#apologist for al-assad

[tomorrowusa]

It's difficult to say which of Trump's nominees is the absolute worst. They each have their own unique combinations of woeful incompetence, hyper-partisanship, and personal failings. But it's certain that Tulsi Gabbard would do the most harm to US national security.

According to ABC’s report, the aides said that the failed presidential candidate regularly read and shared stories from RT—a state-run media outlet formerly known as Russia Today—even after being told that it wasn’t a credible news source. Gabbard’s former staffers suggested that they didn’t buy some claims from Democrats that their former boss is a “Russian asset.” But they do believe she’s become a staunch advocate for one of the United States’ chief adversaries thanks to her routine consumption of pro-Russia propaganda. It’s unclear just how much consuming news from these outlets shaped Gabbard’s worldview. In fact, her former aides said that Gabbard read news from a plethora of outlets, ranging from stories peddled by far left factions to articles from extreme-right sources. But Gabbard’s views on Russian aggression in Europe, specifically, have become increasingly eyebrow-raising since her days as a Democratic House member representing Hawaii. The aides provided ABC News with an internal memo that Gabbard sent to staff in 2017, for instance, which showed her extending unwarranted sympathy to the Kremlin. Among many other damning things, the former Bernie Sanders loyalist-turned-MAGA apologist complained about the United States’ “hostility toward Putin” and bemoaned the fact that “there isn’t any guarantee to Put that we won’t try to overthrow Russia’s government.” “In fact, I’m pretty sure there are American politicians who would love to do that,” she added. These fresh allegations against Gabbard have heightened some Democrats’ fears about her securing a spot in Trump’s Cabinet. Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration, told ABC News that the thoughts outlined in Gabbard’s 2017 memo were “basically the Russian playbook.” He also expressed anxiety that she could soon be charged with overseeing America’s most sensitive intelligence assets. 

It's difficult to find anybody currently on the US political scene who Putin would want more than Gabbard to be in charge of US intelligence.

The aides provided ABC News with an internal memo that Gabbard sent to staff in 2017, for instance, which showed her extending unwarranted sympathy to the Kremlin. Among many other damning things, the former Bernie Sanders loyalist-turned-MAGA apologist complained about the United States’ “hostility toward Putin” and bemoaned the fact that “there isn’t any guarantee to Put that we won’t try to overthrow Russia’s government.” “In fact, I’m pretty sure there are American politicians who would love to do that,” she added. These fresh allegations against Gabbard have heightened some Democrats’ fears about her securing a spot in Trump’s Cabinet. Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration, told ABC News that the thoughts outlined in Gabbard’s 2017 memo were “basically the Russian playbook.” He also expressed anxiety that she could soon be charged with overseeing America’s most sensitive intelligence assets. 

Even some staffers associated with the incoming GOP Senate majority think Gabbard is compromised.

“Behind closed doors, people think she might be compromised. Like it’s not hyperbole,” one Republican Senate aide told The Hill. “There are members of our conference who think she’s a [Russian] asset.”

In addition to Putin, she's a great fan of Putin's pal Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad. By coincidence, HTS insurgents in Syria have made astonishing gains – having take two of Syria's largest cities and are now at the outskirts of a third.

Syrian insurgents close in on Homs as they seek path to Damascus – forcing thousands to flee

The al-Assad régime is being propped up by Russia. But the Russians are losing confidence in their client. Russia has advised its citizens in Syria to flee the country.

Russian embassy advises its citizens to leave Syria as rebels advance on strategic city of Homs

If Tulsi Gabbard had unfettered access to US intelligence, she would be funneling it to Putin and al-Assad.

[mariacallous]

Imagine that the day has come for your brain surgery. You are lying, immobilized and vulnerable, on the operating table. Something is wrong, but you hope that it can be repaired. As the anesthesia sets in, you reflect. To be sure, your brain hasn't always performed the way you wished it had. You have made some mistakes, and done some stupid things, regrettable things, wrong things. But still, it is the brain that allows for a reconsideration of all that, to adjust, to have some hope and some possibility of doing better next time. Your brain keeps you going, keeps you in touch with the world. Hopefully, yours can be repaired, and you can get back to thinking, being, becoming. You could get better. As darkness descends, you catch a glimpse of a person dressed as a surgeon, approaching your head with a knife and a smile. It's Tulsi Gabbard. Hope gives way to horror.

This dark fantasy suggests, on a very small scale, the national trauma that lies before us. Gabbard is Donald Trump's choice to operate American intelligence. In the intelligence system, a kind of national brain, the Director of National Intelligence oversees and coordinates the work of agencies charged with knowing the world, protecting the integrity of digital systems, anticipating and preventing terrorism, and evaluating national security threats. Gabbard is the opposite of qualified for such a role: she is a disinformer and as an apologist for the war crimes of dictatorships.

Gabbard appears on the world stage as a defender of a million violent deaths.

She is an apologist for two of the great atrocities of the century: the Russian-Syrian suppression of the Syrian opposition to the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship, which has taken about half a million lives, most of them civilians, some of them by chemical weapons; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has also taken about half a million lives, and has brought the destruction of whole cities, the kidnapping of children, mass torture, and the large-scale execution of civilians.

That is it. That is her profile. Disinformer and apologist. Beyond the United States, in the larger world that US intelligence agencies are tasked to understand, she is associated with her pro-Assad and pro-Putin positions. (In third place, I suppose, would be her propensity to provide the Chinese state media with useful sound bites).

Until 2014, Gabbard said nothing remarkable about foreign affairs. In 2015, just before Putin intervened to save Assad, she began her extraordinary journey of apology for atrocity. In September of that year, Putin sent Russian mercenaries, soldiers, and airmen to Syria to defend Assad. The great advantage Putin could bring to Assad was to multiply the regime's air strikes, which were turned against hospitals and other civilian targets. Hospitals were and remain a Russian specialty.

In June 2015, as a congresswoman from Hawai'i, Gabbard visited Syria. During her stay, she was introduced to girls who had been burned from head to toe by a regime air strike. Her reaction to the situation, according to her translator, was to try to persuade the girls that they had been injured not by Syrian forces, but by the resistance. But this was impossible. Only Syria (at the time of her visit) and Russia (beginning weeks later) were flying planes and dropping bombs.

Either Gabbard was catastrophically uninformed about the most basic elements of the theater of war she was visiting, or she was consciously spreading disinformation. Those are the two possibilities. The first is disqualifying; the second is worse.

And if she was spreading disinformation consciously, she was also doing so with a pathological ruthlessness. Anyone who would lie to the child victims of an air strike to their burned faces would lie to anyone about anything. In January 2017, she visited Syria again, this time to speak to Assad. She began thereafter to deny that his regime had used chemical weapons on its own people. That was a very big lie.

In Washington, in speeches in Congress, Gabbard showed an uncanny ability to turn almost any issue into a justification for defending the Assad regime. In 2016, concern for Christians in Syria was a pretext to defend the Assad regime. In 2017, she presented worries about terrorism as a reason to defend of the Assad regime. In 2018, the anniversary of 9/11 was her prompt for defending the Assad regime. In 2019, she found her way from the genocide of Armenians a century earlier to the need to defend the Assad regime. She even worked hard to segue from the lack of affordable housing in Hawai'i to the need to defend the Assad regime. Gabbard's support of Assad was so well known that her colleagues, Republican and Democratic alike, were worried that she would reveal the identity of a Syrian photographer brought to Congress to testify about Assad's atrocities.

For Russia, Syria was a testing ground for Ukraine. The atrocities perpetrated by Russians in Syria were repeated in Ukraine. In 2021, the largest donor to Gabbard’s PAC was an apologist for Putin. When the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February of the following year, Gabbard, a consumer of Russian propaganda, was immediately ready as a channel for the Russian line, including obvious Russian disinformation. Again and again, over and over, her public statements were strikingly similar to Putin’s,

Amidst the farrago of lies that Russia used to justify its full-scale invasion invasion was the completely bogus claim that Ukraine was site of American biolabs that were testing which infections would be most harmful to Slavs (and thus Russians). This lie originates in Russia and was spread by Russian media, along with some Chinese and Syrian echo chambers, and with a set of western helpers -- one of whom was Tulsi Gabbard. She also urged, "in the spirit of Aloha," that Ukraine react to the invasion by surrendering its sovereignty to Russia. She later justified Russia's invasion of Ukraine by the notion, common in Moscow, that Russia was the victim of American attempts to overthrow Putin. She was specifically thanked by Russian state media for defending Russian war propaganda.

To be sure, the wars and the regions are complex. Even if Assad falls, as now looks increasingly likely, Syria will be a mess, with unsavory and dangerous people in power. There is, of course, room for disagreement about American foreign policy, including with respect to Assad and Putin and their twinned atrocities. That can all be taken for granted, and provides no excuse whatever for Gabbard's very unusual behavior. It is strange, to say the least, that Gabbard says nothing about these regimes that they have not first said about themselves, and that she uses her platform to spread their own very specific disinformation.

One feature of disinformation is that it is factually incorrect: and so the very least (or most?) that can be said about Gabbard is that she consistently wrong on matters of the greatest moral and political significance. But the other element of disinformation is that it is consciously and maliciously designed to confuse. These memes (biolabs!) are tested and perfected before they are released. Disinformation is the opposite of an innocent mistake: it is concocted to make rational reflection and sensible policy difficult. Disinformation, in other words, is a weapon that one regime tries to spread within another society or -- in the dream of a hostile spy chief -- within another society's intelligence service. That is part of what Gabbard offers America’s enemies, and it is bad enough, because it means that systems meant to protect Americans instead put them in danger. It goes without saying that American allies would be unable to cooperate with the United States, and that patriotic intelligence officers would resign in droves. Informers around the world would cease their work. The US government would be cut off from the world.

As Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard would do enormous harm, unwillingly or willingly. She is not just completely unqualified for this role -- she is anti-qualified. She is just the sort of person enemies of the American republic would want in this job. This is not a hypothetical -- Gabbard is the specific person that actual enemies of the United States do want in the job. The Russian media refers to Tulsi Gabbard as a "Russian agent" and as "girlfriend," with good reason.

Gabbard is worse than unfit. Her public record is as a disinformer and apologist for mass murderers. And there is nothing on the other side of the ledger. There are no positive qualifications. (Yes, she wrote a bestselling book. It became a bestseller because she scammed her followers into donating to a PAC which bought the book in bulk.)

Gabbard is just as qualified to operate on your brain as she is to operate the national intelligence services. Would you let her? She clearly wants to take up the knife. Whose idea, one wonders, was that?

Imagine, because it is true, that the day will soon come when we name the person who will operate the national intelligence services. To be sure, like our own minds, the intelligence services of the United States haven't always performed well. There have been mistakes, and manipulation, and downright evil. But there has also been learning, and some recent, impressive showings, as in the precise and public prediction of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Intelligence services are a central part of government. Just as a brain might need surgery, American intelligence needs reform. But it does not need to be butchered for the pleasure of enemies.

PS: Further sources: In Sketches from a Secret War I write about intelligence, counter-intelligence, disinformation, and active measures. In The Road to Unfreedom I write about the Russian intervention in Syria and the associated atrocities. On the early Russian bombings of hospitals in particular I cited these sources: Amnesty International: “Syria: Russia’s shameful failure to acknowledge civilian killings,” Amnesty International, 23 December 2015; Physicians for Human Rights: “Russian Warplanes Strike Medical Facilities in Syria,” Physicians for Human Rights, 7 October 2015. Russian hackers punished those who wrote about the bombings: "Pawn Storm APT Group Returns," SC Magazine, 23 October 2015.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo for The Big Picture:

Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset. Either that, or she’s compromised. At best, she’s a useful shill for the Kremlin. She’s even been called “Russia’s girlfriend” by its own propagandists. And she is a big vector for disinformation, particularly around Ukraine and other countries Putin has his sights on. Those countries include Syria, where Russia has long backed the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad against rebel forces in a war that has killed half a million people and displaced 12 million more both inside and outside the country. Gabbard infamously visited Assad on her own in 2015, after which she became a chief apologist for his regime, to the horror of her fellow Democrats at the time.

Now Assad has fled, apparently to Moscow, and we may still learn what caused Gabbard to come to Assad’s defense at a time when he was gassing his own citizens. But time is running out. In a true “we’re in the upside down” moment, Donald Trump has nominated Gabbard to the position of Director of National Intelligence, an office that oversees no fewer than 18 different U.S. intelligence agencies. In that position, Gabbard would oversee the National Intelligence Program, which funds intelligence activities in several federal departments, and the Central Intelligence Agency. She would also advise Trump, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council on matters of national security. In order to do so, she would necessarily have access to all of our nation’s top secrets—a terrifying proposition if Gabbard is actually in the tank for Russia. There is ample reason to suspect that Gabbard has at a minimum been brainwashed into becoming a reliable Putin mouthpiece. And her bizarre and as yet unexplained affinity for Assad is now fully in the spotlight too, given that regime’s total collapse. All of her favorite leaders are now gathered in Moscow, which raises a crucial question: What the hell are we doing considering her for the top intelligence post?

Look what you made Vlad do!

It isn’t clear when exactly Gabbard made the jump from U.S. isolationist to Putin apologist. But few can forget her public position, tweeted out to the world when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The “war and suffering” could have been avoided, Gabbard claimed, if the Biden administration and its allies had acknowledged “Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO,” which she said would “mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border”:

[...]

Parroting dangerous bioweapons claims

Gabbard followed this up with a call for a cease-fire, recording a video in which she claimed there were 25 or more U.S.-funded “biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release and spread deadly pathogens.” U.S. officials had vehemently denied these allegations when they were made days earlier by Russian officials, but Gabbard again sided with Russia.

Fact-checkers debunked the claims of “biolabs” in Ukraine as initially spread by anonymous social media accounts. But after they emerged, the claims went viral. Per reporting by the Washington Post, the false claims eventually reached Tucker Carlson’s show on the Fox Network and were amplified by the Russian government. (Carlson is another apologist for Putin, and portions of his show were aired earlier this year on Russian state television.) The question over the alleged biolabs was no small matter, and Gabbard’s amplification of the disinformation was alarming to many. 

[...]

Taking the side of a mass murderer

Gabbard’s preference for our enemies isn’t limited to Russia. She has frequently defended Bashar al-Assad in Syria. And it takes a unique kind of person to do so. In her first visit to Syria, which took place in June 2015, Gabbard went on her own as a Congresswoman representing the state of Hawaii. She met with burn victims who had suffered head-to-toe injuries from air strikes. But rather than condemn Assad, according to her translator, Gabbard sought to persuade the victims that their injuries had not come from government air strikes but from the resistance. This was patently absurd because the rebels had no air power. Only the government did. So why was she so keen to argue this, even to burn victims? In September of 2015, Putin entered the conflict on the side of Assad. He sent mercenaries but also increased the regime’s ability to perform air strikes, which Assad used to bomb hospitals and other civilian structures. This turned the tide in favor of Assad for a prolonged period.

[...]

Is Gabbard a Russian asset?

Many have openly speculated about exactly why Gabbard has been so keen to parrot Russian propaganda and defend a brutal dictator like Assad. And indeed, prominent leaders from both sides of the aisle have accused Gabbard of being everything from a Russian asset to an apologist for our sworn enemies. Hillary Clinton appeared on a podcast in 2019 stating she believed Trump and the GOP were “grooming” another spoiler third-party candidate who would be helpful to Russia. “She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton mused. “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up because she’s also a Russian asset.” Asked later whether Clinton was referring to Gabbard, her spokesperson said, “If the nesting doll fits.” (Gabbard exploded in anger over the claim and even sued Clinton for $50 million claiming defamation, but later dropped the suit.) On the other side, former UN Ambassador and Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley recently laid into Gabbard on her podcast. After walking through Gabbard’s worrisome record of siding with our enemies, and speaking specifically about the position of Director of National Intelligence, Haley warned, “This is not the place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Chinese sympathizer. DNI has to analyze real threats. Are we comfortable with someone like that at the top of our national intelligence agencies?”

Putin and Assad sockpuppet Tulsi Gabbard running our national intelligence would be harmful to national security and our allies.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

During the Cold War, countless Republicans were — along with Democrats — blistering critics of the Kremlin. But the MAGA movement has had its share of Republicans who aren't shy about defending Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The late conservative Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) considered Donald Trump a "disgraceful" Putin apologist. And Putin's vocal MAGA defenders have included former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who spent much of her political career as a Democrat but is now a far-right MAGA Republican.

Trump has nominated Gabbard for national intelligence director, but it remains to be seen whether or not she will be confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2025.

In an article published on December 5, The Guardian lays out reasons why many people in the intelligence community are so alarmed by the nomination.

Intel experts have been troubled not only by Gabbard's willingness to defend of Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but also, by her defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"Within Washington foreign policy circles and the tightly knit intelligence community," The Guardian explains, "Gabbard has long been seen as dangerous. Some have worried that she seems inclined toward conspiracy theories and cozying up to dictators. Others, including the former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have gone further, calling her a 'Russian asset.'"

The Guardian adds, "Those concerns have been heightened by Gabbard's nomination under Donald Trump to the post of director of national intelligence, a senior cabinet-level position with access to classified materials from across the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, and shaping that information for the president’s daily briefing. The role would allow her to access and declassify information at her discretion, and also direct some intelligence-sharing with U.S. allies around the world."

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), a Never Trump conservative who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 presidential race, has been an outspoken critic of the nomination.

In a scathing article published by The Bulwark on November 19, Kinzinger warned, "I worry what might happen to untold numbers of American assets if someone as reckless, inexperienced, and outright disloyal as Gabbard were DNI."

A Guardian source described as someone "familiar with discussions among senior intelligence officials" told the publication, "There is real concern about her contacts (in Syria) and that she does not share the same sympathies and values as the intelligence community. She is historically unfit."

[hussyknee]

Not so friendly reminder that Tankies are people who deny not only the genocides of Russia but also Vietnam and China (including the Uyghurs), and are apologists for the North Korean regime. They push Russian propaganda of "colour revolutions" every time a Global South country rises up against a totalitarian government because they believe totalitarianism is merely anti-communist agenda; deriding, dismissing and dehumanizing the liberation movements of our countries that come at great human cost. They're not anti-imperialists or anti-colonial; their chief issue with the imperial core is that it's not their ideology seated at the heart of it. They only care about Global South lives when it serves their ideology, and have no genuine concern or curiosity about the ground realities or agency of the communities impacted by imperialism and colonialism.

I also want you to understand that every major power player involved in this conflict is a genocidal fascist. Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis that are fighting Israel are funded by the theocratic Iranian regime headed by Ebrahim Raisi (begging you to remember the hundreds of Iranian girls and women killed for protesting it). Iran is also an ally of the notorious Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Syria, responsible for the genocide and displacement of millions of his own people while actively funding the Islamic State he wages war against. Both Assad and Raisi are allies of Putin, who is currently trying to colonize and genocide Ukraine and is terrorising Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia etc. However, Iran and Putin (half-heartedly) are also allies of the Armenians who are being genocided by Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is supported by the US, but also Erdogan in Turkey, infamous dictator that hates the European Union and is a close pal of Putin. Meanwhile the US's best friends in the Middle East is Israel, which hates Arabs, and Saudi Arabia, who doesn't recognise Israel as a country but is hated by most of the MENA and is currently in a Cold War with Iran.

*yanks y'all by the shirt and shouts in your face* THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS HERE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?? ONLY INNOCENT CIVILIANS CAUGHT IN A SPIDER WEB OF GREEDY, DESPOTIC, GENOCIDAL, FASCIST CUNTS. THERE IS NO POINT TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE IS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO GLOBAL DEMOCRACY BECAUSE ALL THE FALL OF ONE DOES IS CREATE A POWER VACCUUM THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE FILLED BY THE NEXT BULLY.

These governments can only be toppled from within by their own people once external threats like war with their neighbours are eased, because militaries with nothing to fight are economic black holes that try to eat itself, and it's this economic stress that act as catalysts for coalition building and civilian revolt. Military losses weaken imperialists' coercive power and legitimacy over their own people, so the best thing you can do to help them agitate for change is preventing imperialist expansions from claiming any more victims.

[misfitwashere]

Tulsi Gabbard Holds the Knife

An Operation We Might Not Survive

TIMOTHY SNYDER

DEC 7

Imagine that the day has come for your brain surgery. You are lying, immobilized and vulnerable, on the operating table. Something is wrong, but you hope that it can be repaired. As the anesthesia sets in, you reflect. To be sure, your brain hasn't always performed the way you wished it had. You have made some mistakes, and done some stupid things, regrettable things, wrong things. But still, it is the brain that allows for a reconsideration of all that, to adjust, to have some hope and some possibility of doing better next time. Your brain keeps you going, keeps you in touch with the world. Hopefully, yours can be repaired, and you can get back to thinking, being, becoming. You could get better. As darkness descends, you catch a glimpse of a person dressed as a surgeon, approaching your head with a knife and a smile. It's Tulsi Gabbard. Hope gives way to horror.

This dark fantasy suggests, on a very small scale, the national trauma that lies before us. Gabbard is Donald Trump's choice to operate American intelligence. In the intelligence system, a kind of national brain, the Director of National Intelligence oversees and coordinates the work of agencies charged with knowing the world, protecting the integrity of digital systems, anticipating and preventing terrorism, and evaluating national security threats. Gabbard is the opposite of qualified for such a role: she is a disinformer and as an apologist for the war crimes of dictatorships.

Gabbard appears on the world stage as a defender of a million violent deaths. 

She is an apologist for two of the great atrocities of the century: the Russian-Syrian suppression of the Syrian opposition to the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship, which has taken about half a million lives, most of them civilians, some of them by chemical weapons; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has also taken about half a million lives, and has brought the destruction of whole cities, the kidnapping of children, mass torture, and the large-scale execution of civilians.

That is it. That is her profile. Disinformer and apologist. Beyond the United States, in the larger world that US intelligence agencies are tasked to understand, she is associated with her pro-Assad and pro-Putin positions. (In third place, I suppose, would be her propensity to provide the Chinese state media with useful sound bites).

Until 2014, Gabbard said nothing remarkable about foreign affairs. In 2015, just before Putin intervened to save Assad, she began her extraordinary journey of apology for atrocity. In September of that year, Putin sent Russian mercenaries, soldiers, and airmen to Syria to defend Assad. The great advantage Putin could bring to Assad was to multiply the regime's air strikes, which were turned against hospitals and other civilian targets. Hospitals were and remain a Russian specialty.

In June 2015, as a congresswoman from Hawai'i, Gabbard visited Syria. During her stay, she was introduced to girls who had been burned from head to toe by a regime air strike. Her reaction to the situation, according to her translator, was to try to persuade the girls that they had been injured not by Syrian forces, but by the resistance. But this was impossible. Only Syria (at the time of her visit) and Russia (beginning weeks later) were flying planes and dropping bombs. 

Either Gabbard was catastrophically uninformed about the most basic elements of the theater of war she was visiting, or she was consciously spreading disinformation. Those are the two possibilities. The first is disqualifying; the second is worse.

And if she was spreading disinformation consciously, she was also doing so with a pathological ruthlessness. Anyone who would lie to the child victims of an air strike to their burned faces would lie to anyone about anything. In January 2017, she visited Syria again, this time to speak to Assad. She began thereafter to deny that his regime had used chemical weapons on its own people. That was a very big lie.

In Washington, in speeches in Congress, Gabbard showed an uncanny ability to turn almost any issue into a justification for defending the Assad regime. In 2016, concern for Christians in Syria was a pretext to defend the Assad regime. In 2017, she presented worries about terrorism as a reason to defend of the Assad regime. In 2018, the anniversary of 9/11 was her prompt for defending the Assad regime. In 2019, she found her way from the genocide of Armenians a century earlier to the need to defend the Assad regime. She even worked hard to segue from the lack of affordable housing in Hawai'i to the need to defend the Assad regime. Gabbard's support of Assad was so well known that her colleagues, Republican and Democratic alike, were worried that she would reveal the identity of a Syrian photographer brought to Congress to testify about Assad's atrocities.

For Russia, Syria was a testing ground for Ukraine. The atrocities perpetrated by Russians in Syria were repeated in Ukraine. In 2021, the largest donor to Gabbard’s PAC was an apologist for Putin. When the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February of the following year, Gabbard, a consumer of Russian propaganda, was immediately ready as a channel for the Russian line, including obvious Russian disinformation. Again and again, over and over, her public statements were strikingly similar to Putin’s,

Amidst the farrago of lies that Russia used to justify its full-scale invasion invasion was the completely bogus claim that Ukraine was site of American biolabs that were testing which infections would be most harmful to Slavs (and thus Russians). This lie originates in Russia and was spread by Russian media, along with some Chinese and Syrian echo chambers, and with a setof western helpers -- one of whom was Tulsi Gabbard. She also urged, "in the spirit of Aloha," that Ukraine react to the invasion by surrendering its sovereignty to Russia. She later justified Russia's invasion of Ukraine by the notion, common in Moscow, that Russia was the victim of American attempts to overthrow Putin. She was specifically thanked by Russian state media for defending Russian war propaganda.

To be sure, the wars and the regions are complex. Even if Assad falls, as now looks increasingly likely, Syria will be a mess, with unsavory and dangerous people in power. There is, of course, room for disagreement about American foreign policy, including with respect to Assad and Putin and their twinned atrocities. That can all be taken for granted, and provides no excuse whatever for Gabbard's very unusual behavior. It is strange, to say the least, that Gabbard says nothing about these regimes that they have not first said about themselves, and that she uses her platform to spread their own very specific disinformation.

One feature of disinformation is that it is factually incorrect: and so the very least (or most?) that can be said about Gabbard is that she consistently wrong on matters of the greatest moral and political significance. But the other element of disinformation is that it is consciously and maliciously designed to confuse. These memes (biolabs!) are tested and perfected before they are released. Disinformation is the opposite of an innocent mistake: it is concocted to make rational reflection and sensible policy difficult. Disinformation, in other words, is a weapon that one regime tries to spread within another society or -- in the dream of a hostile spy chief -- within another society's intelligence service. That is part of what Gabbard offers America’s enemies, and it is bad enough, because it means that systems meant to protect Americans instead put them in danger. It goes without saying that American allies would be unable to cooperate with the United States, and that patriotic intelligence officers would resign in droves. Informers around the world would cease their work. The US government would be cut off from the world. 

As Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard would do enormous harm, unwillingly or willingly. She is not just completely unqualified for this role -- she is anti-qualified. She is just the sort of person enemies of the American republic would want in this job. This is not a hypothetical -- Gabbard is the specific person that actual enemies of the United States do want in the job. The Russian media refers to Tulsi Gabbard as a "Russian agent" and as "girlfriend," with good reason.

Gabbard is worse than unfit. Her public record is as a disinformer and apologist for mass murderers. And there is nothing on the other side of the ledger. There are no positive qualifications. (Yes, she wrote a bestselling book. It became a bestseller because she scammed her followers into donating to a PAC which bought the book in bulk.) 

Gabbard is just as qualified to operate on your brain as she is to operate the national intelligence services. Would you let her? She clearly wants to take up the knife. Whose idea, one wonders, was that?

Imagine, because it is true, that the day will soon come when we name the person who will operate the national intelligence services. To be sure, like our own minds, the intelligence services of the United States haven't always performed well. There have been mistakes, and manipulation, and downright evil. But there has also been learning, and some recent, impressive showings, as in the precise and public prediction of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Intelligence services are a central part of government. Just as a brain might need surgery, American intelligence needs reform. But it does not need to be butchered for the pleasure of enemies.

[fromchaostocosmos]

In a preamble, Cuomo said that “if you’re a Nazi, or you’re a hater, or wanna eradicate people, anti-Semitic — something like that — then you have no value, then I don’t have you on the show.” “But if you have ideas that are controversial, if you’re somebody who outrages people because of what you say you want for this country or others that aren’t about destroying or hurting people, they’re just different, then that’s about conversation,” continued Cuomo before suggesting that Hinkle’s “ideas” are “resonant.”

Hinkle went on to advocate the cessation of all American aid to Israel. “What happens if you cease all military aid for Israel? You’re gonna have Israel collapse as a country. And then you would have one country where hopefully people can get along like they have for generations and generations prior to 1948,” said Hinkle.

Notably, Cuomo did not mention Hinkle’s spread of disinformation about the war or conspiracy-mongering about Jews. Since the outbreak of the war, Hinkle has ceaselessly spread blatant falsehoods about Israel, using footage from the Syrian civil war to suggest it had bombed a Gazan hospital, and falsely citing Haaretz in an effort to downplay the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7.

He has also promoted an incomprehensible conspiracy theory connecting “high chairs and stained mattresses” stored in New York City’s “secret underground synagogue tunnels” with a Reddit produced “map of registered sex offenders living in Israel,” as well as declared that “every Zionist woman” in his “DM’s [sic] is ugly as hell.”

As CNN’s Jake Tapper pointed out on X in response to the interview, Hinkle has also denied that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, even calling him a “hero.”

In a statement to Mediaite, Cuomo defended his interview: “It is clearly untrue that I have ever, or would ever, give any deference to any kind of anti-semitism. This is another cheap hit piece. I get that some in the media want to say what can and can not be said. People can make quick work of why Hinkle has such a robust following, and how they feel about his ideas. Mediaite can try to frame me as an apologist for a bigot…but that is about their toxic agenda, not the truth.”

I recommend that you read the whole article.

[verycleverboy]

[Tulsi] Gabbard is stunningly unqualified for almost any Cabinet post (as are some of Trump’s other picks), but especially for [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence]. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none. (She is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police, and civil-affairs-support positions. She has won some local elections and also represented Hawaii in Congress.) She has no significant experience directing or managing much of anything. But leave aside for the moment that she is manifestly unprepared to run any kind of agency. Americans usually accept that presidents reward loyalists with jobs, and Trump has the right to stash Gabbard at some make-work office in the bureaucracy if he feels he owes her. It’s not a pretty tradition, but it’s not unprecedented, either. To make Tulsi Gabbard the DNI, however, is not merely handing a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States. Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, attempting to position herself as something like a peace candidate. But she’s no peacemaker: She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her politics, which are otherwise incoherent, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misunderstood. Hawaii voters have long been perplexed by the way she’s positioned herself politically. But Gabbard is a classic case of “horseshoe” politics: Her views can seem both extremely left and extremely right, which is probably why people such as Tucker Carlson—a conservative who has turned into … whatever pro-Russia right-wingers are called now—have taken a liking to the former Democrat (who was previously a Republican and is now again a member of the GOP).

(full article)

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

Bye John Bolton! 

[eretzyisrael]

The World Council of Churches is led and staffed by people who are so blinkered by their obsession with Jewish power and sovereignty that they have no idea what is really going on in the Holy Land.

That’s a harsh, but reasonable assessment considering the evidence. Looking at the organization’s behavior over the years, it’s impossible to deny that the WCC has enlisted in the effort to make life more difficult for Jews in their homeland. The organization is so committed to this agenda that its leaders and staffers sometimes undermine the welfare of Christians in the Holy Land.

The most recent example of this phenomenon is, helping Archbishop Atallah Hanna, the head of the Sebastia Diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem to defame Israel.

The WCC came to Hanna’s aid on Jan. 2, 2020 when it issued a press release expressing “profound sorrow and prayers” on his behalf after the Archbishop accused the Israelis of trying to assassinate him. Hanna made this allegation on Jordanian television after a tear gas cannister was fired from an unknown source into his church on Dec. 18, 2019.

In response to Hanna’s accusation that Israel poisoned him, Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared on Jan. 5, 2020 that the charges were baseless and “The accusations that stem from these remarks are redolent of blood-libel.”

In its January 2 press release, the WCC declared that Hanna was “reportedly hospitalized . . . after being poisoned by chemical substances.” The following paragraph states that he “has been a strong critic of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians according to International Law.” The WCC’s implication that Israel “poisoned” Hanna is disgraceful act of dishonesty that others have rebroadcast. By retailing Hanna’s propaganda, the WCC has brought shame onto the churches it represents.

It’s not as if Hanna is a credible source of commentary about life in the Holy Land. The man is an inciter against Israel who has accused Israeli Jews of trying to control the world.

He has promoted the Palestinian right of return and called for the creation of a Palestinian state from the river to the sea in the Middle East. Do the math and that means the destruction of Israel.

He has even offered kind words for the Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria who, according to Amnesty International, has been deputized by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to sign off on executions at Saydnaya Military Prison outside of Damascus, where more than 13,000 people have been killed by the Syrian government, most of them by hanging.

Why is the WCC parroting Hanna’s allegations?

The man is not just a “critic” of Israel, as the WCC describes him, but a clergy person who calls for its destruction. Speaking in California in 2008, Hanna told an audience of Arab Americans, “They say the solution is a two-state solution. No. That is not the solution. The solution is one Palestinian state from the sea to the river.” This state would be predicated on the condition, Hanna declared,  “that every Palestinian in exile is allowed to return, including the to the areas occupied in in 1948.”

In this same talk, Hanna declared that “Zionist pretexts” for Israel’s creation “are diabolical and they have no relation to God’s word and the holy books.”

[tomorrowusa]

Dictators sometimes resort to manufacturing and trafficking drugs to raise money for their shoddy régimes. Trump's bro Kim Jong-un famously sells illicit drugs. North Korean diplomats are often drug pushers in countries where North Korea has embassies.

So when a warehouse linked to the ousted al-Assad régime in Syria was found to be stocked with the drug captagon, it simply confirmed suspicions about Syria's involvement in the drug trade.

A social media video surfaced Wednesday allegedly showing a warehouse in Syria stacked with captagon, an illicit drug that had transformed the country into a narco-state under former President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. The large warehouse was reportedly located at the headquarters of a military division near Damascus that was commanded by Assad’s brother Maher. CNN is unable immediately to verify the location. A voice commenting over the video says that it is “one of the largest warehouse facilities of captagon manufacturing of pills.” Piles of pills are seen on the floor along with drug-making equipment. If confirmed, the discovery would support claims by the United States and others that the Assad regime had been involved in actively exporting the drug. Captagon has become a significant social problem in neighboring Arab nations and spurred some of them to engage in talks with the former Syrian regime to curb its trafficking. It is a highly addictive drug, mostly containing amphetamine, that is sometimes described as the “poor man’s cocaine.” Studies over recent years have estimated the annual trade in the drug to be worth billions of dollars. It is believed to have become an economic lifeline for the Assad regime while it was under crippling American sanctions. This week, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya reported the discovery of thousands of captagon pills at the Mazzeh airbase south of Damascus.

This was a bigtime operation, not just a couple of bros in a basement with a chemistry set.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, is a longtime apologist for drug kingpin Bashar al-Assad.

Before she was redpilled, Gabbard’s outstanding trait was warmth toward dictators. In 2017, she traveled to Syria and met with Assad not once but twice, explaining that she met the dictator because “the suffering of the Syrian people . . . has been weighing heavily on my heart.” Like so many political pilgrims, Gabbard saw what she wanted to see, not the reality staring her in the face. In 2017, she had every reason to know that Assad had not only used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, but had welcomed Russian assistance in his civil war, and that Iranian-allied troops and Russian fighters had conducted operations against American interests in the region. No one knows what Assad and Gabbard discussed in their two hours together, but soon after she emerged, Gabbard was expressing skepticism that Assad had really used poison gas, and by the time of her 2020 presidential run, she was citing full-on conspiracy sites that claimed the chemical attacks were false-flag operations designed to bring the United States into the war. Gabbard’s credulousness—if that’s what it is—looks particularly obscene this week, as stories are coming out about the grotesque human rights abuses committed by Assad in Sednaya prison and at other places around Syria. [ ... ] Gabbard demonstrated similar credulousness about Russia and Putin, mouthing so many Kremlin talking points that RT hosts referred to her as “Russia’s girlfriend.”

Of course Russia has been al-Assad's main backer for the past decade. The al-Assad family escaped to Moscow before Syrian rebel forces could apprehend them.

Gabbard may be considered "Russia's girlfriend" by Russian state TV, but she's more generally a harlot for despots.

Trump wants to send the US Army into Mexico to destroy alleged fentanyl labs. But he's quite willing to kiss the butts of dictators who are producing and exporting drugs.

[mariacallous]

In recent decades, both the moral injury of the Iraq War and the turbulent state of public discourse has shaped an anti-American narrative strongly held by a minority of Americans themselves. By “anti-American,” I don’t just mean opposition to contentious aspects of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. I am talking about actual oikophobia, aversion to one’s own homeland, which manifests on both the far left and the far right.

People as diverse as Tucker Carlson and Noam Chomsky have embraced this twisted narrative. After Iraq, their logic goes, and after decades of growing political division, the United States can do no right. This is why the United States shouldn’t aid Ukraine, they argue—we are failing as a country and have no authority to intervene. Whatever other countries might be doing, the United States is doing worse.

It’s gotten to the point that U.S. President Joe Biden’s bold surprise visit to an embattled Kyiv earlier this week was met with such howls of consternation at home that I got the impression that some of our extremists would outright cheer if Russia had, in the words of its own propagandists, tried to “whack Biden” in Ukraine.

There is a defeatism in the words and actions of these U.S. supporters of foreign dictators. They believe there is no hope for the United States. No matter how much they may hem and haw, the logical conclusion of this narrative is: “Americans should give up and let people like Russian President Vladimir Putin run the world.”

“Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light,” the Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote in The Blind Assassin, an extraordinary book published a year before the events of 9/11. As the decade wore on and I became a journalist who worked in a number of countries, I kept coming back to this line. They are not an absolution, but they are a practical way of thinking about the world: There are no utopias.

The call to give up, simply because we are not a utopia, plays on fears about our global standing after decades of the war on terror. Consider Seymour Hersh. As an already-seasoned and celebrated investigative journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, Hersh followed up by reporting on the inhumane torture at Abu Ghraib prison.

Yet years later, Hersh has devolved into a writer who will carry water for a number of war-crime enthusiasts—as long as they are not American. Now, he is an apologist for the brutal regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Most recently, he has been celebrated by Russian war propagandists for alleging that the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. It’s an explosive allegation – based on a single anonymous source. . Not to mention the fact that when one turns to open-source intelligence, glaring holes emerge in Hersh’s detailed narrative.

I understand why some people have been electrified by Hersh’s recent writing, even if it’s bad. Today, the most committed Americans are internationalists, but careful ones—as a 2021 survey by the Eurasia Group Foundation points out, the majority of Americans want the United States to have a greater international role, but not one in which Washington commits our troops at the drop of a hat. Americans are rightfully wary about interventionism, and Hersh’s allegations play into that wariness.

Yet being careful is not the same as projecting our fears and doubts onto the rest of the world. Americans have baggage as a nation—as every nation does—but forcing others to carry it is immature and self-indulgent.

When I was a young person during the George W. Bush years, for example, I began to balk at manipulative and melodramatic rhetoric on freedom, how it cheapened the very idea. Does this give me the right to laugh at Ukrainians who are dying in the thousands because they want to be free of a murderous dictator next door? No, that would be selfish and cowardly.

The devastation of 9/11, the confusion and pain of the wars that followed, the hollowing of our institutions, the increase in bitter divisions—all of these things are real, part of the scar tissue that grows on society. But Americans have choices about how to see those scars and what to do about them.

It’s not my intention to diminish the brutality of some of the United States’ most hotly debated foreign wars, from the Philippines to Iraq. What I do believe is that you can’t effectively reckon with the past if you don’t believe in the future. People who implicitly argue that the failures of Iraq justify a lack of response to Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine have stopped believing in the future. If you rightly think that Abu Ghraib was horrible, you should have something to say about the countless Abu Ghraibs that Russia has created, not turn away and shrug.

Americans should engage with the world, not turn away from it in a spasm of self-hatred. After decades of costly interventionism, the United States is now being practical, using a small fraction of its defense budget to degrade and destroy a significant fraction of Russia’s war machine without putting U.S. troops on the ground. Even a cursory look at Russian propaganda will tell you that this war machine had plans even bigger than taking Ukraine and that this spending is justified in light of the threat Russian fascism has posed. It’s not just 40 million Ukrainians whose lives are on the line here—though they should be enough.

That Americans are tired of war is understandable. In fact, Russians gambled on that in the beginning. Americans proved them wrong. We can, and should, continue to prove them wrong. As a nation, we are greater than our fears.

[toastyslayingbutter]

As a follow-up; a chunk of my discomfort has come from the strange media-circus surrounding the 2020 election, the Hong Kong protests, and Bashar al-Assad’s war crimes in Syria.

I’m well aware that most of the candidates on the Democratic side are pretty weak (save for Bernie Sanders, most of Elizabeth Warren, and Julian Castro); and that the popularity of Buttiegig is entirely due to the moderate media playing favourites. But I feel like as I go from NYT to Jacobin to The Nation, that I’m getting three vastly different stories, and they’re distorted. I take “Socialist” and “Leftist” publications at face value much more quickly that “status-quo” media outlets like WSJ and NYT, but even then, they can oft-tip-toe around important issues.

The same is true of trying to parse out “tankie” Assad apologists and PRC apologists. They take the Western propaganda point above and beyond its actual limits. Yes, there *was* anti-Assad and anti-China propaganda at one time. Yes, there still is. No, that doesn’t excuse Assad’s war crimes or China’s human rights violations against their minority population, particularly the Muslim population. Yet the Lefitst apologists are willing to crank out their own “revolutionary” propaganda, that’s just as absurd.

[the-funtime-autocrat]

Some anti-imperialist critics say that she's (Ilhan Omar) a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled opposition or spokesperson, which would not be too farfetched. Here, she is perpetuating the lies used to justify the United States' dirty war on Syria; namely, that the foreign-shipped, head-chopping "moderate rebels" are waging a "revolutionary struggle" against a "brutal third world dictator" and that the U.S. has to intervene in order to help them bring "democracy." The irony behind Omar, Linda Sarsour, and other Western 'feminists' who cheer on the U.S.-backed Al Qaeda "rebels" trying to overthrow the legitimate, popular, and secular government of Bashar al Assad? Consider the fact that Syrian women's rights are an important part of the pillars of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party, and are protected, and that Sharia law is forbidden in Syria.

Jason Unruhe, “Wahhabi Terror Apologists and American Empire Shills with Pink Pussyhats” (March 16th 2019).

[militant-holy-knight]

Islamophobia: A “Zionist Plot”?

In response to Hating Muslims, Loving Zionists: Israel a Far-Right Model, where Al Jazeera gets everything wrong

Al Jazeera penned an opinion piece trying to lump anti-Muslim terrorism, rational critics of Islamism with Zionism of all things. The “logic” goes that “x Israeli politician is a far-righter”, many leading political figures in far-right politics that criticize Islam have expressed affection and approval for Israel; Palestine is oppressed by Israel and as such all of these things are related to each other. They even used the censored picture of Brenton Tarrant to drive the point home that “See? if you hate Islam, you are also just like this guy and oh, you support Israel too���. 

I can’t even begin pointing out what is wrong with this “some x are y, some y are z, therefore x are y” fallacy, I am even more surprised that right-winged critics of Israel didn’t even try to debunk it. In one hand, it’s pretty observable that support for Israel is strong among mainstream conservatism than other movements across the political spectrum. On the other hand, there is one figure who is never discussed when the topic of alt-right and Zionism overlap, being very little-known outside of Israel.

This is Meir Kahane, a ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbi from the USA who migrated from to Israel and was a co-founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach political party. Also known as “Israel’s Ayatollah”, he urged the establishment of a Jewish theocracy codified by Maimonides (a Reconquista-era Spanish Jew), the immigration of all American Jews to Israel before a “second Holocaust” could take place and was very vocal about advocating the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, violence against Palestinians and those he deemed as “anti-semites”. He was extremely divisive: there were people who found his Jewish supremacist rhetoric intolerable and equated him to the Nazis, while in other camp you had those who supported him largely because of Arab aggression as The Los Angeles Times reported that “[he] is a reaction to the wanton murders of innocent men, women and children in Israel” (which you can find many parallels with modern day politicians supported by the alt-right). Kahane was arrested at least 62 times by Israeli authorities for inciting hatred.

While in prison, Kahane wrote a manifesto titled “They Must Go” where he advocates the complete exile of Palestinians and the necessary process how to do it arguing that if they didn’t they’d begin outbreeding the Jewish population and take over Israel in 20 years (he wrote it in the 80s). His manifesto reads a lot like the anxiety Europeans feel about Muslim migrants which isn’t alleviated in the slightest by them speaking out in the open how they will establish a European caliphate.

Kahane was popular enough with the Israelis that he was elected with one seat to the Knesset. However, he was never really popular with his fellow parliamentarians, whom he regarded as “Hellenists” (Jews who assimilated into Greek culture after being conquered by Alexander the Great), since Kahane thought they weren’t Jewish enough. Most of his proposed laws included: imposing compulsory religious education, stripping citizenship status of all non-Jewish citizens (including Christians) and demanding that relations with Germany and Austria being cut but monetary compensation for the Holocaust being kept.

In 1990, Kahane was assassinated by an al-Qaeda member (it’s believed he was one of the first victims of the terrorist group), who was initially cleared of the murder, but was arrested later for being implicated in the 1993 WWC bombing attempt, where he confessed his first crime and was jailed to life imprisonment. His death made him a martyr leading to Kach member Baruch Goldstein to swear revenge and in 1994, he walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs on the West Bank and shot up the place, killing 30 Muslims before being lynched by the survivors. Given the Cave of the Patriarch status as a important religious site to Islam, this atrocity would have provoked probably worse reactions than Christchurch.

While researching about these things, I couldn’t help but see so many parallels between that and the Christchurch mosque incident. Kahane’s manifesto reads a lot like Tarrant’s own. Even if they were not familiar with Kahane’s own views, it was probably not lost to those that really read into Tarrant’s manifesto that not once he denounces the State of Israel for the current state of Europe - instead he blames Angela Merkel, Reccep Erdogan and Sadiq Khan, straight up calling for their deaths. This seemed enough for many people to conclude Tarrant was an Mossad agent.

To those reading this you may be asking: you listed so many things in common with the alt-right, Islamophobia and Zionism, so what did Al Jazeera get wrong?

Ah, if you actually paid attention to the fringe discourse, you realize that nothing discredits you faster than declaring yourself far-right and voicing support for Israel. I sincerely doubt that white supremacists would have liked a Jewish supremacist like Kahane, specially his demands that Germany to continue paying reparations forever. The fringe right actually finds lots of solidarity with Palestinians and common ground with the liberal left than either side cares to admit. Sure many right-wing politicians happen to be Zionists, but those are the mainstream old guard. 

I also observed that they also are overwhelmingly in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in large part because he is an authoritarian model that stands up against Israel. Does it mean that all people who support Assad are also the same? No. Many support Assad because he is considered a bulwark against Islamism (even though he is a Muslim himself, albeit not considered one by terrorist extremists because he is Alawite). Despite his many flaws, normal people are willing to stand up for him because he represents stability in Syria.

I also take huge issue with Palestinians being referred to as exclusively Muslim because it erases their small and long-suffering Christian minority, which is never on anyone’s minds every time someone discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that Palestinian Christians played a huge role in resistance against Israel before the rise of Islamism ended up alienating them and Christians across the Middle-East aren’t necessarily thrilled about Israel either, not even Israeli Christians themselves.

It’s probably no coincidence that Al Jazeera, who denounces both Israel and the Assad regime who are antagonistic to each other, also happen to be big Islamist apologists which explains why they insist in portraying the Palestinian cause as a religious struggle rather than a nationalist one. It’s in their interest to denigrate critics of Islamism who run across the board in the political spectrum from atheists like Bill Maher and Sam Harris, Christians like David Wood, Brother Rachid and Zacharias Botros and Muslims like Majid Nawaz, Ed Hussein and Mohammed Tawid and many, many, many people worried about the dangers of Islamism, which they use so vociferously the term “Islamophobia” coined by the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization disguised as political party. This way they can lump all the opposition into one camp and paint them as Zionist Islamophobes.

With all that said, the rise of conservatism and nationalism across the world is co-related with the modern liberal left’s weakness to confront the Islamist Question. One of the key reasons that led to Donald Trump’s election were fears of Hillary Clinton increasing immigration as observed by the skyrocketing of sexual abuse cases in Western Europe. Even though he is a more despotic and authoritarian figure than Trump, Erdogan from Turkey is subjected to much less scrutiny from the Western media when he locks up more journalists anywhere in the world.

And this isn’t contained to the West either, the Bharatiya Janata Party characterized as Hindu nationalist and anti-Islamic continues being elected into power because of India’s spats with Pakistan and being formed in the first place because of Indian secularists appeasing to Muslims. And if the future is any indication, you can expect more persecutions of Muslims in Sri Lanka by Buddhists and Christians after the Easter bombings from this year. Those has less to do with Zionism and more with the fear of Islamism.

There is a good reason why I brought up Kahane into this editorial: much like modern day politicians, he was considered too radical by the status quo of the time yet gained the support of a silent majority like modern day because the current status quo proved intolerable. The same thing happened in my country with Jair Bolsonaro, who was already saying absurd things as early as the 90s and would never be considered as President of Brazil yet here we are, though Kahane was assassinated before he got the chance of being Prime Minister.

How many times are we going to deflect the problem like Al Jazeera before we confront it straight in the eye?

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

Refuting Haaretz’s Publisher: Part III

IThe third instalment of my lengthy rejoinder against Amos Schocken, publisher of Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 

Part I is here.

Part II is here. 

In Part II, we saw that Schocken accused the Israeli government of degrading non-Jewish Israelis to second-class citizens by means of its Basic Nationality Law. Does this claim hold water? After all, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had to meet with the Druze community shortly after enacting this law, in order to assure them that the Law did not infringe upon their rights and status in Israel. In addition, many Israeli Arabs alleged that the Law refuted their civil rights, also criticising the “special status”, as opposed to “official” status of Arabic. 

However, when clauses from Israel’s Nationality Law are held up in comparison to other national Constitutions and Laws, we see that Israel asserts similar self-evident truths about her own nationhood in similar ways to other nations. Several articles concerning Syrian nationhood, not called into question on account of Bashar al-Assad or ISIS, mirror those made by Israel. 

Other countries that similarly condemn Israel’s alleged “discrimination and/or racism” have similar Basic Laws. Saudi Arabia asserts itself as an Arab kingdom with Islam as the official (and only) religion, Islam as the rule of law, Arabic (only) as the official language, and Riyadh as its (uncontested) capital. Jordan, whose representatives at the UN regularly excoriate Israel, have similar clauses. According to its Basic principles, Jordan is a Hashemite kingdom, an Arab nation and will not cede any part of its territory as this belongs to the Arab nation. Again, Arabic is the national language, Amman is the capital, and its flag is carefully described. 

Granted, other nations do have several nationalities (Russia and China being such), and several official languages (Iraq), of which some are not indigenous to the nation (Nigeria, Ghana). 

But if Schocken’s contention is that affirming a national identity degrades minority groups to second-class citizens, then why criticise only Israel? Since Haaretz deals with Middle-Eastern affairs (hence the reference to Iran), Schocken should similarly scrutinise and dismiss the Syrian, Saudi, Jordanian, etc. Constitutions and Basic Laws as exclusionary and discriminatory. 

These values of nationhood, national self-determination, the right to choose an official language, a flag, to define borders, and protect the rights of settlement for its citizens, are not discriminatory. Rather, they affirm the human right and need for belonging and connection based on history, culture, identity, language, creed, practice, and geography. The Jewish people, just like the Arabic people next door, have the right to assemble, settle, and govern autonomously in their ancient nation. Unlike the Arabic people, the Jewish right to do all of the above was cruelly suppressed for almost 2000 years, and so the Basic Nationality Law reaffirms what the Jews had lost, and what every other nation affirms (including multinational nations like Russia and China). 

(I should also add that Israel’s Nationality Law specifies that the presence and use of Arabic prior to the Law will remain unchanged).

Back to Amos Schocken’s email:

Haaretz is the strongest advocate for an Israel that is a liberal democracy living in peace with its Palestinian neighbors and that guarantees equal rights for all its citizens.

Israel already fits this category. Nothing inside the Basic Nationality Law, even considering disputes over the wording and potential implications, prevents non-Jews from exercising their rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and association. 

In fact, I went onto the Knesset’s website juand they had Hebrew-Arabic education as one of their front line articles. This will significantly increase community cohesion, and is also necessary for Israel’s many fine academic institutions. 

In another example, point 10 of this Basic Law affirms the rights of non-Jews to observe their own Sabbath days. This complements the rights of non-Jews to establish places of worship, observe their religious teachings, speak Arabic (and other languages), and follow the non-Hebrew (Gregorian) calendar. 

These days are a critical period in Israel. Within three months, Israel will once again hold a general election and the next government will be determined. The real issue is whether Israel will stay a liberal democracy, or move further towards a fundamentalist and ethnocentric society.

It seems that Schocken opposes Jewish nationalism. Does he oppose the far more radical Palestinian Arab nationalism, which would see Jews expelled from a future Palestinian State or worse? Indeed, does he oppose all nationalism? 

His own newspaper stands as a testament to the premise of Jewish nationalism: reconstituting the ancient Jewish homeland as the nation-state of the Jewish people. I challenge Schocken to find anything malign or discriminatory inside such a premise. As mentioned before, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 stated that the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish citizens should not be prejudiced by the creation of a Jewish State. Israel’s society is incredibly rich, and there are many non-Jewish ethnic, national, and religious groups thriving inside the Jewish State. 

Schocken’s insinuations concerning “fundamentalism” are suspicious. What does he mean by this? Zionism is inherently fundamentalist, since it urges Jews to return to their ancient homeland, rather than remain assimilated and scattered abroad. The Zionist case is rooted in history, law, and the Jewish faith-- even though many Zionists are secular. The name of Schocken’s newspaper, Haaretz, refers to how Jews sought to settle and cultivate the land in order to build their state, just as they had done centuries ago, time and time again. So what Schocken labels as a “move further towards fundamentalism” is nothing more than affirming and promoting the essential creeds of Zionism.

Meanwhile, Schocken does not accuse the Palestinians of fundamentalism. They assert that they had a state stretching back to the Roman times and beforehand. This is categorically false. Schocken does not question this. They claim to want a state in which alleged Palestinian refugees (mostly living in Jordan), be allowed to return. They refuse to recognise Israel as a Jewish State, nor Israel’s right to exist. Whilst their Western apologists insist that Jews would be allowed to live with Palestinians, actual Palestinian and Arabic media shows otherwise, with incitements to anti-Semitic murder routine and prominent in political discourse.

 All of this is fundamentalist-- Palestinian Arabic fundamentalism. Yet one may judge for themselves which, of the two, is based on moral right, and which is based on hatred.