#because Gaza will be decimated under Trump

[tearueful]

The choice is pretty simple. There are only two options:

The woman who wants peace and a ceasefire or-

The guy who is best friends with Putin and Netanyahu that wants to glass Gaza.

That's it. That's the choice.

VOTE.

[cherienymphe]

...but I know both sides are terrible. I just think one is worse. Sorry but I do think what I will go through under Trump will be worse than what I would've went through under Kamala. I do not think they're equally terrible and I'm not blaming 3rd party and non voters. I'm expressing my dislike of them 😭 Trump won the popular vote. We have a serious right wing problem in this country point blank, but I'm capable of expressing my dislike of more than one group

Not them writing all that. Just say you feel called out because you didn’t vote and move on😭

No bc why do they think we don't know both sides are terrible? They fr think we don't know what we're talking about because I absolutely believe both sides are awful. That's why the two party system sucks but ultimately I do think one is the lesser of two evils. It all comes back to them feeling like because other groups are suffering then we all must suffer. Trump is going to decimate Gaza and take our rights away in our own country, but that's what they want. I'm not even saying that in a cheeky way but in a very matter of fact way. They fundamentally believe we all should suffer together

They didn't want Kamala in office and now she's not in office. They got what they wanted

[tungledotedu]

the vote blue no matter who crowd should've just kept it to themselves. we have a year before elections and you're already proclaiming that you'll back joe biden and the democrats no matter what?

have you noticed that none of this is over yet? only a four-day truce has been agreed upon and it was still delayed. israel is intensifying its bombings of northern gaza before this truce comes into effect. we don't even know how many palestinians have been killed as the gazan health ministry is unable to properly update the death toll. this is because the idf has been decimating its healthcare infrastructure, invading hospitals and sniping doctors. it claimed hamas had a command centre under the al-shifa hospital, and the biden administration 'confirmed' this without providing actual evidence.

this is only a recent development. god knows what else your government will do to escalate the conflict and help its ally slaughter more innocents. you'll look even stupider in retrospect for flocking to your leader like the brainwashed maga cultists you love to hate.

you don't have the spine to threaten to withhold your vote. you don't have the brains to question your officials' statements and actions. you don't even have the compassion to understand why people hesitate to support the democrats again. hell, some of you refuse to believe israel is committing a genocide in the first place.

you're turning people away, people who would have otherwise understood your point of view. you're effectively shooting yourselves in the foot. it would be laughable if it wasn't a chilling revelation of just how little you care about the victims of your government when it happens to benefit you.

you condescend to your own people as if they're idiots, as if they aren't deeply familiar with the dangers that trump represents. i can't imagine how difficult it must be for muslim and arab americans to be stuck in this unenviable dilemma, and for anyone who held their nose to vote for biden and is now appalled by his conduct. this is no easy choice, not in a country of warmongers posing as a democracy.

but you don't reach out to those people and show them any sympathy, do you? you dismiss them as lazy, useless leftists, because it's easier. you're all too eager to blame them for splitting the vote, as if they were the ones who chose to send more weapons knowing they'll be used for ethnic cleansing. biden wants them to be kept secret and bypass congress. because guess what? he knows you're gullible dipshits who will believe him when he claims to protect civilians.

but sure, you'll do what you can to hold the democrats accountable before you go to brunch. keep pretending your party is a champion of left-wing causes while it collaborates with an apartheid, racist settler-colonial state. your tax dollars go to drones and bombs, but at least your student loan debt is cancelled, right? and that's worth the price in human lives?

you lick those boots thinking they keep you safe, but one day they will crush you too.

[inoankin]

Hi, I’ve been a fan of your for a while now from your AWO stuff but lately some of the stuff you posted and reblog has gotten me very worried about you. Like reblogs of post claiming that US citizens deserve the suffering they fear from Trump due to not caring about Palestine enough according to certain people or post decrying those who are voting blue in the us election and wishing ill on them for trying to avoid what they fear could be a Trump started dictatorship(if he get in, bye bye Woman Rights, LGBT plus Rights, People of Color’ Rights, The right to protest. Oh and Peletine would be nuked under his order and be annex so the the very thing you fear will happen to them) and they are just blue fascist. I completely understand why you are angry(yeah Government has admitted fucked up and it can feel that progress ain’t being made much so people are still dying) but it feels like you fallen into a cult like group that taken advantage of your anger over what happening with Palestine and change you not for the better.

signed,

A very concerned Anonymous fan

my feelings on the matter of voting are very complicated. i understand the reason many people are voting for harris. i don't think you're evil or whatever if you do, i get it, trust me. i know that trump will be hell. you don't need to tell me. but for weeks now i've seen palestinians begging people not to vote for harris/walz because of how badly they have, and will continue to, decimate palestine. the problem is that many (not all) blue voters, who previously bashed biden for siding with israel, now turn a blind eye to harris doing the exact same thing. i have seen it myself.

the posts i'm reblogging come from palestinians who are exhausted and furious at the USA's continued apathy. a large portion of the population refuse to sympathize with, and ignore the pain of, people in gaza, because we're an imperial colonizing empire and that's the only thing some people have ever been taught to do. and i can see why that would make somebody fucking angry.

i don't remember exactly how they worded it, but @/fazirun (a palestinian who lives in the US, and would be directly affected by a red presidency) put it in simple terms: "imagine how badly biden/harris fucked up for us to risk another trump term".

if this is about the "[insert politician here] die" thing, then i see how that can come off as sort of extremist... i'm just becoming extremely disallusioned with our political system as the years go by, and i have an affinity for hyperbole. the only thing i actually wish death upon is the occupying state of israel (the death of specific officials, e.g., prime minister netenyahu, will do nothing to stop the genicide, as someone else will just take his place).

i appreciate your concern, but the situation is what it is, and it's fucking bad. i boost palestinian voices when i can. i don't blame them for being angry. it's been 10 months. i'd be angry, too.

[phoenixwrites]

Alright I'm done. Both democratic congressional leaders signed on to invite Netanyahu to speak before Congress. I tried to suck it up and stay blue but they clearly just don't give a fuck and want us to know it so I'm not giving them what they want.

You are giving Trump exactly what he wants, actually. I'm sure he'll thank you in his acceptance speech, as he bans contraception, outlaws transgender protections, and privatizes Medicare.

When I was a conservative, I used to get so fucking frustrated with single issue voters--in that camp, it was pro-life people. They were solely focused on a very important issue--abortion. But they refused to look at anything else--how their horrible policies would affect infertile couples, or women's rights, the war on terror (pro or against), the economy--as long as the Conservative Mouthpiece said "I believe in the sanctity of life" they'd vote for him ind roves.

If you are turning the Gaza genocide into a tantrum where you won't vote, because i hate them both! You are giving into apathy. You are allowing your privilege to win. You know perfectly well that Biden is the only chance for Gaze, you know Trump will decimate them, this time cheerfully and happily and with full open intention.

Yes, Biden is doing a mealy job trying to appease both sides. Yes, he absolutely is not doing enough. Yes, his stubborn commitment to the Israel government is fucking frustrating--as it must have been frustrating for OUR allies when WE were invading Iraq.

Here's the metaphor. We're in a neighborhood. We live in a house with a roommate--and that roommate is actively trying to kill you. He plants bombs under your bed, he puts a trip wire in your car, he calls your place of employment and tries to get you fired.

You have another roommate, and he's...lazy. He won't to the fucking dishes, even though he keeps promising to do so. He actually keeps going over to the neighbor's house, which is on fire, to try and ask the other neighbor to stop setting it on fire. I mean, that neighbor is handing him matches as he asks him to stop, it's kind of, "I"ll give you a few more matches, but then you HAVE to stop, okay?! It's hurting innocent people! I know you're trying clear away brush, but it's actively setting other houses on fire! You have to stop!" (Arsonist neighbor refuses to stop.)

Meanwhile, the other neighbor that is trying to kill you? He is laughing uproariously at the other neighbor. He says he can't wait till the other guy is evicted, because then he's going to bring his bombs next door and THEN they'll have fun. The rest of the neighborhood are fucking terrified of what he'll do come November.

The enabler neighbor has returned. He has stopped giving matches to the neighbor. He has noticed with alarm that the other roommate has been setting grenades and bombs all over the fucking place. Both of you are going to have to clean up everything. It isn't fair. You shouldn't have to clean up anything. It wasn't your mess!

So you go upstairs to sulk.

That's what refusing to vote for Biden is.

Gaza is a tragedy. But if you're thinking, "it can't possibly get worse under Trump", think again. It can and it will and it will be your fault.

[howdon-aldi-death-queue]

NEW SAM FENDER INTERVIEW FOR NME

THE BIG READ

Sam Fender: “This album is probably the best thing I’ve done in my life”

The hometown hero has distanced himself from the ‘Geordie Springsteen’ tag, but there’s no shortage of rites-of-passage yarns and colossal tunes on the upcoming ‘Seventeen Going Under’

“You can see the ghost of Thatcherism over there…” says Sam Fender, pointing across the water to a vacant shipyard, where once the shipbuilding industry was so healthy that vessels towered higher than the rows of houses on the shore. We’re on the waterfront in North Shields, just outside Newcastle, and our photographer is snapping away for Sam’s first NME cover shoot.

The singer-songwriter stares stonily into the lens as wafts of seaweed and fishing trawlers are carried by the northern coastal breeze. He’s already been stopped for a few pictures with fans, but remains eager to point out the impact that Tory leadership has had on his working-class town over the last few decades. “It’s been closed since the ’80s, from the ghost wasteland of the shipyards. You’ve got all the scars of Thatcherism from The Tyne all over to the pit villages in Durham.”

It’s as good an introduction as any to the outspoken musician, whose 2019 debut album ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ was a record for his sleepy hometown to be proud of – tackling themes that range from male suicide (the heartbreaking ‘Dead Boys’) to world tensions (and the “kids in Gaza” he eulogised on its soaring title track). He set weighty topics against blisteringly well-executed Americana with the fist-in-the-air euphoria of Bruce Springsteen’s colossal choruses and sax solos. Much like his hero, Sam smartly weaves his own political standpoint and personal circumstance into gripping anthems of a generation, which earned him the ‘Geordie Springsteen’ tag.

“I can’t exactly bat off those comparisons, can I?” he says back in his cosy recording studio nearby. “At the same time, I don’t feel worthy of that tag. The first time I heard it, I was like, ‘That’s fucking sick’, but you don’t want to be riding off the coattails of The Boss for the rest of your life. I can write my own songs, they’re different and my voice doesn’t sound anything like Springsteen’s. I don’t have his growl; I’m a little fairy when I sing.”

He may have toned down the Springsteen vibes slightly on his highly anticipated second album ‘Seventeen Going Under’, due later this year, but there are still plenty of chest-pounding anthems capable of making your hairs stand on end: “I much prefer Americana to the music we have in our country at the moment. I love the leftfield indie stuff like Fontaines D.C, Squid and Black Midi, but I love a chorus and melodic songs. I think the American alternative scene has that down with Pinegrove, Big Thief, The War On Drugs.”

‘Hypersonic Missiles’ thrummed with a small town frustration almost that every suburban teenager could surely relate to. This was most notable on ‘Leave Fast’, where he sang about the “boarded up windows on the promenade / The shells of old nightclubs” and “intoxicated people battling on the regular in a lazy Low Lights bar”, a reference to his beloved local. But album two sees him fully embrace North Shields, an ever-present backdrop to cherished memories and harrowing life events of his youth and surroundings.

It’s no coincidence that the 27-year-old has turned inwards and penned a record about his hometown while being stuck at home like the rest of the country: “I didn’t have anything to point at and I didn’t want to talk about the pandemic because nobody wants that – I never want to hear about it again. It was such a stagnant time that I had to go inwards and find something, because I was so uninspired by the lifetime we we’re living in.

“I’ve made my coming-of-age record and that was important for me – as I get older, these stories keep appearing; I’ve got so much to talk about. I wrote about growing up here. It’s about mental health and how things that happen as a child impact your self-esteem in later life. On the first record, I was pointing at stuff angrily, but the further I’ve gotten into my 20s, the more I’ve realised how little I know about anything. When you hit 25, you’re like: ‘I’m fucking clueless! I know nothing about the world.’ It was a humbling experience, growing up.”

Early last year, before the pandemic hit, Sam was set to jet off to New York pre-pandemic to record in the city’s infamous Electric Lady studios founded by Jimi Hendrix. “Looking back, I’m thankful that it happened,” he says. “If I went off to New York and did my second album there… it wouldn’t have been the same record. I will go and do the third one in NYC, come hell or high water – I’m fucking out of here!

“The forced return home really informed the direction [of the record]. I was on the crest of this insane wave; we’d sold out 84,000 tickets for the [‘Hypersonic Missiles] arena tour that we still haven’t played yet. I’m still waiting to hear when it’s going to be rescheduled. It’s incredibly frustrating; I’ve got loads of frustrated fans. That was all cancelled on the day of the lockdown. I thought it was only going to be a couple of months and that it would be another swine flu thing, but fool me – I was stuck in the house like everybody else.”

It’s not the first setback that Sam has dealt with in his career. In the summer of 2019, he was ready to make his Glastonbury Festival debut with a Friday afternoon set on the legendary John Peel Stage, a rite of passage for any emerging artist, but had to pull out due to a serious health issue with his vocal chords. The mood in the room shifts dramatically at the mention of this devastating period: “I don’t want to focus on that, to be honest, because it’s just negative news and it’s in the past.”

“The further I’ve gotten into my 20s, the more I’ve realised how little I know”

Looking back now, he says, it was a tough decision, but ultimately the right thing to do: “We were doing so much at the time and I just burnt out. If you damage your vocal cords, you can’t take it lightly. If something happens like that and you keep going, you’ll fucking lose your career forever. I never want to end up behind the knife; I just refuse to put myself in that situation.”

The fact that his 2019 breakthrough ground to a halt again in COVID-decimated 2020 “was frustrating as fuck”, he says, “but I took solace in the fact that everyone was stopped in their tracks that time; it wasn’t just me.” This was in stark contrast to the singer’s experience of pulling the biggest moment of his music career in order to rest his vocal cords: “I didn’t talk for three weeks; I had to be silent and just watch Glastonbury on the TV, going, ‘This is completely dogshit’. But you can’t even say that out loud – you’re just saying it over in your head like a psycho. I’d take a pandemic over that any day.”

There was a brief flash of light when he headlined the opening night at the world’s first socially distanced arena, Newcastle’s Virgin Money Unity venue, to an audience of 2,500. Yet Sam’s not in the mood to wax lyrical about that, either. “It was amazing,” he says, “but it didn’t happen again.” A local lockdown in the North East brought the following shows – which would have featured Kaiser Chiefs and Declan McKenna – to a premature end in September: “It was another false start. We thought everything was going to get moving again but then we were just sat around [again].”

As for this reaction to the Government’s handling of the pandemic? It perhaps says it all that he’s selling face masks emblazoned with the words ‘2020 Shit Show’ and ‘Dystopian Nightmare Festival’ on his website. “I think everyone has said enough haven’t they?” Sam suggests. “I never want to see Boris Johnson’s or Matt Hancock’s face ever again. As soon as they come on the TV, I just turn it off.”

Political tension bubbles through ‘Seventeen Going Under’. Its second half boasts tracks such as ‘Long Way Off’, a brooding but colossal festival anthem brimming with angst and unease. “Standing on the side I never was the silent type,” Fender roars, “I heard a hundred million voices / sound the same both left and right / we’re still alone we are.” It’s gripping stuff; a Gallagher-level anthem ripe for pyro and pints held aloft.

Sam says the song is about feeling stranded amid political divisiveness here and in the US, epitomised when Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington back in January: “You’ve either got right-wing, racist idiots or you’ve got this elitist, upper-middle-class section of the left-wing, which completely alienates people like myself and people from my hometown.”

“The polarity between the left and the right has me feeling like I have no identity”

Closer to home, the last UK election, in 2019, saw the so-called ‘Red Wall’ crumble as working-class voters in the north defected from Labour to Tory. “The polarity between the left and the right has me feeling like I have no identity,” Sam says. “I’m obviously left-wing, but you lose hope don’t you? Left-wing politics has lost its main votership; it doesn’t look after working-class people the way that it used to. Blyth Valley voted Tory just north of here. Now, that is saying something! We’re in dire straits when a fucking shipbuilding town is voting for the Tories – it’s like foxes voting for the hunter.”

He’s even seen his own working-class friends peel to the blue side: “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I understand it, though. I’d never vote for the bastards because I fucking hate them and I know what they’re up to, but I get why people don’t feel any alliegiance to left-wing politics when they’re working-class.”

As ever though, Sam isn’t masquerading as an expert: “I’m not fucking Noam Chomsky, you know what I mean? I’m not going to dissect the whole political agenda of the Tories and figure it all out because I can’t. All I see is a big fucking shit sandwich – every day through my news feed – and it’s just, ‘Well: that’s what your dealing with.”

The singer is fond of describing North Shields as “a drinking town with a fishing problem”. Today he adds: “That’s been the backdrop of my life: all of these displaced working-class people. It’s a town that’s resilient that still has a strong sense of community. In a lot of big cities that’s dead. In London everything changes from postcode to postcode, but everything is quite uniform up here.”

When NME was awaiting Sam’s arrival outside the studio before the interview, a passerby clocked our photographer’s gear and asked, “Oh aye – are you waiting for Sam? We all know Sam – a good lad; very accommodating with nae airs or graces about him.” Another pointed to The Low Lights Tavern down the road, where Fender used to pull pints on the weekends: “He was a terrible barman, and he’ll be the first to tell you that. I think he got sacked about six times during his time there.”

Sam (who confesses of his bartending know-how: “He’s totally right!”) hit the local to celebrate when ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ won him a Critics’ Choice gong at the BRIT Awards in 2019, placing the trophy on the bar. “I owed The Low Lights one for being such a shit barman,” he says. “I wanted them to be proud of us because they fucking certainly wasn’t proud of us when I was around working there!”

“Celebrity stuff freaks me out. I’d rather just live my life”

He’s clearly a key member of the local community, then. How did he see the pandemic impact on his family and friends – especially when the North East faced the toughest Tier Four lockdown restrictions last December? Sam pauses before bluntly saying: “I lost more mates; there was suicides again. Mental health was the biggest thing. We lost friends who had drunk too much.”

A track on the new record, ‘The Dying Light‘, is an epic sequel to ‘Dead Boys’, with the poignant last line of the album ringing out “for all the ones who didn’t make the night”. Sam, unable to truly distance himself from The Boss after all, explains: “It’s very Springsteen. It’s my ‘Jungleland’ or ‘Thunder Road’ – it’s got that ‘Born To Run’ feel; there’s strings and brass [and] it’s fucking massive. It’s a celebration. It’s a triumph over adversity.”

He stresses that it was vital for him to be in regular contact with his friendship circle through that traumatic time: “It becomes important when you lose friends to suicide… You realise it’s always the unlikely folks. We lost a friend to suicide at the beginning of last year and it was someone you’d never expect. It really hits home; it’s important to check in on your mates.”

Sam has alluded in previous interviews to a health condition that he’s not yet ready to fully disclose, and tells NME that he spent three months shielding at the beginning of the pandemic: “I was alone for three months and that was very tough… When you’re completely alone and isolated, it’s impossible. I spent a lot of time drinking and not really looking after myself and eating shit food, but I wrote a lot of good lyrics.”

There’s a certain resulting bleakness to some of his new songs, but Sam also wanted light to shine through. “It’s a darker record, but it’s a celebration of surviving and coming out the other end,” he explains. “It’s upbeat but the lyrics can be quite honest. It’s the most honest thing I’ve done.”

You might expect a young hometown hero to rail at having been denied the chance to capitalise on his burgeoning fame in the last year or so, but Sam insists, “I still have imposter syndrome,” adding: “I don’t feel like it’s happened… I’m walking around the street and people ask for photos and it just feels bizarre. I’m like, really? I feel like I haven’t come out of my shell yet.”

Sam has rarely been one to court celebrity, and revealed in 2019 that he’d turned down the chance to appear in an Ariana Grande video. “It was an honour but I would have just been known as that guy in the video,” he tells NME. “All of my mates would have been flipping their heads off, but I don’t think she would really want an out-of-shape, pale Geordie. I’d rather just live my life, because all of this celebrity stuff freaks [me] out, you know?”

He might have to get used to it: things can only get bigger with the arrival of the new album. “As a record I think this one is leagues ahead [of ‘Hypersonic Missiles’],” he says, “I’m more proud of this than anything I’ve ever done. It’s probably the best thing I’ve done in my life. I just hope people love it as much as I do. With the first album, a lot of those songs were written when I was 19, so I was over half of it [by the time it was released]. Whereas this one is where I’m at now.”

“This is a dark record, but it’s a celebration of surviving and coming out the other end”

Still, he adds: “At the same time, this record is probably going to piss a lot of people off.” He’s referring to a line in one of the more political tracks, ‘Aye’, where he returns to his most enduring bugbear, divisiveness, and claims that “the woke kids are just dickheads”. Sam’s no less forthcoming in person: “They fucking are, though! Some 22-year-old kid from Goldsmiths University sitting on his fucking high horse arguing with some working-class person on some comments section calling them an ‘idiot’ and a ‘bigot’? Nobody engages each other in a normal discussion [online] without calling each other a ‘thick cunt’.”

He’s eager to make this statement, though, come what may: “I don’t fucking care any more. I’m not really sure how the reaction is going to be. People used to say things online about me and I used to get quite hurt about it, but now I’m like, ‘Well, they’re not coming to my house’… [But] I get so angry. In Newcastle we say ‘pet’ and someone was trying to tell me that was fucking offensive towards women. You’re not going to delete my fucking colloquial identity. It’s not even gender-specific; we say it to men and women. My Grandma calls me ‘pet’! That brand of liberalism is fucking destroying the country. We could be getting Boris Johnson and all them pricks out of office if we stopped sweating over shit like that”.

Sam might be outspoken, but he’s self-aware, too. When we were talking politics earlier, he said: “I didn’t want to start on ‘cancel culture’ because I don’t want to sound like Piers Morgan [and] I fucking hate that cunt. But there is a degree of it which lacks redemption; people fuck up. Everyone is a flawed character. If you’re not admitting that you have flaws, then you’re a fucking psychopath. The left-wing seem to be that way and the right-wing are fucking worse than they’ve ever been. Politically I have just lost my shit.”

In all of this uncertainty, though, it seems a sure thing that Sam Fender will take his rightful crown – as soon as the world lets him – with the colossal ‘Seventeen Going Under’. “It’s going to be a hell of a return,” he insists. “I know the fans are still there, you know? So I’m not really worried – I’m ready to go out there and do my thing. Finally!”

[opedguy]

Palestinians Less Relevant to Mideast Peace

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Aug. 17, 2020.--When 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s 39-year-old  son-in-law White House senior adviser Jarod Kushner announced “normalization” of relations Aug. 13, with the United Arab Emirates, Palestinians called it a “stab in the back.”  Palestinians think all Arabs must follow Palestinians lead when it comes to norrmalizing relations with Israel.  No one knows better the Arab Gulf States about the costs of maintaining Palestinians society, especially in the utterly mismanaged Gaza Strip led by the militant group Hamas.  Iran uses Hamas, and to a lesser extent Hezbollah in Lebanon, to maintain its ongoing proxy wars in the Middle East, currently supplying arms-and-cash to Yemen’s Houthi rebels to perpetuate proxy war with Saudi Arabia.  Gulf State Arabs, led by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, have had enough of perpetual warfare, something Palestinians think other Gulf State Arabs should do unless they make peace with Israel.

            Kushner said Palestinian credibility in the Middle East is at an “all time low” and that the U.S. would not “chase” Palestinians for a peace deal as long a they reject out -of-hand U.S. peace overtures.  Kushner had his Mideast peace plan rejected Feb. 11 by Ramallah-based 84-year-old Palestine Authority [PA] or Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] leader Mahmoud Abbas, saying the plan would turn a Palestinian state into “Swiss Cheese,” allowing Israel to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank.  Palestinians want Jewish settlements out of the West Bank for any negotiation for a future two-state solution with Israel.  But Abbas does not speak for half the Palestinian population living under Hamas rule in Gaza.  Gaza’s Hamas rulers led by 58-year-old Ismail Haniyeh are officially at war with Israel, telling Gaza residents daily it will eventually conquer Israel. 

            Gaza has become the poorest, most poverty-stricken region controlled by the militant group Hamas, periodically running out of cash, then looking to the Gulf State to bail them out.  Hamas has established a pattern of running Gaza into the ground then firing rockets into Israel, prompting Israel to retaliate, decimating even more of Gaza’s dilapidated infrastructure, creating more rioting on the Israeli border.  When Gaza runs out of cash, they beg the oil-rich Gulf States to make them whole again.  UAE’s 71-year-old ruler  Emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan decided to follow his counterpart in Saudi Arabia  34-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman engaging Israel quietly in trade, technology and security.  Sheikh Khalifa took it to a new level formally “normalizing” relations with Israel.  Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, now followed 40-years later by Arab Gulf States.

            Gulf States have grown weary of backing Palestinians’ battles, fighting with Israel at the expense of maintaining economic solvency, then expecting the Gulf States.  “We’re not going to chase the Palestinian leadership,” Kushner said  “Their credibility is just really falling to an all time low and even people who can’t to help the Palestinians, those people are just saying that you can’t helo people who don’t help themselves,” giving an accurate picture of today’s picture.  Abbas lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, not longer able to make a peace deal without Hamas consent.  United Nations and European Union officials haven’t pivoted from the days when PLO founder Yasser Arafat ruled all Palestinians, whether in the West Bank or Gaza. Arafat died Nov. 11, 2004 without realizing his dream of Palestinian state.  He was offered may chances but militants, largely from Hamas, prevented him from many peace deals brokered over 40-year period.

            When you consider that Palestinians held not one inch of sovereign territory before the 1967 Six Day War, you’d think they’d seek a peace deal because the West Bank and East Jerusalem were Jordan’s territory before 1967.  While it’s true that Arabs, now called Palestinians, lived in Israel, Jordan and Syria before Israeli’s May 14, 1948 declaration of statehood, it’s also true that it was never sovereign territory.  Jews and Arabs lived under Ottoman Turkish rule for 500 years, before the Ottoman Empire was broken up after WW I.  When Great Britain took over sovereignty to the Holy Land in 1920, they held the territory until 1948.  When six Arab States went to war against Israel in 1967, Israel seized Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights.  Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1979 and Gaza in 2005.   Arafat created the PLO in 1964, calling Arabs once living in the British Mandate of Palestine, West Bank, Gaza and Jordan Palestinians.

            Palestinians are stuck on the idea of forcing Israel to return to the pre-1967 borders, giving back all of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compromised in “normalizing” relations with the UAE, agreeing to suspend plans indefinitely to annex Jewish settlements occupying 17% of the West Bank.  Netanyahu’s agreement bodes well for Palestinians, if they can unify under one leadership, to negotiate for a two-state solution.  Palestinians have no right to dictate Israel’s return of the Golan Heights. PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said Palestinians were ready to negotiate a two-state solution with borders returned to pre-1967.  Rdeneh won’t admit that he speaks only for the PA, only half the Palestinian population.  As long as Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, it’s unlikely that Abbas can do anything on a two-state solution until Hamas joins the PA and stops its ongoing war with Israel.

 About the Author

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[thenoticeblog]

100 Days of Resistance: Day 2 “Donald Trump is the Most Anti-Israel US President in Generations”

by Dana Aliya Levinson

Now that Donald Trump is the President of the United States, I was thinking how can I resist his agenda? I decided on “100 Days of Resistance”. Every single day for the next 100 days I will post another piece that resists President Trump and his administration. This will come in the form of personal stories as a member of a marginalized group that is threatened under President Trump’s administration, as well as pieces on broader issues that face our nation thanks to him. Today’s piece is on the Israeli – Palestinian Conflict and moving our embassy to Jerusalem.

There has been much talk over the years and saber rattling from Republicans about moving our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. While this has been a staple of a far-right agenda for over two decades, there has yet to be a President who is willing to carry it out. This is because once again, there is a lack of understanding of global flashpoints. Before diving into why this move is a yuuuuge mistake, it’s important to talk a little bit about the state of Israeli politics.

After the failure of the Oslo Accords at the end of Bill Clinton’s Presidency and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the so called ‘peace camp’ in Israeli politics experienced a major setback. The idea of a two state solution lost credibility for much of the Israeli electorate as they felt they took a risk, reached out an olive branch to the Palestinians and made what they felt were large concessions in an effort to make peace, and what they got was the second intifada. The assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a far-right Jewish sympathizer splintered the Israeli electorate even further. Since Oslo, with the exception of a brief moment under Prime Minister Sharon and Tzipi Livni, the ‘peace camp’ has largely been decimated. Even many liberals in Israel are skeptical of reaching any sort of accord with the Palestinians, despite the fact that the Palestinians have different leadership than the Oslo era.

Going along with this growing skepticism about peace in the Israeli electorate is the growing acceptance of the settlement movement. The settlements in the Gaza Strip were all disassembled by Prime Minister Sharon. But since Sharon, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, the settlements in the West Bank have seen a major expansion. According to prior agreements, the West Bank is supposed to be the territory on which the Palestinians build their future state. The Israeli settlements have chipped away at that land, tacitly annexing what was supposed to be Palestinian territory and changing the facts on the ground in a way that will soon make a two state solution impossible, if it hasn’t already.

The settlements have not only chipped away at hope for a peace accord, but in real time they have destroyed Palestinian farmland, separated families, destroyed Palestinian water supplies, and given rise to increasing tensions between the settlers and the Palestinians. The issue is that Netanyahu needs the pro-settler parties to maintain his hold on power because they are part of his increasingly fragile governing coalition. The realpolitik of the situation for him is that supporting the settler movement is more politically advantageous than going against it. However, soon, the Israelis will either need to annex the West Bank entirely or let it go. Should that happen, Israel will have two options; they can either give all of the Palestinians living in the West Bank full Israeli citizenship, like the approximately twenty-five percent of Israel’s population who currently live within the recognized borders of the state of Israel who are Arab, or they can ethnically cleanse the West Bank, which some argue is already happening by way of the destruction of Palestinian land and communities to make way for Israeli settlements. The former would be a problem because the Palestinian birthrate is higher than the Jewish one. Demographically, within two generations, an Israel that annexed the West Bank would become a majority Palestinian state. At that point, Israel could either remain a democracy and would no longer be a ‘Jewish state,’ or, it would place restrictions on Palestinians being allowed to enter government and would retain its character as a Jewish state, but lose its character as a democracy. Former Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t being hyperbolic. The second is a problem, because not only would it be a major human rights violation, but it would also destroy any international credibility that Israel has and would likely see large scale international calls for the overthrow of the regime even in Europe.

The Palestinians not only see the West Bank as part of their future state, but they see East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, as their capital. The international community sees Jerusalem’s status as to be determined in a final agreement between the Israeli’s and Palestinians. The current de facto capital of Palestine is Ramallah, and the capital of Israel is Tel Aviv. The Israelis cite the historic Jewish ties to the Old City, including Judaism’s holiest site; the Western Wall, which is the only remaining piece of the ancient temple from antiquity which was the seat of Israelite rule for thousands of years, until the Babylonian exile and then the diaspora causing Roman exile and destruction of the temple. Islamic ties to the Old City of Jerusalem are also deep. The two mosques constructed on the site that the Ancient Temple once stood are among the holiest sites in all of Islam. The rock contained in the Dome of the Rock Mosque, according to Islamic theology, is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven. That very same rock, according to Jewish theology, is where Hashem tested Abraham’s faith by instructing him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis say that the status of Jerusalem is for them, non-negotiable.

President Trump claims that he would like to be the one who finally solves the Israeli – Palestinian Conflict. Appointing a US ambassador who is pro-settler in David Friedman, and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, will certainly not help. In fact, these two things could mark the final nail in the coffin for the two-state solution. As outlined earlier, overt support for the settlement movement will eventually make the two-state solution impossible and over time destroy the Jewish state from within. However, the far-right in Israeli politics sees the Old City as the rightful and historical capital for the Jewish people. Many in the far-right in Israel believe that Israeli dominion over it is divine right. The settler movement not only wants to de-facto take over the West Bank, they would like to see the Israeli capital officially moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The US moving our embassy to Jerusalem is a tacit recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Meanwhile, Senior Palestinian officials have said that they would view such a move as an act of war. It could easily spark a third intifada as Mahmoud Abbas’ political power and therefore ability to stop it, gets weaker and weaker. Traditionally, the US has been the only country with significant enough leverage over the Israeli government to force them to make concessions in negotiations with the Palestinians. Rubber stamping the right wing and settler agenda will kill the two-state solution for  good, and this seems to be the position of the Trump administration.

I am a Jew, and I consider myself a liberal Zionist. My Great Uncle is a Holocaust survivor, and my family is descended from pogroms and destroyed villages. Despite high rates of US assimilation, anti-Semitism still exists in this country and around the world. In fact, the election of Donald Trump brought much of that latent ant-Semitism out into the open. The history of our diaspora has been one of discrimination and of genocide, first at the hands of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, and then at the hands of the Germans in the twentieth. I believe, as a Jew, it is important for us to have a voice on the world stage and a place we can call our homeland so that Jews can be advocated for worldwide. This said, I also consider myself pro-Palestinian, and I do not see these things as paradoxical. I do not support the settlement movement, I believe in the right of Palestinians to self-determination, and recognize what I feel are major human rights violations on the part of the Israeli government in the West Bank. If President Trump is viewed as legitimizing the idea of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital without a bilateral status agreement, or if he blesses continued settlement building, this will mean that a one state solution will be the only future. If the two state solution is killed, it will mark the beginning of the end of Israel as a Jewish State, or the end of Israeli Democracy. Because of this, President Trump is the biggest threat to Israel in generations.

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Abbas Threatens Netanyahu on Annexation

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), May 20, 2020.--Warning 70-year-old Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, 84-year-old Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would end all security arrangements.  Abbas flatly rejected 73-year-old President Donald Trump’s peace plan, establishing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognizing only the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.  Since the 1967 Six Day War, Israel controlled Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Jordan’s West Bank and Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. Palestinians led by Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] Founder Yasser Arafat demanded Israel return to the pre-1967 borders, something Abbas has tried to get.  Yet with today’s security arrangements with Israel, it’s impossible to Israel to give back all the spoils of the 1967 War, something that won’t happen without another war.

            European Union [EU], United Nations U.N. and liberal Democrats like 77-year-old Democrat presumptive nominee former Vice President Joe Biden subscribe to 1967 U.N. Resolution 242, requiring Israel to give back spoils of the 1967 War in exchange for peace.  Israel did give back the Sinai Peninsula under former President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 Camp David Accords.  Eventually Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave back the Gaza Strip Sept.  22, 2005.  In the ensuing years to present, Palestinian radicals, backed by PLO or Palestinian Authority, have launched two Intifadas or uprisings, suicide bombing Israeli citizens.  Two years after Sharon gave back the Gaza Strip to the PLO, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas seized the seaside territory June 14, 2007, leaving the Palestinian people split between Hamas and Ramallah-based PLO.  Abbas has no control over Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

            Speaking today, the aging Abbas reprised his war-like rhetoric, saying he was “absolved, as of todoay, of all the agreements and understands with the American and Israeli governments and of all the obligations based on these understandings and agreements, including the security ones,” Abbas said, essentially returning to the state of war against Israel. Despite pressure from the EU, UN or liberal Democrat candidates, Israel will not compromise its security over threats from Abbas or other terrorist groups. Under former President George W. Bush, while the U.S. faced Sept. 11, the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, the U.S. stopped placating the PLO, seeing it as another terror group. Arafat died of suspicious causes Nov. 11, 2004, never realizing his dream of a Palestinian state because he resorted to terror to achieve his political goals.  Abbas now says he returns to the PLO’s right of resistance against Israel.

            Abbas showed all this warlike bluster to discourage Netanyahu from formally annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Instead of sitting down the to peace table with Israel and U.S. mediators, Abbas can’t get his way, so he threatens more terror against Israel. Unlike 1967 Six Day War or the 1973 Yom Kippur War, no Arab state would join Palestinian’s fight with Israel, knowing, in the end, they would watch their militaries decimated by Israel. Netanyahu’s the last Israeli Prime Minister to threaten with more terror, nor can any U.S. administration, Republican or Democrat, back terror as a way to settle territorial differences. Abbas and his counterparts in the Gaza Strip have no resources to launch a new war with Israel, where the so-called Palestinian territories have record unemployment, poverty and anarchy trying to maintain order in their own impoverished territories.

            Ending security cooperation with Israel means that Abbas could align himself with other terror groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda or rogue states like Iran to try to exact concessions from Israel.  No U.S. administration, no matter what their sympathies to Palestinians, could back using terrorism in lieu of peace talks. “The impact isn’t just freedom of movement, it is everything, even where food supply lines come from,” said Tareq Bacconi with the International Crisis Group [ICG].  “It can’t be dismantled overnight.” Bacconi thinks Abbas beats the war drums to discourage Netanyahu from annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  “Yet, as the annexation looms his [Abbas] declaration should nonetheless be interpreted as on last desperate shot across the bow,”  said Hugh Lovatt, analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, seeing Abbas’ threats as largely ceremonial.

            Annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank fulfills a promise to West Bank settlers but only throws gasoline on an already volatile situation.  Netanyahu, who recently finished a bruising campaign for prime minister and still faces possible corruption charges, should maintain the status quo for now until the Nov. 4 U.S. presidential election.  If Trump loses, Israel would face mounting pressure to make concessions to Palestinians for a two-state solution.  If Trump wins reelection, Netanyahu could do what he wants but still faces more political upheaval in the U.N. and EU.  “We have been here before, many times, Abbas has yet to follow through employing such threats of any potential deterrence,” Lovatt said, doubting whether Abbas would make good on his threats.  Netanyahu would be wise to keep the status quo until after the U.S. presidential election.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.