Short updates from the Middle East + ISRAEL HOLDS THE WORLD HOSTAGE
Update: Cyprus risks to be involved in the Middle East crisis, if used as springboard for US and UK airstrikes against the Axis of Resistance! Then an opinion piece translated from Italian to English.
An aerial view of RAF Akrotiri, the British air base on Cyprus - .
Short updates from the Middle East
Last night Al Mayadeen reported that Hezbollah resumed “its operations on the northern front with the Israeli occupation”, after a few days of pause mourning the death of its senior commander Fuad Shukr (a.k.a. Hajj Mohsin and Sayyed Mohsen), but it also reported about Israeli airstrikes inside Lebanon in another article. So far, these fire exchanges are taking place along the border and aiming at military installation only, thus minimizing the risk of further escalation.
However, what is worrying is that yesterday, Friday 2nd August 2024, France urged its citizens to leave not only Iran, but also Cyprus, as reported by The Guardian. This suggests that the French government and secret service must know that something serious is going to happen soon in the East Med: probably US and UK are planning to use Cyprus and their military bases in the island (Akrotiri and Dhekelia) as a springboard to launch airstrikes against the Axis of Resistance, as it already happened in the past, for the airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen (see this article, for instance) as well as for resupply Israel with weapons and ammunition (see this other article), thus the fear of the French government of retaliation against Cyprus from Hezbollah, which in the past threatened Cyprus if it got involved in the ongoing Middle East crisis.
In the meantime, Israel keeps bombing Gaza: Al Mayadeen has reported multiple strikes on a school this afternoon, killing at least 15 people and injuring at least 35.
Also, earlier today the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have issued the following statements regarding the Zionist terrorist operation that led to the assassination of martyr Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas political leader, as reported by Al Mayadeen and The Guardian (emphasis mine):
The terrorist operation was carried out by launching a short-range, 7kg-warhead projectile from outside the perimeter of the guests’ residence.
The Zionist entity, with the support of the criminal US government, planned and carried out this terrorist operation.
Avenging the blood of martyr Ismail Haniyeh is inevitable.
Al Mayadeen also previously reported that an informed source “denied to the Iranian Tasnim Agency [here] the entirety of The New York Times report [here] about the assassination of martyr Ismail Haniyeh” (see also this Al Maydeen article).
Expect an Iranian(-coordinated) attack against Israel soon!
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What follows is my English translation of a great article by Dersu Uzala, published on ComeDonChisciotte.org today, Saturday 3rd August 2024. (All formatting original).
ISRAEL HOLDS THE WORLD HOSTAGE
Israel is holding everyone hostage, counting on its strong media capacity, the threats it can impose on the US, Germany, and Europe in general, and the fear of Moscow and Beijing of being unwillingly involved in a war with unpredictable outcomes. Evidently Nethanyahu is doing his calculations well and playing his cards right. Even if it were only a bluff, he knows that there are only chickens or actors at the table who are afraid of not having a winning hand (or with little money to throw into the pot).
And they finally killed him. Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas was killed on 31st July in Tehran, allegedly following an Israeli attack, but it is known that in similar cases the Tel Aviv government neither confirms nor denies. Just a few days earlier, Hezbollah's military chief Fuad Shokor had been killed by a missile attack, again by Israel, in Beirut, Lebanon, and on 14th July, Mohammed Deif, one of the closest collaborators of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas strongman in the Strip, had been shot in Gaza. If we add that General Mohammad Reza Zahedi of the Revolutionary Guardians (IRGC) was killed in a (still Israeli) attack in Damascus on 1st April, a killing that triggered Tehran's missile response on Israel, we can well say that Nethanyahu has informally declared war on three nations at once in defiance of international law, certain to get away with it thanks to culpable American and European cover.
Now, if any other nation had even allowed itself one of these “targeted killings”. the so-called International Community would have been “outraged” and would surely have unleashed an all-out war on it with a side order of sanctions, parallels with Nazism, charges at the International Court of Justice, and so on.
We have known for some time, however, that the international system is now “rules-based”, though we do not know who wrote them [these rules] nor what they are, but they are certainly interpreted for friends and applied to enemies. If Russia allows itself a Special Military Operation in the Donbass, it must be punished mercilessly and accused of crimes against humanity, but if Israel strikes three foreign capitals and bombs civilians in Gaza, exterminating at least 40,000 (but it is surely many, many more), we only ask it for more restraint. Please, Bibi, kill them more softly. The West has by now become accustomed to barbarism, be it American, Israeli, European or otherwise of its own making, but it resolutely judges as “unacceptable” (this is the term most frequently used in the media-political rhetoric of the last ten years) any reaction on the part of the affected counterpart. The Golden Billion is by now certain of its own impunity, and is perhaps even disinterested in what happens outside its borders and quickly gets used to, and bored with, punitive expeditions against insurgents on the other side of the borders [originally “limes”, a Latin word referring to the Germanic border defence or delimiting system of Ancient Rome marking the borders of the Roman Empire]. If one speaks of Israel, of Israel's crimes then, even if one wanted to appeal to that shred of conscience that still remains in him/her, the Westerner must fear the capital threat: the accusation of anti-Zionism, which by now is equated with that of anti-Semitism, whereby if a Jewish thief steals your car and you denounce him, you end up in jail.
In the major European newspapers, the news of Haniyeh's killing is drowned among those of the medals at the Olympic Games and a few news stories, while the “Masters of Speech” write editorials in which they rejoice at the event, warning that no one who threatens “the Jewish state” will get away with it. The entire Christian West (but even more so the atheist West) is hostage to the small state on the other side of the Mediterranean by virtue of guilt, self-inflicted, imposed and reinforced at every opportunity because of the National Socialist [Nazist] persecution 80 years ago. At this point we can also expect, sooner or later, that the Provençals will one day claim a right to moral superiority and make the Catholics pay for the Crusade against the Cathars in 1209. We shall see.
The castration of Western consciences is continually fed by films about the persecution suffered by Jews by bad Europeans, by news about the “resurgence of anti-Semitism” in the various nations of the Old Continent, about the resurgence of Nazi-fascist inspired parties, and if all this were not enough, every European legislation has its own law that punishes any attempt to discuss what happened and what is happening: it is sanctioned that there is one people of eternal victims and many people of perpetrators to the bitter end. It follows that yesterday's victims can be today's executioners without fear of being punished in any way.
Contrary even to the Old Testament, that Pentateuch at the heart of the Torah, which reminds us that the sins of the fathers must not fall on the sons (from the Book of Ezekiel), it does not matter that today's Europeans were born on average 20 or 30 years after the end of the war and that their fathers were infants or teenagers during the conflict: they are guilty and there is no question about it. All European nations and the USA must swear unconditional support for Israel, which always has the right to defend itself even by firing missiles at those who only throw stones at it, and its security must be at the forefront of the concerns of any government, regardless of its political colour and even before the good of its own country, on pain of international disapproval through a dense press campaign at all levels.
The declarations of the European leaders (!) are aligned and in unison and they are all “escalation must be avoided” (ah, what rhetorical skill!), but without saying who is adding fuel to the fire. They know it, but because of what was said above, they are careful not to say. The USA, which as of 7 October seems to be more the junior partner than Israel's protector, has already guaranteed its (predictable) support in the event of an Iranian or Hezbollah retaliation, sending its aircraft carriers (which some have redefined as “floating coffins”) in front of the coasts of Lebanon and off Hormuz. So much for de-escalation. Diplomacy is not even taken into account and has even become a deplorable practice, a sort of “intelligence with the enemy”, an accusation already levelled at Viktor Orbán for visiting all the actors in the conflict in Ukraine and trying to find a solution.
“It's Geopolitics, baby” one might say, because the small state is wedged in a Muslim sea and keeps it at bay, dividing it, striking it and threatening it, reversing the slogan dear to Nethanyahu, according to which "our security (Israel's) is your security (the West's)". So far, the operation has succeeded perfectly and no new empire, whether Ottoman, Sassanid or Umayyad, has ever again surfaced in History threatening European trade.
The problem is that the geo-economic imperatives of the Christian West (or what's left of it) avail themselves of the services of a state that calls itself Jewish and has quite other objectives, one of which is precisely the dissolution of Christianity as the bearer of the message of a false Messiah (in addition to ruling over all the nations of the world as YHWH promised it).
In addition to the messianic and eschatological objective there is another, much more pragmatic one, that is, to become the 'gatekeeper' of energy resources and trade to and from Europe, conquering the entire territory of the Palestinian Mandate “from the [river] Jordan to the sea”, extending northwards as far as the Litani river, wresting territory from Lebanon, and southwards reconquering the Sinai and taking control of Suez. Then the huge gas fields off Gaza (not coincidentally called Leviathan) and southern Lebanon would be in its exclusive possession as well as the bottleneck (chokepoint) of the Suez Strait, along the shortest route between Europe and Asia. Once this design is accomplished, the fates of 400 million Europeans would be in its hands for decades (if not centuries). If one adds to this the fact that with the long-sought destruction of Iran, Israel would no longer have any major adversaries in the whole area and could become the hub of all Middle Eastern oil and gas, the prospect of becoming the Pivot that Mackinder wrote about 120 years ago would become a reality within reach. Turkey also aspires to this role, and it is no coincidence that Erdogan is trying to rewind the tape of history and undo the secularist revolution of Dunmeh Ataturk, aiming to win the hearts and minds of the Sunni Ummah, but without coming into conflict with the Iranian Shiites, who possess the second largest potential gas reserves after Russia. To those who say “but the world is moving towards renewables!”, perhaps it is good to show this infographic that makes the energy situation, and perspective, of the next 20, 30 years clearer.
The situation in the Middle East is therefore in full upheaval but it is not necessarily the case that all European nations are playing the same game and are all on the same side (i.e. that of Zion). Leaving aside Italy and Germany, the great losers of the Second World War, reduced to American economic protectorates by military power [originally in Latin: manu militari] and drowned by an asphyxiating (for the still free minds) Jewish cultural pressure, France is trying to extricate itself by being able to count on a certain influence in Lebanon in that area and by asserting with Iran the hospitality given to Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile that ended with the 1979 revolution.
What role do Russia and China play in all this? Obviously both Moscow and Beijing have condemned Nethanyahu's sudden actions, warning that they can lead to a conflict that can go from local to global and they have no intention of being drawn into it. China signed in March 2021 a 25-year economic and military cooperation agreement with Iran worth 400 billion [sic in the original article, without currency] and of strategic significance. Iran is the second largest supplier of hydrocarbons to Beijing and an important outlet market for its goods, as well as a gateway for cargo traffic to Central Asia. China is also working to resolve the ongoing situation in Gaza and on 23rd July delegations from Al-Fatah, Hamas and other Islamic Jihad groups active in Palestine met in the Chinese capital to reach an agreement (and they appear to have found it) to give the Palestinian territories a unified government and thus prevent Israel from creating a “puppet government” in both the [Gaza] Strip and the West Bank. Beijing's Middle East policy has been in the limelight in recent years and has succeeded where others have failed: getting Iran and Saudi Arabia to talk and (almost) agree, something that was unthinkable until a year ago. Will China be ready to provide Tehran with military aid in the event of a large-scale American-Israeli attack? If we consider that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, after the Americans blocked its oil trade from the Middle East, we may think so, if only to avoid tying itself hand and foot to one supplier, Russia, but it will only be the option of last resort. Moscow, already engaged in a war it did not want in Ukraine, has to play chess, as it does not want a war with the USA, but it cannot let Iran be destroyed and perhaps conquered by the Yankees, completing the encirclement on its borders also on its southern flank. It is true that it has not opposed the reckless actions of the Israeli air force over Syria, but on the other hand it is seeking rapprochement with Turkey, which was invited to the SCO conference held in Astana (Khazakhstan) a fortnight ago, even though Ankara is not part of the alliance and is a NATO member. Ultimately, Israel holds everyone hostage, counting on its strong media capacity, the threats it can impose on the US, Germany, and Europe in general, and Moscow and Beijing's fear of being unwillingly involved in a war with unpredictable outcomes. Evidently Nethanyahu is doing his calculations well and playing his cards right. Even if it was just a bluff, he knows that there are only chickens or actors at the table who are afraid of not having a winning hand (or with little money to throw into the pot). Meanwhile, world stock markets plummet and Gold flies to unimaginable records. Twenty years ago Condoleeza Rice described the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as 'the birth pangs of the new Middle East'. Now the dilation is at its maximum and the baby boy may see the light, but it may not look like its father.
It is wrong that France advised evacuation of frogs from Cyprus. The guardian article says:
"On Friday France urged its citizens to leave Iran and Cyprus said it had expanded plans to support a large-scale evacuation from the region if the war expands."
The cause of the confusion is no doubt an illiterate british idiot posing as a journalist and writing without punctuation this: "leave Iran and Cyprus said it had expanded plans" as opposed to "leave Iran. Cyprus said it had expanded plans".
A rules-based system even in writing english. Indeed.
Ps. I saw your comment at sonar21, you may want to amend it. Thank you.
Has Iran finally had enough?
IMO, with what Israel is doing, Iran has no de-escalatory reasons to hold back on retaliation.
It is wrong that France advised evacuation of frogs from Cyprus. The guardian article says:
"On Friday France urged its citizens to leave Iran and Cyprus said it had expanded plans to support a large-scale evacuation from the region if the war expands."
The cause of the confusion is no doubt an illiterate british idiot posing as a journalist and writing without punctuation this: "leave Iran and Cyprus said it had expanded plans" as opposed to "leave Iran. Cyprus said it had expanded plans".
A rules-based system even in writing english. Indeed.
Ps. I saw your comment at sonar21, you may want to amend it. Thank you.