• Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’
    This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today.

    His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir.

    The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious.

    “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists.

    Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy”

    Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium.

    “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad.

    He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad.

    He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility.

    By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours.

    And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.”

    The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy.

    Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”.

    The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.”

    Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.”

    On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”.

    Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews.

    At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance.

    The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed.

    And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army.

    The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group.

    When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.”

    “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.”

    For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father.

    “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”.

    His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.”

    He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

    And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view.

    His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.”

    Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.”


    https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
    Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’ This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today. His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir. The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious. “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists. Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy” Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium. “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad. He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad. He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility. By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours. And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.” The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy. Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”. The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.” Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.” On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”. Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews. At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance. The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed. And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army. The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group. When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.” “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.” For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father. “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”. His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.” He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.” And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view. His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.” Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.” https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
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  • Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’
    This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today.

    His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir.

    The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious.

    “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists.

    Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy”

    Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium.

    “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad.

    He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad.

    He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility.

    By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours.

    And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.”

    The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy.

    Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”.

    The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.”

    Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.”

    On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”.

    Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews.

    At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance.

    The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed.

    And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army.

    The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group.

    When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.”

    “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.”

    For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father.

    “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”.

    His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.”

    He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

    And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view.

    His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.”

    Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.”


    https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
    Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’ This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today. His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir. The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious. “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists. Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy” Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium. “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad. He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad. He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility. By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours. And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.” The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy. Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”. The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.” Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.” On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”. Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews. At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance. The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed. And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army. The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group. When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.” “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.” For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father. “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”. His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.” He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.” And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view. His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.” Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.” https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
    WWW.JEWISHVOICEFORLABOUR.ORG.UK
    Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’
    Graham Bash reviews this groundbreaking personal and political memoir by Avi Shlaim in which he laments the lost world of…
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  • Netanyahu and Biden: Priests of Satan | VT Foreign Policy
    February 26, 2024
    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    Netanyahu and Biden: Priests of Satan

    By Paul Yesse

    February 25, 2024

    Today is the second Sunday in Lent. This is the most sacred period of the Christian calendar: the 40 days leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

    Every Sunday the churches feature passages from the Bible that are read from the lectern by a member of the congregation. The first reading today was the story of how God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering, then called it off at the last moment. The purpose, says the church, was to test Abraham’s faith. The story is found in Genesis 22.

    In today’s homily, the priest explained that in the days of Abraham, in what became the Holy Land, the local tribes practiced ritual sacrifice of children to appease their pagan gods. He said that the story of Abraham and Isaac showed how the Jews rose above that despicable practice to a more civilized and honorable form of worship.

    After the service, I went up to the priest and asked him why, if the Jews no longer practiced ritual sacrifice, has Israel under Netanyahu murdered tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, including civilian women and children?

    I will not repeat the priest’s answer, except to say that he found my question quite unexpected and that he gave no satisfying response. He briefly tried to justify the genocide but trailed off, knowing he could not.

    To me, any answer must take into account the obvious fact that the god of today’s Israel and its leader, Netanyahu, and by extension, Netanyahu’s enabler, U.S. President Joe Biden, cannot possibly be the god of Abraham and Isaac, or, by extension, that of Jesus Christ and of Jesus’s true followers.

    The god of Netanyahu and Biden must be, rather, that of the child-sacrificing pagans the Judeo-Christian religion was founded, at least in part, to displace from power. My own belief is that the god of Netanyahu and Biden is actually Satan. As the heads of their respective governments, they do appear to be, in fact, priests of Satan.

    I would go further in Biden’s case, and point to several other aspects of his governance that support my contention. One is Biden’s acquiescence in the ongoing genocide of the Covid “pandemic,” where millions of people have died, either from the government’s protocols when hospitalized, or from the deadly government-approved mRNA “vaccine.” Another pandemic appears to be in the planning stages, for “Disease X.”

    Another instance is Biden’s war policy, not only in backing Netanyahu’s genocidal actions in Gaza, but also the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which the U.S. began by overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014, and where the supplying of unlimited money and weapons to the Zelensky regime has led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and the emigration of millions more Ukrainians out of their homeland.

    Another is Biden’s personal corruption and that of his family members which is currently under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives, with impeachment a possibility.

    Yet another is Biden’s “open border” policy that has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country and conceal themselves within our towns and cities with the possible intent to: a) allow criminal cartels and drug gangs to corrupt our nation with deadly drugs and massive human trafficking; b) create a uniparty nation by packing the rolls with millions of new Democratic Party voters; c) generate future indebted victims of the U.S. usury-based banking system; d) enlist millions of cheap non-union workers for menial jobs; and, worst of all, e) possibly to infiltrate an army of terrorists to aid the Deep State and its controllers in their likely plans to replace our constitutional system with a totalitarian takeover of the U.S.

    So, during the Lenten system, we should reflect on where all this is headed for our nation and the world. Those who are able should take action to prevent these abuses. The rest of us, as individuals, can do our own part by respecting the intent of the Lenten season through improving our lives and following Jesus’s injunction to “take up your cross and follow me.” Most inspiring are the words of the old Christian hymn:

    Take Up Your Cross

    Take up your cross, the Savior said,
    If you would my disciple be;
    Deny yourself, the world forsake,
    And humbly follow after me.

    Take up your cross, be not ashamed!
    Let not disgrace your spirit fill!
    For God himself endured to die
    Upon a cross, on Calvary’s hill.

    Take up your cross, which gives you strength,
    Which makes your trembling spirit brave;
    ‘Twill guide you to a better home
    And lead to vict’ry o’er the grave.

    Take up your cross, and follow Christ,
    Nor think till death to lay it down;
    For only they who bear the cross
    May hope to wear the glorious crown.

    Paul Yesse is a pen name.


    ATTENTION READERS

    We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
    In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

    About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
    Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.

    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/02/netanyahu-and-biden-priests-of-satan/
    Netanyahu and Biden: Priests of Satan | VT Foreign Policy February 26, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Netanyahu and Biden: Priests of Satan By Paul Yesse February 25, 2024 Today is the second Sunday in Lent. This is the most sacred period of the Christian calendar: the 40 days leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Every Sunday the churches feature passages from the Bible that are read from the lectern by a member of the congregation. The first reading today was the story of how God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering, then called it off at the last moment. The purpose, says the church, was to test Abraham’s faith. The story is found in Genesis 22. In today’s homily, the priest explained that in the days of Abraham, in what became the Holy Land, the local tribes practiced ritual sacrifice of children to appease their pagan gods. He said that the story of Abraham and Isaac showed how the Jews rose above that despicable practice to a more civilized and honorable form of worship. After the service, I went up to the priest and asked him why, if the Jews no longer practiced ritual sacrifice, has Israel under Netanyahu murdered tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, including civilian women and children? I will not repeat the priest’s answer, except to say that he found my question quite unexpected and that he gave no satisfying response. He briefly tried to justify the genocide but trailed off, knowing he could not. To me, any answer must take into account the obvious fact that the god of today’s Israel and its leader, Netanyahu, and by extension, Netanyahu’s enabler, U.S. President Joe Biden, cannot possibly be the god of Abraham and Isaac, or, by extension, that of Jesus Christ and of Jesus’s true followers. The god of Netanyahu and Biden must be, rather, that of the child-sacrificing pagans the Judeo-Christian religion was founded, at least in part, to displace from power. My own belief is that the god of Netanyahu and Biden is actually Satan. As the heads of their respective governments, they do appear to be, in fact, priests of Satan. I would go further in Biden’s case, and point to several other aspects of his governance that support my contention. One is Biden’s acquiescence in the ongoing genocide of the Covid “pandemic,” where millions of people have died, either from the government’s protocols when hospitalized, or from the deadly government-approved mRNA “vaccine.” Another pandemic appears to be in the planning stages, for “Disease X.” Another instance is Biden’s war policy, not only in backing Netanyahu’s genocidal actions in Gaza, but also the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which the U.S. began by overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014, and where the supplying of unlimited money and weapons to the Zelensky regime has led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and the emigration of millions more Ukrainians out of their homeland. Another is Biden’s personal corruption and that of his family members which is currently under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives, with impeachment a possibility. Yet another is Biden’s “open border” policy that has allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country and conceal themselves within our towns and cities with the possible intent to: a) allow criminal cartels and drug gangs to corrupt our nation with deadly drugs and massive human trafficking; b) create a uniparty nation by packing the rolls with millions of new Democratic Party voters; c) generate future indebted victims of the U.S. usury-based banking system; d) enlist millions of cheap non-union workers for menial jobs; and, worst of all, e) possibly to infiltrate an army of terrorists to aid the Deep State and its controllers in their likely plans to replace our constitutional system with a totalitarian takeover of the U.S. So, during the Lenten system, we should reflect on where all this is headed for our nation and the world. Those who are able should take action to prevent these abuses. The rest of us, as individuals, can do our own part by respecting the intent of the Lenten season through improving our lives and following Jesus’s injunction to “take up your cross and follow me.” Most inspiring are the words of the old Christian hymn: Take Up Your Cross Take up your cross, the Savior said, If you would my disciple be; Deny yourself, the world forsake, And humbly follow after me. Take up your cross, be not ashamed! Let not disgrace your spirit fill! For God himself endured to die Upon a cross, on Calvary’s hill. Take up your cross, which gives you strength, Which makes your trembling spirit brave; ‘Twill guide you to a better home And lead to vict’ry o’er the grave. Take up your cross, and follow Christ, Nor think till death to lay it down; For only they who bear the cross May hope to wear the glorious crown. Paul Yesse is a pen name. ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/02/netanyahu-and-biden-priests-of-satan/
    WWW.VTFOREIGNPOLICY.COM
    Netanyahu and Biden: Priests of Satan
    Netanyahu and Biden: Priests of Satan By Paul Yesse February 25, 2024 Today is the second Sunday in Lent. This is the most sacred period of the Christian calendar: the 40 days leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Every Sunday the churches feature...
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  • CIA Retrieved ‘Intact’ UFOs – Daily Mail

    A “secretive” office of the US spy agency has reportedly recovered nine “non-human craft”

    American spies have managed to recover at least nine potentially alien vehicles, two of them “completely intact,” the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday, citing three anonymous sources.

    The sources, supposedly briefed on top secret operations, told the UK outlet that the main player in the retrievals has been the Office of Global Access (OGA), a branch of the CIA Science and Technology Directorate established in 2003.

    “There’s at least nine vehicles. There were different circumstances for different ones,” one of the sources said. “It has to do with the physical condition they’re in. If it crashes, there’s a lot of damage done. Others, two of them, are completely intact.”

    The CIA has a system to detect unidentified flying objects (UFO) “while they’re still cloaked” and helps special US military units salvage the wreckage if “non-human craft” land, crash, or are brought down, the source added.

    Another anonymous source described the OGA’s role as “basically a facilitator” for US operatives to access areas where they would normally not be allowed.

    “They are very clever at being able to get anywhere in the world they want to,” the second source said.

    Most of OGA’s operations involve “stray nuclear wea
    pons, downed satellites or adversaries’ technology,” according to the Mail, but some missions have involved retrieval of UFOs – or as the US government now prefers to call them, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP).

    https://www.rt.com/news/588160-ufo-retrieved-cia-whistleblowers/
    #ufos #aliens
    CIA Retrieved ‘Intact’ UFOs – Daily Mail A “secretive” office of the US spy agency has reportedly recovered nine “non-human craft” American spies have managed to recover at least nine potentially alien vehicles, two of them “completely intact,” the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday, citing three anonymous sources. The sources, supposedly briefed on top secret operations, told the UK outlet that the main player in the retrievals has been the Office of Global Access (OGA), a branch of the CIA Science and Technology Directorate established in 2003. “There’s at least nine vehicles. There were different circumstances for different ones,” one of the sources said. “It has to do with the physical condition they’re in. If it crashes, there’s a lot of damage done. Others, two of them, are completely intact.” The CIA has a system to detect unidentified flying objects (UFO) “while they’re still cloaked” and helps special US military units salvage the wreckage if “non-human craft” land, crash, or are brought down, the source added. Another anonymous source described the OGA’s role as “basically a facilitator” for US operatives to access areas where they would normally not be allowed. “They are very clever at being able to get anywhere in the world they want to,” the second source said. Most of OGA’s operations involve “stray nuclear wea pons, downed satellites or adversaries’ technology,” according to the Mail, but some missions have involved retrieval of UFOs – or as the US government now prefers to call them, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP). https://www.rt.com/news/588160-ufo-retrieved-cia-whistleblowers/ #ufos #aliens
    WWW.RT.COM
    CIA retrieved ‘intact’ UFOs – Daily Mail
    The agency’s Office of Global Access (OGA) has allegedly recovered at least two undamaged “non-human craft” and seven more wrecks
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  • Burning Inferno of Gaza: Part 1
    Brig. General Asif H. RajaNovember 16, 2023

    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    Burning Inferno of Gaza

    by: Asif Haroon Raja

    Part-1

    Background History of Creation of Israel

    The Christan Zionists had emerged in 1890 and grew in London. In 1905, Arthur James Balfour promulgated the 1905 Aliens Act to stop the immigration to Britain of the Jewish refugees fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia. Theodor Herzl was the founder of Zionist movement. He floated the idea of a Jewish state for the wandering Jews in Europe suffering at the hands of Christian anti-Semites. The latter wanted to get rid of the Jews. The project of sending all Jews to Palestine was jointly pursued by the Zionist movement and the British anti-Semites.



    The Balfour Declaration of Nov 6, 1917 was inked at the behest of Zionist Rothchild with a view to provide a homeland for the Jews. After the 2nd world war, Palestine became the colony of Britain, which considered it a fit place for a Jewish State.

    Palestine

    Palestine, where the great majority was of the Arab Muslims extended from River Jordan in the East to the Mediterranean in the West, and from Ras Al Naqarush in the North to Umm Al-Rashrash in the South. It was a prosperous state where all the communities lived in harmony without any discrimination.

    At the start of the 20th century, the Jewish population in Palestine was less than 5%. After 1920, it swelled to over 30% due to manipulated immigration from Europe. From 1945 onwards the intensity of immigration of Jews to Palestine intensified and the UK helped the Jews to buy lands and properties and to settle down.

    In 1947-48, the militant gangs of the Zionist Jews resorted to terrorism and systematically demolished 531 Palestinian villages. In 1947, the UK proposed division of Palestine, which was executed by the UN to carve out a state for the Jews in May 1948. Almost half of Palestine was awarded to Israel. Before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in May 1948, 200 villages were destroyed.

    It gave birth to the Arab-Israeli conflict and led to the 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars. The combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Iraq supported by other Arab countries were roundly defeated by the IDF in all the wars.

    Displacement of Palestinians

    In 1948, two forcible displacements of 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians took place They were expelled from their homes. In May 1948, another 750,000 were displaced/expelled and forced to live as refugees in several Arab States, West Bank (WB), and Gaza Strip which is just 365 Sq area, 41 KM long and 6 KM wide. It now has about 2.5 million people.

    During the 2nd Intifada, about 5000 homes were demolished and 50,000 Palestinians were displaced. From 2009 to 2023, 9000 homes were destroyed and 1,50,000 Palestinians killed/injured.

    In the current war in Gaza, 1.4 million Gazans have been displaced.

    Settlement of Jews

    During the Partition plan, the Jews owned 7% of the land in Palestine and its population was 55%. In 1947, the Jewish possessions in Palestine were 9-12% of cultivable land, which increased to 81% in 1977.

    From 1967 to May 1977, Israel established 133 settlements in occupied territories of WB, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and Sinai. Since 1979, settlers in WB have risen from 3200 to 17,400. In East Jerusalem, the number of settlers has risen to 80,000.

    From 1949 to 1967, Israel gobbled up 78% of Palestinian lands, and thereafter continued to nibble more territory, reducing the territory held by the Palestinians to only 8%.

    The Western world and the UN legitimized Israel’s robbery of land and wanton barbarities against the victims under the plea of right to self-defense.

    Peace Efforts

    PLO was created in 1964 by Yasser Arafat, which started an armed resistance movement in the late 1960s after Israel launched its policy of settling Jews in Palestinian lands.

    The Madrid Conference in 1991 jointly chaired by George Bush senior and Gorbachev was the first attempt to bring the Arabs and Israelis on a negotiating table.

    Oslo Accords was signed by Israel under Yitzhak Rabin and PLO in 1993. Yasser Arafat agreed to recognize Israel in return for peace and a two-state solution. He earned the animosity of hawkish members in PLO, he fell ill and died in Paris hospital. Many speculated that he was slow-poisoned to death.

    In pursuance of the peace agreement, Israel withdrew from Gaza Strip and agreed to hand over 97% of WB territory. It agreed to recognize Palestine as an independent State comprising Gaza, WB and East Jerusalem as its capital, for which the PLA was created.

    Camp David summit hosted by Bill Clinton for the final settlement in 2000 proved inconclusive, because of disagreements on territory, refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

    The next phase of resistance put up by the PLO was in the form of unarmed Intifada in 2001, in which children threw stones on the occupying Israeli forces. Their sole demand was to return their occupied lands and grant them the right to exist independently.

    Road map for peace formulated in 2003 met a similar fate due to Israel’s obduracy and boycott by Hamas. Same happened with the Annapolis Conference hosted by George Bush junior in 2007.

    Another effort was made by John Kerry to revive peace talks in 2013-14, but Hamas rejected the talks for being tilted in favor of Israel.

    Trump played a role in brokering Abraham Accords in 2020 which led to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab States. Israel declared Jerusalem as its capital and the USA hastened to shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    Not only did Israel violate the peace deal, it launched a vigorous forward settlement program to further encroach into the Palestinian territory and to change the demography of Gaza, WB and East Jerusalem that were illegally annexed in 1967.

    Number of illegal settlers rose from 200,000 in 2008 to over 700,000 in 2023. It laid to rest the two-state solution.

    Rise of Hamas

    Mehmood Abbas who succeeded Arafat after the death of Arafat as the head of PLA, made compromises with Israel, which defanged the resistance movement and made him unpopular. His unpopularity gave space to a new political party ‘Hamas’ under Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza.

    Hamas was elected with a big majority in 2006 elections in which the non-performing PLA under Abbas was defeated. The latter, egged on by Israel, refused to accept the results and formed its own government in the WB in 2007.

    Hamas govt was democratically elected, but it was not accepted by Tel Aviv and its chief patron USA, and was declared a terrorist group. Israel and the USA played a role in creating misgivings and pitting the PLA against Hamas to weaken the Palestine cause.

    Hamas bettered the lives of the Gazans through good governance and honesty and won their hearts which was not to the liking of Israel. The IDF carried out ruthless ground and air offensives against Gaza from 2008 to 2020, killing and injuring 120,286 innocent people and destroying their infrastructure and livelihoods. Deaths and injuries of Israelis were 5887. Al-Aqsa Mosque was repeatedly desecrated even when the Palestinians were praying.

    This was done in a bid to topple Hamas Govt, or to compel the Gazans to detach themselves from Hamas, but they didn’t, and have braved the barbarism of Israel. Despite friendship with Abbas, Israel kept encroaching into WB and killing the Palestinians and established over one hundred new settlements.

    Israel’s aggressive policies forced Hamas to create a militant wing for the defence of Gaza.

    Role of the USA

    The US has been protecting and safeguarding the interests of Israel since its creation in 1948. It helped Israel to become a nuclear power and the strongest power in the ME, and its airspace, border and coastline was made impregnable. The militarily and economically strong Arab States were neutralized and tamed. The US and Europe justified Israel’s sins against humanity by arguing that it is a victim of aggression and has the right of self-defense. Ignoring the extreme pains of the Palestinians and their legitimate resistance movement, who were deprived of their lands and homes, they are accused of unprovoked cruel aggression against Jews.

    Heavy military assistance to Israel by the USA is considered rightful, but humanitarian assistance to the Gazans is seen by the duplicitous West as illegal.

    The certificate of terrorism given to the Palestinians by the US led West and unwavering support of the US encouraged Israel to constantly delegitimize, brutalize and dehumanize them, deprive them of their right of self-defense, or to seek basic human rights.

    A stage came in 2020 during Donad Trump era, that the Arab States abandoned the cause of the Palestinians as well as the two-state solution and decided to recognize Israel. They took the plea that friendship with Israel would help in resolving the Palestinian dispute.

    After several Arab States opened diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, the change of scenario emboldened an arrogant Netanyahu to boast that in near future there will be no Palestine on the map of the world.

    Pressure was mounted on Pakistan to recognize Israel. The main argument of pro-Israel lobbies was that when the directly involved Arab nations had changed their policies, there was no earthly reason for Pakistan not to recognize Israel with which it doesn’t share border and there is no dispute between the two. They further argued that it was hypocritical to maintain friendly relations with the USA and hostility with Israel.

    Ambitions of the Imperialist Powers

    The Muslim leaders must understand the future ambitions of the three imperialist strategic partners – USA, ISRAEL and INDIA.

    The US wants to control the global resources and monopolize the world after neo-colonizing the Middle East.

    Israel’s quest is to create Greater Israel, which stretches from River Nile to Euphrates and includes parts of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.

    India strives for Mahabharata, which envisages the whole of South Asia, Afghanistan, parts of Central Asia, Iran and Indonesia, and stretches up to the Gulf region.

    Both Israel and India backed by the USA are pursuing uniform policies of genocide, rapes, destruction and change of demographic complexion of the occupied territories.

    Both have broken all records of tyranny, cruelty and human rights, but being the darlings of the West, all their sins are ignored. Instead of restraining them or punishing them, they are encouraged and further strengthened by their patrons.

    To be continued… Stay Tuned for Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

    The writer is a retd Brig Gen, war veteran, defence, security and political analyst, international columnist, author of five books, MSc War Studies, served as Directing Staff in Staff College Quetta, defence attaché Egypt and Sudan and Dean of the Corps of military attaches, held high staff and command appointments, after retirement he was appointed Colonel of the Battalion he commanded, he chaired Thinkers Forum Pakistan for 4 years, takes part in TV talk shows. asifharoonraja@gmail.com

    Brig. General Asif Haroon Raja is on the board of advisors for Opinion Maker. He holds an MSc war studies degree. A second-generation officer, he fought the epic battle of Hilli in northwest East Bengal during 1971 war,

    He served as Directing Staff Command & Staff College, Defence Attaché Egypt, and Sudan and Dean of Corps of Military Attaches in Cairo. He commanded the heaviest brigade in Kashmir. He is tri-lingual and speaks English, Pashto, and Punjabi fluently.

    Currently, he is a defense analyst and columnist and writes articles on security, defense, and political matters for numerous international/national publications. He is chairman at the Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre, & Member CWC PESS & Veterans Think Tank

    He is also the author of many books; ‘Battle of Hilli’, ‘1948, 1965 & 1971 Kashmir Battles and Freedom Struggle’, ‘Muhammad bin Qasim to Gen Musharraf’, and Roots of 1971 Tragedy’. His latest book is ‘Tangled knot of Kashmir : Indo-Pakistan antagonism: vol. 1 and vol. 2″

    www.opinion-maker.com


    ATTENTION READERS

    We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
    In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

    About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
    Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.


    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2023/11/burning-inferno-of-gaza-part-1/
    Burning Inferno of Gaza: Part 1 Brig. General Asif H. RajaNovember 16, 2023 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Burning Inferno of Gaza by: Asif Haroon Raja Part-1 Background History of Creation of Israel The Christan Zionists had emerged in 1890 and grew in London. In 1905, Arthur James Balfour promulgated the 1905 Aliens Act to stop the immigration to Britain of the Jewish refugees fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia. Theodor Herzl was the founder of Zionist movement. He floated the idea of a Jewish state for the wandering Jews in Europe suffering at the hands of Christian anti-Semites. The latter wanted to get rid of the Jews. The project of sending all Jews to Palestine was jointly pursued by the Zionist movement and the British anti-Semites. The Balfour Declaration of Nov 6, 1917 was inked at the behest of Zionist Rothchild with a view to provide a homeland for the Jews. After the 2nd world war, Palestine became the colony of Britain, which considered it a fit place for a Jewish State. Palestine Palestine, where the great majority was of the Arab Muslims extended from River Jordan in the East to the Mediterranean in the West, and from Ras Al Naqarush in the North to Umm Al-Rashrash in the South. It was a prosperous state where all the communities lived in harmony without any discrimination. At the start of the 20th century, the Jewish population in Palestine was less than 5%. After 1920, it swelled to over 30% due to manipulated immigration from Europe. From 1945 onwards the intensity of immigration of Jews to Palestine intensified and the UK helped the Jews to buy lands and properties and to settle down. In 1947-48, the militant gangs of the Zionist Jews resorted to terrorism and systematically demolished 531 Palestinian villages. In 1947, the UK proposed division of Palestine, which was executed by the UN to carve out a state for the Jews in May 1948. Almost half of Palestine was awarded to Israel. Before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in May 1948, 200 villages were destroyed. It gave birth to the Arab-Israeli conflict and led to the 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars. The combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Iraq supported by other Arab countries were roundly defeated by the IDF in all the wars. Displacement of Palestinians In 1948, two forcible displacements of 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians took place They were expelled from their homes. In May 1948, another 750,000 were displaced/expelled and forced to live as refugees in several Arab States, West Bank (WB), and Gaza Strip which is just 365 Sq area, 41 KM long and 6 KM wide. It now has about 2.5 million people. During the 2nd Intifada, about 5000 homes were demolished and 50,000 Palestinians were displaced. From 2009 to 2023, 9000 homes were destroyed and 1,50,000 Palestinians killed/injured. In the current war in Gaza, 1.4 million Gazans have been displaced. Settlement of Jews During the Partition plan, the Jews owned 7% of the land in Palestine and its population was 55%. In 1947, the Jewish possessions in Palestine were 9-12% of cultivable land, which increased to 81% in 1977. From 1967 to May 1977, Israel established 133 settlements in occupied territories of WB, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and Sinai. Since 1979, settlers in WB have risen from 3200 to 17,400. In East Jerusalem, the number of settlers has risen to 80,000. From 1949 to 1967, Israel gobbled up 78% of Palestinian lands, and thereafter continued to nibble more territory, reducing the territory held by the Palestinians to only 8%. The Western world and the UN legitimized Israel’s robbery of land and wanton barbarities against the victims under the plea of right to self-defense. Peace Efforts PLO was created in 1964 by Yasser Arafat, which started an armed resistance movement in the late 1960s after Israel launched its policy of settling Jews in Palestinian lands. The Madrid Conference in 1991 jointly chaired by George Bush senior and Gorbachev was the first attempt to bring the Arabs and Israelis on a negotiating table. Oslo Accords was signed by Israel under Yitzhak Rabin and PLO in 1993. Yasser Arafat agreed to recognize Israel in return for peace and a two-state solution. He earned the animosity of hawkish members in PLO, he fell ill and died in Paris hospital. Many speculated that he was slow-poisoned to death. In pursuance of the peace agreement, Israel withdrew from Gaza Strip and agreed to hand over 97% of WB territory. It agreed to recognize Palestine as an independent State comprising Gaza, WB and East Jerusalem as its capital, for which the PLA was created. Camp David summit hosted by Bill Clinton for the final settlement in 2000 proved inconclusive, because of disagreements on territory, refugees and the status of Jerusalem. The next phase of resistance put up by the PLO was in the form of unarmed Intifada in 2001, in which children threw stones on the occupying Israeli forces. Their sole demand was to return their occupied lands and grant them the right to exist independently. Road map for peace formulated in 2003 met a similar fate due to Israel’s obduracy and boycott by Hamas. Same happened with the Annapolis Conference hosted by George Bush junior in 2007. Another effort was made by John Kerry to revive peace talks in 2013-14, but Hamas rejected the talks for being tilted in favor of Israel. Trump played a role in brokering Abraham Accords in 2020 which led to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab States. Israel declared Jerusalem as its capital and the USA hastened to shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Not only did Israel violate the peace deal, it launched a vigorous forward settlement program to further encroach into the Palestinian territory and to change the demography of Gaza, WB and East Jerusalem that were illegally annexed in 1967. Number of illegal settlers rose from 200,000 in 2008 to over 700,000 in 2023. It laid to rest the two-state solution. Rise of Hamas Mehmood Abbas who succeeded Arafat after the death of Arafat as the head of PLA, made compromises with Israel, which defanged the resistance movement and made him unpopular. His unpopularity gave space to a new political party ‘Hamas’ under Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. Hamas was elected with a big majority in 2006 elections in which the non-performing PLA under Abbas was defeated. The latter, egged on by Israel, refused to accept the results and formed its own government in the WB in 2007. Hamas govt was democratically elected, but it was not accepted by Tel Aviv and its chief patron USA, and was declared a terrorist group. Israel and the USA played a role in creating misgivings and pitting the PLA against Hamas to weaken the Palestine cause. Hamas bettered the lives of the Gazans through good governance and honesty and won their hearts which was not to the liking of Israel. The IDF carried out ruthless ground and air offensives against Gaza from 2008 to 2020, killing and injuring 120,286 innocent people and destroying their infrastructure and livelihoods. Deaths and injuries of Israelis were 5887. Al-Aqsa Mosque was repeatedly desecrated even when the Palestinians were praying. This was done in a bid to topple Hamas Govt, or to compel the Gazans to detach themselves from Hamas, but they didn’t, and have braved the barbarism of Israel. Despite friendship with Abbas, Israel kept encroaching into WB and killing the Palestinians and established over one hundred new settlements. Israel’s aggressive policies forced Hamas to create a militant wing for the defence of Gaza. Role of the USA The US has been protecting and safeguarding the interests of Israel since its creation in 1948. It helped Israel to become a nuclear power and the strongest power in the ME, and its airspace, border and coastline was made impregnable. The militarily and economically strong Arab States were neutralized and tamed. The US and Europe justified Israel’s sins against humanity by arguing that it is a victim of aggression and has the right of self-defense. Ignoring the extreme pains of the Palestinians and their legitimate resistance movement, who were deprived of their lands and homes, they are accused of unprovoked cruel aggression against Jews. Heavy military assistance to Israel by the USA is considered rightful, but humanitarian assistance to the Gazans is seen by the duplicitous West as illegal. The certificate of terrorism given to the Palestinians by the US led West and unwavering support of the US encouraged Israel to constantly delegitimize, brutalize and dehumanize them, deprive them of their right of self-defense, or to seek basic human rights. A stage came in 2020 during Donad Trump era, that the Arab States abandoned the cause of the Palestinians as well as the two-state solution and decided to recognize Israel. They took the plea that friendship with Israel would help in resolving the Palestinian dispute. After several Arab States opened diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, the change of scenario emboldened an arrogant Netanyahu to boast that in near future there will be no Palestine on the map of the world. Pressure was mounted on Pakistan to recognize Israel. The main argument of pro-Israel lobbies was that when the directly involved Arab nations had changed their policies, there was no earthly reason for Pakistan not to recognize Israel with which it doesn’t share border and there is no dispute between the two. They further argued that it was hypocritical to maintain friendly relations with the USA and hostility with Israel. Ambitions of the Imperialist Powers The Muslim leaders must understand the future ambitions of the three imperialist strategic partners – USA, ISRAEL and INDIA. The US wants to control the global resources and monopolize the world after neo-colonizing the Middle East. Israel’s quest is to create Greater Israel, which stretches from River Nile to Euphrates and includes parts of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. India strives for Mahabharata, which envisages the whole of South Asia, Afghanistan, parts of Central Asia, Iran and Indonesia, and stretches up to the Gulf region. Both Israel and India backed by the USA are pursuing uniform policies of genocide, rapes, destruction and change of demographic complexion of the occupied territories. Both have broken all records of tyranny, cruelty and human rights, but being the darlings of the West, all their sins are ignored. Instead of restraining them or punishing them, they are encouraged and further strengthened by their patrons. To be continued… Stay Tuned for Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 The writer is a retd Brig Gen, war veteran, defence, security and political analyst, international columnist, author of five books, MSc War Studies, served as Directing Staff in Staff College Quetta, defence attaché Egypt and Sudan and Dean of the Corps of military attaches, held high staff and command appointments, after retirement he was appointed Colonel of the Battalion he commanded, he chaired Thinkers Forum Pakistan for 4 years, takes part in TV talk shows. asifharoonraja@gmail.com Brig. General Asif Haroon Raja is on the board of advisors for Opinion Maker. He holds an MSc war studies degree. A second-generation officer, he fought the epic battle of Hilli in northwest East Bengal during 1971 war, He served as Directing Staff Command & Staff College, Defence Attaché Egypt, and Sudan and Dean of Corps of Military Attaches in Cairo. He commanded the heaviest brigade in Kashmir. He is tri-lingual and speaks English, Pashto, and Punjabi fluently. Currently, he is a defense analyst and columnist and writes articles on security, defense, and political matters for numerous international/national publications. He is chairman at the Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre, & Member CWC PESS & Veterans Think Tank He is also the author of many books; ‘Battle of Hilli’, ‘1948, 1965 & 1971 Kashmir Battles and Freedom Struggle’, ‘Muhammad bin Qasim to Gen Musharraf’, and Roots of 1971 Tragedy’. His latest book is ‘Tangled knot of Kashmir : Indo-Pakistan antagonism: vol. 1 and vol. 2″ www.opinion-maker.com ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2023/11/burning-inferno-of-gaza-part-1/
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    Burning Inferno of Gaza: Part 1
    Burning Inferno of Gaza by: Asif Haroon Raja Part-1 Background History of Creation of Israel The Christan Zionists had emerged in 1890 and grew in London. In 1905, Arthur James Balfour promulgated the 1905 Aliens Act to stop the immigration to Britain of the Jewish refugees fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia. Theodor Herzl was the founder...
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