• Boost Productivity with AI: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, & Expert Tips ft. Allie K. Miller

    This week Morgan DeBaun discusses the ever-evolving world of AI with artificial intelligence leader, advisor, and investor, Allie K. Miller. Morgan is on a mission to help listeners harness the power of AI in their everyday lives, and Allie is here to share her wealth of knowledge on working smarter, not harder, with cutting-edge tools.

    In the episode, Morgan and Allie share personal examples of how they each integrate AI into daily routines and business operations, discussing how tools like ChatGPT, Otter AI, and Google Gemini can increase productivity. Allie offers actionable insights on integrating AI into daily workflows to boost productivity and spark creativity.

    Morgan and Allie also discuss the evolution of AI adoption and how individuals and companies can transition to an AI-first culture. They consider the challenges of introducing AI tools within larger organizations and share strategies for leveraging AI as a competitive advantage. Allie highlights the value of experimenting with AI, forming communities for shared learning, and exploring multimodal AI tools that combine text, voice, and visuals.

    The conversation also touches on the future of AI in entrepreneurship, predicting a wave of AI-driven startups and the potential for one-person unicorn companies.

    Whether you’re new to AI or interested in taking your AI use to the next level, this episode offers insights to help you work smarter and adapt to the ever-evolving AI landscape. Tune in to discover how you can leverage AI to transform your productivity and creativity in life and business!
    Boost Productivity with AI: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, & Expert Tips ft. Allie K. Miller This week Morgan DeBaun discusses the ever-evolving world of AI with artificial intelligence leader, advisor, and investor, Allie K. Miller. Morgan is on a mission to help listeners harness the power of AI in their everyday lives, and Allie is here to share her wealth of knowledge on working smarter, not harder, with cutting-edge tools. In the episode, Morgan and Allie share personal examples of how they each integrate AI into daily routines and business operations, discussing how tools like ChatGPT, Otter AI, and Google Gemini can increase productivity. Allie offers actionable insights on integrating AI into daily workflows to boost productivity and spark creativity. Morgan and Allie also discuss the evolution of AI adoption and how individuals and companies can transition to an AI-first culture. They consider the challenges of introducing AI tools within larger organizations and share strategies for leveraging AI as a competitive advantage. Allie highlights the value of experimenting with AI, forming communities for shared learning, and exploring multimodal AI tools that combine text, voice, and visuals. The conversation also touches on the future of AI in entrepreneurship, predicting a wave of AI-driven startups and the potential for one-person unicorn companies. Whether you’re new to AI or interested in taking your AI use to the next level, this episode offers insights to help you work smarter and adapt to the ever-evolving AI landscape. Tune in to discover how you can leverage AI to transform your productivity and creativity in life and business!
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  • How To Hire Your First Employee & Grow Your Business

    In this special episode of The Journey, Morgan DeBaun is sharing lessons straight from her program, WorkSmart, to help you hire strategically at every stage of your business.

    Whether you’re making your very first hire or planning for growth, this episode is packed with actionable advice to set your team up for success. Morgan explains how to separate CEO tasks from operating tasks and why this distinction is crucial for scaling your business.

    She also walks through how to create an organizational chart that adapts as your business grows and evolves.

    Plus, Morgan shares insights on avoiding common hiring mistakes, like choosing flashy titles over finding team members who are truly committed to your vision.

    From finding the right fit to cultivating a growth-oriented culture, this episode has everything you need to hire smarter! Tune in and get ready to build your dream team!
    How To Hire Your First Employee & Grow Your Business In this special episode of The Journey, Morgan DeBaun is sharing lessons straight from her program, WorkSmart, to help you hire strategically at every stage of your business. Whether you’re making your very first hire or planning for growth, this episode is packed with actionable advice to set your team up for success. Morgan explains how to separate CEO tasks from operating tasks and why this distinction is crucial for scaling your business. She also walks through how to create an organizational chart that adapts as your business grows and evolves. Plus, Morgan shares insights on avoiding common hiring mistakes, like choosing flashy titles over finding team members who are truly committed to your vision. From finding the right fit to cultivating a growth-oriented culture, this episode has everything you need to hire smarter! Tune in and get ready to build your dream team!
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  • Step-by-Step Guide: Making Yogurt in an Instant Pot
    https://www.cookwithcooker.com/instant-pot-yogurt-guide/
    Homemade yogurt is a healthy and cost-effective alternative to store-bought varieties, and using an Instant Pot makes the process incredibly easy. Whether you prefer plain, Greek, or flavored yogurt, this step-by-step guide will walk you through everything you need to know about making creamy, delicious yogurt in your Instant Pot.

    Table of Contents
    Why Make Yogurt in an Instant Pot?
    Ingredients You’ll Need
    i-Heat the Milk
    ii-Add the Yogurt Starter
    iii-Incubate the Yogurt
    iv: Strain and Store
    Tips for the Best Homemade Yogurt
    Common Issues and Fixes
    Why is my yogurt too runny?
    Why is my yogurt too tangy?
    How can I make it thicker?
    Serving Ideas
    Final Thoughts
    Why Make Yogurt in an Instant Pot?
    Instant Pots provide a controlled environment for yogurt fermentation, ensuring a perfect consistency every time. Making yogurt at home allows you to control the ingredients, avoid unnecessary additives, and save money. Plus, homemade yogurt is rich in probiotics, which promote gut health and digestion.

    For more healthy Instant Pot meal ideas, check out our collection of healthy Instant Pot meals.

    Ingredients You’ll Need
    1 gallon of milk (whole milk for creamier yogurt, or 2% for a lighter version)
    2 tablespoons of plain yogurt with live active cultures (as a starter)
    Optional: Sweeteners and flavorings (honey, vanilla extract, fruit puree)
    i-Heat the Milk
    Pour the milk into your Instant Pot’s inner pot.
    Select the “Yogurt” function and adjust it to the “Boil” setting.
    Heat the milk until it reaches 180°F (82°C). This helps denature the proteins, resulting in thicker yogurt.
    Once it reaches the required temperature, turn off the Instant Pot and allow the milk to cool to 110°F (43°C).
    ii-Add the Yogurt Starter
    In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt with a bit of the cooled milk.
    Gently stir this mixture back into the Instant Pot.
    Stir thoroughly to distribute the cultures evenly.
    iii-Incubate the Yogurt
    Place the lid on the Instant Pot and set it to the “Yogurt” function.
    Adjust the time to 8-12 hours. The longer the incubation, the tangier the yogurt.
    Do not stir or move the Instant Pot during this process.
    iv: Strain and Store
    After incubation, check the consistency of the yogurt. If it’s thick and set, it’s ready.
    For Greek yogurt, strain the mixture through a cheesecloth or fine-mesh strainer for 2-4 hours to remove excess whey.
    Transfer the yogurt to airtight containers and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving.
    For more delicious pressure cooker meal ideas, explore our keto pressure cooker dinners.

    Tips for the Best Homemade Yogurt
    Use high-quality milk – Organic, non-GMO, or grass-fed milk provides the best flavor.
    Pick a good yogurt starter – Ensure the starter contains live active cultures.
    Experiment with flavors – Add fruit, honey, or vanilla for different variations.
    Save a portion as your next starter – This eliminates the need to buy a new starter each time.
    Common Issues and Fixes
    Why is my yogurt too runny?
    Insufficient incubation time – Let it ferment for a few more hours.
    Low-quality starter – Use a high-quality probiotic-rich yogurt.
    Milk didn’t heat properly – Ensure milk reaches 180°F before cooling.
    Why is my yogurt too tangy?
    Over-incubation – Reduce the fermentation time next batch.
    How can I make it thicker?
    Use whole milk or add powdered milk before heating.
    Strain longer for a Greek-style consistency.
    For more slow cooker meal ideas, check out our guide to easy slow cooker recipes for beginners.

    Serving Ideas
    With granola and honey for a nutritious breakfast
    Blended into smoothies for an extra probiotic boost
    As a sour cream substitute in recipes
    With fresh fruit and nuts for a healthy snack
    Final Thoughts
    Making yogurt in an Instant Pot is simple and rewarding. By following this step-by-step guide, you can enjoy homemade yogurt tailored to your taste preferences. Whether you prefer it plain, sweetened, or thick like Greek yogurt, the Instant Pot makes the process foolproof.

    For more healthy and delicious recipes, explore our collection of vegan pressure cooker quinoa recipes.

    Enjoy your homemade yogurt adventure and happy cooking!

    #Cooking
    #Recipe
    #Food
    #Docker
    #Startup
    #Productivity
    #Inspiration
    #InternetofThings
    #Yoga
    #Parenting
    Step-by-Step Guide: Making Yogurt in an Instant Pot https://www.cookwithcooker.com/instant-pot-yogurt-guide/ Homemade yogurt is a healthy and cost-effective alternative to store-bought varieties, and using an Instant Pot makes the process incredibly easy. Whether you prefer plain, Greek, or flavored yogurt, this step-by-step guide will walk you through everything you need to know about making creamy, delicious yogurt in your Instant Pot. Table of Contents Why Make Yogurt in an Instant Pot? Ingredients You’ll Need i-Heat the Milk ii-Add the Yogurt Starter iii-Incubate the Yogurt iv: Strain and Store Tips for the Best Homemade Yogurt Common Issues and Fixes Why is my yogurt too runny? Why is my yogurt too tangy? How can I make it thicker? Serving Ideas Final Thoughts Why Make Yogurt in an Instant Pot? Instant Pots provide a controlled environment for yogurt fermentation, ensuring a perfect consistency every time. Making yogurt at home allows you to control the ingredients, avoid unnecessary additives, and save money. Plus, homemade yogurt is rich in probiotics, which promote gut health and digestion. For more healthy Instant Pot meal ideas, check out our collection of healthy Instant Pot meals. Ingredients You’ll Need 1 gallon of milk (whole milk for creamier yogurt, or 2% for a lighter version) 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt with live active cultures (as a starter) Optional: Sweeteners and flavorings (honey, vanilla extract, fruit puree) i-Heat the Milk Pour the milk into your Instant Pot’s inner pot. Select the “Yogurt” function and adjust it to the “Boil” setting. Heat the milk until it reaches 180°F (82°C). This helps denature the proteins, resulting in thicker yogurt. Once it reaches the required temperature, turn off the Instant Pot and allow the milk to cool to 110°F (43°C). ii-Add the Yogurt Starter In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt with a bit of the cooled milk. Gently stir this mixture back into the Instant Pot. Stir thoroughly to distribute the cultures evenly. iii-Incubate the Yogurt Place the lid on the Instant Pot and set it to the “Yogurt” function. Adjust the time to 8-12 hours. The longer the incubation, the tangier the yogurt. Do not stir or move the Instant Pot during this process. iv: Strain and Store After incubation, check the consistency of the yogurt. If it’s thick and set, it’s ready. For Greek yogurt, strain the mixture through a cheesecloth or fine-mesh strainer for 2-4 hours to remove excess whey. Transfer the yogurt to airtight containers and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving. For more delicious pressure cooker meal ideas, explore our keto pressure cooker dinners. Tips for the Best Homemade Yogurt Use high-quality milk – Organic, non-GMO, or grass-fed milk provides the best flavor. Pick a good yogurt starter – Ensure the starter contains live active cultures. Experiment with flavors – Add fruit, honey, or vanilla for different variations. Save a portion as your next starter – This eliminates the need to buy a new starter each time. Common Issues and Fixes Why is my yogurt too runny? Insufficient incubation time – Let it ferment for a few more hours. Low-quality starter – Use a high-quality probiotic-rich yogurt. Milk didn’t heat properly – Ensure milk reaches 180°F before cooling. Why is my yogurt too tangy? Over-incubation – Reduce the fermentation time next batch. How can I make it thicker? Use whole milk or add powdered milk before heating. Strain longer for a Greek-style consistency. For more slow cooker meal ideas, check out our guide to easy slow cooker recipes for beginners. Serving Ideas With granola and honey for a nutritious breakfast Blended into smoothies for an extra probiotic boost As a sour cream substitute in recipes With fresh fruit and nuts for a healthy snack Final Thoughts Making yogurt in an Instant Pot is simple and rewarding. By following this step-by-step guide, you can enjoy homemade yogurt tailored to your taste preferences. Whether you prefer it plain, sweetened, or thick like Greek yogurt, the Instant Pot makes the process foolproof. For more healthy and delicious recipes, explore our collection of vegan pressure cooker quinoa recipes. Enjoy your homemade yogurt adventure and happy cooking! #Cooking #Recipe #Food #Docker #Startup #Productivity #Inspiration #InternetofThings #Yoga #Parenting
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    Step-by-Step Guide: Making Yogurt in an Instant Pot
    Learn how to make creamy, delicious homemade yogurt in an Instant Pot with this easy step-by-step guide. a healthy and budget-friendly!
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  • Arab Regimes and the Betrayal of Palestine (w/ Farah El-Sharif) | The Chris Hedges Report
    Farah El-Sharif examines the forces that lead Muslim leaders to stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state.

    Chris Hedges

    This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

    Farah El-Sharif, writer, academic and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, is uncompromisingly blunt in her assessment of the Middle East. The decades of repression faced by an entire people have produced a fragmented society—culturally and through colonially imposed borders. To help understand why the Muslim world is so broken, corrupt and full of contradictions, El Sherif joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.

    “The systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American-Israeli Western project,” El Sharif says. Though the region has grown to have perceived independence from its former colonial states, El Sharif explains that the imperial agenda and the manufacturing of a Muslim menace continues.

    The psychological and physical damage runs so deep that many give in to their oppressors in hope of selfish prosperity, while others look at themselves as less than deserving of a dignified existence. The genocide in Gaza proves to be the most crucial litmus test, as the leaders of fellow Muslim countries stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state.

    “A lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, Islam is compatible with civility,” El Sharif explains. “I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness.”

    Chris Hedges

    Producer:

    Max Jones

    Intro:

    Diego Ramos

    Crew:

    Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

    Transcript:

    Diego Ramos

    Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it.

    Share

    Transcript

    Chris Hedges

    “The Muslim world has been tested with the weakest, most corrupt, and most hypocritical scholars and rulers because, as a community, our priorities have long been in the wrong place,” writes the Islamic scholar Farah El Sherif. “After being ravaged by colonialism, we no longer rallied behind the core characteristics of true leadership: Prophetic knowledge, principle, and integrity. We no longer valued what is just and true. We chased after the fickle mirages of autocratic power, wealth, charisma, and status. Thus was our downfall. As a result, we today see tightlipped, impotent Muslim rulers idly watch the river of blood as it flows from Gaza. We see compromised scholars betray the Qur’anic command for justice and bend their heads in humiliation and fear of worldly powers. Save for a few, most Muslim rulers and scholarly elites have chosen self-preservation and silence. The river of blood in Gaza is also a river of treachery and collusion. With leaders like these, it is no wonder the Muslim world is in the sorry state that it is in today.”

    “Palestinians could see from the very beginning that there is nothing ‘post’ about the postcolonial world order,” she continues. “They have ever since got less and less of their rights, lands, and dignity with each passing day. In the same era, the opium of nationalism spread like wildfire as the Muslim world was carved into colonially constructed nation states. The rest of the Muslim world enjoyed its false sense of ‘sovereignty’ and accepted its bridle, divorced from the lonesome plight of the Palestinian people, fooled into believing that the same system that gave birth to their ‘sovereign’ states could guarantee their safety and protection.”

    “What,” she asks, “is the Muslim body today if not diseased, aching, and wounded?”

    Joining me to discuss the state of the Muslim world , the connection between repressive Arab regimes and the so-called war on terror, how the genocide in Gaza exposes the moral rot within Arab ruling elites and the efforts by the west to manufacture a complaint form of Islam is Farah El Sherif. Farah received her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a research focus on Islam in Africa and the Levant, the modern nation state and Muslim political movements. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Stanford. You can find her work at sermonsatcourt.substack.com

    Farah, let's begin with the state of the Muslim world, the Arab world, which from the quotes that I pulled from the introduction, is you call it a diseased body, but it's also a created body by Western powers, propped up by Western powers. You grew up in Jordan. The Hashemite rulers of Jordan were imposed on the Jordanian people. Jordan didn't exist, of course, at the beginning, Transjordan, whatever you want to call it. They are from Saudi Arabia. The oil interests created the rulers of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And this has just been a kind of legacy, whether it's [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-] Sisi in Egypt or any other kind of pliant ruler. So let's talk about the state of the Arab world and let's talk about—and we were together in Jordan this summer—the failure on the part of Arab rulers to push back in any, with the exception of Yemen of course, push back in any meaningful way against the genocide of the Palestinian people and then in many cases actually collaborate with the Zionists to overcome the maritime blockade imposed by Yemen.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Chris, for having me and the generous introduction. Really, if you ask any person in Gaza, they will tell you that the thing that hurt them the most was not the American, German and Israeli bombs. It was the cowardice of kin. It was the collusion. It was the abandonment with this kind of Zionist campaign to exterminate them. That is what is the source of their true emotional and psychological scar. So to say that the Muslim community worldwide is stuck between a rock and a hard place is probably the understatement of the century. So if it isn't these bombs, quadcopters, drones that are shredding our bodies and burning our children alive, it's these colonially installed puppets that look towards this model of empire and salivate over it, competing in who gets to please it the most and who gets to bend over to be compliant towards it. So these security states have our people strangulated, whether it is through surveillance, repression or intimidation. And if it isn't the horrific Sednaya Prison that we've seen footage of and other sadistic torture dungeons under Assadist Syria, it is the hundreds of other unknown torture cells still operating in the West Bank, Egypt, Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, East Turkestan, and India, Kashmir, where political prisoners are detained by the hundreds and held under gruesome conditions, often without charge.

    So if it isn't that, it's the Israeli soldiers that relish in breaking the bones of Palestinian children prisoners. It's the [inaudible] concentration camp where Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted over a week ago with no word from him and where Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh of Al-Shifa Hospital was brutally raped and killed before him. It is the crude and sadistic Israeli parliamentarian urge to protect the so-called right to rape. If not that, it is the moral stain of Abu Ghraib. It is the Patriot Act that detains people like Dr. Aafia Siddiqui the rest of the Holy Land Five, and men like Abu Zubaydah, Guantanamo's so-called forever prisoner, or America's tortured guinea pig, who still resides in Guantanamo [Bay] since 2002, and who we forget is of Palestinian descent himself. So this, like you rightly pointed out, Chris, the systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American Israeli Western project. In a twisted way, they kind of all work together like this Pharaoh behemoth protected by Orwellian buzzwords like liberal democracy or state sovereignty or the so-called rules-based order, which Gaza has exposed as nothing but a ruse-based order. So it is as if this entire ecosystem of repression feeds on injustice.

    And we've reached the abyss of the abyss of repression. And this world order is this Frankenstein-like world whose horrors have been unleashed primarily on innocents. So what the great African-American theologian James Cone called structural sin, we've reached an alarming level of that, of desensitization to atrocious mass violence. And what does all of this do? It kills and strangulates all of us, not just Muslims. It produces this endemic spiritual death which affects not only Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians, but humanity as a whole. So this pernicious web of carceral cancer is sustained by the politics of compliance to an empire which sees Muslims like me, Palestinians and Arabs as mere fodder for this monstrous system. Nowhere is this collusion more evident than things like basic human rights and civil liberties being eroded in the West. Look at the state of Muslims in Germany. Just last week, I think a senator from Florida, Randy Fine, tweeted essentially a final solution, a call for a final solution, saying that it's high time we dealt with this fundamentally dangerous culture, i.e. Islam, what I would say to that is what is fundamentally dangerous and broken of a culture is one that has normalized genocide, one that is okay with watching images of people being burned alive and moving on with their day. That is what is fundamentally broken and that is what is dangerous. So this manufacturing, decades of manufacturing the Muslim menace, this idea of the war on terror, or let's change that proposition and call it a war of terror, a war of state terror that has Muslim political prisoners locked up and exterminated. This same campaign also sustains and funds the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing land grab annexation and colonization of land in Syria and Lebanon.

    And so all of this is part of a campaign to dominate and redraw the Middle East straight out of a 21st century crusader-cum-Zionist colonial playbook. Except this campaign is more militarized, it's more advanced, it's more funded and supremacist than ever before. So I don't think that this is a controversial point, Chris, but I wrote this in my Substack that we are currently living in an age of Muslim internment, but we don't call it as such. We've reached a point where we have normalized the genocide and extermination of a people deemed to be bad wholesale according to the logic of the Judeo-Western Christian civilization. So, yes?

    Chris Hedges

    No, go ahead.

    Farah El-Sharif

    I was just gonna say that since World War II, we've primarily normalized seeing images of torture basically on Muslim bodies from Bosnia, Abu Ghraib, the Rab'a massacre at West Bank, and now in Gaza, the Rohingya, the Uighurs. So it's definitely a time where, a time of harrowing, sort of desensitization and dehumanization on a global systemic level.

    Chris Hedges

    Well, as you are well aware, the United States acted no differently from Israel, as Israel is, of course, the genocide is more pronounced, but the kinds of the torture, the tactics, the indiscriminate killing, the racist language, this was all part of the project, the imperial project in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria. We have a kind of historical amnesia here in the United States. But certainly within the Muslim world, especially those people that have borne the brunt, mean, how many, what is it, one million Iraqis were killed because of our occupation of the country? They don't forget. They know.

    Farah El-Sharif

    No, absolutely, Chris, you're right. And I think that you talked about, with Dr. Gabor Maté, you talked about fragmented morality, but what we're seeing now in a lot of this knee-jerk geopolitical reactions to what's going on in the region, in the Middle East, is a kind of fragmented vision. And what you were saying about amnesia is absolutely true. So I'm trained as an intellectual historian where my job is to look at the long durée of ideas and look at the kind of the macro arc of where we're going as a human whole. And so I don't say this to be an alarmist. I'm probably the most anti-dogmatic person that you could talk to, but I say this not to kind of play the victim card that, we Muslims, we need help, we're so helpless, and then turn that victimization into furthering another kind of oppression or another kind of injustice. And we've seen that happen to many people who are oppressed or repressed, suddenly they become the tyrant. And I think that for Muslims and Islam, we're at a kind of a turning point, a testing kind of, Gaza has been kind of the litmus test for Western leadership to basically see if there truly are about the highest ideals of Western civilization protecting the right to liberty, the right to life, the right to freedom.

    And it is clear, it is exceedingly clear that these freedoms only extend to the in-kind group. They're only seen as worthy to Westerners, to white people. Whereas when it comes to these barbarians abroad, let's just decimate them, let's just destroy them. And this arrogant expansionist program is very reminiscent of the 18th and 19th century colonial brutal campaigns that I read about when it comes to the French in West Africa or the Dutch in Indonesia. And it's exactly all from the same colonial playbook, except now it is fattened up with this, like I said, this Orwellian cover of civility and democracy. And we should not forget that this campaign that we are seeing now is exactly out of [Benjamin] Netanyahu's kind of wet dream for the Middle East to take all of it, essentially. And in 1996, you know better than me about the Clean Break Policy that was designed to take out seven countries in five years—Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and then swallow the region whole. And for anybody to look at one regime change and to say that that's not part and parcel of this campaign.

    Even the War on Terror was cooked up in Tel Aviv in 1982 or even before in 1979 through the Jonathan Institute that Netanyahu himself founded. He said, we're done with the red threat now. Now is the green threat, that of Islamic terror. And so a lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, if Islam is compatible with civility. And I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness.

    Chris Hedges

    Well, that is, and you've written about this, there's a huge push to create this kind of quizzling form of Islam. That's what the Abraham Accords are. So, you know, we divide, and this is classic colonial rule, we divide, let's put it in commas, the natives into the “good natives” and the “bad natives.” Those who are willing to serve in our colonial police force, like the Palestinian Authority, which is currently attacking Jenin and has thrown Al Jazeera out of the West Bank, imagine, following of course Israel's example within Israel proper. Let's talk about that, the attempt to create divisions within the Muslim world and this insidious project—and the Abraham Accords I think epitomize that—to create quote unquote the good Muslim.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah, I mean, it's a very archetypal story in a sense that in every struggle for liberation, there will always be the collaborators, the native informants, if you will, who kind of throw their people under the bus and scurry the favor of the powers that be and try to kind of gain favor in exchange for petty crumbs. But ultimately, history, scripture have shown us that it is a Faustian bargain. At the end of the day, these people who think that by cozying up with repressive forces of empire like Israel and the United States at the expense of the actual lives of the people they govern, they do that thinking that they're securing their reign or that they are getting political expediency or perhaps their son might become king next or some kind of delusional worldly fantasy like that. But the funny thing that you mentioned about the Abraham Accords and how they are singularly pernicious, Chris, is that they use this language of a kind of this prophetic authority. They invoke Abraham as the father of all three religions and hence give this kind of treacherous collusion, a kind of a prophetic theological tinge. And this is again, part and parcel of this Orwellian doublespeak where this time they have Muslim scholars, even here in America, Muslim scholars who defend that, who are in cahoots with the UAE and Saudi, who are mum about the genocide in Gaza. And so historically we've had Muslim scholars in the lead of anti-colonial resistance movements, today you see they're fully co-opted or they're in dungeon prisons like in Saudi.

    Right now, I read yesterday that every 25 hours, one person is executed under MBS in Saudi Arabia. The other day, just somebody I know was detained for around three months, a woman for wearing a kufiya, a Palestinian kufiya in the holy mosque of Mecca. So this is the kind of cancerous kind of relationship that I was referring to earlier. And the funny thing is, Chris, the irony about the Abraham Accords is that in the Islamic intellectual tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was asked about the Prophet Abraham and what he stood for. So one of his companions asked the Prophet, tell us about the Abrahamic scrolls. And you know what the Prophet said about that? He said, the prophet Abraham used to speak like this:

    “Oh you wretched, insolent, conceited king, I did not send you to this world to collect worldly benefits, rather I sent you to respond to the supplication of the oppressed on my behalf. To respond to the supplication of the oppressed on my behalf.”

    And this is the exact opposite of what the Abraham Accords, backed by the UAE and Saudi, Bahrain, Morocco, do. They actually strangulate the oppressed. They are actually all the people living under the rubble or starving or dying from the cold in Gaza were only able to get to that point because of the collusion and collaboration of Arab and Muslim normalizers.

    Chris Hedges

    Let's, for people who don't know what the Abraham Accords are, this is Jared Kushner's project under the Trump administration, explain what it's—I mean, in its rough description, it essentially normalizes relationships, diplomatic relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia, at the expense of the Palestinians, of course. But talk about the Abraham Accords and why they are so pernicious.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah, it was signed in 2020, like you correctly said, under the Trump administration. It was, you could say, Kushner's kind of vision, alongside Netanyahu, of course. And it was signed between the US, and people don't even realize that Palestine is not even part of this accord. They arrogantly cut out the people whose lives are affected primarily. This is about them, this is about Palestinians, and yet they weren't consulted, they weren't even present. And so this is part of this kind of effort to kind of enact this cultural change, to promote a kind of Islam that is a quietist Islam, that is just cultural, that is just cosmetic. Women in hijabs, great. Men who go to the mosque, great. This rote ritual type of Islam that is devoid of its true spiritual core, its prophetic calling, which is what? To speak a just word in the face of a tyrant. That is the greatest jihad we're taught in our tradition. It's only later, actually Saudi itself never signed this. There's an article, if you look it up, maybe one week before October 7th, MBS said, we're very close to signing peace with Israel. And so even now, after the Gaza genocide, that has not been a disqualifier for any of these Arab regimes to stop or take back those treaties. They still have kept their word on these accords, on these peace treaties, these trade routes.

    And so when we say that these Arab armies, these militaristic behemoths, they've only been fighting their own people. They haven't been defending the oppressed that need them in places like Gaza. And now because of these Gulf states coming into the picture, we are seeing a more cancerous kind of form of normalization on the state level where you see even ordinary journalists, Muslims going online say, you know, we need to coexist. We need to do that. We need to do this. But then how can you coexist with an entity that is essentially trying to basically decimate your entire religious character, your identity, your beliefs, your core scriptural commitments, let alone, your brethren's bodies and the right to exist.

    Chris Hedges

    Before we talk about, I think you would agree, kind of, to me, inexplicable silence on the part of most Muslim, many Muslim leaders over the genocide, let's talk about what these Arab regimes are actually doing in Jordan, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, the land bridge that was set up, the fleecing of Palestinians by Hala, the shooting down of the active assistance by the Jordanian, well, they say it was Jordanian, it was probably heavily American. When I was in Jordan, I was a little surprised to see so many American contractors and soldiers, not in uniform of course, in the hotel where I was at. But let's talk about what they're actively doing. They're not just passive, but the active support for the Zionist state in the midst of the genocide.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yes, I mean, again, if we want to move away from having a fragmented vision and looking at specific states and how they approach Palestine, Palestine has been kind of a revealer and it's pointing us to the longer arc of history. I remind your listeners that these nation states were basically concocted out of a colonial kind of divide and conquer classic strategy after World War I, things like the McMahon policy or the Sykes-Picot [Agreement]. And so these states are cut from this kind of smelly leftovers of the French and the British empires. And people think that just when you declare independence or you're now you're sovereign, it doesn't actually mean that we are free or sovereign. On the contrary, it means that the level of control and coercion and repression has gone underground. It's more ambiguous. It's harder to locate. So that is why, for example, if you go to a protest in a place like a Jordanian university and you say something, you could get snatched up. Or in Egypt, you express solidarity with the Palestinians. People are afraid to do that because they think that that could be cause for them to basically disappear and go underground. So again, this ecosystem of fear not only surveils and kind of mutes people who are so-called not in, who are kind of not in the genocidal atmosphere, but I like what, there was an Egyptian taxi driver in the video that went kind of viral, he was, he rode with a gentleman from Gaza and when he found out that he was from Gaza, he started crying and he said, no, no, no, I won't take your money. And this is the least I could do not to take your money. Forgive us, forgive us for we are occupied too, he said.

    [POTENTIALLY PUT VIDEO HERE] https://www.instagram.com/doamuslims/reel/DCY5x7Uo3lS/

    And I think that is the sentiment that all Arabs feel, but that they cannot say that we are also occupied. We are also under this thumb of this brutal repressive system, whereas Palestinians have had the courage to break free from that. So in a sense, Gaza, sometimes the Arabs say that it represents the most free place on earth because it broke out of that prison. And so a lot of these prisons that Arabs, Muslims have in these Muslim majority Arab countries are mental colonization. If you see a policeman on the street, perhaps they shrink and cower more. Even I, I grew up in Jordan, it's a police state. I remember my dad, God rest his soul, he was a veteran journalist like you, Chris, and he was the editor-in-chief of Jordan's oldest daily. I remember it very well that when we started talking about something slightly taboo or slightly dangerous, they would say, the walls can hear everything, or he would crack a joke and he'd say, you're the neighbor's daughter, you're not my daughter just to kind of joke like that. But these were the kinds of jokes that we... Not funny. You know, this is the kind of climate that we grew up in. And now to see it become in this form, where it's a form of insanity, where you have your own people, your next of blood and kin being kind of exterminated right next door. And not only that, you see the trade routes that goes and funds the occupation boxes and boxes of tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce and produce that go to feed and sustain the settlers and the soldiers while Gaza starves.

    Chris Hedges

    Let me just make clear that this comes in this pipeline—UAE, Saudi Arabia through Jordan over the King Hussein Bridge.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Correct, correct, Chris. And so we should probably shed light on the plight of3, the journalist who merely conducted an investigative report about this trade route, this land lifeline for the occupation. And she is currently doing five years in jail and is paying very hefty penalties for so-called cybercrime. And it's kind of a warning for others that don't you dare expose complicity or collusion or collaboration because you'll end up in a cell or a ditch like her. So it's just, the nice thing about it, Chris, it's like there's no ambiguity anymore, that people can no longer say that we should give them the benefit of the doubt. They're doing their best. It's a tough neighborhood. I hate this cliche. I hear it all the time. And they're always kind of invoking that, it's a tough neighborhood. Politics are dirty. But it's being blown off with crystal clear clarity that this is one occupation. It's one system. The enemy is one. And so it's up to people and their moral clarity and moral courage to everyday shed a little bit of that fear because once they partake in it and once they accept it, they say, oh, generations of people who live in fear and I accept this. I think my generation and hopefully my children's generation will no longer accept that kind of degradation, denigration and fear-based rule.

    Chris Hedges

    Yeah, I'm glad you raised the plight of Hiba, who, as you know, I tried to visit. I filled out all the paperwork and then sat outside the prison, the women's prison in Amman all day and wasn't finally allowed in. How fragile are these regimes? Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, I sense they're very fragile.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah, I mean, we forget that this nation state structure that was cooked up in the kitchen of people like [British army officer and archaeologist] T.E. Lawrence and Sykes-Picot, basically are constructs. They're recent constructs. And we think of them as something that is the status quo since time immemorial, but they're really not. They stand on very fickle ground as we saw that things can change overnight. And so it reminds me of the story of Pharaoh who in the Quranic scripture that we share with our Jewish and Christian brethren is that right before, when he got to the zenith of his power, right before he got to Moses, the sea split and swallowed him whole. He became kind of, until this day, a sign and a kind of a lesson and a symbol for what happens to people who think that they are invincible, for people think that they will live forever. And so God knows what the future brings, but this level of foundational rot, I don't think can hold much longer.

    Chris Hedges

    Let's talk about, you and I were in an event, it was a year ago in Toronto, we were talking about Palestine. And what struck me after we spoke is the number of young people who came up and asked me and probably you why the Muslim leaders, Muslim leadership didn't say what, what was not unequivocal in the condemnation of the genocide. And unequivocal in the condemnation of the apartheid state of Israel. And I want to ask you that question. How do you characterize the response of the Muslim leadership in the United States?

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah, I remember that Chris, and it was heartbreaking and it still is. And I thought about this a lot. And I think it's largely due to the fact that this war on terror rhetoric that kind of weeds out the bad from the so-called good Muslims, the good Muslims who are compliant, who don't support so-called radical, brutal acts of terror. So it's almost as if this colonial rhetoric has been internalized in the consciousness of Muslim scholars and leaders. And so that they say that when perhaps that if we stand with the oppressed, if we speak up for Gaza, the powers that be might think that I support Hamas or that I support this and that. So again, it's like this, not just decimated consciousness, like I said, it's more than that. It's kind of capitulating completely because you're saying that the vernacular of justice has to be removed from Islam for me to have a seat at the table, for me to gain proximity to power, maybe get the ear of Biden or get the ear of Trump. And I see this happening a lot that some Muslims are scurrying the favor of the right-wing kind of platform and thinking that, at least we meet on certain points regarding families and family values and whatnot. So to me, this just signals a huge crisis in our priorities. It signals a terrible misunderstanding of the true aim and kind of point of being a Muslim and that is standing firm in your own principles and ethics and higher morality that is tethered to the throne of God, that is tethered to the oneness, the true oneness of God.

    So other than oneness, what do we have? Multiplicity. And multiplicity signals, I'm afraid, I'm afraid of this commitment. What if I do this? What if I say that? And so that is in a sense, a kind of a hidden polytheism. And so when someone who has a position of authority and scholarship and people look up to them and then they lapse in that responsibility, the whole community is hurt. And the young people are like, where do I locate my Islam? Who am I? What does it mean? And so that is why I think, you know, we are in this place where it's too comfortable with our salaries, upgrading to our SUV and our nice respectable suburban life while our brethren overseas get killed, it's a complete lapse of leadership and collective morality.

    Chris Hedges

    Explain to me this conundrum of Muslims for Trump.

    Farah El-Sharif

    I think I get it.

    Chris Hedges

    It's kind of like it's kind of like Jews for Hitler. I mean, maybe not that extreme, but I mean.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah. No, but I mean, that's where, you know, that gives you a window and how this destroyed kind of consciousness, this severe inferiority complex where you are willing to basically, you know, shut up and accept racist rhetoric about you and your people. And it's this amnesiac kind of just, you know, the Muslim ban, it's still ongoing. It's not like it ended under Biden. And so it saddens me that Muslims for Trump is even a thing because what you're buying into, you're buying into the very campaign that's going to probably deal the final blow. And already you can see how very vitriolic and toxic X [formerly known as Twitter] and platforms like that are and full-blown Islamophobia, xenophobia. And there's this like maybe a strong man appeal to people who think that, well, this is a leader and maybe these are remnants from autocratic nostalgia that I see bumper stickers in Amman for Saddam Hussein. I guess this idea that, okay, if this leader is strong and tells it like it is, and he doesn't mince his words, then he must have something charismatic or strong.

    Chris Hedges

    Well, but at least Saddam Hussein was an enemy to the Zionist state. I mean, I was in Ramallah this summer with Atef Abu Saif, and he said, if you go in these houses, you won't see a picture of [Former President of the Palestinian National Authority] Yasser Arafat, you'll see a picture of Saddam. But Trump has never done anything positive for Muslims.

    Farah El-Sharif

    No, it's baffling and it signals a dangerous level of kind of maybe collective insanity, but there are pockets of hope. I think that, I guess by and large, this election cycle was manic for everybody. And I think we've reached a point where this lesser of two evils conundrum has reached a point where it can no longer be replicated in future election cycles. People are sick of lesser of two evils. They just want no more evil, no more. They just want the good, the true, something other than an orange fascist in charge or a Black woman whose funded genocide. So this conundrum, really this strangulation, this choke hold that we're in, for me is a good thing because it signals that, okay, at least this Leviathan is probably taking its last breaths and that more sane, conscientious people with a moral conscience, with a real pulse, with a real concern for humanity, hopefully, will be the ones to come next and inherit this ailing world.

    Chris Hedges

    So where do you see us going in the months and years ahead and then to close, what do you tell young people, in particular young Muslims? I don't, for the foreseeable future, for me, it looks pretty dark.

    Farah El-Sharif

    Yeah, it's a hard question, but also it keeps me up at night. I think about this a lot. I've always been this intense girl that my family makes fun of me, that even as a younger kid, I was always brooding and thinking about the Muslim world, our affairs, our conditions. So I'd like to refer to a lecture that I was at when I was a student at Georgetown in 2008, my favorite Catholic theologian, gave the nostra aetate annual lecture at the time. He said something that really blew my mind. He said that in his comparing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he said that Judaism rests on kind of tribal, hierarchical commitments. And so its natural culmination, its natural telos is this—the ethno-religious state of Israel. And that is its final conclusion. And then he went on to say that Christianity is beheld by the papacy and the institutionalization of the church. And that's its logical conclusion. When he talked about Islam, he said, Islam is in its essence universalist. And it is, it's tethered by this idea of oneness of man and Muhammad as a mercy to all of humankind, not just Muslims, but their final arc or their final culmination has not been decided yet.

    So I call on my fellow Muslims to take this opportunity of rampant moral rot, of decay and destruction in the systemic world order that we live in that has exposed itself as hypocritical, essentially anti-Muslim, brutal and completely inhumane to kind of lean in to their agency as Muslims that can perhaps bring about a brighter future, that can perhaps fulfill this untold role, a positive role collectively that Islam can offer the world. Because unless and until we remain shackled in our mental and spiritual colonized mentality, whether it is about how we know ourselves, how we know religion, how we conduct ourselves politically, we will never break free. And so we have the potential to do that. We have the potential to be like Malcolm. For me, he's the greatest American Muslim exemplar and courageous leader. We call him the great American Shaheed, the martyr of America, who he himself visited Gaza in 1964 and he said the spirit of Allah was strong in Gaza. So look to these people instead of trying to wait for your average Imam or your charismatic Sheikh to grow a backbone, you have plenty of exemplars within our tradition living and dead, including the people of Gaza themselves. There is a Quranic kind of pointer there that the oppressed shall become the teachers. They shall become the role models of faith, similarly to how in Christianity the meek shall inherit the earth. So the kind of fortitude that the people of Gaza have, let that not go in vain.

    The other day I saw a video, Chris, that I can't get out of my mind of a father holding the shroud of his child in the ambulance. And he was speaking so clairvoyantly, so prophetically that it gave me goosebumps all over. He's saying, Ya Netanyahu, Ya Arab, O Netanyahu, O you Arabs, O you colluders, everybody who failed us, Allah is only raising you so that he can tear you down. So don't think that this, what you see, all of this supremacy, this militarization, this ironclad power, this supremacy is going to be the name of the game forever. It's only this shocking in its dehumanization, this shocking in its genocidal bloodlust for it to, hopefully, wither away and usher in a different world, a better world.

    Chris Hedges

    Great, thank you Farah. I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges], and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com.

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    Arab Regimes and the Betrayal of Palestine (w/ Farah El-Sharif) | The Chris Hedges Report Farah El-Sharif examines the forces that lead Muslim leaders to stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state. Chris Hedges This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble. Farah El-Sharif, writer, academic and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, is uncompromisingly blunt in her assessment of the Middle East. The decades of repression faced by an entire people have produced a fragmented society—culturally and through colonially imposed borders. To help understand why the Muslim world is so broken, corrupt and full of contradictions, El Sherif joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. “The systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American-Israeli Western project,” El Sharif says. Though the region has grown to have perceived independence from its former colonial states, El Sharif explains that the imperial agenda and the manufacturing of a Muslim menace continues. The psychological and physical damage runs so deep that many give in to their oppressors in hope of selfish prosperity, while others look at themselves as less than deserving of a dignified existence. The genocide in Gaza proves to be the most crucial litmus test, as the leaders of fellow Muslim countries stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state. “A lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, Islam is compatible with civility,” El Sharif explains. “I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness.” Chris Hedges Producer: Max Jones Intro: Diego Ramos Crew: Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges Transcript: Diego Ramos Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share Transcript Chris Hedges “The Muslim world has been tested with the weakest, most corrupt, and most hypocritical scholars and rulers because, as a community, our priorities have long been in the wrong place,” writes the Islamic scholar Farah El Sherif. “After being ravaged by colonialism, we no longer rallied behind the core characteristics of true leadership: Prophetic knowledge, principle, and integrity. We no longer valued what is just and true. We chased after the fickle mirages of autocratic power, wealth, charisma, and status. Thus was our downfall. As a result, we today see tightlipped, impotent Muslim rulers idly watch the river of blood as it flows from Gaza. We see compromised scholars betray the Qur’anic command for justice and bend their heads in humiliation and fear of worldly powers. Save for a few, most Muslim rulers and scholarly elites have chosen self-preservation and silence. The river of blood in Gaza is also a river of treachery and collusion. With leaders like these, it is no wonder the Muslim world is in the sorry state that it is in today.” “Palestinians could see from the very beginning that there is nothing ‘post’ about the postcolonial world order,” she continues. “They have ever since got less and less of their rights, lands, and dignity with each passing day. In the same era, the opium of nationalism spread like wildfire as the Muslim world was carved into colonially constructed nation states. The rest of the Muslim world enjoyed its false sense of ‘sovereignty’ and accepted its bridle, divorced from the lonesome plight of the Palestinian people, fooled into believing that the same system that gave birth to their ‘sovereign’ states could guarantee their safety and protection.” “What,” she asks, “is the Muslim body today if not diseased, aching, and wounded?” Joining me to discuss the state of the Muslim world , the connection between repressive Arab regimes and the so-called war on terror, how the genocide in Gaza exposes the moral rot within Arab ruling elites and the efforts by the west to manufacture a complaint form of Islam is Farah El Sherif. Farah received her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a research focus on Islam in Africa and the Levant, the modern nation state and Muslim political movements. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Stanford. You can find her work at sermonsatcourt.substack.com Farah, let's begin with the state of the Muslim world, the Arab world, which from the quotes that I pulled from the introduction, is you call it a diseased body, but it's also a created body by Western powers, propped up by Western powers. You grew up in Jordan. The Hashemite rulers of Jordan were imposed on the Jordanian people. Jordan didn't exist, of course, at the beginning, Transjordan, whatever you want to call it. They are from Saudi Arabia. The oil interests created the rulers of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And this has just been a kind of legacy, whether it's [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-] Sisi in Egypt or any other kind of pliant ruler. So let's talk about the state of the Arab world and let's talk about—and we were together in Jordan this summer—the failure on the part of Arab rulers to push back in any, with the exception of Yemen of course, push back in any meaningful way against the genocide of the Palestinian people and then in many cases actually collaborate with the Zionists to overcome the maritime blockade imposed by Yemen. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Chris, for having me and the generous introduction. Really, if you ask any person in Gaza, they will tell you that the thing that hurt them the most was not the American, German and Israeli bombs. It was the cowardice of kin. It was the collusion. It was the abandonment with this kind of Zionist campaign to exterminate them. That is what is the source of their true emotional and psychological scar. So to say that the Muslim community worldwide is stuck between a rock and a hard place is probably the understatement of the century. So if it isn't these bombs, quadcopters, drones that are shredding our bodies and burning our children alive, it's these colonially installed puppets that look towards this model of empire and salivate over it, competing in who gets to please it the most and who gets to bend over to be compliant towards it. So these security states have our people strangulated, whether it is through surveillance, repression or intimidation. And if it isn't the horrific Sednaya Prison that we've seen footage of and other sadistic torture dungeons under Assadist Syria, it is the hundreds of other unknown torture cells still operating in the West Bank, Egypt, Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, East Turkestan, and India, Kashmir, where political prisoners are detained by the hundreds and held under gruesome conditions, often without charge. So if it isn't that, it's the Israeli soldiers that relish in breaking the bones of Palestinian children prisoners. It's the [inaudible] concentration camp where Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted over a week ago with no word from him and where Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh of Al-Shifa Hospital was brutally raped and killed before him. It is the crude and sadistic Israeli parliamentarian urge to protect the so-called right to rape. If not that, it is the moral stain of Abu Ghraib. It is the Patriot Act that detains people like Dr. Aafia Siddiqui the rest of the Holy Land Five, and men like Abu Zubaydah, Guantanamo's so-called forever prisoner, or America's tortured guinea pig, who still resides in Guantanamo [Bay] since 2002, and who we forget is of Palestinian descent himself. So this, like you rightly pointed out, Chris, the systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American Israeli Western project. In a twisted way, they kind of all work together like this Pharaoh behemoth protected by Orwellian buzzwords like liberal democracy or state sovereignty or the so-called rules-based order, which Gaza has exposed as nothing but a ruse-based order. So it is as if this entire ecosystem of repression feeds on injustice. And we've reached the abyss of the abyss of repression. And this world order is this Frankenstein-like world whose horrors have been unleashed primarily on innocents. So what the great African-American theologian James Cone called structural sin, we've reached an alarming level of that, of desensitization to atrocious mass violence. And what does all of this do? It kills and strangulates all of us, not just Muslims. It produces this endemic spiritual death which affects not only Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians, but humanity as a whole. So this pernicious web of carceral cancer is sustained by the politics of compliance to an empire which sees Muslims like me, Palestinians and Arabs as mere fodder for this monstrous system. Nowhere is this collusion more evident than things like basic human rights and civil liberties being eroded in the West. Look at the state of Muslims in Germany. Just last week, I think a senator from Florida, Randy Fine, tweeted essentially a final solution, a call for a final solution, saying that it's high time we dealt with this fundamentally dangerous culture, i.e. Islam, what I would say to that is what is fundamentally dangerous and broken of a culture is one that has normalized genocide, one that is okay with watching images of people being burned alive and moving on with their day. That is what is fundamentally broken and that is what is dangerous. So this manufacturing, decades of manufacturing the Muslim menace, this idea of the war on terror, or let's change that proposition and call it a war of terror, a war of state terror that has Muslim political prisoners locked up and exterminated. This same campaign also sustains and funds the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing land grab annexation and colonization of land in Syria and Lebanon. And so all of this is part of a campaign to dominate and redraw the Middle East straight out of a 21st century crusader-cum-Zionist colonial playbook. Except this campaign is more militarized, it's more advanced, it's more funded and supremacist than ever before. So I don't think that this is a controversial point, Chris, but I wrote this in my Substack that we are currently living in an age of Muslim internment, but we don't call it as such. We've reached a point where we have normalized the genocide and extermination of a people deemed to be bad wholesale according to the logic of the Judeo-Western Christian civilization. So, yes? Chris Hedges No, go ahead. Farah El-Sharif I was just gonna say that since World War II, we've primarily normalized seeing images of torture basically on Muslim bodies from Bosnia, Abu Ghraib, the Rab'a massacre at West Bank, and now in Gaza, the Rohingya, the Uighurs. So it's definitely a time where, a time of harrowing, sort of desensitization and dehumanization on a global systemic level. Chris Hedges Well, as you are well aware, the United States acted no differently from Israel, as Israel is, of course, the genocide is more pronounced, but the kinds of the torture, the tactics, the indiscriminate killing, the racist language, this was all part of the project, the imperial project in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria. We have a kind of historical amnesia here in the United States. But certainly within the Muslim world, especially those people that have borne the brunt, mean, how many, what is it, one million Iraqis were killed because of our occupation of the country? They don't forget. They know. Farah El-Sharif No, absolutely, Chris, you're right. And I think that you talked about, with Dr. Gabor Maté, you talked about fragmented morality, but what we're seeing now in a lot of this knee-jerk geopolitical reactions to what's going on in the region, in the Middle East, is a kind of fragmented vision. And what you were saying about amnesia is absolutely true. So I'm trained as an intellectual historian where my job is to look at the long durée of ideas and look at the kind of the macro arc of where we're going as a human whole. And so I don't say this to be an alarmist. I'm probably the most anti-dogmatic person that you could talk to, but I say this not to kind of play the victim card that, we Muslims, we need help, we're so helpless, and then turn that victimization into furthering another kind of oppression or another kind of injustice. And we've seen that happen to many people who are oppressed or repressed, suddenly they become the tyrant. And I think that for Muslims and Islam, we're at a kind of a turning point, a testing kind of, Gaza has been kind of the litmus test for Western leadership to basically see if there truly are about the highest ideals of Western civilization protecting the right to liberty, the right to life, the right to freedom. And it is clear, it is exceedingly clear that these freedoms only extend to the in-kind group. They're only seen as worthy to Westerners, to white people. Whereas when it comes to these barbarians abroad, let's just decimate them, let's just destroy them. And this arrogant expansionist program is very reminiscent of the 18th and 19th century colonial brutal campaigns that I read about when it comes to the French in West Africa or the Dutch in Indonesia. And it's exactly all from the same colonial playbook, except now it is fattened up with this, like I said, this Orwellian cover of civility and democracy. And we should not forget that this campaign that we are seeing now is exactly out of [Benjamin] Netanyahu's kind of wet dream for the Middle East to take all of it, essentially. And in 1996, you know better than me about the Clean Break Policy that was designed to take out seven countries in five years—Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and then swallow the region whole. And for anybody to look at one regime change and to say that that's not part and parcel of this campaign. Even the War on Terror was cooked up in Tel Aviv in 1982 or even before in 1979 through the Jonathan Institute that Netanyahu himself founded. He said, we're done with the red threat now. Now is the green threat, that of Islamic terror. And so a lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, if Islam is compatible with civility. And I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness. Chris Hedges Well, that is, and you've written about this, there's a huge push to create this kind of quizzling form of Islam. That's what the Abraham Accords are. So, you know, we divide, and this is classic colonial rule, we divide, let's put it in commas, the natives into the “good natives” and the “bad natives.” Those who are willing to serve in our colonial police force, like the Palestinian Authority, which is currently attacking Jenin and has thrown Al Jazeera out of the West Bank, imagine, following of course Israel's example within Israel proper. Let's talk about that, the attempt to create divisions within the Muslim world and this insidious project—and the Abraham Accords I think epitomize that—to create quote unquote the good Muslim. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, I mean, it's a very archetypal story in a sense that in every struggle for liberation, there will always be the collaborators, the native informants, if you will, who kind of throw their people under the bus and scurry the favor of the powers that be and try to kind of gain favor in exchange for petty crumbs. But ultimately, history, scripture have shown us that it is a Faustian bargain. At the end of the day, these people who think that by cozying up with repressive forces of empire like Israel and the United States at the expense of the actual lives of the people they govern, they do that thinking that they're securing their reign or that they are getting political expediency or perhaps their son might become king next or some kind of delusional worldly fantasy like that. But the funny thing that you mentioned about the Abraham Accords and how they are singularly pernicious, Chris, is that they use this language of a kind of this prophetic authority. They invoke Abraham as the father of all three religions and hence give this kind of treacherous collusion, a kind of a prophetic theological tinge. And this is again, part and parcel of this Orwellian doublespeak where this time they have Muslim scholars, even here in America, Muslim scholars who defend that, who are in cahoots with the UAE and Saudi, who are mum about the genocide in Gaza. And so historically we've had Muslim scholars in the lead of anti-colonial resistance movements, today you see they're fully co-opted or they're in dungeon prisons like in Saudi. Right now, I read yesterday that every 25 hours, one person is executed under MBS in Saudi Arabia. The other day, just somebody I know was detained for around three months, a woman for wearing a kufiya, a Palestinian kufiya in the holy mosque of Mecca. So this is the kind of cancerous kind of relationship that I was referring to earlier. And the funny thing is, Chris, the irony about the Abraham Accords is that in the Islamic intellectual tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was asked about the Prophet Abraham and what he stood for. So one of his companions asked the Prophet, tell us about the Abrahamic scrolls. And you know what the Prophet said about that? He said, the prophet Abraham used to speak like this: “Oh you wretched, insolent, conceited king, I did not send you to this world to collect worldly benefits, rather I sent you to respond to the supplication of the oppressed on my behalf. To respond to the supplication of the oppressed on my behalf.” And this is the exact opposite of what the Abraham Accords, backed by the UAE and Saudi, Bahrain, Morocco, do. They actually strangulate the oppressed. They are actually all the people living under the rubble or starving or dying from the cold in Gaza were only able to get to that point because of the collusion and collaboration of Arab and Muslim normalizers. Chris Hedges Let's, for people who don't know what the Abraham Accords are, this is Jared Kushner's project under the Trump administration, explain what it's—I mean, in its rough description, it essentially normalizes relationships, diplomatic relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia, at the expense of the Palestinians, of course. But talk about the Abraham Accords and why they are so pernicious. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, it was signed in 2020, like you correctly said, under the Trump administration. It was, you could say, Kushner's kind of vision, alongside Netanyahu, of course. And it was signed between the US, and people don't even realize that Palestine is not even part of this accord. They arrogantly cut out the people whose lives are affected primarily. This is about them, this is about Palestinians, and yet they weren't consulted, they weren't even present. And so this is part of this kind of effort to kind of enact this cultural change, to promote a kind of Islam that is a quietist Islam, that is just cultural, that is just cosmetic. Women in hijabs, great. Men who go to the mosque, great. This rote ritual type of Islam that is devoid of its true spiritual core, its prophetic calling, which is what? To speak a just word in the face of a tyrant. That is the greatest jihad we're taught in our tradition. It's only later, actually Saudi itself never signed this. There's an article, if you look it up, maybe one week before October 7th, MBS said, we're very close to signing peace with Israel. And so even now, after the Gaza genocide, that has not been a disqualifier for any of these Arab regimes to stop or take back those treaties. They still have kept their word on these accords, on these peace treaties, these trade routes. And so when we say that these Arab armies, these militaristic behemoths, they've only been fighting their own people. They haven't been defending the oppressed that need them in places like Gaza. And now because of these Gulf states coming into the picture, we are seeing a more cancerous kind of form of normalization on the state level where you see even ordinary journalists, Muslims going online say, you know, we need to coexist. We need to do that. We need to do this. But then how can you coexist with an entity that is essentially trying to basically decimate your entire religious character, your identity, your beliefs, your core scriptural commitments, let alone, your brethren's bodies and the right to exist. Chris Hedges Before we talk about, I think you would agree, kind of, to me, inexplicable silence on the part of most Muslim, many Muslim leaders over the genocide, let's talk about what these Arab regimes are actually doing in Jordan, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, the land bridge that was set up, the fleecing of Palestinians by Hala, the shooting down of the active assistance by the Jordanian, well, they say it was Jordanian, it was probably heavily American. When I was in Jordan, I was a little surprised to see so many American contractors and soldiers, not in uniform of course, in the hotel where I was at. But let's talk about what they're actively doing. They're not just passive, but the active support for the Zionist state in the midst of the genocide. Farah El-Sharif Yes, I mean, again, if we want to move away from having a fragmented vision and looking at specific states and how they approach Palestine, Palestine has been kind of a revealer and it's pointing us to the longer arc of history. I remind your listeners that these nation states were basically concocted out of a colonial kind of divide and conquer classic strategy after World War I, things like the McMahon policy or the Sykes-Picot [Agreement]. And so these states are cut from this kind of smelly leftovers of the French and the British empires. And people think that just when you declare independence or you're now you're sovereign, it doesn't actually mean that we are free or sovereign. On the contrary, it means that the level of control and coercion and repression has gone underground. It's more ambiguous. It's harder to locate. So that is why, for example, if you go to a protest in a place like a Jordanian university and you say something, you could get snatched up. Or in Egypt, you express solidarity with the Palestinians. People are afraid to do that because they think that that could be cause for them to basically disappear and go underground. So again, this ecosystem of fear not only surveils and kind of mutes people who are so-called not in, who are kind of not in the genocidal atmosphere, but I like what, there was an Egyptian taxi driver in the video that went kind of viral, he was, he rode with a gentleman from Gaza and when he found out that he was from Gaza, he started crying and he said, no, no, no, I won't take your money. And this is the least I could do not to take your money. Forgive us, forgive us for we are occupied too, he said. [POTENTIALLY PUT VIDEO HERE] https://www.instagram.com/doamuslims/reel/DCY5x7Uo3lS/ And I think that is the sentiment that all Arabs feel, but that they cannot say that we are also occupied. We are also under this thumb of this brutal repressive system, whereas Palestinians have had the courage to break free from that. So in a sense, Gaza, sometimes the Arabs say that it represents the most free place on earth because it broke out of that prison. And so a lot of these prisons that Arabs, Muslims have in these Muslim majority Arab countries are mental colonization. If you see a policeman on the street, perhaps they shrink and cower more. Even I, I grew up in Jordan, it's a police state. I remember my dad, God rest his soul, he was a veteran journalist like you, Chris, and he was the editor-in-chief of Jordan's oldest daily. I remember it very well that when we started talking about something slightly taboo or slightly dangerous, they would say, the walls can hear everything, or he would crack a joke and he'd say, you're the neighbor's daughter, you're not my daughter just to kind of joke like that. But these were the kinds of jokes that we... Not funny. You know, this is the kind of climate that we grew up in. And now to see it become in this form, where it's a form of insanity, where you have your own people, your next of blood and kin being kind of exterminated right next door. And not only that, you see the trade routes that goes and funds the occupation boxes and boxes of tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce and produce that go to feed and sustain the settlers and the soldiers while Gaza starves. Chris Hedges Let me just make clear that this comes in this pipeline—UAE, Saudi Arabia through Jordan over the King Hussein Bridge. Farah El-Sharif Correct, correct, Chris. And so we should probably shed light on the plight of3, the journalist who merely conducted an investigative report about this trade route, this land lifeline for the occupation. And she is currently doing five years in jail and is paying very hefty penalties for so-called cybercrime. And it's kind of a warning for others that don't you dare expose complicity or collusion or collaboration because you'll end up in a cell or a ditch like her. So it's just, the nice thing about it, Chris, it's like there's no ambiguity anymore, that people can no longer say that we should give them the benefit of the doubt. They're doing their best. It's a tough neighborhood. I hate this cliche. I hear it all the time. And they're always kind of invoking that, it's a tough neighborhood. Politics are dirty. But it's being blown off with crystal clear clarity that this is one occupation. It's one system. The enemy is one. And so it's up to people and their moral clarity and moral courage to everyday shed a little bit of that fear because once they partake in it and once they accept it, they say, oh, generations of people who live in fear and I accept this. I think my generation and hopefully my children's generation will no longer accept that kind of degradation, denigration and fear-based rule. Chris Hedges Yeah, I'm glad you raised the plight of Hiba, who, as you know, I tried to visit. I filled out all the paperwork and then sat outside the prison, the women's prison in Amman all day and wasn't finally allowed in. How fragile are these regimes? Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, I sense they're very fragile. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, I mean, we forget that this nation state structure that was cooked up in the kitchen of people like [British army officer and archaeologist] T.E. Lawrence and Sykes-Picot, basically are constructs. They're recent constructs. And we think of them as something that is the status quo since time immemorial, but they're really not. They stand on very fickle ground as we saw that things can change overnight. And so it reminds me of the story of Pharaoh who in the Quranic scripture that we share with our Jewish and Christian brethren is that right before, when he got to the zenith of his power, right before he got to Moses, the sea split and swallowed him whole. He became kind of, until this day, a sign and a kind of a lesson and a symbol for what happens to people who think that they are invincible, for people think that they will live forever. And so God knows what the future brings, but this level of foundational rot, I don't think can hold much longer. Chris Hedges Let's talk about, you and I were in an event, it was a year ago in Toronto, we were talking about Palestine. And what struck me after we spoke is the number of young people who came up and asked me and probably you why the Muslim leaders, Muslim leadership didn't say what, what was not unequivocal in the condemnation of the genocide. And unequivocal in the condemnation of the apartheid state of Israel. And I want to ask you that question. How do you characterize the response of the Muslim leadership in the United States? Farah El-Sharif Yeah, I remember that Chris, and it was heartbreaking and it still is. And I thought about this a lot. And I think it's largely due to the fact that this war on terror rhetoric that kind of weeds out the bad from the so-called good Muslims, the good Muslims who are compliant, who don't support so-called radical, brutal acts of terror. So it's almost as if this colonial rhetoric has been internalized in the consciousness of Muslim scholars and leaders. And so that they say that when perhaps that if we stand with the oppressed, if we speak up for Gaza, the powers that be might think that I support Hamas or that I support this and that. So again, it's like this, not just decimated consciousness, like I said, it's more than that. It's kind of capitulating completely because you're saying that the vernacular of justice has to be removed from Islam for me to have a seat at the table, for me to gain proximity to power, maybe get the ear of Biden or get the ear of Trump. And I see this happening a lot that some Muslims are scurrying the favor of the right-wing kind of platform and thinking that, at least we meet on certain points regarding families and family values and whatnot. So to me, this just signals a huge crisis in our priorities. It signals a terrible misunderstanding of the true aim and kind of point of being a Muslim and that is standing firm in your own principles and ethics and higher morality that is tethered to the throne of God, that is tethered to the oneness, the true oneness of God. So other than oneness, what do we have? Multiplicity. And multiplicity signals, I'm afraid, I'm afraid of this commitment. What if I do this? What if I say that? And so that is in a sense, a kind of a hidden polytheism. And so when someone who has a position of authority and scholarship and people look up to them and then they lapse in that responsibility, the whole community is hurt. And the young people are like, where do I locate my Islam? Who am I? What does it mean? And so that is why I think, you know, we are in this place where it's too comfortable with our salaries, upgrading to our SUV and our nice respectable suburban life while our brethren overseas get killed, it's a complete lapse of leadership and collective morality. Chris Hedges Explain to me this conundrum of Muslims for Trump. Farah El-Sharif I think I get it. Chris Hedges It's kind of like it's kind of like Jews for Hitler. I mean, maybe not that extreme, but I mean. Farah El-Sharif Yeah. No, but I mean, that's where, you know, that gives you a window and how this destroyed kind of consciousness, this severe inferiority complex where you are willing to basically, you know, shut up and accept racist rhetoric about you and your people. And it's this amnesiac kind of just, you know, the Muslim ban, it's still ongoing. It's not like it ended under Biden. And so it saddens me that Muslims for Trump is even a thing because what you're buying into, you're buying into the very campaign that's going to probably deal the final blow. And already you can see how very vitriolic and toxic X [formerly known as Twitter] and platforms like that are and full-blown Islamophobia, xenophobia. And there's this like maybe a strong man appeal to people who think that, well, this is a leader and maybe these are remnants from autocratic nostalgia that I see bumper stickers in Amman for Saddam Hussein. I guess this idea that, okay, if this leader is strong and tells it like it is, and he doesn't mince his words, then he must have something charismatic or strong. Chris Hedges Well, but at least Saddam Hussein was an enemy to the Zionist state. I mean, I was in Ramallah this summer with Atef Abu Saif, and he said, if you go in these houses, you won't see a picture of [Former President of the Palestinian National Authority] Yasser Arafat, you'll see a picture of Saddam. But Trump has never done anything positive for Muslims. Farah El-Sharif No, it's baffling and it signals a dangerous level of kind of maybe collective insanity, but there are pockets of hope. I think that, I guess by and large, this election cycle was manic for everybody. And I think we've reached a point where this lesser of two evils conundrum has reached a point where it can no longer be replicated in future election cycles. People are sick of lesser of two evils. They just want no more evil, no more. They just want the good, the true, something other than an orange fascist in charge or a Black woman whose funded genocide. So this conundrum, really this strangulation, this choke hold that we're in, for me is a good thing because it signals that, okay, at least this Leviathan is probably taking its last breaths and that more sane, conscientious people with a moral conscience, with a real pulse, with a real concern for humanity, hopefully, will be the ones to come next and inherit this ailing world. Chris Hedges So where do you see us going in the months and years ahead and then to close, what do you tell young people, in particular young Muslims? I don't, for the foreseeable future, for me, it looks pretty dark. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, it's a hard question, but also it keeps me up at night. I think about this a lot. I've always been this intense girl that my family makes fun of me, that even as a younger kid, I was always brooding and thinking about the Muslim world, our affairs, our conditions. So I'd like to refer to a lecture that I was at when I was a student at Georgetown in 2008, my favorite Catholic theologian, gave the nostra aetate annual lecture at the time. He said something that really blew my mind. He said that in his comparing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he said that Judaism rests on kind of tribal, hierarchical commitments. And so its natural culmination, its natural telos is this—the ethno-religious state of Israel. And that is its final conclusion. And then he went on to say that Christianity is beheld by the papacy and the institutionalization of the church. And that's its logical conclusion. When he talked about Islam, he said, Islam is in its essence universalist. And it is, it's tethered by this idea of oneness of man and Muhammad as a mercy to all of humankind, not just Muslims, but their final arc or their final culmination has not been decided yet. So I call on my fellow Muslims to take this opportunity of rampant moral rot, of decay and destruction in the systemic world order that we live in that has exposed itself as hypocritical, essentially anti-Muslim, brutal and completely inhumane to kind of lean in to their agency as Muslims that can perhaps bring about a brighter future, that can perhaps fulfill this untold role, a positive role collectively that Islam can offer the world. Because unless and until we remain shackled in our mental and spiritual colonized mentality, whether it is about how we know ourselves, how we know religion, how we conduct ourselves politically, we will never break free. And so we have the potential to do that. We have the potential to be like Malcolm. For me, he's the greatest American Muslim exemplar and courageous leader. We call him the great American Shaheed, the martyr of America, who he himself visited Gaza in 1964 and he said the spirit of Allah was strong in Gaza. So look to these people instead of trying to wait for your average Imam or your charismatic Sheikh to grow a backbone, you have plenty of exemplars within our tradition living and dead, including the people of Gaza themselves. There is a Quranic kind of pointer there that the oppressed shall become the teachers. They shall become the role models of faith, similarly to how in Christianity the meek shall inherit the earth. So the kind of fortitude that the people of Gaza have, let that not go in vain. The other day I saw a video, Chris, that I can't get out of my mind of a father holding the shroud of his child in the ambulance. And he was speaking so clairvoyantly, so prophetically that it gave me goosebumps all over. He's saying, Ya Netanyahu, Ya Arab, O Netanyahu, O you Arabs, O you colluders, everybody who failed us, Allah is only raising you so that he can tear you down. So don't think that this, what you see, all of this supremacy, this militarization, this ironclad power, this supremacy is going to be the name of the game forever. It's only this shocking in its dehumanization, this shocking in its genocidal bloodlust for it to, hopefully, wither away and usher in a different world, a better world. Chris Hedges Great, thank you Farah. I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges], and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com. Photos Swarm of Insects in Front of Door (photo in thumbnail) (Original Caption) Locusts cover the doorstep of an Iranian home here, as the worst locust plague in 81 years brings threat of hunger and death to Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. (Photo by © Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive) TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT TOPSHOT - An aerial view shows the destruction caused by Israeli strikes in Wadi Gaza, in the central Gaza Strip, on November 28, 2023, amid a truce in battles between Israel and Hamas. Israel and Hamas embarked on November 28 on a two-day extension to a truce that has allowed Israeli hostages to be freed from Gaza in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. (Photo by Mahmud Hams / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images) King Hussein And Benjamin Netanyahu (L-R) Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Jordan's King Hussein, Pres. Bill Clinton & Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu during Wye peace agreement signing ceremony handshakes at White House (bkgrd. L-R: Sandy Berger & VP Al Gore). 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Lawrence. British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. Wikimeida Commons US-VOTE-POLITICS-TRUMP Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets local leaders of the Muslim community who endorsedd him onstage during a campaign rally at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, October 26, 2024. (Photo by Drew ANGERER / AFP) (Photo by DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images) Saddam Hussein Iraq leader Saddam Hussein during one-day visit to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. (Photo by Barry Iverson/Getty Images) Clinton Arafat Barak Peace Talks 373012 03: U.S. President Bill Clinton laughs with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (L) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (R) July 11, 2000 at Camp David during peace talks. (Photo by Cynthia Johnson/Liaison) Americans Go To The Polls In The 2024 Elections FILE PHOTO (EDITORS NOTE: COMPOSITE OF IMAGES - Image numbers 2182486398, 2168330769) In this composite image, Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (L) and Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump. ***LEFT IMAGE*** CHUTE, WISCONSIN - NOVEMBER 01: Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to supporters during a campaign event at Little Chute High School on November 1, 2024 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. The event is one of three Harris has scheduled today in the swing state where she is in a tight race with her opponent Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images). ***RIGHT IMAGE*** POTTERVILLE, MICHIGAN - AUGUST 29: Former U.S. President and current Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks about the economy, inflation, and manufacturing during a campaign event at Alro Steel on August 29, 2024 in Potterville, Michigan. Michigan is considered a key battleground state in the upcoming November Presidential election. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) Gegenveranstaltung zum Deutschen Katholikentag, Hans Küng (GERMANY OUT) Foto: Professor Hans Küng (52) bei Rede. Berlin (Berlin West), 07. 06. 1980. Der Kirchentag von Unten, die Gegenveranstaltung zum 86. Deutschen Katholikentag, findet in der Freien Universität (FUB) statt. Star der Diskussion im Auditorium Maximum war der Theologe Küng, dem die Bischofskonferenz im Dezember 1979 die kirchliche Lehrerlaubnis (Missio canonica) entzog. (Photo by Mehner/ullstein bild via Getty Images) Malcolm X Speaking at Rally Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X draws various reactions from the audience as he restates his theme of complete separation of whites and African Americans. The rally outdrew a Mississippi-Alabama Southern Relief Committee civil rights event six blocks away 10 to 1. https://youtu.be/Zb4BksXtv1Y
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  • New ICJ president plagiarized in the name of Christian Zionism
    Max BlumenthalJanuary 24, 2025

    Julia Sebutinde is a dedicated Christian Zionist who stood alone in rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Now the court’s president, the Ugandan judge appears to have plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion justifying Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories.

    With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability.

    The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda. Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak.

    The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah. In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims.

    Sebutinde’s opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of UN resolutions or international law.

    “There is substantial evidence that Jewish people lived in the region of ancient Israel between 1000-586 BCE. This period corresponds to the era of the United Monarchy under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and the subsequent divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The evidence includes archaeological findings in the City of David…” Sebutinde insisted. “The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) offers detailed accounts of the history, culture, and governance of the Israelites during this period. While these texts are religious in nature, many scholars consider them valuable historical documents.”

    Her opinion was so extreme, and so shot through with theological commentary, it prompted Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, to declare her “ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.”

    After probing deeper into Sebutinde’s bizarre dissent, a Princeton University graduate student named Zachary Foster discovered that large sections of it had been plagiarized from sources including neoconservative operative Douglas Feith and the Jewish Virtual Library.

    So what accounted for Sebutinde’s defiance in the face of the entire ICJ panel and her own country’s diplomatic corps? Had she been handled by malign external forces? Or was she driven by deeply held personal passions?

    Israel’s history of bribing, threatening and blackmailing officials around the world – and destroying those who forcefully oppose it – is well documented. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, fell under heavy Mossad surveillance after he introduced warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant. In October, 2024 when an anonymous accuser brought forward allegations of sexual harassment against Khan, there could be little doubt an Israeli hand had finessed the scandal.

    Sebutinde’s fanatical adherence to Israel’s agenda does not appear to be the product of manipulation or enticement, however. The views expressed in her dissent on the South African case were much more likely a reflection of the Christian Zionist belief system she developed as a member of Watoto, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. It was there that Sebutinde says she developed her worldview under the tutelage of a Canadian pastor and End Times aficionado named Gary Skinner.

    “The godly values of integrity, honesty, justice, mercy, empathy, and hard work that the Skinners and Watoto Church instilled and nurtured in me, over the years, account for who I am today and have immensely contributed to my incredible career as a judge in Uganda and a judge at the International Court for Justice,” Sebutinde proclaimed during a June 2024 ceremony for the launch of a new branch of the church in downtown Kampala.

    “What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Times scenario”

    Since he founded Watoto in 1984, Skinner has instilled a virulently anti-Arab strain of Christian Zionism in his congregation of 36,000 in Kampala. In a 2021 sermon entitled, “Israel: The Greatest Sign,” Skinner spun together an assortment of cherry-picked biblical verses with potted history to justify Israel’s military control over historic Palestine. He punctuated his jeremiad with an admonition to his parishioners and gentiles everywhere: “If you bless the Jews, you will be blessed. If you curse the Jews, you will be cursed.”

    Like all Christian Zionists, Skinner saw Israel’s foundation as the fulfillment of prophecy: “May the 14th, 1948,” the tinny-voiced preacher proclaimed, “and on that day, little four or five foot three David Ben Gurion, with his lion like hair, stood up and declared: ‘The Jewish nation reborn,’ to be called Israel. For 2400 years, no Jewish flag had flown over Israel until that day… but God fulfilled his prophecy by bringing them back the greatest sign of the any moment return of Jesus.”

    Minutes later, Skinner emphasized that Israel’s existence as a self-proclaimed Jewish state “is the most dramatic sign that Jesus is about to return. What’s going to happen ahead of us – Israel is that barometer,” the preacher continued. “What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Time scenario. The national rebirth of Israel is the greatest End Time sign we have.”

    In his sermon, Skinner also boasted of Watoto’s donations to an array of evangelical charities inside Israel through the church’s FIRM Israel initiative, including some that promote religious conversion. “We, as a church, give a lot of money every year to support God’s work in Israel,” he stated, beaming with pride, “because we know that God has a plan for the nation, and it’s the greatest sign of His return.”

    Skinner’s eschatological view of history clearly informed Sebutinde’s dissent against the ICJ ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Though Uganda’s Foreign Ministry condemned her radical opinion, powerful evangelical figures inside the country with close ties to the presidency hailed her as a heroine.

    “Not all heroes wear capes,” declared Patience Rwabwogo, an influential Pentecostal preacher in Kampala. “Julia Sebutinde has made a historic stand at the ICJ. May God always remember her for mercy and may Uganda as a nation always be found on the Lord’s side.”

    Rwabwogo happens to be the daughter of Yoweri Museveni, the flamboyantly evangelical president of Uganda, whose wife Janet – a close ally of Watoto Church – is known for her biblical interpretations of history.

    Frank Kisakye, a Ugandan constitutional scholar, argued that the endorsement of Sebutinde’s ICJ dissent by Museveni’s daughter demonstrates the judge’s opinion was “almost certainly informed by the terms of Genesis 12:1-3,” the verse interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean that anyone who blesses the Jews will be blessed, and was therefore “wholeheartedly sanctioned by the Ugandan Pentecostal movement.”

    Now at the helm of the ICJ, Sebutinde gains the power to break a deadlocked vote, and may be able to undermine the South African case in a more substantive way than before. With Israel likely to shatter the Gaza ceasefire, time is running out for war crimes investigators. But the Ugandan judge appears to be operating on a schedule free from earthly concerns, dictated instead by the End Times.

    https://thegrayzone.com/2025/01/24/icj-president-christian-zionist-end-times/
    New ICJ president plagiarized in the name of Christian Zionism Max BlumenthalJanuary 24, 2025 Julia Sebutinde is a dedicated Christian Zionist who stood alone in rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Now the court’s president, the Ugandan judge appears to have plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion justifying Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories. With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability. The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda. Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak. The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah. In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims. Sebutinde’s opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of UN resolutions or international law. “There is substantial evidence that Jewish people lived in the region of ancient Israel between 1000-586 BCE. This period corresponds to the era of the United Monarchy under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and the subsequent divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The evidence includes archaeological findings in the City of David…” Sebutinde insisted. “The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) offers detailed accounts of the history, culture, and governance of the Israelites during this period. While these texts are religious in nature, many scholars consider them valuable historical documents.” Her opinion was so extreme, and so shot through with theological commentary, it prompted Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, to declare her “ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.” After probing deeper into Sebutinde’s bizarre dissent, a Princeton University graduate student named Zachary Foster discovered that large sections of it had been plagiarized from sources including neoconservative operative Douglas Feith and the Jewish Virtual Library. So what accounted for Sebutinde’s defiance in the face of the entire ICJ panel and her own country’s diplomatic corps? Had she been handled by malign external forces? Or was she driven by deeply held personal passions? Israel’s history of bribing, threatening and blackmailing officials around the world – and destroying those who forcefully oppose it – is well documented. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, fell under heavy Mossad surveillance after he introduced warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant. In October, 2024 when an anonymous accuser brought forward allegations of sexual harassment against Khan, there could be little doubt an Israeli hand had finessed the scandal. Sebutinde’s fanatical adherence to Israel’s agenda does not appear to be the product of manipulation or enticement, however. The views expressed in her dissent on the South African case were much more likely a reflection of the Christian Zionist belief system she developed as a member of Watoto, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. It was there that Sebutinde says she developed her worldview under the tutelage of a Canadian pastor and End Times aficionado named Gary Skinner. “The godly values of integrity, honesty, justice, mercy, empathy, and hard work that the Skinners and Watoto Church instilled and nurtured in me, over the years, account for who I am today and have immensely contributed to my incredible career as a judge in Uganda and a judge at the International Court for Justice,” Sebutinde proclaimed during a June 2024 ceremony for the launch of a new branch of the church in downtown Kampala. “What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Times scenario” Since he founded Watoto in 1984, Skinner has instilled a virulently anti-Arab strain of Christian Zionism in his congregation of 36,000 in Kampala. In a 2021 sermon entitled, “Israel: The Greatest Sign,” Skinner spun together an assortment of cherry-picked biblical verses with potted history to justify Israel’s military control over historic Palestine. He punctuated his jeremiad with an admonition to his parishioners and gentiles everywhere: “If you bless the Jews, you will be blessed. If you curse the Jews, you will be cursed.” Like all Christian Zionists, Skinner saw Israel’s foundation as the fulfillment of prophecy: “May the 14th, 1948,” the tinny-voiced preacher proclaimed, “and on that day, little four or five foot three David Ben Gurion, with his lion like hair, stood up and declared: ‘The Jewish nation reborn,’ to be called Israel. For 2400 years, no Jewish flag had flown over Israel until that day… but God fulfilled his prophecy by bringing them back the greatest sign of the any moment return of Jesus.” Minutes later, Skinner emphasized that Israel’s existence as a self-proclaimed Jewish state “is the most dramatic sign that Jesus is about to return. What’s going to happen ahead of us – Israel is that barometer,” the preacher continued. “What happens to Israel is a sign of the End Time scenario. The national rebirth of Israel is the greatest End Time sign we have.” In his sermon, Skinner also boasted of Watoto’s donations to an array of evangelical charities inside Israel through the church’s FIRM Israel initiative, including some that promote religious conversion. “We, as a church, give a lot of money every year to support God’s work in Israel,” he stated, beaming with pride, “because we know that God has a plan for the nation, and it’s the greatest sign of His return.” Skinner’s eschatological view of history clearly informed Sebutinde’s dissent against the ICJ ruling on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. Though Uganda’s Foreign Ministry condemned her radical opinion, powerful evangelical figures inside the country with close ties to the presidency hailed her as a heroine. “Not all heroes wear capes,” declared Patience Rwabwogo, an influential Pentecostal preacher in Kampala. “Julia Sebutinde has made a historic stand at the ICJ. May God always remember her for mercy and may Uganda as a nation always be found on the Lord’s side.” Rwabwogo happens to be the daughter of Yoweri Museveni, the flamboyantly evangelical president of Uganda, whose wife Janet – a close ally of Watoto Church – is known for her biblical interpretations of history. Frank Kisakye, a Ugandan constitutional scholar, argued that the endorsement of Sebutinde’s ICJ dissent by Museveni’s daughter demonstrates the judge’s opinion was “almost certainly informed by the terms of Genesis 12:1-3,” the verse interpreted by Christian Zionists to mean that anyone who blesses the Jews will be blessed, and was therefore “wholeheartedly sanctioned by the Ugandan Pentecostal movement.” Now at the helm of the ICJ, Sebutinde gains the power to break a deadlocked vote, and may be able to undermine the South African case in a more substantive way than before. With Israel likely to shatter the Gaza ceasefire, time is running out for war crimes investigators. But the Ugandan judge appears to be operating on a schedule free from earthly concerns, dictated instead by the End Times. https://thegrayzone.com/2025/01/24/icj-president-christian-zionist-end-times/
    THEGRAYZONE.COM
    New ICJ president plagiarized in the name of Christian Zionism - The Grayzone
    Julia Sebutinde is a dedicated Christian Zionist who stood alone in rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Now the court’s president, the Ugandan judge appears to have plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion justifying Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories. With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup […]
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