Published: 15 May, 2021

Watching American ordnance blow up buildings in Gaza today I am reminded; I have been watching reportage from Palestine for most of my life.

From the beginning it was clearly a challenge, recognizing the disconnect between the facts of violent land-grab occupation and the Zionist narrative relating to historical biblical rights that would make surviving native American Indians cringe.

Obfuscatory claims conflated with ‘rights of defense’ that appeared to include claiming reparations for boot damage from standing on children’s heads all the while attacking any concerned onlooker with brazen nonsense often starting with that old doozy ‘antisemitism’.

My journey to an opinion on Palestine began over forty years ago. In that time I have visited the Middle East possibly two dozen times. Not specifically to develop an informed view on the Middle East but because London to the Red sea is cheap and easy, offering assured sun in a rainy British winter with world class diving opportunities for scuba.

My visits to the region included interesting Biblical locations; Thrice I traveled to St Catherine’s Monastery, a Greek Orthodox location at the base of Mt. Sinai in the Sinai desert, still accessed by road passing through a no-mans land where I saw burned out tanks from the 1967 Egypt/Israel War between Bedouin encampments practicing a lifestyle and religious stricture seemingly unchanged in the past thousand years.

I visited the Mountain, Mount Sinai, where the story would have you believe God handed Moses a stone tablet containing the Ten commandments; and where the bush burned to create the legend of the Burning Bush in the famous fairy story. I learned why the firework is called the Catherine’s Wheel from the Greek Orthodox priest in residence, who was happy to meet a fellow Greek. Who invited me in to chat in Greek about this amazing place with its longstanding Greek connection.

Another of my favorite historical locations in the region was magnificent Petra in Jordan, accessed by boat from Taba to Aqaba, where Indiana Jones once went adventuring. Seeing close up how the local residents in Aqaba live.

In 2006 I took my son, then 16, to visit the Hilton Hotel Bar in Taba, located on the Egyptian side of the Israeli border post, after it reopened following the horrific 2005 bombing. There we heard first hand accounts of how and why that bombing happened (Muslim Arabs don’t want no pesky non-believer tourist in their holy land) and I was able to interpret this historic enmity for a 16 year old. John would go on to become a gifted speaker in matters of Religion and the Good Book. Origins and outcomes. Seeing locations from Biblical history does help understanding how and why.

Over the years of visiting the Middle East I have met many local Muslims in Red Sea resorts catering for scuba, in the tourist industry that emerged from peace talks handing back Egyptian territory after is was seized by military force in 1967.

The many lucrative dive resorts established by the occupying Israeli’s in this area of the Red Sea were gradually handed back in a phased retreat back to the border above Taba following the 15 year Israeli occupation ending with the resort of Taba seeing President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak raise the Egyptian flag on March 19, 1989. Declaring the return of the final Israeli held Sinai resort to Egypt.

My diving trips to the well-known Red Sea sites provided me with a historical context to how events in 1967 and 1973 impact on locals to this day. I have visited many locations from Hurghada in the South, up to Taba in the North and many in between.

My favorite Red Sea dive location is Dahab, where on one of my visits I experienced living in the Bedouin community for a week. Being reminded five times a day of living conditions for the Muslim locals. It was extremely dirty. Colonies of flies hovering undisturbed on the halal-meat in the butchery window. It felt like I may have been there at any time in the past six hundred centuries.

Visiting the Sinai provides many learning opportunities. Seeing the locations and meeting the people involved. I was especially fortunate to meet participants from both sides in the 1967 conflict, socially, in the context of diving the glorious reefs of the Red Sea. I learned early on that no visit to this region can bypass the legacy of 1967. The so called Six-day-war, starting with Israels conquest of Sinai. A war that was effectively won in three days by Israels far superior military resources aided by American intelligence.

To have any opinion on what is happening now and what will likely happen in the future, the lessons of history cannot be ignored. Here’s my impression.

Egypt’s leader in 1967, Nasser, responded to defeat in the Six-day-war with the “War of attrition” aimed at removing Israeli occupiers from the Sinai. In those three years of bitter war, 1967 – 1970, protracted conflict in and around the Suez Canal area saw Israel bombing the key cities of Port Said, Egypt’s fifth largest City, Ismailia, situated on the west bank of the Suez Canal, and the key location, Suez, an important economic hub for its Ports and canal activity.

Suez was reduced virtually to rubble by Israels defense Force. Israel enjoyed considerable military success bombing civilian towns, measured by high civilian casualties. The destruction of Suez and environs created a flight of some 700,000 Egyptian internal refugees. Reconstruction of Suez only began in 1973, soon after Egypt reopened the Suez Canal, following the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Israel.

My opinions were shaped first by reading factual accounts by both sides and then by meeting local Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, including participants in the 1967 flashpoint. Hearing varying accounts from both sides of this story; from its Biblical Abrahamic origins; to the 1948 Zionist terror attacks; to the regional war that began in 1967, including the astonishing Israeli attack on the American Flag flying on the USS Liberty; to the phased return of the Red Sea dive locations to Egypt, ending with the flag raised in Taba. 1989, after some thirty years.

Throughout, the US influence on Israels fortunes is crucial. This returning of Sinai land seized in the 1967 war was made possible by it’s sponsor, in this case President Jimmy Carter’s ‘Camp David Accords‘ in 1978. Jimmy Carter comes out of this as one American who did try build a peace.

Today the Israeli border on the Red Sea side is in Taba. The former occupied territories to the South are now all returned to Egypt, where Diving Tourism played a significant role in Egypt’s economic and social recovery after the catastrophic wars with Israel.

Diving tourism also provided a lucrative incentive for Egypt’s government to tone down their barbaric killing of Kfirs in their holy land. This they did by machine gunning where necessary. Rule of law in this Holy land where Religion as law is frequently barbaric.

I stopped commenting on the subject of Zionism and “Israel’s right to defend herself” many years ago. After I became stupifyingly bored with Hasbara and the Hasbara currency of gaslighting. Long before American Idiot Trump adapted his own version for America’s Christian vote.

The narrative of ‘Israels Biblical rights’ and our right to comment freely on their rights, or the rights of the refugee children is now so muddied, any comment that does not start with “I stand with Israel‘ is an invitation for trouble, by hasbara, gaslighting, or both, if there is any difference.

There has never been any firmer test for freedom of speech than anyone looking to talk about Israels treatment of Palestinians. Just don’t do it. Unless you are Roger Waters or Banksy. Even then.

When you see images of desperate children being blown to pieces, should you feel moved to comment, never forget to begin with ‘I Stand with Israel‘. If you do not, then “You are a pro-terrorist anti-semite.” You are however free to post words that follow “I stand with Israel” just as every US President since Carter has done. Do that and you will be rewarded.

Objective fact based opinion in reaction to the images we have seen this week cannot progress efficiently without referencing the historic landmarks that brought us to this place. Such is the pernicious impact of Hasbara on media reportage, news-events since 1948 have long disappeared from popular coverage in a blur of antisemitism and Jewish-antisemitism that is confusing only in so far as it is intended to be.

Freedom to speak about Israel is even more limited for Jews commenting on Zionist excesses, no matter how sensible they might be. Especially if they are imminently sensible. (Just read comments that follow many of Noam Chomsky’s articles.) How the Hasbara attacks favor damning their own. Especially if they are holocaust survivors pointing out the similarities.

The risks of remembering and referencing the land grabbing shrink of Palestine and the 1948 Nakba, including the ethnic cleanse and theft of Lydda, are real. If you do feel moved to comment, stay safe; preface your views with either “I stand with Israel” or “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But remember, all media is primed to subvert any student keen to objectively establish the facts of Palestine’s relationship with Zionism.

Considering the role of Islam in this Abrahamic confusion is another minefield marked ‘Don’t go there’. And if you do, don’t reference the interest in the imminent Armageddon.

The glorious second coming of Jesus (Of Nazareth, not Tijuana) can’t happen soon enough for those American Christians who believe Jesus will return in their time.

According to John the Elder (the Greek Christ reporter kicked out of Ephesus for his Jesus work) in his masterwork the Book of the Apocalypse, narrated for him by the Holy Trinity through a talking rock, while high on fermented berries on the Greek Island of Patmos some time before 400 AD, the Apocalypse is real.

I refer of course to the same texts John wrote in the Patmos cave that were adapted by Gay King James a thousand years later in his closing chapter of the English translation of Bible myths called “The Book of Revelations.”

In this Biblical story John’s words in Greek, translated into English, detail how mankind will all end with a big bang in the Holy land. Armageddon he called it. That is when Jesus will come back to Earth for a third time, confusingly named The Second Coming. Then the rapture will take all the good Christians for their heavenly reward for being rapture ready pre-approved-for-heaven believers.

Coincidentally, in no-way connected with gaslighting political deceit, a majority of these same pro-apocalypse Christians recognize and revere Trump as their savior.

Not every Trumpist is an Armageddon-Now-Christian, but every Armageddon-Now Christian is a Trumper. A tragically ironic misappropriation of the principle ‘Christian values’ whatever we understand Christian values to mean.

During his reign on America’s throne Trump opened the Embassy in Jerusalem, which as we know from scripture, is a sure sign that the ‘end times are nigh’. Just as John the Elder-Stoner wrote in the Greek Book of the Apocalypse 1,800 years ago. As repeated by mega-church American millionaires ever since.

John’s Book of The Apocalypse reveals the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as conquest, war, famine and death. Soon after which, as every American Christian knows, cometh The Rapture. A members only club for believers. One no good American Christian wants to miss.

The current ‘May 2021 Troubles’ began in Jerusalem with heavy handed Israeli policing of Jerusalem’s Muslims celebrating Eid, so you don’t need a fully paid membership to the QKK to know that this is THE SIGN the wanna-see-Jesus Christian Armageddonistas have been waiting for.

A great reason to Stand-by-Israel with end-times weaponry. Our Christians really want that Armageddon bomb to explode for Jesus second coming. And they want it Now.

The Samson option was first disclosed in 1991, but my guess, having followed the life and trails of Mordechai Vanunu, (about whom I wrote a blog in the 90’s titled ‘My Favorite Israeli’ that his family thanked me for) is that Israel has had a nuclear capability for self-defense or otherwise since long before the 1979 nuclear test confirmed it.

The Vela Incident, as it is known because of the Vela Satellite images, was big news in South Africa at the time. A great collaboration between Apartheid states suffering arms embargoes for their Apartheid policies. I was in the South African military in 1979/1980, mingling with senior National Party leaders as one does in my version of National Service. (I met and spoke with P.W. Botha and a number of other Botha’s too). Birds of an Apartheid feather flock together. I got to meet members of the Israeli military. Socially. Hearing their innermost beliefs.

While South Africa decommissioned their nuclear program before handing over power to the ANC. Israel did not.

In a wonderfully weird coincidence, in 1982, South Africa’s Armscor built their first operational nuclear weapon, yielding 6 kilotons of TNT. It was code-named HOBO.
Coincidence?
In 1975 I formed my first Garage Band in Johannesburg. A guitar bass and drums quartet of Bryanston 15 year olds called HOBO. That happened just 33 km’s from Pelindaba, the South African Nuclear development lab. Q Anon enthusiasts cannot fail to see what’s obvious.

Israel, as we know from Vanunu’s whistle-blowing visit to the Sunday Times in 1986, significantly advanced their nuclear program. Only a cheerful fool would doubt their nuclear strike capability is as real as Jesus’ imminent second-coming is for millions of American Christian hopefuls enthusiastically financing this rapturous outcome.

Evidently there is some considerable impatience in being perfectly rapture ready; and then nothing happens, year after year. Then you get to your seventies, realize time is running out and worry that Jesus won’t appear in your lifetime. A bitter pill to swallow for many a pious Christian. Missing His return. Easy to see how this Christian creationist profile would resonate with Trumps cavalier approach to gaslighting nonsense. You will only get to see Jesus after Armageddon. But time is running out. Let’s send more ordnance to Israel.

If you have not visited the region and not had occasion to discuss the history of Israel with informed academics, historians, or participants in the local dynamic, and still wish to express an opinion on either “Israel has the right to defend herself” or “I stand with Israel” my recommendation is to climb that learning curve. Get on that book reading horse. Get the facts straight and form your own view. Based on informed critical thought rather than accepting processed approved mainstream-media reportage at face value.

Unless you have done your own research, I will wager with some certainty, you are simply expressing an opinion that was manufactured. At considerable expense by the Zionist movement, spending fortunes on Hasbara by generations of dupees willing to cloud rational judgment by provoking monkey chant loops of misinformation that would have you believe an eye for an eye is essential social planning.

That serially bombing children to prove bombing is wrong is ever right.

Israel’s is a complex history that includes events involving US financed military force against children. War crimes that have been significantly and deliberately excised if not made invisible by mainstream media. We have been guilty of enabling and supporting this particular war crime – premeditated ritual killing of children – for as long as Hasbara media has assured us that it is in fact Israels right to defend itself. That killing children is not wrong at all. In fact, killing children is not only right, it is a sacred duty that every Zionist is obliged to discharge. Let he who casts the first criticism of Israels right to kill children receive the first stone

Stories of child killing that, on the face of human interest alone, would have been made Hollywood movies many times over, but for resistance at studio financing level. In a Hollywood that has long produced only Zionist friendly content.

A balanced informed view that allows for a helpful input in achieving peace in this debate will require some involved selective reading, even if you begin only with with the post WW2 arrival of Zionist’s in Palestine. Setting in motion events that have led to this current news coverage of smart bombs imploding buildings on their own footprint.

They call their ordnance ‘Smart bombs’. Smart bombs they may be, undoubtedly. Perhaps the smartest bombs we have yet seen featured on TV, yet not smart enough to avoid exploding children in their refugee camps in a pattern of behaviors by not-so-smart bombers with a long history and a secured future. As not so smart bombers of children who will continue killing children for as long as The USA keeps sending them child killing ordnance.

That much is always clear. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Going forward, after this current round of explosions, nothing is going to change for those refugee camp children getting blown up except the date and their age.

Repeating the same actions expecting a different outcome is insanity. Bombing Palestinian children is only ever wrong. It will never lead to peace. It will only ever produce the same outcome it did on on every previous occasion. When the U.S.A sent bombs to kill children with their ironclad support assuring Israels bomber command that more bombs would follow when this batch have killed enough children.

There is no possible solution lurking mysteriously in the Hasbara warrantied narrative of “I stand with Israel” that gives any hope for the arrival of a workable plan for peaceful co existence. A just peace can only follow transparent debate including all factors.

I am neither Jewish nor Muslim. (Greek/South African/English/American innit.) My interest in this appalling terrorism against the most vulnerable children is limited to compassion. As a fortunate student of humanity; and as a parent. Seeing premeditated mass child murder appear in my awarness year in year out for most of my adult life is horrifying.

It is awful watching these dirt poor people, enslaved by a cruel barbaric stone-age religion, being crushed into bloodied-dirt by cynical manipulators of an equally barbaric religion and even worse Nazi ideology that depends on the constant mass murder of children to maintain its right to exist as an Apartheid state. As if they were not sufficiently impoverished before these expensive weapons were engaged to make them poorer still. Creating an eye-for-an eye revenge motive in the children of the dead that is no more than the sum of their blind miseducation.

Partying on the dirt of the dead you killed will almost always lead to sorrow.

If there is to be any change for future generations of Palestinian children it will come from information. Education if you like, but not the current narrative associated with any educational model predicated on the fairy stories. Or the prejudiced indoctrination that teaches hate and division because god said this or that.

Scientific, forensic fact-based based education, advancing our awareness both in the local area, where Madrassas perpetuate and reinforce a failed social model by divine leadership, and especially in the US, where as tax payers we continue as the leading sponsors of Israeli war-crime terrorism without questioning why the UN calls it illegal but we repeat “Israel has the right to defend itself by blowing up infants” like puppets on a Zionist string.

An education that enables understanding why certain behaviors are unacceptable and how to provide an alternative to the rich using their wealth to crush the poor to become richer still. And equally, why the Islamic social model is as unlikely to provide a peaceful solution as the investment in more Ordnance. An Islamic education on how best to memorize the Quran is about as helpful in educational terms as a Christian Bible school. Any Education predicated on Religious scripture is miseducation.

A justice centric education in which we learn only through justice and a working rule of law can there be any harmony.

If there is one single root cause of this lunacy that see’s American Christians baying, praying and paying for more Israeli bombs to drop on infants heads, it is the blind-faith delusion of the all-mighty-invisible being used as a sop by the profit motivated old men behind the Hasbara behind the murder of poor children born in the wrong place.

Since the flow of American dollars and armaments began to the new State of Israel in 1948 there have been big winners and even bigger losers in this huge American investment in Zionism.

In 2020 alone the US sent $3.8 Billion in aid to Israel. Of the $3.8bn given to Israel in 2020, $500m was for missile defense, including investments in Israel’s Iron Dome and other systems which can intercept incoming rockets. American Aid has paid for Israels order of 50 F-35’s, at $100m per plane.

Seems like a good business. Tax dollars awarded to Israel and then sent back to the US economy via Defense contracts. While the water in Flint still makes poor kids sick. While homeless veterans still stumble on the Streets talking to invisible voices.

I’ll guess history will record the biggest losers as the dirt-poor children, followed closely by conscripts in the Israeli Army. There’s no real coming back after you have fired a bullet into the back of a five-year old’s head.

The biggest winners?

The rich elite on all sides. How rich is Netanyahu? How many American and Israeli millionaires were made in the sale of those billions of dollars in ‘Defense.’ Iron Dome’ missiles. F-35’s don’t come cheap. Who makes the most from property developing Trump Heights in the occupied territory?

Consider the Muslim leaders in that area of the World. MBS at the one end and also the rest. The small super-rich elite chosen by Allah himself. Who are so rich they can buy Premier football clubs and super yachts, but cannot provide meaningful educational opportunities for these refugee children to become astute effective leaders in the future, instead of being offered Islamic education on how best to avenge their dead parents by martyrdom. How best to enunciate and repeat Aluha Ahkbar. Education that only requires one book. A fraud at the heart of their enormous wealth. Keeping the majority stupid enough to support beheadings for Atheism and other such affronts to the billionaire Muslim overlords.

How many Manchester City players does it take to properly educate one hundred thousand Muslim Refugee kids from Gaza?

Just a fun thought for yacht culture and the cost of education;
Add up the multiple Billion dollar costs of the Jewish and Middle East Muslim owned yachts on this linked-list and compare that figure to the total cost of educating 100,000 kids to Masters degree level at a name secular school. I will wager the top three yacht owners annual-Yacht-running costs alone would pay that 100,000 refugee kid education bill every year.

I have many Jewish born friends. Probably quite disproportionately so. Many of my favorite songwriters and authors are Jewish born. (Almost invariably now secular.) Over 70 years ago Nathan Chofshi, who I guess is Jewish, wrote in the Jewish Newsletter:

“We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we have to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed…we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them.”
(New York, 9 February 1959, cited in Erskine Childers, ‘The Other Exodus’ in Spectator, London, 12 May 1961)

That was over 70 years ago but could have been written today with the same honesty. I know many Jews do not support the current regime and their politic of terror bombing small children in refugee camps.

Turning young Jewish men in Israel, many forcibly conscripted into this cause, into unwilling killers of small children when required by the Minister of defense. Training their own youth to be child killers has consequences. One of which is the new generation of PTSD Israeli conscripts who do not want to wear the IDF uniform and kill children for a politicians benefit. But are forced to serve by mandatory conscription.

Just as I was in a similar racist war benefiting a small empowered elite using teenage labor. Two years in the South African Army, when I was 18. Since that early interest in 1979 I have followed the fortunes of many Israeli teenagers who have resisted conscription, as I did, for decades now. These PTSD conscripts are another in the sorry list of casualties impacted by this greed motivated land-grab by gaslighting right-wing thugs.

While Netanyahu had his back scratch deal with Trump, and his family friend Jared Kushner’s criminal dad Charles, to open an embassy in Jerusalem, presented by the inordinately well paid US Secretary of State, Yael Kushner, now both Kushner’s and Trumps are no longer enabled to steamroller American popular opinion in support for Israels racist right in their famous Christian gaslighting way. Jareds $2 Billion MBS golden handshake means the Kusher pair can enjoy their Khashoggi memorabilia in peaceful memories of fun and good times under Trump.

Its Biden’s turn now to take up this challenge. To end the killing and build a road map for peaceful co existence, whatever that means. To shape how American policy impacts on Israels conduct. To determine if the will of the American people is to keep funding Israels policies. Or to “Stand by Israel” regardless of his feelings about child killing and war crimes.

Time will tell if he really is sleepy Joe. Speaking for the rich, or the poor.

Biden’s envoy is very different to Trumps choice of Jared ‘I fixed the Opioid crisis‘ Kushner. A man in whose bed Netanyahu once slept.

Biden’s choice of envoy representing the new US policy is Hady Amr, 54, born in Beirut. (Lebanon, a country currently in free fall as their model of 18 party Religious Government predictably fails, with enormous consequences for children in a tragedy that will most likely surpass Gaza in the coming Months. Whatever happens next, the outcome will probably not surprise anyone.

Most likely? We will not hear anything more from Mr. Amr’s efforts. And the US will send more hundreds of Millions in ‘Aid’ to Defend Israel. And more Palestinian children will be bombed with that ordnance.

Perhaps its time to put down those divisive hostile Gods, pick up the pieces of humanity that remain, and contrive a sensible, equitable distribution of land, opportunity, resources, education and Covid vaccinations. One born outside of the dark shadow cast by religious submission. How many crusades of Christian killing Muslims or Empires of Muslims killing Christians does it take before the medical definition of insanity crosses its basic common sense threshold.

Apartheid and racial persecution in the name of an almighty, omniscient, inflexible, hateful God (Who really loves you but kills you without a second thought should your loving fall short) always ends the same way. How well your choir sings ‘Jerusalem’ has no bearing on the outcome.

I hope above all that we see a speedy end to the current crop of racist-right wing politicians winning votes by bombing already-abused children in refugee camps and forcing brain-washed young men to commit their dirty deeds; feeding American people the same old Hasbara nonsense that has them believing that killing children is their patriotic duty. In such a way that we stop repeating this cycle ever again.

In the longer term, imagine applying the economic resources not spent in this need to kill children to instead provide (for starters) the current generation of Palestinian children with an opportunity for proper (science based) education; to be freed from the crippling poverty that is their assured future in Allah’s ordained cycle of martyrdom that keeps repeating.

While those who profit so royally from this status quo will continue being rewarded. The arms dealers and the religious salesmen along with the politicians who know which AIPAC side their bread is buttered.

Wanna buy a nice house in Syria, cheap? Trump Heights is still offering great deals for Americans looking for investment properties. (Mar-A-Largo is where you’ll find the Israeli sales reps.)

What if the Billions we send to Israel and neighbors was not in the form of Ordnance – but instead – education. Actual education. Not religious miseducation teaching an eye for an eye. Actual factual informative education. What if we sent Books not Bombs.

To end on one positive. Norway.
Since WW2 the Norwegian Refugee Council has been quietly helping the most vulnerable. Right now, they work in thirty Countries torn apart by religious conflict. The NRC are active in Gaza, counseling traumatized children who fear for their lives. They do not do this for God or Allah. They do it simply because it is wrong to kill children. And just as wrong to watch others kill children and do nothing.

…………..

Source material for this blog: Lies And Truth from Canaan (Link.)
A THRESHOLD CROSSED. Definitions of Apartheid and Persecution in International law. Some numbers and dates.
And a reminder that during this current phase of bombing, Biden “Stands with Israel” even resupplying hundreds of millions in smart missiles to replenish Israels stock spend in Gaza. Biden’s missile sale
The Lydda story by Brett Wilkens is a comprehensive resource.

Andrew Brel Amazon Bookstore for Paperback and Kindle
Apple Books on EPUB here

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