Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts

27 June 2025

The Ceasefire Between Israel and Iran Was At Israel’s Request

 The Attempt to Smear Palestine Action as Terrorists Can Be Defeated By People Declaring ‘We Are All Palestine Action’ & Refusing to be Deterred by the Lie that Protest=Terrorism




Sit in at Brighton Station & Demo In Protest Against the US Strike Against Iran's Nuclear Facilities

Last Monday was a day of two demonstrations on two separate but interlinked issues. At midday there was the energetic and lively demonstration against the proscription of Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ group.

At 5.30 pm when back in Brighton there was firstly a sit-in at Brighton Railway Station and then a march and demonstration against the United States attack on Iran.  I am posting videos and photos from both demonstrations. I spoke twice at the Brighton demonstration and sit-in.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower


Tony Greenstein Speech at Brighton's Clocktower on 23 June after a march against the Attack on Iran

Just as in 2006 when a ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Hezbollah, which Israel got Bush to arrange when Israel was getting the worst of the fight, so too with the ceasefire that Trump arranged on Tuesday.

The ceasefire was clearly at Israel’s behest. Trump also came out with strident criticism of Israel for having broken the ceasefire not understanding that in Israel’s eyes a ceasefire means you cease and we’ll fire.


Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Demonstration Against the Proscription of Palestine Action 23 June 2025

Israel launched the attack on Iran hoping to remove its regime and thus establish complete dominance in the region.  The lie that Iran was developing nuclear weapons has been comprehensively discredited by US Intelligence.

However we should be clear. Israel and the United States attack on Iran never had anything to do with Iran' non-existent nuclear weapons. The aim is to eliminate the Iranian state from disrupting Israeli  and US plans for the Middle East. An extension of the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia at its centre.

The latest manifestation of this is The Abraham Shield which is Israel’s New Blueprint for Regional Control After Gaza. The aim is the integration of the Gulf and Arab economies with that of Israel as the latter excludes the Palestinians, both physically and politically from having any say in their future. It is an Orwellian nightmare of total control by Israel and the Arab regimes of the destiny of the Arab peoples.

The attack on Iran has been the fulfilment of a 20 year wet dream by Netanyahu. He believed that with Trump in power that he could drag the US into the conflict. However despite the fact that the US bombed three nuclear installations, it was clear that the US didn’t want to get embroiled in Netanyahu’s war.

Netanyahu was under the impression that the surprise attack on Iran would be a cakewalk. It was anything but. Instead Iran gave Israelis a chance to experience what Palestinians in Gaza have experienced with demolished buildings and streets and an understanding of what war means in reality. One-third of Tel Aviv was damaged or destroyed.

Not since 1948 in the so-called War of Independence has Tel Aviv been bombed (by the Egyptian airforce).  If Hezbollah had done the same when they had the chance then Israel might have thought twice about devastating Gaza.

The Police were at their aggressive best

What now? Israel will not give up easily having been bruised in the current encounter. Iran will need to replenish their missile stocks and renew their air defences as well as trying to supply their allies in the region, the so-called Axis of Resistance, with new weaponry.

But the challenge is not only military but political and this is where the Iranian regime is fatally flawed.  It is a repressive, undemocratic regime that is at odds with its own citizens. Although Iranians rallied round when Israel was attacking it, they are not going to tolerate a corrupt and dictatorial clerical state that believes in using religion to justify its attacks on women, minorities and the working class.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Iran suffered a great deal of damage from Israeli air attacks on its infrastructure. It is also suffering from economic sanctions and the thinly veiled hostility of neighbouring Arab regimes. Both Jordan and Saudi Arabia were involved in shooting down Iranian missiles. Qatar hosts the largest US base in the region.

Iran is unable to respond to these treacherous regimes precisely because it is not dissimilar in its contempt and repression of its own people. That is the problem for those who believe that the struggle is simply military. The Iranian regime is unable to appeal to the wider Arab populace as Egypt's President Nasser was once able to. Theocratic dictatorships are not popular, either in Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Of one thing we can be sure and that is that Israel is not going to give up and it is going to enlist the Arab regimes in its plans. The Iranian regime, which believes it can ally with those regimes is very much mistaken if it thinks they will help it resist US imperialism and its Israeli attack dog.

The Mullahs are incapable of a genuine anti-imperialist alliance because that would mean allying with the very forces, the Arab street, which in Iran would also remove its own dictatorship.

The Iranian regime is often seen as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. This is a mistake.  It had a golden opportunity with its ceasefire with Israel to demand that Israel also agree to a ceasefire and withdrawal in Gaza. I doubt if the idea even entered the head of Khameini and Iran’s rulers.

In Lebanon the forces of the state and the Phalangists are encircling Hezbollah which has become very unpopular given the way they handled the confrontation with Israel. Allowing suppliers to provide them with pagers containing explosives without checking them raises the question as to how they were so careless.

It is clear that Hezbollah was penetrated from top to bottom by Zionist agents and that Israel was in possession of real time information about the whereabouts of Hezbollah’s leadership.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

But the real problem is that Hezbollah became part of the corrupt Lebanese Establishment. It had no programme for social and political change that could unite the different communities. It had no proposals for ending the confessional nature of the Lebanese political system whereby a Christian becomes President, a Sunni Prime Minister, a Shi’ite Speaker of the Parliament etc. The 128 seats in Parliament are divided equally between Muslim and Christian despite Muslims being in a majority.

Rally at Brighton Clocktower

Changing this was the main goal of the Lebanese National Movement in the civil war of the 1970s. A civil war which saw Syria’s Assad intervene on the side of the Phalangists.

MSNBC on Donald Trump and his Lies About 'Obliterating' Iran's Nuclear Sites

Netanyahu succeeded in his aim in that the US bombed Iran's 3 nuclear sites last weekend. Unfortunately for Trump, despite his boasts that he had obliterated the facilities it is clear that the MOABs did not do the job as the facilities were too well protected.

The Familiar Face of Alexei Sayle

However the present ceasefire is not designed to last and we can be sure that Israel will be plotting with the traitorous Arab regimes, not least those of Jordan and Saudi Arabia how to renew the conflict.

It now seems that a desperate Israeli military has taken to threatening Iranian officials and their families: rebel or we’ll kill you

The guy on the right was the speaker before me

"WE ARE ALL PAL ACTION"

Meanwhile at home Palestine Action is due to be proscribed despite massive opposition to Starmer’s giant step towards a police state. It is clear to most people that the terrorists are the genocidaires not those who oppose them.

Even that beacon of fair-weather liberal opinion, The Guardian, has come out strongly against the proposals of Starmer and Cooper with its legal correspondent Haroon Sidique saying it would have a ‘chilling effect’ on other protest groups, which of course was the whole purpose.

Its leading article asked ‘if red paint is terrorism, what isn’t?’ begging the question as to why the Guardian backed Police State Starmer and the ‘feminist’ Yvette Cooper against Jeremy Corbyn in the first place.

The war of this miserable ‘Labour’ government against our democratic rights, coupled with their attacks on the disabled and working class people shows that it is nothing but a continuation of the Tories. Labour is preparing the way for Nigel Farage’s far-right racist Reform.

Tony Greenstein


13 December 2024

The Assad Regime was Ghastly but the West’s Favourite Jihadists HTS May Be Even More Bloody

The Zionist & American Aim is to Splinter Syria along Ethnic Lines & to Reconfigure the Middle East on Sectarian Lines

The Fall of Assad & What it Means for The Mid East (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

It has been reported that the US closely coordinated the Idlib offensive of HTS with Israel and also Turkey. It is no coincidence that the jihadi attack on Syrian towns began immediately after the ceasefire in Lebanon that Hezbollah was forced to agree to.

As soon as Assad had been overthrown Israel moved its troops onto the other side of Mount Hermon, breaking the 1974 Disengagement Agreement between Israel and Syria. Israel has never missed an opportunity to attack its neighbours and steal some more land. All in the name of ‘security’ and the ‘right of self defence’ of course.

“There should be no military forces or activities in the area of separation. And Israel and Syria must continue to uphold the terms of that 1974 agreement, and preserve stability in the Golan,” said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

 Israel’s pretext is that it is acting in self-defence, a lie that David Lammy, who must qualify as the diplomatic equivalent of Netanyahu’s pet pooch, echoed.

Israel’s unprovoked attack on Syria’s military assets - its navy and airforce - is based on the proposition that no victim of Israeli aggression is entitled to exercise the right to self defence. Only Israel has that right or more accurately Israel reserves to itself the right to attack any country, anytime and anywhere. All with the blessing of the United States and Britain’s colourless and characterless Prime Minister Sir Kid Starver.

The Liquidation of Syrian Army Officers

The US has never paid much attention to international law. Whilst every other state in the world must adhere to the international ‘rules based order,’ the United States is endowed with a belief in Manifest Destiny. God has apparently singled out America for special treatment and given it the right to engage in limitless expansion.

Hence why in 2002 it passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act otherwise known as the Hague Invasion Act which renders American war criminals immune from prosecution at the International Criminal Court. Only African dictators are supposed to adhere to international law. When one thinks of the US and the rule of law, Al Capone and the Mafia come to mind.

In the wake of the defeat of Nazi Germany wars of aggression were considered the supreme war crime. The Nuremberg Declaration on the Crime of Aggression states quite clearly

Recalling that all members of the United Nations shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations as per Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, Mindful of the fact that aggression constitutes the most serious violation of the prohibition of the use of force

Israel’s role in the Middle East was mapped out from the very beginning of Zionism. In his pamphlet The Jewish State, Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl described a future Jewish state as ‘a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.’ Ben-Gurion described Zionism as a ‘bulwark against assimilation and communism.

No-one should be deceived by Netanyahu’s lies about Israel having to act to protect its own security. There is a past history of Israeli leaders wishing to invade and change the political geography of their neighbours. Their only concern was how to do so without seeming to be obvious aggressors.

Livia Rokach first published in 1980 a book ‘Israel’s Sacred Terrorism’ based on the Diaries of Moshe Sharrett, the only ‘dove’ to become Prime Minister of Israel. At this time, of all times, they are worth revisiting.

On February 25, 1954, Syrian troops stationed in Aleppo revolted against Adib Shishakly's regime. Sharrett wrote

After lunch Lavon [then Defence Minister] took me aside and started trying to persuade me: This is the right moment to act this is the time to move forward and occupy the Syrian border positions beyond the Demilitarized Zone. Syria is disintegrating. A State with whom we signed an armistice agreement exists no more. Its government is about to fall and there is no other power in view. Moreover, Iraq has practically moved into Syria. This is an historical opportunity, we shouldn't miss it.

I was reluctant to approve such a blitz-plan and saw ourselves on the verge of an abyss of disastrous adventure. I asked if he suggests to act immediately and I was shocked when I realized that he does. I said that if indeed Iraq will move into Syria with its army it will be a revolutionary turn which will ... justify far reaching conclusions, but for the time being this is only a danger, not a fact. It is not even clear if Shishakly will fall: he may survive. We ought to wait before making any decision. He repeated that time was precious and we must act so as not to miss an opportunity which otherwise might be lost forever. Again I answered that under the circumstances right now I cannot approve any such action. Finally I said that next Saturday we would be meeting with Ben Gurion ... and we could consult him then on the matter. I saw that he was extremely displeased by the delay. However, he had no choice but to agree. (25 February 1954, 374)

The next day the Shishakly regime actually fell. The following day, February 27, Sharett was present at a meeting where Lavon and Dayan reported to Ben Gurion that what happened in Syria was - "a typical Iraqi action." The two proposed again that the Israeli army be put on the march. Ben Gurion, "electrified," agreed. Sharett reiterated his opposition, pointing to the certainty of a Security Council condemnation, the possibility of the use against Israel of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950, hence the probability of a "shameful failure" The three objected that "our entrance [into Syria] is justified in view of the situation in Syria. This is an act of defense of our border area." Sharett closed the discussion by insisting on the need for further discussion in the cabinet meeting, scheduled for the next morning:

Lavon's face wore a depressed expression. He understood this to be the end of the matter. (27 February 1954, 377)

On Sunday, February 28, the press reported that no Iraqi troops had entered Syria. The situation in Damascus was under the complete control of President Hashem Al Atassi. The cabinet approved Sharett's position and rejected Lavon's vehement appeal not to miss a historical opportunity. Lavon said "The U.S. is about to betray us and ally itself with the Arab world." We should "demonstrate our strength and indicate to the U.S. that our life depends on this so that they will not dare do anything against us." The premier's victory, however, was to be short-lived.

Until that time the Syrian-Israeli border presented no particular problems to the Israelis. When tensions developed, it was almost invariably due to Israeli provocations, such as the irrigation work on lands belonging to Arab farmers, which was condemned by the UN; or the use of military patrol boats against Syrian fishermen fishing in the Lake of Tiberias. No Syrian regime could afford to refrain from offering some minimum protection to its border citizens against Israeli attacks or the taking away of their livelihoods, but neither did the rulers of Damascus feel stable enough to wish to be dragged into a major conflict with their southern neighbor. Clashes were therefore minor, and essentially seasonal. No security arguments could be credibly invoked to justify an expansionist program, or any other aggression against Syria.

On December 12, 1954, however, a Syrian civilian plane was hijacked by Israeli war planes shortly after its takeoff, and forced to land at Lydda airport. Passengers and crew were detained and interrogated for two days, until stormy international protests

It must be clear to you that we had no justification whatsoever to seize the plane, and that once forced down we should have immediately released it and not held the passengers under interrogation for 48 hours. I have no reason to doubt the truth of the factual affirmation of the U.S. State Department that our action was without precedent in the history of international practice. ..... What shocks and worries me is the narrow-mindedness and the shortsightedness of our military leaders. They seem to presume that the State of Israel may or even must-behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle. (22 December 1954, 607)

In the 1950s Israel didn’t posses the military power it does today nor did the United States give it carte blanche to do what it wanted. At that time the Arab regimes were fearful of Israel and inclined to put pressure on Britain and the United States to keep it in check. Today that is not the case but what this shows is that from its very beginnings Israeli leaders have been looking to expand their territory and interfere in the governance of their neighbours. It’s not accidental that Israel is the only state in the world not to define its borders.


What happens in Syria today is no business of Israel. If Jihadists have come to power in Syria it is in no small measure thanks to the support they have received from the United States and Israel.

No one should defend the crimes of Bashar Assad against his own people. When they rose up against him in 2011 he mowed down thousands without a thought. His prisons have indeed been grim torture chambers operating entirely outside the law. But the West’s mock shock horror about this is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

Maher Arar

In September 2002, as he was on his way home to Canada, Maher Arar was sent by the US officials to be detained and interrogated under torture in Syria under a program known as “extraordinary rendition.” The horrifying account of what happened to him is documented by the Centre for Constitutional Rights.

Syria is on the way to becoming another failed state along the lines of Libya and Iraq. Turkish-backed rebels have launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Front on the northern border. The US has carried out dozens of airstrikes against ISIS.


Israel has launched massive bombing raids on Damascus and other areas without any justification at all other than its long proclaimed ‘right to self defence’. Of course Starmer and Lammy have gone along with anything that Israel deems necessary. That is how these ‘Labour’ supporters of imperialism behave.


 

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham [HTS] was formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. It is led by Muhammad al-Julani who in the early 2000s joined Al Qaida in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS. In 2011 he was sent into Syria to set up a branch of ISIS, which was named the al-Nusra Front only to break away from them.

HTS is on Britain’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations but the British and US governments have made it plain that as long as they don’t oppose western interests then the label ‘terrorist’ can be removed. In the meantime the press and BBC are falling over themselves to praise their ‘moderation’ despite their still being proscribed!

The British Police have not though arrested any editors of these papers still less the BBC. It is only Palestinian and Kurdish supporters of the PKK who are accused of terrorism if they dare say anything about proscribed Palestinian and Kurdish groups.

In March it was reported that protests erupted in some 20 locations in the Idlib enclave against HTS’s dictatorial rule. They may profess their horror at Assad’s appalling human rights record but their own history suggests that they will not be that different.

Protesters chant slogans against HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani, demanding the release of prisoners held by the extremist group and an end to its security grip on the enclave.

the US government-funded media network said.

Another uprising broke out in May against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s “increasingly dictatorial” rule, including allegedly torturing prisoners to death.

It is clear that the deposing of Assad, coupled with the weakening of Hezbollah, which was forced to accept a humiliating ‘ceasefire’ and the loss of Syrian territory that acted as a conduit for Iranian weaponry, is a defeat for both Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians.

The Axis of Resistance, which was always a cover for the interests of the Iranian regime, is no more. The Iranian regime itself is now directly in the cross-hairs of the Israel regime and its US/British sponsors.

The last time al-Qaeda and other Jihadi groups were present in the south of Syria, Israel established warm relations with them, treating their fighters in a specially constructed field hospital and even arming them. It also provided them with weapons.

Netanyahu has signaled the revival of that policy. He said that Israel would pursue “the same approach we maintained when we set up a field hospital here that treated thousands of Syrians injured during the civil war. Hundreds of Syrian children were born here in Israel.”


What are the lessons that we have to draw? The first is that it is an illusion to believe that the Palestinians can rely on the support of regimes which are fundamentally undemocratic such as Assad or Khameini’s Iran. The problem in the Arab East is precisely the fact that the wealth of the region is commandeered by repressive and corrupt regimes that fear their own people and enter into alliances with both the United States and Israel.

Assad’s Syria would have been happy to reach a deal with the United States and Israel. The fact is that Israel preferred to keep the Golan Heights than make a deal.

Zionism will not disappear until the Arab masses take matters into their own hands. Above all that means both a social and national revolution in the Arab states if imperialism is to be defeated. The Iranian regime is both corrupt and repressive as well as being unpopular with its own people.

It is doubtful that Iran is capable of withstanding an attack from the United States and Israel, not least given the cowardice and complicity of surrounding regimes. The Iranian regime has, for years, tried to reach a deal with the US only to be spurned. Obama’s deal on its nuclear programme was torn up by Trump. It is unlikely to be revivted.

Iranian attempts to become a regional hegemon, which was Israel’s real objection to it, today lie in ruins. Israel has asserted its power with the full backing of Western imperialism.

However as Israel extends its forces and seeks to grab a portion of Southern Syria, which has always been a long-term goal, it will find new enemies on its borders and we can hope to see a new Hezbollah arise in Syria if Israel doesn’t withdraw. That is why in the long-term Zionism is doomed. Its attempts to recreate the biblical land of Israel [Eretz Yisrael] are a pipedream but no less real for that.

Tony Greenstein

Further Reading

Why Israel thinks it won in Syria  EI

Israel occupies new Syrian territory following Assad’s collapse

How Different is the Fourth Israeli Invasion of Lebanon?

The Fall of Assad & What it Means for The Mid East (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report

Understanding the rebellion in Syria - An interview with Joseph Daher

Destroying Syrian Airbase




19 October 2024

The killing of Yahya Sinwar & Hassan Nasrallah will, like that of Bobby Sands, avail Zionism and its imperialist backers nothing

 Israel’s assassinations are based on the idea that Palestinians would happily accept their dispossession but for a few evil men



 

PÁDRAIG PEARSE’s Famous Funeral Oration for O’Donovan Rossa in August 1915)

“A minute of living with dignity and pride is better than a thousand years of a miserable life under the boots of the occupation.” - Yahya Sinwar from his novel, The Thorn and the Carnation

The Zionists and their imperialist backers are celebrating the murder of Yahya Sinwar just as they celebrated the murder of Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh. However the death of Nasrallah hasn’t stopped the Lebanese Resistance inflicting heavy casualties on Israel’s ground invasion and the same will be true in Gaza.

It will not take long before more Palestinian and Lebanese resistance leaders emerge that Israel will seek to assassinate. What cannot be assassinated is the will of the Palestinians and Lebanese to resist Zionism, Israel’s war machine, ethnic cleansing and dispossession.


It was the same with the British occupation of Ireland. The blood of its martyrs simply fertilised the soil of resistance. When the British defeated the Easter Rising they took a bloody revenge executing 15 of their leaders.

More than 3,000 people suspected of supporting the uprising, directly or indirectly, were arrested, and some 1,800 were sent to England and imprisoned there without trial. The rushed executions, mass arrests and martial law (which remained in effect through the autumn of 1916), fuelled public resentment toward the British and were among the factors that helped build support for Irish independence.

In the 1918 general election to Britain’s parliament, Sinn Fein won a majority of the Irish seats.

Zionism and Unionism were bedfellows. Ireland was partitioned in 1921 and the Palestine Mandate began in 1920 although legally the League of Nations only granted it in 1922. As Ronald Storrs, the first Military Governor of Jerusalem said: ‘A Jewish State will be for England a little, loyal Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.’

James Connolly, the Irish socialist and trade unionist whom the British murdered

Zionism has proved somewhat more sturdy than its Unionist sister owing to Israel’s political and strategic importance but just as Ulster was established as a ‘Protestant State for a Protestant People’ so Israel was created as a Jewish Supremacist State, something embodied in the Jewish Nation State Law.

Patrick Pearse - executed

The Zionists like all imperialist monsters will celebrate the death of Yahya Sinwar who died a hero’s death. In his last action, though his arm had been severed, he tossed a stick in defiance at the drone which had entered the window of the building he was in.

10 Reasons People HATE Keir Starmer 

The Zionists, like all stupid imperialists, believe that executions and assassinations will destroy the will of the peoples that they have occupied and oppressed for so long.

Both Biden and Starmer welcomed the death of Sinwar as they had Nasrallah’s murder. Starmer, in a particularly disgusting passage, even for this slavish poodle of US imperialism, told the assembled journalists that no-one should mourn the death of Sinwar.


Of one thing we can be sure - no one bar his cat will be mourning Starmer's passing

I suspect that Palestinians will treat Starmer’s remarks with the same contempt that most British people hold him in. One thing is for sure and that is that Starmer’s passing will not produce any grief comparable to that of Sinwar and Nasrallah.

Alexei Sayle: 'I hate Keir Starmer'

It is noticeable that neither Starmer nor Biden could bring themselves to condemn Israel’s bombing of the tent encampments surrounding Al Aqsa Hospital in Gaza and the burning alive of men, women and children. That is real terrorism. State terrorism but no words of condemnation emerged from either Genocide Joe or ‘Starver’ Starmer’s lips.

The reality is that all the condemnations of Sinwar and Nasrallah as ‘terrorists’ are the dishonest verbiage of corrupt and dishonest imperialist politicians who wouldn’t know what a principle was if it bit them on the backside.

Israel has made clear its intentions to establish settlements in Gaza, in total defiance of international law. The International Court of Justice has recently declared Israel’s occupation of both the West Bank and Gaza illegal.

Roger Casement - executed at Pentonville for High Treason even though, as an Irish patriot he owed the British Crown no loyalty

The welcome of the corrupt neo-liberal leaders of Britain, the United States and Germany for Israel’s murder campaign against the Palestinians and their leaders is a demonstration that when it comes to it, might is all that is important. The right of any occupied nation to resist their oppressors is disregarded.

The Zionist reaction to Sinwar's death demonstrates both their physical and political blindness - Sinwar was sitting on the chair not hiding behind it

Those who regard Nasrallah and Sinwar as ‘terrorists’ are following in the footsteps of the Nazis who likewise regarded the leaders of the Polish, French and Yugoslav Resistance. It is always the same. Those who conquer other peoples’ countries brand any opposition as ‘terrorism’.

Tony Greenstein