Saturday 13 April 2024
Middle East,
Well folks it is a while since I have managed to get up enough enthusiasm to write another The World This Week From Mennies blog. I suppose, like many people, I have been sickened by what is going on in Palestine and indeed, other parts of the world.
So here is my take on the present state of affairs concerning Palestine together with the responsibility for the present difficulties, that is in the lap of the West and in particular the US, together with my opinion on what is abut to happen in connection with the Israeli act if wat with the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Middle East
So, let me start with Palestine the nub of the next flash point.
There is no need for me to go over the horrific genocide that is taking place there, as you are seeing it every day with your own eyes. If, by chance, you are one of the genocide deniers, like the US government, then, there is not much I can do for your present mental health issues.
Suffice it to lay before you a few statistics.
Hamas, the properly elected government of Gaza, and the resistance movement launched an incursion into illegally held Palestinian land on the 7th of October 2023.
Israel had prior warning if this and chose not to stop it. The Egyptian security services warned the Israeli government two weeks before it happened,
There was a bout of short selling on the Israeli stock exchange days before the attack.
There was a change in the arrangements for the music festival which was to take place at a venue much further from where it actually happened.
There is a high probability that Hamas did not know of the venue change and the planned attack was aimed at mainly military targets.
Many of the deaths and injuries were caused by the Israeli military, applying their Hanibal policy, which is, in the event of a hostage situation the Israeli military will open fire regardless of whether, in doing so, it will kill hostages.
Prisoners were taken by Hamas as bargaining chips to address the Israeli hostage situation, which at that time consisted of around 3,000 Palestinians, many of them children. As of this date Israel holds over 12,000 hostages.
Israel initiated what seems a well-planned indiscriminate bombing campaign and destruction ( including infrastructure such as drainage and water) of northern Gaza.
Israel also initiated a campaign of killing journalists and destroying educational establishments and hospitals.
To date over 33,500 people have been killed including women and children, in fact during the six months this has been going on, Israel has killed at a rate of 85 children every single day.
Israel has not defeated Hamas and has taken many casualties.
Israel is becoming desperate and is trying to widen the war to the whole of the Middle East by bringing the US into it. Last week Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing several Iranian nationals in the hope that this would bring instant retaliation from Iran.
Although the US has stated that its intelligence indicates that there would be an attack on Israeli soil within 48 hours it has not yet happened. I think it has been every 48 hours since the Israeli attack in Damascus.
I don’t think a major attack will happen and here is my reasoning.
Israel is losing the propaganda war and now because of the internet, they are not getting away with the kind of atrocities they have been committing since the artificial state of Israel came into being in 1948.
If we go back to that time in history we will find that initially and through the League Of Nations ( forerunner to the United Nations) Britain was granted the responsibility to administer Palestine and if we go back even further to 1917, there was a letter from the then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothchild of the Zionist Federation declaring that the British government intended allowing the establishment of a new Jewish state within Palestine.
This eventually happened in 1948 but not until Jewish settlers had run a terrorist campaign against the British army.
Since the establishment of the Jewish Zionist state, Israel has carried out a very long list of massacres of whole villages and townships in their policy of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
So today, the effect of this present genocidal campaign is there for all to see and although in the main, western governments support Israel the people in these countries do not as they can see the genocide with their own eyes.
Ok, so getting back to why I do not think Iran will mount a significant attack on Israeli soil. Firstly, the US will have to think very carefully before declaring war on Iran, as, because of the positioning of that country it will make it very difficult to invade. The only possibility would conceivably be through Jordan who seems to be very much on side with Israel.
Now today Iran boarded an Israeli-linked container ship in the Streight of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. This sends a message to both Israel and the US that there is more than one way to skin a rabbit and this way is the economic way as most of the world’s oil comes through the Persian Gulf.
So this is part of my rationale and here is the important part. Iran could decimate Israel with a deluge of missiles, I do not think there is any doubt about that and Israel knows that. Yes the US would get involved but apart from firing missiles from ships which would themselves be vulnerable, the US could not mount a land attack on Iran for months. Look how long it took for preparations to be made to invade Iraq., by which time Hezbollah, in Lebanon could be heavily engaged directly with Israel in a ground war. Now Israel’s army has been shown to lack ability in Gaza as they have been fought to a standstill by a few patriots armed only with Kalashnikov and a few RPJ launchers.
So here is the nub of my prognosis and I am pretty sure it is also Irans.
Both Israel and the US along with the usual poodles like the UK are on to a pasting in a conventional war. Iran probably knows this and also that both of these countries possess the ultimate nuclear weapon. Now I do not believe that the US would use it in this instance, although they are the only country on the planet who have used it in a war. However, Israel would not hesitate to use this weapon and it is thought that they possess in the region of about 400 nuclear warheads.
Now Iran knows this and is thought to be very near perfecting a nuclear delivery system, so I would imagine they will go down the economic road whilst buying time to achieve nuclear capability.
When they do achieve that capability Israel’s days as a European enclave in an Arab world are at an end and perhaps we can look forward to peace in the Middle East.
Ok, so, it is a Saturday evening and time for a pint in Mennies I wish my friends the world over a good and safe weekend. Take care
Remember
They say the truth comes out eventually, but it is there all the time.
All you have to do is find it, then do something about it
Slainte
Bob Costello 