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ruminativerabbi · 4 years

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West Bank Story

Is diplomacy merely the costume politics wears when it ventures out into the international arena? Or are diplomacy and politics entirely different fields of endeavor, the one “about” the translation of national principles into the stuff of international relationships and the other “about” the need at least on occasion to surrender those very same principles for the sake of attaining the power necessary broadly to implement them in the forum of national affairs? It’s not that easy to say!

These were the thoughts that came to me this last week when I read that the United States government has determined that there is no inherent illegality to the establishment of Jewish settlements on the land Israel took over from Jordan after the Six Day War in 1967. Of course, illegal and ill-advised are not the same thing—and it is more than possible for something to be technically legal but still a bad idea actually to implement. (It is, for example, fully legal in New York State to purchase cigarettes and to smoke them wherever smoking is permitted.) And, that being the case, asking whether Israel should continue to construct settlements on the West Bank or whether the path toward peace will be made smoother or more rocky by this specific policy shift on the part of the U.S. government—those questions remain on the table for discussion and no doubt prolonged, rancorous debate. And rancor—to say the very least—is surely what will presently ensue now that this week’s decision is in place.

The United Nations has expressed itself repeatedly to the effect that allowing Israeli civilians to live on territory Israel acquired in the Six Day War is a contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, an international agreement to which both Israel and Jordan have been party since 1951. Leaving aside the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations and its decades-long history of unremitting and shamefully prejudicial hostility towards Israel, the issue here turns on the fact that the Convention in question specifically prohibits states signed on from moving civilians onto land seized by war, as might be done by a nation eager to establish an ongoing claim to the seized territory in question. But nothing in the Middle East is ever all that simple to unravel. (Also, it’s a good thing the U.S. only signed the convention in 1955—wasn’t Texas acquired by our nation in the Mexican War of 1848? Just sayin’.)

The territory in question on the west bank of the Jordan River was indeed part of sovereign Jordan before 1967. But Jordan only came to control the territory after the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and its occupation of the territory was itself never recognized by a vast majority of the world’s nations. Furthermore, the land in question was specifically acknowledged as the heartland of the Land of Israel—the ancient homeland of the Jewish people—by the League of Nations in 1922. Most Americans will find it challenging to say whether any real importance should be ascribed to the decision of an organization that existed for a mere twenty-six years and which has been defunct since 1946. But for Jewish Americans, who come pre-equipped with much, much longer memories than their average co-citizens, the issue is rooted in a far older times than the Roaring Twenties anyway.

That the land on the west bank of the Jordan—called by many today by their biblical names, Judah and Samaria—that that land was part of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in antiquity is debated today by no reputable historian or political analyst at all. Nor, as I wrote in this space a few weeks ago, is at all in dispute the fact that the history of the land that followed the collapse of the Maccabean kingdom in the year 67 BCE was one of endless occupation—first by the Romans, but then by Iran (then called Persia), and then in order by the Byzantine Empire, the Muslim Caliphate, the Crusader Kingdoms, the Mameluke Sultanate, the Ottoman Empire and, finally, the British Empire (acting behind the fig leaf of its League of Nations mandate to rule over what had previously—and at that point for almost five centuries—been Turkish Palestine). That’s a lot of occupiers—thousands of years’ worth—and not a single one held back from settling civilians on territory gained by war. Nor, for that matter, did even a single one of the above— including any of the Muslim occupiers mentioned above—consider the land currently referenced as “the” West Bank distinct or different from the rest of the historic Jewish homeland. When Americans talk about “the” West Bank, therefore, as though it were akin to a state in the Union or a department of the French Republic, they are therefore setting themselves up not at all to understand the issue as it feels on the ground to the average Israeli. Or, for that matter, to the average citizen of any country possessed of a clear sense of the history of the territory in question.

All that being the case, the notion that the Fourth Geneva Convention can be simply be applied to the territory in question as though we were talking about the German occupation of Namibia—a place in Africa with no historical tie of any sort whatsoever to Germany—seems, to say the very least, facile.

And also worth noting—and stressing—is the degree to which I constantly see people with little or no background in the actual history of the region speaking or writing negatively about Israel’s presence on the West Bank at all. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, for example, was an expression both of acceptance of the indigeneity of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and also of their natural right to establish a Jewish nation in their historic homeland. That, of course, was nothing more than an expression of British policy with respect to the eventual future of what was soon to become—at least slightly ironically—British Palestine. But dramatically less well known is that the San Remo Conference of 1920 that divvied up the territories of the nations defeated in the First World War among the victors formally affirmed the basic principles of the Balfour Declaration, speaking overtly “in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national homeland for the Jewish people.” There is not the slightest evidence of any sort that the participants at San Remo meant to exclude the land currently referenced as the West Bank in that thought.

I can’t recall hearing much about the San Remo conference lately, but even less about the Treaty of Sèvres that resulted from San Remo and which, as one of the final agreements that ended World War I, yet again reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration’s intent, and firmly, in these words: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.” It was these words that the League of Nations affirmed and confirmed in 1922 when it adopted them into the formal mandate declaration awarded Turkish Palestine to the British.

All that being the case, to refer to the West Bank as being “occupied” by Israel because they wrested it from a nation that itself only ended up as its overlords because they managed to seize it militarily after the British withdrew their forces in 1948 and then had their overlordship of the region affirmed by the Armistice Agreement that ended the Israeli War of Independence seems, again to say the very least, forced.

Another point I generally hear made by none in this fraught context is that the United Nations Charter itself affirms the validity of all treaties entered into or brokered by its predecessor organization, the League of Nations. As a result, when the United Nations passed a scurrilous resolution in 2016 decrying all Jewish settlements on the West Bank as one large violation of international law, it was not only ignoring the specific details of the Oslo Accord of 1995 (which, pending a final peace treaty between Israelis and Palestinians, divided the West Bank up into three areas, innocuously labelled A, B, and C, and specifically awarded Israel the right to govern the Arabs and the Jews resident in Area C), but also its own historical obligations. That our government dishonorably allowed that resolution to pass without a veto was a betrayal not only of Israel, but of our own supposed devotion to the rule of law.

People talk about “the settlements” as an untraversable barrier preventing Israel and the Palestinians from moving forward towards a peaceful resolution of their dispute. But even that commonplace assertion only really works on the assumption that the presence of a relatively small Jewish minority in a Palestinian state is impossible to imagine. On the other hand, if Israel is able to pursue its national destiny as a Jewish state with 20% Arab minority, why shouldn’t Palestine also be able to move forward with a Jewish minority of about 380,000 people among its three million citizens? And that number is not even remotely correct because the chances of every single Jewish resident of the West Bank remaining in place after a declaration of Palestinian independence is zero, which would bring the percentage of Jews present in independent Palestine to less than 10%. To describe that as an intractable problem only really makes sense if it goes without saying that a future independent Palestine must be wholly judenrein, an opinion I find both odious and deeply offensive.

Our government acted in a principled and proper way to reject the notion that the presence of Jewish towns and villages on the West Bank is an ipso facto example of illegal settlement under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In a week already filled with cringe-worthy moments by the dozen, the Secretary of State’s announcement of this shift in American policy (which was really just a return to the policy adopted by the Reagan administration) was both welcome and just.

#Judea and Samaria #West Bank #Fourth Geneva Convention

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findsunbiz · 2 years

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Jordan, Arab country of Southwest Asia, in the rocky desert of the northern Arabian Peninsula. It is a young state that occupies an ancient land, one that bears the traces of many civilizations. Separated from ancient Palestine by the Jordan River, the region played a prominent role in biblical history. The ancient biblical kingdoms of Moab, Gilead, and Edom lie within its borders, as does the famed red stone city of Petra, the capital of the Nabatean kingdom and of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. British traveler Gertrude Bell said of Petra, “It is like a fairy tale city, all pink and wonderful.” Part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918 and later a mandate of the United Kingdom, Jordan has been an independent kingdom since 1946. It is among the most politically liberal countries of the Arab world, and, although it shares in the troubles affecting the region, its rulers have expressed a commitment to maintaining peace and stability.

The capital and largest city in the country is Amman—named for the Ammonites, who made the city their capital in the 13th century BCE. Amman was later a great city of Middle Eastern antiquity, Philadelphia, of the Roman Decapolis, and now serves as one of the region’s principal commercial and transportation centres as well as one of the Arab world’s major cultural capitals.

Although Jordan’s economy is relatively small and faces numerous obstacles, it is comparatively well diversified. Trade and finance combined account for nearly one-third of Jordan’s gross domestic product (GDP); transportation and communication, public utilities, and construction represent one-fifth of total GDP, and mining and manufacturing constitute nearly that proportion. Remittances from Jordanians working abroad are a major source of foreign exchange.

However, although Jordan’s economy is ostensibly based on private enterprise, services—particularly government spending—account for about one-fourth of GDP and employ roughly one-third of the workforce. In addition, Jordan has increasingly been plagued by recession, debt, and unemployment since the mid-1990s, and the small size of the Jordanian market, fluctuations in agricultural production, a lack of capital, and the presence of large numbers of refugees have made it necessary for Jordan to continue to seek foreign aid. The Jordanian government has been slow to implement privatization. Despite efforts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to boost the private sector—including agreements to write off the country’s external debt and loans from the World Bank designed to revitalize Jordan’s economy—it was only in 1999 that the government began introducing a number of economic reforms. These efforts included Jordan’s entry into the World Trade Organization (in 2000) and the partial privatization of some state-owned enterprises.

Only a tiny fraction of Jordan’s land is arable, and the country imports some foodstuffs to meet its needs. Wheat and barley are the main crops of the rain-fed uplands, and irrigated land in the Jordan Valley produces citrus and other fruits, potatoes, vegetables (tomatoes and cucumbers), and olives. Pastureland is limited; although artesian wells have been dug to increase its area, much former pasture area has been turned over to the cultivation of olive and fruit trees, and large areas have been degraded to the point that they can barely support livestock. Sheep and goats are the most important livestock, but there are also some cattle, camels, horses, donkeys, and mules. Poultry is also kept.

Mineral resources include large deposits of phosphates, potash, limestone, and marble, as well as dolomite, kaolin, and salt. More recently discovered minerals include barite (the principal ore of the metallic element barium), quartzite, gypsum (used as a fertilizer), and feldspar, and there are unexploited deposits of copper, uranium, and shale oil. Although the country has no significant oil deposits, modest reserves of natural gas are located in its eastern desert. In 2003 the first section of a new pipeline from Egypt began delivering natural gas to Al-ʿAqabah.

Virtually all electric power in Jordan is generated by thermal plants, most of which are oil-fired. The major power stations are linked by a transmission system. By the early 21st century the government had completed a program to link the major cities and towns by a countrywide grid.

Beginning in the final decades of the 20th century, access to water became a major problem for Jordan—as well as a point of conflict among states in the region—as overuse of the Jordan River (and its tributary, the Yarmūk River) and excessive tapping of the region’s natural aquifers led to shortages throughout Jordan and surrounding countries. In 2000 Jordan and Syria secured funding for constructing a dam on the Yarmūk River that, in addition to storing water for Jordan, would also generate electricity for Syria. Construction of the Waḥdah (“Unity”) Dam began in 2004.

Manufacturing is concentrated around Amman. The extraction of phosphate, petroleum refining, and cement production are the country’s major heavy industries. Food, clothing, and a variety of consumer goods also are produced.

Jordan’s primary exports are clothing, chemicals and chemical products, and potash and phosphates; the main imports are machinery and apparatus, crude petroleum, and food products. Major sources of imports are Saudi Arabia, the United States, China, and the European Union (EU). Major destinations for exports are the United States, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. In 2000 Jordan signed a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States. The value of exports has been growing, but it does not cover that of imports; the deficit is financed by foreign grants, loans, and other forms of capital transfers. Although Jordan’s trade deficit has been large, it has been offset somewhat by revenue from tourism, remittances sent by Jordanians working abroad, earnings from foreign investments made by the central bank, and subsidies from other Arab and non-Arab governments.

Services, including public administration, defense, and retail sales, form the single most important component of Jordan’s economy in both value and employment. The country’s vulnerable geography has led to high military expenditures, which are well above the world average.

The Jordanian government vigorously promotes tourism, and the number of tourists visiting Jordan has grown dramatically since the mid-1990s. Visitors come mainly from the West to see the old biblical cities of the Jordan Valley and such wonders as the ancient city of Petra, designated a World Heritage site in 1985. Income from tourism, mostly consisting of foreign reserves, has become a major factor in Jordan’s efforts to reduce its balance-of-payments deficit.

Jordan has also lost much of its skilled labour to neighbouring countries—as many as 400,000 people left the kingdom in the early 1980s—although the problem has eased somewhat. This change is a result both of better employment opportunities within Jordan itself and of a curb on foreign labour demands by the Persian Gulf states.

The majority of the workforce is men, with women constituting roughly one-seventh of the total. The government employs nearly half of those working. About one-seventh of the population is unemployed, although income per capita has increased. Labour unions and employer organizations are legal, but the trade-union movement is weak; this is partly offset by the government, which has its own procedures for settling labour disputes.

About half of the government’s revenue is derived from taxes. Even though the government has made a great effort to reform the income tax, both to increase revenue and to redistribute income, revenue from indirect taxes continues to exceed that from direct taxes. Tax measures have been adopted to increase the rate of savings necessary for financing investments, and the government has implemented tax exemptions on foreign investments and on the transfer of foreign profits and capital.

Finally, I will leave a link which includes all companies and enterprises in Jordan, for those who want to research and discover more about this country. Thanks for reading.

All businesses address in Jordan: https://findsun.net/JO

#business #jordan

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travisqrqj045 · 3 years

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Leading 10 Lots of Invaluable Currencies In Africa 2021

Pegged to the US dollar in 2003, Kuwait returned to the weighted foreign money basket in 2007, where it stays a powerful foreign money. Oman is one more nation that pegged its foreign money to the U.S. dollar at a set exchange fee. The Omani rial maintained its worth in opposition to the greenback because of Oman's historically tight monetary policy and financial restrictions. Omani policymakers have usually restricted the money supply to guard the nation in opposition to struggle and battle within the Middle East. That has impacted the nation's inflation price, and lending practices in Oman are inclined to favor risk-averse corporations and business ventures. The united dollars is the ninth strongest currencies on earth.

What is the most expensive currency 2020?

Kuwaiti Dinar: 1 KWD = 3.26 USD

The Kuwaiti dinar (KWD) was the most valuable government-backed currency as of 2020. Some currencies not backed by governments, such as gold and bitcoin, were actually worth far more. Substantial oil production helped augment Kuwait's wealth and support the value of the Kuwaiti dinar.

Well, there are one hundred eighty currencies used in 194 international locations at current. US Dollar or Euro is the forex that strikes the mind of most individuals when they think of currencies with the very best value or the strongest currency, which is not true in any respect. The world’s oldest currency that's still in use is the British Pound , US Dollar, then again, remains essentially the most traded foreign money in the world from some time now. This is the forex of each Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The most frequent exchange price for the currency is from the EUR to CHF.

Using Purchasing Power Parity To Search Out Essentially The Most Useful Foreign Money

That’s one of many less-known countries, but its large-scale economic system and improvement won it international respect, and the ability of its foreign money is demonstrated. [newline]The Dinar is the Hashemite Kingdom’s official foreign money on the Asian continent. It has Amman as capital and JOD’s currency code is 1 JOD, which is $1.forty one. In 1940 King Jordan himself launched the official forex, which has since continuously developed into the fourth most essential forex in the world.

Although it is a very small country, it's a relatively free economy in comparability to the remainder of the area.

The task of distributing the currency lies with the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

British Pound Sterling ranks on the number 5 in the listing of top 20 highest currencies within the World.

The Kuwaiti dinar was the most valuable government-backed forex as of 2020.

It's not fairly often that you simply come throughout a coin this old and in almost excellent condition. Ephraim Brasher was a goldsmith and silversmith within the New York City area in the late 1700s. Since the United States Mint was not operational yet, the colonies resorted to minting their very own coins. Private entrepreneurs corresponding to Brasher minted some of these cash.

Prime 10 Highest Currencies In Africa In 2021 Most Precious

The US Dollar is essentially the most traded foreign money in the forex market as of the time of writing this text. As of September 2018, about 1.69 trillion USD in circulation globally, where about 70% of those notes are circulated outdoors the US. The US Dollar is the most traded foreign money within the foreign exchange market as of today. The worth of forex differs the world over and infrequently change over time. The foreign money exchange rate converts the value of 1 form of forex into one other. Knowledge of this price is particularly helpful when traveling to different international locations.

What is the average salary in Iran?

A person working in Iran typically earns around 44,800,000 IRR per month. Salaries range from 11,300,000 IRR (lowest average) to 200,000,000 IRR (highest average, actual maximum salary is higher). This is the average monthly salary including housing, transport, and other benefits.

The fact that the Jordanian Dinar is on this list at all is something that comes as a surprise to lots of people because the nation is often provided with overseas aid. Most of its energy must be imported from close by countries and it typically struggles to provide enough water for everyone that's residing within the nation. It as soon as shared a forex with Palestine however gained independence from this country in 1946. Nevertheless it didn't get its personal foreign money until 1959 when the Jordanian Dinar was launched.

The nation is situated in Western Asia with the capital name of Kuwait City. On the other hand, it is also one of many largest suppliers of oil on the earth. That is the rationale Kuwaiti Dinar is included in some of the valuable currencies in the world. The foreign money has got extra respect from the world as a end result of financial standing of most of the European countries. It attention-grabbing to know that it's the currency of about 25 member states of the Eurozone. It was formally introduced because the foreign money of this area in 1999 with the symbol of €.

For many international locations, that is the reserve foreign money of the state. Although the US dollar might be the commonest currency for worldwide trade, it's not as highly valued as one would anticipate. In truth, some of the nations talked about in the following list of the costliest foreign money on the earth, have a far larger trade rate, sometimes doubling or tripling that of the US dollar. So without going into additional detail, let us take a more in-depth take a look at these currencies and find out how a lot they're actually value. Despite being the world’s most traded currency, the USD surprisingly appears on the backside of the list. This has to do with the reality that its value has depreciated during the last couple of years, owing to its present account deficit and excellent US debt.

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hallsp · 3 years

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When Fred Halliday—scholar, activist, journalist and teacher—died two years ago at the too-early age of 64, obituaries and tributes swamped the British press; the New Statesman subtitled its remembrance “The death of a great internationalist.” Halliday was a truly original thinker, a combination of Hannah Arendt (in her concern for the connection between ethics and politics) and Isaac Deutscher (in his materialist yet supple approach to history). Halliday also knew a little something about the Middle East: he spoke Arabic, Farsi and at least seven other languages, and he traveled widely throughout the region, including in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Israel, Libya and Algeria. He is one of the very few writers who, after 9/11, understood the synthesis between fighting radical Islam and opposing the brutal inequities of the neoliberal global order. He was an uncategorizable independent, supporting, for instance, the communist government in Afghanistan and the US invasion of that country. He embodied the dialectic between utopianism and realism. In his scholarship and research, in his outspokenness and courtesy, in the complexity of his thinking, he was the model of a public intellectual. It is Halliday’s writings—not those of Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens or Tariq Ali—that can elucidate the meaning of today’s most virulent conflicts; it is Halliday who represented radicalism with a human face. It says something sad, and discouraging, about intellectual life in our country that Halliday’s death—which is to say, his work—was ignored not only by mainstream publications like The New York Times but by their left-wing alternatives too (including this one).

It is cheering, then, that a selection of essays, written by Halliday for the website openDemocracy between 2004 and 2009, has just been published by Yale University Press. Called Political Journeys, it gives a taste—though only that—of the extraordinary range of Halliday’s interests; included here are analyses of communism , the cold war, Iran’s revolution, post-Saddam Iraq, violence and politics, radical Islam, the legacies of 1968 and feminism. The book gives a sense, too, of Halliday’s dry humor—he loved to recount irreverent political jokes from the countries he had visited—and his affection for lists, as in the essay “The World’s Twelve Worst Ideas” (No. 2: “The only thing ‘they’ understand is force”). But most of the articles, written as they were for the Internet, are comparatively short and represent a brief span in a long career; this necessarily sporadic volume will, one hopes, lead readers to some of Halliday’s two dozen other books and more extensive essays.

Political Journeys is a well-chosen title for the collection. It alludes not just to Halliday’s travels but also to the ways his ideas—especially about revolution, imperialism and human rights—changed in reaction to tumultuous world events over the course of four decades. For this he has often been attacked, even posthumously. Earlier this year, Columbia University professor Joseph Massad opened a piece about Syria, published on the Al Jazeera website, by dismissing Halliday—along with his “Arab turncoat comrades”—as a “pro-imperial apologist.” (Massad also put forth the novel idea that Syria “has been…an agent of US imperialism,” which might be news to Bashar al-Assad and the leaders of Iran and Hezbollah, Syria’s allies in the so-called axis of resistance.) Yet it was precisely Halliday’s intellectual flexibility—his ability to derive theory from experience rather than shoehorn the latter into the former—that was one of his greatest strengths. Pace Massad,

Halliday didn’t move from Marxism into imperialism, neoconservatism, neoliberalism or “turncoatism”; rather, he developed a deeper, more humane and far sturdier kind of radicalism. It was one that refused to hide—much less celebrate—repression, carnage and virulent nationalism behind the banner of progress, world revolution, selfdetermination or anti-colonialism. Halliday sought not to reject the socialist tradition but to reconnect it to its heritage—derived from the Enlightenment, from 1789, from 1848— of reason, rights, secularism and freedom. He would also develop an unsparing critique of the anti-humanism that, he thought, was ineradicably embedded in the revolution of 1917 and its successors.

Halliday believed that the duty of committed intellectuals is to keep their eyes open, to learn from history, to be humble enough to be surprised (and to admit being wrong). The alternative was what he called “Rip van Winkle socialism.” He sometimes told his friends, “At my funeral the one thing no one must ever say is that ‘Comrade Halliday never wavered, never changed his mind.’”

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Fred Halliday was born in 1946 in Dublin and raised in Dundalk, a town near the northern border that, he pointed out, The Rough Guide to Ireland advises tourists to avoid. The Irish “question” and Irish politics remained, for him, a touchstone—though more as a warning than an inspiration, especially when it came to Mideast politics. The unhappy lessons of Ireland, he wrote in 1996, included “the illusions and delusions of nationalism” and “the corrosive myths of deliverance through purely military struggle.” He added: “A good dose of contemporary Irish history makes one sceptical about much of the rhetoric that issues from dominant and dominated alike.… [A] critique of imperialism needs at the very least to be matched by some reserve about most of the strategies proclaimed for overcoming it.” Growing up in the midst of the Troubles, Halliday developed, among other things, a healthy aversion to histrionic nationalism and the repugnant concept of “progressive atrocities.”

Halliday graduated from Oxford in 1967 and then attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Later he would earn a PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE), where, for over two decades, he taught students from around the world and was a founder of its Centre for the Study of Human Rights. (The intellectual and governing classes of the Middle East are sprinkled with his graduates.) He was an early editor of the radical newspaper Black Dwarf and, from 1969 to 1983, a member of the editorial board of the New Left Review, a journal for which he occasionally wrote even after he broke with it over key political issues. He immersed himself in the revolutionary movements of his time and gathered an enviable range of friends, interlocutors and contacts along the way: traveling with Maoist Dhofari rebels in Oman; working at a student camp in Cuba; visiting Nasser’s Egypt, Ben Bella’s Algeria, Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan and Marxist Ethiopia and South Yemen (the subject of his dissertation). He wasn’t shy: he proposed a two-state solution to Ghassan Kanafani of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, infamous for its hijackings; argued with Iran’s foreign minister about the goals of an Islamic revolution; told Hezbollah’s Sheik Naim Qassem that the group’s use of Koranic verses denouncing Jews was racist—“a point,” Halliday dryly noted, “he evidently did not accept.”

Halliday received, and accepted, invitations to lecture in some of the Middle East’s most repressive countries, including Ahmadinejad’s Iran, Qaddafi’s Libya and Saddam’s Iraq, where a government official told him, without shame or embarrassment, that Amnesty International’s reports on the regime’s tortures and executions were correct. Clearly, he was no boycotter. But neither was he seduced by these visits: in 1990, he described Iraq as a “ferocious dictatorship, marked by terror and coercion unparalleled within the Arab world”; in 2009, he reported that the supposedly new, rehabilitated Libya was just like the old, outcast Libya: a “grotesque entity” and “protection racket” that was regarded as a joke throughout the Arab world. His moral compass remained intact: that year, he warned the LSE not to accept a £ 1.5 million donation from the so-called Charitable and Development Foundation of the dictator’s son, Saif el-Qaddafi. Alas, greed trumped principle, and Halliday’s arguments were rejected—which led, once the Arab Spring reached Libya, to the LSE’s public disgrace and the resignation of its director.

* * *

In May 1981, Halliday published an article on Israel and Palestine in MERIP Reports, a well-respected Washington journal that focuses on the Middle East and is closely identified with the Palestinian cause. It is an astonishing piece, especially in the context of its era, more than a decade before the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel’s right to exist and the signing of the Oslo Accords. It is no exaggeration to say that, at the time, the vast majority of the left, Marxist and not, held anti-Israel positions of various degrees of ferocity; to do otherwise was to risk pariahdom.

While harshly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and of the occupation , Halliday proceeded to question—and forcefully rebuke—the bedrock beliefs of the left: that Israel was a colonial state comparable to South Africa; that Israelis were not a nation and had no right to self-determination; that Israel was a recently formed and therefore inauthentic country (most states in the Middle East—including, for that matter, Palestine— are modern creations of imperialist powers); that a binational state was desired by either Israelis or Palestinians and, therefore, could be a recipe for anything other than civil war and a harshly authoritarian government. (Halliday asked a question often ignored by revolutionaries: Why would anyone want to live under such a regime?)

Most of all, he challenged the irredentism of the Palestinian movement and its supporters. Partition, he presciently warned, is “the only just and the only practical way forward for the Palestinians. They will continue to pay a terrible price, verging on national annihilation, if they prefer to adopt easier but in fact less realizable substitutes, and if their allies and supposed friends continue to urge such a course upon them.” Halliday stressed that a truly revolutionary strategy cannot be “at variance with reality.” Solidarity without realism is a form of betrayal.

The reality principle, and its absence, was a theme Halliday would return to frequently, as in his reappraisal of the legacy of 1968. “It does not deserve the sneering, partisan dismissal,” he wrote in 2008. But nostalgic celebration was also unearned, for “the problem is that in many ways, we lost.” Despite triumphal rhetoric, the year of the barricades led not to worldwide revolution but to conservative governments in France, England and the United States (Richard Nixon). In the communist world, the situation was even worse: “It was not the emancipatory imagination but the cold calculation of party and state that was ‘seizing power.’” In Prague, socialist reform was crushed; in Beijing, the Cultural Revolution’s frenzy reached new heights.

Yet Halliday, like most of us, was sometimes guilty of letting wishful thinking cloud his vision too. In 2004, he called for the United Nations to assume authority in Iraq, which was then in free fall. This ignored the fact that Al Qaeda’s shocking bombings of the UN’s Baghdad mission the previous year—resulting in the death of Sergio de Mello, the secretary general’s special representative in Iraq, and so many others—had disposed, rather definitively, of that issue; the UN had withdrawn its staffers and, clearly, could not ask them to undertake another death mission. (Nor was there any indication that the UN’s member nations—many of whom opposed any intervention in Iraq—would have supported such a proposition.) And his claim, made in 2007, that “a set of common values is indeed shared across the world,” including a commitment to “democracy and human rights,” is hard to square with much of Halliday’s own reporting—such as his 1984 encounter with a longtime acquaintance named Muhammad, who had formerly been a member of the Iranian left. Now a supporter of the regime, Muhammad visits Halliday in London and explains, “We don’t give a damn for the United Nations.… We don’t give a damn for that bloody organisation, Amnesty International. We don’t give a damn what anyone in the world thinks.… We have made an Islamic Revolution and we are going to stick to it, even if it means a third world war.… We want none of the damn democracy of the West, or the socalled freedoms of the East.… You must understand the culture of martyrdom in our country.” Indeed, Halliday’s optimism of the intellect here is belied by even a casual look at any of the world’s major newspapers— whether from New York or Paris, Baghdad or Beirut—on any given day.

* * *

Iran, which Halliday first visited in the 1960s as an undergraduate, was foundational to his political development; he analyzed, and re-analyzed, its revolution many times, as if it was a wound that could not stop hurting. (Iran is the only country to which Political Journeys devotes an entire section of essays.) His initial study of the country, Iran: Dictatorship and Development, was written just before the anti-Shah revolution of early 1979. Based on careful observation and research, the book scrupulously analyzed Iran’s class structure, economy, armed forces, government, opposition movements, foreign policy—everything, that is, but the role of religion, which Halliday seemed to regard as essentially a front for political demands, and which he vastly underestimated. The book’s last sentence reads, “It is quite possible that before too long the Iranian people will chase the Pahlavi dictator and his associates from power… and build a prosperous and socialist Iran.”

Events moved quickly. In August 1979, Halliday filed two terrifying dispatches from Tehran, published in the New Statesman, documenting the chaotic atmosphere of fear and xenophobia, the outlawing of newspapers and political parties, and the brutal crackdown on women, intellectuals, liberals, leftists and secularists. “It does not take one long to sense the ferocious right-wing Islamist fervour that grips much of Iran today,” he began. Later, he would write, “I have stood on the streets of Tehran and seen tens of thousands of people…shouting, ‘Marg bar liberalizm’ (‘Death to liberalism’). It was not a happy sight; among other things, they meant me.” A revolution, he realized, could be genuinely anti-imperialist and genuinely reactionary.

But the problem wasn’t only Iran or radical Islam. As the ’70s turned into the ’80s, it became clear—or should have—that most of the third world’s secular revolutions and coups (in Algeria, Syria, Libya, Ethiopia and, especially, Iraq) had failed to fulfill their emancipatory promises. Each became a one-party dictatorship based on repression, torture and murder; each stifled its citizens politically, intellectually, artistically, even sexually; each remained mired in inequality and underdevelopment. None of this could be explained, much less justified, by the legacy of colonialism or the crimes of imperialism, real as those are. These were among the central issues that led to Halliday’s rift with the New Left Review—and that continue to divide the left, both here and abroad. Indeed, it is precisely these issues that often underlie (and sometimes determine) the debates over humanitarian intervention, the meaning of solidarity, the US role as a global power, the centrality of human rights and of feminism, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. (In 2006, Halliday would sum up his points of contention with his former comrades, especially their support of death squads and jihadists in the Iraq War : “The position of the New Left Review is that the future of humanity lies in the back streets of Fallujah.”)

Halliday’s revised thinking—his emphasis on democracy and rights; his aversion to the particularist claims of tribe, nation, religion or identity politics; his unapologetic secularism; his questioning of imperialism as a purely regressive force—is evident in his enormously compelling book Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, published in 1996. (Halliday dedicated it to the memory of four Iranian friends, whom he lauded as “opponents of religiously sanctioned dictatorship.”) In this volume he took on two still prevalent, and still contested, concepts: the idea of human rights as a Western imposition on the third world, and the theory of “Orientalism.”

Halliday argued that, despite the assertions of covenants such as the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (which defines “God alone” as “the Source of all human rights”) and the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (which defines “all human beings” as “Allah’s subjects”), there is no such thing as Islamic human rights—or, indeed, of rights derived from any religious source. Such rights apply to everyone and, therefore, must be based on man-made, universalist principles or they are nothing: it is the “equality of humanity,” not the equality before God, that they assert. (That is why they are human rights.) Because rights are grounded in the dignity of the individual, not in any transcendent or divine authority, they can be neither granted nor rescinded by religious authorities, and no country, culture or region can claim exemption from them by appealing to holy texts, a history of oppression, revered traditions or because rights “somehow embody ‘Western’ prejudice and hegemony.”

In this light, the search for a kinder, gentler version of Islam—or, for that matter, of any religion—as the basis of rights is “doomed” to failure; for Halliday, the question of a religion’s content was entirely irrelevant. “Secularism is no guarantee of liberty or the protection of rights, as the very secular totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century have shown,” he argued. “However, it remains a precondition, because it enables the rights of the individual to be invoked against authority.… The central issue is not, therefore, one of finding some more liberal, or compatible, interpretation of Islamic thinking, but of removing the discussion of rights from the claims of religion itself.… It is this issue above all which those committed to a liberal interpretation of Islam seek to avoid.” The issues that Halliday raised in 1996 are by no means settled today, and they are anything but abstract; on the contrary, the Arab uprisings have forced them insistently to the fore. In Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, secularists and Islamists struggle over the role (if any) of Islam in writing new constitutions and legal codes; at the United Nations, new leaders such as Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi and Yemen’s Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi argue that the right to free speech ends when it “blasphemes” against Islamic beliefs.

But more than a defense of secularism is at stake here. Halliday argued that the very idea of a unitary, reliably oppressive behemoth called the West—on which so much antiimperialist and “dependency” theory rested— was false. “Far from there having been, or being, a monolithic, imperialist and racist ‘West’ that produced human rights discourse, the ‘West’ itself is in several ways a diverse, conflictual entity,” he wrote. “The notion of human rights was not the creation of the states and ruling elites of France, the USA, or any other Western power, but emerged with the rise of social movements and associate ideologies that contested these states and elites.” The West embodied emancipation and oppression, equality and racism, abolitionism and slavery, universalism and colonialism. Political theories and practices that refuse to acknowledge this—proudly brandishing their “anti-Western” credentials—will be based on the shakiest foundations.

* * *

The argument between advocates of the concept of “Orientalism,” put forth most famously by Edward Said, and its critics—often associated with the scholar Bernard Lewis—was close to Halliday. Lewis had been a mentor of his at SOAS, and one he admired; Said, whom Halliday described as “a man of exemplary intellectual and political courage,” was a friend. (Though not forever: Said stopped talking to Halliday when the two disagreed on the first Gulf War.) Yet on closer look, Lewis and Said shared an orientation: both had rejected a materialist analysis of Arab (and colonial) history and politics in favor of a metadebate about literature. “For neither of them,” Halliday argued, “does the analysis of what actually happens in these societies, as distinct from what people say and write about them…come first.” Increasingly, Halliday would regard the Orientalist debate as one that deformed, and diverted, the discipline of Mideast studies and helped to foster a vituperative atmosphere.

Said had argued that, for several centuries, British and French writers, statesmen and others had created a static, mythical Middle East—sometimes romanticized, sometimes denigrated, always objectified— as part of an unwaveringly racist, imperialist project. (Indeed, Said’s book has turned the word “Orientalist,” which used to refer to scholars of the Muslim, Arab and Asian worlds, into a term of opprobrium.) With sobriety and respect, Halliday considered and, in the end, devastatingly refuted the theory’s major tenets. With its sweeping, all-encompassing claims, he argued, the concept of Orientalism was a form of fundamentalism: “We should be cautious about any critique which identifies such a widespread and pervasive single error at the core of a range of literature.” It was based on a widely held yet entirely unsubstantiated belief that Europe bore a particular hostility toward the Muslim world: “The thesis of some enduring, transhistorical hostility to the orient, the Arabs, the Islamic world, is a myth.” It was undialectical, ignoring not only the myths that Easterners projected against the West—ignorant stereotyping is, if nothing else, a busy two-way street—but the ways the East itself reproduced the tropes of Orientalism: “A few hours in the library with the Middle Eastern section of the Summary of World Broadcasts will do wonders for anyone who thinks reification and discursive interpellation are the prerogative of Western writers on the region.” In fact, Islamists can be among the greatest Orientalists, for many insist on an Islam that is eternal, opaque and monolithic.

Most of all, though, Halliday questioned the assumption that the presumably impure origin of an idea necessarily negates its truth value. “Said implies that because ideas are produced in a context of domination, or directly in the service of domination, they are therefore invalid.” Carried to its logical conclusion, of course, this would entail a rejection of modernity itself—from its foundational ideas to its medical, technological and scientific advances—for all were produced “in the context of imperialism and capitalism: it would be odd if this were not so. But this tells us little about their validity.” (“Antiimperialism” and “self-determination” are, we might note, Western concepts, just as penicillin, the computer, the machine gun and the atom bomb are Western inventions.) And he questioned a key tenet of postcolonial studies and postcolonial politics: that the powerless are either more insightful or more ethical than their oppressors. “The very condition of being oppressed…is likely to produce its own distorted forms of perception: mythical history, hatred and chauvinism towards others, conspiracy theories of all stripes, unreal phantasms of emancipation.” Suffering is not necessarily the mother of wisdom.

But if Halliday was a foe of the simplicities of Orientalism, he was equally opposed to Samuel Huntington’s notion of “the clash of civilizations”—a concept that, he pointed out, was as beloved by Osama bin Laden as by neoconservatives—and to essentialist fictions like “the Islamic world” and “the Arab mind.” (On this, he and Said certainly agreed.) More than fifty diverse countries contain Muslim majorities; the job of the intellectual—whether located inside or outside the region—was to specify and demystify rather than deal in lumpy, ignorant generalities. “Disaggregation and explanation, rather than invocations of the timeless essence of cultures,” was the Mideast scholar’s prime task, Halliday insisted. He rejected mystified concepts such as Islamic banking and Islamic economics (“Anyone who has studied the economic history of the Muslim world…will know that business is conducted as it is everywhere, on sound capitalist principles”); the Islamic road to development (Iran’s economy was “a perfectly recognisable ramshackle rentier economy, laced with corruption and inefficiency”); and Islamic jurisprudence (Sharia, Halliday noted, has virtually no basis in the Koran). Echoing E.P. Thompson, Halliday argued that much of what passes for the ancient and authentic in the Islamic world—including Islamic fundamentalism itself—is the creation of modernity, and can be productively analyzed only within a political context.

Halliday proposed that even the Iranian Revolution—with its mobilization of the masses, consolidation of state power, repressive security institutions and attempts to export itself—had, despite its peculiar ideology, reprised the basic dynamics of modern, secular revolutions: “not that of Mecca and Medina in the seventh century but that of Paris in the 1790s and Moscow and St Petersburg in the 1920s.” Islam, Halliday insisted, could not explain the trajectory of that revolution or, for that matter, the politics of the greater Middle East.

Was Halliday right? Surely yes, in his refusal of essentialist fantasies and apolitical thinking. And in some ways, the Arab uprisings have confirmed everything for which he had spent a lifetime arguing. Here were populist movements demanding democratic institutions, transparency, and an end to tyranny and corruption; here were hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding entry into the modern world, not its negation; here was the assertion of participatory citizenship over passive subjecthood. Yet the subsequent trajectory of those initial revolts also proved him wrong: nowhere else in the contemporary world have democratic elections led to the triumph of religious parties. Nowhere else do intra-religious schisms result in the widespread carnage of the Shiite-Sunni split. Nowhere else do the democratic rights to freely speak, publish and create collide with strictures against blasphemy—even among some presumed democrats. Nowhere else does the fall of dictatorship and the assertion of self-determination translate, so quickly and so often, into attacks on women’s equality. “Islam explains little of what happens” in Turkey and Pakistan, Halliday wrote in 2002, and he believed this to be true of the region as a whole. Yet I doubt there are many Turks or Pakistanis (or, for that matter, Iranians, Egyptians, Algerians, Lebanese, Afghans, Saudis or Yemenis) who would agree. Can they all be the victims of false consciousness?

Here, I think, lies the problem: in his fight against lazy generalizations about Islam and its misuse as a univocal explanation, Halliday sometimes sought to scrub away, or at least radically minimize, Islam itself, as was demonstrated by his early book on Iran. It is almost as if he—the confirmed skeptic, the lover of reason, the staunch secularist, the self-proclaimed bani tanwir (“child of enlightenment”)—could not quite believe in religion as a force unto itself, and an astonishingly powerful one at that. “What people actually do,” he wrote in 2002, “is not determined by ideology.” This is, we might note, a classic Marxist position, in which the “superstructure” of belief is subsumed beneath class and politics. Yet Halliday’s erstwhile Iranian friend Muhammad— and, indeed, so many of the events that Halliday himself witnessed—told him otherwise. And as organizations as diverse as the Nazi Party and Al Qaeda have shown, rational, politically focused strategies and utterly lunatic ideologies can, alas, coexist.

* * *

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Halliday was clear about several points: that the attacks would resonate throughout global politics, changing them for many decades to come; that Al Qaeda was a “demented” product not of ancient Islam but of modernity, and represented “the anti-imperialism of racists and murderers”; and that terrorist violence “from below,” though not directly caused by poverty, could not be severed from the grotesque inequalities that international capital had created. In 2004, he wrote, “The central challenge facing the world, in the face of 9/11 and all the other terrorist acts preceding and following it, is to create a global order that defends security while making real the aspirations to equality and mutual respect that modernity has aroused and proclaimed but spectacularly failed so far to fulfil.” This was not a question of either/or, but of and/ and. Ever the dialectician, Halliday observed that imperialism and terrorism are hardly antagonists; rather, they share a “central arrogance,” each “forcing their policies and views onto those unable to protect themselves, and proclaiming their virtue in the name of some political goal or project that they alone have defined.” And he noted with anger and sorrow how terrorism—which has killed far more people in the East than in the West —had transformed millions of people throughout the world into bewildered bystanders, creating an internationale of fear.

Afghanistan had been one of Halliday’s key areas of study, and he repeatedly pointed to several crucial facts that many Americans still resist understanding. Al Qaeda did not spring out of nowhere, much less from its beloved eighth century. It was Ronald Reagan’s arming of the anti-Soviet guerrillas— even after the Soviet pullout in early 1989, when Kabul’s communist government still stood—that was instrumental in creating the Islamist militias and warlord groups, some of which transformed themselves into the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Thus had our fanatical anti-communism led to the empowerment of “the crazed counter-revolutionaries of the Islamic right.” For Halliday there was no schadenfreude in this, no gloating, no talk of chickens coming home to roost or of blowback (a concept that fundamentally misunderstands— and moralizes—historic causation: was Sobibor the blowback from the Versailles Treaty?). But he insisted, rightly, that the crisis of 9/11 could not be understood, much less successfully confronted, in the absence of engaging this “policy of world-historical criminality and folly.”

Halliday had supported the US overthrow of both the Taliban and Saddam (in addition to military intervention against Saddam in the first Gulf War, and against Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo). He criticized three tendencies of the post-9/11 world with increasing dismay, though not quite despair: the retreat into rabid nationalism in both East and West; the Bush administration’s conduct in Iraq and in international affairs generally (“The United States is dragging the Western world…towards a global abyss,” he warned in 2004); and the left’s romance with jihad, especially in relation to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iraqi “resistance.” And indeed, it was somewhat shocking to read Tariq Ali, writing in the New Left Review in the especially bloody year of 2006, exulting in the rise of “Hamas, Hizbollah, the Sadr brigades and the Basij.… A radical wind is blowing from the alleys and shacks of the latter-day wretched of the earth.” Or, more recently, to find his colleague Perry Anderson arguing that the “priority” of Egypt’s new, post-Mubarak government should be to annul the country’s “abject” peace treaty with Israel as a way of recovering “democratic Arab dignity.” Rip van Winkle socialism, indeed.

After September 11, Halliday focused much of his intellectual energy on explaining the ways the attacks and their serial, convulsive aftermaths were decisively changing international relations. While classic internationalism—in the sense of humane solidarity with the suffering of others—was imperiled, a kind of militarized internationalism was on the rise. Conflicts that had been relatively distinct, except on a rhetorical level, had become ominously entwined and the ante of violence—especially against civilians—cruelly raised. “Events in Lebanon and Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan, Turkey and Libya are becoming comprehensible only in a broader regional and even global context,” he wrote in 2006. This new dispensation, which he dubbed the “Greater West Asian Crisis,” represented a struggle for political supremacy in a region that now included not just the Arab world and Israel but also Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, among others—including a plethora of volatile nonstate militias that are beholden to no constituencies and recognize no restraints. While some conflicts, such as Hezbollah versus Israel, might still be geographically confined, none could be politically or, because of the existence of transnational guerrillas, operationally confined. (Consider, for instance, the reported presence of Islamist fighters from Chechnya and Pakistan in Syria’s civil war.) Halliday warned that the resulting strife would be “more complex, multilayered and long-lasting than any of the individual crises, revolutions or wars that characterized the Middle East.” This was written six years ago; despite the hopefulness of the subsequent Arab Spring revolts, it would be difficult to dispute the alarming vision contained therein.

* * *

In the last decade of his life, Halliday turned, with an urgency both intellectual and moral, to the legacy of revolution in the twentieth century. His writings on this topic—precisely because they are the work of a writer deeply embedded in, and respectful of, the Marxist tradition and committed to the creation of what one can call, without cynicism, a more just world—are important for anyone who seeks to understand the history of the past century or the bewilderments of the present one. These essays make for painful reading, too—especially, I think, for leftists—in their willingness to question, and discard, comforting beliefs.

Halliday’s re-evaluation shared nothing with the smug rejection of revolution that had become so fashionable after 1989, or with the disparagement of communism as an “aberrant illusion.” To the contrary: “Millions of people struggled for and believed in this ideal,” he wrote in 2009. “As much as liberalism, communism was itself a product of modernity…and of the injustices and brutalities associated with it.” Nor had Halliday signed on to a celebration of the neoliberal world order: “The challenge that confronted Marx and Engels,” he wrote in 2008, “still stands, namely that of countering the exploitation, inequality, oppression, and waste of the contemporary capitalist order with a radical, cooperative, international political order.” Against flat-earthers like Thomas Friedman, he argued that the globalized world of the twenty-first century is more unequal than its predecessors.

And so the question of what is to be done still remained, but had to be faced with far more humility and critical acumen than ever before. If Halliday had little sympathy for talk of failed gods, he was equally impatient with the “vacuous radicalisms” and romanticized revival of tattered revolutionary ideals that permeate too much of the left, including—or perhaps especially— the anti-globalization and solidarity movements. The idealization of violence (“the second intifada has been a disaster for the Palestinians”); the eschewing of long-term political organizing in favor of dramatic but impotent protests; the failure to study the complex and blood-soaked trajectory of the past century’s revolutions; the Pavlovian identification with virtually every oppositional movement, regardless of its real political aims: all of this was, in Halliday’s view, the road to both tragedy and farce. “The anti-globalization movement has taken over a critique of capitalism without…reflecting on what actually happened in the 20th century,” he told an interviewer in 2006. “I read the stuff coming out of Porto Alegre and my hair falls out.”

For despite communism’s commitment to, and partial achievement of, certain economic and social values (including a planned economy, women’s equality and secularism)—values that, Halliday believed, must be preserved—its record of murder and authoritarianism could not be evaded. “The history of revolution in modern times is one not only of resistance, heroism and idealism,” he wrote in 2003, “but also of terrible suffering and human disaster, of chaos and incompetence under the guise of revolutionary transformation, of the distortion of the finest ideals by corrupt and murderous leaders, and of the creation of societies that are far more oppressive and inefficient than those they seek to overthrow.” What distinguished Halliday’s argument, however, was his insistence that these failures could not be rationalized as the divergence between “Marxist theory and communist practice”; twentieth-century revolution must be judged an inevitable failure, he concluded.

Thus Halliday rejected all “what if” forms of analysis: what if Lenin had not died, or Bukharin had come to power, or the Germans had turned to the left instead of to the Nazis. (These are questions that, I admit, still haunt me.) He did not believe that a more liberalized version of communism could have prevented the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his view, the key issue— one that many leftists want to avoid—is that communism’s “failure was necessary, not contingent.” This was because of four elements that were central to any communist program and, he argued, to Marxism itself: “the authoritarian concept of the State; the mechanistic idea of Progress; the myth of Revolution; and the instrumental character of Ethics.” (However, Halliday did not—at least as far as I know—ever adequately explain the relationship between the socialist tradition that grew out of the Enlightenment and the fatal flaws of communism.)

A kind of ethical wasteland was, in his view, socialism’s greatest failure. No socialist state, at least none derived from the Bolshevik revolution, had developed institutions that defended the rights of the individual or articulated any “justifiable criteria” for the use “of violence and state coercion.” The Russian Revolution had led not to a withering away of the state but, rather, to the establishment of fearsome regimes with almost unlimited powers to control, repress and terrorize their citizens. Halliday added tartly that many leftists “appear not to have noticed this…an index of how little they have learnt, or have noticed the sufferings of others. Unless and until they do, they have no right to claim that they are advancing the cause of human emancipation.”

The seriousness of such revolutionary failures, the massiveness of such defeats, led Halliday to revisit even such cherished notions as internationalism and solidarity: not as values but as practices. In a brilliant 2008 essay called “Revolutionary Internationalism and Its Perils,” he noted that internationalism, though always heralded by revolutionaries, has historically divided rather than united the left (think of the First, Second and Third Internationals, the Sino-Soviet split, etc.). And he noted a fascinating if counterintuitive process: it is nationalism, not its opposite, which has “spread across the world as a transnational force, crossing boundaries and cultures, to become the universally accepted normative code of modern politics.” At the same time, internationalism had, “in the practice of twentieth century revolutions, become an instrument of states”—had been used, that is, to further the interests and fortify the power of individual states rather than to create global unity. Within this dialectic, Halliday wrote, lies “much of the dynamic, and not a little of the tragedy, of the politics of the past century.” Stirring calls for international solidarity will have to confront this history, and these contradictions, if they wish to move from rhetoric to reality.

* * *

From the time of his break with the New Left Review (and haunted, I suspect, by the bitter fates of slaughtered friends in Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere), Halliday increasingly, and consistently, affirmed the defense of others’ rights—to civil, intellectual and political freedoms, to self-determination, to an unfettered press, to women’s equality, to human dignity and bodily integrity—as the nonnegotiable foundation of solidarity: “The concept of solidarity presupposes that of rights, and the two were so combined, in rhetoric and policy, in the French revolution.” But he opened a circa-2007 essay called “The Fate of Solidarity: Uses and Abuses” with a troubling observation: “In the course of the twentieth century something strange, and distorting, appears to have happened to the concept of ‘solidarity.’” He traced the circuitous history of solidarity—and the left’s practice of it—from the French Revolution through the era of colonialism to the anti-imperialist independence movements and the fall of communism. “Among the many ironies of this process has been the way in which solidarity has been declared with states, movements, and individuals who in their practice deny the very concepts of rights on which the solidarity is supposedly justified in the first place,” he argued. “At the same time, the ideal and practice of solidarity has been turned against those, in the communist movement, who most sought to espouse it.” To declare solidarity while ignoring human rights abuses and the suffering they entail was the worst sort of empty posturing.

For Halliday, to evade the concept of rights was to reject the very notion of a shared humanity—a tendency that, he argued, had only increased since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, a weird convergence had transpired, whereby the right (George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales) joined with Islamists, jihadis and their Western supporters in a mutually enthusiastic denigration of human rights, an embrace of “moral particularism” and a rejection of the laws of war. (From there it is a very short step—really no step at all— to waterboarding, Guantánamo, suicide bombings, and the murder of UN and humanitarian aid workers.) What made this more repellent was that each side proudly proclaimed its internationalist commitments while trampling them to death.

Halliday also questioned the very idea of revolution, and of whether it will prove to be the best way—either ethically or practically—to transform global capital in the twenty-first century. “We are much more certain about the structures, and inherent inequities, in the present system than we are about the alternatives, and the ways to get there,” he admitted in a 2003 essay. Had the traditional opposition between reform and revolution led to productive change, or was it a historic dead end? In any case, he noted, it was late modern capitalism, not revolutionary socialism, that had “formed the global vision of the future” in the 1990s; to succeed, a radical critique of the existing order would have to reverse this momentum and “wrest the initiative within a world of growing inequality and rancor.” This would necessitate the creation of new ideas, new strategies, new ethics and a new capacity for realism in place of reliance on 100-year-old truisms. Even so, it remains to be seen whether revolution—and, if so, what kind—can “fulfill the promise, in terms of economic distribution and the implementation of rights, which modernity has always propounded.” The explosions in the Arab world since December 2010 (and in Iran in 2009)—stirring and heartbreaking, inspiring and ominous—have proved how vital Halliday’s questions, hopes and doubts remain.

Fred Halliday did not live to see the democratic uprisings that have swept the Arab world, which seems like a cruel irony. (One might think of Moses gazing at the Promised Land, except that Halliday didn’t believe in promised lands.) In the days since, it is his voice—calm, knowledgeable, realistic, empathic yet sharply honest—that has been so sorely needed: to explicate the meanings of those events, to look beneath their surfaces, to place them within history, to discover their political and ethical contradictions, just as he did after 9/11. In a lovely essay written in 2005, Halliday praised his intellectual mentors, the Marxist historians Maxime Rodinson and Isaac Deutscher, for their skepticism, universalism, wisdom and independence. “Amid a world scarred by state and terrorist violence and debased public debate,” he wrote, these men—these values—are necessary “more than ever.” The same could be said of Halliday and his incisive yet generous intelligence; I never met the man, but I can’t stop missing him.

Susie Linfield, The Nation

#halliday #linfield

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derstheviking · 5 years

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Rojava and the PKK

The end of World War I (1918) signaled the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the French and British partitioning of the Ottoman Empire into distinct regions such as Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. During the following years of 1919-1922 the Allied proxy states would fight for control of the area of Turkey in the Turkish War of Independence against the Turkish Nationalist Movement who would rebel against the Allied occupation, though finally the Ottoman sultanate would fall and power would end up in the hands of Turkish general Ataturk who would lead the reforms.

Kurdish rebellions against the Ottoman Empire go back two centuries, but the modern conflict dates back to when the Society for the Rise of Kurdistan would plea on the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres for Kurdish independence in eastern Turkey. Without sovereignty, the following decades would end in Kurdish genocide.

In 1930, the Ararat rebellion would end in 5,000 to 47,000 killings of Kurdish civilians. The 1937 Dersim rebellion would end in a massacre of over 13,000 civilians (40,000 according to McDowall).

Until 1946, the Kurdish regions existed in a state of martial law. The words “Kurd”, “Kurdish”, and “Kurdistan” were banned and their ethnicity was known until 1991 officially as “mountain Turks”. Since the 1980 coup in Turkey, speaking Kurdish has been made illegal in public and private life for Kurds living in Turkey. Their language has been continually suppressed and teaching in it has been made illegal. Kurds have been tortured and Kurdish journalists, activists and politicians have been murdered by the Turkish State or turned up missing. They’ve experienced forced displacements, their villages have been destroyed and arbitrary arrests are common.

In 1974, led by Abdullah Öcalan, a group of students founded the initially Marxist-Leninist organization the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the village of Fis, Turkey. The PKK’s ideology was originally a mixture of Kurdish nationalism and revolutionary socialism, intending to create a Communist state in the region known as Kurdistan. However, later on, the PKK would change its demands in Turkey from a fully independent Kurdish state to a respect for equal rights and autonomy of governance within Turkey. The group was formed in response to mistreatment of the Kurds by the Turkish government and in opposition to capitalism.

Between 1978 and 1980, the PKK would engage in urban warfare with the Turkish state killing many police officers. But in 1984, the full-scale insurgency would begin with rural-based warfare in Turkey continuing between 1984 and 1992 and the announcement of a “Kurdish uprising”, and then again consisted of urban warfare from 1993 to 1999.

After 1980, Syria would be the base of operations for the PKK. Getting a great deal of support from the Syrian government, allowing the PKK to set up their headquarters in Damascus, by the mid-1990s, Syrian support for the PKK was declining. The group also lost its support from Saddam Hussein. Around the same time, Turkey began using harsher tactics against Kurdish fighters, weakening the organization. From 1996 to 1999, the PKK would begin using suicide bombers to carry out attacks.

In May 1994, the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War broke out in Iraqi Kurdistan between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The PKK, with presence in Iraq at the time, would support the PUK and fight against all groups opposed to the rule of the PUK in Iraqi Kurdistan including Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (up until 1995). The conflict would end up a US-led peace agreement dividing Iraqi Kurdistan into Northern and Southern regions with two separate Kurdish regional governments, each controlled by one of the opposed political parties. After the war, the PKK would move its base of operations to the Qandil Mountains on the border of Iraq and Iran.

Öcalan was found in Kenya and captured in 1999 with the support of the CIA. He was originally sentenced to death, though on the terms of prospective EU membership Turkey was forced to abolish the death penalty, and Öcalan remains in prison today. Peace was declared for a half a decade, though Turkish advances on the Kurdish territories would trigger violence again in 2004.

While in prison, Öcalan founded the libertarian socialist ideology of “democratic confederalism”. Inspired with his correspondences with founder of “communalism” and “libertarian municipalism” Murray Bookchin. Democratic confederalism would become the foundation for the constitution of Rojava when it was finally ratified in 2013.

In 2002, an offshoot of the PKK was formed to represent the ideology of democratic confederalism in Iraqi Kurdistan, known as the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK). It hasn’t been as successful as the PKK and the PYD politically, and failed to gain any seats in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament in the 2005, 2009 or 2013 elections. In May 2014, the party was prohibited from participating in any further elections in Iraqi Kurdistan in response to a demonstration by the PCDK in front of the KRG’s parliament.

As one of many opposition parties in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) was founded in 2003 distinguishing itself as the only party that supported the Qamishli uprising.

In May 2007, the Kurdistan Communities Union was formed as an umbrella organization for the PKK in Turkey, the PYD in Syria, the PJAK in Iran and the PCDK in Iraqi Kurdistan. All four parties are committed to the establishment of democratic confederalism in the greater Kurdistan region.

In 2011, the Arab Spring spread to Syria. Anti-government protests in Kurdish inhabited regions had been occurring since March 2011. The governing body that would take power in northern Syria came into being as an agreement between the Iraqi Kurdish National Council and the democratic confederalist Democratic Union Party in creating the Kurdish Supreme Committee on July 12. On July 19, the YPG would capture Kobanî, followed by Amuda and Efrîn the next day. Falling to the YPG without any major clashes, the Syrian forces retreated the fight elsewhere, and the two cooperating political parties moved in to run the captured cities. A few weeks later on August 1, Assad’s forces would be pulled into Aleppo to heel intensifying anti-government protests across the city. This opened up room for the relatively bloodless takeovers of at least parts of Qamishlo, Armude, Terbaspi and Ayn El Arab. The next day, the YPG would announce that with the exception of Qamishli and Hasaka, all Kurdish majority cities were under Kurdish control, though in Qamishli the Kurdish flag would be raised in the city and the government army stayed in their barracks. After Kurdish autonomy was gained, a social revolution took place in the territories guided by the libertarian socialist ideology democratic confederalism, with an economy rapidly transitioning to worker cooperatives, a direct democracy made up of both representatives and people’s assemblies, a constitution granting rights to the population such as religious freedom, a justice system based on “restorative justice”, and an advancement of women’s rights. Besides the well-known participation of women in the military in Rojava, the legislative bodies are also structured so that women always have at least 40% representation. One policy of YPG is the establishment of a “Women’s house” in every town and village captured. Progress has also occurred regarding the banishment of child marriages and honor killings.

In 2012, in the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, the Syrian government forces withdrew from three Kurdish regions, leaving control to local militias. Two existing underground political parties in these regions, the libertarian socialist Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the right-wing Kurdish National Council (KNC) would form the coalition government the Kurdish Supreme Committee. The constitution of Rojava would be adopted, providing basic civil liberties to all people and establishing a decentralized direct democracy, with representatives of each canton meeting in an assembly and an executive council.

The official military wing of Rojava, the YPG and its female counterpart the YPJ have taken a large military role in fighting ISIS in Syrian Civil War. Though initially established for defense purposes, Rojava has been forced to take an offensive role in combatting ISIS. In early 2015, the YPG would begin receiving air, ground and arms support by the United States and allies. Formed in October 2015, the YPG coalition with local militias is called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). In August 2016, the SDF started their campaign to unite two Kurdish regions in the north-east by defeating ISIS in Manbij located between the Rojava cantons of Kobani and Afrin.

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Storied Jerusalem Hotel Readies for Arrival of President Trump

Reuters, May 18, 2017

JERUSALEM--The King David Hotel has hosted emperors, kings, prime ministers and divas in its 85-year history and on Monday it will add another salient name to its storied annals--U.S. President Donald Trump.

Perched in the heart of Jerusalem, with sweeping views of its walled Old City, its terraces surveying manicured gardens, a swimming pool and tennis court, the King David is a byword for elegance in the city, its ornate drawing rooms, wood-paneled bars and gilt-edge mirrors echoing the 1930s.

Whether Trump, a former property magnate, and wife Melania end up in the royal suite, presidential suite or another of its pillow-stuffed rooms, chances are the decor will make them feel at home, evoking their penthouse apartment in Manhattan.

Sheldon Ritz, the hotel’s director of operations, has promised that the president, his wife, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner will receive every comfort during their one-night stay, while also guaranteeing “a lot of security”.

The hotel’s renowned chef has said they are prepared to cook Trump any kind of dish, his favorite meatloaf included, although his menu also promises veal sweetbreads, escalope and terrine of goose liver and fillet of beef with porcini sauce.

The King David was built in the 1930s by Ezra Mosseri, a wealthy Egyptian Jewish banker, who wanted to create an enduring symbol of luxury in what was then British Mandate Palestine, with the architecture evocative of the region.

Over the years it has hosted heads of state displaced from their homelands, including Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, who was driven out by Italian fascist forces, King George II of Greece, who fled the Nazis and set up a government in exile from the hotel in the 1940s, and King Alfonso XIII of Spain.

Britain’s King George V, Prince Charles and Jordan’s King Hussein have also passed through.

More recently it has welcomed six U.S. presidents, including Richard Nixon, five British prime ministers, including Winston Churchill, Russian President Vladimir Putin and actors and divas from Richard Gere to Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna.

The most dramatic--and traumatic--moments for the hotel came in the 1940s, when British forces set up their military headquarters there during the mandate of Palestine.

In July 1946, militants from the Jewish Irgun paramilitary group, bent on driving the British out of the region, bombed the hotel, killing 91 people, including Arab and Jewish staff and 28 British citizens, among them high-ranking officers.

Then-British Prime Minister Clement Attlee called it “an insane act of terrorism” and Jewish leaders sought to distance themselves from the Irgun. Israel declared independence two years later.

During his stay, Trump will hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and travel to Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He has expressed hope of restarting Middle East peace talks, although the prospects remain dim.

One lasting legacy, however, will be the opportunity to write a message and sign his name in the King David guestbook. The hotel then engraves some of the signatures of famous guests in its marble hallway--and Trump’s, Ritz said, will be added next, joining President Barack Obama and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

#Israel #King David Hotel #Jerusalem hotel

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rmildner46 · 7 years

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In the Middle East Winners Write History

“The explosion occurred at 12:47 PM. It caused the collapse of the western half of the southern wing of the hotel…91 people were killed most of them being staff of the hotel or the (British) Secretariat; 21 were first rank government officials, 49 were low level clerks, typists and messengers, employees of the hotel and canteen workers; 13 were soldiers, 3 were policemen and 5 were members of the general public…Some of the deaths and injuries occurred on the road outside the hotel and in adjacent buildings. No identifiable traces were found of 13 of the victims.” The may sound as though it happened yesterday, but in fact the event it describes occurred more than 60 years ago. It was the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July of 1946, which killed 91 people and injured 46. It was condemned as an act of terrorism by the governments Great Britain, France, the United States and the newly formed United Nations. The attack was carried out by the Irgun, a violent revolutionary group committed to the establishment of a Jewish independent state in Palestine by any means necessary. It was led at the time by Menachem Begin, who later founded the Likud Party and subsequently served as Prime Minister of Israel. The Likud Party has participated in many governments since then, including the current one, led by Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was not an isolated event. Irgun led a virtual reign of terror from 1944 through 1948 conducting attacks on Arab villages, British military installations, prisons and public markets. During its uprising, Irgun arguably invented the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) which is now the weapon of choice among Middle East terrorists. In July of 1947 Irgun lynched two British army sergeants it had kidnapped in retaliation for the execution of three members of the organization who had been convicted of murder by the British. In 1948 Irgun troops massacred 107 Arab civilians at Deir Yassin. After the creation of Israel in 1948, Irgun was merged into the Israeli Defense Force under commanding General Menachem Begin.

Irgun was not the only organization deeply committed to the establishment of the Jewish state, but it was easily the most violent, regularly earning condemnations from other Zionist organizations. The Likud Party has long claimed that Irgun is primarily responsible for the U.N. partition that created Israel and it is certainly true that Great Britain, wearied by the bloody terrorist campaign, ultimately welcomed the opportunity to turn the issue over to the U.N. But if that is true, then Irgun also must accept at least some responsibility for the extremely hostile relationship with neighboring Arabs dating from the campaign for independence. Of course the Arabs didn’t do anything to help themselves either when they welcomed the mandate establishing the state of Israel with an invasion by of the area by no less than 4 armies, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria. Jordanian forces intended to secure the west bank of the Jordan River that had been set aside for the formation of a Palestinian state. Iraq, Syria and Egypt supported by Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Yemen, meanwhile intended to prevent the establishment of the Jewish State. However, few now recall that the official Arab position was based on the U.N. Charter itself, which proclaimed that the governance of former colonial areas should be determined by the will of the people living there through a plebiscite. If a vote had taken place in Palestine where the Arab population outnumbered the Jewish population by at least 3 to 1, it seems unlikely that it would have resulted in the formation of a Jewish state.

None of this history de-legitimizes the current state of Israel, reduces its importance as an ally of the U.S. in the fragile Middle East, or excuses the intransigence of Arab states and their refusal to accept the existence of the Jewish state. But if the Israeli War of Independence had failed, the leaders of Irgun would likely have been executed and remembered, if at all, as early terrorists. But winners write history while losers are largely consigned to the scrap heap, or in the case of the Palestinians, a sort of geographical purgatory.

The so called “two state solution” dates back to a U.N. Resolution in 1974 that called for the creation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River to coexist peacefully side by side with Israel. Of course that was at the heart of the U.N. Partition in 1948 that created Israel and has been central to every international approach to resolve this now 60 year old issue. And it is not just the international community that accepts this approach. A 2013 poll found that the 2 state solution was accepted by 74% of the Palestinian population and 73% of Israel. The Palestinians want a place to call their own and Israelis understand demographics. Today, the Arab and Jewish populations in greater Israel, including the territories that would likely form a Palestinian state, are split roughly 50/50. But the Arab birth rate is twice the Jewish. Soon, the Arab population will outnumber the Jewish in greater Israel, and the nation will face a reckoning. As John Kerry recently stated, Israel can be a Jewish nation or a democratic one, but without a separate Palestinian state, it cannot be both. To remain essentially Jewish in character, it would have to deny the vote to the majority of the residents of that greater Israel and transform itself into an apartheid era South Africa, denying essential rights to the majority of the population. This is the basis of the current argument over the two state solution and by extension the Jewish settlements on the west bank

Israel has grown to become the military colossus of the Middle East. U.S. military aid, averaging $3.1 billion since 1984 has been helpful, but the Israeli army which is exceptionally well led, disciplined, motivated and equipped with modern weaponry is a success in its own right. Israel is not realistically susceptible to conventional invasion by any other Middle East power. Its vulnerability is to nuclear attack and given its relationship with the U.S., such an attack would constitute murder/suicide for the attacking nation. The U.S. has in fact been enormously supportive of Israel through the years, beginning with outsized support for the original partition that led to the creation of Israel in 1948 and continuing through the three subsequent wars that threatened Israel’s existence. In fact, it would be safe to say that without the generous support of the U.S. Israel might not exist at all. This support continued under President Obama. In 2009 Obama approved the sale of bunker buster bombs to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. In 2011 the U.S. vetoed a U.N. resolution declaring new settlements in the west bank to be illegal, despite previously stated opposition to them. Also in 2011 Obama declared that the U.S. would veto any Palestinian application for U.N. despite U.S. support for the two state solution. In 2012 Obama signed an agreement guaranteeing Israeli debt through 2016. In 2016 the U.S. signed the largest military aid package in the history of the relationship. Still, consistent with U.S. support for the two state solution, Obama consistently opposed new settlements and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has just as consistently resisted.

Benjamin Netanyahu was first elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1996. He lost his election in the parliamentary election of 1999. While Prime Minister he entered into negotiations with the PLO while he emphasized the “three nos”: no withdrawal from the Golan Heights, no discussion of the status of Jerusalem, and no negotiations under any pre-conditions. He was turned out of office after a series of personal corruption scandals and troubles in his marriage. Right wing members of parliament also accused him of being soft on the PLO. He was re-elected prime Minister in 2009 with the support of right wing and religious parties. His coalition has never accounted for as much as 50% of the vote in Parliamentary elections. Since his 2nd government he has moved steadily to the right and relied increasingly on radical religious and anti-Arab small parties. Most Americans would be horrified by many of the political positions of these parties if they knew them. Meanwhile Netanyahu has become increasingly supportive of Israeli settlements in lands west of the Jordan River that had been understood to be a part of the future Palestinian state.

Before Obama and Netanyahu, Israel and the U.S. disagreed occasionally…and privately. No longer. Lately they disagree frequently and publically. Both are committed to not just the existence, but the success of Israel. The difference appears to lie in focus. Obama’s understanding of Israel grew out of his contact with the liberal Jewish community in Chicago and his understanding of the immutable power of demographics. He firmly believes that Israel’s best chance for sustainable survival lay in following a road toward peace which by definition requires the establishment of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu believes in strength and security and no longer even pays lip service to the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which has been at the heart of every U.N. Middle East resolution since the original Partition in 1948. But the difference is personal as well. Obama is a liberal intellectual who takes a reasoned approach to problem solving, deeply resents being called anti-Israel every time U.S. policy diverges from that of Netanyahu’s government and does not appreciate being lectured to on Israeli history. Netanyahu meanwhile is a sharp elbowed visceral politician who dislikes being treated like an intellectual inferior by a liberal academic American. He is also a direct political descendant of Menachem Begin, committed to prevail by whatever means necessary. In an unheard of and very public rebuke, not mention breech of protocol, he turned the U.S. relationship with Israel into a partisan political football by accepting an invitation from the Republican Senate Majority Leader to address a joint session of Congress on the Iran nuclear issue without consulting with the President or even the State Department. He also owes his position as Prime Minister to his coalition with radical religious and nationalistic parties who publically oppose a Palestinian state and favored unlimited Jewish settlement of the West Bank. During his campaign Netanyahu made a public commitment to never dismantling even a single Jewish settlement in the West Bank, including those that had been established without required government approvals. This commitment by itself represents a permanent obstacle to peace with displaced Palestinians.

The U.S., including Barack Obama, has been unwavering and unequivocal in its support for Israel. The two countries have functioned as friends and partners on the world stage since the early days of the creation of the state of Israel. Over the years, the U.S has provided well over $100 billion in direct aid and hundreds of billions more in the form of debt guarantees, a level of commitment that surpasses that provided to other countries by many times over. Under Obama, the level of U.S. aid to Israel and security cooperation between the two countries has actually increased. In response Netanyahu has chosen to abandon the two state solution and has refused to negotiate with the Palestinians on realistic terms. Meanwhile the apparent favoritism toward Israel has complicated U.S. relations with Arab nations. Worst of all, there is no end in sight. Israel seems destined to remain in a permanent state of war with surrounding states, while its population becomes increasingly Arab. Any attempt to prod Israel toward polices that might result in peace will evoke charges of being anti-Israel, or worse anti-Semitic. It is time for Netanyahu to tell us what his strategy is. Given the demographics, where does all this go? Where is the exit ramp? Or is his only interest staying power?

The U.S. has a moral obligation to support Israel. It also has an overriding obligation to act in its own interests and in those of its general citizenry. If the actions of a government in Israel run counter to the interests of the U.S., or if the U.S. believes those actions to run counter to the long term interests of Israel itself, it has no obligation to support them. This is not being anti-Israel, or being anti-Semitic. It is demonstrating good sense. It is time for the government of Israel to show its own good sense and demonstrate that it is worthy of our ongoing support.

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brookstonalmanac · 2 years

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Events 5.25

567 BC – Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans. 240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. 1085 – Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain, back from the Moors. 1420 – Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ. 1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw. 1644 – Ming general Wu Sangui forms an alliance with the invading Manchus and opens the gates of the Great Wall of China at Shanhaiguan pass, letting the Manchus through towards the capital Beijing. 1659 – Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth of England. 1660 – Charles II lands at Dover at the invitation of the Convention Parliament, which marks the end of the Cromwell-proclaimed Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and begins the Restoration of the British monarchy. 1738 – A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners. 1787 – After a delay of 11 days, the United States Constitutional Convention formally convenes in Philadelphia after a quorum of seven states is secured. 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Battle of Carlow begins; executions of suspected rebels at Carnew and at Dunlavin Green take place. 1809 – Chuquisaca Revolution: Patriot revolt in Chuquisaca (modern-day Sucre) against the Spanish Empire, sparking the Latin American wars of independence. 1810 – May Revolution: Citizens of Buenos Aires expel Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the "May Week", starting the Argentine War of Independence. 1819 – The Argentine Constitution of 1819 is promulgated. 1833 – The Chilean Constitution of 1833 is promulgated. 1865 – In Mobile, Alabama, around 300 people are killed when an ordnance depot explodes. 1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London. 1895 – Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison. 1895 – The Republic of Formosa is formed, with Tang Jingsong as its president. 1914 – The House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Home Rule Bill for devolution in Ireland. 1925 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching human evolution in Tennessee. 1926 – Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which is in government-in-exile in Paris. 1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1938 – Spanish Civil War: The bombing of Alicante kills 313 people. 1940 – World War II: The German 2nd Panzer Division captures the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer; the surrender of the last French and British troops marks the end of the Battle of Boulogne. 1946 – The parliament of Transjordan makes Abdullah I of Jordan their Emir. 1953 – Nuclear weapons testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test. 1953 – The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston. 1955 – In the United States, a night-time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It is the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S. 1955 – First ascent of Mount Kangchenjunga: On the British Kangchenjunga expedition led by Charles Evans, Joe Brown and George Band reach the summit of the third-highest mountain in the world (8,586 meters); Norman Hardie and Tony Streather join them the following day. 1961 – Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade. 1963 – The Organisation of African Unity is established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1966 – Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches. 1968 – The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, is dedicated. 1973 – In protest against the dictatorship in Greece, the captain and crew on Greek naval destroyer Velos mutiny and refuse to return to Greece, instead anchoring at Fiumicino, Italy. 1977 – Star Wars (retroactively titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is released in theaters. 1977 – The Chinese government removes a decade-old ban on William Shakespeare's work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. 1978 – The first of a series of bombings orchestrated by the Unabomber detonates at Northwestern University resulting in minor injuries. 1979 – John Spenkelink, a convicted murderer, is executed in Florida; he is the first person to be executed in the state after the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1976. 1979 – American Airlines Flight 191: A McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, killing all 271 on board and two people on the ground. 1981 – In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 1982 – Falklands War: HMS Coventry is sunk by Argentine Air Force A-4 Skyhawks. 1985 – Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people. 1986 – The Hands Across America event takes place. 1997 – A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koroma. 1999 – The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details China's nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades. 2000 – Liberation Day of Lebanon: Israel withdraws its army from Lebanese territory (with the exception of the disputed Shebaa farms zone) 18 years after the invasion of 1982. 2001 – Erik Weihenmayer becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, with Dr. Sherman Bull. 2002 – China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait, with the loss of all 225 people on board. 2008 – NASA's Phoenix lander touches down in the Green Valley region of Mars to search for environments suitable for water and microbial life. 2009 – North Korea allegedly tests its second nuclear device, after which Pyongyang also conducts several missile tests, building tensions in the international community. 2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show. 2012 – The SpaceX Dragon becomes the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station. 2013 – Suspected Maoist rebels kill at least 28 people and injure 32 others in an attack on a convoy of Indian National Congress politicians in Chhattisgarh, India. 2013 – A gas cylinder explodes on a school bus in the Pakistani city of Gujrat, killing at least 18 people. 2018 – The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes enforceable in the European Union. 2018 – Ireland votes to repeal the Eighth Amendment of their constitution that prohibits abortion in all but a few cases, choosing to replace it with the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.

#Events

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jacobsvoice · 4 years

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The Palestinian Refugee Scam

Can history be undone? The correct answer is: of course not. Surely what happened happened, notwithstanding any subsequent discomfort with the result. Not so fast.

For example: Who are the rightful inheritors of Palestine? Indeed, where is “Palestine”? These questions, embedded in discussions (and inevitable disagreements) for the past century, have been thrust to the forefront with announcements by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding the planned extension of Israeli sovereignty over settlements in Biblical Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Jordan Valley.

Prompted by the centennial anniversary of the San Remo accords a long dormant set of flawed assumptions has surfaced. Those 1920 accords, ratified by the League of Nations and never rescinded, affirmed the promise three years earlier by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour that “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The San Remo agreement became, and remained, the international affirmation of Jewish sovereignty over the land west (and originally also east) of the Jordan River. But the United Nations, with its long history of discomfort often shading into overt hostility toward Israel, has yet to recognize this embedded precedent of international law.

Yishai Fleisher, spokesman for the Hebron Jewish community, recently cited “This momentous occasion, on which the international community recognized and then ratified the inalienable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel for the first time in modern history.” But one year later, at the Cairo Conference, Great Britain excluded Transjordan from the territory comprising the Jewish national home and bestowed it as a gift to King Abdullah for his newly invented Kingdom of Jordan.

Israeli scholar Efraim Karsh has affirmed the impact of the San Remo Conference on international law and, by extension, its geographical and legal boundaries for the nascent Jewish state. But the 1948 partition of Palestine that followed Israel’s Independence War transformed Biblical Judea and Samaria into Jordan’s “West Bank.” So it remained for nearly two decades until the Six-Day War returned Israel to the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people. The partition boundaries were erased.

Karsh has carefully scrutinized another, and enduring, aspect of the struggle in his Palestine Betrayed (2010). In the course of the Arab attempt to annihilate the fledging Jewish State in 1947-48 there was a massive flight of Palestinian Arabs. Beginning in Haifa, home to equal numbers of Arabs and Jews, local Arabs disregarded the effort of Jewish authorities – especially the mayor – to persuade them to remain in their homes. Seventy thousand Arabs (half the Haifa population) fled to the north. The same number fled from Jaffa.

The number of Arabs who abandoned Palestine has long been disputed – and, the better to blame Israel, vastly inflated. The New York Times, for example, repeatedly revised the fictitious refugee number upward: 870,000 (1953); “nearly 906,000” (1955); 925,000 (1957); “nearly a million” (1967). But according to Karsh’s meticulously documented research, the total number of Palestinian refugees in 1947-48 was between 583,121 and 609,071. A terrible tragedy to be sure, and one for which the Arab nations that waged war to annihilate the fledgling Jewish state must bear responsibility. But it was, as Karsh pointedly writes, “a self-inflicted tragedy.”

In 1949 the United Nations Relief and Works Administration was established to support Arabs ”whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948”. A laudable endeavor at its inception, over time it has become a farce. As though refugees never die, thereby inevitably reducing the number of beneficiaries, UNRWA (by its own calculation) now provides assistance to more than 1.5 million “refugees” and their descendants. Last August the Trump administration had the good sense to halt UNRWA funding. By then there were as many UNRWA employees as living Palestinian refugees.

Israel certainly can – and arguably should – invite the return of some thirty thousand genuine Palestinian refugees, a number guaranteed to decline over time. The only objections, ironically, are likely to come from UNRWA and its Arab minions. They desperately need Palestinian “refugees” to sustain their unyielding public relations war against Israel and, perhaps more important, to protect UNRWA bank accounts that assure their own salaries. But it is long past time to close this fraudulent charade that lacerates Israel for crimes that it did not commit.

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Print to Fit: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel 1896-2016, chosen by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer as a Mosaic Best Book for 2019.

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newestbalance · 6 years

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Prince William starts first British royal visit to Israel,…

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prince William began the first official visit by a British royal to Israel and the Palestinian Territories on Monday, facing the challenge of navigating deep political and religious divides in a Holy Land once ruled by Britain.

Britain’s Prince William disembarks from a plane upon his arrival at the Ben Gurion International Airport, near Lod, Israel June 25, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

William, a 36-year-old grandson of Queen Elizabeth and second in line to the throne, will see religious sites, honor Holocaust victims and meet Jewish and Arab youths, and Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

A spokesman for the prince, acknowledging the “well-known” and “complex challenges” in the Middle East, said William’s tour, like other visits abroad by members of the British royal family, will be non-political.

But tradition and history will mark many of his stops in an area fought over for centuries and once administered by colonial Britain in the final days of its empire.

In Jerusalem, the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the prince will view its walled Old City from the Mount of Olives during his four-day trip.

William, who flew into Israel from Jordan, will also visit the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and the tomb of his great-grandmother, Princess Alice, who sheltered a Jewish family in Greece during World War Two.

Britain’s Prince William enters a vehicle upon his arrival at the Ben Gurion International Airport, near Lod, Israel, June 25, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

“A HISTORIC VISIT”

In remarks to legislators on Monday before William’s arrival in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “we will of course welcome the prince” on “a historic visit”, and he paid tribute to Princess Alice, as one of the “righteous among the nations” who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

William was not accompanied to the region by his wife, Kate, who gave birth to a son, Louis, in April. The couple have two other children, George, aged four, and Charlotte, two.

The visit comes just after Israel marked its 70th anniversary of independence and amid surges of violence along the Gaza border, including rocket attacks by Palestinian militants and Israeli air raids.

William will stay at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. Once the headquarters of British authorities, it was bombed by Jewish militants in 1946. More than 90 people were killed.

Britain captured Palestine from the Ottoman empire in 1917 during World War One and administered the territory under international mandate until 1948, pulling out a day before Israel declared independence.

Slideshow (8 Images)

The trip is at the behest of the British government. Until now it had been British policy not to make an official royal visit until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

“EXOTIC ECCENTRIC CURIOSITY”

“In a sense, in challenging times it’s all the more important that friends of the region show their interest, show their engagement for the long term, and I think that’s exactly what Prince William will be able to do,” Britain’s Consul General in Jerusalem, Philip Hall, told Reuters.

William begins the first full day of his visit, on Tuesday, at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial in Jerusalem to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Accompanied by Britain’s chief rabbi, he will lay a wreath in its Hall of Remembrance and meet two Holocaust survivors who were given refuge in Britain as children.

The prince also meets Netanyahu on Tuesday and will see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank during the trip.

William’s itinerary includes visits to Tel Aviv and adjacent Jaffa, where he will meet young Jews and Arabs and view high-tech products made by Israeli start-ups.

Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, said some Israelis feel resentment over what he described as the British royal family’s boycott of Israel over the years.

“I don’t expect many Israelis to stream out on to the streets and greet the car of Prince William. He will be treated as some celebrity of course, obviously, maybe some exotic eccentric curiosity,” Segev told Reuters.

Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell; Editing by Maayan Lubell and Andrew Heavens

The post Prince William starts first British royal visit to Israel,… appeared first on World The News.

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Prince William starts first British royal visit to Israel,…

Britain’s Prince William disembarks from a plane upon his arrival at the Ben Gurion International Airport, near Lod, Israel June 25, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

But tradition and history will mark many of his stops in an area fought over for centuries and once administered by colonial Britain in the final days of its empire.

In Jerusalem, the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the prince will view its walled Old City from the Mount of Olives during his four-day trip.

Britain’s Prince William enters a vehicle upon his arrival at the Ben Gurion International Airport, near Lod, Israel, June 25, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

“A HISTORIC VISIT”

William was not accompanied to the region by his wife, Kate, who gave birth to a son, Louis, in April. The couple have two other children, George, aged four, and Charlotte, two.

William will stay at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel. Once the headquarters of British authorities, it was bombed by Jewish militants in 1946. More than 90 people were killed.

Slideshow (8 Images)

The trip is at the behest of the British government. Until now it had been British policy not to make an official royal visit until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

“EXOTIC ECCENTRIC CURIOSITY”

The prince also meets Netanyahu on Tuesday and will see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank during the trip.

William’s itinerary includes visits to Tel Aviv and adjacent Jaffa, where he will meet young Jews and Arabs and view high-tech products made by Israeli start-ups.

Tom Segev, an Israeli historian, said some Israelis feel resentment over what he described as the British royal family’s boycott of Israel over the years.

Additional reporting by Stephen Farrell; Editing by Maayan Lubell and Andrew Heavens

The post Prince William starts first British royal visit to Israel,… appeared first on World The News.

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New world news from Time: Prince William Is Visiting the Middle East. Here’s What to Know About Britain’s Controversial Role in Shaping the Region

When Prince William arrives in Tel Aviv on Monday for a trip that will include time in Israel and the West Bank, he will become the first-ever member of the British royal family to undertake an official visit to those places. For a region with a long history of controversial British involvement, that’s a significant milestone.

William’s spokesperson says the visit is “non-political,” in keeping with the royal family’s ceremonial constitutional role. But for people across the region, the visit will carry political undertones, not least because — alongside engagements to play soccer with schoolchildren and help refugees in the West Bank — he is scheduled to meet with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. And the visit comes at a time of increased tensions, just months after deadly clashes on the Gaza border and President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

It is an area of the globe that cannot escape its history, a history in which Britain has played a major part. So, on the eve of what the British Foreign Office hopes will be a bridge-building tour, here is a short guide to Britain’s complicated role in the modern history of the region.

The Balfour Declaration

It was an agreement signed over 100 years ago, but the 1917 Balfour Declaration is still cited today as one of the defining factors in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The declaration, in the form of a letter from the U.K. foreign secretary James Balfour to a prominent Zionist, Lord Rothschild, committed Britain to supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The Zionist movement had grown in the late 19th century as advocates spread the idea that the Jewish people, too long persecuted in Europe, formed a nation that should have its own state, and that such a state should be located in its Biblical homeland of Israel. At that time, that land was under the control of the ailing Ottoman Empire, which would collapse following defeat in World War I. In 1916, as it became clear that such an outcome was approaching, Britain had struck a secret agreement with France over how to divide up the Ottoman Empire’s levantine territories. It was in this climate that the Balfour Declaration was signed.

By 1920, the drawing-up of the British Mandate for Palestine, by command of the newly established League of Nations, formalized British control over what is now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This meant that the ideas expressed in the declaration could be turned into reality.

While the British now ruled the area, the Mandate explicitly gave Britain the responsibility to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine, as it became known, came into existence in 1923; though Israel did not yet exist, hopeful Jews quickly began arriving from Europe. They joined a small Jewish population that had lived in the area under Ottoman rule and that had already begun to swell with early waves of Zionist immigration; in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the region was about 8% Jewish.

However, while the victorious powers had been deciding what to do about Ottoman territory, the Palestinian people were not consulted. When new arrivals said they had been told the land was to be theirs, the people who already lived there were understandably hostile. Already by 1929, disputes over land — specifically Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall — were so deep they resulted in violence. In one deadly week that August, rioting Arabs murdered over 100 Jews, while over 100 Arabs were killed by British police trying to suppress the unrest.

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The White Paper of 1939

Fast forward to 1939, and Britain realized it had a problem largely of its own making: nothing it could do would satisfy both the Arabic and Jewish populations.

A plan to divide the land into two states was rejected by both sides; between 1936 and 1939, an ongoing Arab revolt demanded a complete end to Jewish migration to Israel. In response to this unrest, British lawmakers issued the White Paper of 1939, which limited Jewish migration to 75,000 over five years.

This attempt to mitigate the problem was unfortunately timed to coincide with Hitler’s increasing persecution of the Jewish people in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Britain’s policy infuriated Jews, who continued to migrate regardless of the quotas, and also infuriated Palestinians, who saw no guarantees of long-term self-determination. “If immigration is continued,” the paper stated, “the situation in Palestine may become a permanent source of friction amongst all peoples in the Near and Middle East.”

In 1947, with immigration quotas still in existence, the SS Exodus, a boat carrying holocaust survivors who intended to migrate to Mandatory Palestine, was boarded by British forces, who killed three and returned the rest to refugee camps in Europe.

Having had their plan for dividing Mandatory Palestine into two states rejected, the British government decided in the White Paper of 1939 that an independent Palestine, jointly administered by Arabs and Jews, should be established within 10 years. The sharing of power, it said, should be done “in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.”

Britain tries to disengage

The Second World War forced Britain to put the issue of Palestine to one side soon after the White Paper was issued. But when peace arrived in Europe, the question could no longer be ignored.

After the war, a Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine put pressure on the British. In 1946, militants bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Britain’s administrative headquarters, killing 91 people. Prince William is scheduled to stay at the hotel during his trip.

In 1947, a war-weary Britain decided to pull out. It handed responsibility for deciding the future of Mandatory Palestine to the United Nations, which had recently been established. (The decision to pull out of India was made the same year.) The U.N. came up with a plan to divide the territory, but it fared little better than Britain had. Yet, even though the U.N.’s plan to divide up the territory was rejected by Arab side — it was seen as too generous for offering 56.5% to the Jewish side, which is far less land than is covered by the current borders of Israel — Israeli politicians moved ahead with it on their own anyway, and in May of 1948 publicly issued a declaration of independence.

The Arab side was outraged. The following day — May 15, 1948 — Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq invaded Israel. With British-Israeli relations still soured following the insurgency, the Arabs enjoyed tacit British support. The Royal Air Force engaged in skirmishes with Israeli planes, but Britain never fully committed to the war. Nor did its support extend to doing anything to help the roughly 700,000 who were forced to leave their homes during the war, in what has become known as the Palestinian Exodus or “Nakba,” meaning catastrophe. (Throughout the 1920s, much of the violence in Mandatory Palestine was perpetrated by Arabs against Jewish settlers. By the 1930s that balance had reversed.)

At the end of ten months of fighting, Israel had increased its land area by a third — meaning that its borders now extended to land originally allocated to Palestinians by the U.N. — and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip, while Jordan controlled the West Bank. Those borders stood until 1967.

After the war, Britain recognized Israel as a state. The Palestinian government, which had just been set up to govern Gaza, did not receive separate diplomatic recognition from Britain — and never has.

Britain’s lingering role

Britain had, officially at least, left the area. But it also left a mark.

Palestinians resented Britain for parceling out their land to Israel, while Israelis resented Britain for what they saw as halfhearted support of a project that the U.K. had once promised to see through.

And even as a distant observer, no longer directly involved in the management of the region, Britain’s role remained complicated in the years that followed. Britain sold Israel weapons, for example, which would be used in a series of wars that led to the expansion of Israel’s power and territory. And such controversial arms sales continue, despite the fact that in 2016 Britain supported a U.N. resolution that stated that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank was in “flagrant violation” of international law.

On the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration last year, Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed Netanyahu to London and said that she was “proud of [Britain’s] pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel.” She also affirmed Britain’s “renewed resolve to support a lasting peace that is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.” And, following violence at the border in April and May of this year, she called for an independent inquiry into what she called “deeply troubling” use of force by Israel. Those riots, at the Gaza border, ended with the deaths of 123 protesting Palestinians and left only one Israeli wounded.

However, soon after, new figures revealed that British arms sales to Israel had reached a record high in 2017.

The press release announcing Prince William’s visit refers to “The Occupied Palestinian Territories,” the internationally recognized umbrella term for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are occupied by Israel. In the Hebrew version of that press release, however, the Prince’s office dropped the word “occupied.” Seventy years after Britain learned the difficulties of the region the hard way, the discrepancy shows that as much as Prince William might like, nothing in the region is “non-political” — especially if you represent the United Kingdom.

June 25, 2018 at 02:27PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com

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