The death of Ms. Marvel!

The Amazing Spider-Man #26

Amazing Spider-man #24 (2023)

Marvel

From Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #025

Art by Kaare Andrews, John Romita Jr. and Marcio Menyz

Written by Zeb Wells

Barrack Obama

Winston Churchill

Yitzhak Rabin

Benjamin Disraeli

I hope Benjamin Netanyahu kills himself soon!

Israel: Netanyahu și Ben-Gvir, complici la asasinarea fostului premier Ițhak Rabin, afirmă liderul Partidului Muncii

Israel: Netanyahu și Ben-Gvir, complici la asasinarea fostului premier Ițhak Rabin, afirmă liderul Partidului Muncii

“Merav Michaeli este gata să facă orice pentru a fi aleasă”, spun liderii de dreapta Liderul Partidului Laburist, Merav Michaeli (foto), l-a acuzat pe liderul opoziției, Benjamin Netanyahu, că este complice la asasinarea fostului premier Ițhak Rabin. Vorbind la o conferință înaintea ceremoniei de comemorare de sâmbătă pentru a marca cea de-a 27-a aniversare a asasinării lui Yitzhak Rabin, Merav…

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21 Nov 2023

Joshua Leifer.

Extract: On a dark October night in 1995, Netanyahu stood on a balcony overlooking Jerusalem’s Zion Square. A banner reading “Death to Arabs” had been unfurled before him. An inflamed crowd of tens of thousands stood below him. Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister at the time, was pushing for a negotiated settlement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and this was a protest organised by the Oslo Accords’ rightwing opponents. At the time, Netanyahu was the 46-year-old elected leader of Israel’s rightwing Likud party. He was widely seen as a brash new face in a tired political scene still dominated by veterans of Israel’s founding.

A savvy political operator, Netanyahu had staked his political future on opposing the Oslo peace process. That summer, he had joined a demonstration that featured a mock funeral procession for Rabin, replete with a coffin and a noose, where protesters chanted “Death to Rabin”. In the streets of Jerusalem that October night, demonstrators brandished signs denouncing Rabin as a traitor. They held aloft pictures of him in the uniform of the Nazi SS, and in PLO chair Yasser Arafat’s keffiyeh. They chanted “in blood and fire we will expel Rabin”, and, again, “Death to Rabin”.

One month later, a religious nationalist law student named Yigal Amir fired two shots into Rabin’s back, killing him and the vision of territorial compromise he represented. Outside the hospital where Rabin’s death was announced, a crowd of the prime minister’s supporters chanted “Bibi is a murderer”. It was, of course, Amir who pulled the trigger. But Netanyahu was among the most prominent figures who had fuelled the atmosphere of violence in which Amir did the deed.

In 1996, the Labor party leader and Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, called elections in the hope of reaffirming a popular mandate for the Oslo peace process. According to the polls, it was a safe bet. Netanyahu’s popularity had begun to flag in the aftermath of Rabin’s assassination. But after a string of suicide bombings in the months before the May elections, Netanyahu’s fortunes began to improve. He hammered Peres on the perils of territorial compromise, framed his dovish opponent as weak and warned that Peres “would divide Jerusalem”. By a threadbare margin – less than 1% of the vote – Netanyahu staged a surprise upset. He became the youngest prime minister in Israel’s history.

I Support A 2 State Solution

I support the 2 state solution:

Palestinians get Palestine, and israelis return to their original countries.

Every single Israeli prime minister is from Eastern Europe.

They have no connection to Palestine whatsoever.

David Ben-Gurion – Poland

Moshe Sharett – Russian Empire

Levi Eshkol – Russian Empire

Yigal Allon – Belarus

Golda Meir – Ukraine

Yitzhak Rabin – Eastern European

Yitzhak Shamir – Poland / Belarus

Shimon Peres – Poland

Benjamin Netanyahu – Poland

Ehud Barak – Lithuania

Ariel Sharon – Georgia

Ehud Olmert – Ukraine/ Russia

Naftali Bennett – America / Europe

Yair Lapid – Serbia / Hungary

Israelis are white European colonizers who came to Palestine to steal land and use religion as an excuse.

The US and UK support them so they keep the Arab world in chaos (divide and conquer) and have an illegal military outpost on someone else’s land.

Richard Medhurst

Image: “The Germans Destroyed Our Families and Homes. Don’t You Destroy Our Hopes.”

Effectively, Netanyahu's entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life's work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party's Knesset members in March 2019.

“This is part of our strategy - to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

—BENJAMIN NETANYAHU actively supported Hamas, to sow division amongst Palestinians and undermine a Two State Solution

Another Chotiner interview, another official makes an idiot of himself and lets on far more than he should have. I honestly don't know how Chotiner manages to do this again and again, have these people just not read any of his previous interviews? It's not like his questions are particularly pointed. I suppose he simply gives people enough rope.

What I’ve been struck by in the last few months is the willingness of the Biden Administration to be humiliated by the Israelis. And I’m not talking about this in a moral or ethical sense. Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, takes a trip to Tel Aviv and the Israelis embarrass him by announcing land seizures in the West Bank during the visit. Stuff like this has happened multiple times. Or Netanyahu, responding to Biden saying he “has a red line” around Rafah, defies him publicly and even says he has his own “red line.” I’m surprised the Administration doesn’t have a little bit more pride. I keep thinking, even if they don’t want to change the policy, they must be having some sort of human reaction to— Oh, I’m sure that’s right. When Bill Clinton emerges from his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, in June of 1996, Clinton explodes: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” James Baker banned Netanyahu from the State Department when he was deputy foreign minister. This is part of what I call the system, the structure of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Someone might say, “Why is the most powerful country in human history essentially taking orders from a country that relies on it for aid? What exactly is going on here?” I’ve been looking at the U.S.-Israeli relationship for decades. I left the government in 2003, during the second Bush Administration. I’d been in government since Jimmy Carter. There was a time when someone could say with a straight face that the three ingredients that made the relationship were a high coincidence of values, a high coincidence of interest, and a strong base of domestic support. During the past fifteen to twenty years, many of which are under Benjamin Netanyahu’s purview as Prime Minister, the value affinity, the perception that Israel shares common values with us, is under more stress. No President I ever worked for sought a major conflict or confrontation with Israeli Prime Ministers. They sought to manage rather than to confront. The practical reality is that if you want to get anything done, even if it involves tensions and pressure, you have to find a way to work with, rather than against, the Israeli government. My analysis has now been tested six months into the worst Israeli-Palestinian crisis that we’ve ever experienced. I just worry about a situation where we throw up our hands and say, “Well, the United States, the most powerful country on earth, has no choice but to keep arming a country that’s starving people.” But, Isaac, look, just between you and me— It’s an interview, but sure. The question is: why? I’ve offered you the best explanation based on literally twenty-seven years of watching and participating in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. I can’t explain it. I think your question is a really good one.

[...]

You’re saying you have no investment in one analysis or another. I could be wrong, but when I was listening to you talk, and you discussed the horrors of October 7th, I sensed an emotion in your voice that I haven’t heard at any other time in this conversation. I don’t want to criticize that, but I do wonder if the people who make policy in America don’t have that same emotion when it comes to Palestinian lives. Do you think that’s fair? I think it’s fair to say, yes, that America and Americans have a pro-Israeli sensibility. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Clinton wrote in his memoir that he loved Yitzhak Rabin as he loved no man, rarely loved any other man, which is extraordinary. I watched Clinton grieve in the wake of Rabin’s murder. And when Biden gave the speech on October 10th, you watched the tears well up in his eyes. He talked about the black hole of loss. He’s conflated the tragedies in his own personal life with what Israelis felt on that day. Yes, that’s very moving, but there is another kind of loss going on now which he apparently can’t conflate with his own experience. Oh, if you’re asking me: Do I think that Joe Biden has the same depth of feeling and empathy for the Palestinians of Gaza as he does for the Israelis? No, he doesn’t, nor does he convey it. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

Christ.

Until this month, Bibi Netanyahu was a HŪGE fanboy of Hamas. Their relationship goes back decades. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory. Much of the information about this comes from mainstream Israeli media and high ranking Israeli former officials.

Here are excerpts from an in-depth article at the CBC – Canada's public broadcaster.

Israelis don't agree on much, especially lately, but polling shows they mostly agree that Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas's onslaught on October 7. The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace. "There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground." "(Hamas and Netanyahu) are mutually reinforcing, in the sense that they provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution," Zonszein told CBC News from Tel Aviv.

Bibi and Hamas could be called "frenemies".

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister." In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

The Bibi-Hamas relationship goes back almost 30 years. In some ways, Hamas helped put Bibi in power in the first place.

Netanyahu first came to power in the 1996 election that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords. Early polls showed Rabin's successor Shimon Peres comfortably ahead. Determined to sabotage Oslo, Hamas embarked on a ruthless suicide bombing campaign that helped Netanyahu pull ahead of Peres and win the election on May 29, 1996. Today, some of the same extremists who called for Rabin's death hold power in Netanyahu's government.

A reminder that the current Israeli government led by Netanyahu is the most far right in Israel's history. Netanyahu filled it with extremists, religious fanatics, and virulent ethno-nationalists in order to stay in power.

Just two weeks before Rabin's assassination, a young settler extremist posed for the cameras with a Cadillac hood ornament he said he had stolen from Rabin's car. "Just like we got to this emblem," he said, "we could get to Rabin." Today, that young man, Itamar Ben Gvir, is 45 years old and has eight Israeli criminal convictions — including convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. Once he was rejected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for his extremist views. Now, Israel's police must answer to him as Benjamin Netanyahu's minister of national security.

Imagine how a second Trump administration would be and you get a hint of what Bibi's pre-October 7th cabinet was like.

The Bibi-Hamas connection only gets worse.

Netanyahu's hawkish defence minister Avigdor Liberman was the first to report in 2020 that Bibi had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the IDF's officer in charge of Gaza, Herzi Halevi, to Doha to "beg" the Qataris to continue to send money to Hamas. "Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas," the right-wing leader complained. A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."

Yep, Bibi actually had a bag man deliver cash to Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority's Ahmed Majdalani accused the Qatari envoy of carrying money to Hamas "like a gangster." "The PLO did not agree to the deal facilitating the money to Hamas that way," he said.

Netanyahu fancies himself as a clever Machiavellian playing one side against the other. He has even bragged of this to members of his party.

On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority, according to the Jerusalem Post: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported. "The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Of course Bibi was ultimately being too clever by half.

Netanyahu insisted that neither the money nor the construction material given to Hamas would be diverted to military purposes. But today, the IDF finds itself showing how Hamas has done exactly that — by diverting and converting civilian funds and materials to warlike purposes. The military tried to warn him at the time, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Ma'ariv newspaper. He said Netanyahu acted "in total opposition to the national assessment of the National Security Council, which determined that there was a need to disconnect from the Palestinians and establish two states."

A lot of radical chic Hamas fans in Western countries will undoubtedly try to obscure the fact that they are cheering the same group which a far right Israeli politician (until recently) has been lavishing with tons of cash.

And the Bibi-Hamas connection is a reminder that while far right politicians in many countries like to portray themselves as tough on security, they will usually put their craven lust for power above all.

Amazing Spider-man #24 (2023)

Marvel

From Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 6 #024

Art by John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna and Marcio Menyz

Written by Zeb Wells

Is Hamas on the Right side of History?

Hamas' 'Offensive' on Israel, back on Oct. 7th, had The West crying Foul! The days following the assault brought News Stories of concert goers being gunned down, Women raped, Holocaust Survivors assaulted, & babies beheaded. Israel had the support of The West as they began an aerial assault on Gaza, & prepared for a massive ground campaign. After weeks of relentless bombing on residential neighborhoods & daily reports of Human Rights Violations, Israel is losing face. Despite worldwide protests calling for a Cease- Fire, Netanyahu's Administration is deadset on their Agenda to eradicate Hamas.

The carnage in Gaza has made some uneasy, but The Biden Administration continues to be Israel's 'Ride Or Die'. State Dept. Director of Congressional /Public Affairs, Josh Paul & Director the NY Office of The U.N., Craig Mokhiber both resigned in protest, but The Beat goes on... Secretary Of State Anthony Blinken went to Israel to discuss a 'Humanitarian Pause', but The U.S. was the only Member to vote No in the U.N. Security Council's measure to call for a Cease- Fire in Gaza. The U.S.'s lone vote was enough to stop the measure. Meanwhile, Joe Biden wants to send Israel another $14.1B in 'Aid' & $100M in Humanitarian Aid for Palestinians in Gaza. Mike Johnson's House passed a Bill offering Israel $14.3B in Aid, but $0 for the Palestinians; Republicans believe that Hamas will use the money to reinforce their position.

Israel, The U.S. & The E.U. refer to Hamas as a Terrorist Group, but like it or not, they are the Legal Government of Gaza. As the Representative of the Palestinians of Gaza, they have a Legal Right to defend their citizens. Muslim Leaders that never showed support for Hamas, are now speaking out in Solidarity. Egyptian President El- Sissi, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, & Turkish President Erdogan have all expressed support for Hamas; Erdogan called them Mujahideen, or Holy Warriors. Following the Incident @ the Dagestani Airport, President Erdogan offered stronger critique of Israel's Humanitarian Violations. Ayatollah Khamenei & Hezbollah Secretary- General Hassan Nasrallah have both threatened Engagement, if Israel continues their bombardment of Gaza.

Several Independent Correspondents & 'Experts' on The Region have offered alternative views to the Mainstream Media Narrative. All have described Israel as an Apartheid State & Gaza as an Open Air Prison, or a Concentration Camp. They have gone about the business of debunking some of the Stories that initially made News. The 1st to be debunked, was the Story of upwards of 40 Israeli babies getting beheaded by Hamas Soldiers. To date, the youngest Israeli victim listed, is 3Yrs Old. These Men are devout Muslims, so the Stories of raping Women & abusing Holocaust Survivors are also proving false. Footage of Hamas' transfer of 2 Elderly Women shows them being gentle; one of the ladies said 'shalom' to her captor as they parted company.

Of the many Experts that spoke on Israel's War on Gaza, Miko Peled, the son of an Israeli General & Former Marine Corps Officer Scott Ritter stand out. Miko gives Us a History of Israeli Zionism, & the goal of a Greater Israel. Scott gives insight into Israel's Security & Intelligence capabilities. According to Miko Peled, Israeli Leadership was Zionist from The Beginning. The Goal, has always been 'A Jewish State'. Leaders from David Ben- Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu have All worked to this end. Yitzhak Rabin tried to find a compromise, & was assassinated for making the attempt. The Israeli Government has been consistently building illegal Settlements ever since. Their zeal for territory mirrors the Tribes of The Old Testament.

Scott Ritter has given several interviews since the initial attack. He tends to look @ the 'War On Gaza' from a tactical perspective. From this angle, Hamas carried out a very effective operation. It appears that they had a Plan, & it was carried out in a way that caught The IDF completely off guard. He contests the stories about hundreds of concert goers being gunned down by Hamas. Ritter says that according to his sources on the ground, it was 'Friendly Fire'. The IDF were not prepared for the assault & overreacted; Survivors said that Soldiers were shooting recklessly into the crowd. Israel is focusing on a narrative of Hamas' unspeakable brutality, to mask unpreparedness & inefficiency.

According to Scott Ritter, Israel doesn't have a Battle Plan for Gaza, that's why the focus has been on bombing it to dust. We're being led to believe that Israel is softening up Hamas, & will send in ground troops to 'finish them off'. The problem w/ that Plan, according to Ritter, is the unpreparedness of The IDF. 300,000 'Reserve' Soldiers have been called to Duty, but how many are Battle Ready? Most haven't served in years. Ritter questions their ability to strap on the necessary gear, & actually Run from place to place. He postulates that the IDF will make small excursions into Gaza, mainly for Political Theater, but will not plan a large scale Assault.

Military Minds, like Miko Peled & Col. Douglas McArthur have talked about Israeli Security & Intelligence, but Scott Ritter has been particularly critical of both. He calls Mossad 'A Joke', giving several examples where they were ineffective- starting w/ the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Ritter says that Hamas' Assault on Oct. 7th was well planned & executed, but it only proved how clueless Israeli Intelligence really is. He goes on to say that unlike The IDF, Hamas has been fighting non-stop. They are a Battle Ready group prepared to engage, while most Israelis are filling a military requirement. Palestinians are willing to die, while The Israelis are scared to die.

The Zionists appear single minded in their desire to 'turn Gaza into a Parking Lot'. All of the Military Minds interviewed agree that this works in Hamas' favor. The IDF aren't prepared for Gaza's network of tunnels, let alone the terrain. Mainstream Media paints Hamas as unsophisticated barbarians, but their Assault was very sophisticated. Don't think that they designed a Plan w/o considering Best & Worse case scenarios. The Pentagon has been trying to advise Netanyahu on the pitfalls of Urban Warfare, but Bibi doesn't appear to be listening. Meanwhile, the World is watching & responding.

Israel's incessant bombing & Human Rights Violations run the risk of galvanizing the Muslim World. U.S. Politicians have tried to include Iran from The Beginning, but Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, & now Turkey are speaking out against their actions. Israel & The West have tried to keep Sunni & Shi'a Tribes @ odds w/ each other, but it's not working now. The incident @ the Dagestani Airport shows that 'Turks' are in solidarity w/ Palestinians. This motivated Erdogan; as the leader of the largest Military Force in the Region, Israel & The West should pay attention. His presence resonates throughout Western Asia. Hezbollah has traded missiles w/ Israel over the last few weeks, but No One expects Netanyahu to escalate.

Doomsday types are forecasting World War III. According to them, the Muslim World will react to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians; The U.S. will respond, & The West will be obliged to back The U.S. & Israel. Others believe that public outrage is making a 2 State solution a viable option. South Afrika & Bolivia have ended Relations & closed Israeli Embassies. The Global South is in Solidarity w/ Gaza... We have to take a closer look @ Hamas. Gaza is being leveled, & over 1.5 Million Palestinians have been forced from their Homes; over 75Yrs after being forced from their Homes the 1st time. The World tends to forget that Gaza Residents were already Refugees.

Looking @ the Big Picture, Hamas made a major chess move. Their Assault exposed Israel's fundamental weakness & accomplished 2 Goals:

Getting Israel to overreact

Stopping the Abraham Accords

It is pretty Machiavellian in Design, but if Hamas carried out their Assault w/ the anticipation that Israel would overreact, what does that say about their ability to Steal the Narrative? Bibi Netanyahu did his 'Bull Conner' impersonation & is getting a similar result; albeit, more violently than Bull Conner or George Wallace. Many have questioned the timing of Hamas' Assault; was it to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? Whatever the reason, Saudi Arabia backed out of the Abraham Accords.

The U.S. brokered Accords were meant to normalize Trade Relations & 'Military Cooperation' w/ Israel & their Arab neighbors (i.e. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, & Morocco). Israel favored this agreement, because it completely ignored the question of a Palestinian State. Saudi Arabia & UAE have danced around recognizing Israel for years (some have theorized that The House of Saud, is ethnically Jewish); Both are @ War w/ Yemen's Houthis, & the proximity of Israeli Weapons must be alluring. The Arab World has taken a Not in My Backyard attitude w/ Palestinian Refugees, so The Abraham Accords was a Win- Win.

Although Gaza's Infrastructure is being leveled- w/ over 9,000 Dead, thousands more injured, & more than Half of the Population 'displaced'; Hamas has Israel on the defensive. The World has watched the carnage in horror, as the Palestinian deaths are approaching 10X the number of Israeli Deaths. People are asking out loud: How many Palestinian lives is an Israeli life worth? Others question how The Zionists can be so comfortable w/ blatant acts of Nazism. Everyone, including The U.S. & The West wants to know Israel's End Game. Once again, Israel is surrounded, but The U.S. cannot support them indefinitely. America's munitions surplus is thin; The Iron Dome is running out of missiles.

Benjamin Netanyahu seems intent on forcing Palestinians out of Gaza. Recent Reports that an Oil & Natural Gas Deposit, worth roughly $500 Billion- $1 Trillion Dollars was discovered in N. Gaza, may explain Bibi's motivation. His Plan is the same as his predecessors- push the Palestinians into Egypt, & Jordan. The Problem, is Sisi, & King Abdullah aren't playing ball. The Saudis were willing to normalize Relations w/ Israel, but in light of their 'War' w/ Hamas, MBS appears to have shifted his focus to BRICS. Netanyahu's heavy hand has put Israel's Future in question. The Biden Administration can't do anymore. Arab Americans in Swing States like Michigan, aren't pleased w/ Joe Biden's Israel All the Time rhetoric; his Poll #s are falling.

Meanwhile, Israeli Citizens are flooding the Airports. They are a Settler Nation, so they are DEPENDENT on European & American Immigrants. The Government can use as many stall tactics as they like, if folks don't feel safe, it will be impossible to maintain a Jewish Ethno- State... I'm reminded of Harry Truman, in his own effort to create a 2 State Solution. The President commented on how 'The Jews want to push The Arabs into the Tigris & Euphrates, while The Arabs want to push The Jews into The Red Sea'. He became frustrated w/ both groups, but he felt that the European Jews weren't concerned about the welfare of 5 Million Palestinians. They just wanted The Land.

The Israelis were aggressive from the beginning, seizing 20% of the remaining Palestinian territory, after getting 60% from The U.N. Miko Peled informed Us that Israel instigated the '6 Day War' in 1967. The Egyptian Army was the largest of the Arab Coalition. The Zionists found them to be weak, so they took the offensive. The rest fell like dominoes. The Goal has always been a Greater Israel; going back to Nathan Birbaum's Principle of 'Political Zionism', but that movement was more passive. The Zionists of today follow Theodor (Fyodor) Herzl's Principle of 'Social Zionism', which promoted a more aggressive & robust posture by European Jews... If only someone offered a 'Principle of Sharing'.

-Just Saying

It’s election season in Europe, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has decided that George Soros can again win him votes. “The Soros network is embedded in the European institutions. They are so embedded that the European institutions give them money to operate,” Orban said in late March on his near-weekly interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Radio. “They’re in the Commission, in the Parliament, and quite a few prime ministers are clearly Soros holdouts.”

Between June 6 and 9, citizens in all 27 European Union member states will choose a new Parliament, and Orban kicked off his campaign in Hungary with a fresh dose of attack politics. Brussels, he said in his March interview, was “increasingly becoming a prisoner of the international network of activists that George Soros has built up over the last 30 years with great effort.”

This isn’t the first time Orban has used Soros, the Hungarian Jewish financier and philanthropist, as a punching bag in an election campaign. He has done so before to win elections in Hungary. What is new this time, however, is that Orban’s spokesperson immediately translated his boss’s stinging attack on Soros from Hungarian into English and posted the translation on X (formerly Twitter). Clearly, the attack is being taken to a new, European level.

How attack politics works, and why the Hungarian prime minister has used it often during the last 10 years, is described in a 2019 BuzzFeed News article, “The Unbelievable Story of the Plot Against George Soros.” (An earlier version appeared in the Swiss magazine Das Magazin.) It tells the story of two American spin doctors who designed Orban’s first hate campaign against Soros back in 2013, managing to turn Soros—who got rich in the United States and poured billions of dollars of his fortune into organizations supporting democratic governance and freedom of speech all over the world—into Hungary’s most hated man within weeks. In fact, their anti-Soros smear campaign was such a success that Orban, who himself worked at the Soros-funded Central European Research Group and studied briefly on a Soros scholarship at the University of Oxford, won the election.

These two spin doctors, Arthur Finkelstein and George Birnbaum—Jewish themselves—worked with a simple idea: If you want to win elections, make sure you go on the attack. The underlying assumption is that many voters know whom they will vote for. Consequently, it is difficult to motivate them to vote for another candidate. Demoralizing them, however, is easier. You discredit your political opponent with a volley of accusations, mostly false, so your opponent’s supporters will start having doubts. As a result, some will not vote. Others will defect to you. Finkelstein and Birnbaum called this “rejectionist voting.”

The duo used this technique first in Israel in 1995, just after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. New elections were scheduled, with the social democrat Shimon Peres as the designated winner. Very few observers gave the young conservative Likud candidate Benjamin Netanyahu, who was polling 20 percentage points behind, any chance. Netanyahu contracted Finkelstein and Birnbaum to help him get out of the underdog position. They told him the only way he would have a chance of winning would be if his campaign focused on spreading the rumor that Peres intended to give half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Peres did not want to do that; it was a complete fabrication. But the more the line spread, the more journalists asked him about it. Instead of pushing and discussing his own political agenda, Peres was forced to defend himself against Netanyahu’s lie. Netanyahu completely trapped Peres and, to the surprise of many, won the 1996 election, with more than 50 percent of the vote. This is how Netanyahu’s spectacular rise in politics began.

In the early 2000s, Finkelstein and Birnbaum helped Bulgarian and Romanian politicians gain power with similar campaigns. Then Netanyahu introduced them to another ambitious politician in Europe: Viktor Orban. He had been prime minister between 1998 and 2002 before losing power. Orban felt so humiliated that he swore he would never lose again. In 2010, the spin doctors advised him to conduct a tough, polarizing campaign against bureaucrats and foreign investors. It worked: Orban’s alliance won a comfortable two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, and the social democrats suffered a stinging defeat that they still have not recovered from today.

During the next election, in 2014, the opposition hardly managed to get a word in. Still, Orban took no chances and again consulted the advisors who had helped him win earlier. They told him he needed a scapegoat with a familiar face. They suggested he use Soros and depict him as a Jewish financier with a secret political agenda: to weaken Hungary and then dominate it. According to some reports, this campaign fueled antisemitism in the country; however, since Hungary keeps no official data on antisemitism, the EU’s rights watchdog, the Vienna-based Agency for Fundamental Rights, found it hard to substantiate this claim.

During this campaign, Orban blamed all his problems on Soros and his “tentacles”—from the financial and economic crises that had hit the country to the arrival of refugees from war-torn Syria and other countries. In 2014 and again in 2018, Orban won elections, consolidating his grip on power in Hungary. In the run-up to the 2018 vote, posters appeared all over Hungary depicting Soros with the text: “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.” That year, the Hungarian government also forced Central European University (CEU), founded and partially funded by Soros, out of the country. CEU eventually found refuge in Vienna, from where it still operates.

As Birnbaum once said, “It’s good to have an enemy,” calling Soros a “good target.” Soros was defenseless. If he fought back, he would only crank up the rumor machine. If he entered the Hungarian political fray, Orban could accuse him of being power-hungry. So he did not say anything, and the rumor spread anyway.

Birnbaum’s father survived Auschwitz. (Finkelstein, who was much older, died in 2017.) That their campaigns featured racist tropes and fueled antisemitism does not seem to bother Birnbaum in the least. Once he asked an interviewer: “Can I not attack someone because he is a Jew?”

While Orban successfully won two Hungarian elections deploying the “Soros monster,” the first time he used this strategy to win a European election was in 2019. Posters went up picturing then-Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Soros, with the words: “You have the right to know what Brussels is cooking up!” Orban’s campaign then focused on migration: Brussels’s “secret” plan to use migrant visas to flood Europe with immigrants and Europe’s so-called attempts to prevent Hungary from guarding its external borders.

Soros largely kept quiet, but Juncker—who had once called the Hungarian prime minister a “dictator”—immediately began to refute the charges. He strongly denied Brussels was working on secret migrant visas or was hindering border guards. In short, Orban’s strategy went according to plan. His alliance won 53 percent of the vote.

That the Hungarian prime minister is having his attacks on Soros translated into English this time is telling. A Hungarian diplomat once told me, “Viktor Orban thinks Europe will either be his Europe or Emmanuel Macron’s Europe.” In countries such as France, where far-right politician Jordan Bardella from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is clearly the front-runner, the election campaign is dominated by a similar binary choice: Europe will be shaped by the likes of Macron or the National Rally.

Now that several far-right parties in different countries do not want to leave the EU anymore because of what Swedish politician Carl Bildt has called the “BTP effect”—meaning, Brexit, Trump, Putin—they seem to want to instead enter European politics for the first time and attempt to change it from the inside. Consequently, they are trying to form coalitions to maximize their influence. Orban told a party congress last year that Europe needs to be changed, not ditched.

Herbert Kickl of the Freedom Party of Austria, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom, and several other far-right politicians are starting to talk more and more about what they want with Europe: ditching climate legislation, changing the existing migration policy, and blocking aid for Ukraine. In the run-up to this year’s elections, the European center-right is already moving somewhat in this direction, just as it does in member states when it tries to prevent voters from fleeing to the far right. Several polls, while showing that the center will hold after the elections in June, have predicted substantial gains for the far right in several member states.

According to Paul Lendvai, a Hungarian journalist in Vienna who has written a critical biography of the Hungarian prime minister, Orban has Hungary “in his pocket, and Europe will be his next step.” He seems intent on using—or rather abusing—Soros to this end once more. Europe had better be prepared.

Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu le cere parlamentarilor să "lucreze împreună" pentru binele țării

Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu le cere parlamentarilor să “lucreze împreună” pentru binele țării

Liderul opoziției, Benyamin Netanyahu, pe cale să devină următorul prim-ministru al Israelului după ce blocul său conservator a reușit să obțină o majoritate solidă în Knesset în urma alegerilor, a făcut apel la colegii săi parlamentari să pună capăt certurilor partizane și să se unească pentru a servi poporul israelian. “Alegerile și discordia dintre partide s-au terminat. Acum trebuie să ieșim…

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