197 Is Israel-Gaza Yet Another Republican October Surprise?
If you’re counting-as this book does-that would make it October Surprise 4.0? After Nixon-Vietnam 1968, Reagan-Iran 1980, the Comey Letter Circa 2016… That’s of course, leaving out Watergate 1972 where technically the big Nixon dirty trick wasn’t in November but during the Dem primary-aka Don Segretti cum Roger Stone and the Canucks Letter.
FN: See chapter Roger Stone
In the recent very temporary buzz over Biden’s ceasefire proposal, Hussein Ibish argued to the contrary a deal was unlikely as both Israel and Hamas appeared content for the war to go on.
For Hamas, Everything Is Going According to Plan (msn.com)
Indeed, the more you think about it the more it begins to seem that far from Joe Biden being “Genocide Joe” he is perhaps the only one-other than, of course, the Palestinian people themselves-who genuinely wants a ceasefire. Certainly, as Bish argues there’s scant evidence that either Sinwar-the leader of Hamas-nor Netanyahu the Israeli Prime Minister are in any rush for the war to end.
To be sure, the fact that Bibi is in no rush for the war to end is like the world’s worst kept secret at this point-like his US fascist counterpart Donald Trump, Bibi needs to stay in power at all costs to keep himself out of prison just like Trump has to win this November 2016-while Bibi’s larger Far Right coalition has dreams of Greater Israel; contrary to Netanyahu’s official narrative that the goal is “total victory” where total victory is defined as ‘complete and utter destruction of Hamas’-the real goal is literally genocide.
FN: There’s been a lot of public Storm and Strang over this-Israel’s defenders quibble that the ICJ hasn’t conclusively found that Israel has done genocide in Gaza which is technically true though if Israel has not yet been convicted-which requires beyond a reasonable doubt-the ICC has at a minimum found “probable cause” of genocide.
But much of the hairsplitting has been based on a false premise on exactly what genocide is-much like Trump apologists like Glenn Greenwald claim 1/6 wasn’t an “insurrection” as not enough people were murdered. But the formal definition of what constitutes an insurrection doesn’t depend solely on a headcount and neither does the definition of genocide. Note also that Greenwald moves the goalposts: the bigger picture is Trump is guilty not just of an insurrection but a larger coup that he begun laying the groundwork for early in 2020 many months before the general election even started.
FN: Interestingly Greenwald himself in the introduction offered a good definition of a coup as opposed to just an insurrection then quietly “forgot” this the rest of the debate and Destiny never seemed to notice that Greenwald was ignoring his own topline-accurate-definition of a coup which most certainly doesn’t depend on a lot of violence or even in principle ANY
Insanely Heated Debate vs Glenn Greenwald (youtube.com)
As for genocide the crucial element is not simply a head count but the intent to drive an entire people out of where they live-in this case to drive the Palestinian people out of Gaza which is clearly the long term goal of the Israel Far Right.
The grandmother who wants to lead Israelis back to a Gaza without Palestinians | CNN
See Greenwald vs Destiny
FN: As opposed to say the IDF whose objectives differ from Bibi and the Far Right.
But Hamas? You’d assume they’re pretty eager to end hostilities ASAP. Ibish argues quite the contrary:
So why would Hamas possibly want the war to continue, given the devastation of Gaza and its beleaguered Palestinian population, and the decimation of the group’s organized military strength? The answer is that Hamas leaders in Gaza almost certainly believe that the war is going according to plan.”
This is a crucial point: contrary to what some of the sympathetic “pro Palestinian” activists in the US and other Western countries claim 10/7 was not a miscalculation. The brutal Israeli response was not a surprise to the contrary it was a feature not a bug. To understand this you have to understand who Hamas is and what their actual objectives are.
FN: Ibish compares this to Hezbollah’s claim back in 2006 that had they foreseen Israel’s brutal response in Lebanon then they never would have provoked them-he argues few believed Hezbollah then and neither should we believe that Hamas didn’t foresee Israel’s post 2007 slaughter of the Palestinians.
Back to Ibish:
“Hamas has never really hidden its motivations. The October 7 attack proved even more devastating than Hamas surely anticipated, and afterward, the group’s leaders repeatedly insisted that they would have continued such assaults until they produced “a state of permanent warfare” with Israel. But what could they have meant by “permanent warfare”? Hamas surely understood that its civic power, military infrastructure, and above all its organized paramilitary forces stood no chance against the Israeli military. The group’s leaders knew that practically everything tangible they possessed would be smashed in relatively short order by the Israelis. And that’s essentially what has happened, although some important tunnels apparently remain, along with, reportedly, three or four battalions in Rafah.”
“The scale of the destruction can’t be a surprise to Hamas. Provoking the Israelis and luring them into Gaza was in fact Hamas’s intent. Once Israel blundered into reoccupying the Strip’s urban centers, its forces could serve as a lightning rod for a long-term insurgency, which was what Hamas was counting on all along.”
So that was their goal-a long-term insurgency. It’s notable that this alleged vision of Hamas is not so different from the dream of Bibi and his Far Right. Recently Gantz left the coalition because of Netanyahu’s refusal to offer a day after plan for Gaza.
FN: Paradoxically the fall of Bibi’s coalition with centrists like Gantz and Eisenkot may be what finally endangers Netanyahu’s government. The failure of the Rabbi Law may prove to be the first sign of trouble where they final straw may prove to be the very unpopular Haredi Exception Law.
This is an argument Ben-Ephraim has been making for some time
Will Netanyahu Fall Because Of The IDF Haredi Draft Exemption Bill? (youtube.com)
But only now with the dissolving of Netanyahu’s war cabinet is it perhaps likely.
End FN
Shaiel Ben-Ephraim the liberal Zionist analyst of Israel also recently argued that the real goal of Netanyahu and the Far Right-Smotrich, Ben Givir, et al may be turning Gaza into Rwanda-that is to say, a failed state.
But it seems that this vision of deliberately reducing Gaza to the level of a failed state also appeals to Hamas or at least the leadership-just like in Israel within Hamas there have been signs of a divide between leadership and rank and file as we clearly see between IDF and Netanyahu.
Israeli Military Says Hamas Can’t Be Destroyed, Escalating Feud With Netanyahu (msn.com)
To understand Hamas’ preference, start from the fact that Hamas never wanted to be the municipal government of Gaza. What does it want? To surpass Fatah in standing for the mantle of leadership of the Palestine liberation movement-while also turning the movement from Fatah’s secular vision to an Islamic one.
While the world’s attention is focused on Rafah, the low-level but potentially “permanent” insurgency against Israeli forces has already begun in the cities of Gaza and Jabalia, and other parts of the northern and central Gaza Strip that Israel supposedly “pacified” and rid of any capable Hamas military forces. Hamas fighters even attempted another infiltration of Israel near the Kerem Shalom border crossing. That Israeli leaders have expressed surprise at this development suggests that they never really understood what kind of war the enemy had in mind. Hamas undoubtedly took steps in advance of October 7 to prepare for the insurgency that appears to have started.”
“Through the PLO, the nominal State of Palestine not only participates in the UN General Assembly as a “nonmember observer state” but has gained membership in most significant multilateral institutions. South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is predicated on the State of Palestine’s having subscribed to the ICJ Statute, which Israel (like the United States) has not. Similarly, potential actions against Israeli and Hamas leaders by the International Criminal Court are predicated on the State of Palestine’s having signed the statute guiding the ICC. This gives both courts jurisdiction over Gaza, a presumptive part of the State of Palestine (which is really the PLO). Yet Hamas has never been a part of the PLO and is a bitter rival of the secular nationalists who control it. Any time a Palestinian rises at an international forum, including the Arab League, to speak on behalf of the nation, it is a Fatah voice that resonates, with no input whatsoever from Hamas.”
Hamas leaders evidently concluded that their fiefdom in Gaza had become more of a trap than a launching pad. Controlling Gaza wasn’t going to help them expand back into the West Bank or marginalize Fatah and eventually take over the PLO. Yet these were the prime directives of their organization when it was founded: The first purpose of Hamas is to turn the Palestinian cause from a secular project to an Islamist one and, in doing so, to take over leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement.
Hamas was hoping to lure Israel into Gaza, where it would get stuck in the quicksand of reoccupation while fighting a long-term, albeit low-intensity, insurgency. Hamas would then wave its bloody shirt to Palestinians and the world, announcing itself as the legitimate national leadership, because it would be the one fighting Israeli occupation forces for control of Palestinian land on a daily basis in Gaza. Against its blood sacrifice, Hamas would cast the Palestinian Authority as the Vichy gendarmerie of the occupation in the West Bank, and the PLO as a humiliated dupe, waiting pointlessly at an empty negotiating table for peace and independence that never come.”
This is how despite the scale of the slaughter of the Gaza’s civilian population-and the total levelling of the land property-Hamas leadership insist they have Israel exactly where they want them!
The insurgency that Hamas hoped for has already begun. That’s why the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, reportedly sent a message in February reassuring anxious Hamas leaders in Qatar and Lebanon that “we have the Israelis right where we want them.” Everything appears to be going according to plan. Why, then, would Hamas possibly be interested in Biden’s peace plan? It has even less motivation than Netanyahu.”
Indeed, the striking big picture takeaway from this then, is that Netanyahu’s and Sinwar’s objectives actually align.
Ibish finishes noting this grim reality:
The grim reality is that the only people left in the world who seem to want the war to continue into the indefinite future are also the only ones who could stop it: the Hamas leaders and Netanyahu. Biden deserves credit for trying, but he has almost no chance of success.”
Yes-but… I agree entirely except I question wether they are the ONLY people left who want this brutal war to indefinitely continue… I will argue that there may well be a-LOT-more people who are happy with this deadly status quo, many others whose interests align with those of Netanyahu-Sinwar.
For my argument I will look to a fascinating and provocative recent piece by Seth Abramson. However, I will first take a little detour and look at a recent New Republic article by Ken Silverstein. I became aware of his quite fascinating and provocative piece
FN: I like fascinating and provocative pieces…
about the communications he came across in Erik Prince’s WhatsApp chat group-which sprung up under two months after October 7-one of the many intriguing aspects is the idea that Prince begun this chat group in large part in response to 10/7.
I initially became aware of Silverstein’s scoop on J.G. Mitchell’s Parallex Views. While I was very interested in the scoop and the messages he uncovered the show itself didn’t focus on the issues I found particularly central. At least part of the reason for this I think is what amounts to Silverstein’s own rather flawed political Weltanschauung (Heidegger).
It doesn’t take long in the episode for Silverstein to reveal himself as kind of leftist “more progressive than you” types who can never hate fascists like Erik Prince his buddies, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone or his “President” Donald Trump as much as he hates liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, or Joe Biden. So even as he discussed Prince’s pro Trump international cabal, Silverstein took pains to quickly assure Mitchell and the listeners that he “hates Joe Biden”-he uses the word hate-presumably just as much if not more than Trump.
He then does go on to describe the rants of the Far Right fascists-the racism against Arabs, the desire to invade up to 49 different countries, and also the desire to hold “Nuremberg trials” for their domestic political enemies-it’s important to correctly view Hunter Biden as the first of many intended victims-see Chapter Hunter Biden.
Yet towards the end of the interview he actually argues that Trump was right in his complaints about being treated “very unfairly” that the Democrats were treacherous towards him-he wrongly reduces the Steele Dossier to a Democratic plot to rob Trump of the election. He complains that the Democrats had planned to impeach Trump before he was even sworn in.
This is symptomatic of the Bernie Bro “True Progressive” types who tended to be anti anti Trump. Right off the bat Silverstein fails to acknowledge two crucial points about Trump:
1. If he wasn’t treated like a normal President that’s because he wasn’t.
2. While the Dem leadership itself actually had not said anything about impeaching Trump prior to the election it wasn’t necessarily an unreasonable position to have as Trump committed crimes during the course of the campaign-not any crimes but election crimes to secure victory. Just recently he was finally belatedly convicted for one criminal episode-the payments to Stormy Daniels, etc.
But the Bernie or Busters always were anxious to insist that Trump wasn’t abnormal in any meaningful way and that he absolutely didn’t get electoral assistance from Russia-and ignored the blatant assistance from James Comey’s FBI-and it seems to me that Silverstein has something of this flawed, erroneous perspective-the leftist tendency to deny any difference between liberalism and fascism.. Indeed, this is clear in the article itself.
After describing in considerable detail the nefarious nature of Prince’s fascist Internationale-including a member with literal family Nazi ties:
S was later revealed to be Sven von Storch, born to a German family that left for Chile after World War II, whose wife, Beatrix von Storch, is the granddaughter of Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Hitler’s finance minister from 1933, the year he took power, until he killed himself in Berlin in April 1945, as Russian troops closed in on the bunker where he and the dregs of his loyalists were holed up. In his last will and testament, Hitler appointed von Krosigk to serve under Joseph Goebbels, his handpicked successor as chancellor, but since his minister of propaganda committed suicide the day after Hitler, von Krosigk became the Third Reich’s head of state during its final days. “Von Krosigk never wavered in his enthusiasm and labors for the Nazi cause,” prosecutor Alexander Hardy said during his trial at Nuremberg, where he was sentenced to 10 years for financing the concentration camps and other crimes.
Beatrix von Storch is a leader and Bundestag member with Alternative for Germany, arguably the most radical of Europe’s far-right parties, which calls for a crackdown on immigration into the country to protect its “Western Christian culture,” a variant of the “great replacement” theory espoused by white supremacists in the United States. Sven von Storch doesn’t hold elected office, but he’s considered to be a prominent figure in the AfD. An admirer of Steve Bannon, von Storch has close ties to Chile’s pro-Pinochet political bloc; he and his wife met with Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s former president, at the presidential palace in Brazil, and the latter’s powerful son Eduardo gave the couple a bottle of the first family’s brand wine as a gift.
“Law and justice no longer mean anything in the West,” von Storch wrote during the same conversation. “Stupid and naive people may still believe it. And probably not even them anymore.”
It’s not clear how many in the group knew S’s real identity, but he was clearly a pedigreed German fascist who even within the rarefied far-right ecosphere of Off Leash sat at a distinctly extreme end. No one seemed troubled by his views, and indeed von Storch was warmly embraced. “This is getting interesting,” Kazerooni wrote in response to his post. “Love this Group.”
Off Leash: Inside the Secret, Global, Far-Right Group Chat | The New Republic
Yet he still went onto close this piece with this:
I sent messages seeking comment to Prince and the 29 participants whose comments in the group chat are cited in this story. Prince did not respond. Of the others, only Barnett, Jacobson, and Goldhorn were willing to be interviewed.
Barnett, who once worked for Blackwater, said participants in the group chat “love the country and want good solutions” and that he was not an ideologue and favored “checks and balances, and transparency.” A “centrist who leans libertarian” and Barack Obama voter in 2008, Barnett said the 9/11 attacks seven years earlier were an “inside job 100 percent,” and that they “woke me up” and triggered the political evolution that led to his current “conspiracy observationist perspective.”
Barnett said he was a Trump fan in part because “the establishment hates” the former president, adding that the Russiagate scandal that led to his first impeachment had been cooked up by Democrats as part of a politically motivated attack to drive him from office. (An opinion I share.) When I told Barnett his remarks about the need for a new Nuremberg tribunal sounded like a call for an attack of the same type but against enemies of the group chat, he said he didn’t favor a politically driven kangaroo court but envisioned a scrupulously fair judicial process that “truly enables our country to move forward,” which could be ensured by establishing panels with impartial experts such as journalist Matt Taibbi, psychologist and commentator Jordan Peterson, and others of similarly “high integrity” to help determine who would be prosecuted.”
So Silverstein’s only criticism of Barnett’s plan to hold Nuremberg trials against his political opponents-led by Matt Taibbi and Jordan Peterson-is that in this case the fascists would be sinking to the level of the liberals? His premise he shares with Barnes that “the Russiagate scandal that led to his first impeachment had been cooked up by Democrats as part of a politically motivated attack to drive him from office” is confused on so many levels it’s tough to know where to start. First it wasn’t “cooked up” by Democrats it was predicated by facts the intelligence community became aware of during the election-besides the Steele Dossier that was not started by the Democrats there was Papadopoulos’ revelations to Australian ambassador Alexander Downer that the Russians had incriminating emails on Hillary Clinton.
“Russiagate” has the inconvenience of being true-and indeed, during the Parallex interview, Silverstein contradicts himself by admitting there was at least some collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia around Roger Stone’ and Julian Assange, etc.
Indeed there was and this was only one of a number of tracks this Trump-Russia collusion occurred. Among the members of Prince’s WhatsApp chat, Silverstein mentions Michael Flynn-who was Trump’s top national security adviser during the campaign-who led the infamous Lock Her Up chants-and Trump’s first NSC adviser. In September, 2016 as covered in Chapter Michael Flynn, Flynn was one of the half dozen senior Trump campaign operatives who received an email from the late Peter Smith who’s explicitly sought to work with Russian hackers and Wikileaks to obtain HRC”s deleted emails while at State.
In Flynn’s Mueller testimony he admitted that the question of wether Russia had HRC’s emails was a very frequent topic of conversation and that he sought through his own contacts to find out. It’s clear that Smith had fairly close ties to Flynn and his son. Then there was Barbara Leeden’s manifesto that laid out very explicitly a proposal for the GOP to work with Russian intelligence to find Clinton’s emails.
FN: As I note in that chapter this was prior to anyone in the GOP even imagining that Trump could emerge as the nominee.
Beyond this if this isn’t enough you have the inconvenient fact-for Silverstein-that the first impeachment wasn’t about Russiagate but Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine military aid Congress had passed from Zelensky in exchange for opening a political investigation of Joe Biden.
FN: To be sure you can make a good case that what Trump did in extorting Zelensky should have been seen as the latest chapter at the time of Russiagate but this is not how Pelosi framed it.
At this point the fact that Silverstein still sees Trump as a normal President post Dobbs and 1/6 seems to suggest like most of the “True Progressive” types he’s beyond hope. If even after this own scoop that showcases how this fascist cabal sees Trump’s election as central, he’s still trying to defend, apologize, or normalize Trump he’ll never get it which is a shame as his discovery here could be very important.
What I find particularly intriguing about his piece such as it is, is the idea that Erik Prince was inspired by October 7 to start the chat group and the international aspect of it.
“Off Leash was launched less than two months after Israel commenced its assault on Gaza following Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack on Israel, and that topic has been one of the group chat’s main concerns since it was established by Prince on December 2. Five days later, Omer Laviv, an executive with the Mer Group, a private security company with many former Israeli intelligence officials in its senior ranks, posted a story to the group that ran two days earlier in The Times of London and reported Prince had been seeking to sell the Israel Defense Forces equipment for a plan he’d devised to flood Hamas tunnels with seawater.”
About three-quarters of the people Prince invited to the group chat are from the U.S. or live here. The largest overseas blocs are from Israel (32 members), the United Arab Emirates (20 members), and the United Kingdom (20). There are smaller contingents, sometimes a single person, from 33 other countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.”
32 from Israel… While the Bernie or Buster types tend to dismiss the idea that Russia could collude with the Trump campaign out of hand-unpossible that Russia could ever do anything bad! as these True Progressive More Progressive Than Thou types also tend to be Tanikies. They sometimes are, however, considerably more open to the idea of Israel Collusion. Some of these folks have come to accept the fact of Israel’s collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign even while ruling out the collusion of this same Trump campaign with Russia.
FN: What they fail to appreciate is the surprising fact that Russian and Israeli interests often align appearances very much to the contrary
I was struck by Due Dissidence’s acknowledgement of Israel-Trump 2016 campaign on an episode I saw today.
(149) White House CANCELS Israel Meeting After Netanyahu SLAMS Biden – YouTube
Historically 2016 was the second time Israel-via Likud naturally-colluded with the US GOP campaign as part of a larger scheme to elect the GOP-as we saw in Chapter Iran Collusion, in 1980 Israel colluded with the Reagan campaign AND the Iranian Ayatollah to elect Reagan by withholding the hostages until the morning of Reagan’s inauguration January 20, 1981.
Speaking of which though could 2024 actually be the third time? As noted in the Due Dissidence link above, Netanyahu recently falsely claimed the Biden Administration was holding back weapons-if only it were true… Could this latest minor treachery of Benjamin Netanyahu be a piece of Israel Collusion 2024? That Bibi very much wants his fascist US boyfriend Donald Trump back is self evidently true, so much so as to be a truism.
As the political streamer Vaush recently noted ‘fascists prefer fascists.’ There are obviously 1000 different reasons why. In his article, Silverstein offers reason 1001-the hottest button issue of all in the Prince WhatsApp was Iran:
FN: Find Vaush link-is it the ceasefire episode?
And most of all, Iran, which participants agreed, with a few exceptions, also needed to be wiped out. Saghar Erica Kasraie, a former staffer for Republican Representative Trent Franks when he served on the House Armed Services Committee and whom, according to her LinkedIn profile, she advised on Middle East issues, urged that the Islamic Republic’s clerical leaders be targeted by weaponized drones that “take them out like flys”
Biden of course is resistant to that. In this it calls to mind how Bill Clinton was resistant to invade Iraq to topple Saddam in the 1990s but then they got W in and the rest if some very bad history. No doubt a Trump administration will be much more “supportive” of military action to topple the regime-many of Prince’s friends on chat had such “proposals.”
FN: Of course the irony is that in toppling Saddam they delivered Iraq into Iran’s web of influence as would have been obvious if Bush-Cheney wasn’t entirely illiterate on the political and religious dynamics of Iraq and the larger Middle East.
End FN.
In any case, clearly the 32 Israeli members of Prince’s WhatsApp desire a Trump Presidency. And again, this would be the third time that Israel-at least an Israel led by Likud-has colluded to help the GOP candidate win. But just as intriguingly the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also has 20 members.
And indeed: UAE also colluded in 2016 to elect Trump. And now… Seth Abramson:
“In late September of 2016, just weeks before Election Day, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi surprised the world by soft-endorsing Donald Trump in that year’s U.S. presidential election—a violation of longstanding diplomatic norms—after a meeting set up between Trump and the tyrannical strongman by Trump advisers Steve Bannon and George Papadopoulos, the latter of whom was then coordinating (with Trump’s assent) the GOP candidate’s secret backchannel to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.”
“El-Sisi’s decision to signal pre-election support for Trump and not his Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton, came amidst the most extraordinary foreign contacts between a U.S. presidential campaign and a U.S. enemy in American political history.”
This was the first of 12 different 2016 Trump campaign backchannels Seth Abramson notes. The eighth one he enumerates actually includes Silverstein’s subject, Erik Prince:
An eighth backchannel ran between Michael Flynn’s friends Michael and Barbara Ledeen, Erik Prince, and alleged Russian hackers claiming to have access to stolen Hillary Clinton emails.”
FN: I discuss Leeden’s Emailgate Manifesto that I argue the entire GOP followed in 2016 in Chapter Leeden Manifesto.
Another country involved in the Red Sea Conspiracy in 2016 was the UAE:
As established via reporting from the New York Times, well-respected UK-based media outlet The Middle East Eye, and thousands of major-media citations in New York Times bestseller Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan US and Simon & Schuster UK, 2019), at the time el-Sisi met with Trump in September 2016, two equally astonishing things were simultaneously true: (1) el-Sisi was one of the six foreign leaders, including Vladimir Putin, participating in an illicit multinational conspiracy aimed at electing Trump the next American president through illegal election interference, and (2) just days before the Trump-el-Sisi Summit the Trump Family, in the person of Donald Trump Jr., had accepted one facet of that illegal election interference: a scheme that involved half the nation-state conspirators in what’s become known as the Red Sea Conspiracy.
The three nations in question are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel.”
At the secret, August 2016 Trump Tower Middle East Summit reported on by the New York Times, the Trump Family was, as noted above, represented by Donald Trump Jr.; the 2016 Trump presidential campaign was represented by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller; the interests of brutal Saudi tyrant, murderer, and Kushner friend Mohammed bin Salman (internationally known as “MBS”) were represented by the pedophile and Trump adviser George Nader; the interests of brutal Emirati tyrant, murderer, and longtime friend of Trump friend and adviser Thomas Barrack, Mohammed bin Zayed (internationally known as “MBZ”), were represented by MBZ and Trump adviser—yes, he served in both roles simultaneously in 2016—Erik Prince; and the interests of the Netanyahu administration were advanced by secretive Israeli intelligence expert Joel Zamel, who at the time shared legal representation (in the form of Marc Mukasey) with none other than the entire Trump Family. Zamel also had significant ties with several Trump and Netanyahu advisers, among them George Papadopoulos; it should also be noted that by December 2016 Steve Bannon—co-orchestrator of the Trump-el-Sisi Summit pre-election—would be meeting secretly in Trump’s home, Trump Tower, with none other than MBZ himself (as well as Kushner, Nader, Prince, and others).
You can learn more about The Grand Bargain that all these meetings were about here.”
Here’s the thumbnail from that link:
“During a private meeting shortly before the November, 2016, election, Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, floated to a longtime American interlocutor what sounded, at the time, like an unlikely grand bargain. The Emirati leader told the American that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, might be interested in resolving the conflict in Syria in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.”
Indeed, and as Abramson discussed in his very important book Proof of Conspiracy, one benefit that both the UAE and the Saudis got from the Grand Bargain was the Trump Administration’s greenlight to do the blockade of Qatar; another benefit the Saudis got was greenlighting their invasion of Yemen.
It’s very much worth revisiting the logistics of the Grand Bargain:
Israel, Saudi and UAE suggested Trump-Putin deal: Report
Officials from the three countries privately encouraged Trump to work closely with Putin on Syria and reconsider Ukraine-related sanctions.”
Emirati, Israeli and Saudi officials separately suggested a diplomatic deal to Donald Trump where Russia would curb Iranian influence in Syria in exchange for lifting Ukraine-related sanctions, the New Yorker magazine reported on Tuesday, citing current and former US officials.”
Israel, Saudi and UAE suggested Trump-Putin deal: Report | Middle East Eye
So once again, the UAE comes up.
The UAE’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed made the suggestion before the elections to a “longtime American interlocutor,” the magazine reported.
Between the election and Trump’s inauguration, Israel’s ambassador to the US Ron Dermer also proposed that the new administration work closely with Moscow to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to “push the Iranians to leave” Syria, according to the report.
Israel has made Iranian military presence in Syria a top priority in its bilateral talks with Russia.
“Our position on Syria is clear,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in May. “We believe that there is no place for any Iranian military presence, anywhere in Syria.”
At a private dinner in the United States in March 2017, Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir and his UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed also recommended a US deal with Russia involving sanctions and Syria, the New Yorker reported.
“Their message was: ‘Why don’t we lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia in exchange for getting the Russians to push Iran out of Syria,'” the magazine quoted an attendee of the dinner as saying, without revealing his identity.
So that the Israelis have 32 people in Prince’s chat and the Emiratis have 20 is certainly notable. Especially when you remember Prince’s own involvement in the Grand Bargain.
In January 2017, Trump confidant Erik Prince met with the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, who is close to Putin, at the Seychelles islands. Prince was at the islands at the invitation of the UAE crown prince.
Leaked emails obtained by MEE revealed earlier this month that Trump’s closest advisers were willing to exchange inside information about US government appointments with Yousef al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to Washington.
Correspondence between Otaiba and Tom Barrack, a longstanding friend of Trump and a billionaire fundraiser, revealed that Barrack offered to bring Trump, then a candidate, to meet the Emirati ambassador for coffee in April 2016.
It also showed how the Republican platform for 2016 was altered to remove a call for the publication of 28 pages of allegedly incriminating documents from the 9/11 inquiry; and how Otaiba sought information about top appointments from Barrack while Trump was president-elect.”
The offer to remove the “28 pages” was another sop to the Saudis.
Indeed Prince’s role in Russiagate-was extensive and deep. He clearly had a role in the very convenient release of the Comey Letter 11 days before the 2016 election-he’s very close to Steve Bannon and pretty friendly with Roger Stone-Prince had also made all kinds of dubious claims about what was in Hillary’s emails found on Huma Abedin’s emails after October 28.
So if there is a Grand Bargain 2.0 it makes perfect sense that Prince would have a major role in spearheading it and that many high-ranking officials from both Israel and UAE would be involved.
As for the Saudis, we’ve heard a lot the last 9 months about Biden’s proposal to offer Israel Saudi normalization in exchange for a ceasefire and a plan to establish a Palestinian state run by the PA after the war. It’s not hard to believe that the Saudis would still be willing to do Israel normalization contrary to what those who naively assume the Saudis actually give a shit about the Palestinians. As if MBS who had Khashoggi murdered with a bonesaw and who had his own brother killed to secure his place in succession for the Saudi throne and who perpetuated a very brutal genocide in Yemen is really finding it hard to sleep at night thinking about the suffering people of Gaza.
The part that is a little harder to believe is that MBS-who gave Jared Kushner $2 billion dollars-yet Hunter Biden is the one about to be locked up for using family connections-is terribly interested in doing Israel normalization in a timeframe that in any way helps Joe Biden-who came into Office quite critical of the Saudis-not for any bad reasons-but ultimately had to back off because of gas prices.
Indeed, when you remember MBS’s role in the 2016 Grand Bargain it’s pretty hard to believe that he doesn’t want Trump to win again and wouldn’t be willing to do what he can to make that happen as he did then. Above we saw that both Netanyahu and Sinwar are happy for the brutal war to go on for their own reasons. Assuming that MBS and the UAE’s MBZ are in on Grand Bargain 2.0 they likely are too.
As is-and this is the hard part for folks like Ken Silverstein to wrap their True Progressive minds around-Vladimir Putin. As I’ve discussed in other chapters the apparent adversarial relationship between Putin’s Russia and Netanyahu’s Israel is only apparent.
The Tankie types can believe anything about Israel or the Saudis but Russia is God’s Country as Jackson Hinckle always says.
Indeed, the old video of Hinkle praising Netanyahu that surfaced now that Hinkle was so successfully grifted off his faux indignation over the plight of the Palestinians makes perfect sense. No doubt both Bibi and Putin believe in “the multipolarity.”
“Benjamin Netanyahu is good for the multipolar world” -Jackson Hinkle (youtube.com)
Unlike most Tankies, Hinkle acknowledged, indeed, lauded the “good working relationship” between Putin and Netanyahu.
Indeed, the more you think about the more striking the similarities between the two-it should be recalled that Lieberman was a Soviet emigree who Putin praises for “an outstanding career.”
This Haaretz article below looks at a family who left Russia after the start of the Ukraine invasion and found Israel all too similar to Russia.
Of course, regarding Ukraine, Israel was the one allegedly Western aligned power which insisted on being “neutral.”
So I very much doubt Putin loses sleep at night contemplating the terrible punishment Israel has been visiting upon the people of Gaza the last 9 months. Here it’s also interesting to recall that MBS’s dearest wet dream is to be like Putin.
Opinion | The Wannabe Putin in Saudi Arabia – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
It’s been noted the asymmetry between Biden’s stellar success in Europe in putting together the pro Ukraine anti Putin alliance and his abysmal failure in the Middle East. I think at the end of the day it comes down to the fact that unlike in Europe, in the Mideast Biden has few friends. It’s not because he’s American per say-both Israel and the Saudis need and want the benefit of US power in the region. The problem they have with Biden isn’t the kind of stuff Noam Chomsky acolytes go on about-the evil “American empire” etc-as the Middle East strongmen want to benefit from US power, it’s that Biden is a liberal. Trump’s a fascist and fascists like other fascists-they have a “good working relationship.”
FN: The legacy of Noam Chomskyism is the tendency to treat US foreign policy as unipolar over the years and to insist that Democrats and Republicans have basically the same foreign policy but this is far from entirely true-what’s missed is the extent to which the “liberal world order” is the achievement of Democratic Administrations starting with Woodrow Wilson whose proposal for the League of Nations was thwarted by the isolationist GOP-but completed finally after WWII in the institution of UN. During the Trump years a very perspicacious article in Bulwark pointed out that the difference between Trump and John Bolton who he brought in in 2018 to be his Natsec Adviser was two different strains of Paleoconservative GOP foreign policy-Bolton is a unilateralist while Trump is an isolationist-as very much opposed to a Chomskyist…
BUT what they share is a hostility to the multilateral institutions that are the legacy of Democratic Administrations.
End FNm
One of the few leftists, much less socialists or Communists-other than Vaush, of course-to not buy Russia’s “multipolarity” coolaid is Zizek. In April, 2023 he said a simple “no.”
“In an interview with Russian state TV this month, Viktor Bout—the international arms dealer freed by the United States in exchange for basketball star Brittney Griner—revealed that he had sent a private message to former President Donald Trump, urging him to flee to Russia for safety. “Most likely he will simply be eliminated” in America, Bout said. “Therefore, I think it’s in the best interests of all of humanity, and primarily all of the American people, to invite Donald Trump here, to Russia, to give him security and protection here.” This would allow Trump to continue “this uprising against the globalists” and protect the American people from “elimination.”
Absurd as it may sound, this proposal—of a direct alliance between today’s Russia and Trumpian populism in a shared revolt “against the globalists”—renders perfectly the underlying ideological project of Russia. It’s an effort to construct a new multipolar world, where even the citizens of the nations that dominate today’s global order will be liberated.
Say No to Putin’s ‘Multipolarity’ | Compact (compactmag.com)
CF:
The Dark Side of Neutrality by Slavoj Žižek – Project Syndicate (project-syndicate.org)
It’s as notable simply that Trump exchanges private messages with Viktor Bout in the first place than the absurdity of the proposal.
FN: Speaking of another October Surprise, Trump has been recently claiming he can free the US journalist being held hostage in Russia if he’s elected. With his Putin ties this doesn’t sound entirely implausible…
Zizek pretty clearly sees what Putin’s fetish for “multipolarity” actually amounts to:
What [is happening] today in the United States with Trumpian neoconservatives is that they are now also moving into this revolutionary phase. It will remain, I hope, a cultural civil war. But did you notice that recently Trump said in an interview that to return to true trust, democracy, [the cancellation of the] Biden election and so on, we are allowed even to violate the constitution, [to] delegitimize the entire system.”
He coins a new phrase: ”
So, I think that the nightmare that I see, is a silent pact between Western alt-right neoconservatives, aggressive populists from France to England to Germany, [and] the United States and Russia. They have, they say, a vision of new sovereign state multiculturalism…. You remember when the Taliban won in Afghanistan (as the United States completed its troop withdrawal in 2021), the Taliban and China immediately made a pact, which brutally made sense: “We leave you alone to do whatever you want, terrorizing women, and so on. You leave us alone to do what we want with our own Muslims, Uyghurs, and so on.”
This is the new world vision, and they even call it the new decentralization, multiculturalism, which means you can cut women’s clitorises, be against LGBT, whatever you want. You do it there. We do it here, whatever we want. This is the new vision of sovereign neofascist states and the whole world is at least on one level moving in this direction….
Yes! and we see this also on the Left with The Grayzone, Jackson Hinkle, etc where these alleged leftists defend some of the most reactionary fascist regimes in the world. Caleb Maupin gloats on Twitter that Nicaragua doesn’t allow women to have abortions, etc.
Speaking of the Tankies, let’s once again consider the Russia-Israel connection despite the fact that officially you would assume the two are on opposite sides. Zizek calls out the Tankie Left for apologizing for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine while criticizing vociferously what Israel does to the Palestinians.
Last May, before being newly re-elected as president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, bear equal responsibility for the war in Ukraine. Yet whether the refusal to pick sides comes from Brazil, South Africa, or India, claiming to be “neutral” on Russia’s war of aggression is untenable.”
The same is true of individuals. If a passerby saw a man relentlessly beating a child on a street corner, we would expect the witness to try to stop it. Neutrality is out of the question. On the contrary, we would deplore the moral turpitude of inaction.”
Indeed yet this is the explicit position of the Grayzone complex, as well as Mearsheimer’s “realism”, etc.
How, then, should we respond to Roger Waters’ recent remarks to the United Nations Security Council? In a video call, the activist and Pink Floyd co-founder claimed to be speaking for “four billion or so brothers and sisters” around the world. He acknowledged that Russia’s war in Ukraine is illegal and should be condemned “in the strongest possible terms.” But then he hastened to add:
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked, so I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms….[T]he only sensible course of action today is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Not one more Ukrainian or Russian life is to be spent, not one, they are all precious in our eyes. So the time has come to speak truth to power.”
Is Waters’ “truth” really an expression of neutrality? In an interview earlier this month with Berliner Zeitung, he said: “Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am now more open to listen to what Putin actually says. According to independent voices I listen to, he governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government.”
I mean it’d be funny if it weren’t so such a dangerous but not uncommon delusion. Yes Russia is a free speech paradise. Just ask his many victims who have ended up dead-starting with Livitechenko in 2006, Navalany just recently.
The List Is Long: Russians Who Have Died After Running Afoul Of The Kremlin (rferl.org)
As an independent voice who follows Russian media very closely, I am well acquainted with what Putin and his propagandists “actually say.” The major TV channels are full of commentators recommending that countries like Poland, Germany, or the United Kingdom be nuked. The Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin’s closes allies, now openly calls for “the fight against Satanism [to] continue throughout Europe and, first of all, on the territory of Poland.”
Speaking of Poland, after Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview, Masha Gesen observed: ‘If I was Poland I’d be scared.’
Over the course of the interview, Putin had namechecked them many times and went so far as to suggest that Poland provoked Hitler into attacking them.
“Neutral” countries outside the West contend that the war is a local conflict that pales in comparison to the horrors of colonialism or more recent events like the US occupation of Iraq. But this is an obvious dodge. After all, Russia’s imperialist war is itself an act of colonialism. Those who would claim neutrality forfeit their standing to complain about the horrors of colonization anywhere. Waters is a vocal exponent of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonization. Why is Ukrainian resistance to Russian colonization any less worthy of support?
Sometimes, things really are as simple as that, especially now that Russia is preparing to celebrate the anniversary of its war with a new offensive. It is obscene to blame Ukraine for Russian acts of destruction, or to mischaracterize the Ukrainians’ heroic resistance as a rejection of peace. Those, like Waters, who call for “an immediate ceasefire” would have Ukrainians respond to redoubled Russian aggression by abandoning their own self-defense. That is a formula not for peace, but for pacification.”
As Zizek predicted this false narrative of “neutrality” has indeed been Putin’s trump card-Trump card? the last 29 months:
It bears mentioning – once again – that Russia is counting on the “neutralist” argument eventually to prevail. As the military historian Michael Clarke explains, “the Kremlin’s plan will be to keep fighting until the West gets fed up and pressures Kyiv into appeasing them with whatever territory they have taken by then.” Russia is digging in for a protracted war that will include the quiet mobilization of some 600,000 soldiers every year for the “indefinite future.”
As for the many on the “Free Palestine” Left who refuse to condemn Russia and insist on “neutrality” they have forfeited their presumed moral purity in condemning Israel.
Again, though the apparent opposition between Israel and Russia today is just that, apparent. In truth both are totally in the “multipolarity” camp, Zizek’s sovereign state multiculturalism…. where we can all oppress are own minority populations and pass draconian laws against women-in the US post Dobbs-complements of Trump’s three SCJs-a 13 year old rape victim has less rights than her rapist who can compel a court to demand she not “kill his child.”
Again, regarding Biden’s problems in the Middle East it’s important to be precise: his problem is NOT the abstract idea of a “waning American power”-something that neither Bibi nor MBS/MBZ want. Rather because Biden’s a liberal. The version of American power they oppose is that of the post War America who created the post War international, liberal world order-the UN, NATO, a rules based order, etc. When the US can be tweaked for hypocrisy the point is less that the US shouldn’t do things like invade Iraq but that therefore Russia, Israel, the Saudis, UAE, and the Chinese should be allowed to do the same.
Within America itself today there are two Americas, and Joe Biden’s America is playing very well in Ukraine and Eastern and Western Europe but much less well in the Middle East. Joe Biden’s America-democratic America-you see is a real threat. The reason the US can’t do things like Iraq anymore is democracy. The big fear of these strongman is that this democratic logic infect their own countries so they look to Trump’s America, fascist America to ensure against this.
Ok so regarding the Grand Bargain 2.0 cum October Surprise 4.0 assuming that’s what Gaza is-certainly Prince’s chat showcases many of the same characters-is brilliant in many ways. Gaza in many ways is the perfect wedge issue for the GOP against Biden.
Years ago, back in the middle of Watergate in the 1972 election-back when the Nixon campaign was doing the crime-Pat Buchanan argues persuasively that they should focus not on issues that unify Republicans but rather divide Democrats. As I argue in Chapter Roger Stone, Buchanan was the brains of CREEP.
It was Pat Buchanan who laid out the Nixon ‘72 strategy in a memo titled “Muskie Watch,” advising that the GOP attacks should “focus on those issues that divide the Democrats, not those that unite Republicans.” Buchanan argued:
“It should exacerbate and elevate those issues on which Democrats are divided—forcing Muskie to either straddle, or come down on one side or the other.”
Another 1971 Buchanan memo reads,
“Maintain as guiding political principle that our great hope for 1972 lies in maintaining or exacerbating the deep Democratic rift.”
:That “deep Democratic rift” referred to the far-right populist wing of the party in the South, led by George Wallace; and the left multiracial wing of the party, represented then by black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and by McGovern, who wound up winning the nomination.”
“Buchanan argued that having Wallace—Alabama’s symbol of segregation—run from the far-right in the 1972 Democratic primaries (but not run in November as a third party candidate, which would hurt Nixon) would divide the Democratic Party, and turn voters off. Lo and behold, they succeeded in convincing Wallace to run in the Democratic primaries in a dirty quid pro quo, and Wallace was doing a good job of dirtying and dividing the Dems until a real-life Travis Bickle stuck his pistol out from a crowd and popped Wallace’s spinal cord.”
The beauty of Gaza is it kind of does both-divides Democrats AND unifies Republicans. The Left eviscerates him as Genocide Joe while no matter how hard he supports Israel it will never be enough for the Right who insist that he’s failing to support Israel enough-as it can never be enough for the Right.
It was pretty self evident post 10/7 that Biden really was damned no matter what he did going forward.
FN: See Chapter Roger Stone
The Left hated Biden’s unequivocally pro Israel position post 10/7 where he begun every discussion about Gaza with a reference to the “pure, unadulterated evil” of Hamas’ actions on that day and the “absolute right of Israel to defend itself.”
Of course, this gained President Joe nothing with the Right-in Erik Prince’s first podcast episode-again the timing is notable as this was begun just after 10/7 Prince claimed that a friend of his spoke to Netanyahu and according to this friend Netanyahu was ALREADY complaining Biden was putting on conditions.
FN: See Prince’s podcast.
Aaron David Miller has been the go to “Biden Whisperer” from the earliest stages his takes have proven correct again and again.
Here he was in mid November in a take which has been proven prescient the last 7 months since-already he remarked the disconnect between Netanyahu and the Biden WH:
There is little doubt that Israel and the US are operating according to two very different timetables. And these two clocks appear increasingly out of sync. Israel — committed to the destruction of Hamas’ military capacity and the end of its ability to govern in Gaza — appears to be in no hurry to declare mission accomplished.
UPDATE: At this point Bibi has now essentially admitted he’s not going to destroy Hamas yet apparently is still not prioritizing the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.
End FN
It’s apparent that the US clock is ticking much faster, a direct result of growing pressure from its European allies, key Arab partners and a deeply divided Democratic Party, all of which are starting to coalesce around a call for a ceasefire. Even within the Department of State and among congressional staff, there has been opposition to the administration’s passivity in the face of Palestinian loss of life that’s unprecedented in recent decades. Indeed, Biden himself almost certainly has come to understand that, as greatly as he’s concerned about Israel, the devastation and death in Gaza demands attention for Palestinians, too.
Senior US officials from the president on down have talked about the need to protect civilian lives, including hospitals; pressed Israel to allow more humanitarian assistance; and drawn clear lines about the day after with respect to Gaza — no forced displacement of civilians, no reduction of territory and no Israeli reoccupation. After vetoing other UN Security Council drafts calling for an immediate humanitarian truce, the US finally abstained on a Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses.
Yet despite the pressure, there’s no indication that the president might support a ceasefire and has intimated, let alone pressed, Israel to set a timeline for ending its military operation in Gaza. His words in the Washington Post seemed to rule that out for now.”
And this dynamic has only intensified over the last 7 months since. Biden has explicitly moved on to a ceasefire since but he’s still not willing to pressure Israel in a way that could compel them to accept one. Clearly Biden wants a ceasefire and to work on a two state solution “the day after” but refuses at every turn to force the issue.
Opinion: Why Biden won’t do more to restrain Netanyahu | CNN
When Miller wrote this piece in Marcy the dynamic hadn’t changed.
Opinion | Words Over Deeds: Why Biden Isn’t Pressuring Israel – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The cruel irony in calling him Genocide Joe is he’s the only one who sincerely wants to end the slaughter in Gaza other than the Palestinians themselves as Miller pointed out here-time is the enemy for Biden and the Palestinians but not for Netanyahu or Sinwar-or as I argue above the authoritarian Gulf Arab monarchies.
‘Time is an enemy’ for Biden, Palestinians during war in Gaza: Aaron David Miller (msnbc.com)
FN: OTOH Miller does point out that if Biden does win-please God!-the chance for a more positive scenario in Israel in terms of a change in leadership in both Israel and in Gaza becomes possible.
Transcript: World Stage: Israel-Gaza War with Aaron David Miller – The Washington Post
Everything always ends up the same place-it all hinges on November 8. If Trump will be in any way held accountable it’s clear we will have to win on November 8 first. If democracy is to be saved it will only have a chance with a victory on November 8. A change in the awful Israel-Gaza status quo? Increasingly looking like there’s no chance before we hopefully-please God!-win on November 8.
Regarding Biden’s ideology it recalls what Tony Blair once said in the face of the heavy criticism he got for supporting George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion-“it’s worse than that I actually believe this.”
That’s the problem with Biden-he’s not the flipflopping, equivocating politician who simply takes any position that proves to be momentarily expedient for him. Which is NOT a good thing. Here it’s hard not to think of Vaush’s debate with Destiny over principle vs consequence in judging the morality of an action.
Three Hours Of Pain & Suffering | Debating Destiny (youtube.com)
FN: Point being Biden, certainly his last resulting son, -and the threat to our democracy less- would be better off if Biden was LESS principled and more “political” here.
If you had any doubt of Biden’s Quixotic not to say suicidal commitment to the Theses of Old Guard Democrat Respectability Politics then his standing by and enabling the political prosecution and conviction of his last surviving son removes any doubt.
Those Theses being
1. Intuitionalism
2. Bipartisanship
3. Unconditional support for Israel
Late this past week Biden did it to himself again, tightening the straitjacket even tighter by unequivocally committing himself to not commuting Hunter’s sentence apparently irrespective of whether such a commutation would be warranted?
Those moments when Biden privately curses out Bibi, Merrick Garland-whose bright idea it was to appoint David Weiss Special Counsel based on what turned out to be yet more Russian disinformation-are not moments to increase hope.Aaron Mieller further confirms that these momentarily passive aggressive moments don’t mean anything-Biden is classic in preferring such meaningless grumbling while continuing to take the beatings-he’ll spit in Netanyahu’s soup but then dump it and hurry back to make him a fresh bowl.
He’s the POTUS but he acts like an overworked underappreciated short order cook at a chaotic mom and pop restaurant. The first time Bill Clinton met Netanyahu at the WH he exploded: “Who the fuck is the superpower?” with Biden-Bibi you’d never even think Biden represents the superpower based on how he acts.
As for the the possibility Israel-Gaza is the 2024 version of the 2016 Grand Bargain, once again, it’s notable that the interests of most of the other leaders in the Middle East clearly seem to align with this continuing through at least November 8-which calls to mind the 1980 October Surprise regarding the US hostages. As we documented above, besides the seemingly self evident fact neither Bibi nor Sinwar have any interest in ending the war anytime soon, it’s arguable that neither do the Gulf State monarchies-allegedly they’re US allies but in fact most of them probably want Trump to win-as they did in 2016-MBS, MBZ, Abramson makes the same case for El Sissi-who also supported Trump in 2016.
- Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has insisted that the Egyptians, rather than the Qataris, act as intermediaries between Israel and Hamas in negotiating a possible ceasefire. It has been universally reported that Netanyahu doesn’t actually want a ceasefire; that he’s being pushed toward one by U.S. president Joe Biden, who Netanyahu wishes to see defeated by Donald Trump in 2024; and that both Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu believe a Biden defeat is made considerably more likely if there is no ceasefire and the 2024 Israel-Gaza War is raging in November 2024—as all parties expect U.S. voters to wrongly blame President Biden for it.
- Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt wants Donald Trump elected president for a variety of reasons, among them that Trump (and not Biden) has potentially lucrative business interests in Egypt and a desire to expand those interests in the future that el-Sisi believes can be used to purchase U.S. foreign policy from Trump; el-Sisi is an autocrat who despises democracy and rightly believes Trump (and not Biden) shares his views on both autocracy and democracy and therefore would be more likely to forgive or even reward the brutal repression of the Egyptian people el-Sisi has authored for years; el-Sisi doesn’t want Gazan refugees on Egyptian soil—because he believes they would never leave, and would become a generational economic drain on Egypt—so he’s both willing to stand by as his co-conspirator Netanyahu ethnically cleanses Gaza (as that reduces the Gazan population, and Mr. el-Sisi doesn’t value human life, as even Donald Trump has acknowledged, albeit approvingly) and satisfied for the Israeli war on Gaza to go on indefinitely (as Israel wants to keep the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt closed for the duration of the war, which suits el-Sisi’s identical desire perfectly). El-Sisi is aware, however, that he must appear to be a partisan of the Gazan cause, though he is not, for the sake of maintaining his tenuous domestic popularity in Egypt.
FN: Speaking of Egypt and 2016 both are in the news again in relation to each other today.
Again as a liberal Biden is the odd man out in the Middle East.
3. MBS of Saudi Arabia and MBZ of the United Arab Emirates are looking to drive a wedge between the Qataris and the Americans as prelude to the bloody ground invasion of Qatar that almost happened during Trump’s first term—and would have happened under whatever Secretary of State Trump chooses for his hypothetical second term (a decision that will likely be made in consultation with the Saudis and Emiratis, as Trump has substantial business interests in both countries). MBZ has already made peace with the Israelis, in a deal set up by Donald Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, in exchange for Israeli surveillance technology that will help MBZ stay in power; MBS now wants to make the same deal with the Israels for the very same reason, but like el-Sisi he must publicly appear to be concerned with the plight of the Gazans. In truth, he and MBZ aim to see in Gaza whatever course of events most aids their chief current-and-intended-future allies: Trump and Netanyahu. As already noted, this means an elongation of the Israel-Gaza War and an assurance that, whatever President Biden might prefer, Netanyahu will insist on using the Egyptians (part of the Red Sea Conspiracy) as negotiators with Hamas, and not the Qataris (who MBS and MBZ aim to turn Trump against fully, to the tune of allowing it to be invaded—though it hosts the largest USAF base in the region—if or when he becomes President of the United States again).
With the above items in mind, here are the key components of CNN’s breaking news:
-
- Netanyahu has made clear “Israel’s preference of Egypt to Qatar” as negotiators;
- because of this it is Egypt, not Qatar, that has been leading ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas;
- during the course of this Netanyahu-demanded Egyptian mediation, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s intelligence services tampered with key documents involved in the negotiation in a way that “scuttled a deal that could have released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and set a path to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza.”
“The results of this illicit plot—by an entity Trump ally Netanyahu insisted be leading the negotiations with Hamas—were (a) that a ceasefire negotiation Netanyahu never had any interest in fizzled, (b) “a wave of anger and recrimination among officials from [the Biden administration and] Qatar”—which was to be expected—but also, far less convincingly, a similar response from Israel, which got all it had wanted from the cessation of the negotiations…”
Indeed, with how well this has worked out for Netanyahu-note he was in considerable jeopardy before 10/7 thanks to his attack on the independent judiciary, his criminal indictment and the genuine threat of prison-unlike in the US, Israel is not afraid of sending former leaders to prison-there has been SOME talk of-yep, a false flag…
Of course this leads many to reject such a “conspiracy” out of hand. However, if you’ve read this book thus far you know history tells us false flags are a real thing. Many national governments have utilized false flags, -in an earlier chapter we looked at the Russian 9/11-wether the US 9/11 was a false flag or not the Russian version is widely believed to have been-and a major reason Litvinenko ended up on Putin’s kill list was his accusation that the Moscow apartment bombings were indeed a false flag.
See chapter Russian 9/11
And, yes, I think the idea that the US 9/11 was a false flag can’t be ruled out of hand-at the minimum there are many unanswered questions-many that the 9/11 Commission failed to even ask starting with Cheney’s alleged shootdown order that raises many questions itself. Indeed, 10/7 does recall 9/11 as with Netanyahu pre 10/7, pre 9/11 Bush-Cheney had a plenty of fairly specific warnings.
FN: There are also arguably multiple cases of Israeli false flags-the USS Liberty and 1957.
The explanation for why W didn’t act was the warnings weren’t specific enough-as if unless intelligence predicts every detail of a coming attack it can’t be utilized. In the case of 10/7, Bib has played the whole ‘there’s no time for looking at what happened now, that’s divisive and backward looking…’ but finally there has been a little information publicly released and what has been released is pretty stunning as to how specific it is.
Intelligence documents compiled by the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division only three weeks before Oct. 7 warned that Hamas was preparing for a massive cross-border attack during which at least 200 hostages would be taken, according to Israeli media reports.
The memo, which was internally circulated on Sept. 19, was brought to the attention of at least some top intelligence officials in the military’s Southern Command, Israel’s Kan News reported on Monday night.
The junior intelligence officers who observed the exercise estimated the expected number of hostages at between 200 and 250 people. During the actual Oct. 7 attacks on the northwestern Negev, terrorists took roughly 250 people hostage, in addition to murdering 1,200.
One of the soldiers involved in the Sept. 19 report wrote after the massacre, “I feel like crying, yelling and swearing,” per Kan.
IDF knew weeks before Oct. 7 of Hamas plan to take 200 hostages | JNS | clevelandjewishnews.com
Ok so let me get this out of the way-false flags happen-I believe the Russian 9/11 was a false flag, and there are serious questions regarding the US 9/11 and Israel has been historically involved in a few false flags. But I don’t believe 10/7 was a false flag per se as clearly Hamas was the mastermind.
However the possibility that powerful elements in the government knew this attack was coming and deliberately sabotaged Israel from responding effectively to it seems far from impossible-again cuo bono-who benefits? Clearly Netanyahu-along with Sinwar, the Gulf monarchies and Vladimir Putin, have benefitted from the aftermath of 10/7. But if there was an inside job aspect this would have been Netanyahu.
Wether there’s anything to this or not, it seems very plausible if not likely that Netanyahu has chosen to drag this out till US election day as it’s a win-win for him-it both keeps him in power and threatens Biden staying in power.
Clearly he’s willing to sacrifice anything to achieve his political goals including his own hostages.
IDF knew weeks before Oct. 7 of Hamas plan to take 200 hostages | JNS | clevelandjewishnews.com
UPDATE:
(12) Why the Breaking News About Roger Stone and Judge Aileen Cannon Is So Concerning (substack.com)