zazen

This 13min video shows how Iran got to where it is today really well: Kim Dotcom: ''Iran is a victim of decades of injustice perpetrated by the US and the UK in an effort to control Irans oil. They couped the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 and installed a US puppet until the Iranian revolution in 1979. Over 500,000 Iranians have died in the US-Iraq war against Iran. Even more died because of US sanctions. Iran is not a terrorist state. Iran has been forced to defend itself against regime change efforts and colonial aggression from the US and their satellites in the Middle East. The Iranians should be applauded for aiding the Palestinian people in their struggle against the illegal occupation by Israel and decades of injustice, theft and dehumanization. Iran has a long history of standing up to bullies. The Persians have fought the Romans, the Turks and the Mongols. Survival is deeply encoded in the Iranian DNA. A war with Iran would be a massive miscalculation by Israel and the US. Iran has prepared for this war. It has a formidable army and a significant arsenal of long range ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Russia and China would support Iran in a war against the US and Israel. Ukraine in reverse. With the big difference that the US can never defeat Iran unlike Russia which is currently destroying the Ukrainian army and its NATO equipment in the US proxy war. The Rand corporation should have titled its infamous warmongering research paper more accurately: ‘Overextending and Unbalancing America and the EU.’ A war against Iran would result in an acceleration of the inevitable decline of US empire and the destruction of Israel. The risk of Israel utilizing nuclear weapons against Iran is significant. It would not lead to victory but to global condemnation and punishment against the Jewish people. Whoever is in charge of the US Govt right now should establish urgent client control and stop the mass murdering war criminal @netanyahu before it’s too late. Jews everywhere should demand the resignation of this lunatic for the purpose of self preservation. Watch the video below to understand that the so called ‘terrorists’ in Iran are simply the victims of endless bullying and deserve nothing but respect from any fair minded person. Resisting evil bullies who want to steal your natural resources is not terrorism.''

Is a occupier balanced with who he occupies? Is a business owner in balance with who works for him? Is a person with a rock and a person with a gun equally responsible for the violence they commit between one another? The problem isn't that Palestinians want a state, the problem is Israel obstructing them from one which is their right by law. If you win the lottery for a million dollars and I get in the way of you receiving that million dollars - am I right or wrong for doing so?

Seems like the ethnic cleansing and dispossession will continue if this video indicates what looks like West Bank 2.0 in the making : New buffer zones created in Gaza by dividing it into fractured blocks to be monitored via check points stationed in multiple corridors. So instead of occupying it from outside, they will occupy it from within. Any Hamas fighters or ''resistance'' to this dystopia that pops up from the tunnels will be stamped out like a game of whack a mole as the IDF will be watching like hawks over it. This isn't a solution, only a escalation of a already intolerable reality. As if we haven't seen what Israel has already done with their power except nothing but abuse it in the West Bank with settlement expansion. This reality will be copy and pasted onto Gaza as the precedent is already set. All this done in the 21st century, backed by the West. The world failed the Palestinian people, shame.

Twitter thread from Mouin Rabbani: 1. The Axis of Resistance is a coalition rather than a formal alliance. It consists of states, movements, and militias that share the common objective of confronting and reducing US and Israeli influence in the Middle East, and at times of weakening governments allied with the West as well. 2. Iran is the most powerful member of this coalition and therefore a central and highly-influential player. But it does not command the Axis of Resistance. It is more the Germany of the European Union than the Soviet Union of the Warsaw Pact. Its influence is also far from uniform and, as demonstrated by the shifts in Iranian-Syrian relations during the past quarter century, changes over time. Some militias operating in Iraq and Syria have all the hallmarks of Iranian proxies. Yemen’s AnsarAllah clearly does not. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was closely involved with the establishment of Hizballah, which for good measure fully subscribes to the Islamic Republic’s system of rule. But it is today powerful enough to make its decisions in Beirut rather than Tehran. Hamas for its part has had an ambivalent relationship with the Axis. At the outset of the Syrian civil war Hamas broke with Damascus, and its exile leadership moved not to Beirut or Tehran but Doha, and a rupture with Iran lasting almost half a decade ensued. 3. It’s transparently clear that the 7 October attacks were neither an Iranian initiative nor coordinated with the Axis of Resistance. So transparently clear that US and Israeli intelligence have come to the same conclusion to preserve their credibility. I don’t believe Hamas ever expected its coalition allies to immediately unleash similar offensives of their own upon Israel. It must have understood that just as Hamas prioritized its own interests and agenda, others would do so as well. 4. Nevertheless, Hizballah on 8 October opened what it termed a support front against Israel, and over the next two months was joined by Yemen and militias in Iraq and Syria. Iran played a supporting role, except when it was directly targeted by Israel. 5. The purpose of the support fronts has been to engage in multi-front attritional warfare against Israel, and to a lesser extent against its allies, in order to raise the costs to Israel and its Western sponsors of continuing the genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. To this end, they have repeatedly stated that their attacks would cease the moment a ceasefire takes hold in the Gaza Strip. 6. Preventing coordinated or unified action by its adversaries has been a guiding principle of Israeli statecraft going back to the 1949 Armistice negotiations that ended the Palestine War. De-linking the support fronts from the Gaza Strip, and then from each other has therefore been an Israeli priority. 7. As a rule, states and conventional militaries prefer to avoid wars of attrition, particularly when these are prosecuted on their territory. They are too costly in terms of the social, economic, and manpower losses involved. This forms the crucial context for the dramatic escalations of the past week. 8. Israel’s dilemma in this respect is two-fold: Its campaigns to de-link and suppress the support fronts risk their escalation into additional full-scale conflicts independent of the war against Gaza. And secondly, the longer this campaign continues the greater the prospect of a full-scale regional conflagration. 9. In other words, the combination of Israel’s inability to achieve a decisive outcome in the Gaza Strip, and refusal to accept a ceasefire agreement, has forced it to play double or nothing. Either Hizballah capitulates and dismantles its support front, or it will face the full force of the Israeli military. Yemen has withstood similar efforts by the US-UK naval task force in the Red Sea. Short of a mortal Israeli blow against Hizballah and its military capabilities, a scenario that no one takes seriously, it also won’t work in Lebanon. 10. Yet from Israel’s perspective the challenge is also a unique opportunity. With Biden wrapped firmly around his finger, Netanyahu believes that the period until January 2025 is ideal to provoke a direct US-Iranian confrontation. And he seems to have decided that the road to Tehran goes through the southern suburbs of Beirut. 11. Just to be clear, tails don’t wag dogs. Dogs wag tails. Washington may well have liked for Israel to approach things differently, but it is geopolitically invested in preventing an Israeli defeat. And that is what makes this moment so particularly dangerous. END

Deplorable. Regarding assassinations:

That's not justification do to horrible acts to others though. Otherwise, we can say that whats happening to Gazans can now be done upon Israelis, which is wrong. Israels Mossad headquarters is based in a densley populated area of Tel Aviv filled with civilians - can we say Israel is using human shields? Does this become a legit target? Of course not, but Israels government thinks different when they see Palestinians. But we must learn from history and not commit the same mistakes, or similar. What makes Israel a special case is it was founded in the 20th century when the world had already adopted new norms around self determination and de-colonisation. Even if we put the founding of Israel behind us, the issue is they still continue to expand settlements till today and take territory or deny territory to Palestinians in the form of their own state. The focus is because the West completely backs and sends money to Israel unconditionally while not having as much concern for their own citizens (Hurricane Helen as a recent example). The entire America First meme indicates how fed up people are. So not only can the West play a massive part in stopping this grave injustice, but they can focus on their own issues. Thats why its the focus of today, because we can do something about it. Most countries were found on violent histories - but thats the point, that violence is history and not a present reality as nations have largely resolved their territorial disputes and settled within their borders. But no nation is obstructing another group from having their own today except Israel. You can't just keep millions of people stateless into the 21st century as if their a random tribe in the Amazon rainforest.

True, it’s one thing to call a just cause glorious, it’s another to call the violent means to that end, in and of itself glorious. Theirs glory in the cause, not in immoral acts done in pursuit of that cause. Tribal thinking will generalize the best of their group while exceptionalising the worst of their group. Cherry picking the worst examples of a society is problematic as it reduces a society to its worst elements. But I think in Israel’s case theres just been so many cases of bad behaviour caught on video and for such a small country that it looks more systemic rather than as isolated anomalies. It’s obviously not all the population, but it’s sizable enough to shift state policy and politics. I’ve seen pro Palestinians quote polling which showed that most Israelis don’t think Israel was going hard enough on Gaza in their bombing campaign, even I shared that here before - but I’d have to verify how reflective such polls can really be ie what’s the sample size etc. Its messy to generalize with such things.

Where have I minimised? I’m simply sharing a video which goes into how October 7th was amplified to justify what Israel has done afterwards. The beheaded babies, systemic rape, babies in ovens, narrative about the children of light vs darkness and of Western civilisation vs a backward civilisation full of savage barbarians. This is the deception and use of atrocity propaganda. “Atrocity propaganda exists because it is an extremely effective tool in shaping public opinion and justifying extreme actions. By dehumanizing the enemy, it creates the emotional and moral groundwork for violence, war, and oppression to be seen as not only acceptable but necessary. The power of atrocity propaganda lies in its ability to simplify complex conflicts into clear narratives of good and evil, leaving little room for nuance, debate, or peaceful alternatives. Once people are convinced they are fighting monsters, there is no limit to what they will tolerate in the name of self-defense or moral duty. This is why, time and again, governments, militaries, and regimes resort to atrocity propaganda—it’s an essential part of selling the public on the idea that extreme actions are not just justified but morally imperative.” Atrocity propaganda only works if it can stay ahead of the truth, which is hard in the digital age.

Graphic lyrical video as a reminder to what our eyes witnessed a year since this all began. Unsettling re-visiting some of the scenes from those first few months and to remember all the discussions on this forum. To think this was all justified and backed by the West. That similar scenes and rhetoric are being used now towards Lebanon - this is how large segments of the Middle Eastern population view Israel and America as terrorist states.

@Inliytened1 A good documentary showcasing Israelis deception regarding what occurred on October 7th, to justify their disproportionate response following it:

Of course Palestinians won’t become absorbed into Israel, that’s rhetorical. The point of the questioning is to expose the weakness in Zionist justifications by getting them to defend the untenable (forever occupation) or reconsider their position. The fact Heaven evades the question and responded to you proves its effectiveness.

So they relocated to somewhere they weren’t living and took over a portion of land from native people already living there? If the roles were reversed wouldn’t Israelis resist this or any other group? Maybe it hasn’t been a success because of occupation. If Israelis demand security so bad, how can security be achieved by occupying people forever who will naturally resist it? The point is, Jewish people lost everything 75 years ago, but Palestinians have been losing what’s theirs for 75 years and still continuing till today - can you acknowledge this injustice is the core of the issue, just as it was for Jews? The ones responsible for destruction should be held to account for reconstruction. Just like Germany and Japan had to pay reparations after WW2 or Iraq destroying Kuwait.

@Heaven Hypothetically, if Palestinians occupied Israelis, should the Israelis resist this occupation? Also hypothetically, let’s say Israel defeats Hamas and they no longer exist. What should Israel do with all the Palestinians that remain in Gaza and West Bank? Will they become part of Israeli society with equal rights or be given their own state?

India can make the same case that its in a bad neighbourhood, flanked by two nuclear countries, or South Korea by one. We don’t see India or the Koreas acting the way Israel does - they navigate those tensions like every other country. Israel is unique in its disregard for International law and Geneva convention violations in how they commit them so brazenly with arrogance. Just see Israel’s UN speech and Irans - and they see who is the one speaking of peace and who of war, and who speaks with such arrogance and mocks the UN. Israel officially isn’t nuclear yet have the Samson option that threatens nuclear strikes as a last resort - no other country would be allowed to exist with such nuclear ambiguity. If someone wins a lottery worth a million dollars, are denied those millions dollar, then go on to pursue it - are they entitled or just obtaining what’s rightfully theirs? If we don’t want Palestinians to so fervently pursue statehood, we shouldn’t have made it their right enshrined in international law - that’s not entitlement, that’s just them pushing their legal right.

Even if we put aside the debate on who’s native or not, that’s exactly the point - if both sides are equally native then both have equal claim to rights and dignity within that territory. If they don’t want to live together and want to slice up their own states that’s fine too - just don’t try to justify denying the other natives what’s theirs and morally grandstand about it which is what really rubs people the wrong way and what the West excel at.

That’s exactly the point - these demographic and security issues are where the geopolitical/logistical complexity come from. But that doesn’t negate the underlying moral injustice at the core - which is to deny a people inclusion into your state or exclude them from having their own if you don’t want them to be a majority demographically in your own. Israel’s constant refrain about security threats from neighboring countries while valid to an extent, doesn’t make it special. Every country lives with the reality of potential conflict. India and Pakistan, China and India, even Germany and France - all of them have histories of violence, yet they coexist as sovereign nations. What makes Israel different? It’s not security, it’s entitlement. The idea that Israel alone gets to deny an entire people their right to self-determination because they might be dangerous in the future is pure hypocrisy. We face risks every time we walk out the door, but we don’t lock up or strip away the rights of everyone just because danger might exist. So why should Israel be any different? The moral clarity here is simple: denying people their freedom and using fear as an excuse to do it is unjust, no matter how complex the geopolitical web gets.

It’s complex in that it’s hard to resolve due to geopolitics, logistics and power interests. But it’s simple in terms of moral clarity. You can have moral clarity on a issue while acknowledging its broader geopolitical and logistical complexity. Take the following: “Imagine if in America, Native Americans were not integrated into the country’s democracy but were sidelined instead. Then, when they demanded a state of their own due to being unwanted, they were denied even that possibility. When they resisted, they were labeled and gaslit as terrorists.” Is there any moral complexity in this? In denying people entry into your state but also keeping them from having their own with the use of violence? Most societies agree that theft is wrong (moral clarity) whether it’s small scale (personal goods) or large scale (land and property). But we can also recognise the complexity in solving those issues like addressing inequality and increasing opportunities. I’m not anti-West, I’m an anti-naughtiness.

People often see the issue as complex and full of weeds not to be got into but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Straightening it out is hard, but it is simple to see who is the wronged party as acknowledged by the founding father of the nation - and that that party is still being wronged today is the whole problem. The only reason people may find this situation complex is due to the decades of history in which a lot has happened and they lack the knowledge of facts on - including a ton of propaganda to obscure the situation. But if looked at bluntly, there is no moral high ground for the Israelis in this, just a moral quicksand that they and the West collectively are sinking in. Can this really be what the West are backing and taking the world to the brink of global war for? Common lol.

The point of sharing Ben Gurion’s words a few pages back was to highlight at least a inkling of acknowledgment on his part of who is the aggressor and instigator of injustice in the Palestine issue - though he justified it through Zionist logic. Most countries, if not all, are founded on violence. The difference as I’ve emboldened in the post above is that Israel hasn’t finished finding itself in the context of what it claims to be their homeland. Across the world nations have resolved their territorial disputes by integrating indigenous or external groups as citizens, rather than excluding them in an apartheid-like system or leaving them in a state of limbo for decades into the modern age. Ironically, it’s the natives who are oppressed into a purgatory realm of statelessness who are called ‘backward’. Imagine if in America, Native Americans were not integrated into the country’s democracy but were sidelined instead. Then, when they demanded a state of their own due to being unwanted, they were denied even that possibility. When they resisted, they were labeled and gaslit as terrorists. If one can’t see the absurdity in this, they must be absurd themselves.

They even know the shitting patterns of their allies. “Boris Johnson claimed he found a listening device in his personal bathroom at the British Foreign Office after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used it.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/03/boris-johnson-bug-found-bathroom-netanyahu-visit/ “The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.” https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house-spying-devices-1491351

Ben Gurion’s words: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121. “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.” — David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech. https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/ From the primary founder of Israel itself, Israel’s version of George Washington.

Live by the sword die by the sword? More like live under occupation die under it. Maybe Israel shouldn’t dehumanise, destroy and deny Palestinians their inalienable rights that the West so proudly claim to have architected. But of course they don’t embody what they preach - Western civilisation is the land of the free and the home of the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality.

New Gaza documentary by Al Jazeera: From CNN's Amanpour: ''Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib tells CNN that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just before he was assassinated by Israel. The temporary ceasefire was called for by President Biden, President Macron and other allies during last week’s UNGA.'' - Similar to when Hamas head Ismail Hanieyh was assassinated during negotiations.

Even if people are right about a certain country needing to be changed for the better, that right belongs to those within that country. If outside forces attempt to make changes the people within that country who also want those changes will see it as an affront to their own rights and perceive it as imperialistic even if intentions are good. Cultural practices evolve, but they do so on their own timeline, from the pressures and values of the people living within those cultures. The West’s selective outrage has nothing to do with principles and everything to do with control. Iran, like any other nation, will change in its own time, but that change belongs to the people of Iran, not to outsiders with their eyes on the region’s resources and strategic positioning. It’s about geopolitics and power. Countries that don’t align with Western interests are vilified for their cultural practices, while allies get a free pass for similar or even worse practices. Saudi Arabia didn’t even allow women to drive until recently, yet they’re an ally and aren’t on the radar for regime change. Or take Thailand who have a longstanding open culture of lady boys and women prostituting themselves in tourist hotspots. Is the right wing of America gonna make a fuss about how they’re oppressing women and children’s eyes by exposing them to a culture that accepts and embraces trans culture? No, because Thailand isn’t of much importance strategically.

Some quotes from Brookings institute on policy options towards Iran: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf On striking Iran ''As noted above, in the section on the time frame for an invasion, whether the United States decides to invade Iran with or without a provocation is a critical consideration. With provocation, the international diplomatic and domestic political requirements of an invasion would be mitigated, and the more outrageous the Iranian provocation (and the less that the United States is seen to be goading Iran), the more these challenges would be diminished. In the absence of a sufficiently horrific provocation, meeting these requirements would be daunting.'' ''A critical challenge for this policy option is that, absent a clear Iranian act of aggression, American airstrikes against Iran would be unpopular in the region and throughout the world. This negative reaction could undermine any or all of America’s policy initiatives in the region regardless of how the Iranians respond.'' ''For that reason, it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)'' On Nuclear disarmament ''It is clear from discussions with Israeli military and intelligence officials, and from numerous press leaks and reports that Israel is well under way in planning for a military operation to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said in 2007 that “the things that we do behind the scenes, far from the public eye, are far more important than the slogan charade,” implying that Israeli covert capabilities are already hard at work trying to cope with the Iranian threat and preparing to attack it if they must. It is impossible to know what those plans entail in detail without access to the IDF’s secret planning, but Israelis say the mission is “not impossible.” The IDF’s September 6, 2007 attack on the Syrian nuclear facility at Dayr az-Zawr is widely believed in Israel to have been in part a message to Tehran that Iran may be next.'' As in the case of American airstrikes against Iran, the goal of this policy option would be to destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities in the hope that doing so would significantly delay Iran’s acquisition of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. However, in this case, an added element could be that the United States would encourage—and perhaps even assist—the Israelis in conducting the strikes themselves, in the expectation that both international criticism and Iranian retaliation would be deflected away from the United States and onto Israel. The logic behind this approach is that allowing Israel to mount the airstrikes, rather than the United States, provides a way out of the dilemma described in the previous chapter, whereby American airstrikes against Iran could become self-defeating because they would undermine every other American initiative in the Middle East, an outcome exactly the opposite of what a new Iran policy is meant to accomplish. An Israeli attack on Iran would directly affect key American strategic interests. If Israel were to overfly Iraq, both the Iranians and the vast majority of people around the world would see the strike as abetted, if not authorized, by the United States. Even if Israel were to use another route, many Iranians would still see the attack as American supported or even American orchestrated. After all, the aircraft in any strike would be American produced, supplied, and funded F-15s and F-16s, and much of the ordnance would be American made. In fact, $3 billion dollars in U.S. assistance annually sustains the IDF’s conventional superiority in the region.''