Middle East conflict formation

A slightly modified version of a text published on Sept. 1, 2025 in TMS. On August 25 Thomas Friedman, always a weathervane for political and economic establishment thinking in the West, wrote a notable column in the NY Times that was pragmatic in tone, misleading in substance, and regressive in intention. Yet it reflects a growing ambivalence toward Israel’s prolonged genocide even among longtime supporters of Israel that now highlights starvation, famine, and a gross distortion of the delivery of humanitarian aid under emergency conditions. But expressed dangerously without hiding the hope that Israel could even now restore its legitimacy without being held accountable for crimes in Gaza and despite all, still expecting to be rewarded by excluding Hamas from any further governance role in Gaza and continuing to move toward the annexation of the West Bank by formal action or through further settlement expansion. It is notable that the headline of...

Professor emeritus, TFF Associate Oxford (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) The dam has burst. Netanyahu and his far-right regime have gone too far. Public pressure on politicians in Europe and many other countries has become irresistible, forcing them to change course. Most countries, 147 of the UN’s 193 members, have formally recognized a Palestinian state, and last week, France pledged to do so at the UN meeting in September. Fourteen nations, including Canada, New Zealand and Australia, join France in a push to recognize a Palestinian state. The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, one of Israel’s staunchest allies who even refused to condemn the Israeli blockade of food, water, medicine and fuel to the Palestinians after the terrible events of 7th October, has buckled under the pressure of public opinion. More than 255 MPs of all parties signed a letter addressed to the prime minister in which they urged him to...

The Gaza People’s Tribunal, at the end of its first public assembly in Sarajevo, issued a Declaration that expresses our commitment to peace and justice for the Palestinian people in their struggle to realize their basic rights, above all their inalienable right to self-determination. We are inviting like-minded friends to read and endorse the Sarajevo Declaration and to share the link with others who might join our solidarity initiative at this critical time. Here is the link to Change.org where you can find the full text of the Declaration and endorser information.

We’ve seen it repeatedly: You invent a pretext based on deliberate lies, fake news, exaggerations or a false flag operation which serves to construct a story that country or leader X is a threat to “us” which legitimates that we do a ‘preemptive’ strike against that – obviously invented – threat to eliminate it. Mainstream media’s task is to propagate the ploy, not to ask questions or reveal the lie. Take Serbia’s ‘genocide’ in Kosovo, Afghanistan’s responsibility for 9/11, Saddam’s possession of nukes in Iraq, Assad’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrians, Gaddafi’s ‘mass murder’ in Bengazi, Russia’s planning to occupy and administer not only Ukraine but also a series of European countries thereafter, Hamas’ attack on Israel – that Israel knew everything about before it happened – and now you have the blatant lie about Iran’s being just about to become a nuclear weapons power. Basic facts about...

The collective cynicism is ugly. The innocent Syrian people are now doomed. The author hopes that his predictions shall soon be proven wrong… This article was published at 02:36, about 4 hours before the HTS terrorists occupied Damascus. • Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen reports tonight, December 8, 2024, that Russia, Iran, Turkey call for immediate end to hostilities in Syria. My cynical interpretation of this – beyond pathetic – “call” is the following: Turkey knew and did/does all it can – again – to destroy Syria. Russia and Iran were surprised or act surprised; they can do nothing given their own malaise. Or their “intelligence” services failed miserably? Their common statement is devoid of constructive steps in this uniquely urgent situation. It does not even mention the Syrian government or its President. They “call for” terrorists who are approaching the outskirts of Damascus and have declared long ago that they want to...

Israel has long been renowned for its ability to shape public discourse pertaining to its behaviour toward the Palestinians, particularly in the West. Its greatest triumph is undoubtedly the manner in which it managed the media treatment of its response to October 7 (2023) in North America and Europe. Israel’s response was depicted as purely a matter of defensive security against Palestinian terrorists who staged an unprovoked and barbaric surprise attack by Hamas. This public distortion of the event gave the Western governments the political space needed to justify their closed eyes military, diplomatic, and intelligence support of Israel while genocide unfolded daily in Gaza. This article is drawn from two articles published on October 7, 2024, on the author’s blog. This political manipulation of this incident in the long struggle between Israel and Palestine has several different dimensions. Above all, it absolutizes October 7 to create the false impression...

Few are better qualified to challenge the official orthodoxy that stifles any discussion of this topic Peter Oborne August 12, 2024 No review has yet been published of Professor Ilan Pappe’s magnificent and passionate new book on the Zionist lobby. This silence is no surprise. Even a passing reference to the lobby is liable to lead to charges of antisemitism and potential career destruction. Faiza Shaheen was dropped like a stone last month as Labour candidate for the London seat of Chingford and Woodford Green. “There have been complaints, allegedly, about her ‘liking’ a tweet that referred to the ‘Israel lobby’ – widely considered an anti-Semitic trope,” reported the New Statesman’s associate political editor, Rachel Cunliffe. On a now-infamous Newsnight appearance following her defenestration, a tearful Shaheen apologised for liking the tweet and accepted it was a “trope”. She didn’t have much choice. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC),...

July 4, 2024 “Each of us has had our own experience of the cascading failures of process, leadership, and decision-making that have characterized this Administration’s intransigent response to this continuing calamity. Taken together, these paint a picture of an overlapping and systemic set of problems in this Administration’s policy approach, and a series of warnings that have gone unheeded…” Read the entire – extraordinarily important – statement here. It is a significant example of civil disobedience and personal ethics. It all began with Josh Paul when he resigned from the State Department last year. See also the video below. This is the way to go. May thousands upon thousands feel inspired and resign, too – and not only in the U.S. but in all Western countries that facilitate and support the genocide in Gaza and the barbaric policies in the Middle East.

1. Israel: The policy’s background As a small country with a tiny population surrounded by large and hostile countries, Israel’s policy ever since its establishment has been to rely on some external forces, the British Empire at the beginning of its creation and later on the American superpower to protect herself. It has also involved the creation of a nuclear arsenal in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (the NPT) and by means of lies and deception, while being the most vociferous opponent of any other country in the Middle East to even have a peaceful nuclear programme for producing energy. Another aspect of this policy of self-preservation has been to divide and partition the neighbouring countries so that they would lose their advantage of larger size and greater population vis-à-vis Israel. As early as 1982, the Israeli scholar Oded Yinon authored an essay called “A Strategy for Israel in the...

Liberal democracies remain shamefully complicit with Israel, despite its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people Students of world politics have long understood that when it comes to the strategic interests of leading states, international law is marginalised unless it is useful in waging a propaganda war against adversaries.  Indeed, the United Nations was designed in ways that recognised this feature of international political life. Otherwise, giving the winners of World War II a right of veto would make no sense.  Such an exemption from international law was also evident at the war crimes trials held in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, at which only the crimes of the losers were scrutinised for legal accountability, and obvious crimes of the victors – such as the indiscriminate bombing of Dresden and the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – were not prosecuted.  To this day, for understandable reasons, many...

Suzie Halewood April 15, 2024 “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime”Ernest Hemingway, 1946 This tax year, the so-called Ministry of Defence will be given £69BN of taxpayers’ money, to effectively subsidise the arms industry and fund more wars of aggression while offering little or nothing in the way of defence. A further £116BN of taxpayers’ money will go to the banks, interest on money that never existed for wars that are not only unnecessary and illegal, but which neither benefit the UK taxpayer, nor those who have lost life and limb in any one of the smorgasbord of conflicts the UK has instigated since WWII. Originally published on Off-Guardian on April 12, 2024 War was outlawed in 1928 by the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War. Known as Kellogg-Briand Pact, the treaty was signed by sixty-three nations, including Britain &...

Professor emeritus & TFF Associate* The world is in turmoil and perhaps closer to the possibility of a devastating nuclear war than at any time since the Second World War. There are at least three ongoing conflicts that have the potential of expanding into something much more serious that will lead to regional or even global wars. Wars are raging in the heart of Europe, the Middle East and, if some US hawks can get their way, soon there will be another disastrous war between the West and China. Yet, world leaders seem to be asleep and are moving blindly towards the precipice. War in Ukraine On 25 March 2024, in a letter to President Joe Biden, a large number of the members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity warned that in the light of the reports that France was preparing to dispatch a force of some 2,000 troops to Ukraine,...