The World Confronts its Malaise

Part I- How was the Middle East destruction allowed to fester and happen?

by Dan Lieberman / October 3rd, 2024

The world is in shock; stricken by the realization that mass murder occurs unimpeded and those who were regarded as protectors against atrocities are those who enable the slaughter of innocents. An uneasiness has gripped the world and brought it to the depressing state of watching helplessly as democratically chosen leaders aid and abet in the most severe criminal activity ─ genocide. Israel has achieved a level of committing atrocities, denying humanity, and displaying insanity that is incomprehensible. Go back in history and return to Hulegu, prince of the Mongol Empire, besieging Baghdad in the thirteenth century. “Surrender and give in to your new authority or all will die,” Hulegu shouted to those behind city walls. Benjamin Netanyahu can be paraphrased as uttering a similar threat to the Palestinians, with one difference; “Even if you remain passive to our dictates after surrender, your community will eventually perish; assistance by Western nations assures us of that.”

Destruction of the Palestinian community has been ongoing, starting in late 1947 and accelerating in contemporary times. The horrors inflicted upon the Palestinians have been obscured and nonchalantly received by Western governments. One event tells the story, serving as a catalyst for additional atrocities that have intensified. Details of that event expose the malaise that fails to understand how the Zionists deceitfully use the damage they inflict upon others to gain advantage. This deceit continues with similar events in the present and predicts a future of chaos for the Middle East. The moment missed has led to a future soon to be missing.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, entered the Ibrahami mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron. Using an automatic weapon, Goldstein indiscriminately killed 29 and wounded 125 of the 800 Palestinian Muslim worshippers participating in the first of the five daily Islamic prayers. On that day, Western leaders should have realized they were dealing with a genocidal Israeli population, that this genocide could not proceed one day further, and failure to halt the drift doomed the Middle East to an endless conflagration that would engulf much of the world.

The fanatical and crazed Baruch Goldstein could not have prepared the act by himself; the calculated manner of presentation and the lack of attention to him carrying a gun and wanting, for no adequate reason, to enter the mosque area, indicate Israeli authorities were complicit in assembling the plans for his attack. Although no longer a doctor in the Israeli military, Goldstein wore his antiquated uniform and “carried a Galil assault rifle and four magazines of ammunition, which held a total of 140 rounds in 35 rounds per magazine.” Events are clouded by observer contradictions and agendas. Tablet magazine has an accepted version (Note:Edited for brevity) that features dubious reasons for inattention to Goldstein’s strange behavior and for not asking sensible questions. The New York Times provided additional facts.

At 5:05 a.m. Feb. 25, 1994, the phone rang in the regional command center of the Israel Defense Forces in Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Shlomo Edelstein, the officer in charge, picked up the phone. “He told me to send a jeep within five minutes to the infirmary,” Edelstein recalled, “which seemed really strange to me, because he wasn’t the doctor on call. And even if someone called him directly at home, say, why would he ask for the jeep? If it was a real emergency, wouldn’t he need an ambulance?”

Edelstein called Motti Unger, who drove the community’s emergency vehicle, and asked him to swing by and see what was up. Goldstein just needed a quick ride to the nearby Cave of the Patriarchs, slightly more than a mile away. The ride lasted about seven minutes, not long enough for Unger to ask any questions. He gave Unger his car keys and asked him to drop them off later with his wife.

Unger didn’t find it strange that the doctor was wearing army fatigues, or that he was carrying his Galil automatic rifle. Hebron was a violent place, and attacks on the region’s Jewish residents were getting more and more common. If he needed a quick early morning ride, he probably had his reasons. The soldiers guarding the cave were just as incurious. One of them asked the doctor why he was there so early, and in uniform no less. The doctor smiled and mumbled something about miluim, Hebrew for reserve duty, and walked in. The doctor walked over to the green metal door that connected the room to the much larger Isaac Hall, at the end of which, according to legend, lies the locked door that leads directly to Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden. Normally, the door would’ve been guarded. The doctor unbolted the door and walked in.

He took a few steps along the wall in the marvelous room with the high, arched ceilings and the ornate rugs. And then, he took out his rifle and started shooting. When security forces finally made their way to the scene, they found the bodies of 29 Muslim men, murdered as they prayed peacefully. And in one corner, lying perfectly still, his head bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher wielded by a few of the men who rushed to stop the attack, was doctor Baruch Goldstein.

The New York Times article adds,

Muhammed Abu Saleh, a guard at the mosque door, said that Goldstein had demanded to enter, saying he was the duty officer, and that when Mr. Abu Saleh objected, the doctor knocked him down with the butt of his rifle. “When I saw him, he was running toward the hall where everyone was saying prayers,” said Khatem Kafisha, who had been taking off his shoes near the door. “He could have shot any one of us who was outside, but it was clear he only wanted to open fire on the worshipers so he could hit as many people as possible.”

The aftermath of the atrocity is an example of how the Zionists cleverly use the damage done to others to eventually advance their cause. It compares to changing the student protests against Jewish participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people to student protest as anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish people.

Israeli leaders showed contempt for the atrocity. Yitzhak Rabin addressed the Knesset:

You are not part of the community of Israel. You are not part of the national democratic camp which we all belong to in this house, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law. We say to this horrible man and those like him: you are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.

The Israeli government’s words made headlines and impressed a world to believe the Israelis wanted peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians. The same world was unaware that, “in October 1993, after a series of previous disruptions, Goldstein poured acid on prayer rugs in the Ibrahimi Mosque, burned large holes in them, and assaulted six Palestinians worshipers.” Muslim authorities informed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the “dangers” posed by Goldstein. “These daily violations in the Ibrahimi mosque cannot be given silent treatment.” Rabin, who posed as a follower of the Oslo Accords, did not respond to the earlier information. Israeli authorities took no action. Now, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) demanded that all settlers be disarmed and an international force be created to protect Palestinians. The Israeli government only arrested followers of Goldstein’s hero, the deceased Meir Kahane, forbade certain settlers from entering Arab towns, and demanded those settlers, and only those, turn in their army-issued rifles.

This was a moment in which an enraged world community may have been able to thwart the ongoing genocide. Those responsible for the Ibrahim Mosque massacre were the foreign settlers who occupied land stolen from the Palestinians. The illegal occupation of the lands provoked the Palestinians into retaliation against these foreign settlers. The retaliation gave Baruch Goldstein and his deranged followers a deranged reason to commit an atrocity against the Palestinians. The cycle of violence had one principal contributing factor — the settlers occupying stolen land. Stop the illegal settlements and the violence will cease. A moribund world could not commit to appropriate action. A moribund world created a world of eternal victims.

The atrocity did not end at the Ibrahami Mosque. In mass protests by Palestinians throughout the West Bank, 20 to 26 Palestinians were killed while 120 were injured in confrontations with the Israeli military. Nine Israeli Jews were also killed. A naïve world did not notice that actions did not follow words, that the Palestinians did not receive compensation or more protection. The opposite occurred; the Hebron settlers received assistance in expanding their settlements and increasing their violence against the Palestinians.

Israeli measures taken in Hebron following the massacre include:

• A round-the-clock curfew imposed on Palestinian residents.
• Forcible division of the Ibrahimi Mosque to create a separate prayer space for Jews with a separate entrance. In addition, the mosque is opened exclusively for Jews 10 days a year, and Muslims 10 days a year.
• Palestinian shopkeepers on Shuhada Street in the heart of Hebron were forced to close their businesses, which were welded shut by the Israeli army, under the pretext of securing settlers living on the busy commercial artery.
• Palestinians were restricted, at first from driving and later from walking as well, on a large section of Shuhada Street, prompting its nickname of “Apartheid Street.” The US government spent millions of dollars through USAID renovating Shuhada Street prior to its segregation, most of which is now reserved for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers.
• Numerous new Israeli military checkpoints and obstacles to movement were put in place making it difficult for Palestinians to move around the city, including children who must pass through checkpoints to get to school.
• There are over 120 obstacles to Palestinian movement designed to segregate “restricted areas” (settlements and surrounding areas) from the rest of the city, including 18 permanently manned military checkpoints.
• Several streets in the center of downtown Hebron that lead to the settlements are prohibited for Palestinian traffic and some also for pedestrian movement.
• 512 Palestinian businesses in the restricted areas have been closed by the Israeli military and at least 1100 others have closed due to restricted access for customers and suppliers.
• More than 1000 Palestinian homes located in the restricted areas, over 40% of the area’s residences, have been abandoned, according to a survey by B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Malaise in the international community caused an inability to find justice for the Palestinians murdered by Brooklyn born Baruch Goldstein in the Cave of the Patriarchs. Malaise set the stage for continuous murders of Palestinians. Goldstein provoked, Palestinians responded, and the Palestinian response moved Israeli officials to take action… against Palestinians. The mass murder of Palestinians was turned into a provocation against Israelis and the Palestinian victims were additionally victimized. Every day, Americans hear about the foreign event that occurred on October 7, 2023. Every day, Americans should learn about American events, about Americans who have gone to the occupied territories and caused death and misery to the peoples in the Middle East. February 25, 1994 prefaced a multitude of provocations, many by Americans, that eventually caused the events on October 7, 2023.



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Part II: The World Confront its Malaise

From an American killing 29 Palestinians to an American bomb killing Hassan Nasrallah

by Dan Lieberman / October 4th, 2024

Read Part 1.

The events described in previous articles ─ pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime in 1948 and an American murder of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 are not isolated relics of the past. They link to events that occur in contemporary times and remain alive as if happening today ─ salient features in the historical narrative that a world ignored and served to claim more victims.

Pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime initiated the trend that guaranteed almost continuous support by the U.S. government for Israel’s mounting crimes. Made in America Baruch Goldstein, in his murderous rampage, set the stage for continuous murders of Palestinians and for the made in America bombs that extinguished the life of Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah.

The constant drumming of arranged epithets and twists of reality, where an Israel committed atrocity becomes an Israel sacrifice, continues to manipulate minds. Hezbollah and its deceased leader, Hassan Nasrallah, are not portrayed as fighting to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people by the terrorist Israeli government; they are labelled as terrorist Hezbollah and terrorist Nasrallah urging genocide of nuclear-armed Israel and as individuals who deserve the ultimate fate.

In his speech to the United Nations (UN), Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, displayed the deranged and manipulative mind that governs Israel’s actions. He said “more resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly against Israel in the last decade than against the rest of the world’s countries,” and accused the UN of being a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” The avalanche of UN resolutions condemning Israel’s genocidal actions prove that Israel is a “house of darkness,” a nation that has no regard for international law, and has leaders who feed upon hating other peoples. In his purposeful upside-down world, Netanyahu attempted to use valid condemnation of Israel’s actions by those who have been trusted to safeguard the world against criminal actions to prove Israel is a “shining light on the hill.”

From Netanyahu,

Hezbollah is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans and more Frenchmen than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented in this room.

Netanyahu alludes to one incident, the 40 year-old 1983 bombings of French and American barracks in Beirut. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, another suicide attack killed 58 French soldiers in their barracks. The barracks were components of contingents of U.S. Marines and French forces that arrived in Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping mission. After the Sabra and Shatila massacres, which killed between “1,300 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias,” and French and U.S. naval bombardments of the Shouf hills, Lebanese militants perceived the French and U.S. presences in their land as intruding forces that protected Israel’s invasion. The militants wanted these forces to leave, and, not too long after the bombings, they left. No confirmed information is available of who authorized and carried out the bombings. A formal Hezbollah did not exist at that time.

There is definite information that Israeli air force jet fighter aircraft and navy motor torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War, killed 34 and wounded 171 crew members. Many Americans have been arbitrarily murdered by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, about ½ dozen this year.

Heart breaking to learn that Turkish-American woman, Aysenur Eygi, who radiates beauty, was shot and killed while protesting near Nablus. Disturbing to know the U.S. government does not hold Israeli officials responsible. Pulverizing to understand that Israel uses slaughter to send a message ─ come to Israel to help the Palestinians and you will be killed — young, old, man, woman, or child. Her life should not be forgotten, and her image should appear on every protest mechanism.

Apply Netanyahu’s statement to situations that caused U.S. casualties, and we have, “Israel is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented at the UN.”

Reality, truth, and facts are rarely considered by Israel’s puppets. Reading a paper placed before him, US President Joe Biden says the same as his leader.

Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”

“Hundreds of Americans,” and “thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians?” Some Israeli civilians have been killed in the tit-for-tat hostilities, a minute number compared to Lebanese civilians and UN workers killed by Israel. Ex-president Joseph Biden, please name one American proven to be killed by Hezbollah since it became an official organization in 1985.

The Israeli Prime Minister, who believes that the function of the peoples of the world is to make certain Israeli Jews live and survive well, regardless of the murders of others, recites,

After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves.

An insolent and degrading insult to all those who fought and died in World War II. The United States, Soviet Union, and their allies fought bravely to defeat the Nazi state in World War II. They raised more than their fingers; they sacrificed themselves in defense of all the European peoples. If there was a strategy to liberate anyone from the camps and secure their lives — Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, political opponents of the Nazi regime, and Jews — they would have implemented the strategy.

In war and immediate post-war years, communication and access to news, including firsthand knowledge was limited — no Internet, no 100 channels of television, no electronic mail, no You Tube, no digital cameras, no smart phones, no Facetime, no WhatsApp, and no social media. The ubiquitous, daily, and on site images of the violence we see today were not available to stir the mind to action. Unbelievable, that despite the enormous information that describes the genocide in Gaza, the world remains relatively passive and little effort is being applied to prevent the genocide. Just the opposite is occurring; societies are helping and encouraging it. Mr. Netanyahu, nobody encouraged the Holocaust; Mr. Netanyahu stand up and tell us why you are encouraging the genocide, requesting the Western world to contribute to your gruesome cause, and are ready to extend it to Lebanon?

The unwary world, still unable to confront its malaise, has allowed the Israeli Jews to judge who lives and who dies, slaughtering others with impunity and without redress. Netanyahu has said it with bravado, vowing to destroy anyone in the world who harms an Israeli citizen. Recent events indicate nobody is safe from the Zionist Jews who murder with ease, without remorse, and without facing justice. Give it perspective by citing a few examples.

The goat and sheepherders in the South Hebron Hills live a simple and basic life on semi-desert land, which is barely sufficient to feed their small herds. They don’t ask anything from anybody, don’t harm anybody, and just want to do their daily chores. Settlers from Brooklyn, New York, who never saw a goat or sheep in their life, have suddenly become herders who need room and land for their pet goats. Simple way to get it ─ forcibly evict these simple people and ruin their lives by telling them the land is now a closed “firing zone.” If they protest, well, just shoot them. A video (scroll down) shows a settler arguing with a Palestinian herder on the herder’s land in the village of al-Tawani and arbitrarily shooting him. Israeli soldiers nonchalantly regard the incident and nobody detains the assailant.

Gaza has its daily atrocities. Israeli snipers and soldiers wantonly murder men, women, and especially children. In one episode, Israeli soldiers search a building, going from apartment to apartment. They enter an apartment and order several men to strip and then execute them. No reason and no concern for the killings. Go to “The Night Won’t End,” a film that investigates civilian killings in Gaza. View from 1:00.01 to 1:04.50 and be prepared to witness a horror.

In the West Bank town of Qabatiya, soldiers murder several Palestinians and then commit a gruesome act — treat the lifeless bodies as rubbish and throw them off the roof into the street below.  

The New York Times reports,

According to Wafa (Palestine News Agency), seven Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military during a 10-hour raid into Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin, on Thursday. Among them, Wafa said, were the three people — believed to be men — captured in the video.

Wafa reported that, after being thrown from the building, the bodies were mutilated on the ground by the claw of an Israeli excavator before being taken away by the military.

In describing the exploding pagers that killed about 10 people and injured several thousand in Lebanon, media, as usual, inserts a description of Hezbollah as the “terror group.” Here we have one of the most horrific terror attacks in recorded history, with innocent civilians suddenly blinded while doing their daily activities and the victims are called the terrorists.

Biggest atrocity

The greatest atrocity has been done to Jewish people. Since its inception, Israel Jews have been used as pawns to oppress and subjugate others and been subjected to constant attacks. Thanks to Netanyahu and his compatriots, the Jews have become the most hated people in the world. Not just animosity or mild disapproval; venomous hatred of not wanting to associate and wishing disappearance. World Jewry may not realize it but this animosity comes from democratic, freedom loving, and liberal persons, people fighting for human rights who now express belief that Zionist Jews are inhuman. Many decent and well-meaning people are following the suggestion by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi.

Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.

Can the world confront its malaise? Activists should keep doing what they are doing and try to overcome the Zionists and their worldwide conspirators who find antidotes by converting protests against their malevolent actions into malevolent protests by the protestors. The latest trickery has the New York Times, Sept. 4, 2024, publish, “Across the United States this spring, Iran also used social media to stoke student-organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students, according to American intelligence assessments.” What nonsense.

Well known that Israeli operatives flood social media with derogatory information on campus protestors and flattering information on their counter protestors, and hundreds of millions of dollars of donations are used to shape college presidents’ and government officials’ decisions. The Iranian agents, if they existed, probably could not buy a government or college official a cup of coffee.

Mentioning the atrocities committed by Israel leads to the question, “What can be done to stop Israel?” Arguments to the eventual demise of the Zionist nightmare are more wish fulfillment than reality.

The Times of Israel (TOI) features an article, “Derelict economy could sink ‘Titanic’ Israel, experts warn,” which relates, “New research paints worrying picture of decades of neglected national priorities leaving the country without the resources to face existential threats.” TOI is perspicacious, Intel has halted expansion of its facilities in Israel, delaying construction of a $25 billion factory for chip production. This pessimism gives optimism to those who believe that a disastrous economy will not be able to support a strong military. After Israel’s military decimates Hezbollah as a fighting force, Israel will no longer need a world class military to protect it from fulfilling its self-guided mission. This mission does not have a high-flying economy as its prominent feature; the Israel economy will always receive assistance from its benefactors — United States, Germany, and Jewish billionaires around the world. The salient feature of the Zionist mission is Irredentism ─ uniting of Jews around the world, physically or morally, in a supposedly united Biblical kingdom of Judah and Israel. That mission is almost completed and only enforcers composed of a small military and a large settler population will be needed to contain the Palestinians on the plantation. The shrinking labor force, due to emigrating Israelis, will be filled by the slave labor of compliant Palestinians.

Another argument for defeating Israel treats collapse of its principal supporter, the United States of America. Accomplishing that internally does not seem plausible. A possible solution to Israel’s maddening of the civilized world lays with leaders of several nations. A world realignment of blocs, those contending American hegemony and those blindly supporting it, is occurring. The U.S. faces economic decline from Chinese competition. If a substantial number of nations are convinced that moving away from the United States and aligning with China is less dangerous than allowing the modern Israelites and their Joshua leader to continue the revival of the Biblical Conquest, slay the inhabitants of the “promised Land,” and lead the world to continuous conflagrations, they could take action and give the U.S. an offer it cannot refuse ─ stop aiding Israel or we start aiding China. Successful rearrangement of the contending blocs requires a three-way endeavor.

• Gravitation to use of the Yuan as international currency will sink the dollar, substantially raise the price of U.S. imports, and cause a national inflation. This will be offset by lowering the cost of U.S. labor for exports and foreign investment.
• Tariffs will have to be imposed by foreign nations to offset the reduced prices and increased competitiveness of U.S. exports
• Nations will have to be assured they are not threatened by loss of U.S. security.

We have a complex subject that needs discussion beyond this article. Wait, there may be a solution on the way. I don’t recommend it but ex-President and future felon, Donald Trump, proposes weakening the dollar, increasing tariffs, and providing less security to other nations.

Will a Trump victory bring about the international realignment that forces the United States to compromise its protection of Israel to guarantee protection of its economy? What a dilemma!

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.