conflict
Trudeau should know that Hamas is to blame
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Johanna Blom
Israelis know the ‘world is watching’ and they too want Palestinian children to live in peace
On Thursday, November 9, an aging Right Honourable Brian Mulroney stood before the World Jewish Congress in New York to accept the organization’s highest honour, the Theodor Herzl Award, in recognition of his efforts to combat antisemitism and his unwavering support for Israel and the Jewish people. A shadow of his former prime ministerial self, he spoke with humility and wisdom but also the conviction of experience when he said, “The prime minister sets both the agenda and the tone in Ottawa.”
Five days later his current successor stood behind a microphone in Vancouver and, scarcely capable of concealing his contempt, lectured the Israeli government on its conduct in the current war in Gaza. Which of course is the same war in Gaza that has simmered on and off for the last sixteen (or really thirty-five) years whenever Hamas decided they were strong enough to violate the latest ceasefire and continue their relentless effort to push the Jews into the sea.
“Even wars have rules,” the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau patronized, emphasizing every word. “I urge the government of Israel to exercise maximum restraint. Because the world is watching… The world is witnessing this. Killing of women, children, of babies. This has to stop.”
Two years ago, I came to Israel to fulfill a childhood dream. I had always wanted to study here – in the land where the desert blooms and King David and Jesus walked and every event ends with singing Hevenu shalom aleichem (“We bring peace to you”). Yet the time never seemed quite right, I didn’t have a good study-plan, and I didn’t have Hebrew. So instead of studying in Israel I obtained a law degree and wound up advocating for the rights of religious minorities around the world, doing a stint in counter-terrorism and human rights after 9/11, visiting Israel several times and never fully losing sight of my dream to study there. Then Covid happened. I realized it was now or never and so I enrolled in an M.A. in counter-terrorism, focusing on human rights, in Israel.
My first visit to Israel had been at the height of the Second Intifadah in 2002 and I didn’t realize how significantly that experience coloured my perspective until I was acquainted with the statistics in my classes. Over the years I was baffled by complaints about how difficult life was in Israel. After all, my introduction to Israel had been two-and-a-half weeks of dodging bus-bombs and the relative calm since then seemed downright peaceful. Now I know that the number of “successful” suicide bombings the month I had been here was more than double the next highest month at any point before or after.
As Prime Minister Mulroney said on accepting his award, “The most sacred duty of any government is to provide for the security of its citizens.” Israel did that in the spring of 2002 and what I had failed to realize was that the attacks slowed by more than half the week after I left. That did not mean the terrorists had stopped trying. It just meant Israel had become more successful at foiling their attempts.
On October 7, I was outside of Israel visiting an ill family member. Observing the signs, I had been expecting something to happen and when it did I knew I needed to return as planned. On arrival, I found a country and a people shell-shocked but filled with resolve. I also saw a unity of purpose that would have seemed impossible when I left the country amid protests over the government’s judicial reform policy only four weeks earlier.
Over the years I’ve learned that not every event in Israel ends with Hevenu shalom aleichem, but the sentiment is still there. I’ve learned it’s not all desert flowers and that most people here don’t really care so much about King David or Jesus. Is Israel perfect? No. Is there discrimination, even racism, and other problems? Yes. Is it an apartheid state? No. Does it, as Trudeau’s comments seem to imply, intentionally target Palestinian ‘women, children, and babies’? Most certainly not.
That is why Prime Minister Trudeau’s words are so dangerous. Israel wants nothing more than to live in peace. Israelis, whether Jewish or Arab, Muslim or Christian, also want Palestinian children to live in peace and thrive.
Canada needs to understand that Israel is incredibly conscious of abiding by international law. It knows that ‘the world is watching’. In fact, it counts in days, if not hours, the window it has in which to operate before the world’s confused moral outrage once again forces it to leave the job undone, frozen until the next time Israelis lose their lives. It follows international law because it cares about innocent Palestinians, apparently more than their own leaders do.
As human rights lawyers Sarah Teich and David Matas wrote recently, “There are two groups that Hamas has victimized: Jews and Palestinians.” If we as Canadians care about Palestinians, then we must allow Israel to do what it needs to do to finally root out Hamas. Yes, innocent Palestinian lives will be lost, but more will be lost if Israel is forced to stop before completing the job. Because it is not Israel who is responsible but Hamas. It is Hamas who puts Palestinians in harm’s way and prevents them from leaving.
Hamas is to blame. We must state this clearly and unflinchingly. As long as the Prime Minister makes misleading comments that make it seem like Israel is intentionally killing innocent civilians, rather than doing everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties, Canadians will continue to misunderstand the fundamental nature of this conflict. For as long as the West misunderstands this conflict, it will encourage Hamas to put Palestinian lives at risk and embolden antisemitic attacks at home in Canada.
Johanna Blom is a Toronto-based lawyer and human rights advocate. She has recently obtained an M.A. (summa cum laude) in Counter-Terrorism and Homeland Security from Reichman University in Israel where she is pursuing research on the intersection of counter-terrorism and human rights.
conflict
US and UK authorize missile strikes into Russia, but are we really in danger of World War III?
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Hopefully a world war appears unlikely, but the decision to allow Ukraine to shoot U.S. and U.K.-provided missiles into Russia once again reveals the lengths to which the ‘neocon globalists’ will go to throw a lifeline to their failing business model.
News that the lame duck President Joe Biden has authorized long-range strikes into Russia using NATO systems was announced with the alarming warning that he had “started World War III.”
The following day, U.S.-supplied and operated ATACMS missiles were fired into Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the authorized strikes as an “escalation” showing that the West wants war.
“The fact that ATACMS were used repeatedly in the Bryansk region overnight is, of course, a signal that they want escalation,” he said, according to Reuters.
Lavrov continued: “Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles, as Putin has repeatedly said.”
Why would the U.S. president finally give the green light to use NATO systems to attack Russia? German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has refused to follow suit and supply German-made Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine – because he does not want to see Germany drawn into a direct war with Russia.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded by suggesting it is only a matter of time before U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles strike deep into Russian territory.
Today – Wednesday, November 20 – the Guardian reported that it has already happened.
The U.K. government has been behind a long campaign to escalate the war in Ukraine, a move seen as an attempt to secure continued U.S. commitments in Europe. The Trump camp has long signaled its desire to draw down its security provision to leave a “dormant NATO.”
In an indication of the dangers of the U.K.-backed move by Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an alarming amendment of the Russian nuclear doctrine.
The policy change, announced in September and published following Biden’s announcement, says “an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia,” according to the BBC.
Russian nuclear doctrine has long included the use of low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons in “conventional” warfare – a significantly lower threshold than that of NATO.
While Russian officials urged Western leaders to consult the text, Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that “we strongly are in favor of doing everything to not allow nuclear war to happen.”
As Reuters reported, this latest provocation is “unlikely to be a gamechanger.” Western media outlets have moved from a narrative of Ukrainian victory to mulling how or even if the state of Ukraine can survive its “inevitable” defeat.
Yet it is not only Ukraine which faces an uncertain future with a Russian victory. The entire globalist order faces a significant blow should the war conclude. Statements from figures such as George Soros, U.S. General Mark Milley, E.U. chief Ursula von der Leyen, and the former head of NATO stressed that their liberal-globalist regime is threatened by defeat in Ukraine.
Biden’s decision has been seen as an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s declared agenda – to clear out the “deep state globalists” whose “neocons seeking confrontation … such as Victoria Nuland” have led the U.S. into endless wars since that in Iraq.
An escalation to all-out war with Russia would not only be a disastrous precursor to nuclear escalation, but would also preserve the dominance of the same “neocon globalists” whose “forever wars” Trump has pledged to end.
Arch-neocon Robert Kagan said Americans who support ending wars are “intolerant.” He went on to author two articles which Hitlerized Trump and appeared to incite the assassination of a man who promised in his 2024 victory speech, “I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to stop wars.”
This follows a long series of claims in the same vein.
“I will end the war in Ukraine,” Trump declared in February 2023, saying he would also end “the chaos in the Middle East” and “stop World War III.”
This move by Biden has no military significance in improving Ukraine’s chances of victory. Russia claimed to have shot down seven of eight ATACMS fired into its Bryansk region. Yet prolonging or even escalating this war has enormous political significance.
Since the publication of the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” a strategy of bleeding Russia on the battlefield to collapse its government has been clear. Russia’s near-limitless mineral wealth would provide an obvious boon to a Western system self-sabotaged by sanctions and the destruction of the Nordstream gas supply.
The enormous significance of the war is found in its use as an attempt to extend and consolidate the power of the same system of neocon “globalism” which Trump has vowed to end.
This context explains why the U.K. government has consistently pressed for escalation since the 2022 intervention of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to have sabotaged peace in favor of an all-or-nothing gamble towards “regime change” in Russia.
Since then, the U.K. government has urged the authorization of long-range strikes into Russia, and it has supplied cruise missiles to attack Russian over-the-horizon nuclear radar warning systems, which play no role in the Ukraine war.
Reports have confirmed “terrorist operations” in Russia, including attacks on the Kerch Bridge leading to Crimea were U.K.-led. A recent expose by The Grayzone revealed that the British state appears to be training Ukrainians to fight a guerilla war, extending hostilities even beyond any ceasefire.
Ukraine’s recent and failed offensive into Russia’s Kursk region appears to have also been a British operation – to secure the kind of “morale boost” which Alastair Crooke says is the only significant war-fighting contribution of the authorization of “wonder weapons” like ATACMS.
The ATACMS authorization was heralded as a turning point in the war by Foreign Affairs. Yet the suspicion of Responsible Statecraft that it was a “sideshow that may become a tragedy” appears to have been confirmed.
The grim reality of this war is underscored by the fact that measures taken which will result in even more needless loss of human life are done so to legitimize useful propaganda headlines. This is undertaken to sell a war which has long been predicted to end as it now seems certain to do so: with a victory on Russian terms.
Though it appears unlikely that a world war will result from this latest reckless move, what has been demonstrated once more is the lengths to which the “neocon globalists” will go to throw a lifeline to their failing business model.
That lifeline is perpetual war, and when they end – so do the careers of so many whose livelihoods and reputations depend on keeping them going.
conflict
Putin Launches Mass-Production of Nuclear Shelters for his People
From Armstrong Economics
By Martin Armstrong
Russia has begun mass production of mobile nuclear bunkers. This is in response to Ukraine’s use of Western US and British missiles to attack deep inside Russia to destroy its conventional capability so NATO can launch an invasion by March/April 2025.
This has coincided with Mr Putin’s change of Russia’s doctrine to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons to include the use of conventional weapons by Ukraine. Russia’s defense ministry said Ukraine attacked an ammunition stockpile in the Bryansk region using missiles supplied by the US military’s MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).
Russia has also ordered the production of its mobile nuclear bunkers to protect citizens. They are shelters capable of protecting people from the light radiation of a nuclear explosion and radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment. These are known as “KUB-M” and will protect 54 people for 48 hours from the air shock wave and light radiation of a nuclear explosion; penetrating radiation and radioactive contamination of the area; high-explosive and fragmentation effects of conventional weapons; falling debris from building structures; dangerous chemicals; fires. Unlike traditional, stationary bunkers, mobile bunkers are built to be easily moved from one location to another, often on vehicles or trailers. They can be equipped with advanced shielding, air filtration systems, and other necessary survival equipment to withstand the harsh conditions of a nuclear event.
The Western press keeps putting out the Neocon and NATO propaganda that Russia will never fire a nuke and Ukraine can win the war. But this is all a smoke screen for NATO will invade Russia, and they are using Ukraine as our Hesbolla, the same as Iran is using Lebanon. Zelensky claimed he invaded Russia to force Putin to peace. But they had a peace deal. Boris Johnson ran to Kiev and instructed Zelensky he was not allowed to sign a peace deal, and now far more than 1 million Ukrainians have been killed so Europe can invade Russia.
Just as Robert McNamara said about Vietnam and the Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist in Iraq, what if these people are wrong AGAIN? There goes Europe! Not a single European leader cares about their own people.
Either the Ukrainian people rise up and take their country back, or Putin needs to nuke Kiev to show the world he is serious. Otherwise, we are sleepwalking into World War III. Our press will NEVER write a single word for peace. It is always Putin is bluffing. What if you are wrong again?
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev was just shut down after Biden gave the go-ahead to use long-range missiles. Hm. If this was to win the war, then why flee Kiev? They know Putin will respond forcefully against Zelensky. Russians get nuclear bomb shelters, and we get Fake News – Don’t worry – he’s bluffing.
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