“Israeli intelligence Chief, Major General Herzi Halevy, said that the last three months have been the most difficult for ISIS since its inception.
In a speech delivered at “Herzliya” conference yesterday , Halevy explicitly said “Israel” does not want the situation in Syria to end with the defeat of ISIS “, the Israeli NRG site reported.
“Withdrawal of the super powers from the region and letting Israel alone in front of Hezbollah and Iran that possess good abilities Will make “Israel” in a hard position” . Therefore, we’ve to do all we can so as not finding ourselves in such situation”, the Israeli chief intelligence added.” AMN
Comment: This guy needs to learn to keep his mouth shut. What he has admitted here is that it is Israel which has urged several American administrations to support ISIS and the AQ spin offs in Syria against the Syrian government because the Israelis are so simple minded that they cannot imagine a situation in which Syria is not an enemy of Israel. I find this sadly amusing since I have personal knowledge of numerous efforts made by the Syrian government to negotiate sub rosa a cessation of hostilities with Israel on the basis of return of Syrian lands, etc. Indeed one of MG Halevi’s predecessors sought to respond to these efforts only to be slapped down by his own government and neocon mad dogs like the the late John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Wolfowitz and others. pl
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/israeli-intelligence-chief-not-want-isis-defeat-syria/
I have always found the IDF folded beret under a shoulder strap thing to be funny. How bad assed!
The date seems to indicate this was published nearly 5 years ago. I only looked at this because AMN hasn’t been publishing very regularly lately.
I’m fairly sure this is still the Israeli wish but the times are a changing.
Marcus
There is nothing in present Israeli behavior that indicates that “times are changing.” You hasbara are clever.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I’m no apologist for Israel. They are the authors of their own fate and their fate (I sincerely hope) is going to be brutal.
I only commented because I thought you may have missed the publish date.
As for the times changing, in the 5 years since this was published Russia (Iran and Hezbollah as well) have shored up Syria’s military defenses (and training in some cases), overt funding and backing from some gulf states has diminished (I agree there is room for debate on this), Assad’s (and I would argue Iran’s) grip seems to be increased, etc. etc.
So Israel can have all the wet dreams they want but the times ARE a changing.
Out of context. Halevy was speaking against the withdrawal of the super powers from Syria once ISIS is defeated, leaving Syria under the control of Hezbollah/Iran with the Sunni majority under their thumb. Not a great formula for stability.
cofer
Rubbish. He means clearly that he wants the US, the British, etc. to fight the imagined Iranian and Syrian government enemy forever. Are you Cofer Black? At the urging of the Israelis we have supported and assisted ISIS and AQ affiliates even to th point of transporting them and their dependents out of tight situations. You think that was a good idea?
No, this is a case of you break it you own it. You really believe that Obama who openly hates Israel lit the entire ME on fire and reignited the Sunni-Shia war at the behest of Israel? The border with Syria was Israel’s quietest for many years. , there where understandings between the two countries. Assad was expected to keep Iran’s involvement to a minimum, he cooperated. Why would Israel be interested in building up ISIS knowing that once it took control of Syria it would most likely turn on it. The US behaved so foolishly but hey, let’s shift some of the blame.
What about Libya? Did Israel also convince Obama and Clinton to bring down the regime, take their weapons, get Turkey to funnel those to ISIS in Syria? There is one country in the ME who’s interest was to start a civil war in Syria, John Kerry might be able to shed some light on that.
cofer
The Syria nonsense started with Bush 43 and Cheney. Obama did his best to slow it down but was only partly successful, especially with neocon Hillary as Secstate and the generals blowing smoke up his butt. Trump, of course caved for his NY Jewish friends and family. You don’t seem to understand how primitive Israeli “strategic” thinking is. It is all just tribal BS for them. You do remember that for several year IDF hospitals have treated sick and wounded jihadi fighters? Is that rational? No, but they do it. Kerry? Yes. He discussed with zarif the level of Israeli support for the jhadiis. Ah, I got it wrong. YOU are the hasbara, not Marcus.
Was always amusing to find out exactly how quickly weapons could be purchased America and friends then be captured from ISIS.
Mostly peaceful wahhabist freedom mercenaries.
Halevs is now Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF . Does that indicate a change of heart?
Interesting that shortly after General Halevy’s speech five years ago the Turkish Second Army Division invaded into the north end of Syria’s Aleppo Province. They were helped by childkillers of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki movement, along with various other headchoppers and livereaters. Erdogan claimed that the operation (Euphrates Shield) was aimed at ISIS and the PKK. But many of ISIS escaped into Turkey and the bulk of the casualties were Assad’s troops and their civilian supporters plus both Arabs and Kurds of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
That occupation still goes on. Many think Erdogan was simply a useful idiot for the Izzies. Or is he knowingly in league with them?
“He means clearly that he wants the U.S., the British, etc. to fight the imagined Iranian and Syrian government enemy forever.” Yes, exactly.
The late Uri Avnery commented on the Zionist secret doctrine of perpetual war against one and all in Counterpunch on April 15, 2008, ‘Manifest Destiny and Israel.’
He wrote: “…The real Zionist vision does not recognize any maps. It is a vision of a state without borders–a state that expands at all times according to its demographic, military, and political power. The Zionist strategy resembles the waters of a river flowing to the sea. The river snakes through the landscape, goes around obstacles, turns left, and right, flowing sometimes on the surface and sometimes underground, and on its way takes in more springs. In the end it reaches its destination.
“That is the real agenda, unchanging, hidden, conscious and unconscious. It does not need decisions, formulations or maps, because it is encoded in the genes of the movement. This explains, among other things, the phenomenon described in the report of senior prosecution lawyer Talia Sasson on the settlements: that all the organs of the establishment, the government, and the military, without any official coordination but with miraculously effective cooperation, acted to set up the ‘illegal’ settlements. Every one of the thousands of officials and officers who spent decades involved in this enterprise knew exactly what to do, even without receiving any instructions.
“That is the reason for David Ben-Gurion’s refusal to include in the Declaration of Independence of the new State of Israel any mention of borders.”
Avnery goes on, deeper in the article, about the second of two well- known speeches that Moshe Dayan made which are critical to any understanding of just who these Zionist Jews really are and as far as I am concerned, why they are extremely dangerous. The first was at the grave of Roy Rutenberg, a kibbutznik who had been killed by an Arab who fought back. The emphasis on the Gates of Gaza, as if this were some kind of secret Jewish obsession, is utterly strange to an American. (What is the Jewish thing about the Gates of Gaza?) The second speech was given in August of 1968 after the seizure of the Golan Heights to a rally of young colonial settlers:
“We are fated to live in a permanent state of fighting against the Arabs. For the hundred years of the Return to Zion, we are working for two things: the building of the land and the building of the people. That is a process of expansion, of more Jews and more settlements. That is a process that has not reached the end. We were born here and found our parents, who had come here before us. It is not your duty to reach the end. Your duty is to add your layer to expand the settlement to the best of your ability, during your lifetime…(and) not to say: this is the end, up to here, we have finished.'”
Avnery goes on: “That is the hidden agenda. We must haul it up from the depths of our unconscious minds to the realm of consciousness in order to face it, to reveal the terrible danger inherent in it, the danger of an eternal war which may in the fullness of time lead this state to disaster.”
Even as late as 2008 it was difficult for Avnery or many others to see that his distant danger, like a Shamal sand storm darkening the desert horizon, would also inevitably cast a growing and menacing shadow over even the hyperpower America–and Avnery shies away from the problem that his brand new country is ultimately big Daddy’s little freak, so he never really begins the real discussion, which is so clearly on his mind –suppose the threat is arriving not ‘in the fullness of time’, no, not at all, but soon, very soon. How about like today. Here, now. And how will the American dupe take it when he realizes what it all means…
Think about it. If you go to war with Iran you will need a draft. What would such an army do? I think an American conscript army would lose the Pacific, mutiny, overthrow the constitution, the government, confiscate, kill select groups of people, break the United States into separate provinces… It would go mad.
Talk about danger. Even during Vietnam entire units had to be stood down and disarmed…It was covered up.
Avnery’s real concern as a founding, hardline Zionist who, like a clear-eyed old gangster, has had good innings, but has gradually begun to have a lurking sense of disquiet, was: How can we get safely out of the game, and its inevitable consequences?
The answer: You can’t.
Excellent comment Tidewater.
Yes, I think it is a huge mistake to think of the State of Israel in the framework of the Westphalian model – where it has fixed borders and is expected to acknowledge the sovereignty of other states. No, Zionist Israel is a more a state of mind, as you infer; expanding as and when it has the power to do so.
I also think it would be a mistake to think that a broken and destroyed US, its Jewish population included (who in the scenario you describe may well end up targeted in the ensuing rage) would bother the consciences of the hard core Israeli Zionists one iota. They see big Daddy merely as a tool to accomplish their ends; Greater or even Greatest Israel. Zionist Americans of all faiths are useful, but ultimately expendable.
I was thinking more about those Jewish settlers now again permitted to visit the Al Aqsa Compound. I hope they are well searched on the way in. After all, committed Zionists have in the past called for the demolition of the Dome of the Rock. A good account of the chief chaplain of the IDF – Rabbi Shlomo Goren doing so just after the Six-Day War is here. In 1984 the Shin Bet foiled a plot by the Jewish Underground who had the explosives ready to bring the Dome down. From what I read it was a close run thing – perhaps our host has more direct knowledge of how close.
The labyrinthine Israeli system of coalition government does not help. Minority extremist parties cannot be ignored and Netanyahu continues to go out of his way to indulge them and their supporters. One such; Jewish Power, is headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir is an out and out Kahanist and earlier this month had set up a political ‘office’ – under an awning – in Sheikh Jarrah. Israel’s police chief has explicitly named Ben-Gvir as responsible for the latest flare up in violence. And the USG is worried about White Supremacists..
Barbara Ann
the plan of this sect is to demolish both the Dome of the Rock ND the al-Aqsa.
Tidewater – an apocalyptic vision indeed! Might I put forward a different?
Because without having your knowledge of the subject, and certainly not the Colonel’s, I see the Israelis in quite a different light. The victims of history in that area rather than the scourge. Trapped, as the unfortunate Ukrainians are now trapped, in forces that certainly existed of themselves but that would have been a mere eddy in the current of history had the Western powers not made use of those forces for their own ends.
Look at what gave Israel its true start, what made real the inchoate yearnings of a people for a better existence than they could hope for within the old Russian Empire. Look at what gave the Herzl’s vision legs. Not some great and irresistible force from within the Jewish people. Merely the cold blooded decision of the then leading powers to settle Jews in Palestine to suit their then imperial imperatives. Here’s Balfour, in a letter written in 1919, setting that decision out. Balfour, you’ll note, not Herzl or some crazed Jabotinsky figure but the then leading statesman of, with the French, the most powerful Western country of the time –
‘For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country .. the Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”. (Balfour, 1919)
Cited here –
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/17301104.pdf
from a reference already used in a comment submitted to Colonel Lang’s site here –
https://turcopolier.com/the-dogs-have-teeth/
What were those “present needs?” What were Balfour’s imperatives that led to the foundation of the Jewish state? The historian can arrange the strands as he pleases but there were many and have been discussed on the Colonel’s site many times.
A desire to shift the flow of Jewish immigrants from the UK to elsewhere; there had been mass Jewish immigration into English cities and that was causing tensions within the UK. A desire to safeguard the Suez route. The requirements of the British Navy; German geologists had found oil not far away and that, if the find came to anything, needed to be got to the coast. A belief that the Arabs of the Middle East would be easier to handle if there were a beneficent colonising influence. And a wish, that we later find in the States, to satisfy the now underestimated forces of Christian Zionism. Christian Zionism, you’ll note, not Jewish, was the determining force.
Those strands formed part of British thinking at the time and, in the context of what was to become a surprisingly sharp conflict with the French, led to the settlements that were later to become Israel.
And as it started so it went on. The country was and remained a vehicle for the promotion of Western interests and, as with the Ukraine, elements therefore became predominant that would not normally have surfaced. Likud is no more an expression of the natural instincts of the Jewish people than the Right Sector is an expression of the wishes of the Ukrainian people. The forces that brought these elements to the surface were external forces. Is there not a comment of Biden’s in which he states that had not Israel existed it would have been needed to be created to protect American interests? It is a country created and shaped for our Western interests, not for those of the unfortunate inhabitants of that country who now find themselves in the historical dead end you describe above.
…………………………..
Biden comment referred to above – “If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved,”
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/if-there-were-no-israel-wed-have-to-invent-one-biden-55494
EO
I doubt that you have experience of the cruelty and rapacity with which the “Jewish People subjugate the “natives.” I do not think think the Zionist project serves the interest of the US IN ANY WAY, nor pes it wish to do so.
I’ve never been there, Colonel, so have no feel for the balance of views there. I could well be paying too much attention to the voices of those within and outside Israel who are not Likud minded. The Israelis who tend to the Hezbollah war graves because they disapprove of the way they are maintained, or Daniel Barenboim, called by the Likud party “a real Jew hater” because of his stance. And I hear of Israelis disapproving of the virtual apartheid imposed on the Romanian and other immigrant labourers.
That all indicates that there are Israelis around who are not Likud minded, but maybe that gets more publicity than is warrented by the general state of Israeli public opinion. On the other hand certainly the Pilger documentary linked to earlier shows well enough the cruelty and rapacity you mention and have seen at first hand so, as said, I don’t have the personal experience to determine the balance.
On the interests of the various external powers involved, I am absolutely convinced that what the Americans and the Europeans powers are doing in MENA generally does not serve my interest, nor the interests of the bulk of the American and European population. Just as I don’t believe Balfour served the interests of my great-grandfather and his contemporaries.
But it does serve neocon aspirations – am I right in thinking that both here and in the States it is their aspirations that now have the determining influence? I am unhappy with the German Greens shifting from fluffy “woke” style politics to their current hard line neocon position, and with the similar shift in my own country that I see with Trilateral Commission Starmer leading the current Labour party. Corbyn may have been unutterably useless – was in fact – but at least he was no neocon.
So both in the States and in Europe the crazies have crawled out of the basement to some effect. The bastards seem to have got themselves cemented in with a vengeance, which is not what this overly hopeful commenter to your site looked for in 2016.
EO
I give you the cut scene of “Otto” the Zionist from Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I particularly like his helmet decoration.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x46src9
Had to check if that was genuine. I doubt such a direct comparison would be allowed today. Innocent times they were.
Comedy films of that time get mined a lot for parodic purposes. During the thick of the dust up over here someone put up a clip of Johns Cleese’s “The Grim Reaper” on Richard North’s site. Dr North at that time keeping a baleful eye on the shambles they were making of his lifetime’s work, leaving the EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obioF4_c6RM
It looked tailor made for the Brexit debate. I immediately sub-titled it “Mr Barnier’s Greatest Performance” and that, courtesy of Mr Cleese, ensured an undeserved immortality for at least one Brussels functionary.
As for the Israelis, Heaven only knows how they’re going to get out of what seems to be an utterly impossible position. To secure the fruits of past atrocities by committing more? A country needs to be truly massive to get away with that.
It would not be allowed today and that is precisely why it is so necessary. Political satire’s acceptable boundaries are being ever more tightly proscribed. This is a very bad sign.
Since at least the time of Aristophanes political satire has been essential to the proper functioning of a democratic state. The ability to mock powerful political figures, movements and whole ideologies is an indispensable bulwark against the weakness that all share; the tendency to trend towards tyranny over time. Wokeness, for example, despite presenting a wonderfully rich vein of satirizable material, appears to be untouchable. This should be read as a huge red flag IMO.
Thanks for the Grim Reaper sketch, I am a huge Python fan. I genuinely believe that similarly to Aristophanes’ treatment of Euripides in The Frogs one day our society will come to realize the true value of its dead poets – both comic and tragic. But by then it will likely be too late.
Oh, and Tidewater’s apocalyptic vision is nothing compared to the goal of the millenarian messianic lunatics (some Jewish, some Christian) who want to demolish the 3rd most holy site of Islam and build the third temple in its place.
They’re convinced they can get away with that as the Muslim states have proven to be paper tigers. In fact some would believe that this is pre-ordained in the Quran.
And the west has been manipulated to accept that criticism of Israel is anti-semitic.
BP
The corpus of Islamic religious sciences does not really support the idea of “states” other than the ‘Umma itself
eo “dogs have teeth” lord kitchener
https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/women-and-children-white-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-1900-1902
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-london-a-visit-to-the-holy-land-of-yore/
they bite back.
my family were Jews who were shipped out to
s africa (another British apartheid theft scheme) but the bill will be presented by Israel to empire.trust me on this
How far back do you want the “bills” to remain due? That debt is unpayable. The perpetrators and the victims are long dead.
Better perhaps to focus on not running up fresh bills with the living.
Colonel – may I append another reference from a discussion on your site in 2017. It relates to the “surprisingly sharp conflict” with the French during and before Mandate times that is referred to above.
The authority here referenced is the historian James Barr, “A Line In The Sand, Britain, France, and the struggle that shaped the Middle East.” (2012)
Barr had access to newly released papers and using those wrote what must be the best and most useful account of the crucial Mandate Period in Palestine and what led up to it. Unfortunately neither we nor the French emerge from Barr’s account with much credit. The Americans come out of the very early days mostly as the good guys, though reduced in influence after Wilson was incapacitated, the Arabs as the betrayed, and we and the French as managing to combine Realpolitik with muddle in a deadly combination that inflicted tragic harm both on us and on the unfortunates who found themselves under our control. In particular and relevant here, the Balfour Declaration was part of a British stratagem to deny to the French control of Palestine.
Sykes/Picot, in as far as it was considered to have validity, allocated Syria to the French and there was good reason historically for the French to consider that this gave them a right to Palestine as well. The French also seem to have had a Messianic vision of their role in the ME that they dated back to Crusading times. Such names as Guy de Lusignan still resonated with some French officers. The French Imperial Mission is mostly forgotten these days, except by the French of course, but it was alive and well back then and inevitably clashed with the resented and by then somewhat shop-worn British Imperial Mission. From this clash of failing empires the modern ME emerged and nowhere were the results as disastrous as in Palestine.
The Amazon summary I’ve just looked at ends in more dramatic fashion – “ Using newly declassified papers from the British and French archives, James Barr brings this overlooked clandestine struggle back to life, and reveals, for the first time, the stunning way in which the French finally got their revenge.”
The following might be of interest to all.
http://baratev.sourceforge.net/conspiracy/08.%20Zionis_Plan/Benjamin._H._Freedman_The_Hidden_Tyranny.pdf