Showing posts with label Middle East Peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East Peace. Show all posts

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Peace in the Middle East by 2024?

*By Robert David Steele

It has been a pleasure as well as an honor for me to be published by Tehran Times and the American Herald Tribune as well as the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).
I was discussing my views on Middle East peace with Dr. Andrey Kortunov (Director General of RIAC), and three observations emerged from that conversation: his view that the Russians have tried everything they could to facilitate peace in the Middle East, and are at a loss for what else they might do without hurting President Donald Trump in passing; and my view that on the one hand, President Trump has such a mediocre intelligence community, such a mediocre communications staff, and such a hostile media environment totally controlled by the Deep State, that he has lost the narrative battle in the USA; and on the other, my long-standing concern that the Iranian, Turkish, and Egyptian leaders are being too cautious – too slow to see that peace in the Middle East is possible by 2024, starting with the restoration of Palestine to the Palestinians.
What Is the Challenge?
I created the above collage to illuminate several points that I do not believe are appreciated in either the USA or the Middle East.
01 Free energy and unlimited desalinated water are the cultural, economic, and political game changer. In the context of free energy not only does the Saudi regime lose all of its illicit financial advantage, at the same time that nuclear energy becomes too costly – too dangerous – to warrant further consideration by the Iranian regime; but this sets the stage for shared prosperity that will facilitate co-existence among the Sunni and Shi’ite populations.
02 Wahhabism is a scourge that must be purged.  This is not negotiable. At the same time, Qatar should understand that it can be invaded and its “leaders” hung to die on any given day. If Qatar does not cease to sponsor terrorism and agitation, it should join the Saudi leadership in Hades.
03 Palestine must be restored to the Palestinians.  This also is not negotiable. Israel is an invented state and Zionism is a criminal, genocidal, apartheid cancer on humanity (not to be confused with Jews, most of whom do not want Israel to exist and most of whom reject Zionism and its evils).
04 It is clear to me that there has not been sufficient appreciation around the world – and in the USA – for the fact that there is a direct relationship between President Trump’s utterly brilliant award of the Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson; his master stroke of temporarily moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem; and Miriam Adelson destroying the Benjamin Netanyahu regime by publicly denouncing Netanyahu’s wife as crazy and Netanyahu himself as her servant. All of this led to Netanyahu’s not being able to form a government today.
05 Jerusalem and Mecca continue to demand some form of an international solution that disconnects as quickly as possible the Zionist regime and its armed personnel from Jerusalem, and the Saudi regime and its armed personnel from Mecca. In my view, the Vatican should lose its diplomatic status worldwide as part of the same international agreement. Countries may choose to be governed by religion, but religions may not assume the rights and privileges of countries.
06 Once the Zionists are dealt with, the Kurds become easier to deal with. The Kurds have been co-opted by the Zionists.  The Kurds have been armed, financed, trained, and directed by the Zionists to destabilize every country where they have a presence.  Turkey is absolutely correct to consider the Kurds a national security issue.  At the same time, the Kurds are absolutely correct to wish for their own country. Just as Palestine has a right to exist, so also do the Kurds have a right to exist, but only in peace.
07 The USA can best help achieve Middle East peace by reducing the size of its secret intelligence community by up to 70%; by closing all US military bases in the region; and by terminating all financial support for the invented illegitimate state of Israel.
Obstacles to Progress on Peace in the Middle East
The US public remains the center of gravity for terminating the Zionist cancer and restoring Palestine, while Turkey remains the center of gravity for accepting the inevitability of a Kurdish country, perhaps one that begins as a unified Kurdish Autonomous Zone that is – if not disarmed, at least on probation such that any armed incidents and particularly any armed incursions outside the Zone during the ten year probation period will nullify and terminate the international acceptance of a potential Kurdish state.
Russia has three major problems centered on Israel, and most usefully, these problems are shared with the USA and potentially of concern to China.
01 A quarter of the population of Israel has roots in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which is to say, not just from Russia but from the “stans,” and many of them are militant and thus opposed to a Palestinian right of return that I personally consider not only essential, but something that should be funded by Europe.
02 Zionist leaders appear to be deeply connected to Russian criminal gangs and oligarchs as well as US criminal gangs and oligarchs (e.g. Lex Wexner, the man who funded the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia political and financial blackmail network).
03 Zionist operatives have captured the government of India and have penetrated virtually every other government worldwide. The only force more powerful and embedded than the Zionists is the Freemasons, with the Knights of Malta and Opus Day in the third position.
Russia has the same problem with its media that the US does, albeit from a different perspective.
The US media is treasonous – totally controlled by the Deep State via the CIA Covert Action Staff and the domestic arm of the National Clandestine Service (a domestic arm that is illegal and not supposed to exist) and incapable of telling the truth about anything including President Trump’s strategically brilliant and historically rooted decision to honor his campaign promise and get US troops out of Syria.
The Russian media, particularly Russian media in English (Russia Today, Sputnik, Strategic Culture) is simply incompetent. They may mean well, but between Washington bureau chiefs that do not even show up for work, and poorly-educated apparatchiks that have no idea what it means to educate the public holistically, Russian communications to the USA are just as bad as the mediocre communications of the staffs that continue to fail President Trump: the WH staff, the GOP staff, the campaign staff.
China appears to be displaying great caution with respect to Israel, a caution I attribute to three factors:
01 China is busy taking over Israeli ports and have their own considerable agenda for the future there; despite its investment in a Jewish Autonomous Zone adjacent to the Russian Jewish Autonomous Oblast, China may not be ready to discuss with the Zionist leadership their need to evacuate elsewhere.
02 China may not yet appreciate that Zionism is over in the USA and soon will be over in the Middle East – China should note that when Elizabeth Warren attacks Israel over the settlements, she is saying two things: first, that she does not need Zionist money, and second, that all the Jewish votes are hers for the taking because they are anti-Zionist and anti-war.
03 Because of the above, China may not realize that the best possible course it might take on the Middle East is to agree to a state visit to Iran within the next year, by all three of the global leaders (Xi, Putin, Trump), because this gives our President “cover for action” in visiting privately with the Supreme Leader as well as publicly with the others. Just as China made possible the unification and denuclearization of the Koreas, so also can China have a salutary effect in advancing what I consider to be inevitable: peace in the Middle East rooted in the restoration of Palestine, the end of Wahhabism, and reconciliation between Sunnis and Shi’ites as well as the creation of a peace-loving Kurdistan.
We have a public education problem. This is a problem common to the leaders of China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and the USA!
Questionable Assumptions?
There are those in the West who question the assumption that Israel can be uninvented, and those in the East who forcefully challenge the possibility of a Kurdish state being put together from bits and pieces of four other long-standing states (Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq).
Let’s take the easy one first, the invented state of Israel. Here I will just point to Shlomo Sand’s book, The Invention of the Land of Israel, a book that totally destroys the nationalist mythology and documents how Israel’s theft of Palestine was in fact based on bribery and blackmail and lies; and Henry Kissinger, who for all his flaws understood history: “In 10 years, there will be no more Israel.” That was in 2002. Add to that the historical forces that overturned apartheid in South Africa and the fact of vastly more concentrated and neo-Nazi apartheid and genocide including ghetto walls that would make a Nazi proud – combined with the resistance of the Palestinians and the ethical and practical inclinations of all the surrounding countries that see Zionist Israel as the source of most evil in the region (the Saudis and Qatar running a poor second and third) and I have to conclude, Yalla Yalla bye-bye Zionist Israel?
The Kurds are a bit harder but none the less probable.  There are 5,000 secessionist movements around the world, 27 in the USA alone, with Catalan being the most current and most violent. It is in my view inevitable that Catalan will at a minimum achieve a fully autonomous status, and it is also my view that some form of Kurdistan is inevitable, particularly if Iran and Iraq take the lead in offering to cede land to a provisional state of Kurdistan with a ten year “peace probation.” Turkey must decide if ceding a portion of land is a good deal against the certainty of decades of violence and cultural confrontation going into the future. Among the many books that support my view on this point are Vaclav Havel’s Power of the Powerless, and Jonathan Schell’s Unconquerable World.
Let’s go two steps further and add two more questionable assumptions. First, that extraterrestrials have neutralized nuclear weapons, as I said here in Tehran Times in my interview with Javad Heirannia, “Full Disclosure: Extraterrestrials, No Nuclear War, End of the Deep State?;” and second, that free energy will become a global good, which in turn enables unlimited desalinated water at the same time that it negates the risk and cost of nuclear energy – this creates infinite wealth that makes possible infinite peace.
I believe – and several others vastly more intelligent than I also believe – that in 2012 we began a 1,000 year period of peace and prosperity and that in the next ten years we will see more positive change than others have seen in the past two hundred years.  If airplanes went from a hundred meter flight in 1903 to a supersonic Concord in 1976, and if we are about to experience, as I believe a period of “full disclosure” of previously secret technologies including anti-aging as well as free energy, then I am predicting that we will see, in the next twenty-five years, both a mass awakening and elevation of consciousness and intelligence within humanity; and the public revelation of a previously secret inter-galactic trading network reserved for the 1%, now available for the benefit of all.
It is not for me to say, “and so this will be,” but rather for the leaders of the Middle East, in consultation with Xi, Putin, and Trump, to say, “this is how we wish it to be.”
Do We Need a Middle East Peace Command Based in Istanbul?
From where I sit, the creation of a Middle East Peace Command, based in Istanbul, jointly funded by China, Russia, and the USA, and jointly staffed with leadership elements from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, is the logical next step. Kurdish and Palestinian leadership elements should be welcomed, along with religious leaders including the former Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East.
Such a Command, with the traditional administrative, intelligence, operations, and logistics structure, could bring together in one place both the existing and new negotiations teams, and for the first time ever, a shared grip on the facts, the true costs, and the possibilities.
No one has ever done this. A Command capable of integrating and leveraging holistic analytics, true cost economics, and Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE). A Command capable of calling out US media outlets, in particular, that are controlled by the Zionists and lying to the American public. A Command capable of providing each of the leaders – both regional (who have primacy) and global (who are in a supporting role) with total access to all relevant facts, costs, and possibilities, information that can be easily shared with the public, the media, and leaders everywhere, because it will be open source information, not secret information.
Intelligence-driven peace?  Intelligence with integrity and imagination for peace?  Yes, please.
* Robert David Steele, a former Marine Corps infantry officer and CIA spy as well as an activist for Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE), regularly answers questions form the Tehran Times.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Christian Zionism: The New Heresy that Undermines Middle East Peace

Dr Stephen Sizer










At least one in four American Christians surveyed recently by Christianity Today magazine said that they believe it is their biblical responsibility to support the nation of Israel. This view is known as Christian Zionism


The Pew Research Center put the figure at 63 per cent among white evangelicals. Christian Zionism is pervasive within mainline American evangelical, charismatic and independent denominations including the Assemblies of God, Pentecostals and Southern Baptists, as well as many of the independent mega-churches. It is less prevalent within the historic denominations, which show a greater respect for the work of the United Nations, support for human rights, the rule of international law and empathy with the Palestinians.

The origins of the movement can be traced to the early 19th century when a group of eccentric British Christian leaders began to lobby for Jewish restoration to Palestine as a necessary precondition for the return of Christ. The movement gained traction from the middle of the 19th century when Palestine became strategic to British, French and German colonial interests in the Middle East. Proto-Christian Zionism therefore preceded Jewish Zionism by more than 50 years. Some of Theodore Herzl’s strongest advocates were Christian clergy.

Christian Zionism as a modern theological and political movement embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism. It has become deeply detrimental to a just peace between Palestine and Israel. It propagates a worldview in which the Christian message is reduced to an ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.
Followers of Christian Zionism are convinced that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the capture of Jerusalem in 1967 were the miraculous fulfillment of God’s promises made to Abraham that he would establish Israel as a Jewish nation forever in Palestine.

Tim LaHaye’s infamous Left Behind novels, together with other End Times speculations written by authors such as Hal Lindsey, John Hagee and Pat Robertson, have sold well over 100 million copies. These are supplemented by children’s books, videos and event violent computer games.

Burgeoning Christian Zionist organizations such as the International Christian Embassy (ICEJ), Christian Friends of Israel (CFI) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) wield considerable influence on Capitol Hill, claiming a support base in excess of 50 million true believers. This means there are now at least ten times as many Christian Zionists as Jewish Zionists. And their European cousins are no less active in the Zionist Hasbarafia, lobbying for Israel, attacking its critics and thwarting the peace process. The United States and Israel are often portrayed as Siamese twins, joined at the heart, sharing common historic, religious and political values.

Pastor John Hagee is one of the leaders of the Christian Zionist movement. He is the Founder and Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church, a 19,000-member evangelical church in San Antonio, Texas. His weekly programmes are broadcast on 160 TV stations, 50 radio stations and eight networks into an estimated 99 million homes in 200 countries. In 2006 he founded Christians United for Israel admitting,
“For 25 almost 26 years now, I have been pounding the evangelical community over television. The Bible is a very pro-Israel book. If a Christian admits ‘I believe the Bible,’ I can make him a pro-Israel supporter or they will have to denounce their faith. So I have the Christians over a barrel, you might say.”

In March 2007, Hagee spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. He began by saying:

“The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened. There are 50 million Christians standing up and applauding the State of Israel…”

As the Jerusalem Post pointed out, his speech did not lack clarity. He went on to warn:

“It is 1938. Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler. We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat and stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East… Think of our potential future together: 50 million evangelicals joining in common cause with 5 million Jewish people in America on behalf of Israel is a match made in heaven.”

Christian Zionists have shown varying degrees of enthusiasm for implementing six basic political convictions that arise from their ultra-literal and fundamentalist theology:

  1. The belief that the Jews remain God’s chosen people leads Christian Zionists to seek to bless Israel in material ways. However, this also invariably results in the uncritical endorsement of and justification for Israel’s racist and apartheid policies, in the media, among politicians and through solidarity tours to Israel.

  2. As God’s chosen people, the final restoration of the Jews to Israel is therefore actively encouraged, funded and facilitated through partnerships with the Jewish Agency.
    Eretz Israel, as delineated in scripture, from the Nile to the Euphrates, belongs exclusively to the Jewish people, therefore the land must be annexed, Palestinians driven from their homes and the illegal Jewish settlements expanded and consolidated.

  3. Jerusalem is regarded as the eternal and exclusive capital of the Jews, and cannot be shared with the Palestinians. Therefore, strategically, Christian Zionists have lobbied the US Administration to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem and thereby ensure that Jerusalem is recognised as the capital of Israel.
  4. Christian Zionists offer varying degrees of support for organisations such as the Jewish Temple Mount Faithful who are committed to destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble sanctuary of Al-Aqsa).
  5. Christian Zionists invariably have a pessimistic view of the future, convinced that there will be an apocalyptic war of Armageddon in the imminent future. They are deeply sceptical of the possibility of a lasting peace between Jews and Arabs and therefore oppose the peace process. Indeed, to advocate an Israeli compromise of “land for peace” with the Palestinians is seen as a rejection of God’s promises to Israel and therefore to support her enemies.
  6. Within the Christian Zionist worldview, Palestinians are regarded as alien residents in Israel. Many Christian Zionists are reluctant even to acknowledge Palestinians exist as a distinct people, claiming that they emigrated to Israel from surrounding Arab nations for economic reasons after Israel had become prosperous. A fear and deep-seated hatred of Islam also pervades their dualistic Manichean theology. Christian Zionists have little or no interest in the existence of indigenous Arab Christians despite their continuity with the early church.
In 2006, I drafted what became known as the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism signed by four of the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem: His Beatitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch, Jerusalem; Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad, Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem; Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East; and Bishop Munib Younan, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. In it they insisted:

“We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organisations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of world.

We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

We call upon Christians in Churches on every continent to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism. These discriminative actions are turning Palestine into impoverished ghettos surrounded by exclusive Israeli settlements. The establishment of the illegal settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land undermines the viability of a Palestinian state and peace and security in the entire region.”

The patriarchs concluded, “God demands that justice be done. No enduring peace, security or reconciliation is possible without the foundation of justice. The demands of justice will not disappear. The struggle for justice must be pursued diligently and persistently but non-violently.” The prophet Micah asks, “What does the Lord require of you, to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8).

It is my contention after more than 10 years of postgraduate research that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial and most destructive lobby within Christianity. It bears primary responsibility for perpetuating tensions in the Middle East, justifying Israel’s apartheid colonialist agenda and for undermining the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

The closing chapter of the New Testament takes us back to the imagery of the Garden of Eden and the removal of the curse arising from the Fall: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb… On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:1-2) Surely this is what Jesus had in mind when he instructed his followers to act as Ambassadors of peace and reconciliation, to work and pray that God’s kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.

 Dr Stephen Sizer is the Vicar of Christ Church in Virginia Water and the author of Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (InterVarsity Press, 2004); Zion’s Christian Soldiers? (2007) and In the Footsteps of Jesus and the Apostles (Eagle, 2004).