Revealed Through Gross Ineptitude

"We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi."

"We base this assessment on the Crown Prince's control of decision-making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi."

U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence report 

Khashoggi said MBS should get rid of his complex against the Muslim Brotherhood [Handout]

 

Henry II was said to have planned the death of his adversary, the Archbishop of Canterbury by simply mouthing the words: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?". And that would be all that was needed for a plot to be cooked up to motivate assailants in service to the king to perform the deed. Similarly Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince may have used a sentiment to the very same effect: "Would someone kindly rid me of this troubling pest?" and the deed would be assured to be carried out. Despite the distance of a thousand years between those events, they otherwise have much in common.

Supreme rulers have a penchant for things going their way. The means used to achieve the required result are of little moment to them; what is important is that their wishes be carried out. They have no need to know the petty details; only the conclusion that the deed transpired successfully. In this particular instance of incredibly awkward decision-making and planning carried out with an utter lack of finesse by crude assailants it was inevitable there would be a lashback.

The murderous crew was careless and uncaring of consequences. The simple expedient of hauling the man back to Saudi Arabia for permanent imprisonment for irritating the royal power behind the throne would have been simple enough to carry to conclusion; the decision to murder the man, dismember the body and secrete it away somewhere represented a bleak, black slapstick farce of intelligence planning gone amok, which had its inevitable consequences.

Turkey's Erdogan, eager to ingratiate himself with the United States' investigation as a demonstration of just how powerfully cognizant he is about civilized behaviour -- despite that he sees nothing whatever unsettling to human rights by marginalizing, persecuting, and bombing minority indigenous Kurds who prefer that their status reflect that of resident/citizens of their ancient homeland, Kurdistan, not Turkey -- professed to be shocked and indignant over the bloody scene. And in matters of injuring and killing innocent civilians as a byproduct of conflict, the U.S. has no clean slate authorizing its investigation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Byzantine affairs.

 

Jamal Khashoggi. Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty

 

 

Jamal Khashoggi had a chequered past, consorting with terrorists, agitating against Jews and Israel, the perennial scapegoats of the Middle East, himself an enthusiastic member of the Muslim Brotherhood acknowledged as a terrorist organization by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His slurs against the House of Saud's irritation factor cannot have been carried out without the knowledge that he was making himself a marked man. He lived in the U.S. in self-exile. To name him as a highly respected journalist is to elevate a sow's ear to a silk purse. His death is no great loss to a troubled world.

 

President Joe Biden wanted to break the revelatory news gently to his great good friend, 85-year-old King Salman, who knows realpolitik inside and out. The point of the release of the investigation pointing a finger of responsibility at this favoured son-and-heir-to-the-Saudi-throne simultaneously with a personal video conference was a patronizing exercise in a more powerful country gently handling a collegial country a political grenade; to be carefully handled lest an explosion result harming relations between the two countries. 

But like Turkey's Erdogan, America's Biden was intent on demonstrating how civilized the United States is, and how affronted civil society was in the wake of the details revealed in the ghastly 2018

assassination of the "Washington Post journalist". An odious act of state malfeasance, somewhat similar to Iran's hit squads hunting down enemies of the Grand Ayatollah, or Russian hitmen poisoning unsuspecting Russian dissidents abroad, occasionally succeeding in dispatching victims to lethal poisoning -- sometimes failing.

How Soon Forgotten! Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes by subjecting cities to unlawful sieges that gave civilians no choice but to give up or die.

"[The] ICC has not opened an investigation in relation to Syria."

"Syria is not a state party to the Rome Statute and has not accepted the ICC [International Criminal Court] jurisdiction."

"Thus, crimes committed by its citizens on its own territories do not fall under the ICC jurisdiction, unless the [United Nations Security Council] would refer the situation to the ICC, which has not happened to date."

ICC spokesperson, Fadi el-Abdallah 

"The most heinous of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law perpetrated against the civilian population in Syria since March 2011."

"Such acts are likely to constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes and other international crimes, including genocide."

Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic report

"This matter has not been referred to the ICC, despite the several calls by the commission of inquiry, and numerous recommendations by the Human Rights council for the UN Security council to do so."

"[The Commission is exploring other] areas of criminal justice] to address the matter of Syrian war crimes]."

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

"There were rivers of blood and maggots [exuding from the bodies], once, I couldn’t eat anything for days."

"[Some corpses were totally rotten and their faces] unrecognizable [as if they had been deliberately disfigured with a chemical. It is the stench of the rotting corpses that most disturbed him and continues to date.] The smell stayed in my nose, even after I showered at home."

Syrian undertaker,witness Z 30/07/19

 

"Someone gives evidence that mass graves were still being dug until at least 2017. This is the kind of government, the kind of regime, that you don’t establish relations with."

"[The revelations made in such testimonies and the evidence laid out] will facilitate future trials against regime officials if they were caught traveling to Europe."

"The individual acts of torture only constitute a crime against humanity if they are being committed within a specific context, that being a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. Z’s testimony establishes the crimes were systematic."

Patrick Kroker, senior legal advisor on Syria, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights

Millions of Syrians have been displaced in a decade of fighting    Getty Images

Syrian war planes strafing civilian Sunni Syrians in bread lines, hospitals and medical clinics bombed, barrel bombs targeting Sunni Syrian neighbourhoods, Syrian towns suffering the agonies of prohibited gas attacks. Children arrested, tortured, murdered. Women raped, imprisoned, murdered. Syrian citizens disappeared, never to be seen again alive or dead. Millions of Syrians internally displaced, fleeing bombardment. Millions more becoming  refugees, flooding neighbouring countries for haven, migrating desperately toward Europe.

Most leaders of countries conceive of legacy projects through which their administrations and their names will be respected and held in gratitude by their public. But not necessarily those in the Middle East, and certainly not the Assad family dynasty with their Alawite tribal affiliations and deadly sectarian hatred; a regime well known to have committed atrocities against its own people in the past and committed to carrying on that tradition. Syria and Iraq, both politically Baathist from opposite ends of the spectrum, both preying on their majority population, Sunni and Shia respectively.

The world watched, transfixed with revulsion at television screens, seeing children in agony from chlorine gas bombs hitting their night-time villages courtesy of their president, Bashar al-Assad, whose military was dispatched to clear Syria of the presence of Sunni Muslim 'terrorists', Syrian civilians who had agitated for equal status and treatment with their Alawite Syrian counterparts. They were rewarded by barrel bombs that wrenched their limbs from their torsos; a regime solution for terrorist activity.

Blood covers the hands of an injured boy following airstrikes believed to have been carried out by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, February 2015.   (Mohammed Badra/REUTERS)

An estimated 350,000 to 500,000 Syrian civilians were slaughtered by their own government, innocent civilians whom their president characterized as terrorists to justify his lethal responses to their pleas for equality as Syrian citizens. The bloody war against Sunni Muslim Syrians created 11 million refugees. A few years in to the civil war that proceeded, the regime battling Syrian Sunni militias attempting to overthrow the government that had systematically destroyed their human rights; the instability attracting actual terrorist groups seeing opportunities to advance their own agendas, among them the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

ISIL terrorists brought horror to the minds of those looking in at the Middle East, with their expanding capture of territory in Iraq and Syria, and their delight in torturing and murdering captured Europeans and Americans alongside their preoccupation with terrorizing and murdering and enslaving Yazidis, and their threats against Christians. Yet despite the terror they inspired in persuading those loyal to ISIL living abroad to launch attacks against Westerners in Europe and the United States, Islamic State could never match the kill rate of an established government that excelled in war crimes against civilians.

When "60 Minutes" documented the extent of the Assad regime's war crimes, activist Mouar Moustafa was the featured personality, a man who was determined to bring the full extent of the blighted criminality of al-Assad to public view through revealing his cache of documents signed by Assad authorizing depraved mass murder alongside thousands of photographs of civilians tortured to death in an accountability mission against his former president.

With the help of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the participation of Iran's proxy terror group Hezbollah and an assortment of Iran-controlled Shi'ite militias, augmented by the aerial bombardments of Russian warplanes, al-Assad finally had the upper hand, and with the dissolution of the Islamic State 'caliphate' the Syrian regime was enabled to restore its territory, mopping up the remainder of the Syrian resistance. The dreadful crimes committed by the Assad regime against its own people cries out for justice. Logically that should come with a trial against Assad himself and his advisers and military commanders.

But the International Criminal Court is disinterested in opening an investigation of Syria, just as the United Nations General Assembly has little interest in holding Syria to account for its paroxysms of mass murder, and the Security Council was never able to launch a condemnation of the regime with two of its permanent members, China and Russia, refusing to give assent. Finally, an accounting of sorts has arisen with a court in Germany having prosecuted and convicted a former Syrian regime officer for crimes against humanity.

 

A court in the German city of Koblenz sentenced former intelligence officer Eyad al-Gharib, 44, to four-and-a-half years in prison for aiding crimes against humanity. Convicted of accompanying 30 detained demonstrators being transported to prison, while fully aware of the systematic torture that awaited them in the prison. al-Gharib, a junior officer, had been arrested in 2019 along with senior regime officer Col.Anwar Raslan, under the principle of universal jurisdiction whereby a national court jurisdiction is given authority in issues of grave crimes against international law, irrespective of where the crimes take place.

Presiding judge Anne Kerber stands before pronouncing her verdict in the court in Koblenz, Germany, on February 24.

While it's a start on seeking justice, much, much more must be accomplished. Justice will only be served when Bashar al-Assad faces the full extent of international law and faces a penalty commensurate with his unspeakable crimes, and along with him, other members of his administration and the Syrian military which destroyed so many lives. President Vladimir Putin also has much to answer for in establishing support for the Syrian regime enabling it with that support to regain Syria while helping to slaughter Syrian civilians in the process.

There is no question the world is weary of these totalitarian governments persecuting innocent people, destroying countless lives, producing innumerable refugees and displaced populations facing miserable living conditions in lives of  traumatized horror. It is just so much easier to feel the horror, dread the outcomes, wish it would all go away, and turn away from it all, if only to maintain one's own sanity, sense of proportion and comfort in living normal lives in countries that sustain the rule of law and security and equality for all.

"This is a historic verdict. Not only because it is the first to convict a Syrian regime official for crimes against humanity, but also because it recognizes his crimes were part of a widespread and systematic attack orchestrated by the highest bodies of Assad's regime."

"This is only the first of many other trials and investigations we are supporting. It is almost ten years since the crimes Eyad A. [al-Gharib] was convicted for were committed in those early days of the uprising as the regime cracked down on bare-armed protesters." 

Nerma Jelacic, director, Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

Free to be Happy and Secure in China

"In the opinion of the House, the People's Republic of China has engaged in actions consistent with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260, commonly known as the 'Genocide Convention', including detention camps and measures intended to prevent births as it pertains to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims".

Conservative motion, House of Commons, Ottawa

"[I was] deeply disturbed by horrific reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang, including the use of arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture, and forced sterilization."

"We have the responsibility to work with others in the international community in ensuring that any such allegations are investigated by an independent international body of legal experts."

Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, Ottawa

"Based on the evidence put forward during the subcommittee hearings, both in 2018 and 2020, the subcommittee is persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention."

Parliamentary Subcommittee on International Human Rights, Ottawa

People gather on Parliament Hill on Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, to protest the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur minority in China. (Andrew Lee/CBC)

 

There, it's done. Elected members of Parliament representing all official parties voted unanimously to declare China an absolute human rights abuser, a genocidal government in Beijing, intent on transforming minority Muslim Uyghurs into Han Chinese citizens; their religion denied, culture denied, language denied; separatist aspirations denied, through an institutionalized disappearance of all that it means to be ethnic Muslim Uyghurs in an irreligious ideology of totalitarian Communism.

Unofficially, that is. In the sense that it wasn't the entire government of Canada that committed itself to that declaration. The sad and sorry fact is that the Cabinet of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chose to separate themselves from all other Parliamentarians' decision to label the People's Republic for what it is; a genocidal regime that began with Tibet and now Xinjiang to complete its mission of one-for-all, and all-for-one-Xi Jinping idolatry.

While mouthing an opinion eerily similar to that of the convinced members of Parliament who voted 266 - 0 in support of the motion, Canada's minister of foreign affairs 'abstained' from the vote on behalf of the entire Liberal cabinet. Straddling the fence on China is a Liberal hallmark, after all. Absurdly enough, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae has stated: "There's no question that there's aspects of what the Chinese are doing that fits into the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention."

Foreign Minister Garneau's mention of an 'investigation by an independent international body of legal experts' points directly to the United Nations. Where it would be natural under any such circumstances for the Human Rights Council to have a good, hard look at China's ongoing discrimination against and deadly dehumanization of Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Hui people -- if they weren't so busy condemning democratic Israel. 

Interestingly enough, China sits on the UNHRC, alongside Russia, Cuba and Pakistan, all stalwarts of human rights support as it pertains to other countries; certainly not their own. Chinese foreign Minister Wang Yi appeared at the UNHRC's 46th session where he proffered out of the goodness of his heart, insight into China's perception of human rights. Where in China "happiness" and"security" are synonymous with China's drive to see its entire population reduced to CCP-supporting zombies.

They will attain happiness and a sense of comforting security by the simple expedient of abandoning the evils of  free thought, free speech, freedom of religion, where "terrorism and separatism" are unequivocally universally condemned by all the people of the People's Republic of China which exists solely to represent the very best interests of its happy population, free to do as they are instructed.

A man wearing a face mask to protect against the coronavirus walks past the Olympic rings on the exterior of the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, which will be a venue for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics, in Beijing, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. A motion passed by the House of Commons today calls on the government to lobby for relocation of the games out of China due to the country's human rights record. (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)

Sleepwalking Intelligence Alerts : Dereliction of Duty

"None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred."

"We properly planned for a mass demonstration with possible violence. What we got was a military-style coordinated assault on my officers and a violent takeover of the Capitol Building."

"I actually just in the last 24 hours was informed by the department that we actually had received that report."

"[Intelligence reports compiled from information from the Capitol Police, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and Washington Metropolitan Police showed that] the level of probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests [on Jan. 6 ranged from] remote [to] improbable."

"In addition, the daily intelligence report indicated that 'the secretary of homeland security has not issued an elevated or imminent alert at this time'."

"Without the intelligence to properly prepare, the USCP was significantly outnumbered and left to defend the Capitol against an extremely violent mob."

"I notified the two sergeant-at-arms by 1:09 p.m. that I urgently needed support and asked them to declare a state of emergency and authorize the National Guard. I was advised by Mr. Irving that he needed to run it up the chain of command. I continued to follow up with Mr. Irving, who was with Mr. Stenger at the time, and he advised that he was waiting to hear back from congressional leadership but expected authorization at any moment."

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund

 

"That's very concerning whether or not [there are] procedures for the head of the intelligence on the U.S. Capitol Police to get the intelligence report, to review it, especially when there were significant other indications of potential violence."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)  

"What the FBI sent, ma'am, on Jan. 5 was in the form of an email."

"[I would think a warning] that something as violent as an insurrection at the Capitol would warrant a phone call or something."

Robert Contee, acting chief, Washington police

"We did discuss whether the intelligence warranted having troops at the Capitol."

"The collective judgement at that time was no -- the intelligence did not warrant that."

Paul Irving, former sergeant-at-arms, House of Representatives and Senate

 

The United States was and is in a turmoil of political, ideological fundamental social disequilibrium. There was so much grumbling, anger, threats, obvious polarization within the population, divisions between rural and urban Americans on the politics they chose under their system of democratic Republicanism, an overall level of alert awareness should have been front and centre in all plans for the January 6 Congressional certification of the election win of Joe Biden for the U.S. presidency.

 

Ever since the October election and the hugely disputed results, the undercurrent of voter fury, the continued incitement to reject the win as unlawful, conceived in a series of corrupt processes, the din on social media of ardent Trump supporters who vowed they would never accept a Democratic win over the incumbent Republican, mirrored in part the reaction of the Democratic furious over the 2015 ascendancy of a Republican candidate to the U.S. presidency. The non-stop efforts to decertify President Trump's win saw its reflection in the more recent obverse. 

The difference, of course, was that while the Democrats used all defamatory means within the law to express their anger and disappointment, the Republicans saw fit to go outside the law to express theirs. They were in actual fact, doing the bidding of the man they were loyal to, who obliquely instructed them in how to proceed, and they obliged. That violent thugs also took part in the effort at an uprising in the seat of American governance should have been predictable.

 

 

And while President Trump saw fit to urge his followers to violently invade Congress, his vice-president was aghast and refused his president's order to oppose Congressional validation of the Biden win, becoming an instant traitor to the cause, and a target for violent abuse. Lawmakers on both sides of the House failed to cover themselves with glory; all too many among them instead behaved like rioters themselves, stopping short of emulating the intruders, paralyzed with fear. All, however, stoked the fires of national fury that resulted in the rampaging mob desecrating Congress.

The FBI had issued a warning notice of the potential for a protest by supporters of Donald Trump  which had the capacity to become violent. The recipient of the notice was the U.S. Capitol Police which gave them ample time to take necessary proactive steps before the assault occurred. Unfortunately top officials in charge of Congress security happened not to have noticed the heads-up. 

 

We've seen this before. When there was a lack of communication and therefore warning, between the CIA and the FBI prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

 

 

Two Senate panels studying the failures linked to the January attack on the Capitol building heard testimony that gives no credit to those tasked with the security of the building and protection of its inmates, in particular at a crucial time in the turnover of administrations. They were quite simply unprepared for hundreds of Trump loyalists in tactical gear storming the building. 

 

Conflicting accounts of discussions prior to the assault lingered on whether the National Guard be called in for support and whether to do so would slur the reputation of an open Capitol in injured pride as a free and open democracy, for the American public.

Yet the FBI's Norfolk Virginia office sent out a warning notice the day before giving ample warning that extremists were preparing a violent offence the day to follow, in an effort to stave off the departure of President Trump as Joe Biden prepared to ascend to the presidency and accompanying occupation of the White House. 

Shay Horse/AP

Confronting China's Dismal Human Rights Record

"We firmly oppose that [a motion in Canada's Parliament] because it runs counter to the facts. And it's like, you know, interfering in our domestic affairs."

"There's nothing like genocide happening in Xinjiang at all."

"I think we respect your values. But I think our core values should be: respect facts. And to stop spreading disinformation or even rumours."

Cong Peiwu, Chinese Ambassador to Canada 

"[The motion and vote to follow are a requirement, to send a] clear and unequivocal signal that we will stand up for human rights and the dignity of human rights, even if it means sacrificing some economic opportunity."

Leader of the Official Opposition, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole

"There is no question there have been tremendous human rights abuses coming out of Xinjiang. [However, use of the word must be] properly justified and demonstrated so as not to weaken the application of 'genocide' in situations in the past."

"[We -- Liberal caucus -- have] taken careful note of conclusions drawn by experts around the world, including findings of crimes against humanity and genocide."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

MPs pass motion declaring genocide against Uighurs in China, despite cabinet abstentions

 

The targeted brutality by China against Tibetans refusing to surrender their sovereignty to a grasping hegemonic China is well enough known in the public sphere. China's threats toward its regional neighbours in its ambitions to dominate and acquire disputed territories along with geographic areas known to be exclusive to China's neighbours' sovereignty has created an aura of anger and trepidation in relation to Beijing's aggressive threats against any who dispute its regional command.

The world has focused on the plight of Turkic Muslim Uyghurs in a Chinese province that was once the homeland of the Uyghurs until it was swallowed into the maw of the People's Republic of China. The Chinese superpower's persecution of the Uyghurs is no secret; their human rights have been unmercifully trampled; forced sterilizations, culture and language suppression, interference in their religious devotion, and of course the 're-education' formula of mind control.

The claim for genocide in describing the plight of a people coerced by force into slave labour, who cannot live free lives because the dominant occupying power considers them to be 'terrorists' in need of de-escalation, to remake them into model Chinese citizens who will nevermore agitate for separation, appears to fall into the guidelines of the UN definition of genocide. A Canadian House of Commons subcommittee documented the human rights abuses leading to the charge of genocide. 

However, Canada's prime minister, who professes to be extremely sensitive about the use of the word 'genocide' to describe Beijing's campaign against the Xinjiang Uyghurs is a craven act of complicity. No such demurrals were expressed when a commissioned report led by a First Nations judge proclaimed that Canada committed 'genocide' against its aboriginal peoples, and it pleased the prime minister to assent to that language in describing Canada.

Under the Liberal Party of Canada a love affair with China has long since taken root, gripped by the potential for trade and investment and business opportunities with the nation with the largest population numbers on Earth. Under this current Liberal government whose ambition was driven to sign a free trade agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, that commitment to ingratiate Canada with the CCP flowered, and for Justin Trudeau, the heir of his father's prime ministerial decision to open full diplomatic ties with post-revolutionary China, no human rights abuses on China's part are too egregious to interfere with his admiration for the power of a totalitarian government.

China's ambassador to Canada knows full well that Beijing's long arm and persuasive funding has gained it the privilege of having its administrative abuses overlooked in favour of trade opportunities. He knows that China instills both awe and fear in the minds of other countries' political heads. He knows that it is Beijing that is interfering in Canada by harassing Chinese-Canadians who fail to support mainland China and decry its takeover of Hong Kong and threats toward Taiwan. Chinese investment in Canadian universities installing its Confucious Institutes to propagandize for China are sinister intrusions.

No, Beijing does not 'respect Canadian values'; it undermines them whenever and however it can. And its high degree of success in presenting itself as a partner in science, education, culture, business and politics, is a crude and effective choreograph undermining Canadian values. Industrial and military espionage is what motivates China. Its diplomatic missions worldwide with their links to the Chinese military and the CCP's agenda are skilled in what they are trained to do. They act as shills for state-linked corporations in communications, pharmacology and advanced technology.

So today, when the vote was cast in Canada's Parliament, it was overwhelming. Support for the recognition of China's persecution of the Uyghurs (Falon Gong, Tibetans, Christians aside) passed unanimously. With the entire Liberal cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abstaining. Establishing beyond doubt that the oft-declared 'values' of this government supportive of human rights is a front for a screen of 'progressive' values. Where Justin Trudeau can see fit to criticize the democracy of India's Narendra Modi for his dispute with farmers with an underlying tone of support for Sikh Khalistanis, yet remain loyal to Communist China's agenda of suppressing Uyghur 'terrorism'.

Protesters gather outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Monday, February 22, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Germany's Extermination Laboratory

Nazi parade in Amsterdam, early in Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands. ‘The Beehive’ department store, Jewish-owned before the occupation, is seen in the background. (public domain)

"The Dutch armed forces surrendered on May 14, 1940, the fifth day of the German invasion. The Netherlands securely in the hands of the German army, the Nazi regime appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reich Commissar for the country. His most important subordinate and rival was Hanns Albin Rauter, the General Commissar for Security, a Higher SS and Police Leader dispatched by Heinrich Himmler. These two Austrians, both executed as war criminals after the Third Reich’s defeat, could rely on the National Socialist Movement, an indigenous fascist party led by Anton Mussert, for enthusiastic support."

"The 140,000 Jews residing in the Netherlands thus had good reason to be afraid. Among them were 25,000 foreign, mostly German Jews, who had sought refuge there, including Anne Frank and her family. Over the next several months, the expected anti-Semitic measures came. Seyss-Inquart and Rauter passed legislation barring Jews from holding public office. In October, all Dutch civil servants had to complete forms—one specifically designed for Jews, the other for Aryans. At the same time, Jewish businesses were also forced to register with the government. The process of removing Jews from the civil service then ensued in early November. In January 1941, the Nazis demanded registration of all Jews, as well as people of mixed ancestry. This insidious process, gradually and methodically implemented, of identifying and separating Jews from everyone else, relegated them to pariah status in their own country."

"Following this wave of reactionary legislation, two incidents in February 1941 demonstrated that the Jewish population in Amsterdam would not hesitate to protect themselves. Feeling emboldened, the Defense Division, the paramilitary arm of Mussert’s organization, openly attacked Jews in Amsterdam. Young Jewish men fought back fiercely and, in one confrontation, killed a Dutch National Socialist." "On February 19, German police entered a popular ice cream parlor in South Amsterdam owned by Erich Cahn, a German Jew and refugee. Mistaken for Dutch Nazis, this patrol was sprayed by ammonium gas from an improvised device in the parlor. In retaliation, the Germans arrested, tortured, and sentenced Cahn to death by firing squad."

"Ever mindful to send a message, Seyss-Inquart’s government additionally seized 425 Jews, literally grabbing them from Amsterdam’s streets, and deported them to Buchenwald.  Of them, 389 were sent from there to Mauthausen. Only a few survived. The brutality displayed in these roundups not only shocked people but stirred them to act."

Opposition took shape around the radical Left. The Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), banned by the German authorities, gave voice and organization to these stirrings. A meeting organized by the Communists and attended by trade-union representatives happened on the 24th. Two CPN militants, Piet Nak and Willem Kraan, called for a general strike. Leaflets were distributed, emblazoned with the words: 'Strike! Strike! Strike! Shut down all of Amsterdam for a day'!" 

Dr. Jason Dawsey, research H\historian, The Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, The National WWII Museum, New Orleans

‘February Strike’ in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1941 (public domain)

 "We always thought the first deportation train departed in July 1942. These razziamen were already deported on 27 February 1941, so that's much earlier."

"It was a kind of laboratory [for the Nazis] to improve their knowledge of everything that we see at Auschwitz on a much, much bigger scale."

"[Those in command at Mauthausen, where the Dutch Jewish men were temporarily incarcerated could select whether to gas people] during the bus ride, halfway to the castle -- and then at Hartheim, there was a kind of place where no one could see what was going on."

Historian Wally de Lang

Dutch Jews board the train that is to take them to Auschwitz. Photograph from 1942 or 1943. Photographer: Rudolf Breslauer. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Rechten: Public domain

Hundreds of Dutch Jews wee rounded up in a razzia in early 1941, taken off the streets of Amsterdam, marking the first Nazi raids on Jews in Western Europe. This was the beginning of an operation and transport to a killing site that became a training camp for German military personnel who would specialize in the exacting necessity of exterminating European Jews. The fine points of gassing people to death in large numbers on an experimental basis to fine-tune and expedite the process needed a living laboratory for success, and the Netherlands was chosen as the initial round-up site.

This roundup (razzia) was occasioned in particular by the death of a Dutch Nazi collaborator who had been killed in a violent confrontation between Dutch fascists in alliance with the German military which had entered the Netherlands the spring before, and young Jewish Dutchmen who had determined to defend themselves. Aboard a deportation train on 27 February 1941 the men disembarked at the site of a 17th century castle-cum-'hospital' in upper Austria, Hartheim Castle.

The castle had, a year earlier, been transformed into a killing centre with the installation of a gas chamber retrofitted in a room especially adapted for the purpose. According to writer-historian Wally de Lang in her newly published book, the castle was destined to become a training camp preparatory to large-scale gas chamber operations to handle an anticipated expulsion of Jews from all points in German-occupied Europe to the Final Solution death camps.

 

In Amsterdam's Jodenbuurt, Jewish men are rounded up and arrested by German soldiers in February 1941. (Public domain)

These experimental test chambers for gassing prisoners of war at Hartheim pre-dated the creation of the Final Solutio,n in January 1942. Of the group of 340 Jews who had been transported from Amsterdam, 108 were murdered at Hartheim in a three-day period in August 1941. Efficiency was a German byword. The families of these men were sent notices of death, attributed to fictional causes. This, at a time when the full agenda of the extermination of Europe's Jews was not yet openly being carried out.

 

The castle was not meant to be the venue of such a ignominiously horrendous rehearsal for genocide. It had been donated by heirs to the local welfare society decades earlier, to be dedicated to the care of mentally and physically afflicted people, but by 1940, 30,000 of those individuals became afflicted in a eugenics network of annihilation courtesy of the Third Reich, to rid the world of the mentally unstable and physically disabled.

 

German pogrom on Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter in February 1941 (public domain)

And although the Nazi Eugenics program came to a halt when the public became aware of the situation and reacted with outrage in 1940, the castle went on to lend its premises to the deaths of 12,000 prisoners of war from 1941 to 1944, in accordance with Action 14f13, an ordinance to eliminate concentration camp prisoners no longer capable of performing slave labour. Poles and Spaniards were among the national and ethnic groups that were targeted for elimination by gassing, though Jews remained the primary target.

Mauthausen, Dachau and Gusen concentration camps, all associated with Hartheim, saw their staff handle logistics and administration. Mauthausen qualified as one of the most brutal of Nazi concentration camps, its complex including some 100 sub-camps spaced throughout Austria, holding a total of 85,000 people by 1945. When researching her book The Raids of 22 and 23 February 1941 in Amsterdam, Ms.De Lang discovered that the Dutch Jews were taken frist from Amsterdam to Camp Schoorl, a prison camp in the Dutch dunes.

Of the 525 men originally seized 388 were dispatched to Buchenwald where many died, and 350 were sent on from there to Mauthausen where many others perished. Three months on, 108 of the original group were gassed at Hartheim. As a percentage of their Jewish population that died in the Holocaust, the Netherlands had a higher rate than other Western European countries, partially attributed to the aid given the Nazi occupiers (which was by no means unique to the Netherlands) by fascist Netherlanders.

Organizing the ‘February Strike’ in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1941 (public domain

Don't Menace Israel: There To Stay

"The Arrow systems cover the highest altitudes of Israel’s missile defense arsenal, which also includes the Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems. The announcement of the Arrow’s latest system comes after the Israeli Defense Ministry hailed the success of the country’s first-ever multilayered missile defense test in December."

"Preliminary designs for the Arrow 4 originated in 2017 as the Missile Defense Organization sought to expand the capabilities of the Arrow 2. Israel Aerospace Industries was announced Thursday as the new system’s primary contractor. The unveiling comes just a day after US President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone."

"Iran possesses the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. While Tehran initially relied on past technology from North Korea and China, it has continued to develop its own projectiles in recent years."

"Both US and UN officials have said there is evidence that Iran has transferred some of that technology to proxy forces in the region, such as the Houthis in Yemen and local militias in Iraq and Syria. Iran’s expanded arsenal has raised concerns over the past several years among officials in Israel and Washington about the Islamic Republic’s ability to strike targets across the Middle East."

Jared Sziba. Al-Monitor

 

"The Israeli army should be the one to be banned from acquiring weapons used to commit massacres against our Palestinian people,” he said, stressing the enormous ongoing efforts on the part of the Israeli army to 'prevent the resistance from exercising its right to obtain the necessary tools to defend its people'."

"But the resistance does not give in to such obstacles', Qasem [Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem] said alluding to the local manufacturing of some military equipment."

Entsar Abu Jahal, Al Monitor

In spite of the Iranian leaders' claim that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, evidence reveals that the Iranian regime has long sought to acquire nuclear weapons. The regime's ballistic missile program to deliver nuclear warheads, a core pillar of its foreign policy, is closely linked to the nuclear program. Pictured: A Shahab-3 ballistic missile on display in Tehran, Iran on September 26, 2019. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

What irony, the State of Israel came into being as a renaissance of its ancient heritage presence following Nazi Germany's horrendous 'Final Solution' success in methodically annihilating most of Europe's Jews. Now, the one country in the world that officially declares itself unimpressed that the Holocaust ever occurred, is diligently working toward accomplishing another genocide, this time against the Jewish state considered to be a haven for world Jewry. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made no secret of its intention to destroy the State of Israel; its clandestine but obvious search for nuclear weapons also threatens many other Middle East states.

Those Middle East states that can rest easy that they are not targets of the Iranian ambition to reassume a position it believes belongs to it by heritage in achieving preeminent power status are those fractured countries where Shiism predominates although the sect has minority status in comparison to Sunnis. Iranian proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and Iran-friendly nations like Qatar, Algeria and Turkey, support the Republic's antipathy toward Israel.

The Hezbollah Shiite militia that effectively rules Lebanon, Islamist Hamas (along with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups) in Gaza, both of which have charters that distinctly express Israel's elimination as their goal, along with other terrorist Shia militias in Iraq all linked to Iran, form a cliquish threat to the predominance and security of the Arab Sunni states. Iran believes itself to be the true custodians of the two Muslim holy sites, Mecca and Medina, intent on replacing Saudi Arabia's eminent position as guardian of Islam's heritage.

The Middle East is nothing if not a roiling, unsettling cauldron of sectarian, political, tribal and clan enmities. And Israel is right in the middle of it all, but with the special status of its Judaic heritage, a square peg in a round hole which has no business squatting on Islamic geography as far as Iran is concerned. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and its sister organization Hamas agree without reservations. 

Iran, broadly acknowledged as the world's greatest terrorist-sponsoring nation, has been steadily supplying its proxies with weapons for years, and those weapons grow increasingly more sophisticated and powerful; Hamas has advanced from home-made rockets to semi-guided missiles, stockpiling more technologically advanced weapons which Israel's blockade of the Strip has attempted to stall. Hamas's dedication to its goal of destroying Israel leads it to spend inordinate sums the international community hands it to improve the lives of Gaza's population -- on building smuggling and offensive tunnels into Israel and Egypt.

Israel military strength 

For 2021, Israel is ranked 20 of 139 out of the countries considered for the annual GFP review. It holds a PwrIndx* rating of 0.3464 (0.0000 considered 'perfect'). 

Global FirePower

Israeli soldiers from the Golani Brigade take part in a military training exercise near the border with Syria (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

In efforts to both hinder Iran's transfer of weapons to Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, Israel conducts nighttime aerial strikes on weapons smuggling targets in Syria. Raids which continue to deliver the message that Israel will not tolerate these ongoing threats meant to embroil it in defensive wars where when it confronts its most direct enemies like Hezbollah and Hamas after lethal provocations, it faces an enemy that takes shelter behind civilian populations, inviting Israel's military to destroy non-militia lives as fodder for terrorist propaganda and international censure.

Iran has succeeded in building a hostile threatening ring to surround Israel from Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. Bases it has established in Syria and Lebanon where Hezbollah rules under Iranian auspices have their purpose. Not only to forestall direct attacks by Israel against Tehran's nuclear installations but to counter the threats its proxies mount against Israel's existence.

During the diaspora years it was Europe that surrendered its Jews that had lived there for a thousand years and more, to the agenda of Fascist Germany. Now that a Jewish homeland has been re-established it is the neighbourhood of Arab states and Aryan Persia that planned to rid its geography of a Judaic presence proclaiming itself to have a right of return to its origins. 

Currently, Sunni Arab states have recognized the futility of denying Israel's presence, a detente leading to recognition and conciliation by some moderate Islamic states toward Israel. Discovering, after all, that they have much in common and much to gain through cooperation with one another heading into the future of amicable engagement.

While Europe, which during World War II became a slaughterhouse for Jews, still finds common cause to criticize the Jewish nation for defending itself from terrorism and threats against its existence. Israel, however, has equipped itself with defences that will withstand all manner of threats. Extending first a hand of friendship to those who would return the embrace. And the fallback of ensuring it has a military second to none in motivation and equipment capable of formidable defence capabilities.

"Since the early 2000s, Iran has supplied cruise and ballistic missiles to its proxies in at least three countries -- Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen."

"[One of its primary goals is] the deployment of missiles under Iran's direct or indirect control would allow it to strike an adversary during a conflict from multiple directions."

Andrew Hanna, U.S. Institute of Peace

A burning vehicle at the Baghdad International Airport following an airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in which Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed January 3, 2020. (Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office via AP)