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The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.? We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).?

offsite link What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

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Public Inquiry
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Public Inquiry >>

Human Rights in Ireland
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Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

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The post In Welcoming Trump, Let Us Remember Henry VIII appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Back in 2022 and 2023 when Covid travel restrictions and vaccine passports were all the rage Dr Roger Watson published his country-by-country guide. Now, in 2025, he takes a look to see if any are still at it.
The post Have Covid Travel Requirements Gone Away? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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The post A Golden Age for American Meritocracy appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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The post Think Tank’s Net Zero Survey Concludes the Public is the Problem appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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There has been a 50-fold rise in children who think they are the?wrong sex in just 10 years, with two thirds of them girls, analysis of GP records suggests.
The post Number of Children Who Think They are Wrong Sex Surges 50-Fold appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Twenty facts about Israel and the Middle East

category national | miscellaneous | news report author Monday June 10, 2002 02:28author by Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Jeane Kirkpatrick Report this post to the editors

These 20 facts will help serve as a primer for those trying to understand the historical context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with a solid grounding in the facts of the matter-facts that too often are forgotten, if ever they were learned. Below are twenty facts that we think are useful in understanding the current situation, how we arrived here, and how we might eventually arrive at a solution.
Roots of the Conflict
· When the United Nations proposed the establishment of two states in the region--one Jewish, one Arab--the Jews accepted the proposal and declared their independence in 1948. The Jewish state constituted only 1/6 of one percent of what was known as "the Arab world." The Arab states, however, rejected the UN plan and since then have waged war against Israel repeatedly, both all-out wars and wars of terrorism and attrition. In 1948, five Arab armies invaded Israel in an effort to eradicate it. Jamal Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee spoke for many in vowing to soak "the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood."
· The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964--three years before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO's declared purpose was to eliminate the State of Israel by means of armed struggle. To this day, the Web site of Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) claims that the entirety of Israel is "occupied" territory.* It is impossible to square this with the PLO and PA assertions to Western audiences that the root of the conflict is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
· The West Bank and Gaza (controlled by Jordan and Egypt from 1948 to 1967) came under Israeli control during the Six Day War of 1967 that started when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and Arab armies amassed on Israel's borders to invade and liquidate the state. It is important to note that during their 19-year rule, neither Jordan nor Egypt had made any effort to establish a Palestinian state on those lands. Just before the Arab nations launched their war of aggression against the State of Israel in 1967, Syrian Defense Minister (later President) Hafez Assad stated, "Our forces are now entirely ready . . . to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland . . . the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." On the brink of the 1967 war, Egyptian President Gamal Nassar declared, "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."
· Because of their animus against Jews, many leaders of the Palestinian cause have long supported our enemies. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem allied himself with Adolf Hitler during WWII. Yasir Arafat, chairman of the PLO and president of the PA, has repeatedly targeted and killed Americans. In 1973, Arafat ordered the execution of Cleo Noel, the American ambassador to the Sudan. Arafat was very closely aligned with the Soviet Union and other enemies of the United States throughout the Cold War. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Arafat aligned himself with Saddam Hussein, whom he praised as "the defender of the Arab nation, of Muslims, and of free men everywhere."
· Israel has, in fact, returned most of the land that it captured during the 1967 war and right after that war offered to return all of it in exchange for peace and normal relations; the offer was rejected. As a result of the 1978 Camp David accords--in which Egypt recognized the right of Israel to exist and normal relations were established between the two countries--Israel returned the Sinai desert, a territory three times the size of Israel and 91 percent of the territory Israel took control of in the 1967 war.
· In 2000, as part of negotiations for a comprehensive and durable peace, Israel offered to turn over all but the smallest portion of the remaining territories to Yasir Arafat. But Israel was rebuffed when Arafat walked out of Camp David and launched the current intifada.
· Yasir Arafat has never been less than clear about his goals-at least not in Arabic. On the very day that he signed the Oslo accords in 1993--in which he promised to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel--he addressed the Palestinian people on Jordanian television and declared that he had taken the first step "in the 1974 plan." This was a thinly-veiled reference to the "phased plan," according to which any territorial gain was acceptable as a means toward the ultimate goal of Israel's destruction.
· The recently deceased Faisal al-Husseini, a leading Palestinian spokesman, made the same point in 2001 when he declared that the West Bank and Gaza represented only "22 percent of Palestine" and that the Oslo process was a "Trojan horse." He explained, "When we are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as 'temporary' procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." The goal, he continued, was "the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea," i.e., the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea-all of Israel.
· To this day, the Fatah wing of the PLO (the "moderate" wing that was founded and is controlled by Arafat himself) has as its official emblem the entire state of Israel covered by two rifles and a hand grenade--another fact that belies the claim that Arafat desires nothing more than the West Bank and Gaza.
· While criticism of Israel is not necessarily the same as "anti-Semitism," it must be remembered that the Middle East press is, in fact, rife with anti-Semitism. More than fifteen years ago the eminent scholar Bernard Lewis could point out that "The demonization of Jews [in Arabic literature] goes further than it had ever done in Western literature, with the exception of Germany during the period of Nazi rule." Since then, and through all the years of the "peace process," things have become much worse. Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels--including claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods--have become prominent and routine. One example is a sermon broadcast on PA television where Sheik Ahmad Halabaya stated, "They [the Jews] must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands.' Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them."
· Over three-quarters of Palestinians approve of suicide bombings-an appalling statistic but, in light of the above facts, an unsurprising one.
The State of Israel
· There are 21 Arab countries in the Middle East and only one Jewish state: Israel, which is also the only democracy in the region.
· Israel is the only country in the region that permits citizens of all faiths to worship freely and openly. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are not Jewish.
· While Jews are not permitted to live in many Arab countries, Arabs are granted full citizenship and have the right to vote in Israel. Arabs are also free to become members of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset). In fact, several Arabs have been democratically elected to the Knesset and have been serving there for years. Arabs living in Israel have more rights and are freer than most Arabs living in Arab countries.
· Israel is smaller than the state of New Hampshire and is surrounded by nations hostile to her existence. Some peace proposals--including the recent Saudi proposal--demand withdrawal from the entire West Bank, which would leave Israel 9 miles wide at its most vulnerable point.
· The oft-cited UN Resolution 242 (passed in the wake of the 1967 war) does not, in fact, require a complete withdrawal from the West Bank. As legal scholar Eugene Rostow put it, "Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces 'from territories' it occupied during the Six-Day War--not from 'the' territories nor from 'all' the territories, but from some of the territories."
· Israel has, of course, conceded that the Palestinians have legitimate claims to the disputed territories and is willing to engage in negotiations on the matter. As noted above, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered almost all of the territories to Arafat at Camp David in 2000.
· Despite claims that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are the obstacle to peace, Jews lived there for centuries before being massacred or driven out by invading Arab armies in 1948-49. And contrary to common misperceptions, Israeli settlements--which constitute less than two percent of the territories--almost never displace Palestinians.
· The area of the West Bank includes some of the most important sites in Jewish history, among them Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jericho. East Jerusalem, often cited as an "Arab city" or "occupied territory," is the site of Judaism's holiest monument. While under Arab rule (1948-67), this area was entirely closed to Jews. Since Israel took control, it has been open to people of all faiths.
· Finally, let us consider the demand that certain territories in the Muslim world must be off-limits to Jews. This demand is of a piece with Hitler's proclamation that German land had to be "Judenrein" (empty of Jews). Arabs can live freely throughout Israel, and as full citizens. Why should Jews be forbidden to live or to own land in an area like the West Bank simply because the majority of people is Arab?
In sum, a fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle East will reveal that one nation stands far above the others in its commitment to human rights and democracy as well as in its commitment to peace and mutual security. That nation is Israel.
* The official Palestinian National Authority Web site (pna.org) is currently not operating. Various reports provide different reasons and the Web site should be operating again in the near future.

author by Oliver O'Driscollpublication date Mon Jun 10, 2002 18:55author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Just on a point of information, Kirkpatrick was one of Reagan's supporter's who attempted to defend the rape and murder of three american nun's in El Salvador.

author by Joepublication date Wed Jun 12, 2002 22:14author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Oliver,
President Reagan was not in office when those horrible rapes occurred. Actually, President Carter was still in office.


Joe

author by Oliver O'Driscollpublication date Wed Jun 12, 2002 22:29author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Whether REAGAN or Carter was in power at the time is not the point, both "PRESIDENTS" supported the genocidal regime in San Salvador. Kirkpatrick was a well known supporter of Reagan and a supporter of the genocidal regime in San Salvador, and attempted to cover up and excuse the brutal rape and murder of her fellow americans.

author by Joepublication date Wed Jun 12, 2002 22:53author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Oliver,
At least the "genocidal" regime of El Salvador did hold elections, unlike the great paradise of Cuba's Fidel Castro. I can so why Fidel has never held elections. His friend in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, lost an election in February 1990 to a woman, Violeta Chamora.

Joe

author by Oliver O'Driscollpublication date Thu Jun 13, 2002 19:08author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Yes the U.S. sponsored regime in San Salvador did hold elections, when it became obvious to them and their sponsors that the campaign of genocide against their own people would not suceed and the publicity was becoming just a little embarrassing to Washington. "Human Rights" Carter was just as much reponsible for the genocide as the army and the right wing death squads such as ORDEN. When he halted arms shipments in a cynical pr stunt, he neglected to mention that Tel Aviv took up the contracts instead.

author by silopublication date Thu Jun 13, 2002 19:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors

It's another trolling/spamming effort from a pro-U.S./Israel perspective.

Some points:

Creation of Israel 1948: Israeli forces expel up to 300,000 occupants of the area and immediately invade the areas recommended by the UN as Palestinian.

6 Day war 1967: Israel takes over the West Bank ("Judea and Samaria") and Gaza Strip, institutes what is effectively military occupation of the area, which continues today.

IDF and PLO both terrorists.

Israel/IDF recieves colossal aid (Military/Civilian/Financial/Ideological) from USA as it serves their interest to maintain Israel as an 'efficient Sparta' in the region in order to control oil.

author by Joepublication date Thu Jun 13, 2002 21:33author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Oliver,
If you really disagree with what was said in the article co-authored by Jeane Kirkpatrick, why don't you challenge what was written, just like Silo did? Yes, the El Salvadorans may have been brutal, but I would seriously question if they were genocidal. Josef Stalin was genocidal, and the El Salvadorans were no where near as bad as Stalin was.

author by Oliver O'Driscollpublication date Fri Jun 14, 2002 00:10author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I will be only too pleased to reply to the Zionist propaganda in the original posting. After the fascist “final solution” during ww11, it was understandable to put it mildly that the survivors of the nazi genocide had a desire for a state of their own. I fully support the right of the Jewish people to have their own state. I also fully support the right of the dispossessed Palestinian people to their own state. I believe that the two state solution is the only realistic one. It is a compromise solution, which would be understandly painful for the Palestinian people to accept. That compromise means a total withdrawal from all occupied terrorities including East Jerusalem and the dismantling of all illegal settlements. Of course Sharon is not interested in such a solution, he prefers more land grabbing and ethnic cleansing. Re the comment as to why Jews cannot live on the West Bank, (after a peace treaty) given the crimes committed by these “settlers” who represent the most extreme element of Israeli society, I don’t think it would be in their own interests to remain and it’s also unlikely that any Palestinian Government would allow them to stay.

The content of the posting refers to the “Arab World”, the UN resolution on Palestine had nothing whatsoever to do with other Arab countries. The terriority captured by the time of the first truce far exceeded that specified by the UN.

The Zionist myth of “a land for a people for a people without a land is just that, a myth. Three quarters of a million Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed from their country by means of murder, rape, and looting. Safsaf, Tantura, Safad, Jaffa, Haifa and Deir Yassin are only some examples of what the Zionists called “population transfer” or rather ethnic cleansing. To quote the late Yigal Allon “If you don't flee immediately, you will all be slaughtered, your daughters will be raped,”. These practices of the seizure of Palestinian land have continued to the present day. It has been accompanied by war crimes that the Nazis would be proud of, i.e. Deir Yassin, Sabra-Shatila, Qana and of course Jenin.

With regard to the sympathy of certain Arab figures re the Nazis, that is not in dispute but then the Nazis has sympathisers in many countries including the United States and Britain.

Finally my support for the Just cause of the Palestinian people is not an endorsement of any other government in the Middle East.

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