After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where Hutus and Twa slaughtered people identified as Tutsis by the thousands, people around the world, abhorred by this senseless killing spree, unaware of power-players in western countries looking for control over the vast resources in the country, came up with a concept of ‘R2P’, the ‘Responsibility to Protect’. NATO-countries acted on this idea again and again, but mainly to serve their far less altruistic agenda of increasing their say over other countries, changing the government, expanding their power, taking the wealth, or denying it to others, and opening pathways for mass migration.
Originally, ‘genocide’ refers exclusively to a desire to kill people based on race. The Nazis and their partners in other countries around Europe they ‘liberated’ killed six million Jews, and anywhere between 250.000 and 500.000 Roma, while the Ukrainian ‘Bandera’ thugs extended this ‘service’ to the Poles and Russians, terminating their lives out of blind hate. In many other situations policies imposed on people in an ‘occupied’ part of the world meant many did not survive. The ‘Armenian Genocide’ was associated with forced ‘relocation’ of the Armenian people imposed on them by the ruling Ottoman Empire during World War I, which killed an estimated one million Armenians.
Ethnic, cultural and language ‘identifiers’ used to determine the fate of a people is sheer horror if these people cannot rely on a state to defend them. Forced ‘assimilation’, beyond demanding that people respect the humane laws of the land they are living in, or visiting, is usually the precursor, but behind these programs to ‘integrate’ groups are often hidden motives. I am writing this as South-Africa is leading the charge against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague over its ongoing war in Gaza. The basis is the 1948 ‘Genocide Convention’ which has been signed by 153 countries, including Israel. Non of the western countries came out to support South-Africa’s claim though, which is not merely based on the horrendous number of civilian casualties, but underpinned by references to public statements by multiple Israeli government officials indicating their goal to get rid of the Palestinian population in the area altogether, either through forced deportation into Egypt, formerly the ‘Sinaï Plan’, or by killing them. Clearly Netanyahu’s earlier statement in the Knesset, that keeping Hamas alive and well funded was the best insurance against a Palestinian state, will be presented as evidence that Israel never recognized the right of the Palestinians to live on the lands allocated to them as the UN recognized Israel formally as a sovereign state in 1949, in accordance with a partition plan, after Jewish terrorists blew up the King David hotel, and assassinated the UN envoy count Folke Bernadotte to put pressure on the proces.
Peace and calm did not decent on the region after that, and Palestinian terrorists, predominantly claiming to be ‘socialists’ at first, and radical Sunnis siding with Al Qaeda and ISIS after that, drew plenty of attention to themselves, but the October 7 attack was designed to breach the existing border security, do plenty of damage, and to take hostages. Depending on your preferred sources you may claim that those Hamas-fighters were real animals, beheading babies and raping women, killing every civilian they didn’t take with them to their Lion’s den, or that all of the dead were really due to Israel firing on its own people, and that the kind people from Hamas saved lots of people by bringing them to safety in Gaza, while even the Israeli police has difficulty finding victims of the alleged atrocities. I haven’t written about it, because I feel everything was kind of ‘scripted’ and predictable, with both sides, and their international supporters, engaging in massive amounts of propaganda, if you have been paying attention to the simmering conflict. Both the radical Palestinians, and the radical Jews, supported by feverish Christian Zionists, are sticking a claim on all of Palestine, and beyond. On both sides there are ‘moderates’, or what I would call ‘normal’ people willing to find a way to reach a lasting settlement, but on the Israeli side that was ‘discouraged’ when a radical Jewish ‘settler’ killed Yitzhak Rabin, who tried. And no doubt Hamas is not very kind to their own if they call on them to seek a solution either.
Against the backdrop of news that Israeli ‘intelligence’ was aware of the outline of this October 7th plan, I’m not shocked to hear people claim that Netanyahu (et al) allowed it to happen, even egging Hamas on when ‘settlers’ stormed the Al Aqsa mosque, to have an excuse to shove the Palestinians out of Gaza altogether, and add the beachfront real estate, and gas rich seabed in front of it, to Israel. More evidence is needed to claim that it is undeniably true, but allow me to say that I do not blame it on ‘The Jews’ in general, but on the select few involved in deciding on Israel’s foreign policy and military strategy, and I’m not crying bitter tears over Hamas losing their ‘finest’ in this war either, but I suffer, like all decent people should, through knowing that civilians on both sides are being led to the slaughter on yet another ‘Great Game’ battleground by people with absolutely no conscience whatsoever.
These scheming ‘Sons-of-Bitches’ are sailing into a headwind. They used to get away with murder, but no longer. A Houthi leader interviewed by the BBC was asked to explain himself after the Yemeni people decided to target commercial shipping trying to reach the Suez Canal, if the ship could be identified as belonging to an Israeli company, or a company of a NATO-country, seen as siding with Israel, out of solidarity with the people of Gaza. Yemen is not exactly next door to Gaza, the journalist claimed. The Houthi leader responded by asking the journalist if Biden, Sunak, Rutte and Netanyahu shared an apartment? What were the US, the UK, Holland, now bombing Yemen, doing at the other end of the globe? How was that close to home for them? Well, ‘R2P’…….
As an apropos, consider the following, for context. Interestingly, ‘R2P’ under the UN-charter was what Russia claimed for its ‘Special Military Operation’, with the stated goal to save the people of the Donbas from being bombed regularly for eight years straight after the ‘Minsk Agreement’ was supposed to put the lid on the Civil War, which raged in Ukraine after Victoria Nuland and her team removed the democratically elected president, and replaced it by a puppet regime doing Washington’s bidding. The ‘Minsk’ agreement left Ukraine whole, save for the disputed Crimea, which opted to become part of the Russian federation after the coup through a referendum. After eight years, no progress, an enormous military buildup in Ukraine by NATO, and 14.000 people killed, many of them civilians, women and children too, with a pending assault on the Donbas by Ukraine, after the military defeat in 2014 at Debaltseve, and NATO refusing to pick up the phone, the Russians kicked off the ‘Special Military Operation’ with gusto, hoping to impress Zelensky into returning to terra firma, and in Istanbul they actually did reach an agreement. But as the Russians started to withdraw as a sign of good will, ‘Boris Johnson’ and ‘Bucha’ happened, which the Russians said was a Ukrainian secret service operation, and Zelensky took the exit to the ‘Meat Grinder’.
Though civilians do get killed in Ukraine, that clearly is not the goal, nor are the Russians aiming for the forced displacement of the people living in the territory they already added to Russia proper after a referendum. The claim that the Russians are engaged in ‘genocide’ is ridiculous. More so from the mouths of people who cheer for national heroes which are listed as the worst Nazis during the Second World War, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, Poles and Russians for being Jews, Roma, Poles and Russians. But enough about Russia and Ukraine, right? The attention is shifting away from Ukraine, since there really is not all that much left for the NATO-countries to do, within their abilities, and it looks like this war will be a footnote in the history books if we continue down this path we’ve taken. Although I do note these threats that Ukraine, as a ‘Failed State’, will do all kinds of mischief to Russia on Russian soil, and in the Black Sea, and it would be foolish for the Russians to let their guards down, since Rishi Sunak on his visit to Kiev pledged to help them with all of that. Still, strange things may happen, if the Ukrainian people ‘flip’, and understand they were taken for granted as bargaining chips in a geopolitical game of high-stakes poker.
This ‘Gaza-thing’ has the same potential, drawing Sunni and Shia in a bond against the west/NATO-countries, unifying the Muslim world in some kind of unreal ‘waking-up ritual’, turning their anger against the forces which did the ‘Divide and Conquer’-thing for too long. I remember this former Dutch foreign minister exclaiming in front of the camera that the Chinese would never form an alliance with the Russians, because they really hated them. He wasn’t too sure about some things in life, but of that he was absolutely sure. After leaving that post as a ‘foreign policy expert’ he became the right-hand Climate Change Commissar serving Mrs von der Leyen, ruining Europe. Before switching back to Dutch politics, ear marked to become the next Dutch prime minister, heading a party attracting pro’-WEF’/‘WHO’-voters and ‘Climate buffs’. But he lost the elections by a considerable margin, which is increasing since, if we can trust the polls. He still has a chance if the party of the parting prime minister, set to become the next secretary general of NATO, greasing the skids with billions of Dutch tax-payers money for ‘Project Ukraine’, pulls out of a coalition considered to be ‘right wing’. Until a new government has been formed, Mark Rutte is still in charge, hence this Dutch support for these bombing runs on Yemen. He ‘explained’ this move as an attempt to ‘de-escalate’ the situation in that corner of the world, which does tell you something about where NATO will be headed if he is actually promoted to replace this Norwegian banker.
How about setting up a ‘R2P’-operation to save the people pushed into the line of fire of all those ambitious jerks? Nothing military. No violent intervention. No bombs. But some *real* protection through de-funding the ‘Warparty’. Well, I’m still allowed to dream, right?