The Jewish Plan For The Middle East and Beyond

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Like to share. A more recent debate.

Blurb

Israelis and Palestinians come together to find a middle ground. Can they look past the deep conflict to understand one another?



To answer the question

Israelis and Palestinians come together to find a middle ground. Can they look past the deep conflict to understand one another?

One side is trying to erase the other, what is there to discuss?

Salaam

Like to share, a tidbit of history.

Blurb

As I was going through some files I came across this old clip of Netanyahu being caught, to his political embarrassment, admitting that the President of the United States and US Foreign Policy are easily steered in the direction that best suits Israel’s interests.

How many times have you seen people browbeat and called antisemitic for saying this exact same thing. Yet here is Netanyahu admitting it.

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Blurb

In a speech at the United Nations on Friday, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Malaysia cannot accept the blatant seizure of Palestinian land by Israel for their settlements as well as the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel.

He highlighted the dire situation of the Palestinians who cannot even enter the settlements built on their land.

Malaysia, he said, accepted the state of Israel as a fait accompli but underscored that because of the creation of Israel, there is now enmity towards the Muslims and Islam.

Salaam

Another update


A Window into Jewish Guilt

It has become an institutional Jewish habit to examine how much Jews are hated by their host nations and how fearful Jews are of their neighbours. Jewish press outlets reported yesterday that “9 out of 10 US Jews worry about anti-Semitism.”

I, for one, can’t think of another people who invest so much energy in measuring their unpopularity. Despite the scale of Islamophobia and anti-Black racism, we are not subjected to a constant barrage of ‘statistics’ to ‘warn us’ of how hated Blacks are or how unsafe Muslims feel.

The American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) statistics suggest that “most Jews think that the situation is getting worse.” I find their statistics unlikely but I guess any mathematically inclined person would agree that if 9 out of 10 are fearful, then the situation can’t get much ‘worse’ as 10 out of 10 would constitute only a minor increase (11%).

Assume, for a moment, that the AJC’s statistics reflect reality and that the overwhelming majority (90%) of 1,200 Jewish respondents, from all political and religious positions, regard Jew-hatred as a serious problem with potentially disastrous consequences.

We might wonder who are the ‘naughty’ one out of ten Jews who, unlike their brethren, are not scared of their American neighbours. I suspect these are the so-called ‘self-haters,’ that infamous bunch of horrid humanist Jews who support Palestine and are disgusted by the manifold of recent Jewish #MeToo scandals and paedophilia/organised crime networks. This small minority (10%) of disobedient Jews might be disturbed by the opioid scandal that left 400.000 Americans dead, they probably know who were the prime actors in this saga of class genocide. They are likely troubled by a range of financial crimes from Madoff to Israeli banks evading US taxes, to the Israeli binary options companies that defraud American citizens. These universalist Jewish outcasts are often vocal critics of their people, their culture and their politics. They may denounce AIPAC and the ADL, Soros and even JVP for acting as the controlled opposition. The AJC’s statistics point to the possible existence of a comic scenario in which 9 out of 10 Jews are intimidated by the 1 out of 10 Jews who speak out.

There is a less humorous, more serious interpretation of the AJC’s findings. It is possible that the large number of Jews who worry about anti-Semitism indicates that Jews at large are aware of the worrying traits associated with their politics, culture, identity, lobbying and Israeli criminality.

Jews may feel that they are stained as a group by problematic characters such as Weisntein, Epstein and Maxwell. They may feel polluted by Israeli politics and the intensive Zionist lobbying that plunders billions of American taxpayers dollars every year. As the White House seems to turn its back on the Neocons’ immoral interventionism, some Jews may be discomfited by the fact that the Neocon war mongering doctrine has been largely a Jewish project. As Haartez writer Ari Shavit wrote back in 2003: “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish…” Maybe some Jews now understand that the Zionist shift from a ‘promised land’ to the Neocon ‘promised planet’ doesn’t reflect well on the Jews as a group.

I am trying to point out the possibility that the overwhelming fear of ‘anti-Semitism,’ documented however poorly by the AJC, might well be the expression of guilt. American Jews may feel communal guilt over the disastrous politics and culture of some sections of their corrupted elite. They might even feel guilty as Americans about the brutal sacrifice of one of America’s prime values, that of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, on the altar of ‘antisemitism.’ .

Obviously, I would welcome AJC’s further investigation of this. It would be interesting to learn about the correlation between the Jewish fear of anti Semitism and Jewish guilt. It would also be fascinating to find out how Jewish anxiety translates into self-reflection. In that regard, I suggest that instead of blaming the American people, Jews try introspection. US Jews may want to follow the early Zionists, such as Theodor Herzl, who turned guilt into self-examination. Herzl was deeply disturbed by anti Semitism but this didn’t stop him from digging into its causes. “The wealthy Jews control the world, in their hands lies the fate of governments and nations,” Herzl wrote. He continued, “They set governments one against the other. When the wealthy Jews play, the nations and the rulers dance. One way or the other, they get rich.” Herzl, like other early Zionists, believed that Jews could be emancipated from their conditions and even be loved globally by means of a cultural, ideological and spiritual metamorphosis with the aspiration of ‘homecoming.’ Herzl and his fellow early Zionists were clearly wrong in their proposed remedy for the Jewish question, but were absolutely spot on in their adherence to self-reflection and harsh self-criticism.

American Jews have much to learn from Herzl and other early Zionists. They should ask themselves how their American ‘Golden Medina’ their Jewish land of opportunities, has turned into a ‘threatening’ realm. What happened, what has changed in the last few years? Was it the constant cries over anti-Semitism and the desperate and institutional attempts to silence critics that turned their Golden Medina into a daunting space?

https://gilad.online/writings/2019/1...o-jewish-guilt

Salaam

Another update

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Israel seeks US help it normalise relations with Gulf

Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said that he had asked the American Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin to help Israel normalise ties with Gulf states.

Taking to Twitter, Katz wrote on Monday: “I asked the American secretary of the Treasury to help Israel build economic relations with the Gulf States in the light of the continuous normalisation wave, mainly with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

He added: “In light of the Iranian threats and the alliance between America, Israel and the Sunni Gulf states, there is a historical opportunity being evolved that we must not lose. The goal of this opportunity is to reach a non-aggression deal.”

His calls come as there has been an increase in the number of meetings between officials from Gulf states and Israel.

Israel’s Labor party leader Avi Gabbay has visited a number of Arab state, including the UAE. According to the Times of Israel, the Moroccan national involved in arranging the December meeting had “previously arranged other meetings for Gabbay with senior Arab officials”.

Gabbay was not the first Israeli establishment figure to visit the UAE in 2018, with Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister visiting the Gulf state in October. Miri Regev attended the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Judo tournament after being invited to support the Israeli national team that had been granted permission to participate, despite the fact that the two countries do not hold formal diplomatic relations and Israeli passports are not valid for travel to the UAE.

Just days after Regev’s visit to Abu Dhabi, Israel’s Communication Minister Ayoub Kara spoke at a conference in Dubai. Kara told the audience – which had gathered for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) conference – that “peace and security in every state […] with economic and scientific progress is what guarantees a future for the coming generations”. In a tweet following the event Kara wrote: “It is amazing and heartwarming to receive thunderous applause at the ITU conference in Dubai. I would like to thank the Government and people of the United Arab Emirates of Dubai for their warm hospitality.”

Israeli-Emirati relations reached new heights in 2018, against the backdrop of Israel’s efforts to foster normalisation with a number of Arab countries. In August, Israeli journalist Edy Cohen claimed that an Emirati pilot participated in the bombing of Palestinian targets in the besieged Gaza Strip during his training on Israeli Air Force F-35 fighters in July. Cohen also accused Dubai’s Deputy Chairman of Police and Public Security, General Dhahi Khalfan, of being complicit in assassinating Hamas leader Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010.

READ: The PA’s support for international agendas shuns the Palestinian right of return

In June, an exposé by the New Yorker revealed that Israel and the UAE have been engaged in secret normalisation talks since as early as the 1990s. The report disclosed that “the secret relationship between Israel and the UAE can be traced back to a series of meetings in a nondescript office in Washington D.C. after the signing of the Oslo Accords.” These meetings discussed the possibility of the UAE purchasing F-16 fighter jets from the US, which are known to be comprised of Israeli technology. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed, also gave his blessing for delegations of influential Jewish-Americans to be taken to Abu Dhabi to meet with Emirati officials and establish an intelligence-sharing relationship.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20...ons-with-gulf/

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More antisemitism.

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Guest speaker and political scientist Norman Finkelstein GS '87 addressed Jacob Katz '23, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, at a panel discussion on Thursday, Oct. 10, called "Fighting for Justice: From Gaza to Ferguson."

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#America’s support for Israel is seldom ever questioned but how is it that the world’s most powerful nation puts the interests of #Israel before its own?

Ethnic-minority interest groups have played an increasingly important role in the affairs of Washington since the early 20th century. One faction that stands out in terms of influence is the collection of pro-Israel pressure groups. America’s support for such bodies has been a fixed truth for decades but one that is seldom ever questioned. So, how is it that the world’s most powerful nation puts the interests of Israel before its own?

Some conspiracy theories would have you believe that secret deals are made in dark-lit rooms, but the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt reveal that the opposite is true. There is no conspiracy, the Israel lobby not only operates in full publicity, but its operations are part of the fabric of modern democracies, all revealing just how powerful it is.

Salaam

Another update.

At long last

The question of whether Jews are a nation or a religion has been definitively and officially settled, at least for the people of the United States:

President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, thus bolstering the Education Department's efforts to stamp out "Boycott Israel" movements on college campuses.

RamZPaul reaches the obvious conclusion:

I guess this means that the United States government’s position is that Jews are not Russians, Germans, Swedes or Americans, but they are a separate nation and a separate people.

Which, of course, has always been the case, despite the various self-serving attempts by immigrants to redefine Americans as some sort of walking, talking manifestations of an ideological Platonic ideation.

And, of course, it tends to raise the question of where in the Constitution the executive branch is empowered to create an "Education Department", much less play economic and speech police for the institutions of higher education across the country.

Anyhow, it is nice to have this age-old debate resolved once and for all.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/12/at-long-last.html

Ah, so George Soros isn't JUST funding a plot to destroy western culture. He's ALSO funding a counterplot to make arabs queer *SIGH*. Damn, he gets around a lot. Too bad we're ignoring all those WASP rich financiers in the name of blame-a-jew.

Salaam

Another update. Enemies of our faith don't even bother to mask their intentions.

UAE foreign minister tweets article about Israel, Arab alliance

“Israel is being seen by moderate Arab governments as a trade and security partner,” Ed Husain wrote at The Spectator.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for the United Arab Emirates, tweeted an article supporting an emerging alliance of Arab states with Israel. He tweeted from his personal account to his 4.6 million followers. The tweet repeated the headline of the article: “Islam’s reformation, an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded that he welcomed closer readings between Israel and many Arab states. “The time has come for normalization and peace.”

“A new narrative is emerging in the Middle East,” wrote Ed Husain in an article on Saturday in The Spectator arguing that an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East. “Sunni Arab neighbors are changing course,” he wrote, contrasting this year with the 1960s when Israel’s neighbors sought to destroy the country. “Islamist leaders are losing their appeal, at a time when Iran, with its brand of theological fascism, poses a threat to Israel and the Arab world alike.”

The article argued that polls show that while religious extremism is falling in the region, young people are open to new ideas. They want prosperity and some are open to build new alliances, including with Israel. The author of the article is currently on a visit to Israel, and tweeted photos from Tel Aviv on Friday. “In Tel Aviv today with Ibn Sina, Maimonides and Aquinas,” he wrote, referencing historic Jewish, Islamic and Christian philosophers. Husain has worked at influential think tanks, including Civitas and the Wilson Center’s Middle East program. He is an author and advisor.

By retweeting the article, the UAE’s influential minister gave wind to it and spotlighted it to his four million followers. Many of the comments were positive. The UAE has been a key ally of Saudi Arabia in recent years and has also been leading the region to confront extremism, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Tehran’s regime. However, the UAE is also in a complex position because it wants to support tolerance but knows that Iran is a neighbor across the Gulf. The US has Al Dhafra air base in the UAE and the French are basing a force to help with maritime security in the wake of Iranian attacks on tankers in May and June this year. The UAE has generally been seen as having shared interests with Israel in recent years.

Husain’s article noted that Abu Dhabi is pushing for coexistence in the region. “In Dubai, Jews have been worshiping at a synagogue for several years now. Rabbis from Israel, America, Australia and Europe have been attending annual international Muslim peace conferences.” There has been talk about a US-supported non-aggression pact between Israel, the UAE and several other states in the region. Israel will participate in an expo in Dubai in 2020. Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar attended an interfaith gathering in Bahrain recently. Israeli minister for Culture Miri Regev went to the UAE in 2018 during the same period that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Oman. “King Hamad of Bahrain has also led a path towards more open relations between Islam and Judaism,” Husain wrote.

There are signs of a “religious glasnost” with Saudi Arabia as well. “Several Saudi bloggers, Youtubers and Twitter personalities have been praising Israel in Arabic.” Husain said he has noticed a change in mood in the region. Part of this is shared interests against Iran’s threat and heavy hand in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. “Israel is being seen by moderate Arab governments as a trade and security partner.” Israel and many Arab states were united in an uproar over the Obama administration’s Iran deal. He even notes that an Arab prince recently asked, “Who else will fly in joint missions against Iranian targets with us?” Husain argued that now is the time for a rebirth of tolerance after seven decades of antisemitism in the region. He says that the Quran can also point the way because of respect for Jews in Islam. “There are enough historical and scriptural narratives of Muslim-Jewish fraternity to form the basis for rapprochement.” It can lead to decades of peace.

For Israel, the Gulf and neighbors such as Jordan and Egypt, there are many shared interests. For instance, concerns about energy in the Mediterranean are drawing Israel and Egypt closer. The UAE recently met with Greek officials to express concern about Turkey’s role, and also the Libya crisis. Israel, Greece, Egypt and Cyprus have shared interests in energy and natural gas issues off their coasts.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/UA...lliance-611660

Salaam. I guess I should be more straight forward. I’m National Socialist. I like Hitler and want Europe to go closer in that direction. I see that the Arab world has problems with Zionism as do we.

National Socialists aren’t like libertarians at all. For us, our state is subordinate to the race. Everything is geared towards serving the race, so it’s very collective. Right now libertarian views are popular in the west, but it’s changing because Jews have pumping us with poison and subversion. People are waking up.

I’m interested in how Islam can and will respond to something of neo-nazi friendly version of Islam. Just trying to test the waters please don’t take offense. Is there a sect or community that already does this? Is it blasphemous to say, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was white? To what extent could we change Islamic practices so they look and feel more western? Surely If a people such as the Aryans came to take the Shahada, be devout and sincere about it, then Allah will protect them and their race, rather than deny them over more trivial aspects.

My theory is that the West doesn’t have nearly as much of a problem with Islam as it does with foreign races. From my view, It’s not impossible to keep Islam in the West, while ensuring European demographic security. And I see a new sect of white racialist Islam as being a good intermediary. Also as a political catalyst to unite the Islamic world and Europe against Zionism. As well as to help support the rise of ethnostates in Europe.

Would it rise unanimously to the level of blasphemy? Or be seen as merely an odd or weird sect. Thanks.

Salaam

Another update

Jordanians come out in droves to protest gas import from Israel

Protesters in the Jordanian capital chant 'no to normalization' after Israel announces the country's newly opened Leviathan field is now supplying gas to the Hashemite Kingdom

Hundreds of locals in the Jordanian capital of Amman protested over the weekend a government agreement to import natural gas from Israel, labeling the deal as "normalization" with the Jewish state.

Protesters carried signs calling the gas deal "an occupation of the Jordanian people" and chanted "no to normalization," as well as "the Jordanian people are not for sale."
The demonstrations took place a week after Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz announced that Israel's newly opened Leviathan field is now supplying gas to Jordan.

One protester strongly condemned the Jordanian government for signing the deal and even accused the administration of committing treason.

"The Jordanian government has betrayed the Jordanian people, who oppose this deal," said the protester. "This government stands against the Jordanian people and we must stop this deal, even if the transfer of gas had already begun."

"And thus Israel has become an energy exporter for the first time in its history," Steinitz told Ynet. "It is happening right now at this moment and I am announcing it here for the first time that Israel is becoming a gas exporter to Jordan. We will also start exporting gas to Egypt within a week to 10 days," Steinitz said.

Despite the courage, however, Israel's Tamar natural gas reservoir has been exporting gas to private Jordanian companies, Jordan Bromine and Arab Potash, for the past two years.

Additionally, the leaders of Israel, Greece and Cyprus last week signed a deal in Athens for an undersea pipeline that would carry gas from new offshore deposits in the southeastern Mediterranean to continental Europe.

The 1,900-kilometer (1,300-mile) EastMed pipeline is intended to provide an alternative gas source for energy-hungry Europe, which is largely dependent on supplies from Russia and the Caucasus region.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who attended the signing ceremony with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, said the pipeline will offer Europe "better flexibility and independence in its energy sources."

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/BkMSTW1eU

Salaam

A look at internal Jewish politics.

The New York Jewish Times

There’s a big brouhaha over at the N.Y. Times. One of their regular Jewish supremacist columnists, Bret Stephens, wrote a meditation on “The Secrets of Jewish Genius” (27 December 2019) that effectively posits the genetic superiority of Jews.

Stephens came under attack for his political incorrectness so the Times had to publish a half-hearted “correction.” Honestly, I can’t fathom what’s the big deal. First, Stephens is the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, house organ of Israel’s uber Jewish supremacists. Surely the Times knew what it was getting when Stephens was taken on board. Second, I’ve never met a Jew who didn’t believe Jews benefited from superior intellectual endowments. (My close comrade Jamie Stern-Weiner swears never harboring this sentiment, but that’s just proof positive he’s a self-hating Jew.)

Stephens’ transgression was saying out loud what every other Jew thinks. Third, can it really surprise that none of the Times’ editors spotted Stephens’ “slip”? The paper might as well be christened The New York Jewish Times. Not a single week, literally, passes without a Holocaust story featured on the homepage (“New Recipe for Cheese Blintzes Found Buried in Auschwitz Barracks”).

In part, the Times is just pandering to its readership base of alte kaker billionaire Jews on the Upper East Side. But it’s also true that the Times truly believes Jewish life is inherently more sacred, its loss more tragic—which is why the Nazi holocaust is still newsworthy after 75 years, unlike, for example, the several million Vietnamese killed by Americans less than 50 years ago. Fourth, consider this passage from a recent book:

We are a people descended from slaves who brought the world ideas that changed the course of history. One God. Human dignity. The sanctity of life. Freedom itself. That is our inheritance. That is our legacy. We are the people commanded to bring light into this world.

Only a flea’s hop separates this paean from Stephens’ genetic lucubrations. It was written by Stephens’ Jewish supremacist colleague on the op-ed page, Bari Weiss, in her widely lauded How to Fight Anti-Semitism.

http://normanfinkelstein.com/2020/01...-jewish-times/

Related.


'Contemptible': outrage as Rudy Giuliani attacks George Soros as 'hardly a Jew'

Trump lawyer claims he is ‘more of a Jew than Soros’

ADL denounces ‘dog whistle to hardcore antisemites’

Jewish groups intensified criticism on Tuesday of Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor turned president’s lawyer and freelancing Ukrainian envoy, after he attacked the Jewish financier, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros for being “hardly a Jew” and failing to attend synagogue.

Giuliani also asserted he was “more of a Jew than Soros” and repeated a claim that the former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who testified in Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, was controlled by the financier.

The Anti-Defamation League CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, furiously rebuked Giuliani, who is of Italian descent and was raised Roman Catholic, describing his comments as “baffling and offensive” and a “dog whistle to hardcore antisemites and white supremacists who believe this garbage”.

Greenblatt called on Giuliani to “apologize and retract his comments immediately”.

The central thrust and larger offense caused by Giuliani’s comments, which were made during an interview with New York magazine, the group argued, was to repeat a trope about the financier controlling political appointments and events.

Soros is widely recognized for funding progressive political and social causes.

To those accusations Greenblatt tweeted: “Opposing Soros isn’t what’s #antiSemitic. Saying that he controls ambassadors, employs FBI agents and isn’t ‘Jewish enough’ to be demonized is.”

In an article published on its website in October, the ADL said: “In far-right circles worldwide, Soros’ philanthropy often is recast as fodder for outsized conspiracy theories, including claims that he masterminds specific global plots or manipulates particular events to further his goals.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...semitic-jewish

Salaam

Hmmmm.


The 'Oman File': Inside the Mossad's Alliance With Muscat, Israel's Window Into Iran

For more than half a century, a powerful convergence of interests has united Israel and Oman, the third Arab country after Lebanon and Jordan to maintain secret ties with the Mossad

Oman rushed to crown its new leader after the death of Sultan Qaboos Bin Said al Said, its ruler for fifty years. It was a clear sign of the Gulf state's determination to ensure a smooth transfer of power and inject a sense of stability after the passing of the longest serving leader in the Arab world.

The big question for Israel is whether Qaboos' successor, Haithman Bin Tarik al Said, 65 years old and a cousin of the late Sultan, will follow in his predecessor's footsteps in terms of Oman's foreign policy in general, and its close relations with Israel in particular. Those relations, forged in war, were cultivated in great secrecy and managed for decades by Israel's spy agency Mossad. Qaboos had good reason to value those ties: Israeli forces had helped save his place on the throne.

Oman, with a population of 4.5 million people and significant land mass -15 times the size of Israel - has crucial geostrategic importance. It overlooks the Straits of Hormuz, gatekeeping the Persian Gulf, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows. Oman shares borders with Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and less than 200km, over the Gulf of Oman, separates Muscat, the capital, from the Iranian mainland.

Its particular location and history were among the reasons which led Oman to reach out to Israel – back in the 1960s. Qaboos had taken power in a bloodless a coup d’état after overthrowing his father Sultan Said bin Taimur, with the support of the British government. Qaboos was a graduate of Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and had served in the British army.

The first connection paving the way for Omani-Israeli ties was formed by a team of former British spies and Special Forces commanders – and it all started in Yemen.

In 1963, a group of young Yemeni officers toppled Yemen’s monarchy and declared the country as a republic; they were backed by Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser. As a result, civil war broke out. The Egyptian army entered the war on the side of the republicans, using chemical weapons against the royalists.

The Yemeni royalists were assisted by Saudi Arabia and the British team led by the legendary Second World War colonel David Sterling, founder of the Special Air Service (SAS), a model for many special forces around the globe, including Israel's Sayeret Matkal. Sterling worked alongside Col. David Smiley, a veteran of various secret British operations during WWII, including missions in Palestine and Syria.

At a certain stage during Yemen’s civil war, Smiley asked Nahum Admoni - then a young Mossad operative - and then-Israeli Air Force commander Ezer Weizmann - to lend a hand to the British war efforts in support of the royalists. Both agreed. Admoni would later rise to become the head of Mossad, and Weizman to become Israel's seventh president.

Mossad agent and the Israeli air force colonel Zeev Liron was sent to Smiley’s headquarters in Yemen to survey the land. Liron traveled by air and land to Yemen under a false identity - an arduous trip which included riding mules - and on his return, he recommended Israel's participation in the operation. IAF pilots flew 14 highly dangerous missions in a Stratocruiser transporter and dropped weapons and ammunition from the air to the royalist forces.

The civil war ended in early 1967, and the royalists were defeated.. Nevertheless, the Egyptian army didn’t celebrate its victory. It had performed poorly, its morale was low and the Yemen misadventure was one of the reasons why Israel won the Six Day War in June 1967.

But the war did result in closer ties between Britain's Smiley and the Mossad's Admoni – that led the way to Muscat. Smiley, who had served as a military adviser to the Sultan of Oman, advised Qaboos to get in touch with Israel. Qaboos was interested, and representatives from the Mossad’s Tevel department (in charge of clandestine relations with Arab and Muslim states with no diplomatic relations with Israel) would occasionally meet with their Omani counterparts.

Oman became the third Arab country - after Lebanon and Jordan - to maintain secret ties with the Mossad.

In Jordan, those ties were with King Hussein; in Lebanon, with President Camille Chamoun who, during his retirement, was even given permission by Israeli military intelligence to go hunting for pleasure near the Israeli border.

In 1975, relations between Israel and Oman reached a new level. Forces from the radical socialist South Yemen had invaded Oman’s Dhofar region, in the south of the sultanate in support of a long-running insurgency. Britain and Iran, then ruled by the Shah, tried to quell the revolt but in vain. Israeli military advisers, coordinated by Mossad’s operative Ephraim Halevy, later also head of the agency, rushed to Oman to help end the revolt.

The episode was a classic and propitious example of the convergence of national interests between Israel and Oman. Muscat had to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty. For Israel, South Yemen a hostile state and key training ground for Palestinian terrorists, including the Entebbe hijackers, and overlooked one of Israel's key oil supply routes.

Away from the battlefield, the Mossad was also instrumental in assisting Oman improve its water resources to irrigate its arid land. The water plan was design by Haim Tsaban, the engineer brother of Yair, a former MK from the Meretz party.

For the next two decades the Mossad continued to play a role maintaining the Omani "file." In 1994, following Israel's signing of the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which resulted in a major extension of Israel's diplomatic, military and economic relations with Non Aligned Bloc states, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, accompanied by Ephraim Halevy, flew to Oman and met with Qaboos. Rabin flew directly from Tel Aviv to Muscat. It was the first publicly-announced encounter between Israel and Oman, but nearly 30 years since they'd initiated undercover contact.

Two years later Shimon Peres, who became prime minister after Rabin's murder, also visited Oman. Immediately following his meeting with Qaboos, Israel opened an official mission in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Even after Benjamin Netanyahu defeated Peres in the 1996 elections and became prime minister, Oman continued to play an important role in its efforts to improve Israel's standing – if not normalization - in the Arab world. The Sultan decided to try and remove one specific obstacle: the state of hostilities between Israel and Syria.

Qaboos instructed his foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi to broker a peace deal between President Hafez Assad of Syria and Netanyahu. Uzi Arad, a former senior Mossad operative and a diplomatic adviser to Netanyahu, met with Alawi three times from 1996 to 1998 in Europe.

No peace treaty with Syria resulted, but the meetings reflected an important element of Omani foreign policy: to ease tensions in the Middle East, be it between Iran and the U.S. (Oman helped broker the Obama administration's nuclear deal in 2015) or between Israel and Palestine.

In 2000, with the outbreak of the second Intifada and the bloody clashes between the IDF and Palestinians, Oman - together with other Arab countries such as Qatar, UAE, and Morocco - severed official ties with Israel.

Yet Oman would not let its ties drop completely. Once again, Israel-Oman relations went underground, maintained via the Mossad. Open ties surfaced again in 2008. That year, Oman's Foreign Minister Alawi met publicly with his counterpart Tzipi Livni in Qatar.

Ten years later, Netanyahu, escorted by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, flew over Saudi airspace to Oman (with a face-saving two-minute "stop-off" in Amman to prevent the formal appearance that Saudi Arabia had allowed a direct flight from Israel to overfly its airspace) and met with Sultan Qaboos.

Netanyahu and Cohen tried to portray the visit as a unique historic event. That convenient piece of storytelling conveniently forgot that two other Israeli prime ministers had made it to Muscat decades earlier - not to mention practically all the Mossad heads since 1970.

For Israel, there have clearly been benefits to the ties with Oman – diplomatic, strategic, trade and public image – but one of the more significant benefits is the fact that Oman has also good relations with Iran, Israel’s most bitter enemy. Through its close contact with Omani officials, Israel was offered a window into Iran’s thinking.

Israeli officials with long experience in the Omani game tend to think that the new Sultan, who served under Alawi as Director General of the Omani foreign ministry, will maintain Qaboos' longstanding foreign policy and strategy, meaning a continuation of the Gulf state's long history of both open and clandestine ties with Israel.

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-...iran-1.8414861

Salaam

George Soros doing what he does best.

Soros gives $1bn to fund universities 'and stop drift towards authoritarianism'

Philanthropist unveils plan for global network of institutions at Davos and attacks Trump as ‘ultimate narcissist’

The philanthropist and former financier George Soros has announced that he is to donate $1bn to fund a new global network of universities designed to promote liberal values and his vision of an open society.

In what he hailed as the “most important and enduring project of my life”, Soros said it was important to fund institutions that would help resist the drift towards growing authoritarianism in the US, Russia and China. He also launched a fresh attack on Donald Trump, calling the US president “the ultimate narcissist”.

Soros, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said his new Open Society University Network would build on his Central European University, set up after the collapse of communism 30 years ago.

The CEU has been forced to move from Hungary to Vienna after Hungary’s rightwing leader, Viktor Orban, stripped it of the ability to issue US degrees.

Soros – the man responsible for the run on the pound that led to sterling leaving the European exchange rate mechanism on Black Wednesday in September 1992 – said the CEU had not been strong enough by itself to become the educational institution the world requires. “That requires a new kind of global educational network.”

He added that the time had come for his Open Society Foundation – the vehicle for his philanthropy – to embark on an ambitious project that would build on the CEU and develop “a new and innovative educational network that the world really needs”.

Soros said: “OSUN will be unique. It will offer an international platform for teaching and research. In the first phase it will connect closer together an existing network. In the second phase, we shall open up this network to other institutions who want to join and are eager and qualified to do so.

“To demonstrate our commitment to OSUN, we are contributing one billion dollars to it. But we can’t build a global network on our own; we will need partner institutions and supporters from all around the world to join us in this enterprise.”

Soros said that while the political situation was quite grim, it would be a mistake to give in to despair. He attacked Trump, who he said was a “con man and the ultimate narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him”.

He said: “When his fantasy of becoming president came true, his narcissism developed a pathological dimension. Indeed, he has transgressed the limits imposed on the presidency by the constitution and has been impeached for it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business...thoritarianism