RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/the-mythologies-of-the-middle-east-part-two/

The Myth of “Proportionality”

As a general rule, in the long history of war, victory is found only by being disproportionate in the use of force. That is a truism so banal as to need little elaboration. When both sides are “proportionate” in their ability to harm their opponents, the result is either a bloody tactical deadlock such as at Verdun or the Somme, or an open strategic sore like Vietnam and Afghanistan, or decades-long “proportionate” killing such as the Peloponnesian War or Thirty Years’ War.

The whole point of Western aid to Ukraine apparently and logically is to allow it to harm Russia disproportionally, especially given the vast imbalance in resources, both human and material. The great tragedy of this horrific two-year war is the reality that Ukraine has only been able to achieve proportional success against Russia, as the current deadlocked map of the battle space attests.

Hamas began its war on October 7, seeking to achieve a disproportionate success; that is, to kill more Jewish civilians in any single day since the gas chambers at Auschwitz. It knew the Israelis possessed a disproportionate ability in strictly military terms to retaliate and do real damage to Hamas. But the Hamas terrorist leaders in turn assumed they had a disproportionate ability to appeal to the larger Muslim and Arab Middle East of 500 million people, as well as hundreds of millions of supporters in the old Third World as well as in the U.S. and Europe. Their logic was brutally simple: while the West, the UN, and the rest would for a moment deplore their tactics, Hamas assumed that privately they either would approve of the damage inflicted on Israelis or at least tolerate it and thus use their various levels of influence to restrain the Israeli response.

https://victorhanson.com/the-mythologies-of-the-middle-east-part-three/

The Myth of the Oppressed Palestinians

There are lots of refugees in the world with much longer claims of displacement than the Palestinians, and also some with much more recent suffering. And yet we hear nothing about them. Does anyone challenge Turkish president Erdogan for his ongoing threats to send missiles into Athens or to brag that he has a solution like his “grandfathers” for the Armenian “problem”?

Or do they lament the 1974 ethnic cleansing of northern Cyprus that resulted when the Turkish military invaded the island, created a puppet separatist regime in the north, appropriated land that had been Greek for three millennia, and then slaughtered Greeks and drove them down into the south of the island? Are there protests today demanding justice and a “right of return” for the Greek Cypriots? Do we talk of “colonialist” or “settler” Turks who were moved from the mainland to Cyprus to alter the demography of the island?

For that matter, do any lament the fate of the Volga Germans (nearly two million) who were packed up by Joseph Stalin and uprooted from their ancient homes in 1941–42?

Are we aware that until 1939 western Ukraine was the ancient home of millions of Catholic Poles, who were driven out by communist Russia in its hideous 1939 deal with Hitler and never returned after the war?

Or do we lament the 13 million East Prussians who were ethnically cleansed after World War II to give lands to a new Poland that was robbed by Stalin of its old domains? Are any of these peoples today considered UN refugees? Do octogenarian Germans dangle the keys of their old homes in Danzig to cameras, as if they will someday have “a right of return” to present-day Poland?

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/07/the-ukrainian-verdun-2/

Ukraine has ossified into something like the modern version of the horrific Battle of Verdun, fought 108 years ago on the 1916 Western Front of World War I. That meat grinder cost France and Germany some 700,000 dead and wounded.

The nightmare ended ten months later, after the heroic French defense stopped the final German push. But the respective armies ended up in the same position as when the battle started.

After the failed preemptive Russia attack on Kyiv in February 2022 and the subsequent collapsed Ukrainian 6-month-long “spring” counter-offensive of spring 2023, the Ukrainian war has now similarly deadlocked.

Russia has failed to annex Ukraine. It has not expanded much beyond occupied Crimea and Donbass.

Yet Ukraine seems unable to push back the Russians to where they started in February 2022, much less recover lost areas grabbed earlier in 2014.

Although neither side has published reliable and comprehensive dead and wounded statistics, the war has now likely reached a horrific Verdun-like total of 600-700,000 combined casualties.

Perhaps 10 million of Ukraine’s prewar population have fled the country. Due to the massive refugee exodus, the country may have shrunk below 35 million.

In other words, Russia now has a population seven times larger, a gross national product ten times greater, and an area over 30 times the size of current Ukraine.

Still, if NATO and the United States can continue to arm Ukraine, it is as unlikely that Russia can annex Ukraine, even as it is doubtful that Ukraine can ever regain territory lost prior to 2014.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20458/iran-oil-funds-genocide

History is filled with the terrible retribution inflicted on America’s foes when those enemies underestimate the United States.

Consider Imperial Japan, which totally underestimated the United States. Hitler thought we could manufacture cars but never have the ability to produce tanks, an air force, a two-ocean navy and the willpower to fight and win. The Soviets told the West: “We will bury you.” And Osama Bin Laden’s ashes will never be found.

So when US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warns Iran that their role in supporting the terrorist murder of some 1,400 Israelis by Hamas has the potential to result in immensely serious “consequences,” he is attempting to ensure that Tehran does not make the fatal mistake of underestimating the United States.

Looking on the surface, it might be easy to do so. Japan saw that the U.S. Congress debated and delayed for months before finally instituting a military draft in 1940. Hitler saw the American-based Nazi Bund convene a rally at Madison Square Garden. We currently have a president whose ability and political will have openly been questioned. The House of Representatives is in disarray. We are facing a multi-trillion dollar debt. Surely we must be distracted and incapable of action.

All the more reason that Graham’s warning, which included “tak[ing] down an oil refinery” for every hostage killed. “The only way you’re gonna keep this war from escalating is to hold Iran accountable,” Graham recently stated.

On October 22, Graham said: “We’re here today to tell Iran: We’re watching you. If this war grows, it’s coming to your backyard.” And to make a point, he made that statement from Tel Aviv, as part of a delegation of ten U.S. Senators. “There won’t be two fronts, there’ll be three,” he added, allowing the recipient of that message to ponder what and where that third military front would be.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20457/bankrupt-iran-close-their-oil-cash-cow

This article was first published by Gatestone on October 23, 2023.

History is filled with the terrible retribution inflicted on America’s foes when those enemies underestimate the United States.

Consider Imperial Japan, which totally underestimated the United States. Hitler thought we could manufacture cars but never have the ability to produce tanks, an air force, a two-ocean navy and the willpower to fight and win. The Soviets told the West: “We will bury you.” And Osama Bin Laden’s ashes will never be found.

So when US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warns Iran that their role in supporting the terrorist murder of some 1,400 Israelis by Hamas has the potential to result in immensely serious “consequences,” he is attempting to ensure that Tehran does not make the fatal mistake of underestimating the United States.

Looking on the surface, it might be easy to do so. Japan saw that the U.S. Congress debated and delayed for months before finally instituting a military draft in 1940. Hitler saw the American-based Nazi Bund convene a rally at Madison Square Garden. We currently have a president whose ability and political will have openly been questioned. The House of Representatives is in disarray. We are facing a multi-trillion dollar debt. Surely we must be distracted and incapable of action.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/02/the-truth-about-the-houthis/

Over the past few months, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been attacking container ships and energy tankers in the Red Sea. The Houthis say that these attacks are retaliation for Israel’s incursion into Gaza. This has delighted anti-Israel activists in the West, who have taken to the streets with a new chant: ‘Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around.’

It’s clear that those Western leftists currently cheering on the Houthis know very little about this regressive movement.

Officially known as Ansar Allah (‘Supporters of God’), the Houthis have been in open rebellion against the Yemeni government since 2004. They now govern much of the populous west and north of Yemen. Since 2014, they have controlled the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognised Yemeni government to relocate to Aden, a port city on the southern coast. Today, the Houthis are the dominant force in a divided country.

To help us understand the rise of the Houthis, it is helpful to turn to Tribes and Politics in Yemen, a 2017 book by Austrian anthropologist Marieke Brandt. A product of extensive anthropological fieldwork in the Houthi stronghold of north-west Yemen, it shows that the Houthis’ rise owes more to the collapse of Arab nationalism in Yemen than any positive, internal dynamic in the movement itself. They have merely exploited the decay of the once powerful nationalist forces that drove the formation of the republic of North Yemen in 1962, before dominating Yemen proper after unification with Communist South Yemen in 1990.

The Houthis, like at least a third of Yemenis today, are Zaydi, which is a branch of Shia Islam. Like other Shia Muslims, the Zaydis believe that the position of state ruler, or Imamate, is hereditary. They trace their lineage back to Al-Qasim al-Rassi, who was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammed’s son-in-law, Ali ibn Abu Talib.

In the ninth century, Zaydi imam Yahya ibn al-Husayn, backed by members of the Sadah (Yemeni nobles), established control over northern Yemen. The Zaydi dynasty proceeded to rule over the north right up until 1962, when nationalists overthrew the Imamate and the Sadah. From this point, many Zaydi factions in northern Yemen felt marginalised.

https://www.jns.org/germany-cuts-funding-to-ngos-labeled-terror-orgs-by-israel-in-2021/

The German government will cease funding six Palestinian NGOs that were declared terrorist organizations in 2021 by then Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported last week.

NGO Monitor, an Israeli watchdog group that spearheaded the effort to convince Germany to stop funding the groups, considers it a major development.

“It is huge because it is the first government in the world that is basically recognizing that Israel’s evidence was right concerning the designation of the six,” Olga Deutsch, vice president of NGO-Monitor, told JNS.

While Germany did freeze funding to the NGOs at the time pending review, for the last two years it had resisted calls to end funding altogether.

Indeed, in July 2022, Germany along with eight other European Union states said they would continue working with the six groups, claiming Israel had provided “no substantial evidence” justifying their assertion of the groups’ terror links.

The NGOs earned their terrorist designation from Israel for their close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

“Part of the problem is that Germany is one of the least transparent countries when it comes to providing aid,” said Deutsch, describing 34 different funding mechanisms under two ministries. Government money is also funneled through development programs, political party foundations and church aid groups, among other means.