Paved with ill-intentions

A Syrian man carries a girl on a street covered with dust following a government airstrike in Aleppo on Tuesday. Rebels took the eastern half of the city in 2012 but are now in danger of being forced out by President Bashar Assad's troops. (Baraa Al-Halabi/AFP/Getty Images) — A Syrian man carries a girl on a street covered with dust following a government airstrike in Aleppo on Tuesday. Rebels took the eastern half of the city in 2012 but are now in danger of being forced out by President Bashar Assad’s troops. (Baraa Al-Halabi/AFP/Getty Images)

In Syria, the Enemy of America’s Enemy Is Still a Lousy Friend | VICE News.
Gaza and Israel: The Road to War, Paved by the West | NY Times.

The reduction of our choices in Syria to a lesser of all evils was something that was orchestrated by the Assad regime and its allies from the early days of the Syrian Revolution back in 2011. Indeed, our road to this particular hell was paved with all the ill-intentions and foresight in the world by people who have done this repeatedly before, and made quite the survival strategy out of it. Still, it does take a strong element of willful blindness on part of so many who are clearly in a position to know better to let something like this happen, again and again. Considering the repetitive patterns involved, one cannot but assume ill-intentions here as well. In other words, and for all the talk about good intentions paving our way to hell, in reality, we more often get there on account of ill-intentions and evil designs.

The Hard Truth

GAZA CITY: A Palestinian militant from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, displays Qassam rockets during a rally in Gaza City 18 September 2005. (ABED/AFP/Getty Images)

Hamas is playing a dangerous game with Gazan lives – The Washington Post.

The hard truth is: yes. Just like the Assad regime in Syria, and Arab leaders in general, the calculus of Hamas leaders when it comes to the conduct of war and peace is rather different than what we are publicly told. Their ultimate mandate is not to protect their civilian population and build the state, but to protect their rule and increase their power, even at the cost of incurring heavy civilian casualties and destroying the state. If they can still retain control at the end, that’s victory enough for them.

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Jon Stewart – Just Another Fallen Idol

Jon Stewart Rips Apart How the Media Covers the Violence in Gaza – Mic.

Jon Stewart was quick to speak on the tragic developments in Gaza and to point out the asymmetric nature of the conflict. But on Syria, he remained silent until such time that Assad’s crackdown finally plunged the country into a civil war allowing for the emergence of Al-Nusra and ISIS. He, then, hosted guests like Fareed Zakaria whose main point was to insist on staying out of the fray, who spoke of all sides as being equally bad, and wondered where the good guys were, all while ignoring the asymmetric nature of the conflict. I long lost my respect for liberals like Jon. He could be brilliant at times, but his politics prevent him from being consistent, and that makes him a hypocrite. So, I don’t give a fuck anymore about how fair he chooses to treat certain issues. He’s just another ideologue.

Ah, the sheer lunacy of it all!

Mideast-Israel-Palest_Horo-31-965x543 — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Friday, July 11, 2014. (photo credit: AP/Gali Tibbon, Pool)

Netanyahu finally speaks his mind | The Times of Israel.

If Netanyahu rejects a binational state and a fully sovereign Palestinian state, then, what does he endorse: apartheid “lite”? The expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt and Jordan? What other conclusions can one draw here? I mean a demilitarized entity encircled by walls and fences and crisscrossed by security checkpoints won’t even amount to a Lesotho-type state. Be that as it may, it’s clear that the Two-State Solution has by now taken its last breaths.

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