Saleem Ayoub Quna, Author at CrossFireArarbia

First Mrs President!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
August 22, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

June 28 of this year was not a good day for the leadership of the Democratic Party or their supporters in the US.

Across the board, they were disappointed and perplexed by the performance of incumbent (D) President Joe Biden, as he faced the more aggressive and outspoken (R) nominee Donald Trump, in their first TV debate, before empty chairs in the room, for the 2024 presidential elections.

The Trump camp and republican sympathizers, at the close of the debate, felt reassured that the gates to the White House, this time, were sliding more towards their direction!

As a matter of fact, for both sides, the results of the race, at that moment, were almost decided. It was simply a matter of time!

When asked about his options, President Biden kept saying that he was not going anywhere, and was looking for the next debate!

Not old movies!

As if watching one of those boring classical movies, where the end is so predictable, the American public and observers around the globe, were bracing themselves for the imperative sequence of this version of presidential race in similar disenchanted mood!

It took Joe Biden nearly a month, precisely on July 21 to, bravely, announce that he was withdrawing from the race to the benefit of his VP Kamala Harris.

The boring classical movie then suddenly took a new unexpected turn and the spectators started queuing again for new refreshments and popcorn!

Overnight, the morbid atmosphere within the ranks and file of the Democratic Party got energized; a reminiscent of a wounded eagle, which starts flapping its wings, after receiving a magic dose of injection, capable of waking up even a sleeping dinosaur!

Fundraising machines were set back in motion; volunteers started enlisting; chapters’ committees regrouped and the whole scene transformed into action, enthusiasm and optimism.

A dramatic shift that would surprise allies, rivals and neutrals alike! As for the republican rivals, represented by their notorious nominee, Donald Trump, the atmosphere took a gloomier turn as new polls started showing alarming percentages of approval and disapproval for one camp and the other!

The tie was dramatically shifting in favor of the new nominee of the Democrats, Mrs. Harris! The personality who remained, for four years, in the shade of Biden’s 50 years long legacy in politics.

Without much to talk about financial largesse or political experience, and coming from a mixed blend of immigrants to the US, Mrs. Harris today, is standing tall in face of Trump, the life-long tycoon of wealth and affluence.

A factor that will definitely add to the wrath and chagrin of Trump, who upon hearing the nomination of his substitute rival in the presidential race, in clear and typical insinuation to her ethnical origin, clumsily asked: “When did she become black”?

Well, Mr. ex-President, Trump, ready your staff next January to draft a descent congratulatory note to the first ever Mrs. 47th President of the US!

This opinion was especially written for Crossfire Arabia by Saleem Ayoub Quna who is a Jordanian author writing on local, regional and international affairs and has two books published. He has a BA in English Literature from Jordan University, a diploma from Paris and an MA from Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He also has working knowledge of French and German.

Opinion

Netanyahu in the Eye of the Storm!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
August 17, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

CROSSFIREARABIA – Whatever our political affiliations might be, there is no denying that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to navigate his way through the worst crisis that hit Israel since 1948.

As this crisis gathered momentum, Netanyahu became more and more inclined to think that he was “chosen” for this once in a life-time moment! In this regard, he likes to liken himself to Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt and likens the 7th Oct., – Hamas audacious full scale attack on Israeli settlements encircling the Gaza Strip – to that of America’s Pearl Harbor of 1941.

Before this devastating development, Netanyahu was busy with couple of matters. For instance, he considered Iran’s nuclear ambitions a life-threatening element to Israel. He would not waste any chance to emphasize that. In all of his speeches on international platforms, his picture holding the diagram showing Iran’s progress in making its own nuclear weapon, became familiar to the eyes of the world.

At the same time, he was engaged in disputes with critics and allies over the future of the Arab occupied territories since 1967 war, primarily the West Bank, which he and his like-minded Israeli politicians, are relentlessly trying to annex to “little Israel”!

De facto factor

Netanyahu and his clique, shared the impression that while the international public opinion in the late 1940s tolerated Israel’s de facto encroachment on territories that were originally allocated to the Palestinians according to the UN partition plan (181). Today he hopes that Israeli continuous attempts to acquire additional Palestinian territories will be, as well, tolerated and eventually neglected and forgotten!

To turn this plan into reality, he followed the example of Israeli successive governments since 1967 war when they embarked on building settlements for immigrant Jews brought in from all over the world. Today, there are more than half a million settlers in the West Bank against 3 million Palestinians, plus the 220,000 Israelis in East Jerusalem, against 372,000 Palestinians.

Dawn of 7th Oct.

Then rises the dawn of 7 Oct., 2023 to dynamite all the above mentioned plans and dreams of Netanyahu and his likeminded right-wing allies!

The surprise full scale attack by Hamas shocked the world and humiliated Netanyahu, for he was the man behind the strategy to strengthen and enrich the Hamas movement in Gaza, while undermining the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to widen the gap between the two competing representatives of the Palestinian people.

Netanyahu cannot pardon himself as he was the man who had in 2011, sanctioned the release of the now Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar, along other 1000 Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by the Islamic movement back in 2006.

By deepening the wedge between the two Palestinian rival groups, Netanyahu’s plan was to tell the world that there was no reliable Palestinian partner to make peace with. According to his logic, the Palestinian Authority is corrupt, weak and unpopular, and Hamas is a “terrorist” organization with whom Israel, by law, cannot talk with!

Such an argument would leave the fate of the West Bank, solely and helplessly, in the hands of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the other extreme right-wing parties, whose main reason d’etre, is the annexation of the West Bank, while at the same time continually applying different tactics to expel, as many Palestinians as possible from beyond the green line of 1948, or what the world concurs as calling “ethnic cleansing”!

The year after!

In years to come, Israeli school children, if we could dig into Netanyahu’s mind, will be taught that Theodor Herzl was the founder of Zionism in 1889, David Ben Gurion, the founder of “little Israel” in 1948 and Netanyahu was the man who tried to outmaneuver the waves of the storm!

Who can resist such a toxic temptation? A war criminal, as some Israeli liberals call him, Netanyahu seems to care less what others think or say of him!

Analyses

Smotrich: Last Fallen Angel of Death, Starvation!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
August 11, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

“Pogrom” is a Russian word which means an organized act of cruel behavior or killing done to a large group of people based on their race and religion.

The word caught the attention of Europeans in the third quarter of the 19th century after many Jewish communities in towns and cities across the south-eastern parts of the Russian Empire, mainly Poland, Ukraine and Odessa, were attacked and harassed by the larger community, followers of the Russian Orthodox Church. They saw members of the smaller Jewish communities exploiting and blackmailing them, for financial and commercial gain.

The wave of pogroms spread to other countries in Europe in similar fashion and continued for three years in the early 1880s. These events paved the way for some Jewish activists like the Hungarian-born, Theodor Herzl, a writer, journalist and lawyer, to start a political movement to defend the Jews against such attacks. Herzl later became the founder of Zionism.

Another most important reason for the repeated pogroms was the assassination of Russia’s Tsar Alexander II at the hands of a Jew. The Tsar was blamed for encouraging his people to attack members of the Jewish community.

It's horrifying but not surprising to hear Smotrich say it's 'justified and moral' to starve 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to death. This vile rhetoric is just the tip of the iceberg. Smotrich is a minister in a government that Western leaders claim shares their values. pic.twitter.com/6QKCmfStcd
— Jehad Abusalim جهاد أبو سليم (@JehadAbusalim) August 5, 2024

In addition to killing, setting on fire, and vandalizing Jewish properties in the above-mentioned cities and towns, tactics of starvation and deprivation were systematically employed to further harass and punish the Jews.

Later in the early and mid-1940s and under the watch of Adolf Hitler, the founder of Nazis, European Jews especially in Germany were brutally persecuted in a process that led to what the Jews call the “ Holocaust”; this became a decisive turning point in Jewish-European relations.

Enter Smotrich

Today, almost 140 years after the pogroms, and 80 years after the Holocaust, a descendant from the Ukraine, the land of the pogroms and holocaust atrocities, the name of Bezalel Smotrich emerges from the smoke of guns over the strip of Gaza, to openly call for the expulsion of all Palestinians from their ancestral home land that today forcefully became Israel.

It also happens that he is also the actual Finance Minister in Netanyahu’s extreme-right government, and head of the National Religious Party.

Although he was born, according to international law, in an illegal settlement on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, his last name should be a reminder of his ancestors’ village (Smotrych) west of Ukraine today!

If the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank who refuse to recognize his “greater Israel”, according to this man doesn’t work, Israel must resort to every possible tactic to drive them out of their homes.

These tactics must include but not limited to exterminating as many Palestinians as possible in Gaza and/or starving them to death, and that will be just fine for him and even moral as he recently made clear.

It is ironic that the an offspring of survivors of the pogroms and Holocaust, gives himself the right and liberty to borrow the same ugly tactics applied against his own ancestors, to be practiced against those who had nothing to do with European pogroms and Holocaust atrocities! Such a bizarre and mind-boggling analogy makes one wonder what kind of character we are dealing with here?

This man, I strongly believe, has more than one little problem! He has a short and selective memory; has an overdose of instinct hatred against those who oppose him; and an extreme sense of superiority versus any different ethnic or religious group.

Finally one simple advice for, hopefully, the last fallen angel of death and starvation: Ask your Sephardim compatriots who lived and thrived in many Arab countries, like Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria before the establishment of your “little Israel” in 1948, if any heard about or experienced any kind of pogrom behaviors at the hands of their Muslim and Christian compatriots, who lived in peace and harmony for more than two and half millennia long before your ancestors survived the atrocities of European pogroms and Holocaust and decided to take refuge in this part of the world?

UN Human Rights Chief @volker_turk is shocked & appalled by words of Israeli Minister Smotrich for whom letting 2 million Palestinians in #Gaza starve to death could be “justified & moral” in order to free hostages.

We condemn these words in the strongest terms. pic.twitter.com/463jqstHct
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) August 9, 2024

Opinion

Weaponizing food!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
August 10, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

Food is a major strategic weapon that can be used against one’s enemy. It can be applied in three cases: When consumed, boycotted or as a deprivation tool!*

Like other types of essential ammunition, soldiers need food to be able to keep on fighting and advancing. No better phrase can explain this idea than the famous quote attributed to Emperor Napoleon when he said: “Armies crawl on their bellies”!

But sometimes, when the other side, your opponent, is also smart and you have the capitalist system of franchising products working in every corner, unexpected things can happen!

This story can, one day, become a classical case study in politics, economics, sociology, psychology and warfare!

It all began in the first half of October 2023 when a franchised company in Israel, representing a famous world food chain, thought it would be a cool idea to photograph Israeli soldiers on the Gaza front, receiving nicely packed items of food produced by that company!

Its Israeli CEO, probably, wanted to demonstrate a symbolic gesture, rather than providing an irreplaceable type of food for the Israeli soldiers on that occasion. But he seemed to have forgotten or deliberately ignore that the same kind of food is available all over the world, including places, where his “enemies” and their allies, by the millions, live and regularly consume the same commodity!

Those millions on the other side of the front line were dismayed and felt offended by those carefully taken shots of the Israeli soldiers receiving their food packages.

The former did not know who was really behind this gesture. But they couldn’t not care less if the gesture originated from within Israel, or was inspired by the mother company in another faraway place.

So they, as a sign of protest of the war against Gaza, decided to boycott all products and services of this company in all of its branches.

They were also aware that the franchised branches play an important role in the local economy in each country. Thousands of young people are hired where unemployment rates are high; they also use subsidiary locally-produced items and so forth. But they had a choice to make. It was a hard one but less painful than acting as if they condone the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

The results of this world wide boycott movement, even in some European countries, proved catastrophic for all branches and especially for the Mother Company, since it’s the one who gets the lion’s share of the pie!

In addition to the symbolic meaning of this initiative which involves national dignity, exercising awareness, it was used as a last resort to fight back and defend their rights and beliefs.

Never take anything for granted, when you go to junk food eatery. Surprises can crawl out from the slices of bread!

*Deliberately depriving the enemy of food is tantamount to a flagrant war crime!

Opinion

License to Kill!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
July 30, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

The “next day” scenario for Gaza as outlined by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in the wake of the Hamas surprise and bold assault on the Israeli settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, did not sail the way he wished.

Instead, he and the Israeli establishment gradually came to realize that this war was more costly, complicated and longer than all previous wars Israel fought since 1948.

Even most Israeli pessimist strategists couldn’t have predicted a worse course of events!

Simultaneously, domestic and international pressure to free the 120-or-so remaining Israeli hostages, held by Hamas, by force or through negotiations, kept growing by the day.

Besieged by these mounting pressures and other legal problems at home, Netanyahu maneuvered his way to address a joint session of the American Congress on July 24, 2024.

Such a coup would be an additional mark of his statesmanship, he thought!

Aside from obvious theatrics and tactics including carefully-chosen vocabulary, Netanyahu feeling like he had hypnotized his listeners, received more than 50 “overdone” standing ovations during that showcase session!

Whether he was rightly shrewd or desperately wrong in this approach, i.e. in addressing a foreign nation’s elected assembly with such an aggressive language and style, rather than talking to his own constituency back home, is an open topic for debate by political scientists and historians!

But for the time being, let us look at some of Netanyahu’s main points.

No one can argue against Netanyahu’s own impression of himself. He only can admire the image reflected on his own mirror: A great leader whom destiny had chosen to play a big role in history!

🇮🇱🇺🇸 Netanyahu in the 80's brags about how the Jewish lobby controls America.

"We own the senate, the congress, and we have a record strong Jewish lobby on our side.

We have a strong influence over the general support.

America won't force us into anything." pic.twitter.com/wZcWOIimlk
— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) May 8, 2024

Netanyahu Versus Churchill

I can only agree with one thing in common between Netanyahu and Churchill. Both addressed the American Congress, while their countries were engaged in a war with a third party in some faraway battlefields!

Britain then, was facing a dominant Germany which had all of Europe in its grip: Israel today, fighting a group of Palestinian militants known as Hamas, thriving in a besieged poverty-stricken, densely populated strip of land, that has been cut from the outside world for the last 18 years by a tight Israeli siege.

Comparing Germany of the 1940s to Gaza under Hamas in 2024, amounts to a flagrant insult to basic human intelligence!

Nevertheless, Netanyahu in his emotional address kept repeating that Israel was the most reliable ally of the US in the Middle East. By saying that he tried to insinuate to his VIP audience that they should not hesitate to take sides against his enemies, calling them barbarians!

In this regard, Gideon Levy, dubbed by Israeli right wing groups as Hamas Ambassador to Tel Aviv, in an article in the Ha’artz daily on July 28 2024, slammed those who attended the session.

Levy wrote: “Shame on you American legislators for applauding a man whom the International Court of Justice has recently declared as a war criminal”. Then he added “your support for this man means that you condone his crimes in Gaza, as if he was commissioned to do it in your behalf”!

Netanyahu then brought up one of his “favorite” haunting nightmares, “nuclear Iran”. He categorically attributed all Middle East problems to Iran. But no Congressman would have the courage to remind him, during the coffee break that the Middle East was never short of problems, long before the present regime in Iran came to power in 1979!

By addressing the UN Congress at this crucial moment, Netanyahu, aimed to bring home on his back, like an untimely Santa Clause, a bag stuffed with more illusions. Among these was a message to his home-based critics, that being the indispensable leader he is, he has influential allies abroad who share his concerns better than they do!

He also wanted to impress his friends and enemies alike, that he is that type of leader who combines word with deed to achieve political goals. In this regard, he managed, separately, to meet with the incumbent President Jo Biden, and the two other, potentially, would be leaders, Harris and Trump, in the near future.

Finally, Netanyahu’s ultimate unpronounced objective during his “last” visit to Washington, was to be able to continue the carnage in Gaza until his promised total victory was achieved; a goal that cannot be reached without the continuous flow of arms, ammunition and other types of financial and political support from the US.

“If you provide us with the arms we need, the fight against those barbarians, our common enemies, will continue on a faster pace and more efficiently”, he shouted!

It's a shameful day for America.

American President Netanyahu addressed the senators he bought at the congress today.

In every speech, senators bought by the Israeli lobby stood up and applauded Netanyahu. pic.twitter.com/lpdU8MZtCW
— Torah Judaism (@TorahJudaism) July 24, 2024

In brief, Netanyahu was begging the American people through their elected Congressmen for a license to kill as many Palestinian civilians as it takes, until his “next day” scenario for Gaza comes true!