Interview
The Middle East is engulfed in flames, from Libya to Iraq. There are new jihadi groups. The current focus is on ISIS. What about ISIS and its origins?
There’s an interesting interview that just appeared a couple of days ago with Graham Fuller, a former CIA officer, one of the leading intelligence and mainstream analysts of the Middle East. The title is “The United States Created ISIS.” This is one of the conspiracy theories, the thousands of them that go around the Middle East.
But this is another source: this is right at the heart of the US establishment. He hastens to point out that he doesn’t mean the US decided to put ISIS into existence and then funded it. His point is — and I think it’s accurate — that the US created the background out of which ISIS grew and developed. Part of it was just the standard sledgehammer approach: smash up what you don’t like.
In 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq, a major crime. Just this afternoon the British parliament granted the government the authority to bomb Iraq again. The invasion was devastating to Iraq. Iraq had already been virtually destroyed, first of all by the decade-long war with Iran in which, incidentally, Iraq was backed by the US, and then the decade of sanctions.
Read more
The Independent
Middle East Monitor 1 Feb – The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Sunday said that it will respond to Israel’s continued expansion of illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories by referring the case to the International Criminal Court (ICC). “Israel’s aggression on the Palestinian people and the Palestinian state has crossed all the red lines and the situation is nearing a complete implosion,” the ministry said in a statement. The decision came in response to Israel’s announcement of tenders to erect 450 new illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “This is a blatant challenge to the international community and defiance of the international condemnation to crimes of the Israeli occupation,” it said. The ministry added that the settlement expansion comes “amid the Israeli election, as Israeli right-wing politicians take advantage of the situation to confiscate more land expand illegal settlements.” “It also comes after the Palestine signed the Rome Statute, which confirms Israel’s arrogance and defiance to the rules and provisions of international law,” the ministry added. “This leads [us] to ask the ICC to look into the issue of settlement expansion as a full case, as soon as the membership of the State of Palestine comes into effect in April.”