Mongol Invasion of the Islamic World

Episode 28: Mongol Invasion of the Islamic

Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)

Dr Kenneth Harl

Film Review

Unlike Genghis Khan, who made no effort to rehabilitate the steppes cities he leveled, his son Ogedei redeveloped the cities he conquered in the eastern Abbasid Caliphate by appointing trusted administrators to run them. Yet Muslims remained in firm control in the region surrounding Baghdad, and the Mamaluks (aka Slave Sultans)* remained in sole control of Egypt.

The Mongol Empire experienced an internal civil war following Ogedei’s death in 1241. Eventually (1251) the position of great khan passed to Genghis Khan’s grandson Mongke.

He appointed Batu ruler of the Mongols and Turks on the western steppes, a post inherited by Berke following Batu’s death. The heirs of Genghis Khan’s second son  Jugatai assumed responsibility for the central steppes. Kublai Khan assumed responsibility for the eastern steppes, and his grandson Hulagu for the eastern Islamic empire.

In addition to the Mamaluks, who continued to receive slave solders from the steppes (via the Byzantine Empire), the other major threat to Mongol rule stemmed from an extremist Shiite group operating out of Alamut (Persia) that carried out orchestrated assassinations of Middle East and Central Asia political leaders.

In his largest military campaign, Hulagu and his troops left the Mongol capitol of Kharakan in 1253. Arriving in Samarkind by 1255, by 1257 they had leveled most of the Shiite assassins’ palaces and confiscated huge libraries of intelligence the Shiites had collected on Mongol opponents.

After securing Persia, in 1258 Hulagu next moved against the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, with support from Christians in Armenia and Antioch. He slaughtered a total of 800,000 civilians in Baghdad, sparing the Nestorian Christians living there because his wife was a Nestorian Christian.

In 1259 he sacked Al Jazeera, the grasslands and cities comprising modern-day Syria, marching as far southwest as Gaza on the Mediterranean. In response, the Mamaluk army (with the help of Crusaders) marched north to Galilee to confront the Mongol army (consisting mainly of Turkish mercenaries). This resulted in the Mongol Army’s very first defeat.

In 1259, Hulagu suspended operations after being notified of the great khan Monke’s death. This would spell the end of Mongol westward military expansion.

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*Historically Turkish military leaders relied heavily on civilians and troops they conquered in battle and trained as slave soldiers. See 9th Century AD: Mass Migration of Uighur Turks to the Steppes fo China Leads to Rise of Seljuk Turks on the Steppes

Film can viewed free with a library card at Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5695047

The Hidden History of the Balfour Declaration and the State of Israel

The Hidden History of How the US Was Used to Create the State of Israel

Allison Weir (2014)

Film Review

This 2014 talk addresses two main topics: the obscenely biased MSM coverage of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the role of the US Zionist lobby in embroiling the US in World War I.

Weir provides a detailed breakdown of Israeli and Palestinian deaths over the period 2000-2015. In every case Palestinian deaths from Israeli Defense Force bombing and shelling exceeds Israeli deaths by 200-fold or more.

One of the most interesting tables she displays relates to Israeli military actions against Gaza in 2001, which was five years before Hamas was elected or a single rocket fired. She also shows slides from her 2001 visit to Gaza. Together they provided a horrifying glimpse of the damage recent Israeli military strikes have wreaked on Palestinian buildings and homes, as well as olive and date orchards.

Her expose of the role the US Zionist lobby played in embroiling the US in World War I begins at 29.25min.

She begins by describing the demography of Palestine in the late 1800s when Zionist groups first began began organizing in the US. In 1900, Palestine was 80% Muslim, 15% Christian and 5% Jewish. Owing to concerns it would displace Palestinian Muslims and Christians, there was strong global opposition during this period to the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson’s close friend Louis Brandeis became chief of the world Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs. Although he stepped down in 1916 when Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court, he continued to play a major role in a secret Zionist group called the Parushim. In 1915, the latter had launched a major campaign to win Western support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

According to Weir, a number of scholarly Israeli sources credit Brandeis with convincing Wilson to enter World War I (as a British ally) in return for a formal British commitment (known as the Balfour Declaration*) to establish a Jewish state in Israel.

Prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, a preponderance of US statesmen and diplomat opposed the displacement of Palestine’s Arab population to establish a Jewish state. Dean Acheson** predicted it would endanger all Western interests in the Middle East. The CIA predicted it would lead to massive “bloodshed and chaos.”

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*When the Balfour Declaration was written in November 1917, Palestine was still under control of the Ottoman Empire (who had entered World War I on the side of Germany). Palestine would become a British protectorate under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The Balfour Declaration was actually a a letter British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour wrote to prominent Zionist Lionel Walter Rothschild promising British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

**Dean Acheson was Undersecretary in Truman’s State Department from 1945 to 1949, when he became Secretary of State.

 

 

 

 

Hidden History: The 2014 Israeli Bombardment of Gaza

Killing Gaza: A Documentary About Life Under Siege

Directed by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal (2018)

Film Review

Dan Cohen has made this documentary free-to-view on Vimeo in light of the most recent Israeli air bombardment of Gaza. It was filmed immediately after the ceasefire in the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict. The latter was triggered by Operation Brother’s Keeper, a one-sided Israeli military raid following the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Gaza militants. Then, as now, the resistance by Gazan militants to the Israeli invasion resulted in the wholesale bombing and shelling of Gazan infrastructure and civilian homes.*

In 2014 2.500 Gazan civilians were killed (including 3400 children). In contrast, Israel lost 7 soldiers, 5 civilians (including one child) and one Thai civilian. The UN estimated that more than 7,000 buildings housing 10,000 Gazan families were razed. An additional 89,000 homes were severely damaged.

The film largely consists of interviews with Gazan civilians who lost homes and loved ones as a result of Israeli bombardment. Those made homeless during the war were still homeless a year later.

The film includes scenes of Israeli Defense Force (IDF) members jubilantly celebrating the carnage caused by their shells and bombs. Along with a very troubling account of an incident in which the IDF deliberately ambushed two Red Crescent ambulance drivers sent to rescue a Gazan civilian they tied to a tree after breaking both his legs. One of Red Crescent workers would be fatally wounded.

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*Deliberately targeting civilians in this way is a war crime under international law.

 

Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art

Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art

Directed by Ello Espana (2019)

Film Review

This documentary, about the anonymous street artist Banksy, is the best I’ve seen in ages. Banksy made world headlines last year when one of his paintings sold at a Sutherby’s auction for £1,420,000 and mysteriously self-shredded once the bidding finished.

The film is narrated by friends and artists who have worked with Banksy. The street artist grew up in Bristol, where he was heavily influenced by the 1980s grafitti/hiphop/rap/DJ culture. The Traveler* community (often associated with anarchism) has always had a strong presence in Bristol and the Glastonbury Festival that takes place annually in the area.

A local youth worker offered up the premises of Barton Hall youth club as a space for all Bristol youth to legally tag and post graffiti. As a teenager, Bansky spent most weekends there. He maintains he was first politicized by the 1990 poll tax riots under Margaret Thatcher. By the 1990s, Banksy (like the late New York street artist Jean Paul Basquiet) was moving away from the tagging towards conceptual art with a political message.

The film includes a video clip of Banksy (his face disguised by a bandana) a mural for the Zapatistas shortly after they occupied Chiapas in 1994. He has also painted stunning murals along the illegal wall the Israeli government erected between Israel and the West Bank, as well as installing a permanent exhibition in Gaza (in 2015) called The Walled Off Hotel: the Worst Hotel in the World.

Banksy first came to world prominence in 2003, when he infiltrated famous art museums all over the world to install politically provocative paintings. It was around this time he moved to London and began accepting commissions to paint murals and other art works. He still considers himself an outlaw, underground street artist, producing art for ordinary people who never buy paintings or visit art museums. His images are simultaneously ironic and iconoclastic, in a way that forces people to question the way society operates. One of my favorites is the image of a small girl in a pink dress frisking a soldier in riot gear.

When Jude Law, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie started buying his prints, their value skyrocketed. At present it’s not uncommon for prints Banksy sells for $150 to be resold at auction for hundreds of thousands  of dollars. His prank last year at Sutherby’s was his response to the extreme commodification of a creative art form that was meant to be freely available to the poor and downtrodden.

In my view, his work represents a highly evolved form of culture jamming (see Culture Jamming: The Grassroots War Against Mind Control

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*In the UK, Travellers are an itinerant ethnic group of Irish or Scottish origin.

Anyone with a public library card can view the film free on Kanopy. Type Kanopy and the name of your library into the search engine.

 

 

 

Israel Independence and the Forced Eviction of 700,000 Palestinians

Al-Naqba: The Palestinian Catastrophe Part 4

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

Zionist leaders proclaimed the independent state of Israel on May 14, 1948, the day British occupation of Palestine ended (see Brits Look On as Jewish Terrorists Ransack Palestinian Villages). By July, more than 400,000 Palestinians had been forcibly evicted from their homes. This final episode of the Al-Nakba documentary includes poignant testimony from Palestinian refugees whose families lived in the open for months without access to food or water. One man describes his mother feeding the family a mixture of hay, oil and onions.

The Swedish mediator the UN appointed to negotiate a peace settlement called the plight of Palestinian refugees a humanitarian disaster. He also put forward a peace proposal granting Palestinian refugees the right of return and was promptly assassinated by the Stern Gang.*

By the end of 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians had been driven from their homes. Despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for Israel to guarantee their right to return to their villages, Ralph Bunche, the new UN mediator omitted this requirement from the separate peace agreements he negotiated between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria in early 1949.

Based on these peace accords, the West Bank of the Jordan River was annexed to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. In this way, Israel succeeded in their goal of totally erasing Palestine from history. The European and US media fully colluded in this endeavor.

In the end, only 15% of Palestine’s 1.3 million Arabs were allowed to remain within Israel’s borders. Owing to its strong link with the Vatican, the Arab population of Nazareth was allowed to remain.

Israel offered Christian and Druze Arabs the right to remain in Galilee. Instead, standing in  solidarity with Muslim neighbors who had been evicted, they opted to emigrate.

At present six million Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) live outside Israel. Two million if them still reside in desperate conditions in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Approximately 8.3 million live in Israel proper (1.8 million) or the Israeli occupied West Bank (4.5 million ) and Gaza (2 million).

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*The Stern Gang was a prominent Jewish terrorist/paramilitary organization formed during the British occupation of Palestine. See1947: British Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine

The Back Story on Hamas

Hamas

by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell

(2010 Polity Press)

Note: the corporate media is omitting important historical context in their current reporting on the recent creation of a “Unity” government uniting the West Bank and Gaza. Two of the most important omissions include the role of the Israeli government in fostering the rise of Hamas and the Hamas victory in the 2006 elections – over all of Palestine, not just Gaza. The Israel and the US refused to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government, installed a puppet government run by Mahmoud Abbas (as they have done recently in Ukraine) and launched a CIA-led 18 month military coup to install Abbas’s illegitimate Fatah government in Gaza. Hamas successfully repelled the coup.

Hamas is about the militant Palestinian group which was democratically elected to run the Palestinian Authority in 2006. The book clearly documents the role Israel played in promoting the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Palestine.

According to Milton-Edwards and Farrell, Israel’s motives in backing the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine were identical to those of the US in Afghanistan and Anwar Sadat in Egypt. In all cases, the goal of supporting the Islamic fundamentalism was to counter the secular Arab leftists and nationalists who controlled most Middle Eastern states prior to 1967. The US and its allies had enormous concerns that that the leaders in power would form a single Arab economic or political block that would thwart US corporate and strategic interests.

Milton-Edwards and Farrell trace the origins of Hamas to the decision by the Muslim Brotherhood to open offices in Palestine in the 1940s, when it was still under the British Mandate. As a condition of their World War I defeat, the old Ottoman (Turkish) empire was divided up among European powers. In 1947 Britain surrendered control of Palestine, and the UN partitioned it into Jewish and Palestinian Arab states.

Outraged that Palestinian Jews, who represented on 32% of the population were awarded 56% of Palestine, in 1949 Syria, Egypt and Jordan joined with Palestine’s Muslim Brotherhood, in declaring war on Israel.

In the resulting settlement, Palestinian Arabs lost even more territory, forcing 726,000 refugees to flee to neighboring states. Gaza, to the west of Israel, came under Egyptian control. Jordan, to Israel’s east, assumed control of the West Bank. The king of Jordan, an autocratic totalitarian ruler, immediately closed the West Bank offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and placed their members under close police surveillance.

In the 1967 six day war, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked Israel and were once again defeated. The West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli military occupation, while Israel banned the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and forced Yasar Arafat and other PLO leaders to flee into exile.

Israel Turns a Blind Eye to Mijamma Violence

Prior to 1973, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood saw their primary role as performing charitable works and speaking out against the liberal Westernized culture Palestinian youth brought back when they went to university in Egypt. In 1973 they formed a new organization Al-Mijamma ‘al-Islami (The Islamic Center), under the leadership of a charismatic wheelchair bound cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Mijamma’s ultimate goal was to reclaim Palestinian land and homes Israel had seized in 1947 and 1967. However they felt the first step in building a militant resistance organization was to re-establish Palestine as an Islamic society. Thus their main focus was on islamization, which they approached by teaching, preaching and setting up community institutions to provide food and other social services to impoverished Palestinian families.

Assuming control of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1973, they began harassing and expelling female students who refused to wear Islamic dress, as well as beating up men who spoke out against these activities.

Israel, which governed both the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, turned a blind eye to this lawless violence, as well as providing direct financial to the Islamic Academy in Hebron, where many of Hamas’s military leaders would receive their training. In 1978 Israel went so far as to grant official recognition to Mijamma, allowing it to meet openly and publicly, at a time when all other Palestinian parties were banned as illegal terrorist organizations.

The Birth of Hamas

During the 1987 insurrection or Intifada, Mujamma renamed itself Hamas. Despite their full participation alongside the PLO in the Intifada, Israel continued to allow foreign money to flow freely to Hamas, while they continued to freeze PLO assets. Likewise Israel allowed Hamas to keep their schools open in Gaza, while they force West Bank Palestinian schools to close.

It wasn’t until 1990 that Israel finally cracked down on Hamas, following the murder of two Israeli soldiers. Their leader Sheikh Hassan was arrested, tried and imprisoned. Three years later, Israel illegally (under international law) deported 400 Hamas members, following the kidnapping of an Israeli border guard.

The PLO Endorses Sadam Hussein

Meanwhile the PLO, Hamas’s rival, made the tragic mistake of endorsing Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. This resulted in the suspension of all aid the PLO previously received from wealthy Gulf oil states. Because they were nearly bankrupt with the loss of their Gulf donors, in 1993 the PLO abandoned their pledge to liberate Palestine through armed struggle. This decision to negotiate a peace with Israel made them enormously unpopular with one million Gazan refugees. Still intent on returning to the lands they had lost in Israel, they had no interest whatsoever in creating a Palestinian state.

The response from Hamas was to issue a fatwa (death sentence issued by Islamic religious leaders) against the Fatah-led PLO. Determined to derail the negotiations, they also launched a massive campaign of violence, incorporating or the first time a new tactic known as “martyrdom” (i.e. suicide) bombings. Each martyrdom bombing resulted in a payment of approximately $25,000 to the suicide bomber’s family, financed mainly by Saddam Hussein and Saudi Arabia.

The Creation of the Palestinian Authority

The 1993 negotiated settlement, known as the Oslo Accords, granted the West Bank and Gaza limited autonomy under Israeli military control. It also created the Palestinian Authority (PA), a shrewd move the US and Israel employed to split and crush the Palestinian resistance. By making the Palestinian leadership the civil authority, they shifted much popular anger away from Israel and towards the PLO.

Arafat and the PLO leadership returned from exile to run the Palestinian Authority (PA). Owing to a continuing embargo by Gulf donors, Arafat had to lay off hundreds of public sector workers and slash social services to prevent a total meltdown of the Palestinian economy. Israel, meanwhile, made Arafat responsible for controlling Hamas militants. His solution was to put thousands of them in prison and torture them. There were numerous reports of prisoners being beaten, forced to shave their beards and sodomized with coke bottles.

Meanwhile PA security services routinely blackmailed families, with offers to release prisoners in return for bribes of $10,000 or more. All this occurred as Israel was continuing to destroy Palestinian homes and olive trees to build more Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The Second Intifada

In 2000, Palestinian anger at their extreme poverty and repression boiled over in armed insurrection, the second Intifada. In 2002, the Saudis put forward a peace proposal which would have normalized Israel’s relations with the Arab world in return for their withdrawal from the occupied territories. As before Hamas, which still demanded the right of return (to their Israeli homelands) for all exiled Palestinians, tried to derail peace negotiations with a wave of sniper attacks and car and suicide bombings. These were directed against the PLO security services, Jewish settlers in Palestine and civilians inside Israel. Instead of retaliating against Hamas, Israel punished Arafat by sending tanks into the West Bank to bombard his headquarters, commencing a military siege that kept him prisoner until he died in 2004.

Hamas Enters Electoral Politics

Hamas boycotted the January 2005 presidential elections, giving the Fatah candidate Mahmoud Abbas an easy victory. In May 2005, the Hamas leadership made a controversial decision to pursue direct political power by standing candidates in Gaza and West Bank local body elections. They did so in parallel with militant attacks on Israel. Following Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza in August 2005, this included Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.

Hamas never expected to win the parliamentary elections in January 2006, a success Milton-Edwards and Farrell attribute to widespread disgust, both in the West Bank and Gaza, with Fatah/PLO corruption and inefficiency. Refusing to recognize the Hamas victory, Mahmood Abbas installed his own non-elected parliament in the West Bank. He also refused to relinquish Fatah-controlled security posts to the new Hamas government. Israel, meanwhile, froze funds needed to pay PA officials in Gaza. When Europe and the US also froze Palestinian developmental assistance, Hamas had no choice but to turn to Iran for training, weapons and financial aid.

The Failed CIA Coup

After a brief experiment with a “unity” government, in which Fatah and Hamas ruled jointly, the CIA and Abbas launched an 18 month military coup, determined to dislodge Hamas from power in Gaza. In June 2006, Hamas came out the victor, employing 16,000 fighters to force 70,000 CIA-backed members of Abbas’ Preventive Security Organization to flee Gaza.

Hamas Drops in the Opinion Polls

By June 2008, their popularity waning owning to brutal sanctions and shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, Hamas was in the exact same situation as Fatah in 1993. In desperation they agreed to a temporary ceasefire (ending suicide bombings and Qassam rocket attacks), on condition Israel end their embargo. Hamas honored the ceasefire for six months, despite Israel’s failure to end their economic blockade. In December 2008, Hamas broke the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel. The book ends with a description of Operation Castlead, which Israel launched against Gaza in retaliation. Castlead destroyed or damaged nearly every Palestinian security installation, killed 1,300 Palestinians (including 900 civilians) and destroyed hundreds of homes and business institutions.

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Beverly Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Steven Farrell, who has dual British-Irish citizenship, is Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times.

Teenagers in the First Intifada

(More from my research for A Rebel Comes of Age and the role of youth in sparking revolution)

Like the 1976 Soweto uprising, the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987 was instigated by teenagers experiencing a breakdown in family life and parental authority.

From 1967, when Israel first seized the Gaza strip from Egypt, until 1987, Gaza, which has always been much poorer than the West Bank, was little more than a cluster of refugee camps. This meant the only central authority Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers, who maintained order. According to a study by EuroMed Youth, this lack of central authority led to the breakdown of parental authority. With a breakdown in civil society, it was only among young people, who freely intermingled in schools, universities and the streets, that intellectual debate could occur. In 1987, Yasar Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization were still in exile.

The Breakdown of Parental Authority

Demographic factors played a major role in the empowerment of Palestinian youth in the late eighties. Approximately 65% of Palestinians were under 25 (with short life expectancy older age groups are underrepresented). In 1987, this group had a 37% unemployment rate.

As in Soweto, the breakdown of parental authority was a major factor. Although some Palestinian adults crossed into Israel to work, their wages were extremely low. Many children and teenagers worked as street vendors to contribute to family income. In some households, they were the sole source of support. Watching Israeli soldiers routinely humiliate their parents also tended to undermine their authority.

Children take on the Israel Defense Force

The first Palestinian Intifada started spontaneously when Palestinian children, teenagers and college students rioted in response to the IDF murder of six Palestinian students. Initially Palestinian youth were armed only with rocks, bottles and slingshots. The insurrection quickly spread to the West Bank and was joined by underground Palestinian resistance organizations, such as Fatah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. They taught the youths how to make Molotov cocktails and sophisticated tactics, such as burning tires or constructing barricades to protect themselves from retaliation.

The response by the IDF was massive brutality, with random killings, arbitrary detention and torture of Palestinian children and teenagers. By 1989, 13,000 Palestinian teenagers were in Israeli jails.

The Creation of the Palestinian Authority

The first Intifada ended in 1993. Under the Oslo agreement, Israel agreed to establish the Palestinian Authority, and Yasar Arafat and other PLO leaders returned from exile to run it.

photo credit: Robert Croma via photopin cc

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In A Rebel Comes of Age, seventeen-year-old Angela Jones and four other homeless teenagers occupy a vacant commercial building owned by Bank of America. The adventure turns deadly serious when the bank obtains a court order evicting them. Ange faces the most serious crisis of her life when the other residents decide to use firearms against the police SWAT team.

$3.99 ebook available (in all formats) from Smashwords:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/361351