Michael Young
@BeirutCalling · Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Yemen
Michael Young is a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
In his latest, @IbrahimRihan2 points out that Hezbollah's evacuation of Ali Taher was the result of a deal with Iran to allow its advisors to leave the facility. This raises questions about what exactly happened in talks to allow the Lebanese army to deploy there, which Hezbollah is said to have rejected: https://t.co/MJVufnIMYn
This is a remarkably tendentious interpretation. First, it's the settlement enterprise that is illegal under international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva convention, even if 242 sought to introduce a quid pro quo. The boycott was brought on by the settlements and the effort to ethnically cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, thereby undermining the two-state solution that is the official policy of these countries. Second, Resolution 242 emphasizes "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war," whereas Israel is clearly seeking to annex the West Bank, as it did the Golan and East Jerusalem. How does one square the proposition that acquiring land through war is illegal with Rob's claim that Israel's retaining land is acceptable? Anyway, Israel's annexation agenda is now perfectly evident, so we're well beyond Caradon's thinking in 1967. Third, whatever admiration he has for Lord Caradon, I wonder whether implementation of international law is something whose pace and conditionally can be set by a British foreign minister. What he sought to achieve doesn't change international law. And anyway, the Arab position on 242 was the polar opposite of the Israeli (and later U.S.) interpretation, but just as legitimate.
Can’t help but feel that the small shift in the UK’s position was pushed, at least in part, by @OborneTweets excellent polemical book on how Britain colluded with Israel during the Gaza war, Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza. https://t.co/qhLOcNYgsi
Hezbollah refused to hand Ali Taher to the Lebanese Army, allowing Israel to take over the strategic position. This leads @RittaS to write: “To avoid giving a symbolic victory to the Lebanese Army, [Hezbollah] gave a genuine victory to Benjamin Netanyahu. To save the principle of its weapons, it sacrificed the land these weapons were supposed to save.” https://t.co/VM2uzAdZQD
If Schama is in the facts business, he should know that the definition of genocide is not about numbers. Srebrenica was ruled a genocide by the UN, though less than 10,000 people were killed there. The South African case before the ICJ also more than proved genocidal intent on the part of Israeli officials, while all means to sustain life in Gaza were annihilated by Israel. Let's discuss facts. Gaza was much more than a catastrophic tragedy.
“Several U.S. military leaders have advised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland,” reports @washingtonpost in its Aug. 30 edition. More than that, the heads of European, Pacific, and Southern Commands, as well as the Navy’s top admiral, inserted a “non-concur” in the Secretary of Defense Orders Book, which extended deployments of their forces. The mess grows: https://t.co/yX1eoEAsNb
Three “senior Iranian sources” tell Reuters U.S. economic sanctions on Iran are beginning to bight. “Although Iran's clerical rulers managed to bypass sanctions for decades, the latest U.S. moves have left them in a far more sensitive position, with few remaining channels to secure foreign currency or buy goods.” https://t.co/98M5cpDpk8
Israel is trying to embark the U.S. on its project to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Netanyahu had tried once before, in October 2023, to persuade the Europeans to convince Egypt to accept the Palestinians. That Israeli officials can be so openly calling for a war crime, while so-called liberal Western states refuse to sanction Israel, makes you wonder why anyone ever bothered to indict or arrest Milosevic, Mladic, Karadzic, or Omar al-Bashir (all meriting imprisonment and more). https://t.co/wMipaL43Z8
Evidently, Israeli occupied areas in Lebanon are only “Israeli military-controlled areas” in the lexicon of This Is Absolutely Not Beirut.
From Amira Hass: “The very existence of the Palestinian people between the sea and the river is now in danger.”
Where have 36 years of Pax Americana in the Middle East led, and should the region lament its demise? In my latest article, I argue there are three good reasons for why most countries in the region should welcome an acceleration of the U.S. exit, at Diwan: https://t.co/XvUB8AmbB3
Should the U.S. accelerate its disengagement from the Middle East? In my latest for Diwan, I argue that, seen from the region, there are three reasons to encourage the Americans to draw down their forces more quickly: https://t.co/XvUB8AmbB3
Citrinowicz taking a ruler to the backside of an FDD fellow for whom a U.S. victory against Iran is imminent. Key phrase: "I don’t evaluate developments through the lens of someone whose professional future depends on defending conclusions that were decided in advance."
In an interview, former ambassador Charles "Chas" Freeman discusses the Mecca Agreement and its implications, and argues that the war with Iran has been a strategic disaster for the United States, at Diwan: https://t.co/1CvLafqhdM
In an interview with @ChrisLynnHedges, Robin Andersen (@MediaPhiled) discusses her new book on the U.S. media's complicity in the Gaza genocide. The book is titled The Complicit Lens: U.S. Media Coverage of the Genocide in Gaza. Whole thing here: https://t.co/pk0Lh0PDsz
If, in June 2025, the U.S. “devastated Iran’s nuclear war-making” capabilities, then why is Trump today saying that the U.S. objective is to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons? Or maybe readers have “idiot” stenciled on their forehead. https://t.co/LEfGK0dWcb
As tensions increase between Turkey and Israel, Lebanon should watch carefully what happens and avoid becoming a football in this regional rivalry. Instead, it should advance projects aimed at stabilizing the country. Mine for @NationalComment: https://t.co/e4KLfEvMX6
Well it took just a day for the machine to kick into motion and force Barrack to (sort of) retreat on his perfectly accurate remark that the Golan Heights is a territory occupied by Israel, to one justifying this occupation. How is being in the position of launderer of an illegality in the U.S. national interest, I wonder?
I heard they love Gaza even more.
The Israel crowd is apoplectic with @USAMBTurkiye Barrack for stating a truism under international law, namely that the Golan is occupied territory. Recall that the UNSC unanimously passed Resolution 497 in December 1981 declaring the following about Israel’s annexation of the Golan: The Security Council 1. Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect; 2. Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, rescind forthwith its decision; 3. Decides that all the provisions of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, continue to apply to the Syrian Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights … Trump’s decision to go back on this in March 2019 did not change the legal status of Resolution 497, or the fact that the territory remains occupied under international law. So Barrack is guilty of adhering to international law, and not the position of the U.S. government to ignore international law—though the Reagan administration had initially supported it. The same holds for the West Bank and Gaza, which are both regarded as occupied territory under international law. Israel and its friends may want to launder the occupation, but there are limits to what they can do—hence their systematic efforts to discredit the UN system over the years.
It was taken out of Lebanon’s control while Lebanon and Israel were negotiating a pilot zone scheme to take zones out of Israel's control.
This sententious gaslighting is insufferable. Israel has blocked any further progress on the pilot zone scheme, has insisted that it will maintain a buffer zone inside Lebanon, has razed over 70 villages, in the process utterly discrediting the Lebanese government and president, but he still manages to turn things around to say the Lebanese are to blame. Rob, you know perfectly well that Israel doesn’t want the framework agreement to work. Please spare us the faux sorrowful tone.
Here is Samer Franjieh's takedown of the Lebanese lobby in Washington, which earned a virulent Facebook response from @haningdr, who was recently taken to task by the twitterati (and Franjieh) for having insisted she found a Hezbollah tunnel in the Kisirwan district. https://t.co/epooEN83kp
In 1989-90, I was at the Center for Peace and Reconstruction in Lebanon—a small unit coordinating a group of figures thinking about peace in the country. Hanf was consistently impressive and lucid, someone who always took the discussion into frutiful, practical directions. RIP.
Seven people killed in an Israeli bombing of Ansar, including a mother and her four children, as well as four others in Deir al-Zahrani. Israel’s embrace of peace is in direct proportion to the number of victims they cause, rest assured:
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