The Attack on Syria in 4 Basic Facts

War is immoral, illogical, and criminal and has no “good side” or “bad side”.

At the direction of the president, U.S. forces conducted a cruise missile strike against a Syrian Air Force airfield today at about 8:40 p.m. EDT (4:40 a.m., April 7, in Syria). Photo: U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)

(OCCUPIED PALESTINE) - The attack on Syria by the United States while illegal per international law (not sanctioned by the UN Security Council and opposed by Russia and China) comes to remind as all of five basic facts of geopolitics:

1: US Presidents no matter how “unconventional” must always obey the rules set for them. Trump came to office opposing intervention in Syria and is now directly siding with the “rebels” and has accepted the 1990s neocon strategy of regime changes across Western Asia that are supposed to benefit "Israel".

2: As Henry Kissinger said: “all foreign policy is domestic policy”. With a strong Zionist lobby in the US and absence of any counter lobby that watches over US (let alone world) interests, we have a push for wars supposed to help apartheid Israel whether in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, or Syria.

3: Modern warfare kills far more civilians than military (the ratio now is >10 to 1). War is immoral, illogical, and criminal and has no “good side” or “bad side”.

The only positive thing now is that countries that use wars as their main tools (Israel, US being the key ones) will lose because wars have now become also illogical in terms of achievement of policy. Just take as examples in the past 20 years: the US attack on Iraq and Israel’s attack on Gaza and Lebanon. It is now almost a given like the Newtonian laws of physics.

4: People still have the power to change things. Governments regularly lie to their own people (all governments). But their biggest tools are to a) create fear, b) create apathy (powerlessness).

Getting people to be good consumers (of propaganda and products) is key to government “success” (short term as it may be and to enrich politicians and their backers). Key to human rights advocate success is getting people to be good involved and informed citizens.

The conflict between the two (governments and people) is the real consequential conflict we face. It is between short term greed and long term planetary interests. It is an existential conflict for humanity.

Epilogue: It is far easier to criticize existing systems than work to create more equitable and sustainable systems. This issue while clear is not easy to address. Our humble beginning towards an intentional community “Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and sustainability” is finally seeing a milestone reached with our opening to the public next week.

On a very positive note, I share with you exciting news that the museum exhibits and botanical garden will be ready to receive regular visitors starting Thursdays (for school children) and Fridays (for the general public) beginning Thursday April 13. The public is invited to visit starting Friday, 14 April (10 AM-3 PM). We also look for volunteers this week and every week to accelerate our work and progress. And of course we welcome financial contributions (our work towards the opening took significant resources).

To see what we do, here is a short video: PMNH: Nature and People prosper. To donate and support in other ways, go to https://www.palestinenature.org/support-us/ and https://www.palestinenature.org/support-us/volunteer/.

Follow us on the web at http://palestinenature.org and on facebook (updates daily) at Palestine Museum of Natural History.

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