The funeral of the 32 Yemeni journalists killed by Israel on 10 September has been held. Israel would do anything to hide the truth. open.substack.com/pub/dropsitenews/p/yemen-israel-bombing... ▪️ Israelis can be honest however, admitting their slaughter is to occupy the land they've stolen by killing the inhabitants: "Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described Gaza as a “real estate bonanza” on Wednesday, saying Israel is in talks with the United States negotiating how the two countries will divide up the enclave.

 

“We are checking how this becomes a real estate bonanza — I’m not joking — and pays for itself,” Smotrich said, adding, “I’ve begun negotiations with the Americans, and I’m saying this seriously, because we paid a lot of money for this war. We need to work out how we share percentages on the land. The demolition phase, the first stage of urban renewal, we’ve already done. Now we need to build.” open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/bernie-sanders-i... ▪️▪️▪️▪️Tigh tréigthe, Poll an Churraigh Theas, Gleann Maghair / Tŷ a adawyd, nid nepell o Baile Roisín, Gleann Maghair/ Abandoned house, Riverstown area, Glanmire

"Kuwaiti Government 025" (which brought the Houthi rebels for the peace talks in Stockholm) departed Stockholm back to Kuwait yesterday.

Yes- we all know

there’s a War(s)- between Israel and Hamas

(and Hezbollah, and The Houthis, and now-

maybe with Doha- but it’s mostly a Proxy War with Iran)

 

There have been many evil and horrific things done in this War, and- frankly- in most Wars (thing is- many are not covered as extensively as the Middle East is) by all factions.

Civilians murdered.

Genital Mutilation.

Beheadings.

The point of this sticker photo is- if a person who travels

to PORTO/GAIA on holiday- thinks it's a good idea

to post their personal views and opinion,

by a Sticker, by spraying Graffiti which I’ve spotted here more and more or, some other more

aggressive fashion (attacking a Synagogue for example)

-where does a Societies Free Speech-end,

and a “Defacer-ofPublic-Property” need to be

put to work cleaning ALL THE STICKERS

that are everywhere in PORTUGAL?

 

IDF targets infrastructure for moving weapons between Lebanon and Syria

Infrastructure along Syria-Lebanon border, used to transfer weapons for the purpose of harming Israeli civilians, struck by IDF.

Israel National News

Israel National News

1 minutes

Sep 26, 2024 at 1:56 PM (GMT+3)

Northern Arrows

 

Strike in Syria (Illustrative)

Ali Syria/Flash90

The IDF on Thursday struck key infrastructure used for transferring weapons between Lebanon and Syria, a military statement read.

 

"A short while ago, IAF fighter jets struck infrastructure along the Syria-Lebanon border used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the terrorist organization used against Israeli civilians," the IDF reported.

 

"The IDF will continue to strike and act against the Hezbollah terrorist organization's attempts to arm itself and transfer weapons into Lebanon from Syrian territory."

 

"The IDF is continuing to operate to dismantle and degrade Hezbollah's capabilities and terrorist infrastructure."

 

Related articles:

IAF intercepts UAV fired from Iraq

Israel eliminated senior Hezbollah figure in Damascus

Ukrainian special forces raid Russian base in Syria

Why were Houthi militants in Syrian territory?

Earlier this month, Israel succeeded in infiltrating a Syrian missile manufacturing facility, removing equipment and documents, and booby-trapping the facility, Greek researcher and analyst Eva J. Koulouriotis said, quoting a "security source."

 

According to the source, Israeli forces "succeeded in entering a facility for missile manufacturing in Syria, taking a haul, and escaping after they destroyed it," Koulouriotis wrote, noting that the facility is affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

 

Israel did not respond to the report.

 

According to Koulouriotis, Israeli special forces carried out the operation at the military facility, which is located six kilometers southwest of Masyaf in western Syria. She noted that the operation began with airstrikes, and afterwards the Israeli ground forces entered the facility.

 

"The raid lasted approximately one hour, during which the forces entered the facility, took documents and other important equipment, and at the end, booby-trapped it from within, with explosives, and escaped after it was destroyed," she added.

 

She stressed that the ballistic missiles and UAVs intended for both Hezbollah and the Syrian army are manufactured in the facility.

 

According to The New York Times, the site was a "center of weapons research and development, aided by Syria’s ally Iran." Activities at the site included "chemical, biological and potentially nuclear weapons as well as missiles used by Hezbollah."

Joyce sat next to me the other day, excited to announce that we had a hotel room on the beach at Virginia Beach this September 20-22. Rooms were not available until then. That room has a balcony over the beach so we can see the Beach Blast after Saturday’s air show at NAS Oceana. That air show continues with this F/A-18F and others from the base lighting up the twilight sky over the beach with their afterburners engaged. The beach will be alive with a decent band of Navy musicians, as well as Blue Angels pilots and crew, and the Navy SEAL parachute team, the Leapfrogs, mingling with the crowd. Navy, being the professionals they are, know how to have fun, too.

 

Speaking of fun, TAC DEMO pilot CDR Joshua Keever is accelerating hard around this smoke plume, showing the thrilling capability of the Super Hornet at last year’s air show. The Houthi rebels of late likely don’t find this view as thrilling… too bad.

 

George's Island in foreground.

Carrier in action www.nytimes.com/card/2024/03/18/world/houthis-red-sea-yem...

  

Pretty exciting ‼️

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time on Thursday about the airstrike overnight on Houthi targets in Yemen.

 

According to Netanyahu, "We did this in response to the Houthis' repetitive attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Last night, they attacked a school in Ramat Gan.

 

"They don't attack just us, they attack the entire world. They attack the international shipping and trade routes. So when Israel operates against the Houthis, it works for the entire international community. The Americans understand this well, and so do many others."

 

He further stated: "After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the only arm that the Iranian axis of evil has left. They are learning and they will learn that those who hurt Israel - pay a very heavy price."

 

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‎נתניהו על התקיפה בתימן

‎עומר מירון/ לע״מ, סאונד: יחזקאל קנדיל/ לע״מ

 

Related articles:

Footage shows pilots taking off for Yemen strike

 

Warhead from Houthi missile falls in Ramat Gan school

 

Smotrich: 'Very good things were done last night in Yemen'

 

New details on the bombings in Yemen

The main objective of the IDF airstrikes was to shut down all three ports controlled by the Houthis.

 

The Air Force attacked targets in the port of Hodeidah and the capital Sana'a, approximately 2,000 km from Israel. The Houthis have launched about 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones towards Israel since the war began. Most were intercepted, but some managed to penetrate Israeli airspace. In July, a drone from Yemen caused the death of Evgeny Freder in Tel Aviv.

 

The first wave of the attack began at 3:15 AM in the coastal area of Yemen, with the second following at 4:30 AM in Sana'a. Fourteen fighter jets, covering more than 1,700 km, participated, targeting the ports of Ras Issa, Hodeidah, and the Al-Salif port. In total, eight tugboats were attacked. In Sana'a, fuel tanks, oil, and a power station were targeted.

We were on the same flight from Larnaca. She was returning from her grandfather’s funeral. I was traveling from Haifa via Larnaca to London. After the Houthis struck near Ben Gurion Airport with a rocket, most airlines stopped flying to London—and not just there.

 

She sat next to me and shared some gozinaki [Georgian nut brittle] with me. Whenever I see beautiful people, my first thought is that I’ll photograph them. We got to talking and spent four hours telling each other about our lives.

 

‘You know, there were plenty of empty seats when I booked my ticket,’ she said, ‘but I thought, "It’s fate," and clicked the square right next to yours. So we didn’t meet by chance. There’s a reason for everything.’

 

We exchanged numbers. And yes—I did photograph her. And she’s extraordinary

Shelled 3x by Houthis. Built 1275 AD.

republished

⏩ in slideshow

 

Pretty exciting ‼️

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time on Thursday about the airstrike overnight on Houthi targets in Yemen.

 

According to Netanyahu, "We did this in response to the Houthis' repetitive attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Last night, they attacked a school in Ramat Gan.

 

"They don't attack just us, they attack the entire world. They attack the international shipping and trade routes. So when Israel operates against the Houthis, it works for the entire international community. The Americans understand this well, and so do many others."

 

He further stated: "After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the only arm that the Iranian axis of evil has left. They are learning and they will learn that those who hurt Israel - pay a very heavy price."

 

00:00

Play

00:00

00:50

Mute

Settings

AirPlay

Enter fullscreen

 

Play

‎נתניהו על התקיפה בתימן

‎עומר מירון/ לע״מ, סאונד: יחזקאל קנדיל/ לע״מ

 

Related articles:

Footage shows pilots taking off for Yemen strike

 

Warhead from Houthi missile falls in Ramat Gan school

 

Smotrich: 'Very good things were done last night in Yemen'

 

New details on the bombings in Yemen

The main objective of the IDF airstrikes was to shut down all three ports controlled by the Houthis.

 

The Air Force attacked targets in the port of Hodeidah and the capital Sana'a, approximately 2,000 km from Israel. The Houthis have launched about 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones towards Israel since the war began. Most were intercepted, but some managed to penetrate Israeli airspace. In July, a drone from Yemen caused the death of Evgeny Freder in Tel Aviv.

 

The first wave of the attack began at 3:15 AM in the coastal area of Yemen, with the second following at 4:30 AM in Sana'a. Fourteen fighter jets, covering more than 1,700 km, participated, targeting the ports of Ras Issa, Hodeidah, and the Al-Salif port. In total, eight tugboats were attacked. In Sana'a, fuel tanks, oil, and a power station were targeted.

The Yemeni Air Force (al-Quwwat al-Jawwiya al-Yamaniya) received Italian aircraft in 1926 to counter British air power in the region. In November 1967, the air force was divided into the northern Yemen Arab Air Force (YARAF) supplied by the Soviet Union and the southern People’s Republic of Yemen Air Force (PRYAF), supplied by the British. In the 1970s and 1980s, the two Yemens engaged in several civil wars. By that time, both the YARAF and PRYAF were flying Soviet aircraft. The YARAF suffered greatly but was aided by the United States and Saudi Arabia, who supplied new equipment and training. The PDRYAF also received reinforcements from the Soviet Union. A failed coup d’etat and armed conflict in 1986 resulted in South Yemen losing almost all of its aircraft to attack and defection. By 1990, the North and South were officially unified, and each country's military forces gradually merged. However, increased tensions once again led to a civil war in 1994. The PDRYAF first introduced the MiG-29, that were purchased second-hand from Moldova and flown by Eastern European mercenaries. Despite having superior aircraft, the pilots were poorly trained, and several pilots fled to Djibouti, Oman, and the UAE with their aircraft.

 

At the end of hostilities, a unified Yemeni Air Force emerged from the remaining PRDYAF and YARAF aircraft. In 1995-6, two additional MiG-29s were purchased from Kazakhstan; in 2000, 14 MiG-29Ss and one MiG-29UB were bought from Russia. All MiG-29s in service were upgraded to the MiG-29SM standard and reached a maximum strength of 36 aircraft by 2007. The Yemeni Air Force participated in the War in Sadah in 2009, the War on Terror beginning in 2001, the 2011 Temeni uprising, and the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen in response to the Yemeni Civil War of 2014. At the time, it was believed that some of the Yemeni Air Force had joined the Houthis rebels.

 

In this image, a MiG-29SM from the 9th Fighter Squadron unleashes a salvo of S-5 rockets from its wing-mounted UB-32 rocket pods. The MiG-29SM (Product 9.13M) is similar to the 9.13 but can carry guided air-to-surface missiles and TV-and laser-guided bombs. During the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, repeated airstrikes on Houthis-controlled airbases slowly decimated the operable aircraft. As of 2017, the Yemeni Air Force is effectively inoperable and non-functional. However, after government forces recaptured Al Anad Air Base, the UAE rebuilt and trained the Yemeni Air Force and currently flies air support missions.

Kamera: Nikon FM

Linse: Nikkor-S Auto 55mm f1.2 (1970)

Film: Rollei P&R 640 @ box speed

Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 13:30 min. @ 20°C)

 

-Monday 26 February 2024: What an eventful day - so many things happening all at once - all of which deserves looking further into:

 

- US Air Force soldier Aaron Bushnell self-immolates in a shocking protest outside the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C and dies from his injuries.

- Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh (b. 1958) and his PA government resigns.

- Jordanian Air-Force airdrops humanitarian aid of food and other supplies in Gaza

- Last day of the ICJ hearing on the legality of Israeli occupation of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

- Final day for Israel to deliver their report to the ICJ in the South Africa vs. Israel genocide case on what measures they have been taking in order to prevent genocide - it was delivered just hours before the deadline.

  

While we try to digest the rapid bombardment of suddenly fast-forward development, news and unexpected flux - for a better understanding of the context, I want to share with you a worthwile broadcast which goes deeper into the history of Palestine, the PLO and the PA:

  

COLONIAL LAW AND THE ERASURE OF PALESTINE

 

by Chris Hedges (b. 1956), The Real News Network February 2, 2024 [See and listen here]

 

For a century, international law derived from British colonial rule has been premised on the non-existence of Palestinians as a people.

 

In Palestine, the law has been used as a tool of oppression to legitimize and advance the dispossession of the Palestinian people for more than a century. From the theft of Palestinian land by legal mechanisms to the non-recognition of Palestinians as a people with the inalienable right of self-determination, the law is yet another weapon wielded against the Palestinian people by Israel and its patrons. Activist, attorney, and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the use of lawfare against Palestine and her new book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

 

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino

Post-Production: Adam Coley

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

“Time and time again,” the human rights attorney, Noura Erakat (b. 1980), writes, “we see evidence of the laws assumed insignificance in the dispossession of Palestinians. Great Britain remained committed to establishing a Jewish national homeland and Palestine, despite its legal duties as the mandatory power to shepherd local Arab peoples to independence. The permanent mandates commission remained committed to the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration into the Mandate for Palestine in contravention of the covenant of the League of Nations, which in discussing the dispossession of the communities formally belonging to the Turkish empire, stated that the wishes of these communities must be a primary consideration.”

 

“The United Nations proposed a partition of Palestine without legal consultation and in disregard of the existing populations wellbeing and development, which the same covenant had declared to be a sacred trust of civilization. Zionist militias established Israel by force without regard to the partition plans stipulated borders.”

 

“The United Nations accepted Israel as a member despite the state’s violation of the non-discrimination clauses of the partition plan and of the UN’s own condition that Israel permit the return of forcibly displaced Palestinian refugees. The very origins of the Palestinian Israeli conflict,” Erakat continues, “suggests that it is characterized by outright lawlessness and yet few conflicts have been as defined by astute attention to law and legal controversy as this one.”

 

“Do Jews have a right to self-determination in a territory in which they did not reside but settled? Are Palestinians a nation with the right to self-determination or are they merely a heterogeneous polity of Arabs eligible for minority rights? Did the United Nations have the authority to propose partition in contravention of the will of the local population? Are the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip occupied as a matter of law that is, are they recognized as such by law?”

 

Does Israel have the right in law to self-defense against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories? Do Palestinians have the right to use armed force against Israel? Is the root of Israel’s separation barrier built predominantly in the West Bank illegal? Is Israel an apartheid regime?

 

Joining me, discussing these issues examined in her book, Justice For Some: Law and The Question of Palestine, is the human rights attorney and assistant professor at Rutgers University, Noura Erakat (b. 1980).

 

You begin the book, I think making a crucial point, and that is that the entire legal system, and this predates the establishment of the state of Israel under the British mandate, is grounded in the denial of sovereignty to the Palestinian people. And I, as we said before I went on air, reminded me very much of the construction of the American legal system, another settler colonial project, basing it on Locke’s primacy of property. So you build a legal system on a distortion. And this was something that the British imposed. Let’s go back and look at that.

 

Noura Erakat:

 

Absolutely. And so I think that the invocation of John Locke (1632-1704) is very apt here. Specifically as we were discussing earlier, Locke theorizes the social contract as was later applied in the United States as a social contract for settlers only through the exclusion of indigenous peoples and their erasure. And here what you’re describing as the perversion and the denial of sovereignty to Palestinians is what I capture as a colonial erasure, the erasure of the juridical status of Palestinians as a international people with the right to self-determination. There was never a denial that there were people on these lands, but that there was an outright denial whether these people constituted a political community with the right to exercise self-determination, what we’re using interchangeably here with sovereignty, though I would caution that sovereignty has come to take on quite new meaning beyond just statehood and self-governance. But in so far as we’re discussing this particular moment, it’s the aftermath of the First World War.

 

And the British have basically promised Palestine to its native peoples and promised self-determination across the former Ottoman territory is what they describe as the area a mandate. They’ve also promised Palestine and designated it as a site of Jewish settlement as captured by the Balfour Declaration, which was approved by British Parliament in 1917. That later becomes the Preambular text for the Palestine mandate, which governs the regulation of this mandate territory. Now, in so doing, and this is why I examine the language of the Balfour Declaration, the declaration itself only recognizes Jews was having a right to self-determination when they designated as a site of settlement and recognizes the original inhabitants, but only describes them as having a right to civil and religious rights. So they have the right to practice their religion freely and to move about freely, but they do not have a right to political rights.

 

And that’s what I capture as the colonial erasure. Once the British do that, and now it’s incorporated in the Palestine mandate in 1921, it becomes, I suggest, not just British colonial prerogative as the mandatory power. It now becomes international law and policy by which the entire permanent mandate commission, which is overseeing the governance of all the mandates. Now remember the mandates are set up as being trusteeships that will be shepherded to self-determination. But as Timothy Mitchell points out, this was about the consent of the governed. That self-determination here only meant that the governed decided who would be their mandatory power. But this becomes an other way to continue French and British colonial penetration into the Middle East and North Africa without necessarily granting independence to these peoples who have to fight for their independence. But even within that construction, they set apart Palestine as a part of international law and policy.

 

They set it apart from the other class A mandates in saying unlike those mandates that are being shepherded to independents that have a provisional government, that are able to represent themselves, Palestine because of its designation as a side of Jewish settlement has to be now developed in another way. And so they suppress any form of Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination even in contravention of the League of Nations covenant, which regulates the mandate territories, the mandates themselves that says, for example, “You cannot contravene the wishes of the original inhabitants.” Well, obviously we know that the inhabitants rejected Zionism and wanted self-determination, that there should be some sort of self-government, but they wouldn’t allow representative self-government because if they did, that would contravene the Balfour Declaration.

 

And now the Balfour Declaration was part of the Palestine mandate, which was international law. The PMC resolves this in basically saying, “Why don’t we first prioritize the settlement of Jewish persons and then we’ll move on to resolve the issue of the rights of the original inhabitants?”

 

And this points out to something interesting, Chris, which is often I think we give too much credit to Britain and to this imperial access of having a plan, that they planned that there would be a Jewish state. And I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think that they wanted to thwart self-determination in general and maintain Palestine as a site where they can continually justify their intervention and their colonial penetration in order to basically compete with the French in the MENA region as well as to justify their presence through some sort of colonial benevolence.

 

And what crystallizes later is why this becomes the demand. Now, the Zionist demand for a Jewish state is not something that they necessarily intended and why it becomes a blunder. This becomes a blunderous policy for them as we see in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the British leave and they give this to the United Nations and they say, “We don’t know what to do anymore. We can’t resolve this. We’ve made too many promises, we’ve created a bit of a Frankenstein here.” But all that to say is that it was through their 30 years of that mandatory authority that they create the conditions that basically make ripe Zionist militias to then establish a Jewish state themselves, a Zionist state with a solid Jewish demographic majority that is contingent on the removal and dispossession of the original Palestinian people.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

Well, at the inception, the Jews and Palestine who were a small minority were essentially seen as colonial administrators. And during the Arab Revolt, 37, 38, 39, the British were arming the Zionist militias as auxiliary units. You’re write, all of it backfired. But from the inception, and this was I think the underlying point of the Balfour administration, it was through the Jewish community that essentially they were going to maintain this colony. Isn’t that correct?

 

Noura Erakat:

 

Yeah, very interesting here. This is also part of a broader colonial trope that they wanted to protect the minority Jewish population as a religious population, and it’s under this kind of benevolent auspices that they can justify their own intervention, right? But they wanted, for example, to maintain direct access and build a railroad from Haifa to Baghdad as part of a broader British vision, that this wasn’t about creating a homeland for Jews, for the British as much as it was about achieving their policy as you’re describing. A few things about the Great Revolt. The Great Revolt is so significant, not only because here the British are arming the Jewish Yeshu, the Zionists and training them in this moment leaving arms to them. At the same time, Rashid Khalidi (b. 1948) points out to us that through the course of the Great Revolt, the British actually end up decimating 10% of the male adult population either through imprisonment, exile, or outright killing.

 

And so this makes the Palestinians, in fact, some 10 years later when now they’re facing off with the Zionist militias in the falling apart of the partition plan, unable to resist I think more forcefully. So that’s absolutely significant.

 

The second thing I’ll say about the Great Revolt is that it changed British policy that whereas the British refused to reexamine their commitment to Zionism between 1917 and 1936 in the aftermath of the Great Revolt because they realized that they could not resolve this forcefully, they could not partition Palestine as a matter of force, that the Palestinians refused that outcome, that it would have to be done by force. They actually revised their Zionist policy for the first time when they issue the white paper and they walk back that policy and now say that the future will be determined by a referendum and that there will somehow be an Arab federal state instead. Obviously, none of this comes to fruition, not least of which because the Second World War begins.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

And I just, as you point out in your book, the Arab Revolt was actually quite successful. I think they even occupied, as you say, Jerusalem for five days, huge parts of the country. And the British declared martial law and brought in, was it a hundred thousand or 200,000 British troops? So it required Draconian British military power, in essence to crush these aspirations. And then as you point out, left the Palestinians weakened. You had a Jewish brigade of course in World War II incorporated into the British Army, and then they pushed through the seizure of land, 78% of land 1948 when they created the state of Israel, which is an important part.

 

Noura Erakat:

 

Before you go there, Chris, I just want to point out this point about martial law significant in three ways, I should say. Number one, the martial law regime that the British apply during the Great Revolt in order to basically crush the Palestinian insurgency and uprising is something that they’re applying across their colonial geographies and their colonial holdings, whether it be in Malay, in Kenya, in India, this is a form of their suspending all civil rights in order to be able to exercise whatever they deem necessary for their national interests. And so the colonial legacy, here, I say that to just emphasize that as exceptional as many aspects of the Palestinian struggle for liberation are, that it’s actually quite common and emblematic of a broader colonial history. The second thing that I want to point out is that upon its establishment, Israel, one of the first act of the Knesset is to adopt Britain’s emergency regime, almost verbatim, almost verbatim, for the purpose of achieving its settler colonial ambitions.

 

Of course, they become sovereign over 78% of Palestinian lands, but those lands still belong to Palestinians. It takes 12 years until 1960 in four phase plan where now the state of Israel, no longer the Zionist militias, are now the state forces, are incrementally taking that land through a regime of immigration law, property law, and emergency rule of which the military law is central as it’s applied solely to the Palestinian population that remains, that eventually become citizens of the state as well.

 

And then the third thing that I’ll say about that martial law is that once they lift the martial law, in 1966, this is precisely what now they apply to the Palestinians and the West Bank in Gaza to continue that settler colonial expansion. So the legacy, this broad global legacy of martial rule in order to achieve their colonial ambitions becomes a central organizing technology of Israeli governance in order to fulfill its own settler colonial ambitions, both within what becomes Israel as well as in what we describe as the occupied territories in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

So there were two key points I picked up from your book. One, this continuum between a legal system set up by the British settler Colonial project and the Israeli settler colonial project really almost seamless and premised on exactly the same point that the Palestinians have no sovereignty, the Palestinians, Golda Meir (1898-1978), I think said they don’t exist as a people. And so just the same legal tools that the British were using to dispossess and strip Palestinians of basic rights are no different from the tools that Israel uses. Is that correct?

 

Noura Erakat:

 

I’ll modify that slightly. And also, unfortunately, [inaudible 00:18:35] D. Muir says this in an interview with the International Herald Tribune where she says, “It’s not as if there was a land with a people that we dispossessed. It was a land without a people for a people without a land.” This is emphasizing that colonial erasure, Golda Meir, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943), all of these founding figures, Zionist figures understand full well there are Palestinians, they just do not recognize them as a political community.

 

There’s this continuing discourse of savagery, barbarism, lack of civilization, do not know how to rule themselves. It’s a colonial project. Zionism is very much a settler colonial project, which makes this revisionism that we’re seeing today, describing it as a national self-determination movement, or worse as the greatest form of anti-colonial revolt. So laughable because it is exalted, self exalted as a colonial project. The other thing I’ll just modify slightly is that insofar as the British were concerned, it wasn’t just that they were targeting Palestinians, they were also suppressing any form of national self-determination because of their imperial interest.

 

They wanted to stay there, they didn’t want to leave. But the infrastructure that they set up for us, this emergency infrastructure in particular is what Zionists adopt in Toto, almost verbatim, when the Israel establishes itself and they do so whereas when the British passed, they actually impose the martial law and the emergency regime on everyone. The Jewish Zionists as well as Palestinians, when Israel adopts it in the Knesset, it’s imposed on Palestinians only in order to continue now a specific form of dispossession. What the British do is engage in immigration, which is engage in a discriminatory form of immigration that just doesn’t regulate the immigration of Jewish settlers. And also a land regime where we’re seeing a tremendous sale of lands that’s also unregulated, not regulating the market properly so that Palestinians are not necessarily stripped forcefully what they’re stripped of as their political right, their political right to represent themselves, their political right to organize their political right to make decisions on what this looks like.

 

But not in the same way of once Israel is established. At that point, the law is retooled specifically to transform Palestinian lands into Israel lands. And once in the form of Israel lands, that’s just the cover because if you say Israel, that means that, oh, everybody who’s a citizen of Israel. But in fact, it’s a cover to say Jewish national lands in particular because upon its establishment in 1950 and 1952, Israel bifurcates Jewish nationality from Israeli citizenship. And this is key. This is key especially to those who discuss apartheid because Israel doesn’t become an apartheid regime for failing to establish a Palestinian state and truncating Zionist sovereignty across the 1949 Armistice lines or what we know as the 1967 lines. Israel is predicated on a discriminatory framework that bifurcates Jewish nationality through which all rights flow.

 

This is an extraterritorial right that promises any Jewish person within outside, who’s never even heard of the state, who might be born today, to land, to employment, to housing, to education, to governance in a way that will never become accessible even to the Palestinian inhabitants that never leave. 20% of Israel’s population are the Palestinians that stay through the 1948 war, but even they don’t have those same rights. They’re only entitled to Israeli citizenship. And there’s a two-tiered system, one of nationality and citizenship, and one of citizenship only, and citizenship only is a form of second class citizenship or a fifth pillar. And so this too is part of a legal edifice that defines the state and its establishment.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

In the book, you talk about the legal recourses that Palestinians, in particular the PLO, and what I found interesting is that while they didn’t achieve their ultimate objective, they often achieve secondary objectives that benefited the Palestinian people almost by default. Can you explain that?

 

Noura Erakat:

 

Well, you’re leaving it very open-ended because as you know, I divide the book into five critical junctures. Each of those junctures is really catalyzed by some sort of violent confrontation that becomes an opportunity to recalibrate the balance of power. And in each of these episodes, that relationship between power and law becomes formative in both defining how we understand the question of what becomes the question of Palestine as articulated by the United Nations in 1948, it suddenly becomes a question, and defines the meaning of law in particular. So what the Palestinians do, and those junctures are 1917, in the aftermath of the first World War, 1967, the 1967 war, 1973, the October 1973 war, 1987, the First Palestinian Intifada and 2000, the Second Palestinian Intifada, which also shapes and defines ongoing warfare to this day when Israel shifts from a policy of occupation to explicit warfare against the Palestinians who live under its occupation.

 

So I say that all to lay out the audience, that I’ll just focus on the juncture and the aftermath of the 1973 war. When I articulate in the book that this was really the apex of when the Palestinian Liberation Organization due to the law astutely to achieve its national ambitions. Now, this is also nuanced because at this time in 1973, the PLO as defined by its militia forces who take over the PLO in 1968, their goal is full liberation. They want to liberate all of Palestine. They have no ambitions for a state. There’s no articulation of that. This is a decolonization movement they want to liberate. They want to free the land. In the aftermath of the 1973 war, and specifically we see this very explicitly in ’74, we might see it earlier, but very explicitly in ’74, there is now a seed planted that envisions the establishment of a truncated Palestinian state as either the stepping stone of full liberation or the final solution.

 

We don’t see that question resolved until 1988 when the Palestinians now enter Oslo. So I’m just setting this up for the audience to be able to explain that even we say, what do Palestinians want? At this point there’s a lot of nuance. There’s an explicit agenda of full liberation, but there’s also now a latent agenda by some elements of the PLO led by Fatah, and I would say even a very conservative element of Fatah, not all of Fatah at this time. So now what? Okay, so in ’74, the Palestinians basically make their first foray into the United Nations. Their objective is actually not to enter the United Nations. They want to enter the Middle East peace process now being shepherded by the Soviet Union, but by primarily the United States, by Nixon, who’s both the Secretary of State and the head of the National Security Council, who in pursuance of Zionist goals as well as US national interest, disaggregates the Arab Israeli question, or the Arab Israeli conflict, I should say, into an Egyptian Israeli track, a Lebanese Israeli track, a Jordanian Israeli track, a Syrian Israeli track, and leaves out the Palestinians altogether.

 

What the PLO really wants is to be able to negotiate on behalf of themselves and not by proxy. Failure to be able to incorporate themselves into that negotiating process, now they set their sights on the United Nations, and that’s when they enter in ’74 to pass Resolution 3236 and 3237, which together both affirms their Juridical status as a people when it says that the PLO is the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and not merely a [inaudible 00:28:23] of refugees in need of humanitarian assistance and establishes a corrective to Resolution 242, which doubles down on their erasure by describing them as refugees only, and establishes a quid pro quo arrangement whereby Israel will enjoy permanent peace in recognition for returning all of the territories. And so this is seen as an instrument of defeat. So that’s the first kind of what, I guess, one might describe as that’s not exactly what they wanted.

 

What they wanted was to enter into the negotiations. This is what they do, which is also very successful. That didn’t advance their cause as much. And in the summer of ’75, they decided that they wanted to expel Israel from the United Nations in the same way that the non-aligned movement had expelled South Africa and unseated it from the United Nations. But in their effort to do so, they were primarily blocked by Egypt under the leadership of Anwar El-Sadat (1918-1981), who saw that the only pathway forward was through some sort of US alliance in order to get the Sinai back to recoup the Sinai and wanted to continue negotiations with Israel. So actually stymied this initiative to unseat Israel from the United Nations. Instead, what the Palestinians do in the summer of ’75 at the International Women’s Conference, at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, at the non-aligned movement, amongst the organization of African Union is basically a condemnation of Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination.

 

That wasn’t the primary goal, but that was the consensus. So they come back to the general assembly and now work to create one of the most significant, I think, legal achievements when they amend the decade against racism that was targeting apartheid in Namibia and South Africa to also include a condemnation of Zionism. And we get Resolution 3379 that declares that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination that would only be rescinded by the PLO itself in 1991. And so I would say that these are just a few examples of what… I think I’m responding to your question of perhaps what Palestinians had sought and what they do instead using these legal maneuvers. And obviously all of this entry of foray is also restricting the Palestinians themselves, but it’s a restriction that they welcome in order to advance their other goals.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

Let’s talk about Oslo. You opened that chapter quoting Edward Said (1935-2003), who calls it a Palestinian Versailles, and really, I think, you make a very persuasive argument that it destroys the PLO as an effective resistance organization.

 

Noura Erakat:

 

When I started this chapter, I really was starting it and interested in it as a legal scholar, and I thought to myself, one of the offerings that I can make is to explain to a non-specialist, what did Oslo do in order to permanently subjugate Palestinians? Because that’s what it is. Oslo is a sovereignty trap. It doesn’t promise, there’s never even a mention of the Palestinian state. None of its negotiating terms promises an eventual outcome of a Palestinian state. Palestinians don’t get anything. And so I wanted to explain that, how does Israel create this new administration under Oslo to regulate access to water, access to land, access to movement? How does Oslo set up all of these strictures? But when I read the actual documents, the Declaration of Principles, also known as Oslo 1, when you read Oslo 2, that sets up this jurisdictional regime of area A, B, and C, when you read why and Taba and so on, it’s so obvious how Palestinians are subjugated that I thought to myself, well, you don’t need to be a legal expert to have this takeaway, you just need to be literate.

 

So instead, I decide to answer a question I don’t know the answer to yet, which is why? Why would the PLO enter into something so obviously devastating and self-defeating. And in trying to answer that question, what becomes clearer to me anyway, is that this really is about salvaging the PLO, that that’s what was being done. The PLO after its expulsion from Lebanon in 1982 in removal to Tunisia, is now no longer has a solid base where it almost oversees, one would say the infrastructure of a para state with a significant refugee population within Lebanon that constitutes an entire institution of representation and services and functioning, and also it doesn’t have the grounds for cross border attacks. That’s a significant blow. By 1987, they continue to weaken, not least because of the emergence of opposition like Hamas, that now becomes even more popular than the PLO struggle, as well as the fact that now there’s an organic movement within the West Bank in Gaza that’s leading an Intifada, an uprising so that the center of gravity shifts from the Palestinian diaspora to Palestinian lands themselves.

 

And this is undermining the PLO’s authority together with the fact now by the time Arafat throws his hat in and supports Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, which in retribution Gulf states, Kuwait, number one basically says Palestinians out. And now there’s a whole loss of remittances to the Palestinians, as well as the fact that anybody that wants to support Palestine is going to support opposition and not the PLO itself. So all of these things come together to basically shape a moment where the PLO was at the edge of irrelevance, at the edge of irrelevance. And entering into the negotiations, they had a very adept team at Madrid, Washington, that saw the writing on the wall [foreign language 00:35:33] are very clear in their legal analysis in mourning that Israel is basically offering the same thing that was offered in the 1978 Middle East peace process in the negotiation between Sadat and Begin leading up to the 1979 permanent Egyptian Israeli peace, which is an autonomy framework.

 

That’s all they’re offering. They offered the same thing in ’78. The only difference now when they’re offering it in the lead up to the adoption of the Declaration of principles is that they’re saying that Palestinians will not only be able to govern themselves on these different plot of lands, but can also govern certain plots of land, but only there. They still won’t be able to exercise jurisdiction. And instead of electing a local government to do it, they’ll allow the PLO to do it. Those are literally the only differences between ’78 and what we ultimately see in ’93. One of the interesting things about doing this work, Chris, and this research, is that the legal literature is dominated by Israeli scholars, especially on these questions. So part of the work that I was doing was also helping to create a Palestinian archive to advance these legal arguments.

 

And doing that meant that I interviewed the interlocutors that were there. I interviewed the negotiators themselves, so Camille Mansour (b. 1945), who was there and was a negotiator and is a legal scholar. It’s his words where he illuminates that if you lose Palestinian representation, we go back to being just no people anymore. We had to save the PLO in order to save our status as a juridical people. But in exchange for that recognition, we basically relinquished Palestine.

 

The rescindment of the 1975 resolution declaring Zionism is a form of racism, is emblematic. The amendment of the charter that says that Palestinians will no longer resort to armed force when Israel is not making similar concessions. It doesn’t say we’re not resorting to armed force. The recognition of Israel. Palestinians recognize Israel. There’s no mutual recognition of a Palestine. And so Palestinians basically see and surrender what should have remained on the table as part of their negotiating leverage as a condition for entering into Oslo, which becomes the trap that they remained frankly ensconed within. Although we obviously see many, many cracks and Oslo has been dead, even though many have tried to keep it up on stilts. But that’s what’s happening. That’s what people are celebrating in 1993, even though though Edward Said, Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Nabil Shaath, and many others recognized as an instrument of defeat, this Palestine, it’s done, Palestine has been lost. And even Hanan Ashrawi (b. 1946), Dr. Hahan Ashrawi, who recognizes what a loss this is, also agrees that it was still worthwhile because they didn’t want to relinquish the status of the PLO. And so people are not stupid.

 

This was a very logical decision. The PNC approves Oslo, approves the DOP. So this is also not necessarily just betrayal by the PLO, even though it is betrayal by the negotiating team in Oslo, which was the back channel secret negotiation, but the negotiators in Washington had no idea about. But just adding nuance here that there was a lot. The PLO in its own documentation says that they entered into Oslo and Dr. Nabil Shaath (b. 1938), who’s also one of my interlocutors, says, “We knew it was bad, but we entered on good faith.” And that faith obviously didn’t bear out for them. It didn’t do what they had hoped.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

There was a lot of corruption. I was in Gaza after Oslo and the PLO leadership were importing their duty free Mercedes and building villas. As you point out in the book, the PA (Palestinian Authority) spends most of its budget on internal security functioning in essence as a colonial police force, the hierarchy that’s willing to do that dirty work can live very well. But we’ve now reached a point, and of course in the elections in 2006, the PA lost, Hamas won even in the West Bank. So in many ways, I don’t know if you would agree, it’s nullified itself as a credible movement on behalf of the Palestinian people at this point. Would you agree?

 

Noura Erakat:

 

100%. I think that this is consensus amongst Palestinians, which is what’s so troubling that the PA, even according to Oslo, the PA is only meant to be an administrative body. It should deliver mail. It should pick up the trash. It should complete administrative functions. It was never appointed to lead the Palestinian liberation movement, which should have remained within the purview of the PLO. But we see a collapse of the PA in the PLO in a way that blurs these lines on the firsthand. And then instead what we see, it was supposed to have a temporary function until we moved into permanent status negotiations and the establishment of the Palestinian state. There’s never a mention of the Palestinian state, Chris. Even the negotiators themselves, Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995) who is hailed as the peacemaker and assassinated for his willingness to enter into Oslo by an Israeli settler.

 

Even he says there will never be a Palestinian state. So this temporary arrangement should have only lasted for five years. Let alone now we’re above three decades, and the PA has been a very, very significant instrument part and parcel of Israel’s occupation regime. It is doing the work on behalf of Israel. It is coordinating security with Israel. It is arresting Palestinians. It is providing intelligence on where Palestinians are. It is actually entering into Palestinian public squares to beat Palestinians to suppress their protests, even now against the genocide in Gaza. Just think. Just think the fact that the public sector is bloated, but the primary part of the Palestinian public sector is the security sector. And that security sector is basically policing Palestinians to protect Israel settlement enterprises. I had said before, and I’m saying now again, that in contrast, there’s no dedication, for example, to invest in the agricultural sector.

 

Had the PA now collapsed with a PLO invested in an agricultural sector, it might’ve been able to create and cultivate an economy that can engage in boycott of Israeli goods even rather than be flooded with Israeli goods into the market. But this also goes hand in hand with the fact that the PLO has never even endorsed boycott. There’s still committed, even if it’s a state led, a truncated Palestinian state, to that structure at the expense of liberation. And why at the expense of liberation, because this is not inclusive of all Palestinians. It’s not inclusive of the Palestinian refugees. It’s certainly not inclusive of the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, and it doesn’t have a vision of how is it that Palestinians are going to be free from Israeli dominance as opposed to what they’re banking on, which is an autonomy arrangement whereby they will forever receive certain incremental privileges from Israel and its patron, the United States, in exchange for being good natives.

 

And this is the trap that we remain in, and it puts Palestinians… It makes our struggles so much harder. And many people are asking, how is Gaza? And the West Bank too. I mean, obviously the West Bank is being subject to untold and unprecedented violence from the beginning of this year, but especially since early October. But Palestinians are not even able to mount a significant and a robust resistance to protect themselves because not only are they being attacked by Israel and their settler vigilantes who are being armed, but they’re also being attacked and policed by the Palestinian authority.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

You compare the PLO to the Namibians and you make some, I think, really important points about how they were far more astute. They rejected the South African peace process as an alternative. SWAPO refused to enter South Africa’s exclusive sphere of influence and maintain an adversarial position, unlike the PLO, which has committed to US mediated bilateral talks for 25 years, SWAPO never relinquished its right to the use of force, and it never ceased its armed struggle. Talk about the difference because they were far more successful. And then of course you had Cuban troops stationed in Angola.

 

Noura Erakat:

 

I bring up Namibia in the conclusion because there is, especially in the realm of Palestine, and we see this now because of the South Africa application at the ICJ, there is a way because of the failure of politics really, and a failure of a Palestinian leadership to articulate some sort of a political program and a resistance vision. And resistance here, I mean robustly like diplomatic resistance, economic resistance, popular resistance, cultural resistance, delegitimizing, a Zionist colonial project. Nothing. There’s nothing. And in the absence of that, unfortunately, human rights and rights-based programs have taken up an inordinate amount of space in a way that even supplants the language of politics that now Palestinian politics are hollowed out instead with principles of law, which is detrimental, is detrimental because the law is only a tool. That very same law like human rights law that Palestinians use to assert their right to family and their right to not be harmed.

 

Settlers in the West Bank are invoking that same body of law to say that it’s their human right to maintain these lands and to be protected and to be free of Israeli state violence. The law will set up a battleground only, but that can only be resolved through politics. And so I bring that to the fore to say, because so many people bring up Namibia as an example of a very astute use of the law. Here it is. Namibia waged a multi-year legal battle where they incrementally scaffolded a legal argument at the ICJ in order to demonstrate firstly and foremost the illegitimacy of South Africa as a mandatory power and a governing power in Namibia and South Africa. And then scaffolding on top of that other rights of their right to self-determination and so on and so forth. But it’s not because of this robust jurisprudence that the Namibians ultimately gain independence. That’s necessary.

 

That was strategic. That helped build a language to use. It helped cultivate international support. But ultimately it wasn’t a legal decision. South Africans don’t leave Namibia because the court said so, they could care less. Ultimately why they leave is because you have Cuban forces who are fighting alongside, who are in Angola that the US wants out of Angola. This becomes a proxy for the US and the Soviet Union and Cuba being involved, and part of that negotiation of withdrawal includes withdrawal from Namibia. So there are other things happening where this influences the United States and shifts its position on apartheid as well. But the Namibians, as you point out in and as I point out in the book, are also very astute. They never enter into a South African sphere of influence. They’re offered the same thing that Palestinians are offered in the form of black homelands and autonomous governance.

 

They reject that. They never rescind their right and to use armed force, which is enshrined as a result of the non-aligned movement, enshrined as a right for people living under alien occupation, racism and domination. So that matters too. Now, I say all that to say to the credit of the Palestinians that this environment in which Namibia is maneuvering or Namibians are maneuvering, excuse me, doesn’t exist by the time the Palestinians are entering into Oslo. In fact, we’re seeing Namibian and South African independence. Mandela has been released. We’re seeing the fall of apartheid. We see the fall of the Soviet Union. We see the emergence of a unipolar world. So this balance of power that really did enable a different kind of liberation struggle for Namibians is not available to the Palestinians at the time. And so we can sit here retrospectively and say, “Well, nothing could have been worse than what they’ve done now.”

 

But all of this is conjecture, obviously. I’m less concerned about the trap that Palestinians enter into based on this balance of power based on the political considerations. I’m more concerned that they haven’t shifted course and policy when it was clear. If you didn’t know the day of like Abdel-Shafi and Said than others, you certainly knew by 2000 when the Camp David agreement collapses. Now it’s over. [inaudible 00:51:44] is besieged and killed. That’s it. There’s no excuse. Because I want to give some benefit of the doubt that they thought they couldn’t get anything better. Fine. But by 2000, you knew that this was a dead end. So there’s absolutely no explanation why Palestinians would stay in that arrangement since 2000 through 2023, a quarter of a century, knowing full well, there’s no way out.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

Well, Palestinian Street. The average Palestinian has walked away from it. They walked away from it a long time ago.

 

Noura Erakat:

 

Even in this moment, the Palestinian liberation struggle’s not being led by an official Palestinian leadership, which makes this moment even more profound, that we’re Palestinian Diaspora, Palestinians on the ground. Everybody has been coordinating and working without a centralized governance system, certainly without any means and funding, and yet has been able to mobilize in a decentralized fashion.

 

The Boycott National Committee establishes itself in 2005, launches an international boycott divestment in sanctions movement. This is civil society. It has nothing to do with the Palestinian leadership. The way that Palestinians bring back a condemnation of Zionism, which we see first in the Durban Conference in 2001. The review conference of the decade against racism happens in Durban, South Africa in 2001, where Palestinians raise the banner and say, “Israel’s an apartheid regime, and Zionism is racism once again.” Palestinians have never relinquished that front, and we even see it in the realm of knowledge production where scholars have reconstructed very robustly, not only making clear that Israel is a settler colonial project, but that there’s an entire realm of Palestinian indigenous studies of tradition, of economy, of belonging, of family, all sorts of tradition of land use, of sea technology that could be studied, which brings us into 2024.

 

The reason we remain alive as a people is because the people have insisted that we are here.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

I want to close by talking about the resistance. That was more than a hundred days of saturation, bombing of Gaza, destruction of every form of infrastructure that can sustain existence from wells to hospitals, to bakeries to schools, horrific numbers of dead. I was in Sarajevo during the war, which was awful, three to 400 shells a day, four to five dead a day, two dozen wounded a day. I only say that as a comparison to Gaza, where hundreds of people are being wounded and killed a day just to point out the scale. And yet, US intelligence estimates that only 20 to 30% of resistance or fighters, Hamas fighters, have been killed. It’s becoming clear that if Israel does not achieve its goal, which I don’t see how it will of eradicating Hamas, and Hamas and the resistance survives, which I feel it will then in any way, the Palestinians win.

 

And however horrific Gaza becomes other than the Yemenis, the Houthis, nobody is intervening to halt this genocide despite all the legal bodies we have at the UN and everywhere else. But talk about the resistance and whether I know how I knew one of the founders of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi (1947-2004) was in his house with him and his family. His wife was just killed on October 19th. And not by the way, the demonized image of a leader of Hamas. He was a pediatrician, highly educated, graduated first in his class from the University of Alexandria, very soft-spoken, brilliant figure, assassinated in 2004 along with one of his sons. Let’s talk about the resistance. And so whether you embrace the ideology of Hamas or not, for me, is irrelevant. I think it’s been amazingly successful.

 

Noura Erakat:

 

Well, I want to nuance this in many ways. I want to nuance this by having a lot of mixed feelings about strategy and moving forward. And I want to emphasize here, I think, and I understand, I understand this idea of that if they’re not defeated, they win, which is a tenant of asymmetric warfare and guerilla combat. But I can’t do that with ease, given the magnitude of loss and given just how painful it’s been.

 

Images that I saw last night are still ravaging me inside of what are we going to tell these kids who have suffered so much? 355,000 children because of dehydration are at risk of permanent, cognitive, under development and stunting, right? So it’s hard for me, Chris, as much as if they’re not defeated, obviously I don’t want them to be defeated. And what people don’t understand when they say that is because surrender doesn’t bring us back to an ordinary life, which is normally what war looks like. You fight, you fight, you fight, you fight, and then one party surrenders because then you just go back to ordinary life. Palestinians don’t go back to an ordinary life. So surrender is not an option. At the same time, I want to take time to mourn. Palestinians have not had time to mourn. There is such deep devastation that’s generational, that’s traumatic, that’s social, that’s political that I want to honor and hold here. And it’s very painful. It’s just very, very painful.

 

And I don’t know what we do. I don’t know what we do because not only are we holding onto that pain, but now we have in Israel a society that is not just quasi okay with an apartheid racist regime. They have literally become avid supporters of genocide as a matter of rights. They’re fascists, society, media, children are taunting their elders, their principal for expressing empathy for Palestinians. For me, I paused to say, what is the victory here when now we have to deal with a society? What is the exit plan? How do you defeat fascism in a world where it’s being nurtured by Germany and the United States and Britain and Canada? They’re applauding them. And so where is the accountability here? So I just countenance the language of victory, to be honest, and I know that puts me at odds and probably deflates a lot of people who want to hear something else, and I just want to ground this in something else of what it means that Israel cannot decimate Hamas military.

 

They cannot. There is no military solution. There is no military solution. They cannot decimate Hamas. They haven’t. Hamas is still firing rockets from the middle of Gaza City. As you point out, they’ve not even decimated half of their militants in the Gaza Strip. They’ve not turned the Palestinians against Hamas, which was part of their military objective. If anything, they’ve made Hamas more popular and robust, not only amongst Palestinians, across the air world and the world in general. And they’re not any closer to retrieving their captive, their captive military personnel or rescuing their civilian hostages, which they were only able to retrieve and return through diplomatic negotiations. Someone has to ask, how can you justify the 11th most significant military in the world? Be trust by US intelligence, with advanced weapons technology that has had no red lines for over a hundred days, that has not even come close to achieving any of its military objectives, but has certainly destroyed Palestinian life, conditions of life that’s promising devastation into the future.

 

We have to agree that anybody who’s now supporting this is outright supporting a terroristic program that’s basically targeting Palestinian civilians, as put by Professor [inaudible 01:01:51], Palestinian civilians are clearly the military objectives. Hamas is the collateral damage.

 

So I think that we have to use this to agree that there is no way out, but that the road ahead is what we absolutely need to keep our eyes on. For me, victory is liberation. Victory is a world where Palestinians are recognized as having human life that is sacred and worthy of protection and deserving of self-defense, which Palestinians have asserted over and over and refused to relinquish. I cannot believe this is in controversy.

 

And so insofar as the cessation, for me, first and foremost, the cessation of hostilities is necessary just to end the genocide. And then insofar as it demonstrates there’s no military solution and exposes that Zionism is predicated on just a genocidal program that’s an ongoing Nakba in their own words, Avi Dichter (b. 1952) said it clearly, “This is Gaza.” Gaza Nakba 2023. They’ve equated their peace and security to genocide and ethnic cleansing. In so far as it illuminates that in order to get us to the threshold that it’s not controversial, that it’s not controversial, that Palestinians deserve life.

 

Chris Hedges:

 

Thank you. That was Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and assistant professor at Rutgers University. I want to thank the Real News Network and his production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.

 

This article first appeared on The Real News Network and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Pretty exciting ‼️

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time on Thursday about the airstrike overnight on Houthi targets in Yemen.

 

According to Netanyahu, "We did this in response to the Houthis' repetitive attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Last night, they attacked a school in Ramat Gan.

 

"They don't attack just us, they attack the entire world. They attack the international shipping and trade routes. So when Israel operates against the Houthis, it works for the entire international community. The Americans understand this well, and so do many others."

 

He further stated: "After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the only arm that the Iranian axis of evil has left. They are learning and they will learn that those who hurt Israel - pay a very heavy price."

 

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‎נתניהו על התקיפה בתימן

‎עומר מירון/ לע״מ, סאונד: יחזקאל קנדיל/ לע״מ

 

Related articles:

Footage shows pilots taking off for Yemen strike

 

Warhead from Houthi missile falls in Ramat Gan school

 

Smotrich: 'Very good things were done last night in Yemen'

 

New details on the bombings in Yemen

The main objective of the IDF airstrikes was to shut down all three ports controlled by the Houthis.

 

The Air Force attacked targets in the port of Hodeidah and the capital Sana'a, approximately 2,000 km from Israel. The Houthis have launched about 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones towards Israel since the war began. Most were intercepted, but some managed to penetrate Israeli airspace. In July, a drone from Yemen caused the death of Evgeny Freder in Tel Aviv.

 

The first wave of the attack began at 3:15 AM in the coastal area of Yemen, with the second following at 4:30 AM in Sana'a. Fourteen fighter jets, covering more than 1,700 km, participated, targeting the ports of Ras Issa, Hodeidah, and the Al-Salif port. In total, eight tugboats were attacked. In Sana'a, fuel tanks, oil, and a power station were targeted.

U.S. is sending fighter jets to boost military presence in Middle East as tensions soar

 

World Aug 2, 2024 6:52 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Defense Department will move a fighter jet squadron to the Middle East and maintain an aircraft carrier in the region, the Pentagon said Friday, as President Joe Biden made good on his promise to beef up the American military presence to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and safeguard U.S. troops.

 

In a statement, the department said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the European and Middle East regions and is taking steps to send more land-based ballistic missile defense weapons there.

 

The shifts come as U.S. leaders worry about escalating violence in the Middle East in response to recent attacks by Israel on Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, which triggered threats of retaliation.

 

WATCH: Killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders escalate fears regional war could ignite

 

Biden in a call Thursday afternoon with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed new U.S. military deployments to protect against possible attacks from ballistic missiles and drones, according to the White House. In April, U.S. forces intercepted dozens of missiles and drones fired by Iran against Israel and helped down nearly all of them.

 

The assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday and senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur in Beirut on Tuesday risk escalating the fighting into an all-out regional war, with Iran also threatening to respond after the attack on its territory. Israel has vowed to kill Hamas leaders over the group’s Oct. 7 attack, which sparked the war.

 

Austin is ordering the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, which is in the Gulf of Oman but scheduled to come home later this summer. That decision suggests the Pentagon has decided to keep a carrier consistently in the region as a deterrent against Iran at least until next year.

 

The Pentagon did not say where the fighter jet squadron was coming from or where it would be based in the Middle East. A number of allies in the region are often willing to base U.S. military forces but don’t want it made public.

 

The White House in a statement said Biden “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.”

 

Earlier Friday, Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters that moves were in the works. She said Austin “will be directing multiple” force movements to provide additional support to Israel and increase protection for U.S. troops in the region.

 

Military and defense officials have been considering a wide array of options, from additional ships and fighter aircraft squadrons to added air defense systems or unmanned assets. In many cases the U.S. does not provide details because host nations are very sensitive about the presence of additional U.S. forces and don’t want those movements made public.

 

It’s unclear what new ships would move to the Middle East.

 

The U.S. has had a consistent warship presence there and in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, including two Navy destroyers, the USS Roosevelt and the USS Bulkeley, as well as the USS Wasp and the USS New York. The Wasp and the New York are part of the amphibious ready group and carry a Marine expeditionary unit that could be used if any evacuation of U.S. personnel is required.

 

In addition, a U.S. official said that two U.S Navy destroyers that are currently in the Middle East will be heading north up the Red Sea toward the Mediterranean Sea. At least one of those could linger in the Mediterranean if needed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements.

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

nice hair

utter nonsense

 

the New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details of a US attack on Yemeni Houthi rebels last month in a second Signal chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people.

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

Following a lay over at Gibraltar, HMS Diamond has rearmed her Sea Ceptor anti-air missiles, refuelled, restocked and conducted maintenance and this morning heads out to sea again. She is expected to be deployed back in the Red Sea to protect shipping from Houthi anti-ship and cruise missile attacks.

 

During her last deployment, HMS Diamond intercepted and downed nine Houthi drones.

more pics from Hadramawt desert

The T-34 is a Soviet medium tank from World War II. When introduced, its 76.2 mm (3 in) tank gun was more powerful than its contemporaries, and its 60-degree sloped armour provided good protection against anti-tank weapons. The T-34 had a profound effect on the conflict on the Eastern Front, and had a long-lasting impact on tank design. The tank was praised by multiple German generals when encountered during Operation Barbarossa, although its armour and armament were surpassed later in the war. Though, its main strength was its cost and production time, meaning that German panzer forces would often fight against Soviet tank forces several times their size. The T-34 is also a critical part of the mechanized divisions that form the backbone of the Deep Battle Strategy.

 

The T-34 was the mainstay of the Soviet Red Army armoured forces throughout the war. Its general specifications remained nearly unchanged until early 1944, when it received a firepower upgrade with the introduction of the greatly improved T-34-85 variant. Its production method was continuously refined and rationalized to meet the needs of the Eastern Front, making the T-34 quicker and cheaper to produce. The Soviets ultimately built over 80,000 T-34s of all variants, allowing steadily greater numbers to be fielded despite the loss of tens of thousands in combat against the German Wehrmacht.

 

Replacing many light and medium tanks in Red Army service, it was the most-produced tank of the war, as well as the second most-produced tank of all time (after its successor, the T-54/T-55 series). With 44,900 lost during the war, it also suffered the most tank losses ever. Its development led directly to the T-44, then the T-54 and T-55 series of tanks, which in turn evolved into the later T-62, that form the armoured core of many modern armies. T-34 variants were widely exported after World War II, and as recently as 2010 more than 130 were still in service.

 

Development and production

Origins

In 1939, the most numerous Soviet tank models were the T-26 infantry tank and the BT series of fast tanks. The T-26 was slow-moving, designed to keep pace with infantry on the ground. The BT tanks were cavalry tanks: fast-moving and light, designed for manoeuver warfare. Both were Soviet developments of foreign designs from the early 1930s: the T-26 was based on the British Vickers 6-Ton, and the BT tanks were based on a design from American engineer J. Walter Christie.

 

In 1937, the Red Army had assigned engineer Mikhail Koshkin to lead a new team to design a replacement for the BT tanks at the Kharkiv Komintern Locomotive Plant (KhPZ). The prototype tank, designated A-20, had a modified BA-20 engine and was specified with 20 mm (0.8 in) of armour, a 45 mm (1.77 in) gun, the production model used a Model V-2-34 engine, a less-flammable diesel fuel in a V12 configuration designed by Konstantin Chelpan. It also had an 8×6-wheel convertible drive similar to the BT tank's 8×2, which allowed it to run on wheels without caterpillar tracks. This feature had greatly saved on maintenance and repair of the unreliable tank tracks of the early 1930s, and allowed tanks to exceed 85 kilometres per hour (53 mph) on roads, but gave no advantage in combat and its complexity made it difficult to maintain. By 1937–38, track design had improved and the designers considered it a waste of space, weight, and maintenance resources, despite the road speed advantage. The A-20 also incorporated previous research (BT-IS and BT-SW-2 projects) into sloped armour: its all-round sloped armour plates were more likely to deflect rounds than perpendicular armour.

 

During the Battle of Lake Khasan in July 1938 and the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, an undeclared border war with Japan on the frontier with occupied Manchuria, the Soviets deployed numerous tanks against the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). Although the IJA Type 95 Ha-Go light tanks had diesel engines, the Red Army's T-26 and BT tanks used petrol engines which, while common in tank designs of the time, often burst into flames when hit by IJA tank-killer teams using Molotov cocktails. Poor-quality welds in the Soviet armour plates left small gaps between them, and flaming petrol from the Molotov cocktails easily seeped into the fighting and engine compartment; portions of the armour plating that had been assembled with rivets also proved to be vulnerable. The Soviet tanks were also easily destroyed by the Japanese Type 95 tank's 37 mm gunfire, despite the low velocity of that gun, or "at any other slightest provocation". The use of riveted armour led to a problem whereby the impact of enemy shells, even if they failed to disable the tank or kill the crew on their own, would cause the rivets to break off and become projectiles inside the tank.

 

After these battles, Koshkin convinced Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to let him develop a second prototype, a more heavily armed and armoured "universal tank" that reflected the lessons learned and could replace both the T-26 and the BT tanks. Koshkin named the second prototype A-32, after its 32 mm (1.3 in) of frontal armour. It had an L-10 76.2 mm (3 in) gun, and the same Model V-2-34 diesel. Both were tested in field trials at Kubinka in 1939, with the heavier A-32 proving to be as mobile as the A-20. A still heavier version of the A-32, with 45 mm (1.77 in) of front armour, wider tracks, and a newer L-11 76.2 mm gun, was approved for production as the T-34. Koshkin chose the name after the year 1934, when he began to formulate his ideas about the new tank, and to commemorate that year's decree expanding the armoured force and appointing Sergo Ordzhonikidze to head tank production.

 

Valuable lessons from Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol regarding armour protection, mobility, quality welding, and main guns were incorporated into the new T-34 tank, which represented a substantial improvement over the BT and T-26 tanks in all four areas. Koshkin's team completed two prototype T-34s in January 1940. In April and May, they underwent a grueling 2,000-kilometre (1,200 mi) drive from Kharkiv to Moscow for a demonstration for the Kremlin leaders, to the Mannerheim Line in Finland, and back to Kharkiv via Minsk and Kiev. Some drivetrain shortcomings were identified and corrected.

 

Initial production

Resistance from the military command and concerns about high production cost were finally overcome by anxieties about the poor performance of Soviet tanks in the Winter War in Finland, and the effectiveness of German tanks during the Battle of France. The first production T-34s were completed in September 1940, completely replacing the production of the T-26, the BT series and the multi-turreted T-28 medium tank at the KhPZ plant. Koshkin died of pneumonia (exacerbated by the drive from Kharkiv to Moscow) at the end of that month, and the T-34's drivetrain developer, Alexander Morozov, was appointed Chief Designer.

 

The T-34 posed new challenges for the Soviet industry. It had heavier armour than any medium tank produced to date, and there were problems with defective armour plates. Only company commanders' tanks could be fitted with radios (originally the 71-TK-3 radio set), due to their expense and short supply – the rest of the tank crews in each company signalled with flags. The L-11 gun did not live up to expectations, so the Grabin Design Bureau at Gorky Factory N.92 designed the superior 76.2 mm F-34 gun. No bureaucrat would approve production of the new gun, but Gorky and KhPZ started producing it anyway; official permission came from the State Defense Committee only after troops praised the weapon's performance in combat against the Germans.

 

Production of this first T-34 series – the Model 1940 – totalled only about 400, before production was switched to the Model 1941, with the F-34 gun, 9-RS radio set (also installed on the SU-100), and even thicker armour.

 

Mass production

Subassemblies for the T-34 originated at several plants: Kharkiv Diesel Factory N.75 supplied the model V-2-34 engine, Leningrad Kirovsky Factory (formerly the Putilov works) made the original L-11 gun, and the Dinamo Factory in Moscow produced electrical components. Tanks were initially built at Plant N.183, in early 1941 at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory (STZ), and starting in July at Krasnoye Sormovo Factory N.112 in Gorky.

 

Total Soviet tank production

TypeNumber

Light tanks14,508

T-3435,119

T-34-8529,430

KV and KV-854,581

IS-3,854

SU-7612,671

SU-852,050

SU-1001,675

SU-1221,148

SU-1524,779

 

After Germany's surprise invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), the Wehrmacht's rapid advances forced the evacuation and relocation of Soviet tank factories eastwards to the Ural Mountains, an undertaking of immense scale and haste that presented enormous logistic difficulties and was extremely punishing to the workers involved. Alexander Morozov personally supervised the evacuation of all skilled engineers and laborers, machinery and stock from KhPZ to re-establish the factory at the site of the Dzerzhinsky Ural Railcar Factory in Nizhny Tagil, renamed Stalin Ural Tank Factory N.183. The Kirovsky Factory, evacuated just weeks before the Germans surrounded Leningrad, moved with the Kharkiv Diesel Factory to the Stalin Tractor Factory in Chelyabinsk, soon to be nicknamed Tankograd ("Tank City"). The workers and machinery from Leningrad's Voroshilov Tank Factory N.174 were incorporated into the Ural Factory and the new Omsk Factory N.174. The Ordzhonikidze Ural Heavy Machine Tool Works (UZTM) in Sverdlovsk absorbed workers and machines from several small machine shops in the path of German forces.

 

While these factories were being rapidly moved, the industrial complex surrounding the Dzerzhinsky Tractor Factory in Stalingrad continued to work double shifts throughout the period of withdrawal (September 1941 to September 1942) to make up for production lost, and produced 40% of all T-34s during the period. As the factory became surrounded by heavy fighting in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, the situation there grew desperate: manufacturing innovations were necessitated by material shortages, and stories persist of unpainted T-34 tanks driven out of the factory directly to the battlefields around it. Stalingrad kept up production until September 1942.

 

Soviet designers were aware of design deficiencies in the tank, but most of the desired remedies would have slowed tank production and so were not implemented: the only changes allowed on the production lines through to 1944 were those to make production simpler and cheaper. New methods were developed for automated welding and hardening the armour plate, including innovations by Prof. Evgeny Paton. The design of the 76.2 mm F-34 gun Model 1941 was reduced from an initial 861 parts to 614. The initial narrow, cramped turrets, both the cast one and the one welded of rolled armour plates bent to shape, were since 1942 gradually replaced with the somewhat less cramped hexagonal one; as it was mostly cast with only a few, simple flat armour plates welded in (roof etc.), this turret was actually faster to produce. Limited rubber supplies led to the adoption of all-steel, internally sprung road wheels, and a new clutch was added to an improved five-speed transmission and engine, improving reliability.

 

Over two years, the unit production cost of the T-34 was reduced from 269,500 Rbls in 1941, to 193,000 Rbls, and then to 135,000 Rbls.

 

In 1943, T-34 production had reached an average of 1,300 per month; this was the equivalent of three full-strength tank divisions. By the end of 1945, over 57,300 T-34s had been built: 34,780 T-34 tanks in multiple variants with 76.2 mm guns in 1940–44, and another 22,609 of the revised T-34-85 model in 1944–45. The single largest producer was Factory N.183 (UTZ), building 28,952 T-34s and T-34-85s from 1941 to 1945. The second-largest was Krasnoye Sormovo Factory N.112 in Gorky, with 12,604 in the same period.

 

At the start of the German-Soviet war, T-34s comprised about four percent of the Soviet tank arsenal, but by the end it made up at least 55% of tank production (based on figures from; Zheltov lists even larger numbers.

 

Following the end of the war, a further 2,701 T-34s were built prior to the end of Soviet production. Under licence, production was restarted in Poland (1951–55) and Czechoslovakia (1951–58), where 1,380 and 3,185 T-34-85s were made, respectively, by 1956. Altogether, as many as 84,070 T-34s are thought to have been built, plus 13,170 self-propelled guns built on T-34 chassis. It was the most-produced tank of the Second World War, and the second most-produced tank of all time, after its successor, the T-54/55 series.

 

Design

The T-34 had well-sloped armour, a relatively powerful engine and wide tracks. The initial T-34 version had a powerful 76.2 mm gun, and is often called the T-34/76 (originally a World War II German designation, never used by the Red Army). In 1944, a second major version began production, the T-34-85, with a larger 85 mm gun intended to deal with newer German tanks.

 

Comparisons can be drawn between the T-34 and the U.S. M4 Sherman tank. Both tanks were the backbone of the armoured units in their respective armies, both nations distributed these tanks to their allies, who also used them as the mainstay of their own armoured formations, and both were upgraded extensively and fitted with more powerful guns. Both were designed for mobility and ease of manufacture and maintenance, sacrificing some performance for these goals. Both chassis were used as the foundation for a variety of support vehicles, such as armour recovery vehicles, tank destroyers, and self-propelled artillery. Both were an approximately even match for the standard German medium tank, the Panzer IV, though each of these three tanks had particular advantages and weaknesses compared with the other two. Neither the T-34 nor the M4 was a match for Germany's heavier tanks, the Panther (technically a medium tank) or the Tiger I; the Soviets used the IS-2 heavy tank and the U.S. used the M26 Pershing as the heavy tanks of their forces instead.

 

Armour

The heavily sloped armour design made the tank better protected than the armour thickness alone would indicate. The shape also saved weight by reducing the thickness required to achieve equal protection. A few tanks also had appliqué armour of varying thickness welded onto the hull and turret. Tanks thus modified were called s ekranami (Russian: с экранами, "with screens").

 

The USSR donated two combat-used Model 1941 T-34s to the United States for testing purposes in late 1942. The examinations, performed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, revealed problems with overall armour build quality, especially of the plate joins and welds, as well as the use of soft steel combined with shallow surface tempering. Leak issues were noted: "In a heavy rain lots of water flows through chinks/cracks, which leads to the disabling of the electrical equipment and even the ammunition". Earlier models of the T-34, until the Model 1942, had cast turrets whose armour was softer than that of the other parts of the tank, and offered poor resistance even to 37 mm anti-aircraft shells. Early T-34s also suffered from poor quality welds, leading to instances of shells which would not have penetrated the tank under normal circumstances to penetrate anyway. They also suffered from rushed manufacturing, leading to inconsistent protection.

 

In addition, close examination of the T-34 at the Aberdeen Testing Ground showed that a variety of alloys were used in different portions of the armour on the T-34. "Mn-Si-Mo steels were employed for the thinner rolled armour sections, Cr-Mo steels for the thicker rolled armour sections, Mn-Si-Ni-Cr-Mo steels were employed for both rolled and cast steel components from 2" to 5" in thickness, and Ni-Cr-Mo steels were employed for some of the moderately thick cast armour sections". The armour was heat-treated in order to prevent penetration by armour-piercing shells, but this also caused it to be structurally weak, as the armor was very hard and thus brittle, resulting in strikes by high explosive shells causing spalling.

 

Despite these deficiencies, the T-34's armour proved problematic for the Germans in the initial stages of the war on the Eastern Front. In one wartime account, a single T-34 came under heavy fire upon encountering one of the most common German anti-tank guns at that stage of the war: "Remarkably enough, one determined 37 mm gun crew reported firing 23 times against a single T-34 tank, only managing to jam the tank’s turret ring." Similarly, a German report of May 1942 noted the ineffectiveness of their 50 mm gun as well, noting that "Combating the T-34 with the 5 cm KwK tank gun is possible only at short ranges from the flank or rear, where it is important to achieve a hit as perpendicular to the surface as possible." However, a Military Commissariat Report of the 10th Tank Division, dated 2 August 1941 reported that within 300–400 m the 37 mm Pak 36's armour-piercing shot could defeat the frontal armour. According to an examination of damaged T-34 tanks in several repair workshops in August to September 1942, collected by the People's Commissariat for Tank Industry in January 1943, 54.3% of all T-34 losses were caused by the German long-barreled 5 cm KwK 39 gun.

 

As the war went on, the T-34 gradually lost some of its initial advantages. The Germans responded to the T-34 by fielding large numbers of improved anti-tank weapons such as the towed 7.5 cm Pak 40 anti-tank gun, while hits from 88 mm-armed Tigers, anti-aircraft guns and 8.8 cm Pak 43 anti-tank guns usually proved lethal. In 1942 the German Panzer IVs were refitted with the 7.5 cm KwK 40 due to the inadequate anti-tank performance of previous German tank designs against the T-34. The upgunned Panzer IV posed a serious threat to the T-34-76, being able to penetrate the frontal turret of a T-34-76 at a range of 1,200 m (3,900 ft) at any angle.

 

A Wa Pruef 1 report estimated that, with the target angled 30° sideward, a Panther tank could penetrate the turret of a T-34-85 from the front at ranges up to 2000 m, the mantlet at 1200 m, and the frontal hull armour at 300 m. According to the Pantherfibel (the Panther tank manual for its crew), the T-34's glacis could be penetrated from 800 m and the mantlet from 1500 m at 30° sideward angle.

 

A Waffenamt-Prüfwesen 1 report estimated that with the T-34 angled 30 degrees sidewards and APCBC round, the Tiger I's 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56 would have to close in to 100 m (110 yd) to achieve a penetration in the T-34's glacis, and could penetrate the frontal turret of a T-34-85 at 1,400 m, the mantlet at 400 m, and the nose at 300 m Ground trials by employees of NIBT Polygon in May 1943 reported that the 88 mm KwK 36 gun could pierce the T-34 frontal hull from 1,500 meters at 90 degrees and cause a disastrous burst effect inside the tank. The examined hull showed cracks, spalling, and delamination due to the poor quality of the armour. It was recommended to increase and improve the quality of welds and armour.

 

Analysis of destroyed T-34 tanks in the Korean War found that the 76 and 90 mm armour-piercing rounds of the M41 Walker Bulldog and M46 Patton could penetrate the T-34 at most angles from 800 yd (730 m). The maximum range at which the tanks could penetrate the T-34 could not be determined due to a lack of data at higher combat ranges.

 

In late 1950 a T-34-85 tank was captured by the UN security force in the Korean War. An evaluation of the tank was conducted by the USA which found that the sloped armour of the T-34 was desirable for deflecting shells. They also concluded that the armour was deemed as satisfactory as armour strength was comparable to US armour of similar hardness and that the quality of the material used was "high-grade". Similarly, casting was seen as high quality although casting defects were found in the side armour of the tank that negatively affected armour strength. The abundance of gaps in the joints of the armour was seen as an undesirable feature of the tank due to the risk of injury from "entry of bullet splash and shell fragments".

 

Firepower

The 76.2 mm (3.00 in) F-34 gun, fitted on the vast majority of T-34s produced through to the beginning of 1944, was able to penetrate any early German tank's armour at normal combat ranges. When firing APCR shells, it could pierce 92 mm (3.6 in) at 500 m (1,600 ft) and 60 mm (2.4 in) of armour at 1,000 m (3,300 ft) The best German tanks of 1941, the Panzer III and Panzer IV, had no more than 50 or 60 mm (2.0 or 2.4 in) of flat frontal armour. However by 1942 the Germans had increased the hull armour on the Panzer IV to 80 mm (3.1 in) which provided good protection at normal combat distances. The F-34 also fired an adequate high explosive round.

 

The gun sights and range finding for the F-34 main gun (either the TMFD-7 or the PT4-7) were rather crude, especially compared to those of their German adversaries, affecting accuracy and the ability to engage at long ranges.[68] As a result of the T-34's two-man turret, weak optics and poor vision devices, the Germans noted:

 

T-34s operated in a disorganized fashion with little coordination or else tended to clump together like a hen with its chicks. Individual tank commanders lacked situational awareness due to the poor provision of vision devices and preoccupation with gunnery duties. A tank platoon would seldom be capable of engaging three separate targets but would tend to focus on a single target selected by the platoon leader. As a result, T-34 platoons lost the greater firepower of three independently operating tanks.

 

The Germans also noted that the T-34 was very slow to find and engage targets, while their own tanks could typically get off three rounds for every one fired by the T-34. As the war progressed the Germans created heavier tank designs like the Tiger I or Panther which were both immune to the 76mm gun of the T-34 when fired upon from the front. This meant that they could only be penetrated from the sides at ranges of a few hundred metres. Due to low anti-tank performance, the T-34 was upgraded to the T-34-85 model. This model, with its 85 mm (3.35 in) ZiS gun, provided greatly increased firepower compared to the previous T-34's 76.2mm gun. The 85 mm gun could penetrate the turret front of a Tiger I tank from 500 m (550 yd) and the driver's front plate from 300 m (330 yd) at the side angle of 30 degrees, and the larger turret enabled the addition of another crew member, allowing the roles of commander and gunner to be separated and increasing the rate of fire and overall effectiveness. The D-5T was capable of penetrating the Tiger I's upper hull armour at 1,000 metres. When firing on the frontal armour of the Panther at an angle of 30 degrees sidewards, the T-34-85 could not penetrate its turret at 500 m (550 yd). This meant that the T-34 would have to resort to using tungsten rounds or firing on the weaker sides of the Panther to destroy it.

 

The greater length of the 85 mm gun barrel – 4.645 m (15 ft 2.9 in) – made it necessary for crews to be careful not to plough it into the ground on bumpy roads or in combat. Tank commander A.K. Rodkin commented: "the tank could have dug the ground with it in the smallest ditch [filling the barrel with dirt]. If you fired it after that, the barrel would open up at the end like the petals of a flower", destroying the barrel. Standard practice when moving the T-34-85 cross-country in non-combat situations was to fully elevate the gun, or reverse the turret.

 

During the Korean War, the USA captured a T-34-85. US engineering analysis and testing concluded that the T-34-85 could penetrate 4.1 in (100 mm) at 1,000 yd (910 m), performing similarly to the HVAP rounds of the M41. The Americans also concluded the maximum range of the gun was 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi), but the effective range was only up to 1,900 m (1.2 mi).

 

Mobility

The T-34 was powered by a Model V-2-34 38.8 L V12 Diesel engine of 500 hp (370 kW),[d] giving a top speed of 53 km/h (33 mph). It used the coil-spring Christie suspension of the earlier BT-series tanks, using a "slack track" tread system with a rear-mounted drive sprocket and no system of return rollers for the upper run of track, but dispensed with the heavy and ineffective convertible drive. T-34 tanks equipped with the 4-speed gearbox could only use 4th gear on road, being limited to 3rd on terrain. In the first batch of T-34s, shifting from 2nd to 3rd required a force of 46-112 kg. In September 1941, however, changes were made which lowered the effort to under 31 kg by changing the 3rd gear ratio, which lowered top speed in 3rd gear from 29 km/h to 25 km/h, but made shifting easier. Using the 5-speed gearbox allowed the T-34 to use 4th gear on terrain, with which it could reach 30 km/h.

 

The T-34-76's ground pressure was around 0.72 kg/cm². Its wide tracks allowed for superior performance on dirt roads and off-road when compared to contemporary tanks. There were, however, still examples of T-34s getting stuck in mud. For example, in 1944 February 4, the 21st Guards Tank Brigade with 32 T-34, was ordered to proceed by road to Tolstoye Rogi, a journey of approximately 80 kilometers. Of the 32 tanks, no less than 19 got stuck in the mud or suffered mechanical breakdowns.

 

Ergonomics

The original 76mm armed T-34 suffered from the unsatisfactory ergonomic layout of its crew compartment compared to the later 85mm variant. The two-man turret crew arrangement required the commander to aim and fire the gun, an arrangement common to most Soviet tanks of the day. The two-man turret was "cramped and inefficient" and was inferior to the three-man (commander, gunner, and loader) turret crews of German Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks. The Germans noted the T-34 was very slow to find and engage targets while the Panzers could typically get off three rounds for every one fired by the T-34.

 

Early in the war, the commander fought at a further disadvantage; the forward-opening hatch and the lack of a turret cupola forced him to observe the battlefield through a single vision slit and traversable periscope.[81] German commanders liked to fight "heads-up", with their seat raised and having a full field of view – in the T-34 this was impossible. Soviet veterans condemned the turret hatches of the early models. Nicknamed pirozhok ("stuffed bun") because of its characteristic shape, it was heavy and hard to open. The complaints of the crews urged the design group led by Alexander Morozov to switch in August 1942 to using two hatches in the turret.

 

The loader also had a difficult job due to the lack of a turret basket (a rotating floor that moves as the turret turns); the same fault was present on all German tanks prior to the Panzer IV. The floor under the T-34's turret was made up of ammunition stored in small metal boxes, covered by a rubber mat. There were nine ready rounds of ammunition stowed in racks on the sides of the fighting compartment. Once these rounds had been used, the crew had to pull additional ammunition out of the floor boxes, leaving the floor littered with open bins and matting and reducing their performance.

 

The main weakness [of the two-man turret of a T-34 Model 1941] is that it is very tight. The Americans couldn't understand how our tankers could fit inside during a winter when they wear sheepskin jackets. The electrical mechanism for rotating the turret is very bad. The motor is weak, very overloaded and sparks horribly, as a result of which the device regulating the speed of the rotation burns out, and the teeth of the cogwheels break into pieces. They recommend replacing it with a hydraulic or simply manual system. Due to not having a turret basket the crew was [sic] could be injured by getting caught in the drive mechanism, this could leave them out of combat for a while, the lack of a turret basket also caused general discomfort to the crew, having to manually turn.

 

Most of the problems created by the cramped T-34/76 turret, known before the war, were corrected with the provision of a bigger cast three-man turret[86] on the T-34-85 in 1944.

 

General reliability

The T-34's wide track and good suspension gave it excellent cross-country performance. Early in the tank's life, however, this advantage was greatly reduced by the numerous teething troubles the design displayed: a long road trip could be a lethal exercise for a T-34 tank at the start of the war. When in June 1941, the 8th Mechanised Corps under Dmitry Ryabyshev marched 500 km towards Dubno, the corps lost half of its vehicles. A.V. Bodnar, who was in combat in 1941–42, recalled:

 

From the point of view of operating them, the German armoured machines were almost perfect, they broke down less often. For the Germans, covering 200 km was nothing, but with T-34s something would have been lost, something would have broken down. The technological equipment of their machines was better, the combat gear was worse.

 

The T-34 gearbox had four forward and one reverse gear, replaced by a five-speed box on the last of the 1943 model of the T-34.

 

The tracks of early models were the most frequently repaired part. A.V. Maryevski later remembered:

 

The caterpillars used to break apart even without a bullet or shell hits. When earth got stuck between the road wheels, the caterpillar, especially during a turn – strained to such an extent that the pins and tracks themselves couldn't hold out.

 

The USSR donated two combat-used Model 1941 T-34s to the United States for testing purposes in late 1942. The examinations, performed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, highlighted these early faults, which were in turn acknowledged in a 1942 Soviet report on the results of the testing:

 

The Christie's suspension was tested a long time ago by the Americans and unconditionally rejected. On our tanks, as a result of the poor steel on the springs, it very quickly fatigues and as a result clearance is noticeably reduced. The deficiencies in our tracks from their viewpoint result from the lightness of their construction. They can easily be damaged by small-caliber and mortar rounds. The pins are extremely poorly tempered and made of poor steel. As a result, they quickly wear and the track often breaks.

 

Testing at Aberdeen also revealed that engines could grind to a halt from dust and sand ingestion, as the original "Pomon" air filter was almost totally ineffective and had an insufficient air-inflow capacity, starving the combustion chambers of oxygen, lowering compression, and thereby restricting the engine from operating at full capacity. The air filter issue was later remedied by the addition of "Cyclone" filters on the Model 1943, and even more efficient "Multi-Cyclone" filters on the T-34-85.

 

The testing at Aberdeen revealed other problems as well. The turret drive also suffered from poor reliability. The use of poorly machined, low quality steel side friction clutches and the T-34's outdated and poorly manufactured transmission meant frequent mechanical failure occurred and that they "create an inhuman harshness for the driver". A lack of properly installed and shielded radios – if they existed at all – restricted their operational range to under 16 km (9.9 mi).

 

Judging by samples, Russians when producing tanks pay little attention to careful machining or the finishing and technology of small parts and components, which leads to the loss of the advantage what would otherwise accrue from what on the whole are well-designed tanks. Despite the advantages of the use of diesel, the good contours of the tanks, thick armor, good and reliable armaments, the successful design of the tracks etc., Russian tanks are significantly inferior to American tanks in their simplicity of driving, manoeuvrability, the strength of firing (reference to muzzle velocity), speed, the reliability of mechanical construction and the ease of keeping them running.

 

Soviet tests on newly built T-34’s showed that in April 1943 only 10.1% could complete a 330 km trial and in June ’43 this went down to 7.7%. The percentage stayed below 50% till October 1943 when it rose to 78%, in the next month it dropped to 57% and in the period December ’43 – January ’44 the average was 82%. During February 1944 tests, 79% of tanks reached 300 kilometers, and of the test batches 33% reached 1,000 kilometers. This became immediately apparent to the tank troops. The deputy commander of the 1st Guards Tank Army, P. G. Dyner, commented that tanks in 1943 would reach only 75 percent of their guaranteed life span in engine hours and mileage, but in 1944 they reached 150 percent.

 

In 1944 June, a report written by the 2. Panzerjäger-Abteilung Company 128 (23. PzDiv.) described experiences acquired during operations with its Beutepanzer SU-85 and T-34:

 

Despite not having much experience yet, it can be said that the Russian battle tank is not suitable for carrying out long marches as well as high-speed marches. A maximum driving speed of 10–12 km / h has become convenient. During the marches and in order to allow the engines to cool down, it is absolutely necessary to make a stop every half hour for a minimum duration of between fifteen and twenty minutes.

 

Steering gears have caused problems and breakdowns on all new battle tanks. In difficult terrain, during the gears or also during the course of attacks where many changes of direction are made, the steering clutch heats up and covers with oil quickly: consequently the clutch does not engage and it is impossible to maneuver the vehicle. Once it has cooled down, the clutch should be cleaned with copious amounts of fuel.

 

In relation to the armament and based on the experiences acquired so far, it can be affirmed that the power of the 7.62 cm cannon is good. If the barrel is adjusted correctly it has good precision even at great distances. The same can be said of the rest of the automatic weapons of the battle tank. The weapons have good precision and reliability, although a slow rate of fire.

 

The Company has had the same positive experiences with the 8.5 cm assault gun. Regarding the true power of fire compared to the 7.62 cm gun, the Company is not yet able to give details. The effect of explosive projectiles ( Sprenggranaten ) at great distances and its precision is much higher than that of the 7.62 cm cannon.

 

The optical systems of the Russian battle tank are, in comparison with the Germans, much inferior. The German gunner has to get used to the Russian telescopic sight. Observing the impact or the trajectory of the projectile through the telescopic sight is only partially possible. The gunner of the Russian T-43 [sic] battle tank has only a panoramic optic, located in the upper left area, in front of the telescopic sight. In order for the loader to be able to observe the trajectory of the projectile in any case, the Company has additionally incorporated a second panoramic optics for this member of the crew.

 

In the Russian tank it is very difficult to steer the vehicle or a unit and shoot simultaneously. Coordinating fire within a company is only partially possible.

 

On January 29, 1945, the State Defense Committee approved a decree that extended the service life guarantee of the T-34's V-2-34 engine from 200 hours to 250 hours. A report by the 2nd Guards Tank Army in February 1945 revealed that the average engine service life of a T-34 was lower than the official warranty at 185–190 hours. For comparison, the US M4 Sherman had an average engine service life of 195–205 hours.

 

Operational history

Operation Barbarossa (1941)

Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, its invasion of the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941. At the start of hostilities, the Red Army had 967 T-34 tanks and 508 KV tanks concentrated in five of their twenty-nine mechanized corps. The existence of the T-34 and KV heavy tanks proved a psychological shock to German soldiers, who had expected to face an inferior enemy. The T-34 was superior to any tank the Germans then had in service. The diary of Alfred Jodl seems to express surprise at the appearance of the T-34 in Riga, noting "the surprise at this new and thus unknown wunder-armament being unleashed against the German assault divisions". Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, called it "the finest tank in the world" and Heinz Guderian affirmed the T-34's "vast superiority" over German tanks.

 

Initially, the Wehrmacht had great difficulty destroying T-34s in combat, as standard German anti-tank weaponry proved ineffective against its heavy, sloped armour. In one of the first known encounters, a T-34 crushed a 3.7 cm PaK 36, destroyed two Panzer IIs, and left a 14-kilometre (8.7 mi) long swathe of destruction in its wake before a howitzer destroyed it at close range. In another incident, a single Soviet T-34 was hit more than 30 times by a battalion-sized contingent of German 37mm and 50mm anti-tank guns, yet survived intact and drove back to its own lines a few hours later. The inability to penetrate the T-34's armour led to the Germans' standard anti-tank gun, the 37 mm PaK 36, being dubbed the Panzeranklopfgerät ("tank door knocker") because the PaK 36 crew simply revealed their presence and wasted their shells without damaging the T-34's armour. Anti-tank gunners began aiming at tank tracks, or vulnerable margins on the turret ring and gun mantlet, rather than the bow and turret armour. The Germans were forced to deploy 105 mm field guns and 88 mm anti-aircraft guns in a direct fire role to stop them.

 

Despite this, the Soviet corps equipped with these new tanks lost most of them within weeks. The combat statistics for 1941 show that the Soviets lost an average of over seven tanks for every German tank lost. The Soviets lost a total of 20,500 tanks in 1941 (approximately 2,300 of them T-34s, as well as over 900 heavy tanks, mostly KVs). The destruction of the Soviet tank force was accomplished not only by the glaring disparity in the tactical and operational skills of the opponents, but also by mechanical defects that afflicted Soviet armour. Besides the poor state of older tanks, the new T-34s and KVs suffered from initial mechanical and design problems, particularly with regard to clutches and transmissions. Mechanical breakdowns accounted for at least 50 percent of the tank losses in the summer fighting, and recovery or repair equipment was not to be found. The shortage of repair equipment and recovery vehicles led the early T-34 crews to enter combat carrying a spare transmission on the engine deck.

 

Other key factors diminishing the initial impact of T-34s on the battlefield were the poor state of leadership, tank tactics, initial lack of radios in tanks, and crew training; these factors were partially consequences of Stalin's purge of the Soviet officer corps in 1937, reducing the army's efficiency and morale. This was aggravated as the campaign progressed by the loss of many of the properly trained personnel during the Red Army's disastrous defeats early in the invasion. Typical crews went into combat with only basic military training plus 72 hours of classroom instruction; according to historian Steven Zaloga:

 

The weakness of mechanized corps lay not in the design of their equipment, but rather in its poor mechanical state, the inadequate training of their crews, and the abysmal quality of Soviet military leadership in the first month of the war.

 

Further action (1942–1943)

As the invasion progressed, German infantry began receiving increasing numbers of the 7.5 cm Pak 40 anti-tank guns, which were capable of penetrating the T-34's armour at long range. Larger numbers of the 88 mm Flak guns also arrived, which could easily defeat a T-34 at very long ranges, though their size and general unwieldiness meant that they were often difficult to move into position in the rough Soviet terrain.

 

At the same time, the Soviets incrementally upgraded the T-34. The Model 1942 featured increased armour on the turret and many simplified components. The Model 1943 (confusingly also introduced in 1942) had yet more armour, as well as increased fuel capacity and more ammunition storage. Also added were an improved engine air filter and a new clutch mated to an improved and more reliable five-speed transmission. Finally, the Model 1943 also had a new, slightly roomier (but still two-man) turret of a distinctive hexagonal shape that was easier to manufacture, derived from the abandoned T-34M project.

 

The T-34 was essential in resisting the German summer offensive in 1942, and executing the double encirclement manoeuvre that cut off the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in December 1942. The Sixth Army was surrounded, and eventually surrendered in February 1943, a campaign widely regarded as the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front.

 

In 1943, the Soviets formed Polish and Czechoslovak armies-in-exile, and these started to receive the T-34 Model 1943 with a hexagonal turret. Like the Soviet forces themselves, the Polish and Czechoslovak tank crews were sent into action quickly with little training, and suffered high casualties.

 

In July 1943, the Germans launched Operation Citadel, in the region around Kursk, their last major offensive on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. It was the debut of the German Panther tank, although the numbers employed at the resulting Battle of Kursk were small and the brunt of the burden was carried by the Panzer III, StuG III, and Panzer IV. The campaign featured the largest tank battles in history. The high-water mark of the battle was the massive armour engagement at Prokhorovka, which began on 12 July, though the vast majority of armour losses on both sides were caused by artillery and mines, rather than tanks. Over 6,000 fully tracked armoured vehicles, 4,000 combat aircraft, and 2 million men are believed to have participated in these battles.

 

The Soviet high command's decision to focus on one cost-effective design, cutting costs and simplifying production wherever possible while only allowing relatively minor improvements, had proven to be an astute choice for the first two years of the war. However, the battles in the summer of 1943 demonstrated that the 76.2 mm gun of the T-34 was no longer as effective as it was in 1941. Soviet tank crews struggled at longer ranges with the additional frontal armour applied to the later variants of the Panzer III and Panzer IV, and were unable to penetrate the frontal armour of the new German Panther or Tiger I tank at standard combat ranges without tungsten rounds, and had to rely on tactical skill through flanking manoeuvres and combined arms.

 

T-34-85

After improved German Panzer IVs with the high-velocity 7.5cm (2.95 in) KwK 40 gun were encountered in combat in 1942, a project to design an entirely new Soviet tank was begun, with the goals of increasing armour adding modern features like a torsion-bar suspension and a three-man turret. The new tank, the T-43, was intended to be a universal model to replace both the T-34 and the KV-1 heavy tank. However, the T-43 prototype's armour, though heavier, was not capable against German 88 mm guns, while its mobility was found to be inferior to the T-34. Finally, although the T-43 shared over 70% of its components with the T-34, manufacturing it would still have required a significant slow-down in production. Consequently, the T-43 was cancelled.

 

Not only were the weapons of German tanks improving, so was their armour. Soviet firing tests against a captured Tiger I heavy tank in April 1943 showed that the T-34's 76 mm gun could not penetrate the front of the Tiger I at all, and the side only at very close range. A Soviet 85 mm anti-aircraft gun, the M1939 (52-K), was found capable of doing the job, and so derivatives of it were developed for tanks. One of the resulting guns used on the original T-34 85 model (the D-5T) was capable of penetrating the Tiger I's upper hull armour at 1,000 metres. It was still not enough to match the Tiger, which could destroy the T-34 from a distance of 1,500 to 2,000 m (4,900 to 6,600 ft), but it was a noticeable improvement.

 

With the T-43 canceled, the Soviet command made the decision to retool the factories to produce an improved version of the T-34. Its turret ring was enlarged from 1,425 mm (56 in) to 1,600 mm (63 in), allowing a larger turret to be fitted supporting the larger 85 mm gun. The prototype T-43's turret design was hurriedly adopted by Vyacheslav Kerichev at the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory to fit the T-34. This was a larger three-man turret, with radio (previously in the hull) and observation cupola in the roof. Now the tank commander needed only to command (aided by cupola and radio systems), leaving the operation of the gun to the gunner and the loader. The turret was bigger and less sloped than the original T-34 turret, making it a bigger target (due to the three-man crew and bigger gun), but with thicker 90 mm armour, making it more resistant to enemy fire. The shells were 50% heavier (9 kg) and were much better in the anti-armour role, and reasonable in a general purpose role, though only 55–60 could be carried, instead of 90–100 of the earlier shells. The resulting new tank, the T-34-85, was seen as a compromise between advocates for the T-43 and others who wanted to continue to build as many 76 mm-armed T-34s as possible without interruption.

 

Production of the T-34-85 began in January 1944 at Factory No. 112, first using the D-5T 85 mm gun. Parallel to the production of the T-34-85 with the D-5T gun, production of the T-34-85 using the S-53 gun (later to be modified and redesignated as the ZIS-S-53 gun) began in February 1944 at Factory No. 112. The improved T-34-85 became the standard Soviet medium tank, with an uninterrupted production run until the end of the war. A T-34-85 initially cost about 30 percent more to produce than a Model 1943, at 164,000 Rbls; by 1945 this had been reduced to 142,000 Rbls during the course of World War II the cost of a T-34 tank had almost halved, from 270,000 Rbls in 1941, while its top speed remained about the same, and its main gun's armour penetration and turret frontal armour thickness both nearly doubled.

 

The T-34-85 gave the Red Army a tank with better armour and mobility than the German Panzer IV tank and StuG III assault gun. While it could not match the armour or weapons of the heavier Panther and Tiger tanks, its improved firepower made it much more effective than earlier models, and overall it was more cost-effective than the heaviest German tanks. In comparison with the T-34-85 program, the Germans instead chose an upgrade path based on the introduction of completely new, expensive, heavier, and more complex tanks, greatly slowing the growth of their tank production and helping the Soviets to maintain a substantial numerical superiority in tanks. By May 1944, T-34-85 production had reached 1,200 tanks per month. In the entire war, production figures for all Panther types reached no more than 6,557, and for all Tiger types (including the Tiger I and Tiger II) 2,027. Production figures for the T-34-85 alone reached 22,559.

 

On 12 January 1945, a column of Tiger IIs and other tanks from 424th Heavy Panzer Battalion were involved in a short-range engagement with T-34-85 tanks near the village of Lisow. Forty T-34-85 tanks commanded by Colonel N. Zhukov were attacked by the 424th Heavy Panzer battalion, which had been reinforced by 13 Panthers. The Germans permanently lost five Tiger IIs, seven Tiger Is and five Panthers for the loss of four T-34-85 tanks burnt out.

 

German use of T-34s

The German army often employed as much captured materiel as possible and T-34s were not an exception. Large numbers of T-34s were captured in fighting on the Eastern Front though few were T-34-85s. These were designated by the Germans as Panzerkampfwagen T-34 747. From late 1941, captured T-34s were transported to a German workshop for repairs and modification to German requirements. In 1943 a local tank factory in Kharkiv was used for this purpose. These were sometimes modified to German standards by the installation of a German commander's cupola and radio equipment.

 

The first captured T-34s entered German service during the summer of 1941. In order to prevent recognition mistakes, large-dimension crosses or even swastikas were painted on the tanks, including on top of the turret, in order to prevent attack by Axis aircraft. Badly damaged tanks were either dug in as pillboxes or were used for testing and training purposes.

 

After the end of World War II, East Germany continued to utilize the T-34.

 

Manchurian campaign (August 1945)

Just after midnight on 9 August 1945, though the terrain was believed by the Japanese to be impassable by armoured formations, the Soviet Union invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Red Army combined-arms forces achieved complete surprise and used a powerful, deep-penetrating attack in a classic double encirclement pattern, spearheaded by the T-34-85. The opposing Japanese forces had been reduced as elite units had been drawn off to other fronts and the remaining forces were in the middle of a redeployment. The Japanese tanks remaining to face them were all held in the rear and not used in combat; the Japanese had weak support from IJAAF forces, engineering, and communications. Japanese forces were overwhelmed, though some put up resistance. The Japanese emperor transmitted a surrender order on 14 August, but the Kwantung Army was not given a formal cease-fire until 17 August.

 

Korean War (1950–1953)

A full North Korean People's Army (KPA) brigade equipped with about 120 Soviet-supplied T-34-85s spearheaded the invasion of South Korea in June 1950. The WWII-era 2.36-inch bazookas initially used by the US troops in South Korea were useless against the KPA's T-34 tanks, as were the 75 mm main guns of the M24 Chaffee light tank. However, following the introduction of heavier and more capable armour into the war by US and UN forces, such as the American M4 Sherman, M26 Pershing and M46 Patton tanks, as well as the British Comet and Centurion tanks, the KPA began to suffer more T-34 tank losses in combat from enemy armour, aside from further losses due to numerous US/UN airstrikes and increasingly-effective anti-tank firepower for US/UN infantry on the ground, such as the then-new 3.5-inch M20 "Super Bazooka" (replacing the earlier 2.36-inch model). By the time the NKPA were forced to withdraw from the south, about 239 T-34s and 74 SU-76 assault guns had been lost or abandoned. After October 1950, NKPA armour was rarely encountered. Despite China's entry into the conflict in the following month, no major armour deployments were carried out by them, as the Chinese focus was on massed infantry attacks rather than large-scale armour assaults. Several T-34-85s and a few IS-2 tanks were fielded, primarily dispersed amongst their infantry, thus making armoured engagements with US and UN forces rare from then on.

 

A Chinese T-34 tank No. 215 from 4th Tank Regiment, 2nd Tank Division, allegedly destroyed four enemy tanks and damaged another M46 Patton tank during its fight from 6 to 8 July 1953. It also destroyed 26 bunkers,9 artillery pieces, and a truck. That tank is now preserved in the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution.

 

In summary, a 1954 US military survey concluded that there were, in all, 119 tanks vs. tank actions involving US Army and US Marine units against North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War, with 97 T-34-85 tanks knocked out and another 18 considered probable. American losses were somewhat greater.

 

Angolan Civil War (1975–1988)

One of the last modern conflicts which saw the extensive combat deployment of the T-34-85 was the Angolan Civil War. In 1975, the Soviet Union shipped eighty T-34-85s to Angola as part of its support for the ongoing Cuban military intervention there. Cuban crewmen instructed FAPLA personnel in their operation; other FAPLA drivers and gunners accompanied Cuban crews in an apprentice role.

 

FAPLA began deploying T-34-85s against the UNITA and FNLA forces on June 9, 1975. The appearance of FAPLA and Cuban tanks prompted South Africa to reinforce UNITA with a single squadron of Eland-90 armoured cars.

 

Other regions and countries

In early 1991, the Yugoslav People's Army possessed 250 T-34-85s, none of which were in active service. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, the T-34-85s were inherited by the national armies of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro and continued to see action during the Yugoslav Wars. Some were also acquired from Yugoslav reserve stocks by Serbian separatist armies, namely the Army of the Republic of Serb Krajina (SVK) and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). Most of these tanks were in poor condition at the beginning of the conflict and some were soon rendered unserviceable, likely through inadequate maintenance and lack of spares.

 

On 3 May 1995, a VRS T-34-85 attacked an UNPROFOR outpost manned by the 21st Regiment of the Royal Engineers in Maglaj, Bosnia, injuring six British peacekeepers, with at least one of them sustaining a permanent disability. A number of T-34s being stored by the VRS at a base in Zvornik were temporarily confiscated by UNPROFOR as part of a local disarmament programme the following year.

 

Middle East

Czechoslovak-produced T-34-85s were used by Egypt in the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1956 and 1967 (Six-Day War) in the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt went on to build the T-34-100, a local and unique conversion that was made up of a Soviet BS-3 100 mm heavy field-artillery gun mounted within a heavily modified turret, as well as the T-34-122 mounting the D-30 gun. In 1956, they were used as regular tanks to support Egyptian infantry, the tank was still in use by the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.

 

The Syrian Army also received T-34-85s from the Soviet Union and they took part in the many artillery duels with Israeli tanks in November 1964 and in the Six-Day War of 1967.

 

Warsaw Pact

T-34-85s equipped many of the armies of Eastern European countries (later forming the Warsaw Pact) and the armies of other Soviet client-states elsewhere. East German, Hungarian and Soviet T-34-85s served in the suppression of the East German uprising of 17 June 1953 as well as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

 

Afghanistan

T-34-85s were sporadically available in Afghanistan. During the Soviet–Afghan War, most of the T-34s were fielded by the Sarandoy internal security forces. Some were also kept in service with the Army of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

 

China

After the formation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Soviet Union sent many T-34-85s to the PRC's People's Liberation Army (PLA). Factory 617 had the ability to produce every part of the T-34-85, and during decades of service many modifications were made that visibly distinguish the PRC T-34-85 from the original specification, but no T-34-85 was actually made in China. The production plan of the T-34-85 in China was ended soon after the PRC received T-54A main battle tanks from the Soviet Union and began to build the Type 59 tank, a licensed production version of the T-54A.

 

Cuba

Cuba received 150 T-34-85 tanks as military aid from the Soviet Union in 1960. The T-34-85 was the first Soviet tank to enter service with the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), along with the IS-2. Many T-34-85 tanks first saw action in April 1961 during the Bay of Pigs Invasion with an unknown number destroyed or knocked out during the battle. In 1975, many T-34-85s were also donated by the USSR to the FAR to support its lengthy intervention in the Angolan Civil War.

 

A platoon of five Cuban T-34-85s saw combat in Angola against South African troops during the Battle of Cassinga. The tanks were based along with a company of Cuban mechanized infantry equipped with BTR-152 armoured personnel carriers. In May 1978, South Africa launched a major airborne raid on Cassinga with the objective of destroying a SWAPO (South West African People's Organisation) base there. The Cuban forces were mobilised to stop them. As they approached Cassinga they were strafed by South African aircraft, which destroyed most of the BTR-152s and three of the T-34-85s; a fourth T-34-85 was disabled by an anti-tank mine buried in the road. The remaining tank continued to engage the withdrawing South African paratroops from a hull down position until the battle was over.

 

Over a hundred Cuban T-34-85s and their respective crews remained in Angola as of the mid 1980s. In September 1986, Cuban president Fidel Castro complained to General Konstantin Kurochkin, head of the Soviet military delegation to Angola, that his men could no longer be expected to fight South African armour with T-34s of "World War II vintage"; Castro insisted that the Soviets furbish the Cuban forces with a larger quantity of T-55s. By 1987 Castro's request appeared to have been granted, as Cuban tank battalions were able to deploy substantial numbers of T-54Bs, T-55s, and T-62s; the T-34-85 was no longer in service.

 

Cyprus

Cypriot National Guard forces equipped with some 35 T-34-85 tanks helped to support a coup by the Greek junta against President Archbishop Makarios on 15 July 1974. They also saw extensive action against Turkish forces during the Turkish invasion in July and August 1974, with two major actions at Kioneli and at Kyrenia on 20 July 1974.

 

Namibia

In 1984, the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) made a concerted attempt to establish its own conventional armoured battalion through its armed wing, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). As part of this effort, SWAPO diplomatic representatives in Europe approached the German Democratic Republic with a request for ten T-34 tanks, which were delivered. PLAN T-34s were never deployed during offensive operations against the South African military, being confined to the role of protecting strategic bases inside northern Angola.

 

By 1988 the PLAN T-34-85s had been stationed near Luanda, where their crews received training from Cuban instructors. In March 1989, the PLAN tanks were mobilised and moved south towards the Namibian border. South Africa accused PLAN of planning a major offensive to influence Namibia's pending general elections, but the tank crews did not cross the border and refrained from intervening in a series of renewed clashes later that year. Between 1990 and 1991, SWAPO ordered the PLAN tanks in Angola repatriated to Namibia at its own expense. Four later entered service with the new Namibian Army.

 

Finland

The Soviet and Finnish armies used T-34s until the 1960s; the former included the 76.2 mm-armed versions until at least 1968, when they were used in filming the sequel to the movie The Alive and the Dead. The Finnish tanks were captured directly from the Soviets or purchased from Germany's captured stocks. Many of the Т-34-85s were enhanced with Finnish or Western equipment, such as improved optics.

 

Vietnam

During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army was equipped with many Soviet T-34-85 and these were used in the Operation Lam Son 719, the 1972 Easter Offensive and the 1975 Spring Offensive. They were later used during the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea and the Sino-Vietnamese War. A small number are currently being used as trainers. The rest are in storage and no longer serve as active duty battle tanks.

 

Yemen

In 2015, both T-34-85 Model 1969 tanks and SU-100 self-propelled guns were photographed being used in Houthi takeover in Yemen. Some were even being fitted with anti-tank guided missiles.

 

Current active service

In 2018, there were nine countries that maintained T-34s in the inventories of their national armed forces: Cuba, Yemen, the Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. Of these operators, Vietnam possessed the largest known surviving fleet of T-34 series tanks, with 45. Yemen possessed 30, Guinea 30, Guinea-Bissau 10, Mali 21, and Laos 30. It was unclear how many Cuban and North Korean T-34s remained in service. All the Congolese, Namibian and Malian tanks were believed to be in reserve storage or inoperable. The Laotian Army retired its T-34s in early 2019 and sold them to Russia, to be used for public displays and museum exhibits.

 

Successors

In 1944, pre-war development of a more advanced T-34 tank was resumed, leading to the T-44. The new tank had a turret design based on the T-34-85's, but featured a new hull with torsion-bar suspension and transversely mounted engine; it had a lower profile than the T-34-85 and was simpler to manufacture. Between 150 and 200 of these tanks were built before the end of the war. With substantial drivetrain changes, a new turret, and 100 mm gun, it became the T-54, starting production in 1947

Near Kawkaban, Yemen.

Pretty exciting ‼️

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time on Thursday about the airstrike overnight on Houthi targets in Yemen.

 

According to Netanyahu, "We did this in response to the Houthis' repetitive attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Last night, they attacked a school in Ramat Gan.

 

"They don't attack just us, they attack the entire world. They attack the international shipping and trade routes. So when Israel operates against the Houthis, it works for the entire international community. The Americans understand this well, and so do many others."

 

He further stated: "After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the only arm that the Iranian axis of evil has left. They are learning and they will learn that those who hurt Israel - pay a very heavy price."

 

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‎נתניהו על התקיפה בתימן

‎עומר מירון/ לע״מ, סאונד: יחזקאל קנדיל/ לע״מ

 

Related articles:

Footage shows pilots taking off for Yemen strike

 

Warhead from Houthi missile falls in Ramat Gan school

 

Smotrich: 'Very good things were done last night in Yemen'

 

New details on the bombings in Yemen

The main objective of the IDF airstrikes was to shut down all three ports controlled by the Houthis.

 

The Air Force attacked targets in the port of Hodeidah and the capital Sana'a, approximately 2,000 km from Israel. The Houthis have launched about 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones towards Israel since the war began. Most were intercepted, but some managed to penetrate Israeli airspace. In July, a drone from Yemen caused the death of Evgeny Freder in Tel Aviv.

 

The first wave of the attack began at 3:15 AM in the coastal area of Yemen, with the second following at 4:30 AM in Sana'a. Fourteen fighter jets, covering more than 1,700 km, participated, targeting the ports of Ras Issa, Hodeidah, and the Al-Salif port. In total, eight tugboats were attacked. In Sana'a, fuel tanks, oil, and a power station were targeted.

Pretty exciting ‼️

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time on Thursday about the airstrike overnight on Houthi targets in Yemen.

 

According to Netanyahu, "We did this in response to the Houthis' repetitive attacks on civilian targets in Israel. Last night, they attacked a school in Ramat Gan.

 

"They don't attack just us, they attack the entire world. They attack the international shipping and trade routes. So when Israel operates against the Houthis, it works for the entire international community. The Americans understand this well, and so do many others."

 

He further stated: "After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the only arm that the Iranian axis of evil has left. They are learning and they will learn that those who hurt Israel - pay a very heavy price."

 

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00:50

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Enter fullscreen

 

Play

נתניהו על התקיפה בתימן

עומר מירון/ לע״מ, סאונד: יחזקאל קנדיל/ לע״מ

 

Related articles:

Footage shows pilots taking off for Yemen strike

 

Warhead from Houthi missile falls in Ramat Gan school

 

Smotrich: 'Very good things were done last night in Yemen'

 

New details on the bombings in Yemen

The main objective of the IDF airstrikes was to shut down all three ports controlled by the Houthis.

 

The Air Force attacked targets in the port of Hodeidah and the capital Sana'a, approximately 2,000 km from Israel. The Houthis have launched about 200 ballistic missiles and 170 drones towards Israel since the war began. Most were intercepted, but some managed to penetrate Israeli airspace. In July, a drone from Yemen caused the death of Evgeny Freder in Tel Aviv.

 

The first wave of the attack began at 3:15 AM in the coastal area of Yemen, with the second following at 4:30 AM in Sana'a. Fourteen fighter jets, covering more than 1,700 km, participated, targeting the ports of Ras Issa, Hodeidah, and the Al-Salif port. In total, eight tugboats were attacked. In Sana'a, fuel tanks, oil, and a power station were targeted.

Following a lay over at Gibraltar, HMS Diamond has rearmed her Sea Ceptor anti-air missiles, refuelled, restocked and conducted maintenance and this morning heads out to sea again. She is expected to be deployed back in the Red Sea to protect shipping from Houthi anti-ship and cruise missile attacks.

 

During her last deployment, HMS Diamond intercepted and downed nine Houthi drones.

The Wahhabi Mind-Set: www.goharshahi.us/articles/view/the-mind-set-of-wahhabis/

  

What the world needs to know about 'Islamic' Terrorism.

  

#SaudiArabia #Wahhabism #Wahhabi #Mindset #Article #ISIS #Salafism #Salafi #philosophy #shiite #terrorism #islamicterrorism #deobandi #extremism #fanaticism #fundamentalism #puritan #ISIL #Daesh #Yemen #Hadith #Quran #ProphetMohammad #Muhammad #Mohammad #sharia #fundamental #airstrikes #alqaeda #houthi

 

The streets of Aden is covered with banners and flags that are symbols of South Yemen and part of the southern secessionist movement against the Sanaa regime.

 

Aden was once one of the busiest harbour in the world when it was under British rule. The great natural harbour protected by a dead volcano crater and being midway between the Orient/India and Africa/Europe made it the perfect stop for ships to refuel and resupplied. After the British left in the late 1960s, Aden became the capital of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), the only communist Arab state that had ever existed.

 

With the collapse of the USSR it was reunited with the rest of Yemen in 1990. However, many in south Yemen and Aden today still supports a secessionist movement away from the north, despite the defeat in the brief civil war against the north in 1994 and the continuing brutal suppression by the Sanaa regime.

 

The future of Aden remains unclear - during my visit in 2012 Aden was besieged by the growing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) movement that had plagued the rest of south Yemen, controlling towns and cities not far from Aden. Since the Yemeni Civil War in 2015, the Sanaa regime had been pushed out of the capital by the Houthis rebels and currently have their HQ based in Aden, protected by Saudi-Arabia and other Gulf countries.

 

Aden, Yemen.

The old Anglican Church is a landmark in Tawila district in Aden. Built during the British colonial era, the church was closed after the British left in the 1960s and was temporarily a police station before it was abandoned and restored. When I was there in 2012 it was being restored into a museum, which due to the ongoing civil war I would have imagined it to be abandoned once again.

 

Aden was once one of the busiest harbour in the world when it was under British rule. The great natural harbour protected by a dead volcano crater and being midway between the Orient/India and Africa/Europe made it the perfect stop for ships to refuel and resupplied. After the British left in the late 1960s, Aden became the capital of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), the only communist Arab state that had ever existed.

 

With the collapse of the USSR it was reunited with the rest of Yemen in 1990. However, many in south Yemen and Aden today still supports a secessionist movement away from the north, despite the defeat in the brief civil war against the north in 1994 and the continuing brutal suppression by the Sanaa regime.

 

The future of Aden remains unclear - during my visit in 2012 Aden was besieged by the growing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) movement that had plagued the rest of south Yemen, controlling towns and cities not far from Aden. Since the Yemeni Civil War in 2015, the Sanaa regime had been pushed out of the capital by the Houthis rebels and currently have their HQ based in Aden, protected by Saudi-Arabia and other Gulf countries.

 

Aden, Yemen.

Event arranged by Chicago Area Peace Action group.

 

The blue backpacks stand for each one of the children killed in the Saudi bombing attack on a school bus. They used a 500 pound bomb manufactured by Lockheed-Martin.

 

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

A family rests in a tent in Al-Mazrak displacement camp in Hajja Governorate. About 250,000 people have been displaced by hostilities between Government forces and the armed group known as Al Houthis. UNICEF is supporting these people with water & sanitation, nutrition, education and child protection services. © UNICEF Yemen/2009/Naseem ur-Rehman

Thanks to Putin, many of my friends now live in different parts of the world. When Putin started the war with Ukraine, a huge number of Russians left the country—myself included. I, however, ended up in Israel. Double bingo, if you know what I mean. Not long ago, I was planning to go to London, but the Houthis from Yemen launched a missile near Ben Gurion Airport, so foreign airlines stopped flying here. But I found out that there’s a flight from Haifa to Larnaca, and from there, you can fly anywhere. My friends lived in Larnaca, so I stayed overnight with them and flew to London the next morning, not forgetting to take a photo of them. Long live friendship. And I can’t help but say—I know the world now loves to hate Israel. And we get bombed every other day. If before it was Gaza and Lebanon bombing us, now it’s the Houthis. Honestly, it’s exhausting. But no matter, the people of Israel are alive.

Following a lay over at Gibraltar, HMS Diamond has rearmed her Sea Ceptor anti-air missiles, refuelled, restocked and conducted maintenance and this morning heads out to sea again. She is expected to be deployed back in the Red Sea to protect shipping from Houthi anti-ship and cruise missile attacks.

 

During her last deployment, HMS Diamond intercepted and downed nine Houthi drones.

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

Hababah, Yemen.

At least 15 people, including children, where killed when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a home in the southwestern city of Taiz on Monday, Yemeni tribal officials said.

The air raid struck the house in the Dimnat Khadir district, an area that has seen heavy fighting between Saudi-backed government forces and Houthi rebels.

The tribal officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

More than 10,000 Yemenis have been killed and 53,000 wounded since the start of the coalition intervention in Yemen.

Civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes have drawn criticism from rights groups, and in October the United Nations placed the alliance on a "blacklist" for killing and maiming children.

The UN is making a fresh push for peace talks in Yemen, where the coalition acted to support the internationally-recognized government after the Houthis seized the capital.

Earlier this month, the UN asked donors for nearly $3 billion to help an estimated 13 million people who urgently need aid in war-ravaged Yemen.

"Yemen is the world's worst humanitarian crisis," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, calling the situation "catastrophic."

more pics from Hadramawt desert

© Eric Lafforgue

www.ericlafforgue.com

Near Hababah, Yemen.

Near Hababah, Yemen.

Sunni Islam and Shia Islam are the two major divisions of Islam. Approximately 85% of Muslims are Sunni and 15% are Shi'a, with a small minority belonging to other sects. The historic background of the Sunni-Shia split lies in the schism that occurred when the Islamic prophet Muhammad died in the year 632, leading to a dispute over succession to Muhammad.

 

Over the years Sunni-Shia relations have been marked by both cooperation and conflict. Today there are differences in religious practice, traditions, and customs in addition to religious belief.

 

Differences in beliefs and practices

The Shia believe that Muhammad divinely ordained his cousin and son-in-law Ali (the father of his only two grandsons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali) in accordance with the command of God to be the next caliph, making Ali and his direct descendants Muhammad's true successors. The Sunnis hold that Abu Bakr was Muhammad's rightful successor and that all caliphs should be chosen by consensus of the Ummah, Muslim community, and that this method of choosing or electing leaders (Shura) is endorsed by the Qur'an.

 

Sunnis follow the Rashidun (rightly-guided caliphs), which were the first four caliphs who ruled after the death of Muhammad (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman Ibn Affan, and Ali). Shias discount the legitimacy of the first three caliphs and believe that Ali is the second-most divinly inspired man (after Muhammad) and that he and his descendents by Muhammad's daughter Fatimah, the Imamah (Shia imans) are the sole legitimate Islamic leaders.

 

The Shias accept most of the the same hadiths used by Sunnis as part of the Sunna and to argue their case. In addition they use hadith narrated by the Ahl al-Bayt (the prophet's family through Ali), that Sunni do not consider hadith. Some Sunni-accepted hadith are less favored by Shia, for example, because of Aisha's opposition to Ali (whom they believe to have been divinely appointed by Mohammad), hadith narrated by Aisha are not given the same authority as those by other companions.

 

A rift also still exists between Sunnis and some small Shia branches who curse Aisha (RA) and the first three Caliphs. Sunnis strongly disagree with this practice. Mainstream Shias do not consider the cursing of the first three caliphs as a sin, but neither do they consider it helpful to the Shia cause, and hence do not endorsing it.[1]

 

When prostrating during ritual prayer, (Salah), Shia place their forehead onto a piece of naturally occurring material (usually clay, or sand from Kerbala, the place where Imam Hussain was martyred), instead of directly onto the prayer mat, as the majority Sunni do. (There is some question as to how different this is from Sunni practice, since the Prophet prayed on soil or earth, not synthetic materials, and since it is always preferrable to do as the Prophet did, and since most mats and carpets nowadays are made of semi or partially synthetic material.[2])

 

Some Shia perform prayers (Salah), back to back, sometimes worshipping two times consecutively (1+2+2), thus praying at three separate times during the day instead of five as is required by Sunni.[3]

 

Most Sunni and Shia believe that the Mahdi will appear at end times to bring about a perfect and just Islamic society. Twelver Shia believe the Mahdi will be Muhammad al-Mahdi, the twelfth Imam returned from occultation where he has been hidden by God since 874 AD. Sunni do not accept this.

 

Some Shia permit mutah - fixed-term temporary marriage - which is not acceptable within the Sunni community. Sunnis do not allow it due to the Prophet's ban of it, but according to Shia it was banned by Umar.

  

[edit] History

 

[edit] Abbasid era

The Umayyads were overthrown in 750 by a new dynasty, the Abbasids. The first Abbasid caliph, As-Saffah recruited Shiite support in his campaign against the Umayyads by emphasizing his blood relationship to the Prophet's household through descent from his uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib. The Shia also believe that he promised them that the Caliphate, or at least religious authority, would be vested in the Shiite Imam. As-Saffah assumed both the temporal and religious mantle of Caliph himself. He continued the Umayyad dynastic practice of succession, and his brother al-Mansur succeeded him in 754. The sixth Shi'a Imam died during al-Mansur's reign, and there were claims that he was murdered on the orders of the caliph.[4].

 

However Abbasid persecution of Islamic lawyers was not restricted to the Shia. Even the Sunni scholar and founder of the biggest Sunni school of law, Abu Hanifah, was imprisoned by al-Mansur and tortured. Al-Mansur also had Ibn Hanbal, another one of the four major schools of Sunni law, flogged.[5]

 

Shia sources further claim that by the orders of the tenth Abassid caliph, al-Mutawakkil, the tomb of the third Shia Imam Husayn ibn Ali in Karbala was completely demolished,[6] and Shias were sometimes beheaded in groups, buried alive, or even placed alive within the walls of government buildings still under construction.[7]

 

The Shia believe that they thus continued to live for the most part in hiding and followed their religious life secretly without external manifestations.[8]

  

[edit] Shia-Sunni in Persia

Main article: Islam in Iran

Sunni was dominant form of Islam in most part of Iran from the beginning until rise of Safavids empire. According to Mortaza Motahhari the majority of Iranian scholars and masses remained Sunni till the time of the Safawids.[9]

 

Nizamiyyas were the medieval institutions of Islamic higher education established by Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk in the eleventh century. Nizamiyyah institutes were the first well organized universities in the Muslim world. The most famous and celebrated of all the nizamiyyah schools was Al-Nizamiyya of Baghdad (established 1065), where Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk appointed the distinguished philosopher and theologian, al-Ghazali, as a professor. Other nizamiyyah schools were located in Nishapur, Balkh, Herat and Isfahan.

 

The domination of Sunnis doesn't mean Shia was rootless in Iran. The writers of The Four Books of Shia were Iranian as well as many other great Shia scholars.

 

According to Mortaza Motahhari[9]:

 

The majority of Iranians turned to Shi'ism from the Safawid period onwards. Of course, it cannot be denied that Iran's environment was more favourable to the flourishing of the Shi'ism as compared to all other parts of the Muslim world. Shi'ism did not penetrate any land to the extent that it gradually could in Iran. With the passage of time, Iranians' readiness to practise Shi'ism grew day by day. Had Shi`ism not been deeply rooted in the Iranian spirit, the Safawids (907-1145/ 1501-1732) would not have succeeded in converting Iranians to the Shi'a creed and making them follow the Prophet's Ahl al-Bayt sheerly by capturing political power.

  

[edit] Shiaism in Iran before Safawids

The domination of the Sunni creed during the first nine Islamic centuries characterizes the religious history of Iran during this period. There were however some exceptions to this general domination which emerged in the form of the Zaydīs of Tabaristan, the Buwayhid, the rule of Sultan Muhammad Khudabandah (r. Shawwal 703-Shawwal 716/1304-1316) and the Sarbedaran. Nevertheless, apart from this domination there existed, firstly, throughout these nine centuries, Shia inclinations among many Sunnis of this land and, secondly, original Imami Shiism as well as Zaydī Shiism had prevalence in some parts of Iran. During this period, Shia in Iran were nourished from Kufah, Baghdad and later from Najaf and Hillah. [10] Shiism were dominant sect in Tabaristan, Qom, Kashan, Avaj and Sabzevar. In many other areas the population of Shia and Sunni was mixed.

 

The first Zaidi state was established in Daylaman and Tabaristan (northern Iran) in 864 C.E. by the Alavids[11]; it lasted until the death of its leader at the hand of the Samanids in 928 C.E. Roughly forty years later the state was revived in Gilan (north-western Iran) and survived under Hasanid leaders until 1126 C.E. After which from the 12th-13th centuries, the Zaidis of Daylaman, Gilan and Tabaristan then acknowledge the Zaidi Imams of Yemen or rival Zaidi Imams within Iran.[12]

 

The Buyids, who were Shi'a and had a significant influence not only in the provinces of Persia but also in the capital of the caliphate in Baghdad, and even upon the caliph himself, provided a unique opportunity for the spread and diffusion of Shi'a thought. This spread of Shiism to the inner circles of the government enabled Shias to withstand those who opposed them by relying upon the power of the caliphate.

 

Twelvers came to Iran from Arab regions in the course of four stages. First, through the Asharis tribe at the end of the first(AH)/seventh(CE) and during the second(AH)/eighth(CE) century. Second through the pupils of Sabzevar, and especially those of Shaykh Mufid, who were from Ray and Sabzawar and resided in those cities. Third, through the school of Hillah under the leadership of Allama Hilli and his son Fakhr al-Muhaqqiqin. Fourth, through the scholars of Jabal Amel residing in that region, or in Iraq, during the 10th(AH)/16th(AH) and 11th(AH)/17th(AH) centuries who later migrated to Iran.[13]

 

On the other hand Ismailis sent Da'i (missionaries) during Fatimid caliphate to Iran as well as other Muslim lands. When Ismailis divided into two sects, Nizaris established their base in Iran. Hassan-i Sabbah conquered fortresses and captured Alamut in 1090 CE. Nizaris used this fortress until Mongol raid in 1256CE.

 

After the Mongol raid and fall of the Abbasids, the Sunni ulema suffered greatly. In addition to the destruction of the caliphate there was no official Sunni Madh'hab for a while. Many libraries and Madrasahs were destroyed and some of the Sunni scholars migrated to other Islamic lands like Anatolia and Egypt. In contrast Shia where unaffected as their center was not in Iran at this time. For the first time Shia could invite other Muslims openly.

 

Several local Shia dynasties like Sarbadars were established during this time. The kings of the Aq Qoynlu and Qara Qoynlu dynasties ruled in Tabriz with a domain extending to Fars and Kerman. In Egypt the Fatimid government ruled (al-Ka-mil of Ibn Athir, Cairo, 1348; Raudat al-safa'; and Habib al-siyar of Khwand Mir).

 

Shah Muhammad Khudabandah, the famous builder of Soltaniyeh, was among the first of the Mongols to convert to Shi'aism, and his descendants ruled for many years in Persia and were instrumental in spreading Shia thought.[14]

 

Sufism played a major role in spread of Shiism in this time. According to Hossein Nasr

 

After the Mongol invasion Shiims and Sufism once again formed a close association in many ways. Some of the Ismailis whose power had broken by the mongols, went underground and appeared later within Sufi orders or as new branches of already existing orders. In Twelve-Imam Shiism also from Seventh(AH)/thirteenths(CE) to the tenth(AH)/sixteenth(CE) century Sufism began to grow within official Shiite circles.[15]

 

Nasr insists on the role of Sufis orders on spread of Shiism.

 

The extremist sects of the Hurufis and Shasha'a grew directly out of a background that is both Shiite and Sufi. More important in the long run than these sects were the Sufi orders which spread in Persia at this time and aided in the preparing the ground for the Shiite movement of Safavids. Two of these orders are of particular significance in this question of the relation of Shiism and Sufism:The Nimatullahi order and Nurbakhshi order.[16]

  

[edit] Shiaism in Iran after Safawids

Ismail I initiated a religious policy to recognize Shi'a Islam as the official religion of the Safavid Empire, and the fact that modern Iran remains an officially Shi'ite state is a direct result of Ismail's actions. Unfortunately for Ismail, most of his subjects were Sunni. He thus had to enforce official Shi'ism violently, putting to death those who opposed him. Under this pressure, Safavid subjects either converted, or pretended to convert, but it is safe to say that the majority of the population was probably genuinely Shi'ite by the end of the Safavid period in the 18th century, and most Iranians today are Shi'ite, although there is still a Sunni minority.[17] Safavids systematically sought to establish Shiism as the religion of the state.

 

Immediately following the establishment of Safavid power the migration of scholars began and they were invited to Iran ... By the side of the immigration of scholars, Shi'i works and writings were also brought to Iran from Arabic-speaking lands, and they performed an important role in the religious development of Iran ... In fact, since the time of the leadership of Shaykh Mufid and Shaykh Tusi, Iraq had a central academic position for Shi'ism. This central position was transferred to Iran during the Safavid era for two-and-a-half centuries, after which it partly returned to Najaf. ... Before the Safavid era Shi'i manuscripts were mainly written in Iraq, with the establishment of the Safavid rule these manuscripts were transferred to Iran.[13]

 

This led to a wide gap between Iran and its Sunni neighbors until 20th century. During the early days of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini endeavored to bridge the gap between Shiites and Sunnis by declared it permissible for Shiites to pray behind Sunni imams and by forbidding criticizing the Caliphs who preceded Ali — an issue that had caused much animosity between the two sects.[18]

  

[edit] Shia-Sunni in Levant

Shias claim that despite these advances, many Shi'as in Syria continued to be killed during this period merely for being Shi'ah. One of these was Muhammad Ibn Makki called Shahid-i Awwal (the First Martyr), one of the great figures in Shi'a jurisprudence, who was killed in Damascus in 1384CE (al-Ka-mil of Ibn Athir, Cairo, 1348; Raudat al-safa'; and Habib al-siyar of Khwand Mir).

 

Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi was another eminent scholar, killed in Aleppo on charges of cultivating Batini teachings and philosophy (al-Ka-mil of Ibn Athir, Cairo, 1348; Raudat al-safa'; and Habib al-siyar of Khwand Mir).

  

[edit] Modern Sunni-Shia relations

Western scholars have agreed that a realistic measure of Sunni Shia numbers is 85% Sunni, 13% Shia with the remaining 2% forming other groups. [citation needed]In addition to Iran, Iraq has emerged as a major Shia government when the Shi'a achieved political dominance in 2005 under American occupation.

 

The two communities have often remained separate, mingling regularly only during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. In some countries like Iraq, Syria, and Bahrain, communities have mingled and intermarried. Shias have been treated harshly in some countries dominated by Sunnis, especially in Saudi Arabia, while Sunnis have been treated likewise in Shia-majority Iran.

  

[edit] Iraq

 

A heated talk show where a Sunni Iraqi member of parliament attacks a Shia journalist, while claiming that "these same people that killed Saddam are the same people that killed the Khulafa al-Rashidun".See video footage:[19]According to most sources, including The CIA World Factbook, the majority of Iraqis are Shi'ite Arab Muslims (around 65%), and Sunnis represent about 32% of the population.[20] However, Sunni are split ethnically between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. Many Sunnis hotly dispute their minority status, including ex-Iraqi Ambassador Faruq Ziada,[21] referring to American sources.[22] They claim that many reports or sources only include Arab Sunnis as 'Sunni', missing out the Kurdish and Turkmen Sunnis. Some argue that the 2003 Iraq Census shows that Sunnis were a slight majority.[23] Various monarchies, and secular regimes sourced mainly, but not exclusively, from Sunni areas, controlled the government for nearly a century until the 2003 Iraq War. The British, having put down a Shia rebellion against their rule in the 1920s, "confirmed their reliance on a corps of Sunni ex-officers of the collapsed Ottoman empire". It was when the Sunni and Shia united against colonial rule that it ended.[24]

 

The Shia suffered indirect and direct persecution under independent Iraqi governments since 1932, especially that of Saddam Hussein. In 1969 the son of Iraq's highest Shia Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim was arrested and allegedly tortured. Shia religious leaders were particularly targeted. "Between 1970 and 1985 the Baathist regime executed at least 41 clerics",[25] and Shia opposition to the government following the first Gulf War was reportedly suppressed.

  

[edit] Iraq War

Some of the worst Shia-Sunni sectarian strife ever has occurred in the Iraq War, which has built up steadily following the 2003 American invasion of that country.[26] While thousands have been killed by American and allied military collateral damage,[27] this has become overshadowed by the cycle of Sunni-Shia revenge killing -- Sunni often using suicide bombing, Shia favoring death squads. [28]

 

Sunni suicide bombers have targeted not only thousands of civilians, [29] but mosques, shrines, [30] wedding and funeral processions. [31] Sunni militant organizations that the US state department describes as the "terrorists" include Ansar al-Islam.[32] "Radical" groups include Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura, Jeish Muhammad, and Black Banner Organization. [33]

 

Takfir motivation for many of these killings may come from Sunni insurgent leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Before his death Zarqawi was want to quote Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, especially his infamous statement urging followers to kill the Shi'a of Iraq,[34] and calling the Shias "snakes".[35] Wahabi suicide bombers continue to attack Iraqi Shia civilians,[36] and the Shia ulema have in response declared suicide bombing as haram:

 

"حتي كساني كه با انتحار مي‌‏آيند و مي‌‏زنند عده‌‏اي را مي‌‏كشند، آن هم به عنوان عمليات انتحاري، اينها در قعر جهنم هستند"

"Even those who kill people with suicide bombing, these shall meet the flames of hell."[37] Some believe the war has strengthened the takfir thinking and may spread Sunni-Shia strife elsewhere. [38]

On the Shia side, in early February 2006 militia-dominated government death squads were reportedly "tortur[ing] to death or summarily" executing "hundreds" of Sunnis "every month in Baghdad alone," many arrested at random. [39] [40] [41]

 

"Over the last eighteen months [2005 through early 2006] these commandos [ Badr Organization militiamen controlling the Ministry of the Interior] - who are almost exclusively Shia Muslims - have been implicated in rounding up and killing thousands of ordinary Sunni civilians"Channel 4 program Dispatches

 

In addition to the killing, it is reported that Shia "death squads" of the government's Interior Ministry and the Badr Organization militia, have used intimidation to drive the mainly Sunni intelligentsia from their posts, jobs and neighbourhoods, to replace them with poorer, and less educated Shias often from the poorer south. Many Sunnis register themselves as Shia for identification cards to avoid being targeted by the 'death squads'.

  

[edit] Pakistan

Pakistan has seen serious Shia-Sunni discord. Almost 77% of Pakistan's population is Sunni, with 20% being Shia, [40] but this Shia minority population is larger than that of the Shia majority in Iraq. In the last two decades, "as many as 4,000 people are estimated to have died in sectarian fighting in Pakistan", 300 in 2006."[42] Amongst the culprits blamed for the killing are Al Qaeda working "with local sectarian groups" to kill what they perceive as Shi'a apostates, and "foreign powers ... trying to sow discord."[43]

 

Anti-Shia groups in Pakistan include the Lashkar i Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, offshoots of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). The groups demand the expulsion of all Shias from Pakistan and have killed hundreds of Pakistani Shias between 1996 and 1999.[44]

  

[edit] Afghanistan

Shia-Sunni strife in Pakistan is strongly intertwined with that in Afghanistan. Though now deposed, the anti-Shia Afghan Taliban regime helped anti-Shia Pakistani groups and vice versa. Lashkar i Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, have sent thousands of volunteers to fight with the extreme Deobandi Taliban regime and "in return the Taliban gave sanctuary to their leaders in the Afghan capital of Kabul." [45]

 

"Over 80,000 Pakistani Islamic militants have trained and fought with Taliban since 1994. They form a hardcore of Islamic activists, ever ready to carry out a similar Taliban-style Islamic revolution in Pakistan." According to Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid[46]

 

Shia-Sunni strife inside of Afghanistan has mainly been a function of the puritanical Sunni Taliban's clashes with Shia Afghans, primarily the Hazara ethnic group.

 

In 1998 more than 8000 noncombatants were killed when the Taliban attacked Mazar-i-Sharif and Bamiyan where many Hazaras live.[47] Some of the slaughter was indiscriminate, but many were Shia targeted by the Taliban. Taliban commander and governor Mullah Niazi banned prayer at Shia mosques[48] and expressed takfir of the Shia in a declaration from Mazar's central mosque:

 

Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you. The Hazaras are not Muslims and now have to kill Hazaras. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan. Wherever you go we will catch you. If you go up we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair. [49]

 

Assisting the Taliban in the murder of Iranian diplomatic and intelligence officials at the Iranian Consulate in Mazar were "several Pakistani militants of the anti-Shia, Sipah-e-Sahaba party." [50]

  

[edit] Iran & Shia Statehood

 

In this letter purporting to be from the International Islamic University Malaysia, the university is denying employment to a person based on what it claims to be government policy "against employing staff from a particular denomination, Shiite". Other sources present similar accounts of discrimination in Malaysia. [39]Iran is unique in the Muslim world not only for being overwhelmingly Shia (approximately 90% of the population), but having a theocratically Shia constitution. Sunnis there have complained of discrimination, particularly in important government positions. [51] For instance, while calling for unity with Iranian Shia Rafsanjani, Sunni Shiekh Yusuf al-Qaradawi complained that no ministers in Iran have been Sunni for a long time, that Sunni officials are scarce even in the regions with majority of Sunni population (such as Kurdistan, or Balochistan).[52] Sunnis claim to be heavily persecuted, claim they were regarded as second class citizens under the Shah of Iran, and suffered arrest, torture and execution and after the 1979 revolution. They claim that currently there is not a single Sunni mosque in the capital of Iran Tehran, despite having Christian churches, and that their mosques and schools have been demolished by the current regime, despite constituting a third of the population (not about 10% as most believe) and initially supporting the revolution of Khomeini in 1979.[53](dead link)

 

Soon after the 1979 revolution Sunni leaders from Kurdistan, Balouchistan, and Khorassan, set up a new party known as Shams, which is short for Shora-ye Markaz-e al Sunaat, to unite Sunnis and lobby for their rights. But six months after that, they were closed down, bank accounts suspended, and had their leaders arrested by the government on charges that they were backed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.[54]

 

A UN human rights report states that

 

...information indicates Sunnis, along with other religious minorities, are denied by law or practice access to such government positions as cabinet minister, ambassador, provincial governor, mayor and the like, Sunni schools and mosques have been destroyed, and Sunni leaders have been imprisoned, executed and assassinated. The report notes that while some of the information received may be difficult to corroborate there is a clear impression that the right of freedom of religion is not being respected with regard to the Sunni minority.[55]

 

Members of the 'Balochistan Peoples Front' claim that Sunnis are systematically discriminated against educationally by denial of places at universities, politically by not allowing sunnis to be army generals, ambassadors, ministers, prime minister, or president, religiously insulting Sunnis the media, not allowing the one million Sunnis in the capital Tehran to build a mosque or pray Jumuah (Friday prayers in congregation), economic discrimination by not giving import or export licenses for Sunni businesses while the majority of Sunnis are left unemployed.[56]

 

There has been a low level resistance in mainly Sunni Iranian Balouchistan against the regime for several years. Official media refers to the fighting as armed clashes between the police and "bandits," "drug-smugglers," and "thugs," to disguise the true nature of the conflict. Revolutionary Guards have stationed several brigades in Balouchi cities, and have tracked down Sunni leaders and assassinated them inside Iran and in neighboring Pakistan. In 1996 a leading Sunni, Abdulmalek Mollahzadeh, was gunned down by hitmen allegedly hired by Tehran as he was leaving his house in Karachi.[57]

 

Members of Sunni groups in Iran however have been active in what the authorities describe as "terrorist" activities. Balochi Sunni AbdulMalek Rigi continue to declare the Shia as Kafir and Mushrik.[58] These Sunni groups have been involved in violent activities in Iran, and have waged "terrorist"[59] attacks against civilian centers, including an attack next to a girl's school[60] according to government sources. The "shadowy Sunni militant group Jundullah" has reportedly been receiving weaponry from the United States for these attacks accoridng to a think tank.[61] The United Nations[62] and many countries worldwide[63] have condemned the bombings (See 2007 Zahedan bombings for more information)

 

Non-Sunni Iranian opposition parties, and Shia like Ayatollah Jalal Gange’i have criticised the regimes treatment of Sunnis, and confirmed many of the things sunnis complain of.[64]

 

Relations between Sunni Sufis and the Shi'a establishment are also tense. In February 2006, Qom witnessed a violent standoff between the two groups in which many Sufis were arrested[65][66]

  

[edit] Yemen

See Human rights in Yemen article.

 

Muslims in Yemen including Shaf'i (Sunni) majority and Zaydi (Shi'a) minority. Zaidi are sometimes called "Fiver Shia" instead of Twelver Shia because they recognise the first four of the twelve Imams (Ithna-asharī Imams) but accept Zayd ibn Ali as their "Fifth Imām" rather than his brother Muhammad al-Baqir.

 

Both Shia and Sunni dissidents in Yemen have similar complains about the government -- cooperation with the American government and an alleged failure to following Sharia law[67] -- but it's the Shia who have allegedly been singled out for government crackdown.

 

During and after the US-led invasion of Iraq, members of the Zaidi-Shia community protested after Friday prayers every week outside mosques, particularly the Grand Mosque in Sana’a, during which they shouted anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans, and criticised the government's close ties to America.[68] These protests were led by ex-parliament member and Imam, Bader Eddine al-Houthi [69]. In response the Yemeni government has implemented a campaign to crush "the Zaidi-Shia rebellion,"[70] and harrass journalists.[71] These latest measures come as the government faces a Sunni rebellion with a similar motivation to the Zaydi discontent.[72][73][74]

  

[edit] Bahrain

See Bandargate scandal

 

The small Persian Gulf island state of Bahrain has a Shia majority but is ruled by Sunni Al-Khalifa family as a constutitional monarchy. "Al Wifaq, the largest Shi'a political society, won the largest number of seats in the elected chamber of the legislature. However, Shi'a discontent has resurfaced in recent years with street demonstrations and occasional low-level violence." [75][76]

  

[edit] Syria

Syria is approximately three quarters Sunni[77], but its government is predominately Alawi. The government is controled by the dictatorial secular Arab nationalist Baath Arab Socialist Party, which is dominated in Syria by the Alawi sect which makes up less than 15% of Syria's population. Alawi are often considered a form of Shia Islam that differs somewhat from the larger Twelver Shia sect. [78] Others claim that Alawis "perceive themselves as the unique and only true monotheistic faith, distinct from the rest of Islam, including the Shi’a",[79] and that both Sunni and Shia do not consider Alawis Muslims. [41][42] [43].

 

A very serious 20th century conflict in Syria with sectarian religious overtones was the 1982 Hama Massacre, where an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 were killed by the Alawi-dominated Syrian military following an uprising by the Islamist Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. How much of the conflict was sparked by Sunni v. Shia divisions and how much by Islamism v. secular-Arab-nationalism, is in question.

  

[edit] Saudi Arabia & Salafis

Main article: Sunni fatwas on Shi'as

The Wahabi or Salafi movement of Saudi Arabia, have made no secret of declaring that the Shi'a are "not Muslims",[80] or "Kafir". (Wahabis consider themselves "true Sunnis" but are considered "pseudo-Sunnis" by some other Muslims.[81]) The Shia minority in Saudia Arabia has no political power or rights,[82] and edicts by the wahabi clerics have declared "Shia blood to be halal, i.e. permissible to be shed."[83]

 

According to a report by the Human Rights Watch:

 

"Shia Muslims, who constitute about eight percent of the Saudi population, faced discrimination in employment as well as limitations on religious practices. Shia jurisprudence books were banned, the traditional annual Shia mourning procession of Ashura was discouraged, and operating independent Islamic religious establishments remained illegal. At least seven Shi'a religious leaders-Abd al-Latif Muhammad Ali, Habib al-Hamid, Abd al-Latif al-Samin, Abdallah Ramadan, Sa'id al-Bahaar, Muhammad Abd al-Khidair, and Habib Hamdah Sayid Hashim al-Sadah-reportedly remained in prison for violating these restrictions."[84]

 

And Amnesty International adds:

 

"Members of the Shi‘a Muslim community (estimated at between 7 and 10 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s population of about 19 million) suffer systematic political, social, cultural as well as religious discrimination."[85]

 

While Shia make up only a small percentage of Saudi Arabia's population, they form roughly one-third of the residents of the eastern province of Hasa where much of the petroleum industry is based, and make up the majority of the work force there. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Shia in Hasa ignored the ban on mourning ceremonies commemorating Ashura. When police broke them up three days of rampage ensued -- burned cars, attacked banks, looted shops -- centered around Qatif. At least 17 Shia were killed. In Feb. 1980 disturbances were "less spontaneous" and even bloodier.[86] Meanwhile broadcasts from Iran in the name of the Islamic Revolutionary Organization attacked the monarchy, telling listeners, `Kings despoil a country when they enter it and make the noblest of its people its meanest ... This is the nature of monarchy, which is rejected by Islam.`[87]

 

The arresting of Shias for commemorating Ashura continued as of 2006.[88] In December 2006, amidst escalating tensions in Iraq, 38 high ranking Saudi clerics called on Sunni Muslims around the world to "mobilise against Shiites".[89] In return, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi in 2007 responded:

 

The Wahhabis ignore the occupation of Islam's first Qiblah by Israel, and instead focus on declaring Takfiring fatwas against Shias.[90]

 

Saudi Arabia being an absolute monarchy generally recognizes no rights by law or plurality to any political participation outside the ruling family and its supporters. And being an absolute monarchy, the ruling elite have tried to portray a homogenous society in culture and religion. Since the religion of the rulers is Wahhabi, they have tried to create a uniform wahabi society thus leaving out Shi'as, Sufis and other Sunnis from the homogenous mainstream.

  

[edit] On the Internet

Many other Wahabis have waged a virtual war of information on the internet against the Shi'a, with the Salafis and Saudi Arabia as the major sponsors of this movement.[91] Examples:

 

Shi'ism and Islam are indeed different religions..[92]

Shiaism and Islam are indeed different religions. This sect has developed into what we now know as the Shia whose beliefs and thoughts are repugnant beyond belief.[93]

The protracted contrariety between Islam and Shi'ism is but a clear reflection of fundamental differences between the two. The only common denominator between Islam and Shi'ism is the Islamic Kalimah. The rest of Shi'ism has very little in common with mainstream Islam. The unbridgeable divide between the two is entrenched in some of the core fundamentals of this sect...[94]

In some cases, wahabis have dedicated entire websites like ansar.org with the single purpose of attacking the Shias. Shias have answered with sites like answering-ansar.org In turn SUnnis have responded with sites like ahlelbayt.com

  

[edit] Al Qaeda

Some wahabi groups, often labeled as extremists, linked to Al Qaeda, have even advocated the persecution of the Shi'a as heretics[95] Such groups have been responsible for violent attacks and suicide bombings at Shi'a gatherings at mosques and shrines, most notably in Iraq during the Ashura mourning ceremonies where hundreds of Shias were killed in coordinated suicide bombings,[96] but also in Pakistan and Afghanistan. However Al-Qaida deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri in a video message directed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of Al-Qaida in Iraq, not to attack Muslims but to focus on the occupation troops. His call seems to have been ignored, or swept away in the increasing tensions of Iraq under occupation.

  

[edit] Efforts to foster Sunni-Shia unity

 

[edit] International Islamic Unity Conference

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[edit] Saudi-Iran Summit

In a milestone for the two countries' relations, on March 3 2007 King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Saudi Arabia and held a summit meeting to discuss among other things the rise of sectarian problems in the region. King Abdullah received Ahmadinejad personally at the airport in Riyadh. Both leaders agreed to work towards better relations, and prevent sectarianism now threatening the region. They commented that divisions between Muslims only serves the interests of foreign powers in the area

 

Ahmadinejad declared on his return to Tehran that

 

"Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are aware of the enemies' conspiracies. We decided to take measures to confront such plots. Hopefully, this will strengthen Muslim countries against oppressive pressure by the imperialist front."[44]

 

Saudi Arabia's official government news agency added.

 

"The two leaders affirmed that the greatest danger presently threatening the Islamic nation is the attempt to fuel the fire of strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and that efforts must concentrate on countering these attempts and closing ranks,[45]"

 

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said

 

"The two parties have agreed to stop any attempt aimed at spreading sectarian strife in the region"[46]

 

This could be construed as either directed at either Al Queda or at the United States, depending upon ones point of view.

 

This meeting ran counter to what was envisioned by many pro-Bush neo-cons in the current US administration - Shia Iran and the Sunni Saudi Arabia intensifying their rivalry to the point of funding and training sectarian militias in Iraq to engage in a debilitating Islamic civil war.[47]. The two countries have shared economic interests, and both have a history of private meetings, which came to the fore when previous Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had a meeting King Abdullah in March 1997 when he was crown-prince, and was invited to undertake the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca the following month. This led to no objection for Iran to host the OIC conference for the first time soon afterwards.[48]

  

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The Sira Fortress dates back to about 1,000 years in time, as it is strategically located and overlooks the Aden harbour.

 

Aden was once one of the busiest harbour in the world when it was under British rule. The great natural harbour protected by a dead volcano crater and being midway between the Orient/India and Africa/Europe made it the perfect stop for ships to refuel and resupplied. After the British left in the late 1960s, Aden became the capital of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), the only communist Arab state that had ever existed.

 

With the collapse of the USSR it was reunited with the rest of Yemen in 1990. However, many in south Yemen and Aden today still supports a secessionist movement away from the north, despite the defeat in the brief civil war against the north in 1994 and the continuing brutal suppression by the Sanaa regime.

 

The future of Aden remains unclear - during my visit in 2012 Aden was besieged by the growing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) movement that had plagued the rest of south Yemen, controlling towns and cities not far from Aden. Since the Yemeni Civil War in 2015, the Sanaa regime had been pushed out of the capital by the Houthis rebels and currently have their HQ based in Aden, protected by Saudi-Arabia and other Gulf countries.

 

Aden, Yemen.