In Episode 237 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides some under-reported context for the international crisis that has quickly spiraled since last week’s deadly rocket strike on a Golan Heights village, and now threatens to escalate to the unthinkable. Under international law, the Golan is Syrian territory not Israeli. And the kids who were killed in the rocket strike were Druze not Jews. Most of the Druze residents of the Golan have refused Israeli citizenship and remain loyal to Syria. Only one country on Earth recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan—the USA, thanks to Donald Trump. Israel has a complicated history with the Druze, going back well before the occupation of the Golan in 1967. But the origins of the current trajectory toward regional war in a massacre of Druze youth points again to how peoples on the ground are exploited as pawns and propaganda in the cynical Great Power game. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.
Production by Chris Rywalt
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Photo: Freedom’s Falcon via Wikimedia Commons
Errata and clarifications re. podcast Episode 237
The US warships being sent to the Middle East are not capabe of firing ballistic missies, but intercepting them with Ballistic Missile Defense Systems. (DW)
Iranian authorities are now saying Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed with a “short-range projectile” fired from outside his guesthouse in Tehran. (BBC News)