https://x.com/profhall1955/status/1868625615403811266?s=61&t=9EnPLVXd4j5cSxF44oDcqw

“Now that the dust is settling on the Syrian collapse, we can see more clearly the curve of history. Alongside the monstrosity of the Zionist occupation and the Gaza slaughter, the other, furtive monsters of history have appeared in stark relief.

For decades, the elites of the Sunni majority states turned their backs on the Palestinians. Their betrayal was justified in their own minds by their contempt for Shia-majority Iran. But their collusion with the Israeli and Western capitalist elites is driven by a more powerful force. The excitable teenage minds of techno-modernists will never allow sleepy agricultural regions to stay as they are.

Whether the locations they have in their sights are cradles of a civilization matters nought. They stopped trying to understand and reproduce their own origins a long time ago. The Ziggurat of Ur no longer has any meaning. They are energised by endlessly recurring dreams of modernisation, progress and capital accumulation. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund is now nothing more than a private equity corporation, competing for investment opportunities with Blackrock, Vanguard and all the others.

Accordingly, they see the Levant as nothing more than a huge piece of real estate ripe for development. Their minds are relentelssly troubled by feverish visions of ports, canals, bridges, roads, condominiums, hotels, factories, international airports, shopping malls, holiday resorts, sports stadia, casinos and the sort of sanitised sex shops and brothels approved by Priests and Rabbis. All with that same corporate look about them.

Sleepy Palestine saw generations of farmers bringing their olives to market on carts. Jewish, Muslim and Christian grandfathers shared jokes as they kept an eye on the grandkids during the school holidays. Workers made castile soap in Nablus. But all that was no use. GDP was too low and investment opportunities too thin on the ground. Anything or anyone who gets in the way is collateral damage. Besides, we must stop the Chinese Belt'n'Road initiative, which seems to help development without settler occupation and so much collateral damage.

Sleepy innocence must die, never to be reborn. Chirico saw it coming.”