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In this mailing:
* Gordon G. Chang: China's Proxy Wars Are 'Encircling' America
* Amir Taheri: Palestine: A Cause or a State?


** China's Proxy Wars Are 'Encircling' America ([link removed])
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by Gordon G. Chang • October 22, 2023 at 5:00 am
* What is the Communist Party of China up to?
* Xi Jinping, who reveres Mao Zedong, is taking a page from his hero's "peasant revolution" playbook. Mao in 1949 prevailed over his enemy, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government, by "encircling the cities from the countryside."
* Ukraine, North Africa, and Israel, as Beijing sees it, are parts of the "countryside" today. So, what is the "city"?
* The main enemy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the United States of America.
* [T]he Party believes it must destroy the U.S. because of what America stands for. An insecure ruling organization in Beijing is worried about the inspirational impact of America's form of governance and values on the oppressed Chinese people. This means the United States will never have amicable relations with China as long as the Communist Party rules it.
* Today... the Communist Party is waging proxy wars against America, such as Russia's campaign to annex Ukraine.... Splitting off Europe from America, in turn, would be another step in starving the U.S. Similarly, China is buying friends in, among other places, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean as a means of further isolating America.
* President Joe Biden is either unwilling or unable to defend the world from malicious Chinese communism. The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan.... signaled that American policy was in collapse.
* China's leader will continue to attack... especially as Biden pays what are essentially ransoms and thereby provides incentives for further disorder. The ransoms include the unfreezing of $6 billion in connection with a hostage swap with Iran... and the October 18th announcement of "humanitarian assistance" to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, apparently to free Americans held by Hamas.
* Allowing China, Russia and friends to take over areas is a critical — and probably fatal — mistake. Victories, for one thing, create momentum and the appearance of inevitability. Xi Jinping promotes the notion of the inevitability of Chinese rule as he tries to intimidate others into submission. China's successes just embolden the regime to press attacks.
* How, then, does the United States confront China's proxy-war strategy? Washington can turn the tables on Xi by taking down Chinese proxies, thereby isolating Beijing and creating the appearance of Chinese failure.
* Communist China is already overstretched. The primary driver of its four-decade rise, the economy, is in distress. The property sector accounting for at least a quarter of gross domestic product, is crumbling. Money is fleeing the country. GDP is growing nowhere near the 5.2% claimed for the first three quarters of this year—if it is growing at all. Imports, perhaps the best indicator of domestic demand, have now fallen for 12 straight months on a year-to-year basis.
* [A]fter three decades of particularly naïve, indulgent, feeble, and otherwise misguided policy, Washington has no good options. The worst option of all is to continue policies that have created this disastrous situation.
* America and the free world are running out of time.
* America... is about to lose everything.

The Chinese Communist Party believes it must destroy the U.S. because of what America stands for. Today. the CCP is waging proxy wars against America. Allowing China, Russia, and friends to take over areas is a critical—and probably fatal—mistake. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks to the Politburo Standing Committee at the 20th CCP Congress on October 23, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

China is setting fires.

Chinese President Xi Jinping green-lighted Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is supporting that war with lethal and other assistance. In North Africa, Beijing, in conjunction with Moscow, has been fueling insurgencies that resemble wars. In the Middle East, China is backing Hamas's monstrous attacks on Israel.

Hamas fighters, for instance, appear to have Chinese-made weapons, presumably supplied through Iran. Moreover, the U.S. Navy in 2021 and this year seized Chinese weapons in transit to another proxy of the Islamic Republic, the Houthi militia in Yemen.

"Tehran for some time has distributed Chinese weapons to its terrorist proxies throughout the region," Jonathan Bass of energy consultant InfraGlobal tells Gatestone. "The Middle East, thanks in no small measure to Beijing, is soaked with blood."

What is the Communist Party of China up to?

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** Palestine: A Cause or a State? ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • October 22, 2023 at 4:00 am
* Why did Hamas trigger its attack out of the blue? Hamas apologists repeat the usual shibboleths: occupation, colonial settlements, expulsions, Apartheid, the two-state solution.
* A closer look, however, shows that none of those "reasons" could explain, let alone justify, why Hamas did what it did on October 7.
* The [Palestinian Authority] and Hamas have preferred to pose as guardians of the flame rather than builders of state structures.... For a brief period, 2007-2013, the PA under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad tried to promote the state-building culture as opposed to the chest-beating posture of "the cause". But both Hamas and the PA did all they could to derail Fayyad's project.
* The "Gaza first" scheme exposed the concept of "security through evacuation" as a dangerous myth that replaced another myth: land-for-peace, which has offered what amounts to lukewarm and always reversible peace.
* All along, Israeli leaders tried to jump through one hoop after another to avoid seriously dealing with the "two-state" formula, which the United States and its Western allies promoted regardless of its lack of support among Israelis and Palestinians.
* [T]he "Palestinian cause" [is] used, and abused, as a means of legitimizing regimes as diverse as the Islamic Republic of Iran; the AKP in Turkey and, believe it or not, the leftist outfit in Colombia. And that not to mention "return ticket revolutionaries" in the West who draw voyeuristic pleasure from watching others kill and die for "great causes."
* Throughout the Cold War, ignoring the geopolitical dimension of the Israel-Palestine issue encouraged wild-goose diplomatic chasings most notoriously symbolized by the "two-state" formula. Today, the same error is repeated by focusing almost exclusively on Hamas without asking who is funding, training, arming and manipulating Hamas in the name of "clash of civilizations".
* The current tragedy has shattered the status quo that took shape in the aftermath of the Cold War. Attempts at reviving it in one form or another would only provide a prelude to even bigger tragedies.

Pictured: Hamas terrorists who were killed on the way to murder Israelis, near the city of Sderot, Israel on October 8, 2023. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Why did Hamas trigger the current tragedy that has given the old Israel-Palestine conflict an even deadlier dimension? And what are the chances for shooing the two sides away from the edge of the abyss?

The tsunami of comments on the latest episode shows that the Israel-Palestine conflict remains a template on which advocates of rival ideologies project their fantasies and prejudices.

Why did Hamas trigger its attack out of the blue? Hamas apologists repeat the usual shibboleths: occupation, colonial settlements, expulsions, Apartheid, the two-state solution.

A closer look, however, shows that none of those "reasons" could explain, let alone justify, why Hamas did what it did on October 7.

The occupation claim is out because Israeli occupation of Gaza ended in 2005, and since 2007 Hamas has been in full control of the enclave and what is presented as its government.

Continue Reading Article ([link removed])

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