In grim Birmingham, U.K. sometime in late of 2016, two British Hevals meet in a bleak coffee shop with no phones to say hello, goodbye, and hash out some final details for their upcoming deployment into Rojava.
“My government name is not relevant to you, Hevalin, as they say.” Havalin is the plural of Hevals, my man and multiple friends. Says Heval Erdal, a cheeky British Jew of left-wing leanings with many Kurdish friends. He sits with his old friend Ana Montgomery Campbell from Lewes, U.K. who later died a Martyr in the defense of Afrin Canton. The British pipeline begins in Birmingham. Actually, hundreds of ISIS Islamists had been recruited from Birmingham. Literally many hundreds.
“You may call me by my Kurdish guerrilla name, “Heval Erdal”. I’m lanky and have a highly disarming grin, so say the ladies. I’m just having a kid, which is to say a laugh; the ladies don’t say anything like that. I’m British clearly, but also a cheeky part Jew. It’s not a very well thought out part to be honest. Don’t practice any of it. I became active in the Kurdish movement protesting Turkish arms deals and attending cultural events at the centers. My working-class British city had literally hundreds of Jihadists who took off for the Middle East and joined Daesh. Fuck all mate, hundreds! They took wee kids and wives with them. They thought it was the end of times. Well, it had end of times properties, I’ll give it that.” So, I was always a ‘wee activist’ with politics of the progressive kind, but I love them Kurds man! They’re so awesome. Humble, principled mountain people. Leftists. Warriors. Love um! Sometime in August of 2016 I made up my mind to travel to Kurdistan and join up with the People’s Protection Units; the famous and glorious Y.P.G.71.
So, I worked a bit more than usual. I saved up about 2,000 quid and there I had a chance to ask the right questions about who to contact, literally just an email address called YPG REVOLUTION, and I answered a bunch of questions for them. Then I was approved to go. It didn’t take nearly as long as lots of chaps complained. Britain has the second largest contribution of foreign fighters to Y.P.G./Y.P.J. right after Turkish leftists.
But life happens, you have a girlfriend you can’t bring, and you have an apartment you can’t just leave. You also have a bit of fear in you. No one wants to die! Unless you’re one of these Jihadist tossers. You make various excuses. Well not me, I don’t worry about dying. I had a pretty boring apartment. My job was bullocks. We all have bollocksy jobs, so it made it easier to leave mine and go, knowing how much I hated my current situation in what Kurds call Capitalist Modernity. Also, there were brave Hevals who went in earlier, when things were more desperate and asymmetrical.
I had become friendly with Heval Helen Qerechow, whose British name was Ana Campbell via the various protests and Kurdish events. She was far more ideological than I was. She was what we called later a ‘true believer’, a highly committed young revolutionary. Me, I just wanted to kill Daesh, and the Turkish fascists. I wasn’t stupid to the politics mind you, but I was more of the fighterly mind set. I had set myself on a warpath. I grew up working class and I would die working class, and revolution would never come home to the U.K., but if I could contribute well to the Y.P.G. and aid the Kurdish resistance then I would feel like I was a man of my word. All these years yelling about arms deals and Turkish coups all didn’t ever do much, but it was how you made friends with Hevals and aspiring Hevals. Heval in Kurdish means comrade/friend. It’s what movement people call each other affectionately and ideologically.
They had met just one weekend before herself deployment to Syria. I went out with Ana, and we talked a little bit about what we were risking and why we were risking it. She went in to Rojava about five months before me. This was maybe on the eve of.
“I’m all in the game mate, I’m just all about it. As an anarchist and as a human, this is the real deal as I see it,” Ana declared.
“I mean eye to eye my sis, I agree,” I tells her.
“I mean as a woman and as an activist this seems so big, so important, how could we ever just go on and ignore this and act like we have and validity to our own fight?” Ana always talked in big questions, rhetorical like ones for circular thinking.
“I mean are you scared?” she asks me, “I’m not scared at all.”
“No, not scared to die. Maybe scared to be tortured or maimed, but all part of a revolution I guess,” I reply.
“You must be brave. Everyone is watching us. The Kurds and the vultures, you know they want to make up stories about why we went out there, going out there to die in a foreign war, a Kurdish war! It’s our war, it’s the last stand for idealism.”
“It’s pathetic so few leftists are going, have gone,” I say.
“No, it’s up to us to be an example of trustworthy European leftists and what we can contribute. Everything must be about possibility not fear!”
“You’re a shining star,” I tell her.
“Serok Apo72 says that Women’s leadership is what saved the P.K.K. in Qandil and has saved the Rojava revolution.”
“Well surely it has,” I just agree with her now because I’m not ever one to argue with her on either Feminism or what Serok Apo said. She’s very ideological and I am not, so it’s easy to avoid contentious bickering.
“I’m so happy we’re both finally going,” she says.
“Yeah, good times,” I reply.
“We probably won’t see each other that often. The Y.P.J.73 has its own separate structures. How do you feel about that? I think I prefer the old way when we were all together.”
“I think I read they need to be able to tell the conservative Kurdish village fathers their daughters aren’t getting banged out in the P.K.K., and also because Kurdish Women’s Movement wants their own self-governing spaces.”
“Yeah, both. But anyway, we will meet up for tea and have long fireside talks about ideology like you love so much,” she smiles.
So, I was scheduled to begin the Academy in Qerechow74 in August of 2017. I had booked a direct flight to Erbil from Heathrow. Ana was in the class before me for the Y.P.J.; Women’s Protection Units, the co-gendered women’s structure. We had both been arrested several times scuffling with the Turkish security service at this demo or that. Never had any challenging times either of us. Well, why should we have? We were fighting for Kurdish Freedom, for peoples’ freedom; against fascists and Islamic terrorists, the kind that lived in Birmingham and migrated to Syria with their families for the war.
Now my motives were pure, but they were not purely ideological. Apo did not make me do it! I just felt that Daesh was a heinous evil. I felt the Turks to be true aggressors. And I wanted to avenge the fact that so many people from my city had headed over to the enemy. An enemy which throws homos off roof tops. Kidnaps and sex enslave young women. Commits genocide! And until Operation Inherent Resolve75 I.S.I.S. was gradually taking over the entire Middle East into their “Caliphate”.
“So, I packed my bag and joined the international volunteers!” About five months later Anya went down to Rojava to join the Y.P.J. The proud, inglorious 500 or 600 so who ended up with the Y.P.G. and its various affiliated structures. The embarrassingly low turnout compared to the well over 40,000 Jihadists who turned out to join I.S.I.S. is a matter of leftist defeat, human cowardice, ineptitude of Kurdish propaganda, and the psychological barriers of joining a violent shit show that no one is clearly ever going to win. Her last words before she left England were the same last words, she said to me before she was blown apart on the Afrin Front. The phrase has a couple of meanings to the Hevals. “Onwards to invincible victory,” or “Victory is certain ”, or in Kurmanji, “Serkaften!”
To which I replied “Serchevan76.” On the eyes!
Within the next year Heval Errdal’s entire family would be arrested in the United Kingdom and charged with aiding terrorists financially and Anna Campbell would be dead, martyred in a Turkish airstrike.
➢ “Sometimes I think we have to get out of this place!”𝀓
The motherland calls,
And now we’re using a code.
The silence of touch, the science of mode,
The science of making one’s morals align.
With the cold things done-for-dollars, in the absence of ethics,
Or the g-d head the divine𝀓
Oh, the things I might do! Oh, things that you do.
An animal’s logic of rough-handled thrusting,
Subsumes the illogic, or basic desire to woe or to woo.
“If I get on my back for an hour ortwo”,
I see your face.
Security, obscurity, can you lick something magic?
“Man, how many times did you die in disgrace?”
Frail little humans, trying to see a plot through,
black breaded blue black sky where every single star is a blessing,
A promise of pity,
“I didn’t ask what you’ve done lately,
So I probably only muse partly, rip off your dress, and we forget second-guessing.
on the things you still have to do.
a breathtaking ode to the half-naked goddess that’s you.
The thrusting of my logic dare outpace.
In the lack of a life we had picked out in earnest,
Hinting the the hilt of a gentleman’s saber? You hand in my face?
➢ the back-breaking ease of the thing we call labor,
The belt on the neck of the thing we call grace.
Abhorrent! On whose horse did you rode?
Morse code on my back, your fingers play piano.
Let the skill of your ill masquerading, let it lighten the load.
Let the lust that men drown in make it a new home,
Make the world implode. Make a world where it’s up to a partner to lighten a load.
We both have nostalgia for things that ignite,
A lust for a new kind of rule?
A list of words for the way that the body can gyrate,
and mix to a perfect soundtrack of the sage house abide or abode.
“Man, pretty cool.”
and then all things can explode.
Explode into opportune living of life spent in terror,
Life spent lacking free life, like the fairy tale ritual error.
The first time.
It was always still the very best time, the first time,
So close to your body,
A Look in the mirror of the look in your eyes.
In rented safe house attics suited for stealing, the petty theft of posture passion and wiggle thrust rhyme, silhouettes forming fantastic formations of fondle,
Pausing the clock for a sensual mime.
Physically speaking,
It was something divine.
But the next second time,
“We spoke candidly about the feelings on not having feelings, and escapading in Europe, and the subtle sublime,”
What a terrible habit, paying on the record,
Transferring rebels to camps or rubies for illicit moments of the financial district down climb.
Wasting the very last moments,
“Wasting one’s absolute time.”
For in arrest, for is your work working off the world of stress,
A test of the blessed, a test of the rest of the lifestyle, the bondage?
The work of the night and the work of the question, the imagined, the partially guessed. for the guess of an intention to blow or to be or to bless!
To lay even one more hand on your most amble chest.
I close my eyes, and we kiss harder than the press will later confess.
I sought out your confidence, I seek out your most costly attention, I believe you think in Russian, but that’s a soft guess.
I seek out something between total lust and a loyal affection,
I seek out writhing inside you and placing a kiss on every speck of your being,
What and how much am I after?
I don’t ask you to fully undress.
My love is something absurd, the uses of my love are anyone’s guess.
I ask you to weigh.
Do I have the talent and useful out lie of skills to back up all of the ludicrous things I might say?
Will all of the laughter outlay?
All the past hardships and tears?
It doesn’t matter the plot points that set out the setting,
I want to use (and to know) and be used near on next to your body for years!
Not just mere hours, in a state of total erotic orgasmic undress.
Speaking of evil and speaking of stress, please use me for fucking,
Please use me for parts.
Or for evil Jew medical legalish arts.
Floor boards are now creaking,
Shall we try and proceed under such flagrant duress!
Rustling now in the attic,
Erotica is what one is perhaps seeking;
Also, are you waiting? Chandelier spills of
For the end to come,
In a visitation, we commit petty crime.
In downtime,
Surround sound to fondle around time.
in up time, in emotional downtime.
In the placement of dispondant downtime,
You stroke the shaft of midnight off the layers of lime.
You lay me down, my face into a hole like a waterboard, I’m dripping.
You lay me down, your reflection an erotic silhouette of starlight,
Lip service for a hardcore lash or lock of further lipping.
Dasha, can you trust me yet?
Have we made love in other lives?
Dasha, can you ever fully trust me, get you happy, get you fully unhinged in upset?
A tall tale of too much turmoil, a rare form of Amerkanski.
You are well armed with your curvatures, your lips tight.
A lusty lap dance for a lingering servitude,
I’ve been to your safe house in Midtown.
Your goddess naked, curving silhouette is etched in my mind at night,
At first sight.
I want to render you completely naked,
And work very my sex on your very soul, lie where you lie.
A ride or a grip; or die for a try, par to the part of the whole,
with the ink of my pen, or the typing of sonnets that preferably never will get old,
and preferably never quite die.
Make you call out for me,
like I call out for you,
in the bellowing evilish New York dusk twilight.
I want to kiss your lips forever, or just for the rest of right now, can we try,
I have a half of a plan and I will show you how, how the last of us cry,
for as many hours as it is possible to imagine them entertaining me.
I want to roughly take you,
There were sneaking, creaking footsteps toward the rented safehouse,
There were mechanical noises in the dark sky above,
But perhaps in reality, just make noble love.
My hands as they grip your hips,
My tongue, when it lashes out, sips of fortuitous trips down the small of your spine,
And the arch of your back when you moan out for me.
Make you drip, you make me drip, you make me melt, you make me sip,
On the very most waters of want, on the lustiest thirst, on the thrown.
On the edge of reality’s grip.
I can’t do this whole night of class war alone,
I can’t write you too well from an ambulance late at night,
from the glow of making us less smart phones.
I can’t make love when your body is still something to buy or to own.
Are words purely worthless?
Is their weight to a promise. Is there weight to a stone?
Are we still having fun?
I want you to think of me kindly when we are all done.
I want your lips on my lips, I want your hips on my hips, I want my whole flesh inside you, writhing naked right back to where the romance begun.
When the traps are reset, and the web is unspun.
Where do I know your naked body from?
Where do I imagine this whole tryst can go?
Do you think of me ever when my existence is gone?
Take you hard on a floor roughly, or a gentle, long kiss good night in a hotel bed, can you want me like a lover and still profit from a John?
Русский (рифмованный) перевод
«Иногда я думаю: нужно бежать отовсюду!» — Зовёт нас родная земля, Мы пишем шифром, в немом переулке у чуда, Где такт прикосновений заменяет слова.
Наука того, как мораль подчиняют расчёту, Холодным делам “за доллар”, без духа, без Бога в нутре. Что я бы сделал? Что делаешь ты в поворотах? Животная логика тел, уступающая логике тьме.
«Если лягу на час-другой» — вижу снова твой лик. Безопасность, туманность — лижешь магический штрих. «Сколько раз ты погибал позорно, до криков и рвот?» Хрупкие люди ловят сюжет, Чёрный хлеб, чёрный небосвод, Где каждая звезда — благословенье, Обет жалости, «Не спрашивала я, что ты делал вчера — Мне хватает лишь жеста, Рву твоё платье — и нет больше бегства, Есть только тела, и их высота, и последняя нежность».
Полунагую богиню продумывает мой стих, Дыханием споря с твоей красотой. Мы жили бы лучше — но путь был другой, нас увёл… Твой жест — будто эфес от сабли был поднят над мной.
Тяжёлое и лёгкое, то что зовётся “трудом”, Ремень на шее “грации”, Где потеряно всё. На ком твой конь взлетал галопом? Твой Морзе на моей спине — Ты играешь, как рояль в темноте.
Пусть ложь твоих масок хоть как-то снижает саван заботы, Пусть страсть, где мужчины тонут, Станет домом в сердечной пустоте.
Мы оба скучаем по искрам, что жгли до зари, По страсти, что строит законы и миры. По словам, что описывают танец тела, По музыке мудрых стен, что хранят ордена и тайны квартиры.
«Чёрт, круто же было». И всё может взорваться — Взрывом удачи, Жизни, где страх — и любовь, и попытки восстать.
Первый раз — Всегда лучший, Так близко к тебе — словно зеркало глаз. В мансарде секретной, где время крадут, Где позы, касанья — изгибы страстей, Где тени сплетают узор из тел, Где вздох — это музыка, Пауза — сонм нежных ролей.
Второй раз мы говорили честно О том, как не чувствуем чувств, О Европе, её авантюрном искусстве, О тонком, почти бестелесном «вдруг».
О, ужасная привычка платить, Переводить бунтарей и рубины За тайные встречи на дне делового квартала.
Тратили последние вдохи, «Тратили время — финальный товар».
Арест ли спасает? Работа ли держит нас в мире, где боли — товар? Ночные вопросы, оковы, догадки, Где благословляешь удар.
Положить бы ладонь На грудь твою — в пламени странных начал. Я закрываю глаза — и мы целуемся так, Как газеты потом не напишут.
Я искал твою уверенность, Прошу твоего дорогого внимания, Мне кажется — думаешь ты по-русски, Но это лишь нежное предположение.
Мне нужно меж похотью и верностью Узнать твой предел и твоё доверие, Обнять каждую точку тела, Не требуя даже раздеться.
Моя любовь абсурдна, Её смысл — загадка и жест.
Скажи, есть ли талант Удержать все нелепые фразы, что скажу я всерьёз? Перекроет ли смех Все прошлые слёзы и боль? Неважны сюжетные трещины — Я хочу быть с тобой Годы, а не часы, В оргазмическом, бешеном, нежном, Беспамятном наголо-снятом тепле.
Говоря о зле и о стрессе — Пользуйся мной, Пользуйся частями, Пользуйся “еврейской медициной и правом”, На полу скрипят доски — Но мы продолжаем.
В мансарде шуршат тени, Ищут эротики, Ждут конца, Как визита небесной беды.
В паузах — преступленья малы, В минуты простоя — Ласка, В часы разлада — Тоска по ударам судьбы.
Ты кладёшь меня вниз лицом, Как на водную пытку, — Струится пот. Ты кладёшь меня под свет звезды, И губы твои творят Служение боли и ласке сверх меры.
Даша, Ты мне доверяешь? Мы любили друг друга в иных мирах? Даша — Сможешь когда-нибудь верить, Сбывать мои страхи, Безумие вытравлять?
Ты — тень небесной работы, Американский мой миф и бред. И армия линий твоего силуэта В ночи гремит.
Я был в тайном убежище твоём, Где тело твоё — как статуя яркого тлена, Где я хотел снять с тебя всё — И душой, и рукой, И стихом, где ни строчка не стареет, Где слово не умирает порой.
Хочу, чтоб ты стонала так, Как я стону по тебе В злорадно-чудовищный сумрак Нью-Йорка.
Хочу целовать тебя вечно — Или хотя бы до утра. Есть план — и я покажу, Как плакать вдвоём, Как тянуть наслаждение часами, Как разгораться в безумных играх.
Хочу взять тебя грубо, Но в ту ночь Казалось — вокруг механический шорох, И шаги по лестнице, И звёзды гудят. Но на самом деле — Это была любовь.
Мои руки на бёдрах, Мой язык вдоль твоей спины — И мир тает, И таешь ты.
Я не выдержу этот классовый бой в одиночку, Не напишу тебя с “скорой помощи”, Где свет смартфонов гасит нас в ночь. Не могу любить, Когда тело — товар, Когда любовь покупают за наличный вздох.
Есть ли вес у слова? Вес у камня? Всё ли нам в шутку? Я хочу, чтобы ты вспоминала меня Добро — когда всё кончится вдруг.
Хочу твои губы на губах, Твои бёдра на бёдрах, И тело твоё вокруг — Как начало романа.
Когда ловушки сброшены, Когда сети порваны — Откуда мне знакомо твоё нагие формы? Куда ведёт эта связь? Думаешь обо мне, Когда я исчезну?
Взять тебя жёстко на полу Или нежно — Ждать рассвет. Быть любовником Или стать для тебя Очередным, кому платят за след.
A small place like this takes on fierce intensity. A pressure cooker of ethnic strife baked in varying religious modes. I have not seen the sun in over a week. I work from 9ish at night until close to 3 in the morning, chill by the beach, and then go back to Mughrabi to sleep. I’d walk past the Opera Towers, about a mile north on the tiyeled until I got to Mike’s Blues Bar. I’d shoot the shit with everyone’s favorite Russian-who-wanted-to-be-American Svetlana, drink a beer, eat a burger, pass out a shit ton of flyers to Americans and trash containers, then go back and have Alex buy me a shot while Canadian Dave the manager told me about being a sniper in the IDF. Turned out he and Maya, whom he also called Emma, were old lovers or something for a fleeting time. I really liked the guy. Once he took me to the roof of his building, a great crib on Ben Yehuda Street, and taught me about sniping with a broom. To exhale and then to fire. To always change positions quickly after firing. To wait for hours to get the most bang for your exposure. He told me that sniping is like ancient times when you must remember the face of each woman or man you kill. I told him I wanted to be a sniper in the army, and he just figured the army I meant was the IDF. Lessons were scheduled for once a week, but they only happened two more times.
I co-write a short manifesto with Maya and Avinadav an,d they turn it into Hebrew and Arabic. I didn’t trust any of my Russians to look at it and did not know any Arabs to trust either. We set up a timetable for me to set up cells in Haifa, Be’er Sheva, and Jerusalem. I spent about three days in each city recruiting. I was to attempt to be back at the Deep on Thursday to check in. Maya would set up a ‘unit’ in Tel Aviv and Avinadav would be the money and logistics man.
The Organization, as we soon took to calling the thing, was founded in Tel Aviv in late July of 2001. ‘A group without a name was formed to launch a movement without a color’ as our line went. The initial objective of our group was the resolution of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It was believed that through the creation of a united front among the peoples of the region, a solution could be achieved that might serve as a springboard for a worldwide revolution against American hegemony and the cultural mentality it perpetuates. The principle on which this group was founded was that ‘we are in fact not an organization, but rather individuals becoming organized’ another line from our playbook. The Organization was to serve as a network through which quite different people could unite under common revolutionary goals. Our goals were to be better defined in a soon-to-be-written 10 Point Program for the Revolution in Israel and Palestine.
I was taking notes from Che Guevara’s manual on guerilla warfare and Mao’s Little Red Book. I was mixing it with populist Israeli rhetoric and Marxist overtones. We didn’t say proletariat. We just said we fought for the rights of the working class. I was getting my training on the fly. So were Maya and Avinadav. The Maya revealed no ideological leanings other than progressive feminism. She seemed left without needing to declare it. She was Spanish by passport and Canadian in upbringing, but she’d been in HaEretz a year and a half. As a club promoter she had half the basic skill set of a revolutionary anyway, the gift of random gab. She took the role of support and advice and begrudgingly accepted a title on our cabinet. She urged me to hammer out a ten-point program before she tried to recruit anyone she knew.
Andrew Manasseh Butler, aka “Andrew the Hustler”, whom no one seemed to call Avinadav except for me, not even Maya who quite a few men called Emma, told me one night over dinner that Maya and I could be the activists, but he had ‘keep the focus on the mission.’
Avinadav and I would talk all night. He lived in a sprawling penthouse near the outer highways and skyscraper towers of the Azrieli center at the edge of Ramat Gan. It was really near the Tel Aviv Light Rail Depot, so I’d crash with him once and awhile at his ‘House of the Rising Sun’ as Emma called it. There were always people crashing on the couches, on the floors and anywhere they could. There was a White rapper from the American hip-hop group Cyprus Hill who had been drafted to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv and then fucked it up somehow. Nice guy, but a huge show boater and big talker. One night he and I picked up these two Ashkenaz cuties and he claimed he was rapping at GSPOT, this huge hip-hop club and could get us all comped. I closed the stand and the four of us walked our asses north to the Sheraton and beyond, only for him to disappear into the club and ditch us outside.
I talked big too, but I prided myself on delivering what I promised with broads and bullets both. This guy was living on Avinadav’s couch indefinitely. Disrael, the partner at The Deep with the ice in his ear, which he declared ‘It’s a cubit diamond from the land of Zirconium, was the only other rent payer besides Yashara, Avindav’s Yemenite special lady who looked Dominican more than Arab or Jewish. At any given time, there could be between four to seven ‘community relatives’ who’d gotten exiled from Demona for this or that and were living with Avinadav until something came along, or they got forgiven.
“We are all in ‘back against the sea or a head to the wall country,’ some of us more than others. So when the honorable Prophet Ben-Ami led seventy-odd Black brothers and sisters in 1969 from Chi-Town’s Southside across Africa to build the Hebrew Israelite Community in the badlands of Southern Israel and then when your father gets into a fight with the Prophet over annulling a marriage and your whole clan gets tossed out of the community, but you and your brethren don’t have Israeli or American passports, well fuck the dumb shit, where we gonna go?”
“How many of you are there?”
“A couple thousand now. Not one is a citizen here. Ethiopians, they at least begrudgingly call them Jews. We do not even get offered real citizenship. If we the field Negroes, then you got some idea why it’s ‘Waleed and the Lethal Leisure Suite’ time for the Palestinians. It never comes down too hard on more than one demographic group at a time. The others make believe it won’t happen to them. Besides you Ashkenaz, everybody is shut out of something.”
“Just like in the States.”
“A microcosm of all the stupid suffering that the wretched of the earth are subject to because they refuse to fight back. I want you to dig inside, Zach. I want you to look into your soul and know that our struggle is doomed to fail like the thousands of other risings before ours if you can’t honestly see the soul you have is of the same worth as the one Hashem gave the Arabs and the Christians, the pagans, communists and atheists like Emma Solomon.”
“I thought she was agnostic like everybody else.”
“Nope. She just plays one on TV to get more answers out of you.”
“Ah. Answers about what?”
“To judge if we can trust you, a near total stranger, with our lives.”
“I’m not asking for that kind of trust. I’m asking for help printing propaganda, obtaining safe houses, and recruiting partners. What do my religious inclinations have to do with the mission?”
“What’s the mission then, Zachariah?”
“Empower the Israeli and Palestinian people to win a class war against the American backed proxy government of this country.”
“Which would take a miracle.”
“You’re not saying…”
“Who’s Mike Washington?”
“How did you….?”
“Emma says you ask him questions in your sleep. Lucky you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“I know it’s not like that. The girl’s a goddess, heavenly just to lie beside. But back to Mr. Washington.”
“I have an imaginary friend who’s a sort of fire walking paramedic with a handgun, something concocted in my head since I was 13 to shoot all the monsters when I sleep.”
“Gets um all doesn’t he? Shoots straight, never misses, reliable? Brotherly maybe?”
“Something like that.”
“You believe in your dreams, Zachariah?”
“I’d say they confuse more than guide me.”
“You don’t have a guide in the waking life to translate for you what It’s telling you.”
“Who? Mike Washington?”
“Mr. Washington is just a messenger. Your name in Hebrew means ‘G-d Remembers’ incidentally. You ought to toy with the notion of our meeting not being an accident but in fact providence. You ought to meditate on why you’re in the land so young and so early.”
“One should be careful in presuming their dreams have any more meaning than necessary.”
“Be as careful as you want. Emma and I are careful as hell. The road to Zion is paved in shit that can get you killed. And there are so, so many things worse than death in the world today. It makes hell quite superfluous to have a world like this.”
“I agree. Your allusions make me want a cigarette. I think I’m in love with Maya by the way.”
“With Maya or Emma?”
“Same person.”
“Are Sebastian and Zachariah the same person?”
“Emma told you my real name?”
“Yeah, but I learned it again going through your pockets when you slept over last time. We must ensure everybody is who they say they are. Got me?”
“Zachariah’s me trying to live up to the expectations of Mr. Washington.”
“Complicated. Sounds like programming. Being that you haven’t fucked her, but you guys have rolled up like kittens and cuddled three times in the past week on some pretext. You are in love with Emma. What is it to you to hold that girl?”
“It is to remind myself I’m a good man whenever I’ve been tested. Otherwise, she would not want me near her.”
“That’s part of it. What else you feel?”
“That I remember what love felt like the first and only time I felt it in my life.”
“Whatcha gonna do about it?”
“Why so you can tell her?”
“Information only flows one way around here.”
“Nothing at all. I can fall in love and have family in the world to come. I make a better fighter than a lover anyway even though I try and kid myself otherwise. I’ll tell her how I feel before I cross over to the other side.”
“That’s reassuring to hear. It’s not romantic or right, or fair because you very well might give her the love, she needs to restore her black heart. But I need two lieutenants who can be objective about what we have to do. You want to seize one of the most important spiritual hot zones of the planet there are some time-honored ideas about infrastructure and discipline you would do well to embrace.”
“Yeah. Go on.”
“The bottle makes you play the fool. The smokes make you sick and will kill you before their bullets do, and a revolutionary gets only one love, his people. Regulate your vices as soon as you are able.”
“You want me to quit smoking and drinking?”
“And stop being promiscuous.”
“You and Emma are gonna do that?”
“Of course not. Everyone gets to be a hypocrite except for you.”
“Why the fuck is that?”
“Because you’re gonna be a mouthpiece for something massive. If you’re willing to have a message, get you crucified, don’t let some run of the mill garden variety sin degrade your credibility.”
“You keep alluding to me on some God tip, but we don’t know if God wants any of this. You’re saying you think Hashem got me all the way to the Promised Land to help you and Emma form and lead a revolutionary army?”
“If I have to dignify that with a response, it is really gonna take eleven more years.”
“Eleven more years?”
“People think 2012 is when the world ‘ends.”
“The world doesn’t ever end.”
“If the masses were such great political scientists and theologians, we probably wouldn’t have left the gardens to begin with.”
“Why 2012?”
“It’s the Mayan calendar thing. It’s in the collective conscious.”
“You were quick to help me, Avinadav. Why is that?”
“Every community gets a few prophets right before tumultuous times. All the holy books say so.”
“I wouldn’t be so fast to construe dreams with prophesy.”
“I get dreams too. And so does Emma. So does everyone, but only some people get dreams that give um ideas about what Hashem has put them here to do. I believe in the things you say Zachariah; and your soul is eons older than your years of life. Let’s just hope Hashem sends some reinforcements because this plan of ours will not go unnoticed for very long.”
***
So, we built the thing, cobbled it together based on the various books we’d read and life experiences we’d had. The Organization, whom the Israelis called Ha Irgun, was structured to be a constantly evolving effort based upon an ongoing dialogue between Avinadav and me with Emma making corrections. It was the amalgamation of our three quite different viewpoints. Our goal was for the Organization to be composed of autonomous cells throughout the Middle East engaging in political work, community support, business and military operations, and whatever else proved logistically expedient to our ends. We had all done a bit of research on all this before we met. Avinadav made himself Chairman and Minister of Finance. Maya was appointed Defense Minister. I was elected to serve as the Minister of Operations handling logistics and recruiting. We set up a 12-person Cabinet that would command hundreds of 3 to 5-person cells in different communities across the country loosely organized around the Ten Point Program, under the leadership of the Cabinet. Maya and I authored the first statement that we would print glossy club flyers with a grey fist.
We selected the color grey as our standard because it was no color at all, but many shades of understanding and identity. We called our manifesto-in-progress the Little Grey Book. It began simply:
“The Organization will not stop fighting until all people on this Earth are free.”
“Go big or go home.” We argue about the name for a whole night then figured “what’s in a name?” We all had a couple of names, so why not the group? “We were organizing. It was an organization.” The word for that in Hebrew was Ha Irgun, which sounded officious enough to me and had been the street name for one of the original Israeli independence groups. So, we ran off stacks of these little grey cards with a black fist and a little call to arms.
Treatise on the Formation of a Middle Eastern Confederation
Preamble
Arabs, Persians (Iranians), Kurds (including Kurmanji, Sorani, and Zaza speakers), Turks, Azeris, Assyrians (Syriacs, Chaldeans, Arameans), Armenians, Circassians, Chechens, Druze, Yazidis, Bedouins, Berbers, Copts, Samaritans, Palestinians, Jews (Sephardic, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Beta Israel, Karaite), Maronites, Lebanese, Syriacs, Chaldeans, Mandaeans, Baháʼís, Alawites, Shi’a Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Turkmens, Baluch, Pashtuns, Lurs, Georgians, Greeks, Roma, Tatars, Shabaks, Mhallami, Dom, Nubians, Fang, Armenians of Cilicia and Anatolia, Kurds of Yazidi and Shafi’i traditions, Assyrian Christians of Nineveh Plain and Tur Abdin, Arab Christians (Melkite, Orthodox, Latin, Maronite), Samaritans of Nablus, Druze of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, Circassian tribes of the Levant, Chechen communities in Jordan and Syria, Jews of Yemenite, Iraqi, Iranian, and Syrian origin, Baháʼí communities from Iran, Lurs of western Iran, Qashqai and other nomadic tribes of Iran, Baluch of southeastern Iran and Pakistan, Turkmen of Iraq and Syria, Afro-Arabs along the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt, various Bedouin tribes across the Arabian Desert, Aramaic-speaking communities in Syria and Iraq, Mhallami of Turkey and Lebanon, Dom and Romani groups scattered across the Levant, Nubians of southern Egypt and northern Sudan, and smaller scattered minorities such as the Talysh, Tats, Kurds of Kermanshah, Guran, and Feyli, Pontic Greeks, Assyrian Catholics, Armenian Catholics, and other historical or nearly extinct groups across Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf States, and the Caucasus region.
None of us needs to be pro-peace on essentially unjust terms. We are pro-survival. Pro-stability. Pro-living our lives with dignity. We are invested in the possibility that the birth of the Confederation will stop the flow of blood throughout our lands. We have all been taught an endless amount of mythology, based on extraordinarily little tangible evidence. It suggests that what occurred between the Tigris and Euphrates, and what occurred down the Nile, was “progress”. It suggests civilization, and later religion, and even later science, all emanate from our peoples and our lands. Perhaps some of that is valid lore, but today in 2025, we are stuck in a period of perpetual war, state collapse, revolution, and widespread violence accelerated by foreign brokered weapons and aid.
Our many tribes, clans, confessional sects, our many peoples, are people who remember old ways and old customs back thousands of years. Peoples rooted in venerable traditions and lived religions. People who descend from the bloodlines of prophets, visionaries, and visceral authors of the word of God. With our stiff necks and incredible stubbornness to ever relinquish our sense of identity or core beliefs. We all live with memories and tribulations going back several thousand years. But atrocities are escalating, violence is accelerating, and we have gone from civilizational greatness to utter chaos, war, and genocidal practices.
It is not in our interests to keep fighting even if we have no will to make immediate peace. For we have no ability, or perhaps, actual willingness to completely destroy each other. But that assumption weakens each passing year. There have been atrocities in Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine. There has been over a hundred years of continuous regional war. Between us and outsiders, between us and ourselves. Perhaps were are so wildy diverse as a region it is hard to accept who is ‘our people’, who is ‘a stranger’. Who is of the book, who is of the land, who has always been here, and who migrates, was removed, or came back. We must now find a completely new way to live on our wildly different terms and conditions. For thousands of years, our peoples, very different peoples, gathered at the crossroads of the world. Or were born here in the shifting sands of trade, or warfare, and of revelation. We all traded, we all intermarried, we have all made shifting alliances. We have raided, we have fled, we waged great and small wars. We conquered, converted, pillaged, assimilated, massacred, and made a total fitna of these lands. We have shared blood, overlapped our laguages, prayed one way then prayed another. But none of our differing peoples have killed in the numbers we now kill with weapons from outside our sphere. Weapons, technology, and funding that we have been granted by the great powers, who once sought to control our holy sites, now who seek our oil, our gas, and persue raw hegemony.
This is a treatise co-written by the People of the Book, but also those who came before these books, and after those books, and those who never believed in a religion at all. It is pieced together and translated differently by the Zoroastrians, and the Judeans; by the Persians, by Arabs, and Phoenicians, by the Kurds; by the Palestinians living as citizens in exile or in camps as refugees. By Assyrians and Druze, by Shi’a, by Sunni, by Orthodox and Latin Christians. By Yemenites, Chechens, Assyrians, Armenians, Maronites, Sunni and Shi’a Lebanese, Jordanians and Syrian Arabs, Alawites, and Georgians as well. All who wish to see lasting peace, and if not peace, a separation of belligerents, a tempering of state violence, the irons heels of dictators, and a long-term ceasefire. Where the region may trade, heal, and develop ourselves. If not peace, if not better understanding, then trade and normality. Civility in wildly diverse societies. All the people in our region have suffered enough. To survive the wars of the last four thousand years, to stop the wars of tomorrow from occurring: “Enough! Ceasefire.” But that must be a building block to confederation; courts, trade agreements, transnational civil service, and collective defense, not dictated or dominated by the foreign policy of the meddling great powers. We must build our long-needed confidence apart. Let us separate into our respective camps and return to our ancestral lands or be in those lands where we are welcomed. Let us confederate and forever defeat the meddling of outside nations that speak of “peace” but trade in arms, and reduce us to all barbarism!” These authors and practitioners of a fourth track diplomacy call for an end to false, wasteful ideas of Western or Eastern peace. An end to all outside invasions. If we cannot pray in the same ways or all speak the same languages, this is no actual impediment to declaring HOLLIS! HUDNA! From our many flags, let us become a Middle East Confederation from the Western Maghreb to the Indus River.
A Regional Framework Defined
The Middle East is a transcontinental region located at the junction of Western Asia and northeastern Africa, generally encompassing the countries that lie between the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Geographically, it typically includes Western Asian countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Palestine, as well as parts of North Africa, primarily Egypt. Some broader definitions also incorporate Turkey and Iran due to cultural, historical, and geopolitical ties. The region is characterized by its strategic position connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, its arid and semi-arid climates, and its abundance of natural resources, particularly oil and gas reserves, which have made it central to global economic and political affairs.
A broader definition of the Middle East extends beyond the traditional core of Western Asia and northeastern Africa to include Turkey, the South Caucasus states of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the countries of the Maghreb in North Africa—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania. This expanded conceptualization reflects not only geographical proximity but also historical, cultural, and political connections, including shared experiences of Ottoman and colonial influence, Islamic heritage, and trade networks linking North Africa, the Levant, and the Near East. Under this definition, the Middle East becomes a strategically and culturally diverse region bridging three continents, encompassing a wider array of climates, ethnicities, languages, and religious traditions, and highlighting the interwoven nature of geopolitical, economic, and social dynamics across its extended territory.
If we divide the region into varying confessional or alliance blocks we arrive at:
The Maghreb states (Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunesia, Morocco, Mauratnaia)
Stateless Kurds (in Turkey, Syria, Iran, & Iraq)
Middle Eastern Christians in varying sects,
Turkey
Israel
In the Middle of what, East of who?
The Ziggurats of the Neolithic age tell a story. Civilization began with the creation of castes and the centralization of power into early state systems. The cradle of all civilization began with specializations of labor, chaining early humanity to useful trades, and the conscription of worker slaves. The appointment of Kings. It began with tributes to unseen Gods, all-powerful oligarchs, and eventually a cast of priests to preside over mythology, then later religions, and later still over since, and this all served one thing: to prevent us from rebellion. The unnatural subjugation of all humanity into productive labor is not a unique story to Mesopotamia. This book is not about insurrection or economic development. It is not a rejection of ethnic identity or the work of atheists. What is clear: the status quo is dangerous to states and people inside them.
It is chaotic uncertainty at best. The entire Middle East is awash in an endless war and has experienced every measure of barbaric atrocity. This state of modern warfare has proceeded without any actual peace since 1920, but the bloody chaos existed a long time before that. In perpetuity for as long as we have known.
Every nation is highly vulnerable; every nation is perhaps also complicit in the killing fields today. The Western powers and Eastern powers have used us. They have handed us sophisticated weapons to murder each other in varying combinations while the great transnational corporations harvest the energy supplies in the ground. This has nothing to do with civilizational clashes or the competing interpretations of the Abrahamic religion. That is just the framework for our terrifying division, but not the cause of it. The Modern Middle East must cast off its own oligarchy, jail its own collaborators, we must cast off foreign domination, cast off ethnic particularism, and embrace peace on its own terms.
It is not fully true that the tinderbox of the dying Ottoman Empire erupted in Palestine or can be cured from there. Nor can Turkey revive it. Or can Iran dictcate its Shi’a rivalist terms. Nor is it true that the roads to Jerusalem from Cairo, Damascus, Karbala, Najaf, Mecca, Medina, and Tehran are all guarded by the now-flailing American empire. The mulipolar world of rising China and reviving Russia will treat the region in a different, but not necessarily better way.
Not all our original sins of the region began with the Crusaders, the Mongols, the Ottomans, the Zionists, with meddling foreigners, and with our oil. Long before the Crusaders attacked from the West and the Mongols came from the East; we fought wars of the Ziggurats. We fought wars of city states. We fought wars against Romans. We fought wars between Sunni and Shi’a. We fought wars between rival Caliphs. We fought wars against unbelievers and true believers of esoteric sects.
The truth is that any so-called peace process is little more than a short-term buy-off if there is no structural framework to actually exist together. Allowing the hegemonic powers (American, the EU, China, and Russia) more time to take, to utilize what lies under our sands until it all runs out, and it will run out in the next several hundred years. We cannot and should not seek to perpetuate war on Israel; we should all be seeking to decouple the Jewish state from the foreign policy goals of the West. But also the Muslm states that are Western or Eastern semi-peripheral states; such as Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. We should take accountability for what we have done to and with Palestinians as a whole, both as Israeli occupiers and Arab state hosts. We should validate the Kurdish question and acknowledge the rights of 40 million stateless people, who have been massacred, particularly in Iraq and Turkey. We should acknowledge that the Sunni-Shi’a cold war is also quite violent and divisive to the region. We should prevent starvation, human rights violations, and genocide in Palestine, but also in Syria,Yemen,.and Sudan (which is not part of the Middle East but deeply affected by it). In short, we must be accountable for what is the violence inflicted by colonialism/ neocolonialism, and what is the violence we are self-inflicting. Violence baked into the fabric of our poltical consciousness as a region. In Islam, hypocrisy is a high level of contradictory sin; we must take stock of where the fault lies with foreign meddling and where it lies with our own leaders’ violent impulses and failed policies. Yet, the treatise does not reject states. But presupposes they are violent, inefficient, repressive, and prone to Oligarchic capture.
There are many failures of the modern state system. Innumerous failures and predations to indict. But these are the boundaries were working with, the confines of power we are conglamorating if this scheme might proceed, it is a balance of nationalism, an alliance of regional geographies, and has to balance the authoritarian nature of states and armies, with the civil society and constitutional rights entitlements of citizens organized into cantons.
What is a state in the Modern Middle East?
With the exceptions of Egypt, Israel, Turkey, and Iran (because they have certain historical permanence or at least longer periods of imagined identity); most states are modern inventions of Sykes-Picciot and nationalisms of convenience. Borders drawn up by foreign powers then codified in over 125 years of basically continuous warfare.
The Ottoman Turkish genocide of the Armenians, carried out by Kurds. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine carried out by Israelis. The Iraqi genocide of the Kurds carried by Saddam’s forces. The war between Iraq and Iran. The ISIS genocide on the Yazidis.
The Yemen civil war, the Lebanese Civil War, the Syrian Civil War, the Libyan Civil War.
The most deadly engagements fought between Jews and Arabs, Christian Lebanese and Muslim Lebanese, Shi’a Iran against Sunni and Shi’a Iraq, the war between Turks and Kurds, the modern conflagrations in Algeria, Palestine, Yemen, Syria, and Libya. The spill over of these wars, into Sudan and Afghanistan.
What is Federalism is the Modern Middle East?
It is to allow states greater regional autonomy in their governance by allowing for sub-unit/provincial governments where federal states can have their own civil administration, state laws, and state self-defense in the form of national guards.
In the Middle Eastern context, federalism refers to a system in which power is divided between a central government and regional authorities, such as provinces, emirates, or autonomous territories. Unlike in Western democracies, where federalism often evolves from voluntary union or constitutional design, in the Middle East it tends to emerge as a conflict-resolution tool—a way to manage deep sectarian, ethnic, and tribal divisions within states that were often shaped by colonial borders rather than shared identity. Federalism in this region is therefore less about political philosophy and more about pragmatic power-sharing in fragile or post-conflict societies.
Historically, most Middle Eastern states developed under highly centralized, often authoritarian governments that concentrated power in the capital. This structure marginalized peripheral regions and minority groups, fueling recurring tensions. When these centralized states fractured—through wars, revolutions, or foreign interventions—federalism was sometimes proposed as a way to preserve unity while granting autonomy. The most prominent example is Iraq, which adopted a federal constitution after 2003 that recognized the Kurdistan Regional Government as an autonomous entity within a single Iraqi state. This arrangement sought to balance power among Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites, though it remains contentious. Another example is the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven emirates that maintains stability through monarchical power-sharing rather than democracy—making it a rare case of successful, non-democratic federalism. Proposals for federal systems have also appeared in Syria, Yemen, and Libya, where decentralization has been discussed as a means to end prolonged civil wars, though these plans have yet to take hold.
Despite its appeal as a peace mechanism, federalism in the Middle East faces major obstacles. Deep sectarian mistrust, weak institutions, and the enduring culture of centralized authority make it difficult to implement effectively. Many political elites fear that federalism will lead to partition, while external powers—such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—often manipulate internal divisions for their own regional agendas. As a result, federalism in the region is frequently perceived as foreign-imposed or a prelude to fragmentation rather than a step toward stable governance.
In essence, Middle Eastern federalism is less an ideological system than a pragmatic survival strategy. It seeks to balance competing identities and distribute power in states where national unity is fragile. While in theory it could promote local governance, accountability, and reduced conflict over resources, in practice it remains a contested and unstable experiment—a reflection of the region’s complex interplay between unity, autonomy, and enduring historical divisions.
What are Cantons?
A means to organize a more localized civil administration in highly diverse societies with a tendency to wage protracted civil wars. Which have come out of the many wars but do not need to wait for a war to form structures. In fact it is more desirable for the existing states to undertake federalism, then to dissolve into further warfare.
Cantons do not have to geographic they can also be communal; the main benefit of canton level sub-organization to the the federalized state is to allow community organization on civil society lines, allow for local decision making on community life, and allow peoples of common affinity to organize their lives on those traditions and values.
For instance, in Lebanon, the idea of cantonization became prominent during the 1975–1990 civil war, when the country effectively split into Christian, Muslim, and Druze-controlled territories. Although the Taif Agreement later re-centralized the state, Lebanon still operates through an informal sectarian power-sharing system that resembles a confessional version of cantonal autonomy. In Syria, after the 2011 uprising, the country fragmented into several zones of control: Kurdish self-governed areas in the north and northeast (often described as “cantons” by their organizers), Assad regime territory, and opposition or Islamist enclaves. The Kurdish-led administration explicitly used the term “cantons” to describe regions like Afrin, Kobane, and Jazira, which were united under the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)—a model inspired by decentralized and participatory governance rather than ethnic nationalism.
In Iraq, the term is less commonly used, but the reality is similar: the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Shi’a and Sunni-dominated provinces function as quasi-cantons within a weak federal framework. Similarly, in Yemen and Libya, ongoing wars have produced competing governments and territorial zones—effectively cantonized states divided by militia control, tribal loyalty, and external patronage.
Thus, in the Middle East, “cantons” are rarely peaceful administrative entities. They are instead manifestations of state disintegration or attempts to manage diversity through localized autonomy. While some scholars and diplomats propose cantonization as a conflict-resolution mechanism—for example, suggesting a canton-based solution for Syria, Yemen, or Palestine—risks entrenching division, legitimizing warlords, and formalizing partition. In essence, Middle Eastern cantons represent a hybrid between governance and survival, where local communities govern themselves amid the collapse or weakness of the central state.
Middle East (core countries – 20)
MASHRIQ
BILAD AL-SHAM (Egypt & Levant)
Egypt
Lebanon
Syria
Israel
Palestine
Jordan
BILAD AL-RAFIDAIN WA FARIS
Iran
Iraq
KHALIJ (Gulf States)
Bahrain
Kuwait
Oman
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Yemen
MAGHREB (Northwest Africa)
Libya
Algeria
Tunisia
Morocco
Mauritania
Total (core Middle East): 20 states
Middle East Semi-Peripheral
Turkey
Iran
Egypt
Israel
Saudi Arabia
Middle East Peripheral
Cyprus
Azerbaijan
Georgia
Armenia
Sudan
Afghanistan
Middle East Non-State Cantons
Kurdistan-Iraq (KRG-Bashur)
Kurdistan-Syria (Rojava)
Houthi Territories-Yemen
Palestine Gaza
Palestine West Bank
Druze in Syria
Hezbollah in Lebanon
= 27 countries total
Egypt, Jordan, and briefly the PLO were all bought off to make an awkward peace with Israel with American development aid dollars. In recent years, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan, and, one day soon, Saudi Arabia most likely are paid to recognize Israel because the Americans and Europeans use Israel in Palestine as a forward operating base.
They use it as a litmus test of their hegemony. Just as the Russians used Syria until its total collapse and still use Iran in some agreed to forms. The Iranians and Israelis have their specific confessional interests, and of course, they have their own regional goals; but without external arms and subsidies, they could not sustain such aggressive posturing and mount such an adventuristic foreign policy. The Israeli military machine is funded by the United States, and the Iranian one (and the Assad regime in Syria before it collapsed) partially by Russia and China, though to the same effect: perpetuating adventuristic and militant regional foreign policy.
The capital inputs for development or military aid allow the Saudi Arabian and UAE to sustain devastating intervention in Yemen. They subsidize Israeli hyper-militarization and the Palestinian occupation, but they also subsidize Hezbollah, Hamas, and Shiite militia forces. It is hard to imagine such horrific localized wars without the foreign powers subsidizing them.
The road between both halves of Jerusalem/Al-Quds runs in fact to the mountains of Kurdistan. To a people without a state, who by historical circumstance were in the last 40 years trained to fight by the leftist Palestinians and trained to reorganize by Zionists. Who, although speaking 11 dialects of Kurdish, are linguistically and culturally most like the Persian Iranians. The Iranians, who are the only existential threat to Israel, still have over 40,000 Jewish citizens and share a version of Shi’a faith with the Lebanese, Yemenis, Bahrainis, and Iraqis and a language with the Afghans; fight East and West via these proxies.
Finally, Egypt is a nation that subsists on Western aid, but revolution is always below the surface. Jordan is actually over 60-70% Palestinian, and without American and Israeli support, could not exist as a country.
So, it is not the coexistence of Israel in Palestine that is the linchpin of regional peace. Yet in warfare, they have drawn in all the actors that are needed to make a Hudna, or a lasting ceasefire for the Israelis to ally with the two other powers that ensure the Confederation can raise its flags; Iran and Egypt. Which is to say, the historic enemies of the Jews. Nations such as Egypt and the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires did attempt to obliterate the Jews, then the “Eivree” or Hebrews. “Jews’ is a word invented by Romans, as there is no J sound in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Although all our people learn and think in several thousand-year segments. Although we find almost unceasing war records no matter what empire or confederation was in power. The point of unity for the nations of this proposed Confederation is the historical legitimacy and self-awareness of monotheistic, desert tribes that absolutely no outsider or insider to the region could subjugate completely. This does not make an argument that Palestinians are Canaanites, the Lebanese Phoenicians, or that Jews should not be called Jews but are the 20-30% intermixed survivors of the Israelite tribes Dan, Yehuda, and Levy; Eivri, or Yehudeans. Or that of the 13 million worldwide population of descendants of the Jews, as few as 5 million are remotely even practicing the religion. Which is speculated.
Palestine is an open wound. It is with the latest round of fighting in Gaza evidently a genocide. Over 65,000 people have died so far. It shall be remembered to all that over 4 million have died in Sudan, so far. Over 630,000 were killed in the Syrian Civil War (mostly by the Russian-backed Assad regime), and the war between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the Houthis has led to the deaths of over 377,000 people, that we know of.
It is a wild deception that the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), Daesh, has its origins in any normally accepted version of Islam. Its goals were allegedly divinely inspired in prophecy. Its defeat will be no means bring an end to this type of Wahabi Salafist insurgency, exported in petro-dollars from the Gulf. ISIS was an entity controlled by, supplied by, and supported by Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan’s intelligence services. That is one theory, another that was Ba’athist intelligence and varying Al Qaeda offshoots, using messianic fervor and rhetoric. If not for the Coalition forces, particularly the US, the French, the British, the Kurdish SDF, Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, and Iraqi PMF, they very well might have conquered the entire Middle East. How close they came is understood only by those who were there on the ground.
It is time now for the coming generation of the Middle East to take steps to prevent the interventions of all types of foreign power, the meddling of the great powers, as well as to contain the regressive impulses of our varying theocracies. In short, the road to an actual long-lasting peace is not through the conquest of states, the dispersion of the Jews yet again, or doubling down on depper religious zeal and fundamentalisms!
The road to peace is in fact not peace; it is instead about ceasefire, and separation into stable units, but not embracing the chauvinistic nationalism of outsiders, particularly the meddling of the East and the West: NATO-aligned neocrusaders, Russian-aligned neocrusaders, and rising China hungry for all resources of all types. We do not have to commit to anything with these actors. But we must enter a confederation strong enough to repel foreign aggression, stamp out internal fundamentalism, stamp out ethnic conflicts, and secure the ceasefire. Secure a framework of civil and human rights acceptable to the diversity of religions, and of course, prevent the indefinite traffic of weapons and currency for access to the finite resources of gas and oil. The Muslim world is obsessively fixated on Palestine because it is an open wound, it is a blatant ongoing human rights violation, a violent occupation, and because it instills a crusader-like, colonial force in our midst that is not fully Western, but also not fully Middle Eastern. As long as Israel has no alignment in culture, trade, and security, it will remain a destabilizing entity. One that, in any projection of isolation, resistance, demographic shift, BDS, international divestment/ shaming, has 200 nuclear missiles. Its Jewish population in religious identity and political imagination is indigenous to the Middle East. Removing it, secularizing it, demilitarizing it, or refusing to deal with it is political imagination. The highest level of human rights and civil rights safeguards one can deliver to Palestinians is an Israel and Palestine fully integrated into the region. The Western media and the Muslim streets obsessively focuses on Palestine because:
It is an open wound with ongoing human rights violations that antagoize and grieve the very heart and soul of the region.
(a) The Israelis, despite being mostly Jewish, are at least half European or Slavic in roots and appearance (approx. 2 million are Ashkenazi/ European and 4 million are Sephardic/ Mizrahi), so aesthetically it triggers the latent crusader imagination. Were their no real and imagined Arab enemy the Jews might fight yet another civil war for the soul of thier state. It is deeply baked into Chrisitian theology the Jews must gather again in Israel before their Christian messiah returns. The war in Palestine-Israel is thus deeply and subconsciously understood by Western minds as theological and geostrategic.
(b) Israel is, without a single doubt, is a manifestation of several thousand years of collective trauma experienced by the Jewish people into being a modern Outremer: a military colony that Europe and America rely on for regional control. There is not a realistic scenario where the Jews will lose a military confrontation. They will not pack up and leave. There is a highly realistic scenario they will lose lose a demographic one. The birthrates of Palestinians already place them above 20% of Israeli passport holders.
It cannot be denied that both the West and East have not been short on Muslim proxy clients. Pahlavi Iran until 1979. The U.S. bases in Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Turkey. Russia once heavily invested in Egypt until it went to America, and also Syria until the Assad regime fell in 2024.
The abomination of Wahabi Salafist extremist Saudi Arabia, as well as each of the Petro-States of the Gulf. Unique in a world where race is the most essential passport to privilege, of 8-9 million Israelites, 3 million look fully European. For the greater part of 800 years since being butchered by Crusaders, culminating in the holocaust, the Jews have, or at least the Ashkenazi in charge of Israel, decided they will collaborate with Christian Europe against their Semitic cousins, the people of the region they were expelled from by the Romans 1,900 years ago.
The Shi’a also know a great deal about enduring persecutions. Iran and the Shi’a have many characteristics developed adjacent to the Jews. Particularly, a feeling of their backs against a wall, then the sea. A feeling of a need for a vigilant ethno state. The world’s oldest groups of Christians, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Maronites, have survived endless wars by retreating to the mountains. The Sunni are being held hostage between secularism and regressive fundamentalism; Egypt, Türkiye, and Pakistan are caught between those feelings. The contradictions of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are lost on no one.
The three intrinsic imperialists are external profiteers who secure themselves from endless war. They steal resources and direct efforts toward maldevelopment: USA-NATO, the Russian Federation, and eventually the People’s Republic of China. (Though their imperial footprint is still light).
The initial geography behind which a Middle Eastern Confederation can be birthed, formed, and fortified. Broken into federal units within exisitg states, then administered by canton level governance.
Lebanon- 4 cantons
Sunni
Shi’a
Christian
Druze
Palestine-Israel- 2 cantons
Judean
Palestinian
Jordan-2 cantons
Hashimite
Palestinian
Syria- 4 cantons
Kurdish (SDF)
Sunni Arab
Alawite
Druze
Iraq- 3 cantons
Shi’a Arab
Sunni Arab
Kurdish (PUK/KDP)
Iran- 5 cantons
Shi’a Persian
Azeri
Kurdish
Baloch
Lur
Second Phase
Turkey, Armenia, Kurdistan regions.
Gulf States & Saudi Arabia.
For the skeptics let us draw on the fact that America is under 300 years old. The complete reliance on fossil fuels for transport and trade is less than 200 years old. All of Europe exhibited mass violence and religious atrocity for around 2,000 + years, and the nations of the Middle East have produced all Western religions, writing, science, and literacy dating back perhaps 3,000 years. Essential to this document is an understanding that we are proposing the confederation of peoples who have lived beside each other in relative non-violence for as long as recorded history existed, and only the interventions of Crusaders, Mongols, and European imperialists have escalated conditions to perpetual war and genocide.
Realignment is suggested. Five pillars, keystone nations if you will, that if realigned, restore the Palestinians and also the Israelis to their lost homeland indefinitely and return the Jews to being a people of the Middle East. With the realignment of Israel away from her European mixed tribes, abusers of over two thousand years back to the tent of her blood; then there are only four nations left that can sow widespread death, extremism, and disorder, and they, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Türkiye, will have to be managed one by one. The five intrinsic incubators of regional instability and endless war behind which the Middle Eastern resources are divided up and plundered: Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan. Each with an external pipeline of funds and trade linking back to a hegemonic power. The semi-peripheral powers of the Middle East.
We, the peoples of the Middle East, comprising all peoples listed above and all indigenous communities acknowledge the history of millennia-long coexistence, conflict, trade, and cultural exchange. The region has endured cycles of war, conquest, displacement, and foreign interference. It is the imperative of survival, dignity, and justice that motivates this treatise.
Chapter I: Principles of Survival and Peace
Principle of Non-Annihilation: No party possesses absolute capacity to destroy another; hence, the continuation of conflict is neither inevitable nor desirable.
Principle of Diverse Society: Peoples must establish arrangements permitting ethically and religiously divergent communities to coexist while preserving autonomy, identity, and historical heritage.
Ceasefire Imperative: Immediate cessation of hostilities is mandatory. External actors benefiting from ongoing conflict must be neutralized in policy and practice.
Chapter II: Recognition of Indigenous Sovereignty
All peoples retain sovereignty over ancestral lands or lands where they are received. Their civil, poltical, economic, culturalm and social human rights will be affirmed in the formation of governance cantons in federalized states.
Political and territorial arrangements must respect cultural, ethnic, and religious distinctions.
State boundaries will be altered to reflect demographic realities and avoid further armed conflicts.
State governance will be remodaled to a Federal system of sub units called Cantons, inside Federalized States, bound in a Confederation.
Historical grievances shall not preclude functional coexistence; legal recognition of past injustices shall guide reconciliation mechanisms.
Chapter III: Formation of the Middle Eastern Confederation
Structure: The Confederation shall comprise autonomous cantons existing inside the state frameworks, each preserving ethnic, linguistic, and religious governance within a shared federal framework.
A Federal structure for existing states will be established on regional or confessional lines to propagate the terms of the Confederation.
Cantons can form based on shared ethnicity, religion, or logical geography
Cantons have a civil administration and a series of democratic term based councils that sent delegates to a Federal State level Assembly.
Like an American state with a national guard and its own constitution and taxation powers.
The elected leadership of several cantons form a Federal State Assemby of a geographic unit of the country (nation state).
The nation State will have a unicameral Congress/Parliment/Majalis which in turn elects Confederation level Reprentatives (like representatives to the EU).
The Confederation is a voluntary association of existing states that share a framework of free travel, free trade, triparte taxation, a Confederation wide civil service, and miliary security cooperation agreements.
A referendum of cantons can asl to withdraw from the Confderation obligations
The target goal is ten years to integrate all the miliary forces
Each State wiil adopt a Federal framework transferring certain civil administration and taxation responsibilities to a Canton Administation.
One or several Cantons will comprise a Federal unit of an existing State.
Each State will adopt constitutional amendments enshrining a civil code of the cantons, the availability to seek justice under that code or religious courts
Cantons can propagate a Modal Civic Code with variations for local religious law
Human rights law shall supersede all local or religious law where conflict arises.
Human rights law shall be derived from existing Human right treaties.
Citizens retain the right to relocate between cantons or exit the Confederation entirely by a popular vote.
Cantonal legislation may govern internal religious matters provided compliance with federal legal standards.
A unified supreme judiciary shall arbitrate disputes between cantons and states.
Chapter IV: Governance and Civil Service
Rotational Leadership: Leadership positions across cantons shall rotate to ensure equitable representation.
Civil Institutions: Shared civil services shall administer education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
Defense and Security:
A coordinated defense council shall maintain sovereignty and internal stability.
Military and police forces shall operate under confederal oversight while respecting cantonal autonomy.
No foreign powers will be allowed miltarya bases in the region.
The Confederation will draft an collectively maintain a unified multinational defense force.
Chapter V: Engagement with External Powers
The Confederation shall maintain non-alignment with foreign powers.
No external power shall dictate domestic policy, supply advanced weaponry, or manipulate regional conflicts.
Strategic self-reliance shall be developed in energy, defense, and civil administration.
Chapter VI: Strategic Objectives
Arrest cycles of conflict across the region through structured separation and collaboration.
Priorities include pacficiaiton of protradcted conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Libya, & Israel-Palestine
Secure survival and autonomy of all indigenous peoples.
Establish a legally binding and historically informed framework for peace and cooperation through a regiona Human Rights Court.
Prepare for post-conflict sustainability: energy, economic stability, and civil resilience.
Chapter VII: Immediate Measures
Initiate a region-wide ceasefire framework within six months.
Convene representatives from all states, militai, cantons, and indigenous communities to formalize governance structures.
Draft a constitution codifying rights, responsibilities, and federal oversight.
Establish mechanisms for dispute resolution and conflict prevention.
FRAMEWORK This treatise is not a theoretical abstraction. It is a practical, legally grounded roadmap for survival, dignity, and justice in the Middle East. It acknowledges history, respects diversity, and insists on immediate action. The formation of a Middle Eastern Confederation is the sole viable mechanism to halt ongoing cycles of destruction and secure the future of its peoples.
A confederated alliance of states and self-governing cantons that must find a common cause for separation and economic development, intrinsically linked to a series of strategic agreements between Arabs, Persian, Judeans and all of all religious confessions, and Kurds of all political types. Not factoring in whether they have states or are not recognized by the world state system.”
The Confederation shall be founded by the peoples of nations, not by states. The geographic boundaries are contingent upon the peoples who reside in the Maghreb, Middle, and Near East. Specifically, the fertile crescent with geopolitical implications from Tunisia to the west, to Kashmir in the East, to Sudan in the south, and the Caucuses. But rooted deeply in accords between Israel, Palestine, Shi’a Iran, Lebanon, and the Parties of the Kurds.
The Confederation shall be based on ethnic cantons that will be self-governed by religious law, civil law, or tribal custom but all cantons must be Universal Human Rights law-abiding; which is to allow the exit from any community of those that wish to live under secular civil law.
The Confederation shall be based on democratic autonomy; thus, a co-gendered leadership, a census, and a system of voting and elections must be in place to implement religious laws that are binding throughout a canton.
The Confederation shall conscript and maintain a unified Defense Force and Civil Service that, through 3 years of military or civil duty deploy diverse forces amid the Confederation to foster shared values in a complex and diverse society.
The ethno-civil administrative capitals of the Confederation pending cessation of military conflict shall be Cairo, Jerusalem-Al Quds, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Diyarbakir, Istanbul, and Tehran.
The Israelis and Palestinians are not the key elements of actualizing the Confederation, but they are capable of indefinitely destabilizing the effort to form the alliance and must be specifically managed.
The Israeli, Iranian, Saudi, and Turkish agreement is the only way to militarily secure the confederation.
The Kurds (in civil society/ ideology), Shi’a (in security), Lebanese (in trade), and Israeli (in technology, but certainly all sectors) have specific developmental technology as well as governance systems that are integral to this project.
The Confederation shall pursue non-alignment.
The Confederation shall enshrine into law and fiercely defend universal human rights, and all other canton level legal configurations will be subordinate to that code.
There are critical security, international relations, and domestic crisis issues that threaten the very existence of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples much more so than the ongoing, comparatively low-intensity occupation of the Palestinian zones of control in the West Bank and blighted Gaza. The region at large is in an acute state of political and social unrest; the governments of Somalia, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen have fallen resulting in foreign occupations, civil wars, and general anarchy. Shi’a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are at proxy war throughout the Muslim world.
Many will object to us describing Israel as a “Jewish military Colony”, and object to calling the separation barrier the “Apartheid Wall” but linguistics and agreement of a shared paradigm are vital to the success of this committee’s objectives. We assure you the credentials of our core research team from Israel are sufficiently grounded in lived experiences of both the intelligence service and defense forces; while our Palestinian team’s Jihadist and patriotic background would be of little question.
Chaos and revolution are spreading while security, what little there was, is unraveling. All of this was acutely exacerbated by the 2001 & 2003 American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; resulting in the virtual anarchic non-governance of both countries today. And of course, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is an open wound that festers, then bleeds out.
This treatise has been researched and written by a group of Judeans, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, and Kurds concerned with the collective survival of their respective peoples as they occupy and are occupied in the heart of this massive, unending conflict. There is very little hope of this macros-regional war or micro-peace settlement between Israel and Palestine being resolved on the level of government. Palestinians have two competing governments; Hamas and Fatah; Israel has a coalition government but is controlled as a military oligarchy on the behest of Ashkenazi Judaism and the foreign policy goals of the United States of America.
For the approximately 16 million humans living in Greater Israel/ Historic Palestine; the varying scenarios are not optimistic in the slightest.
Peace is improbable, demographics are not favorable to the 5-6 million categorized Jews and beyond the religious overtone of the landmarks described by three world religions as ‘holy land’; Israel is also a nuclear-armed semi-peripheral power aligned completely and dependent on financially a Jewish Lobby and interest in the United States which cultivates the specific and direct interests of two intractable groups; the US military-industrial complex and the 2-3 million Ashkenazi (European) Israeli Jews; which enjoy a standard of living inside the Jewish colony markedly different from the Jews of other ethnic backgrounds.
There has been ceaseless warfare in the Maghreb and Middle East since 1920, shortly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The false consciousness of the invented Nationalism. All the scenarios discussed in the treatise are inseparable from the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but it is naïve and European to link the peace of the region to our specific peace. A peace that will never be under the dynamics of the current situation, the minuscule size of the land, and endless regional intrigue. Arms and aid money, for control of energy resources.
Thus, we concern ourselves in this first manuscript with Israelis (of all religions and ethnicities) and Palestinians (of all demographics). We are concerned with the broader course of humanity, but this has been authored to ensure that regardless of humanities general course; there will always be Palestinians, and there will always be Jews; and if there are to be “Israelis” an identity that is less than 85 years old; we must engage in radical steps to subvert the course of the mainstream Zionist project; delink ourselves of Euro-American hegemony and stop the inevitable slaughter of our collective peoples.
“A new level of atrocity is coming; in fact, it has very much arrived.”
Between October 7th, 2023, and the January 2025 ceasefire the Palestinians killed around 1,700 Israelis, the Israelis killed around 75,000 Palestinians (and counting) and over 5,000 Lebanese. Some portions had weapons, and many did not.
Palestinian demographics will increase to above 50% inside the green line which they trend toward (currently the reality is something like 7 million Arabs to 8 million Jews + others), and or if Israel uses a nuclear weapon of which it has over 500. Or Israel is sucked into or provokes a war with Iran. Or any number of scenarios with state collapse, proxy war, Saudi and Iranian warfare, and further misadventures with enormous cost in-human life. To stop the final floodgates from opening, to address the broad systemic internal contradictions of the Israeli state and to secure a viable Middle Eastern Confederation, a radical policy of reorientation must begin with a realistic assessment of the only other three parties on the ground besides Memshala Yisrael3which can broker regional stability. Israel must deal directly with Hamas, Fatah, Kurdish Parties, and most importantly the Islamic Republic of Iran. Only an uneasy truce and alliance of this kind can focus policy and praxis on awakening the consciousness of the Sunni Arab majority.
“It is no longer a question of moralizing the conflict, obsessing over past failures, or temporarily abating a cycle of degenerating violence. Or conducting more banal and expensive anthropological studies on identity.”
In the Israeli Knesset, amid the Palestinian resistance factions, among the various Persian & Arab power brokers and the para-state organizations on the ground (and in the Diaspora) all realize that neither by sheer will nor by force of arms can they destroy one another. Blame for the modern quagmire that is the Middle East may fall squarely on the post-colonial powers of Europe and the United States for the proliferation of arms without stipulation or control. However, the new reality is that if the third Hebrew Commonwealth of Israel is to survive; if a Palestinian State is to be brought into being; as well as if any measure of regional stability is to be achieved, radical and unorthodox steps must be taken to close the breach. The breach is not simply a result of Israeli defense against Arab aggression, or vice versa; it is a breach in the foundation of the modern security calculus. All parties involved must become more attuned to the heightened stakes via lessons in history and sound political science.
This treatise offers an objective analysis of the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyah to advocate for its recognition as a viable partner, not in immediate peace; but in implementation of separation, economic development, and most importantly; Hudna4. It makes a fundamental case for supporting Kurdish national ambitions in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria. We advocate for a full and lasting partnership between Israel and the revolutionary Shi’a government in Iran. But we envision and call for something much more powerful.
To claim that Memshala Israel has secured its borders, or contained conventional military threats to its existence is to say that glass is made from sand. The process by which glass is made from sand renders the base substance unalterably changed and requires the release of energy through fire and heat to yield something far more unstable than its original form. While the cousins of Ishmael and Yitzhak, the Israelis, and Palestinians, are indeed two peoples intractably bound to a single, tiny piece of land, they are met with a recurring problem. The Israeli public and government (currently) lack the will to commit genocide. The Palestinian Resistance factions cannot (currently) procure or introduce a means to mass murder that will not render their own homeland a house of ash.
Surely whispered even openly said in both camps is the notion that it would not be ‘objectionable’ for the other and their kind to be ‘pushed into the sea’ or ‘dumped on the other side of the Jordan.’ The survivors of the Shoah5 cannot (yet) bring themselves to this, nor would international opinion condone genocide in the Holy Land today. As for the Palestinians, pushing the Jews into the sea has more to do with rhetoric than ability, conscience, or even intention. The ancestors of both races defended the holy land against the Christian Crusaders locked arm in arm.
There are over 1,400 years of precedent for relatively peaceful co-existence and less than 100 to the absolute contrary6. Anyone telling you otherwise has a vested interest in your ignorance. Even the death toll of the First Intifada (estimated at 421 Israeli/1,549 Palestinian7) and the bloodier melee of the Second Intifada, which included suicide bombers and collective punishment, cost only 1,062 Israeli and 5,500 Palestinian lives8. The invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008 resulted in 13 Israeli and 1,417 Palestinians9. In the ongoing Gaza Wars in 2010-2015, an estimated 100 Israelis and over 5,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. Approximately 1,300 Israelis and 50,000 Palestinians have died in the latest war.
Between 2015 and 2023 multiple rounds of fighting in Gaza killed several thousands of Palestinians and a few dozen Israelis. In the same period, the Syrian Civil War killed over 500,000 people. That means that in the entirety of the Palestinian Israeli conflict beginning in 1948; less than 50,000 people have cumulatively died, comparatively to all other ethnic conflicts that is a footnote, a statistic. The body count of the Palestinian-Israel civil war is comparatively low when compared with other global ethnic conflicts like those waged in Sri Lanka, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Ukraine.
Then in under two years the Jewish State killed over 70,000 Palestinians in retaliation for the brutal killing on October 7th of 1,200 Israelis.
Hamas must be directly engaged as the only viable partner capable of securing Palestinian temporary acceptance of the third Hebrew Commonwealth and thereby securing the Jewish National home by buying both sides more time for ultimate reconciliation before more desperate measures are introduced. (Most no longer believe that is the truth on the ground, as of July 2025 Hamas is reeling).
The Three Parties of Kurdistan (PKK, PUK, KDP) must be supported aggressively by both people overtly and covertly. Shi’a Iran is the only semi-peripheral power both sides can count on, as all other states besides Egypt are European inventions; and Egypt is an incredibly unstable place locked between a US-backed military dictatorship and the Muslim Brotherhood. The road to peace does not run through Jerusalem/ Al-Quds, but without a full ceasefire between the Judeans and Palestinians no other keystone ally, tribe, or faction can be aligned to the program to build up a Middle East Confederation in our lifetimes.
“The window of achieving political and military victory within our lifetimes is an ever-narrowing window. If we falter, if we squander possibility in the name of imagined identity and unseen gods; all will be lost. All our people no matter what they pray to, will be facing annihilation together.”
“We ask you to read these documents carefully and go back to your factions, parties, organizations, armies, and places of worship to testify on the nature of this plan.”
By the best calculations of our Party, we have a window of less than 200 years before the oil reserves run out, but under 40 years to achieve the Confederation on the terms of the many peoples of our nation. There is nothing in anyone’s scripture that calls for this endless warfare. There is nothing that tells us there must be homogenous practice or uniform belief.
The road to peace is in fact not peace; it is instead about ceasefire, and separation into stable units but not embracing the chauvinistic nationalism of outsiders; particularly the meddling of the East and the West: NATO aligned crusaders, Russian aligned crusaders, and rising China hungry for all resources of all types. We do not have to commit to anything with these actors. But we must enter a confederation strong enough to repel foreign aggression, stamp out internal fundamentalism, stamp out ethnic conflicts, and secure the ceasefire. Secure a framework of civil and human rights acceptable to the diversity of religions and of course, prevent the indefinite traffic of weapons and currency for access to the finite resources of gas and oil.
The academia, the media, and the West obsessively have focused on Palestine, because:
(a) The Israelis, despite being mostly Jewish are at least half European or Slavic in appearance (approx. 2 million are Ashkenazi/ European and 4 million are Sephardic/ Mizrahi) so aesthetically it triggers the latent crusader imagination.
(b) Israel is without a single doubt a manipulation of several thousand years of collective trauma experienced by the Jewish people into being a modern Outremer: a colony that Europe and America rely on for regional control. But while accepting or refuting that statement; it cannot be denied that so was Pahlavi Iran until 1979. So has been Jordan and Egypt, and the abomination of Wahabi Salafist extremist Saudi Arabia; as well as each of the Petro-States of the Gulf. Unique in a world where race is the most essential passport to privilege; of 8-9 million Israelites: 3 million look fully European. For the greater part of 800 years since being butchered by Crusaders culminating in the holocaust; the Jews have, or at least the Ashkenazi in charge of Israel decided they will collaborate with Christian Europe against their Semitic cousins, the people of the region they were expelled from by Romans 1,900 years ago.
The Shi’a also knows a great deal about enduring persecution. Iran and the Shi’a have many characteristics like the Jews. Particularly a feeling of their backs against a wall, then the sea. The world’s oldest groups of Christians; the Armenians, Assyrians, and Maronites have survived endless wars by retreating to the mountains. The Sunni are being held hostage between secularism and regressive fundamentalism; Egypt, Türkiye, and Pakistan are caught between those feelings. The contradictions of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are lost on no one.
Thus, an unusual realignment is suggested. Five pillars, keystone nations if you will, that if realigned restore the Israelis to their lost homeland indefinitely and return the Jews to being a people of the Middle East. With the realignment of Israel away from her European mixed tribes, abusers of over two thousand years back to the tent of her blood; then there are only four nations left that can sow widespread death, extremism, and disorder and they; Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Türkiye will be managed one by one.
The five intrinsic incubators of regional instability and endless war behind which the Middle Eastern resources are divided up and plundered: Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan. Each with an external pipeline of funds and trade linking back to hegemonic power. The semi-peripheral powers of the Middle East.
The three intrinsic imperialists are external profiteers who secure themselves from endless war. They steal resources and direct efforts toward Maldevelopment: USA-NATO, Russian Federation, and eventually the People’s Republic of China. (Though their imperial footprint is still light).
The initial geography behind which a Middle Eastern Confederation can be birthed, formed, and fortified: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Türkiye, Armenia, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Kashmir.
For the skeptics let us draw on the fact that America is under 300 years old. The complete reliance on fossil fuels for transport and trade is less than 100 years. All of Europe exhibited mass violence and religious atrocity for around 2,000 + years and the nations of the Middle East have produced all Western religions, writing, science, and literacy dating back perhaps 3,000 years. Essential to this document is an understanding that we are proposing the confederation of peoples who have lived beside each other in relative non-violence for as long as recorded history existed, and only the interventions of Crusaders, Mongols, and European imperialists have escalated conditions to perpetual war and genocide.
The road between both halves of Jerusalem to Al-Quds runs in fact to the mountains of Kurdistan. To a people without a state, who by historical circumstance were in the last 40 years trained to fight by Palestinians and trained to organize by Zionists. Who, although speaking 11 dialects of Kurdish, are linguistically and culturally most like the Persian Iranians. The Iranians, who are the only existential threat to Israel, still have over 40,000 Jewish citizens and share a version of Shi’a faith with the Lebanese, Yemenis, Bahrainis, and Iraqis and a language with the Afghans; fight East and West via these Proxies. Finally, Egypt is a nation that subsists on Western aid, but revolution is always below the surface. Jordan is over 60-70% Palestinian and without American and Israeli support could not exist as a country.
So, it is not the coexistence of Israel in Palestine that is the lynchpin of peace. Yet in warfare, they have drawn in all the actors that are needed to make a Hudna, or a lasting ceasefire for the Israelis to ally with the two other powers that ensure the Confederation can raise its flags; Iran and Egypt. Which is to say the historic enemies of the Jews. Nations such as Egypt and the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires did attempt to obliterate the Jews, then the “Eivree” or Hebrews. “Jews’ is a word invented by Romans, as there is no J sound in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Although all our people learn and think in several thousand-year segments. Although we find almost unceasing war records no matter what empire or confederation was in power. The point of unity for the nations of this proposed Confederation is the historical legitimacy and self-awareness of monotheistic, desert tribes that absolutely no outsider or insider to the region could subjugate completely. This does not make an argument that Palestinians are Canaanites, the Lebanese Phoenicians, or that Jews should not be called Jews but are the 20-30% intermixed survivors of the Israelite tribes Dan, Yehuda, and Levy; Eivri, or Yehudeans. Or that of the 13 million worldwide population of descendants of the Jews as few as 5 million are remotely even practicing the religion. Which is speculated.
“Essentially speaking we are talking about a confederated alliance of states and self-governing cantons that must find a common cause for separation and economic development intrinsically linked to a series of strategic agreements between Judeans, Persians, Arabs of all religious confessions, and Kurds of all political types. Not factoring in whether they have states or are not recognized by the world state system.”
The Confederation shall be founded by the peoples of nations, not by states. The geographic boundaries are contingent upon the peoples who reside in the Maghreb, Middle, and Near East. Specifically, the fertile crescent with geopolitical implications from Tunisia to the west, to Kashmir in the East, to Sudan in the south, and the Caucuses. But rooted deeply in accords between Israel, Palestine, Shi’a Iran, Lebanon, and the Parties of the Kurds.
The Confederation shall be based on ethnic cantons that will be self-governed by religious law, civil law, or tribal custom but all cantons must be Universal Human Rights law-abiding; which is to allow the exit from any community of those that wish to live under secular civil law.
The Confederation shall be based on democratic autonomy; thus, a co-gendered leadership, a census, and a system of voting and elections must be in place to implement religious laws that are binding throughout a canton.
The Confederation shall conscript and maintain a unified Defense Force and Civil Service that through 3 years of military or civil duty deploy diverse forces amid the Confederation to foster shared values in a complex and diverse society.
The ethno-civil administrative capitals of the Confederation pending cessation of military conflict shall be Cairo, Jerusalem-Al Quds, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Diyarbakir, Istanbul, and Tehran.
The Israelis and Palestinians are not the key elements of actualizing the Confederation, but they are capable of indefinitely destabilizing the effort to form the alliance and must be specifically managed.
The Israeli, Iranian, Saudi, and Turkish agreement is the only way to militarily secure the confederation.
The Kurds (in civil society/ ideology), Shi’a (in security), Lebanese (in trade), and Israeli (in technology, but certainly all sectors) have specific developmental technology as well as governance systems that are integral to this project.
The Confederation shall pursue non-alignment.
The Confederation shall enshrine into law and fiercely defend universal human rights, and all other canton level legal configurations will be subordinate to that code.
There are critical security, international relations, and domestic crisis issues that threaten the very existence of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples much more so than the ongoing, comparatively low-intensity occupation of the Palestinian zones of control in the West Bank and blighted Gaza. The region at large is in an acute state of political and social unrest; the governments of Somalia, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen have fallen resulting in foreign occupations, civil wars, and general anarchy. Shi’a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are at proxy war throughout the Muslim world.
Many will object to us describing Israel as a “Jewish military Colony”, and object to calling the separation barrier the “Apartheid Wall” but linguistics and agreement of a shared paradigm are vital to the success of this committee’s objectives. We assure you the credentials of our core research team from Israel are sufficiently grounded in lived experiences of both the intelligence service and defense forces; while our Palestinian team’s Jihadist and patriotic background would be of little question.
Chaos and revolution are spreading while security, what little there was, is unraveling. All of this was acutely exacerbated by the 2001 & 2003 American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; resulting in the virtual anarchic non-governance of both countries today. And of course, the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians is an open wound that festers, then bleeds out.
This treatise has been researched and written by a group of Judeans, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, and Kurds concerned with the collective survival of their respective peoples as they occupy and are occupied in the heart of this massive, unending conflict. There is very little hope of this macros-regional war or micro-peace settlement between Israel and Palestine being resolved on the level of government. Palestinians have two competing governments; Hamas and Fatah; Israel has a coalition government but is controlled as a military oligarchy on the behest of Ashkenazi Judaism and the foreign policy goals of the United States of America.
For the approximately 16 million humans living in Greater Israel/ Historic Palestine; the varying scenarios are not optimistic in the slightest.
Peace is improbable, demographics are not favorable to the 5-6 million categorized Jews and beyond the religious overtone of the landmarks described by three world religions as ‘holy land’; Israel is also a nuclear-armed semi-peripheral power aligned completely and dependent on financially a Jewish Lobby and interest in the United States which cultivates the specific and direct interests of two intractable groups; the US military-industrial complex and the 2-3 million Ashkenazi (European) Israeli Jews; which enjoy a standard of living inside the Jewish colony markedly different from the Jews of other ethnic backgrounds.
There has been ceaseless warfare in the Maghreb and Middle East since 1920, shortly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The false consciousness of the invented Nationalism. All the scenarios discussed in the treatise are inseparable from the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but it is naïve and European to link the peace of the region to our specific peace. A peace that will never be under the dynamics of the current situation, the minuscule size of the land, and endless regional intrigue. Arms and aid money, for control of energy resources.
Thus, we concern ourselves in this first manuscript with Israelis (of all religions and ethnicities) and Palestinians (of all demographics). We are concerned with the broader course of humanity, but this has been authored to ensure that regardless of humanities general course; there will always be Palestinians, and there will always be Jews; and if there are to be “Israelis” an identity that is less than 85 years old; we must engage in radical steps to subvert the course of the mainstream Zionist project; delink ourselves of Euro-American hegemony and stop the inevitable slaughter of our collective peoples.
“A new level of atrocity is coming; in fact, it has very much arrived.”
Between October 7th, 2023, and the January 2025 ceasefire the Palestinians killed around 1,700 Israelis, the Israelis killed around 75,000 Palestinians (and counting) and over 5,000 Lebanese. Some portions had weapons, and many did not.
Palestinian demographics will increase to above 50% inside the green line which they trend toward (currently the reality is something like 7 million Arabs to 8 million Jews + others), and or if Israel uses a nuclear weapon of which it has over 500. Or Israel is sucked into or provokes a war with Iran. Or any number of scenarios with state collapse, proxy war, Saudi and Iranian warfare, and further misadventures with enormous cost in-human life. To stop the final floodgates from opening, to address the broad systemic internal contradictions of the Israeli state and to secure a viable Middle Eastern Confederation, a radical policy of reorientation must begin with a realistic assessment of the only other three parties on the ground besides Memshala Yisrael3which can broker regional stability. Israel must deal directly with Hamas, Fatah, Kurdish Parties, and most importantly the Islamic Republic of Iran. Only an uneasy truce and alliance of this kind can focus policy and praxis on awakening the consciousness of the Sunni Arab majority.
“It is no longer a question of moralizing the conflict, obsessing over past failures, or temporarily abating a cycle of degenerating violence. Or conducting more banal and expensive anthropological studies on identity.”
In the Israeli Knesset, amid the Palestinian resistance factions, among the various Persian & Arab power brokers and the para-state organizations on the ground (and in the Diaspora) all realize that neither by sheer will nor by force of arms can they destroy one another. Blame for the modern quagmire that is the Middle East may fall squarely on the post-colonial powers of Europe and the United States for the proliferation of arms without stipulation or control. However, the new reality is that if the third Hebrew Commonwealth of Israel is to survive; if a Palestinian State is to be brought into being; as well as if any measure of regional stability is to be achieved, radical and unorthodox steps must be taken to close the breach. The breach is not simply a result of Israeli defense against Arab aggression, or vice versa; it is a breach in the foundation of the modern security calculus. All parties involved must become more attuned to the heightened stakes via lessons in history and sound political science.
This treatise offers an objective analysis of the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyah to advocate for its recognition as a viable partner, not in immediate peace; but in implementation of separation, economic development, and most importantly; Hudna4. It makes a fundamental case for supporting Kurdish national ambitions in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria. We advocate for a full and lasting partnership between Israel and the revolutionary Shi’a government in Iran. But we envision and call for something much more powerful.
To claim that Memshala Israel has secured its borders, or contained conventional military threats to its existence is to say that glass is made from sand. The process by which glass is made from sand renders the base substance unalterably changed and requires the release of energy through fire and heat to yield something far more unstable than its original form. While the cousins of Ishmael and Yitzhak, the Israelis, and Palestinians, are indeed two peoples intractably bound to a single, tiny piece of land, they are met with a recurring problem. The Israeli public and government (currently) lack the will to commit genocide. The Palestinian Resistance factions cannot (currently) procure or introduce a means to mass murder that will not render their own homeland a house of ash.
Surely whispered even openly said in both camps is the notion that it would not be ‘objectionable’ for the other and their kind to be ‘pushed into the sea’ or ‘dumped on the other side of the Jordan.’ The survivors of the Shoah5 cannot (yet) bring themselves to this, nor would international opinion condone genocide in the Holy Land today. As for the Palestinians, pushing the Jews into the sea has more to do with rhetoric than ability, conscience, or even intention. The ancestors of both races defended the holy land against the Christian Crusaders locked arm in arm.
There are over 1,400 years of precedent for relatively peaceful co-existence and less than 100 to the absolute contrary6. Anyone telling you otherwise has a vested interest in your ignorance. Even the death toll of the First Intifada (estimated at 421 Israeli/1,549 Palestinian7) and the bloodier melee of the Second Intifada, which included suicide bombers and collective punishment, cost only 1,062 Israeli and 5,500 Palestinian lives8. The invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008 resulted in 13 Israeli and 1,417 Palestinians9. In the ongoing Gaza Wars in 2010-2015, an estimated 100 Israelis and over 5,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. Approximately 1,300 Israelis and 50,000 Palestinians have died in the latest war.
Between 2015 and 2023 multiple rounds of fighting in Gaza killed several thousands of Palestinians and a few dozen Israelis. In the same period, the Syrian Civil War killed over 500,000 people. That means that in the entirety of the Palestinian Israeli conflict beginning in 1948; less than 50,000 people have cumulatively died, comparatively to all other ethnic conflicts that is a footnote, a statistic. The body count of the Palestinian-Israel civil war is comparatively low when compared with other global ethnic conflicts like those waged in Sri Lanka, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Ukraine.
Then in under a year the Jewish State killed over 75,000 Palestinians in retaliation for the brutal killing on October 7th of 1,200 Israelis.
Hamas must be directly engaged as the only viable partner capable of securing Palestinian temporary acceptance of the third Hebrew Commonwealth and thereby securing the Jewish National home by buying both sides more time for ultimate reconciliation before more desperate measures are introduced. (Most no longer believe that is the truth on the ground, as of July 2025 Hamas is reeling).
The Three Parties of Kurdistan (PKK, PUK, KDP) must be supported aggressively by both people overtly and covertly. Shi’a Iran is the only semi-peripheral power both sides can count on, as all other states besides Egypt are European inventions; and Egypt is an incredibly unstable place locked between a US-backed military dictatorship and the Muslim Brotherhood. The road to peace does not run through Jerusalem/ Al-Quds, but without a full ceasefire between the Judeans and Palestinians no other keystone ally, tribe, or faction can be aligned to the program to build up a Middle East Confederation in our lifetimes.
“The window of achieving political and military victory within our lifetimes is an ever-narrowing window. If we falter, if we squander possibility in the name of imagined identity and unseen gods; all will be lost. All our people no matter what they pray to, will be facing annihilation together.”
“We ask you to read these documents carefully and go back to your factions, parties, organizations, armies, and places of worship to testify on the nature of this plan.”
By the best calculations of our Party, we have a window of less than 200 years before the oil reserves run out, but under 40 years to achieve the Confederation on the terms of the many peoples of our nation. There is nothing in anyone’s scripture that calls for this endless warfare. There is nothing that tells us there must be homogenous practice or uniform belief.
“We are going to use thin, durable, and yet fully understandable code.” We are going to use metaphors inside the allegories. We will fight on the low roads and high roads and from the mountains. We will not contradict myths or religious tenets; we will not offer science as a new kind of positivist God. “We call on all patriots to mount a defense of our realm. The barbarians are not just inside the gates; they have taken over most of our states and their governments.”