Yogi's Corner

With the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire, the latest round of the Israel-Palestinian conflict ended on May 21, 2021. The eleven-day firefight, bloodiest since 2014, left a trail of death and destruction. Recurrent conflicts between the two are essentially manifestations of two self-determination movements — the Jewish Zionist and Palestinian Nationalist projects—both claiming the same piece of real estate.   Jewish Build-Up in Palestine.             After his unsuccessful siege of Acre in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte proposed a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a European stronghold in the region. Four decades later, the British carried this proposal forward to urge the Ottoman Sultan to open up Palestine to Jewish immigrants. Around 3000 then, wealthy benefactors began to sponsor Jews from Europe to establish settlements in Palestine to augment their numbers.                ...

                       Last month, US President Joe Biden announced a complete and unconditional pullout from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, thus proclaiming an end to the longest US war. The withdrawal deadline coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the horrific 9/11 al-Qaeda aerial assaults in New York and the Pentagon that prompted President George W Bush to seek retribution by attacking terrorist bases in Afghanistan.               Biden has throughout remained a critic of the American presence in Afghanistan.  No sooner than he had the authority did he order an end to a war that was 'not worth the costs in blood and money' - 2,400 troops and $ 2 trillion. Biden claimed that the original objectives, ousting al-Qaeda and ensuring Afghanistan is never again used as a pad for launching attacks on the US,  are already achieved. He underscored a ...