Iceland’s Message to Portugal
Organizing against the debt
By NICK DEARDEN | CounterPunch | April 15, 2011
This week has witnessed two very different reactions to European debt. At one end of Europe, Iceland’s voters decided once again not to accept the payment terms of their ‘creditors’, the British and Dutch governments, following the collapse of Icelandic banks in 2008. At the other, Portugal is being pushed down the path of shock therapy by the European Union, with the people of that country cut out of a process which will change their lives dramatically.
Neither Iceland nor Portugal will have it easy in the years ahead. But there is a world of difference between the refusal of the people of Iceland “to pay for failed banks” in the words of their President, and the pain being imposed on Portugal from the outside. The European Central Bank’s head Jean-Claude Trichet has made it perfectly clear that the negotiations on Portugal’s future are “certainly not for public” debate.
Iceland’s people have not made a knee-jerk reaction. They are well aware that refusal to pay is the less easy short-term route to take. An impending court case by the UK and the Netherlands, the negative reaction of credit markets and the threatened block to their EU membership will all take a toll.
But for the people of Iceland the orthodoxy as to how countries are supposed to deal with debt is not simply economically flawed, it is deeply unjust, unfairly distributing power and wealth within and between societies. Twenty eight-year-old voter Thorgerdun Ásgeirsdóttir said “I know this will probably hurt us internationally, but it is worth taking a stance.”
If the people of a country which truly bought into free market ideology, deregulated capital markets and cheap lending can refuse to pay for the crimes of the banks, then those that did less well from the decades of financial boom can be expected to feel even more impassioned.
In Greece such anger is starting to turn into a constructive challenge to the power of finance. A debt audit commission has been called for by hundreds of academics, politicians and activists. Such a commission would throw open Greece’s debts for public examination – directly confronting the way that the IMF and European Union work behind closed doors to force their often disastrous medicine on member countries.
As Greek activists have said, “the people who are called upon to bear the costs of EU programmes have a democratic right to receive full information on public debt. An Audit Commission can begin to redress this deficiency.”
Their resolve is currently being bolstered by a website phenomena – a short viral film called debtocracy (government by debt) – sweeping Greece’s online population and convincing them they have been taken for a ride. Early next month activists from across Europe and the developing world will gather in Athens to put together a programme which will challenge the IMF’s policies in Greece.
Portugal’s deal is just beginning to be hammered out. As in Greece and Ireland, a ‘bail-out’ package will primarily benefit Western European banks, with €216 billion of outstanding loans to Portugal, while ordinary people endure a programme of deep spending cuts, reduced workers’ rights and widespread privatisation. The head of Portugal’s Banco Carregosa told the FT: “It’s not an exaggeration to call it shock therapy.”
The comparisons with developing world countries are obvious and the mistakes there are already being repeated. Time and again banks were bailed out and the poorest people in the world were pushed even deeper into poverty. Today countries from Sierra Leone to Jamaica are racking up ever more debts, once again, to weather the banker’s storm.
This is why a line must be drawn in Europe. Pouring more debt on top of Portugal’s woes will do nothing to resuscitate the economy. Portugal’s debt is totally unsustainable – largely the result of reckless private lending over the last decade. Those responsible are being bailed out, those that aren’t are suffering the pain. This is what Iceland has refused to do.
The people of Iceland have stood up for their sovereignty. Their future looks considerably brighter than those of Ireland or Portugal. The people of Greece are just beginning their struggle. The outcomes will have a monumental impact on the fight against poverty and inequality across the world.
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Nick Dearden is director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign.
Israel considers 1,000 citizenship applications from US Christians seeking permission to settle in the West Bank
MEMO | April 15, 2011
The Israeli media has revealed that 1000 Christian Americans have submitted applications for Israeli citizenship and permission to settle in the occupied West Bank. In return, they have said that they will convert to Judaism and serve in Israel’s occupation army.
According to a report in the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, a group made up of hundreds of US citizens presented their request to the Israeli MP Lian Shem Tov.
During her meeting with the group’s representative, Baruch Abramovich, who is active in Judaizing Christians and taking them to Occupied Palestine, the MP pledged to assist the Americans and support their application to the Israeli government.
According to Abramovich, this group has “no political ambitions, but wants to be part of Israel”. He added that, “bringing these Americans would contribute to the development of the West Bank as part and parcel of the State of Israel, and to the development of the economy and even the Israeli army.”
The newspaper reported that Shem Tov has presented the American project to the so-called Shomron Regional Council and exerted efforts to push the idea. She has also organized a meeting between the Council and the group’s representatives to discuss the request in detail.
NATO Irradiates Libya
By THOMAS MOUNTAIN | CounterPunch | April 15, 2011
NATO aircraft are routinely equipped with anti-armor missiles fitted with depleted uranium war heads. It has been widely reported that NATO has fired hundreds of anti-armor missiles in many parts of Libya, including in the immediate environs of the Libyan capital Tripoli. This means that thousands of kilos of depleted uranium have been used in Libya in the past weeks.
Depleted uranium, or D.U., ignites when it strikes armored vehicles. Ignition causes D.U. to break down to a microscopic powder, measured in microns or millionths of an inch. Upon impact D.U. creates a fireball in many cases that rises hundreds of feet into the atmosphere where the wind helps spread it over large areas.
D.U. is a very dangerous, long term poison. It is radioactive and when ingested internally causes a host of problems to its victim. It is nonspecific and generational in impact, meaning that it does not distinguish between friend or foe and the damage it does goes on for generations into the future.
Large quantities of D.U. were used during the attack on Iraq in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The damage done by D.U. to the Iraqi population is well documented and continuing.
The use of D.U. constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity, just as poison gas and dumdum bullets were designated in their time. The Libyan people are the latest victims of this western inflicted plague.
Irradiate the Libyan people to save the Libyan people? How else could you describe the NATO attack on Libya?
~
Thomas C. Mountain can be reached at: thomascmountain at yahoo dot com
Gaza War and Goldstone’s Moral Collapse
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | April 14, 2011
Shocking is not a sufficient term to describe Justice Richard Goldstone’s decision to recant parts of the 2009 report on alleged war crimes in Gaza.
The document, known as the Goldstone Report, was compiled after a thorough investigation led by the South African judge and three other well-regarded investigators. They documented 36 incidents that occurred during the Israeli Operation Cast Lead, an unprecedentedly violent attack against small, impoverished and besieged Gaza. It resulted in the death of over 1,400 Palestinians, and the wounding of over 5,500.
Goldstone is both Jewish and Zionist. His love for Israel has been widely and affectionately conveyed. In this particular case, he seemed completely torn between his ideological and tribal position and his commitment to justice and truth, as enshrined in the mandate of the UN Human Rights Council.
After 18 months of what seemed a wholly personal introspection, accompanied by an endless campaign of pressure and intimidation by Zionist and pro-Israel Jewish groups from all over the world, the man finally surrendered.
“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document,” he wrote in the Washington Post on April 1. But what did Goldstone learn anew since he issued his 575-page report in September 2009?
The supposed basis of Goldstone’s rethink is a follow-up report issued by a UN committee chaired by retired New York Judge Mary McGowan Davis. Her report was not a reinvestigation of Israel’s — and Hamas’ — alleged war crimes in Gaza, but a follow up on the Goldstone Commission’s findings, which urged the referral of the matter to the International Criminal Court. McGowan Davis made this distinction clear in a recent interview with the Israeli Jerusalem Post. According to the post, she said, “Our work was completely separate from (Goldstone’s) work.” She further stated, “Our mandate was to take his report as given and start from there.”
So how did a probe that used Goldstone’s findings as a starting point go on to inspire such a major refutation from one of the authors of the original report?
McGowan Davis’ report merely acknowledged that Israel has carried out an investigation into a possible “operational misconduct” in what is largely known outside Israel as the Gaza massacre. The UN follow-up report recognized the alleged 400 investigations, but didn’t bear out their validity. These secret inquiries actually led to little in terms of disciplinary action.
More, the UN team of experts claimed there was “no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead.”
In fact, Israel is known for investigating itself, and also for almost always finding everyone but its own leadership at fault. Israeli investigations are an obvious mockery of justice. Most of their findings, like those that followed another investigation of the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006, merely chastised the failure to win the war and to explain Israeli action to the world. They said little about looking into the death and wounding of innocent civilians. Is this what Goldstone meant when he used the words, “if I had known then what I know now”? And could this added knowledge about Israel’s secret — and largely farcical — investigations be enough to draw such extreme conclusions such as “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy”?
This was the trust of the Israeli argument, which attempted to reduce a persistent policy predicated on collective punishment — one that used controversial and outright illegal weapons against civilians — to the injudiciousness of individual soldiers. Goldstone’s calculated retraction is an adoption of “the Israeli position that any misdeeds during the Gaza assault were caused by individual deviants, not by policies or rules of engagement ordered by military leaders,” according to George Bisharat, professor at the Hastings College of the Law (as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, April 7). Bisharat added, “Yet the original report never accused Israel of widespread deliberate attacks on civilians, and thus Goldstone retracted a claim that had never been made. Most of its essential findings remain unchallenged.”
John Dugard, professor of law at the University of Pretoria and former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory agrees. “Richard Goldstone is a former judge and he knows full well that a fact-finding report by four persons, of whom he was only one, like the judgment of a court of law, cannot be changed by the subsequent reflections of a single member of the committee.”
Dugard, well known for his principled stances in the past, is also known for his moral consistency. “It is sad that this champion of accountability and international criminal justice should abandon the cause in such an ill-considered but nevertheless extremely harmful op-ed,” he wrote in the New Statesman on April 6.
Unsurprisingly, Israeli leaders are gloating. “Everything we said was proved true,” declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to Goldstone’s moral collapse. The New York Times reported on April 5 that Goldstone agreed to visit Israel in July during a telephone call with Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai. “I will be happy to come,” Yishai quoted Goldstone as saying. “I always have love for the State of Israel.”
The fact is, Goldstone’s repudiations of some of his commission’s findings clearly have no legal validity. They are personally, and in fact selfishly motivated, and they prove that political and ideological affiliations are of greater weight for Goldstone than human suffering and international law and justice. There is no doubt, however, that Goldstone’s rethink will represent the backbone of Israel’s rationale in its future attacks on Gaza. Goldstone, once regarded as an “evil, evil man” by a prominent Israel apologist in the US, will become the selling point of Israel’s future war crimes.
If the killing of over 1,400 Palestinians is not a “matter of policy”, and Hamas’ killing of four Israelis is “intentional” — as claimed by Goldstone — then the sky is the limit for Israel’s war machine.
Indeed, “shocking” is not the right term. “Disgraceful” may be more fitting.
~
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.
US Senate urges UN to revoke Gaza War report
Press TV – April 15, 2011
The US Senate has urged the UN to revoke a report on the Gaza War, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes during the 22-day offensive against the Gaza Strip.
The US senators have drawn up a resolution calling on UN Human Rights Council members “to rescind the report and reconsider further Council actions with respect to the report’s findings.”
The resolution also urged UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to help “reform” the Human Rights Council “so that it no longer unfairly, disproportionately, and falsely criticizes Israel on a regular basis,” AFP reported
It also called on the UN chief to “do all in his power to redress the damage to Israel’s reputation” caused by the report.
The resolution comes after head of the UN inquiry over the Gaza offensive Richard Goldstone said earlier this month that he was wrong to conclude Israel targeted civilians.
In April 2009, Goldstone investigated reports of the international human rights and humanitarian law violations during the December 2008-January 2009 assault, which left more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, dead.
The report said that the Israeli operations “were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”
However, under intensive pressure from the Israelis, Goldstone on April 3 announced that he was wrong to say Israel had deliberately targeted civilians.
Goldstone later announced that he has no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at the moment.
On Thursday, three of the authors of the report, which was condemned by the US House of Representatives in a November 2009 vote, rejected calls to retract it.
The report could pave the way for dragging Israel before the Hague tribunal for war crimes.
Goldstone’s Retraction Rejected
Al-Manar | April 15, 2011
The three co-authors of the United Nations report on the 2008-2009 Gaza war rejected on Thursday an op-ed by the fourth member and chairman Richard Goldstone in which he retracted key conclusions of the report – in particular claiming that Israel had not intentionally targeted civilians during the war.
In an article in the British daily The Guardian, the three members – the Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani; Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics; and former Irish peace-keeper Desmond Travers maintained that the conclusions of the report remain valid despite Goldstone’s shift and subsequent calls to retract the report in the UN.
“There is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would in any way change the context, findings or conclusions of that report with respect to any of the parties to the Gaza conflict,” they wrote.
Earlier this month, Goldstone published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he backtracked on claims he had made in the UN report, accusing Israel of targeting civilians during its war on the Gaza Strip two years ago.
The three international law experts did not mention Goldstone by name, but slammed a number of the points he made in his op-ed in the Washington Post, writing that “aspersions cast on the findings of the report cannot be left unchallenged” and said they have “misrepresented facts in an attempt to delegitimize the findings” of the Goldstone Report and “to cast doubts on its credibility.”
Moreover, they said that any kind of retraction of the report is an insult to the victims of the Gaza war. “We consider that calls to reconsider or even retract the report, as well as attempts at misrepresenting its nature and purpose, disregard the right of victims, Palestinian and Israeli, to truth and justice.”
In his Washington Post op-ed earlier this month, Goldstone said that if Israel had cooperated with his probe then the conclusions on the report would have been different.
Vik: a friend, a brother, a humanist
By Eva Bartlett | In Gaza | April 15, 2011
I first heard of Vik before arriving in Gaza. Vik had just been injured by IOF water canoning which shattered the windows of the fishing boat he was accompanying. Vik had some injuries from the shattered glass.
When I met Vik he was nothing but humble and humour. A compassionate man, living to do good and do anything for Palestinian justice. Others knew him better and longer, and told me of Viks arrests by the IOF, deportation, and other interesting stories. But above all, what shone, aside from his intelligble English and random Italian curses, was his humanism.
He was taken from Gaza, briefly, by the IOF navy, when they kidnapped 15 Palesitnian fishermen and 3 accompanying activists, including Vik, in November 2008, from Palestinian waters. At the time of his abduction, he was electrically shocked while peacefully avoiding abduction by diving into Gazas cold waters.
He returned to Gaza, via Free Gaza again, before Israel began its war on Gaza. He continued to write and report from the enclosed, bombed Strip.
Stay human, he always said. And so was the title of his book on the Israeli massacre of Gaza in 2008-2009. Stay human.
Viks blog, Guerilla Radio, gave voice to Palestinians who have strong voices but are denied the microphone.
During the Israeli war on Gaza, we all worked together, riding in ambulances, documenting the martyred and the wounded, the vast majority (over 83%) civilian. Vik was always on the phone, Italian media taking his words and printing them for the public to see.
Aside from the loss of a compassionate, caring human, activist, and friend, I am saddened by the group that did this. Surely they knew Vik was with them, for them. But in every society, including my own, there are extremists, people who act with misguided guidance.
Vik was there, among the war casualties, among the on-going martytrs unspoken in the corporate media, celebrating Palestines beauty and culture, dancing Dabke at my wedding celebration.
He was there to joke with us, to counsel us, to smoke shisha by the sea…He wrote the truth, spoke the truth, stayed human.
Vik, my brother, allah yerhamek, bless you for your humanity and your great contribution to Palestinian justice. I will miss you, your smile, your humble, fun personality.
Yatikalafia ya Vitorrio.
Palestinians and Internationals call for release of Italian ISM activist kidnapped in Gaza
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT, FREE GAZA MOVEMENT – April 14, 2011
Vittorio Arrigoni
Today, our friend and colleague, Vittorio Arrigoni, a journalist and human rights defender working in the Gaza Strip, was kidnapped by Salafists, members of a very small extremist group in Gaza.
Vittorio has been active in the Palestine cause for almost 10 years. For the past two and a half years, he has been in Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement, monitoring human rights violations by Israel, supporting the Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli occupation and disseminating information about the situation in Gaza to his home country of Italy. He was aboard the siege-breaking voyage in 2008 with the Free Gaza Movement and was incarcerated in Israeli prisons several times. He was in Gaza throughout Israel’s brutal assault (Operation Cast Lead), assisting medics and reporting to the world what Israel was doing to the Palestinian people. He has been arrested numerous times by Israeli forces for his participation in Palestinian non-violent resistance in the West Bank and Gaza. His last arrest and deportation from the area was a result of the Israeli confiscation of Palestinian fishing vessels in Gazan territorial waters.
Vittorio frequently writes on the issue of Palestine for the Italian newspaper, IL Manifesto and Peacereporter. Additionally, he maintains a popular blog (http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com) and Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vittoriatio-Arrigoni/).
Khalil Shaheen, a friend of Vittorio and Head of the Economic and Social Rights Department at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said, “This is outside of our traditions. We are calling for the immediate release of my best friend. Vittorio Arrigoni is a hero of Palestine. He was available everywhere to support all the poor people, the victims. I’m calling on the local authorities here in Gaza, and all security departments, to do their best to guarantee his safety and immediate release.”
Vittorio was granted honorary citizenship for his work on promoting the cause of the Palestinian people. Members of Gazan civil society are demanding his release; tomorrow at 4:00pm there will be a mass demonstration in Jundi Square.
Woman killed in Gaza air strike was anticipating wedding
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 14 April 2011
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The chairs that Nidal and Najah Qdeih were sitting in when they were killed in an air strike. (Rami Almeghari) |
Around midday last Friday, Ibrahim Qdeih was chatting with his daughters and wife about preparations underway for his daughter Nidal’s wedding later this month. Those plans would be forever disrupted after an Israeli missile hit their house, taking the lives of Ibrahim’s wife, Najah, and daughter, Nidal.
“I was set to go to the Friday sermon [at the mosque] and it was about 12:15pm, when my daughter Nidal was talking to me about the final touches for her wedding party. By then, electricity was cut off and my wife Najah and my daughters Nidal, Neda and Fida, all moved to rest a bit on these chairs,” Qdeih explained, standing near a crater left by the fatal missile strike next to his modest, rural home in al-Faraheen, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The bereaved father added “After we talked, I took my son to the Friday sermon at a nearby mosque. While in the middle of the road, we heard a large explosion but we went on walking, for I didn’t expect it was my home. As we arrived at the mosque, someone told me that my house was struck by a missile. Then I rushed back along with my son to the house.”
As the two arrived, Ibrahim’s 43-year-old brother, Fathi, along with Ibrahim’s neighbor, Mansi, were trying to aid Ibrahim’s wounded daughters, Neda and Fida. Najah and Nidal did not survive the strike. Neda is currently in critical condition and is being treated at al-Nasser hospital, while Fida’s injuries are moderate.
Fathi was the first to arrive at the gruesome scene.
“As I was walking down just few meters away from my brother’s house, just near this palm tree, I was shocked by the explosion and saw some pillars of smoke rising up from Ibrahim’s house,” Fathi said while surrounded by family in Ibrahim’s three-room home.
“Then I pushed the door to see what happened. It was horrible, it was horrible — Najah’s face was smashed and stained with blood, while Nidal’s abdomen was ripped open with blood covering all over her body.”
Nidal’s fiance, 24-year-old Jihad al-Qarra, was waiting anxiously for their wedding day before the missile hit. Al-Qarra teared up when he entered the room where luggage lay, stuffed in preparation for a wedding that will never happen.
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| Ibrahim Qdieh and his son Ahmad. (Rami Almeghari) |
“Just four hours before Nidal was killed, I was taking part in the funeral procession for my cousin Abdallah, who was also killed by an Israeli drone the day before,” al-Qarra, a university graduate and farmer, said. “It was a very difficult moment for me when I heard Nidal was killed. Nidal was a very quiet, simple and kind girl who I really loved for the past six months and I wanted her to be my life partner.”
Asad al-Najjar, Ibrahim’s brother-in-law, vented his anger over the loss of his sister and niece.
“This is a catastrophe,” al-Najjar said. “Where is the UN Security Council, where are the rights groups and others who are concerned about the protection of civilians in the time of war? It is really the climax of atrocities! This is an unbearable situation where people can never feel safe inside their homes. How come such helpless women are struck by missiles, killed and wounded inside their home?”
In the half-meter-wide crater left by the strike, Najah and Ibrahim’s 12-year-old son, Ahmad, began collecting small pieces of shrapnel. “I am collecting these small pieces for remembrance,” the boy said before being overcome by emotion.
The Qdeih family were not the only to suffer casualties last week as the Israeli military bombed across the Gaza Strip. According to Adham Abu Silmia, spokesperson for the ambulance service in Gaza, the Israeli army targeted civilian homes and even medical centers such as the Hijazi clinic in northern Gaza.
“Eighteen persons, including three children, two women and two elderly men have been killed either by air strikes or artillery fire,” Abu Silmia explained. “And 67 other persons have been wounded, including forty women, children and elderly and two ambulance crew members.”
Abu Silmia added that four of the wounded, including an elderly farmer in northern Gaza, had limbs amputated due to the drone or artillery fire.
Israeli army spokesperson Arieh Shaliqar, asked to comment on the deaths of Najah and Nidal Qdeih in their home, said: “Please let me emphasize that the Israeli army is not interested in fighting civilians or fighting people who are uninvolved or people who are regular citizens living in the Gaza Strip or in any other place. Our enemy is the Hamas terrorist organization, which keeps on sending rockets on the Israeli home front.”
In the wake of last week’s strikes, several Gaza-based armed factions, topped by the ruling Hamas party, declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza. Israel threatened to collectively punish Gaza in the event of additional rocket fire from Gaza.
Last Thursday, Israel stepped up attacks on the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ military wing fired an anti-tank rocket on a school bus in southern Israel, critically wounding a 16-year-old boy and the bus driver. Hamas said the strike was in retaliation for Israel’s 1 April extrajudicial killing of three Hamas members in Gaza.
The latest violence follows weeks of escalation of violence between Gaza and Israel, which Israeli analysts say has been fueled and instigated by Israel.
In Cairo, Arab League chief Amr Mousa signaled the possibility that he would request the United Nations consider imposing a no-fly zone over Gaza to prevent further Israeli air strikes.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, there will be one less wedding celebration this month. And during this reporter’s time in al-Faraheen with the Qdeih family, the Israeli drones — or unmanned aerial vehicles — overhead signaled the end of the interview.
“Let’s leave the house right now; the drone is overhead and I think this is enough,” Fathi Qdeih said.
Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.
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Israel Would Have No Qualms About USS Liberty-Style FALSE FLAG If Iran Campaign Falters – Analysts
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.06.2025
Donald Trump is mulling whether or not to join Israel’s aggression against Iran as Tel Aviv faces problems sustaining its defenses against growing counterstrikes, and apparently lacks a realistic game plan for an end to hostilities after failing to achieve its goals. Analysts told Sputnik how the US could be ‘nudged’ into the conflict.
“The US is already assisting Israel with supplies, intel, refueling support, etc. One of the many US posts in the region could be attacked for a casus belli,” former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski explained.
“If Trump doesn’t comply with Israel’s demand” and join its aggression voluntarily, “a false flag may be needed” to drag the US in, Kwiatkowski, retired US Air Force Lt. Col.-turned Iraq War whistleblower, fears.
Netanyahu has a diverse array of options at his disposal, according to the observer, including:
- a false flag against US assets abroad blamed on Iran or one of its Axis of Resistance allies, like the Houthis
- a US domestic attack or assassination blamed on Iran
- Iranian air defenses ‘accidentally’ hitting a civilian jetliner carrying Americans
- use of a dirty bomb or nuclear contamination somewhere in the region blamed on Iran
- even blackmailing by threatening to use nukes against Iran if the US doesn’t join the fight
Kwiatkowski estimates that Israel probably has “enough blackmail power” against President Trump and Congress to avoid the necessity of a false flag operation, but a “USS Liberty-style” attack, targeting the soon-to-be-retired USS Nimitz supercarrier that’s heading to the Middle East, for example, nevertheless cannot be ruled out entirely, she says. … continue
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