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Zionism: Imperialism in the Age of Counter-revolution

Coercive Engineered Migration: Zionism’s War on Europe (Part 11 of an 11 Part Series)

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | Dissident Voice | April 11, 2016

During the 1920s General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin formulated what he considered to be the essential contribution of Lenin to Marxist political economy. Leninism, he wrote, is Marxism in the era of proletarian revolution. Since 1989 proletarian and national liberation revolutions throughout the world have been overturned by a general, global counter-revolutionary upsurge. It is a a political phenomenon that has seen the onslaught of US colour revolutions, which seek to do away with the bourgeois nation-state itself, the last barrier to the total exploitation of the world by the global corporate and financial elite.

In this essay I have argued that the contemporary form of this counter-revolutionary ideology, of this imperial drive for global domination, is Zionism. One could therefore, echoing Stalin’s definition of Leninism, assert that Zionism is imperialism in the age of capitalist counter-revolution. In other words, Zionism is the very form of contemporary Western imperialism. However, unlike Russian and Chinese imperialism, Western imperialism or Zionism has both a religious and ethnic dimension. Zionism is a Messianic and racist ideology which is not based simply on secular, Jewish nationalism but has its roots in Talmudism.

Zionism, through its control of Western finance capitalism, is striving for global governance. Lenin, writing in 1915, described as ‘indisputable’ the fact that ‘development is proceeding towards monopolies, hence, towards a single world monopoly, towards a single world trust’. But Lenin also pointed out that this drive towards unipolar global power would also intensify the contradictions in the global economy. A cogent example of this today is the low-intensity covert war currently being waged by the United States/Israel against Germany: The Western imperial alliance is turning on itself.

However, no people’s resistance to Zionism can be mounted if the empire continues to outsmart its opponents. The aforementioned General Barnett understands his enemies well. He used to teach Marxism in Harvard university and has written a book comparing the African policies of the German Democratic Republic and the Socialist Republic of Romania. In his book Blueprint For Action, he points out that the father of Fourth Generation Warfare is Mao Zedong.  Imperial grand strategy is now waging war using techniques developed during the Chinese revolution, one of the greatest anti-colonial struggles in history. The key for anti-imperialist resistance today, therefore, has to be to understand how to turn the tools of imperialism against imperialism.

Marxism is an indispensable tool for understanding capitalism, but is insufficient for a full comprehension of the complexities of imperial strategy and tactics in the information age. Barnett and many other US and Israeli military strategists are keen students of social psychology, and in particular General Boyd’s OODA Loop Theory. The OODA stands for observation, orientation, decision, action. According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity (whether an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.

One could see this psychology at work during the Arab Spring. The rigid ideological orientation of the average ‘leftist’ saw the uprisings in Tunisia as proof that people were rebelling against a US-backed dictator and his ‘neo-liberal’ regime. This interpretation was reinforced by strategically placed ‘critics’ of US-foreign policy in the news station of Zionism’s ancillary regime, Qatar, while the initial indifference of the Western press confirmed the interpretation of the Tunisian revolt as a genuine, grass roots uprising against US imperialism.

US and Israeli strategists were capable of doing this through their deep understanding of ‘leftist’ discourse. They also understood that the ‘anti-globalisation’ form of the protest movement would fool genuine critics of US imperialism, thereby impeding their ability to react to the US-orchestrated revolutions in a rational manner.

In the Arab Spring, inverted Marxian dialectics, Systems Theory, Psychology, Military Science and Utility Theory were waged against a feckless and discombobulated anti-war movement who would repeat the sound bites of ‘popular uprising’ and the ‘defeat of US imperialism in the Middle East’ implanted in their minds by one of the most impressive and successful US/Israeli geostrategic operations in modern history.

On the eve of NATO’s bombing of Libya, the BBC predictably called upon an old reliable ‘critic of US foreign-policy’ Noam Chomsky. The veteran American philosopher agreed that the West had a “duty” to “stop the massacres” in Libya thus ensuring there would be no moral outrage among the so-called “anti-war movement” to a NATO military intervention. The invitation of Noam Chomsky by the Zionist-controlled BBC illustrates the importance for British intelligence of ideologically disarming potential ‘leftist’ opponents in the run-up to meticulously planned wars of aggression, disguised as ‘humanitarian interventions’.

Chomsky stated that ‘there may come a time when it would make sense for the West to become involved… but the question is has that time come.’ No anti-imperialist would ever suggest that it could make sense for the West to intervene militarily in another country, under any circumstances.

Given Chomsky’s anarchist ideology — the very ideology instrumentalised by the CIA in colour revolutions — the BBC knew he would go along with their fake ‘popular uprising’ in Benghazi; thus providing justification to wage ‘humanitarian’ warfare in support of the ‘revolution’.

In 2013, a massive military destablisation of Brazil was undertaken by US NGOs, operating under the guidance of the CIA, in order to weaken the popularity of a government moving far too close to Russia and China in the eyes of Washington. Again, the CIA’s ‘Vinegar Revolution‘ received full support from most ‘leftist’ quarters. Once again, military geostrategy had triumphed over anti-imperialist analysis.

The current refugee crisis proves that US/Israeli military geostrategy is running circles around its opponents who, instead of identifying the culprits who are using human beings as weapons, are unwittingly collaborating with Zionism’s plan to inundate Europe with migrants for the purposes of fomenting civil war in the European peninsula.  It is a desperate effort to prevent Eurasian integration, a prospect inimical to what the Pentagon refers to as ‘full spectrum dominance’.

Those who have joined in the chorus of welcoming the refugees/migrants are unwitting participants in an extension of Zionism’s neo-colonial wars in Africa and the Middle East. They are also complicit in the endorsement and cover-up of a modern slave trade. Opposing imperialism requires study of the logic of its geostrategic operations. Imperialism’s deliberate flooding of Europe with a Wahhabised lumpen-proletariat from a war-torn Southern Hemisphere will not help the cause of labour, the cause of human freedom. Rather, it will contribute to preventing the unification of the European-peninsula with the Eurasian Heartland. It will also contribute towards the further colonisation and destruction of independent African and Middle Eastern nations such as Eritrea and Syria.

An example of Marxist Leninist parties’ inability to deal with imperialism’s weaponization of migrants comes from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist). Their argument in favour of immigration is sound under normal circumstances but they fail to address the problem of when immigration becomes a tool of imperialism, a specific geopolitical strategy aimed at destabilizing both the country of origin and the destination of the migrant.

The recent resolution of the CPGBML is worth reproducing here in full:

This party firmly believes that immigration is not the cause of the ills of the working class in Britain, which are solely the result of the failings of the capitalist system.

Immigration and asylum legislation and controls under capitalism have only one real goal: the division of the working class along racial lines, thus fatally weakening that class’s ability to organise itself and to wage a revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of imperialism.

These controls have the further effect of creating an army of ‘illegal’ immigrant workers, prey to super exploitation and living in dire conditions as an underclass, outside the system, afraid to organise and exercising a downward pull on the wages and conditions of all workers.

The scourge of racism, along with all other ills of capitalism, will only be finally abolished after the successful overthrow of imperialism. But since immigration can no more be abolished under capitalism than can wage slavery, our call should not be for the further control and scapegoating of immigrants, but the abolition of all border controls, as part of the wider fight to uproot racism from the working-class movement and build unity among workers in Britain, so strengthening the fight for communism.

The problem here is that no distinction is made between immigration into imperialist countries and immigration into semi-colonial type countries. For example, Syria has been forced to close its borders due to the passage of terrorists in the service of imperialism. In such circumstances, it would be ludicrous to condemn the Syrian government for erecting fences to protect its borders. Similarly, Hungary, a small country which has just taken modest steps towards escaping from the clutches of US imperialism under the control of the IMF, has decided to erect fences to protect its borders from what it perceives as an attempt by US imperialism to destabilize the country. Under these conditions, such a decision is entirely justified. The CPGBML argues correctly that “the scourge of racism, along with all other ills of capitalism, will only be finally abolished after the successful overthrow of imperialism.” The erection of fences in Hungary is part of that fight against imperialism, when migrants are clearly being used as weapons of imperialist strategy against recalcitrant nation-states.

The fact that Zionism is using the refugee crisis to further its imperialist agenda does not mean, however, that all refugees in the world are being used for this purpose. Rather, just as in the Arab Spring where the social inequalities of capitalism were used by imperialism to further the cause of capitalism, many refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa are being used for the same purpose.

Throughout the world Homo sapiens is being supplanted by Homo economicus: a vacuous, brain-washed, rootless cosmopolitan, a deterritorialised and acculturated nomad, hopelessly blown hither and thither by the exigencies of capital. Meanwhile, Zionism continues to stoke up the incessant and utterly fraudulent War on Terror, with omnipresent mass surveillance of the “nations” (goyim) while at the same time Jews are being encouraged by the Israeli regime to leave Europe for settlement on Arab lands, ruined and depopulated by Zionism’s wars.

The ‘refugee crisis’ is indubitably one more step towards the creation of a Greater Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu recently told the Israeli National News that Israel must become a “world power”.

To politically correct pundits, Victor Orban’s fence might appear inhumane and xenophobic, but at this moment in history the concrete choice presented to us is between temporary fences designed to protect nations from imperialism or Zionist walls built to imprison humanity.

• Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a journalist and political analyst based in Paris. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle.

April 12, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Goldman Sachs: Just 5 Billion dollar Fine Compared to 13 Billion Dollar Taxpayer Bailout

By Craig Murray | April 11, 2016

Goldman Sachs aggressively sold sub-prime packages to investors as a first class product, while at the same time laying equally aggressive bets that those packages would fail. That is not my analysis; it is one of the things they have admitted as part of the deal in the United States that means that, in return for a 5 billion dollar fine, yet again no corrupt and fraudulent bankers are going to jail.

The ultimate irony is that the 5 billion dollar fine is dwarfed by the 13 billion dollar taxpayer bailout they received after the banks’ immoral antics caused massive economic collapse. So the net result of their appalling behaviour has been that they collect not only the profit from those bets the system would collapse, but an eight billion dollar net payment from ordinary taxpayers thrown in. Which eight billion dollars has been just a contribution to the bonuses and partner remuneration which have continued to bulge in their over-stuffed pockets since 2008, uninterrupted by the crash, thanks to the generosity of poor taxpayers struggling to balance their personal budgets.

This is a description of the position of Goldman Sachs in the United States, but it sums up the entire banking crisis worldwide and its result in the punishment of entirely the wrong people, and the continued rewards enjoyed by the crooks.

Due to new media (of which this blog is one atom in a mighty sea) public awareness of what is happening is growing, as is the desire for popular resistance to the super-rich. But they are not surrendering control any time soon. Which is why the call for Clinton to release the transcripts of the extravagantly paid talks she gave to Goldman Sachs is more than a question of political openness. It goes to the heart of the rot in the system.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Russia Regrets Certain Countries’ Unwillingness to Ratify Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Sputnik – 11.04.2016

Russia regrets that a number of countries, including those trying to position themselves as global leaders, have yet to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the Russian President said Monday.

Moscow calls on world leaders to join the treaty and prohibit nuclear explosive tests, Vladimir Putin stressed.

“The unwillingness of these countries to become full parties to the treaty is cause for serious regret, especially given the fact that some of them claim to be leaders and to practically hold special powers in dealing with global security issues. We again call on their leaders to show real political will and join CTBT as soon as possible,” Putin said in a statement.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 1996.

All five nuclear weapons states as recognized by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom, are signatories to the treaty.

The treaty, aiming to create a legally binding prohibition on nuclear explosive tests for all its parties, will enter into force when China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States ratify it.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Marking Brazil’s Brutal US-Backed Military Coup 52 Years Later

teleSUR – March 31, 2016

As the possibility of a new threat against democracy looms over Brazil in the form of an unlawful impeachment against leftist President Dilma Rousseff, Brazilians remember a coup that kicked off a brutal 20-year-long military dictatorship. Similar military coups would follow in Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Together with the support of the U.S. government and Paraguay, under General Alfredo Stroessner, the region would organize Operation Condor, a political repression and terror campaign to suppress opposition to their governments.

The following is an excerpt from the Brazil chapter of the book “Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of 21st Century Socialism,” by Roger Burbach, Michael Fox, and Federico Fuentes (Zed Books, 2013).

In 1964, the Brazilian military dictatorship rolled in like a bad dream. President Joao Goulart fled to Uruguay, and with him went the hopes of progressive reforms. The first of 17 military decrees, or Institutional Acts, were issued.

Institutional Act 5, decreed by military president Artur da Costa e Silva on December 13, 1968, suspended habeas corpus and disbanded Congress. Inspired by the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and insurgent guerrilla movements in Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, Communist Party militants went underground and formed armed movements against the dictatorship, including the National Liberation Alliance and the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard, which would later become the Revolutionary Armed Vanguard Palmares or VAR-Palmares.

Dissidents were tracked down, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or worse. According to the 2007 report from the Brazilian government’s Special Commission on Murders and Political Disappeared entitled “The Right to Memory and the Truth,” 475 people were disappeared during the 20-year-long military dictatorship. Thousands were imprisoned and roughly 30,000 were tortured. More than 280 different types of torture were inflicted on “subversives” at 242 clandestine torture centers, by hundreds of individual torturers.

Current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was at the time a student activist who became active in the VAR-Palmares (among other guerrilla groups). She was captured by the Brazilian military on January 16, 1970, tortured, and imprisoned for two and a half years, for participating with the guerrillas. Within a few years the armed resistance to the Brazilian dictatorship had been largely eliminated.

Meanwhile U.S.-Brazilian relations became tighter than ever, as the United States worked to turn Brazil into a “success story” in the fight against communism. According to a five-and-a-half-year, 5,000-page investigation into the human rights violations of the dictatorship, entitled “Brasil Nunca Mais” (Brazil Never Again), CIA agents, such as U.S. officer Dan Mitrione, actively trained hundreds of Brazilian military and police officers in torture techniques, or what they called the “Scientific Methods to Extract Confessions and Obtain the Truth.” Several documented accounts reveal that Mitrione tested his techniques on street kids and homeless beggars from the streets of Belo Horizonte. Many of these techniques would be replicated across the region through the U.S.-sponsored Plan Condor, as Brazil’s neighbors also fell to military dictatorships.

This was the direction that the United States hoped the region would turn. Internationally, the military dictatorship broke off relations with Cuba and the Soviet block, and steered the country back into the U.S. sphere of influence (Cuba-Brazilian relations wouldn’t be resumed until 1986).

“Never had there been such ideological convergence with the United States,” wrote the former Brazilian Ambassador to the United States (1991–93), Ruben Ricupero, “not just in the perceived continuity and Cold War dangers, but in the acceptance of North American leadership and the feeling among Brazilian leaders that this was an inseparable and defining element in the internal struggle against communist subversion.”

Domestically, encouraged by the United States, Brazil liberalized its economy, pushed to increase exports, and opened up for foreign investment, but the economic model didn’t stick. Military President Costa e Silva steered the country back towards the import substitution model that would carry through the rest of the dictatorship. Meanwhile, ideologically, Brazilian military leaders continued their fight against the communist threat that would often place them even further to the right than U.S. officials.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Drone kill list: Parliament deceived on ‘medieval assassination’ program

RT | April 11, 2016

Parliament has been deceived by the Conservative government on the scope and details of Britain’s unauthorized drone assassination program, according to a new report by the human rights NGO Reprieve.

The authors argue in the opening commentary that the “revelations in this report demonstrate that parliament has been misled” and that current scope of investigation into the issue is too “narrow.”

Published Sunday, the report makes a number of startling assertions. It claims the kill list – also known as the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) – conflates drug enforcement and counterterrorism.

It also says UK police units have helped the US military find targets for assassination and that unrepresentative examples of die-hard extremists are being cited to mask the human impact of drone warfare.

War on everything

The investigation warns that under the auspices of the UK’s targeted killing policy the ‘War on Terror’ is being merged with the ‘War on Drugs,’ with people other than suspected terrorists being killed by drones.

It alleges there may have been up to 50 Afghan drug traffickers on the list since 2009 and that UK police officers working for the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) worked with electronic intelligence agency GCHQ and Britain’s Joint Narcotics Analysis Centre to pick out targets.

Skewed

Reprieve’s study claims the UK government has used particularly extreme examples to justify its drone policy, in the same way that the death penalty in the US has been justified by pointing to the most extreme killers.

It cites the example of Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement on September 15, 2015, when he said that a UK drone strike had killed jihadist Reyaad Khan in Syria. Reprieve claims this was used to spin the reality of drone warfare.

“History teaches us that it has always been easiest for advocates of the death penalty to sell their case to some by highlighting the face of a serial killer who is captured on film committing his atrocities,” the report says.

This, the NGO claims, is not reflective of the demographic most profoundly affected by drone warfare, instead arguing that drones are “far from the marvelously precise killing machines” they are marketed as. It claims up to nine innocent children have been killed in pursuit of a “High Value Target.”

Medieval

The report warns against assassination as a tool of policy. It lauds those Conservative politicians who criticized Tony Blair’s government for “complicity” in the US torture program, but adds “if this government now seeks to drag the UK back to medieval times with an assassination project, it is only right that it should be fully discussed with parliament and the public.”

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

China Acquires Israeli Dead Sea Cosmetics Company for $77 Million

Sputnik – April 11, 2016

On Sunday, Vice President and CEO of Fosun Group, Liang Xinjun, signed an agreement to purchase Ahava with Executive Director of Gaon Holdings Guy Regev. The deal amounted to $77 million.

The ceremony took place in the presence of high-ranking Israeli officials at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem and was witnessed by Israeli government officials and representatives of both companies.

Under the terms of the agreement, Fosun will acquire the holdings from all Ahava’s shareholders including Gaon Holdings, Shamrock Israel Growth Fund Advisors, Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem, and Kibbutz Kalia.

Vice-President of Fosun, Liang Xinjun, said he was pleased with the results of agreement and hopes to bring Ahava into the Chinese market.

Chinese companies and corporations have been active in the Israeli market over the last few years. In 2011, China National Chemical Corporation acquired Adama, which produces pesticides, for a price of $2.4 billion and in 2015 the Chinese company Bright Food acquired a controlling stake in Israel’s largest producer Tnuva, which is heavily involved in dairy goods.

In addition, China is already the world’s largest importer of cosmetics and health products based on minerals from the Dead Sea.

Experts believe that China’s geopolitical presence in Israel will only continue to grow. In particular, due to the construction of the state-owned China Harbor seaport of Ashdod on the Mediterranean Sea.

The country’s first private port will not appear before 2021. The project cost is estimated at over one billion dollars. The purpose of the project is to connect Ashdod with the southern Israeli city of Eilat and transport goods to Europe, bypassing the Suez Canal.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Arrest arms dealers, not peace campaigners!’ 8 on trial over weapons fair protest

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RT | April 11, 2016

Eight activists are standing trial at Stratford Magistrates Court for disrupting the world’s biggest arms fair, held in London, where deadly merchandise was marketed to repressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Azerbaijan.

The campaigners blocked the road leading to the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) in Stratford, London, last September, preventing tanks and weaponry from entering.

The defendants are using a defense of necessity, insisting their actions were justified because they intended to prevent greater crimes taking place around the world.

These include: “The sale of weapons to internally repressive regimes, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia; the sale of weapons to countries imminently at war and overtly complicit in ongoing war crimes in Yemen, Kurdistan and Palestine; the sale of weapons to regimes that have been widely accused of arming ISIS [Islamic State or IS]; the promotion for sale of weapons that are designed specifically for torture or banned under international law for their capabilities concerning the mass indiscriminate killing of civilians.”

The DSEI arms fair is held every two years in London, and is regularly attended by representatives from repressive regimes. It has also previously provided a platform for weapons dealers to illegally promote arms that are used for torture.

Last September’s event featured stalls from more than 1,500 exhibitors, including arms giants Lockheed Martin, BAE systems, Finmeccanica and others.

Protestors sought to disrupt the fair by locking their bodies together to block access roads outside the Excel Centre, where the fair was held. Several were arrested.

Some protestors, such as Vyara Gylsen – who was arrested after writing a slogan on a military vehicle with a washable marker pen – have since seen criminal charges against them dropped.

The defendants in court this week include Isa Al Aali, a Bahraini activist who was tortured during the Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain.

Green Party activists Angela Ditchfield and Tom Franklin are also among the eight appearing in court.

“The government is supporting and facilitating the sale of weapons that are being used to kill ordinary people, from the West Bank to Yemen and Sudan,” Franklin, 57, of York, said.

“This week we will put the arms trade in the dock and highlight the crimes that the government and the companies at DSEI are complicit in. Arrest arms dealers, not peace campaigners.”

The defendants will be supported by expert witnesses, including former South African MP Andrew Feinstein, who resigned from parliament in 2001 in protest at the government’s refusal to investigate a £5 billion (US$7.12 billion) arms deal.

Amnesty International UK’s Oliver Sprague, who heads up the charity’s arms Control and Policing division, will also give oral evidence, as will Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy director Sayed Ahmed, who seeks to improve accountability in the repressive Gulf state.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Switzerland Ready to Mediate Ukraine Crisis – Swiss Foreign Minister

Sputnik – 11.04.2016

Switzerland’s neutrality in the east Ukrainian crisis puts it in a position to mediate the conflict in order to bridge the gap between all parties involved, Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter said Monday.

“The vision of Switzerland is not that of the Kremlin or that of Ukraine. It is the vision of the Swiss government. Switzerland believes we can play a role of the bridge, and… we are able to discuss the conflict situation with everyone,” Burkhalter said after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Burkhalter said it was important to look for a solution instead of playing a blame game. He admitted there were differences between Moscow and Bern on the issue but underscored the importance of finding a way out of the Ukrainian crisis together.

“On Ukraine, I want to say that we do not agree on every issue with Russia, there are differences, but it does not prevent us from cooperation and looking for attempts to find a solution,” Burkhalter said.

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) said last week it had registered a spike in violence in the Donetsk region. It also continued to note the presence and use of proscribed weapons within the agreed security zone in eastern Ukraine.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Last day of demolition order leaves Palestinian family in fear of losing their home

International Solidarity Movement | April 10, 2016

Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine – The 10th of April is the last day of the demolition order on the home of the Totanji family. The family lives in the Sawaneh district in Wadi al-Joz, a village in East Jerusalem near the Old City, which Israel has declared as a ‘National Park’ area. This despite it having always been a residential area. The family received the demolition order over a year and a half years ago, but lost the appeal against the order last month. Today is the last day of the demolition order, which leaves the family fearing that their house maybe demolished tonight.

The house is single-story with 4 bedrooms. However, it is currently the home of 16 people including a 7 month old baby, the granddaughter of the owner of the house. As is the case with other Palestinian families in fear of house demolition, the family does not have any where else to go, and will leave their whole life behind if their house is demolished. Just seven months ago, one of Totanji sons had his house demolished in the same area. This fear of losing one’s home does not just apply to the Totanjis, but also to the rest of the residents in Palestine, due to the huge number of demolitions and demolition orders. In just the last week (31st March-6th April) 14 houses have been demolished in East Jerusalem and the West Bank by Israeli Forces.

Wadi al-Joz is located directly outside the Old City of Jerusalem in a vulnerable area. It is a neighbourhood that suffers from many demolition orders and subsequent demolitions. This is due to Israel declaring parts of the area around the Old City in Jerusalem as a ‘National Park’, to “protect the historical land.” The area covers a huge residential areas containing villages which are already overcrowded including Wadi al-Joz. In addition to the Totanjis, 13 other families in the Sawaneh district in Wadi al-Joz are also in danger of demolition. The information regarding the so called ‘National Park’ was only relayed to these families in the past two years. And whilst Israeli authorities claim that it was declared a park more than 4 decades ago, regardless, this declaration concerning annexed territory is in direct violation of international law.

The family is seeking an international presence to defer the demolition and deter the Israeli authorities. Internationals will be in the house from this evening and for the foreseeable future to prevent the demolition. There is a press conference planned tomorrow morning, 11am on the 11th of April 2016, to announce the opening of a protest tent outside the Totanji family house. The families and the community of Wadi al-Joz invites everyone to attend the protest and to lend coverage to this important event.

Address:

Wadi Al-Joz, neighbourhood of East Jerusalem

Across the Fire Station, behind the Central Market or “Hisbi”

Directions:

From Damascus Gate, follow the Old City Wall towards the Mount of Olives and continue down into Wadi Al-Joz. The home is on a dirt road on the right before you begin to go up the hill to the Mount of Olives. It is about 10-15 minute walk from Damascus Gate. Alternatively, you can drive down from the Mount of Olives past the Ibrahimiya School. The dirt road is on the left at the bottom of the hill just opposite the paved road that goes right into Wadi al-Joz.

Contacts:

Totanji family contact

Aref Tatanji: +972-(0)-508-133-590 (Arabic)

Press conference contact

Nureddin Amro: +972-(0)-525-271-587 (Arabic and English)

ISM media contact

Josephine: +972-(0)-59-740-6401(English)

Further reading:

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-destroying-palestinian-homes-path-bible-trail-encircling-jerusalem-1585955449

Background about home demolitions:

House demolitions in International Humanitarian Law (Diakonia)

East Jerusalem: Key Humanitarian Concerns (UN OCHA, August 2014)

The Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem and Its Implementation: A Legal Guide and Analysis (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2013)

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | 1 Comment

As Ukraine Collapses, Europeans Tire of US Interventions

By Ron Paul | April 10, 2016

On Sunday Ukrainian prime minister Yatsenyuk resigned, just four days after the Dutch voted against Ukraine joining the European Union. Taken together, these two events are clear signals that the US-backed coup in Ukraine has not given that country freedom and democracy. They also suggest a deeper dissatisfaction among Europeans over Washington’s addiction to interventionism.

According to US and EU governments – and repeated without question by the mainstream media – the Ukrainian people stood up on their own in 2014 to throw off the chains of a corrupt government in the back pocket of Moscow and finally plant themselves in the pro-west camp. According to these people, US government personnel who handed out cookies and even took the stage in Kiev to urge the people to overthrow their government had nothing at all to do with the coup.

When Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was videotaped bragging about how the US government spent $5 billion to “promote democracy” in Ukraine, it had nothing to do with the overthrow of the Yanukovich government. When Nuland was recorded telling the US Ambassador in Kiev that Yatsenyuk is the US choice for prime minister, it was not US interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine. In fact, the neocons still consider it a “conspiracy theory” to suggest the US had anything to do with the overthrow.

I have no doubt that the previous government was corrupt. Corruption is the stock-in-trade of governments. But according to Transparency International, corruption in the Ukrainian government is about the same after the US-backed coup as it was before. So the intervention failed to improve anything, and now the US-installed government is falling apart. Is a Ukraine in chaos to be considered a Washington success story?

This brings us back to the Dutch vote. The overwhelming rejection of the EU plan for Ukrainian membership demonstrates the deep level of frustration and anger in Europe over EU leadership following Washington’s interventionist foreign policy at the expense of European security and prosperity. The other EU member countries did not even dare hold popular referenda on the matter – their parliaments rubber-stamped the agreement.

Brussels backs US bombing in the Middle East and hundreds of thousands of refugees produced by the bombing overwhelm Europe. The people are told they must be taxed even more to pay for the victims of Washington’s foreign policy.

Brussels backs US regime change plans for Ukraine and EU citizens are told they must bear the burden of bringing an economic basket case up to European standards. How much would it cost EU citizens to bring in Ukraine as a member? No one dares mention it. But Europeans are rightly angry with their leaders blindly following Washington and then leaving them holding the bag.

The anger is rising and there is no telling where it will end. In June, the United Kingdom will vote on whether to exit the European Union. The campaign for an exit is broad-based, bringing in conservatives, populists, and progressives. Regardless of the outcome, the vote should be considered very important. Europeans are tired of their unelected leaders in Brussels pushing them around and destroying their financial and personal security by following Washington’s foolish interventionism. No one can call any of these recent interventions a success and the Europeans know it.

One way or the other, the US empire is coming to an end. Either the money will go or the allies will go, but it cannot be sustained. The sooner the American people demand an end to these foolish policies the better.

April 11, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Would a Clinton Win Mean More Wars?

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 10, 2016

The Democratic Party establishment seems determined to drag Hillary Clinton’s listless campaign across the finish line of her race with Bernie Sanders and then count on Republican divisions to give her a path to the White House. But – if she gets there – the world should hold its breath.

If Clinton becomes President, she will be surrounded by a neocon-dominated American foreign policy establishment that will press her to resume its “regime change” strategies in the Middle East and escalate its new and dangerous Cold War against Russia.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressing the AIPAC conference in Washington D.C. on March 21, 2016. (Photo credit: AIPAC)

Hillary Clinton (Photo credit: AIPAC)

If Bashar al-Assad is still president of Syria, there will be demands that she finally go for the knock-out blow; there will pressure, too, for her to ratchet up sanctions on Iran pushing Tehran toward renouncing the nuclear agreement; there are already calls for deploying more U.S. troops on Russia’s border and integrating Ukraine into the NATO military structure.

President Clinton-45 would hear the clever talking points justifying these moves, the swaggering tough-guy/gal rhetoric, and the tear-jerking propaganda about evil enemies throwing babies off incubators, giving Viagra to soldiers to rape more women, and committing horrific crimes (some real but many imagined) against defenseless innocents.

Does anyone think that Hillary Clinton has the wisdom to resist these siren songs of confrontation and war, even if she were inclined to?

President Barack Obama, who – for all his faults – has a much deeper and subtler intellect than Hillary Clinton, found himself so battered by these pressures from the militaristic Washington “playbook” that he whined about his predicament to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, himself a neocon war hawk.

The Washington foreign policy establishment is now so profoundly in the hands of the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” sidekicks that the sitting President presumably couldn’t find anyone but a neocon to give those interviews to, even as he complained about how the U.S. capital is in the hands of warmongers.

Given this neocon domination of U.S. foreign policy – especially in the State Department bureaucracy, the major media and the big think tanks – Clinton will be buffeted by hawkish demands and plans both from outside of her administration and from within.

Already key neocons, such as the Brookings Institution’s Robert Kagan, are signaling that they expect to have substantial influence over Clinton’s foreign policy. Kagan, who has repackaged himself as a “liberal interventionist,” threw his support to Clinton, who put him on a State Department advisory board.

There is also talk in Washington that Kagan’s neocon wife, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, another Clinton favorite and the architect of the “regime change” in Ukraine, would be in line for a top foreign policy job in a Clinton-45 administration.

Neocons Back in Charge

So, Clinton’s election could mean that some of the most dangerous people in American foreign policy would be whispering their schemes for war and more war directly into her ear – and her record shows that she is very susceptible to such guidance.

At every turn, as a U.S. senator and as Secretary of State, Clinton has opted for “regime change” solutions – from the Iraq invasion in 2003 to the Honduras coup in 2009 to the Libyan air war in 2011 to the Syria civil war since 2011 – or she has advocated for the escalation of conflicts, such as in Afghanistan and with Iran, rather than engaging in reasonable give-and-take negotiations.

Though her backers tout her experience as Secretary of State, the reality was that she repeatedly disdained genuine diplomacy and was constantly hectoring President Obama into adopting the most violent and confrontational options.

He sometimes did (the Afghan “surge,” the Libyan war, the Iran nuclear stand-off) but he sometimes didn’t (reversing the Afghan escalation, finally negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran after Clinton left, rejecting a direct U.S. military assault on the Syrian government, and working at times with the Russians on Iran and Syria).

In other words, Obama acted as a register or brake restraining Clinton’s hawkishness. With Clinton as the President, however, she would have no such restraints. One could expect her to endorse many if not all the harebrained neocon schemes, much as President George W. Bush did when his neocon advisers exploited his fear and fury over 9/11 to guide him into their “regime change” agenda for the Middle East.

The neocons have never given up their dreams of overthrowing Mideast governments that Israel has put on its enemies list. Iraq was only the first. To follow were Syria and Iran with the idea that by installing pro-Israeli leaders in those countries, Israel’s close-in enemies – Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups – could be isolated and crushed.

After Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003, Washington’s neocons were joking about whether Iran or Syria should come next, with the punch line: “Real men go to Tehran!” But the Iraq War wasn’t the “cakewalk” that the neocons had predicted. Instead of throwing flowers at the U.S. troops, Iraqis planted IEDs.

As it turned out, a lot of “real men” and “real women” – as well as “real children” – died in Iraq, including nearly 4,500 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

So the neocon timetable took a hit but, in their view, only because of Bush’s incompetent follow-through on Iraq. If not for the botched occupation, the neocons felt they could have continued rolling up other troublesome regimes, one after another.

Professionally, the neocons also escaped the Iraq disaster largely unscathed, continuing to dominate Washington’s think tanks and the op-ed pages of major American news outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. Barely missing a beat, they set about planning for the longer haul.

An Obama Mistake

Although they lost the White House in 2008, the neocons caught a break when President-elect Obama opted for a Lincoln-esque “team of rivals” on foreign policy. Instead of reaching out to Washington’s marginalized (and aging) foreign policy “realists,” Obama looked to the roster of the neocon-dominated establishment.

Obama recruited his hawkish Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to be Secretary of State and kept Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Obama also left in place most of Bush’s military high command, including neocon favorite, General David Petraeus.

Obama’s naïve management strategy let the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” pals consolidate their bureaucratic control of Washington’s foreign policy bureaucracy, even though the President favored a more “realist” approach that would use America’s power more judiciously — and he was less enthralled to Israel’s right-wing government.

The behind-the-scenes neocon influence became especially pronounced at Clinton’s State Department where she tapped the likes of Nuland, a neocon ideologue and an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, to become the department’s spokesperson and put her on track to become Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (although the appointment wasn’t finalized until after Clinton left in 2013).

The neocon/liberal-hawk bias is now so strong inside the State Department that officials I know who have gone there reemerge as kind of “pod people” spouting arrogant talking points in support of U.S. intervention all over the world. By contrast, I find the CIA and the Pentagon to be places of relative realism and restraint.

Perhaps the best example of this “pod people” phenomenon was Sen. John Kerry, who replaced Clinton as Secretary of State and suddenly became the mouthpiece for the bureaucracy’s most extreme war-like rhetoric.

For instance, Kerry advocated a retaliatory bombing campaign against Syria’s military in August 2013, ignoring the intelligence community’s doubts about whether President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was responsible for a sarin-gas attack outside Damascus.

Instead of listening to the intelligence analysts, Kerry fell in line behind the neocon-driven “group think” pinning the blame on Assad, the perfect excuse for implementing the neocons’ long-delayed Syrian “regime change.” The neocons didn’t care what the facts were — and Kerry fell in line. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What’s the Matter with John Kerry?”]

But Obama didn’t fall in line. He listened when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told him that there was no “slam dunk” evidence implicating the Syrian military. (Ultimately, the evidence would point to a provocation carried out by Islamic extremists trying to trick the U.S. military into intervening in the war on their side.)

Obama also got help from Russian President Vladimir Putin who persuaded President Assad to surrender all his chemical weapons (while Assad still denied any role in the sarin-gas attack). Putin’s assistance infuriated the neocons who soon recognized that the Obama-Putin cooperation was a profound threat to their “regime change” enterprise.

Targeting Ukraine

Some of the smarter neocons quickly identified Ukraine as a potential wedge that could be driven between Obama and Putin. Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and a potential first step toward driving Putin from power in Russia.

It fell to Assistant Secretary of State Nuland to shepherd the Ukraine operation to fulfillment as she plotted with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt how to remove Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Nuland and Pyatt were caught in an intercepted phone call discussing who should take over.

“Yats is the guy,” Nuland said referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who indeed would become the new prime minister. Nuland and Pyatt then exchanged ideas how to “glue this thing” and how to “midwife this thing.” This “thing” became the bloody Feb. 22, 2014 coup ousting elected President Yanukovych and touching off a civil war between Ukrainian “nationalists” from the west and Ukraine’s ethnic Russians in the east.

As the “nationalists,” some of them openly neo-Nazis, inflicted atrocities on ethnic Russians, Crimea voted by 96 percent to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Resistance to the new Kiev regime also arose in the eastern Donbas region.

To the State Department – and the mainstream U.S. news media – this conflict was all explained as “Russian aggression” against Ukraine and a “Russian invasion” of Crimea (although Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of the Sevastopol naval base agreement). But All the Important People agreed that the Crimean referendum was a “sham” (although many polls have since confirmed the results).

When citizen Clinton weighed in on the Ukraine crisis, she compared Russian President Putin to Hitler.

So, today the neocon/liberal-hawk Washington “playbook” – as Obama would call it – calls for massing more and more U.S. troops and NATO weapons systems on Russia’s border to deter Putin’s “aggression.”

These tough guys and gals also vow to ignore Russia’s warnings against what it views as military threats to its existence. Apparently “real, real men” go to Moscow (perhaps riding a nuclear bomb like the famous seen from “Dr. Strangelove.”).

Ian Joseph Brzezinski, a State Department official under President George W. Bush and now a foreign policy expert for the Atlantic Council, a NATO think tank, has co-authored an article urging NATO to incorporate Ukrainian army units into its expansion of military operations along Russia’s border.

“High-level Ukrainian national security officials have urged the international community to be bolder in its response to Russia’s provocative military actions,” wrote Brzezinski (son of old Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski) and Ukrainian co-author Markian Bilynskyj.

“The deployment of a battle tested, Ukrainian infantry company or larger unit to reinforce the defense of NATO territory in Central Europe would be a positive contribution to the Alliance force posture in the region.”

Following the Playbook

This kind of tough-talking jargon is what the next President, whoever he or she is, can expect from Official Washington. From Obama’s interview in The Atlantic, it’s clear that he feels surrounded and embattled by these warmongering forces but takes some pride in resisting – from time to time – the Washington “playbook.”

But how would President Hillary Clinton respond? When she appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on March 21 – at a moment when it appeared she had all but nailed down the Democratic nomination – Clinton showed what you might call her true colors, fawning over how loyal she would be to Israel and promising to take the very cozy relationship between the U.S. and Israel “to the next level.”

By reviewing Clinton’s public record, one could reasonably conclude that she is herself a neocon, both in her devotion to Israel and her proclivity toward “regime change” solutions. She also follows the neocon lead in demonizing any foreign leader who gets in their way. But even if she isn’t a full-fledged neocon, she often bends to their demands.

The one possible deviation from this pattern is Clinton’s personal friendship with longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, who was an early critic of the neoconservatives as they emerged as a powerful force during the Reagan administration. Blumenthal and his son Max have also dared criticize Israel’s abusive treatment of the Palestinians.

However, the Israel Lobby appears to be taking no chances that Sidney Blumenthal’s voice might be heard during a Clinton-45 administration. Last month, a pro-Zionist group, The World Values Network, bought a full-page ad in The New York Times to attack Blumenthal and his son and declared that “Hillary Clinton must disavow her anti-Israel advisors.”

Though Clinton might not publicly disassociate herself from Sidney Blumenthal, the preemptive strike pushed him further toward the margins and helped clear the path for the Kagan/Nuland faction to rush to the center of Clinton’s foreign policy.

Indeed, Clinton’s primary focus if she gets elected is likely to be ensuring that she gets reelected. As a traditional politician, she would think that the way to achieve reelection is to stay on the good side of the Israeli leadership. Along those lines, she promised AIPAC that, as President, she would immediately invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

So, what would happen if Clinton takes the U.S.-Israeli relationship “to the next level”? Presumably that would mean taking a super-hard line against Iran over last year’s nuclear deal. Yet, already Iran is questioning whether its acceptance of extraordinary constraints on its nuclear program was worth it, given the U.S. unwillingness to grant meaningful relief on economic sanctions.

A belligerent Clinton approach – decrying Iran’s behavior and imposing new sanctions – would strengthen Iran’s hard-line faction internally and might well lead to Iran renouncing the agreement on the grounds of American bad faith. That, of course, would please the neocons and Netanyahu by putting the “bomb-bomb-bomb Iran” option back in play.

A Stunning Reversal

Clinton may have viewed her AIPAC speech as the beginning of her long-awaited “pivot to the center,” but afterwards she suffered a string of primary and caucus defeats at the hands of Sen. Bernie Sanders, most by landslide margins.

Besides those stunning defeats, Clinton’s campaign clearly has an “enthusiasm gap.” Sanders, the 74-year-old “democratic socialist” from Vermont, draws huge and excited crowds and wins younger voters by staggering percentages. Meanwhile, Clinton confronts polls showing high negatives and extraordinary public distrust.

If she gets the Democratic nomination, she may have little choice but to engage in a fiercely negative campaign since — faced with the lack of voter enthusiasm — her best chance of winning is to so demonize her Republican opponent that Democrats and independents will be driven to the polls out of fear of what the crazy GOP madman might do.

Right now, many Clinton supporters see her as the “safe” — not exciting — choice, a politician whose long résumé gives them comfort that she must know what’s she’s doing. African-American voters, who have been her most loyal constituency, apparently feel more comfortable with someone they’ve known (who has also served in the Obama administration) than Sanders who is unknown to many and is seen as someone whose ambitious programs appear less practical than Clinton’s small-bore ideas.

But a look behind Clinton’s résumé, especially her reliance on “regime change” and other interventionist schemes in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, might give all peace-loving voters pause. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Hillary Clinton ‘Qualified’?”]

Savvy neocons, like Robert Kagan, have long understood that Clinton could be their Trojan Horse, pulled into the White House by Democratic voters. Kagan told The New York Times, “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy. If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

The same Times article noted that Clinton “remains the vessel into which many interventionists are pouring their hopes.” However, if she is that “vessel” carrying a neocon foreign policy back into the White House, this “safe” choice might prove dangerous to America and the world.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

April 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , | 4 Comments

Regev tweet ignites campus fury

MEMO | April 10, 2016

The troubled director of one of the most prestigious university colleges in the world has become mired in controversy since it emerged that she invited the new Israeli ambassador in London for tea. Controversial Mark Regev had been in the job less than two days when he sent out a tweet boasting about his invitation to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from his old friend Baroness Valerie Amos.

Within hours of the news breaking, students, academics and leading student societies showed their displeasure by signing letters and issuing condemnatory statements; demands for an apology were also made as a demonstration took place on the steps of the prestigious central London institution. Graffiti is now being seen around the SOAS campus accusing the director of being “complicit”.

Tea with Amos was probably more of a “friends reunited” affair for Australian-born Regev; the baroness played a key role ahead of the Iraq war for another mutual friend, Tony Blair. The three have met on overseas trips, including at least one organised by Labour Friends of Israel when Blair was Middle East Peace Envoy.

Apart from the smug tweet from Regev, the full content of his conversation with Amos has yet to be revealed. There can be little doubt, though, that the activities of the powerful boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement at SOAS were touched upon.

Baroness Amos has so far claimed that she summoned the Israeli ambassador to her office to explain the poor treatment of a SOAS student by Israel, but a source on the campus said that this was a weak excuse that no one is buying. “A university director does not have the power or influence to bring an ambassador to heel like that,” I was told, “never mind ‘summons’ him to her office. This was tea with an old friend.”

It is an open secret that Regev, once the mouthpiece and apologist of the Israeli war machine as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, is under orders to smash the BDS movement in Britain because it is proving to be among the most troublesome in the global campaign against Israel. MEMO revealed recently that the media department at the Israel Embassy in London has a military-style wall chart and map of the UK pinpointing the most active campus BDS movements and Palestinian societies.

Amos first came to prominence in 2003 when she was appointed as international development secretary by Blair when he was prime minister; she got the job after the resignation of Clare Short over the Iraq war. As a foreign office minister, she had a key role ahead of that conflict when she was pressed into action to canvas African leaders in the run-up to the disastrous invasion and its aftermath, travelling to Cameroon, Angola and Guinea to urge their governments to support the United States and Britain in the UN Security Council.

Her appointment as director of SOAS raised eyebrows last year, and within four weeks the baroness was forced to write to staff and students denying that she had backed proposals to slash a third of the institution’s courses. The row, which saw students staging a sit-in and the Students’ Union passing a vote of no confidence in the executive board, was described as a “misunderstanding” by a spokesperson at the university.

Now it appears that there has been another “misunderstanding” over tea in her office with Regev. There are widespread and growing calls for her to apologise over the meeting, as well as accusations that Amos has violated the principles of the BDS movement, which SOAS students, academics and staff voted to support in a campus referendum in March 2015. Almost three-quarters voted in support of a boycott of Israeli universities.

So far more than a dozen student societies have written to Baroness Amos to condemn the Regev meeting, which they called “an act of normalisation with Israel”. These include the Palestine, Yemen, Kurdish, Iraqi, Feminist, Labour, MENA and Syria societies at the college. MEMO has been given sight of a letter signed by scores of academics expressing to Amos their “dismay” after reading Mark Regev’s Twitter feed boasting that he’d had “a good meeting” with her.

“We are alarmed by this meeting because Mark Regev is not an ordinary ambassador paying you a courtesy visit,” they wrote. “He is not only the ambassador of the world’s longest military occupation since World War II. He is also the man who, in front of world media, including UK media, justified Israel’s 2006 war-criminal aggression on Lebanon and its repeated war-criminal onslaughts on Gaza, including those of 2008-9, 2012 and 2014. He did so in his capacity as spokesman for the Israeli government, and thus is indelibly connected to these war crimes in public perception.”

Although Amos responded to critics by saying that she was merely following up on the detention of a SOAS research student by Israel, the academics were not impressed. “Indeed,” they added, “we can provide you with a list of SOAS community members who were maltreated by the Israeli authorities for the purpose of follow up.”

Furthermore they expressed their “regret” that such a meeting with a person like Regev could take place in the director’s office, given the fact that it came against the backdrop of the Israeli media’s vilification of SOAS students and staff. “The Israeli media have published misleading reports of our events that were critical of Israel’s oppressive practices. This is primarily due to the vast majority of 73 per cent of staff and students at SOAS who voted for a boycott of occupation-related Israeli institutions.”

The academics said that they felt that the meeting exposed a lack of understanding and respect for staff and students at the university who “have consistently taken a stance against Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.”

Before signing-off the letter, the SOAS academics reinforced the understanding that Regev is, based on his past record, not “welcome at SOAS, and we are sure that, had his visit been announced, a vast mobilisation would have occurred to block him from entering our premises. We hope that such an affront to the SOAS community will never be repeated.”

One gets the feeling that the next time Regev and Amos are reunited it will be at Israel’s London Embassy, without announcements being made on Twitter or selfies taken by the BDS map. It will, by default, become part of the shadowy world of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

April 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

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