US-led warplanes strike northeastern Syria, kill four civilians
Press TV – June 13, 2018
Four civilians have been killed when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group conducted an airstrike against Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah.
Local sources, requesting anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that the aerial attack targeted residential buildings in al-Hardan village, which is located in the southeastern part of the province, on Wednesday, causing the fatalities.
A dozen civilians lost their lives and several others sustained injuries on Tuesday, when US-led military aircraft bombarded Tal Shayr village in the same Syrian province.
The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.
Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the rotating President of the UN Security Council Vasily Nebenzya on June 5, condemned the continuing attacks by the US-led coalition against innocent Syrians, and its assaults on the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of the conflict-plagued Arab country.
The letters further noted that the “illegal” US-led coalition continues to perpetrate massacres against Syrian civilians, leaving scores of people, including elderly people, women and children, dead over the past few days and destroying homes as well as civilian properties and infrastructure in targeted villages.
The Syrian foreign ministry added that the US-led coalition is devoid of any international legitimacy, and has bombarded people in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr after they did not agree to support US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militants.
“The United States has organized these militants in a bid to target the positions of the Syrian army, and recapture areas liberated by the Syrian army soldiers and their allies from the menace of terrorism,” the letters pointed out.
They noted, “The United States has on occasions offered direct support to Daesh Takfiri terrorist group – the latest of which was on May 24 when US-led fighter aircraft struck Syrian army military sites between Albu Kamal border town and Hmeimim Air Base less than 24 hours after government forces thwarted Daesh assaults on its positions.”
Iranian President Suggests Pullout of Advisors, Foreign Military From Syria
Sputnik – 13.06.2018
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has discussed the situation in Syria, as well as prospects of Iran deal with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a telephone call, the official website of the Iranian president reported.
Hassan Rouhani noted that Tehran had sent its military advisers to the Arab republic at the request request of its legitimate government in order to help Damascus fight terrorism. He expressed hope that no “foreign military presence” would be needed after the terrorist threat had been eradicated.
Israel accuses Iran of sending the country’s troops to Syria in order to attack it from Syrian territory. Tel Aviv has already conducted several airstrikes against Syrian bases under a pretext of Iranian Revolutionary Guards being stationed there. Tehran and Damascus deny these accusations.
The two presidents also discussed the current state of the JCPOA. Rouhani praised the stance that Europe took to keep the deal alive after the US withdrawal, but noted that, so far, statements had not been “accompanied by practical and tangible measures and solutions.”
“If Iran cannot benefit from the privileges of this agreement, remaining in it will not be possible,” the Iranian president said.
Emmanuel Macron confirmed commitment to the JCPOA and assured Rouhani that France is working on “a series of measures and practical solutions” to make the deal work.
The US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, with President Donald Trump claiming the deal was “flawed” at its core. Other parties to the agreement have confirmed their readiness to stick with the deal and work out solutions against possible US sanctions.
The Art of the Deal worked on Sentosa Island
By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | June 13, 2018
Some statesmen by their sheer force of personality and unorthodox ways of politicking arouse disdain among onlookers. US President Donald is perhaps the most famous figure of that kind in world politics today.
No matter what he does, Trump attracts criticism. He evokes strong feelings of antipathy among a large and voluble swathe of opinion within half of America. The making of history in a virtual solo act on his part, which is the rarest of efforts, on Sentosa Island in Singapore on Tuesday and which the world watched with awe and disbelief, will be instinctively stonewalled.
Half of America simply refuses to accept the positive tidings about him coming from Singapore. The skeptics are all over social media pouring scorn, voicing skepticism, unable to accept that if the man has done something sensible and good for his country and for world peace, it deserves at the very least patient, courteous attention.
The problem is about Trump – not so much the imperative need of North Korea’s denuclearization. But western detractors – ostensibly rooting for the “liberal international order” – will eventually lapse into silence because what emerges is that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has enough to “bite” here in the deal that Trump is offering – broadly, a security guarantee from the US and the offer of a full-bodied relationship with an incremental end to sanctions plus a peace treaty.
Succinctly put, Trump has offered a deal that Kim simply cannot afford to reject. The ending of the US-ROK military exercises forthwith; Trump’s agenda of eventual withdrawal of troops from ROK; the lure of possible withdrawal of sanctions once 20% of the denuclearization process gets underway, or once the process becomes irreversible; Trump’s hint that he has sought assurances from Japan and the ROK that they will be “generous” in offering economic assistance to the reconstruction of North Korea; China’s involvement in the crucial process – these are tangibles.
Re-election at stake
Trump seems to have succeeded in impressing Kim how green his valley too could be if he accepted the deal. On the other hand, Kim senses that he has an interlocutor who is keenly seeking a success story for his beleaguered presidency and is not playing political games or merely waffling. Trump candidly, disarmingly admitted at the press conference after the talks with Kim concluded that this success story would certainly go into his campaign plank when he makes a bid for re-election in 2020. What bigger signal can Trump give regarding his good faith.
In sum, Kim gets a one-time deal that must see the light of day before November 2020. It is custom-made by someone who correctly figured out Kim’s needs and compulsions. Thus, a personal chemistry is developing, which will be further cemented when Kim travels to Washington. Evidently, Kim also senses that he must concede on issues that matter to Trump politically – the issue of the remains of Americans who lost their lives in the Korean War, which is a hugely emotive issue in the US and whose resolution casts Trump in a positive glow. Trump was pleasantly surprised that Kim agreed on the spot when he made the request – just like that.
Geopolitically, Kim weighs in that in the ROK President Moon Jae-In, he already has someone who is a famous supporter of Seoul’s “Sunshine Policy”. There is already talk in Seoul about doing trade with North Korea. And it is a masterstroke on Trump’s part to include China in the negotiations for a peace treaty between the US and North Korea – although legally speaking, that is not mandatory. Trump flagged twice that US intelligence has spotted that China-North Korean border controls have eased lately since the US-China tensions began rising over trade.
Trump is ensuring that China remains a big stakeholder right until the finishing line. Now, a Korean peace treaty will inevitably reflect on the presence of US troops in South Korea – and Japan – which is, of course, an issue of momentous consequence for China’s security and the power dynamic of Northeast Asia.
The unthinkable is happening
The bottom line is that Trump has pulled off something that could make him a man of history and strengthen his America First project and in the process might win him a second term as president. The unthinkable is happening and his detractors are desperately searching for loopholes in the joint declaration signed in Singapore. It is a pathetic sight because no political document ever drafted by man has been 100% foolproof. A document is always open to interpretation. To err is human, to forgive divine.
However, that is beside the point here. The heart of the matter is that a big portion of the Trump-Kim deal cannot even be written on parchment paper. It is one-on-one. It is built around personal rapport, while the terms were agreed upon beforehand. The assisting role of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kim’s 30-year old sister Kim Yo-jong in the signing ceremony presented an extraordinary sight, testifying to the profundity of the occasion. In the East, you don’t break a deal that your sister bore witness to.
Therefore, setting aside prejudices regarding Trump the man, this is a moment when America should be capable of savoring. Of course, history shows that man proposes and God disposes. But the good part here is that no one is seeking to undermine what Trump and Kim have embarked upon.
So long as their mutual commitment is not in doubt, the prospects of a settlement on the Korean Peninsula are reasonably good. That’s what Trump’s Art of the Deal would have said.
Democrats Put Partisanship Before Prospects for Peace
By Joe Lauria | Consortium News | June 13, 2018
When Richard Nixon returned to Washington after his historic 1972 trip to China, he was welcomed with strong support from Democrats.
“From the initial Congressional reaction, it was apparent that the President, home from his China trip, would find broad bipartisan support for his move toward closer relations with Peking,” The New York Times reported on Feb. 29, 1972.
Even Democratic Senate leaders Edward Kennedy and Mike Mansfield praised Nixon’s diplomatic gamble.
Forty-six years later President Donald Trump took a similar political risk in agreeing to the first ever summit with a North Korean leader. Cautious optimism emerged from the summit that peace on the Korean peninsula may finally be within reach 65 years after a truce silenced the guns of the Korean War.
But instead of the support Nixon received from the opposition party, Trump has been blasted by Democrats, who’ve put any prospect for peace behind their partisan quest to regain power.
“It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore,” wrote liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff on Tuesday. “Trump seemed to believe he had achieved some remarkable agreement, but the concessions were all his own.”
“Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this,” Kristoff wrote.
Nixon toasting Zhou
The Times editorial board was even harsher. “President Trump was on his best behavior, as is so often the case when he is dealing with dictators,” it wrote. “Mr. Trump was even more effusive about Mr. Kim after their session, sounding more like he was deconstructing a blind date than analyzing a diplomatic meeting.”
In case the reader didn’t get the message the editorial went on: “Whatever he does or does not understand about history or policy or statecraft, Mr. Trump has a keen sense of how to engage authoritarian thugs who crave respect and legitimacy. It’s how he’s wired.”
And then it piled on: “Mr. Trump has a deep and abiding fondness for strongmen … The more ruthlessly they have had to act to hold on to power, the more he respects them.”
“Dealing with men like Mr. Kim is, on some level, comfortable ground for Mr. Trump,” the Times editorial said. “Such negotiations are a higher-stakes, global version of the world he came up in, one of cutthroat real estate developers and shady businessmen and mobsters. … The world sneers at strongmen like Mr. Kim, Mr. Putin and Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, regarding them as uncivilized thugs, and Mr. Trump feels similarly disrespected. Dispositionally speaking, these are Mr. Trump’s people.”
A Beginning, Not an End
There wasn’t a word about what the two leaders agreed to in Singapore, namely the start—not the end—of what Trump called “an arduous process” that could lead to peace on the Korean peninsula. Trump could not have been clearer. He even said he could be wrong if the agreement is not realized.
The Times editorial never mentioned the agreement. In essence both sides agreed to work towards a peace treaty to end the Korean War, and the U.S. agreed to provide security guarantees to North Korea in exchange for the denuclearization of the peninsula. This was always meant to be a broad agreement on principles at the summit to kick start the indeed arduous negotiations to follow.
That the Times editorial board purposely ignored this fact to score cheap partisan points could not be clearer. The risks inherent in war on the peninsula, which should be of bi-partisan concern, were apparently of no concern to the editors on Eighth Avenue who decidedly took the low road.
Senate Democrats were no less uncharitable, seizing what they thought was an opportunity to score partisan points, while ignoring the promise the summit holds. “What the United States has gained is vague and unverifiable at best,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “What North Korea has gained, however, is tangible and lasting. By granting a meeting with Chairman Kim, President Trump has granted a brutal and repressive dictatorship, the international legitimacy it has long craved.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said: “In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo.”
The questions asked at Trump’s post-summit press conference is illustrative of the partisan nature of today’s press. He was repeatedly asked about giving away the store without getting anything in return. But Trump made clear he had already gotten the return of three American prisoners, had gotten a commitment for the remains of Americans killed in the Korean War to be returned, and most crucially, a promise to begin the task of denuclearization.
US devastation of N. Korea (Keystone/Getty Images)
Yes it’s a promise. But the process has to begin somewhere. The very hard work to make that happen will begin now, and no peace-loving person would not want to give it a chance instead of seeking to gain short-sighted partisan advantage.
Trump said sanctions would remain and that war games with South Korea could resume if the deal does not materialize. After the devastation wrought by the United Sates on North Korea 65 years ago Trump incredibly agreed that those war games were seen as provocations by the North. He is being roasted for putting himself in the position of his adversary and seeing things as they do—a fundamental principle of diplomacy, and presumably journalism too.
The press also badgered Trump about North Korean human rights. They wanted to know how he could make a deal with such a repressive country. Would the alternative be war to enforce human rights? Trump said human rights were raised with Kim but were separate from the imperative of denuclearization. He felt that if peace were achieved and the North Korean economy improved (with the likely participation of U.S. corporations) that human rights would improve.
Turning the Tables
“I’m disappointed Kim Jong-un did not take the opportunity to raise with Trump the utterly dismal US human rights record, from mass incarceration of millions to rampant police murder of Black citizens,” tweeted Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the website The Electronic Intifada. “Any credible deal must be predicated on US respecting its own people.”
Journalist Max Blumenthal tweeted: “The US committed genocide during the Korean War, killing 20% of North Korea’s population, burning literally all of its cities to the ground w/ napalm, & nearly nuking it. Today it threatens w extermination. Reporters must ask Kim how he can make peace with such a brutal country.”
“Democrats attacking Trump from the Right on Korean Summit,” added writer and filmmaker Tariq Ali in a tweet. “Pity Obama didn’t have the guts to visit Teheran.”
What we are witnessing is an inability, or unwillingness, to break down Trump’s positions and examine each one individually, something that Democrats like Ted Kennedy were able to do with Nixon. But we are in a totally different era. A non-partisan approach to Trump would be able to decry his positions on climate, torture, health insurance, taxes, Iran and Palestine, and yet welcome his stated desire to lessen tensions with Russia and North Korea.
Instead we get tweets like this from former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh: “America is the brightest, most benevolent nation on earth. North Korea is the darkest, most horrific regime on Earth. We just gave them equal billing. We just sat at a table with them. There had better be something really, really good coming in return.”
Clearly some criticism of Trump for meeting Kim is bipartisan, but none of the praise is. Such an attitude of Walsh’s, and The New York Times, rests on a misunderstanding of America that is intended to reflect well on those who conveniently leave out the darkest chapters of America’s history, of which there have been far too many. The napalming and destruction of North Korea is among them, but hardly alone.
Deleting the context of decades of election meddling, coup plotting, assassinations and invasions of sovereign lands in the reporting and editorials of august organs like the Times, indeed in the entire corporate media, leaves Americans with a comic book understanding of their history, cast adrift in a bubble from the reality of the rest of the world.
Attacking other nations’ human rights record while ignoring one’s own, or one’s allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, is classic projection designed to wash one’s conscience clean. It helps to hold a position in the post-War Western-dominated international system making it easy to convince oneself of one’s righteousness, though self-reflection would reveal that that system has become a grotesque image of its former self.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe.
North Korea: Pelosi versus Peace
By Thomas L. Knapp | William Lloyd Garrison Center | June 12, 2018
Which is worse: The specter of nuclear war, or giving US president Donald Trump credit for a significant diplomatic accomplishment?
In her official statement on Trump’s Singapore summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi makes it clear that a few million incinerated human beings are a small price to pay to keep the 68-year-old Korean War going. Maybe not forever, but at least until there’s a Democrat in the White House.
“[T]he President handed Kim Jong-un concessions in exchange for vague promises that do not approach a clear and comprehensive pathway to denuclearization and non-proliferation,” Pelosi complains.
What were these dangerous “concessions?”
First, the US armed forces will, conditional upon progress toward North Korean denuclearization, stop conducting the threatening military exercises that they’ve conducted on North Korea’s border and off its coast since the 1953 ceasefire. Some “concession.” If US and South Korean forces aren’t prepared for a new outbreak of hostilities after 65 years of training, they never will be.
Secondly, again conditional upon North Korea holding up its end of the developing bargain, the US will provide “security guarantees.” Which means, the US and South Korea won’t invade North Korea, just like they haven’t invaded North Korea since 1953. Again, some “concession.”
Would a Democratic president, at the kind of summit with North Korea’s ruler that Trump managed to swing — unlike any past president, Democrat or Republican — have refused those two obvious first-step “concessions?” Not a chance. They were the bare minimum, and if a Democrat had offered them, Pelosi would have publicly celebrated them as like unto the Second Coming.
“President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo,” Pelosi continues, ignoring the fact that every president since Eisenhower has “preserved the regime’s status quo” — until Trump, who recognized, diplomatically speaking and in relation to the issue at hand, that North Korea is already at “the level of the United States.”
If the Korean War is going to be sorted out, it will be the belligerents — North Korea, South Korea, China and the United States, likely with significant input from Russia — doing the sorting.
But Pelosi, the Democratic Party, and the party’s allies in the media, would rather it NOT get sorted out.
That’s disgusting.
Posturing America as “the exceptional nation,” Kim as a supplicant in rags, and those other governments as mere hangers-on could have had only two possible outcomes. One was the status quo ante. The other — a danger faced by then-president Barack Obama in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal — was those other parties negotiating their own deal, leaving a petulant, marginalized America to watch their parade from the sidelines.
A genuine and durable peace on the Korean peninsula may or may not be achievable, but Trump seems to be giving it the old college try. Pelosi and her party, having proven unable to lead and unwilling to follow on the matter, should at least have the decency to get the hell out of the way.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).
Israeli Authorities Demolish Graves at Historic Palestinian Cemetery
Sputnik – June 11, 2018
Israeli authorities were caught on video excavating portions of the historic Bab al-Rahma cemetery next to Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. The cemetery is believed to contain the final resting places of two companions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
Video from June 5 shows about a dozen men, presumably members of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, at a work site in the Bab al-Rahma cemetery, through which Israel is planning to build a national park trail.
The cemetery sits adjacent to Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. It is believed to hold the graves of Ubada ibn as-Samit and Shadad ibn Aus, two of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions. The cemetery has remained in use for more than 1,000 years.
Israel plans to seize about 40 percent of the cemetery for the national park under murky legal pretexts, Sputnik News recently reported. The plan has supposedly been in place since 2015, but Palestinian lawyers and conservation activists claim Israel is jumping the gun, as court cases over the fate of the cemetery remain pending.
Israeli authorities have recently resumed work on the park and have been seen digging up and marking graves, removing trees and fencing off areas to halt future burials. During the first weekend of June, several Palestinians were injured and arrested while protesting the desecration of the cemetery.
Outside of Jerusalem proper, in the West Bank, authorities are also clearing the way for a new settlement over the village of al-Khana Ahmar, a village mostly inhabited by Bedouin refugees who were expelled from southern Israel in 1952. In 2009, an Italian aid organization constructed a school there, but Israel ordered it to be demolished one month after it opened. After that, residents in neighboring Israeli settlements petitioned the courts to demolish the community, which has been slated for destruction since February 2010. In 2015, authorities confiscated solar panels that provided the only source of electricity to the village.
Israel plans to relocate them yet again, this time north to a village called An-Nuway’imah, allowing Jewish settlers to claim the strategically significant spot. Building an Israeli settlement there would allow the government to connect the urban Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem and to control the gateway between northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
Abu Khamiss, a spokesman for the current Khan al-Ahmar villagers, told France 24 in 2014 that “the place where Israel wants us to ‘relocate’ would be like a prison for us. We’d be surrounded by Israeli settlements, a checkpoint and military training camps.”
The demolition is expected to begin any day now. Already, Israeli authorities have been accused of poisoning locals’ dogs under cover of night, robbing the villagers of the “faithful shepherds.”
© REUTERS / Mussa Qawasma
For Palestinian children living in the West Bank, getting to school is an incredibly difficult task because of their scarcity and the difficulty of traveling due to the abundance of Israeli checkpoints that control movement around the territory and can take hours to pass through. Israel is slated to destroy the Palestinian school in al-Khana Ahmar as well, a move the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said in 2011 “would effectively deny the children of the community their education and jeopardize their future.”
According to a January report from the the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 61 schools in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have pending demolition orders or stop work orders against them from the Israeli government.
See Also:
Israel’s Demolishing of West Bank Schools May Amount to Int’l Crime – Watchdog
Israel to build new outpost in W. Bank for evacuated settlers
Palestine Information Center – June 12, 2018
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – The Israeli government intends to build a new settlement outpost for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank after a court verdict recently ordered the dismantling of Netiv Ha’avot outpost, which was built on privately-owned Palestinian land.
According to Haaretz newspaper, Israeli security forces are expected to demolish 15 structures in this outpost Tuesday morning.
In the presence of right-wing Israeli ministers, thousands participated on Monday in a mock protest against the evacuation of settlers from the outpost.
Israeli army sources told Haaretz that an agreement had been reached with the settlers under which they accepted to only resist the demolition of two structures in the outpost. The source added that the evacuation would go smoothly and with no problems.
The Israeli government has allotted 60 million shekels (approximately $16.5 million) for the slated demolitions and the construction of a new outpost. The sum will be used to compensate evacuated settlers and reconstruct stone structures for them on a nearby tract of land that is not privately owned.
Israeli Army Closes Probe into the Murder of Palestinian Teen
Mahmoud Raafat Badran, 15, shot dead by Israelis. They say they mistook him for a stone-throwing “terrorist.”
Palestine Chronicle | June 12, 2018
The Israeli military has closed an investigation into the tragic death of a 15-year-old Palestinian, who was killed two years ago after the soldiers mistakenly opened fire on a car full of West Bank teens.
In June 2016, Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Mahmoud Raafat Badran after “showering” a car on Route 443, a major West Bank highway, with live fire.
Four other Palestinian teens, who were returning from a nearby swimming pool, were also injured in the incident, which unfolded as the Israeli soldiers tried to quell Palestinian youths in the vicinity but “misidentified” the suspects’ vehicle.
The four injured were Mahmoud’s two brothers – 16-year-old Amir and 17-year-old Hadi – as well as Daoud Abu Hassan, 16, and Majdi Badran, 16.
Following a comprehensive investigation into the incident, the Military Advocate General ordered the closure of the probe, admitting that the Israeli Army had “mistakenly” identified the teens as a group of Palestinian youths who had earlier assaulted Israeli cars with stones and Molotov cocktails.
While noting there were “professional failings” during the incident, the Advocate General found opening fire on the car was justified and the mistake was “earnest and reasonable.”
According to the Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem, the shooting of the 15-year-old Palestinian boy was “deliberate, entirely unjustified and a direct result of military policy”.
Palestinians refuse to terminate social welfare for victims of Israeli aggression
MEMO | June 12, 2018
The Palestinian Authority has sent a defiant message to Israel over Tel Aviv’s attempt to freeze tax money used by the PA to pay victims of Israeli violence.
“There is no force in the world that can cause us to renounce our prisoners and the martyrs”, Yusuf Al-Mahmoud, spokesman for the PA government said, regarding Israel’s attempt to freeze Palestinian tax revenue.
Al-Mahmoud claimed that Israel bore full responsibility for violence in the region and said that it was “stealing their [Palestinian] money on the pretext of offsetting tax revenues”.
His comments follow repeated attempts by the Israeli government to use Palestinian tax revenue to gain political concession. The tax collection regime in the occupied territory, which grants Israel the right to collect tax on behalf of the Palestinians and then distribute it, is one of the many oddities to come out of the Oslo Accords.
The Knesset is currently discussing a bill to impound tax revenue that would have been handed to families and victims of violence perpetrated by the Israeli army. Protesters killed and injured in Gaza would be eligible for these payments, which Netanyahu is trying to block.
Israeli sources reported that last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Meir Shabbat, chief of Israel’s National Security Council, to deduct money from the taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in order to pay for the damage from fires caused by “rioter-terrorists” in Gaza sending kites attached to firebombs into Israeli territory.
“The martyr’s fund”, as it is known, has become a highly contentious issue. While Palestinians feel they have every right to use their own funds to provide welfare and social security to families of injured or deceased protesters resisting Israel’s brutal occupation, Israel feels it can exploit the tax situation to pile further pressure on the PA.
In addition to the bill discussed at the Knesset, senior members of the Israeli government have conditioned future negotiations on the PA suspending its welfare programme. Commentators have pointed out that this was another crude attempt to blame the victims. Insisting on the PA conceding on an issue that is a red line in the eyes of Palestinians is an attempt to shift the blame for the ongoing conflict away from Israel, and possibly stymie any future negotiations.
Read Also:
The international community should not stand by as Israel abuses Palestinians
North Korea foreign minister calls Netanyahu “stinking Zionist”
Palestine Information Center – June 12, 2018
PYONGYANG – North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-Ho has described Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu as a “stinking Zionist” and bashed his offer to provide the citizens of Iran with water purification technology while Gaza faces a severe water crisis.
“Stinking Zionist Netanyahu offer water to Iran; he’s criminal/liar so wouldn’t deliver. Meanwhile, he can’t be bothered giving water to Gaza; he kills them instead,” Yong-Ho said on his Twitter page.
Yong-Ho’s Twitter remarks came as North Korea was gearing up for a landmark meeting to be held soon in Singapore between its leader Kim Jong Un and US president Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel.
A second Tweet from the foreign minister said that while officials were preparing for the summit, “[North Korea] can’t fail to note stinking Zionist warmonger Netanyahu in Europe seeking to isolate Iran.”
It further accused Netanyahu of “working overtime to make the Singapore Summit fail; he hates DPRK,” it added, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The North Korean remarks were apparently prompted in part by a video published at Netanyahu’s official social media channels with an offer to Iran to provide its citizens with Israeli water technologies to combat persistent drought in the country.
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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