Israel’s balancing act in Ukraine is likely to backfire
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | March 24, 2022
Israel’s balancing act in the Russia-Ukraine war is likely to falter soon, simply because the resulting NATO-Russia conflict is expected to last for years, not weeks or months. Eventually, Israel would have to make a choice. Alas, whatever that choice may be, Israel will stand to lose.
From the first day of the war, Israel somehow became involved. Top Israeli officials, including the country’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, began calling their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. Initially, some in the media surmised that Israel is concerned because of the large Jewish populations in both Ukraine and Russia.
However, the headlines quickly moved on, with terms such as ‘Israeli oligarchs‘, ‘Jewish oligarchs‘, and other combinations of Israel-friendly oligarchs dominating the news. Business interests quickly began replacing the supposed concern over the safety and welfare of ordinary Ukrainians.
The latter fact was demonstrated in a most tragic way when Israeli Channel 12 reported, on 10 March, that many Ukrainian refugees were “stuck at Ben Gurion Airport, facing cold and callous treatment”.
Israeli hypocrisy reared its ugly head once more on 26 February, when Israeli Minister of Aliyah and Integration, Pnina Tamano-Shata, said in a statement, “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.”
It is obvious that Israel does not care about the welfare of Ukrainians or, frankly, Ukrainian Jews either. After all, these newcomers to Israel would eventually be incorporated into the country’s illegal settlement enterprises. We know this from history and particularly from the history of the migration of Russian Jews to Israel, who arrived in their hundreds of thousands in the early 1990s. Not only do many of them now reside in illegal Jewish settlements, but to some extent, they also represent the backbone of some of Israel’s far-right political parties, the likes of Avigdor Lieberman‘s Yisrael Beiteinu.
Aside from the fact that a country moving its residents to an occupied territory is a stark violation of international law, it is also a violation of the rights of these vulnerable refugees, who will be expected to live in another war zone in the service of Israel’s Zionist ideology.
It is unfortunate, but typical that Israel finds opportunities to bolster its settler colonial model in occupied Palestine by exploiting the tragedies of other societies to its advantage. It has done so many times in the past: in Ethiopia, following the famine in 1984, in Russia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in France, following the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015.
While France was still trying to fathom the enormity of its tragedy when 130 people were killed in broad daylight on 13 November, 2015, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on French Jews to move to Israel. “Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home,” he said.
Shamelessly, Israel finds tragedies as political opportunities worth exploiting. While this quality is not unique to Israel – the Russia-Ukraine war has also exposed the opportunism of other countries around the world – Israel’s exploitation is doubly shameful as it hopes that war-torn Ukraine would help it sustain its own war waged against the Palestinian people.
However, serious cracks in the Israeli balancing acts are already on display. On 11 March, US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland called on Israel to join sanctions against Russia. “We’re asking as many countries as we can to join us. We’re asking that of Israel as well,” she said.
Understandably, much of that pressure is coming from the Ukrainian government itself. Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly called on Israel to reciprocate for the Ukrainian support of Israel during its genocidal wars on the Palestinians. Indeed, Zelensky has taken every opportunity to express his solidarity with Israel in the past, even though Palestinians were the ones dying in their thousands.
“The sky of Israel is strewn with missiles. Some cities are on fire. There are victims. Many wounded. Many human tragedies,” the Ukrainian President tweeted on 12 May, 2021. Even during his inauguration speech in May 2019, Zelensky did not forget to bring Israel into his budding political discourse. “We must become Icelanders in soccer, Israelis in defending our land, Japanese in technology,” he said.
Still, aside from the occasional lip service, Israel insisted on remaining largely neutral. Analysts have explained the Israeli position in terms of Israel’s concern over Russia’s possible retaliation in Syria, for example, by allowing Iran greater geopolitical access to Syria that may compromise Israel’s ‘security.’ Others cited Israel’s deep financial interests, especially through the aforementioned oligarchs. Whatever the reasons may be, pressure is mounting on Israel to completely abandon its interests in Russia in favour of fully supporting Ukraine.
On 20 March, Zelensky upped the ante when he gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset. Not only did the Ukrainian President ask for Israel to provide Ukraine with an Iron Dome similar to the one that Tel Aviv uses to intercept Palestinian resistance rockets, he went much further, by infusing the Holocaust, an extremely sensitive discourse that only Israeli officials are allowed to use – and, indeed, manipulate – to silence any criticism of Israel internationally.
“The Nazis called this ‘the final solution to the Jewish question,'” Zelensky said. “And now, in Moscow, (…) they’re using those words, ‘the final solution’. But now, it’s directed against us and the Ukrainian question.”
For the Ukrainian President, although himself Jewish, to dare strike such a historical parallel to serve his country’s interests outraged many Israelis. “I admire the Ukraine president and support the Ukrainian people in heart and deed, but the terrible history of the Holocaust cannot be rewritten,” Israeli Communications Minister, Yoaz Hendel, tweeted. Many others joined in, in Israel and the US, attacking Zelenky’s supposed audacity.
Aside from its fear that injecting the Holocuast as part of Ukraine’s anti-Russian discourse could deprive Israel from its monopoly over the use and misuse of that historic tragedy, the Israeli official response to Zelensky also further exposed Israel’s stance on the war as defensive, suspicious and uncertain.
As the war rages on, Israel’s balancing act is becoming increasingly unsustainable. By allying fully with Ukraine, Israel could find itself at risk of losing Russia’s somewhat tolerant position pertaining to Israel’s ‘security’ in Syria and throughout the Middle East. Israel could also likely find itself at odds with Russia’s allies and semi-allies in China, India and other Asian countries. However, taking Russia’s side, a less likely scenario, means a break up of Israel’s historic alliance with its main benefactors in Washington and other European capitals.
As the world is likely to splinter among various power camps, Israel will find itself torn between its interests in the West, on the one hand, and the massive, emerging markets in the East, on the other. Though the West’s margin for tolerance when it comes to Israel by far exceeds its patience with other countries, it is only a matter of time before Israel will be expected to make a clean break from Russia and its economic, political and military interests that are tied to Moscow. When that happens, the geopolitical balance of power in the Middle East will likely shift against Israel, a scenario that would become even more difficult for Tel Aviv, if Iran manages to negotiate a return to the nuclear deal with the US and its western allies.
Though from the onset, Israel attempted to exploit the Russia-Ukraine war to its advantage, future scenarios are quite bleak for Tel Aviv.
China denounces Israel’s illegal settlements and urges UN to focus on Palestine
MEMO | March 24, 2022
Israel’s ongoing illegal settlement expansion has been slammed by China during a UN briefing on the situation in Palestine. Beijing’s representative at the world body insisted that settlements are a violation of international law and urged the international community to support the Palestinian people.
“We call on Israel to halt the expansion of settlements, stop the eviction of Palestinians, stop the demolition of Palestinian homes, and create conditions for the development of Palestinian communities in the West Bank, as called for in [Security] Council Resolution 2334,” said Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN.
Adopted unanimously in 2016, Resolution 2334 states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity”. It demands that Israel should stop such activity and fulfil its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
“Settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory violate international law, disrupt the contiguity of the occupied Palestinian territory, squeeze the living space of the Palestinian people, and affect the prospects for achieving the two-state solution,” continued Jun.
The Chinese envoy also expressed concerns over the deterioration of security in Palestine and the plight of children. “The protection of children in conflict settings is not an empty slogan, but an unshakable moral responsibility and an international obligation that must be fulfilled. We call for a thorough investigation of the recent violence and for effective accountability.”
He also urged the international community to continue to help Palestine alleviate its fiscal crisis, improve its economy and people’s livelihood, and tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. Underscoring the need to keep the focus on Israel’s occupation, he stressed that the Palestinian question should not be marginalised, much less allowed to be pending for a long time.
“China will continue to work with the international community to make unremitting efforts and contribute China’s share to a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the question of Palestine,” the envoy added.
Israel advocates pass new definition of antisemitism at 15 more U.S. colleges
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | March 22, 2022
In a triumph of Orwellian newspeak, over the past academic year Israel advocates at 15 American colleges succeeded in pushing through a newly created definition of ‘antisemitism’ that focuses on Israel. The formulation for the new definition – known as the IHRA definition – originated with an Israeli official in 2004 and has been promoted worldwide ever since.
As an Israel advocate writes, the IHRA definition is “the only definition which includes anti-Zionism within it.” Anti-Zionism is a highly diverse movement that supports Palestinian rights and opposes Israel’s ethno-religious discriminatory system, which is widely considered a form of apartheid.
The normal, traditional definition of antisemitism is simply “hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.”
According to the American Jewish Committee,* the definition has now been endorsed by at least 30 American colleges and universities:
- Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ (September 2020)
- Brooklyn College, New York, NY (November 2020)
- California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA (April 2021)
- California State University, Northridge (CSUN), Los Angeles, CA (December 2020)
- Chapman University, Orange, CA (May 2017)
- City College of New York, New York, NY (November 2020)
- East Carolina University, Greenville, NC (February 2017)
- Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (July 2020)
- Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, CA (October 2020)
- Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (December 2018)
- Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA (March 2021)
- Northeastern University, Boston, MA (November 2020)
- Pace University, New York, NY (October 2020)
- Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA (April 2021)
- San Diego State University, San Diego, CA (April 2017)
- St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY (November 2020)
- Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (February 2019)
- Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY (March 2021)
- Texas A & M University, College Station, TX (September 2020)
- University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (March 2015)
- University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA (February 2021)
- University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA (February 2021)
- University of Georgia, Athens, GA (January 2021)
- University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA (May 2021)
- University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (March 2021)
- University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN (April 2021)
- University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX (March 2021)
- University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX (April 2021)
- University of Wisconsin, Madison, Madison, WI (September 2017)
- Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC (December 2018)
While adoption of the new definition for antisemitism may seem symbolic, pro-Israel groups have a reason for promoting it: under Trump’s 2018 executive order on antisemitism it can potentially be used to censor information about Israel-Palestine on the campuses.
*Although it is named “the American Jewish Committee,” the AJC is actually an international Israel advocacy organization with offices throughout the world.
High vaccination not preventing COVID deaths in South Korea
Very disturbing data worth examining

By Joel S Hirschhorn | March 21, 2022
South Korea’s whole population is currently 86% vaccinated, one of the highest in the world, with about 63% of its population boosted as well. Of countries with 10 million or more people, South Korea is the third most vaccinated in the world and one of the most boosted.
By January of 2022, the Korean Herald reported that 93% of the population aged 18 and up had been “fully vaccinated” with either the two-dose AstraZeneca, Pfizer, or Moderna series or single dose of Johnson and Johnson. Among the elderly, 94% have been fully vaccinated and 78% boosted. All the booster doses have been mRNA-based vaccine product from Pfizer or Moderna.
Pfizer offered me $1 million & $50,000 month wage; essentially to stop writing & hammering them
I said NO!
By Dr. Paul Alexander | March 21, 2022
Yes, this happened. That I would not call out Bourla again. Of course no one would put this in writing but of course this was to silence me. Of course if I worked for Pfizer I would be muted complete from that moment on. That is how they silence you, put you on payroll.
To me, the battle is so huge, so transformational, that a POTUS could be so mislead that decisions were made Feb/March 2020 that shaped the next 2 years in the US and world and negatively so. Of course I cannot be part of that nor would ever consider it. I am in the fight for my peoples, my family, my children and the world I will leave behind one day. I have lost enough that I cannot go back now. As they say “balls to the wall”!
And I will say again, Bourla and Bancel and all at FDA, all at NIH, Fauci et al., all who have acted in this COVID fraud, must be allowed to defend their decisions and policies as we live in good governance etc. and we function with laws (though many argue the judicial system is corrupted) but if we show in proper legal inquiring and public inquiries that their actions costed lives, that their decisions killed people, that people and children died as a result, then they must be held to account with jail time! Financial penalties and jail time.
I am hurt financially, personally, as are a core 12-15 of us globally who have stood up, but the fight we are in is beyond money. Those of us who have been cancelled have been hurt, name wise, career, slandered etc. But for each person there is a time in life that we chose to stand up or not… we rise or shrink away, and most scientists, universities, doctors, public health officials, technocrats, governments, COVID Task Forces etc, chose to sell the people out for money, their grants, their salary was more important, so their silence was bought…so yes, we are hurt as our careers and income were hurt, I being one of them and I was stunned at what I was told on the phone twice in the call with the ask on a trip to TO…would have changed my life, but I said no, shove it, and so be it… money can come again and we will survive. Money is not the key in life. There is something called a line of integrity that must not shift based on money etc.
I joined with the Canadian truckers and now the US truckers to help stop the unscientific mandates and emergency powers, and I will remain fighting… its that critical.
These vaccines by Pfizer, Moderna et al are criminal, because they were non-sterilizing, and they knew it like how Pfizer knew there were 1,223 deaths that they and FDA hid from the public (see recent tranche of released documents, and 1290 special adverse effects etc., all hidden and they hoped for 55 or 75 years) it would have only driven infectious variants and more likely more virulent, more lethal ones. This is happening now. We are at this point where not only is the sub-optimal non-neutralizing Abs driving increased infectiousness of the virus via new variants, but it is driving increased virulence.
British military wants prank call censored

Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace © Luka Dakskobler / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Samizdat | March 23, 2022
London has asked YouTube on Wednesday to censor any videos of the call between pranksters Vovan and Lexus – pretending to be the Ukrainian PM – and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, claiming they are propaganda by the Russian state that was manipulated to show falsehoods and undermine British reputation and Kiev’s morale.
“We are calling on YouTube to help us support Ukraine by taking down videos doctored by the Russian state and disseminated to try and sap the morale of a people fighting for their freedom,” said the defense ministry (MoD) in London.
In the attached letter – which lacks the name of both the sender and the recipient – the ministry claims “the Russian State was responsible for the hoax call” and that “Russian disinformation presented in this video creates a substantial risk to UK national security” as well as “risk to international unity working to support Ukraine.”
The MoD claims the videos were “modified and edited” to show Wallace saying things that are not true, such as that the UK is “running out of our own” NLAW anti-tank missiles.
This is “factually incorrect,” the MoD said in the letter. “We have no supply shortages.” Another claim the MoD labeled false – presumably made by the pranksters – was that the NLAWS sent to Ukraine “often failed.”
“Any perceived failure of our lethal aid supplied to support Ukraine will provide an immediate detrimental effect upon the morale of Ukrainian forces,” the MoD letter said.
“I am confident you would not wish to be a conduit for Russian propaganda or be in any way associated with the potential consequences of this type of media manipulation,” the unnamed MoD official tells YouTube, demanding that the platform “remove (or at least block) access” to any videos of the call.
Wallace raised a stink over the call last Thursday, claiming he hung up on the person pretending to be Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal after getting suspicious about the “misleading” questions. It later emerged that the Microsoft Teams call lasted for almost 10 minutes, and came while Wallace was visiting Poland.
Blaming the government in Moscow, the minister denounced the call as an example of “Russian disinformation, distortion and dirty tricks” and launched an internal security investigation into how the pranksters were able to contact him in the first place.
On Tuesday, the notorious pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov – going by the monikers Vovan and Lexus – confirmed they had been behind the call and posted several teasers, saying the full video would be up soon. The duo has a long history of pranking celebrities and public figures, including Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They have denied being agents of the government.
DOJ secretly spied on Project Veritas journalists
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 23, 2022
Project Veritas, whose declared goal is to expose media and Big Tech bias and other irregularities happening behind the scenes at these corporations, says that the FBI spied on the organization’s email communications for close to a year.
This was reportedly done using gag orders, i.e., mandating that those whose communications were searched cannot be informed about it. An example of the gag orders can be found here.
The claim has come out in a letter (obtained here) Project Veritas sent on Tuesday to a federal judge in charge of a case involving a controversial FBI raid that took place last November of the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and two other employees, carried out as part of an investigation into a missing diary belonging to US President Biden’s daughter.
The FBI at the time had obtained warrants to take phones and computers from the three persons the agency targeted in the raids, but the court has since allowed a request filed by Project Veritas for a special master to look into whether protected information falling under the attorney-client privilege was violated by the prosecutors handling the investigation.
But in the letter to the judge, Project Veritas now says that for almost a year before the raids, gag orders were used by prosecutors to hide their activities around the diary investigation.
Among the information obtained in this way were three months’ worth of emails belonging to O’Keefe and several other employees, dating back to 2020, as well as grand jury subpoenas.
In one case, a Project Veritas journalist’s emails sent and received for over a year in 2020 and 2021 were secretly turned over to the FBI using the same tactic. Reports say that it appears the entity that received the bulk of the demands to turn over the emails was Microsoft.
The gag orders kept being renewed even as the special master was hearing from both sides in the probe into the lawfulness of the data the FBI seized in November. For this reason, stated Paul Calli, an attorney for Project Veritas, the government’s failure to disclose “other privilege invasions” it had carried out, “makes a mockery of the proceedings.”
Calli further stated in the letter that it was “impossible for us to understand how the government convinced multiple magistrate judges to extend non-disclosure orders for an investigation that was already public and widely-reported,” and added:
“Project Veritas had the right to know of these government infringements. The government’s clandestine invasions of journalist’s communications corrode the rule of law.”
The US Attorney’s Office in charge of the investigation is yet to comment on the letter.
Russia’s ruble payment plan leaves European gas buyers confused
Samizdat | March 23, 2022
German gas industry group Zukunft Gas said on Wednesday it was confused by the statement of Russian President Vladimir Putin about the switch of payments for Russian natural gas supplies to rubles.
“We took the message that Russia wants [us] to pay for gas supplies only in rubles with great confusion,” Timm Kehler, the director general of Zukunft Gas, told DPA agency. “We can’t predict at this moment what specific implications this will have for the gas trade,” Kehler said.
Meanwhile, Austrian OMV said it was going to continue to pay for Russian gas in euros. According to the head of the company, they have no other contractual basis.
President Putin announced earlier in the day that Russia will now accept payment for gas exports to “unfriendly countries” in rubles only.
The measure is the first serious response from Moscow to sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies over the conflict in Ukraine. A number of mostly Western countries have taken steps to isolate Russia from their financial systems. Major Russian banks have been cut off from the SWIFT payment network, making it difficult for the country to continue transactions in euros and US dollars.
