India deploys warships to Arabian Sea following attack on Israeli-linked ship
The Cradle | December 26, 2023
The Indian Navy has deployed three guided missile destroyers to the Arabian Sea in response to an alleged drone attack on an Israeli-linked chemical tanker last week.
New Delhi also uses long-range maritime patrol aircraft for “domain awareness,” the defense ministry reported Monday night.
On Saturday, the Liberian-flagged MV Chem Pluto, a Japanese-owned tanker traveling 370km off the coast of India, was reportedly hit by a kamikaze drone, according to the Pentagon.
The Israeli-linked tanker had been on its way from Saudi Arabia to India, according to maritime security firm Ambrey.
The Indian Navy says they are examining the specifics of the attack on the MV Chem Puto, which managed to anchor in Mumbai on 26 December.
Although Indian officials say a preliminary evaluation suggests a drone strike, they emphasize that additional forensic and technical examinations are necessary to determine the exact method of attack.
Washington blamed the attack on Iran, saying the drone had been launched “directly” from the Islamic Republic.
“We declare these claims completely worthless,” said Nasser Kanaani, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, on Monday.
“Such claims are aimed at projecting, distracting public attention, and covering up for the full support of the US government for the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza,” he added.
Saturday’s drone attack came less than a week after the US announced the formation of the so-called Operation Prosperity Guardian, described by US officials as a new “coalition of the willing” that seeks to counter the threat posed by Yemen in the Red Sea.
Although the Yemeni armed forces have been conducting the attacks against Israeli-linked vessels of their own accord, the Pentagon insists Iran is somehow involved.
“The [Yemeni] resistance has its own tools […] and acts by its own decisions and capabilities,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri told Mehr News Agency on Saturday.
“The fact that certain powers, such as the US and the Israelis, suffer strikes from the resistance movement […] should in no way call into question the reality of the strength of the resistance in the region,” he added.
Time to fix Canada’s anti-Palestinian tax code
By Yves Engler | December 26, 2023
At the start of the month Sylvan Adams gave US$100 million to Ben-Gurion University. During a Toronto gala for the university’s Canadian fundraising branch the Canadian billionaire announced the money for “rebuilding and strengthening the south … in the wake of the Oct. 7th attack against Israel’s southern border communities.” Over the past ten weeks United Israel Appeal Canada has raised $100 million. After a recent Jewish National Fund of Canada fundraiser the registered charity’s executive Director Jeff Springer said, “We raised money for the war during this event.”
Throughout its history flare ups in Israeli violence have prompted an outpouring of financial assistance from Canadian Zionists. A significant share of that money has been underwritten by the public.
The Canadian tax code has long been used to subsidize projects in Israel and pro-apartheid groups have received large amounts in public grants. While little discussed, the ‘Zionifaction’ of charitable status is Canada’s most significant contribution to Palestinian dispossession.
Canadians provide a massive, unique, subsidy to Israel. Close to hundreds of million dollars a year in public money is funneled to a country that has long committed the crime of apartheid and tens of millions of dollars more goes to groups promoting anti-Palestinian policies within Canada.
Benefiting from the ability to grant tax credits covering as much as half of a donation, registered charities finance projects in Israel as well as Canada’s apartheid lobby. Additionally, many Canadian apartheid lobby groups receive direct government grants.
Over 200 registered Canadian charities finance projects in Israel. It’s difficult to quantify exactly how much they funnel to a country with a GDP per capita equal to Canada’s, but Just Peace Advocates research has put it at around a quarter billion dollars annually. A third of that sum would be covered by taxpayers through charitable write-offs.
Most years United Israel Appeal Canada is the largest single source of charity funds for Israel, sending between $50 and $110 million. It’s overseen by the Jewish federations of Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and Atlantic Canada. In addition to the funds raised by United Israel Appeal, the Jewish Federations raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Some of those funds are sent directly to projects in Israel.
The Federations organize Toronto’s Walk with Israel and Montréal’s annual Israel Day Celebration. The Federations also operate Israel Engagement initiatives that host Israeli teens who defer their military service for one year to volunteer to “teach about Israel through creative programs and challenging discussions.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Canada’s most influential apartheid lobby group, “is the advocacy agent of Jewish Federations across Canada”. The Federations fund many other apartheid lobby groups and Israel ‘lobby sustaining’ organizations, which are pro-apartheid but not principally focused on Israel campaigning.
Beyond benefiting from charitable status, the federations receive tens of millions of dollars in direct federal, provincial and municipal grants. Last December Ottawa put up $25 million for the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, which includes an “Israeli Department” and is adorned with Israeli flags. Similarly, Montreal’s Sylvan Adams YM-YWHA received $8 million in federal funding in March. The facility operated by the Montréal Federation is named after a billionaire who has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigning for Israel. In 2012 UJA Toronto received $30 million in federal and provincial funding to build a new community centre.
The Federations receive tens of millions of dollars more in government grants for various initiatives ranging from security assistance to educational projects. Overseen by Federation CJA, the Montréal Holocaust Museum recently received $40 million in provincial, municipal and federal funding for its expansion (as well as a similar amount in tax subsidized donations). But the Museum is a sponsor of the ongoing Montreal Israeli Film Festival with the Israeli Consul General, Israel Bonds and other groups. The Holocaust Museum says it “is proud to have taken part in the Canadian delegation” that helped develop the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism. When the Project Montréal municipal government refused to heed the apartheid lobby’s push to adopt the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism in 2020, the museum released a statement criticizing the party headlined “The Montreal Holocaust Museum regretfully notes the Montreal Mayor’s refusal to support the definition.”
In the last federal budget the Liberals provided $2.4 million for the Toronto Holocaust Museum, which is overseen by that city’s federation. An advocate of the IHRA’s anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism, the Toronto Holocaust Museum also received half a million dollars in provincial funding. At the June launch of the museum speakers stood in front of Canadian, Ontario and Israeli flags.
The Federations provide funding to a slew of Israel lobby sustaining organizations from private schools to Hillels. One of those groups is Birthright Canada, which spends over three million dollars a year paying for young Jews to go to Israel. A dozen campus based Hillels are also among the federation assisted Israel lobby ‘sustaining’ registered charities. So are Israel studies and pro-apartheid Jewish studies programs established at universities by donors receiving generous tax credits.
As part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia, David Azrieli spent $5 million to establish Israel studies at that Montréal university (as well as $1 million on Jewish studies). More than $10 million in tax-deductible donations were made to the University of Toronto to establish the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair in Israeli Studies. Millions more were donated to launch similar initiatives at the University of Calgary, York, McGill and other universities.
Probably the most significant cog in the lobby ‘sustaining’ wheel, private Jewish schools generally indoctrinate young minds into worshiping a violent far away state oppressing millions. TanenbaumCHAT, Bnei Akiva and more than a dozen other registered charity schools raise around fifty million dollars annually in donations. With Québec offering unique support to private schools, pro-apartheid Jewish schools receive around $10 million in direct public grants annually.
After CIJA, B’nai B’rith is the second most influential Israel lobby group. The registered charity raises about ten million dollars a year (through multiple arms). Another influential charity lobby group is Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre with a $7 million budget.
Honest Reporting Canada, StandWithUs Canada and Hasbara Fellowships Canada are almost entirely focused on apartheid campaigning. These registered charities have a combined annual budget of $2 million.
Israel lobby and ‘sustaining’ organizations receive upwards of $100 million a year in direct government grants. Additionally, registered charities funneling money to Israel or Canadian apartheid lobby organizations raise half a billion dollars a year (around a third covered by taxpayers).
The ability to secure significant public assistance obviously reflects Israel lobby power. Simultaneously, it strengthens the lobby’s power as well as apartheid in Israel.
The subsidies must be countered. The first step to upending Canadian assistance to apartheid and the Israel lobby is to map it, which Just Peace Advocates is doing. Additionally, anti-apartheid forces should state clearly their opposition to the Jewish Federations receiving government grants so long as they funnel money to Israel and sponsor CIJA. While that demand will garner little immediate political traction, it’s an essential step towards politicizing the federations.
More immediately relevant are ongoing efforts to press the Canada Revenue Agency to apply its own rules regarding charities its empowered with special tax status. The CRA currently forbids registered charities from supporting foreign militaries, explicitly racist organizations and West Bank settlements yet a slew of Israel focused charities do just those things. Over the past year complaints have been submitted to the CRA detailing about a dozen different charities’ – with over $100 million in revenue – violating these rules. (CRA investigations and audits are confidential so the status of the complaints is unclear.) Many other charities should be challenged and more campaigning is needed to press the CRA to take action, which they have done with Israel-focused charities. (In recent years the CRA has revoked the charitable status of a dozen organizations providing funds to Israel.)
Removing groups’ charitable status and dampening the flow of public funds to the apartheid lobby is paramount, but there’s also an ideological value to the campaigning. While apartheid apologists complain incessantly about Israel being unfairly “singled out”, pushing the CRA to apply its own rules towards massive subsidies highlights how Israel is in fact singled out for special treatment. No other wealthy, faraway, country receives a remotely comparable amount of charity fundraising.
In essence, Canada’s tax code and government grant system are structured to enable a wealthy, apartheid state, committing genocide in Gaza at the expense of the colonized Palestinians. Whether through legal or political channels, it’s imperative to push back against the staggering sums of public funds subsidizing Israel and sustaining the apartheid lobby in Canada.
Biden’s plan to ‘revive Palestinian Authority’ fizzles out: Report
The Cradle | December 26, 2023
The US government has run into a significant hurdle in its campaign to “revitalize” the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) as possible successors to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, failing to convince Israel to unblock funds necessary to prevent the PA from total collapse.
“Even if we agreed [to take over for Hamas in Gaza], how can we implement it? The policy of Israel is to weaken the authority, not strengthen it,” PA Deputy Prime Minister Nabil Abu Rudeineh told the Washington Post. “We cannot even pay the salaries of our soldiers, our employees,” he added.
Despite round-the-clock visits to the heavily fortified PA headquarters in Ramallah and meetings with Israeli authorities, US officials have made little progress in securing the release of millions in Palestinian tax money that Israel has blocked since 7 October.
Two months ago, the Israeli finance ministry – led by Jewish supremacist official Bezalel Smotrich – froze the transfer of tax revenues amounting to some $188 million monthly to the PA.
“The PA didn’t see fit to distance itself from these barbarian actions, and officials in the authority even expressed support for the awful massacre […] Furthermore, the PA is acting against Israel at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice,” Smotrich said on 30 October.
The tax revenues – known in Palestine as maqasa – are collected by the Israeli government on behalf of the PA on Palestinian imports and exports. Israel earns a commission of 3 percent of collected revenues.
On Friday, the European Commission said it was preparing a $130 million aid package to help plug the gap.
According to Sabri Saidam, a member of the central committee for the Fatah party and close adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, plans for Palestinians to receive their tax revenue have “collapsed.”
Besides finding ways to avert the financial collapse of the PA, US officials have also been pushing for “changes and new faces in key positions” in a last-ditch effort to improve the public image of the deeply unpopular organization.
According to a recent poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 88 percent of Palestinians want Abbas to resign as PA President, up 10 points from three months ago.
Meanwhile, the popularity of Hamas has soared in the occupied West Bank, from 12 percent to 44 percent.
“It’s always this colonizing mentality, whereby, ‘We decide your leadership, we are the ones basically designing your strategy for the day after, we tell you how to live, we tell you how to breathe, and we tell you how to run your land,’” Saidam told the Washington Post.
The PA was established in 1994 based on the first Oslo Accords (1993) between Tel Aviv and the now-defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It was initially established as a temporary governing body to lay the foundation for an independent Palestinian state.
However, after decades of corruption allegations, collaboration scandals, and a poor human rights record, the PA was in a state of “total inertia” before the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation unfolded on 7 October.
Complicating matters further for Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is staunchly opposed to a PA-controlled Gaza.
“Expectation that the Palestinian Authority will demilitarize Gaza is a pipe dream,” Netanyahu says in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Monday.
“[The PA] has shown neither the capability nor the will to demilitarize Gaza,” the premier added, claiming that Ramallah “currently funds and glorifies terrorism […] and educates Palestinian children to seek the destruction of Israel.”
“For the foreseeable future, Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza,” Netanyahu stressed.
Israel Paying a Heavy Price for Its Crimes
BY KEVIN BARRETT | DECEMBER 25, 2023
So Netanyahu is now saying that (Israel is paying) is a heavy price. How heavy is the price?
Netanyahu is not admitting how heavy the price really is. The actual number of Israeli casualties is much higher than the official count. We know that because we’ve actually seen that the resistance fighters have filmed themselves taking out tanks and trucks and other military vehicles by the hundreds. They’ve filmed many of their other operations as well. So we can see that just based on what’s out there in the resistance film footage, the casualty count has to be a lot higher than Netanyahu is admitting.
He also is ignoring the fact, at least publicly, that Israel has lost something like 7% of its population. They haven’t been killed, they’ve fled the country. This has happened occasionally before, but this time it’s not certain that they’ll be coming back, because the Israeli economy is in shambles. The northern edge of the country is now uninhabited, as they’ve all been evacuated due to the northern front of Hezbollah.
And the Israeli economy may not come back. It’s heavily dependent on tourism, and that’s completely shut down now. The usual tourist hotels are full of Israelis who fled the war zones in the north. And so that of course is bad enough. But (the main reason) the future of the Zionist entity looks incredibly bleak is because of the way that they’ve managed to commit the most horrendous genocide ever seen on live television, and they’ve sickened and appalled pretty much the entire world. Their only supporters now are in Washington DC. And even in the United States of America polls show that the majority of young adults want the resistance to win and put an end to Israel.
So they have lost the military battle. They can’t get their hostages back. They can’t succeed in their ground operations. They can’t stop Hamas as they say they are going to. They’ve lost their economic battle. They’ve lost in their propaganda war, where they’re making up ludicrous stories about beheaded babies that nobody believes. Nobody believes anything they say any more. They’ve blown all their credibility, blown up their economy, and shown that they’re a military paper tiger. The end of the Zionist entity is near. And Netanyahu knows that his own political end is even nearer.
US jets strike resistance sites in Iraq
The Cradle | December 26, 2023
US warplanes launched airstrikes against several sites belonging to the Kataib Hezbollah faction early on 26 December, in Washington’s latest response to ongoing drone and missile attacks launched by the Iraqi resistance on US bases in Iraq and Syria.
The strikes resulted in large explosions south of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, an Al-Mayadeen correspondent reported. One was killed and over a dozen wounded, according to an official statement.
The US hit “three locations utilized by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups focused specifically on unmanned aerial drone activities,” a US National Security Council spokesman said in a statement.
The attack “likely killed several Kataib Hezbollah militants,” according to CENTCOM.
The Iraqi government said in a statement that the attack “harms bilateral relations between the two countries and represents an unacceptable violation of sovereignty,” which “harms” Baghdad’s bilateral ties with Washington. The statement added that an Iraqi service member was killed, while 18 were injured, including civilians.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the attack was a response to ongoing Iraqi operations targeting US bases, in particular one attack on the Erbil air base on Monday, 25 December, which left three US soldiers wounded, including one in critical condition.
An Iraqi Ministry of Interior official told AFP that the US airstrikes targeted a Popular Mobilization Forces’ site in the city of Hillah, the capital of Babylon Governorate in central Iraq. A site in the Wasit Governorate was also targeted, resulting in the wounding of at least four people.
In a statement, leader of the Nabni Coalition Hadi al-Amiri stressed his “strong condemnation and denunciation of the repetition of the sinful American attacks that were embodied at dawn this day in the provinces of Babil and Wasit.”
On the afternoon of Christmas Day, the Islamic Resistance coalition in Iraq said in a statement that it targeted “the occupied Harir base near Erbil Airport in northern Iraq with drones.”
The statement vowed that the Iraqi resistance would continue the “destruction of enemy strongholds” in line with its goals of “resisting the American occupation” in Iraq and responding to “the Zionist entity’s massacres against our people in Gaza.”
The Iraqi resistance also struck the US Green Village base in northern Syria, the group said in a separate statement earlier that day.
Following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the start of the Gaza-Israel war in October, Iraqi resistance groups banded together under a single coalition. They launched near-daily attacks on US bases in both Iraq and Syria in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and in rejection of Washington’s support for the Israeli assault on Gaza.
The attacks also aim to hasten the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
The US air force has launched several attacks in response. One strike in early December resulted in the killing of five Iraqi resistance fighters.
While the US presence in Iraq is coordinated with the government of Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani, a political alliance of Shia parties represented in his parliament are staunchly opposed to it.
In 2020, following the assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iraq’s parliament voted in favor of expelling the US from Iraq. The resolution specifically called for the cancellation of Iraq’s formal request for US military assistance against ISIS, which was issued in 2014.
Washington rejected the resolution and threatened to impose sanctions on Baghdad.
Ukrainian opposition politician jailed for five years
RT | December 26, 2023
A court in Ukraine has sentenced a member of a banned opposition party to five years behind bars for expressing pro-Russian views in private conversations. The man, whose name has not been revealed, had served on the Cherkasy City Council before becoming an aide to an MP in the country’s parliament.
In March 2022, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine suspended the activities of the Opposition Platform – For Life political party. The authorities accused the party of operating in the interest of Moscow. It was eventually banned by a court ruling several months later.
In a message on its Telegram channel on Monday, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General revealed that the defendant was found “guilty of justifying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and glorifying its participants.”
According to the prosecutors, the former municipal council member aired his pro-Russian views “in conversations with his close relatives and acquaintances.” The man is said to have extolled Russia’s actions in Ukraine as well as President Vladimir Putin personally.
Officials quoted the defendant as saying: “To Russia’s victory on our long-suffering Ukrainian soil! It needs to be cleansed.”
Earlier, the Office of the Prosecutor General reported levelling similar charges against a 62-year-old woman, who is also from the city of Cherkasy in Central Ukraine. The authorities said they believed she had justified Russia’s actions and compared the Ukrainian government to the Nazis in a phone conversation with her friend.
In 2020, criminal charges of high treason were filed against the former leader of the Opposition Platform – For Life, Viktor Medvedchuk, over his visit to Moscow, where he had met with top Russian officials. Sometime later, the politician was put under house arrest. However, in late February 2022, around the time Russia launched its military action against its neighbor, Medvedchuk absconded. He was recaptured several months later, and handed over to Moscow as part of a prisoner swap deal last September.
The exiled opposition figure has continued to criticize President Vladimir Zelensky’s administration. Earlier this month, Medvedchuk opined that the current leadership in Kiev has “turned out to be not just bad negotiators, but criminal amateurs.” He also accused the Ukrainian head of state of selling “out [Ukrainians] for cannon fodder” after being promised Western aid.
The politician claimed that President Zelensky is averse to the idea of peace negotiations with Moscow because such talks would prove to be a “sentence for Zelensky, not only political, but also criminal,” with Ukrainians likely to start asking him tough questions.
Is the Kiev regime now killing foreign journalists to hide its corruption?
By Drago Bosnic | December 26, 2023
Back in August this year, reputable Egyptian investigative journalist Mohammed al-Alawi revealed exclusive materials regarding the purchase of a villa worth nearly $5 million by a woman named Olga Kiyashko. This would hardly be newsworthy if the person in question wasn’t the mother-in-law of the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the documentation al-Alawi presented, the lavish compound is located in the so-called VIP area of the city of El Gouna on the Red Sea coast. Zelensky’s mother-in-law acquired the villa in May for 150 million Egyptian pounds (approximately $4,860,000). This is rather peculiar, given that Zelensky’s income before he took power in 2019 was ₴28 million (hryvnia), which is around $750,000.
Ever since, his wealth increased exponentially. Although sources vary significantly, Zelensky’s current net worth that not even the mainstream propaganda machine denies is roughly $20 million. The actual number could be orders of magnitude higher, but for the sake of the argument, let’s say it’s true. Still, the question arises, how did he manage to accomplish a 25-fold increase in wealth? Worse yet, this “remarkable” accomplishment happened in the middle of an “evil Russian invasion”. However, it should be noted that the reason why his net worth is extremely likely to be much higher lies in the fact that he surely wouldn’t invest a quarter of his wealth into a luxurious villa that probably costs tens of thousands in maintenance per month.
Still, the more important question is where did the money come from? Obviously, the question is rhetorical, but the Neo-Nazi junta and its NATO overlords wouldn’t want anyone to start asking it, let alone giving the most obvious answer. Egyptian sources indicate that much of the so-called “Ukrainian elite” acquired property in Egypt, particularly in the aftermath of the special military operation (SMO). However, Al-Alawi “dared” to do his job and investigate the matter and it seems that he really hit the hornet’s nest by revealing this information. Namely, several news outlets reported that he was found dead near the El Hadaba road in Hurghada. Local police said that his body had numerous abrasions, fractures, bruises and a traumatic brain injury.
The investigation has so far concluded that al-Alawi was beaten to death. His family and relatives said that they feared for their lives ever since he revealed the details of his investigation. Namely, both al-Alawi and his family have been receiving death threats for months. Interestingly, the mainstream propaganda machine and its “independent fact-checkers” fought tooth and nail to “debunk” al-Alawi’s findings and even launched a smear campaign against him. However, Egyptian authorities are now suspecting that special services (most likely the SBU) were involved in al-Alawi’s murder. This is hardly surprising, given that murdering foreign journalists and anyone who doesn’t bow to the Neo-Nazi junta has become its common practice.
In this particular case, the goal was to punish al-Alawi for exposing Zelensky and undermining the image of a “war hero” that the Kiev regime and the political West have been trying to create since the SMO started. What’s more, it’s not impossible that al-Alawi had additional information about the rampant corruption of the Neo-Nazi junta and its leadership, the extent of which is difficult to overstate. The sheer magnitude of embezzlement on all levels of government has prompted the Kiev regime’s American backers to actively disrupt any audits. Such investigations would certainly reveal the enormous extent of the Neo-Nazi junta’s corruption. This would only exacerbate its funding issues, as the GOP-dominated Congress can’t wait for an excuse to cut it completely.
And yet, corruption scandals keep springing up everywhere in Ukraine. In recent days, a senior Defense Ministry official was arrested for embezzling $40 million allocated for the purchase of artillery munitions. The unnamed official is said to have committed fraud by using state funds to purchase shells at inflated prices. His home was searched by the police who found documentation that confirms he ran the scheme. It should be noted that the Kiev regime forces are experiencing chronic shortages in artillery munitions. This means that the unnamed official effectively contributed to the problem that is so severe now that Ukrainian artillerymen are forced to limit their fire support only to larger formations and completely ignore smaller Russian units.
Corruption scandals are so common that the Neo-Nazi junta is simply unable to prevent people from leaking information about it. The Defense Ministry is particularly involved in such embezzlement schemes, as evidenced by ongoing investigations into the acquisition of sub-standard bulletproof vests, as well as the purchase of food supplies and uniforms at inflated prices. One of the more recent scandals was when Zelensky fired all officials in charge of conscription commissions. Namely, they were essentially selling exemption notices and making it possible for the more well-off people to avoid being sent to the frontline. This is creating tensions with the political West, as both the US and EU are deeply irritated by the lack of battlefield results.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Eisenhower’s Dirty WWII Secret
By Nial McCrae | 21st Century Wire | December 22, 2023
A vast field is filled as far as the eye can see with miserable and gaunt men in remnants of military uniform. It’s May 1945 and the war in Europe has ended. By rights, these surrendered soldiers will be allowed to return to their families, but many will not leave this muddy ground alive. There is no food, no shelter, and no medicine. The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were the killing fields of one of the worst war crimes in modern history, committed by General Dwight Eisenhower and the US Army.
The cull of German troops was a closely-guarded secret until four decades after the war, when a Canadian researcher was writing a book on a French resistance hero. James Bacque found that his subject, Raou Laporterie, had been saved by a German soldier, Hans Goertz. In gratitude, in 1946, Laporterie got Goertz out of a French prison camp to work in his chain of drapery stores. Goertz told of mass deaths of inmates through lack of sustenance.
After pursuing leads in the French records, Bacque came to realise that Allied military leaders had ‘committed an appalling crime against humanity’. His investigation culminated in Bacque’s harrowing book Other Losses: The Shocking Truth Behind the Mass Deaths Of Disarmed German Soldiers And Civilians Under General Eisenhower’s Command (1989). The foreword to this expose was written by Ernest Fisher, a retired colonel of the US Army, and war historian noted for his book Cassino to the Alps. Fisher set the scene: –
‘Over most of the western front in April 1945, the thunder of artillery had been replaced by the shuffling of millions of pairs of boots as columns of disarmed German soldiers marched wearily towards Allied barbed wire enclosures. Scattered enemy detachments fired a few volleys before fading into the countryside and eventual capture by Allied soldiers.’
As Fisher explained, German soldiers did everything they could to evade capture by the Russians, who raped and pillaged as they advanced over eastern Germany:
‘The mass surrenders in the west contrasted markedly with the final weeks on the eastern front where surviving Wehrmacht units still fought the advancing Red Army to enable as many of their comrades as possible to evade capture by the Russians. This was the final strategy of the German High Command then under Grand Admiral Doenitz who had been designated Commander-in-Chief by Adolf Hitler.’
But crossing to the Allied side was not the sanctuary that the defeated Germans expected, due to the visceral hatred of Eisenhower. The supreme military commander, of Swedish-Jewish background, had wriiten in a letter to his wife ‘God, I hate the Germans’. In September 1944, in the presence of the British ambassador to Washington, Eisenhower proposed that the entire German general staff, all officers of the Gestapo and all leaders of the Nazi party from mayor upwards should be exterminated (around a hundred thousand men).
Fisher had met Bacque in Washington in 1987 where they uncovered evidence, deeply buried in national archives, of a systematic slaughter. ‘More than five million German soldiers in the American and French zones were crowded into barbed wire cages, many of them literally shoulder to shoulder. The ground beneath them became a quagmire of filth and disease. Open to the weather, lacking even primitive sanitary facilities, underfed, the prisoners soon began dying of starvation.’
Shockingly, more German soldiers died in the camps from April 1945 onwards than died in combat.
In the archives, Bacque studied each edition of the ‘Weekly Prisoner of War and Disarmed Enemy Forces Report’, which showed a high number in the category of ‘other losses’. As escape was almost impossible, these men must have died in the camps. According to Bacque:
‘The victims undoubtedly number over 800,000 and quite likely over a million. Their deaths were knowingly caused by army officers who had sufficient resources to keep the prisoners alive. Relief organizations that attempted to help the prisoners in the American camps were refused permission by the army. All of this was hidden at the time; then lied about when the Red Cross, Le Mondé and Le Figaro attempted to tell the truth publicly.’
Ominously, on 26th April 1945 the combined chiefs-of-staff at Reims decided to create the status of ‘disarmed enemy forces’. This category would apply to ‘prisoners-of-war in American hands only’. No public declaration was made of this bypassing of the Geneva Convention. Mortality data were censored by the American military authorities, who exploited their control of media to push propaganda about their humane treatment of prisoners.
With German soldiers failing to come home in the months after the war ended, the myth of a ‘world food shortage’ was used, a contrived crisis blamed on the Germans. Yet despite the war, there was ample supply of wheat and corn The Swiss Red Cross had thirteen and-a-half million food parcels intended for prisoners, which would have prevented any death from starvation, but this provision was blocked. Indeed, the Red Cross was prevented from entering the camps, as Bacque explained:
‘Granting permission for the welfare agencies to visit the camps would have led to a storm of public protest against the atrocious conditions, while at the same time producing the workers and political will needed to alleviate them. It can hardly be doubted that this was why permission was not given.’
Eisenhower’s accomplice in this cruelty was an old friend of his from military training. Appointed as Eisenhower’s right-hand man, General Everett S Hughes took an extraordinary interest in prisoners’ rations, which he deviously reduced by as much as he could.
The British were innocent in this massacre, its German prisoners dying at no more than an expected rate, because they were fed and housed appropriately. Bacque’s book begins with a conversation at the banqueting table at the Yalta conference in 1943. Joseph Stalin expressed his desire to shoot a line of fifty thousand German officers. Franklin Roosevelt suggested a compromise of 49 thousand, before his son Elliott, a brigadier-general in the US Army, added to the proposed cull hundreds of thousands of Nazis. Winston Churchill stormed out, after stating ‘I would rather be taken out in the garden here and now to be shot myself than sully my own and my country’s honour by such infamy’.
There is another part to this dark episode. General George Patton, a magnanimous victor who respected the Germans as a people, was disgusted by Eisenhower, accusing him of Gestapo practices. Patton, whose Third Army had rapidly swept through northern France after the D-Day landings, due to his brilliant tactics, made himself unpopular with the US military establishment after the war was won. A thorn in the side of Eisenhower, he suggested that the Germans be rearmed to fight the communist Russians.
As described in a Daily Mail article (21 December 2019), General Patton MURDERED? Mystery pertaining to the suspicious death of the general 74 years later, Patton’s death at the end of1945 was later suspected as an assassination. In 1979 Second World War spy Douglas Bazata claimed that he was ordered by the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) to kill Patton and make it look like an accident. Patton was driving a Cadillac in Mannheim when he collided with a military truck. He was paralysed from the head down, but recovered sufficiently in an army hospital for medical clearance to fly back to the USA. On 21st December, the day before his flight, he died suddenly. There was no autopsy, and medical records disappeared.
Was Patton killed because he knew too much about the death camps, and was as much of a maverick to risk the dirty secret coming out?
***
Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018). See his 21WIRE archive here.
Israel massacres at least 70 Palestinians in airstrike on Gaza refugee camp
Press TV – December 25, 2023
An Israeli airstrike targeting a refugee camp in the central part of the Gaza Strip has killed at least 70 Palestinians as the regime’s genocidal war across the besieged territory continues unabated.
Gaza’s Health Ministry reported the massacre in a late Sunday statement, saying the fatalities came after the regime’s air raid hit a number of houses at the al-Maghazi refugee camp.
According to the ministry’s spokesman, the strike destroyed a “residential block” and the “toll is likely to rise” given the large number of families residing there and the fact that many people are still under the rubble.
“What is happening at the al-Maghazi camp is the annihilation of an entire residential square,” Ashraf al-Qudra said.
The ministry also noted that another Israeli strike on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza has killed 10 members of the same family.
The ministry’s spokesman said the regime’s forces “are bombing the main roads between the [refugee] camps … to impede the arrival of ambulances and civil defense vehicles to the targeted locations.”
“Most of the martyrs who arrived from the Maghazi camp were children, women, and the elderly,” the spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital was quoted by the Palestinian media as saying.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said the Israeli strike saw the regime’s military bombing “four inhabited homes” at al-Maghazi.
“We call on all countries of the world to put pressure on the criminal occupation in order to stop the genocidal war … against our Palestinian people and against children, women and civilians,” it added.
The Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement Hamas also reacted to the Israeli attack, describing it as a “horrific massacre.”
Hamas called the strike “a new war crime extending the genocide” that the Israeli regime “commits against children and unarmed civilians.”
The movement said Israel perpetrated “this treacherous and cowardly bombing…in an attempt to renovate the image of its defeated army.”
Hamas noted that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza is being “supported by [US] President [Joe] Biden’s administration, [which is] the primary partner of the Zionist entity in its crimes and fascist aggression” against the blockaded territory.
The Israeli war machine launched its military aggression on October 7 following an operation by Gaza’s resistance movements, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm. Over 20,400 people, most of them women and children, have been killed in the Israeli genocide so far.
As the regime’s most dedicated ally, the US has supplied it with more than 10,000 tons of military equipment since the onset of the aggression.
Washington has also cast its veto against all the United Nations Security Council resolutions that called for implementation of an immediate ceasefire across Gaza.
Netanyahu Outsmarted by ‘Wily’ Biden? No, Biden Is the One Being Played
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 25, 2023
Biden smirked and responded, “I know”, when told by a guest that Netanyahu is drawing the U.S. into a civilisational conflict – and further that Netanyahu blames him (Biden), complaining that the White House wants to block Israel from getting at the root of the problem, by harping on about Gaza and the ‘day after’.
In practice, what Netanyahu is doing is simply mounting a classic flanking manoeuvre – attempting to circumvent Biden by pointing to the ‘broader conflict’ with Iran: ‘Why are you pestering me about Gaza when there’s a monumental conflict raging’, suggests Bibi in exasperation?
“This is not only ‘our war’ but in many ways your war… This is a battle against the Iranian axis… now threatening to close the maritime strait of Bab Al-Mandeb… It is the interest … of the entire civilized community”, Netanyahu has said – not very subtly.
Biden’s reaction is a smug smile, hinting that he thinks he can outplay Netanyahu (‘the fox’). This is Biden’s approach: He aims to disarm Netanyahu’s allegation of an obstructionist U.S. through a parade of top-level visits that reiterates his unstinting support Israel – and to pre-empt Bibi, through insisting that he (Biden) will take care of the non-Gaza issues (Hizbullah, Yemen etc.).
So, the U.S. is assembling a maritime force to confront AnsarAllah in Yemen; the Biden Admin will act to sanction violent settlers in the West Bank; it is warning Baghdad to rein-in the Hashad al Sha’abi; and his envoys in Beirut are trying to forge a ‘diplomatic agreement’ that will include the withdrawal of Hizbullah’s Radwan Forces to the other side of the Litani River in southern Lebanon, and also deal with the unresolved border disputes between Israel and Lebanon.
Biden prides himself on being a hugely experienced foreign policy actor – and thinks himself too wily for Bibi’s tricks. But maybe, Netanyahu – for all his many faults – better understands the Region?
Biden clearly is being played. Even though he fails to recognize it.
Netanyahu knows that ‘no way’ will Hizbullah disarm, and withdraw to north of the Litani. He knows this, and thus can wait out Biden’s diplomatic failure, before saying that the approximately 70,000 Israeli citizens displaced from the northern towns in the wake of 7 October need to ”go home”, and that if the U.S. cannot remove Hizbullah from the border-fence, then Israel will do it.
Netanyahu is using Biden’s diplomatic Lebanese initiative to build European justification for an Israeli operation in a few weeks’ time to push Hizbullah away from the border with Israel. (An Israeli operation against Hizbullah has been in the works from the outset of the Gaza war).
Netanyahu knows too that control over settler violence in the West Bank lies not with him, but is in the hands of his partners: i.e., Ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Neither he, nor Biden can dictate to them – they have been quietly increasing the squeeze on West Bank Palestinians for months.
And finally, Netanyahu knows the Houthis: They will not be deterred by Biden’s maritime flotilla. They will, rather, relish drawing the West into a Red Sea quagmire.
Like it or not, Biden’s tactic of containing and pre-empting regional escalation through the U.S. itself becoming lead actor – in lieu of Israel – is clearly drawing the U.S. deeper into conflict. Does Biden believe that the Houthis will just quietly ‘roll-over’ because the Gerald Ford is anchored off Bab Al-Mandeb, or that Hizbullah will accept instruction from Amos Hochstein?
The second way that Biden is being outplayed is through him seeing the Israeli problem as ‘just Bibi’ – indulging in personal politics. Of course, it is true that the Israeli PM is moulding Israeli politics to his own survival needs; yet pause a moment to consider what President Herzog said on Tuesday during an interview facilitated by the Atlantic Council, a leading Washington-based think tank.
Herzog has long been viewed as distinctly ‘dovish’ and ‘Leftist’ by the Beltway foreign policy establishment – prior to the war – compared to Netanyahu.
In the interview, Herzog said: “We intend to take over the entire Gaza Strip and change the course of history”. He said that the current conflict is a clash of “a set of civilizational values” and he cast Hamas (in pure Manichaean terms) as a “force of evil”, adding that Israel would no longer tolerate Gaza being a “platform for Iran – driving everyone into the abyss of bloodshed and warfare”.
Not much daylight then between him and the PM then.
The convergence between Herzog and Bibi reflects, perhaps, a more substantive change taking place in Israel – a strategic shift that extends far beyond Biden’s personal obsession with Bibi:
Since 7 October, the New York Times and the Jerusalem Post report that 36% of Israelis have moved decidedly to the right on a number of political issues, including support for settlers in the West Bank, endorsements for far-right politicians, and even settlements again inside the Gaza Strip. And while public opinion of Netanyahu himself is faltering, his government is not expected to fall.
And even were that to occur, the more important point to grasp is that support for the policies upheld by Netanyahu’s radical Rightist government is growing, and rapidly.
Israel’s Right generally believes in Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza, with many right-wing Israelis opposed to the principle of a Palestinian state existing at all alongside Israel. This can be seen in many of the current government’s policies, which have worked toward expanding Israeli settlement of the West Bank and rendering Gaza unlivable for Palestinians.
On the opposite side of the spectrum sits Israel’s Left. The Jerusalem Post notes that the Left largely believe that Israel is ‘occupying’ the West Bank, and that an end to the conflict can only be achieved by ending the occupation and enabling a two-state solution. But no one is explicit on where that second state – a Palestinian state – would be situated. Legally it would be Gaza, the West Bank and part of Jerusalem. But who could enforce that? Who would expel settlers from the West Bank?
For many Israelis, the separation ‘apartheid’ Occupation state of the past 30 years was the workable ‘two-state solution’ – but its pillars (structural separation, military enforcement and deterrence) which had for many Israelis seemed to promise the ‘quiet’ that many hoped for – blew apart on 7 October.
“The trauma of what happened on Oct. 7 shifted Israeli society. It made them question the most basic tenets of whether they were safe in their homes”, said Israeli columnist, Tal Schneider:
“They are calling now for more — more military, more protection, more hard-line policies”.
“Many right-wing people,” Ariella Marsden writes in the Jerusalem Post, “and a minority of left-wingers, saw 7 Oct as proof that peace with the Palestinians is impossible”. Not surprisingly, thinking has turned to population removal which chimes with Netanyahu’s ‘new war of Independence’ theme.
In short, Biden may believe that his ‘long experience’ puts him on the ‘right side’ in judging events. His experience however, is drawn from another era. The political Israel he knew is over: It has reached the end of the road in respect to the old paradigm of its Palestinian modus vivendi. Demography no longer pushes towards ‘giving’ the Palestinians a state, but rather to a clearing of the land of all ‘hostile populations’.
Israelis are rummaging now for their new solution.
And just as Hamas’ resistance has pointed to new ways of conducting warfare, so Biden’s ‘long experience’ exemplified in the sending of 1960s era carriers and vessels to sit offshore, in an age of smart nimble, often untraceable drones and pinpoint missiles, points to something also passé.
The U.S. is directly engaged today in Yemen, Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq and Syria. And as the war widens, so the U.S. will be held at least partly responsible – You deliberately let Gaza break, and what’s broken, you own. What further gets broke, you own that too.
A destitute 2 million Gazans will be all refugees with no government to provide basic functions and services. Does Netanyahu get it? Of course. Do the vast majority of Israelis care? Nope. But the rest of the world does, and sees a dark stain spreading across the map, and leeching into the West.
And does the U.S. Red Sea flotilla; does the diplomatic effort in Lebanon; do the frantic calls to China to ask for help to rein-in Iran, and the efforts in Baghdad – will this suffice to bring an end to the Axis’ plan?
No – the Resistance must see the U.S. floundering and that Israel – suffused with anger – is positively inviting the next ascent up the escalatory ladder of diffused incremental wider conflict.
Biden’s disregard for truce speaks volumes of US heartless approach to Gaza genocide: CAIR
Press TV – December 25, 2023
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has slammed US President Joe Biden’s administration for “actively supporting” Israel’s ongoing “genocide and ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip and indifference to the genocide there.
In a statement on Sunday, CAIR national communications director of the US-based Muslim advocacy group said Biden’s actions will “stain” the US “international reputation.”
“The Biden administration’s callous indifference to – and active support for – the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing being carried out by [Israel] will stain our nation’s international reputation for generations to come,” Ibrahim Hooper said.
“The fact that President Biden admits that he did not even ask for a ceasefire in a recent conversation with [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu speaks volumes about the administration’s heartless and immoral approach to the genocide in Gaza,” he added.
On Saturday, Biden told reporters that his conversation with Netanyahu over the war on Gaza was a “long talk,” but he did not ask for a ceasefire in that call.
“Israel has now killed probably more than one in every 100 people in Gaza. That shocking figure alone should be all the evidence that is needed to finally acknowledge the truth of the ‘genocide’ label,” Hooper said.
The statement came as Israel’s deadly air raid on the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least 70 people, including pregnant women and children on Monday.
An Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza interviewed eyewitnesses who said Israeli forces killed pregnant women “without mercy.”
“The women were reportedly raising white flags as they were attempting to reach the Al-Awda Hospital when they were shot by Israeli forces,” the reporter said.
On Saturday, CAIR called on Americans of all backgrounds to demand that the Biden administration act to “end the slaughter, starvation and ethnic cleansing.”
The call came after several reports revealed that Israeli forces massacred 76 members of an extended family in Gaza, Israeli-imposed famine is widespread, and that bodies are decaying in the streets and are being dug up by Israeli bulldozers.
The group said more than 110,000 Americans have used CAIR’s action alert to contact their members of Congress and call for an end to the violence and occupation.
Previously, CAIR called on the Biden administration to stop sending what it called “genocide bombs” to Israel after the New York Times revealed that US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs were “routinely” used against Palestinian civilians in so-called “safe areas” in Gaza.
CAIR also said the Biden administration must stop “justifying war crimes” Israel has perpetrated against hospitals after an investigation by the Washington Post debunked claims that Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital had to be attacked because it was a military command center.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of death and destruction against Palestinians.
The Israeli attacks have so far killed at least 20,400 Palestinians, including 6,200 women and 8,200 children, and wounded 53,688 others in the besieged territory, where the Zionists cut off fuel, electricity, food, and water to Gaza’s 2.3 million population.
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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