OHCHR’s Venezuela Report is Terrible and May Incite More Violence
By Joe Emersberger | ZNET | September 1, 2017
The OHCHR put out a press release a few weeks ago about violent protests in Venezuela in which the following words leapt off the page to anybody who has been following the situation without blinders on:
“security forces are allegedly responsible for at least 46 of those deaths, while pro-Government armed groups, referred to as ‘armed colectivos’ are reportedly responsible for 27 of the deaths. It is unclear who the perpetrators of the remaining deaths may be.” [my emphasis]
It was “unclear” to the OHCHR if protesters had killed a single person!
The OHCHR’s full report, which was just released, does not go to that extreme but is still an embarrassingly shoddy and biased report. In a section with the subheading “Violent anti-Government protesters”, the OHCHR report concedes that four murders have been perpetrated by protesters but hastens to add that protester violence has been a “reaction to the disproportionate use of force by security forces” and that the “level of violence by these groups increased as the use of force by security forces rose”.
Four is less preposterous than zero, but is still wildly off the mark. See the detailed timeline provided by VenezuelAnalysis.com.
Direct victims of opposition political violence: 23
Bryan Principal, Oliver Villa Camargo, Niumar Jose Sanclemente, Almelina Carrillo, Paola Ramirez, Jesus Leonardo Sulbaran, Luis Alberto Marquez, Efrain Sierra, Rexol Navas, Gerardo Barrera, Anderson Dugarte, Jorge David Escandon, Pedro Josue Carrillo, Danny José Subero, Orlando Figuera, Douglas Acevedo Sánchez, Ronny Alberto Parra, Alexander Rafael Sanoja Sanchez, Jose Luis Bravo, Ramses Martinez, Hector Anuel, Oneiver Quiñones Ramirez, Felix Pineda Marcano, Ronald RamirezDeaths indirectly linked to opposition barricades*: 8
Ricarda Gonzalez, Ana Colmenarez, Maria de los Angeles Guanipa, Angel Enrique Moreira Gonzalez, Carlos Enrique Hernández, José Amador Lorenzo González, Luis Alberto Machado, Miguel Angel Villalobos Urdaneta
Additionally, how were the murders of unarmed civilians like Orlando Figuera and Almelina Carrillo by protesters a “reaction” against the security forces? Similarly, how is the burning of food warehouses and ambulances, which the OHCHR also concedes took place, a reaction against the security forces?
Moreover, the first person killed by opposition protesters was the civilian bystander Brayan Principal on April 12, only eight days after the protests began. The VenezuelAnalysis timeline shows that, right from the beginning of the protests, when security forces have perpetrated crimes they have been arrested and charged. That’s quite a contrast with what frequently occurs in the United States which is not faced with violent foreign-backed protesters trying to oust the government. It was only four days after the protests began, on April 8, when protesters torched a Supreme Court building.
I would not advise Black Lives Matter protesters in the United States to torch a Supreme Court building and expect to have their actions excused by the OHCHR or any other high profile outfit as a “reaction to the disproportionate force by police”.
The extremely well documented case of Orlando Figuera also exposed some inexcusable sloppiness in the OHCHR report. It falsely stated that Figuera died the same day he was attacked. He actually died in hospital few weeks later. He claimed from his hospital bed that he had been killed for being a suspected Chavista.
Why were the protesters brazen enough to murder Figuera in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses?
There have apparently been no arrests in the case though the government has identified one of the perpetrators (who was in hiding).
Here are a few reasons:
- 1) People in opposition strongholds – like the one where Figuera was murdered – would likely be afraid to name the perpetrators or, sadly, even supportive of the crime in some cases.
- 2) The Attorney General at the time, Luisa Ortega Diaz (who has now been fired and is who now collaborating with US prosecutors to target the Maduro government), was preoccupied with weakening the government and maneuvering to save her own skin should the opposition seize power.
- 3) Biased reporting promotes impunity. When the United States government wants to vilify a government and have it overthrown – which has been the case in Venezuela for the past fifteen years – numerous natural allies reflexively offer a helping hand: private media companies around the world, high profile NGOs and of course UN bodies like the OHCHR. The destruction of Iraq since 1990 does not happen without UN complicity even though neocons demand that the UN be even more subservient to the US.
There is a section in the OHCHR report on “Violations of the right to freedom of expression” and “Smear campaigns against journalists”. The OHCHR included a throwaway remark that “journalists were also targeted by demonstrators and supporters of both the opposition and the government.“
Prominent opposition supporters tried to get Abby Martin and Mike Prysner lynched by spreading allegations that they were working as informants for the government. Watching their report on the violent protesters the OHCHR whitewashed is something I highly recommend. The OHCHR’s bias not only makes opposition violence more likely, it makes honest journalism about it more dangerous.
The report “recommends” that opposition leaders condemn all violence by its supporters when the OHCHR itself goes out of its way to ignore that violence and deflect responsibility away from the perpetrators. The OHCHR also didn’t think to “recommend” that opposition leaders stop calling on the military to overthrow the government. An organization not at the service of the US Empire would also have “recommended” that the US government not violate international law by imposing economic sanctions or threatening the use of force against Venezuela. Have OHCHR investigators not reviewed the UN Charter recently?
US ambassador not taking Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands for fact
Press TV – September 2, 2017
United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has used the word “alleged” to refer to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Friedman referred to the situation in the Palestinian lands as “alleged occupation” in an interview with Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post, which was published on Friday. It was his first major interview with Israeli media.
Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds during the Six Day War in 1967. It later annexed East Jerusalem al-Quds in a move not recognized by the international community. In November 1967, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted Resolution 242, under which Israel is required to withdraw from all territories seized in the war.
US politicians, as high in ranking as President Donald Trump himself, have in the past exhibited a loose relationship with facts. But it is unlikely that Friedman used the phrase in the Friday interview unwittingly. He is a hawkish politician known for his hard-line stance against Palestinians. His remark did contradict both US foreign policy and international opinion on the issue, however.
According to The Guardian, a Palestinian official, whom the British paper did not name, demanded clarification from the US regarding Friedman’s comment.
“Our understanding is that when someone has an official position, like being an ambassador, this person does no longer speak in a personal capacity. Mr. Friedman should realize that denying facts doesn’t mean that they don’t exist,” the Palestinian official said.
The official said the US envoy “has an extensive record of attacks against the national rights of the Palestinian people, including funding illegal colonial-settlements and participating in celebrations of the Israeli occupation.”
Palestinian officials say they want the decades-long conflict with Israel resolved based on the so-called two-state solution along the pre-1967 boundaries. However, Israel seeks to maintain its grip on the Palestinian lands and has been building settlements deep within territory.
Before taking up his post as the US ambassador to Israel, Friedman had voiced opposition to the two-state solution, which envisages the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
He is also a vociferous advocate of Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian lands, another issue opposed by the international community and the UNSC.
Friedman is the president of American Friends of Beit El Institutions, which raises millions of dollars each year for the Israeli Beit El settlement in the West Bank.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has been by and large vague about its stance on the potential establishment of a Palestinian state.
How Israel Weaponizes Archeology
By Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | August 31, 2107
From the Zionism’s earliest days in the late 1800s until the present, Israel’s battle has always been about land, but for some the issue goes much deeper—literally. What is underground is as valuable as what is above ground, and the battle has been raging for years.
The battle is over ancient artifacts, from Jerusalem to Gaza to Qumran.
The “Jewish State” prioritizes anything that might boost its legitimacy as rightful owner of Holy Land real estate, and has appropriated the science of archeology to help create its narrative.
The goal is to highlight the ancient Jewish presence and discount all other communities. whether historic or current. The Israeli narrative assumes, for example, that Christians may have been present for a short time, but only as visitors, leaving virtually no trace; the same goes for any Muslim presence.
In order to back up this version of history, Israel has found it necessary to destroy villages, demolish ancient sites, appropriate historic areas, rewrite textbooks, redraw boundary lines, and more. With the illusion of an ongoing, dominant Jewish presence, Israel can assert that it is simply “re-claiming” what is rightfully theirs, instead of taking what belongs to others.
Facts under the ground
It is no surprise that Israel/Palestine is an archeological gold mine: ancient trade routes crisscrossed the region; it was the historic home of the Philistines and Crusaders; a stone’s throw from the early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Phoenicia; part of the Roman, Greek, Persian, and Ottoman empires, to name a few; and the dwelling place of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
In fact, Palestine is home to the oldest archeological organization in the world, the Palestine Exploration Fund, founded in 1865. Here excavators have feasted on a dizzying array of strata, ranging from Upper Paleolithic (about 40,000 BC) to late Ottoman (19th century AD), and everything in between; their findings have led to the advancement of the science of archeology itself. No wonder archeologists from around the world have been assembling for at least a century and a half to unearth and study Palestine’s ancient cultural riches.
When Israel created itself in 1948—and even before this date—the “Jewish State” worked to take control of archaeology, and thus, of the region’s history. It toiled to erase footprints of the numerous civilizations that had preceded the Jewish presence, as well as the peoples that have come afterward.
“Hand to hand”
The claim to the land is based on a very small window of time, as Illene Beatty pointed out in Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan: “The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years… Then it fell apart… [Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David’s conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule.”
The Israeli narrative pushes the window open a few hundred years more: history (at least, relevant history) supposedly “started with King David and ended with the destruction of the second temple [70 A.D.], restarting with Jewish settlement in the nineteenth century.” Some Greek and Roman presence and a “smattering of early Christianity” are tolerable. But ancient Philistines, Arabs, and Muslims are never acknowledged as part of the region’s history. They would impinge upon Jewish interests.
The official explanation, according to an introductory film that is shown to tour groups in Jerusalem, is simply, “For two thousand years, the city passed from hand to hand.” The “righteous return” and the settler agenda are the only account to which visitors are exposed. On Palestine, there is only silence.
As Israeli author and activist Uri Avnery reminds us, the Zionist claim to the land of Palestine, based as it was on the Biblical history of the Israelites, requires proving that the Bible is true. Almost all of the founders of Israel were professing atheists, but they gritted their teeth and gave their orders.
During the early years of Israel’s existence, bulldozers removed Ottoman and Mameluke remains, Arab and Crusader artifacts, Byzantine and Roman and Greek and Persian remnants—in order to find “pay dirt”: biblical Hebrew artifacts. The search is ongoing. (Read this and this, for example.)
And over the years, the narrative has been pieced together for a single purpose: to manufacture “legitimacy.”
“I told you so”
This explains why, for example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to social media when a coin was found recently in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank (Palestine). Preliminary identification classified the coin as a 2,000-year-old half shekel. The Prime Minister posted on Facebook that the artifact was “evidence of the deep connection between the people of Israel and its land” (mind you, the item was found in Palestine, not Israel). Several days later, the coin was more accurately identified by the Israel Museum as a replica, a souvenir, circa 2000 A.D. The Facebook post was removed.
After the 2015 discovery of an ancient jug with Hebrew inscription, Israel’s minister of education, Naftali Bennett, posted on Facebook, “This is yet another example of the many facts on the ground that tell the story of the Jewish state that flourished here in this land 3,000 years ago… A nation can not occupy its own land.”
Moral of the story: Archeology—when massaged properly—is proof positive that there is no occupation.
Palestinian villages evaporate
As part of this effort, Zionist forces wiped out 400-600 Palestinian villages in the 1940s—some were destroyed in the war, but many were depopulated and razed even before the war began; others were demolished in the three years or so following the war.
According to Just Past? The Making of Israeli Archaeology, “remnants of the Arab past were considered blots on the landscape and evoked facts everyone wanted to forget” (everyone except the Palestinians). Many of these lost villages were themselves ancient, or contained ancient building materials. This assisted forgetting, essentially “Nakba denial,” is undoubtedly the greatest theft of Palestinian history. Today, in place of those lost villages are Israeli towns, farms, and orchards.
Hundreds of historical monuments and places of worship (primarily mosques) were also targeted for demolition after the 1948 war. A few Israelis pleaded with the Israeli Department of Antiquities to preserve these sites, but they were for the most part unsuccessful.
Raz Kletter wrote about the situation, of which he as an archeologist was ashamed: “I don’t think this village landscape belongs to us—it belongs to the people who lived here—but still, there is longing for that lost landscape. We cannot bring it back, but at least we should be aware of the truth and not lie to ourselves.”
Cartographers were sent out to make a new map, renaming cities, villages, rivers, etc. with Israeli/Hebrew names to erase all vestiges of Palestinian presence.
This effort has continued for decades, down to even renaming parks and streets.
Appropriating archeological sites & the Dead Sea Scrolls
The 1995 Oslo Accords II assigned 60% of the West Bank (Palestine) to full Israeli military control by designating it “Area C.” This was meant to be a temporary arrangement, but has lasted over twenty years to date. Israel maintains authority over all land-related civil matters, which includes the Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land (with a current population of about half a million) and almost all of Palestine’s archeological sites.
According to international law, artifacts found on Palestinian land— whether Area A, B, C, Gaza, or East Jerusalem—belong to Palestine and should remain inside Palestine. UNESCO Accords, UN Security Council resolutions, and the 1954 Hague Convention all indicate that “when ownership of an antiquity is vested in a nation, one who removes it without permission is a thief, and the antiquities are stolen property”— this according to Patty Gerstenblith, DePaul professor and author of a 2016 Department of Justice guide to cultural property law.
The appropriation of archeological sites and their artifacts is, by definition, illegal, but Israel has a great deal of experience in flouting international law and getting away with it. This crime does not need to be covered up.
Witness the famous Dead Sea Scrolls: discovered by Palestinians before the founding of Israel, in the Qumran Caves which are located in the West Bank of Palestine. Because Qumran is in Area C of the West Bank, Israel controls the archeological site, the tourism, and the conversation. The scrolls are now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Their official website does not contain any mention of Palestine.
Area C designation enables Israel de facto control over not only excavation and the distribution of artifacts; but decisions about when to stop digging and start building new structures—or parks or parking lots—on top of a site.
Palestinian towns and neighborhoods that are close to or part of East Jerusalem are subject to particularly exasperating treatment: the 1980 Jerusalem Law essentially annexed East Jerusalem (most of the world does not recognize the annexation), declaring all of Jerusalem “the complete and united capital of Israel,” and promising to “provide for the development and prosperity of Jerusalem and the well-being of its inhabitants.” Israeli domination ensued, and for Palestinians it feels like an elaborate land grab.
Case study: Silwan
The East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, whose families have owned their lands since Ottoman times, has been living under this cloud of Israeli authority since 1967.
Silwan used to be almost completely Palestinian and Muslim. After the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem, a plan was announced to shift the population to 75% Israeli. As one of the settler/archeologist spokesmen explained, the objective was “to get a [Jewish] foothold in East Jerusalem and to create an irreversible situation in the holy basin around the Old City.” (This is called “ethnic cleansing.”) This has been accomplished through evictions and home demolitions—over half of the houses in Silwan are under demolition orders—sometimes using forged documents.
Palestinian women in Silwan watch as settlers move into homes in the neighborhood
One of the main ways Israel got a “foothold” in Silwan was through the 1950 Absentee Property Law. This insidious regulation states that if a piece of Palestinian property has been uninhabited for three years, or ownership documents could not be produced, the land would revert to a Custodianship Council, which could then distribute the property for military or settlement use.
The Absentee Property Law had worked handily when Palestinian refugees were refused the right of return: after three years, their land was confiscated and they had nothing to come back to anyway. Those few who did get back, and whose homes were still standing—only seven villages were left intact—often found their deeds missing or destroyed, and new, Jewish tenants in place. According to the Israel Government Yearbook, 5719, almost 60,000 homes and 10,000 businesses were appropriated during Israel’s early years.
A large number of properties in Silwan have been appropriated through this law.
The small number of green spaces in Silwan have also been claimed as archeological sites, forbidden to Palestinians. Hundreds of closed-circuit TV cameras are used to insure compliance.
Having appropriated swaths of Silwan, the work of appropriating swaths of history began “with bulldozers clearing huge areas in haste and multiple levels being dismantled in a race to get to ‘Jewish’ bedrock.” Where they couldn’t find what they needed, settlers built houses on top of excavation sites.
Silwan’s Palestinian residents used to take pride in the archeological riches of their land, but since Israel’s land grab, things have gone from bad to worse. The heavy machinery and deep digging are beginning to compromise structures: Palestinian homes are showing large cracks, making their owners nervous and angry.
One resident, Jawad Siyam, created a petition to end the destructive digging, and filed it with the Israel Supreme Court. The result: Jawad and all of those who signed the petition were imprisoned or put under house arrest for “disturbing the peace and causing damage to property.”
Adding insult to injury, the Jerusalem municipality replaced a number of Arabic-named streets in Silwan with biblical Hebrew names—yet another daily reminder to Palestinians of who is in charge.
Antiquities in Gaza
Not surprisingly, the situation in Gazan archeological sites is even worse—though its location as a seaport makes it wildly rich in ancient treasures. Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities oversees digs and artifact preservation to the best of its limited ability: its offices, as well as many historical sites, have been damaged by Israeli bombs.
In addition, the equipment and chemicals needed to carry out work are forbidden for “security reasons” under the decade-old blockade. Guest archeologists can not get in to help, and local archeologists can not get out for training. Oddly, many of Gaza’s most valuable artifacts have turned up in Israeli museums.
Needless to say, there is little funding for the work in Gaza, what with the highest unemployment rate in the world, electricity shortages, and clean water crisis.
Israeli tourism
Anyone familiar with the region knows that tourism has been almost completely appropriated by Israel—and this is another sore spot for Palestinians in archeologically rich areas. For example, the City of David National Park (built on Silwan’s land—see above) welcomes hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, each of whom pays an $7 entrance fee, and most of whom buy food and souvenirs from Jewish Israeli settlers. Not only are all of the profits pocketed by Israel and Israelis, the Palestinians of Silwan and their connection to the land are completely and intentionally disregarded.
This tourism income may be small change to Israel—it receives over $10 million a day from the US alone—but it would make a huge difference to the people of Silwan and other towns that are casualties in the antiquity war.
A great irony in the saga of Israel’s quest for legitimacy in the land is this: no one, Palestinian or otherwise, denies an ongoing Jewish presence since ancient times. The pilfering of archeology has been unnecessary and unbecoming from that standpoint. The rising consensus worldwide of Israel as a pariah state and the increasing popularity of the Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions movement (BDS) indicate that Israel’s strategy is not helping in legitimacy efforts.
How Media Obscure US/Saudi Responsibility for Killing Yemeni Civilians
By Ben Norton | FAIR | August 31, 2107
A coalition of Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates, with minor support from several other Middle Eastern nations, has relentlessly bombed Yemen since March 2015. This August, the coalition ramped up the ferocity of its airstrikes, killing dozens of civilians.
On August 23, the US/Saudi coalition bombed a hotel near Yemen’s capital Sanaa, killing 41 people, 33 of whom—80 percent—were civilians, according to the United Nations.
Then on August 25, the coalition bombed homes in Sanaa, massacring a dozen civilians, including eight members of the same family.
Major Western media outlets have, however, obscured the responsibility Saudi Arabia, and its US and European supporters, bear for launching these airstrikes.
There are no other parties presently bombing Yemen, so media cannot feign ignorance as to who is responsible for the attacks. But reports on the bloody US/Saudi coalition airstrikes were nonetheless rife with ambiguous and downright misleading language.
It seems worth mentioning that the airstrike was
supported by the same government that supports NPR.
“Dozens of People Killed as Airstrike Hits Hotel Near Yemen’s Capital,” wrote NPR (8/23/17), in a masterwork of euphemism. Apparently dozens of Yemenis mysteriously died of unknown causes at the exact moment a generic, unaffiliated airstrike hit the hotel. NPR only indirectly mentioned, in the story’s fifth paragraph, that the “Saudi-led coalition” was “blamed” for the attack.
AFP‘s news wire (8/23/17), which was republished by Yahoo, the Daily Mail and Breitbart, used the headline “Air Raids on Outskirts of Yemen Capital Kill ‘at least 30,’” again obscuring who was responsible for those air raids. France 24 (8/23/17) ran the wire with the headline “Air Raids on Yemen Capital Kill Dozens.”
The BBC (8/23/17) wrote, “Yemen War: Air Strike on Hotel Outside Sanaa ‘Leaves 30 Dead.’” “Dozens Killed in Airstrike on Yemeni Hotel,” the Guardian headline (8/23/17) read.
The London-based Middle East Eye (8/23/17) was just as ambiguous, with “Yemen Air Attack Destroys Hotel, Killing at Least 35 People,” as was Qatar-owned Al Jazeera (8/23/17), with “Air Raid in Yemen Kills at Least 35 people” and the Turkish TRT World (8/24/17), which wrote, “At Least 60 people Killed in Airstrikes on Hotel in Yemen.”
Whose airstrike was it? What party was responsible? This remains unknown to those who only glanced at the headlines—that is to say, to most readers.
The 29-month war has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians, with tens of thousands more injured and millions facing famine. And the United Nations has repeatedly reported that the US/Saudi coalition is responsible for a majority of the civilian casualties.
Even when Saudi Arabia’s guilt is acknowledged by media, the crucial role of the US is typically ignored (FAIR.org, 8/31/15, 10/14/16, 2/27/17). Readers miss out on crucial context that is needed to understand the war, and their governments’ contributions to it: Saudi Arabia is flying US-made planes, full of fuel provided by the US Air Force, dropping US- and UK-made bombs, with intelligence and assistance from American and British military officials.
Non-Yemeni ‘Yemeni Airstrikes’
Neither the headline nor the accompanying story mention who conducted
the airstrike—though the photo caption refers to the “Saudi-led airstrike.”
Two days later, reports were just as obfuscatory, and even used the term “Yemeni airstrike,” to refer to an airstrike that was carried out by non-Yemenis.
“Yemen Airstrike Kills 12, Including Six Children: Rescuers,” Reuters reported on August 25. This brief two-paragraph wire did not once mention the US/Saudi coalition was responsible.
“After Yemeni Airstrike, Little Girl Is Family’s Only Survivor,” the international news agency wrote the next day (8/26/17). This Reuters piece noted that the “Saudi-led coalition” was “blamed,” though even that language seems designed to deflect; blamers can be wrong, after all.
Major newspapers were similarly misleading. “Young Yemeni Girl Is Sole Survivor After Airstrike Topples Her Home,” the New York Times (8/26/17) reported. The lead provided no further information: “An airstrike toppled their apartment building.” In fact, it was not until the seventh paragraph, after three large photos, that the Times finally conceded, “A Saudi Arabia–led coalition took responsibility for the airstrike a day after the attack, citing a ‘technical mistake.’” The Times did not once mention American or British support for the coalition.
Al Jazeera (8/25/17) likewise used the headline “Children Among Dead in Latest Attack on Yemen Civilians.” And TRT World (8/26/17) reported, “Yemen Airstrike Kills 12, Including Six Children.”
Even when Saudi Arabia admitted responsibility for killing Yemeni civilians, media watered down the language. “Saudi-Led Force Admits Strike in Yemen’s Capital Hit Civilians,” Reuters (8/26/17) headlined its news wire. Note the airstrike hit civilians, not killed them.
The attack was also reduced to a mere “mistake.” Larger context was not provided: namely that more than one-third of US/Saudi coalition airstrikes have hit civilian areas, and that there is a growing body of evidence that the coalition has intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure in Yemen.
Not all media were equally misleading; some were more forthright. AP‘s news wire (8/23/17), which was republished by the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle, used a headline that told readers who was responsible for the deadly attack: “Saudi-Led Airstrikes Hit Yemen Hotel, Killing at Least 41.”
The Washington Post was similarly direct, with its reports “Saudi-Led Coalition Airstrike Kills Dozens in Yemen Ahead of Major Rally” (8/23/17) and “Saudi-Led Airstrikes Kill 14 Civilians in Yemen’s Capital” (8/25/17).
The Art of Obfuscation
To justify this ambiguity in reporting, media might claim it is sometimes not immediately clear who launched the airstrikes. But, again, there are no other parties flying warplanes in Yemen.
Yemeni Houthi-Saleh forces, who govern the north of the country and roughly 80 percent of the population, have not been bombing their country. Moreover, the US/Saudi coalition has imposed an air blockade on the impoverished country since March 2015 (another significant fact that is rarely reported by corporate media).
In Syria, where numerous rival countries have been launching airstrikes, it is understandable that media may sometimes have to exercise caution before apportioning blame. But this is not the case with Yemen.
In the 29-month war in Yemen, there is one party that has been responsible for thousands of air raids: the Saudi air force, as part of a coalition with the US, the UK and the UAE.
Yet Yemen is not an isolated case of this ambiguity. Media frequently obfuscate and downplay the culpability for bombing when the US and its allies are responsible.
NYT headline (10/3/15) improved by Twitter user @OneKade
When the US bombed a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October 2015, killing dozens of civilians, media scrambled to craft almost laughable euphemisms. FAIR (10/5/15) documented at the time how news outlets used circuitous headlines like “US Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital.” Also seen in the August 23 NPR report cited above, this brand of misleading, ambiguous rhetoric is the “officer-involved shooting” of war reporting.
On the other hand, the responsibility of US enemies for killing civilians is rarely if ever obscured.
It is instructive to compare Western media coverage of Yemen to that of Syria, where attacks are “Assad bombing” (Fox News, 2/15/17), “Assad airstrikes” (Breitbart, 4/28/16), “Assad regime airstrikes” (Times of Israel, 10/16/12; Australian, 8/18/15), “regime airstrikes” (NBC, 8/19/16) or “regime bombing” (Daily Caller, 8/17/15).
Media have even written of a “pro-Assad drone” that was “displaying hostile intent,” and thus just had to be shot down by the US (Guardian, 6/20/17; Independent, 6/20/17; The Hill, 6/20/17), as if the robot were personally a fan of the Syrian leader.
The phrases “Salman bombing,” “Salman airstrikes” or “Saudi regime airstrikes” are, however, nowhere to be found in reports on Yemen.
Downplaying the Key US Role
Media calling US/Saudi coalition attacks “Yemeni airstrikes” is at best misleading, and at worst flat-out false. Yet this language also has a political effect: It obscures the character of the war. This framing is part of the “civil war” trope media have propagated for two-and-a-half years.
When Yemen is discussed, it is virtually always through the lens of a “civil war.” As FAIR (7/25/17) has detailed before, this exceedingly widespread myth, which has permeated media discourse, denies the extent to which the conflict is actually a foreign war on Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their US and European sponsors.
Even the term “Saudi-led” coalition is misleading. The New York Times editorial board (8/17/16) acknowledged, in a little-noted editorial on Yemen, “Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support.”
That is to say, if the US wanted the war in Yemen to end, it would end overnight. The “Saudi-led” coalition is only led by Saudi Arabia in name.
Surprisingly, in the midst of intensified coalition attacks, the New York Times published another rare editorial on Yemen on August 25. In the piece, dramatically titled “The Slaughter of Children in Yemen,” the editorial board forcefully warned of exactly what critics have been saying for 29 months:
The Saudi coalition—and its American enablers, who provide military equipment, aerial refueling and targeting—simply cannot be allowed to continue killing civilians and destroying what little is left of Yemen. That is why it is imperative to publicly identify the unconscionable slaughter of innocents for what it is, and to hope that this will shame Saudi Arabia and its American backers to search for a humane end to Yemen’s hell.
Reporters at the Times and elsewhere should heed this call to demonstrate journalistic responsibility by clearly conveying their governments’ responsibility for the slaughter in Yemen—not just in editorials, but in news articles, every time.
‘400,000 deaths in Syria civil war directly attributed to US & allies’
By Dan Glazebrook | RT | September 1, 2017
African and Asian leaders are denied by the West to have any military means against an insurgency in their countries, while the US and its allies have absolute impunity when they want to take on a population anywhere in the world, says political analyst Dan Glazebrook.
The US-led coalition against Islamic State has confirmed another 61 civilian deaths are likely to have been caused by its air and artillery strikes in Iraq and Syria. That brings the total number of civilians it has acknowledged killing since the conflict began to 685.
Dan Glazebrook: I think it’s also likely to be a gross underestimate because we found out in 2012, for example, that all military-age males killed in US airstrikes are not classified by the US military as civilians, they’re automatically excluded from those statistics. So if I was walking down the street in Iraq, unarmed, and I was directly and intentionally blown to pieces by a US airstrike, that would not be recorded as a civilian death. Now, I don’t know if they still use this criterion currently, but what we certainly do know is that the monitoring group Airwars suggested almost 1,500 people may have been killed in US coalition bombings in Iraq and Syria in March of this year alone, including the terrible strike on a residential block in Mosul that is thought to have killed around 200 people. So these statistics are certainly likely to be a gross underestimate.
There are a couple of other points I’d like to make about this as well. This narrow focus on civilians we must recognize is deeply ideological because it serves to whitewash the true scale of the slaughter taking place in Iraq and Syria right now. Why should a 16-year-old boy, pressed into service by ISIS and then blown to pieces by the US before even firing a shot, why should his life be considered so unworthy, so meaningless, as not to be recorded in any kind of statistic because he’s, “not a civilian”? This use of the term and focus on civilians is actually a means of placing all soldiers, all militants, in the same category of subhuman and implies they deserve to be killed. More than that, not only do they deserve to be killed, but their lives are so meaningless and unworthy, they don’t even deserve to be recognized in any kind of balance sheet as to the costs of this war.
And a third point I’d like to make is that in 2011, Syria was at peace until, in that year, the US, Britain, and France sponsored a violent sectarian insurgency, an insurgency in Syria that eventually morphed into ISIS and spilled over into Iraq. So I would actually go further than this and I would attribute all 400,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war directly to the US, France, Britain and their allies.
RT:What would you make of comments made by US Defense Secretary James Mattis that Americans are the good guys and locals know the difference. Is there a difference between good bombs and bad bombs?
DG: No, of course, there isn’t, and what’s absolutely clear is their recklessness, which was actually bad enough under Obama but has increased under Trump. The recklessness with which the US is pursuing its foreign policy goals – and Britain and its allies in the coalition, I should add – have got complete impunity and complete disregard for the lives of those living in places like Mosul and Raqqa and it really shows the racism which is inherent in what’s going on here. Leaders of African and Asian states are denied by the West to have any kind of military means against an insurgency that happens within their borders. And yet when the US and its allies decide they want to take on a population anywhere in the world, they have absolute impunity to do so. So in 2011 Gaddafi was trying to put down a proto-ISIS rebellion in Benghazi and was labeled by the West as a bloody genocidal dictator and so on and was eventually subjected to torture and lynching by those states. When the US decides it wants to carpet-bomb Mosul or Raqqa thousands of miles from its shores, it can do so with complete recklessness and impunity and disregard for the populations living there.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.
Nicaragua’s Sandinista Achievements Baffle World Bank, IMF
teleSUR | August 31, 2017
No one can take at face value any report, governmental or quasi non-governmental, coming out of the imperialist bureaucracy in Washington. Ideological bias and institutional self-justification prevent these reports from giving a true account of virtually anything.
The latest World Bank report on Nicaragua is no exception.
The implicit but unstated truth in this report is that President Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista National Liberation Front have achieved an unprecedented economic turnaround in just seven years, starting in 2010.
Reading the report, it is impossible to ignore the tension between latent ideological and political imperatives and the obligation to report the facts. Put another way, mild conflict clearly prevails between the World Bank’s Washington head office and its reality based local officials. From Washington, the tendency is both to minimize Ortega’s achievement and also to cover up the World Bank’s own lamentable history in Nicaragua. On the other hand, in Nicaragua, local World Bank staff dutifully report the facts as they see them.
A total of 71 people contributed to the report. Supposing those 71 people each worked for a month to prepare the research and say their average salary was about US$80,000, then pro rata a month’s work by that team cost over US$500,000, a very conservative guess. Even so, in summary, that money bought policy recommendations for Nicaragua’s development amounting to little more than better infrastructure; better basic services; more private business investment; more efficient government; better targeted social policies. That’s it, for US$500,000 or more.
In general, the report recognizes Nicaragua’s achievements in reducing poverty and inequality, raising productivity, diversifying economic activity and promoting security and stability. The report’s 130 or so pages include, among the economic and sociological analysis, many self-confessed guesses to fill in “knowledge gaps” and much gerrymandered history to cover up what Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel prize winning address justly called “the tragedy of Nicaragua.”
Pinter himself might have remarked the report is almost witty in its audacious, glib omissions. It acknowledges the catastrophic destructive effects of the 1980s war in Nicaragua, but carefully omits the U.S. government’s deliberate role in that destruction, now repeated against Syria and Venezuela.
The report talks about a “democratic transition” starting in 1990. In fact, the Sandinistas organized the first free and fair democratic elections ever in Nicaragua in 1984, but the U.S. government ordered the main Nicaraguan opposition to boycott them. Despite the war, Ortega and the Sandinistas won with 67 percent of the vote, very similar to the most recent presidential elections in 2016.
The heavy ideological bias also explains the World Bank’s curious dating of when Nicaragua’s economic turnaround began, placing it firmly in the neoliberal era prior to 2007. But at just that time, the World Bank was cutting back the public sector as much as they could, pushing, for example, to privatize Nicaragua’s public water utility and its education system.
Back then, Nicaragua’s neglected electrical system collapsed through 2005 and 2006, incapable of generating even 400 megawatts a day, plunging swathes of Nicaragua back into 19th-century darkness for 10 to 12 hours at a time, day after day. That was the World Bank and IMF’s gift to Nicaragua after 17 years of so-called “democratic transition.” That period included Hurricane Mitch, devastating Nicaragua to the tune of 20 percent of its GDP, only for the corrupt neoliberal government at the time to misuse hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster relief. The only structurally significant economic achievement of the neoliberal era in Nicaragua was substantial foreign debt relief.
When Ortega took office in January 2007, he faced four years of domestic crisis with an opposition controlled legislature persistently sabotaging his government’s programs. From 2007 to 2008, Nicaragua and the whole region struggled in vain to contain a balance of payment deficits against oil prices reaching US$147 a barrel in 2008.
That disaster was compounded by the collapse of the Western financial system in late 2008 to 2009, a year when Nicaragua’s economy suffered a 3 percent contraction. Only in 2010, did the Nicaraguan government finally enjoy domestic and international conditions stable enough to be able to consolidate and improve its social programs, improve infrastructure investment, democratize and diversify the economy, extend basic services, and attract foreign investment, among other things.
If that sounds suddenly familiar, it should. It is exactly the development recipe offered up by this latest World Bank report, essentially an embellished review of policies the Nicaraguan government has already been implementing for a decade. Put positively, the government’s National Human Development Plan and other relevant documents suggest that the World Bank’s engagement with the Nicaraguan government has been one of mutual learning. So much so, that the current country program is likely to continue and may even expand.
The political opposition in Nicaragua has seized on parts of the report to try and discredit the Sandinista government’s outstanding achievements. In fact, for 17 years under neoliberal governments implementing World Bank and IMF policies, areas criticized like, for example, access to drinking water and adequate sanitation, or education, suffered chronic lack of investment, compounded by egregious waste and corruption. Now, the World Bank hypocritically criticizes Nicaragua’s government for intractable policy difficulties the IMF and the World Bank themselves originally provoked.
Similarly, when the World Bank report criticizes the targeting of social programs, they omit the unquestionable success of the government’s Zero Usury micro credit program and the Zero Hunger rural family support program, both prioritizing women. These programs have lifted tens of thousands of families out of poverty and, along with unprecedented support for Nicaragua’s cooperative sector, radically democratized Nicaragua’s economy, especially for previously excluded rural families and women. That supremely important national process is entirely absent from the World Bank report.
In its discussions of almost all these issues, the report makes more or less detailed contributions, mostly already identified by the government itself. In every case, the underlying cause of problems or lack of progress, for example, on land titling or social security, has been the legacy of neoliberal governments between 1990 and 2007, that reinstated elite privilege, rolled back the revolutionary gains of the 1980s and failed to guarantee necessary investment.
The World Bank and the IMF were enthusiastic ideological partners in that endeavor. They would have continued their ideological offensive had not Ortega and his government dug in their heels in 2007 and 2008, backed by investment support for social and productive programs from Venezuela as part of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas.
Since then, the World Bank, as this report suggests, seems, at least for the moment, to have learned two key lessons from the Sandinistas. In a world dominated by corporate elite globalization, their report implicitly recognizes the importance, firstly, of a mixed economy under a strong central government and, secondly, the crucial role of broad dialogue and consensus, across all sectors of society, to promote and sustain national stability. Essentially, the World Bank has acknowledged the undeniable success of the Sandinista Revolution’s socialist inspired, solidarity based policies, decisively prioritizing the needs of people over corporate profit and demonstrating the systemic inability of capitalism to meet those needs.
Tillerson Approves Nearly $60Mln in Funding to Fight Propaganda – State Dept
Sputnik – 01.09.2017
WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has approved spending nearly $60 million on countering terrorist propaganda and state-sponsored disinformation, a State Department official has confirmed to Sputnik.
A US news outlet, Politico, reported in August that Tillerson was resisting the Department’s officials who wanted to spend $80 million on anti-propaganda efforts, including on countering Russia’s alleged disinformation campaign.
“Last week, after significant consultations within the State Department… Secretary Tillerson approved the release of one source of funding, and approved the request for another,” the official said, referring to $19.8 million in extra funding to target Islamist propaganda and another request for a transfer of $40 million from the Pentagon.
The official stressed that Tillerson’s decisions came after a realignment of programs by the Global Engagement Center (GEC) to match national security priorities and make sure that this funding would be used effectively “to counter the messaging of international terrorist groups and state-sponsored disinformation.”
The Global Engagement Center is an interagency entity, housed at the State Department, tasked with coordinating US counterterrorism messaging to foreign audiences. It was created in March 2016 to counter messaging from the Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia).
But former President Barack Obama last December signed the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which expanded the center’s mandate, allowing it to counter messages from state actors like Russia and China.
Russia has denied meddling in last year’s election in the United States, and the Kremlin insists that it does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
Al Jazeera: Blair, US officials on UAE payroll
MEMO | August 31, 2017
The UAE has paid tens of millions of dollars to expand its regional and international influence by buying positions and the loyalty of key figures, an Al Jazeera documentary has said.
Aired yesterday, “Men around Abu Dhabi” claimed the Emirates paid former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the international envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon and a number of leaders of the US Department of Defence in order to keep them on side.
The channel said that UAE paid $35 million to Tony Blair when he was the envoy for the Middle East Quartet. He was also paid as a consultant, leaked email published by the Sunday Telegraph revealed.
The UAE government paid about $53,000 per month to the Spanish diplomat Bernardino Leon.
Last year, the UAE Diplomatic Academy, which is headed by the UAE’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairman of its Board of Trustees, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, announced that Leon, who served as UN envoy to Libya, will be assigned as its general manager.
At that time, media sources considered the news as a scandal that would undermine the credibility of the United Nations.
Abu Dhabi also paid $20 million in donations to the Middle East Institute in Washington, which is run by US General Anthony Zinni.
Zinni is an American general who once led US forces in the Middle East. After retiring, he served as a special envoy to the region. The US administration chose him and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Timothy Lenderking, as envoys to support the Kuwaiti mediation to resolve the Gulf crisis.
There is also James Mattis, the current US secretary of defence, who was previously hired by the UAE as a military adviser to develop its army and Robert Gates, the former US secretary of defence who attacked Qatar’s policies and Al Jazeera.
The documentary also revealed that Turki Aldakhil, the director of Al Arabiya TV channel, received more than $23 million in return for promoting Abu Dhabi’s agenda in the region.
On 5 June, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic relations with Qatar and imposed punitive measures on the small Gulf state accusing it of “supporting terrorism”. Doha strongly denied the claims.
Making stuff up on Twitter is the new ‘journalism’ — and we deserve it
By Danielle Ryan | RT | August 30, 2017
On Monday, The Guardian published a story which should have surprised no one: Information pushed aggressively on Twitter by anti-Trump conspiracy theorist duo Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor came from a hoaxer who duped Taylor in an email.
Taylor, a former White House staffer under Bill Clinton, tweeted out “fake details of criminal inquiries” related to Donald Trump which did not exist and were “invented” by a hoaxer claiming to work for the New York attorney general.
Mensch, a former conservative member of parliament in the UK and now a self-styled journalist, helped Taylor to spread the information on Twitter, while also claiming to have separate sources to back it up.
Conning the con artists
Among the details provided by the hoaxer was a false allegation that Trump’s inactive model agency in New York is being investigated for sex trafficking. The Guardian reports the hoaxer fed information to Taylor by email, acting out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Taylor and Mensch.
According to the hoaxer, Taylor did not try to verify her identity and did “no vetting whatsoever” to confirm her information was correct. Nor did he try to seek confirmation from a second source, a standard practice in journalism. Instead, the hoaxer claims Taylor “asked leading questions to support his various theories” and asked her to verify his suspicions.
When approached by The Guardian, Taylor, whose Twitter handle ironically remains @TrueFactsStated, admitted he was duped, tweeting: “As a ‘citizen journalist’ I acknowledge my error and do apologize.”
Mensch, for her part, has doubled down. She posted a rebuttal to The Guardian report, claiming she has her own sources (who she claims to know personally) and insisted she did not base her reporting on any interactions with the hoaxer in question. She claims the allegation that Trump’s model agency is being investigated for sex trafficking is “entirely true,” and ongoing.
La La land
Writing for FAIR, Adam Johnson laid out a series of outlandish and unsubstantiated claims Mensch has made on Twitter. Among other things, Mensch believes Russia is controlling the public WiFi networks in her neighborhood, that Anthony Weiner’s latest sexting scandal was a setup by a Russian hacker and that Vladimir Putin had something to do with the March 22 terror attack in London. She also believes misspelled hashtags on Twitter are Russian “active measures,” that the Kremlin funded riots in Ferguson, and that Steve Bannon may get the death penalty for espionage. Finally, thanks to The Guardian’s reporting exposing the hoax Taylor fell for, Mensch now apparently believes the newspaper is a front for the Russian FSB.
Mensch often claims to have “sources” to back up her random claims, but I imagine any legitimate source in their right mind would steer well clear of Mensch given the reputation she has garnered for peddling absolute nonsense.
Taylor is almost as bad. He hasn’t gained quite the notoriety of Mensch, but has been touted as a legitimate source of information on Trump by many, including a raging Keith Olbermann.
If Mensch and Taylor were just a pair of random trolls on Twitter, they wouldn’t be much of a problem. Their fantastical claims would remain irrelevant and would be kept to the confines of Twitter’s loony bin.
But Mensch and Taylor sadly are not irrelevant. Between them they boast nearly half a million followers on Twitter. Mensch has been propped up by mainstream media and praised by some high-profile figures, including former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. She has appeared as a guest on US political talk shows and has even been given op-ed space in the New York Times.
Thankfully, Mensch’s star has started to fade, and she has gradually been called out by numerous publications for her lunacy. Slate called her a “paranoid bard” who has created a “cottage industry of conspiracies.” A piece in the National Review lamented her “bastardized relationship with reality.” Commentary Magazine wrote that she has “a habit of seeing Russians behind every darkened corner” — and BuzzFeed called her out for branding innocent people as Russian agents.
My personal favorite, though, is the Daily Beast article about Twitter’s “conspiracy queen” which quotes a Republican political consultant calling Mensch “unbelievably toxic” and a former intelligence officer calling her “batshit crazy” and a “fruit loop of the highest order.”
Mensch is a fanatical tweeter. Since I opened her profile little over an hour ago, there have been 38 new tweets and retweets posted. Consider this: Mensch, a woman now widely panned for spreading totally unverified information, has been verified by a blue tick on Twitter — but the social media platform has refused to verify Julian Assange — a man who has distributed millions of authentic, consequential documents and broken countless legitimate stories through WikiLeaks.
Rot from the top
The rise in prominence of conspiracy theorists like Mensch and Taylor speaks volumes about today’s political climate and the state of journalism.
Legitimized by the mainstream, Taylor and Mensch built a massive following of loyal supporters who will not abandon them for anything. As I type, their devoted fans are tweeting them support and thanking them for their hard work.
This is pure and utter madness. But the fish rots from the head down.
Mensch and Taylor benefit greatly from the lowering of standards across the entire media industry. The problem is not simply that anyone can wake up and post wild claims on the internet. That has always been the case.
The problem is that through unbridled sensationalism, naked bias, a focus on speed over accuracy, less emphasis on basic fact-checking, an increased willingness to rely on anonymous government sources and a need to attract readers with the most clickbait-y headlines — the news media has helped create an appetite for exactly what Taylor, Mensch and their ilk provide: Unadulterated nonsense. What’s more, when people believe (rightly) that they can’t trust the real media, they go looking for alternatives and fall victim to charlatans and opportunists.
A good example of how the media has helped in this regard comes from a Washington Post story published last year claiming that Russia hacked the US power grid through a facility in Vermont. The Post later had to backtrack on the story, which turned out to be untrue. It was later revealed the newspaper did not even contact that Vermont utilities in question to confirm the information. The fact that it was light on evidence and sourcing didn’t matter. The story had everything the public wanted and everything the Post wanted to give the public: sensational, scary and highly click-worthy claims about Russia.
Today’s political and media climate encourages rabid devotion to one’s cause over debate, balance, and self-restraint. It is not simply enough to dislike Donald Trump and oppose him politically. You must hate him with a fiery passion and denounce him from the rooftops with a guttural scream. You must believe he kicks puppies and eats babies for breakfast. You must find the pundit that hates him the most, latch onto their wagon and pledge allegiance for the rest of time.
The case of Taylor and the hoaxer goes to show just how easily many people will believe a story if they desperately want to believe it. This is not a phenomenon of the left or right. If a story appears to confirm for a group what they think they already know, they will eat it up, no questions asked.
Taylor was no exception – literally. A hoaxer mailed him false information, and because he wanted to believe it, he asked no questions.
He didn’t try to verify it. He didn’t try to find a second source. He didn’t even try to confirm the identity of the woman feeding him this information. He broke every rule in the book because he so badly wanted the information to be true.
This is the kind of “journalism” Taylor and Mensch’s followers are signing up for. But if the “real” media makes no effort to take a long hard look in the mirror, then this is exactly the kind of replacement they deserve.
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Netanyahu uses fake “ancient” coin to justify settlements in West Bank
Palestine Information Center – August 29, 2017
NAZARETH – A coin that was celebrated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as evidence of a historical Jewish link to the West Bank has been found to be fake replica.
Numerous media outlets reported last week on the find of a rare 2,000-year-old half-shekel coin by an eight-year-old girl, Hallel Halevy, in the Israeli illegal settlement of Halamish in the West Bank.
The find excited many Israelis who argued it provided evidence of the historical Jewish connection to the West Bank, usually referred to as Judea and Samaria by Israelis.
Among those lauding the find, Netanyahu claimed in a Facebook post that “the “2,000-year-old silver coin” was used during the Second Temple period in Jewish history which lasted between 530 BCE and 70 CE.
“This exciting discovery is additional evidence of the deep connection between the people of Israel and its land – to Jerusalem, to our temple, and to the communities in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu wrote in his post.
However, on Sunday it was revealed that not only was the coin not ancient, but also was in fact a replica souvenir, regularly made at the Israel Museum, where a small mint at the Youth Wing of the museum is used to create the coins during annual Hanukkah activities organized as part of an educational program for children.
“There is no chance that it is authentic, it is not an ancient coin,” Haim Gitler, chief curator of archaeology and the curator of numismatics at the Israel Museum told The Times of Israel on Sunday. “Even to call it a coin is to exaggerate what it is,” he added.
Netanyahu deleted his Facebook post shortly after that. However, social media users were quick to comment on the news, with many ridiculing Netanyahu mistaking the replica for a historical artifact.
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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