The moral obligation to shut down Israeli weapons manufacturers
By Naila Ahmed | MEMO | December 14, 2023
You may be unaware that currently eight people are standing trial for shutting down an Israeli weapons factory, amongst other actions. Over the course of the last few weeks I have managed to attend some of their hearings at Snaresbrook Crown Court. For the duration of that time, the courtroom was packed as the defendants, known as the Elbit Eight, gave evidence about why they took action for Palestine, Israeli war crimes and Elbit Systems’ participation in those crimes.
Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, profiting off the genocide of Palestinians, it markets its drones and weapons as “battle tested”. The weapons are tested on civilians in Gaza before being mass produced. Elbit Systems supplies up to 85 per cent of the Israeli military’s drones and land based equipment. These weapons are produced here in the UK by Elbit Systems’ factories across the country. In the last few weeks alone Israel has murdered over 20,000 Palestinians and destroyed hospitals, schools, homes and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – using weapons produced by Elbit Systems. One of the main witnesses from Elbit, their chief of security, was due to give evidence for the prosecution at the trial, but Israel refused to let him travel or even give evidence remotely, despite him being a crucial witness for the prosecution.
The Elbit Eight have been on trial since 13 November,two of them are founders of Palestine Action. They are all on trial for the direct action they have taken against Elbit Systems in the first six months of Palestine Action’s work, from July 2020. Direct action is a form of protest that seeks to shut down and disrupt. For the Elbit Eight this included protesting inside Elbit Systems offices, spraying red paint to signify Palestinian blood, and shutting down weapons factories by blocking entrances and locking themselves to the building so they cannot be moved and weapons supply is halted. The charges against these actionists are politically motivated and there’s even evidence of Israel’s involvement in them being charged.
Choose courage for Palestine
I’ve been listening to testimony from the Elbit Eight, and reflecting on the actions they took and why they took them. One thing that stood out to me most was that these actionists chose courage for Palestine. They didn’t let the fear of prison or prosecution stop them from using their voices and their bodies to prevent weapons being sent to kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
In each testimony given by the eight actionists, they stated their moral and legal obligation to stop an apartheid regime, to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people and to shut Elbit down. Many of them testified to the numerous ways they engaged in the system prior to taking direct action, whether that be writing to MPs or other forms of traditional campaigning, all of which amounted to nothing. One actionist said that they wished direct action wasn’t necessary, that our government would just sanction Israel and stop arming them. But that isn’t a reality. Britain is responsible not only in the creation of the Zionist state but also in the continuous arming of this apartheid regime. So the obligation is upon us to take action in order to stop arming Israel.
As the state seeks to protect institutions and warmongers at every level, taking action to shut down the flow of weapons to the occupation becomes the most moral action we can take. There’s a moral duty to prevent the genocide of an entire people. The state seeks to criminalise such principled actions by arresting, charging and in some cases imprisoning those who take action.
With courage comes risk
All of the actionists that work with Palestine Action are the same. They choose courage and compassion over all else. They take actions knowing there is inherent risk – risk to their livelihood, to their liberty, but the moral obligation to act and prevent harm overrides the concern for their personal lives.
I have been privileged to work alongside the Elbit Eight and many other activists in the run up to this trial. One of my colleagues at CAGE also took action previously and won her case last year by a unanimous not guilty verdict. The acts of courage she took, could have cost her a career as a barrister, but it was a material risk she was willing to take in the defence of the Palestinians and to prevent harm from reaching them.
Over the last three years, Palestine Action has been highly effective in its campaigning and direct action against Israeli arms manufacturers, in particular Elbit Systems. Its stated aim is to shut Elbit down, and this has galvanised across the country, and across the globe as you see people taking direct action to stop weapons being sent to Israel. Palestine Action in the UK has been successful in:
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Costing Elbit over £280 million ($356 million) in lost contracts,
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Shutting down Elbit’s offices in central London,
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Forcing the permanent closure of two of Elibit’s weapon factories,
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Just this month, getting their sole recruiter in the UK, iO Associates, to stop working with Elbit,
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Getting the property managers of Elbit’s drone factory in Shenstone (UAV Engines), Fisher German, to cut all ties with Elbit Systems.
These successes have inspired the launch of Palestine Action US and Italy who have already taken a series of effective actions.
‘Let him change it with his hand’
When I see those actionists taking direct action to stop Israeli weapons from being manufactured here in the UK, I am reminded of the often repeated hadith – saying – of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) – one we may cite often, but how often do we implement it?
“Whoever among you sees evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot do so, then with his tongue. If he cannot do so, then with his heart, which is the weakest level of faith.” (Sahih Muslim 49)
I see the work of Palestine action and the Elbit Eight as an embodiment of that hadith, of seeing an evil and changing it with their hands – that is, taking direct action.
We have all been witnessing what’s been happening in Gaza, the daily massacres, destruction, devastation and we often respond with despair and helplessness. There is an obligation upon us as Muslims to end oppression. This is not a time for despondency, confusion or weakness, we must not be bystanders as we witness genocide. The Elbit Eight chose courage for Palestine and we must choose courage too. Either by joining Palestine Action’s movement or by using our voice and supporting them in their work. Courage is indeed a choice. It may not be comfortable for many of us, but it is a choice we can build up to.
No matter the outcome of the trial, the Elbit Eight have already succeeded. First, in taking action that stopped weapons and parts being sent to Palestine. And secondly, for drawing attention to Israel’s and Elbit’s war crimes in open court, testifying to the massacres and current genocide of our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Whatever comes from this trial, the Elbit Eight have already won, they put their bodies and freedoms on the line for Palestine. A courage many of us would hope to emulate. And I’m honoured to have supported them in the Elbit Eight campaign.
Flooding Gaza’s Tunnels Is Proof the Final Solution Has Begun
By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 15, 2023
Asking an engineering friend of mine with almost 50 years’ experience of handling water what obstacles Israel would face with flooding Gaza’s tunnels (and drowning all therein), he said there were three main issues to consider.
The first of these is that the total head of water or height water has to be pumped above sea level but, as Gaza is fairly flat, he did not see that as being particularly problematic. The second issue he drew my attention to was the distance to be pumped from the sea. He imagines this can be overcome by arranging a series of pumps in a line with holding tanks spaced over the total distance, though a canal system might also work. Given that the Gaza strip is narrow, approximately 9 km wide on average, he did not see any big issues there. The third issue he drew attention to was the volume of water needed, which is obtained by multiplying the diameter of tunnels by their total lengths, and perhaps adding something extra “for luck”. That total volume would determine the number and size of pumps needed for the volume of the tunnels and the duration of the exercise.
Thus, once Israel secures the Gazan shoreline and installs the appropriate pumping material, it is game on, all the more so as such engineering feats should be well within the capabilities of the Israeli/American alliance. As Egypt previously flooded the tunnels to stop ISIS attacks in the Sinai, we can rest assured Israel and America will be more than competent for the job in hand.
As Al Mayadeen, Al Jazeera and other outlets have reported that the Israelis have already begun flooding some of the tunnels, we can regard that as a done deal. Because Israel and its American sidekick have had years to plan all this and they don’t give a damn for either the human or ecological damage they will cause, we can expect Christmas 2023 in Gaza to be literally hell on earth.
Although you can read more here, here, here, here, here and here from these military, academic, and media sites on the technical and tactical issues involved in flooding the tunnels, let me just draw your attention to these articles here and here about the various laws on genocide Israel is blatantly violating to state that none of that matters a damn, as Israel has made it plain time and again that it is not constricted by any laws of either God or man.
The scenes from Gaza are already post-apocalyptic, with Israel parading naked men about as human shields, whilst shell shocked children have limbs amputated with no anaesthetic by heroic surgeons Israeli snipers shoot at through hospital windows and other innocent children, who dreamed childish dreams about being doctors, vets or gamers are now gone, their lives expunged like cigarette butts under Israeli jackboots.
In a previous article about these war crimes, I compared the Israeli army to Hitler’s doomed Sixth Army, which found itself marooned in Stalingrad, fighting the wrong war in what infamously turned out to be the wrong place.
Another friend wrote to me that: I would have thought that the most obvious comparable situation would have been the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, with Israel’s ‘defence’ minister Gallant playing the role of Jürgen Stroop, the Ordnungspolizei commandant, who boasted about clearing Warsaw of the ‘Jews and bandits,’ like Gallant speaking of ridding Gaza of ‘human animals’. In position papers, and in the public utterances of leading Israeli figures, it looks like the sheer violence of the Israeli response to the Oct’ 7th events, is to affect the ‘Final Solution,’ to the problem of Gaza. Not my words, but those of a Jewish member of the Knesset, critical of state policy towards the Palestinians. It now seems obvious that this ‘Final Solution’ will involve the forced expulsion of the entire Gaza population to the Egyptian controlled Sinai, with or without the cooperation of the client military regime in Cairo. I strongly suspect that plans drawn up years ago are now being put into effect, and notwithstanding world wide pro-Palestinian protests, it seems to me that this abominable plan will succeed, for it appears to have the tacit support of the U.S. and Western powers. What we may soon see is the largest forced exodus of people in either Europe or the Near East since 1945, since the forced departure of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. The numbers from Gaza alone will be three times those of the original Nabka in 1948.
My friend, sadly, makes his case well. Gaza’s final solution will soon be in full throttle and, as with the original Nakba, no one of consequence can or will do a thing about it. No one but Hezbollah perhaps?
Hezbollah are currently engaged in taking potshots at Israel’s Northern District, which is the only district of Israel, where the majority of inhabitants are Arabs. As the Lebanese border becomes more volatile, the Druze, who form 8% of the area’s population and who are the attack dogs of the Israelis, might have to reconsider their options.
Certainly, Hezbollah’s ability to hold the line in Southern Lebanon will give the Druze of Northern Israel and Southern Syria food for thought as I, for one, would not like Hezbollah gunning for me if I lived in the area and was vulnerable to attack from them. Although Hezbollah gave the ‘Christian’ militias a pass when they defeated those Israeli proxies in the Lebanese civil war, fools’ pardons can only be dished out so many times.
Hezbollah long ago decided that its main regional enemy was Israel and it was not going to allow itself to be unduly distracted by others sniping at its heels. The Druze of Northern Israel, now that they are fully within range of Hezbollah’s entire arsenal, might really want to reconsider how long more they should be the bitch of Israel, which has the same sort of moral standing Jürgen Stroop had following the Warsaw Uprising.
As regards East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the final solution is only a matter of time. As I type this, Israeli drones are terrorising the village of Taybeh, the last Christian town on the West Bank. Elsewhere, in towns like Jenin, the Israelis continue to kill and plunder as they please. Christians continue to get beaten up in Jerusalem’s Old City and it is only a matter of time before the Al Aqsa mosque falls, just as the mosque in Hebron was transformed at gunpoint into a synagogue.
Although truly legendary rock stars like Roger Waters are to be admired for calling all this out, it will take much more than an octogenarian guitarist to stop this ongoing carnage. If we are to use Stalingrad, Stroop and Waters’ father (martyred at Anzio) as our templates, then the answer can only be found in military resistance, coupled with an unbending consensus that Gallant, Biden, Netanyahu and all like them must go the way of Stroop and his leather-clad chums.
But dreaming for such a consensus is as childish as the dreams of being doctors, surgeons or vets that once sustained those martyred Gazan children. If there is to be peace this Christmas or any Christmas in the Holy Land, then it must be a case of out with the old and in with the new. Or, to put it more prosaically, the military, economic and diplomatic dominance of the United States and Israel must be shattered by forces that can accommodate the dreams of a life with dignity of whatever Gazan children beat the odds and survive their genocide.
And, though that might sound as childish as anything those martyred children might have said, it is the only way. Not only must Israel and the United States be upended but so too must every Hollywood spun narrative, bought, bribed or bullied politician, media hack or parasitic NGO or charity that ever helped sustain them, their endless lies and their serial racketeering.
US Has No Plans to Restrict Military Aid to Israel Despite Biden Calling Gaza Bombing ‘Indiscriminate’
By Dave DeCamp | The Libertarian Institute | December 15, 2023
The US has no plans to restrict military aid to Israel or draw any red lines on Israel’s use of US-provided munitions despite President Biden labeling Israel’s bombing of Gaza “indiscriminate” and the massive civilian death toll, US officials told CNN.
One official said the US does not consider the death of civilians a violation of the laws of war unless they are purposefully targeted. A report from +972 Magazine revealed that Israel is intentionally targeting civilians as part of a strategy to put pressure on Hamas, but the Biden administration is still claiming Israel is taking steps to mitigate civilian casualties.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed on Wednesday that Israel “stated their intent to reduce civilian casualties. And they have acted on that.” When pressed on President Biden’s comments calling Israel’s bombing campaign “indiscriminate,” Kirby refused to say if that was the US government’s official position.
“The President was expressing concerns — again, as I said — about the civilian casualties that we’ve seen. And, again, it’s reflective of our constant efforts to urge the Israelis to be as precise and careful as possible,” Kirby said.
In the same speech where Biden called the Israeli bombing “indiscriminate,” he vowed to continue supporting the campaign.
While US officials have been expressing “concern” about civilian casualties, the administration is not using any leverage it has over Israel to force them to change their tactics. Israel dropped more than 22,000 US-provided bombs on Gaza in just the first month and a half of the operation, demonstrating how reliant the Israeli military is on US support.
The US officials speaking to CNN also said the US was not conducting real-time assessments of each Israeli strike to see what weapons were used and how many civilians were killed. They said doing so would be “nearly impossible” due to the sheer number of Israeli bombings.
So far, the US-backed slaughter in Gaza has killed over 18,000 Palestinians, including over 7,000 children. The White House has previously acknowledged “many, many thousands of innocent people” were being killed by Israel in Gaza.
Iran, China, Saudi Arabia urge swift action to stop Israel’s war machine in Gaza
Press TV – December 15, 2023
Iran, China and Saudi Arabia have jointly demanded urgent action to end Israel’s atrocities in the besieged Gaza Strip, and provide sustainable relief to the Palestinians.
China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Deng Li hosted Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Ali Bagheri Kani of Iran and Saudi Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Waleed bin Abdulkarim El-Khereiji in Beijing on Friday for the first time within the framework of the joint committee of the three countries.
In a statement, the trio expressed opposition to the forced displacement of the Palestinians, and underscored that any future arrangement about Palestine must embody the will of its people and support their right to establish their state and self-determination.
The diplomats also voiced concern about the current critical circumstances in Gaza.
The three officials agreed on the next meeting to be held in Saudi Arabia in June.
Also in the meeting, the diplomats discussed the progress in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, including the reopening of the respective embassies in Riyadh and Tehran.
The Iranian and Saudi diplomats expressed appreciation for China’s influential part in the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh and reaffirmed their full commitment to implementing the Beijing Agreement.
US warns Ansarallah against attacking Israeli ships
The Cradle | December 15, 2023
The White House has sent back-channel messages to Yemen’s Ansarallah warning them to stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea and against Israel, Axios reported on 15 December.
US special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, recently visited the Gulf to meet his Saudi, Omani, and Qatari counterparts to discuss the attacks by Ansarallah and convey a message to the Yemeni group.
The Axios report said that Lenderking emphasized that the “US is highly concerned about Houthi attacks that threaten freedom of navigation in international waters.”
However, the warnings sent by the US to Ansarallah against the actions that the group is taking in the Red Sea have not done much to deter the solidarity of the Yemeni resistance group with the Palestinian people.
In a statement from the Yemeni Armed Forces yesterday, spokesman Yahya Sarae said that the Yemeni Armed Forces Navy “carried out a military operation against the container ship Maersk Gibraltar, which was headed to the Israeli entity. It was targeted by a drone, and it was directly hit.”
“The targeting operation came after the ship’s crew refused to respond to the calls of the Yemeni Naval Forces,” Sarae added. “The Yemeni Armed Forces have successfully prevented several ships headed to the Israeli entity from passing through in the last 48 hours.”
Sarae affirmed Yemen’s continued efforts to prevent ships heading to Israeli ports from navigating in the Arabian and Red Seas until necessary food and medicine are allowed to enter the Gaza Strip.
In response to the attacks and seizures of commercial vessels by Ansarallah, the US envoy for Yemen has told Reuters that the US wants to form the “broadest possible” maritime coalition to protect ships in the Red Sea and send an “important signal” to Yemen that these attacks will not be tolerated.
“There’s a very, very active assessment going on in Washington about the steps necessary to get the [Ansarallah] to de-escalate,” Lenderking said, while also calling on Ansarallah to release the crew of the Galaxy Leader, a ship seized on 19 November.
In response to the US Red Sea coalition proposal, Iran’s Defense Minister Mohammed Reza Ashtiani said that Washington and its Gulf allies would face “extraordinary problems.”
“If they make such an irrational move, they will face extraordinary problems. Nobody can make a move in a region where we have predominance,” Ashtiani told Iranian media.
Israel’s National Security Council has ordered ports to hide their shipping schedules in response to Yemen’s attacks against Israeli ships and vessels headed toward Israel.
Yemen’s refusal to allow these Israeli-linked ships to pass the Bab al-Mandab strait has forced companies to change course and take the long route around Africa, further increasing Israel’s war costs.
Sons of Salah Al-Din: Shuja’iyya is not just a neighbourhood, it’s a legacy
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 14, 2023
‘Difficult event’
‘What’s in a name?’
Gate to Gaza
Secret of Shuja’iyya
A Week Like No Other
Washington’s shameful behavior marks a new low for the Biden Administration
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 14, 2023
The first week in December of this year was all about America’s apparent inextinguishable love for the state of Israel. After a short pause to exchange hostages for prisoners, the Israelis re-launched their drive to exterminate the Gazans and steal what remains of their land and property. President Joe Biden, ably assisted by his ever-present sidekick State Department honcho Antony Blinken, welcomed the Jewish state’s onslaught by pushing the pedal to the metal on aiding the loveable Bibi Netanyahu while at the same time suggesting that the twenty thousand dead Palestinians and counting just might be a tad too much. Of course, the suggestion was limited to demonstrating what a great humanitarian, who is up for reelection, now sits in the Oval Office and was not supported by any real consequences for Israel should it ignore the advice, which it did. Biden then demonstrated where his heart truly was by expediting through the State Department a new shipment of munitions, an apparent gesture that keeps on giving to help the war effort, with some reports suggesting that upwards of two hundred US military aircraft have already made deliveries of more than 15,000 bombs to help Bibi kill more Pals.
The decision to provide more weapons to Israel coincides with a recommendation from Jerusalem’s right wing deputy mayor that captured Palestinians, whom he described as subhuman, should be buried alive, which elicited no comment from the White House. The Administration explained the rush delivery of the tank cannon munitions circumventing established congressional review procedures by saying that Israel urgently required the materiel to defend itself and that complying with Israeli demands is “vital to US national interests.” A State Department press release described the unusual procedure as having been “determined and provided [with] detailed justification to Congress that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel of the above defense articles and services in the national security interests of the United States, thereby waiving the Congressional review requirements under Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended. The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives. Israel will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense.”
As Hamas has no heavy weapons and it is not occupying or penetrating into Israeli territory, the explanation would appear to be more in the nature of another government “big” lie, somewhat similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech before the UN in 2003 affirming that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was preparing to use them. And it also challenges those who believe the United States is making an honest effort to reduce casualties among civilians. Josh Paul, the former State Department official who resigned to protest the provision of American weapons for use against the people of Gaza, reacted to the news with “…this expedited provision of lethal arms to Israel should cause some serious consideration of whether the secretary’s repeated assertions that the US seeks to minimize civilian casualties in Israel’s operation in Gaza are sincere.”
So, what made the first week in December different than any other in which the White House looks the other way and gives Netanyahu whatever he wants while Israel kills and kills and kills? Well, there was also more going on than just the provision of thirteen thousand nine hundred eighty-one (13,981) 120mm M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer (MPAT) tank cartridges, worth a paltry $106.5 million. There was also a bit of bother at the United Nations, where a motion came to a vote that would have demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to permit negotiations to end the genocide that Israel is pursuing to end the Palestinian problem forever. The motion had been endorsed earlier in the week, by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who invoked a rarely used article of the UN Charter to urge the Security Council to “press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe” and pass a resolution for a “humanitarian cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants.” Guterres warned that the civilian death toll was approaching what he described as an “apocalyptic” level due to the bombing of infrastructure, starvation and disease. He called for the UN Security Council to stop the killing in Gaza as a basic responsibility under the UN Charter. Each day, UN officials on the ground in Gaza heroically struggled to feed, shelter, and protect the population from Israeli bombs and more than 100 UN staff have been killed, a higher death toll than for any other operation ever. The motion would have passed unanimously but for one little problem: the United States vetoed it, clearly acting under orders from Netanyahu, who later thanked Biden. The final vote was 13 to 1 with Britain abstaining and not voting. Blinken defended the move on the Sunday talk shows, saying that Israel’s effort to eliminate Hamas was a “legitimate goal.” He added that “When it comes to a cease-fire in this moment, with Hamas still alive, still intact, and again, with the stated intent of repeating October 7th again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem.”
The US deputy representative to the UN Robert Wood, clearly acting under orders from the White House and State Department, explained his veto vote, saying that “… the resolution’s authors declined to condemn Hamas’ October 7th attack that killed 1,200 people, including women, children and elderly.” Wood added that the draft also “failed to acknowledge that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism.” Israeli Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan thanked the White House “for standing firmly by our side.”
Frustrated by the US veto in the Security Council, on December 12th the UN General Assembly voted on the same resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel/Gaza conflict. The result was an overwhelming Yes: 153; No: 10; Abstain: 23. The US was again a “no” vote, together with Israel and the usual “associated” south Pacific island territories and Austria, Papua New Guinea, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Liberia and Paraguay . The vote took place at an “emergency special session” under a “Uniting for Peace” resolution introduced when the Security Council fails to act due to the veto of a permanent member, and there have been legal arguments made that such votes, like Security Council votes, can be construed as legally binding. Of course, that may be viewed as irrelevant, since Israel has rarely if ever complied with any UN resolution that it opposed, whether of the “binding” variety or not, and also since Israel’s effective control of the US government has guaranteed that its defiance will not produce any adverse consequences.
It was, reportedly, the forty-fifth time that Washington has used its veto to protect the state of Israel in the UN, which is why the Jewish state has never been held accountable for anything. Nor has the United States, which has started more wars against countries that did not actually threaten it than anyone else since the founding of the UN and, presumably, it could always use its veto to block such a motion against itself. The result is that the United Nations Security Council only exists to take action against countries that are not one of the permanent members of the Council or against Israel, which is protected by Washington.
One would think that all of the above would constitute a far above average week from hell, but there’s more, including yet another sustained attack on freedom of speech being mounted by politicians, the media and Jewish billionaires to block all and any criticism of Israel. The attacks started several months ago when students at a number of public and private universities began protesting over Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians, leading to a death toll that is almost certainly currently approaching or exceeding 20,000 when all the corpses are dug up from the rubble of bombed buildings. Some politically ambitious scumbags like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis immediately declared that pro-Palestinian student groups were “antisemites” and banned them from Florida state universities while also declaring that no Palestinian refugees should be admitted to the US because they too were “Jew haters.”
As the anti-Palestinian narrative took shape in political, media and Zionist circles, it adopted a familiar line, which goes something like this: Israel is the Jewish state. If you criticize the Jewish state and/or Zionism you are therefore by definition an antisemite. Antisemitism is a “hate crime.” If you advocate or argue for any Palestinian group like Hamas, which the US government has labeled “terrorist,” you are providing “material assistance to terrorism” which is a crime for which you can be fined or imprisoned. Even if you merely criticize Jewish groups supporting Israel you are likewise an antisemite and have committed a “hate crime.” Neat, isn’t it? and the end result is that Israel, which is immune from the consequences of its actions internationally, also increasingly cannot be criticized at all without serious consequences for the critic. In other words, freedom of speech in the United States only exists, insofar as it does, if you are not disparaging Israel or even its friends due to their demonstrable behavior.
Some of those consequences were experienced recently by three presidents of prominent American universities, responding to a congressional grilling that was set up by allegations that colleges are hotbeds of antisemitism and are responsible for major increases in incidents targeting Jews. There is a certain irony in the allegations since Jews in America are the wealthiest, best educated, most politically powerful, most prestigiously employed and most protected by Homeland Security of all ethno-religious groups. And there is not much real evidence that Jews are in any way increasingly “victims” in the United States or in Europe. The antisemitic incidents that are “surging” are frequently based on criticisms of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians and often consist of a Jewish college student being offended or annoyed by a poster or a speaker criticizing Israeli behavior. Instances of actual physical confrontation are few and far between and are immediately reported in the accommodating mainstream media to heighten the sense that Jews in America and even worldwide are threatened. Certain groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are heavily into the promotion of the narrative of Jew hatred as it is in their bottom line to do so given their donor base which likes to hear exactly that. In other words, it is all largely a contrivance to obtain political and economic benefits as well as a free pass on bad behavior that might not otherwise be forthcoming.
The three university presidents, all of whom were women, represented Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT and all three were highly respected in their respective professions prior to their presidencies. They did not anticipate New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Jewish Harvard product, who was out to nail them and make the case that academia hates Jews and is encouraging antisemitism. Stefanik was backed up by Jewish oligarchs who have threatened to sharply cut donations to the respective universities that do not toe the line, doing what Jews are often accused of doing, i.e. using their money and the power that it buys to stop all discussion on subjects that they find troubling.
Stefanik and company were particularly incensed by student pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting “Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” She interpreted both expressions being calls for the destruction of Israel, which they are not. Intifada is “shaking off” in Arabic and is a call for liberating the Palestinian people and their land from the Israeli tyranny. The “river to sea” is somewhat similar, a call for a Palestinian state with actual sovereignty and neither is an explicit call for killing Israelis or Jews. They are generic cries for freedom. Stefanik curiously, though not surprisingly, did not mention the concurrent actual demands by senior Israeli government officials to displace or kill all Palestinians, something that they actually have the power to do and which might be regarded as a threat.
The university presidents were pilloried by congress, the White House, the Israel Lobby and the media by refusing to label all criticisms of the Zionist project and Israeli behavior as unacceptable “free speech” and through their assertion that the meaning of political slogans often depends on the context. For something or someone to qualify as a source of harassment, which is forbidden at the colleges in question, there has to be a direct threat made to another person. When that is present, it is harassment. When it is not, it is protected speech on a university campus, even if it is critical of group behavior or even racist. That is as it should be.
And if you thought that the week’s nastiness ended there, you would be wrong. There was also some disgraceful action during the week from Congress which rejected a Senator Rand Paul motion to withdraw US troops from Syria by a vote of 13 votes in favor and 84 votes against. Ironically, on the same day December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, US bombers committed a war crime in killing 36 Syrian villagers in retaliation for a series of attacks on US bases. American soldiers are in Syria illegally basically to bring down the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad, though they claim it is to confront ISIS terrorists. They are also sitting on Syria’s oil producing region and stealing the oil. Both Syria and neighboring Iraq would like to see the “Yankees go home” but the Pentagon alleges that the attacks on the bases have been carried out by groups affiliated with Iran, Washington and Israel’s prime enemy in the region, so the White House has decided that killing Syrian farmers is justifiable reciprocity. Meanwhile, Israel is bombing Syrian airports in Damascus and Aleppo on a regular basis, arguing that they are being used by the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guards.
During the week the Congress also passed a motion which partly explains why US foreign policy in the Middle East region is so incoherent. Congress declared by way of a GOP drafted and backed resolution that antizionism is to be considered antisemitism by a vote of 311 to 14, drawing the support of all but one Republican. Ninety-two Democrats voted “present” — not taking a position for or against the measure — while 95 supported it, paving the way for more hate crime persecutions and increasing legal liabilities for critics of Israel. Antizionism is, of course, not antisemitism as Zionism is a political movement and Judaism is a religion. In fact, many religious Jews reject the idea of a Jewish state and many secular Jews are currently active and even prominent in the humanitarian protests against Israel’s massacre of the Gazans.
Finally, the week also saw presentations by Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, both of whom explained their view of why Congress must pony up multiple billions of dollars for Ukraine. Biden warned explicitly and almost certainly incorrectly that “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there. We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.” Biden and Austin’s delusion centers on a presumption that Russia’s Vladimir Putin will move to reconstruct the Soviet Union by taking the Baltic states, which are NATO allies, after he gobbles up Ukraine. It is a scare tactic based on no evidence whatsoever and Russia does not even have the desire or ability to take all of Ukraine, let alone recreate the USSR, which its leadership clearly recognizes. Fortunately, few in Washington and Europe have been buying the bullshit and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made a surprise visit to Biden a few days later to plead for money, went home basically empty handed.
There probably is still more from that action packed week if I dig a bit deeper, but I am sure that readers get the point. It was a disastrous week for genuine United States’ interests and I don’t see anything that benefits the average American, quite the contrary. But this has been the pattern for a whole series of US administrations that have unfortunately done their best to destroy the United States as it once was along the lines of George W. Bush’s pledge to be the new sheriff in town ready and willing to engage in warfare against the whole world. Who will rid us of these monsters or are they too deeply entrenched in the system to be removed? That is the real question.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
US teacher arrested after threatening to behead student over comments about Israel flag
MEMO | December 14, 2023
A teacher in the US State of Georgia has been arrested on multiple charges, including child cruelty after allegedly threatening to behead one of his 7th grade students over comments made about an Israeli flag.
According to local reports, 51-year-old Benjamin Reese, a teacher at Warner Robins Middle School in Houston County was arrested on Friday having been charged with Felony Terroristic Threats and Acts and Misdemeanor Cruelty to Children in the Third Degree. He was released on bail on Sunday, two days after his arrest.
Houston County School District officials released a statement to WGXA News saying Reese has not been on campus since Thursday, one day before his arrest: “All employees of the Houston County School District are required to follow the Code of Ethics for Educators. If there is a violation or accusation of a violation, we investigate and respond appropriately. While we are not able to discuss specific personnel matters, we can share that Mr. Reese has not been on the campus of Warner Robins Middle School since December 7, 2023. Safety and the well-being of our students and staff is our number one priority.”
A report by state news station 13WMAZ revealed that a female student told the social studies teacher that an Israeli flag he had displayed in his classroom offended her, to which he cursed at her and threatened to kill her.
The teacher reportedly was asked by the student, who was with two classmates, why he had the flag. Reese explained that he is Jewish and has relatives in the occupation state, to which the student responded that she found the flag offensive due to the large Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza as a result of Israel’s bombing campaign.
After being labelled “anti-Semitic”, the police report says the students left his classroom only to be pursued by the teacher down the hallway where he continued to yell at them.
Several witnesses, including other teachers, said they heard Reese say: ‘I should cut your motherf**king head off!’ and other profanities.
Despite the severity of the incident, the news story has not made national news or has been covered by any major US news networks.
A New Standard By Which to Measure Infamy
Reality is just more collateral damage in the war on Gaza – and humanity (part II of a series)
(part I, on Israel’s experiments in televised genocide and the international community’s suicidally obsequious response, is here)
Helen of desTroy | December 12, 2023
With all eyes on the historically unprecedented bloodbath Israel is unleashing in Gaza, the transnational parasite class headquartered there is working overtime to accelerate the expansion—and criminalization—of “antisemitism” in the West, taking advantage of the geopolitical chaos they’ve unleashed to expand the sphere of attitudes and behaviors thus classifiable as rapidly as possible in the hope that even the most outrageous overreach will be perceived as the New Normal once the political atmosphere re-congeals. It’s a cynical gambit, but alarmingly likely to succeed, given their top-down control of the media and their previous success in both broadening the term’s definition beyond recognition and shoehorning that expanded definition into law (discussed at length elsewhere on this site) in both public and private life.
Smashing the Overton Window
When several dozen Harvard University campus organizations signed their names to an open letter stating “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame” for the October 7 Hamas raid, the risibly-named hasbara group Accuracy in Media targeted the students with billboard trucks featuring their photos alongside the text “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites,” deploying the trucks first on campus and later to students’ parents’ neighborhoods with the stated goal of turning them into unemployable pariahs. Included on the display was a website urging the reader to petition Harvard’s board of trustees to expel these “despicable, hateful students” and their organizations — all over a letter that contained no references to Jews and limited its criticism to the Israeli government. AIM president Adam Guillette nevertheless boasted of rigging Google search results for the targeted students’ names to prominently display the smear site, telling the New York Post that the letter-writers’ failure to “explicitly condemn Hamas” constituted overt antisemitism. Similar libel-on-wheels campaigns were inflicted on Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, the latter targeting university president Elizabeth Magill herself for having allowed the campus to host a literary event featuring Palestinian writers that one detractor bizarrely referred to as an “antisemitic Burning Man” — weeks before the raid.
The same campuses were simultaneously deluged with complaints — cc’ed to any media outlet within kvetching range – from wealthy, mostly Jewish donors (including Jeffrey Epstein’s benefactor Leslie Wexner in high moral dudgeon) demanding crackdowns on the imaginary plague of “antisemitism on campus,” up to and including the firing of professors over their advocacy for Palestine and the ouster of university presidents for allowing that advocacy to take place. The Anti-Defamation League and other hasbara groups backed by compromised toadies like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio framed college fixtures like Students for Justice in Palestine as literal terrorists starting pogroms in the cafeteria. Astroturfed “student groups” like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s “Israel Alliance” fostered this delusion, bending the ear of domesticated media with claims that students lying on the floor to protest the slaughter in Gaza in a classic “die-in” protest somehow posed a threat to the safety of Jewish students, in a sick echo of Israel’s own claims that flattening entire Palestinian neighborhoods is necessary for “self-defense.” That none of these episodes of antisemitic “intimidation” were ever recorded on the thousands of smartphones in their vicinity was immaterial — the media establishment knew which side of its challah was buttered. After students at both Harvard and Columbia Law Schools reportedly had job offers rescinded for signing onto their respective schools’ open letters in support of Gaza, over two dozen of the largest law firms in the US leaned into the supposedly antisemitic trope of “Jews control the legal system” and wrote a sternly-worded directive to the nation’s top law schools to crack down on the scourge of “antisemitic harassment” or risk none of their graduates ever working in the industry again. Collective punishment — it’s not just for Palestinians anymore.
Within weeks, UPenn, Harvard, and Columbia had all announced antisemitism “task forces,” complete with plans of action lifted directly from the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, a self-righteous panderfest that sank without a ripple when it was unveiled earlier this year. Columbia suspended its chapters of SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace. Pro-Palestinian professors targeted by petitions backed by the hasbara machine were forced to eat their words to keep their jobs — and more than a few were forced out anyway. Several of the Harvard student groups that signed the fateful open letter issued public retractions in a panicked bid to save their employment prospects as a growing swarm of hedge funders and corporate CEOs demanded the school furnish them with the membership rosters of those groups to use as a “do-not-hire” blacklist, and the Harvard Law Review spiked a thoroughly-vetted article on Israel’s genocide in Gaza (a piece the journal had commissioned from a Palestinian doctoral candidate just weeks before) not because it contained factual errors, but because a majority of the journal’s 100 editors feared for their own career prospects.
The individuals whose lives are upended by this kind of socioeconomic terrorism are mere collateral damage in a campaign that is clearly aimed at all of academia, the Frankfurt School’s tried-and-true shortcut to the American collective consciousness. The targeted schools were selected for their potential to set a nationwide trend, as hedge fund parasite and UPenn donor Marc Rowan acknowledged in his demand that university president Liz Magill be fired for not immediately begging forgiveness for allowing a student group to host a Palestinian writers’ festival on campus two weeks before the Hamas raid, rather than their vulnerability to pressure campaigns. Harvard has more money in its endowment than over half the countries on Earth and could easily weather the storm if a few snowflake donors opted to skip their usual conspicuous displays of philanthropy this year, and the other two aren’t far behind. That students at 100 colleges staged a walkout for Gaza even after weeks of this treatment speaks to a massive shift in public opinion, and ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt can be heard freaking out about the “major generational problem” Israel faces with regard to Generation Z on a leaked phone call with fellow Lobby bigwigs obtained by Iranian media last month.
The genocidal cat may be out of the bag, but Big Parasite is determined to ram it back in, tie the bag back up, and drown it in the Dead Sea. It was thus not especially surprising when Susan Sarandon, already reviled among liberals for her refusal to ditch her principles to support Hillary Clinton in 2016, was fired by United Talent Agency for suggesting Jews lacked a monopoly on suffering during a speech she gave at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York, or when screenwriter Aaron Sorkin fired his agent, Maha Dakhil, for accusing Israel of genocide in an Instagram post, or even when Lebanese-born porn star Mia Khalifa lost her Playboy podcast over tweets expressing empathy with Palestinians. Everyone knows Jewish elites have called the shots in the US entertainment industry since its birth. But with control of academia seemingly slipping away, anything less than total ideological lockstep in Hollywood has become suddenly intolerable. The industry’s failure to issue a full-throated demand for bloody vengeance immediately following the Hamas raid, the New York Times declared breathlessly, was not just an outrage, but an antisemitic one. And Hollywood’s faithful didn’t stop at denouncing their colleagues — they unloaded on everyone from the establishment media editors who correctly reported Israel’s airstrike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, to the Writers’ Guild of America (which had just secured favorable contracts for its members after a months-long strike but hadn’t condemned Hamas fast enough), to the TikTok executives unable to inflate traffic for pro-Israel hashtags to the same level as pro-Palestine terms with the platform’s established censorship algorithms. By failing to suppress all pro-Palestine discourse, TikTok executives were enabling the next Holocaust, dozens of Jewish celebrities nearing their sell-by dates, including Amy Schumer, Sacha Baron Cohen and Sarah Silverman, informed two of the platform’s Jewish executives in a Zoom struggle-session that would have been hilarious if not for its real-world repercussions. Armed with cooked data from the ADL, which had conveniently begun counting all pro-Palestinian protests and uses of phrases like “from the river to the sea” in its already-skewed accounting of “antisemitic incidents,” the industry’s dregs literally demanded TikTok (and other social media platforms) give them a magic button to press to disappear the “hate” — which the executives promised to do to the best of their ability. Calls to shut TikTok down have predictably surged among Republican politicians, particularly primary candidates who seem to be campaigning harder for Israeli political office than any in the US. Nikki Haley claimed during last week’s debate that every half-hour of TikTok use made a person 17% more antisemitic, a howler that met with zero laughter from an audience obediently spooked by the platform’s power after Israeli operatives had astroturfed a campaign around Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” to frame TikTok as a hive of antisemitism seducing impressionable young minds to the dark side. If they could not dupe young Americans into supporting Israel as they had their parents, Big Parasite would have to make them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
cleanliness is antisemitic
Selling savagery
To ensure opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza becomes guaranteed career suicide, the Israeli Lobby must widen the exception it has already (and wildly unconstitutionally) carved out of the First Amendment for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to include pro-Palestinian speech of any kind. Congress did the heavy lifting earlier this month with a full-frontal assault on the dictionary, explicitly expanding the already bursting-at-the-seams concept of “antisemitism” to include anti-Zionism. Adopted unanimously save for lonely vertebrate Rep. Thomas Massie, the resolution bemoans a world in which protesters can “spew hateful and vile language amplifying antisemitic themes” in the US’ capital and “4 masked men” can tear an Israeli flag off the wall of a Philadelphia restaurant but is apparently OK with 150 Palestinian children being blown sky-high every day by American-made bombs dropped by Israel’s finest.
But while simply declaring anti-Zionism is antisemitism makes Big Parasite’s job manufacturing consent for its Gaza genocide much easier, it is as fundamentally incompatible with reality as declaring steel a vegetable or Israel a democracy. Jewish religious doctrine has no place for Zionism — Jews aren’t supposed to return to the Holy Land until the Messiah shows up, and most of them don’t recognize any past or current claimants to that title — but then most of Israel’s inhabitants aren’t particularly religious, and the ones that are wouldn’t be caught dead fighting for the IDF, details generally left out of stateside hagiographies of the “special relationship.”
A who’s-who of controlled opposition has been deployed to sell Israel’s case for ethnic cleansing, led by purported free-speech crusaders from histrionic trainwreck Laura Loomer and Musk-anointed professional whiner Bari Weiss to conservative college blog CampusReform. The latter’s content transformed practically overnight on October 8 from criticism of woke damage and thought-policing in higher education to a baying chorus of self-righteous slopaganda-spewers suggesting those who oppose the IDF’s brutality should be not only deplatformed but personally harassed, many articles including lists of names of professors and even students whose only transgression was opposing the Israeli occupation. That such spiteful malingering brought this supposedly conservative outlet into ideological lockstep with professional Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer Michael Rapaport, who not only conflated failure to condemn Hamas with antisemitism but threatened these newly-minted “antisemites” with the withdrawal of financial support from their projects, supposedly on behalf of a cabal of Jews who were “making a list” in order to punish the insufficiently-genocidal in the future, does not appear to bother anyone on the Right. Indeed, Rapaport has done a 180 and embraced the candidacy of the man he endearingly refers to as “Pig Dick” for president, thanks apparently to the latter’s unquestioned subservience to Israel, and his fellow grifters in the Trump camp have welcomed him as the prodigal son.
At the same time as the Right was extending its Big Tent to include anyone who could hold up an Israeli flag without shitting themselves, conservative influencers who strayed even slightly from the path dictated by Tel Aviv in the hours after Hamas’ incursion were publicly and messily sacrificed, no matter how enthusiastically they had deep-throated the Zionist cause in the past. Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative campus group Turning Point who is regularly heckled at his own events for his slavish devotion for Israel, was publicly crucified as an antisemite for suggesting someone in Netanyahu’s government must have known about Hamas’ plans before October 7. Abandoned by the Zionist masters he’d relentlessly shilled at the cost of his early grassroots supporters, a suddenly-friendless Kirk began manically cucking to atone for his moment of doubt, even as those initial suspicions were completely validated by the news that Tel Aviv had not only had Hamas’ exact invasion plan in hand a year before October 7 but had ignored numerous warnings by IDF troops stationed at the Gaza border who observed Palestinian militants “rehearsing” the plan in the weeks preceding that invasion.
The most valuable horse in Netanyahu’s stable is billionaire troll Elon Musk, the self-appointed guru of “free speech absolutism” (now with more loopholes). Fresh off suing neoliberal-centrist smear merchant Media Matters over a ruinous outbreak of advertiser boycotts supposedly triggered by a manipulation of Twitter that forced ads to appear alongside neo-Nazi content, Musk simped his way across Israel earlier this month, dutifully parroting his hosts’ explanation that they were slaughtering the people of Gaza because Palestinians “think it’s OK to kill civilians” (the 18,000 civilians Israel has massacred in the space of two months having apparently been murdered only with extreme regret). He even repeated the claim that Palestinian hatred for Israelis must stem from antisemitic propaganda they’re taught as kids in school rather than the reality of living with those Israelis’ boots on their necks and spit in their eyes for generations. With regular condemnations from the Anti-Defamation League bolstering his anti-woke cred, Musk convinced millions of adoring fanboys that he had bought Twitter to return it to its mythical heyday as the Free Speech Wing of the Free Speech Party™ by occasionally tweeting into the tamer fringes of the Narrative — despite ratcheting up obedience to government censorship requests, putting a World Economic Forum lackey in the driver’s seat, and building a privatized social credit score system far worse than anything ever actually seen in China. The Israeli trip punctuated his latest redemption arc, which began when he questioned the legitimacy of Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians and really caught fire with an acknowledgment that “Jewish communities” aren’t huge fans of white people before our hero learned a Valuable Lesson about the legitimacy of genocide in the service of real estate acquisition. When he flipped off New York Times DealBook smarm-meister (and close personal Musk friend of 16 years) Andrew Ross Sorkin onstage after coming home, credulous dissidents across the West swooned.
The Lobby deliberately courts influencers with cross-partisan appeal like Musk, Democratic congresswoman-turned-Fox News pundit Tulsi Gabbard, and vaccine safety advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to create the false impression that a Zionist consensus supersedes all the usual sociopolitical divides. These assets are allowed to gain political traction with vocal, even eloquent opposition to the US’ Israel-fellating neocon foreign policy, and only once their antiwar or pro-First Amendment bona fides are firmly established are they ordered to “come out” as pro-Israel. Their most devoted followers will dutifully embrace their incongruous drift into warmongering and censorship, accepting cognitive dissonance as the cost of doing business (don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good! ) and even coaxing some skeptics into riding that sunk cost fallacy all the way into the pasture of Righteous Goyim. A thick folder of compromising material is kept by these assets’ handlers, capable of being deployed piecemeal to ensure that anyone who starts to get cold feet over duping their followers into embracing the violent racist death cult currently occupying Palestine can be persuaded to resume full obedience before they’ve passed the point of no return. Big Parasite loves a good ritual humiliation, and there’s nothing like dangling the tapes from those long-ago trips through the friendly skies on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express in front of a hungry reporter to make even an intelligent person spout the most aggressively ignorant Ziofascist thuggery this side of a Likud party meeting while flanked with obscene grifters like Shmuley Boteach, declaring with a straight face that the IDF is not only the most moral army in the world but does not — has never! — deliberately target(ed) civilians.
On the record advocating for Palestine? They can probably still use you, given how few people can stand by what Israel is doing in Gaza without becoming violently ill. Just publicly recant your ideological crimes, preferably with a pained look on your face, and start puking out cult dogma, as Musk did while Israeli President Isaac Herzog clapped like a seal during the former’s apology tour. Countless social media influencers have come forward since October 7 showing off emails from Israeli PR firms offering insulting sums in exchange for “sponsored” content, a poisoned hook that not only renders the entire pool of Israel/Palestine social media content questionable but allows Israel to claim plausible deniability regarding its own dismal performance in TikTok’s metrics — see, those dastardly Palestinians must be paying for their traffic, maybe we should ban TikTok after all! And when Israel can’t get their (wo)man, they are not above using AI to fake it. Model Bella Hadid, whose Palestinian father’s family lost their home in Safed during the 1948 Nakba when a Jewish refugee family from Europe to whom the Hadids had given shelter took over their home while the Hadids were away, was deepfaked into an apology video in which “she” recanted her past support for Palestine and embraced Israel, claiming to have “taken time to truly learn the historical context.”
October 7 is the new January 6
Big Parasite’s efforts to collapse any daylight between “free-speech” crusaders and Zionist zealots is a desperate bid to prevent any empathy from developing between its own victims in Palestine and in Washington — specifically those who’ve found themselves in social-credit purgatory, unable to board a plane or open a bank account due to attending the January 6, 2021 “Stop the Steal” protest. Despite similar experiences with over-the-top Orwellian surveillance and harassment by Big Brother and Big Tech for behavior which no reasonable person would define as crime, conservatives have been repeatedly lied to by Israel-affiliated “America First” sites like Breitbart and the Free Beacon that they have absolutely nothing in common with Palestinians and Palestine advocates who’ve been facing similar treatment from the US government for so long that an entire organization, Palestine Legal, arose to defend them in court. When hundreds of Jewish peace activists were arrested on Capitol Hill a week after the Hamas raid, J6 patron saint Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene accused her colleague and Congress’ sole Palestinian, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of leading a “pro-Hamas insurrection,” demanding Tlaib be censured and the demonstrators receive the same harsh sentences as the Stop the Steal crowd. She justified her sudden embrace of the police-state tactics she’d railed against for the previous two years by offering up the stale hasbara nugget that to be pro-Palestinian was to support Hamas, citing the ADL — which has called Greene herself “somewhere between deranged and demented” — in her desperate reach to denounce Jewish Voice for Peace as an extremist group.
Similarly, when conservatives better known for fighting the Biden administration’s unconstitutional crackdown on social media had a chance to join hands across the aisle with liberal university presidents struggling to flex their own disused First Amendment rights against the Lobby’s McCarthyite demand for a loyalty oath during this month’s campus antisemitism hearing, they chose instead to join the neocons in piling on the Ivy League women. It wasn’t so much the universities’ insufficient bubble-wrapping of the Jewish Campus Experience™ that bothered what should have been natural allies, but not hiring “enough” conservative and/or pro-Trump faculty and for overdosing on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion kool-aid — claims that were at best irrelevant, at worst unproven, and made the questioners look like petty bullies trafficking in entitled male resentment.
Billed as a hearing on “college campus antisemitism,” the House Education and Workforce Committee’s sadistic four-hour interrogation of the presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and MIT last week proved once again the impossibility of appeasing one’s way out of tyranny. Despite having cooperated promptly and exhaustively in reorienting their universities’ campus life around the fictional scourge of antisemitism after October 7, dropping everything to assemble a whole new layer of bureaucracy capable of protecting the Ivy League’s Jewish snowflakes from accidental contact with student activism, Claudine Gay (Harvard), Liz Magill (UPenn), and Sally Kornbluth (MIT) were bullied and harassed in the name of stopping antisemitic bullying and harassment by making speech the Lobby doesn’t like an actionable disciplinary offense. When none of the presidents cracked under the full gale force of Rep. Elise Stefanik’s pearl-clutching tantrum even after she revealed their universities would be turned inside out with Title VI investigations, a nasty little tactic capable of ripping a multi-million dollar hole in one’s institution, one of UPenn’s Jewish sugar daddies threatened to drill an even bigger hole in the school’s war chest if Magill was allowed to stay, claiming he had anonymously donated $100 million in options from his Stone Street Asset Management firm — and that those options could be yanked back the minute he felt the school was no longer representing his Values faithfully. Because the board didn’t want to play chicken with a $100 million gift — not when there was a nice responsible Jewish girl already standing by as vice-chair waiting to fill Magill’s uncooperative shoes — it was done.
Greenblatt was soon troping up a storm on CNN as he gloated about Magill’s demise, claiming he could have helped UPenn — they’d contacted him, after all, as had Harvard — but they just wouldn’t do what he wanted. This wishlist had somehow metastasized from establishing an antisemitism task force to ordering that task force to ‘solve’ antisemitism within a designated time frame, purging university curricula of references to Israeli apartheid, adopting a hate speech code prominently featuring the bloated-to-the-point-of-meaninglessness IHRA definition of antisemitism (long since rejected by its creator as unfit for purpose) to be centered within a revamped Diversity, Equity and Inclusion framework, and correspondingly stepped-up punishments meted out to students, professors, administrators, and even the university itself if a Jewish student felt momentarily uncomfortable. Meanwhile, for hesitating before stripping students of their rights, then apologizing for crimes they did not actually commit, these university presidents have been doubly condemned to eternal “Jewish media torture” (for some idea of what to expect, refer to the character assassination of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn).
The aim of the elaborate and frankly absurd manipulations Big Parasite has visited upon the minds of the West over the last two months is to normalize the most severe punishments for the slightest deviation from total fealty to the Israeli line — not so much shifting the Overton window as throwing a cinderblock through it in an epistemological Kristallnacht while somewhere, Jonathan Greenblatt screams like a little girl. Such upheaval is deliberately, unmanageably chaotic to ensure it cannot be reversed without extreme difficulty. It is now supposedly normal to be blacklisted, to lose one’s job and to get suspended from school for uttering “free Palestine.” Being refused a hotel room — or one’s constitutional right against self-incrimination — because of perceived failure to adequately condemn events that transpired halfway around the world and have no bearing on one’s life is not only viewed as socially legitimate but expected. The popular pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea” was alchemically transmuted in a matter of hours on October 7 into a terrorist threat meaning the genocide of all Jewish Israelis (when in reality Jews peacefully lived among the Arab population of Palestine when it stretched from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea before the 1948 Nakba), and merely uttering it on Twitter – or even using the word “decolonization” – is cause for suspension, courtesy of Elon “I pretended to sue the ADL so you’d let me hand over your biometrics to Israel” Musk. An entire Twitter account with accompanying website was created to cement a bogus equivalency between removing posters of Israeli hostages from the American walls they’ve been irrelevantly posted on and “Jew hate.” Such “hate” need not mention Israel or Jews at all — Starbucks sued its own employee union over their social media posts expressing solidarity with Gaza, and the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce launched a campaign against the popular cafe chain with the slogan, “Drinking a cup of Starbucks is drinking a cup of Jewish blood.” Wave a Palestinian flag at a protest? You might as well be heiling Hitler.
To make sure this avalanche of fraud stays put, Big Parasite has made a bold grab for the control room of the internet itself, consolidating what is already near-total control so as to prevent even the slightest pin-pricks of light from hitting the retinas of the populations they must keep in the dark to complete their atrocities unmolested. In October, the US Federal Communications Commission quietly passed a measure giving itself total control of the transmission of all content across US internet infrastructure in the name of upholding “equity,” leaning on an already legally-absurd concept in order to justify something so far outside the bounds of law it might as well have been written in feces on the walls of an asylum. The agency’s own commissioner, Brendan Carr, took to social media to warn Americans what was in the works, explaining that the plan “hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country.” Just as the people of Gaza have been all but muzzled by Israel’s deliberate shutdown of electricity and internet and blockade of fuel deliveries to the enclave, so will Americans find that their words can no longer reach an audience — either inside the US or outside its borders — if the FCC thinks it might hurt an influential Jew’s feelings. This is not speculation — the ADL made the argument for targeting internet infrastructure to suppress wrongthink earlier this year, and especially after the Biden administration had its wrist slapped for playing Ministry of Truth at the platform level with the Missouri v Biden decision, it has become abundantly clear to Big Parasite that preventing the transmission of such material is a much more final solution than trying to prevent its publication.
Preemptive self-defense
By equating pro-Palestinian speech with the literal genocide of Jews, Big Parasite’s agents in the West are not just dismantling the last remaining safeguards against state-sponsored censorship — they are opening the door to monstrous acts of “preemptive self-defense,” a concept only the diseased minds running the Israeli government would ever have had the chutzpah to attempt in real life. Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked cited just such a rationale for killing Palestinian children, whom she memorably referred to as “little snakes” in 2015, while the IDF’s “one shot, two kills” t-shirt has become a critical artifact for understanding the Israeli mind. As a desperate Israel runs out of threadbare narratives to brandish in the hope of distracting from the abattoir it’s operating in Gaza, American dissidents risk losing quite a bit more than just their jobs when they challenge Bibi the butcher.
coming soon to a boardroom near you
Israel has made it clear: support for Palestinians is support for Hamas. Anyone found to be supporting Hamas is a terrorist. All terrorists must die. And by the way, we’re gonna send the IDF around to all your countries — if Mossad isn’t already there — to make sure we got them all. Oh, and the US Congress has decided anti-Zionism makes you a terrorist too. Sleep tight!
The line between character assassination and actual assassination has never been thinner, especially with Big Parasite’s control of AI — both through operational algorithms and the feeder material, which is sourced from Wikipedia or its even less reliable cousin Wikidata more often than you’d like to think. They do not need TikTok users’ approval or even consent to insert the most aesthetically and morally repugnant content directly into the collective consciousness, especially once Musk fanboys start lining up for their Neuralinks and find themselves completely unable to question why their thoughts are suddenly expressed with an Israeli accent (“the tewwowists are coming!”)
Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer chillingly predicted his own demise as the result of “Bari Weiss and her likes” in a tweet less than a month before Israel bombed his sister’s house last week, killing him and half a dozen family members. Below a screenshot of his inbox, which was overflowing with poorly-spelled death threats, was a tweet from the perennially-butthurt Weiss spotlighting him for joking about whether an Israeli baby supposedly found in an oven in the world’s least original atrocity propaganda recipe had been cooked “with or without baking powder.” Weiss, like Musk, Gabbard, Kennedy, and any of countless other controlled-oppo personalities, presents herself as a fierce foe of cancel culture while hypocritically embracing it against anyone opposed to the genocide of Gaza, to the point that she has apparently moved up to helping cancel them for real.
the next butthurt loser you mock online might be working for Peter Thiel
Weiss last week retweeted an ominous message from Palantir, the Orwellian “security” firm founded by billionaire technofascist Peter Thiel. The company, it said, had opened its arms to Jewish students pissed that their universities wouldn’t evict pro-Palestinian students from campus wholesale. Palantir has offered such wannabe-Kissingers positions in a secretive new initiative apparently targeting those universities — and potentially anyone else who gets in the way, since putting killing machines in the hands of insecure nerds with grudges is not exactly self-limiting — with “actions on the battlefield.”
Witnessing the rollout of this repressive control agenda should only spur dissidents to greater activity, as many are beginning to understand — at least on a subconscious level — that if Gaza and the West Bank fall, these predators will come knocking on our doors (and while Jonathan Greenblatt may look like Nosferatu, he does not have to be invited in). Thousands of artists, writers and performers have hit back against the effort to delete Palestine from the discourse as a pretext for deleting it from history, fully aware that the censorship campaign they are facing off against represents an existential threat precisely because of the heavy-handed unpersoning of so many of their peers. One day we may find ourselves “deplatformed” only to realize we have to pay a toll to reenter the real world — and it’s Worldcoin or no world for you.
The twin spirals of silence and complicity are already twisting into an epistemological barbed wire fence, completing the Total Demoralization project that has been underway since Zionism took its first breath and shouted that this planet was not big enough for the both of us. They are correct — it isn’t big enough at all — but it is not we who have to go.
Britain secretly sent 500 extra troops to Cyprus base being used to supply weapons to Israel
By Matt Kennard | Declassified UK | December 12, 2023
Britain secretly deployed 500 additional troops to its bases on Cyprus after Israel began bombing Gaza, it can be revealed.
The UK government has said previously that it deployed 1,000 troops to the East Mediterranean to support Israel but it did not reveal how these troops were distributed.
But in a letter to Alba MP Kenny MacAskill, seen by Declassified, defence minister James Heappey wrote that on 27 November half these troops were in Cyprus.
Britain now has “approximately 500 additional service personnel deployed to Cyprus,” Heappey wrote in a surprising admission.
Britain has two “Sovereign Base Areas” on Cyprus – known as Dhekelia in the east of the island and Akrotiri in the west – which are large, highly secretive military and intelligence installations comprising 3% of the island’s land area.
The major UK air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, has long been the staging post for British bombing campaigns in the Middle East, and sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv. The flight time is 40 minutes.
The extra UK troops takes the number of British military personnel deployed on the island to 2,717. The UK bases also host 273 British civil servants.
The US military has also had a base on British territory on Cyprus for nearly half a century, but its size was kept secret from the public before Declassified recently revealed that 129 US airmen are permanently deployed to RAF Akrotiri.
It is not known if additional US personnel have also been deployed to Britain’s Cyprus bases to help support Israel’s bombing of Gaza, as the British government refuses to make public any information about American activities on the UK territory.
Defence minister James Heappey also revealed in his letter that Britain has sent extra troops to Egypt, Israel and Lebanon, but he refused to say at what levels. “I have withheld specific numbers for these countries for operational security reasons,” he wrote.
The UK military personnel were said to be deployed “to support contingency planning and UK humanitarian aid efforts”.
The 500 extra UK troops deployed to Cyprus do not include British special forces, which operate completely outside of democratic oversight.
The Sun reported on 27 October that Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS), the army’s elite special force, was on “standby” in Cyprus to – it was claimed – rescue British hostages held captive by Hamas and Britons who are trapped in Gaza.
The UK military’s “D-Notice” committee, which seeks to stop the media publishing information it claims would damage national security, requested on 28 October all media editors to not publish information relating to SAS operations in Gaza.
There has been no further reporting on the SAS’s role in Gaza, while the UK military refuses to confirm or deny if the SAS has been on the ground in Gaza since Israel began bombing the territory.
It is unclear if the Cypriot government has been told of the SAS deployment—or the extra UK troops.
Declassified recently revealed that over 30 military transport flights, operated by the RAF, had flown from RAF Akrotiri to Tel Aviv since the bombing of Gaza began.
But Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis told the Cyprus Mail he had received no information about the flights. The UK, meanwhile, denied it is sending “lethal aid” or “military equipment” to Israel from RAF Akrotiri.
Declassified then reported the US was using RAF Akrotiri to transfer weapons to Israel. Respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that over 40 US transport aircraft have flown to RAF Akrotiri carrying equipment, arms and forces.
The planes have been loaded with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and NATO in Europe, Haaretz reported, with around half the US flights said to be “delivering military aid”.
The Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides was asked about the US deliveries in a press conference, and said: “There is no such information, our country cannot be used as a base for war operations”.
Kenny MacAskill, the MP who asked the questions in parliament, told Declassified: “We require openness and accountability about what is happening at Britain’s bases on Cyprus and the role they are playing in Israel’s criminal bombing of Gaza. 500 additional military personnel to Cyprus is a huge deployment given the large contingent already based there. What is their role?”
He added: “It’s 20 years since the UK was taken into a war in Iraq based on lies and deceit. That cost the lives of millions and still causes harm today as refugees and terrorism testify to. Iraq wasn’t in my name and neither are these actions. We need to be told what is being done by our government.”
Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt
From Dallas to Gaza: Was JFK’s Assassination Instrumental is Strengthening Zionist Israel?
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | December 13, 2023
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 60 years ago. If he had lived and won a second term, the Israeli Palestinian conflict would have evolved differently. Possibly the path toward Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza could have been avoided.
In his short time in office, Kennedy changed US foreign policy in significant ways. As documented in the book “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it still matters”, JFK resisted the CIA and military industrial complex in the policies he set regarding the Third World and Soviet Union. The Vietnam War, assassination of Indonesia’s President Sukarno, and continued hostility to Cuba and the Soviet Union would not have happened had Kennedy lived and won a second term.
Less well known, Kennedy’s policies also challenged and opposed the military and political ambitions of Zionist Israel. At the time, Israel had only existed for thirteen years. It was still evolving and the course was not totally set. There was significant international resolve to find a compromise solution regarding Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Nakba. When Israel attacked Egypt and seized the Sinai peninsula in 1956, the Eisenhower administration demanded Israel withdraw from the captured territory. They complied.
At this time, in the early 1960’s, prominent Jewish voices criticized the racism and discrimination of the Israeli government. Israelis like Martin Buber assailed Ben-Gurion and noted that “At the inception of the state, complete equality with the Jewish citizens was promised to the Arab population.” Many influential Israelis realized their long term security and well-being depended on finding a just settlement with the indigenous Palestinian population.
In the United States, the Jewish community was divided and many were anti-Zionist. The American Council for Judaism was influential and anti-nationalist. The racist and militaristic character of Israel was not yet set in stone. Nor was American Jewish support for Israel. When Menachim Begin came to the United States in 1948 he was denounced by prominent Jewish leaders including Albert Einstein. They said Begin, who later became Israeli Prime Minister, was a “terrorist” who preached “an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority.” Many American Jews had mixed feelings and did not identify with Israel. Others supported Israel but on the basis of there being peace with the indigenous Palestinians.
There are four key areas where the Kennedy policy was substantially different from what followed after his death.
Kennedy Was Not Biased in Favor of Israel
The Kennedy administration sought good relations with both Israel and the Arab nations. Kennedy aimed to extend US influence throughout the Middle East, including with nations friendly with the Soviet Union and at odds with NATO partners.
JFK personally supported Arab and African nationalism. As a senator in 1957, he criticized the Eisenhower administration for supporting and sending weapons to France in their war against the Algerian independence movement. In a 9,000 word presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he criticized “western imperialism” and called for the US to support Algerian independence. Algerian President Ben Bella, who France had tried to assassinate and considered far too radical by many in NATO, was given a huge and impressive welcome to the White House.
Kennedy changed the previous frosty relations with the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria) led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. For the first time, the US approved loans to them. Kennedy wrote respectful letters to the Arab presidents before he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion to Washington. The Arab leaders could see the difference and responded with appreciation. Those who claim there was no difference with Kennedy ignore the fact that Egypt’s Nasser, Algeria’s Ben Bella and other nationalist leaders saw a big difference.
In 1960, when Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency, he spoke at the Zionists of America Convention. He made complimentary remarks about Israel but also expressed the need for friendship with all the people of the Middle East. He said the US should “act promptly and decisively against any nation in the Middle East which attacks its neighbor” and “The Middle East needs water, not war; tractors, not tanks; bread, not bombs.”
Kennedy frankly told the Zionists, “I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.” By maintaining objectivity and neutrality on the Israeli Arab conflict, Kennedy wanted to steer the Jewish Zionists away from the racist, militaristic and ultra-nationalistic impulses which have led to where we are today.
Kennedy Wanted the Zionist Lobby to Follow the Rules
The second difference in Kennedy’s policy is regarding Zionist lobbying on behalf of Israel. Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), organizations that promote or lobby on behalf of a foreign government are required to register and account for their finances and activities. Under Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the Department of Justice (DOJ) instructed the American Zionist Council (AZC) to register as agents of a foreign country. AZC is the parent organization of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC).
As documented in detail here, on 21 November 1962, the Assistant Attorney General wrote to them “the receipt of such funds from the American sections of the Jewish Agency for Israel constitutes the (American Zionist) Council an agent of a foreign principal… the Council’s registration is requested.”
The emergence of Israeli political influence was also scrutinized in the Senate. Under Senator William Fulbright, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings in May and August 1963. They revealed that tax free donations to the United Jewish Appeal, supposedly for humanitarian relief in Israel, were being channeled back to the US where the money was used for lobbying and Israeli public relations.
Attorneys for AZC stalled for time. On August 16, 1963, a DOJ analyst reviewed the case and concluded, “Department should insist on the immediate registration of the American Zionist Council under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
On October 11 the DOJ demanded that AZC register and “Department expects a response from you within 72 hours.”
On October 17, a DOJ memorandum reports that attorneys for AZC pleaded for not being required to register as foreign agents. They offered to provide the required financial disclosures but that registering as a foreign agent “would be so publicized by the American Council on Judaism that it would eventually destroy the Zionist movement.” As indicated in this discussion, political zionism was not yet dominant in the American Jewish community and was actively opposed by the American Council on Judaism and other Jewish groups.
Kennedy Supported Palestinian Rights
A third difference is regarding Palestinian rights. Although he was only 44 when he became president, Kennedy had more international experience than most US presidents. In 1939 he spent two weeks in Palestine. In a lengthy letter to his father, he described the situation and difficulties. He wrote,
“The sympathy of the people on the spot seems to be with the Arabs. This is not only because the Jews have had, at least some of their leaders, an unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude, but they feel that after all, the country has been Arabic for the last few hundred years … Palestine was hardly Britain’s to give away.”
In comments that are still true, Kennedy remarks how the Jewish residents are divided between “strongly Orthodox Jewish group, unwilling to make any compromise” and a “liberal Jewish element composed of the younger group who fear these reactionaries”. His analysis is sympathetic to both Jewish and Arab peoples and addresses the difficulty but necessity to find a compromise solution.
In the early 1960’s, the US State Department was not locked in to a biased acceptance or approval of Israeli policies. The US supported UN Resolution 194 resolving (in paragraph 11) that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” This has become known as the “right of return”.
On November 21, 1963, the day before Kennedy’s assassination, the NY Times has two news stories which exemplify the discord between Washington and Tel Aviv. A report from the United Nations is titled “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees”. It begins,
“A United States resolution calling for continued efforts to resolve the predicament of the Palestinian Arab refugees was approved tonight 83 to 1… Israel cast the single negative vote… The issue centers on a 1948 resolution whose key section, paragraph 11, concerns the future of the Arabs who were displaced from their homes by the Palestine conflict. They have been living in the lands bordering Israel … The revised United States text calls on the Palestine Conciliation Commission to ‘continue its efforts for the implementation of Paragraph 11’.”
The second NYT story is titled “U.S. Stand Angers Israel”. It reports from Jerusalem that “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestine refugee debate… Israel’s anger was conveyed ‘in the strongest terms’ to the US Ambassador … The Israeli Government is upset about the American resolution before the UN Political Committee and by American maneuvers over the issue.” Israel was angered and objecting because the Kennedy administration was trying to resolve the Palestinian refugee situation including the right of return.
Kennedy Tried to Stop the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program
The fourth and biggest contention between Kennedy and the Israeli leadership was regarding their developing nuclear weapons. This issue was kept so secret that crucial documents and letters have only been released in recent years.
President Kennedy was a strong advocate for stopping nuclear proliferation. After the 1962 Cuba missile crisis, he realized how easy it would be to intentionally or accidentally trigger a catastrophic nuclear war. If nuclear weapons were allowed to spread to more countries, the risks of global catastrophe would be all the greater. It was also predicted that if Israel acquired nuclear weapons capability, they would become more aggressive and less likely to reach a compromise agreement regarding Palestinian refugees.
When intelligence indicated that Israel might be trying to build a nuclear weapon at Dimona in 1962, Kennedy was determined to find out if this was true, and if so to stop it. This caused an intense diplomatic confrontation between JFK and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The proof of this has recently been revealed in the exchange of letters between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and his successor Levy Eshkol. They are all labeled “Top Secret” or “Eyes Only”.
It is important to see the sequence and some details to understand how intense this showdown was. These communications are all from 1963. (Note to reader: skip ahead to the next section if you become tired of the detail in the following exchanges.)
In March the US State Department instructed the US Ambassador to inform the government of Israel (GOI) that for “compelling reasons” the “USG seeks GOI assent to semi-annual repeat semi-annual visits to Dimona, perhaps May and November, with full access to all parts and instruments in the facility, by qualified US scientists.”
On April 19 the State Department instructed the US Ambassador to Israel to “press” for an “affirmative reply” to the earlier request for semi-annual inspections of Dimona.
On April 26, Israeli PM Ben Gurion replied to President Kennedy. He evaded the issue of nuclear facility inspections and instead expressed his concern regarding a recent proclamation from Egypt, Syria and Iraq. He compared Egyptian President Nasser to Germany’s Hitler.
On May 4 JFK responded to Ben Gurion’s concerns and underscored the US commitment to Israel and peace in the Middle East. He told the Israeli leader he is much less worried about an “early Arab attack” than the “successful development of advanced offensive systems”.
On May 8, a Special National Intelligence Estimate concluded, “Israel intends at least to put itself in a position to be able to produce a limited number of weapons” and that “unless deterred by outside pressure [the Israelis] will attempt to produce a weapon sometime in the next several years.” The analysis predicted that if Israelis had the bomb it would “encourage them to be bolder in their use of the conventional resources both diplomatic and military in their confrontation with the Arabs.”
On May 10, US State Department sent an “Eyes Only Ambassador” telegram to the US Ambassador to Israel. The ambassador was instructed to remind the Israeli leadership that they have previously agreed to the bi-annual inspections. The telegram also says Israeli concerns about Arab development of a nuclear bomb “are not valid” because there is nothing comparable to the “advanced Israeli program.”
The tensions between the Kennedy administration and Tel Aviv caused the Israel lobby to escalate pressure on the White House. This is revealed in a May 11 TOP SECRET State Department memo regarding “White House Concern with Arab-Israeli Matters”. It begins,
“In recent weeks, as you are aware, it has become increasingly clear that the White House is under steadily mounting domestic political pressure to adopt a foreign policy in the Near East more consonant with Israeli desires. The Israelis are determined to use the period between now and the 1964 Presidential election to secure a closer, more public security relationship with the Unites States, notably through a public security guarantee and a cooler, more antagonistic relationship beween the United States and the UAR [United Arab Repubic].”
Source
This is a highly interesting memo showing Israeli influence in US foreign policy and electoral politics. It further shows Kennedy’s effort to mitigate this influence while standing firm on the goal to stop nuclear proliferation.
On May 12, 1963 Ben Gurion wrote another long letter to President Kennedy. Again evading the US request, Ben Gurion gives a distorted history including the claim that Palestinian refugees left Palestine “at the demand of Arab leaders”. He again compares Nasser to Hitler and suggests the danger of a new Holocaust.
He says, “Mr, President, my people have the right to exist … and this existence is in danger.”
Source
On May 19, Kennedy responded to Ben Gurion emphasizing the importance he placed on not allowing the spread of nuclear weapons.
“We are concerned with the disturbing effects on world stability which would accompany the development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel.”
Kennedy underscores the “deep commitment to the security of Israel” but says the commitment and support “would be seriously jeopardized” if the US is unable to obtain reliable information about “Israel’s efforts in the nuclear field.”
On May 27, Ben Gurion responded to Kennedy saying that the nuclear reactor at Dimona “will be devoted exclusively to peaceful purposes”. He counters Kennedy’s request for bi-annual visits starting in June by suggesting annual visits “such as have already taken place” starting at the end of the year. The condition is significant because the previous “visit” to Dimona was restricted in time and space.
The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center as viewed from a Corona satellite in the late 1960s (Public Domain)
On June 15, Kennedy wrote to Ben Gurion after he had received a scientific evaluation of the minimum requirements for a nuclear site inspection, After welcoming Ben Gurion’s assurances that Dimona will only be devoted to peaceful purposes, Kennedy issued a polite ultimatum. “If Israel’s purposes are to be clear to world beyond reasonable doubt, I believe the schedule which would best serve our common purpose would be a visit early this summer, another visit in June 1964, thereafter at intervals of six months.” He specifies that the “visit” must include access to all areas and “sufficient time be allotted for thorough examination.”
On June 16, the US Embassy in Israel reported that Ben Gurion resigned as Israel’s Prime Minister. This was a huge surprise; the explanation was that it was for “personal reasons”. It is likely that Ben-Gurion knew the contents of the forthcoming letter from Washington (received at the embassy the day before). The impact of his resignation was to stall for time. US Ambassador Barbour suggested waiting until the “cabinet problem is worked out” before sending JFK’s near ultimatum to the next Prime Minister.
Kennedy did not wait long. On July 4, he wrote to new Israeli Prime Minister Levy Eshkol. After congratulating Eshkol on becoming new Prime Minister, he goes straight to the point “concerning American visits to Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona.” Kennedy says, “I regret having to add to your burdens to soon after your assumption of office, but …” He then goes on to request inspections as was requested in the letter to Ben-Gurion and that “support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized” if this is not done.
On July 17, Eshkol wrote to Kennedy that he needed to study the issue more before responding to Kennedy’s request for visits to Dimona. US Ambassador Barbour added that Eshkol verbally conveyed that he was “surprised” at Kennedy’s statement that US commitment to Israel might be jeopardized. Indicating Israeli defiance, Eshkol told the US Ambassador “Israel would do what it had to do for its national security and to safeguard its sovereign rights.”
On August 19, Eshkol wrote to Kennedy re-iterating the “peaceful purpose” of Dimona and ignoring the request for a summer inspection. He proposed the inspection take place “toward the end of 1963”.
On August 26, Kennedy wrote to Eshkol accepting the visit at year end but emphasizing it needs to be done “when the reactor’s core is being loaded and before internal radiation hazards have developed.” Kennedy set these conditions because they were essential for determining whether the facility could be used for developing a nuclear weapon.
On September 16, State Department prepared a Memorandum of Conversation with a counselor from the British Embassy. There was joint concern but agreement that Dimona would be visited and inspected “prior to the activation of the reactor.”
After the Assassination of JFK on November 22
After Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) became president, US mideast policy changed significantly. From the start, LBJ told an Israeli diplomat, “You have lost a very great friend. But you have found a better one.” The Israeli publication Haaretz says, “Historians generally regard Johnson as the president most uniformly friendly to Israel.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs writes “Lyndon Johnson Was First to Align U.S. Policy with Israel’s Policies” and “Up to Johnson’s presidency, no administration had been as completely pro-Israel and anti-Arab as his.”
On the crucial issue of Dimona inspection, the Israelis ignored JFK’s condition and the reactor went critical on December 26. When the inspection occurred three weeks later, they could not inspect the areas that had been irradiated. A handwritten comment on the report says, “We were supposed to see this first!” We do not know what would have happened it JFK had been in the White House but given the intensity of his effort, and deep convictions regarding the dangers of nuclear proliferation, it would not have been ignored as it was under LBJ.
Under LBJ, relations with Egypt deteriorated. The US stopped providing direct assistance loans and grants to Egypt. The US became increasingly antagonistic to President Nasser, as desired by the Israel lobby.
US support for a resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue decreased and then stopped.
The Department of Justice efforts to require the American Zionist Council to register as foreign agents became increasingly weak until they were dropped under LBJ’s new Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. The sequence of exchanges includes:
On December 11, 1963, the AZC attorney wrote to the DOJ saying, “Our client is not prepared to register as an agent of a foreign government.” Instead, he proposed to provide “voluntarily” the required financial information.
In January and February 1964, there were more exchange between AZC and the DOJ. AZC expressed concern because the American Council on Judaism publicly said that AZC was acting as “propaganda agents for the state of Israel and that the Jewish Agency was being used as a conduit for funds for the Zionist organization in the United States.”
In summer 1964 Nicholas Katzenbach becomes Attorney General. Negotiations continued. DOJ staff noted that AZC was “stalling” and not providing acceptable information despite the increasingly special and favorable treatment. In spring of 1965 the DOJ accepted that AZC was NOT required to register as foreign agent. Their financial information was kept in a unique expandable folder. In November 1967 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) applied for a federal tax exemption. The US Treasury Department granted it, backdated to 1953.
Increasingly Aggressive and Uncompromising Zionist Israel
The successful development of nuclear weapons added to Israel’s aggressive actions and unwillingness to resolve the Palestinian refugee crisis.
With intelligence information provided by Washington, Israel made a surprise attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967. The “Six Day war” was a crucial turning point in middle east history. Israel quickly defeated the unprepared combined armies. In the West, public perception of Israel changed overnight. The mythology of Israeli military (and general) superiority was created. Among the American Jewish population, doubts and concerns about Israel evaporated and support skyrocketed.
Israeli leaders arrogance and deceit is exemplified by the attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War. The communications navy vessel was monitoring the air waves in the eastern Mediterranean when it was attacked by Israeli aircraft and boats. Thirty four US sailors were killed and 172 injured. Amazingly , the ship managed to stay afloat. The plan was evidently to sink the ship, blame it on Egypt and consolidate US support and hostility to Egypt and the Soviet Union.
Lyndon Johnson over-ruled the calls for help from the vessel, saying “I will not have my ally embarrassed.”
The deadly incident was covered up for decades.
We do not know for sure what might have happened had JFK not been assassinated. It is possible that Israel would have been stopped from acquiring the bomb. Without that, they may not have had the audacity to launch the 1967 attacks on their neighbors, seizing the Golan, West Bank and Gaza Strip. If the Zionist lobby had been required to register as foreign agents, their influence would have been moderated. Perhaps Israel could have found a reasonable accommodation with Palestinians in one or two states.
Instead, Israel hardened into an apartheid regime committing increasingly outrageous massacres. As Kennedy warned in 1960, Israel has become a “garrison state” surrounded by “hate and fear”. The assassination of John F Kennedy insured Zionist control of Israel, suffering for Palestinians and permanent instability.
*
Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Franciso Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@protonmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Copyright © Rick Sterling, Global Research, 2023
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
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