![An elderly Palestinian and a child during the Nakba [Hanini/Wikipedia]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-10-6_nakbaOldman_girl_nakba.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
MEMO | December 10, 2021
Israeli government discussions on the massacres perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in 1948 were declassified for the first time this week in an investigative report published by Haaretz and the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research.
Entitled, Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew, the report exposes two large-scale operations launched by the army in October 1948, one based in the south, known as Operation Yoav, which opened a road to the Negev; and another in the north, Operation Hiram.
As part of the latter, within 30 hours Israeli soldiers attacked dozens of Palestinian villages, forcefully expelling tens of thousands of Palestinian residents, while thousands of others fled.
Nearly 120,000 Palestinians, including the elderly, women and children resided in the area, however, following Israel’s massacre only 30,000 Palestinians were left.
“Within less than three days, the IDF [army] had conquered the Galilee and also extended its reach into villages in southern Lebanon. The overwhelming majority of them took no part in the fighting,” reported Haaretz.
The investigation also revealed accounts regarding previously unknown massacres that took place in the villages of Al-Reineh, just north of Nazareth, Meron and in Al-Burj.
Before the brutal attacks against Palestinians during Operation Hiram, the village of Al-Burj, presently known as Modi’in Illit, a large ultra-Orthodox settlement in the occupied West Bank, was raided in July 1948.
According to a document found in the Yad Yaari Archive, four elderly men remained in the village after its capture. “Hajj Ibrahim, who helped out in the military kitchen, a sick elderly woman and another elderly man and elderly woman.”
Eight days after the village was raided by Israeli occupation forces, Ibrahim was sent on an errand to pick vegetables by an Israeli soldier, in order to keep him away from the atrocity the soldiers were ready to commit.
“The three others were taken to an isolated house. Afterward an anti-tank shell was fired. When the shell missed the target, six hand grenades were thrown into the house. They killed an elderly man and woman, and the elderly woman was put to death with a firearm,” according to the document.
“Afterward they torched the house and burned the three bodies. When Hajj Ibrahim returned with his guard, he was told that the three others had been sent to the hospital in Ramallah. Apparently he didn’t believe the story, and a few hours later he too was put to death, with four bullets,” added the document.
The declassified State Archives also consist of several pages of minutes from those years, including the testimony of Shmuel Mikunis, a member of the Provisional State Council (predecessor to the Knesset) from the Communist Party, who reported on the atrocities perpetrated in the Meron region.
Mikunis requested clarification from former Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion about acts that had been carried out by members of the Jewish terrorist group, Irgun.
According to the declassified documents, “A. They annihilated with a machine gun 35 Arabs who had surrendered to that company with a white flag in their hands. B. They took as captives peaceful residents, among them women and children, ordered them to dig a pit, pushed them into it with long French bayonets and shot the unfortunates until they were all murdered. There was even a woman with an infant in her arms. C. Arab children of about 13-14 who were playing with grenades were all shot. D. A girl of about 19-20 was raped by men from Altalena [an Irgun unit]; afterward she was stabbed with a bayonet and a wooden stick was thrust into her body.”
The declassified documents, investigated in Haartez’s report also includes details on the Hula massacre in Lebanon and the depopulated Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. Though the report is lengthy, the paper highlights that many more details remain unknown; “This is not surprising, considering how much material remains locked away in the archives,” it explained.
MEMO | December 8, 2021
Pro-Palestine campaigners have called on the charities regulator, the Charity Commission, to launch an urgent investigation into the activities of a pro-Zionist lobby group after it falsely accused anti-Israel demonstrators of extremism, racism, and intimidation at a recent protest rally.
The Community Security Trust attempted to turn what was a peaceful anti-Israel protest against the presence of Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, at a university event last month into a panic about anti-Semitism.
The CST is a registered charity that ostensibly exists to “provide safety, security, and advice to the Jewish community in the UK”. However, rather than serving this purpose it routinely engages in political activities designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism and censure.
The latest evidence of this came at a debate hosted by the London School of Economics Debating Society on Tuesday 9 November 2021. This was a peaceful protest that attracted scores of students and others from all backgrounds, with many wishing to express their opposition to racist Israeli policies that have seen Palestinians dispossessed and oppressed for over 70 years.
Although the event passed off peacefully without any arrests the CST has since made unsubstantiated allegations about supposed anti-Semitism amongst the protestors and about the threat these types of protests pose to Jewish students, deliberately conflating anti-Israel activity with anti-Semitism. The CST has increasingly relied on this false equivalence to demonise anti-Israel campaigners, attempting to damage their credibility using the charge of racism.
The letter reminds the Charity Commission of its differential treatment of Jewish and Muslim charities. In recent years the watchdog has been at pains to remind Muslim charities to steer clear of taking positions on the Palestine issue, but it appears to have given the CST a free pass to support Israel, using underhand methods if desired.
The signatories call on the Charity Commission to launch an investigation into the CST which they say has breached the code on charities engaging in political activity, spreading racial hatred, and the requirement to remain impartial. The full letter can be read here.
IHRC Chair Massoud Shadjareh said: “It would seem that in the eyes of CST there is no good pro-Palestinian and everybody who opposes Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians is fair game for demonisation. This latest episode highlights once again how CST primarily behaves as an apologist for apartheid and a brutal illegal occupation.”
Palestine Action | December 6, 2021
Three Palestine Action activists, dubbed the ‘Elbit Three’, have today been found not guilty of criminal damage charges in a trial taking place at Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrates Court. The trial, which commenced on Friday 3rd December, saw Elbit Systems and the Crown Prosecution Service attempt to criminalise individuals who took a stand against the manufacture of drones and drone parts. The products manufactured at the site of the protest, the UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire, are key components for a range of Elbit’s combat drones, used extensively by Israel for bombardments of Gazan civilians.
Elbit Systems are Israel’s largest private arms company, supplying 85% of Israel’s drone fleet. Their Hermes drones, manufactured with UK-made components, are regularly deployed in bombardments of Gaza, with Elbit also supplying a range of surveillance equipment, armaments, and specialist military technologies for the Israeli military and police. Palestine Action have undertaken a campaign of sustained direct action against Elbit Systems – across their 10 sites in the UK – with this action in Shenstone having occured in January 2021, six months since Palestine Action launched. Despite many dozens of actions taken, and over £15,000,000 in damages caused (according to police), this is the first time that activists had faced trial, with all previous charges having been dropped in the run-up to trial dates.
The presiding judge, Judge Waites, stated that the Crown had failed to prove that convicting the defendents would be proportionate with their freedom to protest. He stated further points which included: Palestine is an important issue, the arms trade is an important issue, the defendants believed in what they were doing, and the location was specifically chosen. These are the points that Palestine Action has long stated: through targetted and deliberate direct action, individuals can make a measured impact on the lives of civilians in Palestine by disrupting and undermining Israel’s arms trade.
This verdict represents a serious defeat for Elbit Systems, who have long maintained that their business is lawful and that they are therefore to be protected from such actions. This belief has been shared by the British state: the police have offered a round-the-clock rapid response and extensive protection to Elbit’s death factories, and the CPS have attempted to prosecute those who take a stand against Elbit’s business of bloodshed.
The defence, represented by Palestinian barrister Mira Hammad and Richard Brigden of Garden Court North (instructed by Kelly’s solicitors), presented their case that the action taken was to prevent a greater crime. An activist involved in the trial elaborated, stating that the action was taken to shut down the factory for one day in an attempt to stem the flow of drones and stop the bombings. They stated that Elbit provide 85% of Israel’s drones, with Elbit describing themselves as the ‘backbone’ of the Israeli airforce, adding that there is extensive documentation of the drones being used for attacks on the civil population of Gaza. They stated that this is not only during intensive military excursions, but also for extrajudicial killings and indescriminate bombings – with Elbit drones being linked directly to the killing of four children playing on a beach in Gaza in 2014.
Another activist, Sarah, later stated that:
“Throwing this paint may not protect Gaza. What protects Gaza is stopping the bombing. Elbit produce weapons, tanks and drones used to commit crimes against humanity, and this is what is unlawful. Export licenses should not be granted while Elbit continue to violate human rights. In the face of these crimes, you have to do something. If you do nothing, then Elbit continues to make its smart weaponry which enables Israel to kill efficiently. Elbit has no business being allowed to be in the UK. It has no values that are shared with humanity”. Following this, a standing ovation was given from the public gallery.
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 6, 2021
For whatever reason, some mistakenly perceive the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, as liberal, progressive, and even ‘pro-Palestinian’. Of course, none of this is true. This misconstrued depiction of an essentially Zionist and anti-Palestinian newspaper tells of a much bigger story of how confusing Israeli politics is, and how equally confused many of us are in understanding the Israeli political discourse.
On 28 November, newly-elected Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) with hundreds of soldiers and many illegal Jewish settlers, including the who’s who of Israel’s extremists.
The scene was reminiscent of a similar occurrence where late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had stormed, along with thousands of soldiers and police officers, the Haram Sharif Compound in occupied East Jerusalem in September 2000. It was this particular event that unleashed the second Palestinian uprising, Intifada (2000-05), which led to the killing of thousands.
Herzog’s gesture of solidarity with the Kiryat Arba settlers was identical to Sharon’s earlier gesture, also made to win the approval of Israel’s burgeoning and influential right-wing extremists.
Only a few months ago, Haaretz had described Herzog as a “centrist, soft-spoken, ‘no drama'” person who had, at times, “felt out of place on Israel’s stormy and fractured political battlefield”. According to Haaretz, Herzog “may be exactly what Israel needs.”
But is this really the case? Marvel at some of the statements made by Herzog as he visited a site where twenty-nine Palestinians were massacred by a Kiryat Arba extremist, Baruch Goldstein, and where many more were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the aftermath of the tragic event. Not only did many Israelis celebrate the memory of Goldstein with a shrine befitting of heroes and saints, but many of Herzog’s companions during the provocative ‘visit’ are ardent followers of the Israeli Jewish terrorist.
“We have to continue dreaming of peace,” Herzog declared while marking the first night of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah inside the Ibrahimi Mosque compound, which was previously emptied of its Muslim worshippers. Proudly, he “condemn(ed) any form of hatred or violence”. Meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli soldiers were terrorising 35,000 inhabitants of the old city of Al-Khalil. These Palestinians, who suffer daily violence at the hands of nearly 800 armed Jewish settlers in Kiryat Arba, along with an equal number of Israeli soldiers, were all locked in. Their shops were closed, their life was put on hold, their walls covered with racist graffiti.
“If he had walked around the corner,” the Israeli news website 972Mag reported referring to the Israeli president, “Herzog might have seen the graffiti on the walls reading ‘gas the Arabs.’
Chances are Herzog already understands – in fact, supports – such racism; after all, he was joined by the likes of Eliyahu Libman, who heads Kiryat Arba regional council, and Hillel Horowitz, the leader of the Jewish settlers of Al-Khalil. It is these two men who preach extremism and violence against the Palestinians as a matter of course. Aside from hosting the Goldstein grave and shrine, the settlement has a park that carries the name of Meir Kahane, the spiritual leader of Israel’s most violent extremists.
In an emotional speech given by Horowitz in the company of Herzog, the settler leader announced that the Israeli president’s violent storming of the Ibrahimi Mosque “reminds us that we did not take the land of foreigners.” He followed with “Your visit here strengthens our mission.”
From Horowitz, Libman, and their ilk’s point of view, their ‘mission’ has been a great success. They have managed to steer Israeli politics almost entirely towards the right. Even the “centrist, soft-spoken” president is now fully embracing their sinister mission.
But will Haaretz acknowledge this reality? That the ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ editorial line they have allegedly championed for many years has completely failed, and purposely so, to depict the truth about Israel?
Compare Haaretz‘s positive portrayal of Herzog with their coverage of the former right-wing Israeli President, Reuven Litvin. The latter, on various occasions, and rightly so, was criticised for his pro-Likud political line and for his divisive role that contributed to an already fragmented Israeli political scene. But when Rivlin, in October 2014, had declared that “Israeli society is sick, and it is our duty to treat this disease,” a Haaretz columnist lashed out suggesting that “Rivlin’s comments are positively bursting with Jew-hatred”.
“First he called Jewish society ‘sick’ – dredging up anti-Semitic tropes about Jews as carriers of cultural and ideological disease. Then he asked whether Jews are ‘decent human beings’: Questioning their humanity itself,” the article argued.
Of course, the sickness of “violence, hostility, bullying, (and) racism”, that Rivlin had then pointed out, is very much real. Other symptoms of this horrible disease also include military occupation, apartheid, and genocidal violence like that frequently meted out against the besieged Gaza Strip.
While this Israeli ‘disease’ is becoming common knowledge globally, with such organisations as Human Rights Watch and many others describing it in the most honest and blunt terms, the vast majority of Israeli society, including their representatives and their ‘soft-spoken’ president, remain blind to it, shielded from the truth by their own hubris, infatuated with their military power and intoxicated by the humiliation and violence to which Palestinians are subjected to, in Al-Khalil, in Gaza, in Jerusalem, and throughout occupied Palestine.
There are no indications that Israeli society, government, and media – ‘liberal’ or right-wing – will, on their own, develop the necessary antibodies that will cure the disease of racism, military occupation, and apartheid. Yes, it will ultimately be the Palestinian resistance that will make the decisive difference of holding Israel accountable. But that can only happen when the international community takes a courageous stance in advocating Palestinian rights and unconditionally supporting the Palestinian quest for freedom.
Whether right-wing, left-wing, or centre, Israel is committed to its military superiority, its racism, and to the military occupation more than ever before. The sooner we accept this fact, and quit subscribing to the illusion that change in Israel will happen from within, the sooner the Palestinian people will finally achieve the justice they need and deserve.
By Eva Bartlett | RT | December 2, 2021
Syrians accuse the Western-backed Kurdish enclave in the country of using ethnic cleansing and child soldiers against them to form a new anti-Arab state. The parallels with Israel’s creation in the 1940s are striking.
Kurdish forces in Syria have been lauded by many in the West as being fighters for freedom and an autonomous society. But, unless you’ve been following independent researchers and the Syrian media, you might be unaware of the crimes the US-backed group have been committing over a number of years.
On November 25, the Daily Sabah (a website not sympathetic to the Syrian government) reported on one of their most sickening practices. It revealed, “YPG/PKK terrorists detained three more 15-year-old girls – Hediyye Abdurrahim Anter, Evin Jalal Halil and Ayana Idris Ibrahim – in Amuda in Hassakeh province on Nov. 21 to forcibly recruit them as ‘child fighters.’ The terror group detained two children, aged 13 and 16, in early August. And two children aged 16 and 13 were kidnapped Aug. 23.”
The piece went on to note that this practice of abducting children and forcing them to fight has been documented by the United Nations, with one report stating that the YPG/PKK used more than 400 children between July 2018 and June 2020.
Yet, the world has been led to believe that the self-declared autonomous region – known as Rojava and comprising areas of Hassakeh, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo governorates – is a haven for liberals and feminists, with freedom-loving Kurdish fighters based there fighting ISIS and liberating Syria.
Indeed, the YPG Rojava page claims: “The YPG was set up to protect the legacy and values of the people of Rojava and is founded on the principles of the paradigm of a democratic society, ecology and woman’s liberation. Without preferring or discriminating any religion, language, nation, gender or political parties, the YPG is protecting the country against all attacks from outside. The YPG is the Democratic Nation’s defense force and is not related to any political party.”
It reads like a feelgood fairytale, but is not based in reality.
The utopian image of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the YPG and PKK, is betrayed by the kidnappings, which sadly are not a new development. Search for QSD – their Arabic acronym – on Syrian media and you’ll see regular updates on Kurdish forces kidnapping civilians and journalists.
This image is further betrayed by their ethnic cleansing of indigenous Syrians from the northeastern Syrian regions Kurdish forces occupy and collaboration with illegally occupying US forces.
But this won’t be highlighted in corporate media. Instead, you will still find odes romanticizing Kurdish fighters, with one such recent story deceptively saying that the areas controlled by Kurdish forces have a “predominantly Kurdish population” – a claim not backed up by the truth.
As author Stephen Gowans detailed in a 2017 article, Kurds in Syria comprise, “only a small percentage of the Syrian population… Estimates of the proportion of the total Kurd population living in Syria vary from two to seven percent based on population figures presented in the CIA World Factbook.”
And yet, Assyrians, Arameans, and other Syrians who have lived there for generations should accept being ruled, or expelled, by Kurds?
Gowans went on to note, “Kurdish fighters have used the campaign against ISIS as an opportunity to extend Kurdistan into traditionally Arab territories in which Kurds have never been in the majority.”
In 2018, Syrian journalist Sarah Abed wrote of the SDF’s kidnapping and ethnic cleansing, noting not only the abductions of men, but, again, children. She recorded how Eddie Gaboro Hanna, the founder of Patriarchal Relief Care Australia, a group providing assistance to Christian families impacted by wars in Syria and Iraq, had explained, “They are taking young Christian boys by force to sign them up for the Kurdish military and send them to the front line.”
And he added, “Christians are treated as second-class citizens [here] in their own land. Just like how ISIS has the Islamic tax they have their own Kurdish one. They’ve replaced ISIS.”
Although the BBC’s coverage of the Kurds’ activities in Syria is predictably pro-SDF, in 2015, even it reported on their ethnic cleansing and displacing of indigenous Syrians. Citing an Amnesty International report, it noted the YPG were accused of “razing entire villages after capturing them from Islamic State (IS),” in Hassakeh and Raqqa provinces.
The Kurds’ history in Syria
In January 2019, I spoke with geopolitical analyst and Sputnik contributor Laith Marouf about the Kurds in Syria. A descendant of eastern Syria’s Deir ez-Zor governorate, part of which is now occupied by Kurds, Marouf had a lot to say about the history of the Kurds in Syria and this 21st century land-usurpation project.
He told me, “There was a wave of Kurdish refugees coming down to Syria (from Turkey) in the 1940s, and the second wave of them in the 1960s when the PKK started the armed rebellion against the Turkish government in what was Arab lands.”
“They were given citizenship by the Syrian government. They were armed and given protection by the Syrian state to fight for their liberation in the Kurdistan mountains in Turkey, and the Syrian government housed the leadership of all the Kurdish resistance up until the early 90s.”
Marouf noted that Syria’s support for the Kurds saw Turkey threatening to invade in the 1990s and building numerous dams on the Euphrates, cutting the water flow. Yet, Syria refused to hand over PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. Marouf emphasized: “Syria almost went to war with Turkey, and the Syrian people (in the northeast) went thirsty and the agricultural fields—the breadbasket of Syria—almost collapsed those couple of years, to protect Kurdish rights.”
“And then what happens now is some crazies are saying there’s something called Rojava and that they can secede and colonize and settle and steal parts of Syrian lands.”
He, too, spoke of the years of kidnappings and disappearances of those critical of Kurdish rule. “Even Kurdish Syrians that are critical of what the YPG is doing, even remotely critical professors in the universities in Hassakeh and Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, were disappeared. And these were just critical Kurds.
“So you could imagine what happened to the Assyrian and the Arab leaders in the area, thinkers, tribal leaders, ex-military – huge amounts of disappearances and forced displacements.”
And as Abed’s article highlighted, formerly Assyrian villages in Hassakeh and Raqqa have been fully taken over by Kurdish forces. “They’re moving in the Kurdish militias and their family members into those villages and creating new ethnically pure towns and villages that are Kurdish. And this is expanding to the holdings of the Syrian churches and their Armenian churches, they confiscated all their land.”
So much, then, for the Rojava “legacy and values” that included “without preferring or discriminating any religion, language, nation, gender or political parties.”
Marouf also said, “They have enforced an educational curriculum on all the schools—including schools that are run by ethnic and/or religious groups – so all those that are run by the churches are being told that they have to teach a certain curriculum that specifically promotes and propagates falsehoods about the Kurdish control of the area.”
“When the Assyrians refused, because these are their own private schools that are controlled by the church, the YPG went ahead and shut down all the schools, with armed men making sure the kids cannot go to school.”
The ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of indigenous people sounds horribly familiar, as Marouf pointed out. “So, the reality is that we have an ethno-nationalist settler colonial state being enforced by the empire, called Rojava – and it’s being sold the exact way that Israel was being sold in the 1940s. It’s like cut and paste propaganda saying that we’re creating a utopia of secular and socialist government in the ‘sea of barbaric Arabs.’”
Over the years, I’ve had Rojava supporters criticize me for respecting Syria’s sovereignty and speaking critically about the West’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. Instead, according to them, I should have been supporting this false utopia which has killed and displaced many. To them, I say you have been deluded, as much of the Western left has on Syria.
And you can rest assured that had it been Syria committing these crimes, the media would be reporting loudly and regularly. But because they are being carried out by puppets of the West, all is quiet on that front.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
![US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and President of the Security Council speaks during a press conference for the Security Council programme of work in March at the UN Headquarters in New York on 1 March 2021. [TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/GettyImages-1231458912.jpg?resize=1200%2C799&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | December 2, 2021
Israel seems to have acquired another formidably biased ally in the latest US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Her Trump era predecessor Nikki Haley once said, “If there’s anything I have no patience for, it is bullies – and the UN was being such a bully to Israel because they could.” Thomas-Greenfield is going down the same route; less fiery language, perhaps, and more diplomatic tact, but subjugating Palestinians to Israel’s colonial violence nonetheless.
During a briefing to the UN Security Council this week, Thomas-Greenfield spoke about Palestinians’ security concerns while invalidating them in the same speech by upholding Israel’s security narrative.
Israeli settlers, she noted, are attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while settlement expansion is threatening the two-state paradigm. However, Israel has “real and understandable security concerns” about which the UN is not doing enough. That’s if the US narrative is to be believed which, of course, it shouldn’t.
Israelis “interpret the overwhelming focus on Israel in this body as a denial of Israel’s right to exist and an unfair focus on this one country – and they are correct,” Thomas-Greenfield declared. Only a few days ago, the UN Secretary General made sure that the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People did not infringe on Israel’s colonial existence. So how can the US ambassador claim that the UN is denying Israel’s right to exist, when the two-state framework and the 1947 Partition Plan endorsed colonialism in Palestine and has protected it ever since?
The UN’s “unfair” focus on Israel is favourable to the settler-colonial enterprise. Its alleged unfairness has generated unrivalled impunity for Israel, while Palestinians have been begging for their political rights for decades to no avail. While Israel is recognised, endorsed and supported, Palestinians have lost so much territory that recognition of a Palestinian state renders no tangible benefits in terms of state-building. The “unfair focus” to which Thomas-Greenfield refers has allowed a colonial settlement project – with war crimes, as the International Criminal Court determined – to continue without any punitive measures, while Palestinians remain stuck in a perpetual cycle of dispossession. “Unfair focus” has also prioritised Israel’s existence over the Palestinian right of return, which the international community has long since written off as unfeasible and worthy only as a symbolic gesture, as opposed to a necessary political reckoning.
Thomas-Greenfield’s rhetoric takes the purported anti-Israel bias at the UN to a whole new level. The UN does not speak of decolonisation, let alone “a denial of Israel’s right to exist”, as she puts it. On the contrary, the UN affirmed Israel’s existence despite knowing that the creation of the settler-colonial state was based upon the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their own land.
In fact, so favourable is the UN’s focus on Israel, that Palestine is defined through Israel’s colonial requirements that will only consider complete annihilation of the land and its people as an acceptable end result. Hence the silence on Israel’s de-facto annexation of ever more Palestinian land, while issuing futile reprimands on settlement expansion and promoting dissociation between Israel’s violations of international law to avoid speaking of decolonisation. In light of all the pro-Israel bias at the UN, what else do the US and Israel expect from the international community?
RT | November 24, 2021
Australia has designated all of Lebanon’s influential Hezbollah movement as a terrorist organization, expanding the earlier ban on its armed units to the political wing.
Hezbollah poses a “real” and “credible” threat to Australia, Karen Andrews, the country’s home affairs minister, said on Wednesday.
The Lebanon-based group “continues to threaten terrorist attacks and provide support to terrorist organizations,” Andrews added.
The move means that Australian citizens are now forbidden from becoming members of Hezbollah or providing funds for its operations. The group’s military wing has been on Australia’s terrorist list since 2003.
People from Lebanon make up the largest Middle Eastern community in Australia – estimated at around 230,000, mainly in the Greater Sydney area and Melbourne. Immigration to Australia peaked during the Lebanese Civil War between 1976 and 1981, but has declined significantly since then.
Hezbollah operates in various fields in Lebanon, acting as a political party, a military organization, and a provider of basic services to the population.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who reportedly asked his Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison to ban Hezbollah’s political wing during the UN climate summit in Glasgow in early November, thanked Canberra for the move. He said the two countries will continue “to act in every way possible against terrorism, including in the international arena.”
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also expressed his gratitude that Australia, which he described as “a close friend of Israel,” joined 17 other nations that realize “there are no separate wings to terrorist organizations.”
Israel, which waged a war against Hezbollah in 2006, considers the group, which has strong links to Iran, a threat to national security.
Hezbollah has been labeled a terrorist organization by the US, Israel, and the Arab League. The EU and many individual European nations have banned its military wing, but were reluctant to act against the political party over concerns it could further destabilize the situation in Lebanon.
MEMO | November 19, 2021
The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, on Friday, decried the British intention to label it as a “terrorist organization”, Anadolu News Agency reports.
In a statement, the group said Britain continues “favouring the (Israeli) aggressor at the expense of the (Palestinian) victims.”
“Resisting the occupation with all possible means, including armed resistance, is a guaranteed right by the international law for the people under occupation,” Hamas statement said.
It added: “The (Israeli) occupation is terrorism. Killing the indigenous people, expelling them by force, demolishing their homes and detaining them are terrorism.”
The statement urged the international community, including Britain, to stop the “double standards and the grave violation of the international law.”
UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, is expected to outlaw Hamas for “links to terrorism and anti-Semitism against Jewish people.”
Since 2001, the UK has been calling the Hamas armed wing—Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades—a terrorist organization, but did not include the Hamas political bureau within the designation.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, on Twitter welcomed the decision by Britain, claiming: “Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
“I welcome the UK’s intention to declare Hamas a terrorist organization in its entirety because that’s exactly what it is,” he added.
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | November 16, 2021
The revelation a few years ago that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been conducting mass surveillance on millions of Americans reignited the conversation on governments’ misconduct and their violation of human rights and privacy laws. Until recently, however, Israel has been spared due criticism, not only for its unlawful spying methods on the Palestinians, but also for being the originator of many of the technologies which are now being criticised heavily by human rights groups worldwide.
Even at the height of various controversies involving government surveillance in 2013, Israel remained on the margins, despite the fact that its government, more than any other in the world, uses racial profiling, mass surveillance and numerous spying techniques to sustain its military occupation of Palestine.
In Gaza, two million Palestinians are living under an Israeli blockade. They are surrounded by walls, electric fences, underground barriers, naval vessels and a multitude of snipers. From above, the tannaana, the Arabic slang used by Palestinians for unmanned drones, watch and record everything. These armed drones are used to destroy anything deemed suspicious from an Israeli “security” perspective. Moreover, every Palestinian wishing to leave or return to Gaza — and only a relative few are allowed the privilege — is subjected to the most stringent “security” measures, involving various government agencies and endless military checks. This applies as much to a Palestinian toddler as it does to a terminally-ill Palestinian man or woman seeking treatment unavailable in the besieged territory.
In the West Bank, Israel’s security “experiment” takes many forms. While the Israeli objective in Gaza is to entrap people, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem its aim is to control the everyday life of the Palestinians. Aside from the 1,660 kilometre-long Apartheid Wall in the West Bank, there are many other walls, fences, trenches and other types of barriers that are aimed at fragmenting Palestinian communities. These isolated communities are only connected through an elaborate system of Israeli military checkpoints, many of which are permanent, but with many more duly erected or dismantled depending on the “security” objectives on any given day.
Much of the surveillance occurs daily at these Israeli checkpoints. While Israel uses the convenient term “security” to justify its practices against Palestinians, actual security has very little to do with what takes place at checkpoints. Many Palestinians have died and many mothers have given birth or lost their newborn babies while waiting for Israeli security clearance. It is a daily torment, and Palestinians are subjected to it because they are the unwitting participants in a very profitable Israeli experiment.
Fortunately, the details of Israel’s undemocratic practices are becoming better known. On 8 November, for example, the Washington Post revealed an Israeli mass surveillance operation, which uses “Blue Wolf” technology to create a massive database of all Palestinians.
This additional measure gives soldiers the opportunity to use their own cameras to take pictures of as many Palestinians as possible and match them “to a database of images so extensive that one former soldier described it as the army’s secret ‘Facebook for Palestinians’.”
We know very little about this “Facebook for Palestinians”, aside from what has been revealed in the media. However, we do know that Israeli soldiers compete to take as many photos of Palestinian faces as possible, as those with the highest number of photos could potentially receive certain rewards, the nature of which remains unclear.
While the “Blue Wolf” story is receiving some attention in international media, it is nothing new for Palestinians. To be a Palestinian living under occupation is to carry multiple permits and magnetic cards; to require numerous “security” clearances; to have your photo taken regularly; to have your movements monitored; and to be ready to answer any question about your friends, your family, your co-workers and your acquaintances. When that is impractical because, say, you live under siege in Gaza, then the work is entrusted to unmanned drones scanning the land, sea and sky.
The reason that “Blue Wolf” is receiving some traction in the media is that Israel has been implicated recently in one of the world’s biggest espionage operations. Pegasus is a type of malware that spies on iPhones and Android devices to extract photos, messages and emails, and to record calls. Tens of thousands of people around the world, many of whom are prominent activists, journalists, officials, business leaders and such like, have fallen victim to this operation. Unsurprisingly, Pegasus is produced by an Israeli technology company, the NSO Group, whose products are involved heavily in the monitoring of and spying on Palestinians, as confirmed by the Dublin-based Front Line Defenders, and as reported in the New York Times on 8 November.
It is a sad reflection of world affairs that Israel’s unlawful and undemocratic practices only became the subject of international condemnation when the victims were high-ranking personalities, such as French President Emmanuel Macron and others. When Palestinians were on the receiving end of Israeli spying, surveillance and racial profiling, the story was deemed to be unworthy of global outrage and coverage.
Moreover, for many years, Israel has promoted and sold its sinister “security technology” to the rest of the world as “field-tested”, meaning that it has been used against Palestinians living under occupation. That may have raised a few eyebrows among concerned individuals and human rights groups, but the tried and tested brand has, nonetheless, allowed Israel to become the world’s eighth-largest arms exporter. Israeli military and security technology is now used by governments around the world. It can be found at North American and European airports; at the Mexico-US border; in the hands of various intelligence agencies; and in European Union territorial waters, largely to intercept refugees from war (in which Israeli technology is also utilised) and asylum seekers.
Covering up Israel’s unlawful and inhuman practices against the Palestinians has become a liability for the credibility of the very people who justify Israeli actions in the name of “security” and “self-defence”, including successive administrations in Washington. On 3 November, the Joe Biden administration decided to blacklist the Israeli NSO Group for acting “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” This is a right and proper measure, of course, but it fails to address the ongoing Israeli violations against the people in occupied Palestine.
The truth is, for as long as Israel maintains its military occupation of Palestine, and as long as the Israeli military-industrial complex continues to see Palestinians as subjects in a mass “security experiment”, the Middle East — in fact, the entire world — will continue to pay the price.
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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