‘Responsibility for Israel’s right to exist’ pillar of Germany’s national security strategy
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
The Cradle | July 3, 2023
On 14 June, Germany announced its first National Security Strategy since the end of World War II under the slogan “To promote world peace in a united Europe.”
While the strategy takes aim at several “integrated security” elements, from military and “terrorist” threats to those posed by climate change, healthcare, and “the decline of democracy,” the document also stresses that a central security pillar for Berlin is to “take on responsibility for Israel’s right to exist.”
“We will continue to bear responsibility for Israel’s right to exist … The responsibility for Israel’s right to exist remains a permanent commitment for us,” the executive summary reads.
While Germany’s position is not new, it confirms what many have seen as certain through the years. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly emphasized that Germany’s support for Israel’s “right to exist” is a national interest and “must never be questioned.”
During the visit of former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid to Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed that Germany “will always stand by Israel and that Germany and Israel. They are the closest allies, strategic partners, and friends.”
Berlin also remains one of the most important trading partners for Tel Aviv, as the volume of trade exchange between the two reached $5.2 billion in 2020. Both nations also partner in several defense projects.
Following the start of the war in Ukraine, Scholz described it as a “turning point” and stressed, “Germany must stand on the right side of history.” However, since making these statements, Berlin has only redoubled its reliance on US diktats, even after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bombing cut the EU nation off from vital natural gas supplies.
In an article published by Foreign Affairs, Scholz stressed that today’s priority is “the defense of the rules-based world order,” that is, the defense of US hegemony over the world order, including Israeli supremacy in West Asia.
In this regard, Berlin’s National Security Strategy takes aim at Iran by accusing the Persian nation of “violating the human rights of its own citizens,” “pursuing its nuclear ambitions,” and even of “blocking efforts” to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that was blown up by the US in 2018.
The document also takes aim at Russia, calling it “the most significant threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area” while calling China “a partner, competitor and systemic rival.”
Moreover, the document highlights that Germany “owes its security, as well as peace at the heart of Europe, to the United States of America.”
It also reaffirms Germany’s commitment to NATO, saying Berlin will increase its military spending to 2 percent of its GDP.
Another security issue for Berlin is the delivery of oil and gas from West Asia and spreading “democracy and protecting human rights” via government-funded NGOs.
Thousands displaced from Jenin as Israeli siege enters second day
The Cradle – July 4 2023
Around 3,000 Palestinians were forced to leave the Jenin refugee camp overnight on 4 July, as the Israeli army pushed ahead with the second day of the largest military invasion into the occupied West Bank since 2002.
“There are about 3,000 people who have left the camp so far,” Jenin deputy governor Kamal Abu al-Roub told AFP on Monday night, highlighting that 18,000 people live there.
Palestinians leaving their homes told reporters that Israeli forces had threatened to target them if they refused to leave, while some said the troops fired live shots at their homes.
Several families were tear-gassed as they fled for safety.
According to the mayor of Jenin, Nidal Obeidi, the Israeli army started demolishing homes in the refugee camp after displacing their residents.
“Those being targeted now are not just the resistance fighters, but civilians are being killed and wounded as well,” he told Al Jazeera.
Tel Aviv’s brutal invasion of the flashpoint West Bank city started in the early hours of 3 July and has left at least 10 Palestinians dead. Over 100 others have been wounded.
Shelling and fighting continued overnight. In the early hours of Tuesday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes in the Al-Damej neighborhood, while drones could be seen flying over the camp.
The Israeli siege involved drone strikes, Apache helicopters, and ground forces, including army bulldozers that tore up streets across Jenin. The offensive has been widely described as one of the worst Israeli attacks on the West Bank since the end of the Second Intifada.
While reporting on the siege, several journalists reported they were directly targeted by Israeli live fire. Al Araby TV correspondent Ahmed Shehadeh said the army destroyed his camera while he and four other journalists were taking refuge inside one of the homes in the camp before being evacuated by the Red Crescent.
While the Israeli military initially declined to say how long the siege of Jenin would take, army spokesperson Daniel Hagari announced on Tuesday morning that the operation “could end faster than initially expected, even within a matter of days.”
The operation was launched in response to the unprecedented rise of armed resistance in the West Bank, which has become a significant threat to Israeli cities and illegal West Bank settlements.
Confronting the massive invasion are several different resistance factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Jenin Brigade, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and groups linked with Hamas.
The Jenin Brigade claims they have shot down at least four Israeli drones since the start of the siege.
Solidarity with Jenin has been pouring in from across West Asia and North Africa, with dozens of nations condemning the Israeli aggression.
A general strike was announced in the occupied West Bank for Tuesday, while people in Gaza held rallies to express solidarity with the people of Jenin.
Gaza resistance factions on Monday said in a statement, “We call on all our people in cities, villages, and camps, especially around Jenin, to confront the Israeli occupation and support Jenin.”
“We call on the resistance fighters in all arenas to respond to any aggression if the Israeli occupation continues its crimes against our people.”
Christianity’s Survival in Israel Is Under Attack
Extremist government headed by Netanyahu promotes de facto ethnic cleansing
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 4, 2023
Israel’s new government is still taking shape, but some of the policy changes being promoted are so Jewish-centric that they will inevitably impact disproportionately on minority disadvantaged communities like the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. The government itself is already being described in the press as the “most extremist or right wing in Israel’s history,” though what exactly that means is left to the perception of the reader. Several government ministers have even at times been excoriated for some of their extreme views inclusive of encouraging homicidal genocide or even the complete removal of all non-Jews by force from the country and occupied territories.
The Joe Biden Administration, in which nearly half of all senior appointments are Jews, as well as nearly everyone who deals with foreign policy, is doing its part to comply with traditional White House submission to Israel’s perceived interests. Israel is in the driving seat, and Biden knows it, declaring himself to be personally a Zionist. Much has been made of the fact that Biden has not invited Netanyahu to the White House to congratulate him on his latest electoral victory over concerns relating to the proposed judiciary changes and increasing settlement expansion, but it is clear that Israel and America’s Jewish Lobby are fully in control of both the White House and Congress.
Israel has certainly morphed into a nice place if one likes to feel racially and morally superior while shooting Arab children. This move of the Israeli government rightwards is reflected in a shift in popular sentiment. A recent poll by Israel Democracy Institute revealed that a record-high 62% of Israeli Jews place themselves on the right wing of the political map. The shift is best appreciated by examining the profiles of several of Netanyahu’s new ministers. The one most often cited is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party. Ben-Gvir, who calls for deporting Arabs, has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for involvement in a Jewish terrorist group. Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians, which have included marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns. To cap the irony, though he is a persistent law violator he has been the National Security Minister since November 2022, which gives him authority over the police. He is currently seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians and also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.
Another extremist politician who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper. Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people. He has now been granted authority over settlement development and support on the West Bank.
Though Israel’s internal enemies, such as they are, are frequently characterized as Muslims, the dwindling ancient Christian community in Israel and what remains of Palestine has also been under increasing pressure as Israel becomes less multi-cultural and more a state designed only to accommodate Jews. Increasing illegal settlement growth in largely Christian areas has also threatened the survival of many Christian villages and towns. Nevertheless, Israel remains a home to 185,000 Christian Palestinians, most of whom reside in Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem. Tens of thousands of people of partial or full Christian ancestry, some of whom are married to Jews, live in Israel as well. Beyond that, there are many Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, institutions, holy places and cemeteries in Israel.
Several months ago, the head of the Roman Catholic church in Israel, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said that Christians have faced difficult challenges since the formation of Netanyahu’s far right-wing government last December. According to Pizzaballa, his government has emboldened ultra-nationalist religious activists, many of whom are armed settlers, and some of whom have harassed male and female members of the clergy and vandalized religious property. Pizzaballa observed how “The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new. These people feel they are protected … the cultural and political atmosphere can now justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians.” A colleague, Francesco Patton, the Custodian of the Holy Land, elaborated how “We are horrified and hurt in the wake of the many incidents of violence and hatred that have taken place recently against the Catholic community in Israel.” He described the desecration of a Lutheran cemetery, the vandalizing of a Maronite prayer room, urination on holy sites, destruction of sacred images and the spraying of “death to Christians” on church property, all taking place shortly after the new government was installed. He also noted “the responsibility of the leaders, of those who have power,” adding that the Israeli police routinely failed to investigate such incidents after the churches reported them.
To determine if the claims of increased violence and hate crimes directed against Christians were true, on June 26th the liberal leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz sent one of its journalists dressed as a priest into downtown Jerusalem. Within five minutes, the journalist Yossi Eli “was derided and spat at, including by a child and a soldier… A bit later a man mocked [him] in Hebrew, saying, ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned.’ Then an 8-year-old spat at [him], as did [another] soldier when a group of troops passed by later.”
Given what is going on on-the-ground, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has called for an investigation into the role that Israeli-US dual national settlers are currently playing in the recent wave of violence directed against both Christian and Muslim Palestinian towns and villages. ADC Executive Director Abed Ayoub has said that “We have strong reason to believe that American citizens are among the key perpetrators of the most recent brutal and violent attacks.” Since June 21st, armed Israeli settler mobs have been terrorizing Palestinian villages in the West Bank on a nearly daily basis. They have destroyed homes, burned vehicles, and killed at least one Palestinian. For decades US Citizens have moved to Israeli settlements, which they use as bases for regularly engaging in violence against Palestinians, all with impunity, as the Israeli police and army provide the Arabs with no protection and instead often protect the settlers. Many of these US Citizens also take advantage of American charitable and non-profit tax laws to fund illegal settlements and initiate violence against Palestinians.
In another major incident, five weeks ago dozens of Israeli extremists, primarily Orthodox Jews, disrupted a Christian prayer event for pilgrims near the Western Wall. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh King and leading Rabbi Avi Thau led the protesters. Denouncing the Christians as “missionaries” trying to convert Jews, the extremists spat at and cursed the pilgrims, many of whom were ironically normally strongly pro-Israel evangelical Christians from the US. Deputy Mayor King said that Christians should enjoy freedom of worship “only inside their churches.”
According to Protecting Holy Land Christians, an organization established by Christian groups to raise awareness of threats their religion, 2022 was “one of the worst years for Christians in Jerusalem to date.” The organization reported spitting attacks, vandalism, and property theft as mechanisms of erasure. And there are other accounts of how Christians have been subjected to increasing persecution. A recent report details how Palestinians have been targeted by what it calls settler-colonialism, which is a series of measures intended to destroy their communities and drive them from their land. It identifies seven policies that Israel uses against Palestinians throughout the whole of Mandatory Palestine (1948 Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem) and also to punish those in exile: “denial of residency; land confiscation and denial of use; discriminatory planning; denial of access to natural resources and services; imposition of a permit regime; fragmentation, segregation and isolation; denial of reparations; and suppression of resistance.” The report concludes “Whether these policies are considered separately or taken together, they amount to forced population transfer, a grave breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).”
To cite only one example of how it works, the venerable Armenian Christian community has been the victim of a controversial land sale in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City Armenian Quarter that is being developed as a luxury resort which will effectively destroy a neighborhood that has existed for seven hundred years. The Australian-Israeli developer who obtained the land apparently did so through a shady deal with a bribed community official that circumvented local zoning and property sale regulations. The religious leadership of the Armenian community, which numbers less than 1,000, fears that the resort will force many families, already suffering under Israel’s rule, to depart.
Recently, these essentially genocidal measures have included the outright theft of their historic buildings and land by the government, and denial of other rights, including refusal to permit gatherings of the faithful at the existing churches on major holidays like Christmas and Easter. There have also been many physical attacks on individual Christians carried out by extremist Jews as well as desecration of Christian religious sites and destruction or defacement of Christian relics and statuary. A conference in Jerusalem held last Friday to address the issue of increased violence against Christians attracted a number of diplomats, scholars and representatives of religious groups, but it was boycotted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The US Embassy also did not send a representative or observer, indicating clearly that it was not interested in the plight of Christians in Israel, or rather that it did not even want to admit that there was a problem.
So there you have it. The new Israeli government is not very interested in human rights for anyone who is not a Conservative or Orthodox Jew. It is, in fact, essentially hostile to all Palestinians and foreigners, be they Muslim, Christian or even irreligious. They denigrate such people as what Germans in the 1930s would have referred to as “untermenschen” meaning subhumans, a word then used to describe Jews, ironically enough. That the United States ignores all of Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations is disgraceful, but par for the course as American Jews who are advocates for Israel have corrupted and taken firm control of the political process. And do not think for a second that Israel’s leaders give one damn about the United States and its people. Recall for a moment how former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referred to Americans in a discussion with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” And more recently Netanyahu said “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” That is what they really think of us.
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.
Spiraling West Bank violence could spell political doom for both Israeli and Palestinian leadership
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | July 3, 2023
The latest upsurge in violence throughout the occupied West Bank signals the failure of US-led efforts to create calm. Both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government were faced with domestic pressure to take escalatory measures against the opposing side, resulting in an Israeli military operation against Palestinian armed groups in Jenin.
Beginning with an Israeli raid on the city of Jenin, a string of violent events again ignited tensions between Palestinians and Israelis inside the occupied West Bank. In mid-June, a number of Israeli armored vehicles stormed Jenin to arrest members of the armed group known as the Jenin Brigades, when they were ambushed by local Palestinian fighters. Seven Israeli soldiers were injured by improvised explosive devices that were detonated underneath their military vehicles. This led to the deployment of Apache helicopters and a large number of Israeli ground forces, who ended up killing seven Palestinians and injuring 91.
Just one day later, two Palestinian gunmen carried out an attack near the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Eli, killing four Israeli settlers and injuring four others. The two shooters were identified as having an affiliation with the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades. Both were shot and killed by Israeli forces that same day.
The increase in violence followed the decision of the Israeli government to allow its far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to assume special powers to develop settlement expansion plans, even without the approval of the Knesset. The move sparked only light condemnation from the US government, which said that it “opposes such unilateral actions that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve and are an obstacle to peace.”
The following night, radical Israeli settlers decided to attack Palestinian villages, in what they called “revenge” for the shooting attack against settlers earlier that day. In the Palestinian village of Turmasaya alone, around 400 armed settlers torched 30 homes and 60 cars. The attack also resulted in over 100 injuries and 1 death. Israeli settler attacks like these target any Palestinian community that they are able to penetrate, almost always with the protection of the Israeli army. One such attack, earlier this year in the village of Huwara, was even described as a “pogrom” by Israeli general Yehuda Fuchs.
The Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was put in an embarrassing position following the events in both Jenin and the settlement of Eli. Both these situations represented a clear development in the sophistication of the West Bank armed groups, proving them capable of inflicting casualties on both Israeli soldiers and settlers in just over a 24 hour window. Already there had been calls from Israeli settler communities, in the northern West Bank, to launch an all-out military operation in order to crush the armed groups, with the above mentioned incidents only leading to further pressure being placed on the government to act.
In an Israeli security session, held to assess the situation inside the West Bank following the Eli shooting attack, it was reported that both Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, opposed the option of launching a military operation inside the occupied territory at the time. The expectation was raised on the government, at that point, to react disproportionately to such attacks, given that the Israeli coalition is held together by a number of hardliners who seek a complete annexation of the West Bank and currently live inside illegal settlements themselves.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration set up two security summits, aimed at improving cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel. The conferences were held in Jordan’s Aqaba and the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh. The goal was to have the PA’s security forces and the Israeli military work together in order to prevent further deterioration in the security situation. One of the components to creating a more stable environment was a plan to utilize a specially trained PA force that would directly confront the West Bank armed groups that have emerged over the past two years. The plan, drawn up by US security coordinator Michael Fenzel, represented political suicide for a PA that is already facing a massive backlash from Palestinians.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, roughly 80% of Palestinians want the current PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. During the latest string of Israeli settler attacks against defenseless Palestinian villages, locals have also gone viral calling on the PA to deploy its roughly 70,000-strong security force to protect against settler attacks. The PA only has limited areas of jurisdiction inside the West Bank and uses its forces to handle domestic Palestinian crime, in addition to protecting Israeli security interests. Under the current circumstances, a direct confrontation between PA forces and Palestinian armed groups could lead to a revolt against its rule inside the territory.
Mahmoud Abbas is currently 87 years old and there is a fear that when he passes away, there will be a power vacuum, which could result in the PA’s collapse or even a revolutionary anti-Israeli group taking over. Although the PA is currently attempting to sit on the fence, knowing that no conflict resolution dialogue has even been entertained with the Israeli side since 2014. It attempts to pretend as if there aren’t thousands of armed Palestinian fighters who are currently operating outside of the administration’s control and that it cannot do anything about Israel’s actions either. This attitude is mostly born out of a desire to remain in the good graces of their top donors, the United States and European Union. While the PA does not want to assume the role of an active protector against Israeli military and settler attacks, which the Palestinian people call on it to be, neither does it want to commit to being a direct aggressor against the armed militant groups.
Unlike the PA, the Israeli government was in the position to launch a military operation against the West Bank armed groups, so it waited and decided to carry out its attack on Sunday night. In 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, during which they killed around 500 Palestinians and effectively eliminated many of the strongholds for the armed groups that were operating at the time. Israel’s army would seek to replicate the 2002 model in any large-scale operation, however, it has instead chosen to isolate Jenin in order to set back the groups, instead of attempting all out elimination. If it is to launch an all encompassing campaign, it is also likely that it will lose many soldiers and that there will be attacks from other territories, such as Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Therefore, there will be a political price to pay for launching such an operation, which is something that Netanyahu knows and is perhaps why he ordered a more limited attack.
Instead of declaring war inside the entire West Bank, it seems that the Israeli army has decided to increase the heat on the armed groups, using tactics like drone strikes to assassinate fighters, while this current escalation is an attempt to show strength and cut back the abilities of the groups. The day after the settlers’ “revenge” attack, Israeli forces announced that they had carried out a missile strike on a car, near a checkpoint that is located in Jenin, killing three Palestinian fighters. This airstrike was significant because it was the first assassination by missile strike in the West Bank since 2005. Now, the current invasion of Jenin is the largest since 2002.
If the Palestinian armed groups are allowed to grow stronger and their influence spreads to other cities, it may be politically impossible in the future for the Israeli government not to launch a large-scale military campaign, which is likely why it has opted for the current approach. However, one interesting element to the recent military operation in Jenin, is the lack of care from Palestinians in Ramallah and other cities, only Palestinians from the refugee camps came out in large demonstrations. This reflects a massive victory of Israeli policy over the Palestinians of the West Bank, they have successfully disconnected them from the suffering of their fellow people and it seems as if life can go on as normal for people living in cities like Ramallah.
Due to the US refusal to present any pathways forward, the West Bank is heading towards even greater violence. Its roadmap for the PA is not reasonable, given that it essentially asks the Palestinian Authority to commit suicide, but on the other hand, it won’t actually punish Israel for violating its own red-lines. Washington is frequently expressing its concern over the Israeli government’s constant approval of settlement expansion plans, yet it is unwilling to take a single step toward doing anything about it and supports Israel’s military solution to a problem that Washington failed to solve. The Biden administration has the power to pressure both the PA and Israel to sit down together today, yet it refuses, offering nothing more than platitudes about peace negotiations that have essentially been dead since the late 1990s. Without any viable options for a solution on the table, there will only be more violence, even if tensions calm temporarily.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Israel worried Hezbollah’s air defense systems will ‘limit freedom of action’ over Lebanon
The Cradle | July 1, 2023
Israeli military planners are concerned about what they describe as “a significant change in the concept of air defense by Hezbollah in Lebanon” after the resistance group “doubled” the number of air defense systems in its possession, according to a report by Maariv newspaper published on 30 June.
The report cites unnamed military officials saying the resistance’s air defense systems will “restrict the freedom of action of the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon.”
“[Hezbollah] doubled the amount of air defense systems in its possession during the last five years … these defense systems are based mainly on modern Iranian systems,” the report adds.
Furthermore, Tel Aviv claims Hezbollah is in possession of the SA8 and SA22 Russian air defense systems, which have been previously deployed in Syria.
“The attack by an Israeli drone, in August 2019, on a facility in a building in the heart of the southern suburbs of Beirut … initiated the turning point in Hezbollah’s strategy, leading to the threat by [Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah] … to start shooting down Israeli drones,” the report highlights.
“Hezbollah implemented this threat two months later when it fired an SA8 missile at an Israeli Hermes 450 drone, which was on an intelligence-gathering mission, but the missile missed the target,” it adds.
In recent months, Israeli military planners have been on edge over Hezbollah’s vast military advancements coupled with the growing coordination among resistance factions in the region.
Earlier this week, Israeli media revealed that the US has stepped in to pressure Lebanon into having Hezbollah remove an outpost erected in the occupied Shebaa Farms.
Hezbollah has so far rejected these demands.
“You cannot threaten us with a large-scale war; it is us who are threatening you … Your follies, not ours, might blow up the entire region and lead to the Great War,” Nasrallah told Israeli leaders during a speech in May.
“The resistance is expanding by the day and has witnessed a great [positive] change in its financial and military capability,” he added.
Israel backs down on threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites
The Cradle | July 1, 2023
Israel is not planning to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser said on 30 June, as indirect talks between Tehran and Washington regarding the nuclear issue have continued in recent weeks.
Asked whether an Israeli decision on a preemptive strike against Iran was any closer, Tzachi Hanegbi said:
“We are not getting closer because the Iranians have stopped, for a while now, they are not enriching uranium to the level that, in our view, is the red line.”
Hanegbi added: “But it can happen. So we are preparing for the moment.”
For several decades, Israel and the US have accused Iran of being “weeks away” from building a nuclear weapon. However, Iran says its nuclear industry is for peaceful purposes, including energy, and has stressed that Islam forbids pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
Hanegbi said it was still unclear what would come of the US-Iran talks. Still, he insisted that if an agreement is signed between Israel’s primary sponsor and main enemy during the indirect talks that began in Oman, this will not obligate Israel to abide by it.
Last week, Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting that Israel opposes any interim agreement between the US and Iran regarding the latter’s nuclear program.
Israel opposed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and celebrated when Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.
The deal limited Iranian uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent. After the US withdrew from the agreement, Iran began enriching to 60 percent, which is still far from the 90 percent needed for use in a nuclear weapon.
“We also tell [the US] that even… ‘mini agreements,’ in our opinion, do not serve our goals, and we oppose those as well,” Netanyahu recently stated.
At the same time, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly accused Israeli officials of leaking information about the indirect US-Iran talks while complaining that the leaked information was inaccurate.
This included claims that the Biden administration seeks to reach an informal deal with Iran limiting its nuclear enrichment to bypass getting approval from Congress.
According to the New York Times, the US seeks an agreement that would include a pledge by Tehran not to enrich uranium beyond 60 percent purity, to better cooperate with UN nuclear inspectors, to stop attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, to avoid providing Russia with ballistic missiles, and to release three American-Iranians held in the Islamic Republic.
In exchange, the US would release billions in seized Iranian funds, commit not to impose additional sanctions, and not take action against Iran in international forums such as the UN and IAEA.
Italy’s forgotten concentration camps in Libya
By Dr Mustafa Fetouri | MEMO | June 29, 2023
On 30 August 2008, Italy and Libya signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, ending their awkward past of feuding and diplomatic tensions over Italy’s colonisation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Libya was seeking compensation, recognition of suffering of its people and, above all, an apology. Rome, as is the case with all former colonial powers, tried for years to close the matter without offering anything. The treaty, a success for Libya, might have ended the political and diplomatic struggle over the colonial past, but it will not wipe it out from history and people’s memories.
The idea of invading Libya came during the colonial rush that saw major colonial powers like France, United Kingdom and others divide the dying Ottoman Empire possessions in North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe itself. Libya was part of that empire, very close to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea and, above all, Libyans lacked effective means to fight back after the Ottoman military garrison left the country.
The rise to power of the Republican Fascist Party, led by Benito Mussolini in 1922, gave the occupation of Libya another nostalgic dimension as the fascists strongly believed in the deceptive idea that modern Italy was the rightful heir to the Roman Empire and, therefore, they were responsible for recovering the possessions of the bygone empire. Another reason that made Libya more attractive to fascist Italy is the fact that Italy, united just 50 years earlier, became overcrowded and its farmers, particularly in the south, were eager to own land of which Libya has plenty. Mussolini used to call Libya the “fourth shore of Rome”.
Italians thought that the taking over of Libya would not be more than a few days’ sea trip and the entire country would be conquered. However, once the first amphibious forces tried to land on Tripoli shores in 1911, they were faced with stiff resistance from the locals, who rushed to defend their country with the little means they had.
As the invaders increased their numbers and widened their presence, the resistance shifted to new tactics, using the guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run. Outnumbered and out-gunned, the Libyans, mostly nomads and shepherds, figured out that direct confrontation with one of the most modern armies at the time was suicidal and destructive.
Instead of facing the Italian army directly, they waged rather small battles, mostly at night time. Benefitting from their detailed knowledge of the land and its geography, the Mujahidin, as they were called, managed to make life really difficult for the Italian army wherever it went. Facing a ghost enemy fighting on horseback, the Italian army started to use unheard of methods of war, scoring many firsts.
For instance, Italy was the first country to use air war and Libya became the first country to be bombed from the air. An Italian pilot named Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, in a letter to his father, described how he threw the first bomb at an Arab [Libyan] camp in November 1911, just a month into the invasion. The young pilot wrote “today I have decided to try to throw bombs from the aeroplane”, before pointing out that it was “the first time that we [Italian army] will try this and if I succeed, I will be really pleased to be the first person to do it.”
Pilot Gavotti, indeed, succeeded in throwing the first ever bomb from an aeroplane, ushering in the age of air war for the first time in the history of mankind. He wrote “and after a little while, I can see a small dark cloud in the middle of the encampment” in Ain Zara, today a town, but at the time just an oasis south-east of Tripoli. Ain Zara became the first place on earth to be bombed from the air. The Italian pilot did not realise what he had just done and had no idea what his bomb had done to people, mostly civilians, below. He returned to base, overwhelmed by his success in hitting “the target” and went straight to report to General Caneva that he just registered his name in history as the first person to bomb a target from the air. Carlo Caneva was the first Italian commander to announce that “Tripoli will be Italian”, as his forces launched the first attacks on Libya. He led the earlier brutal stages of the invasion before being replaced later by another, crueler General Rodolfo Graziani in 1930.
In the same year, the Italian army scored another world first when Benito Mussolini authorised, for the first time, the use of sulphur mustard to subdue Libyans. Bombing formations of fighters and civilian villages suspected of supporting the Mujahidin from the air but, this time, using poisonous gas, besides explosives.
In the 1920s, Libyan resistance intensified, particularly in eastern Libya with the rise of Omar Al-Mukhtar, a septuagenarian who suffered old age and chronic back pain, who became the national leader of the Mujahidin against fascist Italian occupation.
This forced General Graziani to revert to using collective punishment against entire civilian communities by forcing them into concentration camps across Eastern Libya. At one point, there were some 16 different camps in the Sirte desert and further east in which thousands of civilians including women, children, the elderly and young men were forced to live with their animals in desert plots surrounded by barbed wire and guarded, around the clock, by armed soldiers.
Despite this brutality, Al-Mukhtar and his colleagues fought for 20 years, until he was captured on 11 September 1931, after suffering an injury in a village called Slonta, south of Al-Bayda town in Libya’s eastern Green Mountain region.
After a quick trial, he was sentenced to death by hanging on 16 September. Hundreds of civilians, including women and children were forced to watch as Al-Mukhtar was hanged in Suluq concentration camp, one of the most infamous, south-west of Benghazi. By staging such a gruesome show, the Italian authorities wanted to terrify Libyans who might think of following in his footsteps and fight them.
Modern Libya, before the NATO invasion of 2011, used to commemorate 16 of September as a national day of mourning to remember Al-Mukhtar and remind younger generations of what happened in Libya, decades before. New Libya, however, has forgotten the mourning day, while fascist concentration camps are never really mentioned outside academic circles.
Palestinian journalist wins wrongful termination appeal against DW
The Cradle | June 29, 2023
Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Farah Maraqa on 28 June announced winning an appeal filed by Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) media network over her unlawful dismissal for alleged “antisemitism.”
The decision comes nine months after the German judiciary ruled that her dismissal by state-owned broadcaster DW on charges of anti-Semitism was “legally unjustified,” which the German broadcaster appealed.
“It is a relief that the judge ruled in Farah’s favor and held Deutsche Welle accountable for this illegal dismissal,” Giovanni Fassina, director of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), which advocates for the legal rights of Palestinians in Europe, said at the time.
In February 2022, DW fired Maraqa alongside five other Arab journalists – all Palestinian or Lebanese – accusing them of “antisemitism” in social media posts and articles they had written for outside publications.
The charges were based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) controversial extended definition of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land and the system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians.
The definition, which Germany adopted, has been criticized as a means of silencing pro-Palestinian support and dissent against Israeli policies.
In May 2021, DW reportedly sent an internal two-page memo to employees banning them from using terminology such as “colonialism” and “apartheid” when describing Israel.
Over the past few years, western outlets have come under fire for firing or suspending Arab journalists over alleged “antisemitism.”
In March, France24 suspended four journalists from their Arabic branch at the behest of the pro-Israel media monitoring organization, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).
Last October, the New York Times (NYT) fired Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Salam over social media posts supporting Palestinian resistance factions.
The freelance journalist was dismissed after the Israeli lobby organization Honest Reporting alerted the NYT of his posts.
Social media giants like WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok have also been accused of silencing or “purging” Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the occupied West Bank who report on Israeli war crimes.
Furthermore, Google employees accused the tech giant of censuring them for protesting against a controversial $1.2 billion contract signed with Israel to provide the country with advanced artificial intelligence (AI), which many fear will worsen human rights abuses in Palestine.
The Hate Crime Purging of “Antisemites” Is Underway!
Saying anything about Israel’s misbehavior can send you to jail
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 20, 2023
There have recently been a number of incidents that would be of interest if one has concerns about the sorry state of free speech in Europe and the United States, the so-called “democracies” who tend to boast about their freedoms and the rights of their citizens. The chosen weapon in the US and elsewhere in the Anglo-sphere has been the designation “hate speech” which also covers “hate writing,” “possessing hate literature or films,” and even “hate thinking.” In Europe, where “hate speech” is often referred to using the English words, the expression is often preceded by the word “illegal” to make sure that the point about consequences is made and the potential penalty is clearly understood. Some Europeans have in fact been convicted and sent to prison when they have falsely believed they were exercising free speech.
Though the “hate” designation was originally coined to discourage racist language and other forms of expression it has increasingly been exploited by Israel and its associated Jewish support groups to criminalize any criticism of Israel or of Jewish group behavior. It has extended its reach by moving into subsets, notably “holocaust denial” and “antisemitism” which are also regarded ipso facto as hate crimes in a context in which Jews are always regarded as victims, never as perpetrators of violence.
Much of what is going on might be described in fairly simple terms: Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its unprovoked lethal attacks on its neighbors might reasonably be described as “deplorable” or even genocidal in the case of the Palestinians. Beyond that, Israel, which pretends to be a democracy, operates a system of control over the Christian and Muslim minority within its own borders and also in the area it illegally occupies that is describable as “apartheid,” where the minority is compelled to accept limited resources and consistently harsh treatment from the dominant Jewish population. More to the point, the extremist government coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the situation even worse for those non-Jews that it controls, with talk of introducing mass expulsions and imprisonments. The death toll of Palestinians at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces has also been going up, with more than 150 Palestinians killed this year, including 26 children.
To be sure, Israel has become a home for Jews that can no longer tolerate anyone else. Some ministers in the new government are particularly vile in their views but it is to be assumed that Netanyahu and others in his administration are genuinely supportive of turning Israel into a truly and even exclusively Jewish state, which is in fact how it legally defines itself. The one minister most cited for his cruelty and racism is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party. Ben-Gvir has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for support of a Jewish terrorist group. He is a former supporter of the now deceased right wing fanatic Meir Kahane, and, like Kahane, envisions an Israel that is as Palestinian free as possible and centered exclusively on Jewish interests. He has called for deporting Arabs who aren’t loyal to a Jewish Israel, annexing all of the West Bank and exercising full Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, where the Muslim venerated Al-Aqsa mosque is located. He supports legislation defying international agreements to “divide” the Al-Aqsa site to permit regular Jewish worshippers and there have even been suggestions that the Israeli government will seek to rebuild the so-called Biblical Second Temple, destroyed in the First Century by the Romans, in that location.
MK Itamar Ben Gvir at a ceremony honoring late Jewish extremist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane in Jerusalem on November 10, 2022. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians. He has led marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns and has even brought settlers and other extremists to the al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and to interrupt Friday prayers. To cap the irony, he has been since November 2022 the National Security Minister, which gives him authority over the police, to include the so-called Border Police as well as the police forces located on the illegally occupied West Bank. Indeed, as a practical matter, Ben-Gvir is seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians. He has also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.
Another extremist who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper. Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people. He demands a state judiciary that relies only on Torah and Jewish traditional law. Accused of inciting hatred against Arab Israelis, he told Arab Israeli lawmakers in October 2021, that “it’s a mistake that David Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw all of you out in 1948.”
The increasing brutality of the Israeli government and its security forces have produced a reaction among many observers worldwide, so the supporters of Israel have engaged in their own first strike frequently using the “hate crime” weapon. They have basically turned the hate crime legislation to their advantage by convincing many nations to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of the “hate crime” antisemitism to automatically include criticism of Israel as being equivalent to hatred of Jews. When that doesn’t work the powerful Israel lobby can also resort to much more brutal threats. When Iceland sought to make illegal infant circumcision five years ago, regarding it as genital mutilation performed on an unconsenting child, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) threatened to unleash Jewish power to destroy their economy and international reputation as punishment for making their country “inhospitable to Jews.”
Now that the “hate crime” genie together with the associated links to holocaust denial and antisemitism have been released from the bottle, they are being used regularly to silence anyone who even indirectly criticizes prominent Jews like George Soros. Conservatives including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have recently been on the receiving end of the antisemitism label after referring to Soros and his “Globalist” agenda. It is my belief that Tucker was fired at least in part due to Jewish pressure on FOX as he had been very critical of groups like the hysterical ADL and its hideous director Jonathan Greenblatt.
Roger Waters, the former lead singer of Pink Floyd, has emerged as a powerful critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. As a consequence, he has been hounded by authorities in Europe, has had his concerts canceled, and has been threatened with legal action to make him shut up. The Biden Administration’s antisemitism Czar Deborah Lipstadt has also attacked him, saying “I wholeheartedly concur with [an online] condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.” She was referring to a tweet stating that “I am sick & disgusted by Roger Waters’ obsession to belittle and trivialize the Shoah & the sarcastic way in which he delights in trampling on the victims, systematically murdered by the Nazis. In Germany. Enough is enough. Holocaust trivialization is criminalized across the EU.” The State Department, speaking for the White House, then piled on adding that Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and a concert he gave late last month in Germany “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust… The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
One might observe that the depiction of Waters is basically untrue – he is a critic of Israeli crimes against humanity but does not hate Jews. One might also add how the fact that the United States State Department actually has a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism speaks for itself and tells you exactly who is in charge in Washington. I wonder how much it costs to run Lipstadt’s mouth from a no doubt well-appointed office in Foggy Bottom each year? Maybe someone should do a cost/benefit analysis and give Debbie her walking papers.
Beyond that, several other recent stories show how it all often works in practice to confront and silence critics. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is facing what is obviously a coordinated backlash on social media after criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In an Instagram message to her 6.3 million followers, the 23-year-old declared the ongoing cross-border violence, which is killing mostly Arabs, was a “crime” against Palestinians. Her effort to be somewhat even handed was ignored, in the message, which she later deleted, where she wrote “We have to stand up for Jewish people all over the world facing anti-Semitic violence and threats, but we must also call out a state upholding apartheid and KILLING civilians, funded by American dollars.” She ended the message with the hashtag “#freepalestine.”
Larsson was hardly calling for targeting Jews or anything like that, but the reaction to her comment was symptomatic of the typical overkill response engaged in by Israel and its friends whenever anyone challenges the standard narrative of Israeli perpetual victimhood. Two other instances of comments about Israel leading to an overwhelming response to punish the perpetrators took place during the past month in the United States at college commencement ceremonies. The first was on May 12th, at a graduation ceremony for the law school of the City University of New York (CUNY), where Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Queens native who was selected by the graduating 2023 class to speak during the May 12 ceremony, praised CUNY for supporting student activism, citing in particular the acceptance of student groups protesting against Israel’s brutality towards the Palestinians. She said “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young and even attacking funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinians homes and businesses. As it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes. Silence is no longer acceptable.”
The response to Mohammed was immediate, including a scathing news report in the New York Post, a call by several Jewish groups to cut funding to CUNY and demands that the law school dean be fired. And the controversy again made news when a second student spoke out at a commencement at El Camino community college in Torrance California. Jana Abulaban, 18, strongly criticized Israeli government policies during her speech on June 9th.
Abulaban, who was born in Jordan in a family of Palestinian refugees, reportedly felt “inspired” by the speech of Fatima Mousa Mohammed and she told the audience “I gift my graduation to all Palestinians who have lost their life and those who continue to lose their lives every day due to the oppressive apartheid state of Israel killing and torturing Palestinians as we speak.’’
There was, of course an immediate reaction to the Abulaban speech coming from a variety of West Coast and New York pro-Israel sources. Brooke Goldstein, a claimed human-rights lawyer founder of The Lawfare Project, said, “This is yet one more example of the systemic Jew-hatred we’re seeing on our college campuses. When a student gives a commencement speech targeting Jews, trafficking in modern tropes of antisemitism, it’s clear that there has been a complete failure in that school to promote social justice for the Jewish people. If any other minority group were targeted like this, there would be consequences for the bigot. The Jewish community deserves no less.”
Of course, both women only spoke the truth about what is happening in the Middle East. Neither attacked the Jewish religion or Jews per se and only criticized Israel’s appalling behavior. When I last checked, Israel was a foreign country with both foreign and domestic policies that are considered very questionable by most of the world, so why should it be protected from being challenged in the United States? The two women were brave to speak up as they did, surely knowing that they would be targeted by the Jewish state’s many friends and supporters. Those of us who continue to speak out on Israel’s genocidal policies can likewise expect no less, particularly as both the federal as well as many state governments and also the media are now on a witch hunt directed against those who seek to speak the truth. But we must persevere. As Fatima Mousa Mohammed put it, “Silence is no longer acceptable.”
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.
Twisted narratives promote the targeted assassinations of Palestinians
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 20, 2023
A recent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research detailed how Palestinians are largely in favour of armed resistance against Israel’s settler-colonialism. More importantly, Palestinians have again asserted that they no longer need to take their cues from the main Palestinian political factions, indicating a sharp detachment from the politics of the previous years that monopolised resistance depending on factions and geographical territory.
In the poll, 71 per cent of Palestinians favoured the forming of armed resistance groups such as the Lions’ Den and the Jenin Battalion. The Palestinian Authority continued to lose favour among the people of occupied Palestine, with 80 per cent of survey participants against the surrender of members from resistance groups to the PA. In relation to this, 86 per cent of Palestinian respondents declared themselves to be against the PA’s persecution of resistance group members.
Juxtaposed against these findings is the statement of Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s former foreign minister and current head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, who has called for a targeted assassination policy against Hamas leaders in Gaza. “We cannot accept the ‘rules of the game’ in which they can inflame Judea and Samaria while being immune in Gaza,” said Lieberman, referring to Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank. He also called for a large-scale military operation in the occupied Palestinian territory to quash the resistance.
The current Palestinian resistance — which is legitimate under international law — does not follow the politics of Palestinian factions, preferring instead to maintain a unified front encompassing all groups. Moreover, support for Hamas in the occupied West Bank is not a recent phenomenon, but the result of the Fatah-led PA’s corrupt existence.
Referring to the Israeli raid of the Jenin refugee camp in which five Palestinians were killed (a sixth has since died of his wounds), Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem pointed out that, “The resistance fighters from all factions were united on the battlefield. It shows that the resistance still exists in the West Bank cities.”
Two narratives are at play here. One is the unified front which Palestinians are moving towards and embracing in their anti-colonial struggle. The other portrays Hamas as the epitome of Palestinian resistance and the reason why Palestinian resistance exists. Much of this is attributed to the discrepancy between Gaza and the occupied West Bank in terms of their portrayal, as well as the different reactions to their unique socio-economic and political realities. Now that the PA has lost much of its grip over the occupied West Bank, Hamas is looming as a bigger threat in the official narrative, despite Palestinians clearly veering towards a unified resistance that encompasses all factions and which remains independent.
Lieberman’s call for targeted assassinations exploits the image of Hamas as synonymous with Palestinian resistance. The movement is being used to promote Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations, a purportedly rational objective in the settler-colonial narrative. The impact, however, is not restricted to Gaza. A growing independent Palestinian resistance which is out of the PA’s control is an uncontained reality which Israel currently faces. Maintaining the narrative of Hamas as the exclusive source of resistance can ultimately be used as a facade for Israel and the PA to normalise extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Read also: Israel forces assassinate Palestinian Authority officer in West Bank
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Fanatical Followers of the Covid Regime: A Jim Jones-Style Cult?
By Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021
As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” … continue
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