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Israeli settlers attack Palestinians, steal land with impunity. Imagine outrage & calls for sanctions if any other state did it.

By Eva Bartlett | RT | April 16, 2021

Every aspect of their existence on occupied Palestinian land is illegal. Still, the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against civilians continues, propped up by Israel’s legal system and the world’s blind eyes.

Periodically, we will hear in the news something about the illegal colonies (settlements), but increasingly rarely over the years, and generally without a human face: just numbers and false promises to end the expansion of these colonies choking Palestinians from their land.

Recently, UN Special Rapporteurs and experts shed light on the uptick of brutality and land theft by Israeli colonists. In a new UN report, they noted:

“In 2020, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 771 incidents of settler violence causing injury to 133 Palestinians and damaging 9,646 trees and 184 vehicles mostly in the areas of Hebron, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah. Already, during the first three months of 2021, more than 210 settler violent incidents were recorded, with one Palestinian fatality.”

Stop for a moment and imagine this was a report on violent incidents by Russia, Syria, Venezuela, or any of the nations in NATO’s crosshairs. Media would be howling with outrage and faked tears, with demands for heads to roll, or at least for perpetrators to face justice.

But this is occupied Palestine, where the Israeli legal system serves continued colonist expansion and terrorism against Palestinians. And, let’s be clear, what the colonists do to Palestinians is indeed terrorism.

Colonists have burned alive a Palestinian youth, shot and killed Palestinian civilians, have run people over, including children, leaving them to die. They routinely attack farmers trying to work their land or harvest their olives.

They hail stones, large rocks, sewage and waste onto Palestinians walking or living below their illegally occupied homes, steal Palestinians’ flocks of sheep (or poison them), even uproot and thieve their olive trees.

This has been going on for decades, and the so-called international community allows it, in spite of overwhelming documentation of these crimes.

Israeli rights group B’Tselem has been reporting on such attacks since 1989. A 2017 B’Tselem article noted:

“Thousands of testimonies, videos and reports, as well as many years of close monitoring by B’Tselem and other organizations, reveal that Israeli security forces not only allow settlers to harm Palestinians and their property as a matter of course – they often provide the perpetrators escort and back-up. In some cases, they even join in on the attack.

After more than 25 years of this work, there is no escaping the conclusion that the authorities merely make a show of law enforcement in this context and that, with few exceptions, they have no interest in seriously investigating settler violence against Palestinians.”

Disturbing memories of colonist brutality

In 2007, I witnessed and heard of colonist violence and land theft when I spent eight months in the West Bank as an activist documenting the crimes against Palestinian civilians by both the Israeli military and the illegal colonists.

The city of Hebron has some of the most violent squatters, who, like colonists all over the West Bank, walk with guns slung over their back and routinely attack and abuse the Palestinian residents, including children.

In fact, during my two-week stay in Hebron in mid 2007, one of the things I and other activists did was simply to stand on shara Shuhada, the once vibrant main street, now a shuttered ghost town.

We stood, or sat, on that street for hours, in the heat of the day, to deter colonists from attacking children going to or from school, or adults going to market, work or mosque. It seemed a colossal waste of time, but there had been many precedents of Israeli colonists stoning or beating Palestinians.

South of Hebron, in a desert-like hamlet called Susiya, over the course of many months I stayed in the makeshift tent and metal structures of the Palestinians living there. Prior to their shantytown, they, and generations before them, had lived in stone houses and even cave dwellings. But, they were evicted in the 1980s, when Israel declared the area an archaeological site.

As I wrote, “We stayed with them in hopes of preventing the inevitable attacks by the nearby colonists. Hajj Khalil, an elder in his eighties, had been brutally beaten by colonists the year before I met him.”

The recent UN report also noted:

“Settler violence was predominantly ideologically motivated and primarily designed to take over land but also to intimidate and terrorize Palestinians. The violence and intimidation often prevents Palestinians from accessing and cultivating their land, and creates a coercive environment pressuring Palestinians to stay away from certain areas or even move.”

Indeed, in the Susiya region, I witnessed land being stolen and quickly annexed by the illegal Jewish colonists.

As I wrote, “The elderly Palestinian landowners have been harassed and threatened, and physically abused. They have been moved off of the land by menacing of the illegal colonists. The owners of the land very much want to use it for agricultural purposes and have tried–mostly unsuccessfully–to file complaints at the nearest police station, Kiryat Arba, nearly two hours away. These illegal tactics have been largely successful in the region, with many Susiya residents and landowners leaving their land for nearby cities and towns.”

During the olive harvest that year, I accompanied Palestinian farmers to their orchards in a northern West Bank region. Not long after they had begun collecting olives, six masked colonists descended a hill, slinging hefty stones at us, for forty minutes stoning and then physically hitting people in our group.

I wrote about that at the time, noting, “One of the six attackers slung a large rock at me. Hitting my camera hand, the rock missed my temple. One of the farmers, on the other hand, was not so fortunate, with severe gashes on his head from multiple stone strikes.”

On another occasion, the Palestinians had the needed paperwork to be on their land (that’s right, they have to ask their occupiers for permission to access their land for limited amounts of time, to harvest their olives), and had only just begun to harvest when gun-toting colonists dressed in white descended the hill and began menacing the Palestinians.

What did the Israeli army do? Point their guns at the farmers and tell them to take a hike. Get off their land. The setters have spoken…

There are far worse examples. My encounters and documentation at the time was more on the crimes of the Israeli army against Palestinians. But, B’Tselem has pages of reports and videos of Israeli colonists’ attacks on Palestinians.

In 2015, Haaretz reported colonists had “firebombed” a West Bank house, the ensuing fire burning to death an infant.

The youth I mentioned earlier, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was indeed burned alive by Israelis, in mid-2014. As I wrote some years ago, “Khdeir went missing while going to mosque for morning prayers in occupied Jerusalem. His slight body was found a few hours later charred and beaten. The autopsy report “showed soot in the victim’s lungs and respiratory tract, indicating he was alive and breathing while he was being burnt.”

In a rare instance of justice, the colonist was sent to prison for life for his crime.

But as Israeli rights group Yeshe Din in December 2019 reported, most attacks go unpunished.

According to their research, “Israeli Police failed in the investigation of 82% of the files opened between 2005 and 2019. 91% of all investigation files were closed without an indictment. After 15 years of monitoring Israeli law enforcement authorities in their handling of complaints filed by Palestinian victims of ideological crimes committed by Israelis, the picture that emerges demonstrates that the State of Israel is failing in its duty to protect Palestinians in the occupied territories from those who would harm them and, in fact, leaves them defenseless as they face assault and harassment.”

In their 2017 report, B’Tselem further noted, “Violent actions of settlers against Palestinians are not exceptions to a rule. Rather, they form part of a broader strategy in which the state colludes, as it stands to benefit from the result. Over time, this unchecked violence is gradually driving Palestinians from more and more locations in the West Bank, making it easier for the state to take over land and resources.”

That is the essence: the crimes of Israel’s colonists actually benefit Israel in occupying more and more Palestinian land. So there is incentive to look away, close investigations, let the attacks and murders continue.

In researching for this article I came across yet another account of colonists beating a Susiya resident I knew. The article described an attack in December 2020 on 78 year-old Khalil Haraini. In which, “about 10 settlers rushed out from behind a hill, armed with pistols, rifles, clubs, axes and iron chains. One of them assaulted the elderly farmer, knocking him to the ground. Settlers then beat him with their clubs.”

Although I’m not naive enough to believe anything will change after a UN report here or there, I feel the need to write about it still, 13 years after meeting people like Khalil Haraini or the farmers I accompanied.

Their hell continues and, tragically, no one is going to rein in the terrorists known as Israeli settlers.

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).

April 17, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Associated Press misreports news about Gaza rocket into Israel

By Alison Weir | Israel-Palestine News | April 16, 2021

A recent news report by the Associated Press (AP) published by thousands of newspapers around the U.S. contains inaccurate information.

The report, entitled “Israeli army: Rocket from Gaza hits south Israel,” states in its lead sentence that the rocket broke weeks of “cross border calm.”

In reality, Israeli forces have attacked Gaza numerous times in the past several weeks:

Gazan rockets & Israeli airstrikes

Rockets from Gaza have killed 30 Israelis during the approximately 20 years they’ve been used, while Israeli air strikes have killed over 4,000 Gazans during the same time period.

Palestinian resistance groups began launching their mostly home made rockets in April 2001, after Israeli forces had invaded Gaza numerous times and killed over 570 Palestinians in the previous six months.

A detailed study by three American professors found that it was “overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine,” that initiated violence after a period of calm.

Statistical studies of the Associated Press reporting conducted in 2006 and 2018 found that AP covered Israeli deaths at rates far greater than they covered Palestinian deaths.

The AP bureau is located in Israel and many of its editors are Israeli and/or married to Israelis.

The U.S. gives Israel over $10 million per day.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

April 17, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Bipartisan Murder

By Richard Medhurst | April 11, 2021

Syria is the key to the Middle East. Bordering Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, and with access to the Mediterranean Sea, for millennia Syria has held unique geopolitical and strategic importance in the region. The war taking place there since 2011 has been sold by virtually every news outlet in the West as being strictly a civil war, part of the popular uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’. The reality couldn’t be more different.

As General Wesley Clarke points out in 2007 there had been an agenda to take out “seven countries in five years” among them Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran; to replace their governments with ones favorable to Washington DC.

Five years already before the “Arab Spring”, a 2006 cable from the United States embassy in Damascus published by WikiLeaks shows how the US was looking at various threats, both real and exaggerated, that it could exploit in order to destabilize the Syrian government.

The US and its allies Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar began funding and arming various militias inside Syria, funneling weapons and supplies to them in order to overthrow the Syrian government. Efraim Halevy, former head of israel’s intelligence service the Mossad, even admitted in an interview that Israel had provided aid to Al Qaeda fighters just because it was advantageous for Israel to see the Syrian government fall.

PBS recently did an interview with Abu Mohammad al Jolani, a terrorist leader in Syria’s north-western Idlib during which he expressed no intent to fight with the US, despite having a $10 million bounty on his head. The article goes on to mention how former Ambassador James Jeffrey, the US’ former Special Envoy to Syria, confirms that al Jolani’s organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebrand of Al Qaeda, was a “an asset” to America’s strategy in Idlib.

To cover up the undeniable role played by foreign governments, to this day the mainstream media portrays the war on Syria as a grassroots uprising by “moderate rebels”— the overwhelming majority of whom just so happen to be rebrands or affiliated with Al Qaeda and other jihadist elements.

Despite the efforts of the entire Western propaganda machine and a dozen nations ganging up against Syria, their gamble for regime change has failed thus far: Syria has taken back most of its territory from ISIS and other foreign-backed terrorists, and now boasts even stronger ties with its allies than before. Take for example Russia’s naval port in Tartus, established in Syria in 1971 as part of an accord with the Syrian government, providing it access to the Mediterranean Sea. A decade ago, at the start of the war, the port was practically crumbling, Ten years later in 2021, it’s been completely renovated, upgraded and fitted with state of the art ships.

While some argue the main goal behind the war in Syria was to build the Qatar-Turkey pipeline which would deliver gas through Syria to Europe, undercutting Russia’s market share, I think the larger objective for the United States has mostly been regime change and to remove the “thorn” in israel’s side. Syria refuses to recognize israel and has no official ties with the Zionist occupation. The two have been at odds with each other for the last 73 years; not just since the start of the occupation of Palestine in 1948, but also the capture of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967 and consequent illegal annexation. Syria is also allied with Russia, Iran and supports the various liberation movements of its neighbors including the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, collectively dubbed the “Axis of Resistance”– a twist on George Bush’s “Axis of Evil“.

Seeing how the regime change strategy through various terrorist and armed groups has failed in Syria, the United States is now occupying Syria’s vital breadbasket region, where most of its crops are grown, as well as the oil fields in Deir Ezzor and Hassakeh provinces in East and North-Eastern Syria.

After Trump openly admitted “we’re keeping the oil”, we also saw in August, 2020 then Secretary of State Pompeo admit to Senator Lindsay Graham during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that a US firm would be “modernizing Syria’s oil fields”, which is a nice way to say “plundering”.

Graham can be heard gloating about the brutal Caesar Act sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. Indeed, in addition to stealing Syria’s resources, the United States is also starving the Syrian population with siege warfare. These Caesar sanctions announced by Trump and kept by Biden serve no purpose other than to tighten the noose on the Syria’s population. Syria’s economy has collapsed, its currency in free-fall and nearly 60 percent of the population is now food insecure in a country which used to be self-sufficient and a net exporter of wheat. The US shamelessly states that its goal is to deprive the Syrian government, and by extension the Syrian people, of one of their most valuable resources (oil accounts for around 25% of government revenue) desperately needed to fund public infrastructure and social programs, with 90% of Syrians now living in poverty. They pretend that sanctions only affect the politicians but it’s the civilians who are suffering.

The West doesn’t care if Syrians die. This scorched-earth policy is advantageous to US and Western interests because it keeps Syria in a constant state of chaos and helps israel create a buffer beyond just the occupied Golan Heights, but also more generally as Syria is now unable to defend itself, defend its neighbors, and subject to regular airstrikes which the world lets israel carry out with impunity.

While Secretary of State Blinken uses his own kids in some deranged comparison to pretend he cares about Syrian children he and Biden are completely fine keeping Donald Trump’s “Maximum Pressure Campaign” of sanctions going. According to Syria’s oil minister around 90% of Syria’s crude is now under control of the US. Syrians wait in massive queues as they experience fuel shortages and are lining up for bread. Sanctions are a modern adaptation of siege warfare, just as ruthless and deadly.

Both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page when it comes to imperialism and their fealty to corporations. There is no difference among them in that regard except in decorum. After Trump bombed Syria in April 2018, over an alleged chemical gas attack in Douma later revealed to have been staged, then Senator Kamala Harris questioned the “legal rationale” behind the strikes. Some Democrats criticized Trump saying it was a breach of constitutional powers– but none of them fundamentally questioned whether these alleged chemical attacks had even taken place to begin with. The team of scientists sent by the Organization for the Prohibition for Chemical Weapons hadn’t even arrived in Syria yet to determine what had happened. Democrats only issued mild statements of rebuke while simultaneously cheering on Assad was being “punished”– which goes to show their objectives fundamentally remain the same, no matter who is in power.

Biden’s bombing of Syria

After Joe Biden became president his first military action was to bomb Syria. Naturally, bombings takes priority over campaign promises like the $15 minimum wage or $2,000 checks he lied about. Biden’s supposed “justification” for bombing Syria on February 25th, 2021 was that he was acting in self-defense to protect the United States. This is of course an absurdity; Syria is not a threat to the United States nor has it attacked the United States– if anything it’s the other way around. Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter that Biden blatantly lies in his letter to Congress, everyone knows this is merely a cover story in order to comply with the War Powers Resolution (notifying Congress of military action and citing defensive measures if no prior Authorization for Use of Military Force exists).

When Biden bombed Syria he claimed to have targeted “Iranian backed militias”- the same excuse that Israel gives when illegally bombing Syria almost on a weekly basis. When I spoke to Professor Max Abrahms on my television The Communiqué he said the bombing was likely more about sending a message to Israel rather than Iran; a show of support from Biden that the Zionist occupation could still count on the new administration’s support.

When corporate media and Western politicians say “Iranian backed militias” they’re referring to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF / PMU) or Hashed al Shaabi in Arabic. The PMU is made up mostly of various Iraqi brigades, consisting of different religious and ethnic groups, despite claims that they’re exclusively Shiah– although even then I struggle to understand how that would give the US or Israel the right to kill them. The popular forces are united under one banner to fight terrorism and occupation. Of course the United States can’t have you realizing they’re a resistance movement because then people would rightfully ask “resisting what?” and that’s of course the United States, illegally occupying Iraq since 2003. The PMU also celebrated major victories in defeated ISIS and Al Qaeda, taking back the major city of Mosul in 2016. Although the US and its illegal occupation like to take credit for that (so they can justify their presence) that victory is not theirs. As a matter of fact, the United States not only helped create Al Qaeda and ISIS but Trump’s assassination of General Soleimani and PMU commander Abu Mahdi was celebrated by the very terrorists who had come to fear them. While the US claims to fight terrorism it’s actively helping terrorists by killing their biggest enemies. And now of course Biden follows in Trump’s footsteps, proceeding to bomb the PMU. I wonder how many will break the situation down like that for you on the evening nows? Let’s be clear on something: I don’t care if the target was an empty barn in Syria – he has no right to bomb anything there nor in any other country.

Shortly after Biden’s bombing of Syria, Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN) introduced legislation calling for the repeal of the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs. Note that the 2001 AUMF is missing – unsurprising as it’s the template Congress has used for two decades to invade, bomb and ransack the planet in the name of “the War on Terror”. Of course they wouldn’t repeal that AUMF. Biden is now on track to violate the Afghanistan peace deal signed under Trump, after drawing down the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 2,500, with a complete withdrawal set for a deadline of May 1st. Right on cue, the US claims that the Taliban aren’t holding up their end of the deal- hence why the US can’t leave just yet, continuing to impose conditions on their departure as if Afghanistan belongs to them. Naturally, the media provides cover for the longest war in US history, repeating without question or scrutiny Biden’s claims that a withdrawal “can’t be rushed” after occupying Afghanistan for almost 20 years. CNN also made the case that this is now about women’s rights– as if the United States cared about women when it displaced millions of them in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria. We’re now made to believe that occupation is emancipation. The poor white man’s burden, freeing the world through bombs, sanctions and occupation.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats have largely chosen to side with him on the issue while others, including so called “progressives” like Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez have remained completely silent despite criticizing Trump for bombing Syria in 2018, calling him a ‘mad king’. This really shows you where their allegiances lie and how far their “progressivism” extends. The so called “left-wing” of the Democratic Party is about as “progressive” as you can get when you stay silent about Biden bombing Syria, ballooning the war machine to an outrageous $753 billion, and violating the Afghan peace deal in order to maintain a 20-year occupation. War pigs. All of them.

A template for war

The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001 and 2002 passed by Congress formed the legal basis with which Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Specifically, the AUMF of 2001 broadly authorizes force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”. This ambiguous language essentially gives the president a blank check to conduct military strikes anywhere and has been distorted and manipulated by every president since in order to expand the “War on Terror” into 19 countries. Trump in his usual absurdity even cited the 2002 AUMF to try and justify his assassination of General Soleimani in January, 2020. Of course, Congress won’t ever go after him for that, despite all this talk of how Trump posed a unique danger to US democracy, let alone any other sitting or former president. Never forget, Nancy Pelosi refused to impeach George W. Bush and admits as late as 2019 that she knew George Bush had lied about weapons of mass destruction and still chose to ignore calls to impeach him over a war that displaced and killed millions of Iraqis.

The constitution clearly says that the president is the commander-in-chief of the United States’ Armed Forces, however, that the power to declare war resides with Congress. Although the president can respond to imminent threats, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 stipulates that the president must notify Congress in absence of a declaration of war or prior statutory authorization. Consultation and follow ups with the Legislative branch are a must and the entire point of the resolution is to limit the Executive’s reach in matters of war.

If Congress has already issued an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), presidents will operate within that framework and cite it to justify any action they take. What presidents have often done is to abuse this and distort its legal interpretation e.g. Bush’s crimes in Iraq, Obama’s drone strikes in Pakistan, Trump’s assassination of General Soleimani. On the other hand, if Congress hasn’t issued an AUMF, like in the case of Biden’s bombing of Syria, then the president will simply cite self-defense as the justification– which is exactly what Biden did– even if it isn’t true. In either case, whether an AUMF has been issued or not, it seems Congress allows presidents to proceed unchecked– because Congress agrees with their imperialist agenda.

One mustn’t forget that even in the case when Congress issues an AUMF and agrees with the president’s military action: US law does not supersede international law. For example, just because the US Congress voted to invade Iraq does not mean that this invasion was morally or legally justifiable.

While Biden cites Article 51 under the United Nations as the United States’ right to self-defense, one has to wonder how Article 51 would even begin to apply in this context. Syria has not attacked the United States, nor are the two nations (at least officially) at war. Moreover, if the targets were so called “Iranian-backed militias”, the same rationale still applies. These bombings also violate Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter which asserts Syria’s sovereignty and prohibits use of force against other member states. Some legal scholars might go on to argue that self-defense under Article 51 only applies against other states, not “militias”. Some might also question how the United States can argue self-defense when its very presence in Iraq is illegal to begin with; the result of an illegal invasion in 2003? At best Biden’s pretext for bombing Syria is dubious, and at worst downright illegal and outrageous. I think most rational people can clearly see it’s the latter.

Indeed, no matter who is in charge, the warmongering remains the same. Obama, Trump, Biden have all maintained George Bush’s neoconservative wars, his creation and expansion of the electronic surveillance start, his Department of Homeland Security and the post-9/11 world crafted by the Bush-Cheney regime. You won’t see many Democrats or Republicans voicing support to repeal the AUMF anytime soon. War is a racket, and the United States excels at it. It’s no accident you have a revolving door between Washington D.C. and the private sector, and that the new Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is a former board member of the weapons manufacturer Raytheon. At least there’s diversity right? Now that the Treasury and Office of Foreign Assets Control, whose sanctions kill millions, is being run by Janet Yellen, its first woman ever, everything is fine. That’s what counts, right? Or that Alejandro Mayaorkas, the first Latino man to head the Department of Homeland Security, continuing to separate children, placing them in the same camps and appalling conditions as Trump and maintaining construction on Trump’s racist border wall (which all of a sudden Democrats have no issue with). What a diverse brand of imperialism: Uncle Joe’s Rainbow Coalition Death Cult®.

April 16, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Spain allows Israeli agent to interrogate Palestinian journalist in Madrid

MEMO | April 15, 2021

The Spanish security services have allowed an Israeli agent from the Mossad spy agency to interrogate a Palestinian journalist seeking asylum, Wafa news agency has reported. The incident at the Civil Guard building in the capital has been condemned by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

The syndicate called on the Spanish government to assume its responsibilities by ensuring the security of Muath Hamid and his family. It also called for the Spanish authorities to open an investigation into what happened during the interrogation.

Spain’s Civil Guard is the oldest law enforcement agency in the country and “military in nature”. The journalists’ union said that it is suspected of being “complicit” with Mossad in allowing the Israeli agent to interrogate Hamid in its building. “This was a gross violation of international law, a violation of Spanish sovereignty and a threat to the journalist’s security and safety,” the syndicate insisted.

It added that the case is being followed closely in conjunction with the Union of Spanish Journalists, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry, and the Spanish political and security authorities to ensure that Hamid is not subject to any harm or torture. The reporter for Al Araby TV and freelance contributor to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed is currently a refugee in Spain, where he lives with his wife and two children.

According to popular Spanish online newspaper Público last Friday, on 9 December Hamid received a telephone call from “Nicolás”, an officer on duty at the Civil Guard’s Spanish Information Services “Nicolás wanted to discuss Hamid’s work as a journalist, his past and his current life in Spain. This is a regular procedure for refugees and migrants.”

When the journalist went to meet “Nicolás” in Bilbao, he met another officer, Javier. “Hamid answered all the questions, explaining why he applied for asylum in Spain and describing his journey from Palestine to Europe through Turkey,” reported Público. “In early February, the young Palestinian journalist was summoned again by Nicolás… this time in the Spanish capital, Madrid.”

This time there was also another man in the room, allegedly named Omar, “who was introduced to him as a Palestinian. Hamid, however, immediately noticed his strong Israeli accent… and he decided to answer his questions in Hebrew.” Omar acknowledged that he was an Israeli, at which point Javier “left the room, leaving Muath in the hands of the supposed Mossad agent… who threatened the Palestinian journalist and his family, saying that they will never be allowed to go back to Palestine due to one of his journalistic investigations” related to the work of the Israeli spy agency.

Público sought comments and clarifications from the Israeli Embassy and the Civil Guard, as well as Spain’s Interior Ministry. It has received no replies.

April 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Supreme Court green lights Israel’s ‘Cyber Unit’ that works with social media giants to censor user content

Adalah Press Release | April 12, 2021

Court authorizes Cyber Unit to continue operating in the shadows, conducting quasi-judicial censorship without allowing social media users to defend their rights or even to know that the state has been involved in removing their online content.

The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday, 12 April 2021, rejected a petition filed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) giving a green light to the continued operations of the Israeli state attorney’s office Cyber Unit and its “alternative enforcement” model of censoring social media content.

Israel’s Cyber Unit uses an “alternative enforcement” mechanism to essentially censor social media platforms and muzzle users: it flags and submits social media posts – without legal proceedings and often without even the knowledge of the individual user – to social media giants and requests their removal.

This Israeli state practice is aimed at clamping down on social media dissent, and frequently even results in the suspension or removal of users. This censorship is conducted in collaboration and coordination with social media outlets, including U.S.-based giants Facebook and Twitter.

Similar units operating in countries around the world are known as Internet Referral Units (IRUs).

Adalah attorneys Fady Khoury and Rabea Eghbariah had filed the petition against the Cyber Unit to the Israeli Supreme Court on 26 November 2019. They stressed that the Cyber Unit’s “alternative enforcement” mechanism violates the constitutional rights of freedom of expression and due process, and that the unit is operating without any legal authority.

Israeli Supreme Court Justice Hanan Melcer announced the decision on Monday morning in Jerusalem, in his final ruling before retirement.

In its decision, the court granted unchecked and unauthorized power to the Israeli state, allowing it to govern online speech by using informal channels with social media corporations. The court essentially privatized the judicial process, allowing private corporations to decide upon censorship of social media content based on ostensibly unbinding requests from Israeli state authorities.

Adalah Attorney Rabea Eghbariah commented immediately following the Israeli Supreme Court ruling:

“The Israeli Supreme Court has just authorized the state to continue to use its Cyber Unit to conduct quasi-judicial censorship proceedings in cooperation with private corporations, without allowing social media users to defend their rights or even to know that the state has been involved in removing their online content. Israel’s Cyber Unit has operated in the shadows of the law to censor tens of thousands of social media posts every year. The Supreme Court has now, to our regret, given Israel a blank check to continue with this practice.”

April 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Magic of Israel

Now you see it, now you don’t

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 13, 2021

The popular narrative of plucky little Israel prevailing over hordes of bloodthirsty Arabs has captured the Western imagination even though it is manifestly false in almost every detail. But Israel’s greatest accomplishment might well be something else, it’s ability to make things disappear. It plausibly all began in June 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a lightly armed but well identified US naval vessel cruising in international waters under a large American flag. Fighter bombers and torpedo boats sought to sink the ship, destroying the lifeboats so no one would escape. In the engagement, 34 American military personnel were killed and a further 171 wounded, before a heroic defense by the crew managed to save the vessel. President Lyndon Johnson, who said he would rather see the ship sink than embarrass his friend Israel, started a cover-up which has lasted to this day. There has been no legitimate court of inquiry into the attack and when the ship’s captain received a Medal of Honor for his heroism, it was awarded secretly in the Washington Navy Yard rather than openly at the White House. Israel and its legion of apologists certainly know how to make potential embarrassments disappear.

Last week on this site I posted an article that I thought would prove to be extremely interesting to those who have been expressing concern about foreign interference in our government. It included a link to a series of computer screen texts provided by a credible independent source demonstrating that an employee of the Israeli Consulate General was deeply involved in what appears to be extorting millions of dollars from the father of a congressman based on assisting that congressman through some legal difficulties. The scheme being concocted also included discussion of arrangements for a commando raid on Iran to free a prisoner. The information conveyed in the screenshots that were provided of the texts has not been disputed by anyone involved in the venture, but as I thought the accompanying article was timid in its willingness to draw any conclusions, I wrote my piece attempting to connect the dots.

The Congressman involved was, of course, Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is now facing the House Ethics Committee, surely an oxymoron if there ever was one, concerning his primarily sexual exploits. To my surprise, however, there has been hardly a word in the mainstream media about looking deeper into the possible Israeli connection. One would have thought the copied texts would be newsworthy due to the extortion angle but even more due to the fact that an armed attack on a nation with which the US is not at war was being funded and planned by a foreign government’s diplomatic mission in New York.

To be sure my article did very well both on Unz and even Facebook, though I had to cut and paste it in the latter site due to its blocking of Unz. I did a bit more checking and noted something that has been occurring for some time: the piece, like others relating to Israel, was not coming up on search engines like Google, which means it was not getting the exposure that it merited. I search daily by my name assuming that my pieces if replayed elsewhere will be displayed. In the past I would sometimes get scores of hits on a popular article, but during the past year hardly anything has been appearing. I have to assume that deliberate and widespread censorship of articles critical of Israel is taking place, which was no surprise as friends of Israel are not exactly rare in the social media. Facebook’s censorship board, for example, includes a former Israeli government minister.

It all comes down to the power of the Israeli/Jewish lobby and its ability to make things that it does not like go away. And sometimes it can make things happen that are manifestly not in the interest of the United States. Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy ever in the history of the United States, was recently allowed to return to Israel. In an interview on March 26th he said that any American Jews working for US intelligence agencies must do their duty and spy for Israel because one’s real loyalty is to the Jewish state and one’s co-religionists.

Clearly Pollard is not alone and it was shocking to learn that outgoing president Donald Trump pardoned the Israeli agent who recruited and presumably helped “run” Pollard when he was stealing US secrets. Aviem Sella received a full pardon from Trump as part of hundreds of last minute pardons, many of which had been arranged through two Orthodox Jewish agencies favored by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Sella was a retired Israeli air force officer doing graduate studies and living in the US when he enlisted Pollard to spy for Israel. He fled the country after Pollard was arrested in 1985 and was charged in absentia on three espionage counts but Israel refused to extradite him to the US to stand trial. A White House statement noted that Sella’s request for clemency received support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli ambassador in Washington Ron Dermer, the American ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican Party’s top donor and Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson. Would anyone expect otherwise?

The Sella pardon should be seen for what it is. It was a gift to the corrupt Netanyahu, who was at the time facing another national election. It served no US national interest at all and in fact sent the message to those who might be tempted a la Pollard that spying for Israel might be regarded as consequence free, in fact desirable and the right thing to do. Of course, the special “exemption” when dealing with Israel should also be regarded as a tribute to Jewish power in the United States, which relies on the corruption of those in leadership positions, using financial inducements or even blackmail backed up by smears of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial for those who cannot be bought.

And the power to corrupt governments and media is not limited to the United States. Nearly everyone in public office or who relies on the media for an income understands one does not cross the Israel Lobby. In Britain, former Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan has written a memoir that accuses pro-Israel lobbyists of “the most disgusting interference” in British politics while also distorting the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East to favor the Jewish state.

Duncan also claimed that Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) went “ballistic” and blocked him from becoming the Middle East minister at the Foreign Office. Duncan has long been a major target for the Israel lobby. In 2017, an Al Jazeera documentary exposed the maneuvering of pro-Israel groups working together with the Israeli Embassy in London to “take down” Duncan and also Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Per Duncan, Conservative Friends of Israel, which openly promotes the interests of a foreign country, had successfully promoted a “Netanyahu-type view of Israeli politics into our foreign policy.” In one chapter Duncan criticized Conservative MPs’ fawning over Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain, a performance apparently similar to the time when Bibi addressed the US Congress and received 27 standing ovations.

The Duncan book appeared when another story broke about how a group called “UK Lawyers for Israel” acting on behalf of the Israeli government has been altering the material included in secondary school text books. Per a statement issued by Pearson, the largest publisher of school books in the UK, the company has suspended publication of two textbooks responding to “an eight-page report, by Middle East specialists Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, which found hundreds of changes to the textbooks overwhelmingly favoring an Israeli narrative and removing or replacing passages that support Palestinian narratives.”

Censorship of course materials as well as textbooks by Jewish groups to depict Israel in a certain way has certainly been going on in the United States for many years. And the corruption of our institutions to favor Israel and protect it from criticism is incessant. It will be interesting to see if the Gaetz story in all its aspects will ever be allowed to surface or whether the congressman will be offered some inducement to allow him to quietly resign. Somehow, it reminds one of the still unresolved Jeffrey Epstein case in which Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell obtained blackmail material relating to world leaders and celebrities having sex with young girls, somewhat similar to the claims regarding Gaetz.

Many including myself believe that Epstein was part of an Israeli intelligence operation, similar in scale to what was being run on 9/11, which sought to “influence” key figures on issues regarded as important by the Jewish state. Clearly, the game goes on with no one in Washington caring much about the damage being done. Do corrupted and intimidated Congressmen over their morning coffee ponder whether certain activities are “Good for Israel” and therefore not subject to further scrutiny? Judging from Epstein and Gaetz, one would have to believe that to be the case.

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

April 13, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran Starts 60% Enrichment in Reaction to Natanz Sabotage

Mehr News Agency – April 13, 2021

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Sayyed Abbas Araqchi announced the beginning of 60% enrichment in the Natanz Enrichment Facility.

Araqchi who is in Vienna to participate in a new round of talks with the P4+1 and the EU representative within the framework of the JCPOA Joint Commission announced the start of 60% enrichment on Tuesday afternoon.

Iran has announced today in a letter to the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency that it would begin 60% enrichment, he said.

Another 1,000 centrifuges with 50% more capacity will be added to the machines in Natanz, in addition to replacing the damaged ones, he added.

Earlier, after the recent sabotage of the Natanz enrichment facility, Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations Kazem Gharibabadi announced that a new generation of machines will be installed in Natanz and several other technical measures will be announced this week.

The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Sunday that an incident took place in a part of the electricity distribution network of Shahid Ahmadi Roshan facility in Natanz.

Following the incident, AEOI Chief Ali-Akbar Salehi slammed the “act of sabotage”, noting that the international community, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), must deal with such “nuclear terrorism” that targets Iran’s facilities.

April 13, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

US, Israel set to punish Palestinians for holding a democratic election, again

By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | April 11, 2021

Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.

Israeli and US officials are citing concerns over the potential outcome of the upcoming May 22 Palestinian legislative elections, and if their reactions mirror the past example, the conflict in the Palestinian Occupied Territories could severely escalate.

The people of the West Bank, East Jerusalem al-Quds and Gaza are set to vote in their first set of elections in 15 years. Much to the dismay of Israel and the United States, who claim they will not interfere in Palestinian democratic processes, it looks like their most despised group Hamas is on the way to a potential landslide victory.

In 2006, Hamas historically won the legislative elections, seizing control of the Gaza Strip. Their Fatah Party rivals, the United States and Israel, however, did not accept the election results and decided to take action to punish the people of Palestine for having their own say at the ballot box.

What ensued was dubbed as the ‘Palestinian civil war,’ which officially ended in 2007, with Hamas having successfully stopped an attempted Fatah-led coup – backed by the United States and Israel. Israel, as a result of the removal of Fatah power from the Gaza Strip, saw the perfect opportunity to impose a full and tightened blockade over the territory – thus collectively punishing its civilian population for their choice in the elections. Upon the Hamas victory, the US and EU also imposed overwhelming sanctions on Gaza meant to undermine the elected Hamas government.

As a result of the rivalry between the Fatah Party, currently heading the Palestinian Authority (PA) – which maintains limited control over small portions of the West Bank – and Hamas, there have been no elections since. Time and time again Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose term in office expired in 2009, has postponed the elections, until early this year, when Abbas announced that legislative and presidential elections were finally to take place.

For Palestinians, their elections are set up to fail from the get-go. Pretty much the only political party they have to choose from, without being punished by the West and Israel, is the Fatah Party. All other major political Parties are registered terrorist organizations by most Western countries and Israel itself. Due to Western political immaturity, no organization that refuses to sell out the Palestinian cause for national liberation is to be considered as a legitimate political force and so instead it must be punished, attacked, sanctioned and humiliated. Thus, any Palestinian voting for a change to the status quo, meaning voting outside of lists belonging to Fatah, are to be punished for their choice to change to political scene.

We know from statements published by Fatah and Hamas that both intend to set up a unity government, meaning that Hamas will be in on decisions to lead the Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet, if this occurs, Israel is very open about their rejection of any collaboration with a government formed of Hamas members. This means that all of the cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, such as “security cooperation,” would cease and the two would be at conflict.

Early this year, Israeli Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman had repeatedly warned President Mahmoud Abbas about the consequences of holding elections and made it clear that Hamas would not be tolerated. The Shin Bet chief also stressed that Abbas not go ahead with the elections.

Now it has been reported that, in a meeting between the two, both Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken are “concerned” about a Hamas win and urge a postponement of the elections. The hilarious part of the meeting, reported by Israel’s Walla news outlet, was that both figures also stressed that they didn’t intend to interfere in Palestinian democratic processes. But if you are urging a postponement of elections, after 15 years of no elections and are set to reject the party most likely to win at this point, then what else other than interference is that?

Israel has already gone on a tirade of arresting Palestinian political activists and prominent members of Hamas, in the West Bank and threatens ending cooperation with the PA, which will result in an escalation of violence. The US also does not indicate it will accept a Hamas win and is already expressing concern. So, if Hamas were to win in the West Bank, then we can only assume that their sanctions against Gaza may be transferred somewhat onto the West Bank too. This is essentially the US and Israel offering the Palestinian people an ultimatum; choose the status quo and still have the limited money you have, or choose who you like and we will crush you.

Due to the internal divisions now seen in the Fatah Party – which seems most likely to pave the way for a Hamas win – there is no indication that this will be respected by the West and Israel.

So, what do Palestinians do, vote for the status quo and continue to suffer as usual, watching the settlements expand upon the rest of their lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds), or vote for the alternative which will likely mean an all-out conflict with the West and Israel?

As much as the West and Israel attempt to publicly distance themselves from the Palestinian elections, they are as much a part of it as are all the Palestinian political parties themselves. This is just the reality of the ongoing illegal occupation, there is no official autonomous Palestinian State, only oppressed peoples fighting for that State. So, any attempt to act as if a fair election, without Israeli-US influence is possible, is a product of great imagination.

April 11, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Former minister blasts pro-Israel lobby over ‘disgusting interference’ in British politics

MEMO | April 9, 2021

Former Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan has accused pro-Israel lobbyists of “the most disgusting interference” in British politics, and of negatively influencing the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The veteran politician has also claimed that Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) went “ballistic” and blocked him from taking on a new post covering the region’s affairs.

Duncan, a former Conservative MP and government minister, makes the sensational claims in his newly published memoir, In The Thick of It: The private diaries of a minister (published by William Collins, 2021). Speaking to journalist Michael Crick about his book for the MailPlus website, the 64 year-old blasted CFI and its undue influence in British politics.

Conservative Friends of Israel, he said, had injected a “Netanyahu-type view of Israeli politics into our foreign policy,” referring to Israel’s right-wing prime minister. He claimed that it had applied pressure on Theresa May’s government to prevent him becoming Middle East minister at the Foreign Office.

In his book, Duncan claims that his new role was agreed until the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson alerted him to the fact that CFI “are going ballistic”. He insists that he was blocked from taking the post because he believes in the rights of the Palestinians.

In one diary entry Duncan is scathing about Conservative MPs’ fawning over Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain. He was “ashamed” of the British government, accusing officials of allowing Netanyahu to “peddle pro-settlement propaganda”.

Duncan described to Crick the culture of fear created by CFI. “A lot of things do not happen in foreign policy or in government for fear of offending them because that’s the way it’s put to them by the CFI.”

He warned: “It’s a sort of buried scandal that has to stop… they will interfere at a high level in British politics in the interests of Israel on the back of donor power in the UK.” Ultimately, he pointed out, the influence of the pro-Israel lobby group came at the expense of the Palestinians.

Duncan has been a major target for the pro-Israel lobby. In 2017, an Al Jazeera documentary sensationally exposed the operations of pro-Israel lobbyists working with the Israeli Embassy in London to “take down” a minister of the Crown. Duncan, fellow Conservative MP Crispin Blunt and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were marked out as targets. Writing for Al Jazeera at the time, Robert Grenier, a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, warned against what he called the “insidious threats” of the pro-Israel lobby.

Read also: Conservative Friends of Israel urge UK to oppose ICC’s war crimes investigation

April 10, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Anti-war activist visited by police after posting embarrassing AOC video

By MAX BLUMENTHAL · The Grayzone · APRIL 9, 2021

An anti-war activist said he was visited by California Highway Patrol officers after posting video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bumbling comments on Israel-Palestine. The action was initiated by a call to US Capitol Police.

As he waited for a food delivery at his home in Los Angeles on April 8, Ryan Wentz, an anti-war activist and producer for the online viral program, Soapbox, heard two men calling his name from over his front gate. When he approached, he realized they were not delivery drivers, but police officers flashing badges of the California Highway Patrol.

The cops informed Wentz that they had received a call from the Capitol Police, the federal law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the US Congress, about a tweet he had sent that allegedly threatened Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Wentz told The Grayzone, “The officers said, ‘We got a warning about a sitting member of Congress. And it was because of your tweet, which tagged them in it.’ And then they just wouldn’t back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her.”

The California Highway Patrol indicated on Twitter that it had acted on a call from Capitol Police. The Grayzone has contacted the office of Ocasio-Cortez, known popularly as AOC, and will update this article when more information is available.

Whether or not AOC’s office was responsible for falsely informing Capitol Police of an online threat by Wentz, the Democratic congresswoman has demonstrated a pattern of spurious claims of violence against her critics, and of resorting to heavy-handed methods to suppress them. Any move by AOC to wield law enforcement against online detractors would be especially ironic given her status as a vehement advocate for defunding the police and ending mass incarceration.

Whoever called the police on Wentz furnished law enforcement with a patently false allegation, as he has never threatened violence against any member of Congress. In the tweet that triggered the police action, Wentz merely posted video of AOC delivering a vapid and embarrassingly convoluted answer to a question about resolving the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Describing her answer as “incredibly underwhelming,” he let the congresswoman’s cringeworthy commentary speak for itself.

https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1379879392642408448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1379879392642408448%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrayzone.com%2F2021%2F04%2F09%2Fanti-war-activist-police-aoc-video%2F

Asked by Michael S. Miller of the New York Jewish Community Relations Council about actions that could be taken to support movements towards peace between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, AOC responded as follows:

Earlier just now you and I were talking about the what and the how. And I think that when we talk about peace, centering people’s humanity, protecting people’s rights – it’s not just about the what and the end goal which actually gets a lot of focus, but I actually think it’s much more about the how, and the way we are coming together, and how we interpret that what, and how we act in, you know, the actions we take to get to that what. So what this really is about is a question more than anything else about process. And we really need to make sure that we are valuing a process where all parties are respected and have, you know, a lot of equal opportunity to really make sure we are negotiating in good faith, etcetera. That being said, you know, I think there’s just this one central issue of settlements, because if the what – if the what has been decided on as two state, then the action of settlements, it’s not the how to get to that what. And so, you know, I think that’s a central thing that, you know, we center. And that we value Jewish and rather, we value Israeli, uh, uh, uh, we value the safety and human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians, in that process that is similar, and that is on equal footing. And so all of that is extremely important in that process.

The video that Wentz tweeted of AOC’s long-winded dodge of a fundamental question about resolving the Israeli occupation of Palestine prompted a flood of online mockery and contempt, mostly from leftist Twitter users. Many derided AOC as a careerist who had abandoned progressive causes like Palestinian liberation in order to curry favor with Democratic Party power brokers, while others ridiculed her meaningless word salad.

Within hours of the online pile-on, someone reported Wentz to the Capitol Police for tweeting the video that embarrassed AOC. Because Wentz does not provide any information about his personal identity in his public Twitter profile, the social media giant appeared to have provided his private details to federal law enforcement.

“Another weird thing is usually I would get a report [from Twitter],” Wentz said, “because I’ve gotten my tweets reported before. But I didn’t get any notification about this.”

AOC’s staff has previously appealed to certain authorities to punish online critics. On February 4, 2021, her campaign sent a mass email to supporters asking them to “scan your social media to find posts with misleading information” about the congresswoman, and “use the built-in report feature to flag them for moderators.”

Team AOC issued its appeal for supporters to police social media in response to right-wing mockery of a dramatic livestream in which AOC suggested that the mob which stormed the Capitol building on January 6 nearly assassinated her.

“I just hear these yells of ‘WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS SHE?’” she recounted in the livestream. “This was the moment where I thought everything was over. I thought I was going to die.”

Her eyes welling with tears, AOC continued, “I felt that if this was the journey my life was taking, I felt that things were going to be okay, and that I had fulfilled my purpose.”

However, the source of the yells which had terrified AOC turned out to be a Capitol Police officer who had been dispatched to protect her. Further, the congresswoman’s office was located in the Cannon House Office Building, which had not been penetrated by any rioters on January 6 and was located a block away from the melee.

Right-wing activists responded to AOC’s claims by launching a viral hashtag likening her to Jussie Smollet, the actor who faked an attack on himself. After attempting to challenge her critics directly, AOC delegated her staff to dispatch its army of supporters to report critics en masse to Twitter and Facebook censors.

Weeks earlier, online podcaster Jimmy Dore had initiated a “Force The Vote” campaign to pressure AOC and fellow members of the progressive congressional “Squad” to withhold their votes for Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House until Pelosi agreed to bring a bill for Medicare for All to the floor for a vote.

In response to incendiary criticism from Dore for her refusal to buck centrist party leadership, AOC declared, “That’s not tone, that’s violence.”

AOC’s record of characterizing harsh criticism as violent abuse, and turning to online censors to suppress it, raises questions about whether her team was responsible for siccing the police on an anti-war activist.

According to Wentz, the police officers that visited him asked if he had any violent intent behind his tweet, then left. “If this was like a purely intimidation thing,” he reflected, “then I guess it did its job. It’s not comforting to be on the receiving end of that. But at the same time, they’re not going to shut the left up.”

Wentz added, “We are told that AOC is a member of the left, but if she really was involved in this [call to the Capitol Police] – and that’s how the left treats the left – then I want no part of that. I don’t want this fake adversarial movement that just entrenches the horrible deeds that we’re living under now.”

April 9, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Iranian merchant vessel Saviz struck by blast in Red Sea, suffers minor damage: Official

Press TV – April 7, 2021

Iran says one of its merchant vessels has been targeted by an explosion of unknown origin in the strategic Red Sea, in the second such incident in less than a month.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatizadeh told reporters that the Saviz ship was struck by the blast at around 6 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Tuesday, April 5, near the coast of Djibouti, and sustained minor damage.

“Fortunately, no fatalities were caused by the incident, and technical evaluations on how the incident occurred and its origins are underway,” he added.

The Iranian official said Tehran will take all the necessary measures regarding the case through international bodies.

Rejecting media claims, Khatibzadeh said the Saviz is a non-military vessel, whose specifications and mission have been formally registered with the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

He said the ship acts as Iran’s logistic station in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, protects naval routes and provides security for merchant vessels and tankers against pirates.

A New York Times story published on Wednesday quoted an anonymous US official telling the newspaper that the Tel Aviv regime notified the United States that Israeli forces had attacked an Iranian ship in the Red Sea.

The unnamed US official said Israel called the strike a retaliation, and that the ship had been hit below the water line.

In a similar incident last month, an Iranian cargo ship was damaged after it was targeted by a terrorist attack en route to Europe in the Mediterranean Sea.

Tehran said back then that such acts of terror are a clear example of naval piracy and run counter to international law on the safety of commercial vessels.

On February 25, an explosion struck Israeli-owned and the Bahamas-flagged ship, the MV Helios Ray, in the Sea of Oman near the strategic mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hastily accused Iran of attacking the ship. Iran categorically rejected the charge.

Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi, in a letter addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on March 5, warned of consequences of any possible miscalculated measure by Israel over the explosion.

“The incident has all the characteristic of a complicated false flag operation carried out by actors in order to pursue their malign policies and to advance their illegitimate objectives,” Takht Ravanchi wrote.

April 7, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Oxford Researcher Who Helped Push US to Depixelate Israel in Satellite Snaps Died From Cancer at 34

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.04.2021

For over two decades, US legislation stopped American companies from creating and publishing high-resolution satellite images of Israel. In July 2020, lawmakers updated the obscure amendment regulating the “pixelated Israel,” paving the way for detailed snaps of everything from Tel Aviv’s nuclear reactor to the country’s activity in the West Bank.

Michael Fradley and Andrea Zerbini, a pair of Oxford University archeologists specialising in the Middle East, were responsible for spearheading the campaign to amend an obscure US law to unblur satellite imagery of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Company, Dr. Fradley said that he and Zerbini stumbled upon an obscure law, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, which was passed thanks to Israeli lobbying as part of the National Defence Authorisation Act of 1997, in the mid-2010s after being frustrated by the lack of high-quality satellite images of the region.

“We were archeologists. We didn’t really know anything about space law,” Fradley recalled, adding that beginning in 2017, he and his colleague got to work trying to find a legal way to get around the restrictions.

Eventually, the pair of academics discovered that Airbus, the Western European multinational aerospace giant, has been producing high-resolution sub-2 metre per pixel images of Israel and Palestinian lands since at least 2012, with the European company not subject to the US law.

The academics proceeded to press the United States to change its laws, pointing to a reform mechanism within the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment which allows for restrictions to be reduced if companies outside the US were selling their own satellite imagery at resolutions higher than those set by the law.

After obtaining the clearer images from Airbus, Fradley and Zerbini published a paper in 2018 in Space Policy, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, in which they urged US authorities to pay attention to advances in commercial satellite technology outside the US and update policy accordingly.

In their paper, Fradley and Zerbini stressed that the regulations required an “urgent review,” and recommended that “US imagery should meet what has become the international standard of 0.5m.” The archeologists argued that the restrictions “hampered scientific research” and that their removal would “open up access to modern satellite imagery, as well as historical images captured by spy satellite… [and] allow researchers to record longer-term landscape change.” Other prospective benefits presumably included surveying and monitoring, keeping tabs on heritage sites, climate assessments and more.

In July 2020, someone in the US government finally listened and the Kyl-Bigaman Amendment was updated – its exception for Israel and the Palestinian territories modified to a limit of 0.4 meters per pixel, and a further requirement to drop it to 0.3 meters after Airbus launched its new generation of imaging satellites.

The Israeli military criticised the US decision profusely, with Amnon Harari, head of space programmes at Israel’s Defence Ministry, complaining to local media at the time that the Israeli side was never consulted about the change, and stressing that the military “would always prefer to be photographed at the lowest resolution possible.”

Bittersweet Victory

Recalling the moment when he learned that the rules would be changing, Fradley told ABC that it was “really a happy moment,” but also one “tinged with real sadness.” Dr. Zerbini, his research partner, died of a rare form of liver cancer in 2019 at the age of just 34 after become ill in late 2018.

“He was the only other person who really kind of understood the nuances and how much we put into it,” Fradley said. “We were immensely proud of the work that we had done.”

Unexpected Consequences

In addition to finally opening Israel and the Palestinian territories to be studied by archeologists, Fradley and Zerbini’s footwork allowed for investigators to make major new discoveries related to Israel’s suspected nuclear weapons programme (Israel formally neither confirms nor denies that it possesses nukes).

In February, an independent group of arms-control and non-proliferation experts used commercially available high-resolution images of Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant snapped by SpaceWill, a Chinese company, to show that “significant construction” activities were taking place at the site. Days later, additional, clearer images provided by Planet Labs, a California-based private Earth imaging company, confirmed the construction.

The Planet Labs’ satellite snaps would not have been made available had it not been for Fradley and Zerbini’s work.

Nor would satellite imagery-based studies of Israeli activities in the West Bank or the occupied Golan Heights, such as the bulldozing of structures, settlement growth, and military emplacements.

April 5, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

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