Israel’s Friends at the RNC: ‘Christian Zionists’ Dictate the Agenda of the Republican Party
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | September 2, 2020
It is difficult – and futile – to argue which American president has historically been more pro-Israel. While former President Barack Obama, for example, has pledged more money to Israel than any other US administration in history, Donald Trump has provided Israel with a blank check of seemingly endless political concessions.
Certainly, the unconditional backing and love declared for Israel is common among all US administrations. What they may differ on, however, is their overall motive, primarily their target audience during election time.
Both Republicans and Democrats head to the November elections with strong pro-Israel sentiments and outright support, completely ignoring the plight of occupied and oppressed Palestinians.
To win the support of the pro-Israeli constituencies, but especially the favor of the Israel lobby in Washington DC, Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have deviated even further from the low standards set by the Democratic Obama administration. Despite his generous financial support for Israel and full political backing, especially during Israel’s wars on the Gaza Strip, Obama dared, at times, to censure Israel over the expansion of its illegal Jewish settlements.
The Biden-Harris ticket, however, is offering Israel unconditional support.
“Joe Biden has made it clear,” Harris was quoted as saying in a telephone call on August 26, “he will not tie US security assistance to Israel to political decisions Israel makes, and I couldn’t agree more.” The call was made to what the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, termed as “Jewish supporters.” The Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel referred to this crucial constituency as “Jewish donors.”
The references above are sufficient to delineate the nature of the Democratic Party establishment’s current support for Israel. Although the view of the party’s rank and file has significantly shifted against Israel in recent years, the Democratic upper echelon still caters to the Israel lobby and their rich backers, even if this means molding US foreign policy in the entire Middle East region to serve Israeli interests.
For Republicans, however, it is a different story. The party’s establishment and the rank and file are united in their love and support for Israel. Though the Israel lobby plays an important role in harnessing and channeling this support, Republicans are not entirely motivated by pleasing the pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington DC.
The speeches made by Republican leaders at the Republican National Convention (RNC), held in Charlotte, North Carolina, between August 24-27 were all aimed at reassuring Christian Evangelicals – often referred to as ‘Christian Zionists’- who represent the most powerful pro-Israel constituency in the United States.
The once relatively marginal impact of Christian Zionists in directly shaping US foreign policy, has morphed over the years – particularly during the Trump presidency – to define the core values of the Republican Party.
“This is apocalyptic foreign policy in a nutshell,” tweeted Israeli commentator, Gershom Gorenberg, on August 24. In Republican thinking, “Israel is not as a real country but a fantasyland, backdrop for Christian myth.”
Gorenberg’s comments were tweeted hours before the controversial speech made by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, America’s top diplomat, who delivered his brief notes from “beautiful Jerusalem, looking out over the old city.” The location, and the reference to it, were clear messages regarding the religious centrality of Israel to US foreign policy, and the unmistakable target audience.
Trump was even more obvious during an August 17 speech in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem,” Trump announced to a cheering crowd, “and so the Evangelicals – you know, it’s amazing with that – the Evangelicals are more excited about that than Jewish people … It’s really, it’s incredible.”
Unsurprisingly, 22 percent of Wisconsin residents identify as “Evangelical Protestants.”
This was not the first time that Trump has derided US Jews for not being as supportive of him as they are of his Democrat rivals. A year ago, Trump called Jewish Democrats “disloyal” to Israel. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” he said in August 2019.
This was not a simple case of Trump’s typical political insensitivity but, rather, the cognizance that the real Republican prize in the coming elections is not the Jewish vote but the Christian Zionists.
In his speech before the RNC on August 27, Trump recounted to this same audience his pro-Israeli accomplishments, including the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018. “Unlike many presidents before me, I kept my promise, recognized Israel’s true capital and moved our embassy to Jerusalem,” Trump proclaimed.
The moving of the embassy, always a great opportunity to repeat the word “Jerusalem” before a jubilant crowd, was the buzzword at the RNC, repeated by all top Republicans, including former US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. “President Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem — and when the UN tried to condemn us, I was proud to cast the American veto,” Haley announced proudly, which generated an approving cheer.
In all of their references to Israel at the RNC, Republican leaders adhered to specific talking points: Iran, the US embassy move, the recognition of the Occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territories, the fight against anti-Semitism (silencing any criticism of Israel), and so on.
However, the Republican discourse seems to be detached from the traditional US foreign policy view that US support for Israel serves the geopolitical and geostrategic interests of Washington. This view, predominant among Democrats, seems to be almost entirely forsaken by Republicans, whose love for Israel is now dedicated to a purely religious mission.
In June 2015, when he was still a Congressman from Kansas, Secretary Pompeo once declared before a packed megachurch in Wichita, that the “battles” against evil are a “never-ending struggle,” one that will continue “until the Rapture,” a reference to what some Christians believe to be a sign of the end of times.
Addressing the RNC from Jerusalem on August 25, Pompeo must have felt that part of his spiritual mission has already been fulfilled.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
Ceasefire Understanding Reached between Hamas, Zionist Entity
Al-Manar – September 1, 2020
Hamas Palestinian Resistance group said it accepted a ceasefire agreement with the Zionist entity on Monday night, ending a nearly month-long round of tensions along the Gaza border.
After talks with Qatari envoy Mohammed El-Emadi, “an understanding was reached to rein in the latest escalation and end [Israeli] aggression against our people”, the office of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said on Monday.
The announcement came after three weeks of tensions that saw Israeli strikes on the besieged enclave and the launch of hundreds of explosives-laden and incendiary balloons were launched toward the occupied territories.
According to Hamas, the new understanding includes “a number of projects that serve our people in the Gaza Strip and would help them cope with the outbreak of the coronavirus.”
The Israeli regime, on his part, did not explicitly confirm the existence of a deal, but in a tacit acknowledgment said it would fully reopen the fishing zone off the coast of the Strip and the enclave’s border crossings beginning Tuesday.
“This decision will be tested on the ground: If Hamas, which is responsible for all actions that are taken in the Gaza Strip, will fail to meet its obligations, Israel will act accordingly,” the Zionist entity’s military liaison to the Palestinians said in a statement.
The occupation army has carried out attacks on Gaza almost daily since August 6 in what it says is a response to the airborne incendiary devices and, less frequently, rockets launched into the occupied territories.
Facebook Hires an Israeli Censor
Another attack on free speech by the Jewish State
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 1, 2020
Israel’s defenders both in the political realm and in the media have long used every weapon available to stifle any criticism of Israeli racism and its oppression of the Palestinians. In particular, the use of “anti-Semitism” as something like a tactical discussion stopper in deliberations about the Middle East has long been a staple of both American and European politics. It is freely employed to end all dispute while also condemning those accused of the crime to being somehow outside the pale, monsters who are consigned forever to derision and obscurity. But the Israelis and, to be sure, many diaspora Jews know exactly how the expression has been weaponized. Former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni explained how it is done “Anti-Semitic”…”its a trick, we always use it.”
If one were to read the U.S. mainstream media, reflective as it nearly always is of a certain institutional Jewish viewpoint, one would think that there has been a dramatic increase in anti-Semitism worldwide, but that claim is incorrect. What has been taking place is not hatred of Jews but rather a confluence of two factors. First is the undeniable fact that Israel has been behaving particularly badly, even by its admittedly low standards. Its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza has been unusually observable in spite of media attempts to avoid mentioning it, plus its support of terrorists in Syria and attacks on that country have also raised questions about the intentions of the kleptocratic regime in Tel Aviv, which is currently pushing hard for an attack on Iran and appears to have the Trump administration fully on board. That all means that the perception of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state, inevitably raises questions about the behavior of the international Jewish community that has done so much to shape the favorable narrative, but it does not necessarily imply hatred of the Jewish ethnicity or religion.
Second, the alleged increase in anti-Semitic incidents is also largely fueled by how those incidents are defined. Israel and its friends have worked hard to broaden the parameters of the discussion, making any criticism of Israel or its activities either a hate crime or ipso facto an anti-Semitic incident. The U.S. State Department’s working definition of anti-Semitism now includes “… the targeting of the state of Israel” and it warns that anti-Semitism is a criminal offense. Recent legislation in Washington and also in Europe has criminalized hitherto legal and non-violent efforts to pressure Israel regarding its inhumanity vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Legitimate criticism of Israel thereby becomes both anti-Semitism and criminal, increasing the count of so-called anti-Semitic incidents. That means that the numbers inevitably go up, providing fodder to validate a repressive response.
One might add that Hollywood, the mainstream media and academia have contributed to the allegations regarding surging anti-Semitism, relentlessly unleashing a torrent of material rooting out alleged anti-Semites and so-called holocaust deniers, while simultaneously heaping praise on Israel and its achievements. All of the media exposure of so-called anti-Semitism has a political objective, whether intended or not, which is to insulate Israel itself from any criticism and to create for all Jews the status of perpetual victimhood which permits many in the diaspora to unflinchingly support a foreign country against the interests of the nations where they were born, raised and made their fortunes.
Two Muslim congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, have dared to overtly challenge the reality that Jewish power is greatly disproportionate in Washington. Tlaib said that the sponsors of legislation intended to benefit Israel by limiting free speech “… forgot what country they represent. This is the U.S. where boycotting is a right and part of our historical fight for freedom and equality. Maybe a refresher on our U.S. Constitution is in order, then get back to opening up our government instead of taking our rights away.”
Indeed, Congressional Israel boosters have long since forgotten that they are supposed to uphold the Constitution of the United States while also promoting the interests of their constituents, not those of a country seven thousand miles away. Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept responded to the Tlaib comment with a tweet “It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.” Ilhan Omar then tweeted her own pithy rejoinder to Greenwald: “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby!” which was in reference to the Founder Benjamin Franklin’s portrait on hundred-dollar bills. Her comment was almost immediately interpreted as meaning that she was accusing leading politicians of being bought by the Israel Lobby, which is at least in some cases basically true.
There followed a manufactured outrage, with political leaders from both parties latching on to a media frenzy to score points against each other. Even though it is perfectly legitimate for a Congresswoman on the Foreign Affairs Committee to challenge what the Israel Lobby does and where its money comes from, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi complained that Omar’s “use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters” was “deeply offensive.” President Donald Trump, who has admitted that his Mideast policy is intended to serve Israeli rather than U.S. interests, also jumped in, saying “I think she should either resign from congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
Omar’s comments preceded the recent wave of pro-Israel censorship in news stories, on social media and also within information “search” services on the internet. If anything, the effort to broaden the censorship of language and expressions relating to Israel and the activities of the Israel Lobby both in the United States and worldwide has increased. News/information sites like Yahoo have stopped allowing comments on their articles in part because the comments often contradicted their reporting on the Middle East and also on other issues. Google searches are skewed to bury results that are particularly critical of the Jewish state.
As it is an election year and both parties are seeking tens of millions of dollars from Israel-tied Jewish donors like Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, the effort to make any criticism of Israel hate speech is intensifying. Two weeks ago “… more than 120 organizations sent a letter to the social media giant [Facebook], urging it to ‘fully adopt’ the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism as the ‘cornerstone of Facebook’s hate speech policy regarding antisemitism.’ This definition, which was adopted by the IHRA in 2016 and has been promoted to governments worldwide, includes several examples of what it describes as ‘contemporary’ antisemitism—including ‘denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards’ to Israel—that can be interpreted to define much criticism of Israel, Israeli policies, or Zionism as antisemitism.”
Facebook for its part has hired Emi Palmor, former director-general of Israel’s justice ministry, as a member of its new oversight board which will censor content on the site. The company’s chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg has also declared that FB is using “… the IHRA definition ‘in informing [its] own approach and definitions,’ that its new policy ‘draws on the spirit—and the text—of the IHRA,’ and that under Facebook’s policy, ‘Jews and Israelis are treated as “protected characteristics.’”
Protected characteristics has meant in practice that criticism of the activities of either Israelis or Jewish groups will not be acceptable on the site. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Facebook is also now censoring any material that might lead to legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and its policies. On August 18th the site removed a picture and article showing a road filled with dead Palestinian-owned sheep that were reportedly killed by an Israeli settler driver. The Israeli deliberately ran over the animals with his car as part of a campaign to destroy the livelihoods of Palestinian farmers on the West Bank.
When the Israel Lobby complains that portraying Israel negatively is thinly veiled anti-Semitism, one might well respond that terrible things are being done in the Middle East in the name of Jews and of Israel. Silencing critics by accusing them of a hate crime is little more than a perversion of justice to serve the demands of a powerful and wealthy minority as well as a denial of constitutional rights for all Americans. When confronted by accusations of “anti-Semitism”, just recall what the Israeli minister admitted: “It’s a trick, we always use it.”
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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Palestinian student Nizar Issa Qaddoumi forcibly kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | August 31, 2020
Israeli occupation forces abducted Nizar Issa Qaddoumi, 26, on the evening of Monday, 31 August, 2020, as he worked at the Al-Natour gas station in Tulkarem. Nizar, a student at Kadoorie – Palestine Technical University, is the latest Palestinian student to be seized by occupation forces in a violent kidnapping.
In the video below, Israeli occupation forces, driving a civilian van and wearing civilian clothes, drive into the gas station. When Nizar approaches them for service, they spring out of the van, attacking, grabbing and beating him over the head while brandishing handguns, presumably threatening Nizar’s Palestinian coworkers. They force Nizar into the back of the van and drive off toward an unknown location – another example of the daily injustices and violence imposed on Palestinian life by Israeli colonialism.
There are currently over 200 Palestinian university students in Israeli prisons, and Israeli occupation forces routinely invade Palestinian university campuses and students’ homes, interrogating them and imprisoning them – either in administrative detention without charge or trial, or by dragging these civilian students before military courts for participating in student activities like campaigns, book fairs and demonstrations on campus.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges student organizations and people of conscience around the world to organize for the freedom of Palestinian student prisoners – and all Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails by putting pressure on governments to end their support for the Israeli occupation regime and escalating the boycott of Israel and the corporations that profit from colonialism, such as HP and G4S.
UN: Israel Must Immediately Allow Entry of Fuel, Other Essential Items into Gaza
Palestine Chronicle | August 31, 2020
United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick today called on Israel to immediately allow entry of fuel and other essential goods into the besieged Gaza Strip to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe.
“The deterioration witnessed in recent weeks in the Gaza Strip is of grave concern,” he said in a statement, explaining that with an escalation of hostilities in the area, “Israel has limited the transfer of certain goods into the blockaded coastal enclave, reduced the permissible fishing area and prevented fuel deliveries, including the UN-facilitated fuel for Gaza’s sole Power Plant. As a result, the Gaza Power Plant ceased operations on 18 August, sharply reducing electricity provision to nearly 2 million Palestinians,” said the UN official.
“In addition, and marking a significant deterioration in the health situation, on 24 August, the first cases of COVID-19 outside the quarantine facilities were confirmed. Thus far, there are 280 known active cases, 243 of which are from community transmission.”
He added: “At present, people have access to rolling electricity supply for a maximum of four hours per day, a difficult situation at any point, but especially serious given efforts to contain the outbreak of COVID-19. The situation is hindering the provision of services in the quarantine facilities and the capacity of the health system to cope with the increased demands, such as the ability to detect new COVID-19 cases. Power outages in hospitals are having serious repercussions, with patients in intensive care, chronic and emergency cases particularly vulnerable.
“The reduction in electricity supply is also severely undermining other critical infrastructure, including the operations of all water wells, sewage pumping stations, wastewater treatment plants, and some desalination plants. The supply of clean water and wastewater treatment is impacted. There is now a high risk of sewage flooding populated areas, increased pollution into the Mediterranean Sea and along the coast, and further pollution to the aquifer.”
McGoldrick warned that following 13 years of the Israeli blockade and a dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, swift action is required to alleviate the humanitarian situation, prevent further deterioration and increase respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law, calling on Israel “to immediately allow the resumption of fuel into the Gaza Strip, in line with its obligations as an occupying power, to ensure that the basic needs of people are met and to prevent a collapse of basic services.”
In August, Israel has cut fuel imports into Gaza since last week as part of punitive measures over the alleged launch of incendiary balloons from the strip.
Israel has also closed the Karam Abu Salem crossing with Gaza and completely closed the Strip’s fishing zone due to the alleged breach of the security truce.
Gaza, with a population of 2 million, has been under a hermetic Israeli siege since 2006, when the Palestinian group Hamas won the democratic legislative elections in occupied Palestine. Since then, Israel has carried out numerous bombing campaigns and several major wars, that resulted in the death of thousands of people.
Hezbollah vs Israel 2006: Who has upper hand 14 years on?
Middle East Observer | August 14, 2020
Senior Lebanese political analyst Nasser Qandil explores what has changed between Hezbollah and Israel over the last 14 years since the ‘July War’ or ‘The Second Lebanon War’ in 2006.
After tracing the major changes and transformations in the military balance of power between the two sides over the last 14 years, Qandil then explores the current challenges facing Hezbollah inside Lebanon, particularly regarding the deepening economic and political crises in the country.
Note: we have added our own sub-headings in the below transcript to make for easier reading
Source: Al Mayadeen News
Date: July 12, 2020
Transcript:
Hezbollah 14 years on from the July War
Nasser Qandil:
Actually, regarding (Hezbollah’s) achievement of liberation (in the year 2000) free from any conditions or negotiations, any analyst can figure out that after the year 2000, the region was involved in a race between the Resistance and (Israeli) Army of occupation in which both (sides) tried to reinforce the reality that they wanted to reflect on May 24, 2000 (i.e. just before the liberation).
Israel wanted to say that it has positioned itself on the borders with the purpose of protecting the interior (of Israel); that the era of (the war of) attrition has ended; and that it is moving into a stage where it is able to direct (its) deterrent capacity at will. In contrast, the Resistance wanted to say that Israel has humiliatingly and forcefully withdrawn (from Lebanon); and that this withdrawal is not only the beginning of a countdown of the (Israeli) entity’s capacity to hold onto (occupied) land, but also (its capacity) to go to any (new) war again as well.
Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and the Al Aqsa Uprising (“Al Aqsa Intifada”) certified what the Resistance was saying. (Israel’s) 2006 war on Lebanon was the contest that had to settle the previous contests and the (side) who wins this round, cements what it has said. Israel has worked on a plan, theory, mechanisms and appraisals, that is, it didn’t go haphazardly to war (in 2006). In short, Israel counted on “air warfare” theory and put it into practice in the (2006) war. However, the Resistance was aware of that, so it opted to strengthen its power on land, in order to cancel out the theory of air warfare, and to bring the enemy to the land to fight, engage in (battles) of attrition, and (ultimately) defeat it.
The Resistance was the victor. This was the outcome (of the war), because when we talk about ‘victory’ we are not referring to the historic and final defeat. Rather, we are just discussing this war (in 2006) in which the Resistance achieved victory and Israel was defeated again. As in the Lebanon war of the year 2000, or (more accurately) as reflected by the liberation in the (year) 2000, Israel lost its first pillar, that is, its ability to occupy (Lebanon) and remain in it. It also lost its second pillar in the 2006 war, which is its ability to wage war and achieve the goals (that it sets) as it wills.
After the 2006 war, the issue (between both sides) persisted. They entered a totally new and different race. The entity of the (Israeli) occupation is fighting to restore its honor and rehabilitate its image, whereas the Resistance is fighting the battle of becoming a regional power able to make the deterrence weapon (itself as) the policymaker. Since the year 2006, America put its weight behind (Israel’s goals) since Israel is not able to survive any longer without American protection and support. America went to Iraq after realizing that Israel superiority is (gradually) being eroded, and that it is important to rehabilitate its power and control through the American military presence to compensate for the deficiency in Israel’s ability that came about after Lebanon’s liberation in the year 2000 and the Al Aqsa intifada.
Host:
We all remember Condoleezza Rice and the ‘New Middle East Project’.
Nasser Qandil:
Exactly, and this was at the heart of the 2006 war. However, before this (war), America went to Iraq in order to redress the imbalance occurred after Lebanon’s liberation in 2000 and the Al Aqsa intifada, but they failed. The “July War” (2006) came as a second rehabilitation supported by American pressure, calculations and backing. It was a new failure that was added to the accumulated record of failures.
The only available alternative (choice) then was going to a great war, i.e. to topple Syria. This was like Armageddon. Nevertheless, other different battles, the Yemen war and the battle over the future of Iraq, occurred alongside the war (in Syria). They were no less important than the (war in Syria). Today, 14 years after the July War (in 2006), we can talk about facts and not about general trends only. The resistance (movements) transformed from being a resistance force into an Axis of Resistance. This becomes a fact; it is not just words. Today, when his eminence Sayyed (Hassan Nasrallah) speaks and says “I will kill you” – we’ll discuss this later – this (statement) reflects the (powerful reality) of the Axis of Resistance, from Beirut, to Palestine, to Iraq, to Yemen, to Iran and to Syria. This is the first major transformation that occurred between the years 2006 to 2020 during the heat of the several wars that raged over the map of the region.
The second (major transformation during these years): the ‘missile belt’ is now able to strike – from any point (within the Axis of Resistance) – any target in occupied Palestine (i.e. Israel). This means that as the resistance in Palestine is able to target all (areas of Israel) north of Gaza, the resistance in south Lebanon can target the entire (area of Israel) south (of Lebanon); the resistance from Iraq is even able to reach the (Mediterranean) sea; the resistance in Yemen can cover the whole territory of Palestine; and that’s besides (the missiles capabilities of) Syria and Iran.
The Host:
The entire Israeli intelligence efforts have lately been centered on the missile capabilities of the resistance.
Nasser Qandil:
This ‘(missile) belt’ has been completed; it is not a subject of discussion anymore.
The third (major) development is the entrance of the drones (UAVs). The use of this weapon is not restricted to the Lebanese front line. Israel has evidence that confirms that. How many times were drones sent by the resistance from Lebanon? How many times were the Israelis lost because they failed to track the drones sent from Gaza? (Further evidence lies in) the drones in Yemen, and the achievement of the Aramco attack (in Saudi Arabia) that the godfather of the Dimona (Israeli nuclear program) and Thomas Friedman wrote about it an important article in the New York Times. The article states that what happened in Aramco (can be) repeated on all American military bases in the Middle East, and can be repeated (in a strike) on Dimona. Moreover, one of the Israeli generals quoted by Thomas Friedman during a telephone conversation says that it seems that we must now relinquish the status of being the number one technicians in the Middle East, (and cede that status) to Hezbollah and its allies, and (we ought to) call upon our people to carry hand rifles in any coming wars in which drones are used. Henceforth, the third factor is the drones.
The fourth (major) new factor is the precision-guided missiles which formed the center of the struggle during the last two or three years of the Syrian war. The Israeli (air) raids which initially aimed at stopping the supply of weapons to the resistance (from Syria to Lebanon) turned into a specific goal (during these years) which became ‘preventing the resistance from the possibility of transforming their missiles into precision-guided ones’. Today, the Israelis speak about precision-guided missile factories and this signifies that they have surrendered to this fact.
The last issue we are ignorant of was revealed by the video published (recently) by (Hezbollah’s) military media which says “Mission accomplished”. Certainly, it is not referring to the precision-guided missiles because his eminence Sayyed (Hassan Nasrallah) has already announced clearly and publicly that ‘yes, we have enough precision-guided missiles to hit any vital Israeli military installation in occupied Palestine’. But we still don’t know what is meant by “Mission accomplished”. This will stay one of the resistance’s surprises in the coming wars.
Israel 14 years on from the July War
Nasser Qandil:
What have Israel and America achieved in return? Their situation now is similar to that in the July War (2006); they go to war today on one foot only. It was the air force in (the) July (War) that they relied upon, and it is the financial sanctions (that they rely upon) today. Did the Resistance succeed in breaking this foot? I say “Yes, and we will expand on this discussion later.
Host:
We will continue discussing why the resistance succeeded…
Nasser Qandil:
In the first section we talked about the progress achieved by the resistance (Hezbollah) from 2006 to 2020. Israel also worked (on building its power) during these 14 years. Let us see what it did.
Host: … and of course (Israel) was given a green light by the US.
Nasser Qandil:
First of all, Israel focused on the home front. Its main aim was not to draw up a plan to seize the initiative, but to face the fallout of the July War. The resistance (Hezbollah) has risen higher and higher in its level of readiness, its networking capabilities (i.e. greater integration of the Resistance Axis across the region), and its ability to wage war. Meanwhile, what did the (Israeli) entity do?
(First), the Iron Dome that (Israel) was preparing (in order to intercept) Katyusha missiles is now threatened by precision-guided missiles and drones. (The Israelis) went back to saying that they will shoot down missiles with hunting rifles!
(Second), the (Israeli) home front has further collapsed, and now in the time of Corona, it is even worse.
Third, political fragmentation, which is one of the repercussions of the July War. Since the July War, the (Israeli) entity has been mired in its inability to reestablish a historical (political) bloc capable of leading the entity politically. This fragmentation reached its peak with three (consecutive) repeats of the election.
The last point that (Israel) has discovered (over the last 14 years) is that there is no solution to is broken spirit, because we are not only talking about equipment, armies, weapons and logistical plans, we are talking about human beings, about their mental condition. The resistance (Hezbollah) is now becoming more and more confident that it can bring down the (Israeli) entity. When his eminence Sayyed (Nasrallah) comes out and says in one of his recent appearances that there is a real possibility that the (Israeli) entity will collapse without war, and that this generation is going to witness the liberation of Jerusalem… On the other hand, we find the (Israeli) entity in a state of frustration. No matter how many (Israeli) generals say “We will win. Victory is ours in the coming war. We are waiting for the right opportunity to wage war”… what are you (Israelis) waiting for? You and the Americans said: “Time is not in our favor. Yesterday’s war is better than a war today, and a war today is better than a war tomorrow.”
Host:
Who is going to achieve Israel’s goals today? Who is the principal agent? The US? Because, as you said in one of your articles, Sayyed Nasrallah’s recent speech on 7/7/2020, presents the most vivid example of the (resistance’s) ability to defeat the Israeli occupation and American hegemony. But how is he (Nasrallah) able today to combine this (military) resistance with economic resistance?
Nasser Qandil:
What I want to get to is that in one of his appearances, his eminence Sayyed Nasrallah cut to the chase and said: “The resistance (Hezbollah) has already overtaken Israel. Israel is still standing thanks to US protection.” In 1996, the Resistance discovered – and this was the secret behind the liberation in the year 2000 – that the Israelis remained (in Lebanon) because they were under the illusion that the border buffer zone (that Israel established within Lebanese territory) protects the (Israeli) entity from the missiles of the resistance. So if (Israel) realizes that the border (buffer zone) is pointless and that the entity will be targeted no matter what, it will withdraw. And this is what happened (in the year 2000).
Today, his eminence Sayyed (Nasrallah) tells us that the resistance is certain that the (Israeli) entity continues to survive only because of the American presence (in the region), and that the decisive battle with the entity is a battle to expel the Americans from the region.
Whoever analyses the (American) sanctions and the logic behind them will discover that they are not aimed at escalating the situation such that it provokes a full-scale confrontation. This is nothing but propaganda. In fact, these sanctions have direct political goals. I mean, (Lebanese) parties affiliated to the US (in Lebanon) are proposing (very high demands such as) the disarmament (of Hezbollah) and the implementation of Resolution 1559 because this is the American approach. Just as they (Americans) did in 1983 with (Lebanese) President Amine Gemayel when they told him that they were (about to attack) Syria at the same time in which they were engaged in negotiations with (Syria). Two months later, McFarlane) the special US envoy to the Middle East) was asked: “why did you back out (of the attack)? You would have put (Gemayel) in big trouble.” McFarlane answered: “if we told (Gemayel) that we were (negotiating) with Damascus, he would have beat us to it. We trick our allies to make them think that we are escalating for the sake of imposing stronger terms in the negotiations.”
What do Americans want from the Caesar Act? Why are the Americans putting pressure on Lebanon, blocking access to US dollars in the (Lebanese) market, preventing the transfer of dollars to the country, and closing lines of credit – via the Central Bank of Lebanon’s accounts -for the purchase of fuel? What do they want? The Americans are not hiding (their intentions). They told us what they want. James Jeffrey (US Special Representative for Syria Engagement) told us. Why the Caesar Act? He said in the live appearance he made in which he spoke about the Act. He said ‘we wish to go back to (the balance of power) that existed before 2011. What does he mean by “before 2011”? He means the time when “we (Americans) will acknowledge the victory of President Assad. We were not present (in Syria before 2011), but Hezbollah and Iran were not there either. We leave (Syria), but (Hezbollah and Iran must) leave too.”
So he (Jeffrey) wants to ensure the security of the (Israeli) occupying entity in southern Syria by hinting at sanctions against Russia as the main target of the Caesar Act. Syria will be hit by sanctions anyway and Iran is drowning in a sea of sanctions. Therefore, these sanctions are actually against Russia. The Caesar Act was introduced originally at the beginning of 2016 in order to reach a compromise with Russia in relation to the battle in Aleppo. However, (the Caesar Act) now aims at reaching an agreement with Russia over the terms of the withdrawal of US forces from Syria and is not aimed at (prolonging) their stay.
Second, regarding Lebanon, David Schenker (US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs) publicly appeared on TV and said that Hezbollah is involved in ‘corruption, smuggling, money laundering, causing devastation, and that it is the cause of the crisis (in Lebanon)’ etc. Give it to me directly (Schenker), what do you want? He (Schenker) told us directly that “you are suffering greatly (due to the economic crisis). You have promising gas reserves in the (Mediterranean) sea, but they are in a region that is the subject of a dispute with Israel. We (the US) presented you with a plan, so accept it! So the US wants an exit strategy that provides the (Israeli) occupying entity with a security belt on the Syrian and the Lebanese fronts, and (the US seeks to achieve this) by exerting “maximum pressure on the resistance”.
———
Nasser Qandil:
This is the third pillar of the power of the Resistance. The first pillar is military capability. The second pillar is the political front, meaning the Axis of Resistance. The third pillar is economic reconstruction. Without a resistance economy, the resistance cannot speak of an ability to maintain a level of cohesion within its support base and environment. What I want to say here is that the measures and steps taken by the resistance are not new. It is not true that the resistance, being under pressure at the moment, is now discovering or searching (for solutions). This was in fact its original program. Its original program was and is ‘Openness to the East’, that (Lebanon) have multiple sources (for economic, financial, and political relations). Its original program is aimed at breaking the borders (created by) Sykes-Picot between the countries of the region to form a single (economic) market. Its original program is aimed at relying on industry, agriculture and the national currency for exchange with neighboring countries and where possible. This is the original plan of the resistance. But this plan is now being put into action. It is not a negotiating weapon to lure Americans into easing conditions. If the Americans want to cooperate they are welcome, but if they don’t we will proceed (with this plan). Either way, this plan is not subject to review. Industry and agriculture are objective needs (of Lebanon).
In terms of industry and agriculture, Lebanon … Lebanon, by the way – in the year 1960, the Iraqi market was running 60% of the Port of Beirut and 30% of Lebanese industrial production. Today, Lebanon, which used to export milk, cheese, juice, clothing and shoes to the Gulf, imports 200 million dollars worth of milk and cheese only! Thus, the revival of the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, which were destroyed by the rentier economy, was and is the original plan. We are not talking about a knee-jerk reaction.
Host:
Has the goal (behind the sanctions) become counter-productive? Because the Lebanese internal consensus over the economic resistance that Sayyed Nasrallah called for was remarkable. I want you to comment briefly because we exceeded the time allocated for this file. The Patriarch (Bechara Boutros) al-Rahi said today: “The Lebanese people today do not want any majority (group in Lebanon) to tamper with the constitution and to keep them away from (Lebanon’s) brothers and friends.” This is noteworthy as well Mr. Nasser, is it not?
Nasser Qandil:
The truth is, the speech of his Beatitude (al- Rahi), at certain points, was vague and unclear. It seemed like he was targeting the resistance by talking about neutrality and keeping Lebanon out of conflicts. However, today there may be another direction. I think the Lebanese people know that when we talk about buying oil products in Lebanese pounds… if you don’t want to buy them from Iran, then buy them from Saudi Arabia. Aren’t you friends with Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Let these countries sell us oil products in Lebanese pounds. Half of the demand for dollars in the Lebanese market is because of oil imports. We are depleting the reserves of the Central Bank of Lebanon. They will last us for five years instead of ten if we keep using them for oil imports.
His eminence Sayyed Nasrallah announced that Iran is ready to help, and since oil imports are consuming half of the budget, the resistance is proposing to remove half of the pressure on the US dollar, meaning (that the exchange rate) would return to 3000 or 4000 (Lebanese pounds per dollar) if we buy these oil products in Lebanese pounds. We are not bound to (importing) from Iran exclusively. Bring any offer from any other country.
Host:
True… for the Americans, the (economic) war was aimed at Hezbollah. However, the entirety of Lebanon is suffering the consequences of this war.
Nasser Qandil:
Here, I want to say something so we can put things in the right perspective. When the uprising began in October (2019), Pompeo and his team went beyond warnings. (Jeffery) Feltman (Former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs) said before the American Congress: “Do not overestimate the influence of this uprising. Let’s not allow Lebanon to become prey for China and Russia.” He said frankly that China wants Lebanon to be a base for its 5G (technology) in the Middle East.
The Americans are backtracking from this (maximum economic pressure) approach not only because of economic (considerations). Do not be mistaken. This is because a highly powerful security message was delivered to the Americans about what the resistance might do if the situation (in Lebanon) deteriorated further.
—————
Nasser Qandil:
When someone with the great prominence, status, and figure of Sayyed Nasrallah comes out and says: “I will kill you, I will kill you, I will kill you” … These words were written down (on paper). He did not say them out of anger during his speech. He was establishing a (new) equation. He said: “You are making me choose between hunger or death. My answer is: I will kill you, I will kill you, I will kill you.” Mediators received questions asking them “what is going on? (what does Nasrallah mean here by ‘I will kill you’)” Then they got the answer. The answer might be – I do not know the answer, only the resistance knows it – but it might be in the form of strong military strike that the US and Israel would never expect. Is it the announcement of the zero hour for the expulsion of US forces from Iraq and Syria? Maybe. Is it a precision guided missile attack on the Dimona (nuclear reactor in Israel), for example? Maybe. Is it a (codeword) for opening up the (military) front in the south of Lebanon, and the Golan Heights front (from Syria) under the title of liberating the Shebaa Farms and the Golan Heights in one go? Maybe. This is the level and size (of the warning that Nasrallah directed).
The resistance will not stand idly by while its people suffer (from the deteriorating economic crisis). It will fight hunger by establishing the foundations of economic reconstruction because this is its project. This (economic reconstruction) has nothing to do with merely fighting (US) sanctions. (The resistance) found an opportunity to launch this project. Other (Lebanese parties) did not accept these proposals (before). Now it is the chance (to put them forward).
Do we want to change Lebanon’s identity by (economically) cooperating with China and giving rise eastern totalitarianism and who knows what, as some (in Lebanon) claimed? No. But does it make sense that the NATO (member) Turkey dares to go to Russia and buy S400 (missile systems), while we (Lebanese) don’t dare to buy Kalashnikov bullets that former Prime Minister Saad Hariri pledged to buy but did not dare to allocate funds for? We have 10 billion dollars’ worth of offers from China to build power plants, factories and tunnels under BOT (Build–operate–transfer) contracts, but we don’t have the courage to accept these offers because we are afraid that the US might be upset with us!
Host:
Saudi Arabia itself is now negotiating with China over avenues of cooperation…
Nasser Qandil:
Everyone is turning to China. (Check) the Boston Harbor now, all the equipment for loading, operating, and unloading are Chinese!
Host:
This all goes back to the American-Israeli concerns, Mr. Nasser.
Nasser Qandil:
This is the economic vision of the resistance. The (military) dimension (of this whole picture) is something else. The (military) dimension is the following: when they raise the bar of the financial threat, we raise the bar of the military-security threat.
Please help us keep producing independent translations for you by contributing as little as $1/month here
Modi uses Israel’s ‘settler’ tactics to change Kashmir
Press TV – August 29, 2020
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is changing Indian Kashmir’s residency laws for the first time since 1947, in a bid to snuff out any challenge to the disputed territory belonging to India.
Drawing comparisons with Israel’s “settler” tactics in the Palestinian Territories, Modi’s Hindu nationalist government aims to change the demographic makeup and identity of the Muslim-majority region, critics say.
AFP looks at the background, what the new rules are and their implications for the area’s 14 million population.
What has Modi done in Kashmir so far?
The Himalayan former princely state has been split between India and Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947.
In the Indian-administered part a conflict between separatist rebels and government forces has killed tens of thousands since 1989, mostly civilians.
More than 65 percent of the population is Muslim. In the Kashmir Valley, the main center of the rebellion, it is close to 100 percent.
On August 5, 2019 Modi’s government revoked articles in the Indian constitution that guaranteed Kashmir’s partial autonomy and other rights including its own flag and constitution.
A huge accompanying security operation saw tens of thousands of extra troops — adding to 500,000 already there — enforce a siege-like curfew. Thousands were arrested and telecommunications were cut for months.
Jammu & Kashmir state was demoted to a union territory governed directly from New Delhi, while the Ladakh region was carved out into a separate administrative area.
Creating such new “facts on the ground” in Kashmir has long been advocated by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the hardline Hindu parent organisation to Modi’s BJP party.
The move sent a further shudder through India’s 200-million Muslim minority and defenders of its secular traditions, who fear Modi wants to create a Hindu nation — something he denies.
“What I see unfolding is a Hindu settler colonial project in the making,” Mona Bhan, associate professor of anthropology at Syracuse University who has long researched Kashmir, told AFP.
What happened to Kashmir’s special rules?
Modi’s government tore up Kashmir’s special residence rules dating back to 1927 which had ensured only permanent residents could own land and property, secure government jobs and university places and vote in local elections.
Now a raft of different categories of people from anywhere in India can apply for domicile certificates, giving them access to all the above.
These include those living in Kashmir for 15 years, who include around 28,000 refugees who fled Pakistan and as many as 1.75 million migrant laborers — most of whom are Hindus.
In addition, civil servants who have worked in Kashmir for seven years and their children, or students who have taken certain exams, also qualify for domicile status.
The changes are “the most drastic imposed since 1947,” Siddiq Wahid, a historian and political analyst, told AFP. “It was done with the intent to open the gates to demographic flooding.”
What do locals have to do?
Locals too now have to apply for the new “domicile certificates” in order to qualify for permanent resident rights.
To get this, they have to produce their Permanent Resident Certificates (PRC), cherished documents valid since 1927, which then become worthless.
Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, an engineering graduate said young Kashmiris were in effect being forced to give their political loyalty to India in exchange for a livelihood.
“They say, you want a job, OK, get the domicile document first,” he said.
Is anybody happy?
A few people. Bahadur Lal Prajapati, born in Indian Kashmir to Hindu refugees who fled Pakistan during its first war with India over Kashmir seven decades ago, is finally an official resident and has “never been so happy”.
“We got the right to live in this part of India as citizens after 72 years of struggle,” Prajapati, 55, told AFP from his home in Jammu, the Hindu-dominated district of the region.
One of the first people to receive the new domicile certificate was Navin Kumar Choudhary, a top bureaucrat from the Indian state of Bihar who worked in Kashmir for many years.
Photos on social media of Choudhary proudly holding the certificate sparked huge anger among Kashmiris but delight among Modi’s supporters.
What happens if people complain?
Some 430,000 new domicile certificates have been issued — despite the coronavirus pandemic. It is unclear how many of them are to people from outside and how many to locals.
Many locals are refusing to swap their old documents, even though this makes life harder. Some do it in secret for fear of censure from their neighbors.
Wary of being labelled “anti-national” by the authorities many Kashmiris are also scared to speak out openly. Some are deleting their Twitter accounts.
“It’s a travesty that I have to compete with outsiders for citizenship rights in my own homeland,” said a student — who also wished also to remain anonymous out of fear of problems with the authorities.
Pro-Israel Kamala Harris pledges not to condition US aid to Israel on human rights
MEMO | August 27, 2020
Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, has eased the concerns of pro-Israel Jewish donors to her party, by pledging not to condition aid to Israel on its human rights record if Joe Biden is elected President.
“Joe has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes, and I couldn’t agree more,” Harris is reported saying in a virtual event held with Jewish donors by the Jerusalem Post.
“As vice president, Joe Biden helped ensure unwavering support for Israel’s security,” she continued. “During the Obama-Biden administration, he was a key advocate in securing support for life-saving technologies, which I have seen.”
Vowing to put Israel first, Harris added: “I pledge to you the Biden-Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security, including the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation pioneered during the Obama-Biden administration and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge.”
The threat of conditioning aid to Israel was suggested by a number of Democrat lawmakers. In July the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders signed a letter calling for the $3.8 billion annual aid given to Israel to be made conditional on the Zionist state ending its violation of Palestinian human rights.
Israel military plants booby trap explosives near Palestinian village
Mamoun Shtaiwi with a crate of stun grenades (C) with the child who found an explosive device (L) in Qaddum, August 25, 2020.
By Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | August 26, 2020
Ha’aretz reports that a Palestinian child discovered a box full of explosives near his home last week. It was one of at least three such boxes placed there by Israeli soldiers as a “deterrent.”
Last Wednesday night, Israeli soldiers entered the West Bank village of Qaddum around midnight to plant the explosives in the area, which sees a large amount of foot traffic. They were set to explode when touched, and camouflaged with stones and scraps of cloth.
The next day, a seven-year-old boy saw one of the boxes. He explained later, “I wanted to pick it up and play with it.” But his mother and other relatives were suspicious. They picked it up and shook it; it exploded, wounding one of them.
They found another similar box nearby and detonated it from a distance.
Another village resident reports finding a sign nearby, in Hebrew, reading, “Keep away or die; danger of death.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admitted to placing the stun grenades, adding that they were planted as a deterrent in an area where “violent riots have regularly occurred for years.”
The military spokesman maintained that, “after it was discovered that this could lead to injuries, forces worked to remove them from the area.” An investigation has been opened.
It is against international law to place armed explosives in a civilian area.
Residents of the village also noticed that a Palestinian flag in the area had been removed.
Qaddum’s claim to fame
In recent months, videos have recorded an Israeli military bulldozer facing off against protesters; Israeli soldiers slashing tires of cars owned by Palestinians, and throwing tear gas canisters into a Palestinian home; they have also intentionally shot holes in water tanks (water is scarce for many Palestinians in the West Bank). Residents of Qaddum have been holding weekly demonstrations for nine years, protesting the closure of a main road, which had been closed to accommodate the expansion of a nearby settlement. The village has frequently made the news.
Reports of Israeli forces injuring Palestinian protesters are also numerous.
Most alarming of all is the story of nine-year-old Abdul Rahman Yasser Shteiwi, who was shot in the head during a protest last year. The bullet shattered into at least 100 pieces. The IDF at first denied using live ammunition, but it was later proven that they did, and were responsible for Abdul Rahman’s injury.
Another boy, age fifteen, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in January on a Thursday, when there was no protest. Experts say the shooter was only a few yards away. The IDF delayed the car taking him to the hospital for 25 minutes.
Kathryn Shihadah is staff writer for If Americans Knew. She also writes for MintPress News and blogs at Palestine Home.
Sudan PM to Pompeo: Government has no mandate to normalize with Israel
Press TV – August 26, 2020
Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has dashed America’s hopes for quick normalization with Israel, saying his government has no mandate to establish ties with Tel Aviv and any such a decision should wait until after the transitional period ends in the African country.
During talks in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday, Hamdok “clarified” to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the country’s transitional period “is being led by a wide alliance with a specific agenda — to complete the transition, achieve peace and stability in the country and hold free elections,” Sudanese government spokesman Faisal Saleh said in a statement.
It “does not have a mandate beyond these tasks or to decide on normalization with Israel,” Hamdok was quoted as saying.
The Sudanese prime minister also reaffirmed the importance of separating normalization of ties from a US decision to remove Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, Saleh pointed out.
Sudan’s interim government took power last year after longtime leader Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by the army following mass popular protests. It is set to remain in office until elections in 2022.
Pompeo arrived in Khartoum on Tuesday to push for Sudan’s normalization with Israel, two weeks after the US brokered a highly contentious peace deal between the regime and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Following the talks, the US State Department said in a statement that Pompeo and Hamdok discussed “positive developments in the Sudan-Israel relationship.”
Sudan which has no formal relations with Israel has been cozying up to the regime over the past year.
In February, Sudan’s leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the chairman of the ruling council in the country, met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Uganda, sparking anger among politicians and the public at home, where anti-Israel and pro-Palestine sentiments run high.
After the US announced the UAE-Israel deal, Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Haidar Badawi Sadiq said in an interview with Sky News Arabic that “there is no reason for the hostility to continue between Sudan and Israel,” in comments that drew Netanyahu’s praise and raised speculation that Khartoum may be the next in line to normalize with Tel Aviv.
The Sudanese official was, however, sacked shortly afterwards over “unauthorized” comments, with Sudanese Foreign Minister Omer Ismail saying that his ministry “didn’t discuss the possibility of relations with Israel in any way.”
Palestinians have derided the UAE’s decision to normalize with Israel as “backstabbing,” with President Mahmoud Abbas warning other Arab countries against following Abu Dhabi’s lead.
Pompeo in Bahrain to talk normalization
Pompeo visited the Israeli-occupied territories before arrival in Sudan.
Later on Tuesday, Pompeo left Sudan for Bahrain as part of a tour aimed at getting more Arab countries to follow in the UAE’s footsteps.
Palestinians have denounced the agreement as a “betrayal” of their cause.
Meanwhile, there are reports that an Israeli delegation and top aides to US President Donald Trump will fly together on board an Israeli airliner directly from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi on Monday for talks on cementing UAE-Israel normalization deal.
Netanyahu said in a video statement that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, US Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz and other US officials will escort the Israeli delegation led by national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat.
A high-ranking US administration official confirmed the participation of Kushner, O’Brien and Berkowitz, and said former US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook would also be on the flight.
Talks will focus on ways to promote Israeli-UAE cooperation in various sectors, Netanyahu added.
After Beirut blast, Israel revives tales of Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terror plots
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | August 26, 2020
Israeli officials have exploited the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut this August to revive a dormant propaganda campaign that had accused the Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah of storing ammonium nitrate in several countries to wage terror attacks on Israelis.
The Israeli intelligence apparatus had planted a series of stories from 2012 to 2019 claiming Hezbollah sought out ammonium nitrate as the explosive of choice for terrorist operations. According to the narrative, Hezbollah planned to covertly store the explosive substance in locations from Southeast Asia to Europe and the US — only to be foiled repeatedly by Mossad. In each one of those cases, however, the factual record either contradicted the Israeli claims or revealed a complete dearth of evidence.
The narrative first debuted in the Israeli press after a June 2019 story in the British pro-Israel daily The Telegraph on alleged Hezbollah storage of the explosive around London. The Times of Israel introduced for the first time the much broader theme that Hezbollah planned to use the explosive for “huge, game-changing attacks on Israeli targets globally.”
Next, “new details” appeared in the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth from “unnamed Israeli intelligence officials,” disclosing how Israel had supposedly stymied ammonium nitrate-based terror plots by Hezbollah in London, Cyprus and Thailand.
Following the calamity of the Beirut explosion, the narrative story was opportunistically revived in the Israeli media, with The Times of Israel summarizing an Israeli Channel 13 report citing an “unsourced assessment” that Hezbollah “apparently planned to use the ammonium nitrate stockpile that caused a massive blast at Beirut’s port this week against Israel in a ‘Third Lebanon War’.”
A review of the supposedly open-and-shut cases in both Thailand and Cyprus, however, reveals serious questions about the evidence used to accuse Hezbollah suspects and the role of the Mossad in those cases. It also shows that an alleged Hezbollah plot involving ammonium nitrate in New York City was contrived by the FBI and Justice Department without any real evidence.
Thailand: Muddling the Issue, Bending the Law
The arrest of Hussein Atris, a dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen, in Bangkok on January 13, 2012 occurred after the Mossad received a report that a terrorist attack was due to occur in the middle of that month. The Israeli intelligence agency had given the Thai police a list of 14 or 15 suspects — all Iranian or Lebanese — to be placed under surveillance, including Atris.
But it was Atris who received the bulk of attention. After his arrest, he told police about goods he had stored in a commercial building in Bangkok. Shortly after his arrest, he was taken out of his cell to a house where he was interrogated by three Mossad agents, as was typical of Mossad operations in countries where Israel cultivated close relations with law enforcement. On January 17, Thai police visited the commercial building near Bangkok and reportedly found 4.8 tons of urea fertilizer and 40 liters (100 pounds) of ammonium nitrate.
Atris was immediately charged by the police with “possession of prohibited substances.” But in fact, the ammonium nitrate that Atris had stored in the building was not illegal; it was merely a component of frozen gel packs for sore muscles commonly bought and sold wholesale and retail all over the world.
The boxes of gel packs were stored along with electric fans, slippers and copy paper on the second floor of the building. And as Atris explained to his interrogators and to a reporter from the Swedish dailyAftonbladet who interviewed him in jail, he had been purchasing various goods in Asia and exporting them to other countries like Liberia. He had already arranged for a freighter to ship the goods he had stored there, as the chief of Bangkok metropolitan police confirmed in an interview with the New York Times.
The Mossad interrogators refused to accept the explanation by Atris and accused him of lying about his business. Further clouding the picture, police found two tons of urea fertilizer in bags labeled as cat litter on the same floor as the cold packs. But Atris told an interviewer he had never dealt with fertilizer in his business, and that he believed “it must have been placed in our storage facility by someone, probably Mossad.”
Mossad and its Thai allies were committed to the idea that Atris was a Hezbollah operative from the beginning, even though they apparently had no actual hard evidence to back it up. The claim of Hezbollah membership was nevertheless sold successfully to cooperative local and national news media. A Reuters story headlined “Thailand: Hezbollah man arrested in terror scare.” When he was brought to trial in 2013, Atris firmly denied any links to Hezbollah, and the court ultimately found that there was no evidence to support the contention by the police and Mossad that he was in any way involved with the Lebanese movement.
International press coverage of the case blurred details in a way that incorrectly suggested terrorist intent. When Atris’s case went to trial in July 2013, Agence-France Presse falsely reported that he and “unidentified accomplices” had “packed more than six tons of ammonium nitrate into bags,” thus confusing the already commercially-packaged cold packs with the urea fertilizer, which was not an illegal substance under Thai law and which he specifically denied owning. Time magazine distorted the case more seriously by referring to the bags of urea fertilizer as “chemicals being assembled into explosives… in bags labeled as kitty litter.”
In the end, Atris was convicted of “illegal possession” of ammonium nitrate, which was a banned substance under Thai law. However, the country had not intended for the provision to apply to frozen gel packs for pain relief, which are commonly traded in bulk internationally.
Despite the absence of any evidence that Atris was either a Hezbollah agent or a terrorist, the US State Department bowed to its Israeli allies and declared him to be “a member of Hezbollah’s overseas terrorist unit.”
Cyprus: The mysterious appearance of ammonium nitrate
In 2015, the Cypriot government’s prosecuted Canadian-Lebanese Hussein Bassam Abdallah for allegedly being part of a Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terrorist plot after police found 420 boxes of the fertilizer in the house where he was staying. Yet virtually no details about the case were ever released because the entire legal process took place behind closed doors. What’s more, Abdallah’s defense was never made public.
Furthermore, information from the Kuwaiti daily Al-Jarida, which Israelis have often used to disseminate propaganda into the Arab Middle East, raises serious questions about the origin of the ammonium nitrate found in the house where Abdallah was staying. The newspaper published a story citing a “private source” who said that Mossad agents had been tracking Abdallah, following his every movement and intercepting all his phone calls from Cyprus. The Mossad surveillance continued, according to the story, “until he obtained the materials and fertilizer, after which Cypriot authorities were informed [and] raided his place of residence and arrested him and seized two tons of [ammonium nitrate].…”
By reporting an apparent Mossad account that the ammonium nitrate was not at the house until just before Mossad tipped off the police, the Al-Jarida account obviously suggested that the timing of its appearance was not merely coincidental.
This was not the first time that Mossad-related evidence against one of its targets turned out to be highly suspect. Two Iranian men who were visiting Mombasa, Kenya in 2012 were charged with having buried 15 kg of the explosive RDX on a golf course. However, they had been interrogated — and one of them allegedly drugged — by three Mossad agents. Though Kenyan police had supposedly been carrying out constant surveillance on them for the entire length of their stay, no direct evidence of the Iranians ever possessing RDX came to light. That anomaly resulted in the case against the Iranians being thrown out by Kenya’s Court of Appeal , and suggested that Mossad itself had planted the explosive on the golf course.
In Abdallah’s case, the evidence also indicated the use of a classical prosecution tactic was employed to force him to admit to a Hezbollah ammonium nitrate terrorism plot: forcing a plea bargain on him by the threat of a much longer sentence if he refused to plead guilty.
After the first week of interrogation, a Cypriot security official told a journalist that Abdallah denied all charges against him and was not “cooperating” — meaning he was not admitting what both Israel and Cyprus wanted him to. Weeks later, however, following a trial closed to the public, Abdallah admitted to all eight charges against him. The semi-official Cyprus News Agency reported he had given the police a statement that the ammonium nitrate was to have been used for terrorist attacks against Jewish or Israeli interests in Cyprus. In return he was given a six-year sentence instead of the 14 years he would have received without the deal.
Abdallah’s defense lawyer, Savvas A. Angelides, pressed his client to accept the plea bargain, advancing the political interests of Cyprus as a close ally of Israel. For his part, Angelides had his eyes on a high-level national security posting in his country’s government. Sure enough, in early 2018, the lawyer was appointed Defense Minister of Cyprus.
The idea that Hezbollah obtained ammonium nitrate for use in New York City – another Israeli contention – was not supported by any evidence whatsoever. In this case, a Lebanese-American named Ali Kourani stood accused of hatching a Hezbollah terror plot. But the closest the US Justice Department could come to linking to ammonium nitrate was a statement in its criminal complaint against him.
It claimed that in May 2009, Kourani “entered China at an airport in Guangzhou, the location of Guangzhou Company-1, i.e., the manufacturer of the ammonium nitrate-based First Aid ice packs sized in connection with thwarted IJO attacks in Thailand and Cyprus.” The suggestion that a trip to Quangzhou somehow counted as evidence of an effort to procure ammonium nitrate for Hezbollah terrorism was patently absurd.
London and Germany: Mossad’s phantom Hezbollah explosives
The next apparent Israeli intel dump arrived in the form of a June 2019 story in the Telegraph UK, a right-wing Murdoch-owned daily which loyally follows Israeli propaganda lines. According to the report, in 2015, the UK MI5 intelligence service and London’s Metropolitan Police were tipped off by the Mossad about thousands of ice packs containing three tons of ammonium nitrate in warehouses in Northwest London. The Telegraph revealed that London police had arrested one man “on suspicion of plotting terrorism” but had eventually released him without charges. That detail was the giveaway that the British had come to realize that they had no evidence linking cold packs or their owner to any Hezbollah terrorist plot — contrary to the Israel narrative.
The Telegraph’s suggestion that MI5 decided not to prosecute to disrupt the threat isn’t credible, because no one was ever prosecuted. And its implication that the British government kept quiet about the episode because it was protecting the Iran nuclear deal did not apply once Trump tore up the agreement in 2018. The British government, which banned Hezbollah in February 2020, has never suggested that the Lebanese militia had been plotting to use ammonium nitrate from warehouses in the UK to carry out terrorist attacks.
According to a report this May by Israel’s Channel 12, days before Germany announced its banning of Hezbollah from the country, Mossad had gathered information on alleged Hezbollah terrorism-related activities in Germany. The supposed plotting consisted of the identification of warehouses in southern Germany where the Mossad said Hezbollah was storing ‘hundreds of kilograms” of ammonium nitrate.
After the information was presented to German intelligence and law enforcement agencies, according to the report, the German Interior Ministry announced in April 2020 that it was banning Hezbollah. It simultaneously raided four mosque associations accused of being close to Hezbollah. But German law enforcement never announced any action regarding warehouses supposedly holding ammonium nitrate, indicating that the German government found nothing that backed up the claims by Mossad.
Hoping to seize the Beirut explosion as a historic propaganda opportunity, the Israelis clearly believe they can fashion a new and more powerful narrative by knitting together false claims related to these episodes. Their objective is to achieve their longtime objective of forcing Hezbollah out of the Lebanese government by implicating it in the calamitous blast. So far, Western corporate media appears inclined to accept the baseless Israeli claims on face value. The day after the blast in Beirut, the Washington Post reported that Hezbollah “has long shown an interest in acquiring [ammonium nitrate] for use in a variety of terrorist plots.”
Featured Video
House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran unveils new control measures over Strait of Hormuz transit
- House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech
- Ceasefire no longer viable after 200 days of Israeli violations: Hamas
- Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported
- Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare
- Trump Taps Israel Lobbyist From Mossad Cutout FDD To Join Iran Negotiations
- Trump’s Blockade Snatches Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
- Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of the Strait of Hormuz
- Mali: a new front in the Western war on multipolarism
- CHD Scientist: CDC, FDA COVID Vaccine Safety Monitoring ‘Insulting, and Many People Are Injured’
- If Americans Knew
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- US set to sell $1B “Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System” to Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 32 Across S Lebanon, Including Children – Amid “Ceasefire”
- Israel to pour $730m into propaganda arm amid reputational crisis
- Real Cost of Iran War Likely Double the $25 Billion Figure the Pentagon Gave to Congress
- Israel conducts farthest-ever strike in long history of attacks on Gaza humanitarian aid flotillas
- In Gaza, Israel commits 10+ ceasefire violations a day – Daily Update
- US ships 6,500 tons of munitions, equipment to Israel in 24 hours
- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
- Israel’s top Jewish religious body ‘refuses to condemn’ smashing of Jesus statue
- No Tricks Zone
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
Aletho News 