Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The Hariri Assassination Verdict: A Billion Dollar Trial Ended after 15 Years

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | American Herald Tribune | August 19, 2020

On February 14, 2005, an explosion rocked Beirut killing and injuring hundreds of people chief among them the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik al-Hariri. The West was quick to blame Hezbollah and Syria. In 2006, Israel and its tanks rolled into Lebanon.

15 years later, on August 4th, another explosion rocked Lebanon. This time, the fingers were again pointed at Hezbollah and its ‘Iran backers’. And once again,  Israeli tanks crossed into Lebanon.

After years of investigating the first incident, on Tuesday, August 18, 2020, Syria and Hezbollah were evicted of involvement in the 2005 explosion. Judges at a U.N.-backed tribunal said Tuesday that there was no evidence the leadership of the Hezbollah militant group and Syria were involved in the 2005 suicide truck bomb assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.”

Yet reading the Western media headlines, one would think that the judge had found Hezbollah guilty. Just as the most recent explosion was blamed on Hezbollah. But what would Hezbollah gain from such horrific acts?  If not Hezbollah, ‘cui bono’? The answer is simple. Proving it is not.

The 1967 war resulted in the exponential expansion of Israeli water sources including the control of the Golan “Heights” (also referred to as the Syrian Golan). For decades, Syrian Golan and the return of its control to Syria had posed a major obstacle to the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations.   Israel’s water demands make it virtually impossible to accommodate this process. In fact, even with full control of the Golan, Israel’s water crisis in 2000 was so acute that it prompted Israel to turn to Turkey for water purchase.

Importantly, Syria’s presence in Lebanon since the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 played a crucial role in hindering Israel’s never-ending water demands. Although the 1955 Johnston Plan (under the auspices of the Eisenhower administration) proposed diverting water from Lebanon’s Litani River into Lake Kinneret, it was not officially formulated, though it remained an attractive prospect. In 1982, Israeli forces established the frontline of their security zone in Lebanon along the Litani. Numerous reports alleged that Israel was diverting large quantities of Litani water.

On June 6, 1982, Israel advanced into Lebanon. However, the Syrian army halted the Israeli army advance in the battle of Sultan Yakub and the battle of Ain Zahalta.  Sharon’s plan to conquer all of Lebanon and destroy Syria as a military power was thwarted.  In reviewing the book and the battles, the famous scholar and activist, Israel Shahak, opined that “the principal purpose of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was destruction of the Syrian Army” [1].

A 1987 book by Col. Emmanuel Wald of the Israeli General Staff entitled “The Ruse of the Broken Vessels: The Twilight of Israeli Military Might (1967-1982) reveals the aims of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the month of pre-planning that had gone into it.  Wald writes that Ariel Sharon’s master plan codenamed “Oranim” was to defeat the Syrian troops deployed in the Bekaa Valley all the way to the district of Baalbek in North of Lebanon.  According to Wald, “during the first days, it was quietly approved by the U.S.”.

Sharon’s plans were put in the backburner. Though the urgency of the successful implantation of the plan was not lost on Israelis; perhaps made even more urgent in the face of the 1991 Lebanese-Syrian Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination.  The treaty was a challenge to Israel and its diversion of water and annexation. When Syria replaced Israel as the dominant power in southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israeli fears grew that Syrian success in controlling the Golan and by extension, Lake Kinneret, would have a devastating effect on Israel.

Washington, always ready to serve Israel, passed the Syrian Accountability Act and the Lebanon Sovereignty Restoration Act.  Without any hesitation to investigate the explosion, Washington and the West did not hesitate to place the blame on Syria and Hezbollah. Much to the delight of The Washington Institute, the pro-Israel think tank, the United States implemented the Act which in addition to sanctions, called for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. In 2006, the deck was cleared for Israel to attack Lebanon.

Although the Tribunal found no ties to Syria or Hezbollah leadership, it did convict Salim Ayyash – a Hezbollah member. The question is, was Ayyash a rogue member acting on his own or was he a member of Israel’s “Arab Platoon” (Ronen Bergman, 2018) [2].

The Arab Platoon a clandestine commando unit whose members operated disguised as Arabs, were trained fighters who could operate inside ‘enemy’ lines, gather information, and carry out sabotage and targeted killings. Their training included commando tactics and explosives, but also intensive study of Islam and Arab customs. Nicknamed the “Mistaravim” (the name by which the Jews went in some Arab countries), they practiced Judaism but in all other aspects were Arabs.

It is not clear to this writer if Ayyash was a Hezbollah member or a Mistaravim. However, it is evident that neither Syria, Lebanon, nor Hezbollah benefited from the attack.

Curiously, the initial tribunal date coincided with the Lebanon port explosion which devasted the country, even making it appear as if the explosion and the delay in the hearing would benefit Hezbollah. Undoubtedly, the findings of the Tribunal must have been very disappointing for Israel and its backers who had placed the blame on Hezbollah and Syrian leadership. It may be reassuring for some and worrying for others that the FBI is in Beirut investigating. The FBI has managed to build quite a reputation for cover ups.

Beirut has been devastated. And as with 2006, every foe is out to grab a part of this beautiful country. During the 2006 war, while Israel bombed Lebanon, Carlyle profited greatly – as did the Saudis, the U.S., and of course, Israelis. The systematic destruction of Lebanon translated into a significant opportunity for the Carlyle Group and with the ‘crisis, they announced a $1.3 billion fund for investment in the region. They were not alone. The rush was on. The big investment banks — Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers – all increased their presence in the region. Israel, the perpetrator as the benefactor, received an increase of USD 500 million additional in aid package from the U.S. in September of the same year (Ynet News).

With millions of funds from  CIA/NED spent in Lebanon over the past few years (NED 2018, etc.), the country is ripe for its enemies to bend it to their will. Clearly, this would not benefit Hezbollah, Iran, or Lebanon. Fingers have also been pointed at Israel for being the culprit. It may take several years for the truth to come out – and be proven. At the end of the day though, cui bono?

Endnotes

[1] Sahak, Israel.  Israel Considers War With Syria as It Ponders 1982 Invasion of Lebanon, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 30, 1992).

[12] Ronen Bergman. Rise And Kill First; The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. P. 24. Random House 2018

August 19, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Despite normalization, Israel pressing US not to sell UAE F-35 jets

Press TV – August 18, 2020

Israel has kept up the pressure on the United States not to provide the United Arabs of Emirates (UAE) with F-35 stealth fighter jets despite a recent normalization deal reached between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.

Two unnamed Israeli officials, familiar with the moves to establish diplomatic relations with the UAE, told Haaretz on Monday that Tel Aviv had pressured Washington to block the sale of the advanced fighter planes fearing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his confidants may have made a secret agreement without consulting military officials.

Since the announcement of the normalization pact last week, several sources, who had been previously involved in contacts between the two sides, raised concerns that as part of the new understandings, Netanyahu may have abandoned Israel’s traditionally vehement opposition to the sale of sensitive military equipment and technology to the UAE, particularly F-35 fighter jets.

According to the report, during the secret talks led by Netanyahu and Netanyahu confidants Mossad head Yossi Cohen, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat, there may have been a secret agreement made on this issue without informing Israel’s top military officials, who were excluded until now from the talks.

The Israeli sources said that the Persian Gulf Arab states, including the UAE, had pressed Israel numerous times to lift its objections so that such deals could go through.

They said that the normalization agreements would not change Israel’s long-standing objection to the sale of American F-35 fighter jets to Abu Dhabi.

Under understandings dating back decades, Washington has refrained from Middle East arms sales that could blunt Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This has applied to the F-35, denied to Arab states, while Israel has bought and deployed it.

Reports say that the driving factor for the UAE to sign the agreement with Israel has been a US weapons deal to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, including supplying F-35 jets, advanced UAVs and other arms.

A day after the normalization deal, Amos Yadlin, a former general in the Israeli air force and the ex-head of the Israeli military tweeted, “It is important to remember that Abu Dhabi seeks to acquire very sophisticated weapons from the United States.”

In an interview with Israel’s Kan Bet public radio on Sunday, Yadlin said, “We know they are asking for very sophisticated weapons from the Americans and the Israelis, and what’s stopping this is that there is no peace treaty between the countries and the Israeli qualitative edge. And it could be, and that’s what I was warning about in my tweet”.

In a statement on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s Office said that Israel has not softened its opposition to any US arms sales to the UAE that could diminish its military superiority as part of the US-brokered normalization pact.

“In the talks (on the UAE normalization deal), Israel did not change its consistent positions against the sale to any country in the Middle East of weapons and defense technologies that could tip the (military) balance,” Netanyahu’s office said.

The statement followed a report in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the Trump administration planned a “giant” sale of advanced F-35 jets to Abu Dhabi as part of the Persian Gulf country’s move last week to normalize ties with Israel.

The Trump administration has signaled that the UAE could clinch unspecified new US arms sales after last Thursday’s normalization announcement.

Under pressure from Israel and the Israeli lobby in Washington, the US Congress had earlier blocked a plan for such a sale.

The US has sold the warplanes to a range of allies, including South Korea, Japan, and Israel, but experts say sales to the Persian Gulf Arab states require a deeper review due to US policy for Israel to maintain a qualitative military edge in the Middle East.

August 18, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Hariri tribunal: Hezbollah, Syria had no link with 2005 blast

Press TV – August 18, 2020

A UN-backed tribunal says it has not been able to establish any link between a 2005 blast in Beirut that killed Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafiq Hariri and the Hezbollah resistance movement or the Syrian government.

The so-called Special Tribunal for Lebanon (SDL) read out a summary of the 2,600-page verdict at The Hague on Tuesday after trying for 15 years and spending some $1 billion to prove allegations of association between the explosion and the Lebanese resistance movement or Damascus.

“There is no evidence that the Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in Mr. Hariri’s murder and there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement,” said Judge David Re.

Lebanon’s an-Nahar daily ran the headline, “International Justice Defeats Intimidation” even before the decision was announced, referring to extensive attempts by certain parties within and outside the country to implicate the resistance group in the crime.

Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah had also said on Friday that he was not concerned about the proceedings, and that if any members of the resistance movement were claimed to be guilty, Hezbollah would stand by their innocence.

The tribunal, however, did not stop short of echoing those who have been trying to make the unfounded allegations against the resistance group and Damascus.

“The trial chamber is of the view that Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives to eliminate Mr. Hariri and his political allies,” the judge said.

Observers said the latter part of the verdict showed that the countries that forced the United Nations Security Council into forming the tribunal in the first place — based on unproven hypotheses, without any legal basis, and in violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty — were still influencing the verdicts that it issues.

Hezbollah — which has rejected the jurisdiction and independence of the court — has denied any link to or interest in the atrocity.

The group has invariably proven itself as a unifying factor in the country, including by forcing Israel into retreat in the occupying regime’s 2000 and 2006 wars on the country.

Israel’s Channel 1 once alleged an association between four people with alleged links to Hezbollah and the 2005 explosion.

The tribunal considered the allegations worthy of its consideration and convicted one of the four, whom it identified as “the main defendant.”

Even with regard to the four, lawyers appointed by the tribunal itself said there was no physical evidence linking them to the crime and that they had to be acquitted.

Hezbollah has condemned the tribunal for serving as an opportunity for Tel Aviv to achieve its “unachieved” goals in Lebanon.

August 18, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s Top General Says Tehran’s Approach to UAE Will Change Due to Abu Dhabi’s Deal With Israel

Sputnik – 16.08.2020

On 13 August, US President Donald Trump announced that the United Arab Emirates had agreed to recognise and establish normal relations with the State of Israel, with a formal signing ceremony expected to take place at the White House within the coming weeks. The UAE will be the third Arab nation, after Egypt and Jordan, to do so.

Iran’s military considers the UAE-Israel deal to establish diplomatic ties “unfortunate,” and the Iranian military’s calculations in relation to Abu Dhabi will shift, given the new circumstances, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has said.

“Certainly, Iran’s approach to the UAE will change fundamentally and the Armed Forces will look at this country with different calculations. And if something happens in the Persian Gulf region and our national security is damaged, however small, we will hold the UAE responsible and will not tolerate it,” Bagheri warned, his remarks cited by Tasnim.

Bagheri stressed that “it is not too late for the UAE to reconsider its decision and to avoid pursuing a path which is detrimental to the security of the region and to itself.”

The UAE’s military consists of approximately 100,000 personnel, and the country regularly takes part in regional wars, including the Gulf War in 1990-1991, the War in Afghanistan (starting in 2007), and the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, starting in 2015. The UAE formally announced a partial withdrawal of its forces from the latter conflict in 2019, and a shift in focus from fighting the Shia Houthi millitia to Daesh (ISIS) and al-Qaeda* terrorists operating in Yemen). The Al Dhafra Air Base outside Abu Dhabi is also known to host US Air Force combat, intelligence-gathering and tanker aircraft for Washington’s anti-Daesh operations in the region.

Last year, amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf in the wake of a string of tanker sabotage attacks, ship seizures and the destruction of a US spy drone by Iranian air defences, Iran proposed the creation of a coalition of Gulf nations, including the UAE, to help ensure the security of the Persian Gulf. In July 2019, coast guard commanders from the two countries met in Tehran to work to improve cooperation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials have made no secret of their antipathy toward the UAE-Israeli diplomatic deal on normalisation of relations known as the ‘Abraham Accord’ announced last week by US President Donald Trump. On Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the agreement a “huge mistake” and a betrayal of the Arab World and the Palestinians. Also Saturday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that the deal would have “dangerous” consequences for both parties if implemented.

A formal signing ceremony for the agreement is expected to take place in the coming weeks, and to be held in Washington. The UAE will be the first Arab nation in the Persian Gulf region to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, and the third Arab nation overall to do so after Egypt and Jordan, which normalised relations with Tel Aviv in 1979 and 1994, respectively.

Most Arab countries’ relations with Tel Aviv remain poor, and this state of affairs has reigned since the establishment of Israel in 1948.

August 16, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

INTERVIEW: Dr Marandi on Beirut Blast Aftermath & Lebanon’s Future

21stCenturyWireTV | August 11, 2020

SUNDAY WIRE show, host Patrick Henningsen is joined by global affairs analyst Mohammad Marandi from the University of Tehran, to discuss the recent developments in Beirut, Lebanon in the aftermath of the tragic explosion which destroyed the city’s port area and resulted in many dead and injured, as well as 300,000 made homeless due to ancillary damages.

Dr Marandi explains some of the legacy issues in Lebanese politics, as well as the true aims of US and its allies in the region, the geopolitical motivation behind punishing economic sanctions by Washington, and how these policies actually prevent delivery of regional aid, cooperation and prosperity among neighboring states. Listen:

August 14, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemen’s Ansarullah slams UAE-Israel deal as ‘great betrayal’ of Palestinians

Press TV – August 14, 2020

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement has decried the deal reached between the United Arab Emirates and Israel to fully normalize relations as a “great betrayal” of the Palestinian cause.

In a statement issued on Friday, Ansarullah’s political bureau said the exposure of the UAE-Israel relations proved the emptiness of all the pan-Arabist slogans raised by the Saudi-led coalition in waging war on Yemen.

The statement added that the UAE was continuing to move forward on the wrong path of serving American and Israeli interests against the Muslim Ummah, referring to the Emirates’ participation in the Saudi-led war on Yemen, which began in March 2015 and has left tens of thousands of people killed.

Ansarullah dismissed assertions that normalization with the Israeli regime would lead to the establishment of peace and stability in the region as “mere delusions.”

It also called for isolating any regime that announces normalization with Israel and boycotting it economically and commercially, stressing that Arab and Muslim peoples were able to do a lot to help Palestine.

The deal between the UAE and Israel was announced on Thursday. US President Donald Trump, who apparently helped broker the deal, has attempted to paint it as a big breakthrough.

But the Palestinians have utterly rejected the deal.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas referred to the deal as an “aggression” against the Palestinian people and a “betrayal” of their cause. The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas described it as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause.” And Palestinian people staged protests against the deal in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip on Friday.

The Emirates is now the third Arab country, after Egypt and Jordan, to normalize with Israel. Abu Dhabi was already believed to have clandestine relations with Tel Aviv.

August 14, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘No change’ of West Bank annexation plans after Israel-UAE deal, Netanyahu says

RT | August 13, 2020

Israel is still committed to annexing parts of the occupied West Bank, PM Benjamin Netanyahu said, after a peace deal with the UAE was reached. As part of the deal, Tel Aviv agreed to suspend the annexation.

The revelation was made by Netanyahu in a televised speech on Thursday.

“There is no change in my plans to apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, with full coordination with the US,” Netanyahu said, referring to parts of the West Bank region by their biblical names.

The remark came shortly after the peace deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was unveiled. Among other things, it contains a provision that Tel Aviv agrees to ‘suspend’ its annexation plans.

Netanyahu did not give any timeframe for when exactly his land-grabbing plans will go through, but apparently sought to reassure his hardline supporters, disappointed by the sudden U-turn on the annexation issue.

The Israel-UAE deal was first announced by US President Donald Trump on Twitter earlier in the day. Trump called the agreement a “HUGE breakthrough” and labeled the whole deal a “historic” achievement.

Most of the Arab world does not officially recognize the Jewish state, but countries like Saudi Arabia have enjoyed quite cozy relations with Tel Aviv for years.

August 13, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians are deprived of a political voice, and their leaders do nothing about it

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 13, 2020

Palestinian refugees are at the core of Palestinian narratives. The international community has, however, classified Palestinian refugees as a humanitarian issue. In between these diverging depictions, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) seeks to grapple with both strands to push for “international protection” within the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

With international aid for Palestinian refugees barely enough for basic necessities and thus contributing to their increased vulnerability, the PLO has requested the UN to provide protection and financial aid for them. According to reports, “Such protection and support must continue until a solution for the issue of the refugees is found based on Resolution 194.”

The political exploitation of Palestinian refugees knows no limits. UN Resolution 194, which has been accepted blindly as the framework upon which a solution should be found, is rarely criticised for shifting accountability upon the colonised population, rather than the settler-colonial framework which usurps Palestinian territory and made Palestinians refugees in the first place. Resolution 194 is part of the international narrative on Palestine and has little to do with safeguarding the rights of refugees because it fails to call for the decolonisation of their land.

Palestinian refugees are not allowed a political platform at an international level. Hence the constant “speaking for” refugees within a humanitarian context that in turn justifies the international community’s role in deciding how the promotion of Palestinian refugees should be carried out in order to highlight the humanitarian paradigm. Humanitarian aid is about the international community first and foremost. The recipients are forced to play a part in this charade, which ignores Israel’s colonisation of Palestine as the cause of the whole issue.

Furthermore, the PLO’s request for aid promotes the international narrative of delays. Aid must be given until a solution is found, the PLO insists, yet how much emphasis is placed upon finding and implementing that solution? The international community and the Palestinian leadership have turned Palestinian refugees into accessories for political convenience. Indeed, there is hardly any mention of Palestinian refugees unless a humanitarian context is evoked, or if the UN inaugurates a project to exploit the illusion of “Palestinian autonomy”, which is non-existent in a humanitarian context rigged with deficiencies and political allegiances to the Zionist colonial project.

So I have a suggestion: how about remembering Palestinian refugees as the most prominent victims of Zionist colonisation; as people who have been deprived of their rights by the international community which allows that colonisation to continue unabated? Decades have passed since the UN Relief and Works Agency was mandated to provide for Palestinian refugees and bound to a “neutral” narrative, despite being funded by countries that prioritise their diplomatic and economic ties to Israel over and above human rights and justice. Palestinian autonomy for Palestinians, including refugees, is still a non-existent concept, because the international community has monopolised the politicisation of humanitarian aid without allowing Palestinians to participate in the process.

Each time the legitimate Palestinian right of return is tied to requests for humanitarian aid, the “right” is whittled down even further. Such rhetoric falsely equates Palestinians with a passive stance, one that the Palestinian Authority is fond of describing as “waiting”. Such projections are harmful to Palestinians; they are not waiting, they have been deprived of a political voice, and their leadership is doing nothing to counter this international violation of human rights.

August 13, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel, UAE reach US-brokered agreement to establish full diplomatic ties

Press TV – August 13, 2020

Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have reached a deal that will lead to a full normalization of diplomatic relations between the two sides, in an agreement that US President Donald Trump apparently helped broker.

Under the agreement announced on Thursday, Israel has allegedly agreed to suspend applying its own rule to further areas in the occupied West Bank and the strategic Jordan Valley that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pledged to annex, senior White House officials told Reuters.

Trump, in a tweet, called the agreement a “HUGE breakthrough,” describing it as a “historic peace agreement between our two GREAT friends.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke to reporters accompanying him on a trip to central European countries, said for his part that the agreement was an “enormous” step forward on the “right path.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also tweeted that the deal marked “a historic day.”

Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed said on Twitter on Thursday that an agreement had been reached on normalising relations between the two countries.

The deal, however, has elicited sharp negative reactions from various Palestinian groups as well as their supporters from across the world.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement reacted rapidly by condemning the deal between the UAE and Israel.

The movement noted that normalization of ties between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi was a sign of submission on the latter’s part without having any effect on reducing conflicts in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Islamic Jihad movement also noted that the deal will, on the other hand, further embolden the Israeli occupiers.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has issued a statement, calling for an urgent meeting of Palestinian leadership to be held on the Israel-UAE deal to discuss its consequences.

Meanwhile, senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi accused the United Arab Emirates of “normalization” with Israel after Thursday’s announcement of the so-called peace deal.

Ashrawi, who is a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said on Twitter, “The UAE has come out in the open on its secret dealings/normalization with Israel. Please don’t do us a favor. We are nobody’s fig leaf!”

Ashrawi also responded to Abu Dhabi’s crown prince’s tweet in a counter-tweet in which she reminded him of the sufferings of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli occupiers.

May you never experience the agony of having your country stolen; may you never feel the pain of living in captivity under occupation; may you never witness the demolition of your home or murder of your loved ones. May you never be sold out by your “friends.” https://t.co/CBaNl1QQqx
— Hanan Ashrawi (@DrHananAshrawi) August 13, 2020

The spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Fauzi Barhum said the normalization of ties between the UAE and Israel is a reward for occupiers in return for their crimes and violations of Palestinian’s rights.

Sarah Leah Whitson, a pro-Palestinian activist, also took to Twitter to condemn the deal, saying it would not lead to any recognition of Palestinians’ rights.

“Israel won’t formally annex and exercise sovereignty over the land it has for all intents and purposes already annexed and exercises sovereignty over… ZERO for the rights of Palestinians,” she wrote.

The information minister of the Yemeni government in Sana’a also reacted by saying that the deal between the Israeli regime and the UAE was a show of defiance shown by the enemies of Islam to all Muslims.

Popular Resistance Committees, which is a coalition of a number of Palestinian groups, also reacted to the UAE-Israel deal by noting that the agreement reveals the high volume of conspiracies against the Palestinian people and their sanctities.

“This is like a poisonous dagger in the back of the Islamic Ummah,” the committees added.

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has also vehemently slammed the deal as a provocative move.

Ansarullah’s spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam said the agreement brought to light what had been kept secret and proved that Zionist and American enemies will continue to destroy the region.

He added that this is not an anti-Iran deal alone, but is against the interests of the entire Arab and Islamic Ummah.

Meanwhile, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ahmad Fuad, was quoted by al-Mayadeen news agency as saying that the UAE-Israel deal is a crime against the Palestinian people and their martyrs and will have no effect on the resistance front.

He added that the Palestinian people will continue to confront Israel’s daily attempts to annex more Palestinian territories.

“It is the Palestinian people who prevent further annexation of their lands by Israel, not the UAE and its leaders,” he said.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, however, welcomed the agreement, saying, “I followed with interest and appreciation the joint statement between the United States, United Arab Emirates and Israel … I value the efforts of those in charge of the deal to achieve prosperity and stability for our region.”

August 13, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Visiting your Palestinian child in an Israeli prison

Defence for Children Palestine • August 13, 2020

Two Palestinian mothers share their experiences attempting to visit their children who are serving sentences in Israeli prisons:

Khaled B., 13, recounts his time in solitary confinement:

Israeli forces shot child who posed no threat:

May 2, 2019

Israeli forces shot Palestinian child Mahmoud Qaddumi, 13, with live ammunition in both legs at a time when he did not pose a threat, and then arrested him. Defense for Children International – Palestine visited him in the hospital, where he was recovering from surgery. He hopes to walk.

Defense for Children International – Palestine is an independent NGO dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian children.

August 13, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Why the economics behind Jason Kenney’s small nuclear reactor dream don’t add up

By David Climenhaga | AlbertaPolitics | August 12, 2020

When Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says small nuclear reactors “could be a game changer in providing safe, zero-emitting, base load power in many areas of the province,” as he did Sunday in a tweet, he’s pulling your leg.

For a variety of economic and technical reasons, the scenario Kenney described while re-tweeting a CBC story about his announcement that Alberta intends to sign onto the three-province effort to develop small nukes is unlikely ever to occur.

Kenney and his government’s officials certainly know this.

This is not a judgment call on whether “small modular reactors” — as the companies proposing manufacturing these things prefer to call them to sooth a public skittish about the word “nuclear” — will perform as advertised. Small nuclear reactors can be built and should be able to be operated reasonably safely.

Nor is it a call on whether nuclear power is the solution to a warming planet or a dystopian nightmare with the potential to make things even worse. There are reasonable voices on both sides of that debate.

The problem is that the economics of the scheme described by Kenney just don’t add up.

Consider these facts:

As long as natural gas is cheap and plentiful, small nuclear reactors will not make economic sense.

Except in a few locations like very remote mines, small nuclear reactors will never make sense from an economic standpoint as long as natural gas is readily available and inexpensive, as it is now in Canada and will likely remain.

Even a modular reactor built by a mature industry selling lots of units would cost more to build and run than a natural-gas powered plant. And right now, there is no approved small reactor design anywhere in the West, and no mature industry to make them.

Even if this idea is not just a pipe dream, no electrical utility is ever going to buy one unless they are forced to by government policy or regulation — the kind Alberta’s United Conservative Party purports to be opposed to. Nor will any bitumen-mining company.

Probably the only way to make these things competitive would be to impose a stiff carbon tax that vastly increases the price of natural gas.

Small nuclear reactors are not necessarily as cheap to build as nuclear fairy tales like the premier’s suggest.

Creating an acceptable small nuclear reactor design all the way from the drawing board to approval by a national nuclear regulatory authority will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

While dozens of speculative companies are printing colourful brochures with pretty pictures of little nukes being trucked to their destinations, very few are serious ventures with any possibility of building an actual reactor. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency says diplomatically there are about 50 concepts “at different stages of development.” Those that are serious, like NuScale Power in the United States, have huge amounts of government money behind them.

The only small nuclear reactor plant known to be operating in the world now is the Akademik Lomonosov, Russia’s floating power barge with two 35-megawatt reactors aboard. From an original estimate of US$140 million in 2006, its cost had ballooned to US$740 million when the vessel was launched.

Operational costs are bound to be higher because it floats, but the kind of small reactors Kenney is talking about won’t be cheap by any yardstick.

Small reactors are less economical to run than big reactors.

If a reactor is only producing 300 megawatts of electricity compared to 800 megawatts or more, it’s not going to generate as much profit for its private sector owners. This is why all reactors getting built in the world nowadays are large — 1,000 to 1,600 megawatts.

Ontario Power Generation Inc.’s eight operational reactors at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station on Lake Huron can produce a combined 6,200 megawatts. The eight reactors at the Pickering NGS near Toronto have combined output of 3,100 megawatts.

This is why nobody wanted to buy the scaled-down CANDU-3 reactor, development of which was paid for by Canadian taxpayers in the 1980s. At 300 megawatts, CANDU-3s were just too small for commercial viability. A working CANDU-3 has never been built.

The cost of small reactors would have to come down significantly to change this. And remember, the research and development requirements of small reactors are just as high as for big ones. With nobody manufacturing modules, there are no existing economies of scale. In other words, dreamy brochures about the future of small reactors are just that — dreams.

By the way, in 2011 the Harper government privatized the best commercial assets of Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., to … wait for it … SNC-Lavalin Group Ltd. Think about that every time you hear Conservatives in Ottawa screeching about the goings on at SNC-Lavalin!

In the Alberta government’s news release, Energy Minister Sonya Savage was quoted saying “Alberta’s rich uranium deposits … could make us an attractive destination to develop and deploy SMRs.”

Not really.

With one exception, all current small reactor designs use enriched uranium, and Canada doesn’t produce any. So if we adopted a lot of the small reactors being touted by Premier Kenney right now, we’d be putting our energy supply in the hands of foreigners.

Would putting a large percentage of our national power needs directly in the hands of other countries be sound policy from the standpoint of security or sovereignty? Not if you’ve been paying attention!

The only exception is the CANDU-3, which SNC-Lavalin recently rebranded as the CANDU-SMR, which can run on naturally occurring uranium like that found in Alberta.

Global uranium markets are already saturated, so there’s no way this will become a new resource industry for Alberta.

Don’t expect a boom in uranium mining in Alberta, either. There’s a worldwide glut of the stuff. Prices are low. (Sound familiar?) Existing suppliers have invested billions to mine high-grade deposits, and even that production is fetching only depressed prices.

So nobody’s interested in creating new uranium mines in Alberta, probably ever.

Small reactors might be safer than big reactors, but we don’t really know that.

Kenney and Savage talk about small reactors as if it were a fact they’re safer than big reactors. Maybe they are. But we don’t really know that because nobody but the Russians actually seems to have built one, and in most cases they haven’t even been designed.

Remember, the Russians’ small reactors are both on a barge. For what it’s worth, critics have called it “floating Chernobyl.”

However safe they are designed to be, small reactors won’t be safe without public regulation.

This is an important consideration. The safety of electricity generation projects regardless of what kind of fuel they use needs to be watched over by accountable, responsible, and, yes, properly paid public employees.

This runs counter to the philosophy of all four provincial governments involved in the inter-provincial effort to encourage the development of small nukes.

With the potential effects of a nuclear disaster so long lasting, can we trust industry to regulate itself? More importantly, can we trust a UCP government not to hand regulation of these plants to the for-profit companies that would operate them?

Then there’s still the matter of waste disposal.

Nuclear plants don’t produce a lot of waste by volume, but what there is sure has the potential to cause problems for a very long time. Thousands of years and more. So safe storage is an issue with small nukes, just like it is with big ones.

Where are we going to store the waste from all these wonderful small nuclear reactors Kenney is talking about?

Canada created the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to find a “willing host community” for a deep geological repository capable of storing nuclear waste for thousands of years. Almost nobody wants the stuff, for obvious reasons. Does any Alberta community want to put up its hand?

“More research and development work is required on the fuel cycle for some SMR technologies,” the UN’s IAEA notes cautiously.

Alternatively, spent fuel could be reprocessed in fast reactors. But why do that when natural uranium prices, just like oil prices, are in the bargain basement, making fast reactors uneconomical? What are we going to do to raise prices? Build a uranium pipeline?

So what gives?

None of this sounds like the basis of an exciting new industry for Alberta. On the contrary, there’s a whiff of scam about the whole effort to proselytize the idea of a small reactor manufacturing industry, which wouldn’t be located in Alberta anyway, and more uranium mining, which isn’t going to happen.

The timing of last Friday’s announcement was certainly intended as a distraction from a political embarrassment the day before.

But arguably the whole memorandum of understanding is a distraction too, a way to tell citizens and foreign investors fretting about global climate change, “Don’t worry about it, we’re working on it.” That’s less embarrassing than admitting that we’re doing very little to reduce CO2 emissions.

Ontario has a big nuclear industry with lots of private employers and a large workforce, so for a modest investment it looks good for Premier Doug Ford to sign on.

How many jobs is it likely to create here in Western Canada? Well, Saskatchewan’s ministry of the rnvironment recently posted a job for a “Director of SMRs.” That person will supervise four people. That’s probably about it for the foreseeable future.

If Alberta ends up with the same number of people working on this, we’ll be lucky.

David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions at The Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald.

August 12, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Guilt by Accusation: Alan Dershowitz and Maria Farmer

By Vernon Thorpe • Unz Review • August 12, 2020 

Alan Dershowitz, in Guilt by Accusation, writes, referring to accusations concerning his alleged sexual misconduct,

“Evidence was no longer important. It was the accusation that mattered, as well as the identities of the accuser and accused. The presumption shifted from innocence to guilt. For a man to call a false accuser a liar became a political sin, even if the accused had hard evidence of the accuser’s lies, as I did.”

The main purpose of his short book is to dent the credibility of Virginia Roberts Guiffre who, as well as being a leading witness against Dershowitz’s friend and former client Jeffrey Epstein, has claimed that the latter trafficked her for sex with Mr Dershowitz.

Now that Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell has been arrested and charged we can only hope that the courts get to the bottom of the matter and find out what actually did or did not happen.

However, Mr Dershowitz, as well as writing his case-for-the-defence in relation to Virginia Guiffre, has also expended effort to discredit another person who has made accusations damaging to him. That person is Maria Farmer, who worked for Epstein and whose allegations against him and others are recounted in the Netflix documentary Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.

Although Farmer does not claim to have been abused by Dershowitz, she does state in an affidavit that she saw Dershowitz on a number of occasions at Epstein’s New York mansion where she worked, “going upstairs at the same time there were young girls under the age of 18 who were present upstairs in the house.” Dershowitz vigorously denies that this was even possible, saying that he only met Epstein “well after she [Farmer] stopped working for him”. According to Dershowitz, Farmer stopped working for Epstein in the “early summer of 1996” with Dershowitz only meeting Epstein for the first time, via Lynn Forester (Lady d’Rothschild), in the summer of 1996. However, Farmer claims in an interview with the journalist Whitney Webb that Dershowitz met Epstein years before he claims, via Bert Fields, the husband of Barbara Guggenheim.

Curiously Dershowitz, in his recent article aiming to discredit Farmer, does not mention the one time he is referred to by name in Webb’s lengthy phone interview. Instead, he sets out to depict Farmer as someone who may have“been motivated by the anti-Semitic attitudes she has long harboured, to falsely accuse prominent Jews of sexual misconduct.”

It is this suggestion and others made in the article that I want to examine here. Note that Farmer’s claims about Dershowitz are in fact relatively mild and hardly the high-coloured stuff we might expect of an anti-Semitic liar; indeed, Dershowitz’s reference to “prominent Jews” in the plural may suggest that he is attempting to undermine Farmer’s claims about Epstein, Maxwell and perhaps others, rather than just himself.

The claims that Dershowitz makes about Farmer’s alleged anti-Semitism are a large part of the ‘evidence’ he brings forward to undermine the testimonial authority that Farmer claims to have as an alleged victim of Epstein. If Farmer can be shown to be a raving anti-Semite with a vicious attitude towards Jewish people, then her testimony becomes more questionable both in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of judges.

Dershowitz, referring to Farmer’s interview with Webb (which is available on Youtube in two parts here and here makes the following claims in his NewsMax article entitled Key Witness in Epstein Case Made Anti-Semitic Claims

Dershowitz opens the article by citing, in quotation marks, six statements that he asserts Farmer uttered in the course of the interview.

Here they are:

  • “I had a hard time with all Jewish people.”
  • “I think it’s all the Jews.”
  • “They think Jewish DNA is better than the rest of us.”
  • “These people truly believe they are chosen every one of them.”
  • “All the Jewish people I met are pedophiles that run the world economy.”
  • “They are ‘Jewish supremacists’” and they are “all connected” through a mysterious organization called MEGA, which is run by Leslie Wexner who is “the head of the snake.”

Most readers, on seeing these statements, would conclude that whoever uttered them was someone with very bigoted attitudes towards Jews in general and prone to the kind of conspiratorial thinking that takes hold in the minds of people with paranoid tendencies.

What happens if we actually listen to the interview, to which Dershowitz provided no link or reference? As there is no transcript of the interview I have transcribed the relevant sections of it myself, together with timings so that readers can check for accuracy.

Exhibit 1

“They think Jewish DNA is better than the rest of us.”

This is cited by Dershowitz as an example of the“bigotry Maria Farmer spewed during a recorded two-hour interview that can be heard online.”

What Farmer actually said, in the relevant section of the interview (and the only time she mentioned DNA) is as follows:

14.09-14.41 DNA

“When I called Ghislaine [Maxwell] and asked why I couldn’t eat there [at a private and exclusive country club] she said “it’s a Jewish country club, you’re not Jewish, they’re not going to serve you.” This is how this woman spoke to me, yeah. This is how these people think Whitney. They, honest to God, think their DNA is better than everybody else’s, I swear to you. It was a theme all the time with them. With Eileen Guggenheim, with Jeffrey Epstein, with Ghislaine. It was a theme.”

It is quite clear from the context that Farmer, when she says “They”, is referring to the set of people she mentions and not all Jewish people. Yet Dershowitz, by stripping away the context of the quotation, leads the reader to assume that “They” is a universal ascription of certain views to Jews in general of the kind that might be made by a genuinely bigoted person.

Exhibit 2

“I had a hard time with all Jewish people.”

“I think it’s all the Jews”.

“All the Jewish people I met are pedophiles that run the world economy.”

The context of these quotations can be seen below.

“1hr 24.05 “I was actually glad I was in hiding in obscure hillbilly town. Like I’ve had to live in horrible places full of ignorant hillbillies and it was a relief because they weren’t elites, you know. It was just, it’s, for a long time I had a hard time with all Jewish people, I’m gonna be honest with you. For a long time I was like, I think it’s all the Jews. Like I don’t know, because my sister is like, “Maria, it’s just the ones you met, it’s these people.” It’s just unfortunate that all the Jewish people I met also happen to be pedophiles that run the world economy, you know. So it gives like a bad taste in your mouth. But David Icke has kind of helped me with that. I kind of understand it better now, but like er that looks hard. You know, they did a number on all of us. We’ve all had a hard time with, like, a lot of it because of the abuse, you know. So it’s hard to not then go, all these people are like this when it’s not true, not all of them, just a huge chunk of elites are like this.”

The first thing to notice here is that Dershowitz removes the words “For a long time” from both the first and second quotes. Had he kept the phrase in, this might have led readers to ask what Maria Farmer’s evolving attitudes were and whether she has distanced herself or is in the process of doing so from previous attitudes. Compare how you might react on hearing that someone had said, “For a long time, I thought, black people are inferior”, as opposed to hearing the person had simply said “black people are inferior”.

Farmer explicitly distances herself from a bigoted stance towards “all Jewish people” seeing herself as trying to recover from such an attitude. In this context, she refers to the advice of her sister and, alarmingly, that of David Icke who certainly has trafficked in wild conspiracy theories concerning lizards and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not the best choice for a guide, to put it mildly, and a worrying sign of Farmer’s naivete – but the point here is that she is actively resisting a tendency to bigotry she presents as arising from her traumatic experiences.

Again she refers to the specific people she came across in the Epstein set, who she claims are powerful pedophiles that run the world economy. And she suggests that as a result of the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of people within this elite set, she developed an attitude towards Jews that was bigoted and which she is trying to resist. She does not deny that she has sometimes blurred the line between Jews generally and the arrogant criminal conduct of the elite set, but it must be recalled that she was a young woman at the time of the alleged abuse and has since struggled with her prejudice, hoping to overcome it.

It is hardly unusual for abuse victims to develop negative and irrational attitudes to groups of people who share features with their abusers. Female rape victims not uncommonly struggle not to have negative attitudes to all men, or to all men who share certain physical characteristics with the men who raped them. Very often such victims know that such attitudes are irrational and struggle with them. Or think of the attitudes to ‘all Germans’ of some Holocaust victims, or to ‘the Japanese’ of British prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, or of the attitudes of Jewish and Palestinian victims of Palestinian and Israeli terrorism to those they identify with the terrorists. To quote Maria Farmer in a way that deliberately suppresses her struggles with past attitudes and depict her as a straightforward bigot to be excoriated is to suppress the voice of someone who may simply be trying to recover from damage inflicted upon her.

Exhibit 3

“These people truly believe they are chosen every one of them.”

Maria Farmer does not actually say what Dershowitz has her saying (by combining two clauses in different sentences). Again, “every one of them” clearly refers to a specific group, the Epstein set.

1hr 32.04-1hr 32.47

“You wouldn’t believe the way Jeffrey and Ghislaine spoke about African-Americans. It was like, it made my skin crawl. Anybody who was not Jewish, and you should write about this, but the way they spoke about them, it was really horrifying and it showed me a great deal about how these people truly believe that they are chosen to do something here. I don’t know, it’s unbelievable to me. I mean, and it was every one of them, the way they spoke. And one time I heard Isabelle say to her mother Eileen [Guggenheim] “Mommy, why do you call Maria a nobody” and she said “Honey, Isabelle, Maria is not a Jew, she is a nobody. So you can see why, for about 20 years…”

Exhibit 4

“They are “Jewish Supremacists”

1hr 33.45-1hr34.04

“This is a problem, this elitism is very deep and these are the people pushing racism, these are the people saying, pushing white, saying there is White Supremacy, which maybe there is in some ignorant Southern hillbilly groups, but I don’t know any White Supremacists but I know a lot of Jewish Supremacists they’re all elites and they are all connected. And they are the biggest Supremacists I have ever met. And the things they said about Black people made me cry. Honest to God. It made me sick.”

Note that Dershowitz completely misquotes Farmer here and again, by stripping the quotation of context leads his readers to assume that “They” refers to all Jews, rather than Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their set. Presumably for Dershowitz, someone condemning White Supremacists they had met, and referring to that particular group as ‘they’, could be condemned as having a bigoted attitude to all white people – even if they said in the same interview that they know this isn’t about white people as a group.

It is worth now quoting Farmer at length to gain an insight into the levels of dishonesty Dershowitz is to employ.

PART 2

34.19 – 37.27

“So Jeffrey and Ghislaine they were at the estate, they came like three times to visit Wexner while I was there. And they would go meet with him and then they would come back. And Ghislaine said they were working on all these Israeli charities for students and for,you know,Jewish people. And I remember thinking, oh that’s weird. And she was like, she was like “you don’t understand our loyalty to Israel, Maria. You don’t understand our loyalty.” She’s like, “unless you’re a dual citizen you just don’t get it”. She’s like “your people could never understand.” She would say “My people, your people, The Chosen Ones”, all that bullshit. And I’m just like…Let me tell you something, if I walk out of here not at all racist it’s a freaking miracle. Because I struggle every day with it. I’m like urgh I was so abused. I guess it could have happened from any group but because they are the ones that happen to control the world. It’s hard, it’s really hard, like this specific group of elites. It’s really hard to not just hate them, you know. So I haven’t gotten over hating that Ghislaine and the way she…

WW: I think they try and lump everyone in by design too, you know, in order to give themselves protection.

MF: Yes.

WW: I think it’s very intentional.

MF: It is very intentional.

WW: I can’t blame you for feeling that way considering what you had to go through so.

MF: Right. Well I don’t really feel that way. Let me tell you my background. Every boyfriend I’ve ever had was very Jewish, like 100 per cent, and never, I mean I had the best relationships in New York, I mean these were like the most patient guys, I don’t know why they put up with me, I think back on it and like those were the nicest guys. So there were the four boyfriends I had and everybody who got in touch with them says you know what Maria your boyfriends loved you so much and say nothing but nice things. So I have had very good experiences.But it was the Eileen Guggenheim thing and the Ghislaine all of that really soured me on like the religious, on religion in general, if you wanna know the truth. Like religion being used against people. And erm just all of it. It just really soured me. And I don’t, I don’t totally trust people, even though I have friends that are Jewish, like I still havefraught trust issues because, and it’s so unfair to them – rationally I know it’s unfair, but I was so, you know, scalded by the hot water, you know, I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t stick my hand back in. Like it’s too hard right now.

WW: That’s ok, it makes sense.

MF: But I don’t totally feel that way. I’m just being honest. I’m like a really honest person Whitney. And so, most people will never talk about that stuff. And I’m not…and the other thing that pisses me off is this whole anti-semitic bs because they call Bernie Sanders anti-semitic.

WW: Oh yeah, I know.

MF: I’m like, when is it going to end.

WW: It’s out of control. And the whole dual loyalty thing, you can’t say that even though you just mentioned what Ghislaine told you, right? Sheldon Adelson, he’s on video saying, all I care about is being a good citizen of Israel and he’s the top political donor in the United States. So the fact you’re not allowed to talk about is I think very troubling, right so…”

Whatever one makes of Farmer’s claims, there can be no doubt that Dershowitz has concocted a grotesque smear, depicting her as something she is not to a wide readership who will never hear the interview. Perhaps, using his own standards, we should begin to question his own reliability as a witness, using his actual – not fabricated or misleadingly presented – words.

It is not as though Dershowitz doesn’t have an impressive track record when it comes to smears and character assassination; in particular, blaming victims is something he has shown himself very willing to do.

Just a few examples will suffice here, but those looking for more documentation on Dershowitz’s reliability should consult, for starters, David Samel; Norman Finkelstein and Tim Wilkinson.

Dershowitz falsely claimed that Norman Finkelstein suspected his mother of being a ‘kapo’ by distorting a moving account of her experiences Finkelstein had recalled. He falsely and without evidence claimed that Walt and Mearsheimer drew from “neo-Nazi” websites for their work on the Israel Lobby. He called Richard Goldstone a “moser” and accused Robert Fisk of anti-Semitism when he attempted to look for the possible motivational causes of the hijackers of 911, telling listeners that Fisk was anti-American and that “anti-Americanism is the same as anti-Semitism”[1].

Readers can look up Finkelstein’s thorough refutation of Dershowitz’s book The Case for Israel in Beyond Chutzpah, for examples of his deeply biased, deeply unreliable approach and well-documented attempts to justify numerous war crimes and his defence of torture.

As Finkelstein points out, Dershowitz asserts in Chutzpah,

“Anti-Semitism is the problem of bigots…Nothing we do can profoundly affect the twisted mind of the anti-Semite”. As Finkelstein puts it, “In sum, Jews can never be culpable for the antipathy others bear towards them: it’s always of their making, not ours.” (p81 Beyond Chutzpah)

Such a point is worth remembering when examining Dershowitz’s book The Case Against Israel’s Enemies. In this later book, he argues that the dispossession of the Palestinians was deserved because of their support for Hitler during World War II (in this he differs from Joan Peters whom he heavily relied on in writing his earlier The Case for Israel which largely adopted her debunked conclusions). He states that “The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler’s Holocaust.” (p. 196) There is, of course, not the slightest evidence of this ‘significant role’, but Dershowitz thinks it acceptable to smear an entire people and use such statements to justify ongoing human rights abuses against that same people to this day.

It’s a familiar story. Ignoring the historical context, the Occupation, “they” deserve what they get because, well, they are bigoted towards Zionists for no reason whatsoever. And as a result, we can safely ignore their testimonial authority with regard to what Dershowitz calls the “so-called Palestinian Nakba” (p.206).

Maria Farmer is only the latest victim of Dershowitz’s smears. Before you throw people under the bus, it’s best to dehumanise them, ignoring the harms done to them in order to justify your character assassination (or, when it comes to Israel, the ‘targeted’ assassinations Dershowitz supports).

Dershowitz’s latest article is of a piece with his advocacy for Israel’s crimes over the years. Blaming the victim, while making oneself invulnerable to criticism by demeaning those who dare to criticise, is a hallmark of Dershowitz’s career.

Notes

[1] The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (London: Harper Perennial 2006) p. 1034.

August 12, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »