Israel’s Pegasus spyware and its global consequences
By Sari Orabi | Palestinian Information Centre | August 4, 2021
Israel’s export of technology used by repressive regimes to establish their authority, not only over their political opponents, but also against large parts of civil society, is nothing new. News of this has been spreading since 2017 at least and the inauguration of the Arab-Israeli alliance under the auspices of the Trump administration.
There is no doubt that the relationships hidden before the alliance was made public included the use of Israeli technology. This is what mostly unites the repressive Arab regimes with Israel. In 2019, WhatsApp informed 1,400 of its users that they had been under surveillance since 2016. We can guess how much further spyware has been developed over the past five years.
The scandal is the recent revelation about Israel’s Pegasus spyware and the number of those targeted by such technology, as well as the number of the Israeli company’s clients. Even some of Israel’s allies have been spied upon, such as French President Emmanuel Macron.
Israel benefits from this in three ways. There is a direct security aspect, as the database that is created by its customers and their espionage activities will eventually flow into Israeli servers. This turns its customers into security agents for the occupation state. Ironically, they pay for this dubious privilege. Israel not only sells the technology but also gleans the information generated by customers’ espionage. It’s a very profitable deal for Tel Aviv.
This is just part of the economic aspect which benefits Israel enormously. It is worth pointing out that the technology being sold by Israel — whether this sort of spyware or advanced weapons systems — are all “field tested” on the Palestinians. This makes it very attractive to repressive regimes.
This is also ironic because Israeli technological and intelligence development stems, in part, from the state spying on Arab countries, some of which buy the same technology for their own use. Moreover, Israel has become the headquarters and partner of many Western technology companies, especially from America. Since this type of technology is only sold with government approval, it is more than likely that the US itself is involved at the highest level, not just Israel. There are many political indications that this is the case, including the alliance launched by the Trump administration.
There is also a huge political aspect to these developments. Israel has made itself and its technology indispensable to many governments around the world, including regimes in Arab states. It is a complex situation which encourages conflicts to be prolonged — or at least not brought to a peaceful conclusion — so that Israel has a market for its products, and buyers know where to go for what they need to defeat their opponents. Ensuring that conflicts remain ongoing not only guarantees Israel an important industrial sector, security and hegemony, but also guarantees Arab subordination at very little cost to the colonial-occupation state.
The Arab regimes are thus paying large sums to spy on friends and foes alike and, in doing so, are serving Israeli interests. US support for the high-tech sector in Israel is part of the project to help the state protect itself. This is done within a regional environment that is not conducive to Israel’s presence due to its lack of any historical, social or political legitimacy.
The Arab masses do not accept Israel’s presence in their midst. Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2017 that Israel’s problem lies with the Arab people, not the Arab governments. The Zionist state’s policies will, therefore, focus on maintaining the repressive Arab regimes and their alliance with Israel, as well as ensuring their subordination.
In the meantime, of course, Israel’s existence continues to depend on a fabricated historical narrative, the ethnic cleansing and oppression of the people of Palestine and unquestioning Western support. The state has no qualms about doing all it can — legitimate and illegal; good and bad — to promote depravity in human relations around the world because, in short, it needs conflict in order to survive.
The Pegasus spyware scandal illustrates clearly that “Israel the ally” is, simultaneously, “Israel the belligerent”, a state that recognises and respects alliances only as long as they benefit its own interests. Looked at objectively, the whole world is a potential victim of the evil that is Israel and its pernicious ideology, Zionism. The sale and use of Pegasus spyware has global consequences.
Translation by MEMO
American Tax Dollars Financing Israeli Tourist Park Atop Historic Palestinian Neighborhood
Illegal colonist throws eggs
By Jessica Buxbaum | MintPress News | July 12, 2021
Roughly 2.5 miles from Sheikh Jarrah — the Palestinian neighborhood that grabbed the world’s attention in May — lies Silwan. This neighborhood in Occupied East Jerusalem is perched atop the steep slopes just outside the Old City. Houses are tightly compacted and stacked on top of each other as they dip into the valley below. And here, Palestinian residents face the same fate as their brethren in Sheikh Jarrah.
Israeli forces raided the al-Bustan neighborhood in Silwan with bulldozers on June 29 — razing a butcher shop and dispersing Palestinian protesters defending their homes with tear gas, stun grenades, batons and rubber-coated steel bullets. At least 13 people were injured and six arrested including the owner of the butcher shop, Nidal al-Rajabi, and his sons and brothers.
In regard to the recent demolition, Norwegian Refugee Council’s Palestine country director, Caroline Ort, said in a press release, “Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has an obligation to protect civilians under its occupation and to refrain from destroying private property.”
Al-Rajabi’s store was destroyed on the pretext of lacking a building permit. Various human rights organizations involved in the issue state conflicting numbers, but according to Fakhri Abu Diab, spokesman for Silwan, 16 buildings in al-Bustan are also at immediate risk of being torn down. About 1,500 Palestinians live in more than a hundred houses in al-Bustan.
On June 7, two structures — including the butcher shop — received notices from the Municipality of Jerusalem to self-demolish their homes within 21 days or municipality authorities would do so and charge the residents the demolition fees, calculated at about $6,000.
Amy Cohen, director of International Relations and Advocacy at Ir Amim, a Jerusalem nonprofit, told MintPress News the second structure, a residential unit, has yet to receive a visit from municipality inspectors. Government officials typically come to a building with a pending demolition order to check whether it has already been demolished by the owners. If not, the inspectors then notify the residents that Israeli authorities will carry out the demolition within days, or even within 24 hours.
Discriminatory housing policies
According to Ir Amim, 68 homes in al-Bustan have pending demolition orders so as to execute the Jerusalem Municipality’s “King’s Garden” plan. The municipality outlined the initiative in 2010, stating:
The King’s Garden area [al-Bustan in Arabic] will be developed into a tourist and residential district. Commercial sections, restaurants, and art galleries will be built, turning it into a bustling tourist zone. For the first time, the local residents will have the legitimate right to live in this neighborhood.
The development plan has not moved forward since 2010, but the municipality’s recent objection to extending the demolition freeze suggests the plan could be reactivated.
In February, the Jerusalem Municipality filed an objection in the Local Affairs Court against al-Bustan residents’ request to extend the demolition freeze, arguing the proposed zoning plan for the area doesn’t follow proper guidelines and isn’t advancing quick enough. In March, the court ruled to extend the demolition freeze until August 15.
Negotiations have been ongoing between the municipality and the residents to develop a suitable zoning plan for al-Bustan since 2005. In 2009, the residents’ plan was rejected by the municipality in favor of the King’s Garden Plan.
According to Murad Abu Shafee, an al-Bustan resident who received a demolition order, the municipality told the residents, “This structure plan can’t happen in Israel. This might happen in Europe or any Arab country, but not here.”
“Our plan was very modern and it doesn’t fit with the Israeli government’s standards for East Jerusalem,” Abu Shafee explained. “[Israel] doesn’t want us to have a modern neighborhood. They want us always to be below the line.”
Despite the local court’s ruled extension, 20 demolition cases (including the butcher shop’s order) were excluded from the freeze due to the Israeli Kaminitiz Law — known as Amendment 116 to Israel’s Planning and Building Law — which was fully enacted in 2019. This legislation intensifies enforcement against unauthorized construction and allows for little legal intervention in preventing demolitions of structures built after 2017. The amendment has been partially frozen since 2020 amid ongoing discussions with Palestinian parliamentary members in the Israeli government.
In a statement to MintPress, the Jerusalem Municipality said:
There is no intention to build a ‘biblical garden’ in the area. This is a false claim. The area is designated for gardens and parks for the benefit of the local residents of Silwan.
The vast majority of demolition orders in Al-Bustan are suspended. There are a very few demolition orders that the court has recently decided to unfreeze. It should be emphasized that these orders are old. No new orders [were] issued whatsoever.
As to the execution [of] these orders, the municipality is obliged to act in accordance with the law and with the court rulings. We are still studying the latest ruling profoundly, and will decide on our next steps according to the situation on the ground.
The municipality noted that al-Bustan is designated as a green area because of its location near the Kidron River. Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, explained that when Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 following the Six-Day War, it declared the entirety of East Jerusalem as open, green space, meaning the area is frozen for future building.
Halper pointed out the hypocrisy of this development policy in how Israel treats settlement building versus Palestinian building, explaining:
Today, more than a hundred thousand Israelis live in East Jerusalem in these big settlements. But if East Jerusalem was frozen 100 percent for building, then how did you get all that building for Israelis? The answer is Israel rezones for Jewish settlements. But when a Palestinian wants to build, [the government] says, ‘Sorry, this area isn’t zoned for residential development but for open, green space. So, it’s really the use of bureaucracy and law and planning as tools of control.”
Construction in al-Bustan was done primarily by Palestinian residents themselves on their own land, but often without the necessary building permits. Ir Amim’s Cohen explained this is mostly owing to a lack of viable zoning plans rather than the municipality’s flat-out rejection of building permits:
With the absence of an outline plan, residents are precluded from acquiring the permits. You either have a lack of a zoning plan or you have such outdated zoning plans, which are from say 30 to 40 years ago, that it’s impossible to then receive building permits. And this is a very acute way that the Israeli authorities have neglected their municipal responsibility to provide this service.”
“Since 1967, this has been a means to suppress Palestinian building and planning within Palestinian areas,” Cohen concluded.
American tax dollars financing settler activity
Silwan is located in the Holy Basin—an area coveted by religious settlers for its proximity to the Old City and alleged connections to King David. Ir David or Elad settler organization runs the City of David National Park in the al-Bustan area. Since the 1990s, Elad has sought to transform Silwan into a symbol of Jewish biblical past. Al-Bustan is specifically targeted because it stands as an obstacle to achieving Ir David’s vision of a biblical paradise.
Elad’s actions aren’t focused solely on building settlements but also on promoting archaeological excavations, tourist attractions and parks. According to the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s report on al-Bustan, the settlers’ goals became the official policy of the Israeli government in 2005 when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government approved plans to develop the Holy Basin area.
“In essence, the DNA of Elad’s biblical ideology became the DNA of the Government of Israel in and around the Old City, with [the] Government outsourcing many of its authorities to Elad in order to pursue these objectives,” FMEP wrote in its report. “The lines between government and the settlers became so blurred that they almost disappeared.”
Quteibah Odeh — whose family faces displacement in al-Bustan and in Batan al-Hawa, another neighborhood in Silwan and settler target — described the deep interconnections between settlers and the Israeli government, citing as an example that Arieh King is Jerusalem’s deputy mayor but is also a notorious settler leader responsible for displacing Sheikh Jarrah residents. “These settler organizations are the people running the government,” Odeh said. “They receive full support from the military and any ministry and municipality.”
Ir David isn’t just supported by the Israeli government but also backed by American money. Ir David’s sister nonprofit in the U.S., Friends of Ir David, secures tax-exempt donations for the organization.
According to a January investigation by MintPress News, the Hertog Foundation, Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation, Adelson Family Foundation, Mindel Foundation, Samueli Foundation, Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, and the Jewish Communal Fund have all donated to Friends of Ir David. The organization’s biggest contributors are the Irving I Moskowitz and Adelson Family Foundations. In 2018, the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation gave Friends of Ir David $1.5 million and the Adelson Family Foundation contributed about $3 million.
The Ir David Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Congress members speak out
Israel’s forcible displacement of East Jerusalem Palestinians has caught the attention of the international community, including the U.S. government. On July 1, Illinois Representative Marie Newman delivered a speech on the House floor, urging President Joe Biden’s administration to intervene and stop the ongoing demolitions.
“Today I rise on behalf of the thousands of Palestinian families in the West Bank that face the prospect of eviction, demolition and displacement from their homes by the Israeli government,” the Democratic congresswoman said. “We have received word that demolition orders have already begun for homes in the al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.”
In the face of international condemnations, Silwan spokesman Abu Diab said the recent demolition in al-Bustan demonstrates Israel’s willingness to go against these objections. He elaborated in a statement:
People know members of Congress are speaking out about these issues, yet [the demolition of the butcher shop] proved to the community that Israel is prepared to defy the international community, including members of the U.S. Congress. They assert, yet again, that demolitions and forcible displacement, including Israeli court-ordered evictions, are against international law, are codified as war crimes, and that the occupying power, Israel, has a duty to protect those under its occupation.
The residents of Silwan therefore call on the international community to uphold their third state responsibility, to call on Israel to cease forthwith such illegal policies, with real accountability being the price for any further demolitions or evictions.
As in Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians remain steadfast against Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing efforts. Demonstrations against the demolitions occur daily, Silwan resident Odeh said, adding:
These are our houses. Our parents, our grandparents and our great grandparents have lived here. We have memories, we have history and the people are the past, the present and the future.”
Bill to give Israel billions of dollars passes House, now on to Senate
House appropriations chair Barbara Lee (D-CA) speaks before the House of Representatives on June 28, 2021. Lee said she was “proud” of H.R.4373, which she sponsored, and noted that it included funding for our “ally” Israel. AIPAC thanked her for working “to include key pro-Israel provisions in the bill.”
By Alison Weir | Israel-Palestine News | August 1, 2021
A bill that would expend over $6.4 billion on behalf of Israel, which was advanced earlier by a House committee, has now been passed by the whole House of Representatives. The bill will next be taken up by the Senate.
The bill was passed on July 28th, in the midst of an Israeli killing spree in which Israeli soldiers shot dead four unarmed Palestinian civilians, including an 11-year-old, a teen, and a 20-year-old attending the funeral.
The day before the House vote, Human Rights Watch had issued a report documenting “apparent war crimes” by Israel in its May attack on Gazans.
Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reports that the bill, “which was advised by numerous pro-Israel organizations, includes $3.3 billion in security assistance to Israel as one of its key provisions,” and includes an additional $3.13 billion on items “relevant to Israel” – In other words, items that are funded because they benefit Israel. The bill is H.R.4373 – Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2022.
Pro-Israel organizations AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel, and J Street all praised the pro-Israel provisions.
AIPAC issued a celebratory press release that thanked specific Congress members:
“We appreciate the efforts of several members who worked to include key pro-Israel provisions in the bill. In particular, we thank the leadership of State and Foreign Operations Chair Barbara Lee (D-CA), State and Foreign Operations Ranking Member Hal Rogers (R-KY), House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and House Appropriations Ranking Member Kay Granger (R-TX). In addition, Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Norma Torres (D-CA), Grace Meng (D-NY), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) all made important contributions throughout the appropriations process.
Only three members voted in opposition to the Israel funding: Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. (Republican members voted against the bill because of provisions unrelated to Israel, such as abortion and climate change, while explaining that they were in favor of the money to Israel.)
Another bill (H.R.4432) that would give Israel an additional half billion dollars, which was advanced earlier by a different House Committee, has not yet gone to the House floor. The funding to Israel is expected to pass easily.
If both bills are passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden, a total of approximately $20 million per day of Americans’ tax money will be expended on behalf of Israel (part of the money in direct aid; part of it on items because they benefit Israel).
Israel has received more US aid than any other country on earth – on average, 7,000 times more per capita – thanks to the Israel lobby. Experts say that Israel is not a U.S. ally and has often caused the U.S. profound harm.
For more details on the bills see this.
To contact your Congress members to oppose this massive funding for Israel go here.
Informed sources: Raid on Israeli-managed vessel was retaliation for Israeli raid on Syria
Press TV – July 30, 2021
Informed sources have told Al-Alam television that an attack on an Israeli-managed petroleum products tanker off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea that killed two crew members was in response to an Israeli missile attack on Syria that killed two resistance forces.
The Mercer Street, a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned ship, came under attack about 152 nautical miles (280 km) northeast of the Omani port of Duqm on Thursday, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), which provides maritime security information.
In a statement on Friday, Zodiac Maritime, the Israeli-owned firm managing the oil tanker, claimed that two crewmen, a Briton and a Romanian, had been killed in the assault.
“Details of the incident are still being established and an investigation into the incident is currently underway. We continue to work closely with the UKMTO and other relevant authorities,” London-based Zodiac said on its website.
It also said it was “not aware of harm to any other personnel” than the British and Romanian crewmen who were allegedly killed.
According to Refinitiv ship tracking, the medium-size tanker was headed to Fujairah, a port and oil terminal in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), from Tanzania. Earlier on Friday, the firm described the incident as suspected piracy, but the UKMTO categorized it as not piracy-related.
The company said the vessel was now sailing under the control of its crew and on its own power to a safe location with a US naval escort.
In recent months, several other Israeli ships have come under apparent attacks on various maritime routes across the world. Earlier in the month, a fire broke out on an Israeli-owned cargo ship after it was struck by an “unidentified weapon” in the northern Indian Ocean. Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network said the Israeli vessel had been on route to the coast of the UAE when it was attacked.
Back in February, an Israeli-owned ship was hit by an explosion in the sea of Oman. In April, another Israeli ship came under attack off the coast of the UAE.
The attacks come against a backdrop of the Israeli regime’s various assaults on cargo ships across the Persian Gulf region and elsewhere.
Another Israeli Spy Story: When Will It End?
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 29, 2021
It is perhaps not necessary to point out how the mainstream media in the United States as well as in Europe and Oceania persist in ignoring or otherwise covering up stories that make the Israelis look bad. Recent accounts of the slaughter of children and mostly civilians in Gaza by Israeli planes, missiles and artillery consistently try to depict the conflict as warfare between two comparable opponents, ignoring the enormous disparity in the military force available to the two sides. Israel has a modern army, air force and navy while Hamas has nothing but some small arms as well as improvised rockets and incendiary balloons.
The reluctance to criticize Israeli behavior is largely attributable to the power of the Zionist lobbies in the respective countries but it is also at least in part due to the complicity of Western governments in conniving at the Jewish state’s actions in its own region. The persistence in Israeli demands for war against Iran, preferable fought by the United States, was clear again this past week when the new government in Jerusalem declared that it would be increasing its military budget in anticipation of war with the Islamic Republic. Perhaps not surprisingly, the U.S. Congress also has several bills pending that would increase military assistance to Israel by a factor of three.
Aside from their overwhelming affection for the Jewish state, politicians and talking heads in Washington have always sought to have an enemy to explain why the foreign and national security policies have been such failures. Russia was so designated during the long years of the Cold War and more recently both the White House and Congress have begun to warn that it is China that is seeking to confront democratic norms and “export its authoritarian model.”
Given all of that, there must have been shock in a number of newsrooms when it turned out that the guilty party behind an explosive spy story that was revealed recently appears to be none other than America’s “closest ally and best friend.” It seems that a private Israeli surveillance plus security firm consisting of former cyberwarfare military and intelligence officers and having close ties to the Benjamin Netanyahu government has been selling advanced spyware to at least 45 governments. The sales are in theory restricted for use only in terrorism and criminal cases, but somehow the resource has instead been routinely used against journalists, political activists, business executives, and politicians. Saudi Arabia, for example, used the spyware to track dissident journal Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered by Saudi agents in Istanbul in 2018.
And even though the software has been regularly used against U.S. government officials and journalists, it appears that the Biden Administration has been aware of its capabilities and has done nothing to stop it. In its own defense, the Israeli company NSO that developed the spyware has claimed, implausibly, that it can no longer be used to hack U.S. phones. That assertion was debunked by former NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who tweeted “NSO’s claim that it is ‘technologically impossible’ to spy on American phone numbers is a bald-faced lie: a exploit that works against Macron’s iPhone will work the same on Biden’s iPhone. Any code written to prohibit targeting a country can also be unwritten. It’s a fig leaf.”
The surprise revelation of the Israeli activity came not from a government counter-intelligence agency, but rather from a group of 17 international media organizations that formed a consortium to investigate a data leak relating to hacked telephones. The group included major news outlets that had apparently been targeted using the Pegasus hacking spyware developed by the NSO Group, which was primarily designed to penetrate the security features of smartphones. One former cybersecurity engineer from the U.S. intelligence community described Pegasus as an “eloquently nasty” tool that could be used to “spy on almost the entire world population.” The spyware “can be installed remotely on a targeted person’s smartphone without requiring them to take any action such as clicking on a link or answering a call. Once installed, it allows clients to take complete control of the device, including accessing messages from encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal, and turning on the microphone and camera.” It can also reveal the phone’s location.
The software was designed with a backdoor which allowed NSO to monitor the surveillances and it is presumed that the information was also shared with Israeli intelligence. By one estimate 50,000 smartphones were accessed worldwide, including 10 prime ministers, three presidents including Emmanuel Macron of France, a king, foreign ministers and assorted journalists and government officials both in the U.S. and elsewhere.
A more cautious estimate from the Washington Post, which participated in the investigation, states only that “1,000 people spread across 50 different countries were identified as having numbers on the list, among them are ‘several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials.’ This includes Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s lead Iran negotiator, and journalists for CNN, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.” Other news agencies that were hacked by Pegasus include Agence France-Presse, Al Jazeera, France 24, Radio Free Europe, Mediapart, El País, the Associated Press, Le Monde, Bloomberg, the Economist, Reuters and Voice of America.
Some are inevitably wondering why the Biden White House has been silent about NSO. It has not identified the Israeli firm as a threat to national security and made demands to the Israeli government that it intercede with NSO and shut down the use of Pegasus until some international regulation of the use of hacking software can be developed. Part of the explanation for the reluctance might be that Biden’s senior adviser Anita Dunn’s consulting firm SKDKickerbocker was hired by NSO in 2019 to provide “public relations” advice to improve the company’s image.
The reluctance, of course, also derives from the fact that Israel is involved, but those with longer memories of the Jewish state’s record in stealing American secrets should not be surprised by this latest venture. Israeli-recruited U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was, for example, the most damaging spy in U.S. history. And Israel has, in fact, a long history of stealing U.S. technology and military secrets to include sharing them with countries that Washington has regarded as enemies, including China and Russia.
Israel always features prominently in the annual FBI report called Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage. The 2005 report states: “Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States, these collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizeable armaments industry.” It adds that: “Israel recruits spies, uses electronic methods, and carries out computer intrusion to gain the information.” A 1996 Defense Investigative Service report noted that: “Israel has great success stealing technology by exploiting the numerous co-production projects that it has with the Pentagon.” It says: “Placing Israeli nationals in key industries is a technique utilized with great success.” A General Accounting Office (GAO) examination of espionage directed against American defense and security industries described how: “Israeli citizens residing in the U.S. had stolen sensitive technology to manufacture artillery gun tubes, obtain classified plans for reconnaissance systems, and pass sensitive aerospace designs to unauthorized users.” The GAO concluded that: “Israel conducts,” and this is a quote, “conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any U.S. ally.” More recently, FBI counterintelligence officer John Cole has reported how many cases of Israeli espionage are dropped under orders from the Justice Department. He has provided a conservative estimate of 125 viable investigations into Israeli espionage — involving both American citizens and Israelis — that were stopped due to political pressure.
So Israel gets yet another pass on its spying against the United States. Indeed, the Biden Administration has yet to definitively comment on the latest impropriety. One wonders when the penny will drop and the American people will rise up and say “enough is enough.”
Keir Starmer to deliver keynote speech at pro-Israel group event
Press TV – July 28, 2021
Labor Party leader, Keir Starmer, has reportedly agreed to give the keynote speech at the annual Labor Friends of Israel (LFI) lunch event.
Starmer’s decision is another indication of the Labor leader’s embrace of the expansive Zionist lobby in the UK.
The LFI event is set to take place in November at an undisclosed location in central London.
Starmer’s decision means this will be the first time a Labor leader has addressed the LFI’s lunch event since Ed Miliband delivered a keynote speech in 2014.
Relations between LFI and the previous Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, were frosty as influential members of the pro-Zionist group consistently accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism.
By contrast, relations between LFI – in addition to the broader Zionist apparatus in the UK – and the current Labor leader is excellent not least because Starmer has been at pains to embrace the pro-Israel lobby.
Meanwhile, the Labor Party’s reputation with British Muslim communities has plummeted as more and more evidence emerges of deeply-ingrained Islamophobia in the party.
Last year’s LFI lunch event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown. The 2019 event was also postponed due to the UK general election.
In 2018, the current Israeli President, Issac Herzog, addressed the LFI lunch event in his capacity as chairman of the Jewish Agency.
Syrian air defense units intercept Israeli missiles near Damascus, thwarting THIRD raid in a week – Russian MoD
RT | July 26, 2021
The Syrian military has intercepted two missiles fired by Israeli fighter jets at Damascus suburb of Sayyidah Zaynab over the weekend, successfully thwarting the third such airstrike in a week, using Russian-made air defense systems.
The airstrike was carried out from outside the Syrian airspace, around 5:40am Sunday morning, when two Israeli F-16 jets fired two guided missiles, targeting unspecified facilities in the town of Set (Sayyidah) Zaynab some 10km south of Damascus.
Syrian air defense units – equipped with Russian-made Buk-M2E systems – successfully intercepted both of them, the head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit, said in a daily briefing.
On Wednesday night, two Israeli F-16 jets fired four guided missiles from Lebanese airspace at Syria’s Homs province. All of them were shot down, also using Russian-made Buk-M2Es.
On Monday night, four Israeli jets penetrated Syrian airspace through the area of At-Tanf on the Jordanian border, controlled by the US military, and fired eight missiles into Aleppo province. Seven of them were reportedly shot down by Buk-M2 and Pantsir-S systems, but the remaining one struck a scientific research facility in the town of Safira.
While Israeli officials rarely acknowledge such raids, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warplanes routinely rained down missiles on Syrian territory over the past years, under the pretext of self-defense against the “Iranian threat.”
Damascus has always protested the repeated attacks as blatant acts of aggression, while Russia, Turkey and Iran recently jointly condemned Israeli raids as violations of sovereignty and international humanitarian laws.
Jews enlist US govt to intervene in Chile as Palestinian-descendant rises to presidential election frontrunner
By Eric Striker | National Justice | July 15, 2021
Jews in America are demanding the United States intervene in Chile’s internal politics in the run up to their presidential election next November.
Daniel Jadue, a descendant of Palestinian refugees and member of the Chilean Communist Party, is currently the frontrunner in polls. Jadue is an unapologetic anti-Zionist who has in the past directly confronted the Jewish power structure of his country.
Gerardo Gorodischer, president of Chilean Jewish lobby, has successfully recruited Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress to call on Secretary of State Antony Blinken — a Jew himself — to meddle in Chile’s internal affairs and prevent Jadue from becoming president.
Jadue has in the past called attention to Jewish control of the media in his country. Last year, he was listed as one of the top 10 anti-Semites in the world by the Simon Wiesenthal Center after he passed a strict Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) law as mayor of the city of Recoleta. He is currently supporting a law in the parliament that would make Chile the first nation in the world to officially institute a total boycott of Israel.
With 400,000 descendants, Chile is home to the world’s largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East. Chilean-Palestinians are overwhelmingly Christians who were forced to flee their homeland after being ethnically cleansed by Israel. Chile’s Jewish population is much smaller, currently estimated at 150,000 people. Jews in the country have started immigrating to Israel in larger than usual numbers out of fear of Jadue potentially becoming the nation’s next leader.
So far, Jewish attempts at “Corbyning” Jadue have failed. Complaints from Zionist organizations in Latin America and the US to stop Jadue have largely been ignored by the local population. Their trump card appears to be using the United States to intimidate the Chilean government with threats of economic retaliation or more.
In her letter to Blinken, Democratic congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz made a collective racial attack on the entire Chilean Palestinian community for protesting against Israel’s attacks on Arabs last May:
“Militant leaders of the 400,000-strong Chilean Palestinian community, and their partners, from a variety of political parties, were quite aggressive during and after the Gaza crisis, burning Israeli and U.S. flags, brandishing Nazi symbols and accusing Israel of apartheid and Chilean Jews of controlling the media. This dangerous climate has been intensifying for many years and has already affected Chile’s social fabric despite alarms sounded by the local Jewish community and U.S. Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Committee.”
The billionaire neo-conservative president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, also received the letter. His allies in the parliament have started grilling Jadue over his 1983 high school yearbook entry, where he declared himself an “anti-Semite” and vowed revenge against Jews for what they did to his family. Jadue, a 54-years-old man, responded by making fun of Chilean conservatives asking him to “clarify” comments he made as a teenager as the country suffers through an economic crisis.
Jews have been encountering resistance from all across the political spectrum and diverse countries in recent months. Earlier this month, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko gave a speech suggesting that Jews use the “Holocaust” to intimidate and control people. Yesterday in Poland, local nationalists crashed a Jewish ceremony racially defaming Poles as genocidal killers.
Facebook removes Gaza-based Shehab News Agency from platform
MEMO | July 14, 2021
Facebook yesterday removed the page of the Palestinian Shehab News Agency from its platform.
News Director at Shehab, Hossam Al-Zayegh, described Facebook’s action as a new violation of freedom of opinion and expression guaranteed by international law.
“Deleting our page is a reprehensible and condemned action which aims to fight Palestinian content under the pretext of violating standards and inciting violence,” he added.
“Facebook overlooks incitement and violation of society’s standards by Israelis or Israeli political news sites or associations while preventing the publication of the Palestinian response to these provocations and incitement,” Al-Zayegh said, explaining that the agency had more than 7.5 million followers on Facebook.
The Palestinian Journalist Bloc condemned thew social media platform’s action, described it as “arbitrary and unjust”.
In 2020, the Echo Social Center documented 1,200 violations of Palestinian digital content on social media platforms.
Legal rights centre Adalah revealed in 2018 that social media giants are collaborating with Israeli authorities to censor user content.
In 2018, the Israeli Ministry of Justice said that Facebook has responded to about 85 percent of Israel’s requests to remove, block and provide data on Palestinian content on the site throughout 2017.
The Fight to Save Lifta, the Last Remaining Palestinian Village
By Jessica Buxbaum | MintPress News | July 9, 2021
Yacoub Odeh is 81 years old but he can still remember his childhood in the Palestinian village of Lifta as if it were yesterday. Children playing together in the gardens, swimming in the pools and laying in the grass.
Today, Lifta remains as a frozen time capsule. While the residents were expelled during Israel’s 1948 ethnic cleansing campaign (Nakba), the ruins of their homes still stand. These ruins carved into the lush hillside are perceived as a symbol of the Palestinians’ right of return. This is the only town Israel did not demolish after the Nakba, but a government plan may soon change that.
In May, the Israel Lands Authority (ILA), the government agency in charge of managing public lands, issued a new tender for construction in Lifta. The development scheme, known as Plan 6036, seeks to build 259 housing units along with a commercial and business space and a luxury hotel on top of and around the existing houses. Daphna Golan-Agnon, a law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and part of the Save Lifta Coalition’s board, explained that while the homes may not be demolished, “the village will disappear behind walls of concrete needed to hold new construction.”
The bid was supposed to be held on July 4, but significant public opposition delayed it to July 29.
The ruins in Lifta, a Palestinian village ethnically cleased in 1948. Liebe Blekh | MintPress News
Attempts to demolish Lifta have been ongoing for years. The ILA first published a tender for Plan 6036 in 2010 after the Israeli state approved the construction plan for Lifta in 2006. A 2012 Jerusalem District Court ruling found Plan 6036 insufficient and requested amending it in accordance with a conservation survey on Lifta from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
The IAA survey was completed in 2017 and found that Plan 6036 could not be executed without making significant adjustments in order to preserve the ancient village. Plan 270b was drawn up to fit the survey’s findings but in 2017 the Local Planning and Building Committee of Jerusalem temporarily halted the initiative for further examination.
The recent ILA announcement was met with hundreds of letters to Jerusalem’s mayor rejecting the sale. When reached for comment, the Municipality of Jerusalem told MintPress News that it “wasn’t informed about the publication of this tender and didn’t approve it. The mayor of Jerusalem asked all the relevant authorities to reconsider the construction plan.” The Israel Lands Council, which operates the ILA, did not respond to a request for comment.
‘In one hour, we became refugees’
Lifta’s strategic location at the edge of Jerusalem has made it a prime target for land grabs. Acting as a suburb of Jerusalem, Lifta’s placement next to the Jerusalem-Jaffa Highway makes for an easy trip to the Mediterranean while still being tied to the city of Jerusalem.
Lifta, often referred to as the entrance to Jerusalem, was a wealthy, agricultural community supported by olive presses and flour mills and situated atop the Wadi al-Shami spring. Homes made of limestone were cut into the hillside and Lifta’s roads wended through the valley.
Prior to the 1948 Nakba, Zionist militias like the Haganah saw seizing Lifta as necessary to cement Jewish control over all of Palestine. According to the Haganah Historical Archives, “[s]ecuring the western exit of the city [of Jerusalem] entailed the eviction of Arabs.” Israeli historian Benny Morris said the Haganah fired the first shots in 1947, setting off the mass expulsion of Lifta’s 2,960 residents.
In December 1947, the Haganah killed a Palestinian business owner in Lifta. Later that month, one of Lifta’s two coffeehouses was ambushed with gunfire and grenades. The attack killed six and wounded seven. Two months into 1948, the Jewish Agency chairman and future first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, boasted of the ethnic cleansing’s success, telling his political party members: “From your entry into Jerusalem through Lifta — Romema, through Mahane Yehuda, King George Street and Mea She’arim — there are no strangers. One hundred percent Jews.“
Odeh, head of the Lifta Cultural Heritage Protection Commission, was 8-years-old when Lifta came under siege by Zionist forces.
Yacoub Odeh, Nakba survivor and head of the Lifta Cultural Heritage Protection Commission. Liebe Blekh | MintPress News
“I remember one day my mother was preparing the fire to heat our room, and then [the Zionist miltiias] began to shoot. My brothers began to cry, ‘Mama, mama! They’re shooting us!’ My mom took us inside the room in the corner and under a table to protect us,” Odeh said, recalling two stories of Lifta — the town’s beauty and charm and then its tragic fall.
“There is the beautiful life and then began the miserable life because of the occupation.”
Toward the end of February 1948, Odeh’s father put him, his siblings and his mother into a truck heading to Ramallah to escape the violence in Lifta. Odeh’s father stayed behind to defend the village from the Zionist gangs.
“We were only wearing the clothing we had on because we are coming back tomorrow. We are coming back. Now we just want to be far from the shooting.” Odeh took a deep sigh and said, “In one hour, we became refugees.”
Today, 55 buildings out of approximately 450 remain in Lifta, including a club, mosque, cemetery and school, which now operates as a school for Israeli Jews. Liftawi refugees are estimated at around 30,000 and live in Jerusalem, the Occupied West Bank and the Diaspora. Most of the homes are empty, but a few are occupied by Israeli settlers. According to Zochrot, the Israeli nonprofit seeking to raise awareness of the Nakba, the “settlements of Mey Niftoach and Giv’at Sha’ul were built on village lands and now have become parts of the suburbs of Jerusalem.”
Saving Lifta
The Save Lifta Coalition orchestrated the campaign to the mayor and has been organizing since 2010 against Plan 6036. The organization spent five years working with scholars, activists, conservation specialists and higher education professionals to develop an alternative to 6036.
Their proposal aims to “expand the area of the national park and turn the village into a natural urban space for the adjacent neighborhoods,” while preserving Lifta’s cultural landscape.
The World Monuments Fund added Lifta to its list of endangered sites in 2018 and UNESCO added the village to its tentative list of world heritage sites.
‘Not something we can discuss now’
When asked about the plan’s responsibility regarding the right of return for Palestinians, Golan-Agnon said, “our plan is a plan to save Lifta as it is for the future generations to decide upon its fate.” She explained:
Many of us [in the coalition] do think there should be a right of return for Palestinians but we know it’s not something we can discuss now. So we say, it’s beautiful, keep it open, and then one day there can be a decision about what happens and who’s coming.
Dana Amawi’s grandmother grew up in Lifta and was expelled from the village in 1948. Now the family lives in Amman, Jordan. The 20-year-old said she was shaken to her core upon hearing the news of the sale. “Lifta symbolized a tiny, very small bit of hope that maybe we will be able to return to it,” Amawi told MintPress. “And now to think that other people might live in the house that I have the right to be in, it’s very sad.”
A Palestinian woman holds a partially eaten fig picked from a tree in Lifta. Liebe Blekh | MintPress News
Amawi said that her grandmother fell ill after learning of the auction. “She got sick. She had a fever and she was really, really sad because to her, this is where she grew up. This is where her earliest memories are and this is where she has the right to be,” Amawi said.
Stone houses like the one Odeh spent his early childhood in now crumble from neglect. The walls are sprayed with graffiti and piles of trash line the floors. On Shabbat (the Jewish sabbath), you’ll often find Israelis bathing in the spring’s waters.
Aseel AlBajeh, advocacy officer and legal researcher at the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, visited Lifta in 2018. Her grandmother, who lives in Ramallah, is from Lifta. “It was a painful experience,” AlBajeh said of her time in Lifta. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come back to Lifta in this situation.”
‘You are here as a visitor’
During her visit, AlBajeh tried recalling her grandmother’s memories of a flourishing Lifta, but she said those stories were disrupted by the fact that she’s only in Lifta because of a permit she received from the Israeli government to enter 1948-occupied Palestine or modern-day Israel from the West Bank. “You are here as a visitor. It’s like it’s not a place where you belong, or this is what [the Israeli government] intends for refugees to feel like,” AlBajeh said. “Settlers were swimming in the spring of the village and they were blasting loud music, and it also disrupted my ability to even imagine Lifta as Palestinian.”
Israeli settlers in Lifta hold a middle finger to a group of Palestinian children. Blekh | MintPress News
To help her reclaim Lifta, AlBajeh took a small piece of the village’s remains during her visit. She collected a broken tile painted with traditional designs from one of the house’s floors, knowing this might be the last physical object she can have of Lifta.
“Lifta is a witness of what happened during the Nakba,” AlBajeh said, explaining:
We have this connection as Palestinians, and when we see the cactus plants, we connect this as evidence that displacement happened here. And if you go to Lifta, you’ll see the huge amount of cactus. So even if the houses remain and [Israel] tries to remove the cactus, it’s still painful… It’s not about the stones or about the trees. It’s about the whole identity of Lifta and the Palestinian history, which we still connect to. “
‘We were kings in our village’
Odeh’s memories paint Lifta as an idyllic place, an oasis carved into the steep slopes of Jerusalem where life was carefree and bountiful. “We were kings in our village,” Odeh said. “Everything we need, we had — a life so simple. We didn’t need cinema or computers, no, everything we needed came from our land.”
But the minute Odeh and his family became refugees, their resources became scarce. “At that time there were no charitable associations or agencies ready to help,” Odeh recalled. “You know what Nakba means? Nakba does not mean to destroy homes. No, Nakba means to destroy the life — economic life, social life, educational life, political life. They destroyed our life.”
Upon reminiscing about Lifta, Odeh said his dream is to go back home:
I miss my childhood. Palestinian children have lost their childhood life to play like children, to go to the theater, to concerts, to football. No, until now we have house demolitions, we have arrests, we have land confiscation and killings. Every day we have events like these — if not my family, my neighborhood.”
Featured Video
No Vote, No Representation, No State: Democracy, Israeli Style
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008
It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.
The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- No Vote, No Representation, No State: Democracy, Israeli Style
- Zionist Bought Senate Blocks Information About American Citizens Killed By Israel
- While Gaza dominates the UN, these are the people keeping it alive
- New Report: “Scholasticide and Genocide in Gaza: Assessment, Testimonies and Legal Analysis”
- ‘THAAD Delusion’: Iran war exposes US missile shield limits – The Atlantic
- Moscow issues warning to NATO over Russian exclave
- Yes, the Iran war has destroyed Trump’s presidency
- The fallacy of US delusions about Iran’s economic collapse
- Hezbollah denies Syria cell link, warns of Israeli plan to sow discord
- The legacy of US sanctions, war, and occupation in Iraq
- If Americans Knew
- Mamdani releases plan to combat antisemitism and hate crimes in New York City
- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Publish Letter to the American People
- DMFI launches $1 million ad campaign supporting Virginia’s Elaine Luria
- US Senate blocks resolution seeking report on Americans killed by Israel
- Israeli Attacks Kill Ten Palestinians in Gaza
- Massacre at Minab: The School That Became a Grave
- Israeli media: The IDF Shows It Doesn’t Turn a Blind Eye; It Actively Emboldens Settler Havoc
- As settlers ravage West Bank, Israeli forces kill 10 in Gaza – Daily Update
- New Report: “Scholasticide and Genocide in Gaza: Assessment, Testimonies and Legal Analysis”
- Ex-Biden officials are desperate for a Gaza scapegoat
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
