Israel prepares law to prohibit cooperation with ICC
MEMO | February 18, 2021
Israeli authorities are preparing a law that would prohibit any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and would propose five years in prison for any violations of this law, RT reported yesterday.
Reporting Israeli TV Channel 7, RT said the law would also include a ban on handing over Israeli nationals to the ICC, financing the expenses of legal defence before it and imposing penalties on the court and those working for it.
This, it explained, comes as part of a series of measures taken by Israel against the ICC after its announcement that it would probe potential Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
Channel 7 reported that the bill is being inspired by the American Civil Service Protection Act, which was enacted in Congress in 2002.
The US law, which was known as the Invasion of The Hague, gives the US president wide ranging powers to do anything in order to release any American citizen arrested by the ICC, including the use of force.
Reporting the Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin, Channel 7 said that the Israeli law aims to create a legal safety network for Israeli soldiers and senior officials who could be prosecuted.
It will also sanction the tribunal’s members, ban them from entering Israel and impose restrictions against foreign entities that help them.
The ICC’s declared intention to investigate possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories has enraged Israel. The government has apparently drafted a list of its officials and former officials who should avoid foreign travel as they may be arrested and charged with such crimes.
The Decline of the West: American Education Surrenders to ‘Equity’
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 18, 2021
Public education in the United States, if measured by results, has been producing graduates that are less competent in language skills and dramatically less well taught in the sciences and mathematics since 1964, when Scholastic Aptitude Test scores peaked. The decline in science and math skills has accelerated in the past decade according to rankings of American students compared to their peers overseas. A recent assessment, from 2015, placed the U.S. at 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD), the United States came in at 30th in math and 19th in science. Those poor results must be placed in a context of American taxpayers spending more money per student than any other country in the world, so the availability of resources is not necessarily a factor in most school districts.
Much of the decline is due to technical advances that level the playing field for teachers worldwide, but one must also consider changing perceptions of the role of education in a social context. In the United States in particular, political and cultural unrest certainly have been relevant factors. But all of that said and considered, the U.S. is now confronting a reassessment of values that will likely alter forever traditional education and will also make American students even more non-competitive with their foreign peers.
Many schools in the United States have ceased issuing grades that have any meaning, or they have dropped grading altogether, which means there is no way to judge progress or achievement. National test scores for evaluating possible college entry are on the way out almost everywhere as they are increasingly being condemned as “racist” in terms of how they assess learning based solely on the fact that blacks do less well on them than Asians and whites. This has all been part of an agenda that is being pushed that will search for and eliminate any taint of racism in the public space. It has also meant the destruction or removal of numerous historic monuments and an avoidance of any honest discussion of American history. San Francisco schools are, for example, notoriously spending more than $1 million to change the names of 44 schools that honor individuals who have been examined under the “racism and oppression” microscope and found wanting. They include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Paul Revere.
The new world order for education is built around the concept of “equity,” sometimes described as using the public education system to “ensure equitable outcomes.” But the concept itself is deeply flawed as the pursuit of equity means treating all Americans unequally to guarantee that everyone that comes out of the schools is the same and has learned the same things. That is, of course, ridiculous and it penalizes the good student to make sure that the bad student is somehow pushed through the system and winds up with the same piece of paper.
And the quality overall of public education will sharply decline. One might reasonably observe that imposition of a totalitarian style “equity” regime based on race will inevitably drive many of the academically better prepared students out of the system. Many of the better teachers will also move to the private academies that will spring up due to parental and student demand. Others will stop teaching altogether when confronted by political correctness at a level that prior to 2020 would have seemed unimaginable. The actual quality of education will suffer for everyone involved.
All of that has been bad enough, but the clincher is that this transformation is taking place all over the United States with the encouragement of federal, state and local governments and once the new regime is established it will be difficult or even impossible to go back to a system where learning is actually a discipline that sometimes requires hard work and dedication. In many school districts, the actual process of change is also being put on the back of the taxpayer. In one Virginia county the local school board spent $422,500 on a consultant to apply so-called Critical Race Theory (CRT) to a new program of instruction that will be mandatory for all employees and will serve as the framework for teaching the students. When schools eventually reopen, all kindergarteners, for example, will be taught “social justice” in a course designed by the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center and “diversity training” will be integrated in all other grade levels. Teaching reading, writing and arithmetic will take a back seat of “social justice.”
Critical Race Theory, which is being promoted as the framework for reorganizing the schools along lines of racial preferences, has been fairly criticized as it pretends to be an antidote to systemic racism but is itself racist in nature as it opposes a race neutral system that equally benefits everyone. It proposes that all of America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. It requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.
Fortunately, some pushback to the Jacobins of political correctness is developing. Parents in many school districts are starting to attend school board meetings to register their opposition and even some school board members and teachers are refusing to cooperate. The teachers do so at risk of losing their jobs. At the elite Dalton private school in New York City parents have sent a letter to the Head of School Jim Best complaining how the newly introduced “anti-racist” curriculum has been gravely distorted by Critical Race Theory and the pursuit of “equity” to such an extent that it has included “a pessimistic and age-inappropriate litany of grievances in EVERY class. We have confused a progressive pedagogical model with progressive politics. Even for people who are sympathetic to that political viewpoint, the role of a school is not to indoctrinate politically. It’s to open the minds of children to the wonders of the world and learning. The Dalton we love, that has changed our lives, is nowhere to be found. And that is a huge loss.”
The letter also stated that “Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity, ‘racist cop’ reenactments in science, ‘decentering whiteness’ in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality in health class. Wildly age-inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity training than to Dalton’s intellectually engaging curriculum.”
Ironically, much of the new curriculum is being driven by a core of radicalized Dalton faculty members, who in December signed on to an “anti-racism manifesto” which demanded that the school “hire 12 full-time diversity officers, abolish high-level academic courses if Black students’ performance isn’t on par with White students’, and require anti-racism ‘statements’ from all members of the staff.”
Inevitably what is going on at Dalton and elsewhere is also playing out at many of America’s top universities, so the rot will persist into the next generation when today’s college students themselves become teachers. A black Princeton professor of classics is calling for all classics departments to be done away with because they promote “racism, slavery and white supremacy.” America’s education system, once upon a time, benefited the nation and its people, but we are now watching it in its death throes. And please don’t expect the Joe Biden administration to do anything to save it. They are on the side of the wreckers.
Pelosi’s 9/11-Type Commission to Give More Powers to US Domestic Spying Apparatus
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 18.02.2021
On 15 February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced plans to form a “9/11-type commission” to probe the Capitol protests. The Dems real aim is to give more powers to US spy agencies, expand homeland security, and anti-terrorism measures and use them against the American right-wingers, US observers say.
A new independent 9/11-type Commission will be assigned to “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex,” Pelosi wrote to her party fellows on Monday. According to CNN, the commission of this nature is typically established by a statute, passed by both chambers of the Congress and signed into law by the president.
9/11-Type Commission to Bolster Domestic Surveillance
The original 9/11 Commission was established on 27 November 2002 by President George W. Bush and the United States Congress with the aim “to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.” The bipartisan body consisted of five Democrats and five Republicans and was chaired by former New Jersey Republican Governor Tom Kean.
”The 9/11 Commission was supposed to be a bipartisan effort to find out what went wrong on 9/11,” says American author and political analyst William Stroock. “Today the Dems will use this ‘9/11’ style commission to stoke fears of Q, white nationalism, Trump and his supporters in general. This commission will not be independent at all and will not be interested in ascertaining facts, only in assigning blame to Republicans, conservatives and Trump supporters.”
Nearly 20 years on, it’s clear that 9/11 has proven disastrous for the US in many ways, according to Strook. However, first and foremost it led to the creation of a “vast domestic spying apparatus with secret courts and gave the Feds vast new spying powers,” says the political analyst. Stroock suggests the Democrats “will want to give even more power to the domestic spying apparatus and turn it upon the right.”
Irreconcilable Contradictions in Democratic Party’s Policies
Meanwhile, the Biden administration plans to expand grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for studying and preventing “domestic violent extremism”, according to NBC News’ Friday report. Earlier, on 27 January, the DHS released its first-ever national terrorism bulletin warning about the looming threat of violent domestic extremism supposedly encouraged by the Capitol Hill protests.
In the wake of the DC incident, the Democratic Party also pushed ahead with the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA). Andrew McCarthy, former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, suggested in his January op-ed for National Review that the bill “is not about countering terrorism” but “weaving a political narrative.”
The legislation fell short of targeting jihadists, Antifa or Black Lives Matter militants, while focusing on white supremacists, “or, more specifically, Trump-inspired insurrectionists in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot,” according to the lawyer.
“The double standard here is appalling,” says Stroock. “The Democrat Party has winked and nodded at the BLM/Antifa riots… The media even invented a new term to describe the orgy of looting and destruction, ‘mostly peaceful.’ To see them comparing the Capitol Hill riot to the 9/11 terrorist attacks is pretty rich.”
It’s not the only controversy haunting the Democrats, according to American independent journalist Max Parry: the Dems have previously supported the BLM’s “defund the police” movement and now they are advocating the expansion of homeland security and anti-terrorism measures.
“These are an inherent and irreconcilable contradictions,” Parry says. “Meanwhile, curiously absent is any mobilisation to demilitarise the police, which under the 1033 Program with the Pentagon has hyper militarised US domestic law enforcement even in small towns in the past few decades, yet numerous studies shows has not resulted in lower crime rates… So the irony of calling to ‘defund’ the police while trying to ram through legislation that would likely increase their counter-terrorism training and militarisation is incompatible.”
The movement to “defund the police” was well intentioned but potentially misguided where the legitimate concerns of citizens about the need to reform law enforcement could be used for other agendas, the journalist warns.
How GOP May Give Dems a Taste of Their Own Medicine
While cracking down on Trump supporters in the aftermath of the DC protests, the Dems have failed to convict former President Donald Trump over the alleged incitement of insurrection. As a result, Trump was once again acquitted in the Senate.
”It seems they really thought they would convince 17 Republicans to crossover and vote to convict”, notes Stroock. “Only seven Republicans did so and they’re now in deep trouble with their voters back home. Several have already been censured by their state parties. The Democrats had a plan, a bad one, and had no idea what to do when the plan was foiled by reality.”
Now that the Dems created a new legislative tool, the “snap impeachment,” the GOP could hypothetically fight back and give their political opponents a taste of their own medicine, the political analyst presumes.
“Given the way political gravity works, the Republicans will almost certainly win control of the House and Senate in 2022,” he says. “The Republican base will call for the GOP to impeach Joe Biden. Given the Dem’s own precedent, why not?”
Kamala Harris may also find herself in a heap of trouble given that she earlier tweeted support for a fund that bailed out rioters, according to Strook. Following Trump’s acquittal Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned that Harris could be impeached because she “actually bailed out [BLM] rioters,” pointing to her support of a Minnesota-based bail fund.
“It’s quite a bit of a stretch to say that Harris could be impeached for asking to contribute to a fund that went towards bailing out activists, especially since there is no evidence she herself bailed anyone out,” Parry suggests. “However, that Graham made such threats does show how the prospect of impeachment is now being thrown around so loosely as a political football since the bar has been set so low by the Democrats who impeached Trump over a dubious phone conversation.”
While a lot may happen before the 2022 midterms, the GOP should jump at the opportunity to instrumentalise the potential 9/11-style Commission, argues Strook.
“The Republicans will (or should) approach this commission with great skepticism, turn the camera around and highlight the violence and racism of the left. This commission is a tremendous opportunity for the GOP,” the political analyst believes.
Israel violates international law anew, again bombing Syria… to further indifference of Western media
By Eva K Bartlett | RT | February 16, 2021
Israeli missiles reportedly targeted Syria again on Monday. Usually carried out under the pretense of “targeting Iranian/Iranian-backed militias,” Israel’s strikes violate Syria’s sovereignty and breach international law.
Israel’s military chief of staff boasted earlier about hitting over 500 targets in just 2020 alone. Bearing in mind that Syria’s air defenses do intercept Israeli missiles, it is clear that Israel attacked Syria exponentially more than 500 times last year, and an untold number of times more in the many years that Israel has been bombing Syria.
This latest assault on Syria comes after an Iranian official clarified any Iranian forces in Syria are there at the invitation of the Syrian government to fight terrorists in Syria. This of course applies to all of Syria’s allies, but not to the illegal US and Turkish occupation forces.
Yet, one of the many ironies regarding reporting on Syria is that, while Syria and her allies are fighting terrorism, they are routinely lambasted by Israeli and Western officials, both Israel and Western nations have long been supporting terrorists in Syria, claiming they are “opposition forces” although they are either part of Al-Qaeda in Syria, closely aligned to them, or members of equally brutal factions, including even Islamic State ( IS, formerly ISIS).
If Israel’s routine bombings of Syria are reported in Western media at all, it is with the usual downplaying of (and normalizing of) Israel’s violations of international law.
A SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency) report on the February 15 bombings read as most reports prior over the years, noting the Israeli aggression and that Syria’s “air defenses intercepted the missiles and downed most of them.”
Reuters’ account, referring to the SANA report, put Israeli aggression in quotation marks, as though the bombings don’t amount to an aggression. Perhaps Reuters views them as late Valentine’s greetings…Google “Iranian” or “Russian aggression” and see how often quotation marks are used.
Did Reuters or similar media bother to speak with civilians terrorized by these and the many prior Israeli assaults on Syria? Would they ever mention the psychological component of bombing at night, which is inevitably when Israel usually bombs?
Unlikely. Their narrative is to establish that “Iranian militias” are overtaking Syria and pose a threat to Israel that justifies Israel’s incessant bombings of Syria.
Who do Israel’s bombs target besides “Iranian/Iranian-backed militias” ?
If Western media reported honestly on Israeli bombings of Syria, they would be forced to acknowledge not only that Syrian civilians, including children, have been killed in the bombings, but perhaps offer a human face. Given the frequency of Israeli attacks and disregard for civilians, it is likely that the number of civilians maimed or killed by such bombings is not low.
Even in media traditionally hostile to Syria, one can find reports of civilians killed by Israeli bombings in Syria.
Western media do periodically mention that civilians were killed, but always usurp that point with justifications, like Israel, “periodically attacks what it says are threats to Israeli security in Syria.”
In June 2019, I travelled to Quneitra, southern Syria. Standing near al-Baath City, with around 2,000 civilians living there, and around 4km from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, security there spoke of Israeli attacks in previous years and also just roughly two weeks before my visit.
While their emphasis was on the fact that every time Israel attacked it enabled terrorists (al-Nusra and other groups) to advance, the other take away was that the bombings took place next to or where civilians were living.
In July 2019, among the routine Israeli bombings of Syria was an attack that killed at least four civilians, including an infant, injuring many more. A France 24 mention of the bombings reported six civilians killed, including three children. The report was careful to also specify “pro-regime” for fighters killed, weighted lexicon so common in Western media.
Of that day’s attacks, the BBC ran with: “Israeli jets ‘hit Iranian targets in Homs and Damascus’’. The BBC justified, as the BBC does, Israel’s bombings with: “It periodically attacks what it says are threats to Israeli security in Syria.” Were the dead civilians Israelis, you can bet they would have made the BBC’s headline and not be buried in a justification.
More recently, on the morning of January 22, 2021, Israel (violating Lebanese airspace) bombed Tartous, Hama and Homs countryside. The bombings resulted in the deaths of at least five in one suburb.
Writing from Beirut and Gaza, AP cited the highly partial Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, who from their position afar in the UK attributed the cause of deaths to a Syrian air defense missile. The media ran with that.
And although the big corporate media networks have abundant “unnamed sources,” “citizen journalists” and other credible anonymous sources to support claims of Russian or Syrian atrocities, when it comes to attacks by Israel or the US or allies, these networks run strangely dry of sources and dry of empathy for the victims.
So it is that we never hear of the personal tragedies that come with such bombings.
Regarding the January 22 bombings, journalist Vanessa Beeley went to Kazu, Hama, which she wrote, “took a direct hit with four rockets landing in a narrow residential street.” Beeley reported on how five members of an internally displaced family from Idlib were killed in their sleep (one later dying of her injuries). And sharing horrifying nuances you will not find in Western corporate media, she wrote:
“Hossam was the first on the scene and to see the broken bodies, crushed by the debris of the blast. He told me that he later found the mobile phone of the daughter visiting from Tartous. Her husband had heard news of the attack and had been trying to call her, unaware that his wife had been killed alongside their daughter. Hossam told me that one family member had been sleeping when the shrapnel sliced into their face, tearing skin from bone…”
Now just imagine these were Syrian bombings killing Israeli civilians and children. There would be hell to pay, and the media would scream about it 24/7.
Because some lives matter, but most do not, when it comes to reporting on Syria.
I asked Beeley about the SOHR claims. She replied:
“All survivors of the attack that I interviewed were adamant that four Israeli rockets targeted the narrow residential streets, killing five members of one family and grievously injuring four other relatives living in the same house.”
Why does this hypocrisy matter?
Perhaps people far from the war in Syria and inundated with other terrible information and news wonder why I’m harping on about something that has happened a million times (figuratively) before, Israeli bombings of Syria. Yes, it isn’t news, yes it happens routinely. But it shouldn’t. That’s the bottom line. And it wouldn’t be accepted were a Western nation the target.
These are beyond hypocritical times, when repeatedly bombing a sovereign nation, killing civilians in doing so, merits no outrage, much less any UN or other actions against the offender.
But fighting designated terrorists in Syria warrants media indignation, accusations from Western politicians and the UN itself, and the cruel sanctioning of the people affected.
So why does the hypocrisy matter? Because every time Israel bombs Syria, it is either killing civilians, enabling terrorism (which kills civilians), or preventing the forces fighting terrorism from doing so.
And it matters because Syrians aren’t just numbers behind headlines about “Iranian-backed” fighters. They are people long-abused by Israel and the West’s backing of terrorism and by media complicity.
Guardian writer insists cancel culture doesn’t exist, gets whacked by Big Israel
By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 11, 2021
The meaning of ‘free speech’ is devolving rapidly, with an ever-widening swathe of journalistic content deemed deplatform-worthy, but one writer’s run-in with the Israeli lobby should remind us where “cancel culture” began.
Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, a columnist for the Guardian, tripped over Tel Aviv’s time-honored third rail back in December. He was incensed – as any sane American might be – by the truly preposterous piles of money that were being bundled off to Israel as part of what was supposed to be an omnibus spending bill combined with Covid-19 stimulus passed by Congress as a life-raft for a desperately needy American populace. So he sent out a tweet.
Robinson’s tweet – which wryly suggested “it’s the law” that “the US Congress is not actually allowed to authorize any new spending unless a portion of it is directed toward buying weapons for Israel” – was a joke that took a moment to recognize as a joke, given its resemblance to reality, as the best satire often is. But, at some point, he seemed to get cold feet, following up the tweet with a qualifier noting while it wasn’t really the law, it was “at least so customary as to be functionally identical” to it.
Apparently smelling weakness (and finding satire a wholly inappropriate pastime for a Guardian columnist), the Guardian’s US editor ordered him to delete the tweets, declaring they were not “helpful to public discourse.” One might ask how 95 percent of what’s printed in the Guardian is helpful to public discourse, but one would probably not receive a reply. The email also included what seemed to be a forwarded message from some humorless individual who denounced the tweets as “clearly anti-Semitic,” arguing they were “saying that the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world” and were liable to “inform murderous hatred.”
“Delete this and apologise,” the nameless critic demanded.
Robinson at this point was going to get fired no matter what. He could have stood his ground, explaining to his editor that only the unsigned letter-writer had claimed “the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world,” a conclusion which was nowhere to be found in Robinson’s tweets. He could have pointed out that deeming criticism of Israel “anti-Semitic” was itself anti-Semitic, because plenty of Jews disapprove of the sociopathic actions of the Israeli government and don’t appreciate being used as human shields for those actions. Or he could have just said “no.”
Instead, he went the route traveled by so many journalists desperate to save their jobs, deleting the tweets, groveling at the feet of his editor, and even asking for guidance from the Guardian on what was off-limits – only to be told there was no such code, just an “unwritten one.” Thus was Robinson sucked into the apology vortex that has destroyed so many upwardly-mobile political and media figures – including UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – who’ve dared to oppose the “war crimes” of a foreign country.
After weeks of emails going unreturned, Robinson was informed his services would no longer be needed.
His fate certainly had a ring of poetic justice – his last column published by the Guardian denied the existence of “cancel culture,” gloating that “bigots like Jordan Peterson” aren’t owed a platform after some employees at the publisher who’d already inked a deal with Peterson complained.
However, the Israeli lobby has been bullying journalists since long before “cancel culture” had a name, as Robinson himself documented in a typically long-winded piece posted to his website after he discovered his groveling had been for naught. Indeed, today’s “cancel culture” practitioners most likely learned their craft from observing the craven sneak-attacks practiced by the Lobby that dare not speak its name.
Like the Israeli lobby’s defenders, cancel culture practitioners pile on their targets without regard for logic, fact, or common sense. They hammer away at not only their victim, but their victim’s employer until it becomes easier to just give them what they want, even if the “offensive” statement that started the controversy was utterly unimpeachable.
Robinson’s criticism of the US dumping billions of taxpayer dollars at the feet of Israel while millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet was accurate, as most job-killing jabs at Israel are. Because there is no way of justifying the expenditure of $3.8 billion per year on a country that deliberately antagonizes its neighbors in order to justify the purchase of more American weaponry, Israel’s defenders merely lob the same “anti-Semitism accusation” grenade, again and again. As former Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni has freely admitted, “it’s a trick, we always use it.”
“The ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong.”
It doesn’t matter if the critic of Israel is himself or herself Jewish, either: The list of Jewish critics of the Israeli government’s heinous crimes, all dismissed as “self-hating Jews,” could fill a book (whose publication would no doubt be censored). The Israeli government does not represent the Jewish people, no matter how hard it pretends to, and to suggest it does is itself anti-Semitic.
Unfortunately, the American establishment is utterly unwilling to stand up to these bullies for fear of being smeared as anti-Semitic itself, leading to the spectacle satirized so well in a New York Times cartoon from two years ago – one which also got its creator fired.
It’s a trick they will keep using until someone in the media establishment grows a backbone. As more and more self-styled aggrieved groups pick up on how ‘cancel culture’ works, eventually journalists will be unable to speak at all.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Iraq’s Muqtada Al-Sadr warns of looming normalisation with Israel
MEMO | February 11, 2021
Leader of the Iraqi Sadrist Movement and prominent Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr said yesterday that his movement will not allow normalisation between Iraq and Israel, even if the price is “blood”.
“Normalisation is at the door, and the parliament must prevent this. We will not allow normalisation at all, even if it costs us blood,” Al-Sadr told reporters in the southern city of Najaf.
Al-Sadr did not provide further details, however, in January a new movement named October 25 was formed under the leadership of Secretary-General Talal Hariri who called to have good relations with Israel.
The Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, has not issued a clear position on the movement’s demand.
Iraq does not officially recognise Israel, and there are no relations between the two sides.
In October 2017, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution prohibiting raising the Israeli flag and punishing violators with imprisonment.
Last year, the UAE, Bahrain , Sudan and Morocco signed normalisation deals with Israel. At the time of the first announcements, Iraq declared that its laws prohibited it from normalising relations with the occupation state.
Jolani gets a make-over in Idlib
By Steven Sahiounie | Mideast Discourse | February 9, 2021
The administration of [proclaimed] President Joe Biden may use a new tactic to bring Damascus to its knees. The ‘regime-change’ policy of Obama, which spawned ‘forever-wars’ in Libya and Syria, has a new twist.
Biden could choose to solve the Syrian conflict through diplomacy, but he may have tasked Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with re-inventing a terrorist following Radical Islam, and with a $10 million bounty on his head, as the new leader of Syria.
Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, the leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which had been previously named Jibhat al-Nusra, and where the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, had changed their name in a previous bout of re-branding their image.
The US is now in the process of changing the mask on HTS in Syria, as the group is listed by the US, EU, Russia, the UN, and Turkey as a terrorist group. Jolani took off his guerrilla warfare uniform and switched to a business suit recently in a PBS “Frontline” interview with journalist Martin Smith. Western audiences may be fooled by the new look, but the residents of Syria know the true Jolani. Washing away the gallons of blood on his hands will take a much deeper sanitizing than a new suit. Biden may have a hard time explaining the support of Jolani to French President Macron, who has officially declared war on Radical Islam.
The US had justified their illegal occupation of Syria as necessary to fight Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. The group was successfully dislodged from the territory they had held in northeast Syria.
The sole remaining territory held by an armed group following Radical Islam is Idlib, in the northwest, an area which US officials once described as “the largest al-Qaeda safe haven since 9/11”. Western media describes Idlib as ‘a last stronghold of Syrian rebel groups’. The US and its media outlets have used the terms ‘terrorists’ and ‘rebels’ interchangeably, which has effectively re-branded blood-thirsty criminals into freedom fighters.
Trump had inherited the Syrian conflict from Obama, and he did not work toward any solution but held the status-quo, which saw US troops illegally stationed in Syria to steal the oil. Trump allowed Saudi Arabia to write the US foreign policy on Syria, due to his tight relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The US refused to beat HTS, instead, they protected them in Idlib, and have denounced Syrian and Russian attacks on the group. Now, the US has joined with HTS leader Jolani as their new man to lead Syria, still committed to the US policy of ‘regime change’.
The names change, but the essence is the same. In Syria, there were many armed groups, from the Free Syrian Army to Al Qaeda, and IS. Each had a leader, and a name, but in essence, all were the same: men killing people in the name of God. Their goal is ‘regime change’ and the regime they seek to install in Damascus is an Islamic government, with Sharia as the constitution and rule of law.
Turkey invaded Idlib and has 20,000 troops there, but has been reluctant to publically support HTS, because of the ‘terrorist’ listing. The US may begin a process to remove HTS from the terrorist label, which would open up greater aid and western investment in Idlib. At the same time, this close cooperation in Idlib between the US and Turkey could strengthen a fragile relationship between the two NATO partners. However, Turkey is ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood party, AKP, and there are calls by many in the US and the Arab Gulf states, to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.
The sizable Christian population in Idlib has suffered greatly at the hands of HTS and other Radical Islamic terrorist groups. Not only physical suffering but their properties were seized and they were made destitute and homeless.
The Russian-Turkish ceasefire remains fragile, while joint patrols along the M4 highway have essentially halted since August from terrorist attacks on trucks and civilians. The March 2020 agreement between Russia and Turkey explicitly calls for both sides to “combat all forms of terrorism, and to eliminate all terrorist groups in Syria as designated by the UN Security Council, which includes HTS.
Jolani fought in the post-2003 Iraq war as a member of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI, which later became ISIS), and in 2011 brought ISIS to Syria. He left ISIS in 2013, and declared allegiance to Al Qaeda, and established their affiliate in Syria, Jibhat al-Nusra.
Al-Nusra became known for being more brutal than all others and was feared and loathed by the Syrian civilians who were their victims. The group carried out war crimes and massacres of unarmed civilians sleeping in their own homes near Latakia in 2013. Killing, maiming, raping, and kidnapping was their calling card.
Jolani has been recast as the local Syrian leader capable of governing Idlib. However, Syria is a much bigger place than Idlib, which is a small agricultural area, only known for its olives. What about the biggest city, Aleppo, or the capital Damascus: what would the residents there think of an ex-ISIS member being in charge of Syria? The Syrian people have lived under a secular form of government for 40 years, and have fought against Radical Islam for ten years. Morphing a terrorist into a leader is a fantasy conjured up in Washington, DC. but will not play well to a Syrian audience.
Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.
Leaders, members ‘angry’ at Hamas’ participation in elections
MEMO | February 9, 2021
Leaders and members of Hamas in the occupied West Bank, besieged Gaza Strip and the diaspora are angry at the movement’s decision to participate in the general elections called for by the Palestinian Authority, Arabi21 reported.
The site quoted multiple sources within the movement as saying that the organisation’s leaders and members in the West Bank have informed the leadership that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the decision to participate, which they said had been taken in a “hurry”.
Those who spoke to Arabi21 said the Hamas members’ general dissatisfaction with the decision stems from their view that Hamas’ condition in the West Bank has not changed and its members continue to suffer from the restrictions imposed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel and it still cannot participate in any public meetings.
They also believe “the elections aim to create a new team with new legitimacy, which will strip Hamas of legitimacy and allow the new team to sign any agreement or do whatever it wants on the grounds that it is elected.”
Sources believe Hamas members in the Gaza Strip and in the diaspora consider the decision to take part in the elections to be “unwise and unbalanced”.
Another Zionist Joins the Biden Team
Neuberger will make our cyber secure?
By PHILIP GIRALDI • Unz Review • February 9, 2021
It does not require any particularly perspicacity to realize that the [proclaimed] President Joe Biden Administration has been loaded with Zionists who not only believe in their own vision for Greater Israel but also in some cases have strong and enduring ties to the Israeli government itself. The new Secretary of State Tony Blinken comes from an American Jewish family that has well established ties to Israel. Blinken’s paternal grandfather was one of the founders of an organization that eventually evolved into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Blinken said at his Senate confirmation hearing that the new administration would “consult with Israel” before any possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal and he also made clear that there will be “additional conditions for Iran,” an odd position to take since it was the U.S. that withdrew from the agreement and introduced a harsh sanctions regime even though Iran was in compliance. More recently, Blinken claimed that Iran is weeks away from having the enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear weapon. Strangely enough, or perhaps not, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been making the same claim since the 1980s.
Joe Biden himself proclaims proudly that he is a Zionist and Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken at AIPAC gatherings, pledging her unconditional support for the Jewish state. Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer has proclaimed himself “shomer” or protector of Israel in the Senate while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the “If this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.” The House Majority Leader, the second ranking Democrat, Steny Hoyer has proudly led numerous Congressional delegations to Israel.
One has to suspect that many White House and Congressional friends of Israel are opportunists, knowledgeable of the fact that Zionism is career enhancing and equally aware that getting on the wrong side of “The Lobby” is a political death wish. Many politically astute senior officials meanwhile wind up by design in positions in the Department of State, CIA and National Security Council where they will be able to narrow foreign policy options in favor of the Jewish state. Under George W. Bush, folks like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Scooter Libby worked hard to infiltrate the Pentagon and White House and, having succeeded, the disastrous Iraq War was the result.
One might also recall the concurrent purge of the so-called “Arabists” in the State Department in the 1950s which has led to a domination of key foreign and national security positions relating to the Middle East by American Jews ever since. Indeed, the shift in priorities at State Department has been dramatic, with Foggy Bottom now housing an office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, allegedly because anti-Semitism is surging worldwide, apparently having nothing to do with how Israel and its supporters behave. The incumbent, Elan Carr, has recently been elevated to the rank of Ambassador-at-large and his office, as well as the Biden Administration, now insists that criticism of Israel is ipso facto anti-Semitism. So much for free speech in the new world order.
Once upon a time it was considered unwise to appoint senior officials who had personal ties to other countries lest it create a conflict of interest that would not ultimately be beneficial to either nation. In his often-cited Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington famously warned that “… permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
If Washington were to see the foreign policy ruined by the Israel-centric federal government that has prevailed since the time of Ronald Reagan he would surely be at a loss to understand how that could possibly have developed. Donald Trump even intensified the pander by giving the Israelis gifts that they had not asked for and Joe Biden looks like he will do more of the same. When it comes to Israel, no concession or gift is ever enough.
The FBI, in the past, routinely denied security clearances to appointed officials who had close and enduring ties to other countries that were not part of NATO. Under Donald Trump, it was reported that his son-in-law Jared Kushner had been denied a top-level clearance in part due to his family’s close personal connection with Israel, to include its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is regarded as a family friend. Donald Trump ignored the recommendation and used his own authority to grant Kushner the clearance anyway.
The latest friend of Israel to rise to the top as Biden completes his appointments is one Anne Neuberger, who recently was named senior director for cyber policy on the National Security Council. Neuberger has spent the last decade at the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s cyber spying arm, where she was recently appointed head of the newly created cybersecurity directorate. Her husband Yehuda meanwhile is chair of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Baltimore executive council. He reportedly lobbied ardent Zionist Senator Ben Cardin to oppose the 2015 Iran nuclear deal the Obama White House had negotiated. Cardin did vote against it in spite of it being strongly supported by his party leader President Barack Obama.
There is, not surprisingly, an additional back story to the tale. It goes something like this: NBC news published on January 27th an article claiming that a family foundation connected to Neuberger has donated $500,000 to AIPAC, which is the largest of the hundreds of Jewish organizations that are dedicated to advancing Israeli interests in the United States. AIPAC had in 2019 an annual budget of $133 million, assets of $157 million and 476 employees. It lobbies Congress heavily and is successful to the point where it actually writes legislation favorable to the Jewish State.
The NBC article stated that: “The daughter of billionaire investor George Karfunkel, Neuberger is an officer of a foundation named for her and her husband, the Yehuda and Anne Neuberger Foundation. The foundation was created 12 years ago to ‘carry out the charitable and religious purposes of the Associated Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore,’ according to its tax records… From 2012 through 2018 — the last year for which tax records for the foundation are available — the Neuberger foundation donated $559,000 to AIPAC, tax record show. In a separate part of the forms, the foundation reports spending that exact amounts of its AIPAC donations under the category of spending for lobbying ‘to influence a legislative body’ or ‘to influence public opinion…’”
The article also observes that “[Israel] operates in its own interest and aggressively spies on the U.S., including using cyber capabilities.” It also cites “A cross section of current and former intelligence officials and foreign policy experts — none of whom were willing to be named — [who] said the donations created an appearance problem. They noted that Israel, whose companies build and sell spying gear to regimes abroad and whose intelligence agencies hack foreign governments around the world, has a big stake in American cyber policy.”
The Neuberger foundation also contributes money to the neocon dominated Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which, like AIPAC, colludes directly with the Israeli Embassy in Washington. FDD should be registered as a foreign agent, but no Israel connected entity has ever been forced to comply. To be sure, Neuberger’s involvement with the foundation and her participation in the money contribution to AIPAC should have been an element in her security clearance process, but that process may have been either modified for political reasons or the information was not made available. The NBC report observes that “A spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined to answer detailed questions about the matter, saying, ‘As a senior NSC employee, Ms. Neuberger will abide by the Executive Order on Ethics Commitments By Executive Branch Personnel.’ It’s not clear Neuberger would have been required to disclose contributions by her family foundation as part of her ethics or security clearance reviews — so it’s not known whether the Biden team vetted the donations. Although the donations are listed in public tax filings available on the web, some effort is required to find them.”
The supporters of Neuberger are incorrect in that the contributions made in her name to AIPAC, which most in Washington regard as a front for the Israeli government, would have most definitely been relevant to her clearance process. Under normal rules, it would disqualify her from having a top level clearance, but, as should be noted, we are dealing here with Israel. Neuberger’s appointment as head of U.S. cybersecurity while donating hundreds of thousands to the lobbying arm of a foreign government that recently welcomed to great fanfare a citizen of theirs, Jonathan Pollard, who spied on the U.S., as a hero is unacceptable. One might also add that Israel is regarded as the most active “friendly” government in respect to its spying on the United States, often using sayanim American Jews as their “agents,” and its well documented history of stealing U.S. high technology is extensive. It also has highly developed cyber capabilities of its own which it has recently used against American government targets, to include the White House.
The final twist to the Neuberger story is that complaints from Jewish groups and individuals began to pour into NBC after it released the story, some concerned that a wonderful organization like AIPAC was being impugned. AIPAC denounced the piece directly, claiming that its “Charges of dual loyalty are anti-Semitic and insult millions of Americans—Jewish & non-Jewish—who stand by our ally Israel.” The news network then surrendered, pulling and archiving the story after claiming that it had not met its usual standards due to its use of anonymous sources and failure to give Neuberger adequate time to respond. NBC did not contest the AIPAC claim that Israel is an actual American ally, which is itself a lie, nor to the compelling evidence that some American Jews certainly do demonstrate either dual or singular loyalty that favors Israel.
But my favorite contribution in support of Neuberger comes from President Barack Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who appears to be in line for a Biden senior foreign policy appointment. He tweeted: “I don’t know Anne Neuberger, but the ‘charge’ against her — that she’s not fit for national security work because her family foundation supported political work that is fully protected under the Constitution — is offensive and belied by her stellar career. Glad she is serving.”
Shapiro’s claim that a senior national security official’s supporting a lobby that exists to obtain favors for a foreign country is a “free speech” issue is curious. One also wonders about Shapiro’s ultimate loyalty, recalling how he left his ambassadorial post to live in Israel, where he presumably now holds dual-citizenship. He subsequently told an American Jewish audience that Israel is “this miracle, this gift, this jewel” and worked as a senior officer in an Israeli national security think tank, representing it in testimony before Congress, which should have required him to register as a foreign agent. But he didn’t do so and got away with it because it was Israel, of course. And now he is giving advice on a critical United States national security issue in which he is dead wrong. That is the fundamental problem. We Americans are, at our peril, never allowed to challenge the extent of someone’s devotion to a foreign country if that country just happens to be Israel.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
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From the Archives
How 1960’s French Nuclear Tests Are Still Claiming Lives in Algeria
Sputnik – 15.02.2018
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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