“… Israel is a strong ally and an important friend to the United States. Good friends can disagree and a candid expression of concerns does not diminish our friendship…”
Kushner as a Colonial Administrator
Let’s Talk About the “Israeli Model”
By Ramzy Baroud | Dissident Voice | June 11, 2019
In a TV interview on June 2, on the news docuseries “Axios” on the HBO channel, Jared Kushner opened up regarding many issues, in which his ‘Deal of the Century’ was a prime focus.
The major revelation made by Kushner, President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, was least surprising. Kushner believes that Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.
Not surprising, because Kushner thinks he is capable of arranging the future of the Palestinian people without the inclusion of the Palestinian leadership. He has been pushing his so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ relentlessly, while including in his various meets and conferences countries such as Poland, Brazil and Croatia, but not Palestine.
Indeed, this is what transpired at the Warsaw conference on ‘peace and security’ in the Middle East. The same charade, also led by Kushner, is expected to be rebooted in Bahrain on June 25.
Much has been said about the subtle racism in Kushner’s words, reeking with the stench of old colonial discourses where the natives were seen as lesser, incapable of rational thinking beings who needed the civilized ‘whites’ of the western hemisphere to help them cope with their backwardness and inherent incompetence.
Kushner, whose credentials are merely based on his familial connections to Trump and family friendship with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is now poised to be the colonial administrator of old, making and enforcing the law while the hapless natives have no other option but to either accommodate or receive their due punishment.
This is not an exaggeration. In fact, according to leaked information concerning Kushner’s ‘Deal of the Century,’ and published in the Israeli daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, if Palestinian groups refuse to accept the US-Israeli diktats, “the US will cancel all financial support to the Palestinians and ensure that no country transfers funds to them.”
In the HBO interview, Kushner offered the Palestinians a lifeline. They could be considered capable of governing themselves should they manage to achieve the following: “a fair judicial system … freedom of the press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions.”
The fact that Palestine is an occupied country, subject in every possible way to Israel’s military law, and that Israel has never been held accountable for its 52-year occupation seems to be of no relevance whatsoever, as far as Kushner is concerned.
On the contrary, the subtext in all of what Kushner has said in the interview is that Israel is the antithesis to the unquestionable Palestinian failure. Unlike Palestine, Israel needs to do little to demonstrate its ability to be a worthy peace partner.
While the term ‘US bias towards Israel’ is as old as the state of Israel itself, what is hardly discussed are the specifics of that bias, the decidedly condescending, patronizing and, often, racist view that US political classes have of Palestinians – and all Arabs and Muslims, for that matter; and the utter infatuation with Israel, which is often cited as a model for democracy, judicial transparency and successful ‘anti-terror’ tactics.
According to Kushner a ‘fair judicial system’ is a conditio sine qua non to determine a country’s ability to govern itself. But is the Israeli judicial system “fair” and “democratic”?
Israel does not have a single judicial system, but two. This duality has, in fact, defined Israeli courts from the very inception of Israel in 1948. This de facto apartheid system openly differentiates between Jews and Arabs, a fact that is true in both civil and criminal law.
“Criminal law is applied separately and unequally in the West Bank, based on nationality alone (Israeli versus Palestinian), inventively weaving its way around the contours of international law in order to preserve and develop its ‘(illegal Jewish) settlement enterprise’,” Israeli scholar, Emily Omer-Man, explained in her essay ‘Separate and Unequal’.
In practice, Palestinians and Israelis who commit the exact same crime will be judged according to two different systems, with two different procedures: “The settler will be processed according to the Israeli Penal Code (while) the Palestinian will be processed according to military order.”
This unfairness is constituent of a massively unjust judicial apparatus that has defined the Israeli legal system from the onset. Take the measure of administrative detention as an example. Palestinians can be held without trial and without any stated legal justification. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been subjected to this undemocratic ‘law’ and hundreds of them are currently held in Israeli jails.
It is ironic that Kushner raised the issue of freedom of the press, in particular, as Israel is being derided for its dismal record in that regard. Israel has reportedly committed 811 violations against Palestinian journalists since the start of the ‘March of Return’ in Gaza in March 2018. Two journalists – Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein – were killed and 155 were wounded by Israeli snipers.
Like the imbalanced Israeli judicial system, targeting the press is also a part of a protracted pattern. According to a press release issued by the Palestinian Journalists Union last May, Israel has killed 102 Palestinian journalists since 1972.
The fact that Palestinian intellectuals, poets and activists have been imprisoned for Facebook and other social media posts should tell us volumes about the limits of Israel’s freedom of press and expression.
It is also worth mentioning that in June 2018, the Israeli Knesset voted for a bill that prohibits the filming of Israeli soldiers as a way to mask their crimes and shelter them from any future legal accountability.
As for freedom of religion, despite its many shortcomings, the Palestinian Authority hardly discriminates against religious minorities. The same cannot be said about Israel.
Although discrimination against non-Jews in Israel has been the raison d’être of the very idea of Israel, the Nation-State Law of July 2018 further cemented the superiority of the Jews and inferior status of everyone else.
According to the new Basic Law, Israel is “the national home of the Jewish people” only and “the right to exercise national self-determination is unique to the Jewish people.”
Palestinians do not need to be lectured on how to meet Israeli and American expectations, nor should they ever aspire to imitate the undemocratic Israeli model. What they urgently need, instead, is international solidarity to help them win the fight against Israeli occupation, racism and apartheid.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. He is athor of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle and his latest My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story. He can be reached at ramzybaroud@hotmail.com.
How NeoCon Billionaire Paul Singer Is Driving the Outsourcing of US Tech Jobs to Israel
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | June 11, 2019
WASHINGTON — With nearly 6 million Americans unemployed and regular bouts of layoffs in the U.S. tech industry, major American tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel Corporation are nonetheless moving key operations, billions in investments, and thousands of jobs to Israel — a trend that has largely escaped media attention or concern from even “America first” politicians. The fact that this massive transfer of investment and jobs has been so overlooked is particularly striking given that it is largely the work of a single leading neoconservative Republican donor who has given millions of dollars to President Donald Trump.
To make matters worse, many of these top tech companies shifting investment and jobs to Israel at record rates continue to collect sizable U.S. government subsidies for their operations while they move critical aspects of their business abroad, continue to layoff thousands of American workers, and struggle to house their growing company branches in Israel. This is particularly troubling in light of the importance of the tech sector to the overall U.S. economy, as it accounts for 7.1 percent of total GDP and 11.6 percent of total private-sector payroll.
Furthermore, many of these companies are hiring members of controversial Israeli companies — known to have spied on Americans, American companies, and U.S. federal agencies — as well as numerous members of Israeli military intelligence as top managers and executives.
This massive transfer of the American tech industry has largely been the work of one leading Republican donor — billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who also funds the neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Islamophobic and hawkish think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and also funded the now-defunct Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI).
Singer’s project to bolster Israel’s tech economy at the U.S.’ expense is known as Start-Up Nation Central, which he founded in response to the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to use nonviolent means to pressure Israel to comply with international law in relation to its treatment of Palestinians.
This project is directly linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in recent years has publicly mentioned that it has been his “deliberate policy” to have former members of Israel’s “military and intelligence units … merge into companies with local partners and foreign partners” in order to make it all but impossible for major corporations and foreign governments to boycott Israel.
In this report, MintPress identifies dozens of former members of an elite Israeli military intelligence unit who now hold top positions at Microsoft, Google and Facebook.
Singer’s nonprofit organization has acted as the vehicle through which Netanyahu’s policy has been realized, via the group’s close connections to the Israeli PM and Singer’s long-time support for Netanyahu and the Likud Party. With deep ties to Netanyahu, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and controversial tech companies — like Amdocs — that spied on the American government, this Singer-funded organization has formed a nexus of connections between the public and private sectors of both the American and Israeli economies with the single goal of making Israel the new technology superpower, largely at the expense of the American economy and government, which currently gives $3.2 billion in aid to Israel annually.
Researched and developed in Israel
In recent years, the top U.S. tech companies have been shifting many of their most critical operations, particularly research and development, to one country: Israel. A 2016 report in Business Insider noted that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple had all opened up research and development (R&D) centers in recent years, with some of them having as many as three such centers in Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey. Other major tech companies that have also opened key operation and research centers in Israel include Sandisk, Nvidia, PayPal, Palantir and Dell. Forbes noted last year that the world’s top 10 tech companies were now “doing mission-critical work in Israel that’s core to their businesses back at HQ.”
Yet, some of these tech giants, particularly those based in the U.S., are heavily investing in their Israeli branches while laying off thousands of American employees, all while receiving millions of dollars in U.S. government subsidies funded by American taxpayers.
For example, Intel Corporation, which is the world’s second largest manufacturer of semiconductor computer chips and is headquartered in California, has long been a major employer in Israel, with over 10,000 employees in the Jewish state. However, earlier this year, Intel announced that it would be investing $11 billion in a new factory in Israel and would receive around $1 billion in an Israeli government grant for that investment. Just a matter of months after Intel announced its major new investment in Israel, it announced a new round of layoffs in the United States.
Yet this is just one recent example of what has become a trend for Intel. In 2018, Intel made public its plan to invest $5 billion in one of its Israeli factories and had invested an additional $15 billion in Israeli-created autonomous driving technology a year prior, creating thousands of Intel jobs in Israel. Notably, over that same time frame, Intel has cut nearly 12,000 jobs in the United States. While this great transfer of investment and jobs was undermining the U.S. economy and hurting American workers, particularly in the tech sector, Intel received over $25 million dollars in subsidies from the U.S. federal government.
A similar phenomenon has been occurring at another U.S.-based tech giant, Microsoft. Beginning in 2014 and continuing into 2018, Microsoft has laid off well over 20,000 employees, most of them Americans, in several different rounds of staff cuts. Over that same time period, Microsoft has been on a hiring spree in Israel, building new campuses and investing billions of dollars annually in its Israel-based research and development center and in other Israeli start-up companies, creating thousands of jobs abroad. In addition, Microsoft has been pumping millions of dollars into technology programs at Israeli universities and institutes, such as the Technion Institute. Over this same time frame, Microsoft has received nearly $197 million in subsidies from the state governments of Washington, Iowa and Virginia.
Though Israeli politicians and tech company executives have praised this dramatic shift as the result of Israel’s tech prowess and growing reputation as a technological innovation hub, much of this dramatic shift has been the work of the Netanyahu-tied Singer’s effort to counter a global movement aimed at boycotting Israel and to make Israel a global “cyber power.”
Start-Up Nation Central and the Neocons
In 2009, a book titled Start Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, written by American neoconservative Dan Senor and Jerusalem Post journalist Saul Singer (unrelated to Paul), quickly rose to the New York Times bestseller list for its depiction of Israel as the tech start-up capital of the world. The book — published by the Council on Foreign Relations, where Senor was then serving as Adjunct Senior Fellow — asserts that Israel’s success in producing so many start-up companies resulted from the combination of its liberal immigration laws and its “leverage of the business talents of young people with military experience.”
“The West needs innovation; Israel’s got it,” wrote Senor and Singer. In a post-publication interview with the blog Freakonomics, Senor asserted that service in the Israeli military was crucial to Israel’s tech sector success, stating that:
“Certain units have become technology boot camps, where 18- to 22-year-olds get thrown projects and missions that would make the heads spin of their counterparts in universities or the private sector anywhere else in the world. The Israelis come out of the military not just with hands-on exposure to next-gen technology, but with training in teamwork, mission orientation, leadership, and a desire to continue serving their country by contributing to its tech sector — a source of pride for just about every Israeli.”
The book, in addition to the many accolades it received from the mainstream press, left a lasting impact on top Republican donor Paul Singer, known for funding the most influential neoconservative think tanks in America, as noted above. Paul Singer was so inspired by Senor and Singer’s book that he decided to spend $20 million to fund and create an organization with a similar name. He created the Start-Up Nation Central (SUNC) just three years after the book’s release in 2012.
To achieve his vision, Singer – who is also a top donor to the Republican Party and Trump – tapped Israeli economist Eugene Kandel, who served as Netanyahu’s national economic adviser and chaired the Israeli National Economic Council from 2009 to 2015.
Senor was likely directly involved in the creation of SUNC, as he was then employed by Paul Singer and, with neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, co-founded the FPI, which Singer had long funded before it closed in 2017. In addition, Dan Senor’s sister, Wendy Singer (unrelated to either Paul or Saul), long-time director of Israel’s AIPAC office, became the organization’s executive director.
SUNC’s management team, in addition to Eugene Kandel and Wendy Singer, includes Guy Hilton as the organization’s general manager. Hilton is a long-time marketing executive at Israeli telecommunications company Amdocs, where he “transformed” the company’s marketing organization. Amdocs was once highly controversial in the United States after it was revealed by a 2001 Fox News investigation that numerous federal agencies had investigated the company, which then had contracts with the 25 largest telephone companies in the country, for its alleged role in an aggressive espionage operation that targeted the U.S. government. Hilton worked at Microsoft prior to joining Amdocs.
Beyond the management team, SUNC’s board of directors includes Paul Singer, Dan Senor and Terry Kassel — who work for Singer at his hedge fund, Elliott Management — and Rapheal Ouzan. Ouzan was an officer in the elite foreign military intelligence unit of Israel, Unit 8200, who co-founded BillGuard the day after he left that unit, which is often compared to the U.S.’ National Security Agency (NSA). Within five months of its founding, BillGuard was backed by funding from PayPal founder Peter Thiel and former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. Ouzan is also connected to U.S. tech companies that have greatly expanded their Israeli branches since SUNC’s founding — such as Microsoft, Google, PayPal and Intel, all of which support Ouzan’s non-profit Israel Tech Challenge.
According to reports from the time published in Haaretz and Bloomberg, SUNC was explicitly founded to serve as “a foreign ministry for Israel’s tech industry” and “to strength Israel’s economy” while also aiming to counter the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to use a nonviolent boycott to end the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Israeli apartheid, as well as the growth of illegal Jewish-only settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
Since its founding, SUNC has sought to transfer tech jobs from foreign companies to Israel by developing connections and influence with foreign governments and companies so that they “deepen their relationship with Israel’s tech industry.” Though SUNC has since expanded to include other sectors of the Israeli “start-up” economy, its focus has long remained on Israel’s tech, specifically its cybersecurity industry. Foreign investment in this single Israeli industry has grown from $227 million in 2014 to $815 million in 2018.
In addition to its own activities, SUNC appears to be closely linked to a similar organization, sponsored by Coca Cola and Daimler Mercedes Benz, called The Bridge, which also seeks to connect Israeli start-up companies with large international corporations. Indeed, SUNC, according to its website, was actually responsible for Daimler Mercedes Benz’s decision to join The Bridge, thanks to a delegation from the company that SUNC hosted in Israel and the connections made during that visit.
Teaming up with Israel’s Unit 8200
Members of Israel’s signals intelligence Unit 8200 work under a Saudi flag. Photo | Moti Milrod
Notably, SUNC has deep ties to Israel’s military intelligence unit known as Unit 8200 and, true to Start Up Nation’s praise of IDF service as key to Israel’s success, has been instrumental in connecting Unit 8200 alumni with key roles in foreign companies, particularly American tech companies. For instance, Maty Zwaig, a former lieutenant colonel in Unit 8200, is SUNC’s current director of human capital programs, and SUNC’s current manager of strategic programs, Tamar Weiss, is also a former member of the unit.
One particularly glaring connection between SUNC and Unit 8200 can be seen in Inbal Arieli, who served as SUNC’s Vice President of Strategic Partnerships from 2014 to 2017 and continues to serve as a senior adviser to the organization. Arieli, a former lieutenant in Unit 8200, is the founder and head of the 8200 Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Program (EISP), which was the first start-up accelerator in Israel aimed at harnessing “the vast network and entrepreneurial DNA of [Unit] 8200 alumni” and is currently one of the top company accelerators in Israel. Arieli was the top executive at 8200 EISP while working at SUNC.
Another key connection between SUNC and Unit 8200 is SUNC’s promotion of Team8, a company-creation platform whose CEO and co-founder is Nadav Zafrir, former commander of Unit 8200. In addition to prominently featuring Team8 and Zafrir on the cybersecurity section of its website, SUNC also sponsored a talk by Zafrir and an Israeli government economist at the World Economic Forum, often referred to as “Davos,” that was attended personally by Paul Singer.
Team8’s investors include Google’s Eric Schmidt, Microsoft, and Walmart — and it recently hired former head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, retired Admiral Mike Rogers. Team8 described the decision to hire Rogers as being “instrumental in helping strategize” Team8’s expansion in the United States. However, Jake Williams, a veteran of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations hacking unit, told CyberScoop:
“Rogers is not being brought into this role because of his technical experience. … It’s purely because of his knowledge of classified operations and his ability to influence many in the U.S. government and private-sector contractors.”
In addition to connections to Unit 8200-linked groups like Team8 and 8200 EISP, SUNC also directly collaborates with the IDF in an initiative aimed at preparing young Israeli women to serve in Unit 8200. That initiative, called the CyberGirlz Club, is jointly funded by Israel’s Defense Ministry, SUNC and the Rashi Foundation, the philanthropic organization set up by the Leven family of Perrier-brand water, which has close ties to the Israeli government and IDF.
“Our aim is to bring the girls to this process already skilled, with the knowledge needed to pass the exams for Unit 8200 and serve in the military as programmers,” Zwaig told Israel National News.
Seeding American tech
The connections between SUNC and Unit 8200 are troubling for more than a few reasons, one of which being that Unit 8200, often likened to the U.S.’ NSA, closely coordinates with Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and is responsible for 90 percent of the intelligence material obtained by the Israeli government, according to its former commander Yair Cohen. Cohen told Forbes in 2016, that “there isn’t a major operation, from the Mossad or any intelligence security agency, that 8200 is not involved in.” For obvious reasons, the fact that an organization founded by an American billionaire is actively promoting the presence of former military intelligence officers in foreign companies, specifically American companies, while also promoting the transfer of jobs and investment to that same country, is very troubling indeed.
Particularly troubling is the fact that, since SUNC’s founding, the number of former Unit 8200 members in top positions in American tech companies has skyrocketed. Based on a non-exhaustive analysis conducted by Mintpress of over 200 LinkedIn accounts of former Israeli military intelligence and intelligence officers in three major tech companies, numerous former Unit 8200 alumni were found to currently hold top managerial or executive positions in Microsoft, Google and Facebook.
At Microsoft, managers for at least 15 of the company’s products and programs — including Microsoft’s lead managers for engineering, product strategy, threat analytics and cloud business intelligence — publicly listed their affiliation with Unit 8200 on their LinkedIn accounts. In addition, the general manager of Microsoft’s Israeli Research and Development Center is also a former member of Unit 8200. In total, of the 200 accounts analyzed, 50 of them currently worked for Microsoft.
Similarly, at Google, 28 former Unit 8200 members at the company were identified from their LinkedIn accounts. Among them are Google’s Engineering Director, its strategic partner manager, two growth marketing leads, its lead technical manager, and six product and program managers, including Google’s manager for trust and safety search.
Facebook also has several Unit 8200 members in prominent positions, though fewer than Google and Microsoft. MintPress identified at least 13 Unit 8200 alumni working for Facebook, including its director of engineering, lead manager for express wi-fi, and technical program manager. Notably, Facebook has spent the last several years collaborating with Israel’s government to censor Israel’s critics.
Of course, there is likely much more influence of Unit 8200 on these companies than this non-exhaustive analysis revealed, given that many of these companies acquired several Israeli start-ups run by and staffed by many Unit 8200 alumni who subsequently went on to found new companies and start-ups a few years or shortly after acquisition. Furthermore, due to the limitations of LinkedIn’s set-up, MintPress was not able to access the complete list of Unit 8200 alumni at these three tech companies, meaning that the eye-opening numbers found were generated by a relatively small sample.
This jump in Unit 8200 members in top positions in tech companies of global importance is actually a policy long promoted by Netanyahu, whose long-time economic adviser is the chief executive at SUNC. During an interview with Fox News last year, Netanyahu was asked by Fox News host Mark Levin if the large growth seen in recent years in Israel’s technology sector was part of Netanyahu’s plan. Netanyahu responded, “That’s very much my plan … It’s a very deliberate policy.” He later added that “Israel had technology because the military, especially military intelligence, produced a lot of capabilities. These incredibly gifted young men and women who come out of the military or the Mossad, they want to start their start-ups.”
Netanyahu further outlined this policy at the 2019 Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv, where he stated that Israel’s emergence as one of the top five “cyber powers” had “required allowing this combination of military intelligence, academia and industry to converge in one place” and that this further required allowing “our graduates of our military and intelligence units to merge into companies with local partners and foreign partners.” The direct tie-ins of SUNC to Netanyahu and the fact that Paul Singer has also been a long-time political donor and backer of Netanyahu suggest that SUNC is a key part of Netanyahu’s policy of placing former military intelligence and intelligence operatives in strategic positions in major technology companies.
Notably, just as SUNC was founded to counter the BDS movement, Netanyahu has asserted that this policy of ensuring Israel’s role as a “cyber power” is aimed at increasing its diplomatic power and specifically undermining BDS as well as the United Nations, which has repeatedly condemned Israel’s government for war crimes and violations of international law in relation to the Palestinians.
Building the bi-national surveillance state
Top U.S. tech companies have filled top positions with former members of Israeli military intelligence and moved strategic and critical operations to Israel, boosting Israel’s economy at the expense of America’s, and SUNC’s role in this marked shift merits scrutiny.
A powerful American billionaire has built an influential organization with deep connections to the U.S.-Israel lobby (AIPAC), an Israeli company that has been repeatedly investigated for spying on the U.S. government (Amdocs), and the elite Israeli military intelligence unit (Unit 8200) that has used its influential connections to the U.S. government and the U.S. private sector to dramatically shift the operations and make-up of major companies in a critical sector of the U.S. economy.
Further consider that U.S. government documents leaked by Edward Snowden have flagged Israel as “leading threat” to the infrastructure of U.S. financial and banking institutions, which use much of the software produced by these top tech companies, and have also flagged Israel as a top espionage threat. One U.S. government document cited Israel as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S. behind Russia and China. Thus, Paul Singer’s pet project in Start-Up Nation Central has undermined not only the U.S. economy but arguably U.S. national security as well.
This concern is further exacerbated by the deep ties connecting top tech companies like Microsoft and Google to the U.S. military. Microsoft and Google are both key military contractors — Microsoft in particular, given that it is set to win a lucrative contract for the Pentagon’s cloud management and has partnered with the Department of Defense to produce a “secure” election system known as ElectionGuard that is set to be implemented in some U.S. states for the 2020 general election.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
Welcome David Schenker
Another Zionist in charge of American foreign policy
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • June 11, 2019
Those who think that the foreign policy of the United States should be the product of serious discussion embracing a variety of viewpoints to come to a conclusion that benefits the American people should perhaps take note of what has been going on in the President Donald Trump administration. The use of unrelenting pressure to include threats of military intervention rather than negotiation has been noted by many, but the media predictably has failed to discuss the implications of having a team in place making decisions relating to the volatile Middle East and beyond that consists overwhelmingly of Orthodox Jews and Christian Zionists.
To recap, Trump’s A-team in the Middle East is headed by his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner who is being personally advised by a group of Orthodox Jews. David Friedman, the U.S. (sic) Ambassador to Israel is also an Orthodox Jew and a former bankruptcy lawyer with no diplomatic or foreign policy credentials. He is a passionate supporter and even a funder of the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank and on the Golan Heights. Friedman endlessly and ignorantly repeats Israeli government talking points and eventually succeeded in changing the language used in State Department communications, eliminating the word “occupied” when describing Israel’s control of the West Bank. His humanity does not extend beyond his Jewishness, defending the Israeli shooting of thousands of unarmed Gazan protesters and the bombing of schools, hospitals and cultural centers. How he represents the United States and its citizens who are not dual nationals must be considered a mystery.
Friedman’s top adviser is Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is described by the Embassy as an expert in “Jewish education and pro-Israel advocacy.” Once upon a time Lightstone described Donald Trump as posing “an existential danger both to the Republican Party and to the U.S.” and even accused him of pandering to Jewish audiences. Apparently when opportunity knocked, he changed his mind about his new boss. Pre-government in 2014, Lightstone founded and headed Silent City, a Jewish advocacy group supported by extreme right-wing money that opposed the Iran nuclear agreement and also worked to combat the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Trump’s chief “international negotiator” for the Middle East is yet another Orthodox Jew Jason Greenblatt, the former Trump Organization lawyer. If you have read a recent New York Times op-ed by Greenblatt entitled “Care about Gaza? Blame Hamas” you would understand that the misery being experienced by Palestinians in Gaza has nothing to do with Israeli snipers, artillery rounds and phosphorous bombs. It is all the Arabs’ own fault. Greenblatt uniquely claims that Israel’s illegal settlements are “not an obstacle to peace” and he is very upset because some naysayers are actually putting part of the blame for the human catastrophe in Gaza on Israel.
Kushner, Greenblatt and Friedman are perfect examples of the type of “dual” loyalist who cannot appreciate that their overriding religious and ethnic allegiances are incompatible with genuine loyalty to the United States. The other key pro-Israel players in the foreign policy establishment are nominally Christian, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both of whom are Christian Zionists who believe (and hope) that the re-creation of Israel is part of biblical prophecy that will lead to a great war, the end of the world as we know it and the second coming of Christ. The final component of the Zionist line-up is National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has been a recipient of the “Defender of Israel Award” as well as an outspoken advocate of war with Iran.
Not exactly a model of diversity, is it? Well, there was one piece missing and that was the State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, which has been vacant for the past fourteen months due to failure of the Senate to approve the candidate proposed by Trump, one David Schenker. Schenker was not on hold because of what might be regarded as legitimate concerns about his background or his presumed biases, but rather because Senator Tim Kaine had been demanding from the White House documents relating to military action in Syria, a more-or-less unrelated issue. Last Wednesday Schenker was finally approved by the Senate in an 83 to 11 vote.
Schenker has spent most of his time in Washington at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think-tank that supports the Israeli government. He began as an analyst after graduate school and his career exhibits the familiar neocon pattern of jumping between pro-Israel foundations and government jobs to build a resume and credibility. He served in the George W. Bush Pentagon, which was a hot bed of neocon subversion featuring Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith. And WINEP is no ordinary think-tank. It was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington. To describe WINEP as “supporting the Israeli government” is an understatement.
When news of the Senate’s confirmation vote came through, WINEP Executive Director Robert Satloff enthused that “David Schenker’s career has been dedicated to enhancing the quality of U.S. Middle East policy, and it is only fitting he should now be the one enacting such policies at such a critical time for U.S. interests in the region.” Satloff is right to gloat, as The Lobby that he is part of now has its nice Jewish boy in a senior position at the State Department where he will be “enhancing the quality” of U.S. foreign policy for the Middle and Near East to favor Israel.
In a press release WINEP Institute President Shelly Kassen and Chairman Martin J. Gross also joined in, describing how “We are proud of the fact that David Schenker will be the latest in a long line of Institute experts to join the government in senior positions — in both Republican and Democratic administrations — to provide expertise on the Middle East.”
Yes, Schenker is clearly full of expertise, though it is odd how the government appears to think that expert opinion on the Middle East is an attribute belonging only to Jewish pseudo-scholars and think-tank parasites. It is expected that Schenker will not hesitate to get tough with the Arabs. In a September 2017 interview he emphasized the threat posed by “Hezbollah’s tunnels under the Israel-Lebanon border.” And he believes that a future war between Israel and Hezbollah is “not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’” There is little doubt which side Schenker will be on, even if Benjamin Netanyahu starts the war.
There is an unfortunate history of American Jews closely attached to Israel being promoted by powerful and cash rich domestic lobbies to act on behalf of the Jewish state, enabling them to move between think-tanks and government almost effortlessly. To be sure, by virtue of their relentless networking and gaming of the system, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East. Meanwhile, one can also reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are de facto in the pockets of Jewish/Israeli billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, both of whom regard the advancement of Israeli rather than American interests as their top priorities.
What is to be done? Well, it would be nice, almost unbearably nice, to see the media and Congress just for once doing their jobs by challenging the bona fides of poseurs like Kushner, Friedman, Greenblatt and Schenker not to mention the demented trio of Pence, Pompeo and Bolton. It is not in the United States’ interest to have as its representatives and spokesmen in an important and highly volatile part of the world individuals who are demonstrated partisans on issues that that will surely require some compromise if they are ever to be resolved. Israeli leaders have described with a grin how easy it is to “move” the United States in their favor by virtue of the power of their diaspora associates both in and out of government. Perhaps it is time to wake up to that fact, to get rid of the Quislings and set the pendulum swinging in the other direction.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Report: Israel committed 84 violations against Palestinian journalists in May
Press TV – June 9, 2019
The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) says the Israeli military committed 84 violations against Palestinian journalists in the month of May as the Tel Aviv regime continues its repressive measures against members of the press both in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.
MADA, in a report published on Sunday, announced that the number marks a sharp increase compared to the preceding month of April, when 19 violations were documented.
The report then pointed to the recent closure of Facebook accounts of at least 65 Palestinian journalists and activists in a campaign carried out on May 23 and 24.
MADA further noted that Israeli military aircraft targeted and destroyed the office of Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency, besides the office of Palestine Liberation Organization-affiliated Abdullah al-Hourani Center for Studies and Documentation when they bombed the Gaza Strip on May 4.
The report went on to say that Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Mahmoud Hassan suffered a gunshot wound as he was covering a weekly demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli regime in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on May 10.
Two journalists, identified as 42-year-old Abdel Rahim Mohammed Khatib and Ramzi Hatem al-Shukrit, 35, were also separately injured during their coverage of the anti-occupation Great March of Return protests east of the border city of Rafah, located 30 kilometers south of Gaza City, on the same day.
One of them was struck by a rubber-coated metal bullet, while the other was directly hit by a tear gas canister.
On May 12, Israeli military forces arrested seven journalists and human rights activists in the northern Jordan Valley area, and prevented them from covering deportations being carried out by the military against Palestinian farmers and residents living there.
Furthermore, Israeli forces prevented Munther Mohammed Shehadeh al-Khatib, a photographer for al-Ghad satellite television network, from filming scenes of crowds of Palestinian worshippers flocking to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds to perform the last Friday prayers of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and threatened to destroy the camera, forcing him to leave the area.
According to the report, Ahmed Salah al-Najjar, who worked as a photographer with Noor media network, suffered an Israeli gunshot wound in the back while covering an anti-occupation protest east of Khan Yunis on May 31.
Saudi Arabia tightens grip on Palestinians, hampers remittances to Gaza: Report
Press TV – June 8, 2019
Less than a week after Saudi authorities arrested more than 60 people, including Palestinian expatriates and Saudi nationals, on charges of supporting the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, they have now blocked money transfers between the kingdom and the Gaza Strip.
The new step taken by the Riyadh regime against Palestinians involves official and non-official money transfers as the procedure has witnessed a marked decline over the past week and during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, Arabic-language al-Khaleej Online news website reported.
The report described residents of the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip as the main victims of the move. Most of the bank transfers that used to be carried out normally in the past, were frozen just a few days before the start of the holiday.
Remittance transactions are taking much longer time than usual – something that used to be done in a matter of few hours.
Many Palestinians have complained of the move, and termed it as “unprecedented.” They argue that the process of transferring money between Saudi Arabia and the Gaza Strip has become extraordinarily difficult.
Abu Fuad, a resident of the Gaza Strip who refused to give his last name for fear that his family could be persecuted in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah, said he has experienced difficulty receiving money from his family.
“It is three days since the remittance has been made, but I have not received anything. Financial transfers used to be done in a few hours and without any obstacles in the past. But since the week before the Eid, the procedures have become complex and most of the transfers are frozen without any obvious reason,” he said.
Abu Fuad considered the measure as a “new crackdown on the Palestinian community living in Saudi Arabia,” stressing that it would aggravate their sufferings as students rely heavily on money transferred from their families living outside the kingdom.
He called upon the Palestinian Embassy in Riyadh to intervene immediately, and try to work out a quick and practical solution to the crisis, which has negatively affected the Palestinian community in Saudi Arabia.
Over the past two years, Saudi authorities have deported more than 100 Palestinians from the kingdom, mostly on charges of supporting Hamas resistance movement financially, politically or through social networking sites.
The Riyadh regime has imposed strict control over Palestinian funds in Saudi Arabia since the end of 2017.
All remittances of Palestinian expatriates are being tightly controlled, fearing that these funds could be diverted indirectly and through other countries to Hamas.
Money transfer offices are asking the Palestinians to bring forward strong arguments for conversion, and do not allow the ceiling of one’s money transfer to exceed $3,000.
The Joke of the Century
By Jeremy Salt | American Herald Tribune | June 7, 2019
With fresh elections called by Benyamin Netanyahu for September, it is possible that the ‘deal of the century’ may never see the light of day. Condemned across the board by Palestinians, even supporters are backing away. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State, said recently it was a deal “only the Israelis could love” and possible was “unexecutable.” Still, for what it reveals of the minds that could come up with such a scheme, the ‘deal of the century’ is still worth examining.
The ‘deal’ would be the joke of the century were it not so seriously intended. Whether deal or joke, however, the bottom line is blackmail and even murder. If Hamas and Islamic Jihad don’t accept this deal, the US will allow Israel to “personally harm” their leaders, in other words, kill them.
The full package is to be unveiled in late June but these are some of the details, as leaked from the Foreign Ministry to Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper, Israel Hayom, a propaganda conduit for the Netanyahu government. Adelson’s wife Miriam, Israel Hayom’s chief executive, is one of the richest women in the world, with an estimated personal fortune of $22 billion. She and her husband have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into their pet causes, the Republican Party and the state of Israel. Described in the US media as an ‘humanitarian’ and ‘philanthropist,’ this sponsor of Israel’s racist war on the Palestinians was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018, the highest US award that can be conferred on a civilian.
Some of the detail in the Jared Kushner ‘deal of the century’ may be kite-flying, to be modified before the formal release of the plan, so that it won’t look so bad after all, but the deadly intent, to erase Palestine forever and replace it with a strangulated state of ‘New Palestine,’ is not to be doubted.
As outlined in Israel Hayom, Israel would annex all the West Bank settlement blocs. Together with the isolated settlements to be brought within this land grab, Israel could be expected to seize most if not all of Area C of the West Bank, as assigned to full Israeli control in the long-moribund ‘peace process.’
This would give it up to 62 percent of the West Bank. ‘New Palestine’ would consist of Area A (about three percent) and presumably most of Area B, consisting of 24 percent, to make statehood even remotely plausible. The territory taken by Israel would include the fertile and well-watered Jordan Valley. Overall, the Palestinians would be left with about 12 percent of their stolen homeland. In practice, there would be no real change from the present situation. The ‘deal’ would simply ratify Israeli settlement and land seizures in a new pseudo-legal arrangement.
The West Bank would be connected to Gaza by a highway, to be funded mainly by China but with smaller financial contributions from South Korea, Australia, Canada, the US, and the EU. Egypt would lease land to ‘New Palestine’ for the construction of an airport and an industrial zone in Sinai. The Palestinians would also have a port. This and other infrastructural and administrative costs would be covered by $30 billion paid by the oil-producing Gulf states (70 percent, the US (20 percent) and the EU (10 percent).
A time frame of five years would provide plenty of room for the freezing of grants if the Palestinians misbehave, in the event of rockets still being fired into Israel or through their perceived failure to comply with the terms imposed on them, as interpreted by Israel, of course.
Israel would continue to oversee the ‘security’ of ‘New Palestine’s’ land and sea borders, so no change here either except the semantic. As the trump hand in negotiations would always be held by someone else – Israel, the US or Egypt or the donors to the various projects – the Palestinians would be perennially open to threat and intimidation and the withholding of financial grants.
‘New Palestine’ would have its capital in Jerusalem, most probably in the village of Abu Dis, which was brought within the municipal boundaries by Ehud Barak during the Camp David negotiations to create the fiction of a shared capital. In fact, Jerusalem would remain under the full control of the Israeli municipality and government. Palestinians would have no say at all in how the city is run.
East Jerusalem Palestinians would remain the citizens of ‘New Palestine’ but Israel would control their daily lives as before. Restrictions would be formally applied to real estate deals, so that Israelis could not buy Palestinian houses and Palestinians could not buy properties sequestered by Jewish settlers. In practice, given Israel’s determination to turn Jerusalem into a wholly Jewish city, except for Palestinian remnants, it is difficult to see this restriction being applied to the settlers, whom the occupier’s law allows to seize Palestinian property by the most dubious means.
Hamas would have to hand in all its weapons immediately. New elections would be held in a year. ‘New Palestine’ would have no army, only a lightly-armed police force. Having spent more than seven decades destroying the old Palestine – the real Palestine – Israel would take responsibility for the defense of the new, but the Palestinians would have to bear the costs of their own protection as calculated by Israel.
The Palestinians would have to accept that they have no right of return and naturally there is no mention of the hundreds of billions of dollars that is their due from the theft of their land and the destruction of hundreds of their villages in 1948-9. Hot on reparations from Germany, Israel has never shown any interest in paying back the Palestinians for what it has stolen and the lives it has destroyed.
If the Palestinians do not accept the ‘deal of the century’ the US will do everything in its power to make sure that no institution or country in the world gives them any financial support. If the PLO accepts the deal but Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not, the US would support any Israeli attempt in times of conflict to ‘’personally harm’’ their leaders. In other words, the US government would openly support their assassination.
As the US has always tacitly supported the murder of Palestinian leaders, the only change here would be the move from implicit to open support but either way, this is gangsterism pure and simple, put down in writing by the smooth-faced son of a property developer from New Jersey. Where is Tom Wolfe now that he is needed to put all of this into the only appropriate form, satire?
If Israel rejects the offer then it too would receive no more financial support from the US government. The notion that an Israeli government would reject an arrangement that gives it virtually everything it has ever wanted except the complete expulsion of the Palestinians is grotesque.
How astonishing it is that in the 102 dramatic years since the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, that after a century of massacres, murders and assassinations of Palestinians and other Arabs by the Zionists and their ‘western’ sponsors, after the resistance of young and old Palestinians generation after generation, and against the background of the complete illegality of Zionist actions, that this squalid deal is the best Jared Kushner could come up.
He clearly has no grasp of history. No doubt he discussed this at length with Ivanka. That the fate of Palestine could come to rest in the hands of these spoilt American juveniles, these Ken and Barbie dolls, who could be stood next to their waxen simulacrums in Madame Tussaud’s without anyone noticing the difference, is the measure of the complete bankruptcy of the United States in the Middle East.
How equally astonishing it is that Jared, or Ivanka, or Trump or his settler-supporting ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, could be so ignorant of history, so unaware of the human spirit as demonstrated not just by the Palestinians but by every occupied and oppressed people through the entire course of history, that they could have even thought the Palestinians would buy into this cheap realtor’s stunt. Buy now, because tomorrow it’s going to be twice as expensive. This is a bargain you Palestinians just can’t afford to miss. The vendor can’t hold off forever.
The racist, orientalist implications have been brought out by Haidar Eid and others. Dignity, honor, pride, justice, moral, legal and historical entitlement are all missing from Jared Kushner’s calculations. The money deal is on the table and the native better pick it up because this is the best he’s ever going to be offered and if he doesn’t he’s going to be whipped until he sees reason.
‘‘I’m not here to be trusted,’ Jared said of the Palestinians in an Axio-HBO interview. ‘They’re gonna judge it based on facts and then make a determination … When I speak to the Palestinians what they want is the opportunity to live a better life …. They want the opportunity to pay the mortgage.’’ Thus is the Palestinian problem reduced to the cash worries of a suburban American household.
In the Bible, an Esau returning hungry from the fields is said to have sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a ‘mess of pottage,’ which seems to have been a plate of lentils. In a similar fashion, Jared is about to put his offer to the Palestinians on the kitchen table: they will have to forfeit their birthright, but do they want the lentils or not?
He is not even sure the Palestinians will prove capable of governing themselves. That was the British line when they took Palestine from the Palestinians in 1920. They said they would hold Palestine until the people are ready for self-government. In fact, these liars were holding Palestine in limbo until the Zionists settlers had built up the numbers and were ready for self-government without the Palestinians.
Over decades the Zionist line was that ‘we have no negotiating partner.’ In fact, it was the Palestinians who never had a negotiating partner and do not have one now. Israel has ignored, undermined or debauched every single peace offer ever made. It has chosen all of Palestine over peace every time. Now along comes the ‘deal of the century’ to close off all remaining options and deliver the Palestinians into a formally structured Babylonian life of bondage to the state of Israel.
Palestinians have already responded by signaling to Jared that he can put his ‘deal of the century’ in a place where the sun never shines. This struggle will continue, fought within Palestine and from beyond its borders.
Zionists Call Up Heavy Artillery to Blast Disobedient UK Labour
But could it backfire?
Marie van der Zyl. Credit:Twitter)
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | June 4, 2019
Zionist pressure groups are crowing with delight at the decision by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s to investigate anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.
Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl welcomed it. “In the past four years we have seen a large number of cases of anti-Semitism throughout the party from bottom to top. Despite the Jewish community demonstrating in their thousands outside Parliament, this has still not been addressed seriously by the party leadership.”
The Jewish leadership Council issued a statement on what it called the Labour Party’s unlawful discrimination against Jewish people. “We have drawn public attention over the last year to the leadership of the Party’s failure to address the anti-Jewish racism in the party. The fact that they have obfuscated, denied the problem and we have been accused of smears should be countered by today’s announcement by the EHRC. This is a very serious development.”
The EHRC for its part says it took the decision to investigate after receiving a number of complaints about allegations of anti-Semitism in the Party. The investigation will seek to determine:
- whether unlawful acts have been committed by the Party and/or its employees and/or its agents, and
- whether the Party has responded to complaints of unlawful acts in a lawful, efficient and effective manner
The terms of reference also state that the investigation will focus on “the Party’s response to a sample of complaints of alleged unlawful acts”.
In the course of the investigation, the Commission says it may have regard to the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s) working definition of anti-Semitism and associated examples “while recognizing it is a non-legally binding definition”.
So perhaps the complainers shouldn’t celebrate too soon.
Two ‘sample’ cases that I doubt will be investigated
Some readers may remember that I conducted my own investigation last year into a small sample of anti-Semitic cases that turned out to be utterly bogus. Two Scottish Labour politicians, both regional councilors, had been accused of anti-Semitic remarks and were languishing, paralyzed, under the cosh of the party’s blundering, slow-motion disciplinary regime.
In the first case Constituency party officials declared the councilor guilty and issued a press statement to that effect without waiting for him to be heard, hugely prejudicing any inquiry. His Council leader publicly called on him to resign as a councilor, saying his thinking belonged to the Dark Ages: “To smear an entire community both past and present, to say he has lost ‘all empathy’ for them is utterly deplorable,” he told the press.
What was the ‘crime’? The councilor had tweeted: “For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering. No longer, due to what they and their Blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long-suffering people of Britain…”
The other councilor was accused of anti-Semitism by a former Labour MP who, in 2015, wrote to the Culture Secretary urging a debate to ban Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a best seller, and claiming many would argue that it is “too offensive to be made available”. He suggested there was “a compelling case for a national debate on whether there should be limits on the freedom of expression”.
A Tory MP then put the boot in, telling the media it was clear to the vast majority of people that the councilor in question was no longer fit to hold office and suspension didn’t go far enough.
What exactly was this councilors‘ crime’? She’d had the audacity to voice suspicion on social media that Israeli spies might be plotting to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader after three Jewish newspapers ganged up to publish a joint front page warning that a Corbyn-led government would pose an “existential threat to Jewish life in this country”.
She added that if it was a Mossad assisted campaign to prevent the election of a Labour Government (which would be pledged to recognize Palestine) it amounted to an unwarranted interference in our democracy. For good measure she said Israel was a racist State and since the Palestinians are also Semites, an anti-Semitic State too.
Everyone and his dog, including the entire Labour Party and the Zionist movement, surely knew that in January 2017 a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, Shai Masot, had plotted with stooges among British MPs and other maggots in the political woodwork to “take down” senior government figures including Boris Johnson’s deputy at the Foreign Office, Sir Alan Duncan. And that Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s former chief spokesman and the mastermind behind Israel’s hasbara program of disinformation and dirty tricks, had recently arrived in London as the new ambassador.
Masot was almost certainly a Mossad asset. His hostile activities were revealed not by Britain’s own security services and media, as one would have wished, but an Al Jazeera undercover news team. Her Majesty’s Government’s response? “The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed.” But not everyone considered it closed and at a Labour Party conference fringe meeting Israel insider Miko Peled warned that “they are going to pull all the stops, they are going to smear, they are going to try anything they can to stop Corbyn…. the reason anti-Semitism is used is because they [the Israelis] have no argument….”
As for the councilor’s claim that Israel is a racist State, its discriminatory laws, ethnic cleansing and other brutal policies over 70 years make it obvious. And its new Nation State laws reinforce the fact. The councilor’s point about Semitism is also fair comment. DNA research shows that only a tiny proportion of Jews are Semitic (see for example the Johns Hopkins University study published by Oxford University Press) whereas most indigenous Arabs in the Holy Land, especially Palestinians, are Semites. ‘Anti-Semitism’, although meant to describe hatred of Jews, is a term that’s misused.
And what happens to the false accusers?
Remember the Tory MP who said the councillor wasn’t fit to hold office and suspension wasn’t good enough? It turned out that he was chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Jews which is funded, supported and administered by the Board of Deputies who were, and still are, a major player in the campaign to humiliate Jeremy Corbyn and weaken the Labour Party. I don’t suppose the Conservative Party took disciplinary action against him.
Both Scottish Labour councilors were suspended for months without a hearing and the accusations against them paraded in public, seriously disrupting performance of their duties and their work on behalf of their constituents. One of them had to wait 16 weeks ‘under sentence’ and posted on Facebook: “I can’t make any decisions about my personal, political, or professional future whilst this hangs over me. I am constantly tired and anxious, and feel I am making mistakes. I have lost paid work because of what has happened.”
In these two cases a simple, informal assessment at the outset would have shown no need for formal action. Councilors don’t ‘belong’ to the Labour Party or any other party; if they belong to anybody it’s the public who elect them as their representative. Their right to free expression is guaranteed by international convention and domestic law. Labour (and the other parties) ought to heed the warnings by top legal opinion (for example Hugh Tomlinson QC and Sir Stephen Sedley) that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is “most unsatisfactory” and has no legal force, and using it to punish could be unlawful.
When a suspension is lifted the Labour Party rarely issues a statement exonerating the wrongly accused. They are left struggling to re-establish their good name. The accuser, often motivated by political or racial malice or plain ignorance, gets off scot-free after causing untold damage and isn’t even disciplined.
Why, in the first place, take allegations of anti-Semitism seriously from bully-boys who themselves practice or support racism? And why suspend someone without first checking whether the allegations, on the face of it, are remotely valid?
There are within Labour’s ranks some who say idiotic things about Jews, gratuitously insulting them to the detriment of the campaign for justice in the Holy Land. Their remarks are so stupidly provocative that one suspects those making them are Zionist plants. OK, anti-semitic feeling is often brought on by Israel’s endless crimes and brutality. But what is the point of bringing up Hitler and the Holocaust when Israel is the perpetrator of more war crimes and other breaches of international law and human decency than you can shake a stick at?
The investigation needs to happen. I don’t suppose the two cases I looked at will be included in the EHRC’s ‘sample’. Nevertheless, the Labour Party must get its act together if only to protect the free-thinking innocent. This investigation may force it to.
A piece of good news – maybe – for those under Zionist bombardment is the launch of a new campaign group, Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism (LAZIR), which aims to build a network of Labour activists who will work to “kick Zionism out of the British Labour Party” and to “stop the creeping Zionism that pollutes politics in the UK”.
While insisting they are not anti-Jewish they intend working against “the toxic Jewish Labour Movement” in a campaign to allow anyone to decry apartheid in Israel without being branded anti-Semites.
They set out 7 policies which, at this early stage, are perhaps best regarded as work in progress.
US hands over former Palestinian presidential candidate, university prof. to Israel
Abdelhalim al-Ashqar standing in his home in Virginia, the United States. (Photo by Getty Images)
Press TV – June 6, 2019
US officials have handed over a former Palestinian presidential candidate and university professor to Israel after keeping him 11 years in prison on charges of racketeering and collecting funds for the Hamas resistance movement.
The Council on International Relations – Palestine, in a statement released on Thursday, denounced American authorities for extraditing Abdelhalim al-Ashqar to Israel, stressing that US officials bear full responsibility for the fate of Ashqar, who is now in the hands of the “criminal” Tel Aviv regime.
The Council noted that the move attests to the US administration’s hostility towards the Palestinian nation and stability and peace in the Middle East region as well as its blatant bias in favor of the unjust Israeli regime and its ongoing crimes.
The statement further argued that American authorities had unfairly sentenced Ashqar to 11 years in prison after placing him under house arrest for nearly two years. He wore an ankle monitor on his right leg in his home in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Council called on the international community and human rights groups around the world to press for the release of Ashqar, stressing the need for the US administration to review its Middle East policies, which run contrary to its claim of being an honest broker in the so-called peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis.
Ashqar was a professor at Howard University, Washington, the United States. Between 1998 and 1999, he was detained for several months by American officials under allegations of fundraising for certain US-based Islamic organizations.
He was discharged from his teaching position at Washington University in August 2004. He was subsequently arrested, charged with racketeering and illegally collecting funds for Hamas, and put under house arrest.
Ashqar nominated himself as an independent presidential candidate in the January 9, 2005, Palestinian election. He was one of the 10 contenders seeking to succeed Yasser Arafat, who died on November 11, 2004 as head of the Palestinian Authority.
In November 2007, he was sentenced to 135 months in prison.
US Senators meet with Jewish leaders in semi-secret annual event
Jewish leaders meeting with Senate Democrats. Photo from a tweet by Nathan Diament featured by Jewish Insider.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | June 5, 2019
An article in the Times of Israel reports that “Jewish leaders are meeting with Senate Democrats today.” According to the report, this is an annual event.
All except one of the organizations represented by the Jewish leaders at the meeting advocate for Israel.
Several of the organizations participating are focused on preventing the erosion of support for Israel among Democratic voters. Recent polls show that the large majority of progressive Americans now support Palestinian human rights.
Many of the meeting participants, both Senators and Jewish leaders, are particularly known for their pro-Israel work. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calls himself a “guardian of Israel.”
The meeting does not seem to have been announced publicly ahead of time, and staffers at Senate offices contacted for this article were not aware of it.
The chair for the meeting is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a 2020 presidential candidate.
Klobuchar is a strong Israel supporter and announces on her website that she supported the $38 billion package to Israel.
Klobuchar’s office would not reveal the location or time of the meeting. It also would not provide the agenda.
The offices of other Senators reportedly participating in the meeting that were contacted for this article – Tim Kaine, Patty Murray, and Chris Koons – also refused to provide this information to the American public.
Jewish Insider terms the event “Meeting of Machers” (wheeler dealers).
Nathan Diament, Executive Director for Public Policy for the Jewish Orthodox Union, posted a photo about the meeting on his Twitter account (see above), but didn’t clarify when the photo was taken.
Senators & Leaders participating
In addition to Klobuchar, the Senators reported to be participating in the meeting include Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chris Coons (D-DE), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Patty Murray (D-WA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Michael Bennet (D-CO).
The Jewish leaders attending the meeting reportedly include:
AIPAC’s Howard Kohr
J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami
ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt,
JNFA’s Mark Wilf
Conference of President’s Arthur Stark
Democratic Majority for Israel’s Mark Mellman
Jewish Democratic Council of America’s Ron Klein
Israel Policy Forum’s Susie Gelman
The Rabbinical Assembly’s Rabbi Julie Schonfeld
Union for Reform Judaism’s Rabbi Rick Jacobs
Orthodox Union’s Avi Katz
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s Mark Hetfield
National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry’s Mark B. Levin
Jewish Women International’s Loribeth Weinstein
Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ David Bernstein
Bend the Arc’s Stosh Cotler (Unlike the other organizations represented at the meeting, Bend the Arc has not taken a public stand on Israel-Palestine. A member of Bend the Arc’s executive board, Howard Welinsky, is active in AIPAC and chairs Democrats for Israel, Los Angeles. Stosh Cotler, on the other hand, once demonstrated against Israeli policies.)
Seating chart
Below is a chart of the seating arrangement for the meeting provided by Jewish Insider:
Chart of the seating arrangement for the June 5, 2019 meeting.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.
The Quds Day Panic of 2019
Photo: Jüdische Allgemeine
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | June 5, 2019
So it appears we managed to survive another terrifying Quds Day in Berlin. It was certainly touch and go there for a while, what with the media issuing hysterical warnings about the hordes of “Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists” that were going to materialize out of the ether, goose-step down the Kurfürstendamm, and reenact Kristallnacht, or something. The city was braced for an all-out Perso-Palestinian Quds Day Pogrom, which is always a threat on Quds Day in Berlin, but the hysteria level this year was elevated, due to the Anti-Semitism Pandemic that mysteriously erupted in 2019 for no apparent reason whatsoever.
OK, what, you’re probably asking, is Quds Day? It’s an annual event initiated by Iran to show support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism. It takes place on the last Friday of Ramadan, in opposition to Israel’s Jerusalem Day, the national holiday commemorating Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. In Berlin, there’s an annual Quds Day march, which the German media typically respond to by whipping up anti-Semitism hysteria and fanatical, guilt-ridden support for Israel. This year was no exception … on the contrary.
A week or so before the event, Felix Klein, Germany’s “Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism,” warned Jews not to wear kippahs in public, on account of the unprecedented explosion of anti-Semitism throughout the country. According to the interior ministry, there were 62 violent anti-Semitic attacks in Germany during 2018, compared to 37 in 2017, which, in a nation of 83 million people, and with a history of real-life, goose-stepping Nazis, and of perpetrating the Holocaust, and so on … well, you can understand the Commissioner’s alarm.
The international corporate media began spreading the news that Anti-Semitism was once again on the march in Germany. The BBC reported that official figures showed that 1,646 hate crimes had been committed against Jews in 2018, up 10% from 2017! CNN reported that anti-Semitic hate crimes had increased by almost 20%! According to The Jerusalem Post, there were 1,800 anti-Semitic incidents committed against Jews in 2018! It was almost as if the Anti-Semitism Pandemic was retroactively metastasizing right before our eyes.
But whatever. The statistics don’t really matter. The point was, “Jews are not safe in Germany!” The Putin-Nazis had teamed up with the Iranian Nazis and the Syrian Nazis, who were backing the Palestinian Nazis, whose irrational hatred of the State of Israel the German Nazis had somehow weaponized (probably with a bunch of fake Facebook ads), and they were all going to storm the historic high-end shopping boulevard of West Berlin!
Then, on Friday, the day before Quds Day, in a desperate, last-minute, tactical maneuver, German politicians and cultural figures exhorted Jews and gentiles alike to defiantly wear their kippahs on Quds Day. BILD, the leading German tabloid, even printed little cut-out “BILD kippas” (complete with meticulous assembly instructions), and called on Germans to wear them on Quds Day to show their solidarity with State of Israel … uh, sorry, I meant with the Jewish people.
The BILD kippa tactic was a huge success! On Quds Day, fewer than a thousand people, many of them women and children, peacefully strolled along the Kurfürstendamm chanting slogans like “free, free Palestine,” and asking the world to stop the Israelis from penning people up in de facto ghettos, shooting their legs off with dum dum bullets, demolishing their houses, hospitals, and schools, stealing their land, randomly murdering them, and otherwise behaving like sadistic fascists. The hordes of “Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists” that the corporate media had warned us were coming, oddly, never showed their faces … clearly, the “BILD kippas” scared them off.
Or maybe it was the counter-demonstrators. Hundreds of anti-anti-Semites, including prominent German government officials, Israeli diplomats, Antifa factions, members of the local Jewish community, and BILD susbscribers confronted the march, wearing kippahs, waving Israeli flags, displaying giant “MAGA” banners, shouting “long live Israel” and “free Gaza from Hamas,” and giving the marchers the finger, and so on (which, OK, I found a little confusing, as, the last time I checked, Trump was still Hitler, and Antifa were supposedly a bunch of anarchists).
In any event, the hysteria has subsided. Berlin and Israel appear to have survived. The Jews can come back out of hiding, although it isn’t quite clear whether Germany wants them to wear their kippahs in public or not now. Hopefully, we’ll be receiving some sort of official directive from Commissioner Klein (or possibly Axel Springer) about that.
But, seriously, you can’t really blame the Germans for a going a little overboard with their anti-anti-Semitism hysteria or for being reluctant to criticize Israel. It wasn’t all that long ago that their parents and grandparents were heiling Hitler and systematically murdering millions of Jews, or looking the other way while it happened. Most of the Germans I’m acquainted with still feel kind of awful about that. Which isn’t terribly surprising, is it?
I mean, imagine, if you’re one of my American readers, if some other country conquered the USA, and put our political and military leaders on trial for all the war crimes they’ve committed, and for the millions of people they’ve systematically murdered, and taught our children the truth about our history … that might give you some idea of how most Germans feel about the Nazis and the Holocaust.
So, yes, Germans are a bit hypersensitive about anything resembling anti-Semitism, and they tend to conflate opposition to Israel with hatred of the Jewish people (despite the fact that Israel is doing a pretty convincing impression of the Nazis, what with its ethnic cleansing, walls, ghettos, sadistic goons, propaganda, and so on). Many Germans also overcompensate for their feelings of shame about the Holocaust by displaying an awkward fascination and enthusiasm for anything “Jewish” (you know, like many liberal Americans fetishize Native and African Americans), so that might explain the “BILD kippa” nonsense.
No, I’m not mocking or scolding the Germans … they’re still trying to work their history out. I’m just trying to track the propaganda and cynical emotional manipulation that we are increasingly being subjected to as the global capitalist ruling classes wage their War on Populism. The Quds Day Panic of 2019 is just one example. There are many more, both manufactured and all-too-real. The Charlottesville Nazis. Charlottesville II. The MAGA bomber. The Tree of Life shooting. The Christchurch attack. Jussie Smollett. MAGA hat Smirk Boy. And the list goes on … pretty much as it always has.
I’m sorry if this comes as a shock to anyone, but the world has always contained a minority of racist and anti-Semitic whack jobs. They didn’t suddenly start murdering people when Brexit passed and Trump got elected. They’ve been doing that for quite some time. And of course there is still anti-Semitism in Germany. Saxony is crawling with neo-Nazis. And Iran really would like to wipe out Israel, just as Israel would like to wipe out Iran. None of this is in any way new or shocking to anyone who has been paying attention.
The only thing that has significantly changed since November 8, 2016, is the official narrative we are being fed, in which anyone opposing global capitalism and the hegemony of neoliberal ideology is either a Russian or some kind of Nazi, and a new “anti-Semitism” or “fascism” panic is whipped up for us on a monthly basis.
The Quds Day Panic of 2019 (like the Charlottesville Kristallnacht of 2017) is going to be rerun, over and over, in endless variations, until 2020, or whenever the global capitalist ruling classes manage to restore Normality. By that time Israeli sports teams will probably be wearing little Palestinians on their caps, Julian Assange will be locked away in Supermax, and satirists like me … well, I think you know.
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From the Archives
Israel Is A Genocidal Society
The Israeli Political Spectrum From The “Liberal Left” To The Far Right, Is United In Genocide
The Dissident | May 5, 2026
… The fundamental issue of Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu, but the fact that Israel is overwhelmingly a bloodthirsty, war-ready, genocidal society.
Historian Zachary Foster has documented that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis have supported every Israeli war since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, writing:
2006
86% of the Israeli adult population justified “the IDF operation in Lebanon against Hizbollah,” or 2006 Lebanon War, in which Israel killed 1,191 people, the vast majority civilians according to HRW (Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher)2008-2009
82% of the Israeli public thought that the 2008-9 war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians.) Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher2012
90% of Israeli Jews supported war on Gaza ( in which Israel killed 160 Palestinians, 66% civilians)2014
95% of Jewish Israelis believed the war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 2,310 Palestinians, 70% civilians)2021
72% of Israelis believed the war on Gaza should continue (as of May 21) after Israel had already killed 250 Palestinians in Gaza, vast majority civilians. The % of Jewish Israelis who supported killing more Palestinians was much higher.2024
A January poll found 95% of Jewish Israelis thought the Israeli military was using either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza at a time when Israel had already killed >25,700 Palestinians in Gaza.2024
In September, 90% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Lebanon (in which Israel killed 800+, including hundreds of civilians)2025
In March, 82% of Israeli Jews supported the forced expulsion of residents of Gaza, Israel’s main goal in it’s genocide & war on Gaza.2025
In June, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Iran known as the “twelve day war”2026
On March 4, 93% of Israeli Jews expressed support for the war on Iran. 97% of “right-wing” Jewish Israelis support it, compared with 93% in the center and 76% on the left.
The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis also have openly genocidal views towards Palestinians.
Polls in Israel have shown that:
- 84% of the (Israeli )public gives the IDF an excellent or very good grade regarding the moral conduct of the army
- 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza.’
- A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The fundamental problem in Israel is Zionism, not Benjamin Netanyahu. – Full article
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