“… 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…”
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.
Palestinian Photojournalist at Risk of Deportation
IMEMC News & Agencies | June 2, 2019
For the past five months, Mustafa al-Kharouf has been languishing inside Israel’s Givon prison, away from his wife Tamam and their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Asia. But, now, he faces deportation to Jordan.
The 32-year-old photojournalist, son to an Algerian mother and a Palestinian father, has been living in Jerusalem since 1999, when his family returned.
Despite repeated attempts, over the past decade, he has been denied permanent residency status, which he is entitled to, thus rendering him stateless.
By the time Kharouf’s family met the conditions set by the policy, to get residency, Mustafa was 18 years old and his family was not able to submit an application for either reunification or child registration, on his behalf.
In January, Mustafa, who worked with Anadolu Agency, was detained after his lawyer challenged the Israeli interior ministry’s decision to reject his request for legal status.
His fate is now in the hands of an Israeli high court, which will decide if he will be deported to Jordan, a country he has no ties to.
In order to attain their “legal” status as Palestinians in the city, Kharouf’s family applied for family reunification, Al Jazeera/Al Ray further reports.
But, at the core of Israel’s complicated laws for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem – who are granted residency rights but not Israeli citizenship – is the “center of life” policy, which has been described as a legalized ethnic cleansing.
The policy, which requires Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem to prove they keep a center of life in the city, to uphold their legal status, has been criticized by rights groups as discriminatory, and as a precursor to forcible transfers – a serious violation of international law.
Legal status rejected by Israeli interior ministry
Adi Lustigman, Kharouf’s lawyer from the Israeli rights organization HaMoked, told Al Jazeera that Kharouf tried to regulate his status in Jerusalem for years, but to no avail.
“He had an interim order during some periods, but, the rest of the times, he has just managed, like many other stateless and status-less Jerusalemites do,” Lustigman said.
“It is, of course, enormously difficult to be a person with no rights, no work permit, and nowhere to go, in order to be legal.”
From October 2014 to 2015, Kharouf was granted an Israeli B/1 work visa, on a “humanitarian basis”. Yet, requests for a visa extension were eventually rejected by the ministry of interior for “security reasons”.
Lustigman believes that the ministry’s rejections are related to his work as a photojournalist documenting human rights abuses committed by the Israeli authorities, in occupied East Jerusalem.
After Kharouf was married, in 2016, to his wife Tamam, a Palestinian Jerusalemite, he filled out another family reunification application, but it was again rejected in December of 2018, by the interior ministry.
According to Lustigman, the decision was based on unfounded accusations that Kharouf was a member of Hamas, which is banned by Israel.
The lawyer appealed the decision on January 21, 2019, but, the next day, Israeli forces raided Kharouf’s home and abducted him, and he has since been placed under administrative detention – indefinite imprisonment without trial or charge.
“My husband is the most optimistic person I know. But, now, he is beyond miserable,” Kharouf’s wife Tamam told Al Jazeera.
Tamam is permitted to visit her husband once a week, for a maximum of 20 minutes, behind a glass window.
“His spirits have deteriorated so much since his arrest,” the 27-year-old school counselor said. “He has lost 10 kilograms, and is very depressed.”
A few months later, in April, the Israeli District Court rejected Kharouf’s appeal and gave an interim order not to deport him, so he is able to take his case to Israel’s High Court, with May 5 given as the deadline. The appeal has already been filed, but the High Court has yet to make a decision. Kharouf remains at imminent risk of being forcibly deported to Jordan.
Deportation order ‘illegal’
Saleh Hijazi, the head of Amnesty International’s Jerusalem office, described the Israeli decision to refuse Kharouf’s residency application and deport him as “cruel and unlawful”.
“[Kharouf] must be released immediately and granted permanent residency in East Jerusalem, so he can resume his normal life with his wife and child,” Hijazi said.
“The arbitrary detention and planned deportation of Mustafa al-Kharouf reflect Israel’s long-term policy to reduce the number of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, while denying them their human rights,” he continued.
Following Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, at least 14,600 Palestinians have had their residency permits revoked.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the deportation of protected people from an occupied territory is illegal. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court stipulates that “the deportation or transfer [by the occupying power] of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” constitutes a war crime.
“A person cannot be left stateless”, Jessica Montell, Executive Director of HaMoked, said in an April press release.” On the practical level, there is no sense holding Mustafa ‘pending deportation’ when there is no country to which Israel can deport him.
“The High Court of Justice has recognized East Jerusalemites as an indigenous population with a unique status. Israel must therefore release Mustafa without delay and give him the legal status to which he is entitled, as a Jerusalemite.”
Tamam has been busy consulting with lawyers, to see what can be done. But, she said that most of them say her husband’s case is too complicated, and refuse to take it on.
“I haven’t thought about an alternative plan for us,” Tamam said. “If Mustafa gets deported to Jordan, he will not receive residency, let alone citizenship.
“In fact he’ll get detained by Jordanian authorities as soon as he crosses the border, for as long as it will take them to review his files and come to a decision on what to do with him,” she continued.
“If he gets deported, it won’t be just one family that will be fragmented. He’ll be ripped away from me and my daughter, from his parents, and from his in-laws.”
Lustigman says that the importance of highlighting Kharouf’s case can make the difference in not uprooting the photojournalist’s life.
“We hope that public opinion, press interests, and NGO actions would have a certain weight and be of help,” the lawyer said.
Facebook Jail for truth tellers
By Gilad Atzmon | June 1, 2019
Once a day the Palestinian poet Nahida Izzat is being thrown into the FB Jail for 30 days for telling the truth about Palestine and the crime that has been committed against her people for almost a century. Nahida has never promoted violence or written any type of hate speech. The routine is pretty exhausting. She receives a FB notification about her suspension, she then appeals and after a few hours FB lifts her suspension.
The Palestinian poet is subject to a relentless vilification campaign by both Zionists and Anti Zionist Zionists (AZZ). Yesterday, Nahida was suspended again. This time her crime was posting a clip of a Palestinian man who just lost his home to an Israeli bomb. Nahida provided an English translation of the Gazan victim.
Nahida’s post read:
Do you want to know how people in Gaza feel?
Here it is: “Even if they destroy all our homes,
We are with the Resistance
Even if they kill every single one of us
We are with the Resistance Even if they kill our children
We are with the Resistance”
FB has now rejected Nahida’s appeal on the ridiculous ground that the above “goes against our community standards on hate speech”
Apparently reporting on a war crime committed by Israel and providing a first hand account of the destruction and the anguish inflicted on Palestinian refugees is considered ‘hate speech’ according to the authoritarian social network.
Israeli paper betrays scandalous details of ‘deal of century’
Press TV – June 1, 2019
US President Donald Trump’s “the deal of the century” wants Palestinian refugees to be naturalized and settled in several countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, Israeli daily Haaretz reports.
As the world marked the International Quds Day on Friday, political leaders warned of mysterious aspects of the much-touted US plan and its ramifications for the future of Palestinians.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said one definite prospect is that the plan seeks to do away with the issue of returning 6 million refugees to their homeland.
“To realize this goal, America is about to arrange an economic deal and get its money from the miserable Persian Gulf countries,” he said in Tehran.
Haaretz said Washington is thought to be pressing Lebanon to grant citizenship to Palestinian refugees living in the country.
“In the process, this is seen as defusing the issue of a right of return of refugees to Israel, which has been a major obstacle to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the paper said.
According to UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, about 450,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon.
Other reports have put the figure lower, prompting Lebanese groups to say that the census had been conducted under US pressure designed to under-report the real numbers because that way Lebanon could absorb a modest-sized population.
The Lebanese constitution, however, provides that the country’s territory is indivisible and that refugees living there are not to receive citizenship.
The official reason for this is that the absorption of Palestinian refugees would impair their claim to a right of return.
However, the US has sugarcoated the plan with a lifeline to extract Lebanon from its economic crisis, where the country’s debt is estimated at more than $85 billion (about 155 percent of GDP), Haaretz said.
According to the Israeli paper, giving Palestinians citizenship is likely to prompt the roughly 1 million Syrian refugees in the country to demand similar status.
However, Lebanon isn’t the only country concerned about Washington dictating a solution to the refugee problem.
Jordan is horrified over the prospect that the United States will demand it absorb hundreds of thousands or even a million Palestinian refugees in the country, Haaretz added.
The paper cited investigative journalist Vicky Ward recounting in her new book “Kushner Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption” that the Trump administration’s plan sees Jordan providing territory to the Palestinians and receiving Saudi territory in return.
The Saudis, for their part, would get the islands of Sanafir and Tiran from Egypt, it said.
“Land swaps appear to be the magic formula that the Trump administration has adopted, and not just for Jordan,” Haaretz said.
According to Ward, it has been suggested that Egypt give up territory along the Sinai coast between Gaza and el-Arish, to which some of the Gaza population would be transferred. In return, Israel would give Egypt territory of equivalent size in the western Negev.
Haaretz, meanwhile, revealed lucrative projects to be funded by European countries, the US and wealthy Arab states, including an underwater tunnel which Israel would allow to be dug between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Egypt, the paper said, has been promised a whopping $65 billion to help boost its economy which is currently in shambles.
The plan also says Palestinian refugees in Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries would receive citizenship in exchange for generous assistance to the host countries.
The Israeli paper, however, cast doubt on the viability of the “plan of generous financial compensation and empty tracts of land for new housing”.
“The problem is that the Palestinian refugees are the supreme symbols of Palestinian nationhood,” it said.
“An American deal that blatantly relies on buying up that symbol for cash, even lots of it, can’t be acceptable to the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza,” it added.
The Trump administration is set to unveil the economic portion of the so-called “deal of the century” during a conference in Manama, Bahrain, on June 25-26.
All Palestinian factions have boycotted the event, accusing Washington of offering financial rewards for accepting the Israeli occupation.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have said they will send delegations to the Manama forum and Israel’s Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has said he intends to attend.
Nasrallah Vows to Confront US Middle East Plan
Al-Manar | June 1, 2019
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah stressed on Friday that the axis of resistance is stronger than ever before, while ‘Israel’, despite its military strength, is weaker than ever.
During a ceremony held by Hezbollah to mark Al-Quds International Day in Dahiyeh, Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that the Palestinian resistance was advancing and developing immensely and it “became able to control large areas in occupied Palestine in any future war, at a time when the image of ‘Israel’ was destroyed after the defeat of its ground army who couldn’t stop the resistance rockets.”
Sayyed Nasrallah rejected the US conditions for mediating a border and maritime dispute with the Zionist entity, saying Washington, through its envoy who was tasked to negotiate the land and maritime border demarcation between Lebanon and the Zionist entity, was using the talks to the Israeli benefit, bringing up an Israeli claim that Hezbollah has precision missiles factories. “The US wants to blackmail the negotiations on border demarcation in order to open the issue of Hezbollah’s precision rockets arsenal,” he said, but warned that [David] Satterfield should focus on the border demarcation issue and only that.
The Hezbollah leader acknowledged that Hezbollah has the weapons but do not produce them. However, he said Hezbollah may consider setting up such factories if Washington continues to use the talks on border demarcation to discuss the resistance capabilities since it is Lebanon’s right to defend itself. “We have in Lebanon precision rockets that are able to target direct posts in ‘Israel’ and that would change the face of the region,” he said, but warned that Hezbollah will respond to any Israeli aggression on any resistance target in Lebanon quickly, directly and strongly.
His Eminence said that ‘Israel’ fears the resistance in Lebanon and that Israeli officials talk about resistance deterrence and capabilities, pointing out that Hezbollah has “accurate missiles that can reach all the targets required in ‘Israel’ and that are able to change the face of the region.
“The US attempts to control Iraq have failed, the Iraqi stance from regional issues is totally different and uncontrolled,” he said. “Iraq today returned to its regional role and has a capable, struggling and influential people in the region’s issues,” He said.
Sayyed Nasrallah gave the so-called Deal of the Century the lion’s share in his speech, assuring that the US was mistaken by betting on regional people’s weariness to impose the deal. “The main challenge today in front of Palestine and Al-Quds is the deal of the century, or Trump’s deal, and it’s our duty to confront it.”
“We have a deep hope that we, the people of this region, can stop the ‘crime of the century’,” he said, indicating that the US administration and ‘Israel’ are working day and night with Arab regimes to realize the deal.
The US, he said, was able to “contain the Arab Spring popular protests and derail it towards a wrong way, however, Syria overcame the scheme of destroying it, and it remained pro-resistance.”
“Yemen, which is an essential part of the resistance axis, rejects the deal of the century and protests in support for Al-Quds,” Sayyed Nasrallah said. “American tools in the region are unable to protect themselves and some regimes are concerned of implementing the deal of the century,” he said, pointing out that the three summits in Mecca were a proof of the Saudi failure and weakness.
The S.G. said the Zionist entity and the US were no longer as strong as before. “‘Israel’ fears missiles from Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and claims the existence of rockets in Iraq,” he said, adding there’s no leadership in ‘Israel’ and total reliance on US support. However, he said the US was no longer the same as before 20 years after it sent its troops to the region and came out of it defeated.
Sayyed Nasrallah detailed the reasons why the possibility of an upcoming war against Iran was remote. “One reason that there’s no war is that Iran is strong, otherwise the war could have been launched. The other reason is that the CIA knows that a war on Iran will set the region on fire and won’t stop behind its borders.”
“The whole region will ignite and the US troops and interests will exterminate if a war on Iran was launched,” Hezbollah leader warned.
A war on Iran will make ‘Israel’ and Al Saud pay the price, his eminence indicated, wondering how Saudi Arabia, which failed and was defeated in Yemen, would be able to wage war on Iran.
“Trump fears own interests and is only after an economic war against Iran and other states,” he went on to say.
While he hailed the balanced Iraqi stance in the emergency summit that convened Arab leaders in the Saudi city of Mecca overnight Thursday, Sayyed Nasrallah rejected and condemned the Lebanese delegation participation in the summit, saying the Lebanese official stance was inconsistent with the dissociation item in the ministerial statement and violated it.
Sayyed Nasrallah began his speech by saluting the participants and demonstrators across the world to mark this special day. “I thank you, this audience, for reviving this jihadi-moral occasion that is linked to our fate, our pride, our freedom and our sanctities.”
“Attempts to make this day as for a certain sect have failed,” the S.G. said, adding that “the sincerity of all those who walk on the road to restore Al-Quds could be stronger than any siege.”
“Throughout 40 years, Al-Quds enemies bet that this day will be forgotten, but they were mistaken,” he said. “We have been commemorating the week of Al-Quds in many cities of the world. Al-Quds Day protests in Bahrain confirm that the Bahraini people and scholars are innocent of the Deal of the Century’s summit.”
“Al-Quds rallies in Iran serve as a message to US and regional regimes,” his eminence said, adding that Trump will wait for a long time before receiving a phone call from Iran.
The ceremony marking Al-Quds day, with its main emblem “Towards Al-Quds”, was held in Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahiyeh) Friday overnight gathering a huge public and political participation. During the ceremony, organized by Hezbollah, a symbolic military parade was held in which Hezbollah fighters chanted “Oh Quds, we shall march towards you” during the parade. Hezbollah fighters also recalled the oath of allegiance to resistance leaders, Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, Sayyed Ali Khamenei & Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah.
In July 1979, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Imam Ruhollah Al-Khomeini, announced Al-Quds International Day, voicing a complete support to the Palestinian cause against the Zionist enemy.
Although this Day is marked annually every last Friday of the Holy Islamic Month of Ramadan, Imam Khomeini has deliberately given it an international attribute in order to be the day of all the oppressed worldwide.
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UK Researchers: Tax Food to Reduce Climate Change
I doubt these professors have anything to fear from a food tax
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 19, 2016
A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change. […]
This proposal, from a group of people who have probably never missed a meal in their lives, is totally obscene. High income countries often have a lot of poor people who would be hard hit by increases in the price of food.
Needlessly exacerbating the risk poor people don’t get enough to eat, especially children and pregnant mothers, who are especially vulnerable to adverse health impacts from lack of protein in their diet – if this ghastly proposal is ever implemented, future generations will look upon it as a crime against humanity. – Read full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- AIPAC-backed candidates lose New York primaries as voters reject pro-genocide lobby
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- The UN’s plan to levy taxes on global trade is a sinister power grab
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- UN inquiry finds Israel ‘intentionally’ targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, occupied West Bank
- If Americans Knew
- ‘His only crime is that he is a Palestinian doctor’
- ‘Killed pursuing her dream’: Gaza girl on her way to school dies in Israeli drone strike
- Unbelievable pressure on Gaza from Israel, “Board of Peace” – Daily Update
- UN: Israel Continues to Commit Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes by Deliberately Targeting Palestinian Children
- Bari Weiss, Free-Speech Fraud & Zionism Promoter, Would Rather Deport Than Debate
- ‘Doctor of the Poor’: Israeli Occupation Arrests Prominent Palestinian Physician
- Search for Your Church (and see if it has been targeted by the Israeli gov’t)
- Mark Levin Flying to Israel as Netanyahu Reportedly Seeks to ‘Leverage’ Levin to Trash Trump’s Iran Deal
- Watch: Zionist Brags about Israel’s Power to Get the World to Do What Israel Wants
- In Gaza, another senseless death on what should have been a joyous day – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- 3 New Studies Find Increasing Trends In Solar Radiation Since The 1980s – Easily Explaining Warming
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
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