The outgoing IDF chief of staff has spilled the beans on a poorly guarded secret of the Israeli military, that it has supplied Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar Assad’s government with weapons “for self-defense.”
Gadi Eisenkot, who was the Israeli Defense Forces’ Chief of Staff for the last three years, told the Sunday Times in a farewell interview that Israel had been directly involved in the Syrian conflict on the side of the Syrian rebels, something that Tel Aviv has been reluctant to acknowledge before.
The general, who is retiring from military service, said that Israel supplied rebels at the border with light weapons for the purposes of “self-defense.”
While the direct links between Syrian rebels and Israeli commanders have been officially revealed for the first time, rumors of close military ties between the armed militants and the Israeli government have been circulating for years.
Foreign Policy magazine reported in September that Israel supplied weapons and gave money to at least 12 rebel groups holed up in southern Syria. The arrangement reportedly included Israeli officials also giving $75-per-person monthly allowances to rebel fighters, in addition to the funds their leaders received to procure weapons on the black market.
In return, rebels were expected to deter Hezbollah and Iran proxies from the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights.
The scheme was reportedly in effect throughout Operation Good Neighbor, which officially kicked off in June 2016 and was wrapped up only last November. Within this undertaking, Israel was openly assisting the rebels but claimed that assistance was strictly humanitarian. Israel treated wounded Syrian rebels and their families in its hospitals, provided some 1,524 tons of food, 250 tons of clothes, 947,520 liters of fuel, as well as a huge amount of medical supplies.
However, until recently Israel kept vigorously denying any involvement beyond that. The Jerusalem Post’s report in September on the IDF confirming that it had provided light weapons to Syrian rebels was promptly pulled from its website. The newspaper told RT at the time that it was forced to remove the article by the army’s censor, apparently, “for security reasons.”
In November, Maj. Gen. Gershon Hacohen, a former senior commander with the IDF, revealed that former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had personally met with a group of Syrian rebels, without specifying the time period. Ya’alon was Israel’s chief of defense from 2013 to May 2016.
The Israeli military seems to have finally begun to reveal the scope of its involvement in the Syrian conflict, previously shrouded in secrecy. In an interview with the New York Times, Eisenkot acknowledged that Israel has been waging a large-scale bombing campaign aimed at degrading Iran’s military influence in the region. In 2018 alone, the IDF dropped 2,000 bombs on alleged Iran-linked targets in Syria. Sorties into the neighboring country’s territory became“near-daily events” after PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government greenlighted the expansion of the operation in January 2017, according to the retiring general.
January 14, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | al-Qaeda, Israel, Syria, Zionism |
Leave a comment
RAMALLAH – The Israeli occupation authorities on Sunday issued a three-month administrative detention order against the Palestinian prisoner Omar al-Barghouti, the father of martyr Saleh al-Barghouti.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society said that Omar al-Barghouti, 66, has been subjected to harsh interrogation at al-Maskoubiyya detention center since he was arrested on 12 December 2018.
The Israeli occupation forces arrested al-Barghouti and dozens of Palestinian youths during a raid into Kobar village in Ramallah hours after they killed his son Saleh.
Al-Barghouti’s family have been subjected to collective punishment since the killing of Saleh. Most of the family members are currently held in Israeli jails, including al-Barghouti’s sons Asem, Asef, and Mohammed.
Omar al-Barghouti had spent over 26 years in Israeli lock-ups. He is the brother of the well-known Palestinian prisoner Nael al-Barghouti who is serving his 39th year in Israeli prisons.
January 14, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
Leave a comment

The Palestinian Authority (PA) said yesterday that Israel’s storming of Ramallah is an attempt to coerce it into accepting the “Deal of the Century”.
PA spokesman Yousef Al-Mahmoud said that “no power on the face of the earth can push the Palestinian people and their leadership to kneel down,” Safa news agency reported. Al-Mahmoud added: “The repeated invasions of Palestinian cities are attempts to undermine Palestinian sovereignty,” pointing to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings that it could “ignite wars”.
Al-Mahmoud continued: “Our people, with our leadership, announced a continuous confrontation with anything aiming to undermine our cause and against all the conspiracies aiming to undermine our efforts to achieve our freedom, independence and dream of a sovereign Palestinian state.”
The spokesman also blamed Israel for regional deterioration, pointing to its “continuous aggression, invasions and hunting of Palestinian people,” and the fact that it “unleashes the hands of the terrorist settlers to practice their terror under its official protection”.
The Israeli army has been invading the central West Bank city of Ramallah – the headquarters of the PA, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Fatah’s leadership. Israeli forces have carried out operations close to the residence of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in the light of a complete absence of the PA security services or the president’s guards.
WATCH: Israeli occupation forces raid West Bank city of Ramallah
January 12, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 411-1 for a bill that would force President Trump to nominate an anti-Semitism envoy, a position that has been vacant since he took office. The definition of anti-Semitism the position uses includes certain criticisms of Israel.
The bipartisan bill upgrades the current position of Anti-Semitism Envoy to an ambassador rank, which requires the job to be filled within 90 days.
The law states that the Special Envoy shall “serve as the primary advisor to, and coordinate efforts across, the U.S. government relating to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incitement in foreign countries.”
The bill, H.R.221- Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act, was sponsored by Rep. Christopher H. Smith [R-NJ-4] and has 87 co-sponsors. Smith’s largest campaign donor was NorPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee.
To become law the bill must next be passed by the Senate and then be signed by the president. If Trump vetoes it, Congress can override this through a two-thirds vote.
The position of anti-Semitism envoy was created in 2004 over the objections of the State Department, which said it wasn’t needed. It was urged by Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky, who had formulated a new definition of anti-Semitism that includes criticism of Israel.
Previous envoys before or after serving serving in the position worked for the Israel lobbying organization AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The second envoy, Hannah Rosenthal, adopted the Sharansky definition of anti-Semitism for use by the State Department. This is part of an international campaign to insert the new Israel-centric definition in governments and other bodies around the world.
The Times of Israel reports that the impetus for the current bill was “Trump’s failure to pick someone for that opening over the last two years, despite frequent calls from Jewish groups.”
The lawmaker who voted against the bill was Republican Justin Amash from Michigan, a civil libertarian who is Chairman of the House Liberty Caucus.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of whose missions is to advocate for Israel, has been heavily promoting the legislation, which was first introduced last year. The ADL, which includes certain criticisms of Israel as “anti-Semitic,” has issued reports that there has been a “rise in anti-Semitism.”
Some have disputed the ADL numbers, since the ADL does not make public the incident reports on which it bases its claims, since some include actions or statements regarding Israel rather than bigotry, and since the widely publicized bomb threats against Jewish institutions turned out to be the work of a Jewish Israeli. Similarly, some reportedly “anti-Semitic” cemetery damage turned out to have been caused by neglect.
The new Congress has been quick to take up legislation promoted by the Israel lobby. The first Senate bill of 2019 is a composite bill that would give Israel billions of dollars and “combat” the campaign to boycott Israel over its human rights violations among its measures.
The anti-Semitism envoy legislation had been passed in the House in 2018 but did not come to a vote in the Senate. The Senate bill was introduced by Republican Marco Rubio (FL) with eight co-sponsors, seven of them Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Ron Wyden (OR).
The Times of Israel reports that ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt called on the Senate to “take up this bill in a timely manner.”
It is unclear when the bill will be re-introduced in the Senate. The current Israel bill S.1 has been blocked by Democrats over their battle with Trump and the government shutdown. The effort to bring that bill to a vote will resume on Monday.
The House anti-semitism envoy bill was expedited and voted on with little advance notice under a suspension of the rules procedure. The Senate could take a similar course of action.
Additional legislation regarding anti-Semitism may also be re-introduced at some point.
The Senate passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act unanimously in 2016, and it was reintroduced in both the Senate and the House last year.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports: “The Act – pushed by AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federations of America – instructs the Department of Education’s Civil Rights office to follow ‘the definition of anti-Semitism set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism of the Department of State in the Fact Sheet issued on June 8, 2010.’”
The bill has been held up over objections that it interferes with academic freedom and Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.
Click here to see video.
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.
January 12, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Last week the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), under pressure from Palestine solidarity activists, began an audit of the Jewish National Fund.
The audit is significant. Beyond weakening the oldest Israel-focused charity in the country, it will put other Israeli charities in Canada on notice and reflects the growth of Palestine solidarity activism.
Fulfilling the time-consuming audit will be a bureaucratic headache for a group that has eleven offices across Canada and has raised $100 million over the past five years. Already, the credibility of the second most powerful Israel-oriented charity in Canada has taken a hit with the CBC exposé headlined “Canadian charity used donations to fund projects linked to Israeli military” and related stories. If the CRA revokes the JNF’s charitable status it would be devastating for fundraising and deter politicians/celebrities from attending their events.
Similar to the JNF, other registered charities support the Israeli military in direct contravention of CRA rules. Additionally, some of these organizations — like the JNF — fund projects supporting West Bank settlements, which Global Affairs Canada considers in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
At a broader level, critical attention on the JNF could lead to questioning of why Canadian taxpayers subsidize hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to a wealthy country. Despite a GDP per capita greater than Spain or Italy (and equal to Japan), hundreds of registered Canadian charities deliver hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Israel. How many Canadian charities funnel money to Spain or Japan?
If the CRA revoked JNF’s charitable status it would boost Stop the JNF campaigns elsewhere. In England they convinced former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to withdraw as patron of the JNF (Theresa May seems to have also stayed away), and 68 members of parliament endorsed a bill to revoke the organization’s charitable status because “the JNF’s constitution is explicitly discriminatory by stating that land and property will never be rented, leased or sold to non-Jews.”
The CRA audit of a charity that’s found favour with numerous Canadian prime ministers is long in the making and reflects the growth of Palestinian solidarity consciousness. Born in a West Bank village demolished to make way for the JNF’s Canada Park, Ismail Zayid has been complaining to the CRA about its charitable status for 40 years. Lebanese Canadian Ron Saba “has been indefatigable over the years in writing to various Canadian government departments and officials, corporations, and media to rescind tax exemption status and endorsement of” what he calls the “racist JNF tax fraud”. During the Liberal party convention in 2006 Saba was widely smeared for drawing attention to leadership candidate Bob Rae’s ties to the JNF. Saba has put in multiple Access to Information requests regarding the JNF, demonstrating government spying of its critics and long-standing knowledge of the organization’s dubious practices. Under the headline “Event you may want to monitor,” Foreign Affairs spokesperson Caitlin Workman sent the CRA a communication about a 2011 Independent Jewish Voices event in Ottawa stating: “author of the Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Yves Engler, will give a talk on Canada and the Jewish National Fund.”
Former Independent Jewish Voices coordinator Tyler Levitan was smeared for working diligently on the issue. In addition to important organizing, he discovered that the Ottawa Citizen sponsored JNF galas they covered and, suggesting a formal financial relationship, ran an ad for the JNF’s 2013 Ottawa Gala the day after the event.
At the Green Party convention in 2016 Corey Levine pushed a resolution to revoke the JNF’s charitable status because it practices “institutional discrimination against non-Jewish citizens of Israel.” The effort brought the issue into the mainstream though she, IJV and the entire Green Party were smeared as “hard core Jew haters” for even considering the resolution.
Fifteen months ago IJV and four individuals filed a detailed complaint to the CRA and Minister of National Revenue over the JNF. For a number of years IJV has run a “Stop the JNF” campaign and for more than a decade activists across the country have picketed local JNF fundraising galas. These efforts have benefited from many in Palestine/Israel, notably the work of Uri Davies and Adalah.
As I have written before, the campaign to revoke the JNF’s charitable status is important beyond winning the specific demand. It draws attention to the racism intrinsic to Zionism and highlights Canada’s contribution to Palestinian dispossession.
The CRA is undoubtedly facing significant behind-the-scenes pressure to let the JNF off with little more than a slap on the wrists. So, it’s important that people send their MP the CBC exposé and add their name to Independent Jewish Voices’ campaign to revoke the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status.
January 11, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Canada, Israel, JNF, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Lebanese President Michel Aoun yesterday warned of the “Israeli threats” which could lead to new wars, displacement and ethnic cleansing.
Speaking before members of the diplomatic corps accredited to Lebanon in the capital Beirut, Aoun said that “peace does not take place while deals are made at the expense of the refugee who was expelled from his land and his identity was stolen”.
“Peace does not come at the expense of manipulating demography and changing the geographical and social parameters of countries. Peace does not result from deepening racism and rejecting the other.”
The Lebanese president was referring to US President Donald Trump’s proposed Middle East peace plan dubbed the “deal of the century”.
In regards Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Aoun said the international community’s position is not clear about whether they should return to their country, warning that the proposed positions which link the refugees’ return to finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis is “worrying” because a solution could take a long time.
More than 1.2 million Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, a majority of them in areas that experience economic, political and security crises.
January 10, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, Zionism |
Leave a comment
A reported visit to the Israeli-occupied territories by several Iraqi lawmakers has sparked a wave of condemnations from the Arab country’s political leaders, with some of them demanding a probe to identify those who crossed a “red line.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday that three Iraqi delegations had secretly visited the occupied territories in 2018.
The ministry said the 15 Iraqi dignitaries had visited “Israeli officials and universities,” as well as the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem al-Quds.
The report did not identify any members of the Iraqi delegations, nor did it specify with which Israeli officials they had held talks. It said the most recent of the visits was in December.
According to Baghdad al-Youm website, Nasr al-Shammari, deputy secretary-general of Iraq’s Islamic Resistance Movement (al-Nojaba) said in case the report is proved to be true, those who visited the occupied territories should be punished.
The Foreign Relations Committee of Iraq’s parliament also said the Israeli report was aimed at “creating sedition in the country.”
Furat al-Tamimi, a member of the committee, said the issue will be discussed in the upcoming meeting between the parliamentary committee and the foreign ministry, according to Iraq’s Arabic-language al-Sumeriyah news channel.
If the trip has taken place, al-Tamimi said, the responsibility for this issue lies with the security departments, particularly the national security.
Meanwhile, prominent politician and leader of Iraq’s al-Qarar Coalition Athil al-Nujaifi denied reports that he had been among those who visited the occupied territories.
The report first drew strong reaction from First Deputy Speaker of Iraqi Parliament Hassan Karim al-Kaabi, who said in a statement on Monday that “To go to the occupied territory is a red line, and an extremely sensitive issue for all Muslims.”
He also called for “an investigation… to identify those who went to the occupied territory, particularly if they are lawmakers.”
Iraq does not formally recognize Israel, and Baghdad and Tel Aviv are technically still at war.
January 10, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Iraq, Israel, Zionism |
Leave a comment

Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP) paints a bleak prospect for Palestinian children in revealing that in 2018, at least 56 were killed by Israel. Individuals who witnessed some of the murders have insisted that the targeted children were unarmed and posed no threat to the state or its citizens.
Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli army snipers, drones and security forces across the occupied Palestinian territories. Five of the murdered children were under 12 years of age. In Gaza, 49 children were murdered by Israel in activities pertaining to the Great March of Return protests.
Live ammunition was used by Israel in 73 percent of the fatalities documented by DCIP, which also recorded “140 cases of Palestinian children who were detained by Palestinian forces.” Israeli forces also arrested 120 children within the occupied West Bank. In both groups, the detained children suffered abuse at the hands of the security forces holding them, whether the PA or the Israeli military.
These tactics show that Israel’s colonial collaboration with the Palestinian Authority is targeting a very vulnerable segment of Palestinian society. What’s more, the killing and wounding of Palestinian children by Israeli snipers at the Great March of Return is a direct maiming of the generation which can carry on the anti-colonial struggle.
Citing international law is pointless when Israel, and even the Palestinian Authority, have extended the parameters for an ongoing cycle of abuse against Palestinian children. International law is only relevant when used to point out that violations are taking place and the Palestinians are facing a UN member state which treats international law with contempt, while the international community gives its tacit agreement to the abuse and is, in some cases, complicit.
DCIP’s research establishes the fact that Israel killed an average of more than one child per week in 2018. Earlier shocking official statistics revealed that between 2000 and 2014 Israel killed a Palestinian child every three days on average, for fourteen years. Throughout the year there was ongoing discussion about Israel’s genocidal intent and actions which were mostly discarded due to the monopoly over the term in reference to the Holocaust. Yet, Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” What else is Israel doing to the people of Palestine, “in whole or in part”?
The international community’s responses are so predictable that Israel finds no obstacles in maneuvering beyond the limits set by international law; it is allowed to act with impunity. The “drip, drip” rate of the killing of Palestinian children and the almost routine nature of their detention sneaks under the radar of human rights violations. As the international community fails to respond to Israeli violations within its established framework, Israel succeeds in bridging the gap between violations and rights.
To speak of Israel’s violations now is, in fact, also to speak of the international community’s irresponsibility. Yet neither are scrutinized and held to account; the result is the regular yet somewhat reluctant citing of what should happen according to international law being juxtaposed against Israeli breaches of the law. Accountability, however, has long since absconded from the scene of the crime. If Israel wants to kill Palestinian children (or women and men, come to that), it will kill because it has decided, quite deliberately, to do so.
Meanwhile, the international community will steer clear from ever associating Israeli actions with genocide, preferring instead to rely on “alleged war crimes”, the perpetrators of which will never be brought to justice. Palestinian children killed by Israel over many years, last year included, have been forgotten by the world.
January 9, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The Australian Jewish Association (AJA) has urged the Australian national football team to boycott their Asian Cup group match against Palestine scheduled for this Friday.
According to reports, the AJA believes “Palestine is not a country recognised by the international community and that soccer has been ‘blatantly politicised’ by the Asian Football Confederation admitting the Arab state as a member.”
On Friday, “Australia will take on Palestine in a crucial Group B clash in Dubai, needing to bounce back from their opening game loss to Jordan.” Palestine, meanwhile, picked up their first point in a major tournament on Sunday, “when they held Syria to a 0-0 draw in Sharjah”.
Palestine was admitted to FIFA in 1998 and qualified for their first Asian Cup in 2015 in Australia.
As the report notes, “despite having diplomatic relations, Australia is one of several countries globally which do not recognise Palestinian statehood.”
The AJA said Australia playing Palestine “legitimises the politicisation of the tournament” and has called on the Football Federation Australia to not take part in Friday’s match.
“The FFA board should not allow the Socceroos to play Palestine,” AJA president David Adler said yesterday. “If compelled to do so, then at the very least it must do so under protest.”
January 9, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Australian Jewish Association, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment
The Holiday season as December is now referred to, is a time for parties, family gatherings, gift sharing and all the lovely things associated with the end of year festivities.
As the party season bids farewell and the cold weather intensifies it is also a time to reflect on those less fortunate.
In this context, charities work particularly hard to raise funds for the category of people they chose to support. Across social media, which have become major advertising platforms, appeals for funds are now a regular fixture on users’ feeds.
A recent request for donations that was of particular interest was one for money to help elderly Holocaust survivors in their twilight years.
The touching images of frail-looking men and woman are undoubtedly moving and force all those who see them feel much empathy towards a group of vulnerable people who suffered major trauma. Yet as the details of requested donations emerged it became increasingly odd to see these adverts. Of all the vulnerable groups existing today Holocaust survivors are, thanks to reparations paid by Germany, aptly provided for.
Claims Conference
In 1951, just under six years after the end of the Second World War, an organisation was set up called the Claims Conference.
It was tasked with obtaining reparations from Germany in order to compensate Jews for the persecution they suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime. It has to be noted however that Roma, gay, disabled as well as Communist activists who were equally interned in concentration camps, were not offered financial reparations.
Never the less the Claims Conference, set up by a group of Jewish organisations, has been working tirelessly to seek ‘a small measure of justice for Jewish victims’ as stated on its website.
This ‘small measure,’ obtained from Germany, has totalled over $70bn over the past seventy years.
This eye-watering sum that amounts to the state budgets of several countries would have been used to assist Jewish victims following the collapse of Hitler’s rule.
Yet the regular appeals for further donations, from ordinary citizens, implies that Holocaust survivors are still in need of monetary assistance, despite ongoing negotiations with the governments of Germany and Austria to pay further damages to Jewish claimants.
So the question is if Germany –and Austria – have released over $70bn to compensate survivors yet survivors are still in need of assistance, where has the money gone?
In July 2018 the German government agreed to release a further $88m towards care cost for the elderly.
Yet by Christmas adverts appealing for support for the very few survivors left were circulating again.
According to Claims Conference auditing is undertaken by KPMG however the body is regulated by the organisations that form it.
In 2013, a Holocaust survivor called Dora Roth made headlines when she accused the Israeli government of siphoning money destined for victims such as herself.
In April 2016 Haim Katz, Israel’s welfare minister, released a report revealing that more than 20,000 survivors in Israel had never received financial assistance owed to them.
The money, however, was regularly delivered by Germany yet it appears it never reached those it was intended for.
While Germany is only too happy to deliver the funds it is silent on who should be their recipients. According to one former German politician, now working in the financial sector, German politicians cannot stand up to Israel. ‘They know Israel will shout anti-Semitism at the first opportunity and are too terrified with being labelled with that fateful word.’ Asked if German media and politicians are not concerned about where these vast sums of money are ending, he added that issues relevant to compensation and Israel are taboo in his country.
‘Despite the economic downturn, we continue to be milked like cash cows, knowing full well it’s beyond reason to continue to demand such sums, yet there are no brave politicians or journalists willing to ask the questions.’
The Israeli minister who exposed the problem also went on to say that the problem is far worse than it appears as his report only took into account the surviving victims as of 2016 explaining that many more died throughout the years without ever seeing the money Israel claimed on their behalf.
Israel for its part blames the delay in delivering the funds to issues relating to heavy bureaucracy but many find that argument laughable.
Simon, an ex Israeli now living in Paris laughs at this excuse: ‘it didn’t take them 70 years to fleece the Germans but they –Israeli authorities- need 70 years to distribute the money.’
Disillusioned with Israel and its founding ideology Zionism, Simon is scathing towards his former country: ‘To get a permit to destroy a Palestinian home, they took 7 minutes, adding that his rejection of the country was a result of the abuse he received from other Israelis because he was a Holocaust survivor.’
We were viewed with absolute contempt by our ‘fellow countrymen’ (he insists on the brackets). They would tell us we were weak and went to the camps like ‘sheep to the slaughter’.
They would even make sheep noises when I used to walk in the streets when neighbours found out I was a survivor.
Confirming how unimportant Holocaust survivors are in Israeli society, and how oblivious the public is to their plight, Roth’s outburst had little consequences. From a European or American perspective, the fact survivors who have obtained so many reparations –unlike any other group in history- should be left to die in poverty should be major news and yet the money continues to be delivered while the victims continue to die destitute.
Ironically it is their legacy that is used as a justification for the existence of the nation that continues to neglect and despise them.
Who will dare ask the question?
Despite all the evidence of legitimate questions being raised, no one is raising them.
Where is this money ending up? Who is tasked with distributing and why is it failing?
Why should so much of it go through the Israeli government when not all survivors are or have remained in Israel?
Some claim Israel uses it as part of its nationwide budget others still say it is going to fund the military.
It is ironic that money made available to victims of war should now be invested in furthering wars by a country itself often accused of Nazi-like policies and routinely committing war crimes.
The spectre of being labelled an anti-Semite is, of course, a genuine concern no politician or journalist can ignore.
The mere fact of holding to account Israel over the possibility some are extorting funds would be spun as the ‘age-old accusations Jews love money.’
Anti-semitic ‘tropes’ as these bizarre semantic twists are called are casually thrown about wherever Israel or a Zionist person or organisation face questions.
If questions arise about misinformation from an Israeli source then claims of ‘Jews run the media’ will soon surface and bring the subject to a close.
Should claims of embezzlement surround an Israeli or Zionist body then its accusations of ‘Jews love money.’
Even high-profile cases of child abuse involving notable Zionist figures are inevitably spun as ‘Jews are using the blood of goyim children.’
For every Israeli/Zionist crime, there is its accompanying ‘anti-Semitism’ protection policy.
This time, however, victims of Israeli dishonesty are Jewish.
Who will speak up for them?
No one is the simple answer. According to varying reports, most if not all Holocaust victims will have died by 2025.
Israel is therefore just buying time. Meanwhile, now that Germany can no longer be ‘legally’ fleeced, Arab money is the next target for Israel’s appetite for easy ‘guilt money,’ as Simon puts it.
Israel- who expelled Palestinians from their ancestral homeland in 1948 yet refuses to compensate them- is going after Arab states in the hope of obtaining some $250bn in reparations. Though the overwhelming majority of Arab Jews left their Arab nations voluntarily and were never subjected to any treatment remotely equivalent to concentration camps, Israel, knowing it can manipulate international institutions, is launching its latest money-making scheme.
The only question that remains is who will be made to pay up next?
Gamblers are betting on Italy. After all the Roman Empire has a lot to answer for.
January 8, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Middle East |
Leave a comment
The state of Israel seems to share at least some of the responsibility for the latest shift of U.S. Syria policy — as National Security Adviser John Bolton announced on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s call to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria would now be “coordinated” with Israel, after meeting with top Israeli officials including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s main motivation in preventing a swift U.S. exit from Syria was also made explicit by Netanyahu, who openly stated on Twitter that Israel’s push to obtain sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights – which is internationally recognized as part of Syria – was the driving factor behind Israel’s recent efforts to dramatically slow down Trump’s plan for an “immediate” withdrawal of U.S. troops currently occupying Syrian territory illegally.
As MintPress noted at the time of Trump’s withdrawal announcement, Israel’s influence on Trump’s Middle East policy and Israel’s push towards containing “Iranian influence” in Syria would mean that Trump’s plan to withdraw troops over the alleged defeat of ISIS would likely never materialize if it was opposed by Tel Aviv.
This was apparently and not surprisingly the case as, soon after Trump’s announcement that he planned to bring U.S. troops home from Syria last month, Israel’s government announced that it would dramatically rev up its direct involvement in the Syrian conflict in the U.S.’ absence. That involvement had so far been limited to hundreds of unilateral airstrikes on Syrian government and military targets over the course of the nearly eight-year-long war. Israel’s threat of escalation revealed Israel’s unwillingness to see foreign pressure on Damascus reduced.
Israel’s military — currently headed by Netanyahu, who is also serving as Israel’s defense minister — made good on this promise to increase its military involvement in Syria soon after, using civilian airplanes as cover to launch airstrikes on Syria on Christmas Day.
However, Israel’s reaction to Trump’s announcement appears to have been much more extensive than its decision to increase its airstrikes targeting Syrian territory. After meeting with Netanyahu and the director of Israeli intelligence, Bolton noted on Twitter that the “U.S. drawdown in Syria” would now be “coordinated” with Israel. Also on Sunday, Bolton announced that the U.S. had no timetable for troop withdrawal from Syria and that the troop withdrawal was also conditional.
This is just the latest indication that the state of Israel is acquiring unprecedented influence over U.S. troop deployments in the region, as the commander of U.S. European Command (EURCOM) noted last year that Israeli generals — not American generals — have the power to deploy U.S. troops to Israel to fight on Israel’s behalf. Now, Bolton — after meeting with Israeli officials — has stated that Israel’s government will also wield tremendous influence over whether or not U.S. troops will be leaving Syria.
Spotlight on the Golan Heights
In publicly discussing his meeting with Bolton on Twitter, Netanyahu noted that a key topic of ongoing discussion with Bolton regarding Syria would involve Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, a plateau bordering Israel, Lebanon and Syria that Israel has occupied since 1967 and later annexed in 1981.
Netanyahu announced that he and Bolton would be traveling together to the area on Monday and added:
The Golan Heights is tremendously important for our security. When you’re there you’ll be able to understand perfectly why we’ll never leave the Golan Heights and why it’s important all countries recognize Israel’s sovereignty over it.”
As MintPress has noted in the past, understanding the significance of the Golan Heights is in many ways key to understanding why the Syrian conflict was engineered by foreign powers in the first place. This is because, with the Golan Heights in mind, Israel hatched a plan in 2006 to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by creating sectarian strife in the country with the hopes that whoever succeeded Assad would be willing to relinquish Syria’s claim to the territory.
Yet, this plan was never designed to be enacted by Israel but instead by the United States. The U.S. eventually adopted the plan and the communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed it was a driving factor in U.S. policy leading up to the genesis of the Syrian conflict. One of her leaked emails, published by WikiLeaks, stated that “the best way to help Israel deal with Iran’s growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad.”
That same email also noted that “a successful intervention in Syria would require substantial diplomatic and military leadership from the United States.” It added that “arming the Syrian rebels and using Western air power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high-payoff approach.”
Unsurprisingly, official recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan was prominent among the regime-change promises touted by Syrian “rebels.” Over the course of the war, rebels have, in their bid to overthrow Assad, offered to “trade” or sell the Golan Heights to Israel in exchange for military aid or an Israeli-imposed “no-fly zone.”
This also helps explain why Israel was so eager to fund, arm and aid “rebel” groups along the Syria-Israel border, as it offered the justification for the Israeli occupation of a “buffer zone” that, according to Syrian opposition sources and Israeli-American NGOs, was “intended to keep the Syrian army and its Iranian and Lebanese allies as far away from Israel’s border as possible, as well as solidify Israel’s control over the occupied Golan Heights.” However, the success of the Syrian military’s efforts in southern Syria forced Israel to abandon its buffer zone and seek other means to strengthen its claim to the territory.
The Golan: What’s in it for Israel?
Israel created this plan to weaken or overthrow the Syrian state largely because it is eager to cement its claim to the Golan Heights. In order to accomplish that, regime change in Syria is essential, as the international community still refuses to recognize Israel’s seizure and continued occupation of the Golan as legal. This bars Israel from commercially developing the area’s rich resources, which explains Israel’s willingness to go to war over a seemingly small and insignificant tract of land. However, a new Syrian government, one more “friendly” to Israeli interests, could officially relinquish Syria’s claim to the Golan, paving the way for the complete and official annexation of the territory by Israel.
At the time the plan was created, the main motivator for Israel was the Golan’s freshwater reserves, as the Golan is one of three sources of freshwater available to the Israeli state — and is the largest in size and most abundant, as it includes the mountain streams that feed Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and the headwaters of the Jordan river.
This makes this area even more important to Israel, given that Israel is in its sixth year of a drought so massive that a NASA study called it the worst drought in the region in nearly 900 years. Thus, the water resources of the Golan Heights are essential to Israel’s existence as well as its expansionist ambitions.
Though recent Israeli investment in desalination plants have since reduced its dependence on Golan water resources, the discovery of oil in the Golan in 2015 dramatically strengthened Israel’s resolve to gain complete sovereignty over the occupied territory.
The oil reserve discovered in the Golan Heights is estimated to contain “billions of barrels” of crude oil that could turn Israel – which currently imports the vast majority of its fuel – into a net oil exporter. Yet, because the Golan Heights are internationally recognized as being under occupation and not an official part of Israel, the commercial extraction and export of this vast oil reserve cannot move forward — until this status changes.
As a result, only exploratory wells have been drilled, mostly by a division of Genie Energy Co., a U.S.-based oil company connected to Rupert Murdoch, Jacob Rothschild, Dick Cheney and former CIA Director James Woolsey, among other powerful individuals in the U.S. and the U.K. The involvement of such influential figures in future oil extraction endeavors in the Golan Heights – dependent as they are on Israel acquiring sovereignty over the territory — likely explains why the U.S., as well as the U.K., has been so willing to help initiate and then perpetuate the Syrian conflict, which is soon to enter its eighth year.
Geopolitics First: The America-Israel Mideast axis
While Netanyahu’s statements show that the Golan Heights is a key driver for Israel in its refusal to let the Syrian conflict wind down, it is important to note that Israel and its allies abroad are also interested in the partitioning of Syria in order to keep the country weak and conflict-ridden for the foreseeable future. This call to partition Syria as well as other countries in the region, such as Iraq, dates back to the Yinon Plan that was developed in 1982 and seeks to partition and weaken other regional states through the engineering of sectarianism, in order to allow Israel to emerge as the region’s sole superpower.
This is worth pointing out, given Israel’s recent effort to take control of the U.S. troop pull-out (or lack thereof) from Syria, as the U.S. State Department is also promoting a plan as of this past weekend that would push for the partition of northeastern Syria were U.S. troops to begin to withdraw from Syrian territory.
Thus, the announcement that the troop “withdrawal” will now be coordinated with Israel and that the U.S.’ new policy for northeastern Syria will involve partition shows that another “America First” Trump policy has quickly morphed instead into an “Israel First” plan.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
January 8, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Golan Heights, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Middle East, Syria, United States, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Israel and its Western and Arab allies have for decades been claiming that, one day, the Palestinians will have a state of their own. The premise is based on Israel withdrawing from the land it has occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, which would be the capital of the proposed state. What would such a “State of Palestine” actually look like?
When the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), dominated by the secular Fatah movement, recognised Israel’s “right to exist” on 78 per cent of historic Palestine, the resulting Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority to have nominal control of the remainder of the land ahead of the creation of the State of Palestine. There is major opposition among Palestinians to such a deal, not least due to doubt about whether it would meet the internationally-recognised elements needed for a sovereign state to exist.
The first element required for an independent state is a population over which the state governs. The territory “allocated” by the international community for the future Palestinian state includes not only Palestinians but also more than 600,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel insists that it is never going to evacuate the settlers — whose presence is illegal under international law — but how can a state exist with a huge number of alien residents living in major settlement blocs which destroy the contiguity of its territory?
The presence of the settlers doesn’t just create a demographic problem, but also a massive environmental issue. Every settlement bloc disposes of its rubbish and sewage on the farmland of the neighbouring Palestinian population; no plans have been prepared for how the proposed Palestinian state will deal with this. What’s more, the settlers carry out numerous crimes against the local Palestinian population and they are not accountable to the Palestinian Authority at the moment, so what will happen with the government of a state?
Just last week, Jewish settlers attacked the convoy of the PA Prime Minister, wounding his wife and two bodyguards. Rami Hamdallah could not even announce that these settlers had attacked him. Two months ago, the PA governor was obliged by Israeli troops, who are tasked with protecting the settlers, to change the tyre of their jeep. He did it. Four years ago, the Prime Minister’s bodyguards could not protect him from a settler attack and he was obliged to seek the help of Israeli soldiers. That is the situation now; what will it be like with a sovereign state of Palestine? Does anyone really expect lawless settlers to respect its sovereignty and institutions?
The territory of an independent state has to be defined by clear borders, and it must have full sovereignty over its land, persons, organisations, associations, institutions and places therein. “Territory” includes territorial waters and airspace as well as land. The proposed Palestinian state has no definite borders, not least because the occupation state of Israel has never declared where its border is. The “State of Palestine” would have a lot of non-contiguous land, with large swathes encircled by Israel’s Apartheid Wall. None of the deals or “peace” talks have ever identified the borders of the proposed state, precisely because Israel continues to colonise ever more Palestinian land on a daily basis. Unless and until it declares where its borders are, we shall never know what is left — if anything — for the State of Palestine.
Furthermore, the proposed state will not have full control of its land. The Oslo Peace Accords signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993 divided Palestinian territory into three parts, with 61 per cent under full Israeli military and administrative control, 22 per cent under Israeli military control and Palestinian administrative control and 17 per cent under Palestinian security and administrative control. Unless that changes, which is unlikely given Israel’s ongoing belligerence, the supposedly independent state will have another state controlling most of its territory.
Israel’s “security” concerns have been the priority for all “peace negotiations” to-date, and no doubt will continue to do so. Hence, it will continue to control Palestinian territorial waters and airspace. There are massive natural gas fields off the Gaza coast, but the Palestinians are unable to exploit them, even though the Gaza Strip has serious power shortages and has done for more than a decade.
The only airport available for Palestinians and thus, presumably, the “State of Palestine” lies in ruins in Gaza; it was opened in 1998 and destroyed by Israel in 2000 having never really been used to its full capacity. Israel, therefore, can control the movement of all Palestinians and, it is assumed, for “security” reasons, will continue to do so by opening and closing border posts and military checkpoints at will. In this it is supported by the government in Egypt, which opens or closes the Rafah Border Crossing according to what Israel wants. Several Palestinians who have left the Gaza Strip through Egypt have reported that they were approached to give information to the Israeli authorities. Israel continues to maintain a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, which would be the only territory of the proposed State of Palestine with direct access to the sea. Plans to develop the port of Gaza gather dust in an office somewhere.
The government of the state will be the current PA in another form. It is currently unable to collect its own taxes and relies on Israel to carry out this important function of a sovereign state. Israel can and does withhold payment of the taxes to the PA as a means to ensure that it toes the line for the benefit of the occupation state.
The current Palestinian government is punishing the Palestinian people. In the West Bank, it deprives them of their basic rights, including the right to protest or participate in demonstrations, while in Gaza, it is punishing the people for not standing up to Hamas, which has controlled the coastal enclave since winning the last free general elections in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2006. Such punitive measures by the PA include the withholding of medicine and food for patients in Gaza’s hospitals and the withdrawal of security officers from the Rafah Crossing as part of a tightening of the 12-year-old siege imposed by Israel and carried out in coordination with the Palestinian government, Egypt and other countries.
A little-reported aspect of the PA’s mismanagement of its affairs is the overlapping of the legislature, judiciary and executive. Instead of the PA executive being at the disposal of the legislature and judiciary to govern in the interests of the population, it is the body which uses the other two to serve its own factional interests. The legislature and judiciary have their work disrupted if they refuse to work for the interests of the PA. There are no guarantees that this will not continue in a nominally independent state government which will, in fact, depend on the same international sponsors as the current PA who turn a blind eye to its corruption.
Sovereignty is arguably the key element of any state, without which it cannot stand alone. The state must have full internal and external freedom and this can only be achieved if it has an army for its defence and to protect essential freedoms. At Israel’s insistence, the promised Palestinian state must have no army.
All things considered, therefore, it is hard to see how the proposed “State of Palestine” will, under current circumstances, ever have the notional requirements for a sovereign state. It will have no armed forces, no freedoms, no land, no borders, no contiguous territory, no water, no resources and, quite possibly, no actual existence. What, we are entitled to ask, will this state promised by the “peace negotiations”, or even Donald Trump’s “deal of the century”, actually look like? I suspect that it will be a state in name only, and that the occupation status quo will become even further entrenched. Whatever happens, we can be certain of one thing: it will be for the benefit of the State of Israel, not the fictional State of Palestine.
January 7, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment