Israel has violated international law by seizing a Gaza-bound humanitarian ship in international waters and using excessive force to arrest its crew and passengers, the boat’s captain says.
“We were arrested in international waters and we were closer to Egypt than Israel,” Herman Reksten, the captain of the Norwegian Karstein ship, said Thursday upon arrival at Oslo International Airport after being held for three days in an Israeli jail.
Captain Reksten said that the Israeli troops used tasers against the activists, adding, “I still have a headache from being hit in prison.”
A Norwegian government spokesman also said the country was yet to receive a clarification from Israel on why the 22 pro-Palestinian activists on board the boat were arrested.
Norway’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Frode Andersen said it had asked Israel to “clarify the course of events and on what basis they think they are entitled to intervene on the ship.”
According to the group Ship to Gaza Norway, which organized the shipment, all of the activists have been released and expelled or are about to be deported soon.
However, the fate of an ailing Canadian passenger was uncertain on Thursday.
The intercepted vessel was one of the four ships that made up the Freedom Flotilla, which intended to break Israel’s nearly 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Back in late May 2010, an Israeli raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, comprising six civilian ships, killed 10 Turkish activists in high seas and sent the Ankara-Tel Aviv ties into a tailspin.
Israel’s military raid against the civilian flotilla was met with global condemnation. The United Nations Security Council called for a prompt investigation into the incident and the United Nations Human Rights Council described the attack as “outrageous.”
Additionally, numerous attempts have been made throughout the years to draw the public attention to the ongoing siege of Gaza. From 2008 through 2016, international activists have sailed 31 ships and boats to challenge the Israeli naval blockade.
August 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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The city council of Glasgow, Scotland, has vowed not to sponsor any future military exhibitions in response to months of widespread protests against its decision to sponsor the Conference on Subsea Defence Technology. The city council also promised to “reconsider its guidelines” to ensure that they would reflect “Glasgow’s respect of human rights”.
This pledge came after the formation of a popular campaign to put pressure on the city council, a coalition that included the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Scotland against Militarism, as well as the Anti-Arms trading Campaign.
The military exhibition, which included Israeli weapon manufacturers, was held in Glasgow in late July under the sponsorship of BAE Systems and Babcock, the two major arms companies responsible for renewing the UK’s Trident program for the development, activation, and sale of nuclear weapons despite Glasgow’s declaration of being a nuclear-free Council in December 2017.
The exhibition that the city hosted stated Israel Defence, a media organisation promoting the arms industry in Israel, as an official media partner. The presentation was nevertheless attended by the Israeli company DSIT Solutions, involved in the ongoing brutal Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli arms companies regularly market their weapons as “tested” and “field tested”, meaning that they are tested on the Palestinian people and then exported to facilitate the suppression of the army and police forces in the rest of the world.
The National Chairperson of the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), Sofiah MacLeod, welcomed the city council’s statement and added that the campaign would work with other coalition members to ensure that the city council would implement its pledge.
MacLeod added that the popular pressure on Glasgow City Council and the House of Advisers would continue because the council still manages the Strathclyde pension fund known for its investment in arms factories and other companies that have been complicit in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee welcomed the campaign’s success, according to its coordinator in Gaza, Abdul Rahman Abu Nahl. He said: “Such news increase our determination to step up our campaigns against companies involved in Israel’s human rights violations. What has been happening in local councils in Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Italy is a new indication of the growing impact of the BDS movement around the world and the growing isolation of the occupation and apartheid Israeli state.”
The Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) continues to work with various groups such as the Unison Scotland and the Scottish Friends of Palestine, in the “Time to Divest” campaign to push local Scottish authority retirement funds to dispose of contracts of companies complicit in violations of Palestinian human rights. These banks include Hapoalim, the largest Israeli bank, which funds the construction of illegal settlements on usurped Palestinian lands, as well as companies like Hewlett-Packard (HP) and DXC.
August 2, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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BETHLEHEM – Gaza’s National Committee for Breaking the Siege announced on Wednesday that the Israeli authorities began deporting several of the international solidarity activists, who were aboard the Al Awda ship of the Freedom Flotilla.
Gaza’s National Committee confirmed that the activists deportation back to their countries, comes two days after being detained following an attack by Israeli naval forces on the ship in international waters.
Zaher Birawi, head of the committee, said in a statement that a number of international activists have already been deported on Tuesday, including a Malaysian professor, Dr. Mohd Afandi Salleh, and on Wednesday the rest would also be deported.
Birawi stressed that many of the activists rejected to be voluntarily deported, preferring to delay it for more than 72 hours, the legal deadline for accepting voluntary deportation from the country.
Birawi continued that the activists are attempting to delay their deportation, in order to appear before an Israeli court to expose the unjust practices of Israeli naval forces who attacked the humanitarian ship in international waters, and to later prosecute Israel for its actions.
The committee quoted the testimonies of some of the activists as being exposed to “beatings and violence” including the ship’s captain, his assistant, and other solidarity activists.
Swedish human rights activist, Divina Levrini, who was among international detainees, said in a statement that she declares a hunger strike, as a form of protest against the treatment she received by Israeli forces and against the harsh conditions she is going through while being detained in the Israeli Givon prison.
Levrini had conducted an interview with Ma’an in July, while aboard the Freedom Flotilla ship, in which she discussed the Flotilla’s intention on raising awareness about the Israel-Gaza conflict and on breaking the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza.
In addition, two days prior, Israeli authorities already released two Israeli activists on bail. One of the released activists, Zuhr Chamberlain Regev, confirmed that several activists were beaten by Israeli forces before being dragged out of the ship to be detained. She continued by saying that “people on board were tasered and hit by masked Israeli soldiers. We did not get our passports or belongings before we got off the boat. Do not believe reports of peaceful interception.
August 1, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
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Gaza’s National Committee for Breaking the Siege expressed its concern for the safety of international solidarity activists who were aboard the Al Awda Freedom Flotilla ship when it was attacked by Israel in international waters.
The Freedom Flotilla members were detained by Israeli naval forces on Sunday and are still being held in the Israeli Givon prison in al-Ramla in central Israel.
The National Committee confirmed that Dr. Swee Chai Ang, a British activist, author, and orthopedic surgeon, suffered injuries due to being assaulted on board by masked Israeli naval forces.
Sources also confirmed that several activists were beaten by Israeli forces before being dragged out of the ship to be detained.
Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Zaher Birawi, said that this information contradicts Israel’s statements and claims that the detention of the activists was peaceful and that no one was harmed.
Birawi holds Israel fully responsible for the safety of the activists, pointing out that Israel must provide them with medical care and demanded Israel to immediately release them.
He stressed that Israel will be prosecuted for the “crime of kidnapping” the Freedom Flotilla ship and its activists, who did not impose a threat to Israel’s security.
Birawi requested Israel to also return media equipment belonging to journalists who were aboard the ship.
On Monday, Israeli authorities released two Israeli activists on bail, who were identified as Jonathan Shapira and Zuhr Chamberlain Regev, while the remaining 20 international activists were not given the option of release upon bail.
Regev said in a statement that “people on board were tasered and hit by masked Israeli soldiers. We did not get our passports or belongings before we got off the boat. Do not believe reports of peaceful interception.”
Israel charged both, Regev and Shapira, with attempting to enter Gaza and conspiracy before being released on bail.
In 2010, one of the Freedom Flotilla ships was attacked by Israeli naval forces in international waters. The ship, which was carrying aid to Gaza, was attacked while being unarmed, killing 10 pro-Palestinian activists and injuring dozens of other peaceful activists.
The Freedom Flotilla ship peacefully sailed towards the shores of Gaza, with aim to draw the world’s attention to the unjust siege and intending on breaking Israel’s nearly 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.
July 31, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
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Following the Israeli model?
So President Donald Trump reckoned on Monday that the United States Intelligence Community (IC) just might be wrong in its assessment that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election but then decided on Tuesday that he misspoke and had the greatest confidence in the IC and now agrees that they were correct in their judgment. But Donald Trump, interestingly, added something about there being “others” that also had been involved in the election in an attempt to subvert it, though he was not specific and the national media has chosen not to pursue the admittedly cryptic comment. He was almost certainly referring to China both due to possible motive and the possession of the necessary resources to carry out such an operation. Indeed, there are reports that China hacked the 30,000 Hillary Clinton emails that are apparently still missing.
Just how one interferes in an election in a large country with diverse sources of information and numerous polling stations located in different states using different systems is, of course, problematical. The United States has interfered in elections everywhere, including in Russia under Boris Yeltsin. It engaged in regime change in Iran, Chile, and Guatemala by supporting conservative elements in the military which obligingly staged coups. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces invaded and overthrew the governments while in Libya the change in regime was largely brought about by encouraging rebels while bombing government forces. The same model has been applied in Syria, though without much success because Damascus actually was bold enough to resist.
So how do the Chinese “others” bring about “change” short of a full-scale invasion by the People’s Liberation Army? I do not know anything about actual Chinese plans to interfere in future American elections and gain influence over the resulting newly elected government but would like to speculate on just how they might go about that onerous task.
First, I would build up an infrastructure in the United States that would have access to the media and be able to lobby and corrupt the political class. That would be kind of tricky as it would require getting around the Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), which requires representatives of foreign governments operating in the United States to register and have their finances subject to review by the Department of the Treasury. Most recently, several Russian news agencies that are funded by the Putin government have been required to do so, including RT International and Sputnik radio and television.
The way to avoid the FARA registration requirement is to have all funding come through Chinese-American sources that are not directly connected with the government in Beijing. Further, the foundations and other organizations should be set up as having an educational purpose rather than a political agenda. You might want to call your principal lobbying group something like the American Chinese Political Action Committee or ACPAC as an acronym when one is referring to it shorthand.
Once established, ACPAC will hire and send hundreds of Chinese-American lobbyists to Capitol Hill when Congress is in session. They will be carefully selected to come from as many states and congressional districts as possible to maximize access to legislative offices. They will have with them position papers prepared by the ACPAC central office that explain why a close and uncritical relationship with Beijing is not only the right thing to do, it is also a good thing for the United States.
As part of the process, new Congressmen will benefit from free trips to China paid for by an educational foundation set up for that purpose. They will be able to walk on the Great Wall and speak to genuine representative Chinese who will tell them how wonderful everything is in the People’s Republic.
Congressmen who nevertheless appear to be resistant to the lobbying and the emoluments will be confronted with a whole battery of alternative reasons why they should be filo-Chinese, including the thinly veiled threat that to behave otherwise could be construed as politically damaging anti-Orientalist racism. For those who persist in their obduracy, the ultimate weapon will be citation of the horrors of the Second World War Rape of Nanking. No one wants to be accused of being a Rape of Nanking denier.
The second phase of converting Congress is to set up a bunch of Political Action Committees (PACs). They will have innocuous names like Rocky Mountain Sheep Herders Association, but they will all really be about China. When the money begins to flow into the campaign coffers of legislators any concerns about what China is doing in the world will cease. The same PACs can be used to fund billboards and voter outreach in some districts, allowing China to have a say in the elections without actually having to surface or be explicit about whom it supports. Other PACs can work hard at inserting material into social websites, similar to what the Russians have been accused of doing.
And then there is the mass media. Using the same Chinese-American conduit, you would simply buy up controlling interests in newspapers and other media outlets. And you would begin staffing those outlets with earnest young Chinese-Americans who will be highly protective of Chinese interests and never write a story critical of the government in Beijing or the Chinese people. That way the American public will eventually become so heavily propagandized by the prevailing narrative that they will never question anything that China does, ideally beginning to refer to it as the “only democracy in Asia” and “America’s best friend in the whole wide world.” Once the indoctrination process is completed, the Chinese leadership might even crush demonstrators with tanks in Tiananmen Square or line up snipers to pick off protest leaders and no congressman or newspaper would dare say nay.
When the political classes and media are sufficiently under control, it would then be time to move to the final objective: the dismantling of the United States Constitution. In particularly, there is that pesky Bill of Rights and the First Amendment guaranteeing Free Speech. That would definitely have to go, so you round up your tame Congress critters and you elect a president who is also in your pocket, putting everything in place for the “slam-dunk.” You pass a battery of laws making any criticism of China both racist and felonious, with punitive fines and prison sentences attached. After that success, you can begin to dismantle the rest of the Bill of Rights and no one will be able to say a word against what you are doing because the First Amendment will by then be a dead duck. When the Constitution is in shreds and Chinese lobbyists are firmly in control of corrupted legislators, Beijing will have won a bloodless victory against the United States and it all began with just a little interference in America’s politics alluded to by Donald Trump.
Of course, dear reader, all of the above might be true but for the fact that I am not talking about China at all and am only using that country as a metaphor. Beijing may have spied on the U.S. elections but it otherwise has evidenced little interest in manipulating elections or controlling any aspect of the U.S. government. And even though I am sure that Donald Trump was not referring to Israel when he made his offhand comment about “others,” the shoe perfectly fits that country’s subjugation of many of the foreign and national security policy mechanisms in the United States over the past fifty years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently boasted about how he controls Trump and convinced him to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement.
The real mystery, if there is one, is why no American politician has either the guts or the integrity or perhaps the necessary intelligence to substitute Tel Aviv for Moscow and to call Israel out like we are currently calling out Russia for actions that pale in comparison to what Netanyahu has been up to.
To be specific, there is no evidence that Russia ever asked for favors from Trump’s campaign staff and transition team but Israel did so over a vote on its illegal settlements at the United Nations. Is Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Congress interested? No. Is the media interested? No.
Israel, relying on Jewish power and money to do the heavy lifting, has completely corrupted many aspects of American government and, in particular, its foreign policy by aggressive lobbying and buying politicians. All new members of Congress and spouses are taken to Israel on generously funded “fact finding” tours after being elected to make sure they get their bearings straight right from the git-go. Israel’s nearly total control over the message on the Middle East coming out of the U.S. mainstream is aided and abetted by the numerous Jewish editors and journalists who are prepared to pump the party line. The money to do all this comes from Jewish billionaires like Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson, who have their hooks deep into both political parties. Meanwhile, the ability of America’s most powerful foreign policy lobby AIPAC to avoid registration as a foreign agent is completely due to the exercise of Jewish power in the United States which means in practice that Israel and its advocates will never be sanctioned in any way.
Israel is eager to have the United States fight Iran on its behalf, even though Washington has no real interest in doing so, and all indications are that it will be successful. Though it is a rich country, it receives a multi-billion-dollar handout from the U.S. Treasury every year. When its war criminal prime minister comes to town he receives 26 standing ovations from a completely sycophantic congress and now the United States has even stationed soldiers in Israel who are “prepared to die” for Israel even though there is no treaty of any kind between the two countries and the potential victims have likely never been consulted regarding dying for a foreign country. All of this takes place without the public ever voting on or even discussing the relationship, a tribute to the fact that both major parties and the media have been completely co-opted.
And now there is the assault on the First Amendment, with legislation currently in Congress making it a crime either to criticize Israel or support a boycott of it in support of Palestinian rights. When those bills become law, which they will, we are finished as a country where fundamental rights are respected.
And what has Russia done in comparison to all this? Hardly anything even if all the claims about its alleged interference are true. So when will Mueller and all the Republican and Democratic baying dogs say a single word about Israel’s interference in our elections and political processes? If past behavior is anything to go by, it will never happen.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
July 31, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | AIPAC, Israel, United States |
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I recently published a couple of long essays, and although they primarily focused on other matters, the subject of anti-Semitism was a strong secondary theme. In that regard, I mentioned my shock at discovering a dozen or more years ago that several of the most self-evidently absurd elements of anti-Semitic lunacy, which I had always dismissed without consideration, were probably correct. It does seem likely that a significant number of traditionally-religious Jews did indeed occasionally commit the ritual murder of Christian children in order to use their blood in certain religious ceremonies, and also that powerful Jewish international bankers did play a large role in financing the establishment of Bolshevik Russia.
When one discovers that matters of such enormous moment not only apparently occurred but that they had been successfully excluded from nearly all of our histories and media coverage for most of the last one hundred years, the implications take some time to properly digest. If the most extreme “anti-Semitic canards” were probably true, then surely the whole notion of anti-Semitism warrants a careful reexamination.
All of us obtain our knowledge of the world by two different channels. Some things we discover from our own personal experiences and the direct evidence of our senses, but most information comes to us via external sources such as books and the media, and a crisis may develop when we discover that these two pathways are in sharp conflict. The official media of the old USSR used to endlessly trumpet the tremendous achievements of its collectivized agricultural system, but when citizens noticed that there was never any meat in their shops, “Pravda” became a watchword for “Lies” rather than “Truth.”
Now consider the notion of “anti-Semitism.” Google searches for that word and its close variants reveal over 24 million hits, and over the years I’m sure I’ve seen that term tens of thousands of times in my books and newspapers, and heard it endlessly reported in my electronic media and entertainment. But thinking it over, I’m not sure that I can ever recall a single real-life instance I’ve personally encountered, nor have I heard of almost any such cases from my friends or acquaintances. Indeed, the only persons I’ve ever come across making such claims were individuals who bore unmistakable signs of serious psychological imbalance. When the daily newspapers are brimming with lurid tales of hideous demons walking among us and attacking people on every street corner, but you yourself have never actually seen one, you may gradually grow suspicious.
Indeed, over the years some of my own research has uncovered a sharp contrast between image and reality. As recently as the late 1990s, leading mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times were still denouncing a top Ivy League school such as Princeton for the supposed anti-Semitism of its college admissions policy, but a few years ago when I carefully investigated that issue in quantitative terms for my lengthy Meritocracy analysis I was very surprised to reach a polar-opposite conclusion. According to the best available evidence, white Gentiles were over 90% less likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the other Ivies than were Jews of similar academic performance, a truly remarkable finding. If the situation had been reversed and Jews were 90% less likely to be found at Harvard than seemed warranted by their test scores, surely that fact would be endlessly cited as the absolute smoking-gun proof of horrendous anti-Semitism in present-day America.
It has also become apparent that a considerable fraction of what passes for “anti-Semitism” these days seems to stretch that term beyond all recognition. A few weeks ago an unknown 28-year-old Democratic Socialist named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored a stunning upset primary victory over a top House Democrat in New York City, and naturally received a blizzard of media coverage as a result. However, when it came out that she had denounced the Israeli government for its recent massacre of over 140 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, cries of “anti-Semite” soon appeared, and according to Google there are now over 180,000 such hits combining her name and that harsh accusatory term. Similarly, just a few days ago the New York Times ran a major story reporting that all of Britain’s Jewish newspapers had issued an “unprecedented” denunciation of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, describing it as an “existential threat” to the Jewish community for the anti-Semitism it was fostering; but this apparently amounted to nothing more than its willingness to sharply criticize the Israeli government for its long mistreatment of the Palestinians.

One plausible explanation of the strange contrast between media coverage and reality might be that anti-Semitism once did loom very large in real life, but dissipated many decades ago, while the organizations and activists focused on detecting and combating that pernicious problem have remained in place, generating public attention based on smaller and smaller issues, with the zealous Jewish activists of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) representing a perfect example of this situation. As an even more striking illustration, the Second World War ended over seventy years ago, but what historian Norman Finkelstein has so aptly labeled “the Holocaust Industry” has grown ever larger and more entrenched in our academic and media worlds so that scarcely a day passes without one or more articles relating to that topic appearing in my major morning newspapers. Given this situation, a serious exploration of the true nature of anti-Semitism should probably avoid the mere media phantoms of today and focus on the past, when the condition might still have been widespread in daily life.
Many observers have pointed to the aftermath of the Second World War as marking a huge watershed in the public acceptability of anti-Semitism both in America and Europe, so perhaps a proper appraisal of that cultural phenomenon should focus on the years before that global conflict. However, the overwhelming role of Jews in the Bolshevik Revolution and other bloody Communist seizures of power quite naturally made them objects of considerable fear and hatred throughout the inter-war years, so the safest course might be to push that boundary back a little further and confine our attention to the period prior to the outbreak of the First World War. The pogroms in Czarist Russia, the Dreyfus Affair in France, and the lynching of Leo Frank in the American South come to mind as some of the most famous examples from that period.
In 1991 Cambridge University Press published The Jew Accused by Albert Lindemann, a noted scholar of European ideological movements, and his book focused on exactly that era and those sorts of incidents. Although the text is quite short, running less than 300 pages, Lindemann built his discussion upon a huge foundation of secondary literature, with his footnotes drawn from the 200 works included in his extensive bibliography. As far as I could tell, he seems a very scrupulous scholar, generally providing the multiple, often conflicting accounts of a given incident, and coming to his own conclusions with considerable hesitation.
This approach is certainly demonstrated in the first of his major cases, the notorious Dreyfus affair of late 19th century France, probably one of history’s most famous anti-Semitic incidents. Although he concludes that Captain Alfred Dreyfus was very likely innocent of the charge of espionage, he notes the seemingly strong evidence that initially led to his arrest and conviction and finds—contrary to myth-making by numerous later writers—absolutely no indications that his Jewish origins played any role whatsoever in his predicament.

However, he does note some of the underlying social context to this fierce political battle. Although only one Frenchman in a thousand was Jewish, just a few years earlier a group of Jews had been the leading culprits behind several huge financial scandals that impoverished large numbers of small investors, and the swindlers afterward escaped any punishment by means of political influence and bribery. Given this history, much of the outrage of the anti-Dreyfusards probably arose from their fears that a Jewish military spy from a very wealthy family might be able to walk free using similar tactics, and the public claims that Dreyfus’s brother was offering enormous bribes to win his brother’s release certainly strengthened this concern.
Lindemann’s discussion of the 1913 Leo Frank Affair, in which a wealthy Northern Jew working in Atlanta was accused of sexually-assaulting and murdering a young girl, is even more interesting. Once again, he notes that contrary to the traditional narrative, there seems absolutely no hint that Frank’s Jewish background played any role in his arrest or conviction. Indeed, at his trial it was instead his very highly-paid defense attorneys who unsuccessfully sought to “play the race card” with the jurors by crudely attempting to deflect suspicion upon a local black worker by means of racially-charged invective.
Although Lindemann regards Frank as probably innocent, my own reading of the evidence he presents suggests the overwhelming likelihood of his guilt. Meanwhile, it seems undeniable that the outpouring of popular anger against Frank was produced by the vast ocean of outside Jewish money—at least $15 million or more in present-day dollars—that was committed to the legal efforts to save the life of someone widely regarded as a brutal murderer. There are strong suggestions that far more improper means were also employed, including bribery and influence-peddling, so that after Frank was convicted by a jury of his peers and thirteen separate legal appeals were denied, a governor with strong personal ties to the defense lawyers and Jewish interests chose to spare Frank’s life a few months before leaving office. Under these circumstances, the lynch-mob that hung Frank was viewed by the community as merely enforcing his official death sentence by extra-judicial means.
I also discovered that the leading figures in the anti-Frank movement had views far nuanced than I had expected. For example, populist writer Tom Watson had previously been a strong defender of Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman, while ferociously denouncing the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Goulds as the “true destroyers” of Jeffersonian democracy, so his outrage that Frank might escape punishment for murder seemed motivated by the extreme wealth of Frank’s family and his supporters rather than any pre-existing anti-Semitic sentiments.
The unmistakable conclusion of Lindemann’s analysis is that if the defendants in both the Dreyfus and Frank cases had not been Jewish, they would have suffered identical arrests and convictions, but lacking any wealthy and politically mobilized Jewish community to rally around them, they would have received their punishments, just or unjust, and immediately been forgotten. Instead, Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, later claimed that the massive anti-Semitism revealed by the Dreyfus Affair was the basis of his personal ideological awakening, while the Frank Affair led to the establishment of America’s Anti-Defamation League. And both these cases have entered our history books as among the most notorious examples of pre-World War I anti-Semitism.
Lindemann’s discussion of the often difficult relations between Russia’s restive Jewish minority and its huge Slavic majority is also quite interesting, and he provides numerous instances in which major incidents, supposedly demonstrating the enormously strong appeal of vicious anti-Semitism, were quite different than has been suggested by the legend. The famous Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 was obviously the result of severe ethnic tension in that city, but contrary to the regular accusations of later writers, there seems absolutely no evidence of high-level government involvement, and the widespread claims of 700 dead that so horrified the entire world were grossly exaggerated, with only 45 killed in the urban rioting. Chaim Weizman, the future president of Israel, later promoted the story that he himself and some other brave Jewish souls had personally defended their people with revolvers in hand even as they saw the mutilated bodies of 80 Jewish victims. This account was totally fictional since Weizman happened to have been be hundreds of miles away when the riots occurred.
Although a tendency to lie and exaggerate was hardly unique to the political partisans of Russian Jewry, the existence of a powerful international network of Jewish journalists and Jewish-influenced media outlets ensured that such concocted propaganda stories might receive enormous worldwide distribution, while the truth followed far behind, if at all.
For related reasons, international outrage was often focused on the legal confinement of most of Russia’s Jews to the “Pale of Settlement,” suggesting some sort of tight imprisonment; but that area was the traditional home of the Jewish population and encompassed a landmass almost as large as France and Spain combined. The growing impoverishment of Eastern European Jews during that era was often assumed to be a consequence of hostile government policy, but the obvious explanation was extraordinary Jewish fecundity, which far outstripped that of their Slavic fellow countrymen, and quickly led them to outgrow the available spots in any of their traditional “middleman” occupations, a situation worsened by their total disinclination to engage in agriculture or other primary-producer activities. Jewish communities expressed horror at the risk of losing their sons to the Czarist military draft, but this was simply the flip-side of the full Russian citizenship they had been granted, and no different from what was faced by their non-Jewish neighbors.
Certainly the Jews of Russia suffered greatly from widespread riots and mob attacks in the generation prior to World War I, and these did sometimes have substantial government encouragement, especially in the aftermath of the very heavy Jewish role in the 1905 Revolution. But we should keep in mind that a Jewish plotter had been implicated in the killing of Czar Alexander II, and Jewish assassins had also struck down several top Russian ministers and numerous other government officials. If the last decade or two had seen American Muslims assassinate a sitting U.S. President, various leading Cabinet members, and a host of our other elected and appointed officials, surely the position of Muslims in this country would have become a very uncomfortable one.
As Lindemann candidly describes the tension between Russia’s very rapidly growing Jewish population and its governing authorities, he cannot avoid mentioning the notorious Jewish reputation for bribery, corruption, and general dishonesty, with numerous figures of all political backgrounds noting that the remarkable Jewish propensity to commit perjury in the courtroom led to severe problems in the effective administration of justice. The eminent American sociologist E.A. Ross, writing in 1913, characterized the regular behavior of Eastern European Jews in very similar terms.
Lindemann also allocates a short chapter to discussing the 1911 Beilis Affair, in which a Ukrainian Jew was accused of the ritual murder of a young Gentile boy, an incident that generated a great deal of international attention and controversy. Based on the evidence presented, the defendant seems likely to have been innocent, although the obvious lies he repeatedly told police interrogators hardly helped foster that impression, and “the system worked” in that he was ultimately found innocent by the jurors at his trial. However, a few pages are also given to a much less well-known ritual murder case in late 19th century Hungary, in which the evidence of Jewish guilt seemed far stronger, though the author hardly accepted the possible reality of such an outlandish crime. Such reticence was quite understandable since the publication of Ariel Toaff’s remarkable volume on the subject was still a dozen years in the future.

Lindemann subsequently expanded his examination of historical anti-Semitism into a much broader treatment, Esau’s Tears, which appeared in 1997. In this volume, he added comparative studies of the social landscape in Germany, Britain, Italy, and several other European countries, and demonstrated that the relationship between Jews and non-Jews varied greatly across different locations and time periods. But although I found his analysis quite useful and interesting, the extraordinarily harsh attacks his text provoked from some outraged Jewish academics seemed even more intriguing.
For example, Judith Laikin Elkin opened her discussion in The American Historical Review by describing the book as a “545-page polemic” a strange characterization of a book so remarkably even-handed and factually-based in its scholarship. Writing in Commentary, Robert Wistrich was even harsher, stating that merely reading the book had been a painful experience for him, and his review seemed filled with spittle-flecked rage. Unless these individuals had somehow gotten copies of a different book, I found their attitudes simply astonishing.
I was not alone in such a reaction. Richard S. Levy of the University of Illinois, a noted scholar of anti-Semitism, expressed amazement at Wistrich’s seemingly irrational outburst, while Paul Gottfried, writing in Chronicles, mildly suggested that Lindemann had “touched raw nerves.” Indeed, Gottfried’s own evaluation quite reasonably criticized Lindemann for perhaps being a little too even-handed, sometimes presenting numerous conflicting analyzes without choosing between them. For those interested, a good discussion of the book by Alan Steinweis, a younger scholar specializing in the same topic, is conveniently available online.
The remarkable ferocity with which some Jewish writers attacked Lindemann’s meticulous attempt to provide an accurate history of anti-Semitism may carry more significance than merely an exchange of angry words in low-circulation academic publications. If our mainstream media shapes our reality, scholarly books and articles based upon them tend to set the contours of that media coverage. And the ability of a relatively small number of agitated and energetic Jews to police the acceptable boundaries of historical narratives may have enormous consequences for our larger society, deterring scholars from objectively reporting historical facts and preventing students from discovering them.
The undeniable truth is that for many centuries Jews usually constituted a wealthy and privileged segment of the population in nearly all the European countries in which they resided, and quite frequently they based their livelihood upon the heavy exploitation of a downtrodden peasantry. Even without any differences in ethnicity, language, or religion, such conditions almost invariably provoke hostility. The victory of Mao’s Communist forces in China was quickly followed by the brutal massacre of a million or more Han Chinese landlords by the Han Chinese poor peasants who regarded them as cruel oppressors, with William Hinton’s classic Fanshen describing the unfortunate history that unfolded in one particular village. When similar circumstances led to violent clashes in Eastern Europe between Slavs and Jews, does it really make logical sense to employ a specialized term such as “anti-Semitism” to describe that situation?

Furthermore, some of the material presented in Lindemann’s rather innocuous text might also lead to potentially threatening ideas. Consider, for example, the notorious Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, almost certainly fictional, but hugely popular and influential during the years following World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. The fall of so many longstanding Gentile dynasties and their replacement by new regimes such as Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany, which were heavily dominated by their tiny Jewish minorities, quite naturally fed suspicions of a worldwide Jewish plot, as did the widely discussed role of Jewish international bankers in producing those political outcomes.
Over the decades, there has been much speculation about the possible inspiration for the Protocols, but although Lindemann makes absolutely no reference to that document, he does provide a very intriguing possible candidate. Jewish-born British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli certainly ranked as one of the most influential figures of the late 19th century, and in his novel Coningsby, he has the character representing Lord Lionel Rothschild boast about the existence of a vast and secret network of powerful international Jews, who stand near the head of almost every major nation, quietly controlling their governments from behind the scenes. If one of the world’s most politically well-connected Jews eagerly promoted such notions, was Henry Ford really so unreasonable in doing the same?
Lindemann also notes Disraeli’s focus on the extreme importance of race and racial origins, a central aspect of traditional Jewish religious doctrine. He reasonably suggests that this must surely have had a huge influence upon the rise of those political ideas, given that Disraeli’s public profile and stature were so much greater than the mere writers or activists whom our history books usually place at center stage. In fact, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a leading racial theorist, actually cited Disraeli as a key source for his ideas. Jewish intellectuals such as Max Nordau and Cesare Lombroso are already widely recognized as leading figures in the rise of the racial science of that era, but Disraeli’s under-appreciated role may have actually been far greater. The deep Jewish roots of European racialist movements are hardly something that many present-day Jews would want widely known.

One of the harsh Jewish critics of Esau’s Tears denounced Cambridge University Press for even allowing the book to appear in print, and although that major work is easily available in English, there are numerous other cases where an important but discordant version of historical reality has been successfully blocked from publication. For decades most Americans would have ranked Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn as among the world’s greatest literary figures, and his Gulag Archipelago alone sold over 10 million copies. But his last work was a massive two-volume account of the tragic 200 years of shared history between Russians and Jews, and despite its 2002 release in Russian and numerous other world languages, there has yet to be an authorized English translation, though various partial editions have circulated on the Internet in samizdat form.

At one point, a full English version was briefly available for sale at Amazon.com and I purchased it. Glancing through a few sections, the work seemed quite even-handed and innocuous to me, but it seemed to provide a far more detailed and uncensored account than anything else previously available, which obviously was the problem. The Bolshevik Revolution resulted in the deaths of many tens of millions of people worldwide, and the overwhelming Jewish role in its leadership would become more difficult to erase from historical memory if Solzhenitsyn’s work were easily available. Also, his candid discussion of the economic and political behavior of Russian Jewry in pre-revolutionary times directly conflicted with the hagiography widely promoted by Hollywood and the popular media. Historian Yuri Slezkine’s award-winning 2004 book The Jewish Century provided many similar facts, but his treatment was far more cursory and his public stature not remotely the same.
Near the end of his life, Solzhenitsyn gave his political blessing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Russia’s leaders honored him upon his death, while his Gulag volumes are now enshrined as mandatory reading in the standard high school curriculum of today’s overwhelmingly Christian Russia. But even as his star rose again in his own homeland, it seems to have sharply fallen in our own country, and his trajectory may eventually relegate him to nearly un-person status.
A couple of years after the release of Solzhenitsyn’s controversial final book, an American writer named Anne Applebaum published a thick history bearing the same title Gulag, and her work received enormously favorable media coverage and won her a Pulitzer Prize; I have even heard claims that her book has been steadily replacing that earlier Gulag on many college reading lists. But although Jews constituted a huge fraction of the top leadership of the Soviet Gulag system during its early decades, as well as that of the dreaded NKVD which supplied the inmates, nearly her entire focus on her own ethnic group during Soviet times is that of victims rather than victimizers. And by a remarkable irony of fate, she shares a last name with one of the top Bolshevik leaders, Hirsch Apfelbaum, who concealed his own ethnic identity by calling himself Grigory Zinoviev.

The striking decline in Solzhenitsyn’s literary status in the West came just a decade or two after an even more precipitous collapse in the reputation of David Irving, and for much the same reason. Irving probably ranked as the most internationally successful British historian of the last one hundred years and a renowned scholar of World War II, but his extensive reliance on primary source documentary evidence posed an obvious threat to the official narrative promoted by Hollywood and wartime propaganda. When he published his magisterial Hitler’s War, this conflict between myth and reality came into the open, and an enormous wave of attacks and vilification was unleashed, gradually leading to his purge from respectability and eventually even his imprisonment.
Similarly, Israeli academic Ariel Toaff, son of the chief rabbi of Rome, was regarded as one of the world’s leading scholarly authorities on Medieval Jewry. But when he published his remarkable 2004 analysis suggesting the likely reality of the Jewish ritual murders of Christian children throughout history, the resulting media firestorm forced the cancellation of the book’s publication, and the work only survives in samizdat form, while there were even calls for his arrest and incarceration.
In other cases, pressure from the ADL and similar Jewish activist groups have led Amazon to completely eliminate entire categories of historical analysis and ban those publishers who produce such works, which drastically reduces their availability to the reading public.
All of these cases were the sort of high-profile examples which are well-known to anyone who pays attention to such matters. But surely there must have been many other incidents, involving far less prominent authors, which never received any significant media coverage, and also a vastly larger universe of cases in which writers have self-censored their texts in order to avoid such controversies. Over the decades, I have gradually discovered through sad experience that I must exercise extreme caution whenever I read anything relating to the subjects of Jews, Judaism, or Israel.

These important examples may help to explain the puzzling contrast between the behavior of Jews in the aggregate and Jews as individuals. Observers have noticed that even fairly small Jewish minorities may often have a major impact upon the far larger societies that host them. But on the other hand, in my experience at least, a large majority of individual Jews do not seem all that different in their personalities or behavior than their non-Jewish counterparts. So how does a community whose individual mean is not so unusual generate what seems to be such a striking difference in collective behavior? I think the answer may involve the existence of information choke-points, and the ability of relatively small numbers of particularly zealous and agitated Jews in influencing and controlling these.
We live our lives constantly immersed in media narratives, and these allow us to decide the rights and wrongs of a situation. The vast majority of people, Jew and Gentile alike, are far more likely to take strong action if they are convinced that their cause is a just one. This is obviously the basis for war-time propaganda.
Now suppose that a relatively small number of zealous Jewish partisans are known to always attack and denounce journalists or authors who accurately describe Jewish misbehavior. Over time, this ongoing campaign of intimidation may cause many important facts to be left on the cutting-room floor, or even gradually expel from mainstream respectability those writers who refuse to conform to such pressures. Meanwhile, similar small numbers of Jewish partisans frequently exaggerate the misdeeds committed against Jews, sometimes piling their exaggerations upon past exaggerations already produced by a previous round of such zealots.
Eventually, these two combined trends may take a complex and possibly very mixed historical record and transform it into a simple morality-play, with innocent Jews tremendously injured by vicious Jew-haters. And as this morality-play becomes established it deepens the subsequent intensity of other Jewish-activists, who redouble their demands that the media “stop vilifying Jews” and covering up the supposed evils inflicted upon them. An unfortunate circle of distortion following exaggeration following distortion can eventually produce a widely accepted historical account that bears little resemblance to the reality of what actually happened.
So as a result, the vast majority of quite ordinary Jews, who would normally behave in quite ordinary ways, are misled by this largely fictional history, and rather understandably become greatly outraged at all the horrible things that had been done to their suffering people, some of which are true and some of which are not, while remaining completely ignorant of the other side of the ledger.
Furthermore, this situation is exacerbated by the common tendency of Jews to “cluster” together, perhaps respresenting just one or two percent of the total population, but often constituting 20% or 40% or 60% of their immediate peer-group, especially in certain professions. Under such conditions, the ideas or emotional agitation of some Jews probably permeates others around them, often provoking additional waves of indignation.
As a rough analogy, a small quantity of uranium is relatively inert and harmless, and entirely so if distributed within low-density ore. But if a significant quantity of weapons-grade uranium is sufficiently compressed, then the neutrons released by fissioning atoms will quickly cause additional atoms to undergo fission, with the ultimate result of that critical chain-reaction being a nuclear explosion. In similar fashion, even a highly agitated Jew may have no negative impact, but if the collection of such agitated Jews becomes too numerous and clusters together too closely, they may work each other into a terrible frenzy, perhaps with disastrous consequences both for themselves and for their larger society. This is especially true if those agitated Jews begin to dominate certain key nodes of top-level control, such as the central political or media organs of a society.
Whereas most living organizations exist solely in physical reality, human beings also occupy an ideational space, with the interaction of human consciousness and perceived reality playing a major role in shaping behavior. Just as the pheromones released by mammals or insects can drastically affect the reactions of their family members or nest-mates, the ideas secreted by individuals or the media-emitters of a society can have an enormous impact upon their fellows.
A cohesive, organized group generally possesses huge advantages over a teeming mass of atomized individuals, just as a Macedonian Phalanx could easily defeat a vastly larger body of disorganized infantry. Many years ago, on some website somewhere I came across a very insightful comment regarding the obvious connection between “anti-Semitism” and “racism,” which our mainstream media organs identify as two of the world’s greatest evils. Under this analysis, “anti-Semitism” represents the tendency to criticize or resist Jewish social cohesion, while “racism” represents the attempt of white Gentiles to maintain a similar social cohesion of their own. To the extent that the ideological emanations from our centralized media organs serve to strengthen and protect Jewish cohesion while attacking and dissolving any similar cohesion on the part of their Gentile counterparts, the former will obviously gain enormous advantages in resource-competition against the latter.
Religion obviously constitutes an important unifying factor in human social groups and we cannot ignore the role of Judaism in this regard. Traditional Jewish religious doctrine seems to consider Jews as being in a state of permanent hostility with all non-Jews, and the use of dishonest propaganda is an almost inevitable aspect of such conflict. Furthermore, since Jews have invariably been a small political minority, maintaining such controversial tenets required the employment of a massive framework of subterfuge and dissimulation in order to conceal their nature from the larger society surrounding them. It has often been said that truth is the first casualty in war, and surely the cultural influences of over a thousand years of such intense religious hostility may continue to quietly influence the thinking of many modern Jews, even those who have largely abandoned their religious beliefs.
The notorious Jewish tendency to shamelessly lie or wildly exaggerate has sometimes had horrifying human consequences. I very recently discovered a fascinating passage in Peter Moreira’s 2014 book The Jew Who Defeated Hitler: Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR, and How We Won the War, focused on the important political role of that powerful Secretary of the Treasury.
A turning point in Henry Morgenthau Jr.’s relationship with the Jewish community came in November 1942, when Rabbi Stephen Wise came to the corner office to tell the secretary what was happening in Europe. Morgenthau knew of the millions of deaths and the lampshades made from victims’ skin, and he asked Wise not to go into excessive details. But Wise went on to tell of the barbarity of the Nazis, how they were making soap out of Jewish flesh. Morgenthau, turning paler, implored him, “Please, Stephen, don’t give me the gory details.” Wise went on with his list of horrors and Morgenthau repeated his plea over and over again. Henrietta Klotz was afraid her boss would keel over. Morgenthau later said the meeting changed his life.
It is easy to imagine that Morgenthau’s gullible acceptance of such obviously ridiculous war-time atrocity stories played a major role when he later lent his name and support to remarkably brutal American occupation policies that probably led to the postwar deaths of many millions of innocent German civilians.
Related Reading:
July 31, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | France, Russia, UK, Zionism |
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Their quarry: anti-racist Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn; their weapons: anti-semitism smears; their purpose: to oust Corbyn and replace him with a compliant pro-Israel stooge
The row over anti-Semitism has erupted yet again in the UK Labour Party, as predicted a few months ago by Miko Peled, the Israeli general’s son, who 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….
So Israel’s pimps at Westminster, never happy unless they’re telling everyone what to think and say, are frantically insisting that the Labour Party adopts the discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism in its unedited entirety and incorporates it into the party’s code of conduct. Many party members believe they have blown up the matter out of all proportion simply to settle their long-standing score – as Peled says – with the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a genuine anti-racist, champion of Palestinian rights and critic of Israel.
This is what the IHRA definiition says:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
It includes these eleven “contemporary examples of anti-semitism”:
- Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
- Making mendacious, dehumanising, demonising, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
- Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
- Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).
- Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
- Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Jewish community leaders are furious that Labour’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee, disagrees with 4 of these examples and refuses to include them in the party’s new code of conduct. The NEC, of course, is mindful that the code must be enforceable across half-a-million members with differing opinions, many of whom are tired of the constant whining. An emergency motion orchestrated by the Jewish lobby, forcing the NEC to take on board the whole IHRA package with all its examples and humiliating Corbyn in the process, was supposed to be considered yesterday but is now postponed till September.
The NEC explains its omissions by saying accusations of dual nationality are wrong rather than anti-semitic. It strikes out altogether the idea that calling the state of Israel “a racist endeavour” is anti-semitic, no doubt for the simple reason that it is racist. Israelis have for decades practised apartheid, casting their non-Jew population as second-class citizens, and now it’s enshrined in their new nationality laws, in black and white. What’s more, Israel’s illegal occupation has denied Palestinians their right to self-determination for the last 70 years. The NEC also chooses not to forbid the use of symbols and images associated with classic anti-semitism and comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis unless there’s evidence of anti-semitic intent.
Sounds reasonable, you might think. But 68 rabbis have accused the Labour leadership of acting “in the most insulting and arrogant way” by leaving out or modifying those controversial bits. In a letter to The Guardian they say it’s not the Labour Party’s place to re-write it.
The arrogance is theirs, I think. Here’s why. The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee recommended adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism subject to the inclusion of two caveats:
(1) It is not antisemitic to criticise the Government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent.
(2) It is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli Government to the same standards as other liberal democracies, or to take a particular interest in the Israeli Government’s policies or actions, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent.
The Government agreed but dropped the caveats saying they weren’t necessary. Subsequently the IHRA definition has run into big trouble, being condemned by leading law experts as “too vague to be useful” and because conduct contrary to the IHRA definition is not necessarily illegal. They warn that public bodies are under no obligation to adopt or use it and, if they do, they must interpret it in a way that’s consistent with their statutory obligations and with the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides for freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is deeply flawed
Crucially, freedom of expression applies not only to information or ideas that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive, but also to those that “offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population” – unless they encourage violence, hatred or intolerance. Calling Israel an apartheid state or advocating BDS against Israel cannot properly be characterized as anti-Semitic. Furthermore, any public authority seeking to apply the IHRA definition to prohibit or punish such activities “would be acting unlawfully”.
The right of free expression, as Labour’s Zio- Inquisitors ought to know, is now part of UK domestic law by virtue of the Human Rights Act. Furthermore the 1986 Education Act established an individual right of free expression in all higher education institutions. Then there’s Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which bestows on everyone “the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. As always, such rights are subject to limitations required by law and respect for the rights of others.
So the IHRA definition is a minefield. It’s not something a sane organisation would incorporate into its Code of Conduct – certainly not as it stands. It contravenes human rights and freedom of expression. But when did the Israel lobby ever care about other people’s rights?
The whole fuss borders on the farcical when you ask what anti-Semitism means. Who are the Semites anyway? Everyone avoids this question like the plague. Why? It’s embarrassing. DNA research shows that most of those living today who claim to be Jews are not descended from the ancient Israelites at all and the Palestinians have more Israelite blood. So they are the real Semites. Research by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published by the Oxford University Press in 2012 on behalf of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution, found that the Khazarian Hypothesis is scientifically correct, meaning that most Jews are Khazars. The Khazarians converted to Talmudic Judaism in the 8th Century and were never in ancient Israel.
Probably no more than 2% of Jews in Israel are actually Israelites. So even if you believe the propaganda myth that God gave the land to the Israelites, He certainly didn’t give it to Netanyahu, Lieberman and the other East European thugs who rule the apartheid state.
As former Israeli Director of Military Intelligence, Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote: “It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”
Well, that tragic irony has come to pass. As has been suggested before, so-called anti-Semitism is a matter best resolved by the Jewish ‘family’ itself. There’s no reason to bother Corbyn or the Labour Party with it.
July 30, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Jeremy Corbyn, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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Photo: Ola Marshoud, via Asra Media
Palestinian student Ola Marshoud, 21, from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, was sentenced to seven months in Israeli prison by the Salem military court on Monday, 30 July, for her involvement in student activism on the An-Najah University campus. Marshoud has been detained since March, when she was summoned to interrogation at the military base near Huwwara. When she arrived, she was transferred the interrogation center at Petah Tikva.
She was accused in the military court of involvement in student organizing at An-Najah University. Active Palestinians involved in the student movement are repeatedly targeted for Israeli arrest, imprisonment and persecution, including Omar Kiswani, the student body president at Bir Zeit University. Statistics indicate that there are over 300 Palestinian university students imprisoned in Israeli jails.
This policy of colonial military repression of student activism is continuing; in the pre-dawn hours of Monday, 30 July, a number of families in al-Khalil reported that armed occupation forces posted notices on the walls of the area, particularly the homes of female students, threatening them against participating in student elections and activism with the Islamic Bloc on their campuses. Several young women’s family homes were raided and letters presented to their parents by occupation soldiers accusing them of participating in “illegal activities” through student activism.
One such letter, directed at students’ parents from Israeli occupation intelligence, said: “If you get this message, it means that you are the parents of one of the activists of the Islamic bloc, which is an illegal activity. We alert you that any such involvement may lead to the arrest of your daughter, damaging her academic life and future, wasting your money and causing concern and indignation in the hearts of your family. We turn to you to follow up on the activities of your daughter and lead her away from such actions. You have been warned of the consequences.”
July 30, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | an-Najah University, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Israeli occupation forces seized 28 Palestinians on Monday morning, 30 July, including four Palestinian journalists who work for al-Quds TV: Alaa al-Rimawi, Mohammed Sami Alwan, Qutaiba Hamdan and Hassani al-Najas. Rimawi directs the al-Quds TV Ramallah bureau and his home in the al-Masayef neighborhood in Ramallah was raided by occupation forces, while Mohammed Alwan was also seized from his home.
Qutaiba Hamdan was seized from Beitunia and Husni Anjas from Kharbata Bani Harith, and his vehicle and work equipment were seized by the Israeli occupation. Quds News reported that Israeli occupation forces accused the four journalists of “incitement,” based on their reporting about the realities of Israeli colonization in Palestine. Just days ago, Palestinian writer Lama Khater was seized from her home in al-Khalil. Khater and the four journalists seized today make up some of the 29 Palestinian journalists imprisoned by Israel. These imprisoned journalists include student Istabraq Tamimi and a number of journalists detained without charge or trial, including Hammam Hantash, Abdullah Shatat and Abdel-Mohsen Shalaldeh., noted the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission.
The Palestinians seized on Monday included the freed prisoners Mohsen Hardan Shreim, Bilal Maskawi, Nidal Nofal, Fadi Hourani, Khaled Wajih Sabri, Mohammed Wajih Sabri, Nour Daoud and Hussam Hatem Abu Libdeh in Qalqilya. In Bethlehem, occupation forces seized former prisoners Fahad As’ad and Atta al-Hreimi as well as Mohammed Ali al-Muti. In addition to the four journalists, they also seized Wassim Jadallah and Moataz Abu Rahmah from the Ramallah and el-Bireh area; Khaled Sidqi Daraghmeh and Nasr Mohammed Nasrallah Daraghmeh from Tubas; and Shadi Riyad al-Harb from Dura village in al-Khalil.
In addition, occupation forces raided a number of homes in al-Khalil, including the home of Nada Dweik, the daughter of Palestinian Legislative Council speaker and former prisoner Abdel-Aziz Dweik, ransacking it. They posted on the walls of houses in the city warning students against activism with the Islamic bloc on campuses.
July 30, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Twenty international solidarity activists on board the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza are being held in Israeli prisons, report the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The first boat in the flotilla, “Al-Awda,” was hijacked by Israeli occupation forces in international waters on Sunday, 29 July. The next boat in the flotilla, the “Freedom,” is still on the approach to Gaza. The Flotilla aims to break the Israeli naval siege on Gaza, Palestine.
Two activists with Israeli citizenship on the boats, Zohar Chamberlain Regev and Yonatan Shapira, were released on bail and charged with attempting to enter Gaza and conspiracy to commit a crime. The 20 international solidarity activists remain detained in Givon prison and were scheduled to begin meeting with their lawyer on Monday.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition noted that:
“Although the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) claim that the capture of our vessel happened ‘without exceptional incident’, eye-witness Zohar Chamberlain Regev reports that at the time of boarding: ‘People on board were tasered and hit by masked IOF soldiers. We did not get our passports or belongings before we got off the boat. Do not believe reports of peaceful interception.’ We urgently need to know the details of who was injured and how seriously, and what treatment they are receiving, if any. A military attack on a civilian vessel is a violent act and a violation of international law. Taking 22 people from international waters to a country which is not their destination constitutes an act of kidnapping, which is also unlawful under the international Convention of the Law of Sea.”

Mural on Apartheid Wall by artist Jorit Agoch.
In addition, two Italian artists, including well-known muralist Jorit Agoch, were ordered deported from Palestine on Monday, 30 July after they were seized by Israeli occupation forces for painting a large mural of Ahed Tamimi, 17, on the Apartheid Wall. The 13-foot-high painting was part of the celebration of Ahed’s release from over seven months in Israeli prison on Sunday, 29 July, along with her mother, Nariman.
The portrait was the focus of global media attention before the artists and the Palestinian driver who accompanied them were seized by occupation forces as they completed work on the portrait. The Palestinian man was reportedly released, as were the two artists, after their tourist visas were cancelled and they were ordered to leave the country within 72 hours. They were also banned from entering occupied Palestine for 10 years, much like other activists who have been denied entry to Palestine at Ben-Gurion airport or the Karameh/Allenby crossing.
July 30, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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By Issam Aruri | IMEMC | July 18, 2018
The Israeli propaganda machine works internationally to undermine the role of Palestinian NGOs which disclose Israeli violations of international law, and maintain the well-being of Palestinian people.
Imagine the following: a toxic op-ed is published that defames your organisation. You contact the website on which it features and are invited to publish a rebuttal.
The next day, you submit your article. As the editors are about to put it online, they are targeted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign.
More than a dozen people call the editors, seemingly on your behalf, and apply heavy pressure to publish the article. One of the callers even tries to bribe them to get it published.
This confuses and intimidates the editors, who have never experienced anything like it.
They fear that publishing under pressure may damage the independence and reputation of their website, which is a news magazine for the European Parliament.
The editors contact you and you clarify right away that none of these calls originated from your organisation. You urge them to publish your article, as they had promised. But despite your repeated requests, they don’t do so. They don’t even respond anymore to your phone calls and emails.
This is what recently happened to the Palestinian NGO network PNGO, which is an umbrella of 134 civil society organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The op-ed in question was mine, which I had submitted to a Brussels-based website called EP Today.
According to its own information, EP Today is “designed only” for policy opinions by members of the European Parliament. On 26 February, however, it published a slanderous op-ed by NGO Monitor that targeted PNGO.
NGO Monitor is an Israeli right-wing organisation that cooperates with the Israeli government in undermining NGOs that criticise Israel’s violations of human rights and international law.
It constantly attacks Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and dozens of other human rights and civil society organisations, including Israeli NGOs. PNGO is high on its target list.
In its article, NGO Monitor provided false and misleading information about PNGO’s mission and conduct.
While PNGO is a catalyst for a vibrant civil society in Palestine, NGO Monitor framed PNGO as a “ring leader” of a “gang” of NGOs that shrink Palestinian civil space.
Can’t be ignored
For a long time, we ignored organisations like NGO Monitor that provide cover for the Israeli occupation. But this time, we decided to submit a rebuttal to this toxic propaganda.
As mentioned above, EP Today violated its promise and didn’t publish our rebuttal. To make things worse, our article was apparently forwarded to NGO Monitor, which allegedly tried to prevent its publication.
An editor we spoke to implied this, with reference to one member of EP Today’s board of directors, who seems to have ties to NGO Monitor. This would constitute grave professional misconduct, calling into question EP Today’s independence and integrity.
In any case, we won’t be silenced. Our rebuttal of NGO Monitor’s propaganda, titled “What Europe can do to defend civil space: a response by the Palestinian NGO Network”, is now available for everyone, after we published it on our website.
Meanwhile, our real concern is not the article.
What troubles and burdens us is the big picture: the all-out attack that the Israeli government and its affiliated organisations such as NGO Monitor have launched against Palestinian human rights defenders.
Shrinking space for civil society is a global phenomenon. However, the threat it poses in Palestine has an extra dimension: Israel’s strangling military occupation, which began more than 51 years ago.
As a result of the occupation, Palestinians live without a sovereign government, without basic protection and in a fragile economy that heavily relies on international aid.
In this context, PNGO’s member organisations play a crucial and indispensable role in providing services and in preserving social cohesion.
Israel’s attack on us aims to neutralise NGOs that expose its violations of international law and to break the backbone of Palestinian society at large. The attack is meant to sustain and entrench the occupation.
Our reality
The reality in which we live is this: We face draconian digital surveillance and interference by Israel, which violates our fundamental privacy and obstructs our work.
I suspect this triggered the disinformation campaign described above (see AP’s article for more: “Covertly, Israel prepares to fight boycott activists online”).
Like NGO Monitor, the Israeli government engages in smear campaigns against Palestinian NGOs.
For example, on 1 July 2017, Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon branded our members Al-Haq and Al-Mezan as “supporters of terror”, based on false allegations that they have ties to Hamas and the PFLP.
Al-Haq and Al-Mezan are internationally renowned human rights organisations.
Most recently, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs published a slanderous report that contains similar allegations and aggressively accuses the EU of funding Palestinian and European NGOs that sponsor terror and promote Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS – the Palestinian-led global campaign putting pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law).
Indeed, blocking EU funding to Palestinian NGOs is Israel’s declared goal.
In 2015 and 2016, the director and a staff member of Al-Haq received ongoing death threats.
In response to the threats against the staff member, who is based in The Netherlands and Al-Haq’s representative to the International Criminal Court, the Dutch authorities opened a criminal investigation.
While official results are pending, all indications point in Israel’s direction.
PNGO and the Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Council (PHROC) have compiled their concerns about the escalating campaign to silence, delegitimise and defund Palestinian civil society organisations and human rights defenders in a joint position paper, including recommendations to the EU.
For decades, the EU has invested into civil society organisations in Israel and Palestine that promote its core values “on the ground”. The support and protection of human rights defenders is a declared priority of the EU, as also displayed by the guidelines it adopted in 2008 to that end.
On 3 October 2017, in a comprehensive resolution, the European Parliament sounded alarm about the shrinking space for civil society and called “for continued and increased EU support and funding in creating a free and enabling environment for civil society.”
This is the time to act on these commitments.
We rely on the EU to shield us from Israel’s campaign to destroy Palestinian civil society, which has spread to Europe and is reinforced by organisations like NGO Monitor that are designed to shrink our space.
~EU Observer/Days of Palestine
Issam Aruri is the chair of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network (PNGO), an umbrella of 134 civil society organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that promote the rights and well-being of the Palestinian people.
July 30, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Israel, NGO Monitor, Palestine, Zionism |
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The Russian version of the visit by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov to West Jerusalem on July 23 became available, finally, on Wednesday in the nature of a terse TASS report quoting a ‘military-diplomatic’ source in Moscow as saying that the visiting Russian officials “looked into the tasks of completing the anti-terrorist operation in Syria’s South.”
An unnamed Israeli official had earlier floated a story that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did some tough talking with Lavrov and “rebuffed” a Russian offer to create a 100-kilometre buffer zone adjacent to Golan Heights. Netanyahu reportedly insisted that he won’t be satisfied with anything short of Iran ending its presence in Syria conclusively.
The first indication that the talks didn’t go well came when Israel shot down a Syrian jet on July 24 in Quneitra bordering Golan. It was a calculated act of belligerence by Israel. (The Islamic State fighters who are present in the region have since released the photograph of the wreckage and the mutilated body of the Syrian pilot.)
The TASS report today punctures the Israeli version that the two Russian officials were deputed by President Vladimir Putin specially to discuss with Netanyahu the future of Iranian presence in Syria. (It now transpires that the Russian officials were on a tour of Israel, Germany and France.) The Israeli bravado can only be seen as a desperate ploy to cover up its humiliating defeat in Syria with the terrorist groups that were its proxies surrendering lock, stock and barrel in Daraa and Quneitra to the Syrian-Russian forces – especially the hasty exfiltration of the controversial group known as the White Helmets to Jordan via Golan Heights with the logistical help from the Israeli military.
Quite obviously, Moscow does not want to get entangled in the Israel-Iran tensions. This is also the American assessment of the Russian thinking, as articulated by the Director of the National Intelligence Agency Daniel Coats on Thursday:
“We have assessed that it’s unlikely Russia has the will or the capability to fully implement and counter Iranian decisions and influence (in Syria.) Russia would have to make significantly greater commitments [in Syria] from a military standpoint, from an economic standpoint. We don’t assess that they’re keen to do that.”
Nonetheless, the Israeli propaganda has gone overboard in attempting to create a wedge between Russia and Iran. (Read a fine piece, here, by Moon of Alabama on the Israeli disinformation campaign.) This couldn’t have gone down well in Moscow. At any rate, the Russian Foreign Ministry came out on July 24 with some sharp criticism of the move by the Israeli parliament (six days earlier) to adopt a bill known as Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.
The operation by the Syrian forces (backed by Russian allies) to liberate Quneitra succeeded beyond expectations once Washington signaled that the extremist groups entrenched in the southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel should not expect any American intervention to bail them out.
Damascus is now turning its attention to the liberation of the northwestern province of Idlib. It will be a major confrontation due to the presence of a large number of foreign terrorists in Northwestern Syria. The Iranian media reported that a Russian flag ship Ro-Ro Sparta was spotted crossing the Bosporus en route to Syria’s Tartus, carrying military cargo mostly ammunition, shells and missiles and that the reinforcements are meant for the Syrian Army’s “upcoming assault” on Idlib province.
July 29, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Golan Heights, Iran, Israel, Russia, Syria, White Helmets |
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