Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism

US lawmakers urge Pentagon to buy Israel’s Iron Dome missile system

Press TV – April 22, 2018

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US Congress have called on the US military to immediately purchase the Iron Dome, a short-range rocket interception system developed by Israel.

Congressional representatives Grace Meng and Peter Roskam authored this week a letter that was signed by 40 other lawmakers asking the Pentagon to invest $500 in Israeli missile and rocket systems in the upcoming 2019 fiscal year.

“US-Israel missile defense cooperation is a critical investment in the safety and security of Israel and stability in the Middle East,” Roskam said in a press release on Saturday, claiming that Israel’s test launches of the missile system indicated its reliability.

The letter was addressed to the House of Representative Appropriations Subcommittee and stated that the purchase and the investment would help US forces abroad protect themselves from “aggressive” countries like Russia and North Korea.

“Today, our forces face challenges from an emboldened, aggressive, and increasingly militarized Russia, North Korea, and other adversaries heightening our immediate need for advanced missile defense systems to protect our forward-based forces and key fixed installations,” Roskam noted.

“Adoption by the [US] Army of Iron Dome could provide an important near-term capability to US forces as well as a surge production capacity if we or Israel required the system in a time of crisis,” he argued.

The system passed its first ever trials in the US in September last year at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

In real combat situations, however, the system has had difficulty intercepting and targeting simple, unguided Palestinian rockets.

The Iron Dome, designed by Israel’s Rafael weapons manufacturer, uses Tamir interceptor missiles, largely produced by Raytheon, a major US arms company.

The US had previously considered deploying Tamir batteries across Europe as a deterrence against Russia.

The $500 million asked by the lawmakers is separate from Washington’s annual military and economic aid to Israel.

Under the latest aid package, Tel Aviv will receive $3.8 billion annually for the next 10 years, consisting of $3.3 billion in military aid and $500 million for the regime’s missile and rocket programs.

The US will pay Israel a total of $705 million for missile development in 2018, far more than the $147 million that Trump had initially requested. Congress increased the amount upon Israel’s request.

From 2019 onwards, however, Israel will no longer be able to ask Congress to raise US military aid beyond the amount stipulated in the memorandum of understanding that the two allies signed in 2016 under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

April 22, 2018 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Grace Meng, Israel, Peter Roskam, Raytheon, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

US Mainstream Media Attacks North Korea for Supporting Palestine in a Disgusting Display of Nuclear Hypocrisy

By Adam Garrie | Eurasia Future | April 22, 2018

While Donald Trump is busy giving himself credit for the efforts of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in to reconcile the two Korean states in the hope of ending the Korean War/Fatherland Liberation War, Trump’s domestic opponents are busy saying that the man who threatened to “destroy” North Korea in front of the UN General Assembly just seven months ago is somehow going “soft” on North Korea. Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to respond with his customary bombast.

But while the typical back-and-forth between Trump and his media critics continues, one mainstream media publication in the US has taken things a step further by trying to damage the spirit of good will surrounding the DPRK’s rapprochement with Seoul. Newsweek has quoted form an official Korean source Minju Joson, regarding Pyongyang’s condemnation of the slaughter of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators who have been attacked by the military of the Tel Aviv regime during the Great March of Return.

Newsweek published the following statement from the government of the DPRK:

“Israel’s wild act of destroying Mid-east peace and mercilessly killing Palestinians is a hideous crime that deserves denunciations thousands of times. If the U.S. is interested in protecting human rights, it should keep pace with the efforts of the international community to denounce and check Israel’s human rights abuses. But, the U.S. chimed in with Israel in the eyes of the international community, fully disclosing that it is applying double-dealing standards in human rights and politicizing it”.

While the intention of the Newsweek piece was clearly to sow resentment towards the DPRK among Zionist Americans, Newsweek may not achieve the desired result. As the treatment of Palestinians becomes ever more barbaric at the hands of a regime intent on spilling blood in Gaza and the West Bank, even many Americans with Zionist sympathies including actress Natalie Portman have expressed their condemnation of the regime’s activities. While Portman’s stand has been applauded by many, the regime’s Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz has said that Portman’s remarks “border on antisemitism”. This charge is clearly ridiculous for obvious enough reasons, but it is nevertheless being proffered by a regime desperate for legitimacy.

But while the Tel Aviv regime continues to cling on to its illegal nuclear weapons, the DPRK has expressed a willingness to cease testing its weapons while promising the goal of de-nuclearisation in order to achieve peace between Pyongyang and Seoul in line with the desires of the DPRK’s northern neighbours China and Russia.

While North Korea has not actively enraged in the long cold Korean War since 1953, “Israel’s” wars have been endless since 1948. The regime continues to occupy Palestine and part of Syria while it has recently threatened Lebanon with a new invasion.

While North Korea’s uneasy truce with South Korea has not resulted in catastrophe even at the lowest ebbs in relations, the same cannot be said for the Tel Aviv regime’s relations with its neighbours. The Newsweek piece which was intended to slander North Korea has actually helped to raise the important issue of double standards in the US where North Korea’s defensive nuclear programme is presented as something which threatens the world while “Israel’s” offensive and illegal nuclear programme is virtually never discussed. As none of “Israel’s” neighbours have nuclear weapons and as none of the world’s nuclear powers have directly threatened the regime, no country in the world has less of a justification for nuclear weapons than “Israel”. Even in the case of Pakistan and India, two of the world’s most confrontational neighbours with nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan can always justify the presence of its weapons based on the threat posed by the other. “Israel” has no such justification available.

The US hypocrisy regarding the DPRK vis-a-vis the “Israeli” regime is nothing new. These morosely unjust double standards go back decades. In 1967, the American Naval Ship USS Liberty came under a sustained attack from the “Israeli” air-force and torpedo boats without any warning or justification. In spite of Liberty’s commanders sending communications informing “Israel” that they were an “allied” US ship, the attack persisted for hours. Archival material has revealed that some of the pilots were aware that the ship was American, but that they were ordered by their superiors to keep attacking.

Ultimately, 34 Americans died in the attack while 171 were severely wounded. The incident was systematically hushed up by the US government and media. Many researchers suspect that “Israel” had attempted to stage a false flag incident that would later be blamed on Egypt, in order to coerce the US into attacking Egypt and its Soviet ally. Because “Israel” was not able to kill all the men on board, the plan failed as the survivors knew full well that it was “Israel” and not Egypt nor any other Soviet ally that had attacked their ship.

By contrast, the US media could not stop talking about the DPRK’s capture of the USS Pueblo in 1968. There is still no consensus as to whether the US Naval ship that was captured by the DPRK was in North Korean or international waters. Unlike the allied USS Liberty in the Mediterranean, the USS Pueblo was an enemy ship conducting espionage activities against a communist Asian state at the height of the US war in Vietnam. The incident therefore ought to be viewed in this wider content. In any case, the DPRK captured the ship where it remains to this day as a museum piece. One American died during the capture and the rest of the crew were eventually released into US allied South Korea.

Objectively, any American should be able to see that what “Israel” did to the USS Liberty is a vastly bigger issue than what the DPRK did to the spy-ship USS Pueblo. Yet decades later, it is an ever more militaristic “Israel” that is given billions by the United States, while North Korea continues to be sanctioned and threatened by the United States, in spite of the fact that 2018 has seen Pyongyang and Seoul reach a new detente which will see Koreans from both sides of the 38th parallel marching together in the Olympics under a flag of unity.

The events mentioned in this piece are one of the reasons that Palestinians and North Koreans alike, have no faith whatsoever in the United States and the so-called international community it endlessly asks to unite against North Korea, while equally imploring it to abandon Palestine.

So while Newsweek seeks to condemn North Korea for its consistently principled stand as a friend of Palestine, the truth of the matter is that while North Korea has never been a legitimate threat to the wider world, “Israel” not only remains a threat, but has a history of confrontation with almost every country in the region. The fact that the regime continues to slaughter Palestinians protesting for rights to their stolen land is proof positive that while North Korea is embracing peace, the Tel Aviv regime remains more militant than ever.

April 22, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Middle East, North Korea, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

A Brilliant Early Defender of Palestine – Book Review

(Colin Andersen, Balfour in the Dock. J.M.N. Jeffries and the Case for the Prosecution. Bloxham, Oxon: Skyscraper Publications, 2017)

Reviewed by Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | April 18, 2018

J.M.N (Joseph) Jeffries was an outstanding British journalist whose book Palestine: The Reality (1939) is described by Colin Andersen as ‘a masterwork of history and a scathing indictment of British policy in Palestine from 1914 to 1938.’

George Antonius’ seminal work, The Arab Awakening, had been published only the year before but it is a more general account of British betrayal of the Arabs, whereas the value of the Jeffries book lies in his single-minded focus on Palestine and the force of his arguments. Few copies of the book were printed, and it is now almost impossible to find even in libraries. By Edward Said and many others, however, its value as an early exposure of British perfidy has long since been recognized.

Zionism itself was a wicked idea from the start. Herzl was not ignorant of the realities on the ground in Palestine. In the form of the people, he wanted to remove them and in the form of the land he wanted to turn Palestine into something else. Chaim Weizmann was no better. He lied, deceived and dissimulated as a matter of course. By 1914, with one exception, Zionism had no support anywhere. The Ottoman sultan, the Kaiser, and the Tsar’s government had all turned their backs on it. By Jews around the world, the Zionists were regarded as cranks, fanatics, and heretics but the one exception was critical. In Britain, the seed of imperial support for this mad idea had been sown by Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, when in 1903 he backed Zionist settlement in East Africa.

By 1917 Zionism had been absorbed into British imperialism. The motive was not gratitude for Weizmann’s chemical research in support of the war effort or anything as fanciful as sympathy for a persecuted people bent on returning to their ancient homeland but the recognition that Zionism was a tool Britain could use. The chief villains of the piece, in Jeffries’ reading, were the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and his Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, both of whom, to use a term now current, ‘weaponised’ Zionism, first to bring the US into the war and then to turn Palestine over to their Zionist proxies, much as the US, Britain, France and their ‘allies’ have tried hard over the past seven years to put Syria in the hands of their takfiri proxies.

It was Jeffries, an outstanding correspondent for the London Daily Mail, who in 1923 exposed the deception deliberately built into Sir Henry McMahon’s correspondence with the Sharif Husayn of Mecca in 1915. The Sharif had outlined the area in which the Arabs were to be granted independence in return for supporting the British war effort. McMahon made specific exceptions for Mersin and Alexandretta (Iskanderun) and ‘portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, which cannot be said to be purely Arab.’ The excluded region had a substantial Christian percentage, but in line with its imperial tactics of divide and rule Britain chose to regard only Muslims as ‘Arab’ despite the role Christians played in the formulation of the Arab national idea.

This region ‘west of Damascus’ was the coastal littoral Britain intended to allocate to France in Sykes-Picot the following year but on no map, can Palestine be found west of Damascus. Homs and Hama are mentioned but not Jerusalem, for the obvious reason that the British knew that the Sharif Husayn would never agree to its exclusion from the area set aside for ‘Arab independence.’ Although Antonius is given the credit he deserves for exposing the depth of deceit in the McMahon letters to the Sharif Husayn, it was Jeffries, in articles written for the Daily Mail in 1923, based on a copy of the text he had been given by King Feisal, who first brought this deception to the attention of the British public.

The Husayn-McMahon correspondence was followed in 1916 by the treachery of Sykes-Picot and in 1917 by the further treachery of the Balfour declaration, a pledge not just made to the Zionists but largely written by them. Behind the caviling and declarations of nothing but good intentions, Jeffries knew exactly what they were up to the formula of a ‘national home’ was adopted for the time only because pressing for statehood would be regarded even by the British government as too provocative. The ‘country without a people for a people without a country’ was a brazen lie which the Zionists pretended to believe because they did not want the Palestinians to be there. They were being wished away psychologically long before they could be removed physically. As Jeffries was to write, they were nobodies who would eventually ‘vanish like mist before the sun of Zion.’

Behind his lofty, somewhat detached philosophical exterior, Balfour was as remorseless as the fanatics whose cause he was promoting, not in their interests, as they undoubtedly realized, but Britain’s. Zionism, he wrote in 1919, right or wrong, good or bad, was rooted in traditions, present needs and future hopes of ‘far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.’ Crucially, the words ‘now’ and ‘inhabit’ point to what Balfour, the British government, and the Zionists, colluding, had in mind: Palestine did not belong to the Palestinians, they were only ‘inhabiting’ it and only for ‘now.’ In the same statement Balfour, in a rare moment of truth, wrote that insofar as Palestine was concerned ‘the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.’

In Palestine: The Reality Jeffries traced Balfour’s declaration from inception through gestation to birth. As Colin Andersen writes, far from being a pure and lofty initiative of the British government, the declaration was in its drafting ‘very much an Anglo-Zionist-American affair.’ The process began ‘in earnest’ in June 1917, when Weizmann, Lord Rothschild, and Sir Ronald Graham, assistant undersecretary at the Foreign Office, visited Balfour, who had just returned from a five-week visit to the US, where he met the leading US Zionist, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. The question of a declaration on Palestine was discussed and after seeing Weizmann and Rothschild back in London, the drafting began, as Jeffries was to write, ‘on both sides of the Atlantic.’

It remains very worthwhile to consider how these drafts changed. As documented by Jeffries, in its first draft, prepared in July 1917, the British government spoke of Palestine being recognized as ‘the National Home of the Jewish people’, with the conditions of their ‘national life’ being determined with representatives of the ‘Zionist Organization.’ There is no mention of the theme dwelt upon by Balfour and others in the government of historical Jewish suffering and the need for a refuge and neither is there any mention of the majority of the population – Arab – actually living in Palestine.

On July 18 the Zionists produced their amended version in which Palestine would be ‘reconstituted’ as the national home of the Jewish people. In August Lord Milner, a senior figure in the government prepared a draft removing ‘reconstituted’ and referring to ‘a’ Jewish national home ‘in’ Palestine. This was approved by Balfour but opposed by Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, both Jewish and anti-zionist, who described Zionism as a ‘mischievous political creed’, who said there was no Jewish nation and even argued that Zionism should be declared as illegal ‘and against the national interest.’ By longing for the day when he could ‘shake British soil from his shoes’ and go to Palestine, the British Jew would have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and admitted that ‘he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain or to be treated as an Englishman.’ At a Cabinet meeting on October 4, Montagu again objected vigorously, with the support of Lord Curzon, who asked ‘How was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place?’

In Washington on October 13, President Wilson approved to have the British draft, clearly without spending much time thinking about it. Back in London, a reworded draft referred to the British government viewing with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish ‘race’, a phrase as bereft of any logic, historical or otherwise, as the Jewish ‘people’ or ‘nation.’ This time, however, the draft referred to the civil and religious rights of ‘existing’ non-Jewish communities in Palestine – the Palestinians, 90 percent of the population- as well as the rights of Jews elsewhere who were content with their existing nationality ‘and citizenship’, Balfour added.

This draft was also approved by Wilson. Alterations at the behest of Louis Brandeis led to further rewording, especially ‘people’ instead of ‘race.’ The reference to the rights of the ‘existing non-Jewish communities’ raised objections from the Zionists. How could anyone think that they could be damaged by the establishment of a national Jewish home? After all, did not Jewish religious tradition prescribe that the stranger must be looked after? In their inverted world, it was the stranger, themselves, who owned the land and the true owners, individually and collectively, the people of Palestine, who were the strangers, not that the Zionists had any intention of looking after them or even sharing the land. They wanted to get rid of them.

The final form of the declaration was approved by the War Cabinet on October 31 and issued on November 2. It ends with Balfour’s request to Lord Rothschild to bring the declaration to the notice of the Zionist Federation. Nothing more cynically humorous had ever been penned than these two lines, wrote Jeffries, seeing that the Zionists had collaborated in drafting the declaration: in its final form it would never have been issued without their approval. Jeffries describes the document as the most discreditable produced by a British government in living memory.

He follows a trail spotted with lies and deceit to where it led after the war, to a mandatory administration of Palestine top-heavy with Zionists and Palestine resistance to the Anglo-Zionist occupation of their land. By 1937 the Peel report was recommending partition and transfer of part of the Palestinian population, a solution which the Zionists wanted not in part but full but part would at least be a start. Wrote Jeffries: ‘How can anyone suggest that about a quarter of the Arab population should be removed by force from the land which they and theirs have occupied for centuries?’

Colin Andersen, blending original material from Palestine: The Reality and Jeffries’ other writings with his own analysis and interpretation, has produced a book that no student of Britain’s deceits from Husain-McMahon to the Balfour Declaration should leave unread. There is a broader context, of course. In 1917, as the Balfour Declaration was being prepared and the world was reacting to the Bolshevik revolution, Lloyd George was giving assurances to the British labor movement that territorial annexation was the last thing the government had on its own mind.

The British were sick of war and the government was alarmed at the effects of the Bolshevik revolution, at a time it needed to ‘comb out’ more working-class men of fighting age to send to the front. They had to be deceived. In December 1917, addressing trade union leaders, Lloyd George asserted that ‘our one object in the war was to defend the violated public law of Europe, to vindicate Treaty obligations and to secure the restoration of Belgium.’ The release by the Bolsheviks of the contents of Sykes-Picot on November 23 had been an embarrassment but the Labor Party could still issue a statement praising Lloyd George, whose speech had revealed ‘a government and a people seeking no selfish or predatory aims of any kind, pursuing with one unchanging mind, one unchanging purpose: to obtain justice for others so that we thereby secure for ourselves a lasting peace. We desire neither to destroy Germany or diminish her boundaries: we seek neither to exalt ourselves nor to enlarge our empire.’

The immense harm which has been done to the Palestinians also has to be set in a broader regional context. The partition of Arab lands was of a piece with the planned partition of Anatolia, where the powers planned to establish a Christian Armenian ‘protectorate’ in eastern provinces where the population was 80 percent Muslim. In 1919 Lloyd George was the principal architect of the Greek invasion of western Anatolia, which was not to end, after great loss of life and massive destruction, until 1922. In the same year the British government launched the ‘war of intervention’ against the Bolsheviks: in the 1930s it launched the war of non-intervention against the republican government of Spain as well as enabling the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the Japanese invasion of China. Class and money interests of the British establishment took precedence over national interests (not that by this same establishment they were seen as being any different).

We can see continuity in the leading role Britain has played in the destruction of Iraq and Libya and the devastation of Syria by armed proxies over the past eight years, up to the missile attack of April 14. The record of lies, deception, intimidation, and aggression all the way since 1915 is practically seamless. We can only imagine what a journalist of the caliber of J.M.N Jeffries would have made of all this.

– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press).

April 22, 2018 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Palestinian lecturer shot dead in Malaysia

MEMO | April 21, 2018

A Palestinian family on Saturday accused Israel’s spy agency Mossad of killing a Palestinian lecturer in Malaysia.

Fadi Mohammed al-Batsh, 35, was shot dead by two gunmen on a high-powered motorcade near his home in the capital Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, Malaysian police said.

“The suspect fired 10 shots, four of which hit the lecturer in the head and body. He died on the spot,” the official Bernama news agency quoted Kuala Lumpur police chief Mazlan Lazim as saying.

Mazlan said a recording of a closed-circuit television camera near the scene showed the two assailants waited for about 20 minutes for the Palestinian lecturer.

“We believe the lecturer was their target because two other individuals walked by the place earlier unharmed,” he said.

The lecturer’s family, meanwhile, said Mossad was behind his assassination.

“We accuse Mossad of standing behind the energy researcher’s assassination,” the al-Batsh family in the Gaza Strip said in a statement.

The family called on the Malaysian police to launch an investigation into the killing.

There has been no comment from Israeli authorities on the accusations.

Meanwhile, Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, confirmed that the lecturer was a group member.

“The martyr was distinguished by his excellence and scientific creativity,” Hamas said in a statement.

It, however, did not accuse any side of killing al-Batsh.

In late 2016, Palestinian drone expert Mohamed al-Zawari, was shot dead in Tunisia, with Hamas accusing Israel of killing him.

Israel is widely believed to have killed numerous Palestinian resistance activists in the past, many of them overseas.

In 1997, Mossad agents tried — and failed — to kill Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal in Jordan by spraying poison into his ear.

Mossad is also believed to have been behind the assassination in 2010 of top Hamas commander Mahmud al-Mabhuh in a Dubai hotel.

Israel has never confirmed or denied its involvement in Mabhuh’s murder.

April 21, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Zionism | Leave a comment

Ontario anti-racism committee members tied to racist JNF

By Yves Engler · April 20, 2018

Independent Jewish Voices and the United Jewish People’s Order’s exclusion from an Anti-Racism Directorate committee has rightly been criticized. But, the Ontario government’s more appalling decision to appoint individuals tied to an explicitly racist organization has been ignored.

Two years ago the Liberals put forward a plan titled “A Better Way Forward: Ontario’s 3-Year Anti-Racism Strategic Plan How we’re taking proactive steps to fight and prevent systemic racism in government decision-making, programs and services.” As part of the initiative, the government’s Anti-Racism Directorate set up four subcommittees last year to look at anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Black racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

A number of members of the subcommittee on anti-Semitism have personal or institutional ties to the Jewish National Fund, which practices a form of discrimination outlawed in a famed seven-decade-old Supreme Court of Canada ruling.

A member of the subcommittee, Madi Murariu, is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ (CIJA) Associate Director for Ontario Government Relations and Public Affairs. CIJA and JNF Canada often work together and sponsor each other’s events. Additionally, CIJA staff fundraise for the explicitly racist organization and JNF Canada CEO Lance Davis previously worked as CIJA’s National Jewish Campus Life director.

Another subcommittee member, Karen Mock, chairs JSpaceCanada, which was a “participating organization” with JNF Canada on a 2016 event honouring the life of former Israeli president Shimon Peres. Mock also sat on the board of the Canadian Peres Center for Peace Foundation, which raised funds for the Israeli-based Peres Center For Peace. In Israel the Peres Center operated a slew of projects with JNF Canada and other branches of the racist group.

Zach Potashner represents the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center on the subcommittee. One of its directors, Tony Comper, was guest of honour for the 2009 Toronto JNF Negev Dinner fundraiser and a Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Spirit of Hope Benefit chair, Ron Frisch, chaired JNF Toronto’s Campaign and Negev Dinner.

Brianna Ames, a volunteer with the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, represents that organization on the subcommittee. A CJPAC founder and former executive director, Josh Cooper, left the organization to become head of JNF Toronto in 2009 and subsequently CEO of JNF Canada. Another founding member of CJPAC, Michael Levitt, was a JNF Canada board member.

A co-chair of the subcommittee on anti-Semitism is Andrea Freedman, President of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa. Freedman’s organization regularly promotes JNF Ottawa events and funds the centre where it’s based (adjacent to the Jewish Federation of Ottawa offices). The other subcommittee co-chair is Bernie Farber. During Farber’s quarter century at the Canadian Jewish Congress the organization and its personnel had many ties to the JNF.

I found no support from Farber, Mock or the rest of the above-mentioned individuals for Independent Jewish Voices’ campaign to revoke JNF Canada’s charitable status (or other criticism of the explicitly racist organization). An owner of 13 per cent of Israel’s land, the JNF discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis) who make up one-fifth of the population. According to a UN report, JNF lands are “chartered to benefit Jews exclusively,” which has led to an “institutionalized form of discrimination.” Echoing the UN, a 2012 US State Department report detailing “institutional and societal discrimination” in Israel says JNF “statutes prohibit sale or lease of land to non-Jews.”

Indicative of its discrimination against Israelis who aren’t Jewish, JNF Canada’s Twitter tag says it “is the caretaker of the land of Israel, on behalf of its owners — Jewish people everywhere.” Its parent organization in Israel — the Keren Kayemet LeYisrael — is even more open about its racism. Its website notes that “a survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.”

JNF-style discrimination was effectively outlawed in this country in 1951. In 1948 Annie Noble decided to sell a cottage in the exclusive Beach O’ Pines subdivision on Lake Huron to Bernie Wolf, who was Jewish. During the sale Wolf’s lawyer realized that the original deed for the property restricted sale to “any person wholly or partly of negro, Asiatic, coloured or Semitic blood.” A Toronto court and the Ontario Court of Appeal refused to invalidate the racist land covenant. But Noble pursued the case — with assistance from the Canadian Jewish Congress — to the Supreme Court of Canada. In one of the most important blows to legalistic racism in this country, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts’ ruling and allowed Noble to purchase the property. This decision led to the abolition of racist land covenants in this country.

Should we laugh or cry at an Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate subcommittee led by individuals with ties to an organization practicing discriminatory land-use policies outlawed in this country seven decades ago?

April 21, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Canada, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Modi’s homage to Herzl comes to haunt him

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | April 20, 2018

The Israelis are in a bloody mess. They don’t know how to handle it – Palestinians in their thousands taking a leaf out of Gandhi and protesting non-violently against their colonial masters ignoring their fearsome reputation for brutality. And, to boot, women are at the barricades leading the Great Return March. Bravo!

So far, 37 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli troops and more than 1,500 injured with live ammunition. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has given advance instructions to the army to shoot to kill. Today, the Israeli troopers shot down two more Palestinians. Today’s has been the fourth weekly protest. The escalating showdown with Israel is to culminate in a mass march on May 15.

The marches are pressing for the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to what is now Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were evicted from their homes and forced to leave their homeland in the 1948 atrocities by the Jewish extremists to pave the way for Israel’s creation. Palestinians mark May 15 (the anniversary Israel celebrates as its founding day) as their “nakba,” or catastrophe.

Ominously, that is also the date President Trump has chosen to shift the American embassy to Jerusalem. What crass insensitivity! But then, Trump needs Jewish money and Jewish media support in his campaign for re-election in 2020. Son-in-law Jared Kushner who is Trump’s point person on the Middle East also happens to be a Jew – some say, a closet rabbi.

Part of the reason for the protests is the crippling Israeli border blockade on Gaza since 2007. Evidently, the mass marches are also fueled by growing desperation among Gaza’s 2 million residents who are trapped in the tiny coastal territory amidst a gutted economy and deepened poverty. The Gaza residents typically get fewer than five hours of electricity per day, while unemployment has soared above 40 percent.

Despite Israel’s media manipulation to change the narrative and divert attention away from the Palestinian issue toward Iran, there is some uneasiness among American Jews as to where all this is heading and what damage all this is causing to Israel’s future in a medium term scenario. (Of course, America’s “exceptionalism” becomes a macabre joke.)

The White House envoy Jason Greenblatt, a member of President Donald Trump’s Mideast team, has admitted on social media that Palestinians in Gaza have a “right to protest their dire humanitarian circumstances.” He added that organizers “should focus on that message, not stoke the potential for more violence with firebombs and flaming kites, and must keep a safe distance from the border… the cost of these demonstrations is too high in loss of life and injuries.” Greenblatt is a devout and observant Jew himself – although he has opted not to wear a kippa while serving the Trump administration.

Another noted figure, actress Natalie Portman – also a Jewess – who is the recipient of an award, which is dubbed the “Jewish Nobel”, has pulled out of the June awards ceremony in Israel because of “extreme distress” over the brutal violence in that country. The Jerusalem-born Oscar winner intimated the Israeli organizers that she “does not feel comfortable participating in any public events in Israel.”

To my mind, the silence of the Indian government on Israel’s premeditated killings is deafening. How hypocrtical that our current leadership keeps chanting “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (whole-world-is-one-single-family) as its foreign-policy motto! I can only hope that Prime Minister Modi gets to know about all this at some point – and sincerely repents.

Actress Natalie Portman puts him to shame. Indeed, Modi’s visit to the marble tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, in Jerusalem last July stands out as a dark page in the chronicle of independent India’s current history.

I can understand Modi’s lack of erudition. But what I cannot understand why those fellows in his entourage who would have heard somewhere, sometime, someplace about the ideology of Zionism — and Gandhi’s visceral opposition to it — and didn’t alert their prime minister that he was making an appalling error of judgment. Probably, they chickened out.

Read a stirring dispatch from Gaza Strip by Al Jazeera, here, on Friday’s protests that have been labeled as the “Women’s March of Gaza.”

April 20, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Gaza, Human rights, India, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Russian diplomat says Britain deserves title of world’s worst genocide perpetrator

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

TASS | April 19, 2018

MOSCOW – Britain may well be described as the holder of the world’s genocide record, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday in response to claims by UK ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow to the effect Russia was allegedly behind a number of contract killings.

“Britain is the world’s worst genocider,” she said. “The thought of how many millions of innocent people were put to death in the British colonies is terrifying.”

Zakharova recalled that according to various estimates, British colonists exterminated up to 90%-95% of the aborigines in the process of colonizing Australia.

In the 1870s, Britain conducted genocide against the Zulus in Cape Colony, and in 1954-1961, against the Kikuyu people in Kenya, she recalled.

“In retaliation for the killing of 32 white colonists the British authorities exterminated 300,000 members of the Kikuyu people and drove another 1.5 million into concentration camps,” she said.

In all, Zakharova made public 17 pages of archive information describing Britain’s unseemly actions in the world scene over many years.

April 20, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Africa, Australia, Russia, UK | Leave a comment

Hasbara memo: “When Israelis murder Palestinians, it’s a tragedy — for Israelis.”

© Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters

By Richard Hugus | April 19, 2018

Since the start of the latest massacre in Gaza — the killing with live fire of almost 40 and wounding of almost 3,000 unarmed Palestinian protestors during the March of Return — propaganda in service of Israel has been mobilized to cover up the blatant crime. Three days after the March began, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston issued an unbelievably twisted statement on the attacks. What follows is their statement, with comments inserted in italics:

Jewish Community Relations Council Statement on Events Along Gaza Border

April 2, 2018

“We see the events along the Gaza-Israel border this weekend as the continuation of one of the great tragedies of our time.”
— This implies that Gaza is a sovereign country bordering Israel, not the prison for Palestinian refugees that Israel established decades ago in the south of Palestine.

“This is a situation where many are at fault, leaving individuals in impossible situations with impossible choices.”
— When someone is morally at fault, the situation is always “complicated.” As we shall see, the “many at fault” are always Palestinians, not Israelis.

“It is a tragedy for the people of Gaza that, 12 years after the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip, they live under such difficult conditions.”
— “Tragedy” in Greek theater held that events are written by our fate and could not have been otherwise. If Zionism had not chosen Palestine in the late 1800’s and then proceeded to steal land from Palestinians from then on, it could very much have been otherwise. There was an actor here; there was a cause, and an effect. The cause of the “tragedy” was Zionism. Ask the settlers to return to their own countries, and the “tragedy” would end.
The sentence also implies that Israel made a noble gesture when it withdrew from Gaza, and that it is the fault of the Palestinians that they did not make the best of this generous gift. In fact, Israel left Gaza because it was more expedient for Israel to administer Gaza as a prison than to occupy it. The “difficult conditions” faced by the people of Gaza are the result of Israeli control over everything and everyone that goes into and out of it. The “difficult conditions” are the result of repeated Israeli bombings of critical infrastructure, and Israel’s clear plan for the complete immiseration of Gaza’s two million people.

“It is a tragedy for the Palestinians that Gaza was taken over by Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist organization that rules in a brutal dictatorship.”
— Hamas was democratically elected by its people because it distinguished itself from the collaborationist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Israel defines Hamas as terrorist because Hamas is determined to resist the Zionist entity. Israel’s minions in legislative bodies in other countries have been used to create the “designated terrorist” label.
“Brutal dictatorship” is a buzzword applied to all political movements asserting independence from imperialist control.

“It is a tragedy that Hamas has chosen to direct its resources to the building of tunnels and rockets, rather than building hospitals, schools, housing, and factories that would create prosperity and opportunity for the Palestinian people.”
— Are these the same hospitals, schools, housing and factories that Israel has been bombing since 2006? Are these the same tunnels that Gazans used to bring in vital humanitarian goods not allowed through Israeli checkpoints? Doesn’t Hamas have the right to its primitive rockets when Gazans are being periodically bombarded by Israel and its highly sophisticated fighter jets?

“It is a tragedy that, by squandering the opportunity to build a better future for the Palestinian people, Hamas has forced Israel and Egypt to secure their own borders with a blockade to prevent the further weaponization of Gaza.”
— For choosing resistance against the Zionist occupier, the Palestinian people were punished by the Zionist occupier and his servants in Egypt. The blockade is not just against weapons, it’s against any freedom of movement, and any importation of needed goods. Even people in need of urgent medical care are refused. The main purpose of the Israeli blockade is to starve Gaza, to “put them on a diet”, as one Israeli official said. To its everlasting shame, the West-installed political class in Egypt – not the Egyptian people – has chosen to collaborate.

“It is a tragedy that the Palestinian people of Gaza have no recourse against their leaders, living without elections or even the ability to protest those in power openly on pain of death.”
— Again, Hamas was democratically elected in 2006. One would think “the only democracy in the Middle East” would appreciate this. Stories of Hamas killing protesters have appeared only in the Israeli press – e.g., the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel. However, there are stories every day in the worldwide press of Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian protestors all over the West Bank. Let’s also remember that the March of Return in Gaza is made up of protestors, and that Israel sent snipers there for the explicit purpose of killing and wounding them. This is not to mention the “recourse against” Hamas leaders employed over the years by Israel – namely, open assassination.

“It is a tragedy that they are deceived by their own leaders with the unrealistic promise of a destructive victory over the State of Israel – a victory that will never come. It is a tragedy that their own government chooses to use them as human shields, perpetuating their suffering for nefarious self-interest.”
— As the Borg said, “Resistance is futile.” Isn’t the promotion of the idea of an unconquerable Israel the worst kind of war propaganda? The “human shields” argument has been used by Israel as an excuse for intentionally killing hundreds of civilians during its repeated bombing campaigns. What is the “nefarious self-interest” of Gaza’s leadership? — liberation from Israeli torture.

“It is a tragedy that the Israeli people look at Gaza and see the end of a dream; to live in peace with their neighbors.”
— The “dream” of the majority of the Israeli people today is to remove Palestinians from all of historic Palestine, and completely erase Palestinian history. Israelis do not “live in peace with their neighbors.” They have repeatedly attacked Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria and they are the main instigators today of conflict and war with Iran.

“It is a tragedy that Israelis living near the border are terrorized by threats coming from tunnels under their homes and rockets over their schools.”
–The main tactic of this propaganda piece is to blame the victim. Thus, nothing was done through the agency of the Jewish state and its obvious goals; everything was done as a reaction to injustices committed by Palestinians. It also turns reality on its head. Homes and schools have indeed been destroyed, but by Israel.

“It is a tragedy that when Israelis do what any other nation in the world would do – protect their border from being overrun – that they endure a condemnation that no other nation would receive.”
— This is the “why pick on us?” argument. Why? Because Israel has the ugliest, most long-standing system of open colonization and oppression visible in the world today. The vast majority of the people of the world are disgusted. What Israel claims as its “borders” is stolen land.

“It is a tragedy that Israelis experience this singling out as a further example of an isolation, their status as “the Jew amongst the nations,” with only themselves to protect their inalienable rights to live in security.”
— This is the “Jew as victim” argument, made possible by unrelenting Holocaust instruction since World War II, which provides a guaranteed pass for any and all crimes committed by Jews. Since 2001, Israel, the poor victim nation, has gotten the United States to attack a long list of countries in the Middle East which Israel feels threatened by, now including Russia because Russia has thrown a wrench into Israeli plans to destroy Syria. Israel also receives massive direct funding and political cover from the United Sates.
If Israel resents its status as “the Jew amongst the nations” why does it call itself “the Jewish state”? Why does it display the Star of David on all its national symbols and armaments? This is an identity which Israelis promote – how can they now turn around and blame us for it?

“It is a tragedy because this weekend, young men and women of the Israel Defense Forces stared down the sights of their rifles and learned violence at a time when they should have been at home with their families celebrating freedom at the Passover table.”
— The idea that it is the Israeli Occupation Forces who have suffered because they have had to kill and maim defenseless Palestinians is a perfect example of what Zionist supremacy and racism is. It is a form of self-worship and psychopathy in which one is never responsible for committing any wrong — it is always the fault of the other. This sentence is reminiscent of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir saying: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” In other words, the real crime has been committed against Jews, whose purity has been sullied by having to kill innocent people (as they were invading their land and homes).
This belief of Jewish superiority above others is at the bottom of everything Palestinians have suffered for the past 70 years.

“It is a tragedy because Palestinians need some way to express their frustrations – at Israel and at their own government after years of wasted opportunities to build a better life for the people of Gaza. Instead they experienced more manipulation, and more loss.”
–No, the ” frustration” Palestinians feel is from being consistently and sadistically blocked from life and liberty by the Israeli prison-keeper. The real manipulators are those who would have us believe the oppressive tactics of Israel are of the Palestinians’ own making, as this sentence implies.

“We see this weekend as the continuation of a tragedy that has not brought the people of Israel and Gaza any closer to a future of peace and hope for all of their children. As the Boston Jewish community continues to celebrate the Passover holiday this week, we are mindful of the lessons learned at our seders, that we do not rejoice over the tragedy of others and we are ever hopeful for peace and stability for all people.”
— Again, no recognition that this “tragedy” might be in any way the fault of Israel. Israel is supported, not by “the Boston Jewish community” but by a cynically propagandistic Washington-based lobby for Israel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which provides the political line for 125 supposedly local Jewish Community Relations Councils in the US. In other words, a political lobby for a country 6,000 miles away says they speak for all Jews in Boston.
In 2016 the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston sponsored a deceptive anti-boycott bill in the Massachusetts legislature. They were successfully opposed by a large number of Jewish activists in the state, and many others. The Council now claims to represent the Jewish community of Boston in mobilizing opposition to a motion in the Cambridge city council to boycott Hewlett-Packard. When was the vote in which “the Boston Jewish community” elected this Council? Who is the real manipulator in this scenario? Doesn’t the Jewish Community Relations Council actually represent a foreign political movement — not Cambridge, not Boston, not Massachusetts?
Israel, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t repeatedly murder people in Gaza in broad daylight and then piously claim you’re for “ peace and stability for all people.”

April 19, 2018 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Hamas, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

May Let off Lightly after Launching Air-Strike Without Parliament’s Permission

So will the UK Government make a habit of by-passing MPs when contemplating future military action?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | April 19, 2018

On Monday Theresa May came to the House of Commons to answer questions about the air-strikes she and her Cabinet authorised against Syrian targets last Saturday.

It’s a wonder she didn’t arrive by abseiling onto the roof of Parliament from a helicopter. Or, in the style of the Iron Lady, driving through the gates at the helm of a Challenger tank, chiffon scarf fluttering in the Westminster breeze.

Her party whips had been busy. An army of Conservative puppets danced to a rehearsed tune with plenty of carefully scripted questions. The situation was a minefield but nobody planted a truly high explosive charge in Mrs May’s path. Just a handful of harmless thunderflashes were lobbed. She was not held to account. And she came through it looking much more confident than when she faced the press on Saturday.

She started proceedings with this statement:

“Let me set this out in detail: we support strongly the work of the OPCW fact-finding mission that is currently in Damascus, but that mission is only able to make an assessment of whether chemical weapons were used. Even if the OPCW team is able to visit Douma to gather information to make that assessment—and it is currently being prevented from doing so by the regime and the Russians—it cannot attribute responsibility. This is because Russia vetoed, in November 2017, an extension of the joint investigatory mechanism set up to do this, and last week, in the wake of the Douma attack, it again vetoed a new UNSC resolution to re-establish such a mechanism…. For as long as Russia continued to veto the UN Security Council would still not be able to act. So we cannot wait to alleviate further humanitarian suffering caused by chemical weapons attacks.

“Secondly, were we not just following orders from America? Let me be absolutely clear: we have acted because it is in our national interest to do so. It is in our national interest to prevent the further use of chemical weapons in Syria and to uphold and defend the global consensus that these weapons should not be used, for we cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised—within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere.

“So we have not done this because President Trump asked us to; we have done it because we believed it was the right thing to do. And we are not alone. Over the weekend I have spoken to a range of world leaders…. All have expressed their support for the actions that Britain, France and America have taken.

“Thirdly, why did we not recall Parliament? The speed with which we acted was essential in co-operating with our partners to alleviate further humanitarian suffering and to maintain the vital security of our operations. This was a limited, targeted strike on a legal basis that has been used before. And it was a decision that required the evaluation of intelligence and information, much of which was of a nature that could not be shared with Parliament. We have always been clear that the Government have the right to act quickly in the national interest. I am absolutely clear, Mr Speaker, that it is Parliament’s responsibility to hold me to account for such decisions, and Parliament will do so. But it is my responsibility as Prime Minster to make these decisions—and I will make them.”

She went on to assure MPs that the military action “was not about intervening in the civil war in Syria or about regime change”.

Legality questioned

In reply, Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “I believe that the action was legally questionable, and on Saturday the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, said as much, reiterating that all countries must act in line with the United Nations charter, which states that action must be in self-defence or be authorised by the United Nations Security Council. The Prime Minister has assured us that the Attorney General had given clear legal advice approving the action. I hope the Prime Minister will now publish this advice in full today.”

As regards the disputed humanitarian intervention doctrine he remarked: “The Foreign Secretary said yesterday that these strikes would have no bearing on the civil war. The Prime Minister has reiterated that today by saying that this is not what these military strikes were about. Does, for example, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen entitle other countries to arrogate to themselves the right to bomb Saudi airfields or its positions in Yemen, especially given its use of banned cluster bombs and white phosphorus? Three United Nations agencies said in January that Yemen was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, so will the Prime Minister today commit to ending support to the Saudi bombing campaign and arms sales to Saudi Arabia?

“Given that neither the UN nor the OPCW has yet investigated the Douma attack, it is clear that diplomatic and non-military means have not been fully exhausted.”

May responded: “The problem [re Douma] is that the investigation is being stopped. The regime and the Russians are preventing the OPCW from investigating. Moreover, again, the regime has reportedly been attempting to conceal the evidence by searching evacuees from Douma to ensure that they are not taking out of the region samples that could be tested elsewhere, and a wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is under way, supported by the Russians….

“I think it important that this was a joint international effort. The strikes were carefully targeted, and proper analysis was carried out to ensure that they were targeted at sites that were relevant to the chemical weapons capability of the regime. We did this to alleviate further human suffering….”

MPs from all sides then piled in, as called by the Speaker.

Parliament “emasculated”?

Hostile questioning was generally too polite, causing May little discomfort. I missed many of the contributions while yawning, but there were some that I thought worth passing on.

Sir Nicholas Soames, Churchill’s grandson, asked: “My right hon. Friend will agree that the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances, is illegal, contrary to all the laws of war and utterly reprehensible. Will she therefore confirm that the Government will at a later date seek the arraignment at an international court of those who instigate these vile acts, whoever they may be?”

Soames is Pro-Palestinian and a sharp critic of Israel, so the thrust was obvious. But she sidestepped it, replying: “My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the illegality of the use of chemical weapons and the impact of their use. We believe that those who are responsible should be held to account.”

But, clearly, her Government would be doing no such thing.

There are many Conservatives and Labourites in the House who voted for the Iraq war and are still too dim to repent or learn the simple lesson. They and many newcomers queued up to express support for the bombing. Among them was glamorous Priti Patel (Witham) (Con) who, only six months ago as former International Development Secretary, had numerous meetings with Israeli politicians (including prime minister Netanyahu and his security minister) during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present – a gross breach of security.

She now seems anxious to rehabilititate herself in the corridors of power. “There are no words to describe the appalling nature of the humanitarian disaster that confronts Syria,” she told May, “which is why I commend my right hon. Friend for the strong action that she has taken and the support she is giving to the Syrian people. Will she assure the House that in the face of the abhorrent abuses perpetrated by the Assad regime, hers will continue to be a strong voice in favour of the international rules-based system, and will she show that Britain will not stand idly by when cruel weapons are used to murder innocent children and families?”

Patel had toured the Golan Heights (Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis and illegally occupied ever since) with the thieving occupation army – another monumental diplomatic blunder. So this avid Israel stooge has little concern for international rules. Fellow stooge May managed to leave open the option to continue idly ignoring Israel’s crimes. “We will ensure that our voice is heard. It is absolutely right that it was the right thing to do and was in our national interest, but it is also important that we are standing up for that international rules-based order and continue to do so.” Words are cheap; we never see action.

Other MPs were suspicious of May’s I-did-it-my-way act. Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) challenged her on the point that the legal basis relies on there having been no practicable alternative. She enquired whether the UK had asked the OPCW to inspect the Him Shinsar and Barzeh sites. The Prime Minister responded: “We have been very clear that we would like it to be possible for the OPCW to investigate sites in Syria, for there to be proper identification of the chemical weapons and for there to be proper accountability for the use of those chemical weapons.”

Caroline Lucas: “Did you ask?”

May: “Last Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council, there was going to be a proposal and resolution that would have enabled a proper investigative mechanism to be re-introduced to look at the use of chemical weapons and at what chemical weapons were available in Syria and held by the regime and at their capabilities and to be able to ascertain accountability for those chemical weapons? That draft resolution was vetoed by Russia.”

That’s not quite how I read the UN’s own account of the situation. However….

Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab) wanted to know whether the Prime Minister was planning to use Executive powers again with regard to military action in Syria—in breach of the commonly understood parliamentary protocol that would have given the House a say in a matter of war. “There is clear opposition from British people to airstrikes, and I think the public are right to be sceptical, so will the Prime Minister also explain how airstrikes have improved the safety and security of Syrian people practically, when we are aware that the bombing and violence is continuing unabated throughout the region?”

May replied: “The strikes that took place were about degrading the chemical weapons capability of the Syrian regime…. the assessment we have made is that the strikes were successful…. It is by degrading its chemical weapons capability that we can have an impact and ensure that we are reducing the likelihood of the humanitarian suffering in the future.”

Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP): “The policy paper on the UK Government’s legal position says the UK is permitted under international law, on an exceptional basis, to take measures in order to alleviate overwhelming humanitarian suffering. It does not, however, cite any authority for that proposition: it does not quote the UN charter, and it does not refer to any Security Council resolution nor any international treaty of any kind. Will the Prime Minister tell us why that proposition is unvouched for in the policy paper?”

May replied: “The basis on which we undertook this action is one that has been accepted by Governments previously and one under which previous action has been taken. I believe that it continues to be the right basis for ensuring that we can act to alleviate humanitarian suffering, and I would have thought the alleviation of humanitarian suffering was something that should gain support from across the whole House.”

Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab) quoted the Prime Minister from her statement that she was ‘confident in our own assessment that the Syrian regime was highly likely responsible’. Surely, she asked, “the burden of proof should be beyond reasonable doubt, as opposed to being ‘highly likely’? “In addition,” she said, “I would be interested to know who ‘we’ are, given that Parliament was not consulted.”

May replied: “The Government made their assessments. Those were not just the view of the UK Government; they were shared by our allies and on that basis we acted.”

Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP) was quite bold: “So far today the Prime Minister has ducked out of questions about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world—Yemen—and she has not answered why she did not wait until the outcome of the OPCW inspections. She has not explained why a parliamentary recall would jeopardise the action that President Trump had already tweeted about. She has not answered about providing further humanitarian assistance and additional support for refugees, and yet she talks about parliamentary scrutiny. How is a statement after the event parliamentary scrutiny when she will not answer any hard questions?”

To which the Prime Minister replied: “The hon. Gentleman talks about me not answering questions on refugees, but I have done so, or on the OPCW, but I have done so. I have answered many questions…. ”

David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con) gave her a friendly lob: “Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that, contrary to claims over the weekend, there is no evidence that any British defence export products have ended up in the wrong hands in Syria?”

The Prime Minister: “I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance.”

But is it true?

Attempt to rein in wayward prime ministers

For the record, the policy paper published by May’s Government setting out the case for military intervention states:

The UK is permitted under international law, on an exceptional basis, to take measures in order to alleviate overwhelming humanitarian suffering. The legal basis for the use of force is humanitarian intervention, which requires three conditions to be met:

(i) there is convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief;

(ii) it must be objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved; and

(iii) the proposed use of force must be necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian suffering and must be strictly limited in time and in scope to this aim (i.e. the minimum necessary to achieve that end and for no other purpose).

Of course this could just as easily apply to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where nearly 2 million starving people have been under the cosh of Israel’s vicious blockade and bombardments for more than 10 years. Or in Yemen. But UK parliamentarians and US Congressmen would wet themselves at any thought of air strikes against the despicable regimes they are in bed with.

May denied that she took orders from Trump yet had seemed desperate to fit in with Trump’s timetable and jump the gun on the OPCW inspectors’ reports. And she could easily have recalled Parliament during the week leading up to the strike had she wanted to.

The next day, Tuesday, in an emergency debate secured by Corbyn, MPs discussed Parliament’s role in (and exclusion from) approving military action in Syria. Corbyn used the occasion to accuse the PM of by-passing Parliament saying she had “tossed aside” the precedent set by the 2003 Iraq War vote because it was “inconvenient”, and it was now time for Parliament to “assert its authority” over UK military action and take back control. Otherwise, he said, authorising air strikes without Parliament’s approval, if it became the norm, could lead to more dangerous action in the future.

Corbyn called for a new War Powers Act that would require Parliament to be consulted on military intervention. Mrs May reacted angrily to suggestions that Donald Trump had been given more say in Britain’s part in the air-strike than the UK Parliament.

At the end of the debate, MPs voted in favour of a woolly motion that they had “considered Parliament’s rights in relation to the approval of military action by British forces overseas”, which of course moves us no further forward.

May was buffeted by the Syrian bombing affair but escaped the severe mauling she deserved. Within the Westminster bubble she emerges unscathed. Only time and the truth about Douma and Salisbury (when it is eventually known) will tell whether she can get away with it in the outside world.

April 19, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Syria, UK, Zionism | Leave a comment

Durham Becomes First US City to Ban Police Exchanges with Israel

Palestine Chronicle – April 18, 2018

On Monday, April 16, 2018, the Durham city council in the US, became the first US city council to ban police exchanges with the Israeli policy.

“After 3.5 hours and 50 powerful and inspiring testimonies, the Durham city council has just unanimously passed a resolution to end Durham police training in Israel,” said Eran Efrati, one of the organizers of the Demilitarize from Durham2Palestine campaign, which stood behind the vote, in a Facebook post.

“After years of hard work, Durham becomes the first city in the US to ban American police forces exchanges with the Israeli military and police,” he added.

The campaign has launched a petition which was signed by 1,394 people, calling on the council to ban police exchanges with Israel.

The petition read,

“The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of Color. They persist in using tactics of extrajudicial killing, excessive force, racial profiling, and repression of social justice movements. Such tactics have been condemned by international human rights organizations for violating the human rights of Palestinians.”

The petition added,

“These tactics further militarize U.S. police forces that train in Israel, and this training helps the police terrorize Black and Brown communities here in the US. Additionally, such practices erode our constitutional rights to due process, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. Durham officials — including former Chief Lopez and current Chief Davis — have participated in these racist police exchange programs.”

The Palestine solidarity among minorities and marginalized communities has seen a growth in the last few years, with minorities and people of color joining the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel.

April 18, 2018 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Human rights, Israel, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Whose Wars?

Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 17, 2018

In March 2003, Pat Buchanan wrote a groundbreaking article entitled “Whose War?” in opposition to the Bush Administration fueled growing hysteria over Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction which was producing demands for an armed intervention to disarm him. Buchanan rightly identified a number of prominent Jewish officials and journalists closely tied to the Israel Lobby as the principal driving force behind the rush to go to war.

Buchanan is still a powerful voice arguing against the war fever in its 2018 manifestation, which is all too similar to the hysteria prevailing in 2003. But if he were writing his article today, even though those demanding war are pretty much the same people with the same names including Podhoretz, Krauthammer, Kristol, Kagan, Brooks and Boot, he would have to broaden his purview to ask “Whose Wars?” as it is no longer a simple case of going after one third-world autocrat and overthrowing him, we are now instead being urged to attack Syria, Iran and even nuclear superpower Russia due to Moscow’s support of Damascus and its friendship with Tehran.

Lest there be any confusion, the same country keeps surfacing as a central player in the lead-up to America’s regime-change wars, which now have included an illegal attack on Syria, the second such intervention in the past year. That nation is Israel.

Israel’s fingerprints are all over American interventionism, reflecting Jewish power in the United States and the presence of a plethora of well-funded Israel-centric lobbies, think tanks and media outlets. Just last week, the only persistent voice in the mainstream media who, prior to Trump’s cruise missile attack, asked why on earth the United States should be contemplating a major power confrontation that could end life on this planet as we know it over Syria, where Washington has no vital interests, was Tucker Carlson of Fox News. His memorable monologue blasting the “talk show generals” who have “no idea of what is really happening” skewered the pretexts for war being bandied about in spite of the lack of any actual threat directed against the United States or a vital national interest is a model for what the Fourth Estate should be doing but isn’t. Carlson later followed up with an interview of Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. He asked what might be an American national interest that would mandate military involvement in Syria. Wicker hardly hesitated before responding, “If you care about Israel, you have to be interested in what’s going on in Syria.”

Israel indeed. And Israel is not at all shy about what it wants to happen, namely a war in Syria targeting both Damascus and Tehran, leading to a much bigger war with the Iranians. Fought by Uncle Sam, to be sure, as Jewish lives are far too precious to waste.

Tel Aviv has long been feeding the propaganda line relating to why war with Syria and Iran are desirable. Gilad Erdan, who is Netanyahu’s deputy in Likud and serves as Public Security Minister, addressed the latest alleged use of chemical weapons in Douma, saying “The shocking attack shows the incredible international hypocrisy of the international community focusing on Israel confronting the terrorist organization Hamas that is sending civilians to our [border] fence, when dozens are being killed in Syria every day. It shows the need for strengthening the presence of Americans and other international forces, because without them the genocide we are seeing will only intensify.”

Construction Minister Yoav Galant, a former IDF major-general and a security figure close to Netanyahu, also called for military action against the Syrian leader. “Assad is the angel of death, and the world would be better without him.”

The compassion for Syrian civilians, being expressed both in Washington and in Tel Aviv, is, of course, a joke. Donald Trump and John Bolton could care less about Syrian babies and if Trump were genuinely concerned about civilian deaths due to war crimes by governments the first country he would attack would be Israel. Erdan and Galant, meanwhile, serve in a government that has recently shot and killed or injured 2,000 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza, in some cases involving snipers having fun by shooting boys running away and cheering when they were successful, so their hypocrisy is evident.

Israel has also been busy at creating a pretext for using Syria as a stepping stone to Iran itself. The Associated Press is reporting comments by Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad, who claims to be “100 percent certain” that Iran remains committed to developing a nuclear bomb, which is the old “weapons of mass destruction” ploy used to jumpstart the Iraq War. Israel’s bombing attack on Syria that took place one day after the reports of the alleged chemical weapon incident, deliberately targeted Iranians, killing 7 at a military base near Damascus. Iran has promised to respond, guaranteeing that the conflict will expand and draw in both regional and foreign players, definitely including the United States.

More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the U.S., the U.K, and France for bombing Syria, an operation that was coordinated in advance with Israel by National Security Advisor John Bolton. Netanyahu went on to assert that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must understand that “his provision of a forward base for Iran and its proxies endangers Syria,” an analysis of the situation which is, of course, self-serving bullshit.

Unfortunately, Israel has a receptive quasi-American audience in the team that Donald Trump has pulled together under his son in law Jared Kushner to deal with the Middle East. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who is supposed to represent U.S. interests, has become adept at repeating Israeli Foreign Ministry talking points as if they were American policy, while Chief Negotiator Jason Greenblatt has warned demonstrating Gazans to avoid provoking Israel while also failing to advise the Israeli Army that shooting unarmed protesters just might be considered unacceptable.

Kushner-Friedman-Greenblatt is an Israeli dream team in place, backed up by a subservient Congress that reflexively does whatever Israel wishes. One wonders why Congressmen and the media are not screaming about the slaughter in Gaza and pondering how and why the United States has surrendered its sovereignty to a tiny client state in the Middle East, but never fear, Jewish power backed by lots of money is firmly in control of any entity that might challenge bad Israeli behavior. On top of Friedman, Greenblatt and Kushner, one might also add National Security Adviser John Bolton, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And Trump himself? Who knows what he actually thinks if he bothers to think at all. He has just announced that it is “mission accomplished” in Syria, suggesting that he is delusional as well as ignorant.

Media coverage of Syria, apart from Carlson, scrupulously avoids the issue that the United States is in Syria completely illegally and has been cynically supporting terrorist groups in spite of its pledge that it is in the country to get rid of such vermin. It is a measure of how divorced from actual U.S. security America’s Syria policy has become that the White House has not hesitated to launch a second illegal cruise missile barrage against a government that hasn’t attacked the U.S. and doesn’t threaten Americans. Bombing the Syrian government hasn’t made the U.S. or any other country more secure, and it will likely weaken President Bashar al-Assad just enough to prolong Syria’s civil war and add to the suffering of the civilian population. It is a perfect example of a military intervention that is being done for political reasons with no connection to any discernible interests or overall strategy.

Syria is only part of a much larger problem. It is remarkable the extent to which Israeli concerns dominate those of the United States, which now has a foreign policy that often is not even remotely connected to actual U.S. interests. Congress and the Special Counsel are investigating Russia’s alleged interference in America’s political system while looking the other way when Israel operates aggressively in the open and does much more damage. Netanyahu and his crew of unsavory cutthroats are hardly ever cited for their malignant influence over America’s political class and media. Bomb Syria? Sure. After all, it’s good for Israel.

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 – http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org

April 17, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Reports of Monday night attack on Syrian base blamed on false alarm

RT | April 17, 2018

Several sources in Syria said the overnight deployment of anti-aircraft weapons at a military base was triggered by a false alarm, not an actual missile attack, as previously claimed by some media outlets.

Syrian TV earlier reported a missile attack on Shayrat Airbase in Homs governorate, while a Lebanese media outlet with links to militant group Hezbollah said a separate attack targeted Al-Dumair base northeast of Damascus. Multiple sources now show the reports were inaccurate.

The Syrian news agency SANA cited a military source, who said anti-aircraft missiles were fired overnight after a false intrusion alarm. It was consequently established that no new attacks on Al-Dumair base happened.

A similar report came from a Reuters source in the regional pro-government military alliance. The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the false alarm was caused by an Israeli-US cyber warfare operation, but didn’t provide any proof.

Meanwhile, a Russian military source told Interfax news agency that there was no night incident at Shayrat Airbase. … Full article

April 16, 2018 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, Zionism | Leave a comment

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