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Yes, there is an Israel lobby, as any decent journalist knows

By Yves Engler | October 18, 2023

Is the idea of a “highly organized Israel lobby” antisemitic? An apartheid-promoting Globe and Mail columnist claims as much.

In attacking the Canadian Union of Public Employees for standing in solidarity with Palestinians Robyn Urback tweeted, “Points for alleging a Jewish conspiracy, but if CUPE really wanted to go full antisemitic trope, they should have mentioned something about poisoning the wells.” Below her message Urback quote tweeted a colleague stating, “CUPE Ontario says it’s targeted by ‘trolls’ – ‘a highly organized pro-Israel lobby,’ which targeted [Union president] Fred Hahn and CUPE 3906 for ‘recognition of Palestinians’ rights under international law to resist occupation through armed struggle.’”

But Urback knows full well there are many organizations backed by substantial wealth promoting Israel. This is not a trope. This is reality that is easily fact checked and should have been by any honest journalist.

In a sign of her dishonesty, Urback previously wrote about a lobby sponsored trip to Israel she participated in. Urback went on BirthRight, a program that pays for young Jews to go Israel to become “intellectual ambassadors” for the country.

The preeminent force in the “highly organized Israel lobby” is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. CIJA has over 40 staff and a $10 million budget. In addition, B’nai B’rith has a handful of offices across the country. For its part, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Canada’s budget is $7-10 million annually. These groups work closely with StandWithUs Canada, CAMERA, Allied Voices for Israel, Israel on Campus, Honest Reporting Canada and other Israeli nationalist political organizations. Additionally, more than 200 registered Canadian charities assist projects in Israel and engage in at least some pro-Israel campaigning domestically. There are also numerous Jewish private schools, summer camps and community centres that actively promote Israel.

All these groups are backed by substantial wealth. Patron of CIJA, the Jewish federations of Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver and Atlantic Canada raise $200 million annually and have over $1 billion in assets.

A large amount of private wealth strengthens Israel lobby groups’ influence. Since 2013 the chief fundraiser for the Trudeau Liberals has been Stephen Bronfman, scion of an arch Israeli nationalist family. Bronfman has millions invested in Israeli technology companies and over the years the Bronfman clan has secured arms for Israeli forces and supported its military in other ways. Bronfman openly linked his fundraising for Trudeau to Israel. In 2013 the Globe and Mail reported: “Justin Trudeau is banking on multimillionaire Stephen Bronfman to turn around the Liberal Party’s financial fortunes in order to take on the formidable Conservative fundraising machine…. Mr. Bronfman helped raise $2-million for Mr. Trudeau’s leadership campaign. Mr. Bronfman is hoping to win back the Jewish community, whose fundraising dollars have been going more and more to the Tories because of the party’s pro-Israel stand. ‘We’ll work hard on that,’ said Mr. Bronfman, adding that ‘Stephen Harper has never been to Israel and I took Justin there five years ago and he was referring at the end of the trip to Israel as ‘we.’ So I thought that was pretty good.’”

Other notable Canadian moguls have long histories of ensuring ties between Israel and Canada. Worth more than $3 billion prior to his death, David Azrieli was among the richest Canadians. In his youth he served in the paramilitary Haganah group during the 1948 war. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians. Azrieli was also a real estate developer in Israel and in 2011 he made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, a hardline Israeli-nationalist organization (deemed a “fascist” group by an Israeli court).

Worth $1.6 billion, Gerald Schwartz and his wife Heather Reisman created the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides millions of dollars annually for non-Israelis who fight in the IDF.

In recent years Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into various sports and cultural initiatives to rebrand Israel.

Other Canadian billionaires Larry Tanenbaum, Mark Scheinberg, David Cheriton, Mitch Garber, Daryl Katz, Seymour Schulich, as well as the Zekelman, Reichmann and Sherman families, all back Israel. Again, none of this a conspiracy theory or antisemitic trope. It is simple reality and easily fact-checked if one is interested.

It is good, not bad, that a union leader mentions powerful lobbyists influencing Canadian politicians to take certain policy positions. Democracy requires shining a light on such lobbying. Is Urback against this very common practice of good journalists?

Canadians politicians express unmatched fidelity to a state all leading human rights groups say is committing the crime of apartheid. Trudeau’s government organized a pizza party for Canadians fighting in the Israeli military, sued to block proper labels on wines from illegal settlements and announced that should Canada win a seat on the United Nations Security Council it would act as an “asset for Israel” on the council. In recent days Canadian politicians have fallen over themselves to express support for Israel as that country obliterates Gaza, kills dozens in the West Bank and bombs Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.

There’s nothing conspiratorial or untoward about citing the role of a “highly organized Israel lobby”. In fact, there would be nothing conspiratorial or untoward to describe it as a “highly organized Jewish Israel lobby”. A slew of self-described Jewish organizations are deeply involved in anti-Palestinian campaigning and no other lobby focused on a country/ethnicity/religion is near as well-resourced or organized as the above mentioned Canadian Jewish groups.

That’s not to say there aren’t other political and cultural forces shaping Canadian backing for Israel. Zionism began in Canada in the latter half of the 1800s as a Christian movement and there’s still Christian Zionist forces. At the turn of the 20th century Canada became staunchly pro-Zionist due to its close ties to the British empire and Washington’s perspective has significant influence today. There’s also a European ‘settler solidarity’ element to Canadian Zionism and Israel advocates wield a unique and powerful stick: The ability to play victim and smear those advocating for justice as racist.

Robyn Urback knows full well there’s a “highly organized Israel lobby”. Her claim that CUPE is anti-Jewish to mention this is ridiculous. It is also bad journalism and most likely a projection of her (perhaps unintentional) anti-Palestinian racism.

October 22, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

US needs ‘Department of Offense, not Defense’ – presidential candidate

US presidential candidate Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign event on Saturday in Pella, Iowa. © Getty Images / Scott Olson
RT | October 22, 2023

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has called for instilling fear in Washington’s foreign enemies by transforming the US Department of Defense into the “Department of Offense.”

Speaking at a campaign event on Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Haley demanded that the US respond to the Israel-Hamas war by providing the Israeli government and military with “whatever they need whenever they need it.” She added that Washington’s goal must be to “eliminate Hamas, not weaken them,” and she called for cutting off government funding to colleges whose students or employees hold protests in support of the Palestinians.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as US ambassador to the UN under then-President Donald Trump, suggested that the administration of US President Joe Biden must not be fooled by Friday’s release of two American hostages by Hamas. “They are doing this to earn favor with America because they want to try and look good in the eyes of America,” she said. “Don’t fall for it.”

Having a stronger military and strong leadership in the White House could have prevented the war in Israel, as well as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Haley argued. Biden’s botched withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and his administration’s recent prisoner-swap agreement with Iran emboldened America’s enemies, she claimed, adding that only a stronger military can restore US credibility.

“We’ve got to be smart, and we’ve got to be ready,” Haley said. “I’m tired of talking about a ‘department of defense’. I want a ‘department of offense’. Every enemy needs to fear us.”

Haley is calling for a bigger and apparently more aggressive military despite the fact that the Pentagon already boasts annual spending of nearly $832 billion – exceeding the world’s nine next largest defense budgets combined. The US has about 750 bases in 80 countries, and it has a long history of regime-change programs and military interventions around the world.

“This woman is a crazed warmonger,” US podcast host Joey Mannarino said in an X (formerly Twitter) post. “Don’t let the sweet Southern accent fool you. She’d have us in every war she could find.”

Haley has reportedly been enriched by the US military industrial complex since resigning as Trump’s UN ambassador in October 2018. She was hired as a board member with US defense contractor Boeing in 2019. Although she left the company the following year, she still owned as much as $250,000 in Boeing stock as of a financial disclosure filing in May.

Haley has earned six-figure fees for speaking engagements, including over $230,000 from the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and she was paid $127,500 for her work as a consultant to an advocacy group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, which has lobbied for military strikes against Tehran. She also netted more than $708,000 in consulting fees from Prism Global Management LLC, an investment fund, and her husband holds stakes in two firms with ties to the defense industry.

October 22, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We are being gaslit

By Jonathan Cook | October 18, 2023

Let’s say it again: The BIGGEST fake news comes from the establishment media. When the stakes are high, it barely bothers to hide its role as mouthpiece for Western propaganda.

This is another Iraqi WMD moment. We are being gaslit. Believe your eyes and ears, and the laws of physics, not the lies being peddled by our leaders and media about last night’s missile strike on the Baptist hospital in Gaza:

1. No Palestinian group has a rocket that can hit a hospital, killing hundreds. What they have are glorified fireworks that can cause minor damage and the occasional death or two. If Hamas or Islamic Jihad could cause the kind of damage that happened last night, you would hear about it happening in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon too. You don’t, because they can’t.

2. Israel’s apologists (and there are lots of them) are sharing all sorts of videos unrelated to the hospital strike. But the video of the strike itself shows that an incredibly large and powerful weapon is used. Listen to the noise the missile makes just before the hit – that whooshing noise is caused by its phenomenal velocity as it cuts through the air. That is not the noise of a falling Palestinian rocket.

If you watch videos being shared of Palestinian rockets being fired, notice how slowly they travel. Almost at a snail’s pace. If they fail, they drop at free-fall speed, not the near-supersonic speed of the missile that hit the hospital. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the laws of physics.

3. Israel’s apologists are trying to further muddy the waters by suggesting that either a Palestinian rocket fell, or was intercepted, and the rocket or fragments of it hit a very large ammo dump in the hospital. Let’s just accept the racist premise that hundreds of families were quite happy to seek safety next to a huge stash of explosives in the middle of a relentless Israeli bombing campaign. Let’s also accept the fantastical idea that a falling glorified firework or fragment of it could penetrate the hospital’s strong walls and set off such an explosion. If all this was true, you would still see a series of secondary explosions as the arms were detonated by the initial explosion. You don’t because there is only one explosion – from an enormous missile.

4. It’s a desperate psyop, so Israel has now released a recording of two Hamas militants conveniently having a chat after the missile strike, discussing whether they or Islamic Jihad did it. This is the same Israel that did not detect months of planning by Hamas that was needed to organise its breakout 10 days ago. But Israel got lucky this time, it seems, and just happened to be listening in when Huey and Louie decided to self-incriminate.

Remember Israel has a whole unit of ‘mistaravim’, Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians. Israel produced a highly popular TV series about such people, set in Gaza, called Fauda. You have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t, and wouldn’t, rig up a call like this to fool us, just as it regularly fools Palestinians in Gaza.

Most of the people spreading these lies know they are lies, including the media, and most especially the Middle East and defence correspondents. At least a few, like the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and Jon Donnison, are trying cautiously to suggest it’s unlikely a Hamas rocket could cause damage on the scale seen at the Gaza hospital. But it’s not unlikely. It’s impossible, and they know it. They just don’t dare say it.

October 18, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Who’s to blame for the massacre at Gaza’s Baptist Hospital?

MEMO | October 18, 2023

Since Al-Ahli Baptist Church was struck yesterday evening and over 500 people were killed, social media has been abuzz with claims of who carried out this war crime. For Palestinians and reporters with knowledge of Israel’s rules of law – or lack there of – the answer was obvious; Israel hit the hospital. While officials in Tel Aviv first acknowledged the strike as an Israeli attack, they then backtracked and blamed the Palestinian resistance. However reporters covering the ongoing assault on Gaza and the resistance’s rocket fire into Israel have made it clear; the resistance’s rockets cause damage, they have been known to kill people, but they are not powerful enough to cause the amount of death and destruction caused by this one strike.

Looking through social media after the strike, a number of facts were clear to see. If Israel didn’t bomb the Gaza Baptist Hospital, why did the occupation army warn the Gaza Baptist Hospital to evacuate the premises before the bombing occurred?

Israel claims it didn’t hit the hospital, claiming a rocket being shot by Islamic Jihad misfired and caused the damage. To “prove” this, occupation forces have used a video which aired an hour before the strike – at 18:59 local time – when the strike took place around 19:50.

Israel’s newly appointed Digital Spokesperson Hananya Naftali then admitted that occupation forces bombed the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. The post has since been deleted.

Israel also deleted a video posted as “evidence” that the Palestinian resistance struck the hospital.

Meanwhile, the Western media prepared the world for the strike. With the BBC posting a question ‘Does Hamas build tunnels under hospitals and schools?’ a day earlier, in a manner that almost justifies Israel’s targeting of innocent civilians receiving treatment.

While the reporting of events following the massacre simply claimed that an “Israeli air strike killed hundreds of people at a Gaza hospital”, without condemnation of the obvious violations of international law and the possible war crimes once again committed by the occupation and it’s forces.

October 18, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US warmonger Senator threatens Iran

By Lucas Leiroz | October 17, 2023

Once again, the pro-war sectors of American politics seem to want to foment a conflict situation with US involvement. A prominent public figure in the US Senate has made very serious threats to Iran, promising that Washington “will not hesitate” to take actions against Tehran if the conflict in the region continues to escalate.

The threats were made by the highly known Senator Lindsey Graham, who is notorious for his bellicose and irresponsible positions regarding American foreign policy. Graham issued a warning to Iranian authorities, stating that if there is any military action by Hezbollah against Israel, Washington will act to protect its ally, which could have serious consequences for Iran, both in military and economic terms.

“Here’s my message. If Hezbollah, which is a proxy of Iran, launches a massive attack on Israel, I would consider that a threat to the — to the State of Israel, existential in nature. I will introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business,” Graham said.

Hezbollah was not the only topic in the Senator’s speech. Graham also stated that he does not believe in the Iranian government’s official narrative that the Hamas operation was carried out autonomously. For him, believing this is “laughable”, with total confidence on his part that Hamas’ actions were previously discussed with Iran.

“The idea that Iran read about this operation in the paper, or on television is laughable. 93% of Hezbollah and Hamas’ money comes from Iran (…) They’re the source of the problem. They’re the great evil. So, if Hezbollah escalates against Israel, it will be because Iran told them to. Then Iran, you’re in the crosshairs of the United States and Israel,” Graham added.

Graham’s stance is extremely complicated, as the current tense situation in the Middle East favors risks of escalation and internationalization, and there is therefore a considerable possibility of Iran becoming involved in hostilities. This involvement can be direct or indirect, with Tehran sending regular troops or mobilizing its allied groups – which are not limited to Hezbollah. In either scenario, the risks would be enormous for Israel, which, despite its large military strength, is a small and vulnerable country in situations of war of attrition.

Furthermore, it must be emphasized that Iran is doing everything possible not to enter the war. By warning Israel not to continue collectively punishing Gaza, Tehran is offering alternatives to armed confrontation. But Tel Aviv, despite being afraid of invading on the ground, continues to bomb Gaza and kill thousands of civilians, causing Iran’s patience to progressively run out.

It has also been informed by the Persian country’s authorities that the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – a Theran-led coalition of anti-Zionist armed movements – could act at any time in defense of the Palestinians. Iranian politicians clarified that, despite Tehran leading the coalition, the member groups have high decision-making autonomy, and there is no full Iranian control over how these movements will react to Israel. In other words, the risks of escalation are great, and Iran is not capable of preventing it alone.

The only way to truly de-escalate is through a commitment on the part of Israel to stop the attacks. Without this, the situation will go out of control and there will inevitably be intervention – if not direct from Iran, at least from some Iranian-allied group. Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that Hezbollah is already de facto involved in hostilities, with bombings being exchanged between the IDF and the Shiite militia every day. Obviously, if nothing is done to stop these hostilities, at some point Hezbollah will choose to launch a more effective incursion.

With all these factors, Graham’s words sound like a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. He points to an imminent scenario as a “red line” and issues direct threats, making real de-escalation actions virtually impossible. However, this type of behavior is in fact expected from Graham, who is a known “hawk” of American foreign policy. Months ago, the Senator became embroiled in a controversy after saying that the US was investing money in “killing Russians” in Ukraine – praising such an “investment”. In the same vein, on another occasion, he also suggested that Kiev should kill Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It remains to be seen whether these pro-war tendencies will prevail in the American public debate. For now, the US stance has been extremely bellicose, with the country sending aircraft carriers to “help” Israel. However, it is necessary to remember that the American military-industrial complex is not able to work on two different fronts at the same time – in addition to the possibility of escalation in the Pacific in the near future. Washington needs to act rationally and discourage war in the Middle East.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

October 17, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The “Israel-Has-No-Alternative” Myth

BY SAM HUSSEINI | OCTOBER 13, 2023

Many are claiming that Israel has no choice.

It has to bomb Gaza, there is no alternative.

In fact, Israel has a choice.

A clear choice.

To reflexively react and bomb Gaza amid massive propaganda before assessing the facts is deranged.

One clear fact is that Netanyahu promised security and he failed. Israelis of every political stripe should be fuming at him, as some are. Never mind for the moment that he had warning of the Hamas attacks and almost certainly wanted conflict.

The choice facing Israel is highlighted by this:

In 2004, bombings on commuter trains in Madrid killed over 190 people. The government was immediately voted out and a new government came in, swiftly got Spain out of Iraq and nothing like that has happened in Spain since.

But the lessons of the train bombings is memory holed and even falsified.

NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reversed what happened, claiming after the Orlando shooting — which was also followed by a flood of lies — that after the bombings in Spain, “the more conservative candidate ended up winning.” (In NPR-speak, “conservative” means more pro-war.) Total propaganda.

The lesson is clear.

Netanyahu isn’t out to protect Israelis.

If he was, he would embrace peace.

You want to stop a group like Hamas from attacking you?

Solve the conflict.

Abide by international law.

Stop bombing people.

Repent for having expelled nonviolent activists.

Withdraw.

Agree to peace.

—

I’ve been suspended by X/twitter, but you can now see my past material there. I’m also now posting on Gab. 

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Illegal Occupation, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Wonder weapon’ myth is military-industrial complex PR scheme to profit from death

By Bradley Blankenship | Global Times | September 11, 2023

As the Russia-Ukraine war drags on, the Western public has been told that this or that wonder weapon system will turn the tide of the conflict. This has included Javelins, HIMARS, Leopards, Storm Shadow, Bradleys, F-16s, and now depleted uranium munitions, none of which has fundamentally changed the tide of the conflict.

After the slow progress of Kiev’s counteroffensive this summer, it is immediately apparent that high-tech equipment is not ruling the day but logistics and supply chains. It is not about who has the shiniest toys but who has the most troops, tanks and artillery and can deploy them quickly. On that front, Russia clearly dwarfs Ukraine, which is a much smaller country. Due to the fact that the West is evidently not going to join in this conflict directly, and there is growing resentment from the Western public against military aid to Kiev, people are wondering if the two sides will reach a peaceful settlement.

We are constantly told, however, that the latter possibility is somehow wrong or immoral because it will fundamentally grant Russia a victory. Well, morals aside, the reality clearly shows that Moscow is achieving its military objectives. Winning on the battlefield naturally translates to a more favorable negotiating position, and believing otherwise is to live in a realm of make-believe.

Some people idealistically (or opportunistically) believe that the West should support Ukraine’s futile fight against a far superior military power, even though that support will not challenge the eventual outcome and will lead to more death and destruction. Others believe death and destruction are undesirable outcomes; thus, Western leaders should pivot to a negotiations-first approach. The former view dominates the news media while the latter has gained a huge following on social media.

What’s also interesting about the difference between these two views and how they’ve fielded an audience is also about who’s backing them. People who hold the latter view are constantly accused – without evidence – of being funded by the Russian government or, as some US intelligence reports suggest, unwitting assets. Meanwhile, a recent analysis by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that think tanks funded by defense [?] industry contractors are cited 85 percent of the time in Ukraine-related content – and media outlets rarely cite these conflicts of interest.

So, which of these viewpoints is compromised? I believe it’s safe to say the latter. And that’s important because we need to understand the dynamic here: The media is quite literally operating as a paid advertiser for defense contractors. Not only do some outlets consistently peddle that some particular line of products will turn the tide of battle (they will not), but they also cite compromised experts that push a line conducive to selling more defense products. Rinse and repeat.

This is what is so sinister about modern conflict. When you look at the decades that the West was entrenched in Afghanistan, the current Ukraine quagmire or a potential situation in Taiwan island, it’s not about any serious geopolitical strategy or values. It’s just about making a handful of companies richer. Worse still is that this is public, taxpayer money going to this cabal – and, to be sure, primarily working-class funds when taken in conjunction with the historic Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts, which cut taxes for the wealthy.

It would be extraordinarily naive to believe that defense contractors and the people they fund have incentives that supersede the profit motive. Instead, these companies profit from death and human suffering, and they’re enabled by information laundering operations known as think tanks, which are cited without any scrutiny from journalists who are either lazy or also compromised.

The author is a Prague-based American journalist, columnist and political commentator. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

MSNBC Muslim anchors sidelined despite being Israeli apologists

By Mohammad Hashim | Press TV | October 14, 2023

In an interesting revelation, it has been reported on Saturday that three high-profile Muslim anchors of the American news television channel MSNBC, owned by NBC Universal, have been sidelined.

The Semafor report said Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi have been “quietly taken out of the anchor’s chair” amid the Israeli regime’s no-holds-barred bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The network reportedly did not air the Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show on its streaming platform Peacock and also reversed its plan to replace Joy Reid with Mohyeldin this week for the channel’s 7 p.m. show.

The report, citing “two network sources with knowledge of the plans”, said Velshi will also be replaced by Alicia Menendez this weekend. Menendez hosts American Coices on Saturdays and Sundays.

Hasan is a British-American television journalist of Indian descent who has anchored the popular The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC since February 2021.

Mohyeldin is an Egypt-born, New York-based journalist for NBC News and MSNBC who currently hosts the weekly prime-time show ‘Ayman’ on MSNBC.

Velshi is a US-based Canadian journalist, who has been reporting for NBC News since October 2016 and also serves as a news host for MSNBC channel.

NBC has termed the schedule changes as “coincidental,” refuting claims that the high-profile Muslim broadcasters are being snubbed amid the Israeli hostilities against Palestinians.

However, the Semafor report stressed that staff members at MSNBC have been “concerned by the moves”, feeling all three hosts have “some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.”

It said the move to sideline the three anchors comes as the MSNBC network, which is aligned closely with the Democratic Party, has “swung into intense solidarity” with the Israeli regime.

“That shift has come with heated internal and external objections to anything that breaks with that solidarity, and has come with social media criticism of Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Velshi,” the report stated.

Following the Hamas operation, US politicians, including President Joe Biden, quickly jumped in defense of the occupying regime and peddled blatant lies about children beheaded and women raped.

Interestingly, the three MSNBC journalists, including Hasan, have been vocal against the operation launched by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on the occupied territories last week.

Hasan, who has a massive social media following and is known for his argumentative style of on-air debating, took to his X handle on October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, lecturing his 1.3 million followers on “morality” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“This conflict for me has always been about morality. Morally, you cannot justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, even if you say it’s fighting terrorism. But morally, you also cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians, even if you say you’re fighting occupation,” he wrote.

It was a conscious and concerted attempt on the part of the British-American journalist to play both sides, to advocate the case of Palestinians, and also to be apologetic for the Israeli occupation.

He somehow tried to question the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance group to launch the Al-Aqsa Storm operation even if they were occupied, subjugated, humiliated and mercilessly killed every day.

Hasan also fell for the hoax that hundreds of people were “massacred” at a music festival.

“Israel says 260 dead at music festival attacked by Hamas. I cannot imagine how horrific a massacre this must have been. 260 people gunned down. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of more than five Pulse nightclub shootings. Heartbreaking,” he wrote on X.

It was part of the bigger misinformation campaign against the Palestinian resistance movement, which took the music festival participants as prisoners and treated them in a dignified manner as seen in videos circulating widely online.

To put his case as a neutral journalist who cares for Israelis, the MSNBC anchor reacted strangely to a photo of a demonstration by pro-Palestine activists outside the Israeli regime’s consulate in New York.

“These people are an embarrassment and their cheering is reprehensible,” Hasan wrote.

Mohyeldin, much like his MSNBC colleague, has been very consciously trying to appease his employers by being soft on the Israeli apartheid regime and amplifying voices against the resistance.

On October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, he shared a series of posts on X that were circulated to vilify the Gaza-based resistance group and to portray Israeli soldiers and settlers as victims.

He even shared an article that claimed Iran helped in plotting the attack on the Israeli regime.

Velsh, like the other two, has also used his social media platforms, including X, to make a case for himself as someone who despises the Palestinian resistance movement.

On October 10, he shared an article about Hamas, calling it an “important read to understand what you need to know about the group behind the deadly terror attack in Israel.”

He clearly sees the Hamas operation as a “terror attack”, not a legitimate military action against the occupying regime. He also conveniently dismissed the fact that the attack targeted occupiers.

On Saturday, he posted on X that he was leaving the occupied territories, adding to speculation that he has been sidelined from his job despite extra effort to take the hypocritical position on the conflict.

All three of them – Hasan, Mohyeldin and Velshi – despite trying to present themselves as “good boys” have received a bad report card from their bosses. That’s how much Americans value free speech.

Mohammad Hashim is a political and media analyst with a focus on West Asia.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Flashback: Babies on Bayonets

Corbett • 10/14/2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

In this clip from The WWI Conspiracy (Part Two) we examine the propaganda surrounding the “Rape of Belgium” at the start of WWI and the actions of the baby bayonetting evil Hun savages…

TRANSCRIPT

Once again, just as they did in Britain, the cabal was going to have to leverage its control of the press and key governmental positions to begin to shape public perception and instill pro-war sentiment. And once again, the full resources of these motivated co-conspirators were brought to bear on the task.

One of the first shells in this barrage of propaganda to penetrate the American consciousness was the “Rape of Belgium,” a catalogue of scarcely believable atrocities allegedly committed by the German forces in their invasion and occupation of Belgium at the start of the war. In a manner that was to become the norm in 20th century propaganda, the stories had a kernel of truth; there is no doubt that there were atrocities committed and civilians murdered by German forces in Belgium. But the propaganda that was spun from those kernels of truth was so over-the-top in its attempts to portray the Germans as inhuman brutes that it serves as a perfect example of war propaganda.

RICHARD GROVE: The American population at that time had a lot of German people in it. Thirty to fifty percent of the population had relations back to Germany, so there had to be this very clever propaganda campaign. It’s known today as “babies on bayonets.” So if you have no interest in World War I but you think it’s interesting to study propaganda so you don’t get fooled again, then type it into your favorite search engine: “babies on bayonets, World War I.” You’ll see hundreds of different posters where the Germans are bayonetting babies and it brings about emotions and it doesn’t give you the details of anything. And emotions drive wars, not facts. Facts are left out and deleted all the time in order to create wars, so I think that putting facts back in might help prevent wars. But I do know that they like to drive people on emotion. The “babies on bayonets” getting America into World War I, that’s a key part of it.

GERRY DOCHERTY: Children who had their arms chopped off. Nuns that were raped. Shocking things, genuinely shocking things. The Canadian officer who was nailed at St. Andrew’s cross on a church door and left there to bleed to death. These were the great myths peddled in order to defame and bring down the whole image of any justification for German action and try and influence America into war.

Gerry Docherty, co-author of Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

DOCHERTY: That’s not to say that there weren’t atrocities on both sides. War is an atrocious event, and there are always victims. Absolutely. And I offer no justification for it. But the lies, the unnecessary abuse of propaganda.

Even when in Britain they decided that they would put together the definitive volume of evidence to present it to the world, the person they asked to do this just so happened to have been former British ambassador to the United States, a man called Bryce, who was very well-liked in the States. And his evidence was published and put forward and there were screeds of stories after stories. But then later it was discovered that in fact the people who took the evidence hadn’t been allowed to speak to any of the Belgians directly but in fact what they were doing is they were listening to a middleman or agents who had supposedly taken these stories.

And when one of the official committee said “Hold on, can I speak to someone directly?” “No.” “No?” He resigned. He wouldn’t allow his name to be put forward with the [official report]. And that’s the extent to which this is false history. It’s not even acceptable to call it fake news. It’s just disgusting.

The campaign had its intended effect. Horrified by the stories emerging from Belgium—stories picked up and amplified by the members of the Round Table in the British press, including the influential Times and the lurid Daily Mail, run by Milner ally Lord Northcliffe—American public opinion began to shift away from viewing the war as a European squabble about an assassinated archduke and toward viewing the war as a struggle against the evil Germans and their “sins against civilization.”

The culmination of this propaganda campaign was the release of the “Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages,” better known as “The Bryce Report,” compiled for “His Britannic Majesty’s Government” and presided over by Viscount James Bryce, who, not coincidentally, was the former British Ambassador to America and a personal friend of Woodrow Wilson. The report was a sham, based on 1,200 depositions collected by examiners who “had no authority to administer an oath.” The committee, which was not allowed to speak to a single witness itself, was tasked merely with sifting through this material and deciding what should be included in the final report. Unsurprisingly, the very real atrocities that the Germans had committed in Belgium—the burning of Louvain, Andenne and Dinant, for example—were overshadowed by the sensationalist (and completely unverifiable) stories of babies on bayonets and other acts of villainy.

The report itself, concluding that the Germans had systematically and premeditatedly broken the “rules and usages of war” was published on May 12, 1915, just five days after the sinking of The Lusitania.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Israeli settler, who called for Palestinians to be ‘wiped out’, behind ‘beheaded babies’ fake news

Israeli reserve soldier David Ben Zion (file photo)
Press TV – October 12, 2023

The source behind the claim that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas beheaded babies during its large-scale operation against the Israeli regime is an extremist settler leader who called for a Palestinian town to be “wiped out” earlier this year, according to a report.

Investigative news website, The Grayzone, identified Israeli reserve soldier David Ben Zion as the key source behind the fake news, saying he has a history of inciting violent riots in the occupied West Bank by demanding that the Palestinian town of Huwara be “wiped out.”

“Enough talk about building and strengthening the settlements,” Ben David said in a Twitter post on February 26, 2023. “The deterrence that was lost must return now, there’s no room for mercy.”

Ben alleged in an interview with Israeli outlet i24 News on Tuesday that Hamas fighters “cut heads of children” in the village of Kfar Az near the Gaza Strip.

The allegation quickly made its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design, while Western media reported it without a shred of critical scrutiny.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman said babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated.”

US President Joe Biden also repeated the inflammatory claim, saying he had seen “confirmed pictures” of Hamas fighters beheading children.

However, the White House later clarified that Biden and other US officials have not seen or independently confirmed those claims, adding that the US president’s remarks were based on media reports and on claims from Netanyahu’s spokesperson.

In a statement on Thursday, Hamas categorically denied the allegations, saying the group does not attack civilians.

“Give us one picture that Hamas killed civilians, that Hamas killed children, that Hamas killed women. We don’t kill civilians,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the political bureau of Hamas said.

On Saturday, Hamas waged the largest military operation against the occupying entity in decades, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

The resistance movement said that its operation came in response to Israel’s violations at al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East al-Quds and growing settler violence.

Israeli media outlets report that more than 1,300 settlers and troops have been killed, while the number of those injured exceeds 3,300.

Following Hamas’ surprise attack, Israel launched deadly strikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Israeli officials also ordered a total blockade of Gaza to compensate for heavy losses suffered during Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 1,203 Palestinians have been killed and 5,763 wounded since Israel began its bombardment of the already besieged enclave.

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas denies beheading Israeli children

MEMO | October 11, 2023

Hamas has dismissed false claims promoted by some Western media outlets accusing freedom fighters of killing or beheading children and targeting civilians.

In a statement issued today, Hamas condemned “promoting the Israeli occupation’s propaganda, which is full of lies and fabrications, as an attempt to cover up the crimes and massacres committed by the Israeli occupation around the clock, most of which amount to war crimes and genocide.”

Hamas added: “The Palestinian freedom fighters are targeting Israeli occupation military and security posts and bases – all of which are legitimate targets.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian freedom fighters have sought to avoid targeting civilians, Hamas added, pointing to televised testimonies made by several colonial settlers.

Hamas regretted that Western mainstream media have failed to report war crimes and genocide being committed by the Israeli occupation, which has indiscriminately and violently pounded neighbourhoods and bombed dozens of homes with their inhabitants inside, killing more than 1,050 people, including 260 children and 230 women, so far.

Israeli journalist Oren Ziv wrote on X platform: “I’m getting a lot of question about the reports of “Hamas beheaded babies” that were published after the media tour in the village. During the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

How Western media, social media influencers peddle lies to vilify Palestinians

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | October 11, 2023

Since the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance operation “Al Aqsa Storm” on Saturday, mainstream Western media and social media influencers have been aggressively pushing Zionist narratives as part of a murky disinformation campaign against the resistance.

The multi-front information war is designed to control the narrative around anything surrounding the Palestinian issue and the latest military operation that has shaken the foundation of the regime.

Now more than ever, it is becoming clear that Western governments and their ruling class, which have a tight grip on media and information control, are losing the battle of ideas.

Palestinian support in the West is at an all-time high, despite Western leaders coming out in the open in defense of the Zionist regime and its relentless and indiscriminate aggression against Palestinians.

Western leaders came out in unison on Saturday to tow the same false narrative: That the Hamas operation is “unprovoked,” that the Israeli regime is “just” in its decades-long ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and that the Palestinian resistance is “terrorism.”

However, the world saw past these imperialist lies. Millions of people in the West, from New York to London to Paris, poured into the streets to pledge their support to Palestine and the Palestinian resistance, despite their own governments denouncing the Palestinian cause.

In fact, the rallies themselves began to be denounced by Western officials, who despite their aggressive rhetoric against the Palestinian cause saw no end to the outpouring of support for Al Aqsa Storm.

Now, the West and its media apparatuses have turned to their usual assortment of disinformation campaigns to muddy the line between fact and reality.

Perhaps the most egregious claim came from Zionist outlet “i24 News.” Nicole Zedeck, a reporter, falsely claimed that “40 Israeli babies” were killed, and that some were “decapitated.”

Obviously a jarring claim, many netizens pushed back asking for more details or any source that could corroborate this claim, which is part of the disinformation campaign.

Zedeck walked back the claim, saying Zionist soldiers told her this was happening –  but the post, which still has not been deleted – or retracted – has been proven categorically false by media outlets.

The multiple high-profile accounts on X (formerly Twitter) shared Zedeck’s baseless claim, disseminating the proven lie to millions of people across the world.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is that while this claim of Israeli babies being killed was spread with no source or proof, very real footage of martyred Palestinian babies being pulled from the Gaza rubble was also being shared – but without the solidarity of any Western influencer accounts.

Another similar example was shared of a woman, Shani Louk, allegedly being held hostage by Hamas.

Zionist influencers claimed she was sexually assaulted and murdered. Later, the woman’s own mother confirmed she was safe and that Hamas had taken her to a hospital in the Gaza Strip – the same hospital targeted multiple times by Israeli warplanes.

This is a very intentional strategy of the Zionist regime, and the West – when their narrative is being challenged by reality itself, they will not be above spreading lies and refusing to apologize or issue a real retraction when they are caught.

The claims are instead echoed by official Zionist accounts as reality without citation, leading media outlets in the West to print the story verbatim.

Even the celebrity apparatus of the West plays a significant role in disseminating false claims – and then quietly walking them back after millions of people were exposed to flagrant lies.

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis published a photo on Instagram of terrified children looking at the sky, with a caption expressing solidarity with the Zionist State. When netizens correctly identified the children in the photo as children of Gaza, fleeing from a Zionist airstrike, she quickly deleted the photo.

The strategy of publishing lies and issuing a whimper of a retraction (if any at all) has been an imperialist strategy for decades.

The US entry into Vietnam was sparked by a false report of an attack on a US warship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The US illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 was due to a made-up claim of weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Afghanistan before that was also based on false assumptions.

Iran’s foreign-plotted riots were caused by a categorical lie peddled by accounts known to be on the payroll of the United States intelligence agencies – then were spread using a vast network of online bots and influencer accounts.

Western celebrities and influencers then picked up the story to smear the Islamic Republic, despite multiple witnesses and CCTV footage proving the tragic death of Mahsa Amini was of natural causes.

More recently, after a 16-year-old Iranian girl Armita Geravand fell unconscious at the Tehran subway, social media accounts and news media in the West jumped on the bandwagon, claiming “torture.”

Western media apparatus and celebrity apparatus are intertwined. They are part of a sophisticated system that is forced into place by the US ruling class and further strengthened by the Zionist lobby.

Any deviation – meaning support for Palestine – is met with categorically false claims of anti-semitism, racism, or outlandish smear campaigns.

Western outlets will never publish about the true carnage unleashed upon the people of Gaza – the women and children who were martyred.

They will never publish, for example, the video of Israeli soldiers shutting off the water to Gaza – already contaminated – despite it being a human rights violation and a war crime. The imperialist media will never document reality, because reality would condemn the West for its barbarism.

Furthermore, if the West cannot win a war of information, then it seeks to outright ban inconvenient facts altogether. Take for example the shutdown of Press TV in the United States – or the deplatforming of Russia Today or Sputnik after the February 2022 Russian military operation in Ukraine.

Lebanon’s Al-Maydeen was also briefly banned on Meta platforms for its coverage of Al Aqsa Storm. According to the network, no reason was provided for it, nor was any prior notice given.

The fact of the matter is the imperialist media does not shy away from playing dirty to ensure only its pro-imperialist outlets and narratives dominate public perception.

It understands it is in a losing battle against the truth and is aggressively conducting widespread disinformation and information stifling in a final bid to control its narratives.

An age-old saying is that in war, the first casualty is truth. The imperialist West has been imposing war on the entire globe for over a century. The truth has been “killed” in this sense many times – leading to racism, Islamophobia, and more rot within society – but it can also be salvaged.

As growing contradictions sharpen within our world, the imperialist West will intensify its disinformation campaigns. Based on what we already know about its unethical conduct, the world cannot look to the West for the truth.

The West’s truth is a false reality based on the vision created by the US ruling class and its partners, who are committed to defiling the world for their own greed.

If the West fears the narrative of the Palestinians so much then it must know that the truth is with Palestine – and that Palestine is the truth.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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