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How Long Has Netanyahu Got Left?

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 2, 2023

Is Israel really losing the media war? In a conflict where the truth seems to be the first and most predominant casualty, this might be the only truth, certainly when we look at recent events. The war in Gaza is not an irony-free zone though. Recently, Israel stormed social media with claims that the Palestinians were faking videos and they took one of a medic giving resuscitation to a victim, claiming that the technique was erroneous, and so, therefore, the video must have been faked. How are we to take this? Given that Israel is the expert on faking videos to support its heinous war crimes, was the logic behind the claims “trust us, we know what we’re talking about when we talk about faked videos”? In either case it failed. The mob justice of social media didn’t give any gravitas to the claims and soon enough the Red Cross said that the health worker was using the right technique.

But how interesting that Israel is now resorting to this level, to stoop so low makes many wonder if they are even close to winning the war. It doesn’t smack of a victorious side to do this and there are other examples, even, previously. When the Baptist hospital was bombed, the IDF didn’t seem bothered that there was documented evidence to prove that it had actually warned the bosses of it, that they, the IDF, were about to bomb it. Almost as soon as it was bombed and Israel fed the revolting swine of western journalists feeding from the teat of mother Israel for all of their information with the assertion that the Palestinians actually blew it up themselves by a faulty rocket which Hamas had just recently fired close to the hospital. The IDF even produced audio of a conversation which apparently confirmed this. The problem with this though was that the audio was faked. There is actually a history of the IDF faking audio conversations. Some will remember the 2010 storming of the Turkish aid boat where the IDF murdered in cold blood ten activists at point blank range. Audio tape of the activists insulting Israel’s special forces soldiers turned out to be fake.

Western media are playing a role in helping Israel though simply by accepting the carefully arranged circus that they have been invited into. No western journalists that I can see are working within Gaza as it’s simply too dangerous so they are forced to lap up the information which is handed to them on a plate standing on the touchlines and being really nothing more than a spectator to a secret war which they can’t and won’t understand. The holocaust which is taking place is about the annihilation of the Palestinians in Gaza. We can’t really call it a war as this would suggest that both sides have a fair chance to compete on a level playing field. In Gaza, the Israelis are starving the Palestinians so that even if they survive, they will be too weak to fight when, or if, the IDF finally go in with their tank divisions.

The story which isn’t being reported by western journalists is how Hamas is already having some victories in hitting tanks with RPGs and how phosphorous is being dropped on civilians. Of course Netanyahu has been promised by the Biden administration that he can break every war crime ever recorded with the knowledge that he and his people will never face any legal action. And this is really a big part of America’s support to Netanyahu as what we are witnessing – but are unable to film due to Israel cutting off electricity and internet – are war crimes which we have never really seen before in the last 100 years except with the holocaust itself during WWII.

The total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which will never be reported as such by British journalists, which citizens of the free world cannot actually see, so it will continue until only a few hundred thousand Palestinians remain, who then will be convinced by Israel and the West to move onto another location. In fact, there is documentation to prove that the Israelis were planning all along to move out Palestinian citizens out of Gaza all together with the assistance of Egypt.

The big question is time. Time is really an important component in this war. It is only a matter of time before Biden messes up and is drawn into a war with Israel against Iran. Biden doesn’t want this but he is unfortunately stupid and weak and Netanyahu likes American presidents this way. A looming speech from Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah is expected to give an ultimatum to Israel to stop the mass murder of Palestinians, we will soon be reminded who are the most important players: Iran and Turkey.

Both these countries, although from different Muslim faiths who, in other parts of the Middle East are killing each other, seem to be united in their defiance of Israel. It is no longer a question of if they will react to the Gaza holocaust but when. Biden is out of his depth and the Iranians know this. He has only one real ace to play, which is to get rid of Netanyahu which if he was any other U.S. president, he could probably pull this off. But this is Biden we’re talking about whose foreign policy sheet includes the hugely embarrassing exit from Afghanistan and the 130 billion dollar colossal waste of sending cash to Ukraine, the most corrupt country in the world, which most Americans can’t even find on a map of Europe.

The rumours are that Biden is thinking in the longer term than Israel and that he believes that Netanyahu doesn’t have long in office as many Israelis don’t support his war crimes strategy, a point made by Haaretz recently which pointed out his demise was not long off. Something’s got to give. The servile, revolting, passive international press pack might be all that Netanyahu has left.

November 3, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Bahrain ‘halts’ economic relations with Israel over war on Gaza: Parliament

Press TV – November 2, 2023

Bahrain’s lower house of parliament has said the country has halted its economic relations with the Israeli regime over Tel Aviv’s ongoing war against the Gaza Strip that has claimed thousands of Palestinians.

“Economic relations with Israel have been halted,” said a statement from the Council of Representatives on Thursday.

The chamber also “confirms that the Israeli ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain has left Bahrain, and the Kingdom of Bahrain decided to return the Bahraini ambassador from Israel to the country,” it noted.

The move was “in support of the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the brotherly Palestinian people,” the statement read.

Abdulnabi Salman, the Bahraini legislature’s first deputy speaker, confirmed the decision to AFP, saying the “ongoing conflict in Gaza cannot tolerate silence.”

Bahrain’s National Communication Center, the government’s media arm, said the “priority at this stage must be focused on protecting the lives of civilians” in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The brutal war that the Israeli regime has been waging against the coastal sliver since October 7, has so far claimed the lives of nearly 9,061 people, including 3,700 children and more than 2,300 women.

The regime launched the war after Gaza’s resistance groups conducted Operation al-Aqsa Storm, their biggest operation against the occupying entity in years.

Bahrain and the regime established diplomatic relations in 2020 as part of United States-brokered Abraham Accords.

Back in 2021, Bahrain’s main opposition group, the al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, denounced Manama’s normalization of relations with Israel as “a crime,” emphasizing that the ruling Al Khalifah regime’s policies did not conform to the will of the Bahraini nation.

The country has witnessed numerous protests ever since the rapprochement, condemning the detente as an instance of “treason.”

November 3, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Neocon regime change in Gaza will complicate ‘two-state solution’

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 2, 2023 

The world-wide condemnation of Israel’s horrific violation of international humanitarian law is not deterring its military operations in Gaza. In remarks on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the calls for ceasefire, saying these “are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas. That will not happen.” And he sought moral and spiritual support from the Bible for his war. 

At least two armoured and infantry divisions of about 20,000 soldiers have reportedly entered the Palestinian enclave. The New York Times reported, quoting Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defence, that US special forces, including commandos, have also been deployed to Israel. The report disclosed that several other Western nations have also quietly moved teams of special forces closer to Israel. 

Maier said without elaborating, “We’re actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things.” As he put it, the situation in Gaza “is going to be a very complex fight going forward.”  

On the other hand, there are growing domestic worries that the US could get entangled in another costly conflict in the Middle East. Braving threats of physical assault and vilification by conservative media, 55 members of Congress have appealed to Biden and Blinken that Israel’s military operation should “take into account” international law. But the administration refuses to take much notice of such demands.  

What emerges is a grim picture of President Biden giving a free hand to Netanyahu on how he chooses to seek retribution. In exceptionally sharp remarks, the Washington Democrat in the House Pramila Jayapal said on Sunday that the US is “losing credibility” on the global stage due to its “double standard” in its level of support for Palestinians compared to Ukraine, and as a result, the US is “being isolated in the rest of the world.” Jayapal flagged, “There are racists within the Netanyahu government.” This must be the first time that such pointed criticism of Israel is voiced by politicians in America.

Indeed, the Biden administration’s doublespeak scatters the strategic ambiguity that shrouded its stance so far. What stands out is a bizarre neocon project to force regime change in Gaza through coercion and install a pliant regime, midway to a “two-state solution”. 

Mahmoud Abbas, a tragic figure but a fixture still of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a complicated multi-decade relationship with America and Israel (and his own people) appears to be at the centre of the proposed transition. At any rate, all roads lead to Ramallah.  

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading for Israel on Friday on yet another regional tour. Significantly, during a testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, he publicly declared the Biden Administration’s project for the Palestinian Authority to return to the Gaza Strip from where it was ousted by Hamas in 2007, a year after the resistance group won the legislative elections. 

As Blinken put it, “At some point, what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalised Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza. 

“Whether you can get there in one step is a big question that we have to look at. And if you can’t, then there are other temporary arrangements that may involve a number of other countries in the region. It may involve international agencies that would help provide for both security and governance.”  

It appears that Abbas at 87 may be a transitional figure. But CIA and Mossad have longstanding contacts within Fatah.

Suffice to say, the regime change in Gaza Strip is at the core of the neocon vision of “two-state solution”, which Biden keeps talking about. Only, the US’ “two-state solution” and what the global majority understands it to be are two different things — like chalk and cheese. 

Evidently, the US estimates that the unprecedented Arab unity is not going to translate as decisive action on the ground. Secondly, from Blinken’s words, the US intends to control and dominate the two-state solution (regime change in Gaza) per its blueprint. 

To be sure, the Iran factor is going to be crucial. The US seems to be betting that so long as Israel does not invade Lebanon or go for the jugular veins of Hezbollah, Iran will not intervene. Now, that is a big gambit — the “known unknown” — as it underestimates Iran’s commitment to the Palestinian problem.

In Tehran’s assessment, Israel suffered a massive blow from Hamas from which it will not recover — that is to say, Israel is a weakened regional power going forward. Thus, an inflection point is reached, as the US’ capacity and influence is also diminishing.

Iran’s Foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited Doha and Ankara on Wednesday. While in Doha, he met with the head of the Hamas politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, for the second time last month. Later, while addressing a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Ankara, Amir-Abdollahian warned that “If the genocide and war crimes against civilians are not stopped, the region is very close to making a big and decisive decision… (and) the consequences will be severe, and the warmongers will definitely not be able to bear the consequences.” 

Meanwhile, the Russian position on the Gaza situation also has hardened. In a powerful speech at a meeting on Monday with members of the Security Council and Government and the heads of security agencies, President Vladimir Putin called out the US and its satellites as “the main beneficiaries of global instability … (who) are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine… channelling financial resources, including to Ukraine and the Middle East, and fuelling hatred in Ukraine and the Middle East.” 

Notably, Putin compared the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as two sides of the same coin — manifestations of the US’ desperate attempt to shore up its diminishing global influence in a multipolar world. Putin alleged that western intelligence instigated through social media the rioting in Makhachkala (Dagestan) on Sunday night in an attempt to provoke “pogroms in Russia”. Putin said the US and its satellites hatched the plot to discredit Russia.

Importantly, he drew the conclusion that “They (US) do not want Russia to participate in solving any international or regional problems, including in the Middle East.”

Where the Biden administration’s “two-state solution” is deeply flawed will be on four counts. First, the entire project is anchored on an absolute military victory over Hamas. It reminds one of the triumphalist cry of “Mission Accomplished” after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the deceptively easy ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan previously. (By the way, Biden was an ardent supporter of Iraq invasion and had voted to launch the war in Afghanistan in the first place, three days after the 9/11 attacks.)

Second, there is a human content here. Palestinians detest the US and Israel and will not submit to quislings handpicked by these countries. Both Fatah and Abbas are thoroughly discredited entities. At any rate, what makes the Biden Administration so very confident that the Arab regimes will be willing to act as Washignton’s surrogates or fifth column in Gaza? It is a rude and insulting assumption, to say the least.

Third, Hamas’ grassroots support cannot be wished away. Resistance movements may have their ups and downs but seldom die so long as conditions of foreign hegemony exist.

Finally, Washington would still need UN Security Council mandate to legitimise whatever plot it is hatching, which is difficult to extract on American terms if Putin’s speech on Monday is anything to go by. Putin used exceptionally harsh language to describe the carnage unleashed in Gaza.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

At General Assembly, Russia calls for immediate halt to bloodshed in Gaza Strip

Press TV – November 2, 2023

Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya has called for an immediate end to the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli regime continues its deadly bombing campaign in the besieged enclave.

Nebenzya made the appeal during the General Assembly special session on Palestine on Thursday, stressing that the bloodshed must be stopped in order to prevent the ongoing crisis from spreading to the entire.

“First of all, it is necessary to stop the bloodshed and to prevent the crisis from engulfing the entire region. Otherwise, the conflict will never be stopped,” he said.

Nebenzya also demanded that the mediators be allowed to work on a diplomatic solution, including the release of hostages.

“One will have to walk down this path sooner or later; the only question is how many innocent people will die in the meantime,” he said.

The Russian envoy said Israel is an occupying regime and therefore it does not have the right to defend itself in the current conflict as it claims.

On Tuesday, Nebenzya blamed the United States for the ongoing atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians, after Washington opposed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an urgent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

The envoy also slammed Western countries that abstained at the vote on Russia-proposed draft resolutions that called for a ceasefire.

A week earlier, Nebenzya said Moscow has for years been warning about the soaring tensions in West Asia and that the ongoing crisis in the region results from longstanding “destructive” policies of the United States.

Israel has been heavily bombing Gaza since October 7 when the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched a surprise operation in the occupied territories in response to the Israeli regime’s intensified crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The aggression has so far killed 8,800 Palestinians and left more than 23,000 wounded.

Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: Against Our Better Judgment, by Alison Weir

The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel

BY RICHARD C. COOK • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 1, 2023

As the crisis involving the Israelis and Palestinians deepens after the October 7 Hamas attack, we might pause to examine how the state of Israel was created in the first place. At the current juncture, as World War III looms on the horizon, as massacres are currently being perpetrated by Israel against the civilian population of Gaza, with a death toll exceeding 9,000, of which over 4,000 are children, and as a Western armada is gathering in the eastern Mediterranean, it is befitting to review journalist Alison Weir’s book Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. The book was published in 2014, is packed with often hard-to-access details, and is masterfully documented. Alison Weir is also head of a group she has founded: If Americans Knew.

Alison Weir’s book is crucially important in considering ways to gain a broader perspective in order to defuse the situation. It is also of keen interest with respect to the larger potential conflict, where U.S. political leaders are again trotting out the phrase, “Axis of Evil,” this time to describe the nations of Russia, China, and Iran. (Sometimes North Korea is tossed in for good measure.) It’s Iran, of course, that U.S. leaders are identifying as an alleged sponsor of the resistance groups in and around Palestine, including Hamas.

Following are what I view as the main points from Alison Weir’s book. My own interspersed editorial comments are in italics. Page numbers are given in parentheses only for quotations from the book.

Origin of Zionism in the U.S. Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel begins by explaining that support for Zionism, defined as the desire for creation of a Jewish national state somewhere in the world, goes back in U.S. history to the late 1880s, around the time that the Zionist Movement was becoming prominent in Europe. By the 1910s, there were thousands of U.S. adherents, though many Jews opposed Zionism as not in the interests of the Jewish people and certain to result in antagonism toward them. Probably a majority of Jews in the U.S. had never even heard of Zionism and/or were happy to have assimilated into American society. In fact, there was nothing that could even be viewed remotely as an “anti-Semitism problem” in the U.S. at this time.

Role of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis and Creation of the Parushim. Still, some very powerful people became Zionists, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, whose main disciple was future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Brandeis formed a secret organization called the Parushim, whose sole purpose was to bring about the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This Zionist organization required an oath that appeared to give life and death power over its sworn members.

“Parushim,” also spelled “Purushim,” is the Hebrew word from which the name “Pharisees” is derived, meaning “separatists.” From the Pharisees came Rabbinical Judaism and the idea that, “We should not assimilate or acculturate at all.” (prezi.com) I would note that Alison Weir’s book did not aim at giving an account of the deeper motivations of the Zionist movement, other than its claim to be a reaction to European “anti-Semitism.” For more depth, I would recommend a careful reading of the classic The Controversy of Zion by British journalist Douglas Reed (1895-1976).

Justice Louis Brandeis was close to Wall Street banker Jacob Schiff. Brandeis was also closely involved with the creation of the Federal Reserve System, as was Schiff, though Brandeis’s involvement in political issues was largely behind the scenes.

The Federal Reserve, I would add, was largely a project of the U.S. Money Trust and the British/European Rothschilds. The Rothschilds were also heavily involved in Zionism and in the creation and support of the Zionist state. The fact that Zionism was sponsored by some incredibly rich people might cause us to ask to what extent financial rewards played a role in the rapid conversion of many Jews and non-Jews to Zionism during this period. For information on creation of the Federal Reserve, see my own book, Our Country, Then and Now (Clarity Press, 2023).

Collaboration Between the Parushim and Great Britain. Justice Louis Brandeis’s Parushim worked closely with Zionists in Great Britain, including travel back and forth, to persuade the British government to designate Palestine as a future Jewish homeland. This was after Zionist leaders had rejected such locations as Kenya. Thus was created a “contract” between Britain and the Parushim that if the British would generate what became the Balfour Declaration, the U.S. Zionists would endeavor to assure U.S. entrance into World War I against Germany on the side of Britain. This contract was fulfilled by both parties, though, as in the U.S., many British Jews opposed Zionism for similar reasons—as a threat to Jewish assimilation.

The Balfour Declaration specified that it should be “clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” (p.97) At the time, non-Jewish communities made up 92 percent of the population of Palestine.

Zionism and the Failure to Make Peace with the Ottoman Empire. World War I begin in 1914. By 1915-1916, the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with Germany but not at war against the U.S., offered to make a separate peace with the U.S. The Ottomans had also offered to allow the Jews of Europe to live at peace anywhere in their empire. The U.S. sent a delegation to negotiate this separate peace, but Brandeis informed the British Zionists that the delegation was on its way. The British Zionists then send their leader, Chaim Weizmann, to intercept the U.S. delegation at Gibraltar, where he prevailed on it to call off the negotiations. The reason was that the British were going to lay claim to Palestine after the war as a homeland for the Jews, so they wanted to assure that Palestine was going to be available for British control. The British design was to break up the Ottoman Empire, not leave it intact through a separate U.S.-instigated peace.

Warnings Against the Zionist Project. Diplomats within the U.S. State Department both in Washington, D.C., and in the Middle East were aware of and warned against the Zionist project, arguing that a million Palestinians would be displaced or made virtual servants/slaves of the invaders.

World War I. In 1917 the U.S. entered the war on the side of Britain, per the Zionist agreement, and Germany was defeated, along with the Ottomans. Britain also signed a secret agreement with France by which it would get control of Palestine after the war. Control was implemented through the vehicle of a British Mandate approved by the League of Nations.

During this period, antagonism against Jews had begun to grow within U.S. society, partly in reaction to perceptions that Jews controlled the banks and other financial institutions. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” had also appeared. While claimed to be a forgery from Czarist Russia, the Protocols received credence and publicity from Henry Ford and others.

Germany was aware that the Zionists had contributed to the defeat of Germany in WWI. This contributed to the anti-Jewish attitudes of Germans after the war and was a factor in the later Nazi anti-Jewish policies.

During WWI, the Parushim gave the FBI a list of Americans who were opponents to Zionism or the war. Many of these people were arrested and sent to prison. Through all of this, Brandeis was directing matters from behind the scenes. He was arguably the most powerful person in the U.S., but his political activities were secret or carried out through proxies.

At the end of WWI, President Woodrow Wilson sent a commission to Palestine to investigate the situation. Known as the King-Crane Commission, its report “recommended against the Zionist position of unlimited immigration of Jews to make Palestine a distinctly Jewish state.” The report stated that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine,” that “armed force would be required to accomplish this,” and that “the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.” The report of the King-Crane Commission “was suppressed.” (p.25)

Zionism After World War I. Between the two world wars, a growing number of U.S. Zionists worked to further the project for the creation of Israel. In Germany, the Zionists supported the rise of the Nazis, as this would lead to German Jews wanting to emigrate to Palestine. In Iraq, where the Jewish leaders did not support Zionism, Iraqi Jews were attacked, even murdered, to force them to emigrate to Palestine. Without arousing the anxiety of Jews around the world that they were unsafe in their homelands, Zionist planners believed there would not be enough Jewish settlers to create a Zionist state and force the Palestinians out.

Opponents of Zionism in the U.S. diplomatic service were threatened with having their careers destroyed if they did not support the claims that Jews in foreign countries were suffering discrimination so should want to move to Palestine. The Zionists worked to limit immigration opportunities for Jews elsewhere than Palestine, including the U.S. The Zionists opposed measures by the British government to limit the number of Jews who could enter Palestine.

Collaboration Between the Zionists and Nazis. Building on work by author Hannah Arendt, Edwin Black wrote The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Click Here According to author Tom Segev, “Arendt stated that many Jews would have survived ‘had their leaders not helped the Nazis organize the concentration of Jews in the ghettos, their deportation to the east, and their transport to the death camps.’” (p.146) This was called the “Haavara Agreement.”

The famous 1930s Jewish boycott of German products may have been instigated by Zionists to promote anti-Jewish sentiment leading to more desire among Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Other Zionists made claims that persecuted Jews were prone to becoming revolutionary communists for the same purpose.

Zionist Activities Between the World Wars. In the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s, Zionist leaders muffled talk of a Jewish state in Palestine and focused on creating new institutions there as altruistic enterprises. An example was Hebrew University, opening in Jerusalem in 1925. Zionist leaders complained that most U.S. Jews saw themselves first and foremost as American citizens. Organizations like the American Zionist Emergency Council and the United Jewish Appeal were founded to generate funding and support. Donations to the United Jewish Appeal in 1948 was four times that of the American Red Cross. Pro-Zionist publicity and lobbying efforts were unleashed across the U.S. Some Jews, like the American Council for Judaism, still opposed Zionism as inimical to real Jewish interests. The ACJ opposed the Zionists’ “anti-Semitic racialist lie that Jews the world over were a separate, national body.” (p.152)

Zionist advocacy in the U.S. had powerful political adherents. New York Congressman Emanuel Celler told President Harry Truman, “We’ll run you out of town,” if he did not support the program. Senator Jacob Javits said, “We’ll fight to the death and make a Jewish state in Palestine if it’s the last thing that we do.” (p.38) Zionist propaganda included funding of best-selling pro-Zionist books by non-Jews. Zionists such as wealthy Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermyer began to interject “dispensationalist” ideas of “Christian Zionism” into the discourse through sponsorship of the “Scofield Reference Bible.” (Untermyer was also a leading backer of the Federal Reserve and advocate of the worldwide Jewish boycott of Germany.)

Today, as we all know, “Christian Zionism” among “evangelicals” is part of the bedrock support of the Israel Lobby. Leading evangelical ministers like Jerry Falwell received large donations from Zionist supporters. An entire “dispensationalist” mythology involving the “Rapture,” etc., has been constructed and promoted to justify the political union between this group of American religionists and the most extreme factions of Israeli politics led today by such figures as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though Netanyahu has surfaced this mad mythology to cover Israeli genocide in Gaza, the topic is not covered in detail in Alison Weir’s book, so will not be dealt with further here.

Protestant Support of Zionism. By the 1930s, U.S. Zionists were trying to organize American Protestants in their support. By the end of WWII the Christian Council on Palestine had grown to 3,000 members and the American Palestine Committee to 6,500. The appeal to Protestants was based on generating sympathy for refugees, though no mention was made of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians becoming refugees due to the Zionist takeover. During the Israeli war of independence in 1947-1949, Christian churches and institutions in Palestine were assaulted by the Zionists along with the Palestinians.

Beginnings of Terrorism and U.N. Partition of Palestine. In Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s, the Zionists tried to buy Palestinian land but few inhabitants wished to sell. The Zionists then began to organize terrorist forces to drive them out. These terrorist groups also targeted British government officials, as Palestine was still a British Mandate. Author Alison Weir cites a statement by David ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, that suggests this was at least part of what started today’s worldwide phenomenon of terrorism.

By the start of the 1947-1949 war, Jews made up 30 percent of the Palestinian population but owned only 6-7 percent of the land. In 1947, Britain turned its Palestine Mandate over to the U.N. A General Assembly resolution to partition gave the Zionists 55 percent of the land of Palestine. The U.S. State Department opposed the partition plan as against the wishes of local people and in violation of U.S. interests and of democratic principles. Officials warned that partition “would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future.” (p.45) Officials said the proposal was for “a theocratic racial state” that discriminated “on grounds of religion and race.” (p.45) The leading anti-Zionist Department of State official, Loy Henderson, was exiled by his superiors to a post as ambassador to Nepal.

U.S. Government Opposition to Zionism. Nevertheless, virtually the entire U.S. executive branch was opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. Statements and reports were made by a 1946 commission headed by Ambassador Henry F. Grady, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson. A 1948 report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that, “The Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” (p.47)

Jewish leaders were well aware that U.N. partitioning of Palestine was temporary and that over time, the Jewish state would expand to absorb the entire region. The concept of “Eretz Israel” was formulated, whereby the Zionist state would encompass Transjordan, as well as parts of Lebanon and Syria. Zionists also had begun using U.S. antagonism toward the Soviet Union as an argument for creation of a pro-Western Jewish state. This hearkened back to the early days of Zionism, when Zionist leaders characterized their proposed state as a bulwark of British influence in the Middle East; i.e., as an extension of British colonialism and geopolitics.

Today, pro-Zionists make the argument that Israel is an outpost of benign “Judeo-Christian” influence in the Middle East, as they try to arouse antagonism toward the one billion Muslims in the world in a purported “clash of civilizations.” Such attitudes became prominent in U.S. politics during the “War on Terror” of the Bush/Cheney administration that continues today through U.S. labeling of anti-Zionist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorist” organizations. This is despite the historical fact cited above that it was the Zionists who introduced terrorism into the Middle East.

U.S. Recognition of Israel and the Role of President Truman. The U.S. was the first country to recognize Israel as an independent state when on May 14, 1948, President Harry Truman issued a statement of recognition following Israel’s proclamation of independence on the same date. Truman’s main motivation was believed at the time, and still is today, the winning of Jewish support in the presidential election that year. His decision was strongly opposed by Secretary of State George Marshall, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, the CIA and National Security Council, and top State Department official George Kennan. Intelligence agent Kermit Roosevelt wrote: “The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict.” (p.51) Contrary to the belief that U.S. oil interests promoted the Zionist project, officials argued that U.S. ability to access Middle Eastern resources would be adversely affected. Truman also had pro-Zionist insiders at high levels of his administration.

Author Alison Weir points out that bribery also played a part. “Gore Vidal wrote: ‘Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. ‘That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.’” (p.167) Jewish businessman Abraham Feinberg explained his raising of cash for Truman in an oral history interview published by the Truman Library in 1973. The CIA also discovered Feinberg’s illegal gun-running to Zionist groups.

I may be the first writer to point out that Truman’s action in accepting bribes, if discovered, could have been seen and treated as an impeachable offense.

Zionist Takeover of Palestine. At the time of Israel’s proclamation of independence and immediate U.S. recognition, the U.N. resolution of partition had been passed, with war ensuing between Zionist and Arab forces. The U.N. General Assembly adopted the partition plan by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions, with many nations subjected to intense Zionist lobbying and threats. For instance, “Financier and longtime presidential adviser Bernard Baruch told France it would lose U.S. aid if it voted against partition.” (p.55) A Swedish U.N. mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was killed by Zionist assassins. To this day, no accepted legal authority for the U.N. in its partitioning of Palestine has ever been demonstrated. In other words, it was likely an extra-legal action in response to Zionist lobbying.

Though sporadic violence between Jews and Palestinian Arabs had taken place over the previous two decades, the Zionists committed wholesale massacres of Palestinians after the U.N. resolution for partition. By the end of Israel’s war of independence in 1948, over 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled from Zionist-controlled territory. Israeli historian Tom Segev wrote: “Israel was born of terror, war, and revolution, and its creation required a measure of fanaticism and cruelty.” (p.58) Today this is called in Arabic the “Nakba”—“catastrophe.”

The most well-known massacre took place at the village of Deir Yessin in April 1948, before any Arab armies had joined the fight. There, 254 villagers were murdered in cold blood. The heads of two militias present at Deir Yessin, Irgun and the Stern Gang, were Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both of whom later became prime ministers of Israel. The Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1947, killing 86. The Stern Gang also solicited aid from the Axis powers during WWII.

Zionist Front Organizations in the U.S. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Zionists created a number of front organizations to raise money used to finance militant activities in Palestine. After WWII, the U.S. maintained an arms embargo against Israel and the Middle East. Foremost among the sponsors of the front organizations intended to skirt the embargo was Irgun. One group, the Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinians Jews, claimed it was formed to fight the Nazis in Europe, but was intended instead to fight the British and Arabs in Palestine. These groups espoused such radical ideologies as the idea that “non-Jews are the embodiment of Satan, and that the world was created solely for Jews.” (p.67) Another group, headed by Orthodox Rabbi Baruch Korff, hatched a plot to blow up the British foreign office in London that was exposed in the New York Herald Tribune. Through political influence, U.S. charges against Korff were dropped. Later he “became a close friend and fervent supporter of President Richard Nixon, who called him ‘my rabbi.’” (p.71) Nixon’s support for Israel manifested in the gigantic airlift of military supplies that helped save Israel from defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Another major organization raising money for sending arms to the Zionists in Palestine was the Sonneborn Institute. Between 1939 and May 1948, the Jewish Agency for Israel was also active, raising the equivalent today of $3.5 billion.

Zionism and Organized Crime. Financial backers of Israeli independence included members of organized crime, including Meyer Lansky, head of the Jewish Mafia in the U.S. In an April 19, 2018 article in Tablet (tabletmag.com) entitled “Gangsters for Zion: Yom Ha’atzmaut: How Jewish mobsters helped Israel gain its independence. Robert Rockaway wrote: “In 1945, the Jewish Agency, the pre-state Israeli government headed by David Ben-Gurion, created a vast clandestine arms-purchasing-and-smuggling network throughout the United States. The operation was placed under the aegis of the Haganah, the underground forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, and involved hundreds of Americans from every walk of life. They included millionaires, rabbinical students, scrap-metal merchants, ex-GIs, college students, longshoremen, industrialists, chemists, engineers, Protestants and Catholics, as well as Jews. One group, who remained anonymous and rarely talked about, were men who were tough, streetwise, unafraid, and had access to ready cash: Jewish gangsters.” Rockaway, a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, also wrote that through their control of U.S. ports, the Jewish mob arranged for arms deliveries to Israel aboard vessels flying the flag of Panama.

Recruiting Jews to Relocate to Palestine. “Zionist cadres infiltrated displaced persons’ camps that had been set up to house refugees displaced during WWII. These infiltrators tried secretly to funnel people to Palestine. When it turned out that most didn’t want to go to Palestine, they worked to convince them—sometimes by force.” (p.74) Another recruiting source was Jewish foster children in Christian homes. The Zionists claimed to be the sole representative of all the world’s Jews in order to legitimize efforts to divert war survivors to Israel, not to countries like the U.S. to which many preferred to go. “After a voluntary recruitment drive netted less than 0.3 percent of the DP [displaced persons] population, a compulsory draft was implemented.” (p.79) Some draftees were required to fight in Palestine in the Zionist war of independence. Meanwhile, the secretive Sieff group was formed in Washington, D.C., to carry out back channel lobbying for the Zionist project. The group was protected by such powerful individuals as Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and the aforementioned financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch.

Fate of the Palestinian Refugees. Three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees fled to neighboring regions in a gigantic humanitarian disaster. A 1948 State Department report stated “The total direct relief offered…by the Israeli government to date consists of 500 cases of oranges.” (p.83) The value of land confiscated by the Zionists amounted to $5.2 trillion in today’s dollars. Christians also suffered as “numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians.” (p.83) Efforts by U.S. government officials to withhold aid to the Israeli government due to the refugee crisis were overruled by President Truman.

Zionism and the media. Even as early as WWI, the Zionists exerted almost complete control over the U.S. press. This included placing pro-Zionist articles in prestigious newspapers like The New York Times. In 1953, author Alfred Lilienthal wrote: “The capture of the American press by Jewish nationalism was, in fact, incredibly complete. Magazines as well as newspapers, in news stories as well as editorial columns, gave primarily the Zionist views of events before, during, and after partition.” (p.86) Zionist coercion extended to withdrawal of advertising, cancellation of subscriptions, and blacklisting of journalists and authors, even those offering a mere trace of sympathy toward the displaced Palestinians. Particularly emotional in their support of Zionism were the journals the Nation and the New Republic. An example of how the Zionists could destroy an author’s career was the attack on then-famous journalist Dorothy Thompson after “she began to speak about Palestinian refugees, narrated a documentary about their plight, and condemned Jewish terrorism. (p.92)

We all know that the complete slanting of U.S. media coverage toward Zionism and Israel dominates news reporting at all levels and across the ideological spectrum, from the top newspapers and networks to what is left of small town journalism. This includes so-called “independent” outlets like Breitbart. The start of this bias began, perhaps not coincidentally, during the time before WWI when the newsrooms of U.S. newspapers were taken over by propagandists sympathetic to the Federal Reserve System and the Money Trust. Today, of course, we have the internet, which has begun to make inroads into the control of the news by pro-establishment media corporations and Deep State censors. Internet outlets also must be cautious, however, so are often reduced to the role of “limited hangouts,” reporting only selected stories that protest particularly egregious Israeli offenses, but never the “big picture.”

In conclusion we can say that, as Alison Weir’s book makes clear, it was largely American Zionists who financed and enabled the violent takeover of Palestine and who thereby share responsibility over the past three-quarters of a century for the atrocities committed against a diverse population whose forebears had been living in peace and rooted in the region for millenniums. This population also inhabited the holy city of Jerusalem, sacred to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions.

The book also makes it clear that people can oppose Zionism—the forceful establishment of a Jewish national state in Palestine—without being anti-Jewish or “anti-Semitic.” Of course, most of the indigenous people of Palestine are “Semites” in ethnicity and language. Also, the most forceful opponents of the original Zionist movement in Great Britain, the U.S., and possibly other nations, have been, and still are, Jews themselves who had successfully assimilated into their host cultures. Examples are the Hassidic Jews of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jews in Iran who refuse to support Israel.

Many more volumes could or should be written about U.S. enabling of Israel and Zionism and about Israel’s and Zionism’s interference in internal U.S. affairs. I would include an examination of Israel’s possible participation in the JFK/RFK assassinations and the 9/11 attacks, U.S. acquiescence in Israel’s nuclear weapons program, Israel’s links with the Neocons who control today’s U.S. foreign policy, and today’s courting of World War III against more than half the world’s countries, starting with Israel’s nemesis, Iran. Will the U.S. stumble into WWIII because of its pro-Zionist captivity?

Copyright 2023 by Richard C. Cook. Comments are welcome and will be read at monetaryreform@gmail.com.

Richard C. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst who served with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he broke the story of the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Shuttle. After serving at Treasury, he exposed the disastrous flaws of a monetary system controlled by private finance in his book We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. As an adviser to the American Monetary Institute and while working with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, he advocated the replacement of the Federal Reserve System with a genuine national currency. His latest book is Our Country, Then and Now (Clarity Press, 2023).

“Every human enterprise must serve life, must seek to enrich existence on earth, lest man become enslaved where he seeks to establish his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), Translation by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Countries Begin Downgrading Ties with Israel Over Relentless Bombing of Gaza

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | November 1, 2023

A trio of South American countries, along with Jordan, have cut ties with Israel over the onslaught in Gaza. According to Palestinian sources, the Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed nearly 9,000 people, half of which are women and children.

On Tuesday, Bolivia took the most extreme step and cut all ties with Israel. Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani explained that Bolivia “decided to break diplomatic relations with the Israeli state in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive taking place in the Gaza Strip.”

The next day, Tel Aviv responded by saying Sucre’s move was “capitulation to terrorism and to the ayatollah regime in Iran.”

Colombia and Chile announced they would recall their ambassadors to Israel. Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X, “I have decided to call our ambassador in Israel for consultation. If Israel does not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people we cannot be there.”

Chile posted a press release saying Santiago would also recall its diplomat.

“Given the unacceptable violations of International Humanitarian Law that Israel has incurred in the Gaza Strip, the Government of Chile has decided to recall the Chilean ambassador to Israel, Jorge Carvajal, to Santiago for consultations. …”

“Chile strongly condemns and observes with great concern that these military operations – which at this point in their development entail collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza – do not respect fundamental norms of International Law, as demonstrated by the more than eight thousand civilian victims, mostly women and children.”

Jordan joined the South American nations in downgrading ties with Israel. The Foreign Ministry announced it was recalling its ambassador. “Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi decided to immediately recall Jordan’s ambassador to Israel,” a statement said. The move is to reflect Amman’s condemnation of the “Israeli war that is killing innocent people in Gaza.”

While Tel Aviv receives near unconditional backing from Washington, Israel lacks the international community’s support for its war. On Monday, the UN General Assembly voted 120-14 for a ceasefire in Gaza.

After a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Tel Aviv launched a military operation. The bombing campaign and ground invasion have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 3,600 children.

November 2, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Real Names of Stolen Villages, Illegal Settlements of the Gaza Perimeter

By Perla Issa | Institute For Palestine Studies | October 25, 2023

If you are to read Western news reports coming from Israel, you would likely believe that Kfar Azza, Be’eri, Erez, Nahal Oz, and the other settlements that surround Gaza are “idyllic spots,” “little pieces of paradise, little pieces of heaven;” and “small farming communities.”

What is missing from this picture, what is missing from the vast majority of Western news reports on the genocide unfolding in Gaza is that these “pieces of paradise” are built on stolen land — stolen by Zionists from the Palestinian people through violence. And that the Palestinian population have been huddled and caged in one small corner of their original lands for over 75 years. That is what is currently called the Gaza Strip. About 80 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees, refugees from what today is called the Gaza perimeter. As Palestinian resistance increased over the years, as Palestinians, generation after generation, have tried to break the cage and return home, that cage has become tighter and tighter.

That is how the Israeli residents of these “farming communities” — around 50,000 people living on 1,038 squared kilometers of stolen lands (the Sha’ar HaNegev, Eshkol, and Sdot Negev regional councils)— have been able for years to live, prosper, raise families, have dinners, swim in pools, dance, sing and celebrate “unity and love” in large concerts just a few kilometers away from where over 2.1 million people live on 365 squared kilometers, usurped from their lands, subjugated to daily humiliation, purposely impoverished and caged in, unable to move, live, fish in the sea, and certainly unable to celebrate “unity and love.”

A simple glance at Google maps puts this reality in plain sight. How can such an urban reality exist? A people density of 5,753 people per squared kilometer next to a people density of 48 people per squared kilometer. Can there be any doubt that in order to keep such a reality for decades a vast amount of daily violence needs to be applied in order to prevent any spill over?

Google Maps screenshot of the Gaza Strip and surrounding area, showing the wide disparity in urban density between Palestinian and Israeli-controlled areas. Taken on Oct 16, 2023. The image used as the header of this article, however, is a historic map from 1948 from Palestine Open Maps.

Palestinians live this reality on a daily basis, while Israelis, living in “idyllic spots,” thought that they could afford to forget it. They thought they could afford to forget how they came to live on that very land.

Let us here, remind ourselves of this reality.

In an oral history project of interviews with Zionist fighters, the truth is spoken plainly and simply. Michael Cohen from the Negev Brigade of the Israeli Occupation Forces (Formed from the Palmach, the elite fighting force of the Haganah) explains in a recorded video how the brigade expelled Palestinians in October 1948 from what “today you would call the Gaza Perimeter. It’s the entire Western sector bordering on today’s Gaza Strip.” He explains how “expelling was easy.” That the majority of the Palestinians “had no plans to hurt us” but that “we couldn’t allow ourselves, we, as an army and the [Jewish] settlements around us, to leave Arab settlements in our underbelly. We kicked them out.”

He explains how in many places, Palestinians left without a fight: “On one or two occasions, there was some sort of resistance, even using firearms. But that was rare … The Negev was cleared of all villages!” But with time the soldiers realized that the people they had expelled were coming back and that “it was difficult to finish the job with them.” He explains that they had to block them, “block means shoot to kill!” In his own words: “So in that case I saw it with my own eyes, I didn’t just see it with my own eyes, I also did it. Expulsion was one thing that needed to be done and it was done.”

Indeed, violent expulsion was done, but violence breeds violence. Through Cohen’s testimony we can see how Palestinian resistance was changing and adapting in response to Israeli violence. The villagers and Bedouins went from friendly coexistence, to acquiescence, to non-violent resistance by quietly returning to their lands, but once faced with deadly force, they resorted to armed resistance, they started attacking roads and planting mines. The Israeli response was more violence, they demolished Palestinian homes and burned fields forcing the population to flee again. Cohen explains how they planted explosives and “would topple down the houses in one full swoop.” He further explains: “The demolition [of the houses] and/or the burning of the fields, it wasn’t a one-time thing during the deportation, it was a process.”

Avri Ya’ari of the Haganah explains in another recorded video how they expelled the people of Huj (هوج), a Palestinian village lying 2.5 kilometers from the current Israeli settlement of Sderot and 6.5 kilometers from the Gaza Strip; where Ariel Sharon built a ranch. Through Ya’ari’s testimony we get a sense of the large disproportionate of force between the Israeli armed forces and the Palestinians and again we see how the Palestinian population was peaceful.

Ya’ari: There was Huj … but the relations with them were very good …

Interviewer: The Arab population, when did they leave the area?

Ya’ari: When they were told to. [Laughter]

Interviewer: What do you mean?

Ya’ari: They were told to take a hike.

Interviewer: Who told them?

Ya’ari: The army, the Israeli Defense Forces. In certain stages … how should I say it? They cleared the area of Arabs. The people of Huj, who had been very friendly and later suffered terribly in the refugee camps, they told them, they’d be back in two or three weeks.

Palestinians indeed have been attempting to return ever since by any and all means at their disposal. Therefore, if you wish to help end the violence, to usher in peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis, then recognize what lands Israeli settlements have been built on and call them by their names, their real names. In the table below is a list of some of the settlements that surround Gaza and the corresponding Palestinian lands that they have been built on, whether it be city, village, or tribal lands.

 

Israeli settlement

Name of depopulated Palestinian city that corresponding Israeli settlement is built on Name of depopulated Palestinian village that corresponding Israeli settlement is built on Name of depopulated Tribal land that corresponding  Israeli settlement is built on Additional notes from author
Ashkelon Al-Majdal (المجدل)

Al-Jura (الجورة),

Al-Khisas (الخصاص),

Ni’ilya (نعليا)

Built on the village lands and orchards
Zikim Hirbiya (هربيا) Built on the citrus groves of the village
Karmiya Hirbiya (هربيا) Built on the orchards of the village
Mavqiim Barbara (بربرة) Built on the village and its orchards
Erez Dimra (دمرة)
Sderot Najd (نجد)
Mefalsim Wadi ez Zeit of Gaza city
Kfar Aza Turkman quarter of Gaza city
Nahal Oz Waqf Esh Sheikh Zarif in Gaza city (وقف الشيخ ظريف)
Sa’ad Jdeide quarter of Gaza city
Alumin Turkman quarter of Gaza city
Be’eri Wuhaitat al Tarabin (الوحيدات ترابين) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe lands
Re’im Ghawali al-Zari’i (غوالي الزريعي) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe lands Built next to the ancient ruins of Tell Jamma (تل جمة) in the Gaza valley
Kisufim Abu Khammash (ابو خماش) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe lands
En HaShlosha Ma’in Abu Sitta village (معين ابو ستة), Umm Tina hamlet (ام تينة) part of the Arab al Ghawali (عرب الغوالي) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe Umm Tina is described in an oral history project by a former villager as “fertile land extending as far as the eye can see, wide and spacious, with almond orchards and fields of wheat, barley, lentils, watermelons, and cantaloupes … a wonderful country.”
Nirim Ma’in Abu Sitta village (معين ابو ستة), part of the Arab al Ghawali (عرب الغوالي) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe Built on the ruins of the village’s former school
Nir Oz Ma’in Abu Sitta village (معين ابو ستة), part of the Arab al Ghawali (عرب الغوالي) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe Built on the village orchards
Magen Ma’in Abu Sitta village (معين ابو ستة), Abu Tailakh (أبو تيلخ) and Abu Nuqeira (ابو نقيرة) hamlets Part of Arab al Ghawali (عرب الغوالي) clan of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe Built on the village orchards, engulfing the shrine of Sheikh Nuran (مقام الشيخ نوران ) and the Abu Qurayda spring (بئر أبو قريدة)
Ami’Oz,

Zohar,

Ohad,

Mivtahim,

Yesha

Umm ‘Ajwe  (أم عجوة) and Tell Rabiya (تل رابية) hamlets Part of the Najmat clan (نجمات ) of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe
Sde Nitsan,

Talmei Eliyahu

Karm ‘Aqel (كرم عقل) Part of the Najmat clan (نجمات ) of the Tarabin (ترابين) tribe
Holit El-Buhdari hamlet (كرم البهداري) Part of the Najmat al-Kassar (نجمات القصار) clan of the Tarabin tribe (ترابين) Built on the village orchards
Peri-Gan,

Sede-Avraham, Deqel,

Talme-Yosef,

Avshalom,

Yated,

Yevul

El-Ahmar (كرم الاحمر) and El-Khilawi (كرم الخلاوي) hamlet Part of the Najmat al-Kassar (نجمات القصار) clan of the Tarabin tribe (ترابين) Built on the village orchards

Editor’s Note: This is not an exhaustive list. Feel free to contact the author directly at perla@palestine-studies.org. You may also seek additional resources such as All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question (Places section), Palestine Open Maps, Palestine Remembered, and The Return Journey (Atlas) for further reading on the history of destroyed and depopulated villages across all of Palestine.

Perla Issa is a researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, Lebanon.

November 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia warns Israel about attacks on Syria

RT | October 31, 2023

Spreading conflict to other countries in the Middle East is “unacceptable,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, while discussing a spate of recent Israeli airstrikes with his Syrian counterpart.

Lavrov brought up the issue of Israeli airstrikes, “which have become more frequent against the backdrop of events around the Gaza Strip,” during a phone call with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a readout of the call.

Both ministers “emphasized the danger of attempts by external forces to turn the Middle East, in its current explosive situation, into an arena for settling geopolitical scores,” the readout added.

Mekdad phoned Lavrov to discuss the situation in Gaza, as well as a number of bilateral issues and the progress in ending the war in Syria. While the 2011 attempt at armed “regime change” backed by the West and some regional powers ended in failure, the north and northeast of Syria remain outside the control of the government in Damascus.

Since the Hamas incursion from Gaza on October 7, Israel has bombed Syria at least three times, repeatedly shutting down the airports in Aleppo and Damascus. One of these attacks was acknowledged by the Israeli ambassador to Germany, who said it was intended to disrupt “weapons deliveries from Iran.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once said there had been “hundreds” of strikes on Syria over the past decade. On the rare occasions when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) comments on the attacks, it claims to have acted in pre-emptive self-defense against Iran, accusing Tehran of supplying Hezbollah militants. Damascus has repeatedly insisted that the raids constitute a violation of Syrian sovereignty, but to no avail.

Lavrov and Mekdad agreed on the need for an “immediate end to the bloodshed” in Gaza and a solution to all the humanitarian problems created by the fighting.

Russia has condemned the Hamas attack but called Israel’s response against Gaza an unacceptable form of “collective punishment” against innocent civilians. Moscow has called for a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians through the creation and recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

November 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel’s strikes on Jabalia killed 7 hostages’

Palestine Information Center – November 1, 2023

GAZA – Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said that seven hostages were killed in Tuesday’s Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City.

“Seven civilian hostages were killed in the Jabalia massacre, including three foreign passport holders,” al-Qassam Brigades stated on Wednesday.

Israeli warplanes dropped six highly destructive US-made bombs, each of them weighing one ton, on an entire neighborhood in Jabalia refugee camp, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children.

In this regard, senior Hamas official Ghazi Hammad said that the Israeli occupation army “does not care about the safety of the captives in Gaza regardless of their nationalities.”

Hammad added that his Movement already expressed its willingness to release the foreign prisoners, but the Israeli occupation government obstructed any effort in this regard.

However, he stressed the need now for curbing Israel’s aggression and massacres in Gaza.

November 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UNRWA chief says 70% of Gaza victims are children, women

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023
MEMO | November 1, 2023

Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said 70 per cent of the Palestinian martyrs who have been killed by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since 7 October are children and women, warning that there is no safe place in Gaza.

He pointed out that churches, mosques, hospitals and civilian facilities housing displaced people have been targeted, describing the Israeli attacks as collective punishment for Palestinians living under siege.

For her part, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, explained that the Israeli aggression resulted in the killing of more than 3,400 children and the injury of at least 6,300.

She added that this toll indicates that 420 children were killed or injured every day, stressing “these numbers should shock us to the core.”

She indicated that the Israeli raids resulted in the complete or partial destruction of at least 221 schools and more than 177,000 homes.

November 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel pressures Egypt to accept Gaza refugees for foreign debt relief

The Cradle | November 1, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to pressure Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to take in refugees from the Gaza Strip and has offered that the World Bank write off Egypt’s large foreign debt in return, Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth reported on 31 October.

Recently, Israel also turned to international leaders and asked them to try to convince Egyptian President Sisi to accept refugees in Egypt’s Sinai. Sisi refused the idea, saying that Sinai would become a base for Palestinian resistance groups to attack Israel, creating security problems for Cairo.

Egypt is vulnerable to Israeli pressure as it has suffered from record inflation and foreign currency shortages in recent years, making it difficult for the North African country to repay its external debts and pay for crucial imports, including wheat.

“What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force citizens to take shelter and immigrate to Egypt – and we will not accept that,” Sisi emphasized.

Sisi said that if Israel wants to keep Palestinians in Gaza safe from an expected large-scale Israeli ground assault, they should be allowed to evacuate to Israel’s southern Negev desert region and then return after Hamas is defeated.

He added: “Egypt opposes any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue through military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land – whatever will be at the expense of the countries of the region.” Sisi said that if his citizens were called upon to do so, millions of them would take to the streets and demonstrate against the passage of Gazans to Sinai.

About 2.4 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip. At the beginning of the war, many of them flocked towards the Rafah crossing, which was closed.

Netanyahu’s offer to Sisi comes after the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence recommended on 13 October that Israel use the war with Hamas to forcibly transfer Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to Egypt’s Sinai as refugees and prevent them from ever returning, in a repeat of the 1948 Nakba.

The plan was leaked by activists from the Likud party to gauge Israeli and international opinion over such a plan. The Ministry of Intelligence is headed by Gila Gamliel of Likud.

IN 2010, Gamliel and Netanyahu asked then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to implement the same plan. Mubarak rejected the idea and was deposed in January 2011 following street protests organized and supported by Egyptian activists working in concert with the US State Department.

Netanyahu made a similar request to Mubarak’s successor, Mohammad Morsi, in 2012, which Morsi also rejected.

Sisi then deposed Morsi in 2013. In 2014, Netanyahu made a similar proposal to Sisi in which Israel would annex settlements in the West Bank and Palestinians would receive part of northern Sinai.

Israel’s settlement movement has sought to reconquer Gaza and re-establish the Gush Katif settlement there ever since then prime minister Ariel Sharon ordered the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel has maintained a suffocating economic and military siege on Gaza since that time.

November 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

UN official resigns protesting world body’s failure to prevent genocide in Gaza

Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York chapter of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Press TV – October 31, 2023

The director of the New York chapter of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has resigned, protesting the world body’s failure to prevent underway genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has come under a brutal Israeli war.

Craig Mokhiber submitted his resignation to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk in a letter dated October 28. Reactions began to pour in across social media platforms, including X on Tuesday.

“Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it,” Mokhiber wrote, referring to the United Nations.

He was referring to the October 7 present war that the Israeli regime has been waging against Gaza in response to an operation launched by the territory’s resistance movements against the occupied territories.

The ongoing Israeli massacre has killed more than 8,600 Palestinians and left over 23,000 others wounded.

Mokhiber cited the United States, the UK, and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” referring to the Western allies’ consistent political and military support for the Israeli regime, which has bubbled up even throughout the war.

“This is a textbook case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine,” the letter read.

The letter went on to call for an end to the Israeli regime’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, supporting the establishment of a “single, democratic” state “in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews.”

November 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment