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Revealed: The American Money Entwined with Israel’s Jewish Terrorist Groups

By Jessica Buxbaum | MintPress News | May 28, 2021

JERUSALEM — As Israel rained rockets down on Gaza in mid-May, inside 1948-occupied Palestine (Historic Palestine and modern-day Israel), another kind of Israeli terror emerged. Jewish supremacists stormed cities with high Palestinian populations chanting “Death to Arabs!,” attacking scores of Palestinians and vandalizing their properties.

The mob violence killed two Palestinian citizens of Israel, according to the Mossawa Center: the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel. And despite calls for calm, the attacks are ongoing. On Thursday, a Jewish mob dragged a Bedouin driver out of his car and beat him with glass bottles in northern Historic Palestine. Earlier, footage posted on social media showed Arab gas station workers lying on the ground after being surrounded and beaten by a Jewish mob in the town of Binyamina:

The American Jewish community condemned the wave of anti-Palestinian violence, under the assumption these attacks stem from the fringes of Jewish society. In reality, however, these Jewish supremacists receive financial support from a network of charities in the United States.

Jewish extremists organizing online

As the Israeli government orchestrated a bombing campaign on Gaza, right-wing Israeli activists were coordinating their own war-like operations online.

According to HaBloc, an Israeli nonprofit organization monitoring anti-democratic activity, tens of new groups have been created in the last two weeks on WhatsApp and Telegram. The number of participants in each group ranged from the tens, hundreds, and even thousands. About 2,200 people in total were active in these groups.

HaBloc’s observation of these ultra-right-wing groups reveals how they used social media to organize attacks in advance offline. The groups exchanged information, sold weapons like knives, bats, and pepper spray, used inflammatory rhetoric such as calling for revenge against Palestinian citizens of Israel and documented themselves rioting in the streets.

“This is far more than what’s happening on a daily basis within the far right in Israel,” Ran Cohen, co-founder of HaBloc, said of the extremist activity.

News media reported that the main groups behind the recent rampage were Lehava, a Jewish supremacist organization opposing assimilation and coexistence, and La Familia, a far-right group supporting the Israeli Premier League football club Beitar Jerusalem.

The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, has been monitoring Lehava’s activity for more than a decade.

“Lehava is an organization that claims to work against assimilation, but basically wants to create a Jewish-only space in Jerusalem and in Israel in general,” Rabbi Noa Sattath, IRAC’s director, told MintPress News. “In this last wave of violence, they were certainly instigators in several of the cases.”

IRAC demanded Lehava be labeled a terrorist organization in a letter sent this week to Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, and Head of the Shabak (General Security Service) Nadav Argaman.

Researchers within HaBloc, cautioned, though, attaching the violence to specific organizations.

“The role of Lehava in what happened is not direct,” HaBloc said. “It’s not like there was a central command and they’re sending people into the streets. It was really something that sort of spread out in a more organic way.”

“But the infrastructure and the ideology of Lehava is present and it contributes to what happened in the past few weeks,” HaBloc added.

The American charities bankrolling Lehava

Ben-Zion Gopstein is the leader of Lehava (or “flame” in Hebrew) and founded the organization in 2005. He is a notorious right-wing activist and disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-Israeli extremist who founded the Kach Party, a political movement espousing racist beliefs.

After a brief stint in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in the 1980s, the Kach Party was banned from Israeli politics and deemed a terrorist organization by both Israel and the U.S.

Kahane called for the expulsion of Palestinians and Arabs from the Holy Land and advocated for the outlawing of marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

Four years after Kahane’s assassination in 1990, Baruch Goldstein, an ardent Kahane follower, opened fired at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron—killing 29 worshippers.

Kahane and Goldstein have become revered within the Israeli settler movement. Settlers have shared Kahane’s teachings on social media and have prayed at his grave.

Lehava is considered the successor to Kach, and Kahane’s racist ideology, Kahanism, runs deep within Lehava circles.

In addition to following right-wing interactions online, HaBloc’s research has also found a complex web of nonprofits in Israel and the U.S. connected to Lehava.

Lehava is not a registered charity in Israel so it can’t accept donations. Instead, money is funneled to Lehava through the Israeli nonprofit, the Foundation for the Salvation of the People of Israel, or Hakeren Lehazalat Am Israel in Hebrew. Israeli fund, Chemla or “mercy” in Hebrew has also been linked to Lehava until about 2014, according to HaBloc.

The Foundation for the Salvation of the People of Israel did not respond to requests for comment via email. The email address may be Gopstein’s as “benzion” is part of it. When contacted at the telephone number associated with the organization’s GuideStar (a nonprofit database) profile, the person said this was not the foundation and hung up. Contact information for Chemla is not publically available.

Two tax-exempt charities in the U.S. fund Kahanist activity in Israel: Charity of Light and the American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi.

Charity of Light funnels money to Chasdei Meir (which translates roughly into “charity which shines” in Hebrew). Chasdei Meir was named after Kahane, according to the fund’s website. As evidenced on Charity of Light’s tax returns, Chasdei Meir is related to the Chemla Fund. Charity of Light donated $72,000 to Chasdei Meir/Chemla Fund in 2018, according to its most recent tax filing.

Jewish terrorism

Armed members of Chasdei Meir are shown wearing jumpsuits emblazoned with portarts of Meir Kahane

The American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi directly supports Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi or the Jewish Idea Yeshiva, a Jewish education institution founded by Kahane.

“This is sort of the place for indoctrination of Kahanist ideology,” HaBloc said. “It’s where Benzi Gopstein studied and other prominent Kahanist figures.”

The charity gave $154,000 to Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi in 2018, according to the most recent tax report. The yeshiva is even classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. The yeshiva’s dean, Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer, is also part of Chasdei Meir. The yeshiva did not return a request for comment.

The nonprofits’ tax filings list Levi Chazan as the director of Charity of Light and American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi, and Steven Goldrich is listed as a director of Charity of Light and treasurer of American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi. Chazan was convicted in a 1984 bus shooting in the Occupied West Bank, which wounded seven Palestinians. Both did not respond to requests for comment.

HaBloc explained this entanglement of Israeli and American organizations is not directly supporting Lehava with monetary contributions, but rather aiding the network around it.

“The relationship between [Lehava] and groups that are funded with American money are two separate issues,” HaBloc’s Cohen said. “There are connections, of course, but we cannot say that these groups that were active in the last two weeks were funded with American dollars.”

Other financial players

The aforementioned charities are largely linked to Kahanism and Lehava, but other American foundations have also been tied to Israeli extremism.

The Traditional Fund gave $51,000 to American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon and $11,500 to American Friends of Chasdei Meir in 2018. The American Friends of Chasdei Meir is not listed in any available nonprofit database, however, Chasdei Meir’s website does name the American Friends of Chasdei Meir as its contact. The Traditional Fund did not respond to press inquiries.

According to T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, the Central Fund of Israel (CFI) funds Chemla and Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi. The organization filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2018 to revoke CFI and the American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon’s charitable status on the grounds these groups are funding terrorism.

IRS charity law states that terrorist activities are considered substantial means for disqualifying an organization’s tax-exempt status. This is in accordance with engaging in illegal acts contrary to standard U.S. policy.

A litany of private foundations supports the CFI. Most notably, the foundations belonging to the late American billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Irving Moskowitz. The Moskowitz family foundations have contributed more than $8 million to CFI since 2018 and Adelson’s foundation gave $50,000 to CFI in 2018.

Israeli soldiers and settlers attack Palestinian protesters in the Occupied West Bank town of Salfit, Nov. 30, 2020. Majdi Mohammed | AP

Jay Marcus of CFl said in a statement to MintPress News that, “The Central Fund of Israel absolutely rejects violence and does not support any organizations that promote violence. Furthermore, if an organization that we once supported ever started promoting violence, CFI would not support them in the future.”

Marcus claims that he hasn’t heard of Lehava, adding, “having had rockets indiscriminately showered down on my head, I would certainly disagree with your myth about which ‘groups start violence.’”

The Falic family, owners of the major retail chain Duty Free Americas, has supported The Fund for Saving the People of Israel in the past, providing a total of $60,000 to the association from 2007-2017. The money is wired through the Falic’s Israel-based foundation, the Segal Fund. The Falics could not be reached for comment.

Kahanism’s surge in Israel

Kahane’s Kach Party was banned from entering Israeli politics in 1988. But thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Kahanists are now infiltrating the halls of the Knesset (Israeli parliament).

In the lead-up to Israel’s March election, Netanyahu pushed for a right-wing alliance with Itamar Ben-Gvir, a Kahanist, a defense lawyer for price tag campaigners, and leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party. Otzma Yehudit partnered with the anti-LGBTQ Noam Party and the National Union-Tkuma faction to form the Religious Zionism bloc in the last election. The coalition allowed the electoral list to secure six seats in the Knesset and for a Kahanist to gain political power. Rabbi Sattath pins the blame squarely on Netanyahu for Jewish supremacists’ rise in government.

A Jewish settler wears a T-shirt with the image of Meir Kahane near the city of Ramallah. Bernat Armangue | AP

“Because the prime minister was in such a dire situation and was desperate for every vote, he gave [Otzma Yehudit] the legitimacy,” Rabbi Sattath said. “What we’re seeing here in Israel and around the world is that one of the symptoms of democracies in decline is when the extreme right takes over the center right. The fact that the prime minister and some of the right-wing parties gave the Jewish Power Party legitimacy has then increased their power. And that’s what enabled them to use these methods they’ve used for over a decade on a large scale in the last wave of violence.”

Upon reflecting back to Kahane’s short time in the Knesset, Rabbi Sattath said he faced opposition from every politician and was immediately ostracized.

“When he got into the Knesset, he got the bare minimum [of votes] to get one seat. But what happened in the eighties was he was boycotted by every other Knesset member. Nobody would sit in the plenum when he was speaking,” Rabbi Sattath said. “Everybody from the left and the right understood that these ideas were dangerous and extreme and had to be restrained.”

Today, the political climate in Israeli politics is different.

“What we’re seeing now is that the restraint is completely over,” Rabbi Sattath continued. “And we’re hoping that by shedding light on the past weeks’ violence, we can return to the understanding that there needs to be a red line, that these violent militias and racist, Jewish supremacists have to be stopped.”

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Four People Dead After SDF Fighters Attack Demonstrators in Syria’s Manbij

Sputnik – 01.06.2021

DAMASCUS – Four people were killed and 13 more injured after militants from Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) opened fire at demonstrators in Syria’s Manbij on Tuesday, a local source said.

“SDF fighters opened fire on demonstrators at the Jazeera circle in the centre of Manbij, four people were killed and 13 injured as a result,” the source said, adding that some of the injured are in critical condition.

According to the source, demonstrators against the SDF are ongoing for several days in Manbij as locals disagree with “forced conscription of the male population into the armed forces of the Kurdish formations.”

Kurdish militias imposed a curfew and fully blocked the city.

At the same time, another source said that locals in a settlement east of Manbij kicked Kurdish fighters out after they used force against residents.

June 1, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israeli State Terror — Killing Palestinians with Impunity

By Stephen Lendman | May 31, 2021

Throughout Jewish state history, its ruling regimes treated Occupied Palestinians and Arab citizens ruthlessly.

Terrorizing them is longstanding Israeli policy, including daily arrests throughout the Occupied Territories, torture, beatings and other forms of abuse, targeted killings, and justice nearly always denied.

Last week, Al Jazeera reported about “grief and anger (in the al-Amari refugee camp) as women wept, young men chanted with raised fists, and masked gunmen fired into the air during” Ahmed Fahd’s funeral.

According to his family, he was extrajudicially arrested by Israeli undercover agents — then assassinated by multiple shots in the back and legs.

Mortally wounded and bleeding to death in public pre-dawn, he was left to die in Ramallah’s Um al-Shayaret neighborhood last Tuesday.

What happened to Fahd repeats time and again throughout the Occupied Territories, accountability virtually never forthcoming.

Weeping at her son’s funeral, Fahd’s mother mother said he “was shot without mercy.”

According to a Palestinian health ministry spokesman, he was shot multiple times at close range, adding:

“Doctors reported that one of the bullets that entered his back made a 2.5cm entry hole, but when it exited his stomach the hole was 7cm, proving that he’d been shot at close range.”

Israeli soldiers, security forces, and undercover agents use dumdum “butterfly bullets,” Palestinian doctors explained.

They explode on impact, cause severe internal injuries, and make large exit wounds.

Palestinian human rights group Al Haq’s general director Shawan Jabarin said Fahd’s state-sponsored murder was no accident, adding:

His “killing is part of a deliberate Israeli policy of assassinating Palestinians at close range by undercover units known as Musta’ribeen as well as regular troops.”

“The(se) (elements) come into Ramallah nearly every night after 2:00 AM to carry out arrests.”

“There have been a number of cases where Shin Bet intelligence officers phoned the families of Palestinians they killed after shooting them at close range and blocking ambulances from evacuating those critically wounded – young men whom they accused of armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers – saying that ‘the account had now been settled.’ ”

Al Haq documented numerous cases of Israeli state-sponsored assassinations of Palestinians for invented reasons.

Musta’ribeen are ruthless. Arabic speaking, they pose as Arabs to seek out, abduct, and assassinate targeted Palestinians.

According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), undercover Israelis “pos(e) as protesters and incit(e) the situation.”

They “attack civilians very violently and make severe threats, especially against minors.”

“There have been cases when undercover officers pulled people, including minors, off the street without identifying themselves, which made the arrests look like kidnappings.”

In May alone, Palestinians threatening no one were killed almost daily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — with impunity.

B’Tselem explained that when Israeli security forces kill or otherwise harm Palestinians, “none of those responsible have faced charges.”

Most often, probes aren’t conducted. When initiated, whitewash nearly always follows.

The Israeli Yesh Din human rights group denounced targeted killings of Palestinians, saying:

“The combination of permissive rules of engagement, regarding firing at unarmed protesters and a law enforcement system that prevents genuine, effective investigation of protester deaths, is a lethal one,” adding:

“The result is the unfortunate, unnecessary loss of many lives, a lack of accountability for harming innocents, and the abandonment of (Palestinians) who remain defenseless against the specter of losing their lives.”

A Final Comment

Countless thousands Gazan children were terrorized, traumatized, and severely damaged emotionally from days of Israeli aggression in May.

During round-the-clock IDF terror-bombing and shelling, children endured nightmares.

When bombs detonated overnight, many woke up screaming.

The effects of what happened left permanent scars.

Parents tried to stay strong for their children, but devastation in much of the Strip took a toll on most all its residents.

According to Palestinian psychotherapist Ghada Redwan:

“There are a number of cases suffering from severe panic and intense fear.”

“There are also children whose psychological symptoms are showing up in strong emotions and vomiting.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) explained that Palestinian children who survived the trauma of war likely relive what they endured for some time after it ended.

For some, trauma never ends.

As a boy and adolescent in the 1940s, my next door neighbor was a WW II survivor around my own age.

I was too young at the time to understand why he was different from other neighborhood kids, largely keeping to himself, not playing with me and my other friends.

The trauma of war took its toll on countless numbers who survived the ordeal, developing young children likely affected most of all.

May 31, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The United States Is a Serial Nuclear Aggressor Whose Moral Bankruptcy Threatens World Peace

Strategic Culture Foundation | May 28, 2021

More than 60 years ago, American military chiefs were closer than previously known to dropping atomic bombs on China over a relatively minor crisis with the renegade territory of Taiwan. The new revelations came from veteran whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who worked as a nuclear weapons strategist at the Rand Corporation and at the Pentagon during the 1950s and 60s.

Ellsberg was the source of the famous Pentagon Papers which he leaked 50 years ago exposing the official U.S. lies about its criminal involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 70s.

Now at the age of 90, Daniel Ellsberg has dropped another media bombshell – that the Pentagon was ready to attack China and its major cities with nuclear weapons in 1958. The details were published by the New York Times. But it is perturbing that the shocking revelations barely caused a ripple in the U.S. media. There were no editorials condemning the plan which indicates a complacency among the U.S. media bordering on acquiescence towards such criminal action. This complacency is deeply alarming given the present dangers of war stemming from Washington’s provocations towards China and Russia.

It seems incredible that such a monstrous crime in 1958 was being considered fresh from the memory of the horror perpetrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities razed by two U.S. atomic bombs in August 1945 causing the deaths of at least 200,000 mainly civilians. If the Americans had gone ahead with the plan some 13 years later to attack China the death toll would have been in the millions.

Ellsberg, who could face prosecution under the U.S. Espionage Act similar to contemporary whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, said he was motivated to make his latest revelations because of the imminent risk of war from escalating tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan and other issues. Six decades on, it is notable how the same tensions exist. This is because Washington continues to meddle in China’s internal sovereign affairs, making Taiwan a pawn in its imperialist game. It is the U.S. that is stoking the hostility by reneging on its One China policy which has up to now nominally recognized Beijing’s territorial claim to Taiwan.

In 1958, before the One China policy was adopted in 1979, the U.S. sided with Taiwan in China’s civil war between the Communists and Nationalists led by Chiang kai-shek whose forces fled to the island after their defeat on the mainland in 1949. Rather than accepting the outcome of the civil war, the U.S. continued to support Chiang and his Kuomintang regime. Taiwan became a renegade island territory which has existed in large part due to American military support. This is part of the “strategic ambiguity” adopted by Washington even though since 1979 the United States officially recognizes Beijing’s authority over Taiwan. “Strategic duplicity” would be a more accurate term.

Successive American administrations under Obama, Trump and now Biden have moved significantly to undermine the One China policy and to show increasing support for Taiwan’s would-be declaration of independence. If such a move were to take place, China has vowed to use military force to assert control over the territory. That would no doubt lead to war with the United States. Pentagon chiefs have already said in recent months that a war could happen within five years. And from the way relations are rapidly deteriorating between Washington and Beijing – the latest provocation due to Biden’s insinuation this week that the Covid-19 pandemic may have originated from a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan – it is not hard to envisage how tensions could erupt into a full-blown war.

Ellsberg’s concern is that the willingness by Washington to use nuclear weapons in 1958 against China is still extant today. That should be a concern for the whole world. Unlike in 1958, China is now a formidable nuclear power and there is no doubt it would retaliate leading to a nuclear conflagration. Nevertheless, there is a delusion among some American planners that they can win from a pre-emptive strike. The United States is alone among major nuclear powers in not explicitly renounced a first-strike policy.

What is also perplexing is the United States is the only county to have used nuclear weapons of mass destruction in war yet it continues to officially justify that blatant crime as a necessary means to end the Pacific War against Japan. The sense of entitlement and impunity is appalling.

Furthermore, the willingness in 1958 to use nuclear weapons against China was not the only time such an abominable plan was drawn up. There have been several occasions, including:

  • In 1949, Washington formulated Operation Dropshot which planned to drop 300 atomic weapons on 100 cities and towns across the Soviet Union. This was rationalized as a response in the event that the Soviet Union expanded its allegiance among Western European and Asian nations.
  • In 1950 and 1953, the administrations of Harry Truman and Ike Eisenhower warned of using nuclear weapons against China over the latter’s support for North Korea in the civil war against American-backed South Korea.
  • In 1961, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff advocated a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union, but they were stood down by President John F Kennedy who abhorred the idea. Kennedy went on to implement a landmark arms control treaty with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev which many researchers believe led to his assassination by the CIA in 1963.

The propensity by the United States for the use of nuclear weapons can be seen as a form of blackmail and state terrorism against the rest of the world. It has used such weapons without apology, it has explicitly threatened to use such weapons on several occasions, and it continues to tacitly threaten to use these weapons at any time of its choosing. That, in short, is state terrorism.

It no doubt gives the American rulers some pause for thought that China or Russia could retaliate with devastating force. But what is reprehensible and uniquely criminal is the reckless way in which American rulers continue to push the dynamics for war despite their sanctimonious lecturing about upholding “the rules-based international order”.

This week, the Biden administration announced it was not rejoining the Open Skies Treaty which the previous Trump administration walked away from. That is at least the third arms-control treaty that the U.S. has unilaterally ditched – the ABM, the INF and now the OST. Again, the United States is gravely undermining global security based on provocative and baseless claims against Russia and China.

When Biden meets President Putin next month in Geneva, the former is said by U.S. media to be going to raise several concerns with the Russian leader. Such conceited reporting implies a grossly misplaced sense of moral authority. The reality is, however, that Putin will have a lot more genuine and urgent concerns to raise about the American side and its assault on global security.

The fact is the United States is a serial nuclear aggressor whose veneer of supposed virtue is a thin and increasingly transparent disguise for moral bankruptcy. It is the preeminent threat to world peace.

May 29, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israel Rejects Cooperation With UN Human Rights Council Commission, Foreign Ministry Says

Sputnik – 27.05.2021

Israel refuses to cooperate with the commission on Gaza and Israel, the creation of which is envisaged by a UN Human Rights Council resolution, and rejects the resolution itself, claiming that it acted in accordance with international law and ethical standards, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution calling for the creation of a commission of inquiry to investigate violations in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

“Israel rejects outright the resolution adopted today (Thursday, 27 May 2021) by the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body with a built-in anti-Israel majority, guided by hypocrisy and absurdity. Any resolution that fails to condemn the firing of over 4,300 rockets by a terror organization at Israeli civilians, or even to mention the terror organization Hamas, is nothing more than a moral failure and a stain on the international community and the UN,” the statement says.

The ministry noted that Israeli security forces had acted in accordance with the highest ethical standards and in accordance with international law, protecting their citizens from Hamas attacks.

“Israel cannot and will not cooperate with such an investigation,” the statement says.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution a mockery of international law.

“Today’s shameful decision is yet another example of the UN Human Rights Council’s blatant anti-Israel obsession. Once again, an immoral automatic majority at the Council whitewashes a genocidal terrorist organization that deliberately targets Israeli civilians while turning Gaza’s civilians into human shields. This while depicting as the “guilty party” a democracy acting legitimately to protect its citizens from thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks. This travesty makes a mockery of international law and encourages terrorists worldwide,” Netanyahu said.

The resolution adopted on Thursday by the UN Human Rights Council, inter alia, calls for the urgent creation of a permanent independent international commission of inquiry, to be appointed by the president of the UN Human Rights Council, to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel before and after April 13, 2021, as well as all root causes of recurring tension, instability and protracted conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression on the basis of national, ethnic, racial or religious affiliation.

May 28, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Brits protest outside BAE Systems for weapons sales to Israel

By Ahmed Kaballo – Press TV – May 28, 2021

London – Hundreds of pro-Palestine protestors gathered outside the BAE Systems factory in Blackburn in the north of England, to call upon the weapons manufacturer to stop supplying components for F-35 fighter jets that have been used in the recent bombardment of Gaza.

The protest came on the back of one the largest pro-Palestine demonstrations in British history on Saturday and similar demonstrations throughout the week led by Palestine action groups who have been protesting outside the Israeli-owned Elbit Systems factory that provides drones, weapons, and military hardware to the Israeli army.

We have seen protests in Leicester, Tamworth, Oldham, and today in Blackburn as the anger amongst the British public begins to swell at the thought that UK weapons have been used by the Israeli army to kill Palestinian children.

It has become increasingly clear that the British government’s unwavering support for Israel is not representative of the feeling on the ground with more than 383,000 Brits calling on their government to sanction the Israeli regime for their crimes against the Palestinian people.

But while the UK remains complicit through the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of weapons sold to the Israeli army. Some might wonder if the UK should also be held accountable.

May 28, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Shocking! – Latest update on adverse reactions to the Covid Vaccines in the USA released by CDC

THE DAILY EXPOSE • May 23, 2021 

The number of reported adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines in the USA surpassed 200,000 according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data comes directly from reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. The latest data shows that between the 14th December 2020 and the 14th May 2021, a total of 227,805 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 4,201 deaths — an increase of 144 over the previous week — and 18,528 serious injuries, up 1,338 on the previous week.

This data also showed 943 total adverse events, including 23 rated as serious, among 12- to -17-year-olds.

In the U.S., 268.4 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of May 14. This includes 115 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, 144 million doses of Pfizer and 9 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine. […]

The latest VAERS data shows:

There have also been 822,845 adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines in the UK alongside 1,180 unnecessary deaths, you can read our latest analysis of the UK report here.

May 28, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 25, 2021

Yes folks, there is an international conspiracy and it is all about “protecting” Israel. It operates through front and lobbying groups that uniquely promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel, even when those interests do serious damage to the host country where the lobbyists actually live. In Britain, for example, there are a Conservative Friends of Israel and a Labour Friends of Israel, comprising together 216 members of parliament and party officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been silent about Gaza apart from expressing “deep concern” and blaming both sides while Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has also been under pressure to say something, has focused on how four car loads of alleged Palestinian supporters in London may or may not have driven around shouting out “anti-Semitic” comments. Starmer, one recalls, ran on a leadership campaign pledging to root out “anti-Semitism” in the party as a response to previous leader Jeremy Corbyn’s apparently ill-advised public recognition that Palestinians are human beings. Also in Britain, contesting details of the standard narrative of the so-called holocaust can result in a large fine and even some jailtime.

In 2017, Al-Jazeera ran an undercover operation directed against various Israeli front groups in Britain and in the US which determined that officers from the respective Israeli Embassies, presumably intelligence linked, were meeting regularly with members of the alleged non-government organizations that had been set up to provide support for the Jewish state. In Britain, the interaction included explicit discussions on how to destroy the careers of politicians who were deemed to be insufficiently pro-Israeli. In the US the objective has been to disrupt the activities of pro-Palestinian groups, most particularly the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The pro-Israeli and anti-Arab initiatives were coordinated with and sometimes initiated by the Israeli Embassy officers, suggesting that they were actually intelligence operations.

That many American Jewish groups are collaborating directly with the Israeli Embassy raises two concerns. First, it is ipso facto a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which should require registration and complete transparency regarding one’s sources of income and interactions with the foreign embassy. And second, as many of the groups are in tax exempt status with the IRS as either charitable or educational foundations, that status should be rescinded given their foreign affiliation. Of course, the reality is that the Treasury Department has known all that and more for many years and has never taken any action relating to deceptive behavior by pro-Israel groups.

Elsewhere in Europe, “Holocaust denial” even if it only consists of challenging clearly fabricated “factual” details of the event can also land you in jail in Germany and France while criticizing the state of Israel is construed as anti-Semitism, a hate crime. Jewish groups have, in fact, promoted an official “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes any criticism of Israel as a defining characteristic. The United States Department of State has accepted that definition and language.

Yes, the United States has an office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and it is always headed by a Jew, as has been also the office in the Justice Department that continues to be dedicated to rooting out 90 year old Nazis. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, most particularly in its Trump version, is so close to Israel that it might reasonably be regarded as part of the Israel Lobby. And the Democrats are not much better, though there has been some dissent from progressives, which has led to the creation of a Zionist pressure group within the party called the Democratic Majority for Israel. It exists to defend Israel against any and all criticism while also protecting the billions of dollars and other benefits that the Jewish state receives from the US Treasury and government annually.

One might speculate that there is a whole federal government infrastructure devoted to Jewish and Israeli issues. How did that develop? Well, of course, money is what has made it happen. American politicians have notoriously always been easily corruptible, all it takes is a little cash. But no one is allowed to point out that obvious truth as linking Jews to money is regarded, by Jews and their captive media of course, as some kind of “anti-Semitic trope.”

Now it appears that a ceasefire is more-or-less in place but Israel’s ethnic cleansing that preceded its high-tech slaughter of Palestinian civilians who were being deliberately targeted has been perceived by the world, including many Americans, as particularly brutal. Which means the Zionist propaganda plus coercion machine has been working full time. Capitol Hill offices and the White House have no doubt been inundated with calls, emails and visits from constituents, are now all singing the same song that was also being repeated by the President and Congress. It goes like this: “Israel is being attacked by Hamas terrorists and has a right to defend itself!” Sometimes there is a second verse which includes “The only democracy in the Middle East and America’s best friend and ally.”

Too bad that none of it is true, but the media also did its best to support the narrative by reporting how Hamas was launching “swarms” of rockets against Israel, making it appear as if a beleaguered Israel was valiantly defending itself against terrorist hordes. But the actual numbers told a different tale with only 12 Israelis killed after the violence erupted versus 232 Palestinians, including 65 children. Considerable infrastructure was also deliberately targeted and destroyed in Gaza versus limited damage in Israel while the calculated destruction of the building housing Associated Press (AP) and al-Jazeera should be seen as an attempt to eliminate any independent media observers on the ground in Gaza, even though AP predictably has hardly been critical of the Jewish state.

The Israel Lobby is, to be sure, expert at promoting and marketing its product. It is currently engaged in attacking celebrities and others who expressed any sympathy with the Palestinians while they were being slaughtered by the Israelis as anti-Semites. The larger and more openly combative Lobby groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) have supporters in virtually every congressional district in the United States who can be called upon to get on the phone and start pouring out emails as needed. So every congress critter hears the call and knows what it means. And no one wants to have a hostile Israel Lobby on one’s back if there is any thought of being re-elected. In some cases, approaches include suggestions that significant donations to support one’s political campaign will either increase or be denied depending on what the legislator chooses to do or say.

And then there are the personal visits on Capitol Hill from the Israel lobbyists. The door is always open for the man or woman from AIPAC. Sometimes the Congressman is actually urged to sign a statement on his or her view of the conflict, a document carefully prepared in advance by The Lobby, of course. And the work by the Israel Firsters is almost always effective. Witness for example what took place concerning the assault on Gaza, where Congress and the White House tried to outdo each other in declaring how much they love Israel even though they don’t necessarily have to say or do anything as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what he wanted anyway. Biden reportedly spoke with Netanyahu six times urging teethlessly “de-escalation” of the fighting but the Israeli each time insisted that he would continue the operation “mowing the grass” in Gaza until “its aim is met.”

The Israeli grip on the US government is and should be astonishing and one has to ask why the American people put up with it. They likely endure because they are unaware of the extent of it. If anyone still doubts the degree to which Jewish power is a major force in the United States it is only necessary as a test case to look at the Congressional and White House comments on Gaza, which served absolutely no American interest and which will only make the world even more anti-US due to the Administration’s enablement of the slaughter of the Palestinians. Washington’s UN Ambassador vetoed three Security Council resolutions calling for a cease fire, as is often the case, the only country to vote “no.”

Several aspects of the US role in the fighting particularly demonstrate the ability of Israel and its domestic lobby to get what they want from Washington even when it seems counterintuitive for the Administration and Congress to be falling in line. To be sure, 138 Congressmen and 29 Senators eventually signed onto letters urging a cease fire, but the texts tended to be generic, lacking any context, which means the recommendations were basically useless and not intended to go anywhere.

A highly partisan approach, in line with many of the comments by other government spokesmen, was reflected in a letter from Kevin McCarthy, the “leading Republican” (sic) in Congress, who released a statement confirming his allegiance to Israel. Part of it read:

“The ongoing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians show why America must act immediately to support Israel, condemn Hamas, and sanction those who fund terrorism. Instead of pressuring Israel to compromise with this terrorist group, Democrats should join Republicans in voting to cut off international funding for terrorists.

“That is why today, Rep. Brian Mast, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served alongside the Israel Defense Force (IDF), will push for a vote on the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2021.

“This bipartisan bill, which passed the House last Congress, would sanction foreign governments and individuals who fund Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, such as Iran.”

For starters, how exactly is it that a US Army combat veteran served alongside the Israeli Army? And now this great admirer of Israel is in Congress? Once upon a time one would lose US citizenship for serving in a foreign army. Mast must have missed something about swearing an oath to uphold the US Constitution, not Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs and war criminals. And why are McCarthy and Mast including Iran in their indictment? Possibly because Tehran support of the Palestinian cause would be a pretext for another war? And what are McCarthy and Mast doing pledging anything at all to a foreign country which at the time was engaged in genocide?

Bad enough, but what is really appalling is the role of Joe Biden “the peacemaker” in hurriedly pushing through approval to provide the Israelis with $735 million dollars-worth of precision guided missiles, exactly the kind of weapon being used by Israel currently to kill Gazans. One might reasonably ask “What was Joe thinking?” but that raises the second question of “Was he thinking at all, apart from exercising knee jerk loyalty to Israel and its psychotic leader?” He did not have to provide more weapons to the Jewish state, which apparently was not running out of weapons of its own, but he did it anyway.

The United States already pays one fifth of Israel’s so-called “defense” budget and this extra contribution, as well as the funds provided annually to pay for Iron Dome defense, is on top of that. If there was any question whether the US was enabling the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians the question was surely answered by the decision made by the president, who knowingly provided US made weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the US Arms Control Export Act and the existing Arms Supply Agreement between the US and Israel. He also was providing advanced tactical weapons to a country which is in violation of the Leahy Law due to its uninspected nuclear arsenal and is therefore ineligible for US government military assistance of any kind.

To be sure, some in Congress introduced a resolution to stop the weapons “sale” (a euphemism as Israel never pays for anything). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have proposed blocking the presidential authorization based on its one-sidedness and unsuitability when fighting is actually going on, but it was a futile gesture as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will surely let the bill die in committee. It will never reach the House floor for a vote. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate which will likely suffer the same fate.

Tlaib has argued that “The US cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with US-supplied weapons. To read the statements [from the Biden Administration] you’d hardly know Palestinians existed at all. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will fall from the sky. How many of my colleagues are willing to say the same, to stand for Palestinian human rights as they do for Israel? How many Palestinians have to die for their lives to matter?”

So it is all same old, same old. Biden, who boasts that American ties to Israel are “unbreakable,” has welcomed the cease fire in Gaza but it is at best a pause in what has become generational intercommunal warfare based on Israeli intentions to eliminate the Palestinians. And Biden will even be seen as having provided the weapons to further that process. Americans, who have no compelling interest in being involved at all apart from their domination by a ruthless Israel Lobby on foreign policy issues relating to the Middle East, will pay the piper as they rearm the Israelis and enable the next round of killing. Some believe that the tide of public opinion is turning against Israel due to its brutality, but I have my doubts as the Lobby has been in control for so long and knows exactly which buttons to push to get what it wants. That, the subversion and corruption of American democracy, is the real tragedy.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

May 25, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Countering the American Way of War – Proof of Concept

By Patrick Armstrong | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 23, 2021

The American Way of War is founded on three assumptions. Ever since 1945 the USA has assumed that it would have air superiority: it knew that it would have to fight for it against the Soviets but assumed that it would be able to gain it, at least in the areas where needed (local air superiority). In Korea there was some resistance but the USAF was able to bomb pretty freely. Wikipedia informs us that it dropped more bombs on Korea than it did in the entire Pacific Theatre and about half as many as it did in the European Theatre in 1941-1945. North Korea was obliterated: “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too.” Which, of course, is the principal reason why North Korea has nuclear weapons today.

Bombing became the American Way of War par excellence with ever greater tonnages dropped: Cambodia received about the same amount as Korea, Laos about three times as much, Vietnam about six times as much. And the bombing continues today throughout Washington’s forever wars. Officially it is precise, surgical, carefully selected: “The targets I’m assigned to destroy have been vetted through the most professional members of our armed services, and (I know) that others are taking their jobs as seriously as I am“. But U.S. Precision Bombing is a “Persistent Myth” and the reality is quite different:

Since World War II, the U.S. Air Force has loosened its definition of “accuracy” from 25 feet to 10 meters (39 feet), but that is still less than the blast radius of even its smallest 500 lb. bombs. [Here’s one.] So the impression that these weapons can be used to surgically “zap” a single house or small building in an urban area without inflicting casualties and deaths throughout the surrounding area is certainly contrived.

In the end, there is no difference from random carpet bombing: “precision strike” after “precision strike” after “precision strike” – even assuming the intelligence that guides the “precision” is accurate, which it isn’t – leaves nothing but rubble:

If you want a single word to summarize American war-making in this last decade and a half, I would suggest rubble. It’s been a painfully apt term since Sept. 11, 2001. In addition, to catch the essence of such war in this century, two new words might be useful — rubblize and rubblization.

Here are pictures from Raqqa in Syria. Amnesty International calculates that 30,000 artillery rounds were fired and the New Yorker estimates 10,000 bombs dropped; given an assumed population of 300,000 that’s one for every seven or eight people; “precision” or not, what would your neighbourhood look like after that?

Doing war from the air is pretty cost-free especially if your targets have weak air defence. The 1998 NATO operation in Kosovo had two accidental NATO deaths and two aircraft shot down. The 2011 NATO operation in Libya cost one soldier and two aircraft from accidents and one helicopter captured. It’s engagingly technical and allows much talk of precision. To say nothing of the opportunity to smugly accuse others of just tossing bombs around: “Putin’s modern Air Force choosing devastating dumb bombs over precision strikes“. (In this puff piece the authors do not understand that the Russians actually have figured out a cheap way to make “dumb” bombs “precise”. The process is explained here. Also note the familiar American boast “We’re able to do very precise weaponeering in order to strike and then also minimize civilian casualty”.)

The second assumption of the American Way of War is a prerequisite of the first – assured communications. The American way of precision bombing requires that the bomb or missile “talk” continually to its guide, whether that be a laser designator, a signal to the target and back or GPS satellites. This “talking” must be free, unrestricted and continuous – if it is stopped, the “smart” missile or bomb immediately becomes “stupid”. (Another advantage of the Russian way, incidentally, is that the “talking” is unnecessary once the bomb is dropped.)

U.S. warfighting doctrine depends on air power operating and communicating freely.

The countries on Washington’s target list are well aware of this and that is why they are continually improving their air defence and electronic warfare capabilities. Conversely, the reason why NATO members have feeble air defence and limited EW capability is that they’ve never thought they needed to have them. Years of beating up countries with trivial air defence and EW has left them complacent. (Even a wake-up call like the shooting down of the F-117 is soon sent down the Memory Hole.)

Great strategists have always known that victory is found in avoiding the enemy’s strength and attacking his weakness and that one should “fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks.” Russia, China and Iran cannot expect to win a naval battle in the South Pacific against the U.S. Navy: there will be no second Battles of Leyte Gulf, Midway or Coral Sea. That would be to attack U.S. strengths. Missiles to take out aircraft carriers are the answer: do not attack the enemy’s strength, fight him with the weapons he lacks. Neither would they attempt to invade and conquer the USA itself. Defence is what they want and these are the principles that guide them.

But there is a third assumption of the American Way of War and that is simply this:

the air raid sirens will sound somewhere else.

Everything that I have said above applies to Israel. Just like the USA, Israel has grown accustomed to using air power, “precision strikes” and all the rest of it. In 1973 it had a hard ground fight but since its 2006 repulse by Hezbollah in Lebanon it has relied ever more on air strikes. Like the U.S., it is confident that it has air superiority and secure communications. Being so much closer to its enemies, it is not as confident that the air raid sirens will always scream somewhere else, but confident that it can inflict, via its air power, unacceptable damage on its enemy, Israel proceeds. Hezbollah and Hamas would be fools to try – even if they could – to build an air force to fight Israel, neither can they expect to have air defence and electronic warfare assets to seriously challenge Israel’s air superiority. Because they cannot attack the two assumptions of air superiority and communications, they must therefore attack the third assumption of invulnerability. Not the enemy’s strength but his weakness.

The last big U.S. ground operations, the Iraq wars of 1990 and 2003, were preceded by months of unimpeded transportation of immense quantities of supplies across the Atlantic. Baghdad never interfered and the complacent supposition that the air raid sirens would sound only in the enemy’s skies was further strengthened. But, should NATO be so suicidal as to provoke Russia to war, this will not be the case: the Iskanders will come calling and there will be no uninterrupted buildup. NATO bases will not be safe sanctuaries and the convoys will have to fight their way through.

We see, today, the proof of concept. In May Gaza fired hundreds of simple, cheap rockets at Israel. The Israeli air defence system, Iron Dome, was reasonably effective but it will run out of missiles long before Gaza, to say nothing of Hezbollah, will. Iron Dome suffers from the weakness that it is far more expensive than the simple rockets Hamas is using. Debris rained down on Israeli cities, the odd rocket got through (probably more than we were told). The air raid sirens were continuous and Israelis were in bomb shelters. It’s true that Israel’s air force obliterated buildings in Gaza but that’s not the point: everyone knew they could do that, it’s the continuous rockets that are new. This went on for eleven days with no diminution of fire from Gaza. A piece in the NYT, not a noticeably Israel-hostile outlet, quotes an estimate of 30,000 rockets in Gaza; only about ten percent were fired. Hezbollah has at least four times as many. The myth of Israel’s invincibility has been broken: gravely diminished in 2006 on land, its skies are no longer safe. Fight the enemy’s weakness (its home morale – how many dual citizens are already packing their suitcases?) and use weapons it does not have.

A ceasefire was announced after eleven days; we’ll see if it holds: Israeli police have again stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque which was the trigger in the first place. The Jerusalem Post attempts a summing up; and a very pro-Israeli one it is: so many commanders, headquarters, launching sites claimed destroyed. Most important though is its recognition that Hamas “increased its volume and range” of rocket launches. And “Hamas took credit for redrawing the equation of power in the region in its battle with Israel, asserting that Israel is now in a state of decline”. A claim to be sure. But one with some reality. Hamas struck with greater numbers and deeper into Israel than ever before and there were also disturbances in the Arab population in Israel proper. Hamas is claiming a victory and it is not wrong to do so.

Air superiority, assured immediate communications and security of the home front. Gaza and Hezbollah present the poor man’s solution to the problem – lots of cheap rockets to challenge the assumption of a secure home front: Israel’s “illusion of normality” is gone.

Richer and more industrially-based entities can counter the first two assumptions and challenge the third with more sophisticated answers. Perhaps the greatest challenge to the complacency that other countries will be the amphitheatres for American wars is the Russian Poseidon; this weapon, a sort of giant autonomous underwater cruise missile, is designed to create a tsunami to wipe out U.S. ports and coastal areas. Iran, in its retaliatory attack on the U.S. base in Iraq last year, showed that U.S. forces were not safe in their bases. China and Russia are both creating weapons systems to attack the USA where it is weak using weapons it does not have. U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups, rather than projections of mighty power, are mere targets to hypersonic missiles. Russian EW capability has been described by at least one U.S. general as “eye-watering“, able to turn off U.S. systems; and one may be sure that the Russians are saving their best for later. (Can they blind an entire warship? Not at all! Disinformation! Nonsense! Information Warfare! A little too much protesting?) Russia and China can do this because they are not lost to fantasies of “power projection” or “full spectrum superiority“; they defend themselves with weapons the aggressor does not have that are directed at his weakness. Enough and not too much is their guide.

Gaza vs Israel represents the proof of the concept.

May 23, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weakened Israeli Immunity?

By Stephen Lendman | May 22, 2021

Did Netanyahu go too far this time?

Did he shoot himself in the foot for massacring Gazan civilians — and by doing so generate mass pro-Palestinian protests in cities worldwide?

Did his international support weaken for terror-bombing and shelling residential neighborhoods on the phony pretext of claiming that Hamas used families and others as human shields?

Is his Western and regional media support diminished for targeting their Gazan facilities to silence them?

Did he generate widespread international anger for destroying Gazan infrastructure essential to sustain life and well-being, for striking medical facilities and much more in Gaza intensively?

For time immemorial, US and other Western media provided one-sided support for Israel, including earlier wars on Gaza and against Syria and Lebanon.

Did 11 days in May change things — even if only partially?

Did it put a chink in longstanding Israeli impregnability?

Days earlier, the most always pro-Israel NYT said the following:

The IDF “damaged 17 hospitals and clinics in Gaza, wrecked its only coronavirus test laboratory, sent fetid wastewater into its streets and broke water pipes serving at least 800,000 people, setting off a humanitarian crisis that is touching nearly every civilian in the crowded enclave of about two million people,” adding:

“Sewage systems inside Gaza have been destroyed.”

“A desalination plant that helped provide fresh water to 250,000 people in the territory is offline.”

“Dozens of schools have been damaged or closed, forcing some 600,000 students to miss classes.”

“Some 72,000 Gazans have been forced to flee their homes.”

“And at least 213 Palestinians have been killed, including dozens of children.”

“The level of destruction and loss of life in Gaza has underlined the humanitarian challenge in the enclave, already suffering under the weight of an indefinite blockade by Israel and Egypt even before the latest conflict.”

The above and more that followed was sharp criticism of Israel rarely ever reported about a US allied state.

On Friday, NBC News said “Israel-Gaza cease-fire doesn’t mean the IDF should be excused for striking health facilities.”

“Even if the fighting soon stops, not holding Israel to account for potential war crimes green-lights future heinous attacks.”

At times of war, civilians are protected persons under international law.

Targeting and “preventing them from receiving effective care for their wounds compounds their suffering,” NBC News added.

WaPo has been notably critical of Israeli aggression this month.

An opinion piece it published by Columbia University Professor of Arab Studies Rashid Khalidi said the following last week:

Days of Israeli aggression on Gaza reflect “the latest episode in the hundred-plus year war on Palestine,” adding:

“Israel’s brutal actions in and around Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, and its attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians in the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, were triggers for another violent, asymmetrical confrontation” between Israel’s powerful military and Palestinians armed with no more than crude rockets and their redoubtable will to resist oppression.

What went on for days and continues throughout the Occupied Territories through daily oppression of Palestinians has nothing to do with “riot(ing)” or a “real estate dispute” as phony Israeli “talking points” claimed, Khalidi explained.

It’s all about pursuing Israel’s longstanding aim for maximum Jews and minimum Arabs throughout all valued parts of historic Palestine — notably to assure that the world community recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181.

The Palestine Partition Plan granted 56% of historic Palestine to Jews (with one-third of the population), 42% to Palestinians.

Jerusalem was designated an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council.

Res. 181 also called for an Independent Arab state by October 1, 1948.

It called for “all governments and peoples to refrain from taking any action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations.”

The Security Council was and continues to be empowered with “necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation.”

Security Council (SC) Resolution 242 (1967) called for an end of conflict and withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the Occupied Territories.

The UN Charter, Fourth Geneva, and other international laws protect the rights of everyone everywhere, including Palestinians and other oppressed people.

Like the US and West, Israel operates exclusively by its own rules.

A permanent state of war by hot and other means has existed by Israel against Palestinians for nearly three-fourths of a century — with no end of it in prospect.

WaPo contributors Noura Erakat and Mariam Barghouti said Israel’s intention to expel Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah residents from their East Jerusalem homes and land “highlights the violent brazenness of (its) colonialist project.”

WaPo contributor Michael Chabon accused Israel of “violat(ing) the Fourth Geneva Convention, which limits the duration of military occupation to a year and prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own citizens to occupied territory.”

WaPo accused Israel of “leav(ing) Gaza in shambles.”

Questioning Netanyahu’s future, it said “Jerusalem is on verge of erupting again” because of Israeli violence on its people straightaway after agreeing to ceasefire in Gaza.

According to Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Mohammad Fityani, Israeli forces on Friday injured 21 Palestinians in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, adding:

Similar confrontations occurred throughout the West Bank.

WaPo quoted Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, saying:

“Our people rose up… to defend the al-Aqsa Mosque with their bare chests, and to prove to the whole world that (East) Jerusalem is (the exclusive Palestinian capital), and that Al-Aqsa is a red line.”

WaPo quoted Oxfam’s policy officer in Gaza Laila Barhoum, last week saying:

“We dread the darkness of the night, when you can no longer tell where or how close the black smoke is” from Israeli missiles and shells.

“You can only hear it, feel it and, if you’re lucky, survive it.”

“So, we gather together, support each other and tell ourselves that we will survive the night.”

“And we wait for the condemnation from the international community — condemnation that never comes,” notably not from the West.

WaPo contributor Raphael Mimoun said “(t)he Israeli occupation of the West Bank is, by every definition, apartheid: two legal systems for two ethnic groups.”

“Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end Israeli apartheid.”

The above and more like it in WaPo and in other US media editions expressed uncharacteristically harsh criticism of Israel.

Does it reflect a crack in its longstanding invulnerability to justifiable criticism?

Or is it the emotional response of the moment that’s likely to pass in the days and weeks ahead?

A Final Comment

Al Jazeera stressed that 11 days of Israeli bombardment… left (Gaza) in ruins,” adding:

The Biden regime “faced unprecedented criticism for failing to demand an immediate ceasefire to end Israel’s devastating bombing campaign, instead putting out what rights advocates described as milquetoast statements reaffirming Washington’s unequivocal support for Israel.”

Following ceasefire on Friday, “(w)hat’s Biden’s plan” for besieged Gazans and Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories?

Al Jazeera quoted Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver saying:

“There’s zero (US) plan” — other than supplying Israel with more heavy weapons and munitions for further war at its discretion against Palestinians and neighboring states.

Hashemi also stressed that “the more Israel is coddled, supported, and sustained (by the US and West), the more belligerent and intransigent (it) becomes” — knowing it can do what it pleases unaccountably.

May 22, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

American Special Forces Destroyed a Hospital in 2015

Tales of the American Empire | May 13, 2021

President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce American combat forces in Afghanistan failed after the large city of Kunduz was overrun in September 2015. This was the first Afghan city to fall to insurgents since the war began in 2001. This embarrassment was magnified after a C-130 transport aircraft crashed while taking off from Jalalabad that claimed the lives of six American airmen and five contractors. The Taliban claimed credit, but the Americans were unsure why it crashed. The American CIA’s aerial assassination program was failing to suppress the insurgency and senior American officials were angry. Someone wanted revenge and ordered an aerial attack on a hospital in Kunduz where Taliban fighters were being treated, killing 24 patients and 18 medical staff, leaving 33 persons missing and over 30 wounded.

______________________________________

“Doctors Without Borders: U.S. asked if Taliban was at hospital before attack”; David Cloud; Los Angles Times ; November 5, 2015; https://www.latimes.com/world/afghani…

“AC-130 Mission”; Youtube; October 3, 2011; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WKhQ…

“Death from the Sky”; May Jeong; The Intercept ; April 28, 2016; https://theintercept.com/2016/04/28/s…

“CNN and the NYT Are Deliberately Obscuring Who Perpetrated the Afghan Hospital Attack”; Glenn Greenwald; The Intercept ; October 5, 2015; https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/c…

“Kunduz hospital airstrike”; Wikipedia; provides a long list of sources; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_…

May 22, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Israel bombing destroys water supplies of 20% of Gaza residents

MEMO | May 20, 2021

Israeli forces have deliberately targeted two water pipelines in the Al-Saftawi area cutting supplies to 20 per cent of the residents of Gaza City, the municipality said in a statement today.

“The Israeli air strikes on Al-Saftawi area last night damaged two main water pipelines feeding the northwestern residential areas,” the statement said.

“The Municipality of Gaza regrettably confirms that the bombing of these two water pipelines, one of which serves more than 200,000 citizens, leaves them with no water supply and aggravating the water crisis that the city suffers due to the deliberate targeting of its infrastructure,” the statement said.

The municipality of Gaza has begun inspecting the destruction and creating temporary solutions to reduce the water crisis caused by the destruction.

It went on to renew its condemnation of the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, buildings and vital facilities.

May 20, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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