Mr. Netanyahu Crows to Washington (A Brief Retrospective)
By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | June 20, 2014
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loves recycling dire warnings about Middle Eastern rivals acquiring nuclear weapons. He’s been doing it for years.
For as long as we can remember, Netanyahu has insisted that “time is running out” on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, despite the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.
In July 2013, he declared that Iran is “getting closer and closer to the bomb.” A few months before that, in a speech to the AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby in Washington, he said Iran “is running out the clock” and “has used negotiations, including the most recent ones, to buy time to press ahead with its nuclear program.”
The year before that, in an interview with Fox News’ Greta van Susteren, Netanyahu addressed his decade-and-a-half obsession, stating that a nuclear-armed Iran “was a lot further away 15 years ago when I started talking about it. It was a lot further away 10 years ago. It was a lot further away five years. It was a lot further away five months ago. They are getting there, and they are getting very, very close.”
In a nauseating speech before a Joint Session of Congress on May 24, 2011, Netanyahu said, “When I last stood here, I spoke of the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.”
His memory was correct. He did deliver a harrowing warning about Iran to a Joint Session of Congress in 1996. And his rhetoric was nearly identical. Here’s part of it (followed by a transcript):
Netanyahu: The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran, that has wed a cruel despotism to a fanatic militancy. If this regime, or its despotic neighbor Iraq, were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.
I believe the international community must reinvigorate its efforts to isolate these regimes, and prevent them from acquiring atomic power. The United States and Israel have been at the forefront of this effort, but we can and must do much more. Europe and the countries of Asia must be made to understand that it is folly, nothing short of folly, to pursue short-time material gain while creating a long-term existential danger for all of us.
Only the United States can lead this vital international effort to stop the nuclearization of terrorist states. But the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.
Sound familiar? Yes, naturally. The script has remained the same for the past two decades. So identical are the talking points, in fact, that while Netanyahu said “now, time is running out” in 2011, here’s what he said back in 1996, during his speech to Congress.
Sigh. Despite Netanyahu’s constant visibility and years of repetition on this issue, he should not be credited with introducing it. A year before his 1996 speech to Congress, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said much the same thing.
June 21, 2014 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, United States | Leave a comment
Syria’s Press Conference the United Nations Doesn’t Want You To See
Global Research News | June 20, 2014
Yesterday at 11am, the Syrian Mission to the United Nations convened a press conference featuring people from the US who observed the recent elections.
Five minutes into the opening comments of Syrian Ambassador Bashar Al-Jaafari, the UN webcast cut off. The thousands of journalists, political analysts, and others who view UN webcasts each day from all over the world were denied the ability to watch the press conference, and hear what was said.
This is not the first time this has happened when Bashar Jaafari is speaking. This occurred on June 7th earlier this year, and on numerous occasions throughout 2013. Reporters at Inner City Press reported that this is not accidental, but was ordered by Michele DuBach, Acting Deputy Director-News & Media Operations.
This comes in the context of other UN harassment of Syria. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has met with Ahmad Jarba, a leader of violent insurgent groups in Syria, but has refused to meet with Bashar Jaafari. Though Syria pays over $1 million to the UN each year, it is not being treated as an equal member state.
Watch the important, UN Press Conference about Syria, that someone obviously doesn’t want you, or anyone else, to see:
June 20, 2014 Posted by aletho | Video, Wars for Israel | Syria, United Nations | Leave a comment
Mideast crises West bid to protect Israel interests: Jaafari
Press TV – June 19, 2014
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Bashar Ja’afari says the current tumult in the Middle East, including the crisis in his country, is a scheme by the West to safeguard Israel’s interests, Press TV reports.
“This is a geopolitical plan that is not only targeting Syria exclusively, although Syria is very important for either the success or failure of this plan, but it is targeting the whole area,” said Ja’afari Wednesday in an exclusive interview with Press TV in New York.
He said the main goal of the Western plot “is to secure for a long time the interests of Israel and preventing the establishment of Palestinian state in Palestine.”
“So they need to open up a new front, a kind of deviation, from the focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian question to another focus which might be a war between Muslims and Muslims,” he added.
He further underlined that the West intends to incite divisions among Muslims under the false notion of a Sunni-Shia conflict to provoke wars between Muslim countries in the region.
The Syrian envoy went on to reiterate that the huge participation of Syrian voters in the country’s presidential election served as big “NO” message to foreign interference in their country’s internal affairs.
“Our message would be a friendly message… [that] we want to have friends and we want to have normal, bilateral relationship with everybody. We do not interfere into the American domestic affairs. Please don’t interfere into our own domestic affairs.”
According to official figures, President Bashar al-Assad won nearly 90 percent of the votes cast in Syria’s presidential race. Syria’s Supreme Constitutional Court announced that over 73 percent of the 15.8 million eligible voters had taken part in the election.
June 20, 2014 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, Wars for Israel | Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, Yemen | Leave a comment
Global fear of Iran’s ‘controversial’ nuclear programme is a ‘US-Israeli construct’
By Henriette Johansen | MEMO | June 17 ,2014
Iran’s nuclear talks with the P5+1[1] are taking place in Vienna. A “solid commitment” from Iran is needed, ensuring that its stated peaceful atomic energy programme is not a clandestine attempt to build nuclear weapons. The Iranians have found themselves needing to make a leap towards lifting the crushing international sanctions, notably those imposed by the US. It is the basis of these sanctions that MEMO has re-examined with a group of senior researchers in the field.
When Ellie Geranmayeh, Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) spoke with MEMO, she insisted, “In the same way that any potential military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme needs to be explained to the United Nations, the West also needs to explain the basis of its accusations and suspicions.”
Ever since the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported “sensitive enrichment and reprocessing activity” in Iran in 2003, the country has been under close supervision. The UN Security Council decided to impose economic sanctions for Iran’s non-compliance with its previous request to suspend enrichment activities before extending them in 2007, 2008 and 2010. According to Reuters, Washington was recently pushing for an even more severe attack on the Iranian economy, but this was rejected by the Security Council. Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, argued that the sanctions are “illegal” and imposed by “arrogant leaders”. The sanctions are devastating the Iranian economy and have been imposed despite the fact that Iran’s uranium enrichment is being held below 5 per cent, consistent with developing fuel for a civilian nuclear power plant. US pressure has led several nuclear contracts between Iran and foreign governments to fall through.
The United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC)[2], meanwhile, has used its official website to “call for action” to change the course of its declining share of the global enrichment market, underscoring the need to “limit the spread of enrichment technologies to rogue states”. This controversial Western centric use of the phrase “rogue states” demands a thorough investigation, according to many experts.
Furthermore, the West’s foundation for these claims against Iran has too many fault lines “to begin to even list them,” claims historian and Iran nuclear expert Dr Gareth Porter. The single biggest factor pushing “the elite’s obsession over Iran as a threat and as an enemy,” he says, “is that the basic premise was laid down early at the end of the Cold War.” His ground-breaking work recently received the annual Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism from the London-based journalists’ Frontline Club. MEMO spoke to Porter about the trajectory of the “imminent Iranian nuclear threat” and its construct by a handful of powerful actors with a particular political agenda and documents “with little reliability” that the media over the last decade have had no qualms about accepting and sharing as (unauthenticated) “evidence”.
1) “The laptop documents”
One of the main anomalies in America’s porous trajectory on Iran is the pseudo-crucial “laptop documents”. Presented by the US to the Security Council, these 1,000 pages are alleged to contain research on nuclear weapons-related activities, stolen from the computer of an Iranian scientist or engineer who was, it is claimed, involved in the programme. “This was a trick to cover the truth,” said Porter. He recapped how the documents were passed to Germany’s intelligence agency by a member of the Mujahideen-E-Khalq (MEK) an Iranian terrorist organisation in exile, which has been a client of Israel’s Mossad spy agency for several years. German intelligence and many other government officials, including ex-US Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned that the US and EU should not make the mistake of basing policy on this information.
2) Redesigned Iranian missile
Another central anomaly is the “discovery” that the Iranian missile re-entry vehicle is depicted in the documents as being redesigned to accommodate a nuclear payload. “This was one that had been discarded by Iran at least two years before the drawings were said to have been made,” Porter argues, “not according to Iranian sources, but an authoritative Western source: the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).”
3) Technical errors
“The discovery that the same drawings of an alleged effort to redesign the re-entry vehicle of the Shahab-3 missile contained numerous technical errors,” Gareth Porter contends, “indicated again that they had not been done by those involved in Iran’s missile programme.”
4) Codename (5.15)
This was given to one of the sub-projects in the alleged nuclear weapons research programme that was, in truth, the number assigned to a contract with the civilian atomic energy organisation of Iran or an ore processing facility and was signed two years before the supposed covert research programme was even said to have begun.
Israel’s position
Last week, at the Herzliya Conference, Israel’s platform for the articulation of national policy, Global Jewish News Source reported major Israeli politicians with strong beliefs in this propaganda. “What is at stake is not merely Israel’s position in the Middle East,” argued Likud’s Yuval Steinitz, “what is at stake is the fate of the entire world… Iran is a nuclear threshold state. It just hasn’t created the weapons yet.”
Lina Khatib of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank explained to MEMO how Israel has been trying to push the US to take military action against Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment programme. Further, the government in Tel Aviv has also been engaging in “clandestine intelligence operations to halt Iran’s nuclear developments, for example through cyber-attacks,” she warned. In response, America pushed back against Israel’s request for military strikes against Iran, and is not likely to include Israel as a formal partner in the Vienna negotiations over the nuclear file, “though the US will ensure that Israeli interests are represented during the talks”.
“Overwhelming” evidence exists, according to Dr Gareth Porter, that it was Israel’s Mossad that produced the falsified documents that have propelled the “manufactured crisis” forward, “not just once, but twice”. First came the “laptop documents” that surfaced in 2004 followed in 2008-2009, two years into his research, when a series of intelligence reports and allegedly Iranian documents were given to the IAEA directly by the Israelis, “resulting in more accusations following the November 2011 IAEA report”.
According to Porter, Israeli’s pressure on the Obama administration to make demands of Iran will ensure that the talks fail. “Thus far that Israeli strategy has succeeded, because the Obama administration has demanded a cut in Iranian centrifuges that makes it difficult to envision a final compromise.” Basing any military action on false dossiers would be as irresponsible as the invasion of Iraq in 2003; the world witnessed what consequences that had, when soldiers on the ground had no clue about what was going on.
Current talks
Iran has been talking separately with most of the members of the P5+1 group in advance of the formal meetings week. Although reports have been modestly positive about the potential outcome, the final accord date set as July 20 is already predicted to be given a six-month extension by government officials from most of the countries involved.
Porter remains “very worried” that the talks will fail because of America’s “hard-line” refusal to tolerate any Iranian enrichment of uranium to support even its present nuclear reactor, “much less future reactors”. He recently interviewed Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who has not given up hope of renewed and extended diplomatic flexibility on behalf of the US. Even so, he indicated that statements had been made in the talks, as well as to the media, that were “posturing”. He implied that this was politically dangerous because it would make later adjustment in the US negotiation stance very difficult.
According to Lina Khatib, we will see the lifting of some sanctions, but a comprehensive deal will take time to be made and implemented. However, as Iran’s nuclear programme is primarily, she says, “aimed at giving Iran political weight in the Middle East and international recognition as a major regional player, rather than at preparing to conduct a nuclear attack,” there might be more “muscle-flexing” involved than seen so far.
The threat of an ISIS take-over of major Iraqi cities near the border with Iran has collided with the current negotiations on the country’s nuclear programme and arguably paved the way for an indirect willingness to reach an agreement with America. The pace of events means that Iran, which in the 1980s fought former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for eight years, may be willing to cooperate with Washington to bolster Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said that he will consider such cooperation, if the US takes action in Iraq.
However, a US official cautioned against reading too much into the latest talks: “No one should expect that all of a sudden, overnight, even if we resolve the nuclear agreement, that everything will change. It will not. The fundamentals remain exactly as they are. Until we resolve the nuclear issue there cannot be any kind of fundamental change in this relationship.”
Footnotes
[1] Iran has had meetings with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These six are known as the P5+1 (the permanent five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) or alternatively as the E3+3, used by European countries. These meetings are intended to resolve concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme.
[2] USEC: the American corporation that contracts with the United States Department of Energy to produce enriched uranium for use in nuclear power plants.
June 18, 2014 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
The “Progessive” (aka, Liberal) Antiwar Movement: RIP?
By John V. Walsh | CounterPunch | June 16, 2014
Ralph Nader wrote a very perceptive essay in the wake of the edifying defeat of the despicable arch-imperialist, Israel Firster and reliable servant of Wall St. Banksters, Eric Cantor, at the capable hands of the libertarian leaning Professor David Brat. It was titled “Can Progressives Learn From Eric Cantor’s Defeat”? Can they? Yes. Will they? It is highly doubtful. It is difficult to learn anything if you think you have nothing more to learn.
But here we are interested only in the lessons of Cantor’s electoral humiliation at the hands of Brat for the progressive antiwar, anti-Empire movement. (For the significance of the Brat victory beyond the matter of war, see this.) And by “progressive” we do not mean “Left.” “Progressive” for some is merely a brand change adopted by long ago to escape the abuse poured on “liberalism.” One looks in vain for a self-described liberal these days only because they have donned a new costume which they have already badly soiled.
Here are two relevant quotes from Nader’s essay:
“(The Brat victory) has several takeaways for progressives besides envy and shame over why they do not directly take on the corporate Democrats.”
“Unfortunately the driving energy of progressives, including the dissipating Occupy Wall Street effort, is not showing up in the electoral arena. The political energy, the policy disputes and the competitive contests are among the Republicans, not the Democrats…”
In summary, why are the progressives not taking on the corporate (and hawkish) Democrats in the electoral arena? And what does that mean for the next presidential year, 2016? Certainly it is desirable to have antiwar candidates in primaries of both major parties – and even better to have them win the nomination. Thus, there are two electoral tasks for the broad antiwar movement in the rapidly approaching election year of 2016:
1. On the Democratic Side. The progressives must field a candidate to take on the bloodthirsty Hillery to make good on Nader’s challenge. Otherwise, she could well be “the first woman” – to start a world war. So far there is no one – and the undependable Bernie Sanders is not that person, as even a cursory reading of the late Alexander Cockburn’s denunciations of Sanders over the years makes clear. Nor is that great American Indian, my Senator, Elizabeth Warren who ran for Senate as a hawk on Iran, a credible peace candidate.
2. On the Republican Side. Antiwarriors here must make sure that there is an antiwar Republican running in the primaries and hopefully winning the nomination. That person is Rand Paul. And Brat’s victory over the establishment’s candidate bodes well for Paul’s success. So the forces of peace are making headway in the GOP even though they face an uphill battle.
That leaves the Democrats without any anti-Empire voice. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) will not do the job of challenging Hillary. From Norman Solomon to Medea Benjamin they are notorious by now for putting Party over principle. Other progressives operating outside the Dem Party, and few in number, are well defended, claiming that elections are for naught. But history argues against this. Truman, the architect of the unpopular Korean War was defeated in the New Hampshire primary, paving the way for an Eisenhower victory due in part to a pledge to end the war, a pledge he kept promptly. Lyndon Baynes Johnson, the inheritor of a very unpopular war from JFK was also undone in New Hampshire, by the principled Eugene McCarthy, not the most “liberal” Democrat and a bit of a libertarian. From that point on despite the best efforts of both Humphrey and Nixon to prolong it, the Vietnam War was over. Primary challenges have an effect. Ron Paul built a very powerful movement, especially among the young, with his 2008 and 2012 runs.
Other progressives will tell you that street actions like Occupy are the way forward despite the inability of Occupy to so much as articulate a platform, program or strategy. And they are bereft of even a shadow of ideology and consistency having long ago abandoned the more traditional left precepts. Most notably the decade of wars went largely unmentioned in their gatherings, in great part because they are now Obama’s wars. Nader kindly describes Occupy as “dissipating.” Strangely, some of these Occupiers find refuge in the Green Party, which is dedicated to electoral action. The Green Party itself is a resounding failure. Its perennial presidential candidate is a very pleasant, organized and well meaning person but is entirely too solicitous of “progressive” Dems to make an impact. And she has not been able to win even a State House seat in very progressive Massachusetts, although she has tried.
Picasso said he became a Communist, because the Communists were for the peasants and he was for the peasants. Often it is as simple as that. What are people to do if they are for peace and the only viable force for peace is the libertarians, as was true in 2012? Then they will become libertarian Republicans. And we see that happening with many young people. If “progressives” cannot accomplish a challenge to Hillary, they will be finished for the foreseeable future, probably a generation at least. And that seems to be the way things are headed.
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
June 16, 2014 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | LBJ, Occupy Wall Street, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
The Jewish Plan for the Middle East and Beyond
By Gilad Atzmon | June 13, 2014
Surely, what’s happening now in Iraq and Syria must serve as a final wake-up call that we have been led into a horrific situation in the Middle East by a powerful Lobby driven by the interests of one tribe and one tribe alone.
Back in 1982, Oded Yinon an Israeli journalist formerly attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published a document titled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.’ This Israeli commentator suggested that for Israel to maintain its regional superiority, it must fragment its surrounding Arab states into smaller units. The document, later labelled as ‘Yinon Plan’, implied that Arabs and Muslims killing each other in endless sectarian wars was, in effect, Israel’s insurance policy.
Of course, regardless of the Yinon Plan’s prophesies, one might still argue that this has nothing to do with Jewish lobbying, politics or institutions but is just one more Israeli strategic proposal except that it is impossible to ignore that the Neocon school of thought that pushed the English-speaking Empire into Iraq was largely a Jewish Diaspora, Zionist clan. It’s also no secret that the 2nd Gulf War was fought to serve Israeli interests – breaking into sectarian units what then seemed to be the last pocket of Arab resistance to Israel.
Similarly, it is well established that when Tony Blair decided to launch that criminal war, Lord Levy was the chief fundraiser for his Government while, in the British media, Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were busy beating the drums for war. And again, it was the exact same Jewish Lobby that was pushing for intervention in Syria, calling for the USA and NATO to fight alongside those same Jihadi forces that today threaten the last decade’s American ‘achievements’ in Iraq.
Unfortunately, Yinon’s disciples are more common than you might expect. In France, it was the infamous Jewish ‘philosopher’ Bernard Henri Levy who boasted on TV that ‘as a Jew’ campaigning for NATO intervention, he liberated Libya.
As we can see, a dedicated number of Jewish Zionist activists, commentators and intellectuals have worked relentlessly in many countries pushing for exactly the same cause – the breaking up of Arab and Muslim states into smaller, sectarian units.
But is it just the Zionists who are engaging in such tactics? Not at all.
In fact, the Jewish so-called Left serves the exact same cause, but instead of fragmenting Arabs and Muslims into Shia, Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds they strive to break them into sexually oriented identity groups (Lesbian, Queer, Gays, Heterosexual etc.)
Recently I learned from Sarah Schulman, a NY Jewish Lesbian activist that in her search for funding for a young ‘Palestinian Queer’ USA tour, she was advised to approach George Soros’ Open Society institute. The following account may leave you flabbergasted, as it did me:
A former ACT UP staffer who worked for the Open Society Institute, George Soros’ foundation, suggested that I file an application there for funding for the tour. When I did so it turned out that the person on the other end had known me from when we both attended Hunter [College] High School in New York in the 1970s. He forwarded the application to the Institutes’s office in Amman, Jordan, and I had an amazing one-hour conversation with Hanan Rabani, its director of the Women’s and Gender program for the Middle East region. Hanan told me that this tour would give great visibility to autonomous queer organizations in the region. That it would inspire queer Arabs—especially in Egypt and Iran… for that reason, she said, funding for the tour should come from the Amman office” (Sarah Schulman -Israel/Palestine and the Queer International p. 108).
The message is clear, The Open Society Institutes (OSI) wires Soros’s money to Jordan, Palestine and then back to the USA in order to “inspire queer Arabs in Egypt and Iran (sic).”
What we see here is clear evidence of a blatant intervention by George Soros and his institute in an attempt to break Arabs and Muslims and shape their culture. So, while the right-wing Jewish Lobby pushes the Arabs into ethnic sectarian wars, their tribal counterparts within George Soros’ OSI institute, do exactly the same — attempt to break the Arab and Muslims by means of marginal and identity politics.
It is no secret that, as far as recent developments in Iraq are concerned, America, Britain and the West are totally unprepared. So surely, the time is long overdue when we must identify the forces and ideologies within Western society that are pushing us into more and more global conflicts. And all we can hope for is that America, Britain and France may think twice before they spend trillions of their taxpayers’ money in following the Yinon Plan to fight ruinous, foreign wars imposed upon them by The Lobby.
June 13, 2014 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, Afghanistan, Bernard Henri Lévy, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Oded Yinon, Syria, UK, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
Behind the smoke: Gareth Porter and the Iranian nuclear story
By Yazan al-Saadi | Al-Akhbar | June 11, 2014
Iran’s nuclear program has been a subject of obsession for Western governments and media agencies for decades, as far back as the final years of Western-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign. But over the course of the last decade, the subject has reached new hysterical heights, propelled by mainstream media coverage mired with distortion and misinformation. Enter: Gareth Porter.
Porter, 71 years old, is a man of many trades. He is a historian, an author, a policy analyst, and of late, has made a name for himself as a successful investigative journalist.
He began his career in journalism during the US war on Vietnam, serving as the Saigon Bureau Chief for the Dispatch News Service International from 1970-71. He then decided to leave journalism for decades, working in a variety of jobs as an anti-war activist, a university teacher, and sustainable development environment work.
It was after another American war at the dawn of the 21st century, this time against Afghanistan and Iraq, that Porter found himself back into the journalistic fold, mainly writing for the InterPress Service.
“It was only from the year 2000 I started writing this book on Vietnam, how the Americans went to war there. It was such an eye-opener. I realized that the problem of America’s wanton wars was not the problem of a president gone wrong or starting from the wrong values or ideas. It was a systemic problem that the war state was the real problem. That has shaped my political consciousness and my scholarship in journalism ever since then,” Porter told Al-Akhbar.
While working on the book, titled “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, which was eventually published in 2005, Porter started to write investigative journalistic articles, the first of which was on how Iraqi Kurdish groups were stealing and forging parliamentary elections at the time.
“That’s what started me on the road of becoming an investigative journalist. I never imagined it would happen but it just developed really quickly,” he said with a light laugh.
Porter started covering the Iranian nuclear issue in 2006; at first, he said, he had believed the overall narrative produced by various agencies.
One key evidence used in the allegations by the West of Iran’s attempts to militarize its nuclear program is the more than one thousand pages of documents that were supposedly acquired from the laptop of an Iranian nuclear scientist by intelligence agencies. They are known informally as the “Laptop Documents.”
But when Porter decided to examine the evidence presented against Iran, he began to discover certain anomalies.
“I went back to look at the recent history of the Iran nuclear issue, and that is when I came across a Wall Street Journal article quoting a German foreign office official, Karsten Voigt, saying this very intriguing thing: ‘Don’t rely on these documents because they came from an Iranian dissident group’ – meaning Mujihedin-E-Khalq (MEK).”
“It pushed me in the direction of questioning the narrative. As time went by I saw more and more of the pieces that didn’t fit the puzzle, particularly about these Laptop Documents,” he added.
In late 2007, Porter met with a German source in Washington DC, and asked him about the Wall Street Journal article. The German source confirmed Voigt’s statement, and thus cemented Porter’s belief that there was more to the story. He began working full-time examining the various evidence and raging debates over Iran’s nuclear program.
Many of his articles, however, have never garnered the attention of the mainstream press and traditional policy institutions within the US.
“The feedback was very weak. The biggest problem, of course, is that the news media and political elite in the US are very powerful, don’t need to respond to information and analysis that contradicts their narratives,” Porter said in regards to the reasons behind this general disinterest in his reports.
Nevertheless, his work in uncovering propaganda and unveiling uncomfortable truths about the problematic narratives regarding Iran’s nuclear program earned him the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, an annual award given by the London-based Frontline Club that celebrates courageous and ground-breaking journalism.
“The single biggest factor driving the elite’s obsession over Iran as a threat and as an enemy is that the basic premise was laid down early at the end of the Cold War,” Porter explained in terms of the reasons behind the American and European honing in on the Islamic republic.
“That the US must take a hand in constraining and preventing Iran from extending its power. It became a fundamental premise of post-Cold War US policy. It fit the interests of the national security state and the Israeli lobby together. Once that happened, and pretty quickly during the Clinton Administration, successive governments naturally followed the general lines set down.”
“Even Obama, just in the early days of office, had the NSA and Israelis come in and tell him about their plans for a cyberwar against Iran. Here he is, a guy who is allegedly planning to enter serious diplomatic engagement with Iran, was essentially conspiring with the Israelis to carry out cyberwarfare. He was going to be the first president to wage cyberwar against another country. That’s very serious,” Porter further remarked.
Overall, Porter mused, the biggest obstacles to any attempt to work out a deal with Iran and end a consideration of military action comes down to Israel.
“Even if there was a settlement of the issue that led to détente between the US and Iran, both of which I’m skeptical about, that would not change the Israeli point of view – which is they have to possess nuclear weapons to maintain superiority over every other country in the Middle East,” he said.
Porter has authored a new book entitled “Manufactured Crisis: The Secret History of the Iranian Nuclear Scare,” which recounts his journalistic work on the allegations about Iran’s nuclear program by the Americans and Israelis since 2006, and discusses in greater detail the numerous evidences and counter-evidences at play.
He recently presented a round table discussion on the topic and his book at the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) building within the American University of Beirut campus on June 9.
Below is the video of the entire talk, and subsequent discussion between Porter and the audience, posted on YouTube by IFI:
June 11, 2014 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, Zionism | Leave a comment
Fabius’ bad blood infects Iran-P5+1 talks
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | June 11, 2014
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has once again poisoned international efforts to settle the nuclear dispute, with his latest effort to sabotage talks between Iran and the P5+1.
Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 group – US, Britain, France Russia and China plus Germany – are due to reconvene next week in Austria with the tentative prospect of a comprehensive settlement to the long-running nuclear dispute.
A successful outcome would see Western-imposed trade sanctions on Iran being lifted. The onerous impact of these legally questionable Western sanctions on the Iranian people make that outcome long overdue.
However, this week – just days before sensitive talks re-open in Vienna – France’s top diplomat raised a new obstacle to finding a possible final agreement. Fabius is now telling French media that Iran must reduce the number of its nuclear-enrichment centrifuges, by a 10-fold factor, from a few thousand to a few hundred instruments.
Iran has already agreed to significant guarantees that its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes – and not for weaponization, as the US, Britain and France have long been claiming – by agreeing to cap uranium enrichment at levels far below that required to make atomic bombs.
Fabius’ latest demand that Iran must now also drastically scale back on the number of its centrifuges used in uranium enrichment represents a new pre-condition for settling the nuclear impasse. The number of centrifuges is irrelevant given that Iran has already agreed to impose a limit on uranium enrichment – a generous concession by Iran given that it is not mandated to do so by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That self-imposed restriction led to the interim agreement being signed between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers last November.
That initial groundbreaking nuclear deal at the end of last year was also nearly scuppered back then by Laurent Fabius, when days before he suddenly raised the issue of “guarantees for Israeli security”. That was also seen as a mischievous intervention from Fabius, even by other Western diplomats, which in the event did not prevent the interim deal being signed on November 26.
Days before the next round of crucial talks, Fabius is up to his toxic diplomacy yet again.
Without exaggeration, no other contemporary Western diplomat has as much bad blood in his political veins than the French foreign minister.
He is currently overseeing French state-sponsored terrorism in Syria to illegally overthrow the elected government of President Bashar al Assad. Fabius is also currently overseeing the illegal French invasion of two African countries – Mali and Central Africa Republic – which has sparked the death of thousands of people from internecine violence. And yet this politician has the temerity and arrogance to hold the Iranian nation to ransom over trumped-up nuclear concerns.
But there is much more to this politician’s contaminated career. Fabius’ sinister political history has previously seen him involved in other acts of state terrorism, nuclear destruction of the environment on a massive scale, and the manslaughter of thousands of people around the world through the criminal selling of poisoned blood products.
Let’s start with the latter point first. During the 1980s when Fabius was then French prime minister, his government knowingly supplied blood transfusion products to its own citizens and those of many other countries around the world – to safeguard French commercial profits. It became known as the “blood transfusion scandal” – the biggest health controversy ever to hit France. More than 4,000 French citizens were infected by blood contaminated with HIV and Hepatitis C – of which at least 40 per cent were to die. Among several countries affected by importing blood products from France was Iran. An unknown number of sick Iranian patients would also later die from these toxic
French imports.
As head of the French government between 1984-86, Fabius was subsequently charged with manslaughter relating to the scandal. He was later acquitted by a French court in 1999, along with another minister, while his former Health Minister Edmond Herve was found guilty. At least two other government officials were sent to jail for their part in the systematic crime. Angry campaigners denounced Fabius’ acquittal as an example of the French political elite being “untouchable”.
At the same time that Fabius’ government was overseeing the mass poisoning of blood patients to protect the commercial interests of French pharmaceutical companies, this same government committed one of the most audacious acts of state terrorism in recent decades.
In July 1985, French military agents carried out the bombing of a civilian ship, The Rainbow Warrior. The ship belonged to Greenpeace, the environmental campaign group, and was moored in the New Zealand port of Auckland at the time of the deadly attack, which resulted in the death of one Greenpeace activist and several others injured. French divers had mined the vessel with two explosives.
The incident brought an outpouring of international condemnation, and initially Fabius’ government denied any involvement. However, New Zealand police later arrested two French agents belonging to the foreign intelligence service, the DGSE. The pair were convicted and jailed. Fabius was then forced to come clean, in September 1985, when he made the shocking admission to world media that the French government had indeed ordered the murderous attack on a civilian vessel in a sovereign foreign territory. He famously said at the time: “The truth is cruel.”
But the background to this French act of state terrorism on the Rainbow Warrior is even more criminal. The Greenpeace ship was in New Zealand at that time to lead international protests against rampant French testing of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. Ever since 1962, France unilaterally declared its colonial territories of Polynesia and surrounding seas to be nuclear test sites. Between 1966 and 1996, successive French governments, including that of Laurent Fabius, carried out nearly 200 test explosions on the Pacific coral reef islands of Mururoa and Fangataufa.
The nuclear explosions were carried out with air, sea and underground devices and have been responsible for radioactive pollution spreading to New Zealand, Australia and even as far away as Peru in South America. The French weapons of mass destruction have also destroyed countless natural habitats in the South Pacific.
A year before the Rainbow Warrior terror attack, the New Zealand government introduced a law designating its territorial waters a nuclear-free zone. But that legal restriction did not stop Fabius’ government from committing an act of murder against civilians – civilians who were protesting against French acts of mass extermination in the South Pacific.
This is the criminal quality of former French Prime Minister and now Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius – who has the audacity to lecture the people of Iran about their legally entitled use of peaceful nuclear technology.
June 11, 2014 Posted by aletho | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | France, Iran, Israel, Press TV, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
How the Israel Lobby Works
By Philip Giraldi • The Unz Review • June 3, 2014
The major organizations that comprise the Israel Lobby are well known: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and Christians United For Israel (CUFI). All are well known, benefiting from large budgets and staffs. They are extremely effective, having excellent access to politicians and the media to promote their points of view, and are, as a group, regular visitors to the White House. AIPAC is without doubt the most powerful lobby in the United States that is focused on a foreign policy issue.
The institutional Israel boosters are in turn backed by a cluster of think tanks and institutes that spout a relentlessly pro-Likud line. They include Foundation for Defense of Democracies, The Emergency Committee for Israel, The American Enterprise Institute, The Hudson Institute, Brookings and The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A recent op-ed at The National Interest (formerly the Nixon Center) “Why Israel Fears Containment of a Nuclear Iran,” written by two Israelis with government ties, illustrates to what extent spokesmen for Tel Aviv have access to the media across the political spectrum to make their points while contrary views rarely surface. It would be difficult to imagine a similar piece appearing advancing Iranian views on Israel, for example, and one might well question whose “National Interest” is being promoted by providing a platform to current or former foreign government officials.
And backing the think tanks up are the enablers in the media who suppress stories critical of Israel and consistently editorialize supporting policies favored by Tel Aviv. Israeli Ambassadors, uniquely, regularly write op-eds for publications like the Washington Post and The New York Times. Prominent among the consistently pro-Israel media are the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch publications in general and magazines like Mortimer Zuckerman owned US News and World Report, but it would be fair to say that nearly all mainstream media outlets are to some extent wary of offending Israel and its backers.
But as Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt noted in their groundbreaking expose of the Israel Lobby, the lobbying effort extends well beyond the organizational level to include friends of Israel who labor assiduously and voluntarily at state and local levels as well as at universities and from within professional organizations to maintain a positive viewpoint on Israel while promoting a negative narrative regarding its increasing number of critics. Most recently they have been focused on halting the growth of BDS, “boycott, divestment, and sanctions,” particularly in attempts to use “Lawfare” to make such activity illegal when it singles out Israel.
Israel’s friends quite rightly see Congress as their major ally in keeping the United States Israel-friendly, so much so that Pat Buchanan once dubbed America’s legislative body as “Israeli occupied territory.” And so it remains with legislation favorable to Israel passing by unanimous consent voice votes or grossly lopsided margins when a tally actually takes place. The White House too is into the charade that Israel is a major US ally and friend, in spite of mounting evidence that Tel Aviv consistently spies on Washington, is not interested in any peace process with the Palestinians and works against genuine American interests.
I have recently obtained a handout memo relating to a congressional race in Virginia that illustrates how the process works at the political entry level. Congressman Jim Moran has announced that he will not seek reelection in the heavily Democratic district that encompasses Alexandria Virginia. Moran has fallen afoul of the pro-Israel establishment by telling attendees at a 2003 antiwar forum, “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.” He added that Jewish leaders were “influential enough” to change the course of US policy. Moran inevitably apologized for those remarks, but the damage was done and he was considered to be unreliable on the issue of Israel, a view reflected in the handout which quotes Debbie Linick, Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, asserting that Moran had been “lacking the nuances of understanding the peace process. It is crucial that the next representative from the 8th District be a strong supporter of Israel.”
The handout described a Jewish Community Relations Council Political Forum for the 8th District that was to be held on May 18th in Alexandria at the Council’s Early Childhood Learning Center. All prospective candidates for the 8th District were invited to participate to present their positions on various issues of interest to those attending. The access to the event was by paid tickets only, presumably to permit screening to control the make-up of the audience. The handout again quotes Linick as stating that “all area synagogues will be asked to participate” even if they were not in the voting district.
The memo suggests that someone at the forum might ask every candidate to publish his or her signed Israel Position paper, which AIPAC “requires” all candidates for office to personally sign. It also recommends that signs be placed on the street outside demanding release of the paper and notes that if there should happen to be demonstrators present they will not be allowed to block the entrance, which is behind the building on private property.
The Northern Virginia Council might well be more than usually politically active and is unlikely to have a counterpart in most congressional districts, but the handout reveals how AIPAC has an impact on all viable congressional candidates, often before they are even nominated. Once nominated, candidates go through a vetting process in which they meet with an AIPAC official and are asked to write and sign a position paper on Israel, if they have not already done so. Many of the papers are subsequently highlighted on the AIPAC website.
Few if any candidates refuse to cooperate because to do so would mean that AIPAC and its friends would find and fund an opponent and use their media access to distort the politician’s record. This type of blackballing most recently occurred in the case of Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina, who was on the receiving end of a vicious and well-funded campaign because he is an anti-war candidate strongly opposed by the pro-Israel establishment.
To be sure Americans have a constitutional right to both demand to know and challenge the views of those running for office but the important thing to note here is that the discussion is not about healthcare, immigration or government programs – it is rather about unconditional support for the policies of a foreign country. I can think of no other advocacy group in the United States that is comparable to the Israel Lobby in terms of its promotion of positions that are demonstrably not beneficial to the United States with the only possible exception being the prominent Cubans in Congress who vet candidates based on their willingness to continue to punish the regime in Havana. The Cubans, unlike the Israel Firsters, have, however, only regional impact, mostly concentrated in Florida, though it is interesting to note that they – Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, Joe Garcia and Robert Menendez – are also all passionate supporters of Israel.
Americans really have little choice when it comes to Congress and Israel as anyone who refuses to cooperate with AIPAC is unlikely to find himself in the running, but there should at least be some awareness of what happens routinely to prospective candidates to insure conformity with the Lobby’s viewpoint. If unconditional loyalty to a foreign country is a sine qua non for election to congress perhaps there should be some discussion of what that is likely to mean and the promoters of such policies should be held accountable when they produce a bad result, as they did in Iraq and are promising to do vis-a-vis Iran. It is one thing to be all for Israel due to cultural or familial affinity or even as an abstraction but it is quite another to persist in that view when it does genuine harm to the United States, regarding which a case certainly can and has already been made.
June 8, 2014 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
Israel critic targeted by JDL in Canada
By Joshua Blakeney | Press TV | June 3, 2014
Since 2010, I have been Press TV’s Canadian correspondent based in Calgary, Alberta. I have been forced by the actions and statements of Canada’s ruling neoconservatives to hone in on the role Zionists and the organized Jewish community play in Canadian society.
Canada’s current government has shifted this country from being a comparatively benign and peaceful nation to being a warmongering de facto colony of Israel. I believe the evidence suggests this didn’t just happen by accident; the Zionization of Canada was a carefully planned, well-oiled operation.
If I was wrong in my analyses of the interface between Canada’s government and pro-Israel forces, I believe I would have been invited on one of the many Zionist-controlled media organs here, debated by some high-IQ Zionist intellectual and exposed as erroneous and foolish. I believe it is because we at Press TV are accurate in our analyses of Canadian power and politics that a segment of the organized Jewish community has decided to turn to coercion.
I would like to make available an email I received from the Jewish Defense League, a group described in an FBI report entitled “Terrorism 2000/2001” as a “violent extremist organization:”
“Mr Blakeney,
In the middle of the last century, Jews had no right or means of response when they were demonised, persecuted and attacked by your ideological soulmates. Today, the world is a very different place. When we are attacked by hate-filled antisemites like you, we respond with all the resources at our disposal, and with extreme prejudice.
You clearly enjoy indulging your pathological hatred of Jews, but there are three things that you should remember: The code that we live by is ‘never again’; our loathing of those who incite hatred against Jews is stronger than their hatred of us; we didn’t choose you as an enemy, you chose us.”
There are several fallacies committed in this unpleasant email. Firstly, I am not a “hate-filled anti-Semite.” I define Anti-Semitism as an “irrational hatred of all Jews generically.” You have to dislike all Jews and irrationally so to qualify as an Anti-Semite in my book. I merely oppose the actions, arguments and assumptions of those Jews who are oppressors, warmongers, apologists for Israel and proponents of a Zionist exeptionalist police state, etc. Some Jews agree with me, some almost agree with me and others evidently hate me. Either way, criticizing those in power, regardless of their ethnicity, is a natural right which I embrace zealously.
Unlike the JDL, who claim they intend to act with “extreme prejudice” against me, I’m guided by post-judice insofar as my conclusions are derived from an analysis of the factual record. My analyses are rational, logical and evidence based. Evidence emerged of Israeli involvement in 9/11 and then I deduced that Israel conducts false-flag terrorism against the US. The evidence came first, then my conclusion.
Equally misguided is to characterize my alleged “hatred of Jews” as “pathological.” The usage of psychoanalytic verbiage to quash criticism of Jews is the product of Sigmund Freud and members of the Frankfurt School, Jewish thinkers who popularized their ethnocentric doctrines in the first half of the 20th Century. By describing my criticism of certain Jews as “pathological,” the writer of the email exempts himself from addressing the content of my criticisms. If my criticisms are the product of a psychopathology, then they have no relation to the real world and thus need not be addressed. How convenient.
Some academicians and law experts have advised me to take this threatening email to the authorities here in Canada. However, I am intuitively averse to having the state decide which emails are good and which are bad. I’d rather engage in debate and dialogue with my interlocutors. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Canada’s current regime would ever prosecute Jewish ethnic activists like the members of the JDL. That would be in contravention of the Jewish-exceptionalist ideology that seemingly governs this country at the present time.
The Canadian state has defenestrated the values of British Common Law that once guided Canadian society (such as freedom of speech, freedom of expression, adversarial argumentation, habeas corpus and freedom of movement) in favor of the eliminationist ideology of Jewish exceptionalism. Critics of Jews find themselves arrested for “hate speech” or “inciting genocide” and non-Canadian citizens are barred from the country or deported.
For example, it has now been demonstrated that Canada’s ruling neoconservatives barred pro-Palestinian peace activist and parliamentarian George Galloway from Canada in 2009 at the behest of the JDL. This is one reason I don’t fear the JDL per se; there was a time when they had no political clout and thus had to actively engage in their own thuggery and aggression toward those whose perspectives they sought to suppress. Now they have Canada’s MPs and politicized police forces at their disposal to do their dirty work for them. If Mr. Galloway had turned up at the Canadian border in mid-2009, the police would have arrested and incarcerated the six-times-elected British MP, based on lobbying efforts by the JDL. In this epoch, the JDL can sit back and let Israel’s client regime in Ottawa do all the work.
The extent of the Zionization of Canada is revealed by the very presence of the JDL in this country. The militant organization is reportedly proscribed in the US and in many EU countries. In spite of this, periodically Meir Weinstein, leader of the JDL in Canada, pops up on our TV screens as if he is a moderate Canadian political pundit. Quite what the members of the JDL contribute to Canadian society other than aggressive censoriousness and ethnic tension is unclear.
In 1995 German ethnic-activist and historian Ernst Zundel had his house firebombed by Zionist terrorists who disagreed with his historical conclusions. A group called the Jewish Armed Resistance Movement claimed responsibility for the attack but the Toronto Star later claimed that the group had ties to the JDL. Instead of locking up those aggressors who arrogated to themselves the right to revoke Mr. Zundel’s freedom of speech and destroy his property, the police incarcerated Zundel under so-called anti-terrorism legislation, which was later found to be unconstitutional.
Another falsehood in the email is the claim that “we didn’t choose you as an enemy, you chose us.” I grew up in a philo-Semitic household with holidays to Israel and visits to Auschwitz (and I’m not even Jewish!). It was primarily Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and proven involvement in false flag attacks on Western countries that spurred me to voice criticism of certain Jews. Within recent days, Australia’s former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has confirmed that Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty in June 1967. Is he a “pathological” “antisemite” too?
So, to repeat, my conclusions are post-judicial not prejudicial (I actually pre-judged Jews favorably). The Zionists want to use countries like Britain, Canada and the US as playthings to advance Israeli geopolitical goals, expending the blood and treasure of us stupid goyim rather than that of Jews. Certain Zionist fanatics in my view declared war on my historically philo-Semitic people not vice-versa.
I’m keen to engage in dialogue with my detractors. It seems because I have the moral high ground and evidence on my side that some Zionists are now resorting to coercion to silence me.
In my view, the pen is mightier than the sword. The JDL should take a leaf out of my book instead of trying to eliminate anybody who criticizes them and their fellow Zionist ideologues.
June 3, 2014 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | Canada, Human rights, Israel, Zionism | Leave a comment
America’s Role in the Creation of the State of Israel
Review of Alison Weir’s “Against Our Better Judgement: How the U.S. was used to create Israel”
By Karin Brothers | Global Research | May 29, 2014
Weir’s fascinating history focuses on how the State of Israel came into existence through a cynical using of the United States and how it was defended from American critics who saw the support for Israel as violating US principles and damaging US interests.
The significance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British “gentleman’s agreement” between the British government and Lord Rothschild that pledged British support for a Jewish homeland, has not been understood by many for the quid pro quo that it represented. The agreement, which occurred when it appeared that Germany was winning WW I, was that Zionists would work to get the United States involved in the war if Britain would deliver Palestine as a Jewish homeland. The reason for the American involvement in the war and the American contribution to the arrangement have not been widely understood: the Balfour Declaration (as well as the later British Mandate) were drafted in both Britain and the US, including by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
Germany had no inkling of this deal until the post-war 1919 Paris Peace Conference, which Zionists attended to ensure that Britain would come through with its part of the agreement.
Even before Britain washed its hands of Palestine, Zionists recognized that they needed the support of the United States for Israel to survive and thrive, so the U.S. became the focus of propaganda and political pressure. Harry Truman, the US President who recognized the State of Israel immediately after it declared itself a state, had received a then-staggering $2 million from a Zionist donor during what had appeared to be a losing presidential campaign. State Department leaders were against supporting Israel because it damaged U.S. relations with Arab countries and, more importantly, violated important American principles of self-determination and justice. Elected leaders, vulnerable to political pressure and access to campaign funding, were not able to maintain such America-first integrity.
Weir has documented various little-known Zionist efforts to support the creation of their state. The activities — basically bribes, lies, subterfuge, threats and violence– included:
- Zionist leaders’ “mixed reaction” to Nazism, with some seeing that the convergent goals would benefit a Jewish state that required a Jewish population;
- Secret American Zionist clubs (including the elite Parushim with Felix Frankfurter) which pledged to work for Israel behind the scenes;
- Creating the myth that a refuge was needed for Jews (including falsifying anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland and, more importantly, sabotaging western countries’ efforts to open their doors to Jewish refugees after WW II in order to ensure that Jews had few choices of refuge outside of Israel); and
- Zionists’ role in the creation of Christian Zionism and the Scofield Reference Bible.
Weir ends her short history of Israel’s creation by documenting some key examples of how Israel-firsters were able to destroy the careers — if not the lives — of prominent Americans in government, journalism and academia who warned of the loss of American credibility in supporting a state that was based on religious discrimination.
Weir keeps her book focused on the early history of Israel, ignoring highly significant later events, particularly those concerning Senator William Fulbright: his uncovering of Jewish charity fraud that recycled charitable donations into U.S. propaganda, his attempts, with JFK, to force the main Zionist organization to register as an agent of a foreign government and the loss of Fulbright’s Senate seat to the then-unheard of Dale Bumpers.
The main messages from Weir’s history are that the Jewish community has not legitimately needed a homeland- refuge from anti-Semitism and that Americans must take back their country by insisting that their elected officials place the interests of the United States before those of Israel.
May 31, 2014 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
The Status of Jerusalem
By Francis Boyle | Media With Conscience | May 28, 2014
Over the years, one of the most important issues I have dealt with repeatedly for the Palestinian people is Jerusalem. For example, my friend Michael Saba and I launched an initiative to prevent the United States Government from illegally moving the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
In order to forestall this abomination, I prepared Memoranda of Law on the U.S.-Israel Land- Lease and Purchase Agreement of 1989 that would enable the construction of this U.S. Jerusalem “Embassy,” which I sent to Congressman Lee Hamilton, who was then Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives.
These Memoranda were published in American-Arab Affairs. The Israel Lobby and its supporters in Congress are still attempting to pressure the United States government to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Of course this would be a political, legal, and diplomatic disaster.
To be sure, there would certainly be no problem under international law and practice for the United States government to move its Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as part of a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement whereby this Embassy would be simultaneously accredited to Israel and Palestine, with Jerusalem being recognized as the shared Capital of both States. Why and how this can be done is fully explained elsewhere in this book. Years ago the PLO had already approved my proposal set forth herein for this “Final Status of Jerusalem.” But Israel wants Jerusalem for itself. And the United States has never been solomonic when it comes to Palestine and the Palestinian people.
Many categorical statements have emanated from the Israeli government about the yet-to-be-negotiated final status of Jerusalem. Indeed, Jerusalem was said to have been the stumbling block that led to the breakdown of the Camp David II negotiations in the summer of 2000, though the negotiating situation was far more complicated than that. A brief review of the historical record can shed some light upon Jerusalem’s legal status, and thus point the way towards an ultimate solution for this most Holy City in the estimation of the three monotheistic faiths: Islam, Judaism, Christianity.
The Legal Status of Jerusalem
On September 25, 1971, then-Ambassador George H.W. Bush, speaking as U.S. Representative to the United Nations, delivered a formal Statement on Jerusalem before the UN Security Council explaining the official position of the United States government with respect to the City of Jerusalem.1 Therein, Ambassador Bush expressly repeated and endorsed a December 1969 Statement by U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers: “We have made clear repeatedly in the past two and one-half years that we cannot accept unilateral actions by any party to decide the final status of the city.”
Ambassador Bush then specifically repeated and endorsed a 1969 statement made before the Security Council by his predecessor, Charles Yost, criticizing Israeli occupation policies in East Jerusalem in the following terms:
“The expropriation or confiscation of land, the construction of housing on such land, the demolition or confiscation of buildings, including those having historic or religious significance, and the application of Israeli law to occupied portions of the city are detrimental to our common interests in the city.” Ambassador Bush then reaffirmed Yost’s prior statement that the United States government considers East Jerusalem to be “occupied territory and hence subject to the provisions of international law governing the rights and obligations of an occupying Power.”
Succinctly put, these latter obligations can be found in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which expanded upon and improved—but did not displace— the 1907 Hague Regulations on Land Warfare. The United States government is a party to both the Fourth Geneva Convention and The Hague Regulations, and Israel is bound by the terms of both treaties as well.
Previously, Ambassador Yost had continued his 1969 statement in the following language: 2
… Among the provisions of international law which bind Israel, as they would bind any occupier, are the provisions that the occupier has no right to make changes in laws or in administration other than those which are temporarily necessitated by his security interests, and that an occupier may not confiscate or destroy private property. The pattern of behavior authorized under the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949 and international law is clear: the occupier must maintain the occupied area as intact and unaltered as possible, without interfering with the customary life of the area, and any changes must be necessitated by the immediate needs of the occupation. I regret to say that the actions of Israel in the occupied portion of Jerusalem present a different picture, one which gives rise to understandable concern that the eventual disposition of East Jerusalem may be prejudiced and that the private rights and activities of the population are already being affected and altered.
My Government regrets and deplores this pattern of activity, and it has so informed the Government of Israel on numerous occasions since June 1967. We have consistently refused to recognize those measures as having anything but a provisional character and do not accept them as affecting the ultimate status of Jerusalem.
Then, Ambassador Bush continued his 1971 Statement as follows:
We regret Israel’s failure to acknowledge its obligations under the fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and spirit of this Convention. We are distressed that the actions of Israel in the occupied portion of Jerusalem give rise to understandable concern that the eventual disposition of the occupied section of Jerusalem may be prejudiced. The Report of the Secretary General on the Work of the Organization, 1970-71, reflects the concern of many Governments over changes in the face of that City. We have on a number of occasions discussed this matter with the Government of Israel, stressing the need to take more fully into account the sensitivities and concerns of others. Unfortunately, the response of the Government of Israel has been disappointing.
All of us understand… that Jerusalem has a very special place in the Judaic tradition, one which has great meaning for Jews throughout the world. At the same time Jerusalem holds a special place in the hearts of many millions of Christians and Muslims throughout the world. In this regard, I want to state clearly that we believe Israel’s respect for the Holy Places has indeed been exemplary. But an Israeli occupation policy made up of unilaterally determined practices cannot help promote a just and lasting peace any more than that cause was served by the status quo in Jerusalem prior to June 1967 which, I want to make clear, we did not like and we do not advocate reestablishing.
Ambassador Bush then concluded his 1971 statement on Jerusalem by supporting what would later that day become Security Council Resolution 298 (1971), which provided in its most significant parts as follows:
1. Reaffirming the principle that acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible,
2. Deplores the failure of Israel to respect the previous resolutions adopted by the United Nations concerning measures and actions by Israel purporting to affect the status of the City of Jerusalem;
3. Confirms in the clearest possible terms that all legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid and cannot change that status;
4. Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind all previous measures and actions and to take no further steps in the occupied section of Jerusalem which may purport to change the status of the City or which would prejudice the rights of the inhabitants and the interests of the international community, or a just and lasting peace;
Security Council Resolution 298 (1971) became yet another violated resolution in “a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations“by Israel that were never enforced by the Security Council.3
In any event, the Statements made by Bush and Yost have always represented the United States government’s official position on the numerous illegalities surrounding Israel’s conquest, occupation and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem since 1967. The comments on East Jerusalem that Bush made later in 1990 as U.S. President were to the same effect: 4
The President. Well, I’m not sure there was equivocation. My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem. And I will conduct that policy as if its firm, which it is, and I will be shaped in whatever decisions we make to see whether people can comply with that policy. And that’s our strongly held view. We think it’s constructive to peace—the peace process—if Israel will follow that view. And so, there are divisions in Israel on this question, incidentally. Parties are divided on it. But this is the position of the United States and I’m not going to change that position.
Yost’s 1969 Statement, Bush’s 1971 Statement, and his 1990 comments are fully consistent with and indeed required by Article 1 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires the United States government not only to respect but also to ensure respect for the terms of this Convention by other parties such as Israel “in all circumstances”. As treaties, both the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Hague Regulations are deemed to be the “supreme Law of the Land” by Article VI of the United States Constitution. Contrary to the public suggestions made in the United States by the Israel Lobby and its supporters, the United States government is under legal obligation to support the vigorous application of the international laws of belligerent occupation to produce the termination of all illegal Israeli practices in Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, together with the Golan Heights—including and especially illegal Israeli settlers and settlements.
The Political Problem of Jerusalem
For similar reasons, the United States government has never recognized Israel’s conquest and annexation of West Jerusalem as valid or lawful, either. That is why the U.S. Embassy to Israel still remains in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, the pro-Israel lobby in the United States and its beneficiaries in the U.S. Congress have systematically attempted to pressure successive U.S. Presidents into recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, even though such an act would inflame public opinion throughout the Muslim world—over 57 states and 1 billion people, a sixth of all humanity—against the United States. Such an act of formal diplomatic recognition would be a legal, political and diplomatic disaster that would prevent a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine and thus preclude a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Perhaps that is the Israel Lobby’s intention.
Undaunted, the U.S. Israel Lobby has continued apace bribing, threatening, and intimidating members of the U.S. Congress and the President to move incrementally towards an awesome “clash of civilizations” between the United States and the Muslim world over Jerusalem as forecast by Harvard’s Samuel Huntington.5 No point would be served here by reviewing the sordid history of the U.S. Israel Lobby’s efforts to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem since that saga has recently been recounted elsewhere.6
Suffice it to say that the U.S. Israel Lobby procured passage by Congress of the so-called Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995.7 Among other outrages too numerous to analyze here, section 3 of this statute provided in relevant part as follows:
STATEMENT OF THE POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES
(2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and
(3) The United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.
Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution has historically been interpreted to mean that such acts of diplomatic recognition are to be performed by the President. In deference thereto, Congress employed the word “should” instead of “shall” in the statute.
Nevertheless, in section 3(b) thereof Congress did wield its well-recognized constitutional “power of the purse” to cut State Department funding for “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad” unless and until “the United States Embassy in Jerusalem has officially opened.” But section 7 of the Statute permits the President to waive this fiscal sanction every six months on the grounds that “such suspension is necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States.” So far that is what President Clinton and President Bush Jr. have consistently done.
Dissatisfied with Congressional support which, while submissive to Zionist demands, had not yielded changes in actual U.S. policy, the Israel lobby proceeded to procure the passage of an even more strictly tailored piece of legislation that in a nutshell requires the U.S. President to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on official U.S. government documents, once again upon pain of fiscal sanctions—so-called “paper recognition”.8 While President Bush Jr. stated that he will ignore this requirement on the grounds that it is unconstitutional—infringing upon the President’s constitutional power to perform such acts of diplomatic recognition—there was such an uproar throughout the Muslim world over this “paper recognition” of Jerusalem as being the capital of Israel by the United States Congress that the Arab TV Network Al Jazeera invited this author to appear live by satellite on their evening news program for Thursday, 17 October 2002 in order to critique this statute under U.S. constitutional law and under international law, as well as to explain how this statute fits within the overall conduct of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East and the Muslim world. In further reinforcement of the deleterious effects that changes in U.S. policy on Jerusalem have on U.S. interests—as opposed to those of Israel—on 29 October 2002 CNN reported that a U.S. diplomat had been murdered the previous day in Amman, Jordan because of this statute’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Clearly, it is doubtful that the Israel Lobby will be satisfied with Bush Jr.’s statement that he will ignore Congress’s “paper recognition” of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But it is not clear that President Bush Jr. will really honor his pubic commitment to ignore this legislation. The battle for Jerusalem will continue in Washington, DC as well as in the streets of Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere.
A Solution for Jerusalem
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for the Mandate of Palestine called for the creation of an international trusteeship for the City of Jerusalem that would be administered as a corpus separatum apart from both the Jewish state and the Arab state contemplated therein. Today, however, it would not be necessary to go so far as to establish a separate United Nations trusteeship for the City of Jerusalem alone under Chapter XII of the UN Charter. Rather, all that would be necessary would be the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the City of Jerusalem, with a United Nations peacekeeping force to be substituted in its place. This UN force would maintain security within the City of Jerusalem while the provision of basic services to all the inhabitants could be enhanced, especially for the Palestinians.
The simple substitution of a UN peacekeeping force for the Israeli army would have the virtue of allowing both Israel and Palestine to continue making whatever claims to sovereignty they want with respect to the City of Jerusalem.
Thus, Israel could continue to maintain that Jerusalem is the sovereign territory of Israel, its united capital, and shall remain so, one and undivided, forever. The Israeli Knesset could remain where it is, in territory designated as a capital district, and the Israeli flag could be flown anywhere throughout the City of Jerusalem.
Likewise, the State of Palestine could maintain that Jerusalem is its sovereign territory and capital and shall remain so, one and undivided, forever. Palestine would be entitled to construct a parliament building and capital district within East Jerusalem. The Palestinian flag could also be flown anywhere within the territorial confines of the City of Jerusalem. Both Israel and Palestine would be entitled to maintain ceremonial honor guards, perhaps armed with revolvers, at their respective capital districts. But no armed troops from either Israel or Palestine would be permitted within Jerusalem.
The residents of Jerusalem would be citizens of either Israel, or Palestine, or both, depending upon the respective nationality laws of the two states involved. Residents of Jerusalem would be issued a United Nations identity card to that effect, which would give them and only them the right to reside within the City of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, all citizens of the State of Palestine would be entitled to enter Jerusalem through UN checkpoints at the eastern limits of the city. Likewise, all citizens of the State of Israel would be entitled to enter Jerusalem at UN checkpoints located at the western limits of the city. Yet, mutual rights of access for their respective citizens to the two States through Jerusalem would be subject to whatever arrangements could be negotiated between the government of Israel and the government of Palestine as part of an overall peace settlement. The myriad of other complex issues related to Jerusalem and its inhabitants would be progressively negotiated in good faith between the governments of Palestine and Israel under the auspices of the United Nations Organization.
In addition, both Israel and Palestine would have to provide assurances to the United Nations Security Council that religious pilgrims (Muslims, Christians, and Jews) would be allowed access through their respective territories in order to visit and worship at the holy sites in the City of Jerusalem. Some type of UN transit visa issued by the UN peacekeeping force should be deemed to be sufficient for this purpose by both governments. Of course this right of transit could not be exercised in a manner deleterious to the security interests of the two States.
Thus, Jerusalem would become a free, open, and undivided city for pilgrimage and worship by people of the three monotheistic faiths from around the world. Neither Israel nor Palestine would have to surrender whatever rights, claims, or titles they might assert to the city. Security would be maintained by the United Nations peacekeeping force. The city of Jerusalem would remain subject to this UN regime for the indefinite future.
If a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement were to be negotiated along these lines, then it would be perfectly appropriate under international law for the United States government to move its Israeli Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. There the U.S. Embassy could be simultaneously accredited to the State of Palestine as well as to the State of Israel. The same could be done by all other states in the international community. The presence of these embassies in Jerusalem under such circumstances would permit both Israel and Palestine to claim that the entire international community has now recognized Jerusalem as its capital.
Conclusion
There are many other historical precedents that could be drawn upon to produce a mutually acceptable arrangement for Jerusalem: e.g., the Free City of Danzig, the Vatican City State, the District of Columbia, United Nations Headquarters in New York City, etc. So determining the final status of the city of Jerusalem is not and has never been an insuperable obstacle to obtaining a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement—despite Israeli rhetoric and propaganda to the contrary. If the will for peace were there on the part of the Israeli government, then creative lawyers on each side can devise an artful arrangement for the city of Jerusalem that would allow both peoples to claim victory while achieving peace.
In fact, several years ago I drafted a formal proposal similar to the above-described solution for consideration by the PLO. A high-level PLO official informed me that this proposal was acceptable to the PLO. So far, it has proved to be unacceptable to Israel, which continues to stubbornly insist that Jerusalem shall remain its “sole”, “undivided” and “eternal” capital despite all the rules of international law to the contrary and the fact that in the Oslo Agreement of 13 September 1993, Israel expressly agreed in writing to negotiate over the final status of Jerusalem with the PLO. You do not expressly agree to negotiate with your adversary over “your”, “sole”, “undivided”, “eternal” “capital” if it is really yours ! The time has long past for Israel to put aside its relentless rhetoric and propaganda about Jerusalem, and negotiate in good faith with the Provisional Government of the state of Palestine over the ultimate disposition of Jerusalem. The Palestinians have repeatedly demonstrated their will for peace. So far, the Israeli government has only demonstrated its will to power. But when it comes to Jerusalem—Jews, Muslims, and Christians: “Can’t we all get along?” I sincerely believe we can.
ENDNOTES
- U.N. SCOR, 26th Sess., 1582nd mtg. at 33, U.N. Doc. S/Agenda/1582 (1971).
- U.N. SCOR 24th Sess., 1483nd mtg. at 11, U.N. Doc. S/Agenda/1783 (1969).
- For a list of Security Council Resolutions against Israel as of 1995, see Paul Findley, Deliberate Deceptions 187-94 (1995). See also Paul Findley, They Dare To Speak Out (1989).
- 26 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 357 (Mar. 3 1990).
- Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996).
- See Walid Khalidi, The Ownership of the U.S. Embassy Site in Jerusalem (2000).
- Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, Pub. L. No. 104-45, 109 Stat. 398 (1995).
- Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Pub.L. No. 107-228, §214, 116 Stat 1350 (2002).
May 29, 2014 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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