On the annual Jewish celebration of the Biblical slaying “of their foes seventy and five thousand,” at least one Israeli family seems to think it’s funny to reenact the murder of 3,000 in New York on September 11, 2001. Angrily reacting to the story, 6 Degrees no Bacon, a Jewish entertainment blog, appears to be unaware that these are not the first Israelis to be so provocatively indifferent to American suffering on 9/11:
People all over Israel are celebrating Purim this weekend, and much like Halloween, the dress-up holiday is a perfect opportunity for parents to show off their creativity and then display it on their poor kids.
The winners of the contest for Costume of Poorest Taste are definitely 7-year-old twins Ilay and Nehoray, who dressed up as the burning World Trade Center towers with the planes still in them on 9/11. At least they spared us the jumpers.
Publication of the picture on the Israeli news website Ynet prompted widespread condemnation. How would Israelis feel if Americans dressed up as a burning Tel Aviv bus, or Europeans wore a “train to Auschwitz” costume? some asked.
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Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Jordanian King Abdullah II’s recent visit to Moscow crowned a series of steps that Amman has been taking over the past few months, signalling a shift away from its traditional allies like Washington and Israel.
Until recently, Jordan was in the warm embrace of oil-rich Gulf Arab countries that, prepared to admit the Hashemite kingdom into their Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), would then shower it with billions in aid.
This is while Amman offered the services of its security and intelligence forces, coordinating closely with both Washington and Tel Aviv in a variety of areas, not least of which the unfolding crisis in Syria.
According to informed sources, last July 2012, Amman hosted a gathering of security officials from the US, Qatar, and Israel, who recommended setting up training camps for Syrian opposition fighters near the Jordanian city of Irbid.
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted as much when he acknowledged in October 2012 that dozens of American soldiers were deployed along the Jordanian-Syrian border, explaining that “these units are tasked with establishing a base in Jordan and to assist the Syrian refugees and Jordanian armed forces to confront the dangers stemming from Syria’s chemical weapons.”
In the last few months Amman has begun to reassess its alliances in light of the Syrian crisis, perhaps embarking on a process of strategic realignment, moving closer to Iraq and Russia, at the expense of its traditional allies.
The prospective threat posed by the powerful Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and the more radical Islamist currents prompted the army and intelligence to convince the palace not to go along with Washington’s plan.
Amman even went so far as to completely close its border with Syria, preventing fighters and weapons from crossing it.
This came at a high cost for Jordan, as Saudi Arabia and Qatar – who were mobilizing all the forces they could muster against the Bashar al-Assad regime – to halt their support for the kingdom, causing a serious economic crisis in the country.
Iraq quickly moved in to try to fill the void and revive its once close ties with Jordan. An official visit to Amman by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the end of 2012 led to the signing of several lucrative deals that would see cheap Iraqi oil once again flowing to Jordan.
As for Jordan’s relationship with Iran, “that’s a tough one for us,” says a high-level Jordanian security official, pointing out that the realignment underway may go far, “but it has its limits, for there are lines that cannot be crossed, and Iran lies outside these boundaries.”
In light of all this, King Abdullah II’s visit to Moscow on Tuesday, February 19 cannot in any way be seen simply as a routine call.
For its part, Jordan is seeking a counterbalance to US influence, for fear that Washington is preparing to force Amman into accepting a confederation with the Palestinians as a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Russia, on the other hand, sees this as an opportunity to bring Amman into its orbit, particularly on the Syrian question, where Moscow is in the process of pushing for a settlement.
Jordan’s diplomatic support in the Arab arena and the valuable intelligence it can provide on the Syrian opposition make it a critical resource for the Russians.
Foreign policy observers have long known that Hollywood reflects and promotes U.S. policies (in turn, is determined by Israel and its supporters). This fact was made public when Michelle Obama announced an Oscar win for Argo – a highly propagandist, anti-Iran film. Amidst the glitter and excitement, Hollywood and White House reveal their pact and send out their message in time for the upcoming talks surrounding Iran’s nuclear program due to be held tomorrow – February 26th.
Hollywood has a long history of promoting US policies. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI) enlisted the aid of America’s film industry to make training films and features supporting the ‘cause’. George Creel, Chairman of the CPI believed that the movies had a role in “carrying the gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe.”
The pact grew stronger during World War II, when, as historian Thomas Doherty writes, “[T]he liaison between Hollywood and Washington was a distinctly American and democratic arrangement, a mesh of public policy and private initiative, state need and business enterprise.” Hollywood’s contribution was to provide propaganda. After the war, Washington reciprocated by using subsidies, special provisions in the Marshall Plan, and general clout to pry open resistant European film markets.1
Hollywood has often borrowed its story ideas from the U.S. foreign policy agenda, at times reinforcing them. One of the film industry’s blockbuster film loans in the last two decades has been modern international terrorism. Hollywood rarely touched the topic of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s when the phenomenon was not high on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, in news headlines or in the American public consciousness. In the 1980s, in the footsteps of the Reagan administration’s policies, the commercial film industry brought ‘terrorist’ villains to the big screen (following the US Embassy takeover in Tehran – topic of Argo) making terrorism a blockbuster film product in the 1990s.
Today, whether Hollywood follows US policy or whether it sets it, is up for discussion. But it is abundantly clear that Hollywood is dominated by Israelis and their supporters who previously concealed their identity. According to a 2012 Haaretz article:
From the 1930s until the mid-1950s, Hanukkah never appeared on screen. This was because the Jewish studio heads preferred to hide their ethnic and religious heritage in attempting to widen the appeal of their products [emphasis added]. Jews were thus typically portrayed as participants in an American civil religion, whose members may attend the synagogue of their choice, but are not otherwise marked by great differences of appearance, speech, custom, or behaviour from the vast majority of American.
Israeli businessman and Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, was a longtime weapons dealer and Israeli intelligence agent who purchased equipment for Israel’s nuclear program (the book, Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan, written by Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, recounts Milchan’s life story, his friendships with Israeli prime ministers, U.S. presidents and Hollywood stars).
It is important to understand Hollywood not only in the context of a multi-billion dollar industry, but the propaganda aspect of it and as one of the most powerful and universal methods of spreading ideas through visual propaganda. “Propaganda is defined as a certain type of messaging that serves a particular purpose of spreading or implanting a particular culture, philosophy, point of view or even a particular slogan”. With this capability, Hollywood owns the world of ideas on a scale too large and too dangerous to ignore – see this excellent example by Gilad Atzmon – Hollywood and the Past.
Atzmon writes:
History is commonly regarded as an attempt to produce a structured account of the past. It proclaims to tell us what really happened, but in most cases it fails to do that. Instead it is set to conceal our shame, to hide those various elements, events, incidents and occurrences in our past which we cannot cope with. History, therefore, can be regarded as a system of concealment. Accordingly, the role of the true historian is similar to that of the psychoanalyst: both aim to unveil the repressed. For the psychoanalyst, it is the unconscious mind. For the historian, it is our collective shame.
As Hollywood and the White House eagerly embrace “Argo” and its propagandist message, they shamelessly and deliberately conceal a crucial aspect of this “historical” event. The glitter buries the all too important fact that the Iranian students who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, proceeded to reveal Israel’s dark secret to the world. Documents classified as “SECRET” revealed LAKAM’s activities. Initiated in 1960, LAKAM was an Israeli network assigned to economic espionage in the U.S. assigned to “the collection of scientific intelligence in the U.S. for Israel’s defense industry.2
As it stands, the purpose of the movie and its backers was to push the extraordinary revelations to the background while sending a visual message to the unsuspecting audience – to lay the blame of the potential (and likely) failure of the upcoming negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program on the Iranians — the gun-wielding, bearded Iranians of Argo who deserve America’s collective punishment and the crippling, deathly sanctions.
Martha Bayles, Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2005
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services, Washington, D.C., March 1979, p. 9 (typescript). The report classified SECRET, was released to the world by Iranian students who occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. Cited by Duncan L. Clarke, “Israel’s Economic Espionage in the United States” (1998).
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is a Public Diplomacy Scholar, independent researcher, and blogger with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups.
By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | February 25, 2013
Nearly ten years ago, on the eve of the Jewish festival of Purim, invoking the slaughter of Persians, an American student protesting house demolitions in Gaza, Rachel Corrie, was killed by a bulldozer (March 16, 2003).
Shortly after this festival had ended, the Iraq War, waged primarily on behalf of Israel — and still in progress on a more covert level — began on land amidst much media fanfare, including live television coverage. Around the time of the vernal equinox on March 20, 2003, multiple tank formations entered from staged positions in Kuwait, and even now there is still no end in sight to the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in that region.
To commemorate and possibly even celebrate the tenth anniversary of this disastrous debacle, of “Neocon” inspired servitude to Zionism, Israel will welcome Obama on his first official state visit on March 20, yes, just at the time of the equinox (11:02 GMT), a key reference point used in astronomy, astronautics, and astrology.
Obama is scheduled to land in Ben Gurion International Airport around noon on Wednesday, March 20.
How symbolic!
This scripted event should not be lost on the alternative media. Ten years ago it used to be taboo to openly talk about the “War for Israel” because a large segment of the population was still enthralled by the lies (for instance, “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction” and “war for oil”) the media deployed in order to trick them into supporting the operation. Now, after the lies have been exposed, it’s a brazen “in-your-face” attitude that is regularly on display, and Obama’s planned ceremonies in Israel next month will only highlight the obsequious stance of the US government vis-a-vis Israeli leaders dictating their demands.
Since the symbolism is important, though shameful, beware of “coincidence theorists” who will want to deny the intent of the timing!
On 3/26/2013 Iran is expected to meet other world powers in Astana, Kazakhstan to discuss its nuclear program. Discussions that the occupiers of Palestine fervently hope will not be successful. It is toward this end that their key demand this week to the US Congress, the White House and the European Union is “to cast responsibility on the Iranians by blaming them for the talks’ failure in the clearest terms possible.”
According to the Al-Monitor of 3/19/13, Israel also demands that the countries meeting in Kazakhstan “make it perfectly clear that slogans such as ‘negotiations can’t go on forever’ are their marching orders to the White House, and they want the Kazakhstan attendees to act “so severely that the Iranians realize that they face a greater threat than just Israeli military action.” “The message must be that this time the entire west, behind Israel’s leadership, is contemplating the launch of a massive military action.” Unsaid is that “the entire West” is expected to confront Iran militarily while Tel Aviv’s forces will mop up Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Syria if necessary.
Pending the above arrangements, Israel this week is further demanding that the Obama White House issue another Executive Order dramatically ratcheting up the US-led Sanctions against Iran and Syria while it prepares for a hoped for “game changing international economic blockade, including no-fly zones enforced by NATO”.
To achieve yet another layer of severe sanctions, and at the behest of AIPAC, a “legislative planning” meeting was called by Congressman Eliot Engel, who represents New York’s 17th District (the Bronx) and who is the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (Florida’s 27th District), Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. The session was held in a posh Georgetown restaurant and participants included representatives from AIPAC, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain plus half a dozen Congressional staffers.
Congressman Engel has co-sponsored virtually every anti-Arab, anti-Islam, anti-Palestinian, anti-Iran, and anti-Syrian Congressional broadside since he entered Congress a quarter-century ago. His campaign literature last fall stated: “I am a strong supporter of sanctions against those who repeatedly reject calls to behave as responsible nations. [Israel excepted-ed]. I have authored or helped author numerous bills which have been signed into law to impose sanctions against rogue states including Iran and Syria.” Ros-Lehtinen and Engel led all members with AIPAC donations on the House side in last fall’s Congressional elections. They are ranked number one and two respectively as still serving career recipients of Israel-AIPAC’s “indirect” campaign donations.
Some Congressional operatives accuse Rep. Ros-Lehtinen of being a bit lazy and neglecting the bread and butter needs of her Florida constituents. But others argue that it depends on which constituents one has in mind. Her election mailings and her Congressional website claim that the Congresswoman “led all Congressional efforts tirelessly to generate votes to block what she views as anti-Israel resolutions offered at the former UN Commission on Human Rights.”
A big fan of US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen introduced the Iran Freedom Support Act on January 6, 2005, which increased sanctions and expanded punitive measures against the Iranian people until the Iranian regime has dismantled its nuclear plants. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen also introduced H.R. 957, the Iran Sanctions Amendments Act, which she claims “will close loopholes in current law by holding export credit agencies, insurers, and other financial institutions accountable for their facilitation of investments in Iran and sanction them as well.” In addition, H.R. 957 seeks to impose liability on parent companies for violations of sanctions by their foreign entities. She also co-sponsored H.R 1357 which requires “U.S. government pension funds to divest from companies that do any business with any country that does business with Iran.” Her campaign literature states that, “She was proud to be the leading Republican sponsor of H.R. 1400, the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act. This bill applies and enhances a wide range of additional sanctions.”
In addition, last year Illeana introduced H.R. 394, which enlarges US Federal Court Jurisdiction regarding claims by American citizens their claims in U.S. courts. Unclear is whether she realizes that one consequence of her initiative would be to open even wider US courtroom doors to Iranian-Americans and Syria-Americans who today are being targeted and damaged by the lady’s ravenous insatiable craving for civilian targeting economic sanctions.
But Ileana and Elliot appear to be fretting.
So is Israel.
The reasons are several and they include the fact that the US-led sanctions have failed to date to achieve the accomplishments they were designed to produce. These being to cripple the Iranian economy, provoke a popular protest among the Iranian people over inflation and scarcity of food and medicines, weaken Iran as much as possible before adopting military measures against it, and, most essentially, achieving regime change to turn the clock back to those comfortable days of our submissive, compliant Shah.
Zionist prospects for Syria aren’t any better at the moment. Tel Aviv’s [schemes] to intimidate the White House into invading Syria have not worked. Plan A has failed miserably according to the Israeli embassy people attending the Engel-Ros Litinen’s informal confab. Neither did the “how about we just arm the opposition” plan that originated last year with David H. Petraeus and was supported by Hillary Clinton while being pushed by AIPAC. The goal was to create allies in Syria that the US and Israel could control if Mr. Assad was removed from power. Moreover, the White House believes that there are no good options for Obama. It has vetoed 4 recent Israeli proposals including arming the rebels and is said to believe that Syria is already dangerously awash with “unreliable arms.”
The recent shriveling in Israeli prospects for a dramatic Pentagon intervention in Syria reflect White House war weariness. And also Israel’s predilection to bomb targets itself in Syria, as it did recently to assassinate a senior Iranian officer in the Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Hassan Shateri. Contrary to the false story that Israel attacked a missiles convoy, some unassembled equipment was damaged but that was not the primary target according to Fred Hof, a former U.S. State Department official. Gen. Shateri was.
Making matters worse for Tel Aviv, the Israeli military is reportedly becoming skittish due to its deteriorating political and military status in the region and its troops have recently completed subterranean warfare drills to prepare them for a potential clash with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post reported on 2/20/13. “Today during training, we simulated a northern terrain, that included what we might encounter,” Israeli Lt. Sagiv Shoker, commander of a military Reconnaissance Unit of the Engineering Corps, based at the Elikim base in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon explained. Shoker added that his units spent a week focused on how to approach Hezbollah’s alleged underground bunkers and tunnels in South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley quietly and quickly. Israeli forces commander Gantz has been complaining recently to the Israeli cabinet that Hezbollah Special Forces are gaining much valuable experience in Syria fighting highly skilled and motivated al Nusra jihadists and his troops may not be prepared to face them on the battlefield if a conflict erupts. It has been known since 2006 that Israeli soldiers “are having motivation deficits” as Gantz and others have complained.
As Bulgaria claims to have found new evidence linking Hezbollah to the deadly attack on Israeli tourists last July, Israel, the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands have continued to pressure the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization and impose sanctions on the resistance group.
Placing Hezbollah on the terror list requires unanimity among the EU’s 27 member states.
France and Italy have so far opposed sanctions, but Israel says they may be convinced to put some senior Hezbollah officials on the terror list.
“If we get that we’ll consider it an achievement,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official, cited in Haaretz Monday.
Lebanese Kataeb Party leader Amin Gemayel said Monday that the accusation by the Bulgarian government was evidence that Hezbollah could not be seen as “neutral.”
The Bulgarian opposition accused the government in early February of prematurely accusing Hezbollah before the investigation had been concluded.
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Sergei Stanishev had said that Bulgaria was acting under US and Israeli pressure and had entered “into a political game in an irresponsible manner, without calculating the consequences.”
Hezbollah’s Naim Kassem, the group’s number two, slammed the “international campaign of intimidation waged by Israel against Hezbollah” three weeks ago, saying it is “ever improving its equipment and training” and that “these charges will change nothing.”
The Bulgarian government had released a report concluding that three Hezbollah members were behind the July attack that killed five Israeli tourists, based on evidence including a computer printer in Beirut, DNA traces on a SIM card and telephone calls from the bombers to Hezbollah officials.
The Bulgarian government said they had well-grounded reasons to suspect that the three attackers were Lebanese with foreign passports and forged drivers licenses from Canada and Australia.
With the help of foreign intelligence agents, drivers licenses were shown to have been printed on a printer in Lebanon, according to the Bulgarian report.
The US government have in the past convinced some color laser printer manufacturers to encode every page printed with identifying information, but not all printers do so.
Two of the attackers were said to have returned to Lebanon after the attack, while one of attackers died unintentionally during the bombing.
Two Israelis had allegedly confronted the unintentional suicide bomber while he was trying to put his booby-trapped backpack into the bus’ cargo hold. The bomb was said to have exploded prematurely because of the “shaking.”
The investigation’s allegations regarding the role of Lebanon and Hezbollah in the bombing remain unclear and disputed.
Aware of the traceability of mobile phones and internet communications, Hezbollah currently operates within a highly secure landline network to avoid tracking.
The debate on the usefulness and reliability of telephone calls or found SIM cards as evidence in criminal investigations has been ongoing in Lebanon, particularly since evidence of telephone calls linking certain individuals to the Hariri assassination in 2005 was leaked as part of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
The evidence is considered especially unreliable in Lebanon, given Israel’s known tampering in telephone networks in Lebanon, with the capability of forging SIM cards and tampering with collected data on the networks.
The International Telecommunications Union in 2010 passed three resolutions against Israel for “piracy and attacks against fixed and cellular telephone networks in Lebanon.”
The resolutions determined that “Lebanon’s telecommunication facilities have been and are still being subjected to piracy, interference and interruption, and sedition by Israel against Lebanon’s fixed and cellular telephone networks.”
Israel has not yet halted their activities or provided Lebanon with reparations for the damages incurred so far.
In response to hotly contested claims that Hezbollah was responsible for bombing Israeli citizens in Bulgaria last July, immigration minister Jason Kenney called the Lebanese group a “vile anti-Semitic terrorist organization” and urged the European Union to “follow Canada’s lead in listing Hezbollah as a proscribed and illegal terrorist organization.”
Kenney’s comment last week is part of a concerted campaign against a group the Los Angeles Times has called “Lebanon’s largest political party and most potent armed force.” Stephen Harper blamed Hezbollah for Israel’s summer 2006 invasion, Israel’s fifth, of Lebanon, which left 1,100 (mostly civilian) Lebanese dead and much of the country’s infrastructure destroyed. The month after Hezbollah successfully held off the Israeli invasion, foreign minister Peter MacKay said: “Lebanon is being held hostage by Hezbollah. There can be no doubt about that. Hezbollah is a cancer on Lebanon, which is destroying stability and democracy within its boundaries.” For his part, public safety minister Stockwell Day claimed the “stated intent of Hezbollah is to annihilate Jewish people.” (Despite Day and Kenney’s claims, Hezbollah was created in response to Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon and its pronouncements suggest it is largely concerned with Israel’s occupation of Arab lands.)
Almost entirely ignored by the Canadian media, the Conservatives’ demonization of Hezbollah gathered steam when Daniel Bellemare, a Canadian official, took charge of the international investigation into the February 2005 assassination of five-time Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. In November 2007 Bellemare, deputy attorney general and special advisor to the deputy minister of justice until October 2007, was appointed commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) into the bombing that killed Hariri and two dozen others. Concurrently, he was named prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was set to continue the UNIIIC’s work beginning in March 2009.
Both the internal and international investigations into Hariri’s killing were far from conclusive. Initially, Syrian security officers were implicated in the killings and in the post assassination upheaval Syrian troops were driven from the country. Four Lebanese generals were also incarcerated for four years in the killings but they were released when the evidence against them was dismissed.
In 2010 the Netherlands-based STL began to point its finger at Hezbollah and in August 2011 four members of the Party of God were formally charged in the Hariri killings. But before the charges came down the international investigation was discredited in the eyes of many. A July 2011 survey of 800 Lebanese, sponsored by leading Arabic-language daily As-Safir, found that 60 percent of the country believed the international probe was politicized. The poll also found widespread distrust of Bellemare, who was accused of being pro-Israel and anti-Hezbollah. He also had suspiciously close relations with US officials.
Just after Bellemare issued the indictments against four individuals with ties to Hezbollah Lebanese daily Al Akbar published a detailed article on the Canadian titled “UN Tribunal: A Prosecutor’s ‘Tunnel Vision’” (translated by its English edition). “An example of this bias appears in paragraph 59 of the indictment, where Bellemare states that ‘all four accused are supporters of Hezbollah, which is a political and military organization in Lebanon. In the past, the military wing of Hezbollah has been implicated in terrorist acts.’ Bellemare does not offer a reference supporting his assertion that Hezbollah was involved in terrorism, and, so far, no international judicial body has issued a decision describing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. In fact, there is no international consensus surrounding Hezbollah’s ‘terrorism’ status, and the UN does not recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Several countries, including the US, Israel, and Canada have officially labeled the group as a terrorist organization — though, notably, the European Union has not. Bellemare seemingly chose to include his personal political opinion and perhaps the views of some of his colleagues in an international indictment.”
Many Lebanese believe the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad had a hand in Hariri’s death yet Bellemare refused to say if he interviewed any Israeli suspects. A TV station linked to Hezbollah, Al Manar, claimed Bellemare “lost credibility” for his “politicized tribunal” because he was unwilling to investigate Israel’s possible implication in the killings. The “Israeli enemy is ‘innocent’ and will remain so in the eyes of the international community and the STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare.”
The most damning evidence against Bellemare came from the US State Department. A series of US diplomatic cables, released by Wikileaks, suggest he worked closely with the US embassy in Beirut. On one occasion Bellemare asked US officials for information on Syria and for help in convincing the British to assist an investigation committee. The former deputy attorney general also requested two temporary FBI investigators be paid by the US. An October 2008 cable from the ambassador in Beirut to Washington read: “Bellemare showed a good understanding of the problems [for the US] associated with complying … but his frustration was nonetheless evident: ‘You are the key player [he said]. If the US doesn’t help me, who will?’” The US embassy gave Bellemare “an ‘excellence’ preliminary assessment for his effort and determination, and we urge Washington to exert every effort to respond to the investigation committee’s request related to the information and support.”
Hezbollah claimed the Wikileaks cables confirmed that the US manipulated the probe. “The information leaked on meetings between the prosecutor and the US ambassador confirms what we have always said — that the US administration is using the court and the investigation committee as a tool to target the resistance [to Israel, i.e. Hezbollah],” noted Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah in December 2010.
In January 2011 the Lebanese government collapsed when 10 cabinet ministers and one presidential appointee withdrew over then Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s refusal to reject the STL. At the start of 2011 many feared that the STL’s expected indictment of Hezbollah members could re-ignite the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1975-1990. This didn’t bother Washington. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in favour of the STL and announced $10 million in added funding for the floundering tribunal. The US ambassador in Lebanon Maura Connelly said “the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is an irrevocable, international judicial process; its work is not a matter of politics but of law.” Even President Obama chimed in, saying the STL’s first indictment could end an “era of impunity” and that it was “a significant and emotional time for the Lebanese people.”
In the first 10 weeks of 2011 Foreign Affairs released three statements that dealt with the STL. On January 13 the ministry complained about the dissolution of Lebanon’s government over the matter. “These resignations are an attempt to subvert a safe and secure Lebanon and cannot be tolerated. Hezbollah’s actions in bringing down the government are a clear attempt to undermine the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Canada believes that the work of the Special Tribunal should go forward so that justice can be served.” A follow-up statement explained: “We urge the future Lebanese government to continue to support and cooperate with the Tribunal and to continue to uphold its obligations under UN Security Council resolutions on Lebanon.” In March 2011 the Conservatives gave a further $1 million contribution to the STL. “Canada has been a strong supporter of the Tribunal, having already contributed $3.7 million to the voluntarily funded Tribunal since 2007,” explained foreign minister Cannon.
An August 2011 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report, detailed in Montréal daily La Presse, found that “many Lebanese consider the work of the STL an inquest led by Canadians.” At the time more than 20 Canadians were involved in the Tribunal’s work and last March another Canadian replaced Bellemare. According to CSIS, this country’s association with the highly divisive tribunal increased the likelihood of Canadians being targeted.
The Conservatives latest salvo against Hezbollah is another reminder that the Harper government has sided with the US and Israel against most Lebanese.
Yves Engler’s latest book is The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s foreign policy
Egyptian forces have flooded smuggling tunnels under the border with the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said.
The network of tunnels is a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a deadly blockade imposed by Israel for more than seven years.
Reuters reporters saw one tunnel being used to bring in cement and gravel suddenly fill with water on Sunday, sending workers rushing for safety. Locals said two other tunnels were likewise flooded, with Egyptians deliberately pumping in water.
“The Egyptians have opened the water to drown the tunnels,” said Abu Ghassan, who supervises the work of 30 men at one tunnel some 200 meters (yards) from the border fence.
An Egyptian security official in the Sinai told Reuters the campaign started five days ago.
“We are using water to close the tunnels by raising water from one of the wells,” he said, declining to be named.
While Gaza’s rulers have been reluctant to criticize Mursi in public, ordinary Gazans are slightly more vocal.
“Egyptian measures against tunnels have worsened since the election of Mursi. Our Hamas brothers thought he would open up Gaza. I guess they were wrong,” said a tunnel owner, who identified himself only as Ayed, fearing reprisal.
“Perhaps 150 or 200 tunnels have been shut since the Sinai attack. This is the Mursi era,” he added.
Dozens of tunnels had been destroyed since last August following the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in a militant attack near the Gaza fence.
Cairo said some of the gunmen had crossed into Egypt via the tunnels – a charge denied by Palestinians – and ordered an immediate crackdown.
The move surprised and angered Gaza’s rulers, the Islamist group Hamas, which had hoped for much better ties with Cairo following the election last year of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist who is ideologically close to Hamas.
A Hamas official confirmed Egypt was again targeting the tunnels. He gave no further details and declined to speculate on the timing of the move, which started while Palestinian faction leaders met in Cairo to try to overcome deep divisions.
The tunnelers fear the water being pumped underground might collapse the passage ways, with possible disastrous consequences.
“Water can cause cracks in the wall and may cause the collapse of the tunnel. It may kill people,” said Ahmed Al-Shaer, a tunnel worker whose cousin died a year ago when a tunnel caved in on him.
Six Palestinians died in January in tunnel implosions, raising the death toll amongst workers to 233 since 2007, according to Gazan human rights groups, including an estimated 20 who died in various Israeli air attacks on the border lands.
Israel imposed its vicious blockade on the coastal strip in 2007. Food imports to Gaza were cut by nearly 75 percent, from 400 trucks per day to 106 by the start of the blockade.
At one stage an estimated 2,500-3,000 tunnels snaked their way under the desert fence but the network has shrunk markedly since 2010, when Israel eased some of the limits they imposed on imports into the coastal enclave.
All goods still have to be screened before entering Gaza and Israel says some restrictions must remain on items that could be used to make or to store weapons.
This ensures the tunnels are still active, particularly to bring in building materials. Hamas also prefers using the tunnels to smuggle in fuel, thereby avoiding custom dues that are payable on oil crossing via Israel.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been ferociously attacked by the American motion picture industry. The attacks have grown more vehement in recent years.
Iran’s response: Drop a “truth bomb” in retaliation.
The multi-megaton truth bomb – the third Hollywoodism Conference at the Fajr Film Festival – brought together fifty authors, scholars, political figures and filmmakers to oppose and expose Hollywood’s war on Islam in general, and the Islamic Republic in particular. (Full disclosure: I was a participant in the conference, which ended Wednesday.)
Former Senator Mike Gravel, a Democratic candidate for President in 2008, said Americans are being fed a distorted view of Iran. “Everything Iran has done has been entirely within its rights” (to develop peaceful nuclear energy) Gravel stated at the conference. Merlin Miller, another US presidential candidate who ran with the Third Position Party in 2012, added: “The nonexistent Iranian bomb is not the real issue.”
America’s CIA and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei agree on one very important thing: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. Supreme Leader Khamenei has pronounced nuclear weapons haram (forbidden). Anyone who understands the role religious authority plays in Iran knows that no Iranian scientist would even think of contravening the Supreme Leader’s ruling.
Most of the participants, including Miller, agreed with Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) that Hollywood demonizes Iran for a fairly obvious reason: Hollywood, even more than the rest of the US media, is controlled by Zionists. Since Iran opposes Israeli apartheid, and supports the Palestinian resistance, Hollywood endlessly bashes Iran on behalf of Israel.
Weber cited quotes and statistics revealing that Jewish power dominates Hollywood. According to Weber, the vast majority of Hollywood studio heads and top-level executives are Jewish and committed to Israel. Even at the lower-level but important creative positions, Weber argued, Jews are wildly over-represented. The result: Hollywood ceaselessly bashes Arabs, and churns out nonstop hate propaganda supporting Israel’s war on Islam and the Muslim world.
Weber cited Jewish Hollywood columnist Joel Stein, who famously tried to sweeten the bitter pill of Jewish-Zionist power with a dash of humor:
“How deeply Jewish is Hollywood? When the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish). If either of the Weinstein brothers had signed, this group would have not only the power to shut down all film production but to form a minyan with enough Fiji water on hand to fill a mikvah.”
Stein concluded:
“I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.”
Stein’s column was a response to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) press release celebrating a poll showing that only 22% of Americans know that Jews control Hollywood. In other words, the ADL was triumphantly celebrating the fact that 78% of Americans have been brainwashed into believing an outrageous, transparently false lie (“Jews don’t control Hollywood”). Talk about chutzpah.
And speaking of chutzpah, Abe Foxman and the ADL predictably launched a counter-attack on the Tehran Hollywoodism conference. Oddly, the ADL singled out four participants: Senator Mike Gravel, Jim Fetzer, Merlin Miller, and yours truly as the leaders of what they termed “a rogues’ gallery of conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, and anti-Zionists.” (Though I am honored to be attacked by the ADL three times in less than two years, I must point out that all four of us are anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites.)
One of the conference’s most stimulating and controversial speakers was Dr. Michael Jones, a Catholic who wears his anti-Jewish credentials on his sleeve. Dr. Jones argued that the “Jewish revolutionary spirit” is the source of Hollywood’s attacks on traditional values, including the religious values of Islam. If the ADL feels the need to attack anti-Jewish thinkers, they should target Dr. Jones and give his sophisticated and disturbing work some much-deserved publicity.
A key theme of this year’s Hollywoodism conference was 9/11 truth. European 9/11 authors Thierry Meyssan (France) and Roberto Quaglia (Italy) joined such Americans as filmmaker-politician Art Olivier, philosophy professor Jim Fetzer, 9/11 hero and eyewitness William Rodriguez, and yours truly. All conference participants, and every Iranian we met, expressed skepticism about the official version of 9/11 and/or belief that it was an inside job.
Many participants observed that this conference could not have been held in any Western country, where it would have been harassed by the authorities, boycotted by the media, and (possibly) bombed by the officially-tolerated terrorist group the Jewish Defense League. Many though not all participants are holocaust revisionists, making them unemployable in the US and subject to arrest when they travel to many European countries.
The entire conference – roughly fifty hours of high-quality videos of the presentations and interviews – will be archived at the website Hollywoodism.org.
McClatchyreports that Israel now believes Iran will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015 or 2016. That is progress of a sort; Netanyahu had previously been claiming that Iran would have the bomb no later than late summer 2013 — around six months from now. But Israel is still insisting that Iran is only two or three years away from nuclear capability, so I think it is useful to recall and update the timeline I mentioned early last year of breathless Israeli and Western claims about Iran’s nuclear program:
1984: West German intelligence sources claim that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.” US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.
1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells the Knesset that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
1995: The New York Times reports that US and Israeli officials fear “Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought” – less than five years away. Netanyahu claims the time frame is three to five years.
1996: Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres claims Iran will have nuclear weapons in four years.
1998: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims Iran could build an ICBM capable of reaching the US within five years.
1999: An Israeli military official claims that Iran will have a nuclear weapon within five years.
2001: The Israeli Minister of Defence claims that Iran will be ready to launch a nuclear weapon in less than four years.
2002: The CIA warns that the danger of nuclear weapons from Iran is higher than during the Cold War, because its missile capability has grown more quickly than expected since 2000 – putting it on par with North Korea.
2003: A high-ranking Israeli military officer tells the Knesset that Iran will have the bomb by 2005 — 17 months away.
2006: A State Department official claims that Iran may be capable of building a nuclear weapon in 16 days.
2008: An Israeli general tells the Cabinet that Iran is “half-way” to enriching enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon and will have a working weapon no later than the end of 2010.
2009: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak estimates that Iran is 6-18 months away from building an operative nuclear weapon.
2010: Israeli decision-makers believe that Iran is at most 1-3 years away from being able to assemble a nuclear weapon.
2011: An IAEA report indicates that Iran could build a nuclear weapon within months.
2013: Israeli intelligence officials claim that Iran could have the bomb by 2015 or 2016.
The McClatchy articles quotes an Israeli intelligence officer as asking “Did we cry wolf too early?” That’s amusing: Israel (and the West) have been crying wolf over Iran’s nuclear capability for nearly three decades.
David Brooks’ op-ed piece in the February 9 International Herald Tribune – the global edition of the New York Times – is an insult to any serious student of international relations and political theory as well as to Yale University. As part of a course at Yale on Grand Strategy that he is “taking part in” – Brooks does not say if he is a student in the course or teaching the course – the editorialist wheels out the 16th century Florentine political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince to justify the use of drones. Citing passages often used by Realists to justify whatever action fits their aims above and beyond moral considerations, Brooks says that “in the real world, a great leader is called upon to create a civilized order for the city he serves. To create that order, to defeat the forces of anarchy and savagery, the virtuous leader is compelled to do hard things, to take, as it were, the sins of the situation upon himself…Sometimes bad acts produce good outcomes. Sometimes a leader has to love his country more than his soul.”
Brooks’ caricature of Machiavelli allows him to pose a dilemma that has appeared regularly in Realist literature as a binary division between idealism and realistic power politics that is now couched in terms of using drones. “Do I have to be brutal to protect the people I serve? Do I have to use drones, which sometimes kill innocent children, in order to thwart terror and save the lives of my own?” Brooks asks. The political theorist Michael Walzer wrote about this dilemma as “The Problem of Dirty Hands”.
If I were grading Brooks as a student, I would begin by noting in the margins of his paper that his understanding of Machiavelli is terribly superficial. Machiavelli’s advice to the Prince must be understood in the context of the time and place, as R.B.J. Walker has brilliantly shown in “The Prince and ‘the pauper’”. Renaissance life, as sophisticated as it was culturally, was centuries before the codification of public international law, the Geneva Conventions on international humanitarian law, the Genocide Convention, etc. The limited world of the Italian city-states in no way resembles today’s global society. To compare advising the ruler of a small city-state in 16th century Italy with advising President Obama today on the use of drones (or whatever else Brooks can imagine would be justified) is like comparing apples and oranges. Although Brooks praises the fact that “we’ve inherited an international order that restrains conflict,” he cannot go beyond that statement to see that the international order that he praises also restrains the killing of non-combattants by drones, just as it restrains torture. The very basis of that order, and what distinguishes the civilized from the barbaric, is adherence to international law, not the projection of naked power.
David Brooks’ use of Machiavelli is not deserving of a serious first year college student (Will he next be quoting Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue to justify nuking a country when negotiations fail?). Yale’s political science department has long been a leader in the field. By quoting Machiavelli as he does, and then to add legitimacy to the quotations by citing his presence at Yale, Brooks disqualifies himself as a competent student and no more than a simplistic power politics Realist who has no right to whisper in the ear of the Prince, let alone be an editorialist for an institution that considers itself the paper of record.
Mr. Brooks, I do hope you will do better on your next paper. This one is not up to serious standards. You fail.
~
Daniel Warner is a political scientist living in Geneva, Switzerland, and the author of “An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations”. Daniel is a contributing writer to NYTX’s “Geneva Dateline” column.
Press TV has announced a new frequency for viewers in the United States and Canada after the Iranian channel was removed from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform.
The satellite platform provided broadcast services to the viewers of the 24-hour English-language Iranian news channel, and the film channel iFilm in the United States and Canada.
In order to watch Press TV in the US and Canada, viewers can use the following frequency on Galaxy 19:
Frequency 12028 MHz
Polarization H (horizontal polarization)
Symbol rate 21991Msym
FEC 3/4
In another flagrant violation of freedom of speech, Iranian channels Press TV and iFilm have been removed from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform.
The satellite platform provided broadcast services to the viewers of the 24-hour English-language Iranian news channel, Press TV, and the film channel, iFilm, in the United States and Canada.
This is not the first time that Iranian media have been targeted. In January, the Spanish government ordered Madrid’s regional government to stop the broadcast of the Iranian Spanish language channel Hispan TV as of January 21.
The move came a month after the Spanish satellite company, Hispasat, terminated the terrestrial broadcast of Hispan TV.
Hispasat is partly owned by Eutelsat, whose French-Israeli CEO is blamed for the recent wave of attacks on Iranian media in Europe.
Back then, the move was immediately welcomed by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which called it an important development in worldwide efforts to contain Iran’s media influence.
AJC Executive Director David Harris has acknowledged that the committee had for months been engaged in discussions with the Spaniards over taking Iranian channels off the air. … Full article
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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