BETHLEHEM – A 16-year-old Palestinian detainee has had to undergo a below-the-knee amputation due to a severe injuries he sustained after an Israeli jeep hit him at an Israeli military checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin last week, according to Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer.
Addameer wrote in a statement on Tuesday that an attorney representing Sharif Khanfar said the teen was with three of his friends riding a Vespa motorcycle when they were apprehended by Israeli forces for allegedly planning a vehicular attack on soldiers on Jan. 3, and were injured after an Israeli jeep hit them.
The statement contradicted reports from Israeli police at the time of the incident, which did not mention an Israeli vehicle being involved.
Initial reports from Israel media claimed the incident was a deliberate vehicular attack, but Israeli police spokesperson Luba al-Samri said later that it was an accident.
The accident occurred at a so-called “flying checkpoint” — a non-temporary Israeli military checkpoint — that had been set up between the city of Jenin and the al-Jalama checkpoint, which Palestinians use to cross into Israel from the northern occupied West Bank.
Al-Samri’s initial statement said that one motorcycle “bumped into” Israeli soldiers who were on foot at a military checkpoint, while three other motorcycles involved in the incident “fled the scene.”
However, she issued a correction later saying only three motorcycles had been involved — one carrying two Palestinians and another carrying one — without elaborating details of how the accident itself occurred.
A second Palestinian was severely injured in the incident, and a third was lightly injured. Two Israeli soldiers were lightly injured under unclear circumstances, though al-Samri seemed to suggest, without saying explicitly, that they were on foot by neglecting to mention the involvement of a military jeep.
Al-Samri also did not mention in her statements that anyone was detained after the accident or accused with wrongdoing. An Israeli police spokesperson could not immediately be reached on Wednesday to confirm whether or not the teen was in fact being detained.
Israel’s emergency medical service Magen David Adom (MDA) said they evacuated the two severely injured Palestinian motorcyclists to Israel’s HaEmek hospital.
However, according to Addameer, Khanfar was being detained by Israeli authorities in the hospital, which is located in the Israeli city of Afula, north of the border with the occupied West Bank.
Addameer’s statement said Khanfar and his family members were “shocked” by the incident that resulted in the loss of a leg, and denied that he and his friends had intended to carry out an attack.
Since a wave of unrest began in October 2015– largely marked by small-scale attacks by Palestinians targeting uniformed Israeli soldiers and police with knives or similar weapons — a number of deliberate car ramming attacks have occurred.
However, Israeli authorities’ version of events have been challenged in a number of incidents, with officials in some cases later admitting so-called “terror attacks” were actually traffic accidents.
Amid the unrest, Israel has come under widespread condemnation for implementing a “shoot-to-kill” policy against Palestinian committing or allegedly committing attacks. Among the more than 100 Palestinians to be killed by Israeli forces and settlers throughout 2016, 33 were minors aged 17 and younger, according to Ma’an documentation.
In addition to lethal shootings of Palestinian children committed by Israeli forces, Palestinian NGO BADIL has warned of an increasing trend of Israeli forces shooting Palestinian youth in a deliberate attempt to leave them crippled for life.
Rights groups have also widely documented the mistreatment, abuse, and torture of Palestinian minors in detention, and the harsh interrogation practices used to force their confessions.
The Guardian has uncovered a major element of the Shai Masot scandal. I speculated in my last post about this story that Masot worked for an Israeli intelligence agency. No one I consulted found it likely it could be the Mossad. Masot was too public and too pushy to be Mossad. Others speculated that he worked for the IDF intelligence unit, AMAN, since he had until recently been an IDF Major. But his LinkedIn account noted that he’d left the IDF.
Now the Guardian has put two and two together and gotten closer to key elements of the story. He worked for the Strategic Affairs ministry headed by ambitious Likud pol, Gil Erdan. His agency has been tasked with mounting a global campaign against BDS. At a conference in Israel, one of Erdan’s fellow ministers even threatened BDS activists with “civil elimination,” a term dangerously close to ‘assassination’ in colloquial Hebrew. Erdan’s budget is huge ($34-million devoted to fighting BDS alone) as the latter has become the bête noire of the Israeli state–named as Public Enemy Number 1; the new “existential threat” to the “Jewish state” and Jewish people.
The Israeli foreign ministry, according to the Guardian story, recognized the danger of what Masot was doing and its London staff wrote a cable warning that freelancing of the type Masot was engaged in was extremely dangerous because funding UK organizations directly with Israeli state funds would jeopardize the non-profit status of any UK non-profit who accepted them. In videos, Masot boasts about founding pro-Israel astro-turf groups which were local in name only. Masot pulled the strings both financially and politically. He also boasts about collaboration with Conservative Friends of Israel and offers 1-million pounds to a Labour Friends of Israel MP in order to encourage other MPs to participate in junkets to Israel. Joan Ryan, the MP before whom he dangled this bauble didn’t seem to have a clue as to the danger it posed to her. She merely joked to Masot that she didn’t expect he was carrying the 1-million in a bag on his back!
One telling passage from the MFA cable confirms that the Israeli government is far more aggressive in creating such astroturf groups in the U.S. than it has been so far in Britain:
“Attempts to act behind our back have happened before and will happen again, but ‘operating’ Jewish organisations directly from Jerusalem, with no coördination and no consultation, is liable to be dangerous,” it said. “Operating like this could encounter opposition from the organisations themselves, given their legal status: Britain isn’t the US !”
This calls to mind the multitude of Israel Lobby groups which closely coördinate their activity with the Israeli government, and perhaps more. They include StandWithUs, The Israel Project, Christians United for Israel, CAMERA, and many others. In fact, then-deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon boasted on an Israeli TV show that his ministry was funding a SWU lawsuit against the Olympia Food Coop.
This reinforces my strong impression developed over the years that many of these groups, which are ostensibly independent U.S.-based groups are either fully or partially “operated” by the Israeli government. I have even reported on several projects of these NGOs which were explicitly funded by the government. This should endanger their non-profit status and force them to register as agents of a foreign government. But our IRS hasn’t chosen to tangle with the Israel Lobby or even the settler lobby (though it should).
Returning to the Strategic Affairs ministry, it released this statement in response to the September MFA cable. It indicates that the ministry either lied or was totally ignorant about what its own operatives like Masot were doing in Israel’s name:
“We work in coordination with the Israeli embassy in Britain and the Foreign Ministry. Every action is done according to the law and in accordance with government decisions and the ministry’s authority. We regret there are elements in the Foreign Ministry who don’t understand the division of responsibilities between the ministries and prefer to deal with struggles of honor instead of focusing on our goals.”
Someone back in Tel Aviv should be eating crow about now. But given the abysmal lack of accountability in virtually everything done in the government, it’s doubtful anything will come of it. … Full article
Army training is ‘traumatic’ for young recruits and damages the adolescent mind, according to British infantry veteran Wayne Sharrocks, who features in a series of short films released today by Child Soldiers International (child-soldiers.org/dontenlistat16). The films offer young people and their parents a frank alternative to army recruitment materials which, say many veterans, present a sanitised and unrealistic impression of military life. In particular, Wayne wants young people to know that the psychological effects of training can be harmful and permanent.
The films describe Wayne’s journey through the army, from training to deployment and his struggle to adjust to civilian life afterwards. They present a picture of army life that is unrecognisable from recruitment brochures: of routine bullying; ‘traumatic’ training that indoctrinated him as ‘a mindless, robotic killer’; and the often ‘really, really, dull and boring’ life on operations. He recalls seeing his colleagues maimed and killed right in front of him, and talks about his own injury from an IED explosion.
Other British armed forces veterans share Wayne’s concern. Today, Veterans for Peace[i] will deliver a letter to the Ministry of Defence appealing for an end to recruiting from age 16. The letter argues that adolescents should not be put through training whose central goal is to make them capable of killing on demand and without hesitation. In Wayne’s experience, this psychological conditioning produces ‘an insane amount of aggression’ and is ‘massively psychologically damaging’ after leaving the army as it cannot simply be ‘switched off’.
In the films, Wayne describes the lead-up to bayonet drill, which begins with sleep deprivation:
‘So they keep you up all night and make you really angry, then you’ll [have to] run and be put through physical punishments. You’re crawling through mud and [are] screamed at, kicked, punched while you’re on the floor, anything to get you angry… enough to stab another man on the flick of a switch. For a young person at 16 that’s pretty traumatic.’
The army makes use of a gang mentality to force recruits to conform, he says:
‘You either conform, or you don’t and you’re separated from the pack and you’re going to be preyed on. So you can either be the person that’s preying on people or the person that’s preyed on, it’s like survival of the fittest, basically. So these people that aren’t the fittest or mentally the fittest, they’re going to get preyed on and people are going to take advantage of that.’
Wayne’s testimony echoes statistics which show younger recruits are at higher risk of bullying and harassment in the army. In 2015, recruits at the Army training centre for minors (AFC Harrogate) filed 20 formal complaints of inappropriate conduct by army staff, up from ten cases in 2014, ten in 2013, and five in 2012. 15 cases remain unresolved to date.[ii]
‘Before deciding to enlist, young people and their parents deserve the full picture, but the army’s brochures only tell one side of the story. These films give another side, including the frightening and the mundane,’ said Rachel Taylor, Programme Manager at Child Soldiers International. ‘People need to know that basic training involves intense psychological conditioning which doesn’t switch off when you leave the army. Adolescents, whose brains are still developing, are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of this.’
Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now Coordinator for Veterans for Peace UK, agrees. ‘The purpose of infantry training is to fundamentally alter the way your mind works, leaving the army in control of what you value and how you react. These values and reactions are very difficult to switch off and cause all sorts of problems in civilian life. No other country in Europe subjects 16 year olds to this process, it’s time this country caught up.’
The four Children’s Commissioners for the UK also believe that raising the enlistment age would be in the best interests of young people,[iii] as do the major child rights groups,[iv] health professionals,[v] teachers,[vi] faith groups,[vii] parliamentarians,[viii] the Equality and Human Rights Commission,[ix] and three-quarters of the British public, according to a 2014 poll.[x] The British army’s arrangements for gaining the informed consent of recruits and their parents are ‘insufficient’, the UN has said.[xi]
An article in last month’s RUSI Journal argues that the army could enlist only adults and still fill the ranks, since 16 year olds are more expensive than adults to train and one-third are discharged before they finish the course (child-soldiers.org/shop/is-it-counterproductive-to). Despite the growing controversy around the British army’s recruitment age, last year it increased its intake of minors, who account for a quarter of new recruits, recent figures reveal.[xii]
Editor’s notes:
Wayne Sharrocks enlisted into the British infantry in 2006, aged 17, and left seven years later. He was deployed to Afghanistan twice. The second time he was deployed he was injured by an IED. The same explosion blew the legs off a colleague in front of him. He is now making a full length film about the difficulties veterans face in returning to civilian life: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1236839879/life-after-war.
Child Soldiers International is an international human rights research and advocacy organisation seeking to end the military recruitment of any person under the age of 18. Our research on child recruits in the British armed forces is available at https://www.child-soldiers.org/uk.
The large majority of countries worldwide now recruit only from age 18 or above. The UK is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council or EU member state still recruiting 16-year-olds. In the United States the minimum recruitment age is 17 years, but minors only account for around 6 per cent of annual intake; in the UK, they account for one-quarter of the British army’s intake. (Full figures available on request).
The Defence Select Committee (2005, 2013, 2014), the Joint Committee on Human Rights (2009, 2010) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2002, 2008, 2016) have all called on the MoD to review the minimum recruitment age with a view to raising it to 18 years.
Supporters of the campaign to raise the UK enlistment age to 18 include: the Children’s Commissioners for the four jurisdictions of the UK, Child Soldiers International, Veterans for Peace, National Union of Teachers (NUT), Medact, Liberty, ForcesWatch, Amnesty International UK, British Institute of Human Rights, The Who Cares? Trust, Plaid Cymru, the Green Party, Plaid Youth, SNP Youth, Children in Scotland, Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights), Children in Wales, Wales UNCRC Monitoring Group, Wales Observatory on Human Rights of Children and Young People, Children England, Children’s Rights Alliance England (CRAE), Northern Ireland Children’s Law Centre, the Church of Scotland, the Church in Wales, General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, Methodist Peace Fellowship, Baptist Peace Fellowship, Quaker Peace and Social Witness, and Pax Christi.
Army policy ensures that 16 and 17 year olds who enlist are drawn into the infantry in particular, as Wayne was.[xiii] [xiv] The infantry carries the highest risks once recruits turn 18 and can be sent to war. In 2015/16, 41 per cent of minors joining the army were enlisted for the infantry, versus 32 per cent of their adult counterparts.[xv]. The British infantry’s fatality rate in Afghanistan was six times that in the rest of the army.[xvi]
In November the health professionals charity Medact argued that underage enlistment is a public health problem carrying a range of risks to young people.[xvii]
[x] Ipsos MORI, Nationwide poll conducted in July 2014 by Ipsos MORI on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, http://forceswatch.net//sites/default/files/IPSOSsurvey2014-Forces_age.pdf. Poll question: ‘In your opinion, what should be the minimum age to join the British army? Please answer regardless of whatever you believe the minimum age is at the moment.’
[xiii] According to the MoD, Junior Entry recruitment (aged 16-17.5 years) ‘presents an opportunity to mitigate Standard Entry (SE) shortfalls, particularly for the Infantry’. ‘SE’ refers to recruits aged 17.5 years and above. MoD, Policy on recruiting Under-18s (U18), 2013, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Ref. FOI2015/00618, 12 February 2015, p. 2, https://www.child-soldiers.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=5328771a-5ff2-4b15-89ab-ff454339c782.
[xv] In 2015-16, 41 per cent (730) of army recruits aged under 18 were enlisted for the infantry, versus 32 per cent (1,960) of adult recruits. House of Commons, Written questions: Armed Forces: Young People, 25 May 2016, no. 38550; MoD, UK armed forces biannual diversity statistics, 1 April 2016 (Table 8a), 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-biannual-diversity-statistics-2016.
As we enter the last full week of Barack Obama’s eight year tenure as President of the United States of America, dozens of political prisoners still sit in cages across the nation’s prisons, rotting away as Obama consciously chooses not to exercise the power to simply free them with the stroke of a pen. Many activists for Puerto Rican independence, Native American and African American rights, and other causes were targeted by the political police’s illegal COINTELPRO program and convicted in sham trials. Now elderly, some in poor health, they may effectively be facing death sentences unless Obama’s decides within the next two weeks to grant their appeals for clemency.
Among the most well known political prisoners are Oscar López Rivera, Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, who have all been locked up for at least three and a half decades. Many others including The Move 9 and The Holy Land Five have spent years or decades in jail for their political action and views. Many, like Chelsea Manning and Jeffrey Sterling, have been denied their freedom for their roles in exposing government crimes and misdeeds.
But you won’t ever hear this in the mainstream media. The corporate media hypocrisy is best demonstrated by the debate regarding political prisoners during Obama’s trip to Cuba in March 2016.
The U.S. government pretends that it always promotes human rights around the world and opposes human rights violations by other countries it considers adversaries. Hence, part of the propaganda narrative on Cuba is that it unjustly holds political prisoners as part of its campaign to repress the Cuban people – something that would never occur in the United States itself.
During a joint press conference with Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Castro why the Cuban government held political prisoners and whether he would release them. Castro responded by asking for the names of people Acosta was referring to, and said that if he was given a list, they would be free by that evening. The headlines from some of the most popular US new organizations declared that Castro “skirts question on political prisoners” and “President Obama and Cuban President Clash on Political Prisoners in Cuba.” The New York Timeschallenged Castro’s claim by citing Twitter responses naming Cubans purportedly imprisoned for their political beliefs and quoting a U.S. spokesman saying the U.S. had previously shared lists with the Cuban government.
The press coverage treated it as self-evident that only the Cuban government should have to defend itself against allegations of human rights abuses. That the U.S. President would not have to answer the same question was taken for granted.
But by the time the meeting between Obama and Castro took place in Cuba, all prisoners considered by Amnesty International prisoners of conscience had already been released. Meanwhile, Amnesty has directly called on Obama to free Leonard Peltier and produced multiple reports about his case.
However, no news organization questioned why an American reporter who covers the U.S. President every single day had never bothered asking Obama – before or during the press conference in Cuba – about U.S. political prisoners.
When I asked Acosta via Twitter why he was silent about U.S. political prisoners and whether he would call on Obama to free Peltier, he did not respond. In the following months, he has not responded a single time when questioned about his refusal to ask the same questions of his own President that he does of leaders of foreign (enemy) countries. It is easy to see why.
Journalists working in the American mainstream media see themselves as being on the same team as their own government, safely staying on the side of U.S. power by acting as a mouthpiece to promote the government’s own narrative and opposing those countries and leaders that the U.S. government does.
As the American press refuses to acknowledge that the U.S. has political prisoners, it is left to grassroots groups to demand justice. Recently, separate petitions calling for clemency for López and Peltier were created through the White House’s We the People web site, where citizen petitions that receive 100,000 signatures receive a response from the White House.
Both petitions exceeded the threshold and received the same dismissive response, passing the buck to the Department of Justice’s Pardon Attorney and refusing to comment on the individual cases:
“The President takes his constitutional power to grant clemency very seriously, and recommendations from the Department of Justice are carefully considered before decisions are made. The White House does not comment, however, on individual pardon applications. In accordance with this policy and the We the People Terms of Participation – which explain that the White House may sometimes choose not to respond to petitions addressing certain matters – the White House declines to comment on the specific case addressed in this petition.”
Translation: The President doesn’t actually respect citizens’ right to participate in decision making, and feels free to ignore them whenever he chooses. The We the People web site is merely a propaganda tool to give the illusion that the president is responsive to the citizens he purportedly serves.
Indeed, Obama has closed his eyes and ears and shut out the voices of millions of people who have spent his entire presidency calling on him to show basic human decency and stop the perpetration of historic injustices against López, Peltier, Abu-Jamal and the many other political prisoners.
Throughout his term, Obama has been called on by fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates, foreign leaders, Puerto Rican politicians and others to free López Rivera. The case has become perhaps the most important political issue on the island, as well as among Puerto Ricans and allies in the diaspora.
Former President Jimmy Carter, who commuted the prison sentences of four Puerto Rican nationalists, including Lolita Lebron and Rafael Cancel Miranda, who participated in attacks on the Blair House and the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1950s, asked Obama to free López Rivera, as he himself had done for Puerto Rican prisoners convicted of more serious charges. (Carter’s Dec. 13 letter to Obama was not reported in any American corporate media, only in the Puerto Rican press such as the island’s largest newspaper, El Nuevo Dia.)
Despite years of being ignored, the people of Puerto Rico, who are denied their right to self-determination by the U.S. government and relegated to second-class citizenship without the democratic right to representation in federal government, have been unrelenting in continuing to demand Obama grant López Rivera his freedom.
Massive rallies have been held annually in San Juan and across the island on the anniversary of López Rivera’s incarceration each May. The group 35 Mujeres por Oscar (35 Women for Oscar) holds regular gatherings, the most recent on Jan. 6 for López’s birthday.
In a demonstration in October in front of the White House, in which nearly 1,000 people – many who took buses from Philadelphia and New York City – rallied for López Rivera, Puerto Rican recording artist René Pérez (AKA Residente of the band Calle 13), summed up the view of many people that it should be the government of the United States itself that be seeking forgiveness from Oscar López and the people of Puerto Rico. His speech is worth quoting at length:
“We’re here in the United States of America, in front of the government that has enslaved us for more than 100 years. The government that in exchange for a passport took our families to its wars. The government that experimented with our people, since they came implanting its language by force. The government that performed medical experiments on our grandparents injecting them with cancerous cells. The government that experimented with anticonceptive pills on our island. We, who understand [López Rivera’s] fight, are here to tell this government – the only government in the history of humanity to fire atomic bombs – that they have in prison a hero much braver than Washington. That this hero has been imprisoned longer than Mandela. That this hero became a hero without hoping for anything in return. We, who understand the fight of Oscar López are in front of the White House to tell this government that every additional second Oscar López spends in prison converts him in a hero much bigger than any of the heroes the United States has had. We are here to tell this government that even though the history books don’t tell us the real history that includes heroes like Oscar López, we will take charge of telling it. We, who understand the fight of Oscar López, are here to tell this government that we will never ask forgiveness for defending our right to be free. So we don’t ask them to forgive Oscar, but that they recognize the true history of the world, that they recognize the history of Puerto Rico, and maybe some day, after they free Oscar, we will forgive them.”
Obama has chosen to ignore the massive injustice committed against political prisoners in American gulags, likely because he refuses to acknowledge that the system he leads can – and often does – seek to silence and intimidate people into submission, using the legal system as a weapon to destroy the lives of those whose resistance of government power most threatens its perpetuation of the status quo. As Pérez said, perhaps someday people will forgive him.
Former CIA acting director Michael Morell said President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric will undermine the agency by causing a “wave of resignations” and affecting its ability to work with foreign intelligence services.
“First, expect a wave of resignations. Attrition at the C.I.A., which has been remarkably low since Sept. 11, 2001, will skyrocket,” Morell wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Friday.
CIA Worse Than Useless
The CIA is worse than useless. They did not foresee the fall of the Berlin wall, any number of assassinations, Benghazi, 911, or anything else meaningful.
Worse yet, the CIA spied on allies, helped overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran and Ukraine (with disastrous consequences). The CIA was directly involved in the kidnapping and torture of US citizens, frequently not even getting the right person.
Barack Obama has agreed to preserve the Senate’s landmark investigation into the CIA’s use of torture after 9/11, but his decision ensures that the document remains out of public view for at least 12 years and probably longer.
SALFIT – Israeli forces raided the town of Kifl Haris in the Salfit district of the central occupied West Bank overnight Saturday to provide protection for Israeli settlers visiting a site believed to be a Jewish shrine.
Eyewitness Yousif Yaqoub told Ma’an that he counted about 30 Israeli military vehicles storming the center of the town to escort the settlers, with Israeli soldiers firing stun grenades.
Israeli forces then set up military checkpoints at the entrances to Kifl Haris and imposed curfew, according to Yaqoub.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that overnight, “Israeli forces escorted Jewish pilgrims to the tomb of Joshua,” saying that the visit took place “without incident.”
A visit by settlers to the site earlier this month that was not carried out in coordination with the Israeli army sparked clashes with locals youth, prompting Israeli army forces to raid Kifl Haris, when a number of Israeli settlers were reportedly detained and interrogated over “violating Israeli military orders that bans Israelis from entering Palestinian districts.”
Residents of Kifl Haris have been living a continuous tension due to Israeli settlers’ raids to allegedly visit Jewish religious sites.
A number of tombs exist in Kifl Haris, which Palestinians in the area believe to be the graves of Muslim prophet Dhul-Kifl, the Sufi saint Dhul-Nun, and another shrine built by 12-century Sultan Saladin.
However, some Jews believe the tombs belong to the biblical figures Joshua, Caleb, and Nun.
Like many other Palestinian towns across the West Bank with religiously significant sites, Kifl Haris, situated on the main road connecting the illegal Ariel settlement to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, commonly experiences incursions by Israeli settlers accompanied by armed escorts.
Settlers who visit the tombs to pray often actively disrupt Palestinian residents and damage property.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are restricted from visiting holy sites in Israel without hard-to-obtain permits from Israeli authorities.
Imperialist demagogues, as well as religious fanatics, are known to live in their grotesque realities. They erect huge sand castles, invent mascots, and bombard the public relentlessly with self-promoting messages.
Those who refuse to listen and believe, those who dare to doubt and resist, are sidelined, starved to death, humiliated or simply liquidated.
Western religions and European/North American brutal colonialist practices are intertwined culturally. Hand in hand, for centuries, they have been destroying our Planet, from corner to corner, on all continents and even on the high seas.
All conquests, all genocides, all plunders have been eternally rationalized, painstakingly justified. Grand bogus concepts of charity, of ‘altruism’ have been erected. Subjugated nations have always been ruined in the name of some higher principles, in order to save them from themselves. For centuries, the West has portrayed itself as a sacrificial lamb, as a hand chosen by some divine power, as the greatest civilization that is continuously and altruistically liberating the world.
In the West, scribblers and ‘scholars’ have been paid to soften every barbarity committed by the rulers, soldiers and even common citizens.
The cults of formal learning, of facts and information have been erected. Holed in innumerable officially recognized institutions, the scholars, certified demagogues, researchers and media people have been ‘studying’ each other, recycling and quoting each other, filling millions of books with essentially the same narrative.
‘New’ and ‘revolutionary’ academic discoveries mostly lead to the same old conclusions, to stale intellectual and moral passivity, cowardice and spinelessness.
Endless libraries have been filled with useless volumes, first arriving in print, then later in electronic form. Tens of millions of young and not too young men and women are busy wasting their lives, chasing diplomas, those colorful pieces of paper with the seal of approval, certifying people as fit to serve the Empire and the victorious civilization.
At some point, all major philosophical and existential topics ceased to be discussed, in official academia, in mainstream media, in the film houses, libraries and best selling books.
No one paid any attention. The world simply ‘moved forward’.
The ‘issues’ did not disappear. Genocides are still administered by the West in order to plunder the world, the world of the ‘un-people’.
Western colonialism was never really stopped or defeated.
Great ideologies based on humanism were successfully smeared, even erased from the sub-consciousness of the people. Gutless masses, but especially cowardly intellectuals, got convinced that it would be the best ‘not to take stances’, and not to wear ‘old labels’ and gather under ‘old flags’. Passivity combined with the extreme selfishness eventually mutated into collaboration with the regime.
The environment has been getting ruined, progressively and irreversibly.
The press, mass media, gained mastery in saying nothing, addressing nothing, criticizing nothing related to the plunder of the world, and to the suppression of new and truly revolutionary ideas.
Enormous hordes of teachers, lawyers, scientists, and bureaucrats got converted into fundamental idiots, but armed with their licenses, bar exams, patents, contracts and other ‘feel-good’ sheets of colorful papers.
Tens of millions of lawyers failed to form even one single powerful international organization fighting for justice, against the terror of the Empire.
This make-believe world has by now managed to expel Reality and become ‘real’ itself in the minds and brains of billions of men, women and children.
True Reality went underground. She had to become a fugitive, a refugee, paperless and disrespected, belonging nowhere.
She is roaming our Planet, searching for scattered allies, for those few human beings who are still not fully indoctrinated, or fully sold.
Whenever she is caught, she is beaten, stripped naked, and humiliated. A piece of paper saying ‘A Lie’ is hanged around her neck.
Those who are still standing tall, defending great ideals, fateful to the ‘old labels’, are being ridiculed. Old flags, under which millions used to march forward, often victoriously, are now being dirtied, defecated on.
Whatever contradicts the Empire is gradually labeled as Fake News.
In the West, no one seems to be noticing. There are no mass demonstrations, no clashes with police, as laws and regulations are being changed and entire Constitutions violated.
It is because an overwhelming majority is actually collaborating with the regime.
It is because it is suddenly so frightening, or at least impractical, to think outside the box.
It is because there are very few examples of intellectual courage left in this world.
Fake News, fake history, fake emotions, and fake ideals… Everything that is not supporting the official narrative is slowly but seemingly irreversibly becoming ‘fake’.
The only way forward, and the only way for our humanity to survive, would be for at least one group of extremely bright people to fully break from that straightjacket put on the world by the Empire, to reject official perceptions and ‘knowledge’, and to completely cast off all major tools of analyses of Christian and Western supremacy ideologies which are still functioning as the main ‘intellectual’ pillars of the Empire and its collaborators in the colonies.
One’s thought, in order to be original and revolutionary, would have to be almost completely cleansed, even isolated, from the official propaganda of the Empire, from its movies and music, from its schools on all levels, from its professionally manipulative narratives.
Diplomas and licenses supplied by the indoctrination institutions should be used as a toilet paper for extremely severe cases of intellectual food poisoning, and flushed immediately, together with all that toxic shit that consists of so called ‘facts’ and ‘news’.
*
While the ‘Real News’ package is being disseminated all over the world by the Imperial propaganda machine, hundreds of millions of ‘un-people’ are continuing to die annually, aimlessly.
Many are actually vanishing while still fully believing in every word of what they had been fed by the news channels and newspapers. Would they be told the truth (now also known in the West as ‘Fake News’), they’d most likely refuse to die, even opting to fight for their survival.
Fight against whom, against the Empire? That would be unacceptable. Therefore, alternative sources of information must be immediately suppressed – exactly what the Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Obama has been aiming at during the last months of this year, before stepping down from his throne.
The Empire is in panic, because resistance in the form of alternative thoughts and concepts is now coming from various parts of the world, especially from those places not yet infested with the English-language (as well as French or German) standardized storyline. It comes from such places as China’s Academy of Social Sciences, from several Russian institutions and many fiction and non-fiction writers, as well as from numerous new and not so new media outlets in Latin America.
It is now easy to imagine that the Empire might soon introduce some fascist institution like a “Department of Truth”. Its employees could start demanding that each essay and book is ‘well researched’, insisting on ‘facts’.
Writing and philosophy could be reduced to the level of present-day academia: only recycled thoughts would be acceptable. It would not be enough to say that last week it was raining four days a week. A suitable alternative would be: “Last week it was raining four times a week, according to Professor Sigmund Brown.” Or even better: “Both Professors Brown and Green agreed that last week it was raining four times a week”. Then, footnotes would have to be supplied, as well as other information.
Otherwise – it could be defined as Fake News.
The Fake News clause could be invoked if someone wrote, for instance “the true and the most brutal terrorist in modern history is the West.” Or “Several hundreds of millions of people were slaughtered by European empires, and then by the US Empire, in the last several centuries. This holocaust took place in Africa, Asia, what is now known as Latin America, in the Middle East and Oceania, basically everywhere. No alternative system including those of the Soviet Union or China ever came close to the barbarity committed by the West.”
Anyone spreading such blasphemy, such sacrilege, could be caught, charged, tried, punished, and ‘neutralized’.
Just imagine, someone writing this: “All basic narratives on which Western propaganda is based, are either false, or at least have been heavily twisted and manipulated. This includes all storylines related to the Soviet Union, China, colonialism and the anti-colonialist struggle, Cambodia, Cuba, and even Rwanda. The list is long. Ignorance of the Western public is almost complete.”
How could this not be identified as ‘Fake News’? No Professor Blue would utter such judgment, and no Professor Pink would confirm it. You can spend your time digging your snout into millions of books in official libraries, but only a handful of them would mention it.
Therefore, it is all fake, all fabricated. It does not exist, and should be forbidden, censored.
You can of course hear all this in Havana, Caracas, Beijing, Moscow or Johannesburg. In Beijing, in a normal big state-run bookstore there is much greater variety of political opinion than on the entire island of Manhattan. Even many common folks in non-Western places know things and pronounce them freely. However, ‘unapproved’ people cannot be trusted, can they? Especially when it concerns such explosive pieces of material! Also, foreigners speaking their strange twisted tongues cannot be trusted.
Actually, nothing and nobody can be trusted!
Fake News is everywhere, creeping, ambushing us behind each corner. If the Empire is not vigilant, Western supremacy may one day collapse. Which would be against God’s will… Oh, sorry, that was a slip! The correct way to put it: It would be against all reason, against all logic and all facts.
President Obama cares, he understands.
And now we will be defended with even greater fervor: now comes Donald Trump!
Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, a writer of revolutionary novel Aurora and several other books.
Israeli navy ships attacked, several Palestinian fishing boats in the Sudaniyya Sea, northwest of Gaza city, on Thursday morning, causing one boat to capsize while a fisherman went missing in the aftermath of the assault.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said the fisherman, identified as Mohammad Ahmad al-Hassi, went missing after the navy sank his boat, and that Palestinian search and rescue teams are trying to locate him.
The ministry added that the navy fired live rounds at the boats, then flooded them with high-pressure water cannons.
One of the fishers said several navy ships attacked the Palestinian boats less than four nautical miles from the Gaza shore, causing excessive damage to several boats, including the boat that sank.
The attack is part of repeated Israeli violations against the fishers on Palestinian territorial waters, in the besieged and impoverished coastal region, and have led to many abductions of fishers, and scores of casualties, including several fatalities.
“We’re an empire now,” Karl Rove nefariously asserted in 2004, “and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Rove might have said that 12 years ago, but the words hauntingly describe our situation in 2016 — Oxford Dictionaries, incidentally, named “post-truth” the international word of the year — with facts seemingly relative, truth debatable, and a falsely-premised war on fake news, Orwell must be rolling in his grave.
In fact, given these telling circumstances, perhaps Oxford Dictionaries didn’t go far enough — this year epitomizes a new era of post-coherence. Rove and his ilk — the dynasties Bush and Clinton, reigning powers for nearly 30 years — must chuckle behind closed doors as Americans quarrel savagely over the authenticity of falsehoods and facts, alike.
With ostensibly everything now up in the air, the U.S. power apparatus has inarguably ‘created a new reality’ — one in which doubt has been so instilled as to obstruct and thwart the dissemination of accurate, factual information.
This purposeful manipulation of perception, in other words, does exactly what Rove and the aptly-termed “history’s actors” intend — it keeps the rest of us confused — and bitterly arguing over what’s actually going on.
Online communication facilitated this madness exponentially — it’s doubtful such disorientation would have occurred decades ago, when social media didn’t have critical influence.
Of course, this tumult and turbulence isn’t manufactured without reason — it allows the surreptitious and sometimes flagrant distribution of propaganda favorable to the American political establishment to circulate largely unhindered.
But those aspects of post-coherence unintentionally also gave rise to a furious backlash — the Internet might facilitate confusion and propaganda, but it is, after all, a global library of information — and wary independent and alternative media outlets immediately tear apart false information published by collusive corporate media presstitutes.
With all of this in mind, the following are just a smattering of many outrageous examples of how the Fake News narrative brought us post-truth, intentionally shaping the events of 2016 — and promises to continue the inanity far into the future.
Perhaps the most laughable Fake News came to us courtesy of CNN’s Chris Cuomo, who warned the planet amid ongoing publication by Wikileaks of documents deleterious to the credibility of the Democratic establishment to “remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us.”
Cuomo’s conspicuous ploy to limit the spread of the actual documents — and win CNN additional reader- and viewership — constituted a reckless foray into censorship of information.
Of course, CNN didn’t proclaim the leaked emails verboten for nothing — the outlet bears the snarky moniker, Clinton News Network, as its parent company, Time Warner, donated over $400,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign — and was exposed by alternative media countless times for cutting off reporters who dared criticize its darling candidate or report on revealed corruption.
Further, CNN’s pernicious claim came as the documents revealed the outlet and others colluding with the Clinton campaign to report news portraying Democrats in a favorable manner — of course, those who took Cuomo’s warning to heart and relied solely on the Clinton News Network would never know that pertinent detail.
Other mainstream media outlets who coordinated with the Clinton camp struggled to accurately report the contents of the Wikileaks documents — when they bothered covering the revelations. Corporate propaganda’s spin machine seemed to be on overdrive for the duration of the election cycle — and has reached the level of absurdity following Donald Trump’s win.
Because, according to corporate media — who ignored the depth of corruption exposed by Wikileaks — the election of Trump was so anomalous, there had to be an explanation beyond the fact the American people didn’t find Hillary qualified for the job.
Enter The Russians.
Taking cues from the era of McCarthyism and leading the new Red Scare with a bullhorn is the once-illustrious Washington Post, who first posited, without any evidence sans statements from unnamed CIA officials, that the Intelligence Community had reached a consensus — Russian hackers had interfered in the election to install Trump.
Famously in lockstep, the New York Times quickly parroted the same assertion as if it were steel truth — neither outlet, however, bothered consulting officials from the 16 other agencies comprising the U.S. Intelligence Community.
In actuality, no such consensus had been reached — not even inside the CIA. Shortly after the Post’s shameful scare piece was published, the FBI came forward to denounce the Russian hacking theory as “fuzzy” and “ambiguous” — showing the lack of cohesion amongst intelligence officials, as well as the rush to shirk blame for the lost election.
Wikileaks, itself — the one organization with insider information — has vociferously and repeatedly denied their source hacked anything, is not Russian, and that the documents were leaked by an insider.
Nonetheless, news of the report went viral and furthered current administration’s agenda to both paint Russia as a villain and Trump as having somehow stolen the election.
Indeed, the utterly unproven Russian Hackers theory provided the impetus for President Obama to an embarrassing diplomatic meltdown this week, announcing the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, sanctions, and the shuttering of two compounds owned by Russia.
While that move could have easily brought the two superpower nations yet closer to military conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin allowed cooler heads to prevail, went against the fury of other officials, and announced there would be no diplomatic tit-for-tat — no United States diplomats would be expelled from Russia.
Incidentally, the mainstream press jumped the gun again, publishing the statements of Russian officials claiming the country would be mirroring moves by the U.S. — before Putin announced Russia would not be stooping to such diplomatic pettiness. … continue
Let there be no mistake: this is by no means a criticism of human rights as an ideal to work for. The complete title should be “Open letter to those who invoke human rights selectively in order to justify the Western Powers’ policy of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.”
Indeed, the only issue to be discussed about Syria is not the situation on the ground (which may be complicated), but the legitimacy of the interventionist policies of the U.S. and its “allies”, Europeans, Turkey, and the Gulf states in that country.
For decades, the principle on which international law is based, that is, equal sovereignty of States implying non-intervention of one State in the internal affairs of another, has been systematically violated, to the point of being practically forgotten, by champions of the “right of humanitarian intervention”. Recently, a number of such advocates of humanitarian intervention, self-identified as stalwart leftists, have joined the chorus of the Washington war party in reproaching the Obama administration for failure to intervene more in the military efforts to overthrow the government of Syria. In short, they are blaming the Obama administration for not having sufficiently violated international law.
Indeed, just about everything that the United States is doing everywhere in the world violates the principle of non-intervention: not only “preventive” invasions, but also influencing or buying elections, arming rebels, or unilateral sanctions and embargoes aimed at changing the target country’s policies.
Those who consider themselves on the left should take note of the historic basis of those principles. First, the lesson drawn from the Second World War. The origin of that war was Germany’s use of minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland, extended later during the invasion of the Soviet Union. The war finally had catastrophic consequences for the very minorities that were used by the Germans.
Partly for that reason, the victors who wrote the United Nations Charter outlawed the policy of intervention, in order to spare humanity the “scourge of war”.
Next, principle of non-intervention was strengthened by the wave of decolonizations in the following decades. The last thing the newly decolonized countries wanted was intervention from the old colonial powers. The countries of the South have been virtually unanimous in condemning intervention. In February 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, the Non-Aligned Countries’ summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur adopted a resolution stating that:
The Heads of State or Government reaffirmed the Movement’s commitment to enhance international co-operation to resolve international problems of a humanitarian character in full compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, and, in this regard, they reiterated the rejection by the Non-Aligned Movement of the so-called “right” of humanitarian intervention, which has no basis either in the Charter of the United Nations or in international law.[1]
It is obvious that such “interventions” are only possible on the part of strong States against weak States. It can only be a case of might makes right.
However, even all strong states are not equal among each other. Let’s imagine for a moment that the right of intervention is accepted as a new principle of international law. What would happen if Russia tried to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia because of “human rights violations” in that country? Or if China were sending troops into Israel in order to “protect the Palestinians”? One would quickly arrive at a new World War. To understand the “unacceptable” character of interventionist policies, it is enough to think of the American Establishment’s shrieks of alarms following the alleged Russian hacking of certain emails made public by Wikileaks. Note that the reality of this hacking remains to be proven (see here) and that, even if it were true, it would only mean that the hacking enabled the American public to become aware of some maneuvers by its leaders, which is a peccadillo compared to American interventions in Latin America, the Middle East or Indochina.
The consequences of US interventionist policies are multiple and catastrophic. On the one hand, you have the millions of deaths due to American wars (the following study arrives at a total of 1.3 million victims, counting only the “war on terror“).
Moreover it would be a mistake to imagine that the victims of interventions will not react to the threat of intervention by building alliances and trying to defend themselves by increasing internal repression. When the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001, Washington introduced unprecedented security and surveillance measures and, far worse, invaded two countries. How can one imagine that Syria, Iran, Cuba, Russia or China will not take repressive measures to protect themselves from foreign subversion?
Thereby one enters into a logic of unending wars. Indeed, after having themselves intervened in Ukraine and Syria, the Western powers then entered into conflict with Russia and China because of the measures that those countries took in response to those interventions. Far from being a source of peace, the Security Council of the United Nations becomes the scene to express endless acrimony.
In the case of Syria, if, as it now seems, the insurrection ends up being defeated, the Western policy of intervention by arming the rebellion will be shown only to have prolonged the suffering of the population of this unfortunate land. The “human rights defenders” who defended this interventionist policy bear a heavy responsibility in that tragedy.
Although defense of human rights is a liberal concept and liberalism is in principle opposed to fanaticism, today’s “human rights defenders” often display fanaticism. We are warned against a perfectly imaginary Russian influence in Europe (compare the U.S. commercial, cultural, intellectual, diplomatic influence in Europe to that of Russia) and we are told not to consult the “Kremlin medias”. But in any war, and support to the Syrian insurrection is a war, the first casualty is truth. Any truly liberal mind would consult the « propaganda » of the other side, not to take it on faith, but in order to counterbalance and evaluate the propaganda to which his own side is constantly subjected.
Leaving aside “Russian propaganda”, such “human rights defenders” seem unable to pay attention to the following study: “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013.” This study, done by a former UN arms inspector Richard Lloyd and a Professor of Science, Technology and National Security at MIT, Theodore A. Postol, concludes that the gas attack near Damascus in August 2013 that almost resulted in all-out war against Syria, could not be due to the Syrian government. It is difficult to imagine that experts in such positions would deliberately lie in order to “support Assad” or that they are incompetent concerning relatively elementary questions of physics.
The “human rights defenders” also question whether it is still possible to talk with Putin “after Aleppo”. But the U.S. “war on terror”, including the invasion of Iraq, with its hundreds of thousands of deaths, has never prevented anyone from talking to the Americans. Actually, after that 2003 war that France disapproved, France became more integrated into NATO and followed the U.S. more faithfully than ever.
Besides, the European “human rights defenders” are in a particularly absurd situation. Consider, for instance, the alleged use of chemical weapons in 2013 by the Syrian government. There was wide agreement in France over the need to intervene militarily in Syria. But, without American intervention, such a purely French one turned out to be impossible. The European “human rights defenders” are reduced to beg the Americans: “Make war, not love!” But the Americans suffer from “war fatigue” and have just elected a president opposed in principle to wars of regime change. The only possibility for the European “human rights defenders” is to have their own peoples accept massive military spending in order to create a relationship of force that would make the interventionist policies possible. Good luck!
Finally, one must distinguish, among the “human rights defenders” the Noble Souls and the Beautiful Souls.
The Noble Souls warn their “friends” against the idea of “supporting” the butcher, the criminal, the murderer of his own people, Bashar al Assad. But this misses entirely the point of the anti-interventionist attitude.
States can support other States by giving them weapons and money. But individuals, or social movements, like an antiwar movement, cannot do that. So, it makes no sense to say, when individuals express criticism of interventionist policies in our society, necessarily in a marginal way, that they “support” this or that regime or leader, unless one considers that all those who do not want Russia to intervene in Saudi Arabia or China in Palestine support the Saudi regime or Israeli colonization.
Anti-imperialists support another foreign policy, for their own governments, which is an entirely different matter.
In every war, there is massive propaganda in favor of those wars. Since present wars are justified in the name of human rights, it is obvious that the war propaganda will concentrate on “violations of human rights” in the countries targeted by interventionists.
Therefore, all those who are opposed to the interventionist policies have to provide full information to counter that propaganda, for example, the study mentioned above concerning the use of poison gas in 2013, or the testimonies about Aleppo that contradict the dominant discourse (for example a former UK Ambassador to Syria). It is quite remarkable that some leftists, who are very critical of their mainstream media when it comes to domestic policies, swallow almost entirely the Western “narrative” when it comes to Russia or Syria. But if the media distort reality in our own countries, why wouldn’t they do the same when it comes to foreign countries, where things are harder to verify?
This critique of war propaganda has nothing to do with “support” for a given regime, in the sense that such a regime would be desirable in a world freed of interventionist policies.
The Noble Souls want to “save Aleppo”, “are ashamed of the inaction of the international community” and want to “do something”. Yes, but do what? The only practical suggestion that was made (before the recent events) was to create a “no fly zone” that would prevent the Russian air force from helping the Syrian army. But that would be one more violation of international law, since Russia was invited to Syria by the legal and internationally recognized government of that country, in order to combat terrorism. The situation of Russia in Syria is not, from a legal point of view, very different from the one of France when it was invited by the government of Mali to come fight the Islamists in that country (who, by the way, were in Mali because of the French-backed intervention in Libya). Moreover, intervening militarily in Syria would imply either a war with Russia or a Russian surrender without fighting. Who wants to bet on the latter possibility?
To illustrate the hypocrisy of the Noble Souls, compare the situation in Syria and in Yemen. In Yemen, Saudi Arabia is committing numerous massacres, in total violation of international law. If you are indignant because nothing is done about Syria, why don’t you do something yourselves about Yemen? Moreover, there is a big difference between the two situations. In the case of Syria, a military intervention might lead to war with Russia. In the case of Yemen, on the other hand, it would probably be enough, in order to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, to stop delivering weapons to that country. Of course, the Noble Souls know perfectly well that they are unable to stop such deliveries. But, then, what is the point of being indignant about Syria?
The Beautiful Souls, on the other hand, are against all wars, all violence. They “condemn” Assad and Putin of course, but also Obama, the European Union, NATO, everybody! They denounce, they light candles and turn out lights. They “testify”, because “remaining silent” means “being complicit”.
But what they do not realize is that, on the ground, in Syria, nobody, whether the government or the rebels, know that they exist and, if they knew, they couldn’t care less about their indignation, condemnations and lighting up of candles.
This does not mean that the Noble Souls and the Beautiful Souls do not have any effect. They have one, but here it is: to stand in the way of any alternative foreign policy in their own country, which would be based on diplomacy and respect for the United Nations Charter. Yet, only such a policy would favor peace in the world, balance and equality between Nations and, eventually, advance the cause of human rights. But the demonization by the “human rights defenders” of Assad and Putin, as well as of anybody willing to talk to them, renders such an alternative politically almost impossible.
For the “human rights defenders” political realism and the consequences of their actions have no importance: what matters to them is to show that they belong to the “camp of Virtue”. You imagine yourselves as being free, while following at each step the indications of the dominant media as to what should be the object of your indignation.
If I had the slightest illusion concerning the lucidity that you may have about the consequences of your actions, I would call them criminal, because of the harm that you do to Europe and to the rest of the world. But since I harbor no such illusion, I will limit myself to call you hypocrites.
Is a school lesson plan widely used across Canada aimed at fighting racism like its promoters say or is it also a clever cover for defending Jewish/white supremacy in the Middle East?
A recent 12-page Canadian Jewish News insert about Elizabeth and Tony Comper raises the issue. According to the supplement, in 2005 the Bank of Montreal head and his wife Elizabeth started Fighting Anti-Semitism Together (FAST), a coalition of non-Jewish business leaders and prominent individuals. FAST sponsored a lesson plan for Grades 6 to 8 called “Choose Your Voice: Antisemitism in Canada”. Over 2.4 million students in 19,000 schools have been through the FAST program. A year ago FAST added Voices into Action, an anti-racism lesson for Canadian high schoolers that devotes a third of its plan to the Nazi Holocaust in Europe.
Unfortunately, FAST does not appear to be an example of business leaders struggling for social justice. Rather, it’s part of what Norman Finkelstein dubbed the “Holocaust Industry”, which exploits historical Jewish suffering to deflect criticism of Israeli expansionism.
In its “What We Stand For” FAST calls on Canadians “to speak out against all forms of bigotry, racism and hatred”, yet the Compers’ were honoured guests at a 2009 Jewish National Fund fundraiser in Toronto. Owner of 13 per cent of Israel’s land, the JNF discriminates against Palestinian–Arab citizens who make up a fifth of Israel’s population. (What would we think of anti-racist activists who attend KKK meetings?)
In a 2006 article titled “BMO head slams one-sided Israel critics”the Canadian Jewish News reported on FAST’s Quebec launch: “Singling out Israel for blame in the Middle East conflict, even by those of good faith, is fanning anti-Semitism, Bank of Montreal president Tony Comper says. It may not be the intent, but the effect of condemning Israel alone is providing justification for hatred of Jews in Canada and internationally, Comper warned more than 400 business executives. … In underscoring the serious threat of anti-Semitism worldwide, Comper suggested that ‘a second Holocaust’ is possible if Iran acquires nuclear arms and attacks Israel.” In his speech Comper cited CUPE Ontario and the Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada’s support for boycotting Israel as spurring anti-Semitism.
FAST supporters include a who’s who of the corporate elite: President TD Bank, Ed Clark; CEO of CN, Hunter Harrison; CEO of Manulife Financial, Dominic D’Allessandro; CEO of Bombardier, Laurent Beaudoin; president of Power Corporation, André Desmarais; President RBC Financial, Gordon M. Nixon and many others.
According to the Canadian Jewish News supplement, the Toronto couple also sponsored the Elizabeth and Tony Comper Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa in Israel. The Center operates an online Ambassadors Program, which reports the paper, “gives students intellectual material and technical skills to combat online the global boycott, divestment and sanctions anti-Israel movement.”
The supplement was partly sponsored by Larry and Judy Tanenbaum. Larry was one of a half-dozen rich right-wing donors that scrapped the hundred-year-old Canadian Jewish Congress in 2011 and replaced it with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. As the name change suggests, this move represented a shift towards ever greater lobbying in favour of Israeli nationalism.
The Compers provided over $500 000 to the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Established in 2008, Larry and Ken Tanenbaum gave the U of T five million dollars and helped raise more than ten million more for the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.
Andrea and Charles Bronfman gave over $500 000 to the Anne Tanenbaum Centre, which has close ties with the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair in Israeli Studies. In 1997 the Bronfman family provided $1.5 million to create an Andrea and Charles Bronfman Chair in Israeli Studies at the U of T. “Fifty years after its rebirth, the miracle of modern Israel is of broad interest,” said Charles Bronfman at the launch.
The long-standing Zionist family put up $1 million to establish a Jewish Studies program at Concordia two years later. An orchestrator of opposition to Palestinian solidarity activism at the Montreal university through the 2000s, Concordia Jewish studies professor Norma Joseph was also “instrumental” in setting up the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies. In 2011 multi billionaire David Azrieli gave Concordia $5 million to establish the first minor in Israel Studies at a Canadian university. After attending an Association for Israel Studies’ conference organized by the Azrieli Institute, prominent anti-Palestinian activist Gerald Steinberg described the Institute as part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia.
The Israeli nationalist tilt of McGill’s Jewish studies is actually inscribed in a major funding agreement. In 2012 the estate of Simon and Ethel Flegg contributed $1 million to McGill’s Jewish Studies department partly for an “education initiative in conjunction with McGill Hillel.” But, Hillel refuses to associate with Jews (or others) who “delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel; support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the state of Israel.”
The individuals driving Jewish studies and anti-Semitism lessons in Canada overwhelmingly back Jewish/white supremacy in the Middle East and encourage the most aggressive ongoing European settler colonialism.
Unfortunately, support for anti-Palestinian racism, along with colonialism and western imperialism, makes one question their “anti-racism” credentials.
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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Israeli navy ships attacked, several Palestinian fishing boats in the Sudaniyya Sea, northwest of Gaza city, on Thursday morning, causing one boat to capsize while a fisherman went missing in the aftermath of the assault.
Aletho News
