The War on Conspiracy Realists Continues
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | July 24, 2015
Do you believe that governments occasionally conspire to undermine the public good? Do you believe that governments manipulate people through fear to achieve nefarious ends such as war and intervention abroad? Do you believe that ‘elected’ officials serve rich and powerful special interests rather than the majority population?
If you answered yes to any of the above, and you are a British citizen, then you could be the target of a new ‘counter-extremism’ initiative spearheaded by that country’s perverse Prime Minister David Cameron. As part of his Orwellian ‘counter-extremism’ effort, Cameron has instituted a number of truly despotic measures intent on stifling free speech and extirpating ‘heretical’ viewpoints about false flag terrorism and the undue influence of Zionists on Western foreign policy.
While self-evident to most clear thinking people, the notion that the West is deliberately targeting Muslims and their countries in accordance with an intricately fashioned master plan of divide and conquer will now be a prohibited opinion that could put the British police state on your trail.
“Muslim conspiracy theorists,” Cameron proclaimed in a recent speech outlining his ‘five year strategy’ to combat extremism, who believe that “Jews exercise a ‘malevolent’ power, that [the] Israeli intelligence agency Mossad inspired 9/11 and that the UK allowed 7/7 because it wanted an anti-Muslim backlash” are to be singled out for suppression.[1]
Cameron’s 1984-style designs will give parents the ability to revoke their children’s passports if suspected of holding ‘extremist’ beliefs. Police will be given new surveillance powers as well as the authority to vet what certain ‘extremists’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ post on social media. Additionally, Ofcom – Britain’s communications regulatory body – will also be empowered to “crack down on television channels broadcasting extremist messages.” ‘Extremist messages’ appears to be a thinly disguised euphemism for anything not consonant with Western and Zionist propaganda.
Cameron’s aggressive moves against free expression were not unforeseen. During a speech at the United Nations last September, the British leader decried “conspiracy theorists” as “non-violent extremists” who should be confronted with the “full force” of the British state.[2] The theory that Israel and Western intelligence agencies were involved in the fabrication of 9/11 and other false flag attacks was specifically mentioned by Cameron as one of those “dangerous ideas” that needs to be eliminated from public discourse. Inferences about Jewish-Zionist manipulation of Western foreign policy towards the Islamic world should also be combatted, said Cameron in the speech.
Distracting the Public from Western Sponsorship of ISIS
All of this disingenuous bluster rings hollow when one considers the fact that Western governments and their allies have supported, and many would argue created, ISIS to serve their duplicitous agenda in the Middle East.
The CIA, MI6 and Mossad, in conjunction with the oppressive autocrats of Saudi Arabia, have long worked with Wahhabi-Salafist extremist elements in the Middle East and North Africa to counter other more formidable, non-sectarian adversaries in the region such as Libya’s Gaddafi, Syria’s Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran. A re-run of the CIA’s “Operation Cyclone” which empowered Mujahideen forces in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s is currently unfolding in the Middle East under the auspices of many of the same players.
Award winning reporter Seymour Hersh revealed in a 2007 report titled “The Redirection” that the Bush administration launched a joint covert operation with Israel and Saudi Arabia to augment “Sunni extremist groups” and other fanatics to weaken the influence of Syria, Iran and Hezbollah.[3] Obama picked up where Bush left off, flooding Syrian and Libyan insurgent groups with untold largesse and arms, using the corrupted Arab Gulf kingdoms as conduits for weapons transfers for the sake of plausible deniability.
Hersh’s sources close to the US government told him that the Saudis assured Washington that they exercised control over the extremist Wahhabi and Salafist groups, and would steer their fanaticism towards the Shiites. “It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s then-National Security Advisor, purportedly told his American counterparts in the Bush administration. “We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.”[4]
Part of the arrangement, Hersh explained, was a guarantee from the Saudis that Israel’s security interests would be safeguarded, which clarifies why ISIS and its affiliates have not attacked Israel despite the country’s close proximity to the terrorists’ strongholds in Syria and Iraq. “Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran,” Hersh noted was the first point in a series of “informal understandings about their new strategic direction” to combat Shiite influence led by Iran.[5]
ISIS themselves have mostly eschewed hostility towards Israel, posting an official statement on social media in July 2014 saying that they’re more interested in fighting “Muslim infidels” than the Zionist state.[6] Israeli officials have expressed similar sentiments, with Israel’s former envoy to the US, Michael Oren, stating in a September 2013 interview that Tel Aviv “prefers” ISIS and al-Qaeda over the “bad guys backed by Iran,” namely Syria’s Assad and Hezbollah. Oren forthrightly conceded that Israel is committed to defeating through terrorist violence “the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut” with Assad in Syria functioning as the “keystone in that arc.” “That is a position we had well before the outbreak of hostilities in Syria,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post. “With the outbreak of hostilities we continued to want Assad to go.”[7]
The unholy alliance between Israel and the Salafist jihadists came right out in the open in June 2015 when ISIS released a video threatening to topple Hamas in Gaza[8], promising to bring bloodshed and ruin to the Strip. Salafist elements tied to ISIS have in fact attacked Hamas havens in Gaza on multiple occasions over the past few months, showcasing their utility as pawns of Israel.[9][10][11] There are also well-documented direct connections between ISIS-linked militants and Israel. A 2014 report compiled by United Nations observers stationed in the area revealed that the Israeli military has provided anti-Assad militants with sanctuary on the Israeli side of the Golan region, ostensibly treating wounded fighters in Israeli field hospitals and even giving them caches of weapons and other supplies.[12] On top of material support for the terrorists that have besieged Syria, Israel has aided their onslaught through numerous air strikes against Syrian military targets since the turmoil began in earnest in 2012, effectively attempting to tip the tide of the war in the Takfiris’ favour.[13] In January 2015 Israel conducted an airstrike that wiped out a brigade of Hezbollah fighters on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, once again highlighting the Takfiri-Tel Aviv nexus.[14]
In light of such treachery against Arabs and Muslims trying to liberate themselves from oppression and domination, ISIS’s primary function as an acquiescent tool of US-Israeli imperialism cannot be overstated.
Perfidious Albion
As Prime Minister Cameron feigns outrage and opposition to Islamic extremism, the British government under his watch has been an active and willing partner in the Machiavellian strategy of divide and rule in the Middle East spearheaded by the US and Israel.
The 2015 trial of Swedish national Bherlin Gildo – who fought for a militant group in Syria – confirmed London’s role in backing Takfiri insurgents battling Damascus. In his defense, Gildo’s lawyers introduced evidence that British intelligence agencies “were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army.” Confronted with this contradiction, the British court dropped all charges against Gildo, fearing more embarrassing evidence showcasing British complicity with Syrian rebels could surface during proceedings.[15]
In 2013, Roland Dumas, France’s former foreign minister, told a French television station that during a visit to Britain two years before the Syrian crisis began in 2011, British officials informed him of a secret plan to spark a rebel invasion of Syria.[16] “Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria,” Dumas said, pinpointing the origins of the scheme to Israel which, according to Dumas, sought to oust a neighbouring regime hostile to its imperial ambitions in the Levant. Dumas then recounted a conversation he had with an unnamed Israeli prime minister who allegedly told him that the countries in the Middle East that get in the way of Zionist objectives for the region would be swiftly eliminated.
In an April 2014 report entitled “The Red Line and the Rat Line,”[17] journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered British involvement with a CIA-led covert operation in Benghazi, Libya, wherein the Agency was secretly channeling the looted weapons stockpiles of the fallen Gaddafi regime to Western-backed Syrian rebels through a “rat line.” Commenting on Hersh’s report, The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn described the CIA/MI6 “rat line” project in Benghazi as a “supply chain for the Syrian rebels overseen by the US in covert cooperation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.”[18] He summarized Hersh’s findings in more detail as follows:
“The information about this comes from a highly classified and hitherto secret annex to the report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee on the attack by Libyan militiamen on the US consulate in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. The annex deals with an operation in which the CIA, in cooperation with MI6, arranged the dispatch of arms from Mu’ammer Gaddafi’s arsenals to Turkey and then across the 500-mile long Turkish southern frontier with Syria. The annex refers to an agreement reached in early 2012 between Obama and Erdogan with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar supplying funding. Front companies, purporting to be Australian, were set up, employing former US soldiers who were in charge of obtaining and transporting the weapons. According to Hersh, the MI6 presence enabled the CIA to avoid reporting the operation to Congress, as required by law, since it could be presented as a liaison mission.”
In addition to conniving with the US and Israel to arm Takfiri rebel gangs that eventually overran Gaddafi and continue to menace Syria, the British government has also covertly collaborated with Wahhabi extremists in its own country who serve as cartoonish fodder for anti-Muslim war on terror propaganda. In a May 2013 report for the Asia Times, security scholar Nafeez Ahmed disclosed that the British-based Salafist group Al Muhajiroun has been secretly supported by the British intelligence services since its inception in 1996.[19] That group has spawned nearly all of the supposed Islamic extremists implicated in (and perhaps framed for) various attacks in Britain, including the alleged ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid, the alleged Woolwich killers of British soldier Lee Rigby, the alleged 7/7 bombers and many others accused or convicted of terrorism-related offenses. Ahmed contends that various dubious personalities acting as leaders of Al Muhajiroun over the years – including Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri, Haroon Rashid Aswat and Anjem Choudary – have been clandestine agents of British intelligence fronting as ‘Islamic radicals.’
Despite his vocal support for al-Qaeda and ISIS, outwardly championing their grotesque bloodletting in Syria and Iraq today, Anjem Choudary (the current leader of Al Muhajiroun which has re-branded and re-named itself several times) is left untouched by British authorities and appears frequently on mainstream media. How can this impunity be explained if Choudary and his organization are operating independently without state protection? “Almost every major terrorist attack and plot in the UK has in some way been linked to Choudary’s extremist network,” noted Ahmed in the aforesaid piece, yet the radical preacher and his organization “[continues] to function with impunity in new incarnations.”
“[T]hrough Al Muhajiroun,” Ahmed explained, “MI5 is spawning many of the plots it lays claim to successfully foiling – as the FBI is also doing.” The MI5-controlled front group essentially serves a dual purpose: 1) it functions as a repository for Muslim patsies used in US-Israeli-British false flag operations, and 2) it acts as a recruiting hub for Wahhabi-Salafist mercenaries wielded as cannon fodder in various battle zones where Western/Zionist geopolitical and economic interests are at stake.
Unraveling the Web of Intrigue
Those not learned in the dark arts of black operations will likely be confused by all of this. “The West is fighting a war on Islamic extremism,” the indoctrinated lemmings will proclaim with confidence, completely unaware that they are being played for fools by professional spooks trained to employ artifices against the masses.
The surface rhetoric that politicians employ is merely a pack of daft lies intended to divert attention from the real agendas that drive policy. The public is fed a steady diet of cover stories and feel-good rationales – fanciful tales of good vs. evil – to pacify adverse reactions to and deflect unwanted attention from nefarious plots designed to benefit rich people and their interests.
David Cameron himself inadvertently identified whom some of these wealthy string-pullers are: Jewish Zionists committed to overturning every regime in the Middle East that is not yet subordinated to Tel Aviv. The other half of that equation includes an assortment of profiteering Anglos, Americans, Europeans, Arabs, Russians, Chinese and other money-mad opportunists. The Cameron’s, Obama’s, Harper’s, Hollande’s and Merkel’s of the world are mere screens or dummies for the real power behind the throne: the unscrupulous financiers, oligarchs and speculators who dominate Wall Street and the City of London, and to a lesser extent Shanghai and Moscow.
The Zionists, however, seem to be the most organized, the most aggressive and the most committed to living out their grandiose messianic dreams. Whether that vision entails a “New Middle East” in which “Greater Israel” rules the roost or a global government headquartered in Jerusalem remains to be seen. Either way it spells disaster for most of the world’s peoples.
Sources
[1] “Parents may cancel children’s passports in war on IS,” The Week, July 20, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150724070333/http://www.theweek.co.uk/64449/cameron-attacks-ludicrous-extremist-conspiracy-theories
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g-HqRP-ANk
[3] Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” The New Yorker, March 5, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20150318015442/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Elad Benari, “ISIS: Fighting ‘Infidels’ Takes Precedence Over Fighting Israel,” Israel National News, July 8, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140831070443/http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/182632
[7] Herb Keinon, “’Israel wanted Assad gone since start of Syria civil war’,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 17, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20150112102133/http://www.jpost.com/Syria-Crisis/Oren-Jerusalem-has-wanted-Assad-ousted-since-the-outbreak-of-the-Syrian-civil-war-326328
[8] “ISIS Threatens To Topple Hamas In Gaza,” Reuters, July 1, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/01/isis-hamas-gaza_n_7704360.html
[9] “Isis blamed for Gaza City bomb attacks,” The Independent, July 20, 2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-blamed-for-gaza-city-bomb-attacks-10400747.html
[10] “ISIS Allies Target Hamas and Energize Gaza Extremists,” New York Times, June 30, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150713130805/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/world/isis-allies-target-hamas-and-energize-gaza-extremists.html?_r=0
[11] “ISIS supporters claim attack on Hamas base in Gaza Strip,” Russia Today, May 8, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150713195921/http://rt.com/news/256941-isis-attack-gaza-hamas/
[12] “UN details Israel helping Syrian rebels at Golan Heights,” Russia Today, Dec. 8, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150316140841/http://rt.com/news/212319-israel-helps-syrian-militants/
[13] “Head of Syrian army after alleged airstrikes: Israel working with ISIS and al-Qaida,” Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150316154301/http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Head-of-Syrian-army-after-alleged-airstrikes-Israel-working-with-ISIS-and-al-Qaida-383907
[14] “’Israel strike’ kills Hezbollah men in Syria’s Golan Heights,” BBC News, Jan. 18, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150316090443/http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30873402
[15] “Terror trial collapses after fears of deep embarrassment to security services,” The Guardian, June 1, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150610080819/http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo
[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeyRwFHR8WY
[17] Seymour Hersh, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” London Review of Books, April 17, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150315050157/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
[18] Patrick Cockburn, “MI6, the CIA and Turkey’s rogue game in Syria,” The Independent, April 13, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20150110040831/http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/mi6-the-cia-and-turkeys-rogue-game-in-syria-9256551.html
[19] Nafeez Ahmed, “UK pays price for MI5 courting terror,” Asia Times, May 30, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130801060233/http://atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-300513.html
Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez
UK pilots conducted strikes in Syria, Parliament and public kept in the dark
Reprieve | July 17, 2015
British personnel have already conducted air strikes in Syria, despite the Government’s claim that there would be a vote in Parliament before any such action took place, new research by human rights organisation Reprieve has revealed.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by Reprieve to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) found that UK personnel embedded with US and other forces “operating in Syrian airspace” “include pilots flying… Strike missions”.
Previously, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon had indicated that the House of Commons would have the final say before Britain expanded its programme of air strikes to Syria.
Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve said:
“Documents obtained by Reprieve indicate that UK personnel have already been involved in bombing missions over Syria for some time – making the current debate over whether Britain should carry out such strikes somewhat obsolete. It is alarming that Parliament and the public have been kept in the dark about this for so long.
“Yet more worrying is the fact that the UK seems to have turned over its personnel to the US wholesale, without the slightest idea as to what they are actually doing, and whether it is legal. We need an open and honest debate about UK involvement in Iraq and Syria. We can’t have that, though, until the UK comes clean about what actions its personnel are already undertaking.”
US/Israeli/Saudi ‘Behavior’ Problems
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | July 15, 2015
There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.
In this American land of make-believe, Iran is assailed as the chief instigator of instability in the Middle East. Yet, any sane and informed person would dispute that assessment, noting the far greater contributions made by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States.
Israel’s belligerence, including frequently attacking its Arab neighbors and brutally repressing the Palestinians, has roiled the region for almost 70 years. Not to mention that Israel is a rogue nuclear state that has been hiding a sophisticated atomic-bomb arsenal.
An objective observer also would note that Saudi Arabia has been investing its oil wealth for generations to advance the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, which has inspired terrorist groups from Al Qaeda to the Islamic State. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were identified as Saudis and the U.S. government is still concealing those 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 inquiry regarding Saudi financing of Al Qaeda terrorists.
The Saudis also have participated directly and indirectly in regional wars, including encouragement of Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, support for Al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front’s subversion of Syria, and the current Saudi bombardment of Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians, touching off a humanitarian crisis and helping Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate expand its territory.
U.S. Meddling
Then there’s the United States, which has been meddling in the Middle East overtly and covertly for a very long time, including one of the CIA’s first covert operations, the overthrow of Iran’s elected government in 1953, and one of U.S. foreign policy’s biggest overt blunders, President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Iran coup engendered a deep-seated hatred and suspicion of the U.S. government among Iranians that extends to the present day. And, the Iraq invasion not only spread death and destruction across Iraq but has spilled over into Syria, where U.S. “allies” – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel – have been seeking another “regime change” that is being spearheaded by Sunni terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
The U.S. government has further aided in the destabilization of the region by flooding U.S. “allies” with powerful military equipment, including aircraft that both Israel and Saudi Arabia have used to bomb neighboring countries.
Yet, in the fantasy land that is Official Washington, the politicians and pundits decry “Iranian aggression,” parroting the propaganda theme dictated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke before an adoring audience of senators and congressmen at a joint session of Congress on March 3.
This Iranian “bad behavior” includes helping the Iraqi government withstand brutal attacks by the Islamic State and assisting the Syrian government in blocking a major victory for Islamic terrorism that would follow the fall of Damascus. Iran is also being blamed for the Houthi uprising in Yemen although most informed observers believe the Iranian influence and assistance are minimal.
In other words, the neoconservatives who dominate Official Washington’s “group think” may detest Iran’s regional activities since they are not in line with Israeli (and Saudi) desires, but less ideological analysts might conclude that – on balance – Iran is contributing to the stability of the region or at least helping to avert the worst outcomes.
A Lost Mind
The question becomes: Has Official Washington so lost its collective mind that it actually favors Al Qaeda or the Islamic State raising the black flag of Islamic terrorism over Damascus and even Baghdad? Is Iranian assistance in averting such a calamity such a terrible thing?
Apparently yes. Here’s how The Washington Post’s foreign affairs honcho David Ignatius – in a column entitled “Will Tehran Behave?” – describes the geopolitical situation following Tuesday’s signing of a deal to tightly constrain Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions:
“The problem isn’t the agreement but Iran itself. Its behavior remains defiantly belligerent, even as it signs an accord pledging to be peaceful. Its operatives subvert neighboring regimes, even as their front companies are about to be removed from the sanctions lists. The agreement welcomes Iran to the community of nations, even though its leader proclaims that Iran is a revolutionary cause.
“Obama argues that dealing with a menacing Iran will be easier if the nuclear issue is off the table for the next 10 years. He’s probably right, but the Iran problem won’t vanish with this accord. Iranian behavior in the region becomes the core issue. Having played the dealmaker, Obama must now press Iran to become a more responsible neighbor.”
By the way, I always thought that the United States proclaimed itself “a revolutionary cause.” But here is Ignatius, who is regarded as a “big thinker,” setting the parameters of the acceptable debate about the Iran nuclear deal. It’s all about Iran’s “behavior.”
Ignatius even quotes Netanyahu decrying the danger that, after 10 years, the agreement will give Iran “a sure path to nuclear weapons.” Of course, Ignatius doesn’t bother to note that Israel already has taken its own path to nuclear weapons. That context is almost never mentioned.
Nor does Ignatius admit how he and many of his fellow pundits supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which in a normal, parallel universe would disqualify Ignatius and his friends from lecturing anyone about how to “behave.” But in today’s Official Washington, a pre-war endorsement of the Iraq disaster is not a disqualifier but a prerequisite for being taken seriously.
Similarly, The Washington Post’s editorial page, which in 2002-03 eagerly backed Bush’s invasion and routinely asserted as flat fact that Iraq possessed hidden WMD stockpiles, now says the real risk in the Iran deal is, you guessed it, “Iranian behavior.”
The Post says the deal could unleash “a dangerous threshold nuclear state that poses a major threat to the United States and its allies.” And, the Post warns that Iran’s “leaders will probably use” the money from the sanctions relief “to finance wars and terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Yemen and elsewhere.”
Step into Crazy Land
Again, to appreciate the Post’s thinking, you have to step into crazy land. In the real Iraq and the real Syria, the Iranians are supporting internationally recognized governments battling against terrorist groups, Al Qaeda’s affiliate and the Islamic State.
In Yemen, Iranian involvement is probably minor at most. Plus, the Houthis are not a terrorist group, but rather an indigenous popular movement that has been fighting Al Qaeda’s terrorist affiliate in Yemen.
While it’s not clear what the Post thinks that Iran is doing in the Gaza Strip, which is under a tight Israeli military blockade, only fully committed neocons would think that the long-suffering people of the Gaza Strip don’t deserve some outside help.
Still, the larger issue for the American people is what to do with this insane political-media system that dominates Official Washington. Either these powers-that-be are detached from reality or they are deceitful propagandists who think they can manipulate us with lies and distortions.
Yet, by creating a false reality, whether from madness or cynicism, this system guides the nation into terrible decision-making. And, given the immense military power of the United States, this long national detour into a dark psychosis of delusion must be addressed or the future of humankind will be put into serious jeopardy.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Palestinian statement of solidarity with Syria
Statement of Palestinian groups and individuals in the occupied homeland, refugee camps and the diaspora about the global war on Syria
July 16, 2015
We are Palestinians and Palestinian organizations that declare our solidarity with the Syrian people in their great historical struggle for survival, now entering its fifth year. We are in a unique position to understand and appreciate the challenges facing our Syrian brothers and sisters, because we face the same challenges.
We understand what it means to have our lands and our property taken by foreign usurpers. We understand what it means for millions of our people to be driven out of their homes and to be unable to return. We understand what it means for our interests and our national rights to become the plaything of the most powerful nations on earth. We understand what it means to suffer and die in defense of our sovereignty and human rights.
We do not pretend to tell Syrians what is right for Syria, just as Syria has respected the Palestinian right to liberate Palestine since the time of the Nakba. However, we declare that the enemies of Syria are the enemies of Palestine, and those who bear arms against the Syrian people and the Syrian army – regardless of their names and affiliations – are mere pawns that serve Israel and its project to divide and control the Arab region. The people who abduct, murder and slaughter in Syria are the enemies of the Arab nation, just like Israel, with which they share goals and criminal nature.
We therefore reject violence and murder against the people and state in Syria, which has nothing to do with any just demands; rather it merely seeks to destroy the Syrian state. Any attack on Syria is an attack on the Arab nation, and that the true national opposition is the one that commits to its country’s principles and flies its flag, and that doesn’t receive orders from abroad.
The Palestinian and Syrian struggles are not religious struggles. We respect a state that guarantees freedom of religion without preference of any faith over any other. Dividing Arab communities into conflicting sects only serves the Israeli regime and allows it to implement its plots for the region.
While Palestinian refugees have suffered and are suffering in many places, Syria has welcomed them and granted them all the rights of Syrians except the right to vote. We are grateful for this policy of brotherhood/sisterhood and can do no less than to reciprocate with our solidarity for Syria in its time of greatest need. It is the least we can do.
The cynical and genocidal policies of NATO and its proxies in the Middle East have as their main policy to destroy the last remaining independent nations and forces that are not compromised by complicity with Zionist and imperialist forces. These nations and forces wish no harm to others, yet their mere existence is intolerable to Zionism and imperialism. It is our duty to stand with Syria and all nations and movements that resist the intruders and seek an independent course and policy for the benefit and interest of our own people and not to become puppets of foreign powers.
We therefore stand with Syria in its efforts to repel the foreign invaders and the countries that are creating, training, financing, arming and supporting the terrorist groups in Syria. We call for the expulsion of these groups back to their own countries, and for their supporters to devote their resources to improving the lives of their own citizens in their own countries rather than destroying the lives of our citizens in our countries. Like the alien and racist Zionist regime, these criminal countries and their leadership must be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for waging illegal wars against sovereign states and peoples, including Palestine, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Signatures:
1. Mayor Bassam Shakaa (Abu Nidal)
2. His Eminence Theodosios (Atallah) Hanna, Archbishop, Greek Orthodox Diocese of Sebastia, Jerusalem
3. People’s Committee for the Defense of Syria in Palestine
4. People’s Committee for Solidarity with Syria & its Patriotic Leadership, Haifa
5. Sheikh Hassan Foundation for Culture and Science
6. Association of Progressive Arab Women Against War on Syria
7. Cultural Assembly for Democracy in Gaza
8. Palestine Shoruq Organisation, Gaza
9. Kifaah Movement, 1948 Palestine
10. Palestinian Comrades Communist Forum, Occupied Palestine
11. Palestinian Popular Forum, Yarmouk, Syria
12. Coalition Forces of the Palestinian Resistance, Syria
13. Palestinian Youth Organization, Lebanon
14.Union of Palestinian Communities in Europe
15. Palestine Federation of Solidarity Associations, Sweden
16. Yousef Hijazi, Gaza
17. Dr. Sabri Muslim, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
18. Dr. Amal Wahdan, Ramallah
19. Saadah Mustafa Ershaid, Jenin
20. Dr. Munthir Aliwaiwi, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
21. Dr. Mohammed Al-Oweiwi,
Al-Khalil “Hebron”
22. Bashir Abu Omar, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
23. Free Palestine Movement, Syria
24. Yaser Qishlaq, Syria
25. Mahmood Dodeen, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
26. Hisham Al-Sharif, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
27. Abdul-Aleem Da’na, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
28. Dr. Mahmoud Sa’ada, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
29. Dr. Abd Al-Raheem Kettana, Nablus, Palestine
30. Hasan Sarsour, Gaza
31. Raif Diab, Gaza
32. Abdel Moneim Abu Sirdanah, Gaza
33. Murad Mattar, Gaza
34. Noureddine Al Rayes
35. Khaled Souissi, Gaza
36. Anwar Mattar, Gaza
37. Hamid Al-Najjar, Gaza
38. Hind Abu Nijela, Gaza
39. Shareef Samhan, Gaza
40. Yousef Sharkawi, Bethlehem
41. Mohammed Berjeeha, Bethlehem
42. Ibrahim Muzhir, Bethlehem
43. Nidal Abu Aker, Al Dhaishah
44. Imad Abdil Al Aziz, Nablus
45. Mohammed Kayal Albrooh, Acre
46. Ali Isaac, Ramallah
47. Abdel Fataah Ghanem, Ramallah
48. Jamila Aasleh, (Um Aseel), Araba al-Battouf, Acre
49. Hassan Aasleh, (Abu Aseel), Araba al-Battouf, Acre
50. Dr. Adnan Bakriah, Araba al-Battouf, Acre
51. Zuhair Ondrwas, Occupied Palestine
52. Wardih Qasim, Kafr Qasim, Occupied Palestine
53. Salim Salamah, Occupied Palestine
54. Jrais Foul, Occupied Palestine
55. Hussein Zubeidat, Occupied Palestine
56. Mohammed Naamnih, Occupied Palestine
57. Omar Naamnih, Occupied Palestine
58. Imad Shalbak, United States
59. Asaad Quwaiks, Occupied Palestine
60. Labib Ghassan Habib, Occupied Palestine
61. Louay Arafat, Occupied Palestine
62. Tamim Mansour, Occupied Palestine
63. Shawkeyah Arouk Mansour, Occupied Palestine
64. Ali Ghanayem, Occupied Palestine
65. Said Yassin, Occupied Palestine
66. Nizar Kana’ane, Occupied Palestine
67. Mithkal Naamnih, Occupied Palestine
68. Shaker Shbair, Occupied Palestine
69. Jamal Sawaad, Occupied Palestine
70. Rasim Obidat, Occupied Palestine
71. Dr Muslih Awad Muslih, Beit Safafa, Al-Quds “Jerusalem”
72. Ashraf Al-Munawarah, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
73. Dr Ousama Halas, Romania
74. Abu Fadi Farfour, Lebanon
75. Sabri Murshir Alrajoub, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
76. Abid Hakim Samara, Jit, Triangle
77. Abdul Aziz Abu Atwan, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
78. Issa Mahmoud Salah, Bethlehem
79. Khalid Mahmoud Afanah, Salfit
80. Ghazi Al-Sourani, Gaza
81. Ali Al-Jariri, Ramallah
82. Khalil Jabour, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
83. Hanan Bakir
84. Mahmoud Abu Kitah, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
85. Mahmoud Al Sheikh Abdel Fattah
86. Nabil Alizah, Bethlehem
87. Hijazi Abu Shanab, Khan Younis
88. Deeb Hourani, Jenin
89. Ziad al-Sheikh, Damascus, Syria
90. Ashraf Mohammed Amr, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
91. Ghandi Amin, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
92. Hind Abdullah Bandak, Bethlehem
93. Myasir Atyani, Nablus
94. Bassam Shweiki, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
95. Dr. Mohamad Awaineh, Bethlehem
96. Jamal Asleh, Acre
97. Dr. Ali Jariri, Ramallah
97. Mustafa Moisi, Tamra,Galilee
99. Nabil Abu Dayeh, Al-Quds “Jerusalem”
100. Ali Zeibaq, Acre
101. Nida Saadah, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
102. Jihad Saadah, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
103. Fayez Suweiti, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
104. Firas Yaghi, Ramallah
105. Khader Alawneh, Bethlehem
106. Khalid Mohammed al-Madhoun, Al-Khalil “Hebron”
107. Islam al-Tamimi, Ramallah
108. Farid al-Atrash, Esq., Bethlehem
109. Jamal Barghout, Bethlehem
110. Daoud Wazwaz, al-Khalil (Hebron)
111. Abed Jabarin Jabarin, Umm al-Fahm
112. Ali Nassar
113. Osama Abdel al-Halim, Sweden
114. Fouad al-Masri, Caracas, Venezuela
115. Majdi Issa, Nablus
116. Mohammed Salah, Jerusalem
117. Ghassan Khalil Banat, al-Khalil (Hebron)
118. Jamal al-Saadi, Jenin refugee camp
119. Rashed Wadi, Oman
120. Mohammed al-Atawneh, Nablus
121. Maher al-Salaymeh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
122. Dr. Mohammed al-Asmar, Palestine
123. Alaif Sabbagh, al-Boqayaa, Galilee
124. Sheikh Taha al-Qutananeh, Askar refugee camp, Nablus
125. Ayman Yusri al-Heimoneh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
126. M. Ibrahim Abu Shamaa, Tulkarem
127. M. Ahmed Rami, Nablus
128. Dr. Awad Abu Zalata, al-Khalil (Hebron)
129. Louay Hanani, Nablus
130. Awad Ahmed al-Masri, Jerusalem
131. Sufian Sataiti, Jenin
132. Adeeb Qasim, Nablus
133. Samir Mattar, Nablus
134. Jalal Bisharat, occupied Palestine
135. Ahmed Abdel Raouf Abu Ali, Canada
136. Abu Aysar Jaradat, occupied Palestine
137. Azzam Daqqaq, occupied Palestine
138. Khalid Ahmed Saadeddin
139. Nabil Abu Ayyash, Bethlehem
140. Salaam Moussa Jaafar
141. Ziad Hasan al-Saqqa, Jordan
142. Dr. Ramzi Abu Ayyash, Germany
143. Hisham al-Maliki, Stockholm
144. Wissam Abdullah, Jordan
145. Sabri Hajeer, Gothenburg, Sweden
146. Jamal al-Shihabi, Yarmouk Camp, Syria
147. Yousef Mansour, al-Tira, Haifa
148. Omar Atiq, Jordan
149. Nuha Yousef Shomali, Beit Sahour
150. Kamal Maqboul, Sweden
151. Omar Atiq, Oman
152. Sabrina Faqha, Canada
153. Munir Mansour, Majd al-Krum, Galilee
154. Hassan Abdo, Gaza
155. Elham Shaheen, Jerusalem
156. Sama Aweidah, Jerusalem
157. Sheikh Mohammed Omari, Syria
158. Nicola Ibrahim Nicola, Ramallah
159. Nidal Hamed, Norway
160. Ibrahim al-Qudsi, Nablus
161. Nizar Banat, al-Khalil (Hebron)
162. Basem al-Ajjouz, Nour Shams refugee camp, Tulkarm
163. Anis Ghanem, Sakhnin, Galilee
164. Ali Abu Younis, Sakhnin, Galilee
165. Palestinian Youth Movement of Return, Syria
166. Fadi al-Mallah, Damascus, Syria
167. Jazoor News Agency, Gaza
168. Baylist Publishing & Media Agency, Gaza
169. Samer Al-Ghoul, Gaza
170. Nasser Hammad, Gaza
171. Center for Strategic Studies and Documentation, Gaza
172. Hassan Hijazi, Syria
173. Sakhr Abu Zahra, Nablus
174. Ahmed Abu Saud, Gaza
175. Rashad Abu Shawar, Jordan
176. Rasha Maher Anabtawi, Nablus
177. Dr. Nabil Abdel Razek, Jerusalem
178. Lajeen Abdul Haq, Syria
179. Mohammed Adli al-Khatib, Damascus, Syria
180. Baser al-Masri, Syria
181. Mousa Maragha, Syria
182. Ahmed Hilal, Syria
183. Ali Mohammed, Syria
184. Mohammed Jaradat, Syria
185. Mohamed Ezzat, Syria
186. Suleiman Qablawi, Syria
187. Samir Ghasoub, Syria
188. Thaer Massoud, Syria
189. Ibrahim Ibrahim, Germany
190. Democratic Palestine Committees, Germany
191. Majda Khatib, Shafa-Amr
192. Maha Khoury, Haifa
193. Zakaria al-Helou, Jerusalem
194. Tariq Zenati, Lidda
195. Ashraf Wajih Abdullah Hamouda, Oman
196. Nawaf Kabha, Ararah
197. Mohammed Wajih Gharah, Triangle
198. Hussam Khalil, Shefa-Amr
199. Sajid Jaradat, Jenin
200. Amneh Ahmed Ghabariyeh, al-Mushayrifah, Triangle
201. Elham Bushnaq Bakri, Araneh al-Buttouf, Acre
202. Asma Hassouna Mahajna , Umm al-Fahm
203. Abdullah Talaat Saliba, al-Khalil (Hebron)
204. Iyad Mohammed Hmeidat, Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem
205. Fayez Khawaja, Occupied Palestine
206. Issa Farrukh, United States
207. Abdul Salam Shahrour, Esq, Tulkarem
208. Majed al-Jandeb, Esq., Tulkarem
209. Azhar Shahroor, Tulkarem, Palestine
210. Fayez Al-Soweity, Al-Khalil “Hebron”, Palestine
211. Kamal Tannous, al-Lid, Palestine
212. Tawfiq Khoury, Shefa-Amr, Palestine
213. Khaled Abdul-Majid, Syria
214. Mohammed Khoder, Lebanon
215. Ali Ayoub, Lebanon
216. Ahmed Yassin, Lebanon
217. Mohamed Ali Ahmed, Lebanon
218. Maher Moustaha, Lebanon
219. Rasha Ali, Lebanon
220. Vida Warde, Lebanon
221. Dalal Ali Aweiss, Lebanon
222. Tariq Awdeh, Lebanon
223. Mohammed Antar, Lebanon
224. Mahmoud Hashem, Lebanon
225. Hussein Hassan Hamdan, Lebanon
226. Deeb Shalabi Issrawi, Lebanon
227. Aref Al Ezzeh, occupied Palestine
228. Talal Abu-Shawish, Lebanon
229. Nabil Diab, Lebanon
230. Alaa Mahmoud, Lebanon
231. Majed Abu Shawish, Lebanon
232. Fares Al-Saad, Lebanon
233. Arif Daher, Lebanon
234. Jamal Al Jamal, Lebanon
235. Basil El Saiqaly, Lebanon
236. Razan Abed Rabbo, Lebanon
237. Hadi Amar, Lebanon
238. Anwar Shabrawi, Lebanon
239. Rana Bishara, Lebanon
240. Nidal al-Khatib, Lebanon
241. Buthaina Saleh, Lebanon
242. Hanan Daher, Lebanon
243. Imad Salameh, Lebanon
244. Fatima Sleiman, Lebanon
245. Jamal Abu el-Saud, Lebanon
246. Abu Mohamed Farid, Lebanon
247. Anwar Abu Takeh, Lebanon
248. Mujib al-Khafsh, Lebanon
249. Bassam Abu Shawish, Lebanon
250. Moataz al-Ezzeh, Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem
251. Mahmoud Abu Zinada, Lebanon
252. Joujo Ali, Lebanon
253. Ernesto Guevara, Lebanon
254. Thaer al-Khatib, Lebanon
255. Omar Abdel-Karim, Lebanon
256. Suhail Abu al-Majd, Lebanon
257. Fatima Matar, slimmed 326
258. Hassan Kanaan, Balata refugee camp
259. Mohammad al-Mahameed, Umm al-Fahm, Palestine
260. Yasser Abu Ahmed, Lebanon
261. Hassouna Taneina, Lebanon
262. Khaled Taha, Lebanon
263. Samir Adib, Ramallah, Palestine
264. Qadri Abu Wassel, Nazareth, Palestine
265. Khairy Hannoun, Tulkarem, Palestine
266. Dhaher Al-Shemali, Ramallah, Palestine
267. Suheil Natour Tarazi, Gaza
268. Beilset National Foundation for publishing and media, Gaza
269. Tariq Al-Moqayed, Gaza
270. Faris Ahmed, Lebanon
271. Ayman al-Qassem, Lebanon
272. Khaled al-Ali, Lebanon
273. Mona Soufan, Lebanon
274. Mayor Abu Samed Alrowaa, Gaza
275. Samer Al-Ghoul, Gaza
276. Nasser Hamad, Gaza
277. Mehdi Essam Hammad, Gaza
278. Ahmed Abu Qamar, Gaza
279. Samer Tarazi, Gaza
280. Dr. Tarek Ghanem, Tulkarem
281. Alaa Taha, Tulkarem
282. Walid al-Jondeb, Tulkarem
283. Bisan al-Jondeb, Tulkarem
284. Rowaa Bushnaq, Kafr Manda
285. Ahmed Ahmed, Nablus
286. Dr. Bassam Raja, Syria
287. Dima Eskandarani, Syria
288. Omar Hamarsheh, Syria
289. Ibrahim Mouemneh, Syria
290. Wassif Abdul Hadi, Syria
291. Omar Jumaa, Syria
292. Essam Shehadeh, Syria
293. Manal Ghobbash, Syria
294. Fadhil Abdullah, Syria
295. Musa Qasim, Syria
296. Mohammed Abdel-Ghani, Syria
297. Khaled Bdeir, Syria
298. Ibrahim Abou al-Layl, Syria
299. Mahmoud Khalili, Syria
300. Yousef Moqbel, Syria
301. Qusay Qudsiyeh, Syria
302. Abdul Ghani Ghareib, Syria
303. Zakaria Sharif, Syria
304. Jamal Nassar, Syria
305. Yassin Maragheh, Syria
306. Walid Dugheim, Syria
307. Fadi Shahin, Syria
308. Mohammed Abu Saada, Syria
309. Asmagheil Shehadeh, Syria
310. Amro al-Khatib, Syria
311. Adnan Abu Seriyya, Syria
312. Hassan Hijazi, Syria
313. Hussam al-Khatib, Syria
314. Abdul Muti Bouzid, Syria
315. Abdel-Fattah Idris, Syria
316. Tahseen Halabi, Syria
317. Yousef al-Sheheb, Syria
318. Moataz Shata, Syria
319. Bassam Abdullah, Syria
320. Ali Jarwan, Syria
321. Ghalib Ragheb, Syria
322. Omar Ajouri, Syria
323. Ibrahim Nazzal, Syria
324. Nayef Hayatleh, Sweden
325. Palestine Beitna Society, Sweden
326. Zakaria al-Helou, Jerusalem
327. Mohammed al-Helou, Jerusalem
328. Abu Hadi Silwani, Jerusalem
329. Hamdi Hamdi, Nablus
330. Zain Aasi, Ramallah
331. Mohammed Mufarjeh, Ramallah
332. Ayad al-Araj Jenin
333. Fadi Abu Kishk, al-Lid
334. Yousef Khatib, Arraba Buttouf
335. Ahmed Subh, Tamra
336. Tayseer Ramadan Abu Irshaid, Oman
337. Hussein Mutawaa, Amman, Jordan
338. Mohammed Khalil Ashour, Gaza
339. Mohammed Miari, Kafr Yasif
340. Yazn Asi, Ramallah
341. Ali Aasi, Ramallah
342. Abdul Aziz al-Salhi, Ramallah
343. Rasha Bani Odeh, Ramallah
344. Heba Ayyad, Jerusalem
345. Esmat Mansour, Ramallah
346. Mira Hammad, Ramallah
347. Bahaa Asi, Ramallah
348. Farah Badarneh, Ramallah
349. Abdul Rahman Jamhour, Ramallah
350. Saji Mafarjeh, Ramallah
351. Mohammed Badr, Ramallah
352. Jihan Arar, Ramallah
353. Karim Abid, al-Bireh
354. Farah Sarua, Ramallah
355. Uday Asi, Ramallah
356. Sonia Jabr, Ramallah
357. Bahaa Asi, Ramallah
358. Arif Amarna, Jenin
359. Ahmed Rayyan, Ramallah
360. Mohammed Mofarjeh, Ramallah
361. Amir Shibley, Ramallah
362. Alaa Mofarjeh, Ramallah
363. Mohamed Ledadoh, Ramallah
364. Mahmoud Aasi, Jordan
365. Leila Jamil, Ramallah
366. Mohamed Mansour, al-Bireh
367. Abdullah Jibril, Turkey
368. Mahmoud Asi, Ramallah
369. Hammad Asi, Ramallah
370. Abdul Karim Asi, Ramallah
371. Ibrahim Al Ghafari, Ramallah
372. O. Ziad Musa, Ramallah
373. Khalid Sheikh, UAE
374. Mohammed Asi, Ramallah
375. Rafik al-Asi, Ramallah
376. Amani Badr, Jerusalem
377. Sindi Badr, Jerusalem
378. Mohammed Badr, Ramallah
379. Ali Badr, Ramallah
380. Ahmed Sorour, Ramallah
381. Ali Annad, Tulkarem
382. Ismail Mofarjeh, Ramallah
383. Jana Jaradat, al-Khalil (Hebron)
384. Ismail Nassar, al-Khalil (Hebron)
385. Ghalya al-Suweti, Ramallah
386. Mohammed Asi, Ramallah
387. Dr. Nabil Talib, Ramallah
388. Handal Mofarjeh, Ramallah
389. Nidal Asi, Ramallah
390. Majed Asi, Ramallah
391. Biraa Badr, Ramallah
392. Qusay Abu Atwan, al-Khalil (Hebron)
393. Sharouq Badwan, Jerusalem
394. Naama Badr, Jerusalem
395. Mamoun Asi, Ramallah
396. Moataz Badwan, Ramallah
397. Ahmed Barnesi, Tulkarem
398. Mahmoud Mofarjeh, Ramallah
399. Safa Abboushi, Ramallah
400. Mohammed Mofarjeh, Ramallah
401. Hamada Asi, Ramallah
402. Mohammed Jummah, Qalqilya
403. Sajid Asi, Ramallah
404. Mohammed Badr, Ramallah
405. Ziad Zahra, Syria
406. Wael Jadallah, Syria
407. George Haddad, Syria
408. Tariq Haddad, Syria
409. Moataz al-Afghani, Syria
410. Rezan al-Malh, Ramallah
411. Zeina Ayyad, Jerusalem
412. Marwa Obaid, Jerusalem
413. Baha Beitillu, Ramallah
414. Osama Badr, Ramallah
415. Amin Asi, Beitunia
416. Lara Awda, Ramallah
417. Jamal Hassan, Ramallah
418. Bilal Asi, Ramallah
419. Imad Asi, Ramallah
420. Alice Abed, Jerusalem
421. Bilal Hamed, Birzeit
422. Ghassan Siyam, Ramallah
423. Yunus Mussa, Ramallah
424. Jamil Musa, Ramallah
425. Sharif El-Assaad, Tulkarem
426. Mahmoud Rayyan, Ramallah
427. Musa Badr, Ramallah
428. Maher Asi, Beitunia
429. Nizar Badr, Ramallah
430. Seraj Asi, Ramallah
431. Ibrahim Arouri, Ramallah
432. Areej Barghouti, Ramallah
433. Mouin Assi, Ramallah
434. Saji Mofarjeh, Ramallah
435. Hamza Musa, Ramallah
436. Dr. Hani Musa, Ramallah
437. Marcel Assi, Ramallah
438. Basil Asfour, Ramallah
439. Moatasem Badr, Ramallah
440. Omar Mofarjeh, Ramallah
441. Dima Barghouti, Ramallah
442. Jihad Abu Safiya, Ramallah
443. Omar Asi, Ramallah
444. Ezzedine al Asi, Beitunia
445. Badr Badr, Ramallah
446. Luna Seif, Ramallah
447. Mohammed al-Haj, Jerusalem
448. Dr. Umm Kulthum Assi, Ramallah
449. Hayman Asi, Ramallah
450. Ihsan Mofarjeh, Ramallah
451. Ayat Mofarjeh, Ramallah
452. Samar Salah al-Din, Ramallah
453. Ashraf Siyam, Ramallah
454. Mohammed Arisha, Syria
455. Yousef Asi, Ramallah
456. Isa Asi, Ramallah
457. Dr. Asem Khalil, Jerusalem
458. Meyser Asi, Ramallah
459. Dr. Rashad Tawam, Jerusalem
460. Reza Jarrar, Beitunia
461. Islam Mofarjeh, Ramallah
462. Qusay Asi, Ramallah
463. Murad Badr, Ramallah
464. Rehwan Abu Asi, al-Bireh
465. Sabreen Asi, Ramallah
466. Ahmed Maswadiyeh, Jerusalem
467. Sarah Khoamilah, Jerusalem
468. Majid Asi, Ramallah
469. Majid Samhan, Ramallah
470. Amir Khoury, Nazareth
471. Hanna Khoury, Jerusalem
472. Amin Badr, Jerusalem
473. Maher Assi, Ramallah
474. Juma Asi, Ramallah
475. Hussein Asi, Ramallah
476. Rabah Asi, Ramallah
477. Anwar al-Asi, Ramallah
478. Najeh Asi, Ramallah
479. Naaman Assi, Ramallah
480. Ribhi Asi, Ramallah
481. Ayed Assi, Ramallah
482. Harb Assi, Ramallah
483. Muaayad Assi, Ramallah
484. Nur Bekri, Jerusalem
485. Yasmin Afanah, Ramallah
486. Yara Afanah, Ramallah
487. Wafa Arouri, Ramallah
488. Hammam Badr, Ramallah
489. Dr. Samir Awad, Jerusalem
490. Dr. Fayez Bukeirat Jerusalem
491. Dr. Mahmoud Dudain, Jerusalem
492. Rifaat Assi, Ramallah
493. Mahmoud Abu al-Sawi, Jerusalem
494. Renad Abdullah, Beitunia
495. Raynad Abdullah, Jerusalem
496. Nili Hamid, Jerusalem
497. Raad Daana, Jerusalem
498. Saleh Daghlowa, Ramallah
499. A. Baher al-Saqqa, Gaza
500. A. Jawad Asaad, Ramallah
501. Qusay Jabr, Ramallah
502. Tawfiq Abu Arqoub, Birzeit
503. Munther Bader, Ramallah
504. Mohammed Nashashibi, Jerusalem
505. Ehab Mousa, Ramallah
506. Nahed Asi, Ramallah
507. Muhannad Asi, Ramallah
508. Muhannad Khafsh, Nablus
509. Mohammed Khafsh, Nablus
510. Jad Khafsh, Nablus
511. Mujahid Khafsh, Nablus
512. Kinan Asi, Ramallah
513. Merjan Asi, Ramallah
514. Razan Asi, Ramallah
515. Taqi Assi, Ramallah
516. Bakr al Assi, Ramallah
517. Haneen Musa, Ramallah
518. Amir Assi, Jerusalem
519. Waad Badr, Ramallah
520. Sufian Barakat, Tulkarem
521. Mohammed Salameh, Tulkarem
522. Abdul Rahman Abu Halawa, Ramallah
523. Amir Suleiman, Ramallah
524. Abu-Jamal Wahba, Lebanon
525. Hassan Zeidan, Lebanon
526. Fatah al-Intifada Movement in Lebanon
527. Mahmoud Saleh, Lebanon
528. Abu Hani Rameed, Lebanon
529. Abu Yaser Diab, Lebanon
530. Ahmed Hazeenah, Lebanon
531. Yousef Hamdan, Lebanon
532. Beirut Hammoud, Lebanon
533. Mohammed Abdel-Fattah, Kowkab Aboul Hija
534. Hossam Andrea, Germany
535. Najib Abbas, Kafr Kanna
536. Palestinian National Centre, Sweden
537. Salah Hammad, Ramallah
538. Mohammed Abu Qesh, Abu Qesh
539. Khadr Asi, Ramallah
540. Mustafa Assi, Ramallah
541. Miraeb Badr, Ramallah
542. Usri Mofarjeh, Ramallah
543. Aisha Abu Qaraa, Ramallah
544. Maryam Jabr, Ramallah
545. Roula Moussa, Ramallah
546. Areej Abu Hamoud, Ramallah
547. Ahmad Ayyash, Ramallah
548. Mohammed Mahasneh, Tubas
549. Rawia Habibi Ghunaderi, Nazareth
550. Saleen Haddad, Syria
551. Saleh Shatila, Lebanon
552. Mohammed Bakri, Lebanon
553. Ghassan Atamleh, al-Reineh
554. Abdul Rahman Jassim, Lebanon
555. Tahani Nassar, Lebanon
556. Amal al-Haj, Nazareth
557. Afrah Daoudi Dajani, Canada
558. Ali Rafi, Haifa
559. Tanseem Fouad al-Janazera, al-Khalil (Hebron)
560. Maysa Ahmed Saleh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
561. Qamar Akram Ghazal
562. Monia Nihad Fatafta, al-Khalil (Hebron)
563. Hiba Rajah Amro, al-Khalil (Hebron)
564. Hidayat Abdeen Halahelah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
565. Fatenah al-Muhtasib, al-Khalil (Hebron)
566. Reham Al-Sharif, al-Khalil (Hebron)
567. Baraa Shaheen, al-Khalil (Hebron)
568. Razan Abed, al-Khalil (Hebron)
569. Leyana Muhtasib al-Khalil (Hebron)
570. Eva Jamil Altora, al-Khalil (Hebron)
571. Shirin al-Atrash, al-Khalil (Hebron)
572. Aya Dudain, al-Khalil (Hebron)
573. Samah Ali Battat, al-Khalil (Hebron)
574. Wajdan al-Adam, al-Khalil (Hebron)
575. Mees Ghassan Idris
576. Rula Awawdeh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
577. Sumatiya al-Sikh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
578. Batoul Namoura, al-Khalil (Hebron)
579. Hana Ezzat Mukharzah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
580. Dina Fahd Adeis, al-Khalil (Hebron)
581. Samah Hannaihin, al-Khalil (Hebron)
582. Marwa Marwan Bakri, al-Khalil (Hebron)
583. Linda Maher al-Shweiki, al-Khalil (Hebron)
584. Shahd Hatem al-Tamimi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
585. Israa Mohammed Tuweihat, al-Khalil (Hebron)
586. Amjad Saleh Abu Kirsh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
587. Tamer Abdullah Junaidi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
588. Asma Jamal al-Masri, al-Khalil (Hebron)
589. Baissan Nader Al-Tameezi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
590. Sarah Shaker Al-Natshe, al-Khalil (Hebron)
591. Hadeel Samir Adeis, al-Khalil (Hebron)
592. Dima Nayef Amro, al-Khalil (Hebron)
593. Amani Omar Mukharzah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
594. Fatima Yusuf Munasera, al-Khalil (Hebron)
595. Zia Tarawah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
596. Rasha Ghuraib, al-Khalil (Hebron)
597. Ala Hani Batta, al-Khalil (Hebron)
598. Esra Adeis, al-Khalil (Hebron)
599. Duaa Badr, al-Khalil (Hebron)
600. Inaam Dweik, al-Khalil (Hebron)
601. Khudra Warasna, al-Khalil (Hebron)
602. Mahmoud Atawna, al-Khalil (Hebron)
603. Inas al-Sweiti, al-Khalil (Hebron)
604. Abdul Qadir Al-Sweiti, al-Khalil (Hebron)
605. Nadim Hashish, al-Khalil (Hebron)
606. Mohammed Janazerah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
607. Farid al-Raei, al-Khalil (Hebron)
608. Nusseibeh Al-Sweiti, al-Khalil (Hebron)
609. Tamam Saadi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
610. Fayez Amro, al-Khalil (Hebron)
611. Hamed al-Haddad, al-Khalil (Hebron)
612. Ala Khalayleh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
613. Tamim Mohammed al-Wahesh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
614. Shahd Quneibi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
615. Asma Arafa, al-Khalil (Hebron)
616. Khalil Atwan, al-Khalil (Hebron)
617. Muhannad Awdah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
618. Ibtisam Srahna, al-Khalil (Hebron)
619. Abdullah Asafrah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
620. Salsabil Zmaarah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
621. Fatima Aamalah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
622. Majdoleen Karajeh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
623. Aisha Hawwawi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
624. Safa Abu Rayan, al-Khalil (Hebron)
625. Meesr Zuhair Natshe, al-Khalil (Hebron)
626. Raneem Ziad Hatatba, al-Khalil (Hebron)
627. Wilaa Talahma, al-Khalil (Hebron)
628. Fadi Lahassouni, al-Khalil (Hebron)
629. Rula Hassan, al-Khalil (Hebron)
630. Jinan Mohammed Odeh, al-Khalil (Hebron)
631. Aya Mahmoud, al-Khalil (Hebron)
632. Fadi Ahmad, al-Khalil (Hebron)
633. Zahi Terman, al-Khalil (Hebron)
634. Sondas Al-Jabri, al-Khalil (Hebron)
635. Aya Farid, al-Khalil (Hebron)
636. Deena al-Oweiwi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
637. Reem Amro, al-Khalil (Hebron)
638. Areen Karki, al-Khalil (Hebron)
639. Musa Qafeeshi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
640. Abbas Hamideh, United State
641. Thaer Abu Hilal, Abu Dis, Jerusalem
642. Mohammed Salah, Abu Dis, Jerusalem
643. Atta Jaffal, Abu Dis, Jerusalem
644. Makhlis Basl, Haifa
645. Mohammed Abu Laban, Ramallah
646. Hani al-Husri, Ramallah
647. Bishop Abdullah Yulio, Ramallah
648. Wasfi Abdul Ghani, Haifa
649. Issam Makhoul, Haifa
650. Nahi Nasser Hanna, Haifa
651. Rudi Abu Saada
652. Hana Al-Essa, Ramallah
653. Leila Jamal, Ramallah
654. Abla Kamal, Jerusalem
655. Isa Salamat, Jaffna, Ramallah
656. Ihsan Rimawi, Beit Rima, Ramallah
657. Ghassan Abbas Rimawi, Beit Rima, Ramallah
658. Akram al-Maliki, Ramallah
659. Ayad al-Maliki, Ramallah
660. Zia Ghazal, Gaza
661. Yousef Shuhaiber, Gaza
662. Hani Shuhaiber, Gaza
663. Dr. Fayez Rashid, Jordan
664. Leila Khaled, Jordan
665. Mohammed Walid Mohammed Ismail, Ein Arik camp, Ramallah
666. Iyad Masrouji, Ramallah
667. Palestinian Community in Norway
668. Safwan Tirbana, Kafr Yasif
669. Maaouya Hajj, Kafr Yasif
670. Salam Marqis, Kafr Yasif
671. Khalid Sharif, Kafr Yasif
672. Nasrat Samara, Kafr Yasif
673. Boulos Rouhana, Isfiya
674. Shadi Choueiry, Kafr Yasif
675. Yousef Khatib, Kafr Yasif
676. Mufeed Saad, Kafr Yasif
677. Jamila Saad, Kafr Yasif
678. Mufeed Basl, Kafr Yasif
679. Abla Amuri, Kafr Yasif
680. Majdi Abdel Hadi Issa, Nablus
681. Fathi Mohammed Tunbour, Nablus
682. Musab Mahmoud Yousef, Jenin
683. Suleiman Fayez Juma, Nablus
684. Wadi Watfa, London
685. Mary Watfa, London
686. Mahasin Adel Dandis, al-Khalil (Hebron)
687. Azhar Seyyaj, al-Khalil (Hebron)
688. Rashad Abdul Rasul, Dura
689. Bushra Fouad al-Janzerah, Halhul
690. Mohammed Abu Asabeh, Halhul
691. Samah Abu Asabeh, Halhul
692. Sarah Abu Asabeh, Halhul
693. Issa Ahmed Zaki Bahr, al-Khalil (Hebron)
694. Hadeel al-Wawi, Halhul
695. Maryam al-Wawi, Halhul
696. Mahmoud Talbishi, al-Khalil (Hebron)
697. Nadeem Manasrah, al-Khalil (Hebron)
698. Nadeen Mahmoud Sarahneh, Halhul
699. Manar al-Banna, Amman, Jordan
700. Dr. Mohammed K. Hamid, United States
701. Jafar M. Ramini, United Kingdom
702. Khowla Ibrahim, Canada
703. Dr. Nazih Khattaba, Canada
704. Angele Semaan, United Kingdom
705. Victor Najjar, United Kingdom
706. Ghassan Najjar, United Kingdom
707. Souha Najjar, United Kingdom
708. Rehab Naseef, United Kingdom
709. Issa Najjar, United Kingdom
710. Suha Ghassan Najjar, United Kingdom
711. Lydia Perio Najjar, United Kingdom
712. Al-Awda, The Palestine Right To Return Coalition, United States
713. Ribhi Rabah, Canada
714. Morteda Abbas, Syria
715. Firas Yaghi, Ramallah
716. Adibanos Khoury-Machool, Jaffa
717. Taghreed Shehadeh, occupied Palestine
718. Azmi Nabali, Ramallah
719. Palestinian popular trend, Ramallah
720. Popular Action Committees, Ramallah
721. Elias Mouin Najjar, Australia
722. Joseph Mouin Najjar, Australia
723. Grace Mouin Najjar, Australia
724. Mousa al-Amelah, Syria
725. Hanna Mouin Najjar, Australia
726. Joseph Nakhla Najjar, Spain
727. Elias Nakhla Najjar, Germany
728. Fahed Awad, Syria
729. Victoria Nakhla Najjar, Canada
730. Anton Nakhla Najjar, Canada
731. Kateba Nakhla Najjar, Syria
732. Sonia Kamel Assaf, Syria
733. Fayez Kamel Assaf, Lebanon
734. Alice Kamel Assaf, Syria
735. Nimr Kamel Assaf, Syria
736. Nabil Elie Semaan, Lebanon
737. Nabila Elie Semaan, Britain
738. Khaled Elie Semaan, Lebanon
739. Suha Elie Semaan, Lebanon
740. Khaled Hassan Semaan, Lebanon
741. Essam Suleiman, Syria
742. Suha Hassan Semaan, Lebanon
743. Noha Hassan Semaan, Lebanon
744. Walid Hassan Semaan, Lebanon
745. Mowni Butrus Sweileh, Dubai
746. Johnny Butrus Sweileh, Seychelles
747. Leonie Butrus Sweileh, Lebanon
748. Mohsen Selim Gideon, Canada
749. Muhasen Selim Gideon, Canada
750. Wisam Selim Gideon, Canada
751. Hassan Esper Semaan, Lebanon
752. Boulos Anis Haddad, Abu Dhabi
753. Samir Anis Haddad, Abu Dhabi
754. Pauline Anis Haddad, Abu Dhabi
755. Selim Fouad Esper, Lebanon
756. Suhaila Esper Semaan, Lebanon
757. Helen Esper Semaan, Lebanon
758. Salwa Esper Semaan, Abu Dhabi
759. Sameera Elie Semaan, Abu Dhabi
760. Shirin Anis Haddad, Abu Dhabi
761. Nadim Assi, Saudi Arabia
762. Yasmin Khamis, Bethlehem
763. Dima Adawi, Nazareth
764. Mohammed Semrain, Jordan
765. Zeidan Semrain, Jordan
766. Gharam Assi, Ramallah
767. Hanan Moussa, Ramallah
768. Haneen Moussa, Ramallah
769. Mervat Assi, Ramallah
770. Nevin Assi, Ramallah
771. Uday Assi, Ramallah
772. Bassam Bader, United States
773. Hisham Bader, Germany
774. Suhail Assi, Russia
775. Elqassam Assi, Russia
776. Wajdi Mousa, Ramallah
777. Aseel Bader, Ramallah
778. Abdel Hameed Bader, Ramallah
779. Jihan Mufarjeh, Ramallah
780. Manar Mufarjeh, Ramallah
781. Anwar Mufarjeh, Ramallah
782. Zuhoor Deifallah, Ramallah
783. Ibrahim Mufarjeh, Ramallah
784. Nawal Moussa, Ramallah
785. Tahrir Assi, Umm al-Sharayet
786. Tuleen Assi, Umm al-Sharayet
787. Ansar Bader, Ramallah
788. Qadees Bader, Ramallah
789. Bilal Bader, Ramallah
790. Abdulqader Bader, Ramallah
791. Moatasem Assi, Sweden
792. Anas Assi, France
793. Maihoub Assi, Ramallah
794. Hadi Assi, Ramallah
795. Mumen Assi, Ramallah
796. Zahi Assi, Ramallah
797. Ezzeddine Assi, Ramallah
798. Tareq Bader, Jerusalem
799. Hamza Badr, Ramallah
800. Dr. Ammar Shibli, Ramallah
801. Faqih Assi, Venezuela
802. Luqman Assi, Venezuela
803. Samah Nasreddine, Jerusalem
804. Abdul Rahman Faraj, Jerusalem
804. Aliya Hameed, Jerusalem
806. Christina Boutran, Ramallah
807. Sala Shehadeh, Ramallah
808. Essam Assi, Ramallah
809. Uday Aboud, Ramallah
810. Karam Bader, Ramallah
811. Narjis Assi, Jerusalem
812. Amjad Assi, Ramallah
813. Yusri Assi, Ramallah
814. Naqqa al-Dadwah, Ramallah
815. Sharouq Assi, Ramallah
816. Imad Assi, Ramallah
817. Sijjud Bader, Ramallah
818. Sanabel Badr, Ramallah
819. Haneen Assi, Ramallah
820. Afaf Assi, Ramallah
821. Afnan Assi, Ramallah
822. Abada Mousa, Ramallah
823. Jameel Shibley
824. Sajid Assi, Ramallah
825. Munadel Assi, Ramallah
826. Rahma Assi, Ramallah
827. Imran Derraj, Ramallah
828. Fatima Mufarjeh, Ramallah
829. Samah Jalal, Ramallah
830. Salabil Assi, Ramallah
831. Salabil Rayan, Ramallah
832. Mervat Mufarjeh, Ramallah
833. Azhar Mufarjeh, Ramallah
834. Yasmeen Mousa, Ramallah
835. Asma Assi, Ramallah
836. Areen Mufarjeh, Ramallah
837. Fuad Moussa, Ramallah
838. Ala Assi, Ramallah
839. Salim Assi, America
840. Alkhansa Assi, Ramallah
841. Asma Obeid, Ramallah
842. Islam Badr, Ramallah
843. Rana Mufarjeh, Ramallah
844. Munther Shibley, Ramallah
845. Munther Mousa, Ramallah
846. Iman Mousa, Ramallah
847. Doaa Badr, Ramallah
848. Mahmoud Hamed, Jerusalem
849. Issa Ahmed, Ramallah
850. Lulea Assi, Ramallah
851. Neesan Assi, Ramallah
852. Neesan Mufarjeh, Ramallah
853. Mohammed al-Hajj, Ramallah
854. Suha Assi, Ramallah
855. Manar Bader, Ramallah
856. Maram Assi, Ramallah
857. Dima Assi, Ramallah
858. Sundos Badr, Ramallah
859. Wafa Assi, Ramallah
860. Saleh Mufarjeh, Ramallah
861. Haneen Assi, Ramallah
862. Ali Bader, Ramallah
863. Hala Seif, Ramallah
864. Mamoun Absi, Ramallah
865. Amir Suleiman, Ramallah
866. Baraa Abu Musa, Ramallah
867. Rahma Njas, Ramallah
868. Ali Dar Ali, Ramallah
869. Sijjud Dar Ali, Ramallah
870. Ola Rimawi, Jerusalem
871. Ala Barhoum, Ramallah
872. Shurouq Hantash, Ramallah
873. Raghad Shaheen, Ramallah
874. Watan Mousa, Ramallah
875. Esra Mousa, Ramallah
876. Razan al-Malh, Ramallah
877. Bissan al-Malh, Ramallah
878. Nasser al-Malh, Ramallah
879. Mohammed Shuraitah, Ramallah
880. May Shuraitah, Ramallah
881. May Batatah, Ramallah
882. Fatima Schumann, Ramallah
883. Rihan Arar, Ramallah
884. Mohammed Rashid, Ramallah
885. Nasreen Saleh, Ramallah
886. Wafa Saleh, Ramallah
887. Mohammed Awad, Ramallah
888. Mohammed Dufesh, Ramallah
889. Haneen Shuraitah, Ramallah
890. Layala Hamouda, Jerusalem
891. Montasser Nahiz, Ramallah
892. Saad Hob al-Rih, Ramallah
893. Hiyam Saleh, Ramallah
894. Anis Hanoun, Ramallah
895. Musaab Hanoun, Ramallah
896. Nermeen Rudaidah, Jerusalem
897. George Abdullah, Jenin
898. Tijan Atwan al-Khalil (Hebron)
899. Wajnan Shamasneh, Ramallah
900. Khalid Sheikh, Ramallah
901. Khaled Qutaishat, Tubas
902. Abdul Rahman Atiq, Ramallah
903. Rashid Shaheen, Bethlehem
904. Walid Mohammed Ismail, Ein Arik camp
905. Ahmed Hassan Khitab
906. Mahmoud Said Sawafiri
907. Tayseer al-Aslina
908. Uday Walid Ismail
909. Saddam Walid Ismail
910. Thaer Ghazi Shukri
911. Haitham Ghazi Shukri
912. Bassam Farid Tabbalah, Ein Arik
913. Ala Ayyash, Jalazoun cmp
914. Nael Masaad, Aboud
915. Raed Massad, Aboud
916. Louay Zakhri Muneed, Ein Arik
917. Thaer Hijazi, Qarawat Bani Zeid
918. Jumaa Hijazi, Qarawat Bani Zeid
919. Louay Arar, Qarawat Bani Zeid
920. Baseel Teem, Qarawat Bani Zeid
921. Mohammed Hanoun, Balata refugee camp
922. Ibrahim Abu Leil, Balata refugee camp
923. Mohammed Hashash, Balata refugee camp
924. Saleh Hashash, Balata refugee camp
925. Nael Halabi, Jerusalem
926. Wadie Farraj, Jerusalem
927. Diana Farraj, Jerusalem
928. Lina Khattab, Beitain
929. Firas Karajeh, Safa
930. Anas Akef Waheed, Tulkarem
931. Rama Ahmad Ayyash Baraka, Tulkarem
932. Mujahid Fadel Samara, N.
933. Zahran Akef Waheed Hamdallah, Tulkarem
934. Akef Waheed Hamdallah, Tulkarem
935. Muhannad Jamal al-Hassan, Tulkarem
936. Mohammed Suhail Abu Shanab, Tulkarem
937. Leilas Akef Hamdallah, Tulkarem
938. Watheq Abdel Fattah Shaib, Nablus
939. Naji Abdel Fattah Shaib, Nablus
940. Zakaria Abdel Fattah Shaib, Nablus
941. Mona Nihad Sebobah, Tulkarem
942. Seif Rifaat Qassis, Nablus
943. Muwaad Ahmed Daamah
944. Khalid Abdul Rahim Katana, Nablus
945. Aalan Mohammed Daraghmeh, Nablus
946. Reem Najjar, Ramallah
947. Majdal al-Jandab, Tulkarem
948. Wajdi Barakat, Tulkarem
949. Mohammed Awad, Tulkarem
950. Abdul Latif al-Sheikh, Tulkarem
951. Iyad Badran, Tulkarem
952. Qasim Bedeer, Tulkarem
953. Rasha Herzallah, Ramallah
954. Nader Hasan, Tulkarem
955. Sobhi Badran, Tulkarem
956. Ibrahim Tabbal, Tulkarem
957. Tareq Ghanem, Tulkarem
958. Baraa Shahrour, Tulkarem
959. Mahmoud Abu Ali, Tulkarem
960. Nabil Abu Khalil, Tulkarem
961. Mumen Awad, Tulkarem
962. Laith Massoud, Tulkarem
963. Haitham Tatour, occupied Palestine
964. Mohammed Khatib, occupied Palestine
965. Mahmoud Barghouti, Ramallah
966. Abed Yasin, occupied Palestine
967. Yara Aghbarieh, Umm al-Fahm
968. Khuloud al-Zinati, occupied Palestine
969. Muaddel Mahmoud, occupied Palestine
970. Mohammed Awawdeh, occupied Palestine
971. Rana Jarban, occupied Palestine
972. Rim Taha, occupied Palestine
973. Nazmi Taha, occupied Palestine
974. Maysan Sobh, Tamra
David Cameron calls for escalation of UK wars at home and abroad
Cameron plans to extend UK involvement in the wars raging in Iraq and Syria, while mounting an hysterical attack on British Muslims.
By Chris Nineham | Stop the War Coalition | July 13, 2015
Last week’s hike in the military budget was not symbolic. Today David Cameron has proved he wants to take Britain back to a lead military role in the Middle East.
He has called for a ‘fresh assault on Isil’. As the extra 2.5 billion pounds voted for the military in the budget kicks in, he has called on the top brass to organise more SAS troop deployments, drone attacks and RAF bombing missions, not just on Iraq, but in Syria too, despite the parliamentary vote in 2013 explicitly ruling out such an attack.
David Cameron makes the extraordinary claim that his experience over the last five years has proved that drone attacks, spy plane flights and special forces are ‘vital in keeping us safe’. But this is precisely the period which has seen the emergence of Isis and constant warnings from the government about the growing threat of terrorism.
The whole history of the ‘war on terror’ suggests in fact the precise opposite. From the attack on Afghanistan in 2001 to the invasion of Iraq two years later and the Cameron lead assault on Libya in 2011, the war has devastated the Middle East and beyond, creating a series of failed states in which violence has flourished.
Since 2001, jihadist organisations have been able to spread from isolated pockets in Central Asia to a vast swathe of the world from Pakistan through the Middle East and into sub-Saharan Africa.
Last time the British people were being asked to back attacks on Syria, it was to support an (illegal) attempt to remove President Assad. Though Cameron was stopped by popular and parliamentary pressure, continued Western intervention in Syria and the renewed bombing of Iraq have plunged the region further into chaos. Infrastructure, both political and physical, has been further pummelled.
The West’s main allies in the conflict, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, have been backing violent jihadist groups in Syria for years, including al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. The outcome has been a catastrophic unravelling of whole societies. In the words of Patrick Cockburn :
‘In both countries, the collapse of central government has exposed and sharpened differences between arab and kurd, Sunni and Shia, Muslim and Christian, secular and religious. And as Syrians and Iraqis live in a permanent state of war,, these differences are almost always settled violently’.
Now, our government wants to intervene on the opposite side, attacking one of the horrific forces that the West’s policies have helped conjure up. Forget the promises that bombing Iraq or Syria would not lead to further military involvement. Today’s open commitment to deploying special forces is not mission creep, its a brazen admission that Cameron wants to go back to full spectrum war in the Middle East.
The terrifying thing is that in this context, failure to learn the lessons of history will not just lead to repetition, but to a cycle of violence that threatens to consume whole regions of the world.
And this is a war abroad that will be accompanied by hysterical attack on the Muslim population at home. If the only foreign policy they can conceive of is escalating violence, domestically they can’t see beyond threats, intimidation and scapegoating.
In an utterly depraved move, the government have accompanied claims that unidentified Muslims who won’t condemn Isis are driving people into their hands with youtube footage showing the carnage created by British bomb attacks in Iraq. Apparently this is supposed to scare young Muslims from joining Isis. It is more likely to look like bringing the war home.
Worryingly, it looks like the Labour leadership is set to fall in with this march to war. The party’s acting leader, Harriet Harman, has been invited to a high-level security meeting on Isis on 14 July 2015. ‘Indications’ have been made that Labour is re-thinking its position on attacking Syria.
In 2013 anti war opinion and protest derailed Cameron’s war plans. Now, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign takes on a new significance, but campaigning against a new front in Britain’s war in the Middle East has become a matter of urgency.
Conspiracy against Syria & Iran initiated in 2007
Introduction by Brandon Martinez – Non-Aligned Media
Here are excerpts from a 2007 report from award winning journalist Seymour Hersh. His report, published in the New Yorker under the heading “The Redirection,” outlines in clear language that the conspiracy to topple the governments of Syria and Iran, specifically by sponsoring terrorist groups as mercenaries against them, was conceived and initiated during the Bush years, and began to take shape in earnest in 2007.
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
…
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.
…
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
…
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran.
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah.
US-Israeli Imperialists Plot Downfall of Syria and Iran
By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | July 9, 2015
The United States has been running a particularly reckless and transparent bluff on the world.
‘We must defeat ISIS’ has been the repetitive mantra bellowed from pulpits and podiums by deceitful US officials. But this bit of shameless Orwellian newspeak is coming from the very same rogue policy makers who have been the primary source of arms and largesse to that group and its sordid affiliates across Syria, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere.
Republican Senator Rand Paul called his own party’s bluff in a summer 2014 interview with CNN, telling the incompetent host that “we [the US government] are allied with ISIS in Syria.”[1] “[ISIS] would not be empowered in Iraq if we hadn’t been providing them a safe haven in Syria by arming their allies,” the Senator said, adding that “we are where we are because we armed the Syrian rebels,” the preponderance of whom are Wahhabi-Salafist extremists. Paul recently doubled down on that line of reasoning, informing another interviewer in May 2015 that “hawks in my party” are responsible for the rise of ISIS because of their purposefully intransigent policy of “distributing arms indiscriminately” to Syrian and Libyan militants in their fanatical drive to depose Gaddafi and Assad.[2]
Paul’s words were confirmed by a recently unearthed US Defense Intelligence Agency report that, in true Machiavellian style, welcomed an ISIS-controlled “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” to serve as a buffer to “isolate the Syrian regime” and roll back Iran. The US defense analysts, writing at the outset of the rebel insurgency in Syria in 2012, acknowledged that the anti-Assad coalition of militants that Washington was enthusiastically supporting were dominated by Salafist extremist elements linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda.[3]
A June 2015 Washington Post report revealed the extent of the CIA’s covert campaign to train, arm and deploy mercenaries against Assad in Syria, pegging it as one of the Agency’s “largest covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year.”[4] The article’s authors Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung write:
“At $1 billion, Syria-related operations account for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget, judging by spending levels revealed in documents The Washington Post obtained from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
“U.S. officials said the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years — meaning that the agency is spending roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program.
“The CIA declined to comment on the program or its budget. But U.S. officials defended the scale of the expenditures, saying the money goes toward much more than salaries and weapons and is part of a broader, multibillion-dollar effort involving Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to bolster a coalition of militias known as the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army.
“Much of the CIA’s money goes toward running secret training camps in Jordan, gathering intelligence to help guide the operations of agency-backed militias and managing a sprawling logistics network used to move fighters, ammunition and weapons into the country.”
After weeding through all the phony anti-ISIS bluster emanating from the White House, it becomes clear that Washington’s overarching strategy is to play all Muslim groups and factions in the Middle East off against each other in what amounts to a sinister divide and conquer gambit that ultimately serves the interests of Israel. In 2007, years before the present crisis in Syria and Iraq, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah identified this genocidal US/Israeli-led scheme against the region in an interview with American journalist Seymour Hersh. He told the award-winning reporter that the Bush administration was working in tandem with Israel to instigate a cataclysmic civil war – something akin to the Thirty Years’ War in Europe – in the Muslim world. Nasrallah said that this fitna, an Arabic term which means “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam,” was being deliberately fomented by US and Israeli intelligence agencies to significantly weaken the region and allow the Zionist-American imperialists to achieve full-spectrum dominance.[5]
According to Hersh’s excellent March 2007 reportage published in the New Yorker under the title “The Redirection,” the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia began laying the groundwork for a rebel invasion of Syria that same year.[6] The US and Israel planned to enlist radical Wahhabi-Salafist elements backed by Saudi Arabian largesse as proxy mercenaries against Damascus in a wider effort to undermine Assad and precipitate the demise of Iran. Hersh outlined the criminal plan in these terms:
“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”[7]
Citing officials close to the Bush administration, Hersh explained that the CIA sought to employ radical anti-Syrian militants clandestinely “by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process.” Hersh’s sources told him that “the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria.” Using the Saudis as a conduit would, in turn, give Washington plausible deniability. “The Israelis,” Hersh wrote, “believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.”[8]
In an article titled “The Pentagon plan to ‘divide and rule’ the Muslim world,” security scholar Nafeez Ahmed highlighted the contents of a 2008 RAND Corporation report which openly elucidated this belligerent strategy of tension.[9] The Pentagon-backed study group advocated playing all sides and every side in the Muslim world against one another in order to fracture and disorient opposition to Western and Israeli imperialism in the region. The Orwellian strategists identified essentially all Arabs and Muslims – Salafists, Shiites, Sunnis, secular Arab nationalists, communists, Baathists, etc. – as adversaries to be pitted against each other. Already-existing rivalries and fissures would be stoked up and exploited to their maximum potential.
RAND’s divide and conquer objectives are eerily similar to the vile prescriptions of Oded Yinon, an Israeli strategist who authored a geopolitical screed entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s,” published in 1982, which called for the break-up of all Arab states surrounding Israel into fragmented polities along ethnic and religious lines. “Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run,” Yinon expounded in his Machiavellian manifesto, “and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.”[10] The Israeli militarist gleefully cited the Iran-Iraq war as a prime example of the type of internecine conflict Israel hopes to ignite, exacerbate and capitalize on to achieve its Zionist imperium. In a June 2014 television interview, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a dedicated Jewish imperialist, explicated his Yinonite ideology, emphasizing Tel Aviv’s desire to have Sunni and Shiite Muslims fight each other and thereby cancel each other out while Israel reaps the spoils.[11]
It’s impossible to ignore the primacy of Israel in all of this unscrupulous intrigue. Netanyahu’s Likud Party is not only committed to eliminating what’s left of Palestine, but they also harbor expansionistic aspirations that go beyond Israel’s current borders – what some have called “Greater Israel.” Netanyahu’s seminal role in conceiving the rancid doctrines of the ‘war on terror’ itself, alongside the inescapable reality that the neocons who dominate the US foreign policy establishment are first and foremost loyal to Israel, is paramount in understanding the ‘method to the madness.’
Dismembering Syria
While Western-backed ISIS militants behead their way to Damascus, US foreign policy hawks are now plotting the literal dismemberment of Syria as a whole in accordance with the Zionist neocons’ balkanization plan.
In its latest release, the Brookings Institution, an influential pro-Israel, pro-US Empire think tank, has audaciously called for the break-up of Syria, advancing an incremental strategy to facilitate a stealth US invasion and takeover of the Arab country in the service of Israel.
In the June 2015 report titled “Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country,”[12] neocon ideologue Michael O’Hanlon outlines his hopes for a weakened “confederal” Syria “made up of autonomous zones rather than being ruled by a strong central government.” (Pg. 3) Such “safe zones” are to be controlled by US Special Forces and their trained foot-soldiers of the “Syrian opposition.” Specifically, O’Hanlon calls for the US and its regional proxies,
“to help defend local safe areas using American airpower as well as special forces support once circumstances are conducive, the Syrian opposition fighters would then establish safe zones in Syria that they would seek to expand and solidify. The safe zones would also be used to accelerate recruiting and training of additional opposition fighters who could live in, and help protect, their communities while going through basic training.” (Pg. 3)
O’Hanlon admits that the US has spent upwards of a billion dollars in “arms flows and other assistance to [Syrian militants]” and later suggests that the so-called ‘moderates’ are ineffective fighters, “a collection of groups with no unity, common vision, or survivability on the battlefield.” O’Hanlon proposes that moderation would not be a prerequisite for US support, something that has never been an issue for Washington anyway which has been covertly sponsoring some of the most unsavory characters imaginable.
Later in the document O’Hanlon identifies the anti-Assad orientation of the strategy, envisioning the “safe zones” as buffers to launch operations against Assad and to eventually push the Syrian president out of power. He writes:
“The plan would be directed in part against Assad. But it would not have the explicit military goal of overthrowing him, at least not in the first instance or the near term. Rather, it would seek to constrict the territory that he governs. And if he delayed too long in accepting a deal for exile, he could inevitably face direct dangers to his rule and even his person. The plan would still seek his removal, but over a gradual time period that allowed for a negotiated exit if he were smart enough to avail himself of the opportunity.” (Pg. 10)
O’Hanlon ponders the “outright partition of the country.” (Pg. 11) This partition scheme is evidently aimed at pressuring Assad and perhaps provoking him to strike at one of the US-controlled “safe zones” which would, O’Hanlon contends, give Washington an excuse to attack Damascus directly. “If Assad sought to attack the enclaves,” writes O’Hanlon, “where moderate forces were being aided by American and other outside powers … the United States would need to be ready to escalate quickly and powerfully—even disproportionately.” (Pg. 13)
This Brookings plan typifies an advanced phase of the destruction of Syria, something in the works since at least 2007. Washington’s anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian and broader anti-Muslim agenda clearly transcended both the Bush and Obama administrations, underscoring the existence of a permanent ‘shadow government’ – the neocon-dominated Military-Industrial Complex – that stays in place behind the curtain no matter who is elected. Obama’s ascendance to the White House was merely a public relations facelift, serving to make the American-Zionist Empire’s bloodthirsty aims more palatable to a war-weary public.
NOTES
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e_4tUYc6ag
[2] “Rand Paul says GOP hawks ‘created’ ISIS,” New York Post, May 27, 2015. http://nypost.com/2015/05/27/rand-paul-says-gop-hawks-created-isis/
[3] Brad Hoff, “2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State ‘in order to isolate the Syrian regime’,” The Levant Report, May 19, 2015. http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/
[4] Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung, “Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut,” Washington Post, June 12, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html
[5] Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” The New Yorker, March 5, 2007. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection?currentPage=all
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Nafeez Ahmed, “The Pentagon plan to ‘divide and rule’ the Muslim world,” Middle East Eye, April 3, 2015. http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/pentagon-plan-divide-and-rule-muslim-world-1690265165
[10] http://www.scribd.com/doc/155650153/A-Strategy-for-Israel-in-the-Nineteen-Eighties-Oded-Yinon#scribd
[12] Michael O’Hanlon, “Deconstructing Syria Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country,” Brookings Institute, June 2015. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/06/23-syria-strategy-ohanlon/23syriastrategyohanlon.pdf
Copyright 2015 Brandon Martinez
America’s Endless Air Wars
By Nicolas J S Davies | Consortium News | July 6, 2015
U.S. Central Command’s latest figures on its aerial bombardment of Iraq and Syria reveal that this is the heaviest U.S. bombing campaign since President George W. Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign against Iraq in 2003. In the campaign’s first ten months from August 2014 to May 2015, the U.S. and its allies conducted 15,245 air strikes, or an average of 51 air strikes per day.
This is only the latest campaign in a 15-year global air war, largely ignored by U.S. media, in which the United States and its allies have conducted at least 118,000 air strikes against other countries since 2000. The 47,000 air strikes conducted in the 6 ½ years since President Barack Obama took office are only a small reduction from the 70,000 in eight years of the Bush administration, and the current campaign will easily make up that deficit if it continues at this intensity until Obama leaves office.
Afghanistan has been the most heavily bombed country, with at least 61,000 air strikes since 2001. That includes 24,000 bombs and missiles in the first year of the war and a relentless bombing campaign that struck Afghanistan with another 29,000 bombs and missiles between 2007 and 2012, a slow motion version of “Shock and Awe.” That was an average of 13 air strikes per day for six full years, two years under Bush and four under Obama. The heaviest bombardment was in October 2010, with 1,043 air strikes that month, but that total is now eclipsed every month by the new campaign in Iraq and Syria.
Iraq had already suffered about 34,000 air strikes since 2000 before the latest campaign began. There were at least 800 air strikes in the “No Fly Zone” bombing campaign to destroy Iraq’s air defenses between 2000 and 2002; 29,200 air strikes in “Shock and Awe” in 2003, a campaign whose planners compared it to a nuclear attack; and another 3,900 during the U.S. occupation, peaking with 400 strikes in January 2008 as remaining centers of armed resistance were obliterated by air strikes, Spectre gunships and heavy artillery in the climax of the “Surge.”
But until the new campaign in Iraq and Syria, the seven-month NATO-Gulf Cooperation Council bombing of Libya was the heaviest bombardment since “Shock and Awe”, with 7,700 air strikes in seven months, or 36 air strikes per day. NATO and its Arab monarchist allies plunged Libya into intractable chaos and violence, exposing “regime change” as a euphemism for “regime destruction.”
NATO’s destruction of Libya spurred Russia to finally draw the line on its 20-year acquiescence to Western aggression and military expansion. Since then, the U.S. and its allies have persisted in their “regime destruction” policy in Syria and Ukraine, threatening strategically important Russian naval bases in Tartus and Sevastopol, what has evolved from an asymmetric war on a series of relatively defenseless countries into full-blown 1950s-era nuclear brinksmanship.
Drones have played a growing role in the U.S. air war, but they still account for only a fraction of total U.S. and allied air strikes, several thousand out of 118,000 air strikes in 15 years.
None of these figures include Israeli air strikes against Palestine, the current Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, or French operations in West Africa, as I haven’t found comparable figures for those campaigns, but they must add many thousand more air strikes to the real total.
Keeping the People in the Dark
In a recent article, Gareth Porter reported that the Pentagon is seriously opposed to putting more “boots on the ground” in Iraq or Syria, but that the generals and admirals are prepared to keep bombing them more or less indefinitely as the political path of least resistance for themselves and the White House. This may indeed be the “safe” course for a politically-driven administration and a Pentagon that is always thinking of its public image and its future funding.
But it depends on keeping the public in the dark about several critical aspects of this policy. First, there is little public resistance to this policy mainly because few Americans know that it’s happening, let alone understand the full scale of the bloodshed and devastation perpetrated in our names for the past 15 years.
The second thing the Pentagon doesn’t want you to think about is the deceptive role of “precision” weapons in U.S. propaganda. Considering how accurate these weapons really are in relation to the huge numbers of them raining down on country after country, it is not surprising that they have killed or wounded millions of civilians and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and civilian infrastructure, as we see in photographs and video of the ruins of Fallujah, Sirte or Kobani.
A direct hit with a single 500- or 1,000-pound bomb will cause death, injury and destruction up to hundreds of feet from its point of impact, so even accurate air strikes inevitably kill and maim civilians and destroy their homes. But whatever proportion of these 118,000 bombs and missiles have actually missed their targets have wreaked completely indiscriminate death, injury and destruction.
Rob Hewson, the editor of Jane’s Air Launched Weapons, estimated that 20 to 25 percent of the “precision” weapons used in “Shock and Awe” in 2003 missed their targets. Another one third of the bombs and missiles used in “Shock and Awe” were not “precision” weapons to begin with.
Even the Pentagon has not claimed a quantum leap in its “precision” weapons technology since 2003, so it is likely that at least 15 percent are still missing their targets, adding daily to a massive and mounting toll on innocent civilians.
As Hewson told the Associated Press in 2003, “In a war that’s being fought for the benefit of the Iraqi people, you can’t afford to kill any of them. But you can’t drop bombs and not kill people. There’s a real dichotomy in all of this.”
Body Count, a recent report published by Physicians for Social Responsibility, confirmed previous estimates of well over a million people killed in America’s wars since 2000. This and previous studies document the horrific results of what Hewson and other experts understand only too well, that “you can’t drop (100,000) bombs and not kill (hundreds of thousands of) people.”
Another element in the Pentagon’s shaky propaganda house of cards is its effort to obscure what bombs and missiles actually do to their victims. Americans watch the Islamic State beheading videos on TV or YouTube but we never see videos of people decapitated or children dismembered by the bombs our taxes are paying for. But our bombs behead people too.
Apologists claim that U.S. bombing is morally superior to the “terrorism” of America’s enemies, because the U.S. killing and beheading of civilians is “unintentional” rather than “deliberate.” The late Howard Zinn, a former U.S. Air Force bombardier and later a history professor, responded to this claim in a letter to the New York Times in 2007:
“These words are misleading because they assume that an action is either ‘deliberate’ or ‘’unintentional.’ There is something in between, for which the word is ‘inevitable.’ If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not ‘intentional.’
“Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.”
Millions of ‘Enemies’
In fact, U.S. armed forces are waging war on millions of people for whom becoming combatants in a war would be the last thing they would ever consider if we had not brought our war to their doorsteps. The Center for Civilians in Conflict recently interviewed hundreds of local people who have participated as combatants in conflicts in Bosnia, Libya, Gaza or Somalia. It found that their motivations were almost entirely defensive, to protect themselves, their families, their communities or their countries.
When military forces attack or invade a country, many ordinary people feel compelled to take up arms to defend themselves and their homes. When the forces that put them in this unbearable predicament in the first place treat their efforts to defend themselves as a legal “green light” to target them with force and call them “terrorists,” they are driven to join better organized armed resistance movements that offer them protection in numbers and an effective way to fight back.
The essential first step to breaking the escalating spiral of violence is to force the aggressors, in this case the United States and its allies, to cease their aggression, including their state sponsorship of armed groups or “terrorists” in the affected countries. Then legitimate diplomatic initiatives can begin the difficult work of resolving the complex political and humanitarian problems caused by U.S.-led aggression and beginning to restore peace and security.
In his 1994 masterpiece, Century of War, the late Gabriel Kolko documented that war was the catalyst for all the major political revolutions of the Twentieth Century. While the working people of the world have otherwise failed to “rise up” as Marx predicted, the one thing that has reliably driven them to do so is the horror of war.
The war that the United States is waging today is proving no different. Armed resistance is spreading throughout the affected countries, spawning new ideologies and movements that defy the conceptual frameworks and limited imagination of the U.S. officials whose actions gave birth to them.
U.S. leaders of all stripes, military or civilian, Democrat or Republican, still fail to grasp what Richard Barnet concluded in 1973 as he studied the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, “at the very moment the number one nation has perfected the science of killing, it has become an impractical instrument of political domination.”
The last 15 years of war have served to confirm Barnet’s conclusion. After 118,000 air strikes, millions of casualties, trillions of dollars squandered, and country after country plunged into chaos, the U.S. has failed to gain political control over any of them.
But our complacent leaders and their self-satisfied advisers blunder on, debating who to threaten or attack next: Russia? China? Iran? Which “threat” provides the best pretext for further U.S. military expansion?
As Gabriel Kolko observed, because of “inherent, even unavoidable institutional myopia, … options and decisions that are intrinsically dangerous and irrational become not merely plausible but the only form of reasoning about war and diplomacy that is possible in official circles.”
But U.S. war-making is not just dangerous and irrational. It is also a crime. The judges at Nuremberg defined aggression, attacking or invading other countries, as the “supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” The UN Charter goes one step further and prohibits the threat as well as the use of force.
Benjamin Ferencz, the only surviving member of the prosecution team at Nuremberg, is a fierce critic of illegal U.S. war-making. In response to U.S. war crimes in Vietnam, he dedicated the rest of his life to establishing an International Criminal Court (ICC) that could prosecute senior officials of any government who commit aggression and other war crimes.
Ferencz is hailed as the founding father of the ICC, but his vision of “Law Not War” remains unfulfilled as long as his own country, the United States, refuses to recognize the jurisdiction of either the ICC or the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
By rejecting the jurisdiction of international courts, the U.S. has carved out what Amnesty International has called an “accountability-free zone,” from which it can threaten, attack and invade other countries, torture prisoners, kill civilians and commit other war crimes with impunity.
Nuremberg ‘Exemption’?
U.S. government lawyers enjoy the privilege, unique in their profession, of issuing legally indefensible but politically creative legal cover for war crimes, secure in the knowledge that they will never be forced to defend their opinions before an impartial court.
Ben Ferencz very graciously wrote a preface to my book, Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, and he spoke at an event with me and David Swanson in 2011, just before his 91st birthday. Ben talked about Nuremberg and the ICC, and he compared U.S. justifications for its “preemptive” illegal war-making to the defense offered by SS Gruppenfuhrer Otto Ohlendorf at Nuremberg.
As Ben explained, “That Ohlendorf argument was considered by three American judges at Nuremberg, and they sentenced him and twelve others to death by hanging. So it’s very disappointing to find that my government today is prepared to do something for which we hanged Germans as war criminals.”
If we do not hold American war criminals accountable for their crimes, and accept the jurisdiction of international courts to do so if we do not, how else can we serve notice on those who come after them that they must never do this again?
Argentina, Guatemala and other countries in Latin America are prosecuting and jailing mass murderers like Videla and Rios Montt who once took for granted that they could kill with impunity. America’s masters of war should not assume that we will fail to bring them to justice.
As for the collective responsibility we all share for the crimes committed by our country and our armed forces, we must be prepared to pay substantial war reparations to our millions of victims and the countries we have destroyed. We could start by paying the reparations ordered by the International Court of Justice when it convicted the United States of aggression against Nicaragua in 1986, and the $3.3 billion promised by President Nixon to repair at least some of the U.S. bomb damage in Vietnam.
These would be concrete steps to tell the rest of the world that the United States was finally ready to abandon its failed experiment in “the science of killing,” to be bound by the rule of law, and to start cooperating in good faith with the rest of humanity to solve our common problems.
~
Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.
Both Major U.S. Parties are Plagues on Humanity
By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | July 1, 2015
There has never been a dime’s worth of difference between the Clintons (Bill and Hillary) and Barack Obama, and less than ten cents separates the worldviews of these Democratic political twins from the Bush wing of the Republican Party.
Each has their individual quirks. Barack destroys international order and the rule of law while dabbling at song; Bill dismantled the U.S. manufacturing base and threw record numbers of Blacks in prison as he toyed with his trumpet; George W. played the fool who would Shock and Awe the world into obedience; and Hillary is the evil crone that curses the dead while screaming “We are Woman” like a banshee. But they are all the same in their corporate soullessness.
They all lie for a living, and they live to lie. Hillary Clinton commingled official and personal criminality through the medium of email. Knowing that, in a life dedicated to crime, she could never successfully sequester her private and public conspiracies, Hillary privatized all of her email correspondence during her tenure as Obama’s Secretary of State (in the perfect spirit of neoliberalism). The fate of millions of Haitians whose country’s earthquake and development “aid” are under the Clinton family thumb were doubtless bundled into the tens of thousands of messages she erased on leaving Foggy Bottom.
Republicans have harassed her ever since, seeking an electronic smoking gun to show Clinton’s cowardice or lack of resolve to “stand up for America” and “our troops” or some other nonsense. What the Benghazi affair actually proves is that the Obama administration was just as intent as the Republicans to maintain the fiction that the “rebels” put in power by seven months of NATO bombing of Libya were not various flavors of Islamic jihadists – some of whom were already turning on their erstwhile masters. The U.S.-Saudi project to create and nurture the international jihadist network is a bipartisan venture that dates back to Jimmy Carter’s presidency – and, therefore, nothing for Democrats and Republicans to fight about. However, the GOP’s churning of Clinton’s emails does provide a glimpse into her quest to run for president in 2016 as the woman who vanquished Muammar Gaddafi (“Qaddafi” or simply “Q” in Clinton’s usage).
A number of Clinton’s correspondences were with Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton family spin-master who wrote nasty things about Barack Obama while working for Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign – which made it impossible for her to hire him at the State Department. Nevertheless, Clinton needed his talents for hype for the campaign ahead. Their emails in the summer of 2011 discussed how Hillary’s status as stateswoman could soar when the Libyan leader was finally eliminated. “This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” wrote Blumenthal, feeding the crone’s huge gizzard of ego, according to an article in Monday’s New York Times. “You must go on camera,” wrote Blumenthal. “You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.” Hillary was anxious to seize the time to establish what Blumenthal described as “the Clinton Doctrine.”
The Times piece somehow concludes that Obama stole Clinton’s thunder with an 1,100-word speech, in late August, declaring: “The Gaddafi regime is coming to an end, and the future of Libya is in the hands of its people.” But Hillary best expressed the ghoulishness of America’s ruling duopoly two months later, in October, when Gaddafi was savagely butchered by screaming jihadists. “We came, we saw, he died,” cackled the banshee.
In the annals of global diplomacy, no more vulgar words have been spoken by a major power foreign minister or head of state. Yet, Clinton’s calculated quip perfectly encapsulates the bloodlust that is the common characteristic of both the governing duopoly of the United States and their suckling children in ISIS and the other proliferating al Qaida factions.
Thanks to Seymour Hersh, we now have a much more plausible scenario for the May 2, 2011, demise of Osama bin Laden, the “OG” of the U.S.-Saudi spawned global jihad, whose body will never be located. Virtually the entire U.S. account of his death is a lie, repeatedly contradicted on its own terms – another layer of fictional Americana in the age of empire in decline.
Clinton was hard-pressed to imagine how she might trump the president’s bin Laden death-watch extravaganza. Her opportunity came five months later, when she delivered her gruesome paraphrase of Julius Caesar on the occasion of Col. Gaddafi’s murder. In the context of Washington’s deeply racist foreign policy, Gaddafi and bin Laden were equally deserving of death, although Gaddafi was among the most fervent and effective fighters against Islamic jihadists: his government was the first in the world to request a global arrest warrant against bin Laden.
The Libyan Islamists were quickly transferred to the new U.S.-NATO-Saudi-Qatari front lines in Syria. The CIA station in Benghazi was at the center of the action – and got burned in the wild and unwieldy process of herding jihadists, who find it difficult to take orders from “infidels,” even when the “Crusaders” are paying the bills and supplying the weapons.
The U.S. consulate and CIA station in Benghazi were attacked on September 11, 2012. The next day, the Pentagon’s intelligence agency issued a report predicting that a “Salafist principality” – another term for an Islamic State – would likely arise in Syria as a result of the war, and that “Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey are supporting these efforts.” Moreover, the establishment of such an Islamic “principality” would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaida in Iraq, which became ISIS, ISIL and the Islamic State] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi” in Iraq – events that have since transpired.
The Defense Intelligence Agency report didn’t say so, but the “Western Powers” included the United States, through its CIA.
The document was declassified this year as the result of a suit by a libertarian right-wing legal outfit. The people of the world continue to be fed the fiction that the U.S. is engaged in a long, twilight struggle against al Qaida Salafists whose international network was created by, and continues to benefit from, “Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey.”
However, the 2012 Pentagon warning about the rise of an Islamic State may have had some effect on U.S. policy in Syria. One year later, in September of 2013, President Obama backed off from his threat to bomb Syria in “retaliation” for a chemical missile attack against civilians – a crime much more likely committed by western-backed Salafists. The conventional wisdom is that the Russians tricked a hapless Secretary of State John Kerry into agreeing to the peaceful, internationally supervised destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal; or that the refusal of Britain’s Parliament to go along with an air assault on Syria made the U.S. position untenable; or that Obama feared losing a vote on the issue in the U.S. Congress. None of this rings true to me. The United States is not easily deterred by the opinions of Europeans, who in the end accept Washington’s acts as a fait accompli. And, it was not clear that Obama would have lost the vote in Congress – a vote that he requested, while at the same time declaring that he did not need the legislature’s permission to “punish” Syria for crossing his “red line.”
I think that high Pentagon officials and elements of the Obama administration – probably including the president, himself – took the Benghazi disaster and the Defense Intelligence Agency report to heart, and decided that it was better to keep bleeding the Syrians and their Russian, Lebanese and Iranian allies through a prolonged war, than to bomb al Qaida into power. For the U.S., regional chaos is preferable to the triumph of the, ultimately, unmanageable Salafists – unchained.
The thirty-plus year war against Iran would, however, be ratcheted up. The Bush administration was snatched back from the brink of a military assault against Teheran in 2007 when – to the great consternation of Vice President Dick Cheney – all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies declared, publicly and unanimously, that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program, years before.
The spooks reaffirmed their consensus in the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate – again, that there was no evidence Iran has any intention of making a bomb. The Obama administration has since avoided asking the intelligence agencies for their analysis on the issue, knowing they would get the same answer. Instead, they rely on Israeli propaganda, pick and choose various “experts” from inside and outside the arms control “community,” or simply put forward unsupported statements on Iran’s capabilities and intentions: the Big Lie. While Bush was humiliated by facts supplied by his own intelligence experts, Obama has escalated the confrontation with Iran, applying crippling sanctions and the whole range of low-level warfare, in close collaboration with Israel – proving, once again, that Obama is the “more effective evil.”
Obama has nearly completed knocking off victims on the “hit list” of countries that George Bush was working on when General Wesley Clark ran across it in 2002. Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Somalia have been invaded since then, and Sudan was stripped of a third of its territory. Only Iran and Lebanon remain intact and outside the U.S. imperial umbrella.
The Republican-Democratic duopoly plays tag-team in promoting the Project for a New American Century – a doctrine promulgated by neo-conservatives in 1997 that has served as the guiding light of both the Bush and Obama administrations. The differences between the two teams are merely rhetorical. The Bush regime is described as “unilateralist,” although it employed the same “Coalition of the Willing” approach to aggressive war as does the Obama administration. President Obama claims the right to disregard and methodically undermine international law through “humanitarian” military intervention, whereas Bush claimed to be “spreading democracy.” Same weapons systems, same mass murder, same objective: U.S. domination of the planet.
There’s nothing democratic or humanitarian about the U.S. imperial project. Therefore, its maintenance requires the deployment of 24-7 psychological operations worldwide, but directed primarily against the U.S. public.
Republican strategist Karl Rove was far more honest than his Democratic counterparts when he explained to a reporter, back in 2004:
We’re an empire now, 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.
Election seasons are reality-creation festivals, during which the two corporate parties pretend to put forward different visions of the national and global destiny – when, in fact, they answer to the same master and must pursue the same general strategy.
The continuity of GOP-Democratic rule – the near-identical depravity – is horrifically evident in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where six million people have been slaughtered by U.S. surrogates since 1996: the largest genocide since World War II. Successive U.S. administrations – Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, assisted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, the high U.S. official most deeply implicated in the entirety of the genocide – have armed, financed, and covered up the Congolese holocaust. Each administration has collaborated with its predecessor to hide the crime and obscure the question of guilt – and then to continue the killing.
Decent people do not vote for political parties that produce such fiends, who deserve Nuremburg justice of the capital kind. Any talk of “lesser evils” is both stupid and obscene.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
US fails to name Turkey as sponsor of terrorism
Press TV – June 21, 2015
The United States has admitted that it has been fully aware of Turkey’s role in the transit of terrorists into Syria, but has failed to name it as a sponsor of terrorism.
Throughout 2014, Turkey served as a source and transit country for foreign terrorists seeking to enter Syria, the United States said in its annual report on terrorism.
However, the State Department report released on Friday failed to condemn Ankara or declare it as a sponsor of terrorism.
Surprisingly enough, the report leveled accusations against Iran which has supported the fight against the ISIL terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.
Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since 2011. The United States and some of its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — have been supporting the militants operating in Syria.
According to the United Nations, more than 220,000 people have been killed and millions displaced due to the turmoil that has gripped Syria for nearly four years.
The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.
They have been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians.
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Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
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