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Threat of War between Syria and Israel is getting More Real

By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 14.02.2022

On February 9, Israel launched yet another series of strikes on targets near Damascus, which resulted in one Syrian killed and five injured, which has aggravated the threat of war between Syria and Israel.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), on February 9, four Israeli F-16s, without crossing the state border of Syria, launched another guided missile attack on facilities near Al-Kiswah, a village south of Damascus. One of the anti-aircraft missiles of the Syrian army exploded over the occupied Golan Heights, after which the IDF fired from the area occupied by Israeli troops in the Syrian Golan Heights ten surface-to-surface missiles at the positions of the Syrian air defense forces. Some missiles were brought down by Syrian air defenses. Nevertheless, the attack still caused significant damage to some buildings in the city of Qudsaya, destroying dozens of houses and cars. To repel the attack, Syrian troops utilized Russian-made air defense systems, which shot down eight missiles.

According to an IDF statement, in response to an intercepted missile fired from Syria into northern Israel, Israel attacked targets in Syria, including the “Syrian radar and anti-aircraft batteries that launched missiles at Israeli Air Force aircraft.” However, it is obvious that the missile chosen by the IDF as the reason for retaliation was the anti-aircraft missile that exploded in the air and was launched by Syrian air defenses as a measure of protection against earlier Israeli missile attacks launched from Lebanon.

In the message the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent to the UN Security Council regarding the aforementioned act of aggression by Tel Aviv, the Syrian government denounces the dangerous consequences the Israeli attacks on the SAR territory may have for stability in the Middle East and the entire world. “Syria reserves the right to use all legal means to respond to the treacherous strikes carried out by Israel on the outskirts of Damascus from Lebanese airspace and from the occupied Golan Heights,” the document says. The Syrian Foreign Ministry drew attention to the fact that “the United States, which patronizes Israel, encourages it to continue attacks and paralyzes possible measures by the UN Security Council to deter the aggressor, which undermines the prestige of the international community.”

Initially, Israel planned to launch two strikes simultaneously on February 9 – one on the outskirts of Damascus, and the other on Latakia. However, after encountering two Su-35s scrambled in response, the IAF fighters flew back without attacking the Syrian port. At the same time, almost all of the missiles allegedly aimed at Iranian facilities in the Rif Dimashq Governorate were shot down by Russian-made Syrian air defense systems. The attack was carried out from Lebanese airspace, which is another gross violation of international law.

Israeli Air Force regularly strikes targets in Syria without entering the airspace of the Arab Republic, and mainly operates from the airspace of Lebanon – in violation of international norms, or from the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2013, the IDF has been carrying out hundreds of airstrikes on the territory of a neighboring country primarily targeting pro-Iranian forces in the SAR. This year, there have already been two such attacks by Israel. The first one was took place on January 31 at targets near Damascus, namely Hezbollah facilities and warehouses in the vicinity of Al-Qutayfah. In 2021, there were 55 attacks:

– 3 missile strikes in December (on December 7, 16 and 28, mainly in the area of the port of Latakia, one Syrian soldier was killed, and significant damage was caused). It is noteworthy that on December 28, not for the first time, two F-16s of the Israeli Air Force launched four guided missiles at facilities on the territory of the port of Latakia without crossing the Syrian border (from the Mediterranean Sea). The Syrian air defense forces did not engage in a battle to repel the IAF raid on the port of Latakia, since a landing Russian Air Force transport plane could be in the affected area;

– 4 missile strikes in November (on November 3, 8, 17 and 28, mainly on targets near the city of Homs, which resulted in four people killed, including two civilians, several people wounded and significant material damage);

– 4 missile strikes in October (on October 8, 13, 25 and 30, strikes were carried out on the outskirts of Damascus, the outskirts of al-Ba’ath and the village of Al-Krum in the Quneitra Governorate in southern Syria, and the city of Abu Kamal, as a result of which more than ten Hezbollah militants and a Syrian soldier were killed, and significant damage was caused);

– 3 missile strikes in September (on September 3, 14 and 27, South from the village of Mayadin in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate in Eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border, with many people being wounded);

– 2 missile strikes in August (on August 17 and 19); 3 missile attacks from May to July (on May 5, June 8 and July 19); 9 missile strikes from January to April, with dozens of people dead and wounded;

– 39 missile attacks and air raids were carried out in 2020.

Israel explains its attacks with the desire to prevent modern weapons from falling into the hands of it enemies. Enemy No. 1 in this regard is the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which is fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is controlled by Tehran. After the first Israeli airstrikes, Moscow invited all interested parties to meet and talk about disentangling their interests in order to avoid armed conflicts and civilian casualties. However, these calls of Russia have not been heeded.

Israel, despite repeated statements by official Syrian authorities to the UN, continues regular airstrikes on Syrian civilian targets, using, among other things, provocative air attacks by its fighters “under the cover” of civilian aircraft. Thus, in addition to the attack of December 28, on the night of October 13, 2021, four IAF F-16s once again entered the Syrian airspace in the area of the US-occupied Al-Tanf zone in the Homs Governorate and, under the cover of civilian aircraft flying at the same time, carried out an airstrike on a phosphate ore processing plant in the Palmyra area. It is noteworthy that this is not the first time such air attacks have been carried out from the area of the US-occupied zone in the Homs Governorate, which clearly indicates the coordinated actions of the IAF with the US military.

Such provocative tactics of the Israeli Air Force can lead to a serious aggravation of the situation, and it will by the IAF’s fault if the Syrian air defenses in their anti-missile actions shoot down a civilian aircraft of any country, under whose cover Tel Aviv carries out its airstrikes. And such an incident has already occurred in 2018 when Israeli planes bombed Syria from the air zone where the Russian reconnaissance plane was located, and the Syrian air defense shot down this plane by mistake. Russian service members were killed and a big scandal broke out, which was extinguished, and an armed conflict with Israel prevented, only thanks to complex diplomatic efforts.

The Syrian leadership has repeatedly demanded that the UN Security Council put pressure on Israel to stop attacks on the territory of the republic, since such actions violate its sovereignty and lead to increasing tensions in the region. The Syrian Foreign Ministry has previously repeatedly stated that the republic can use “all legal means” to respond to Israeli airstrikes on the Syrian territory. Therefore, by continuing such provocative attacks, Israel is openly tempting its fate, which could turn into a serious armed conflict at any time.

February 14, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

From Tantura to the Naqab, Israel’s roll call of shame is being exposed

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | February 8, 2022

A succession of events in recent weeks all point to the inescapable fact that nearly 75 years of Israel’s painstaking efforts to hide the truth about its origins and its racist apartheid regime are failing miserably. The world is finally waking up, and Israel is losing ground quicker than it is able to gain new supporters or whitewash its past and ongoing crimes.

First, there were the revelations about Tantura, a peaceful Palestinian village whose inhabitants were mostly exterminated by Israel’s Alexandroni Brigade on 23 May, 1948. Like many other massacres committed against unarmed Palestinians over the years, the Tantura massacre was mostly remembered by the village’s few survivors, ordinary Palestinians and Palestinian historians. The mere attempt in 1998 by Israeli graduate student Theodore Katz to shed light on that bloody event ignited a legal, media and academic war, forcing him to retract his findings.

In a recent social media post, Professor Ilan Pappé revealed why, in 2007, he had to resign his position at Haifa University. “One of my ‘crimes’,” wrote Pappé, “was insisting that there was a massacre in the village of Tantura in 1948 as was exposed by MA student, Teddy Katz.”

Now, some Alexandroni Brigade veterans have finally confessed to the crimes in Tantura.

“They silenced it. It mustn’t be told, it could cause a whole scandal. I don’t want to talk about it, but it happened.” These were the words of Moshe Diamant, a former member of the Alexandroni Brigade who, with other veterans, revealed in the documentary “Tantura” by Alon Schwarz, the gory details of the horrific crimes that were committed in the Palestinian village.

An officer “killed one Arab after another” with his pistol, said former soldier Micha Vitkon. “They put them into a barrel and shot them in the barrel. I remember the blood in the barrel,” explained another. “I was a murderer. I didn’t take prisoners,” admitted Amitzur Cohen.

Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Tantura in cold blood. They were buried in mass graves, the largest of which is believed to be under a car park at the Dor Beach, to which Israeli families flock daily.

The Tantura massacre is arguably the most glaring representation of “hidden” Israeli criminality on the occupation state’s roll call of shame. However, this is not the story of Tantura alone. The massacre in the village is representative of something much bigger, of ethnic cleansing on a huge scale, forceful evictions and mass killings. Thankfully, the truth is now being unearthed and exposed.

In another example, the Israeli army launched a full-scale military operation in 1951 to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouins from the Naqab Desert. The tragic scenes of entire communities being uprooted from their ancestral homes were justified by Israel with the usual cliché that the terrible deed was carried out for “security reasons”.

In 1953, Israel passed the so-called Land Acquisition Law, which allowed the occupation state to seize the land of the Palestinians who had been forced out of their homes. By then, Israel had unlawfully expropriated 247,000 dunams of land in the Naqab, with 66,000 remaining “unutilised”. The remaining land is currently the epicentre of an ongoing saga involving Palestinian Bedouin communities in Israel and the Israeli government, which makes ludicrous claims that the land is “essential” for Israel’s “development needs”.

Extensive research conducted by Professor Gadi Algazi points to Israel’s narrative in the Naqab being a complete fabrication. According to numerous newly-revealed documents, Moshe Dayan, then the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, was central to an Israeli government and military ploy to evict the Bedouin population and to “revoke their rights as landowners”, under the conveniently created Israeli law, which allowed the government to “lease” the land as if it was its own.

“There was an organised transfer of Bedouin citizens from the north-western Negev eastward to barren areas, with the goal of taking over their lands,” Algazi told Haaretz. “They carried out this operation using a mix of threats, violence, bribery and fraud.”

The entire scheme was organised in such a way as to facilitate the claim that the Palestinians had moved “voluntarily”, despite their legendary resistance and “the stubbornness with which they tried to hold onto their land, even at the cost of hunger and thirst, not to mention the army’s threats and violence.”

Furthermore, a newly-released volume by French historian Vincent Lemire has entirely dismissed the official Israeli version of how the Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem was demolished in June 1967. Although Palestinian and Arab historians have long argued that the destruction of the neighbourhood — 135 homes, two mosques and more — was done as per the order of the Israeli government through the then Jewish Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, Israel has just as long denied that version. According to the official Israeli account, the demolition of the neighbourhood was carried out by “15 private Jewish contractors [who] destroyed the neighbourhood to make space for the Western Wall plaza.”

In an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Lemire said that his book offers “definitive, written proof on the pre-meditation, planning and coordination of this operation,” and that includes official meetings between Kollek, the commander of the Israeli army and other top government officials.

The story continues with more heartbreaking revelations as a well-integrated version of the truth exposing long-hidden or denied facts. The days of Israel getting away with these crimes seem to be behind us. For the third time in a little over twelve months, a major human rights organisation, on this occasion Amnesty International, has condemned Israeli apartheid.

Amnesty’s report, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: A Look into Decades of Oppression and Domination”, is 280 pages of damning evidence of Israel’s racism and apartheid. It does not shy away from connecting Israel’s violent present with its equally bloody past, nor does it borrow from Israel’s deceptive language and self-serving division of Palestinians into disconnected communities, each with a different claim and a different status. For Amnesty, as was the case with Human Rights Watch’s report in April last year, Israeli injustices against the Palestinians must be recognised and duly condemned in their entirety.

“Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony,” wrote Amnesty, “while minimising the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights.” This could only happen through mass killing, ethnic cleansing and genocide, from Tantura to the Naqab, to the Moroccan Quarter, the Gaza Strip and Sheikh Jarrah. The Israeli roll call of shame is long.

February 8, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UAE ‘directly benefiting’ from illegal Israeli settlement enterprise

MEMO | February 7, 2022

The UAE is directly benefitting from Illegal Israeli settlements and is in violation of international law according to recently signed bilateral trade agreements between Abu Dhabi and the occupation state, Hugh Lovatt, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, has pointed out in a series of tweets.

Lovatt has worked to advance the concept of EU Differentiation, which includes a variety of measures taken by the European bloc and its member states to exclude settlement-linked entities and activities from bilateral relations with Israel.

The EU has never recognised the legality of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories (including those in East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights that have been formally annexed by Israel). This means that the EU has an obligation to practically implement its non-recognition policy by fully and effectively implementing its own legislation against Israel’s incorporation of settlement entities and activities into its external relations with the EU.

In 2016, Lovatt worked to have this measure enshrined within UN Security Council Resolution 2334. It passed in a 14–0 vote, with the US notably abstaining. The Resolution states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity”. It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfil its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Lovatt claims that recently released details of bilateral agreements between the UAE and Israel show that that the Gulf State is in violation of Resolution 2334 and the principal of differentiation which all UN member states are expected to abide by.

“Has the UAE respected international law and its obligations to differentiate between Israel and the settlements as per UNSCR 2334?” asked Lovatt in his tweet. “The answer: No.”

Lovatt explained that “to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 2334, every bilateral agreement signed with Israel should contain a ‘differentiation’ clause defining the territorial scope of its application to Israel’s pre-June 1967 borders. This is not the case in this UAE-Israel agreement”. He shared a screen shot of a clause from the bilateral agreement indicating that no such territorial distinction was made.

The definition of territory applied in the agreement includes all the land that is under “Israel’s jurisdiction”, which Lovatt explained include Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.

Notably Japan’s trade agreement with Israel includes a definition of “Israeli territory” which upholds the differentiation principal and, therefore, does not fall foul of Resolution 2334, Lovatt said. The absence of this distinction in the bilateral agreement between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv means that the UAE is “directly” befitting from illegal settlements through its normalisation with Israel.

Lovatt admits that the UAE may have a different interpretation of the agreement than he does, in which case “it would be incumbent on the UAE government to clarify the agreement’s territorial applicability as soon as possible,” he added.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Volunteers’ group targets Facebook for suppressing Palestinian content

MEMO | February 4, 2022

A Palestinian group of volunteers that monitors Facebook has raised an alarm that the social media platform was increasingly blocking and suppressing the content posted by Palestinian journalists, activists and influencers, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a report, the volunteers’ group, Sada Social, has mentioned that Facebook had limited the reach of the accounts of the Palestinian influencers recently when they were highlighting the issues of Shaikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Gaza Strip.

According to the statistics issued by the group, Facebook had banned the users from reaching the hashtag “Al-Aqsa” in 2021, where many activists were writing about the events happening in Palestine.

“Facebook and Instagram had blocked as many as 1,500 posts in 2021. Almost 44 per cent of posts were posted by journalists and authentic media institutions,” said Iyad Refai, a social media specialist and the Director of Sada Social.

He said that access to the accounts that covered the incidents was restricted through algorithms that identify the digital content, adding that new words were added to expand the restrictive practices.

Facebook catches the words like “to support the Palestine cause” and other words like these, and then blocks the account. In addition, the restrictive practices have been expanded to the names of Palestinian factions, leaders, or martyrs, in addition to any pictures or videos related to this.

“After each violation, we contact Facebook to clarify that we have the right to tell our story. All the discussions with them are about the importance to have a clear and certain adoption of standards of the concepts about violence and hatred since Facebook policies do not follow the UN standards about violence and hatred,” said Refai.

In its annual statement, Sada Social said, in contrast to the efforts of defenders of the right to free expression and a sense of security in digital space, in 2021 there was a growing tendency to impose coercive powers on people’s practices in digital space.

Refai emphasised that, despite repeated calls to Facebook to put an end to the bias shown against the Palestinian content, there has been an increase in attacks on media platforms during the coverage of the recent war and events in Jerusalem. Palestinian news pages like Maydan Al Quds were finally pulled down last year in November.

“It is a US company and US law defines the Palestinian struggle as acts of terrorism,” he added.

According to the annual statistics released by the Sada Social, more than 390 Palestinians were detained by the Israeli forces and exposed to interrogation because of highlighting issues related to Palestine on Facebook.

February 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

46 Israel violations against Palestinian journalists in January

Journalists flee after being attacked with grenades in the West Bank on 22 February 2019 [HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images]

MEMO | February 2, 2022

An Arab journalists’ rights group has recorded 46 Israeli violations of Palestinian media freedoms in January, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a report on Wednesday, the Journalists’ Support Committee which documents media violations across the Palestinian territories, said the Israeli violations varied between “arrest, extortion and direct field assault” of media personnel among other forms of harassment.

According to the NGO, four Palestinian journalists were arrested by Israeli forces last month.

It noted that the Israeli army and settlers committed “17 cases of assault and injury against journalists” during their coverage of the demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and rallies in the West Bank.

The Israeli army often used rubber bullets and gas bombs against Palestinian journalists, the report said.

The NGO also documented 18 cases of journalists being blocked from covering Israeli violations against the Palestinians.

According to the report, Israeli forces raided the house of one journalist, threatened two female journalists, while restricting the social media accounts of four others for “violating publishing instructions.”

Last month, the NGO said that 17 Palestinian journalists and media workers were held in prison by Israel.

February 2, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran envoy: No IAEA access to new nuclear site in Isfahan before conclusion of JCPOA revival talks

Press TV – January 31, 2022

Iran’s ambassador to international organizations based in Vienna says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will have no access to the country’s new nuclear site in the central city of Isfahan before the ongoing talks on the removal of US sanctions and revival of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal reach a definitive result.

Mohammad Reza Ghaebi made the remarks while speaking to reporters on Monday after the IAEA announced earlier the same day that Iran has informed the world body that it would move the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows from TESA Karaj Complex to Isfahan.

He said the process “has not started yet,” adding, “The IAEA will be able to adjust its surveillance rules accordingly, although the information gathered through that surveillance process will remain in Iran and the IAEA will not have access to it until Tehran resumes its nuclear commitments under the JCPOA,” referring to the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The Iranian diplomat added that the IAEA report was a routine update of the agency that provides the “latest technical information on Iran’s nuclear activities to its members.”

In its Monday statement, the UN nuclear agency said its inspectors had installed surveillance cameras in a new workshop in Isfahan on January 24 to ensure the machines intended for the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows were under monitoring but the production of the parts there had not started then.

The UN nuclear agency noted that the production of centrifuge rotor tubes and bellows at TESA Karaj Complex has ceased.

Back in December, Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said  that the country had allowed the IAEA to reinstall its surveillance cameras at TESA Karaj Complex only after the UN nuclear watchdog met Tehran’s preconditions.

Kamalvandi explained that Iran’s preconditions included technical and security examination of the new IAEA cameras, judicial and security investigations into the dimensions of the June attack against the facility, which damaged the previous cameras, and also the IAEA’s condemnation of such acts of sabotage.

Back in September, Iran refused to allow the United Nations’ nuclear agency access to a number of cameras that had been damaged during a terrorist operation targeting the TESA Karaj Complex, a centrifuge component manufacturing workshop in north-central Iran. The Islamic Republic’s refusal was based on the fact that the country needed to complete some legal-security investigations into the incident.

January 31, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

The act of theatre that shows Israel’s contempt for Gaza

By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 30, 2022

Israel has apparently reprimanded a soldier for firing rounds into Gaza. That’s all very well, but what about the countless other soldiers who have done the same for years, maiming and killing Palestinian civilians?

The soldier, who posted his bravado video to TikTok, reportedly got 10 days in military prison. According to an Israeli army statement, “The soldier’s behavior in the video does not conform with the norms expected of soldiers and commanders.”

His sentencing and the media reporting around the incident is pure theatre, given the reality of how the Israeli army routinely targets Palestinians working on land in Gaza’s east and northern regions. While this one particular soldier received a mild punishment, many others who attack unarmed civilians are not held accountable.

Since pulling the illegal settlers out of Gaza in 2005, Israel has implemented a kill zone – dubbed the “buffer zone” or “no go zone” – where, on a regular basis, its soldiers shoot at Palestinian civilians. Ostensibly, it comprises a band of land 300 metres from the fence encaging Palestinians in Gaza. In reality, Israeli soldiers fire upon civilians well over a kilometre away, or even further, as I have experienced myself.

As I reported some years ago, “According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the 300 metres off-limits area extends in areas to at least 1.5 km. PCHR [the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights] has documented the Israeli army targeting of Palestinian civilians as far as 2 km from the border.”

Israeli soldiers in sniper position. © Eva Bartlett

Between 2008 and 2013, I regularly accompanied farmers and other civilians in border areas, and on many of the occasions that we came under fire, we were 500 metres or more from the fence. Among the disturbing incidents was an attack one morning in February 2009, when I came under prolonged Israeli gunfire while accompanying a group of farm labourers on land roughly 500 metres from the fence. By then, I was accustomed to the routine – I would walk with farmers on their land, the Israeli soldiers would arrive in jeeps, assume sniper position and begin firing at us.

On this occasion, the young men had finished their parsley harvest and were pushing a stalled pickup truck when the Israeli gunfire began. The incident was captured on video, as I was there to document such attacks, and as I wrote at the time, “The lightly-dressed, unarmed farmers were clearly visible to… the several Israeli army jeeps and the Hummer which had patrolled the border fence, stopping for long intervals to watch the farmers work, then moving on.” I noted that the soldiers had observed us for a good half hour before shooting, choosing to fire at precisely the time when the farmers were leaving.

Shooting just beyond where I stood in a fluorescent vest, an Israeli soldier hit 20-year-old Mohammad al-Buraim in his leg, and continued to fire at us for a further 15 minutes. Some weeks prior, an Israeli soldier shot his cousin Anwar in the neck, killing him and leaving his wife, young children, and extended family without a breadwinner. Anwar had been on land 600 metres from the fence, also doing farm labour work.

When someone gets injured in these areas, the injury is compounded by the fact that ambulances cannot reach them, as they are targeted by the Israeli army. So, locals need to somehow get the injured to a point where an ambulance can safely reach them. If this is not done quickly enough, the injured risks bleeding to death.

On another occasion, again with farm workers in Gaza’s southeast, I came under intense Israeli fire lasting over 40 minutes from soldiers roughly 500 metres away. Bullets flew within metres of our hands, heads, and bodies. This proved to be an especially interesting case, as a representative from the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv – who had been informed of the shooting by other volunteers – called me to express concern for my safety.

This dissipated as soon as she realized I was being fired on by an Israeli soldier, and not a Palestinian. Her superior, the then-attache in the Tel Aviv office, had the gall to state quite clearly that they were fine with Israel’s “security measures” – firing on an unarmed Canadian and unarmed Palestinians and internationals, who in no way posed any threat to the heavily armed Israeli soldiers – and that we should be aware of the risks.

In another example, in February 2009, also in the southeast on land 550 metres from the fence, I accompanied elderly farmers and their families who intended to harvest some of their meagre crops. Shortly after we had arrived on the land, Israeli soldiers started firing very close to us, less than a metre from where we stood.

As I wrote at the time, “We could almost taste Tuesday’s firing, and the distinct ping-whizz sound they make was somehow impossibly loud, so close the shots were. One of the older women was having trouble walking away, stumbling in her fear. As the shots dug in around her she fell to the ground in terror. Positioning ourselves between the elderly farmers and the Israeli snipers, we accompanied them off the field. A few hundred metres away, the Israeli snipers continued to shoot. Another elderly woman had dived in terror behind a rock and adamantly wouldn’t get up. “They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me,” she cried in fear…”

Thankfully we did make it away that day in one piece. But this was just one of many examples of the terror Palestinian farmers face on a daily basis. And it’s not just farmers – at around the same time, a 17-year-old girl standing around 800 metres from the fence, near the ruins of her home (destroyed in the war just a month previously), was shot in the kneecap by an Israeli sniper.

Children going to school in the eastern village of Khoza’a were, at the time, being fired upon by Israeli soldiers at the fence 1km away. Teens and young men gathering scrap metal from demolished homes routinely come under Israeli fire. One example was 15-year-old Said Abdel Aziz Hamdan, who went to an area in Gaza’s north with his 13-year-old brother, to try to earn money for their large family. After finishing his work, an Israeli soldier fired at him, hitting his leg, without warning.

“People go there every day to gather bits of metal and concrete. The Israelis see us and know we are just working, it’s normal,” he told me when I visited him in hospital.

Palestinians don’t only face Israeli sniper fire, but also flechette shelling – dart bombs – which Israel has indiscriminately used against civilians and medics. One victim was 17-year-old Saleh Ahmad al-Medani, whose shoulder and neck were punctured by the two-inch-long, razor-like, dart-shaped bits of metal packed by the thousands into a single shell. He was attacked while walking home after midnight in June 2009, in northwestern Gaza, over 1km from the wall.

As I wrote at the time, “Due to their design, flechettes dig deeply into their target, with their “tails” frequently breaking off, leaving multiple injuries and rendering them nearly impossible to extract without inflicting more injury in the surgical search. In most cases, doctors opt against surgery, leaving the darts inside the victim’s body.”

The routine and very dangerous Israeli policy of harassment, which risks maiming or killing targets, also means farmers frequently stay off their land, meaning plants don’t get watered, and crops don’t get harvested. These are not isolated and random instances. They are part of a policy that aims to cut off any means of self-sufficiency the Palestinians try to engage in. Other Israeli army tactics include burning Palestinian crops, destroying wells and cisterns, and demolishing homes, livestock farms, and trees throughout the border regions.

So, please, let’s not get carried away with the fact that Israel has thrown one soldier in prison for unacceptable behaviour. It is quite clear that Israel doesn’t hold its own soldiers accountable for their crimes, including killing children or firing white phosphorus on heavily populated civilian areas. Neither does the United Nations nor anybody else appear willing to make Israel take responsibility for its decades of crimes against Palestinians.

One headline about one soldier being reprimanded for posting his tough-guy video on TikTok should not fool anyone.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

January 30, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

One third of Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists

By Gideon Polya | Dissident Voice | January 27, 2022

The US became increasingly Zionist subverted in the 1960s after Apartheid Israel gained nuclear weapons and after the assassinations of JFK and Robert Kennedy. Support for Apartheid Israel (and hence for  the repugnant crime of Apartheid) is now a pillar of US politics, with anti-racist critics of Israeli Apartheid ferociously attacked, side-lined, and falsely defamed  as anti-Semitic. However Zionist control and hubris are now blatant: 32 percent or about one third of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are moderate Christian Zionists.

(a). Jewish Americans are an astonishing 17-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. Jewish Americans total 6.4 million people, or  1.9% of the total US population of 333 million. However Jews represent 8 of the 25 people in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet (including Joe Biden himself) or 32% of the Cabinet. If we consider people who are Jewish or have Jewish spouses we must add Kamala Harris to get 9 out of 25 or 36% of the Cabinet. Thus Jews are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an astonishing factor of 32%/1.9% = 16.8-fold. The sine qua non of US politics is fervent support for theism, America first, neoliberalism and Apartheid Israel (and therefore for Apartheid) — accordingly the non-Jewish 68% of the Biden Cabinet fervently support Apartheid Israel, albeit as moderate Christian Zionists as opposed to the ferocious, Biblical literalist, and genocidal evangelical Christian Zionists who support Trump. If we realistically assume that 50% of Jewish Americans are anti-racist and reject the genocidal racism of Zionism and Israeli Apartheid, then Zionist Jewish Americans are 34-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet.

(b). African Americans are about 2-fold  over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. African Americans total 46,936,733 or 14.2% of the total US population, but comprise  6 out of 25 or 24% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus African Americans are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a  factor of 24%/14.2% = 1.7-fold.

(c).  Hispanic and Latino Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Hispanic and Latino Americans total 65.3 million or 19.5% of the overall US population, but comprise 4 out of 25 or 16% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Hispanic/Latino Americans are under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an unexceptionally modest degree of 16%/19.5% = 0.8-fold i.e. their representation in the Biden Cabinet is a modest 0.8 times less than expected.

(d). Asian Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet.  Asian Americans (mainly  Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans but also notably  including  Korean, Vietnamese, Afghan, Arab and Japanese Americans) total 24 million or 7.2% of the US population, but comprise 2 out of 25 or 8% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Asian Americans are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an unexceptionally modest factor of 8%/7.2% = 1.1-fold. Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans total 5 million, 4.3 million, and 4 million people, respectively, or 1.5%, 1.3% and  1.2% of the total US population.

(e). Indigenous Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Indigenous Americans total 9,666,058 or 2.9% of the total US population, but comprise 1 out of 25 or 4% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Indigenes are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a modest factor of 4%/2.9% = 1.4-fold (the lowest figure possible short of having no Indigenous people in the Biden Cabinet).

(f). Non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans are 2.5-fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet. Thus from the 2020 US Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were White alone, and 71.0%, or 235,411,507 people, were White alone or combined with another race. Non-Latino White Americans totalled roughly 191,697,647, or 57.8%. White Latino Americans totalled about 12,579,626, or 3.8% of the population. Non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans total 191,697, 647 – 6,400,000 = 185,297,647  or 55.6% of the US population, but comprise only 6 out of 25 or 24% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans are substantially under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a significant degree of  24%/55.6% = 0.4 fold i.e. their representation in the Biden Cabinet is 0.4 times less than their “fair share.” However the even more remarkable thing about these 6 non-Jewish and non-Latino White members of the Biden Cabinet is that they are all Catholics. Of the 17 non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet all but 5 (i.e. 12) are Catholics.

(g). Female Americans are slightly under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor  of 0.9.  Thus females represent 50.5% of the American population, but comprise 11 out of 25 or 44% of the Biden Cabinet. Women are thus slightly under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor of 44%/50.5% = 0.9.

(h). Catholic Americans are 3-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. The US has the world’s largest Christian population. About 48.9% of Americans are Protestants, 23.0% are Catholics, and 1.8% are Mormons. In 2016, 74% of Americans identified as Christians while 18% claimed no religious affiliation. However, all (100%) of the 6 non-Jewish and non-Latino White members of the Biden Cabinet are Catholics. Of the 17 non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet, 12 (71%) are Catholics, i.e. while Catholics are 23.0% of the US population they are 71% of the non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet, and thus are disproportionately over-represented by a factor of 71%/23% = 3.1-fold.

(i). Protestant Americans are 2–fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet. While Protestants are  48.9% of the US population, a maximum of only 6 out of 25 (24%) of the members of the Biden Cabinet are Protestants i.e. they are 48.9%/24% = 2.0-fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet.

(j). Republicans, Pentecostal Christians (Evangelical Christians), and Racist Religious Right Republicans (R4s) are totally absent from the Biden Cabinet.  Not surprisingly there are no Republicans in the Biden Cabinet, and despite its representational inequities, the Biden Cabinet is blessed by the absence of Biblical literalist and genocidally pro-Zionist Pentecostal Christians (Evangelical Christians), and of Racist Religious Right Republicans (R4s) in general. Biblical literalists are simply nuts.

(k). All of the members of the Biden Cabinet are fervently theist, nationalist, neoliberal, pro-market, pro-One Percenter, anti-socialist, pro-nuclear terrorism, pro-US hegemony, pro-militarism, pro-US interventionism, pro-Apartheid Israel (and hence pro-Apartheid) and pro-Zionist. To state the obvious, American politicians have to observe the sine qua non pillars of US politics of theism, capitalism, nationalism and support for Apartheid Israel (and hence for Apartheid).

America portrays itself as a “democracy” but this assertion is highly flawed because of differential representation and influence as illustrated here, neoliberal One Percenter domination, and entrenched lying by commission and omission by mass media journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes. A Zionist-subverted and obscenely neoliberal US has transmuted from a one-person-one-vote democracy to a kleptocracy, plutocracy, Murdochracy, lobbyocracy, corporatocracy, and dollarocracy in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, votes and hence more political power and more private profit. The support for Apartheid Israel and hence for Apartheid by the non-European members of the Biden Cabinet is particularly disgusting.

This Zionist perversion and subversion of America is deadly serious because 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year from “life-style choice” and “political choice” reasons, and since 9/11 about 33 million Americans have died thus in this ongoing American Holocaust. The long-term accrual cost of the War on Terror has been about $6 trillion. About 32 million Muslims have died from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity. Thus Zionist-subverted America has committed $6 trillion to killing over 30 million Muslims abroad instead of trying to save over 30 million American lives at home. For a very detailed and documented analysis see Gideon Polya, “Zionist-subverted America: Jewish Zionists Are One Third Of The Biden Cabinet,” Countercurrents, 27 January 2022. Wake up America!

Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

January 28, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Is Washington Under Alien Control?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 25, 2022

The drama currently unfolding in which the Biden Administration is doing everything it can to provoke a war with Russia over Ukraine is possibly the most frightening foreign policy misadventure since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1967 Lyndon Johnson attempt to sink the USS Liberty and blame it on Egypt, either of which could have gone nuclear. I can well recall the Robert Heinlein sci-fi book The Puppet Masters, later made into a movie, which described how alien-slugs, arriving by way of a flying saucer landing in Iowa, invaded the earth and parasitically attached themselves to the central nervous systems of humans and became able to completely control their minds. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And the tale gets really scary in geopolitical terms when some Secret Service Agents are “occupied” by the invaders and they are thereby poised to capture the President of the United States. I would point out that the movie came out when Bill Clinton was president, which should have provoked some concerns about whether it was fact or fiction.

Well, does anyone currently wonder why I think of The Puppet Masters when an incoherent Joe Biden in particular makes a speech? And also consider the befuddled look of Secretary of State Tony Blinken or the bewildered expressions of Vice President Kamala Harris or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, all of which might also suggest that the slugs now completely control the Administration. The Biden and Blinken possibly slug-controlled automatons are now stating their conviction, based on no evidence whatsoever, that Russia is about to invade Ukraine and they are threatening sanctions like Putin “has never seen before.” There will no doubt be more slug-derived pronouncements to reinforce that warning in the next few days after the latest round of talks breaks down. Evacuation of US Embassy staff families in Kiev is already underway, deliberately escalating rather than attempting to defuse the crisis which could lead to nuclear war, destroying the human race and replacing it with the alien slugs.

Consider for a moment the inconsistencies and sheer contradictions in US foreign policy, which might support the credibility of the alien slug theory. The State Department’s management of foreign relations is supposed to serve the interests of the American people, but has not actually done so for decades. Can anyone explain why Washington’s foreign policy during the decade 2010 to 2020 constantly hammered at Russia, which, if anything, should have been the one country with which the US would seek to have a respectful relationship. Where is the logic in condemnation of Russia’s non-violent annexation of the Crimea, which was carried out based on a long-term historic relationship and a popular referendum, while also enabling “allies” like Israel’s illegal occupation and annexation of both Palestinian and Syrian land which has relied on force majeure to drive hundreds of thousands of local inhabitants from their homes. And then there are the Saudis using American made weapons to terrorize and kill the people of Yemen. Slug Biden is now considering aiding the murderous Saudi onslaught by declaring Yemen’s Houthis to be terrorists, legitimizing their slaughter.

Even if one rejects the alien slug theory, at a minimum, there has been a great deal of hypocrisy in terms of how Washington deals with the rest of the world and that has been increasingly the case under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Targeting and killing civilian populations and permanently driving them from their homes are, by the way, unambiguously war crimes and the United States is signatory to the Geneva Conventions that define the Israeli and Saudi actions as such. Israel, which claims a form of perpetual victimhood thanks to the so-called holocaust narrative, is the only nuclear power in the Middle East, though its arsenal is regarded as so secret that US government officials are not allowed to mention it, possibly another indication of alien slug control. It uses that advantage to carry out undeclared open and covert warfare against its neighbors, most notably targeting Syria and Lebanon as presumed proxies for its number one designated enemy Iran. Saudi Arabia for its part does not seem to care at all regarding the devastation it is delivering on the largely defenseless Yemenis.

Israel goes far beyond the actions of any other belligerent nation in the world, and the US is the only nation that even comes close, as recent reports regarding a particularly reckless bombing in Syria suggest. Israel, often with American complicity, engages in covert sabotage and assassination operations inside Iran, which have been sometimes reported, though hardly condemned, in the mainstream Western media. Less well covered are the more-or-less routine bombing attacks conducted against Syria, frequently also violating Lebanese airspace when the Israeli jets stand off in the Mediterranean Sea to fire their missiles at the Syrian targets. It should be noted that attacking a nation with which one is not at war and which poses no direct threat is also a war crime, in this case a war crime that the Israeli and Saudi governments repeat on a regular basis without any objection coming from Washington, which itself has attacked Syria on at least four occasions while also illegally stationing troops inside the country to “protect” its oilfields.

A recent devastating attack by Israel on Syrian targets consisted of a missile strike launched by Israeli air force planes against the Mediterranean port of Latakia on December 28th. Israel’s attack on Latakia has to a certain extent shifted the focus of the war on Syria being conducted by Israel and the United States and their Gulf allies including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. In the past, the port was protected by its proximity to the major Russian base at Tartus in Syria and the actual presence of some Russian personnel assisting in Latakia ship cargo unloading operations, which threatens to bring Moscow more directly into the conflict. And as Washington is Israel’s enabler that will no doubt lead to US involvement in the UN and other fora if any attempts are made to limit or even condemn the Israeli actions. The situation is nasty and threatens to explode if Israel stages a false flag attack intended to lead to demands for direct military action by the US, a concern that some outside the Biden Administration have expressed.

What is particularly disturbing is the fact that while Israel and the Saudis continue to do their best to engage the United States in their own quarrels in the Middle East, President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken do nothing but look the other way so as not to annoy the Israeli leaders and their powerful domestic lobby in the US. At the same time, they unnecessarily provoke a nuclear armed and capable Russia and an emerging superpower China, both of which are regularly demonized both in the media and by leading politicians from both parties. The actions taken together are so irrational as to suggest that Robert Heinlein knew what he was writing about.

And then there is what might be described as the “hidden hand.” It should be observed that many of those US politicians and government officials most keen on baiting Russia are strong and vocal supporters of Israel. Many are neocons, who have penetrated the foreign and national security teams of both political parties and are dominant in the media while also having close ties to the Israeli government. Most of them are Jewish, to include all four of the top officials in the Department of State, while prominent politicians in both political parties, to include the president, have self-described as Zionists. For various reasons, many in the Jewish diaspora have a visceral hatred of Russia, so Israel in an odd way is part of the war party machinations to provoke an armed conflict over Ukraine.

That America is Israel’s poodle and both Russia and China are considered fair game to score political points is really the crux of the matter and it makes Americans complicit in Israeli crimes as Washington provides both arms and money as well as political cover to Jerusalem. It also reduces major US national interests involving Moscow and Beijing to sideshows and in so doing turns American national security on its head, supporting the unspeakable to make political points and ignoring what is important. One might even suggest that never before in history has a great nation so enthusiastically pursued policies that could easily lead to its own destruction. It is not in our interest, or even our survival, to continue along this path and it is past time that the politicians and bureaucrats begin to recognize that fact. Or maybe I should instead be addressing my advice to that alien-slug mothership hidden somewhere in a corn field in Iowa.

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

January 25, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Macron Says, “No Vaxx, No Citizenship” as France Unveils New, Stricter Vaccine Passports

By Josie Appleton | The Daily Sceptic | January 24, 2022 

The French Government is introducing a tougher vaccine passport regime today. Now, only vaccination (and not natural immunity or covid tests) will count to allow access to cafes, libraries, sports facilities, and long-distance trains.

The near-hysterical arguments made by the French political class justifying this new pass are strikingly unguarded and reveal the inner dynamics behind the vaccine passport drive. These debates show that vaccines are no longer a simple medical product. Instead, the vaccine has become a way in which states are establishing their authority, and creating a new QR-code citizenship based on regular compliance with medical procedures.

Vaccination has become a test for entry into the civic body. The ‘test’ of the vaccine is not your degree of medical immunity, or the degree to which you stand to suffer personally from COVID-19 infection. (The vaccine pass goes down to the age of 12 in France, while in New York it applies to those aged five and above).

Instead, the new meaning of vaccination is an act of compliance; it is a matter of doing what is asked and expected of you. The French Prime Minister Jean Castex said that the vaccinated have “played the game”, they have done what is asked of them. President Emmanuel Macron said that the vaccinated, “near-totality of people”, have “adhered” or “subscribed” to what they were asked to do. These people are “responsible”. By contrast, it is a “very small” that is “refractory” or “resistant”. They are “irresponsible”, says Macron, and “a irresponsible person is longer a citizen”.

Here, the state claims the right to set conditions for entry to civic life. The question of being part of social life is not a right, but something provisional; it is a permission that is granted by the state. The new gatekeepers of civil society are the waiter at a cafe, the head of a sports club, the door staff at the theatre, who from Monday will not only scan QR codes but check people’s ID cards too.

“To be a free citizen means to be a responsible citizen,” says Macron. “Duties come before rights.” You can only have rights (enter society) once you have done your duty (been vaccinated). The idea that duties come before rights means, at base, that the state comes before the citizen: the citizen only takes his place in society at the behest of the state.

This is not a matter of two shots and you are done. There is an ongoing demand for compliance, whereby your citizenship – and claim to ‘responsibility’ – is continually renewed. France has followed Israel in requiring a booster shot for vaccine passes to remain valid. Currently, you have seven months to get a booster, but this will shorten to four months in February. A French Government guide sets out the exact timetable expected of you: this is a jurisprudence of medically based citizenship. Every injection gives a ‘valid QR card’ that you can use to access social life; if you don’t get the booster in the required window then this QR code will expire. France has also followed Israel with a special offer (available until February 15th) allowing first-time jabbers to “benefit from a valid vaccine pass” after their first dose, so long as they get their second jab within 28 days.

The discounting of natural immunity is very telling. Natural immunity yields a wider spectrum of anti-bodies than vaccination and is likely to confer longer protection against infection and against new variants. And yet natural immunity has no political meaning. It is a strength that your body has gained through its own efforts, without involving the state or wider society. The ‘pass sanitaire’ that had been in operation in France since last summer recognised natural immunity and negative covid tests, alongside vaccination; the new ‘pass vaccinal’ recognises vaccination alone. The French Prime Minister now claims that natural immunity provides “only very little immunity”, while the source of genuine immunity is a “full course of vaccines”. This claim reflects more about the different political value placed upon these two routes to antibodies. One route is deemed “protective”, robust, and the other very weak, as something that “wanes”, only because one has a robust relationship with the state and the other relates to the state “only very little”.

(Indeed, as we saw with the Novak Djokovic saga, natural immunity – and the claim to exemption based on natural immunity – in fact now poses a threat, so dangerous that a person must be imprisoned and deported. Natural immunity poses a threat not to actual public health, but to the new social order based on vaccination that is being built by the Australian government.)

The fetishism of Covid vaccination is at base a fetishism of bureaucracy. The vaccinated person has a pass, they have a QR code; they are on these grounds judged safe. You can feel ‘reassured’ when you are in a public space and everybody has passes on their phones. The unvaccinated person has no card or QR code and therefore they are seen as risky and posing a danger to others. In declining to be vaccinated, they are not merely refusing a medical procedure – with its attendant benefits and risks – but they are refusing to relate to bureaucracy. The absolute power attributed to a vaccine card – to show that someone is safe, to show that they care for others, and are willing to protect themselves and others – owes less to the medical effects of vaccination than to vaccination as an insignia for bureaucracy.

This is why it is repeatedly asserted that only the unvaccinated are infectious. The French prime minister says that the unvaccinated cannot be allowed to go around “infecting others with impunity”. He even claims that the unvaccinated intend to infect others, that they think to themselves, “I’m going to infect others.” This belief persists in the face of sky-high vaccinated case rates; in the face, even, of the Prime Minister’s own recent Covid infection.

There is a long history of blaming dissident elements for infectious disease – as with the expulsion of beggars, Jews and prostitutes from medieval plague towns, or in the nineteenth century the association between cholera and revolutionary urban uprisings. Infectious disease has often been associated with elements outside the system or that cut against social or religious hierarchy. Michel Foucault said that the absolutist state saw the plague as “a form… of disorder”, a disease of “rebellions, crimes, vagabondage, desertions, people who appear and disappear, live and die in disorder”.

Now too, the unvaccinated are seen as the source of all ills of society. The Italian Prime Minister said that “most of the problems we are experiencing today are due to the fact that there are unvaccinated people”, as he introduced a new tougher vaccine pass for Italian citizens on January 10th. The unvaccinated are even, perversely, presented as the cause of repressive instruments designed by politicians. Emmanuel Macron said that the unvaccinated didn’t merely put other people’s lives at risk, but they also “restricted the liberty of others”, which was “unacceptable”. The French Prime Minister said the unvaccinated “put in danger the life of the whole country and restrict the daily life of the immense majority of French people”.

The eight per cent or so of people who have not been vaccinated in France appear to be the single focus of state authority. Macron recently said that his primary aim was to “piss off the unvaccinated”, and that he will continue to do this “until the end”. In his New Year’s message, he urged the unvaccinated to join the fold, telling them that “all of France is counting on you”, as if the course of the pandemic – indeed the very fate of France – depends upon them agreeing to the jab.

The project of improving national health has been replaced by a project of integrating the population into a bureaucracy by means of health status. The health of the nation has become confused with the proportion of the population that has a valid health pass.

The pursuit of the ideology of vaccination at the expense of health outcomes is shown most vividly in the imposition of vaccination mandates upon healthcare professionals. Here, we see the sheer blindness of sacking of experienced medical staff in the midst of a pandemic on the basis of a vaccine that has no bearing on the risk they pose to patients. It also shows how far the notion of the ‘irresponsible’ unvaccinated person is from the reality, given that healthcare workers have given and contributed more than anyone. In French Guadeloupe, vaccine mandates led to a 30% reduction in staff at the main hospital and the reduction of services to a skeleton operation. The scene there now is colonial: black healthcare staff picketing the hospital were removed by white mobile gendarme units, and now there is an armed police checkpoint at the hospital entrance. Vaccination mandates are a test of allegiance for healthcare professionals. Authorities show that they are prepared to run hospitals into the ground, to risk lives, to protect the ideology.

The vaccine passport is a citizenship test for a morally and politically vacuous age. It is entirely passive – it is the simple act of consenting to a medical procedure, after which you are crowned with a civic virtue. This is a citizenship test that occurs on the level of what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life”; that is, it is a question of merely biological existence, rather than a question of how a life is lived. Receiving a vaccine pass is mute; there are no words, there is no oath of allegiance to party, country or leader. You offer your body and receive a QR code in return: this is the nature of the new social contract between citizen and state. “Vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate” is the mantra for reconstituting authority and society in an age where this authority cannot be grounded on a substantial social basis.

The vaccine is being treated as a mystical state or collective substance that incorporates people into the collective body. Vaccination now is like a sacrament, a transubstantiation ritual; through the vaccine we are receiving the body of the state into our body and therefore joining the community.

One casualty in this is vaccination itself. Considered scientifically, a vaccine – as with any drug – is not a protective talisman or means for membership of a community. It is a medical product with particular qualities and uses, and particular side effects and risks. It may be useful for some groups but not others, and in some contexts but not in others. The rational use of a drug is as important as the drug itself, to ensure that it is directed towards the appropriate ends.

The ideological weaponisation of vaccines distorts these cost-benefit judgements. The vaccine is forced upon people who have little or no need of it, such as children and those with natural immunity, while ignoring those who have need of it. (The older and more vulnerable someone is, the less they are affected by vaccine passports.)

This episode is violating the very basis of health and medical ethics. Through vaccination passports and mandates, it has become acceptable to force someone to take a medical treatment, even a treatment that is not really in their medical interest. When Jean Castex boasted that the vaccine passport led to a rise in people getting their first vaccination, the interviewer pointed out “but they were forced”. Castex shrugged. In normal times, medical force is unacceptable; medical force means the Nazis. When France began vaccinating a year ago, it insisted upon consent forms and pre-vaccine interviews to ensure that people were really consenting. Now, the use of force has become entirely acceptable, it has become ethical in fact. It is the duty of the state to get people to do their duty.

And in this, the state is claiming rights over our bodies, the right to say what we put in them and what we don’t. A citizen under the vaccine passport regime is not in fact a citizen at all, but rather a chattel: you sign your body over to the state, and agree to take the latest required treatments in order have your QR code renewed. You sell your rights over your body for the price of drinking a cup of coffee in a cafe.

Josie Appleton is the author of Toxic Sociality – Reflections on a Pandemic and Officious – Rise of the Busybody State. She writes at notesonfreedom.com.

January 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

How Israel’s ‘Facebook Law’ Plans to Control All Palestinian Content Online

By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | January 22, 2022

It is ironic that even former right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had rejected a Knesset (Israeli Parliament) bill which proposed to give the government greater power to control and suppress online content. This was in 2016, and the bill was introduced by Netanyahu’s Likud party rival, Gideon Sa’ar.

Some analysts argued that Netanyahu had feared that a law aimed at suppressing Palestinian freedom of speech online could be exploited by his enemies to control his own speech and incitement. Now that Netanyahu is no longer in the picture, the bill is back, and so is Sa’ar.

Gideon Sa’ar is currently Israel’s justice minister and deputy prime minister. While his boss, Naftali Bennett, is moving rapidly to expand settlements and to worsen already horrific realities for Palestinians on the ground, Sa’ar is expanding the Israeli military occupation of Palestinians to the digital realm. What is known as the ‘Facebook Law’ is set to grant “Israeli courts the power to demand the removal of user-generated content on social media content platforms that can be perceived as inflammatory or as harming ‘the security of the state,’ or the security of people or the security of the public.”

According to a December 30 statement by the Palestinian Digital Rights Coalition (PDRC) and the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC), Israeli censorship of Palestinian content online has deepened since 2016, when Sa’ar’s bill was first introduced.

In their statement, the two organizations highlighted the fact that Israel’s so-called Cyber Unit had submitted 2,421 requests to social media companies to delete Palestinian content in 2016. That number has grown exponentially since, to the extent that the Cyber Unit alone has requested the removal of more than 20,000 Palestinian items. PDRC and PHROC suggest that the new legislation, which was already approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on December 27, “would only strengthen the relationship between the Cyber Unit and social media companies.”

Unfortunately, that relationship is already strong, at least with Facebook, which routinely censors Palestinian content and has been heavily criticized by Human Rights Watch and other organizations. After examining the numerous allegations of Facebook censorship, Deborah Brown, the senior digital rights researcher and advocate at HRW, concluded that “Facebook has suppressed content posted by Palestinians and their supporters speaking out about human rights issues in Israel and Palestine.”

Facebook’s involvement in Israel’s efforts aimed at silencing Palestinian online voices that call for justice, freedom and end of the occupation, is itself situated in an agreement the company had reached with Israel in September 2016. Then, the Israeli government announced that it had signed an agreement with the social media giant “to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network.” Within days, the accounts of prominent Palestinian journalists and activists were reportedly being deleted.

Israel’s latest ‘Facebook Law’ does not just pertain to controlling content on Facebook-related platforms, including Instagram and others. According to a Haaretz editorial published on December 29, the impact of this particular bill is far-reaching, as it will grant District Court judges throughout the country the power to remove posts, not only from Facebook and other social media outlets, “but from any website at all”.

Unsurprisingly, Israel’s censorship of Palestinian content is justified under the typical pretense of protecting Israel’s ‘national security’. We all know how Israel interprets this elusive concept to include anything from a Palestinian calling for Israel to be held accountable for its crimes in the occupied territories, to another demanding the end of Israeli apartheid to a third writing a poem. A case in point was the humiliating imprisonment of Palestinian poet, Dareen Tatour. The latter, an Israeli citizen, was thrown in jail in 2015 per court order for writing a short poem entitled “Resist, My People, Resist Them”.

Judging from past experience, undoubtedly, the ‘Facebook Law’ would almost exclusively target Palestinians. Moreover, judging from Israel’s previous successes, many digital and social media companies would comply with Israel’s demands of censoring Palestinians everywhere.

In its January 11 report, the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement – 7Amleh – detailed some of the practices that Israel engages in to monitor, silence, and spy on Palestinians. 7Amleh’s report, entitled ‘Hashtag Palestine 2021’, discusses the increased use of surveillance technologies, especially in the context of a proposed Israeli law that would expand the use of facial recognition cameras in public spaces. It is worth noting that such technologies have already been used against Palestinians at Israeli military checkpoints throughout the West Bank for at least two years.

Moreover, the Israeli Pegasus spyware, which has recently made headlines throughout the world for its use against numerous high-profile figures, has also long been used against Palestinian activists. In other words, Palestine continues to be the testing ground for Israel’s human rights violations of all kinds, whether in new weaponry, crowd control or surveillance.

Expectedly, what applies to Palestinians demanding their freedom online does not apply to Israelis inciting violence and spreading hatred against those very Palestinians. According to the 7Amleh ‘Index of Racism and Incitement’, published last June, during the Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip and the subsequent anti-Palestinian violence throughout Palestine in May 2021, “incitement in Hebrew against Arabs and Palestinians increased by 15 times” if compared to the same period of the last year. Much of this has gone unnoticed, and it is hardly the subject of the proposed ‘Facebook Law’ or the sinister activities of the Cyber Unit. For Gideon Sa’ar and his ilk, anti-Palestinian incitement, along with the daily violence meted out against the occupied Palestinians, is a non-issue.

While Israel is permitted, thanks to the deafening silence of the international community, to maintain its military occupation of Palestine, to cement its apartheid and to deepen its control of Palestinian life everywhere, it should not be permitted to expand this matrix of control to the digital realm as well. Civil society organizations, activists and ordinary people everywhere must speak out to bring an end to this mockery.

Moreover, as the Pegasus and the facial recognition surveillance technologies experiences have taught us, what is usually first applied to Palestinians is eventually normalized and applied everywhere else. Israel should, therefore, be confronted in its abuses of human rights in Palestine, because these abuses, if normalized, will become a part of our daily lives, regardless of where we are in the world.

January 23, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Born in Deir Yassin (2017) Complete Film with English Subtitles

January 22, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

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