Israeli soldiers given ‘prizes’ for helping compile database of Palestinians’ pictures – reports
Israeli forces detain a man during a protest in Hebron. September 9, 2021. © Reuters / Mussa Qawasma
RT | November 8, 2021
The Israeli military has reportedly compiled a digital surveillance database to monitor Palestinians in Hebron in the West Bank using invasive facial recognition tech integrated into a network of cameras and soldiers’ phones.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) even incentivized soldiers to compete against each other to take photos of residents “with prizes for the most pictures collected by each unit,” according to the Washington Post. Soldiers were reportedly offered rewards such as a night off if they managed to take the most pictures.
The surveillance dragnet is apparently based in part on smartphone technology called ‘Blue Wolf’ that captures the photos and cross-references the faces to find matches on the database. The application then signals to the soldier through a “traffic light” of colors which individuals to detain, arrest or leave alone.
Noting that the IDF has admitted to the initiative’s existence in an online brochure, the report also features interviews with former soldiers who had previously spoken to Breaking the Silence – a group of veterans that highlights human rights violations by the IDF.
One former soldier reportedly described the program as the IDF’s secret “Facebook for Palestinians.” Another veteran told the paper a network of facial recognition cameras had been installed at various checkpoints in the flashpoint town – as well as a broader network of CCTV cameras known as ‘Hebron Smart City’ that sometimes even allows the IDF to see inside people’s homes.
The network also apparently makes use of ‘White Wolf’, an app employed by security volunteers in the West Bank to provide ID information about Palestinians before they enter settlements to work.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable if they used it in the mall in [my hometown], let’s put it that way,” said one recently discharged soldier who reportedly served in an intelligence unit. She called the Hebron surveillance system a “total violation of privacy of an entire people.”
People worry about fingerprinting, but this is that several times over.
In response, the IDF issued a statement that noted how “routine security operations” were “part of the fight against terrorism and the efforts to improve the quality of life for the Palestinian population in [the West Bank].” It would not comment on the IDF’s “operational capabilities in this context.”
Secret Israeli dossier contained no proof to declare Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’
RT | November 4, 2021
A classified dossier which Israel used to brand six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist outfits reportedly contains no concrete evidence to prove their involvement in violent activities or to otherwise justify the designation.
The document, which bears the logo of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, is the result of its inquiry into six West Bank civil society groups accused of securing foreign funding for a Palestinian militant group.
Despite the severity of the charges, however, Israel has yet to publicly release any evidence backing up its decision to brand the NGOs as terror organizations. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz prompted international backlash last month after he officially placed a terror designation on the six groups on the basis of the Shin Bet investigation.
Accessing the dossier, The Intercept and Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call found that the information used was based chiefly on interrogations of two accountants from another Palestinian NGO, the Health Work Committees, which was also labelled a terrorist organization last year.
The accountants’ lawyers told the outlets that Israeli authorities had “distorted” their testimonies, which were allegedly gathered under threats to family members and harsh interrogation methods that might be considered “torture.”
Shin Bet reportedly used a single statement from one accountant, about forging fake receipts for Health Work Committees, to accuse the other organizations of being involved in a similar scheme to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) militant group. The men apparently described a number of educational and humanitarian initiatives which could be affiliated with the organization as “PFLP activities,” but they did not describe any financing of violent activities.
The outlets said that none of the testimonies cited in the 74-page dossier were backed up by any documents or receipts. The dossier was apparently delivered in May to a number of EU countries that have funded the organizations, prompting independent audits and public criticism from Dutch and Belgian ministers, who stated that the allegations did not contain “even a single concrete piece of evidence.”
“Since the Europeans didn’t buy the allegations, [Israel] used unconventional warfare: declaring the organizations terrorist groups,” Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer representing Al-Haq, one of the accused Palestinian NGOs, told The Intercept. He added that the charges were a “political [attack] under the guise of security.”
Meanwhile, senior officials from two unspecified European countries told the outlet that since Gantz’s announcement, Israel has ignored all requests for more information. While the Israeli Ministry of Defense did not comment, two US sources told the outlets that an Israeli delegation had presented similar dossiers on Capitol Hill.
The six NGOs accused by Israel are Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Defense For Children International-Palestine and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
Here’s what’s wrong with Israel branding human-rights groups ‘terrorists’
By Eva Bartlett | RT | November 3, 2021
The Israeli government has designated several human-rights groups ‘terrorist organisations’ in a blatant attempt to further cover up the crimes they commit against the Palestinian people.
On October 22, Israel branded six respected Palestinian human-rights groups “terrorist organisations,” outraging the UN and the wider global community. This, coming from a state that imprisons and kills Palestinian children, and murders uniformed medics.
On the Israeli Defense Ministry’s list were Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
The groups either document Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, which, in my opinion, routinely amount to terrorism themselves, provide legal support to targeted or imprisoned Palestinians, or work to empower Palestinian civilians. In what bizarre world can they be deemed “terrorist groups”?
A joint statement by leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem and numerous other Israeli and Palestinian rights organisations described the ministry’s action as “a draconian measure that criminalises critical human-rights work,” and noted the importance of documentation, advocacy, and legal aid for the protection of rights worldwide. “Criminalising such work is an act of cowardice, characteristic of repressive authoritarian regimes,” it said.
A number of UN special rapporteurs have condemned the decision as “a frontal attack on the Palestinian human-rights movement and on human rights everywhere.”
Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack unarmed protesters with rubber bullets, live ammunition and tear gas; approve new buildings in illegal Jewish colonies on Palestinian land; and bulldoze centuries-old Palestinian graves in Old Jerusalem; and Israeli colonists continue to brutalise Palestinian civilians, as they have long done. And, of course, Gaza remains under a cruel blockade – the longest lockdown in the world. The roughly two million Gazans barely living in the territory are deprived of the most basic essentials, including urgently needed medical supplies, and Israel guns down and abducts their fishermen, often destroying their boats.
But, no, according to the state responsible for these and countless other acts of terrorism, the “terrorists” are the human-rights groups. This is the state that not only abuses and murders Palestinian civilians, and flattens entire neighbourhoods of Gaza, deliberately destroying vital infrastructure, but also occupies Lebanese and Syrian land, violates Lebanese airspace, and routinely illegally bombs Syria.
This is not the first time Israel has harassed Palestinian (and Israeli) rights organizations.
The children’s agency, DCIP, is “an independent, local Palestinian child-rights organisation dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” In July 2021, prior to its “terrorist” designation, its main office was raided by Israeli forces.
At the time, DCIP described the raid as “the latest act by Israeli authorities to increasingly push forward a campaign to delegitimise and criminalise Palestinian civil society and human rights organisations.” They also noted this was a campaign that has been on the rise in recent years, “advanced by a network of rising nationalist Israeli civil society organisations and associated organisations elsewhere, with the support of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
With the minister of defence designating such groups as “terrorists” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs supporting the delegitimization campaign, it is not credible to argue the persecution is not coming from the Israeli government itself.
For one of the other listed groups, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Israel’s targeted harassment caused the Dutch government to cease funding. Israel’s 972 magazine reported on this, saying “for years, a global network of Israel advocacy groups had been lobbying European governments to cut off funding to UAWC, a group that assists Palestinian farmers to cultivate and remain on their land, market their produce, and develop water infrastructure.”
Some of the work UAWC had done in recent years, the article noted, included establishing “52 cooperatives in the West Bank and Gaza, [and] rehabilitating almost 10,000 dunums of Palestinian land that were under threat of confiscation by Israeli authorities in Area C.”
It also planted nearly two million trees, and developed connecting routes amounting to almost 700km in distance. “UAWC also worked to provide better water access to Palestinians in Area C, where water and sanitation services are regularly interrupted by Israeli settlement expansion,” the article also said.
My experiences in Gaza, volunteering for years with impoverished Palestinian farmers and farm labourers coming under Israeli live fire on a near-daily basis, demonstrated to me that the work of groups like UWAC is essential to help farmers rehabilitate destroyed farmland. These are people simply trying to eke out an existence, being maimed and murdered by Israeli fire while doing so, their farmland and wells bulldozed and destroyed, their crops burned.
I also have some experience with the work of DCIP, which documents Palestinian child detainees in Israeli prisons, including children in solitary confinement, as well as children killed by Israeli soldiers or colonists. Without groups like this documenting these crimes, advocating for the children becomes all the more impossible. Clearly, this is one of the reasons Israel has made the outrageous terrorist designation.
But DCIP also helps sick and injured Palestinian children get medical care. The group helped rehabilitate a terribly injured, bedridden, 16-year-old Palestinian teen I met in a Cairo hospital in July 2008, months after an Israeli soldier shot him in the spine.
In March 2008, Abdul Rahman Abu Oida went to the roof of his home, checking the water tank to see why the family suddenly had no water, and was shot in the spine by an Israeli sniper hiding on another rooftop.
As I later wrote, “The bullet destroyed three vertebrae; the shot left Abed paralysed in a puddle of his own blood until his 13-year-old brother, 15 minutes later, found him and dragged him downstairs. Ambulances were prevented from accessing the area. Abed lay untreated for three hours before he reached a hospital in Gaza City.”
In the Cairo hospital where I met him, he was emaciated, with appallingly large bedsores on his backside and feet. These festering bedsores would be the cause of other ailments which plagued him and eventually caused his death. Through a contact at DCIP, Abed began to get proper treatment for his original wound and the consequences of the bedsores.
Although he survived the 2008/9 Israeli massacre, including Israel’s attack on the rehabilitation hospital in which he and 60 other patients were, in 2014 he finally passed away. But without DCIP’s intervention, Abed would surely have died not long after I met him in 2008.
I have written many times about the crimes Israel has perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, including sniping at medics and killing and maiming still other medics, including with dart bombs – both war crimes – as well as assassinating children and infants, and firing white phosphorus on civilian areas. These are all just from my personal documentation in the span of a few years.
Without people to document these crimes, Israel’s actions could be even more monstrous than they already are.
Last May, in an attempt to prevent journalists from reporting its war crimes, Israel precision-bombed key media buildings in Gaza (which it had previously done in 2009, 2012, and 2014).
Throughout occupied Palestine, the work of human rights groups in documenting Israel’s crimes remains imperative, and the country’s continued harassment of these groups – including their “terrorist” designation – indicates the effectiveness of their advocacy and the determination of Israel to whitewash its crimes.
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).
Journalists’ unions seek ICC probe into systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists
![Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas near reporters as they disperse Palestinian protesters on July 31, 2021 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GettyImages-1234355773-scaled-e1635944533233.jpg?resize=1200%2C799&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas near reporters as they disperse Palestinian protesters on July 31, 2021 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]
MEMO | November 3, 2021
There are “strong grounds” to conclude that Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists working in Palestine and its failure to properly investigate killings of media workers amount to war crimes, a complaint being submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) will say.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), working with the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), has asked Bindmans and Doughty Street Chambers to submit a complaint to the ICC detailing “the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists on behalf of four named victims – Ahmed Abu Hussein, Yaser Murtaja, Muath Armaneh, and Nedal Eshtayet – who were killed or maimed by Israeli snipers while covering demonstrations in Gaza. All were wearing clearly marked PRESS vests at the time they were shot.”
“At least 46 journalists have been killed since 2000 and no one has been held to account,” the IFJ said in a statement on its website.
The complaint will also include the “bombing of the Al-Shorouk and Al-Jawhara Towers in Gaza City in May 2021″.
IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “The targeting of journalists and media organisations in Palestine violates the right to life and freedom of expression. These crimes must be fully investigated. This systematic targeting must stop. The journalists and their families deserve justice.”
Still No Accountability From Israel Over the 1956 Massacre of Kafr Qasem
By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 31, 2021
On the 65th anniversary of Israel’s brutal massacre on the village of Kafr Qasem, where 48 Palestinians were gunned down by border police, the colonial entity has still failed to formally acknowledge its responsibility for the killings. A bill presented at the Knesset by Arab Israeli MKs was once again voted down. The bill would have required educational instruction in Israeli schools about the massacre, as well as the publication of any classified documents.
The Kafr Qasem massacre is an example of Israel’s premeditated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On the same day it attacked the Suez Canal, along with its French and British allies, a curfew was placed on eight Palestinian villages and communicated late, to ensure that Palestinians travelling back home from work would be out after the time restriction. The massacre is one example of Israel’s ongoing Nakba, and one that targeted Palestinians in Israel. Through re-enactment of terror reminiscent of the Nakba, Israel was aiming at further Palestinian dispossession.
It was only 25 days after the massacre that the international community became knowledgeable of the killings, through a press release by Tawfik Toubi, which explained the gruesome massacres in detail. “In some cases, the police stomped on the heads of the dead and sunk their bayonets in the bodies of the women,” an excerpt from the press release included in Samia Halaby’s book, Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacres, reads.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended this year’s memorial. His presence was an example of Israel’s hypocrisy when it comes to Palestinian history as a result of colonial violence. Asking for “forgiveness”, Herzog stated, “For it is clear to all of us: the killing and injury of innocents are absolutely forbidden. They must remain beyond all political arguments!”
But Israel has never made the distinction of the innocent. All Palestinians are a target, since each Palestinian stands in the way of Israel’s colonial expansion. In the case of Kafr Qasem, however, Israel is not averse to making a distinction between this massacre and other previous bouts of ethnic cleansing. Why should Palestinians “forgive” Israel for the Kafr Qasem massacres when the colonial enterprise is failing to institutionalise its culpability? Furthermore, why ask forgiveness for Kafr Qasem and not for the earlier massacres which paved the way for Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing?
Herzog’s words attempted to steer clear of what he called “political argument”. At the commemoration, he declared, “This is our opportunity, as a human society, to empower what we have in common as citizens and as neighbours.”
There is no equality between what Herzog calls citizens and neighbours without decolonisation. The Israeli president spoke from a privileged position to Palestinians who have lost family members, knowing that the perpetrators faced only a charade of justice. The convicted officials responsible for the murders were released from prison by 1960, by means of reduced sentences or pardons, meaning that the Israeli justice system failed to recognise the severity of the crime and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Speaking about the massacres politically as well as in terms of criminal culpability is necessary to ensure that the Palestinian narrative emerges. It is well documented that Israel’s existence is rooted in massacres and Palestinians’ dispossession.
With Kafr Qasem, as well as with other massacres, Israel needs to set the record straight – it is a perpetrator, with intent, and with an entire political structure that has supported its ethnic cleansing for decades. There should be no dissociating from political accountability merely to ensure that Palestinian memory remains distinct from the history which Zionist colonisation perpetrated since the Nakba.
Israel to Attack Iran? Washington Gives the Green Light to the ‘Military Option’
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 28, 2021
Some might recall candidate Joe Biden’s pledge to work to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was a multilateral agreement intended to limit Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, when Biden was Vice President, and was considered one of the only foreign policy successes of his eight years in office. Other signatories to it were Britain, China, Germany, France, and Russia and it was endorsed by the United Nations. The agreement included unannounced inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities by the IAEA and, by all accounts, it was working and was a non-proliferation success story. In return for its cooperation Iran was to receive its considerable assets frozen in banks in the United States and was also to be relieved of the sanctions that had been placed on it by Washington and other governments.
The JCPOA crashed and burned in 2018 when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, claiming that Iran was cheating and would surely move to develop a nuclear weapon as soon as the first phase of the agreement was completed. Trump, whose ignorance on Iran and other international issues was profound, had surrounded himself with a totally Zionist foreign policy team, including members of his own family, and had bought fully into the arguments being made by Israel as well as by Israel Lobby predominantly Jewish groups to include the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Trump’s time in office was spent pandering to Israel in every conceivable way, to include recognizing Jerusalem as the country’s capital, granting Israel the green light for creating and expanding illegal settlements on the West Bank and recognizing the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel.
Given Trump’s record, most particularly the senseless and against-American-interests abandonment of JCPOA, it almost seemed a breath of fresh air to hear Biden’s fractured English as he committed his administration to doing what he could to rejoin the other countries who were still trying to make the agreement work. After Biden was actually elected, more or less, he and his Secretary of State Tony Blinken clarified what the U.S. would seek to do to “fix” the agreement by making it stronger in some key areas that had not been part of the original document.
Iran for its part insisted that the agreement did not need any additional caveats and should be a return to the status quo ante, particularly when Blinken and his team made clear that they were thinking of a ban on Iranian ballistic missile development as well as negotiations to end Tehran’s alleged “interference” in the politics of the region. The interference presumably referred to Iranian support of the Palestinians as well as its role in Syria and Yemen, all of which had earned the hostility of American “friends” Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Israel inevitably stirred the pot by sending a stream of senior officials, to include Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to discuss “the Iranian threat” with Biden and his top officials. Lapid made clear that Israel “reserves the right to act at any given moment, in any way… We know there are moments when nations must use force to protect the world from evil.” And to be sure, Biden, like Trump, has also made his true sentiments clear by surrounding himself with Zionists. Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland have filled the three top slots at State Department, all are Jewish and all strong on Israel. Nuland is a leading neocon. And pending is the appointment of Barbara Leaf, who has been nominated Assistant Secretary to head the State Department’s Near East region. She is currently the Ruth and Sid Lapidus Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which is an AIPAC spin off and a major component in the Israel Lobby. That means that a member in good standing of the Israel Lobby would serve as the State Department official overseeing American policy in the Middle East.
At the Pentagon one finds a malleable General Mark Milley, always happy to meet his Israeli counterparts, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, an affirmative action promotion who likewise has become adept at parroting the line “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And need one mention ardent self-declared Zionists at the top level of the Democratic Party, to include Biden himself, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and, of course, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer?
So rejoining the JCPOA over Israel objections was a non-starter from the beginning and was probably only mooted to make Trump look bad. Indirect talks including both Iran and the U.S. technically have continued in Vienna, though they have been stalled since the end of June. Trita Parsi has recently learned that Iran sought to make a breakthrough for an agreement by seeking a White House commitment to stick with the plan as long as Biden remains in office. Biden and Blinken refused and Blinken has recently confirmed that a new deal is unlikely, saying “time is running out.”
And there have been some other new developments. Israeli officials have been warning for over twenty years that Iran is only one year away from having its own nukes and needs to be stopped, a claim that has begun to sound like a religious mantra repeated over and over, but now they are actually funding the armaments that will be needed to do the job. Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi has repeatedly said the IDF is “accelerating” plans to strike Iran, and Israeli politicians to include former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have regularly been threatening to do whatever must be done to deal with the threat from the Islamic Republic. Israeli media is reporting that $1.5 billion has been allocated in the current and upcoming budget to buy the American bunker buster bombs that will be needed to destroy the Iranian reactor at Bushehr and its underground research facilities at Natanz.
In the wake of the news about the war funding, there have also been reports that the Israeli Air Force is engaging in what is being described as “intense” drills to simulate attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. After Israel obtains the 5000 pound bunker buster bombs, it will also need to procure bombers to drop the ordnance, and one suspects that the U.S. Congress will somehow come up with the necessary “military aid” to make that happen. Tony Blinken has also made clear that the Administration knows what Israel is planning and approves. He met with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on October 13th and said if diplomacy with Iran fails, the U.S. will turn to “other options.” And yes, he followed that up with the venerable line that “Israel has the right to defend itself and we strongly support that proposition.”
Lapid confirmed that one of Blinken’s “options” was military action. “I would like to start by repeating what the Secretary of State just said. Yes, other options are going to be on the table if diplomacy fails. And by saying other options, I think everybody understands here … what is it that we mean.” It must be observed that in their discussion of Iran’s nuclear program, Lapid and Blinnken were endorsing an illegal and unprovoked attack to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon that it is apparently not seeking, but which it will surely turn to as a consequence if only to defend itself in the future.
In short, U.S. foreign policy is yet again being held hostage by Israel. The White House position is clearly and absurdly that an Israeli attack on Iran, considered a war crime by most, is an act of self-defense. However it turns out, the U.S. will be seen as endorsing the crime and will inevitably be implicated in it, undoubtedly resulting in yet another foreign policy disaster in the Middle East with nothing but grief for the American people. The simple truth is that Iran has neither threatened nor attacked Israel. Given that, there is nothing defensive about the actions Israel has already taken in sabotaging Iranian facilities and assassinating scientists, and there would be nothing defensive about direct military attacks either with or without U.S. assistance on Iranian soil. If Israel chooses to play the fool it is on them and their leaders. The United States does not have a horse in this race and should butt out, but one doubts if a White House and Congress, firmly controlled by Zionist forces, have either the wisdom or the courage to cut the tie that binds with the Jewish state.
The Covid vaccine victims who will not be silenced
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | October 28, 2021
IT’S hard to tell sometimes whether the mainstream media is ingenuous and stupid, or disingenuous and malign. Their across-the-board, uncritical and almost adulatory reporting of Israel’s ‘first out of the traps’ mass vaccination programme prompts this observation. Check out Israel on Google: however many pages you search, you won’t find one critical article on the Israeli vaccination programme’s efficacy or ethics.
Had it been an unmitigated success there’d be no cause for surprise. But the truth is otherwise. Despite its early roll-out and achieving rates of vaccination in vulnerable groups upwards of 90 per cent, it’s no secret that over the summer the country experienced another wave of the virus that vaccination proved no barrier to. By early August the vaccinated (not the unvaccinated) in Israel were reported by a leading Israeli health official to account for 95 per cent of severe and 90 per cent of new hospitalisations for Covid-19. Significant ‘excess’ deaths in non-Covid vulnerable age groups also raised serious questions about the vaccines’ safety. In addition, this pre-print study (un-peer reviewed) published in August found natural immunity conferred longer lasting and stronger protection against the disease and hospitalisation caused by the Delta variant than the vaccine.
None of this evidence caused Israel’s government even a pause for thought. Au contraire the country was first off the mark again – this time with ‘booster’ third and fourth jabs all endorsed by the MSM with articles crediting it with powers its predecessors strangely lacked:
‘ . . . third doses are highly effective at preventing people from becoming infected with Delta, among those who are willing to be vaccinated,’ one enthusiastic professor opined. He said they not only dramatically reduce a person’s susceptibility to infection, they create a barrier to the onward transmission and spread of the virus.
The message from Israel for the UK is clear, or so the i newspaper would also have us believe. The booster is the way forward that our Government must follow with all speed.
It’s not just the politicos and the MSM mouthing the mantra. The Brookings Institute has opined tortuously that despite Israel’s ‘successful’ vaccination programme, its mounting cases make ‘the booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine more necessary than ever’.
No academic looking for a living, breathing example of cognitive dissonance could find a better one.
This is the theory we’ve explained more than once in these pages. It accounts for the unaccountable – in this case for vaccine enthusiasts’ (do more) irrational response to the vaccines’ failure to deliver; for the ‘doubling down’ phenomenon – anything rather than acknowledge they may have got it wrong or placed too much reliance on what was always uncertain.
Faithful to the theory, they claim in face of negative data that their actions were successful in averting the worst, going further into denial with professions that had they not acted it would have been worse; thus setting up a canny ‘heads-we-win, tails-you-lose’ interpretation of things.
Festinger, the originator of this particular theory of human behaviour, explains it as ‘a psychic condition of tension and discomfort brought about by a palpable contradiction in an individual’s mental world’. It is an unease that must be eliminated: ‘Accordingly, something in the individual’s conscious awareness has to be invented, altered, ignored or denied.’
What is undoubtedly being denied by the authorities and their propagandists is the other side of the story – not only the inconvenient data but the human testimonies of those who have fallen foul of the experimental vaccine. This is the ultimate denial, keeping invisible the very real victims and survivors of the vaccines whose accounts are too threatening to the official narrative for the authorities to acknowledge.
Thank God then for the The Testimonies Project from Israel … to make sure their voices are heard, since they are not being heard in the Israeli media.
It’s a project that needs replicating worldwide to ensure that the millions of Covid vaccine victims are not airbrushed out of history and that there will be record of the human suffering that politicians can and must be brought to account for.
You can watch it here.
Is Biden any different from Trump on Palestine?
Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett meets U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on August 27, 2021 in Washington, DC, United States [GPO – Anadolu Agency]
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 26, 2021
When Joe Biden was declared the winner in the US presidential election last November, expectations in Ramallah were high. A Biden administration, compared with the brazenly pro-Israel Donald Trump administration, would surely be much fairer to Palestinians. That was the conventional wisdom at the time.
Unsurprisingly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was among the first world leaders to congratulate Biden enthusiastically. “I look forward to working with the president-elect and his administration to strengthen Palestinian-American relations and to achieve freedom, independence, justice and dignity for our people,” said Abbas immediately after the election result was finally confirmed.
In contrast, the then Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, waited for a relatively long time to offer his congratulations in the hope, perhaps, that his close friend and staunch political ally Trump would succeed in reversing the election outcome.
Nearly a year later, however, it is hard to understand the Palestinian euphoria that prevailed in late 2020. And how do we explain the absence of criticism of the Biden administration for failing to reverse most of Trump’s pro-Israel decisions? These include the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital and the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city in violation of international law and even America’s own declared policies.
Why does the PA leadership remain largely silent on the fact that Biden and his team, despite their rhetoric about peace and dialogue, maintain the same degree of commitment to Israel as Trump? The short answer is money.
The only tangible step with regard to Palestine that the Biden administration has taken in the past year has been the restoration of funds that Trump had cut from Palestinian aid in 2018, reversing at a stroke nearly three decades of America, along with other “donor countries”, bankrolling the PA.
In April, the White House declared its intention to restore some, though not all, of such funds given to the Palestinian Authority. An amount of $235 million was to be paid as $75m in economic and developmental assistance; $10m in “peacebuilding” programmes to be provided by USAID agency; and the remainder in humanitarian assistance to the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.
The latter, however, did not come without caveats. On 14 July, UNRWA reached an agreement with Washington regarding the use of this money. The so-called Framework for Cooperation stipulated that, “The US will not make any contributions to UNRWA, except on the condition that UNRWA takes all feasible measures to ensure that no part of the US contribution is used to assist any refugee receiving military training” from any Palestinian resistance group. Under the agreement, which was strongly criticised by the Palestinians, UNRWA will receive an additional $135m from the US.
On the political front, however, there is little else to report. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) office in Washington, although expected to be reopened by Biden after its abrupt closure by Trump in September 2018, remains closed. Moreover, the US Consulate in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, which was also shut down by Biden’s predecessor, remains “a major point of contention” between Israel and the US, according to Axios.
As soon as the Biden administration declared its intention to reopen its mission in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, top Israeli officials poured into Washington to prevent even this symbolic Palestinian gain from taking place. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett raised the issue with Biden during their White House meeting in August, requesting the president to refrain from carrying out such a move. According to the Times of Israel, Bennett asked the Americans to open the consulate in Ramallah rather than Jerusalem.
In September, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned Washington that reinstating the US mission in East Jerusalem was a “bad idea”, suggesting that such a move could force the collapse of Israel’s fragile coalition government.
The subject also topped the agenda of Lapid’s meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington earlier this month. Israeli officials revealed that Lapid told Blinken, “I don’t know how to hold this coalition together if you reopen the consulate.” This too was reported by Axios.
To avoid a confrontation and to buy time for the Israeli government, Blinken proposed the establishment of a joint committee to “discuss the issue with maximum discretion.” The Israeli government is thus using the current fractious ruling coalition as a pretence to defer the US decision on the consulate. It is hinting that if the US reopens the consulate before the government budget passes in November, the coalition will dissolve, with the ominous possibility of Netanyahu’s return.
It is expected that the committee will not be formed until the budget vote. Even then, it is unclear if Washington will succeed in persuading Israel to respect Biden’s consulate decision.
Notably, while the matter of the consulate should concern Palestinians the most, no Palestinian official will be included in the exclusive and secretive Blinken-Lapid committee. More bizarrely, the PA does not seem to mind this snub. There has been no public outcry by Abbas and his officials. This, of course, is typical of the PA, and will remain the case for as long as US funds are finding their way into PA coffers. All other issues appear to have little or no urgency. It’s all about the money.
If a political compromise is found, and the US Consulate is finally reopened, will it alter the reality on the ground? Since 1994, the consulate has played a largely symbolic role, one that mattered most to the PA. It hardly changed the political equation in favour of the Palestinians. In a telling and surreal reference to the consulate, Noga Tarnopolsky wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2019: “The consulate was known for hosting one of the liveliest parties on Jerusalem’s annual schedule, a 4 July gala held on the front lawn.”
A stone’s throw away from the city’s “liveliest parties”, hundreds of Palestinian families are either being evicted from their homes or face the risk of eviction by the US-funded Israeli police and army. A little further away is Israel’s apartheid wall that continues to segment occupied Palestine according to race, ethnicity and religion. We are justified, then, in not being too optimistic that the reopening of the US mission will change the horrific status quo in any way whatsoever.
The Joe Biden administration is proving to be nothing but a soft facade for the same policies enacted by Donald Trump. The only apparent difference is that, this time, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, for self-serving reasons, do not seem to mind.
Direct Flight from Saudi Arabia Lands in Zionist Entity Monday Evening: Report
Al-Manar | October 25, 2021
A direct flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will land at Zionist entity’s Ben Gurion Airport on Monday evening, Israeli media reported.
“The flight will be a VIP class Boeing 737-700 aircraft with registration A6-AIN owned by the Emirati Royal Jet airline,” Kan pubcaster said.
The Riyadh-Tel Aviv flight comes after a report that White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan raised the possibility of Saudi Arabia joining the so-called Abraham Accords during a meeting last month in Riyadh with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), according to three US and Arab sources involved in the talks.
The sources said that during the conversation, MBS did not immediately reject the proposal to establish diplomatic ties with the Zionist entity, listing the steps needed to make the move, including improving the relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
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The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | January 17, 2023
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