Iran Starts 60% Enrichment in Reaction to Natanz Sabotage
Mehr News Agency – April 13, 2021
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Sayyed Abbas Araqchi announced the beginning of 60% enrichment in the Natanz Enrichment Facility.
Araqchi who is in Vienna to participate in a new round of talks with the P4+1 and the EU representative within the framework of the JCPOA Joint Commission announced the start of 60% enrichment on Tuesday afternoon.
Iran has announced today in a letter to the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency that it would begin 60% enrichment, he said.
Another 1,000 centrifuges with 50% more capacity will be added to the machines in Natanz, in addition to replacing the damaged ones, he added.
Earlier, after the recent sabotage of the Natanz enrichment facility, Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations Kazem Gharibabadi announced that a new generation of machines will be installed in Natanz and several other technical measures will be announced this week.
The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Sunday that an incident took place in a part of the electricity distribution network of Shahid Ahmadi Roshan facility in Natanz.
Following the incident, AEOI Chief Ali-Akbar Salehi slammed the “act of sabotage”, noting that the international community, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), must deal with such “nuclear terrorism” that targets Iran’s facilities.
US, Israel set to punish Palestinians for holding a democratic election, again
By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | April 11, 2021
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.
Israeli and US officials are citing concerns over the potential outcome of the upcoming May 22 Palestinian legislative elections, and if their reactions mirror the past example, the conflict in the Palestinian Occupied Territories could severely escalate.
The people of the West Bank, East Jerusalem al-Quds and Gaza are set to vote in their first set of elections in 15 years. Much to the dismay of Israel and the United States, who claim they will not interfere in Palestinian democratic processes, it looks like their most despised group Hamas is on the way to a potential landslide victory.
In 2006, Hamas historically won the legislative elections, seizing control of the Gaza Strip. Their Fatah Party rivals, the United States and Israel, however, did not accept the election results and decided to take action to punish the people of Palestine for having their own say at the ballot box.
What ensued was dubbed as the ‘Palestinian civil war,’ which officially ended in 2007, with Hamas having successfully stopped an attempted Fatah-led coup – backed by the United States and Israel. Israel, as a result of the removal of Fatah power from the Gaza Strip, saw the perfect opportunity to impose a full and tightened blockade over the territory – thus collectively punishing its civilian population for their choice in the elections. Upon the Hamas victory, the US and EU also imposed overwhelming sanctions on Gaza meant to undermine the elected Hamas government.
As a result of the rivalry between the Fatah Party, currently heading the Palestinian Authority (PA) – which maintains limited control over small portions of the West Bank – and Hamas, there have been no elections since. Time and time again Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose term in office expired in 2009, has postponed the elections, until early this year, when Abbas announced that legislative and presidential elections were finally to take place.
For Palestinians, their elections are set up to fail from the get-go. Pretty much the only political party they have to choose from, without being punished by the West and Israel, is the Fatah Party. All other major political Parties are registered terrorist organizations by most Western countries and Israel itself. Due to Western political immaturity, no organization that refuses to sell out the Palestinian cause for national liberation is to be considered as a legitimate political force and so instead it must be punished, attacked, sanctioned and humiliated. Thus, any Palestinian voting for a change to the status quo, meaning voting outside of lists belonging to Fatah, are to be punished for their choice to change to political scene.
We know from statements published by Fatah and Hamas that both intend to set up a unity government, meaning that Hamas will be in on decisions to lead the Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet, if this occurs, Israel is very open about their rejection of any collaboration with a government formed of Hamas members. This means that all of the cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, such as “security cooperation,” would cease and the two would be at conflict.
Early this year, Israeli Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman had repeatedly warned President Mahmoud Abbas about the consequences of holding elections and made it clear that Hamas would not be tolerated. The Shin Bet chief also stressed that Abbas not go ahead with the elections.
Now it has been reported that, in a meeting between the two, both Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken are “concerned” about a Hamas win and urge a postponement of the elections. The hilarious part of the meeting, reported by Israel’s Walla news outlet, was that both figures also stressed that they didn’t intend to interfere in Palestinian democratic processes. But if you are urging a postponement of elections, after 15 years of no elections and are set to reject the party most likely to win at this point, then what else other than interference is that?
Israel has already gone on a tirade of arresting Palestinian political activists and prominent members of Hamas, in the West Bank and threatens ending cooperation with the PA, which will result in an escalation of violence. The US also does not indicate it will accept a Hamas win and is already expressing concern. So, if Hamas were to win in the West Bank, then we can only assume that their sanctions against Gaza may be transferred somewhat onto the West Bank too. This is essentially the US and Israel offering the Palestinian people an ultimatum; choose the status quo and still have the limited money you have, or choose who you like and we will crush you.
Due to the internal divisions now seen in the Fatah Party – which seems most likely to pave the way for a Hamas win – there is no indication that this will be respected by the West and Israel.
So, what do Palestinians do, vote for the status quo and continue to suffer as usual, watching the settlements expand upon the rest of their lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds), or vote for the alternative which will likely mean an all-out conflict with the West and Israel?
As much as the West and Israel attempt to publicly distance themselves from the Palestinian elections, they are as much a part of it as are all the Palestinian political parties themselves. This is just the reality of the ongoing illegal occupation, there is no official autonomous Palestinian State, only oppressed peoples fighting for that State. So, any attempt to act as if a fair election, without Israeli-US influence is possible, is a product of great imagination.
Iran reports ‘NUCLEAR terrorism’ attack at Natanz facility – day after uranium enrichment began
RT | April 11, 2021
Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility was hit by a “terrorist” attack on Sunday, the country’s nuclear chief said, hours after reports of an electrical “accident” – and a day after new uranium enrichment centrifuges were started up.
Iran reserves the right to “take action” against those behind the incident at the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facility in Natanz, the head of the nation’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, told state TV on Sunday.
He called the incident at the plant an act of “nuclear terrorism.”
Iran “condemns this heinous act,” Salehi said, calling on the international community and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in particular to “deal” with the act of “nuclear terrorism.”
The incident at the plant was earlier described as an “electricity problem” at a power grid in Natanz. “Fortunately, the incident did not cause any human injuries or pollution,” Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), said earlier on Sunday.
A member of the Iranian parliament’s Energy Commission, Malek Shariati Niasar, also described the incident as “very suspicious,” and said he had assumed it might potentially be “sabotage and infiltration,” since it took place around the National Day of Nuclear Technology.
The event reportedly caused a blackout in the electricity distribution network of the Shahid Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan nuclear facility in Natanz. Further details have not been made public and the causes of the incident are currently “under investigation.”
Natanz is key to Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which Tehran says is strictly peaceful. In early February, it said that hundreds of advanced centrifuges with a higher capacity for uranium enrichment were installed there.
The events also took place just a day after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran has begun using new advanced IR-5 and IR-6 centrifuges to enrich uranium at the Natanz site.
Israeli media reported that the incident was likely caused by a cyberattack, while the Times of Israel has openly claimed, citing “Western intelligence sources,” that Mossad was “behind” the power cut in Natanz. There have been no official statements from Israeli officials so far, however.
Iran’s nuclear program was significantly limited under the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It included caps on uranium purity and the amount Iran is able to produce.
After then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal, despite the IAEA repeatedly confirming Iran’s compliance, Tehran said that it would no longer be meeting its obligations in full. Washington has since launched a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions on Iran.
Earlier this week, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said the nation had already produced 55 kilograms of 20%-enriched uranium this year, adding that it exceeded the enrichment capacity achieved before the JCPOA. All of Iran’s nuclear aspirations are “peaceful and civilian,” President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday.
Recent talks in Vienna on the nuclear deal, which saw Washington and Tehran negotiating indirectly, have not resulted in any major breakthrough.
Former minister blasts pro-Israel lobby over ‘disgusting interference’ in British politics
MEMO | April 9, 2021
Former Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan has accused pro-Israel lobbyists of “the most disgusting interference” in British politics, and of negatively influencing the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The veteran politician has also claimed that Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) went “ballistic” and blocked him from taking on a new post covering the region’s affairs.
Duncan, a former Conservative MP and government minister, makes the sensational claims in his newly published memoir, In The Thick of It: The private diaries of a minister (published by William Collins, 2021). Speaking to journalist Michael Crick about his book for the MailPlus website, the 64 year-old blasted CFI and its undue influence in British politics.
Conservative Friends of Israel, he said, had injected a “Netanyahu-type view of Israeli politics into our foreign policy,” referring to Israel’s right-wing prime minister. He claimed that it had applied pressure on Theresa May’s government to prevent him becoming Middle East minister at the Foreign Office.
In his book, Duncan claims that his new role was agreed until the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson alerted him to the fact that CFI “are going ballistic”. He insists that he was blocked from taking the post because he believes in the rights of the Palestinians.
In one diary entry Duncan is scathing about Conservative MPs’ fawning over Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain. He was “ashamed” of the British government, accusing officials of allowing Netanyahu to “peddle pro-settlement propaganda”.
Duncan described to Crick the culture of fear created by CFI. “A lot of things do not happen in foreign policy or in government for fear of offending them because that’s the way it’s put to them by the CFI.”
He warned: “It’s a sort of buried scandal that has to stop… they will interfere at a high level in British politics in the interests of Israel on the back of donor power in the UK.” Ultimately, he pointed out, the influence of the pro-Israel lobby group came at the expense of the Palestinians.
Duncan has been a major target for the pro-Israel lobby. In 2017, an Al Jazeera documentary sensationally exposed the operations of pro-Israel lobbyists working with the Israeli Embassy in London to “take down” a minister of the Crown. Duncan, fellow Conservative MP Crispin Blunt and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were marked out as targets. Writing for Al Jazeera at the time, Robert Grenier, a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, warned against what he called the “insidious threats” of the pro-Israel lobby.
Read also: Conservative Friends of Israel urge UK to oppose ICC’s war crimes investigation
Florida and Texas Ban Vaccine Passports
By Stephen Lendman | April 8, 2021
Digital vaccine passports are all-about pushing unwitting people to be jabbed with experimental, hazardous to heath drugs that risk potentially irreversible harm short-or-longer-term when taken as directed.
Already rolled out in Israel, Denmark, and Estonia by late April, they’re coming to the US and other Western states.
Apartheid in new form, they’ll create two-tiered societies — jabbed individuals afforded rights everyone deserves and unjabbed social outcasts denied them.
Where vaccine/health passports are instituted, they’ll likely be required for employment, attending school, air travel, other public transportation, hotel reservations, restaurant dining, in-store shopping, attending sporting events, and other social interactions.
Normal daily lives and routines will likely be denied without proof of covid jabs.
What was inconceivable not long ago already became the new abnormal.
Refuseniks will become untouchable social outcasts.
Draconian brave new world conditions will be more intolerable, unsafe and unfit to live in than already.
Nothing remotely justifies lockdowns, quarantines, face masks that don’t protect and risk harm from longterm use, PCR tests not designed to diagnose viral infections, social distancing that destroys normal human interactions, and hazardous experimental drugs that risk contracting diseases they’re supposed to protect against, but don’t.
What’s happening in real time is all-about replacing free and open societies with dystopian ones.
It’s about transforming world community states into ruler-serf societies.
It’s about instituting social control — enforced by police state harshness.
It’s about powerful monied interests owning everything, exploited ordinary people nothing.
It’s the worst of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World combined.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott banned the transformation of their states into two-tiered ones.
On April 2, DeSantis banned businesses from requiring customers to show proof of covid jabs (by executive order) to enter their premises and be served.
Barring government agencies from requiring proof of jabs, he said “vaccination passports reduce individual freedom and will harm patient privacy.”
His order doesn’t prevent businesses from establishing screening protocols and other policies recommended by state and federal public health officials.
On Tuesday, Texas Governor Abbott banned state agencies, political organizations receiving public funds, and some private entities from requiring vaccine passports or other proof of jabbing for covid to receive services.
His executive order overrides local ones that call for mandating what infringes on civil liberties.
“We will continue to (jab) Texans (for covid) and protect public health, (but) will do (it) without treading on Texans’ personal freedoms,” Abbott said, adding:
The US Constitution does not permit the federal government to mandate proof of inoculations.
The Biden regime ruled out establishing a national mandate to show proof of covid jabs — so far.
At this time, it’s up to states and local communities to set their own standards.
That policy isn’t written in stone and could change ahead — notably if millions of refuseniks refuse jabs to protect their health and well-being.
Pre-2020, no one could have imagined what’s going on now.
Draconian policies may harden ahead. Guidelines being developed by the White House could be stiffened after in place.
Free and open societies in the West are being replaced by draconian ones.
Based on what happened since early last year, what remains of personal freedoms may disappear entirely ahead — full-blown tyranny replacing them.
A Final Comment
Since Texas scrapped mandatory mask-wearing in public weeks earlier, seasonal flu-renamed covid outbreaks and deaths declined in numbers.
Days earlier, MSNBC noted that Texas today resembles 2019, adding:
“(R)estaurants are full. Ballparks are full.” Yet covid outbreaks declined.
Asked for an explanation, pro-mass-jabbing huckster, fraudster, profiteer, chief Biden regime medical adviser Fauci — a doctor who never treated a patient — failed to explain what’s clear to truth-telling medical and scientific experts.
Policies imposed since early last year did infinitely more harm than any number of serious diseases combined — notably by creating deeper Main Street Depression conditions than in the 1930s and deceiving the public to self-inflict harm from toxic covid jabs.
Former Trump regime trade representative Peter Navarro slammed Fauci, saying the following:
“From the first time I met him, he just did not make a lot of sense.”
“We’ve seen all of his flipflops.”
“My new theory is that he’s simply a sociopath. He just lies to advance his own interest.”
Navarro wants him held accountable for serial lying that contributed to inflicting enormous harm on millions of Americans and countless others abroad.
For what I call crimes against humanity, US and other Western political hardliners, their public health handmaidens, Pharma and media press agents for all of the above share guilt.
Iranian merchant vessel Saviz struck by blast in Red Sea, suffers minor damage: Official
Press TV – April 7, 2021
Iran says one of its merchant vessels has been targeted by an explosion of unknown origin in the strategic Red Sea, in the second such incident in less than a month.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatizadeh told reporters that the Saviz ship was struck by the blast at around 6 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) on Tuesday, April 5, near the coast of Djibouti, and sustained minor damage.
“Fortunately, no fatalities were caused by the incident, and technical evaluations on how the incident occurred and its origins are underway,” he added.
The Iranian official said Tehran will take all the necessary measures regarding the case through international bodies.
Rejecting media claims, Khatibzadeh said the Saviz is a non-military vessel, whose specifications and mission have been formally registered with the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
He said the ship acts as Iran’s logistic station in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, protects naval routes and provides security for merchant vessels and tankers against pirates.
A New York Times story published on Wednesday quoted an anonymous US official telling the newspaper that the Tel Aviv regime notified the United States that Israeli forces had attacked an Iranian ship in the Red Sea.
The unnamed US official said Israel called the strike a retaliation, and that the ship had been hit below the water line.
In a similar incident last month, an Iranian cargo ship was damaged after it was targeted by a terrorist attack en route to Europe in the Mediterranean Sea.
Tehran said back then that such acts of terror are a clear example of naval piracy and run counter to international law on the safety of commercial vessels.
On February 25, an explosion struck Israeli-owned and the Bahamas-flagged ship, the MV Helios Ray, in the Sea of Oman near the strategic mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hastily accused Iran of attacking the ship. Iran categorically rejected the charge.
Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Ravanchi, in a letter addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on March 5, warned of consequences of any possible miscalculated measure by Israel over the explosion.
“The incident has all the characteristic of a complicated false flag operation carried out by actors in order to pursue their malign policies and to advance their illegitimate objectives,” Takht Ravanchi wrote.
Would Israel Blackmail a US Congressman?
Should there be any doubt?
By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | April 6, 2021
Israel has been involved in several stories currently making their way through the US media. The most fascinating tale concerns Republican Party Congressman from Florida Matt Gaetz. Gaetz is a Donald Trump loyalist who has up until recently been touted as the party’s future. Young, photogenic and a “firebrand” defender of GOP priorities, he has been much in the news lately.
Per the New York Times coverage of the current story involving him “The Justice Department is investigating whether Gaetz… a close ally of former President Donald Trump, broke federal sex trafficking laws. The inquiry focuses on his relationships with young women who had been recruited online, and whether he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Investigators believe that he paid for sex with a number of women he met through Joel Greenberg — a former Florida tax collector who was indicted last year on a federal sex trafficking charge, among other offenses… Gaetz has denied paying for sex or sleeping with anyone underage, but it’s clear that the story is far from over. And he’s increasingly isolated: Few Republicans have spoken up in support of him, and today [April 2nd] his own communications director, Luke Ball, resigned.”
There have also been claims that Gaetz, who is engaged but not married, paid for transporting the young woman with whom he had sex across state lines, a federal offense. Reportedly, Gaetz is not well liked by his peers due to his impulsive and even erratic behavior “including a fondness for illicit drugs and younger women” with many considering him to be the proverbial “loose cannon on deck.” CNN reports that “Gaetz had a history of showing off nude photos and videos of women that he said he’d slept with to colleagues on the House floor.”
The Gaetz story also has spawned back stories to the investigation. The Daily Beast is reporting that in April 2018 Matt was involved in a secret midnight visit to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s rooms accompanied by Greenberg, who worked in the office during the day. The two men were recorded on surveillance cameras and they forgot to reset the office alarm, which led to inquiries on the following day that produced a series of text messages in which Greenberg admitted that they had been in the office so he could show the congressman how everything was being done there. They apparently had been going through expired drivers’ licenses, which were stored for disposal in the office.
Greenberg has since lost his job and is being investigated in a “…case has now vastly expanded to a 33-count indictment that includes a diverse list of crimes that range from wire fraud to sex trafficking. Investigators say Greenberg recruited at least one teenager between 14 and 17 years old to engage in a ‘commercial sex act’ between May and November 2017 in Central Florida and elsewhere. Investigators also say that Greenberg used his privileged access to Florida’s drivers’ license database to look up private information on ‘individuals’ with whom he ‘was engaged in “sugar-daddy” relationships.’ Additionally, Greenberg is also accused of making fake IDs—potentially explaining why the 2018 surveillance footage raised concerns that led to that text message conversation handed to investigators.”
What a naughty Gaetz was allegedly up to fits in nicely with what Greenberg was also doing but the fun involving Israel really starts with an apparent extortion scheme linked to the investigation that has involved Gaetz’s father Don, a wealthy former president of the Florida State Senate. Following up on the Gaetz story, the Washington Examiner discovered that Don had been approached by a Florida lawyer named Don McGee who promised that a payment of $25 million would make Matt’s “future legal and political problems go away.” Don Gaetz subsequently contacted the FBI and wore a wire that recorded a second visit made by a former Air Force officer named Bob Kent, who explained that the money would be a loan for “Project Homecoming,” a plan to arrange the liberation of ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson, who is generally believed to be either dead or in prison after an ill-advised somewhat mysterious visit to Iran where he disappeared fourteen years ago.
And then the tale really takes off. The American Conservative magazine has obtained a series of “authenticated” text messages between Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and Israeli New York Consulate General’s media officer, Jake Novak, which suggest that the Israeli government was associated with both Kent and McGee and might have been behind the extortion. Presumably Israel was prepared to use its political clout with congress and the media to make Matt’s problems go away in return for the funding of a commando raid that would free Levinson and deliver both a blow to Iran and a major propaganda victory for Jerusalem.
Cartoonist Adams’ alleged connection with the Israeli Consulate is not at this point completely clear, though the texts would suggest that he is a trusted contact. An angry Novak, referring to the Times article on the investigation, wrote to him complaining that “The backstory is that this is screwing up my efforts to free Bob Levinson. Gaetz’s dad was secretly f[u]nding us. So I’m very much wanting this to be untrue. I’ve got a commando team leader friend of mine nervously waiting for the wire transfers to clear.” He then goes on to claim that it was not extortion in a legal sense, “The real documents do not extort. And we only asked for $25 million as an estimate at first. We came way down.”
The two men also exchanged their view of the case against Matt Gaetz. Novak wrote “Scoop I can’t report: Rep. Gaetz is the subject of a secret Grand Jury probe of sex with minors and possibly murder conspiracy. I trust the source. Charges/accusations are apparently ‘very credible.’” Adams responds that “The allegations against him do not sound credible” with Novak answering “I don’t want to believe them but my source says it looks bad from closer in.” Adams then texts “I’m betting against it but the extortion counter claim sounds credible. Has witnesses apparently.” Novak concludes that “Now the Gaetz’s have burned Kent AND Levinson.”
If the American Conservative documents are not part of some elaborate hoax, the evidence of how Israel systematically interferes in American politics is yet again clearly visible. One of the most remarkable aspects of the story is the impression that Israeli consulate employee Jake Novak, who sounds somewhat like an intelligence officer, appears to believe that the exposure of the game he was involved in is annoying but no big deal, confident that Israel is never punished by Washington no matter what it does. He also appeared to have inside information on a confidential Justice Department investigation. Beyond that, the possible extortion scheme itself may be based on a possible set-up “honey trap” followed by what amounts to the blackmailing of an American Congressman.
What exactly did the Israeli Consulate’s proxies McGee and Kent have on Matt Gaetz that might have impelled his wealthy father to fund an implausible rescue operation directed against Iran which could easily escalate into a major international incident, possibly even a war? There are clearly documents, recordings and transcripts…will we the public ever see or hear them? If this all begins to smell like the Jeffrey Epstein saga it should and it is just one more good reason not to trust the Israelis on any issue. One wonders if anyone in the FBI or the Joe Biden Administration has the courage to follow this investigation through to wherever it might lead.
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
Oxford Researcher Who Helped Push US to Depixelate Israel in Satellite Snaps Died From Cancer at 34
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.04.2021
For over two decades, US legislation stopped American companies from creating and publishing high-resolution satellite images of Israel. In July 2020, lawmakers updated the obscure amendment regulating the “pixelated Israel,” paving the way for detailed snaps of everything from Tel Aviv’s nuclear reactor to the country’s activity in the West Bank.
Michael Fradley and Andrea Zerbini, a pair of Oxford University archeologists specialising in the Middle East, were responsible for spearheading the campaign to amend an obscure US law to unblur satellite imagery of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Company, Dr. Fradley said that he and Zerbini stumbled upon an obscure law, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, which was passed thanks to Israeli lobbying as part of the National Defence Authorisation Act of 1997, in the mid-2010s after being frustrated by the lack of high-quality satellite images of the region.
“We were archeologists. We didn’t really know anything about space law,” Fradley recalled, adding that beginning in 2017, he and his colleague got to work trying to find a legal way to get around the restrictions.
Eventually, the pair of academics discovered that Airbus, the Western European multinational aerospace giant, has been producing high-resolution sub-2 metre per pixel images of Israel and Palestinian lands since at least 2012, with the European company not subject to the US law.
The academics proceeded to press the United States to change its laws, pointing to a reform mechanism within the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment which allows for restrictions to be reduced if companies outside the US were selling their own satellite imagery at resolutions higher than those set by the law.
After obtaining the clearer images from Airbus, Fradley and Zerbini published a paper in 2018 in Space Policy, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, in which they urged US authorities to pay attention to advances in commercial satellite technology outside the US and update policy accordingly.
In their paper, Fradley and Zerbini stressed that the regulations required an “urgent review,” and recommended that “US imagery should meet what has become the international standard of 0.5m.” The archeologists argued that the restrictions “hampered scientific research” and that their removal would “open up access to modern satellite imagery, as well as historical images captured by spy satellite… [and] allow researchers to record longer-term landscape change.” Other prospective benefits presumably included surveying and monitoring, keeping tabs on heritage sites, climate assessments and more.
In July 2020, someone in the US government finally listened and the Kyl-Bigaman Amendment was updated – its exception for Israel and the Palestinian territories modified to a limit of 0.4 meters per pixel, and a further requirement to drop it to 0.3 meters after Airbus launched its new generation of imaging satellites.
The Israeli military criticised the US decision profusely, with Amnon Harari, head of space programmes at Israel’s Defence Ministry, complaining to local media at the time that the Israeli side was never consulted about the change, and stressing that the military “would always prefer to be photographed at the lowest resolution possible.”
Bittersweet Victory
Recalling the moment when he learned that the rules would be changing, Fradley told ABC that it was “really a happy moment,” but also one “tinged with real sadness.” Dr. Zerbini, his research partner, died of a rare form of liver cancer in 2019 at the age of just 34 after become ill in late 2018.
“He was the only other person who really kind of understood the nuances and how much we put into it,” Fradley said. “We were immensely proud of the work that we had done.”
Unexpected Consequences
In addition to finally opening Israel and the Palestinian territories to be studied by archeologists, Fradley and Zerbini’s footwork allowed for investigators to make major new discoveries related to Israel’s suspected nuclear weapons programme (Israel formally neither confirms nor denies that it possesses nukes).
In February, an independent group of arms-control and non-proliferation experts used commercially available high-resolution images of Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant snapped by SpaceWill, a Chinese company, to show that “significant construction” activities were taking place at the site. Days later, additional, clearer images provided by Planet Labs, a California-based private Earth imaging company, confirmed the construction.
The Planet Labs’ satellite snaps would not have been made available had it not been for Fradley and Zerbini’s work.
Nor would satellite imagery-based studies of Israeli activities in the West Bank or the occupied Golan Heights, such as the bulldozing of structures, settlement growth, and military emplacements.
Australian-British received Israeli training for spying in Iran, analyst affirms
Press TV – April 3, 2021
A political commentator has shed light on the case of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British citizen who served a prison sentence over espionage charges in Iran, highlighting US media’s dishonesty in intentional concealing of the truth about Tehran’s assertion that the academic lecturer had passed a special training course under Israel’s direct supervision for her spying mission in the country.
Tim Anderson, the director of the Center for Counter Hegemonic Studies (CCHS) in Australia, said in an article published on the center’s website on Friday that the American news mogul Rupert Murdoch’s media outlet had spread misinformation over the convicted Israeli spy, Gilbert, who returned home to Australia from an Iranian jail late last year.
The media outlet claimed that Gilbert had been held in a “hellhole” in Iran for no reason at all.
The British-Australian academic was freed from Tehran’s Evin prison in November after serving about two years of her 10-year jail term.
Iranian media reported that Gilbert had passed a two-year special training course in Israeli occupied territories for her spying mission and she had became fluent in Persian during the course and got prepared to perform espionage activities inside Iran.
Anderson said he had provided Murdoch journalist Stephen Rice with evidence that Gilbert had engaged in Israeli “leadership training” for her spying mission in Iran through a fellowship offer in the Ein Prat Israeli leadership academy at the Alon Shvut settlement, one of many illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Anderson added that Gilbert had received a scholarship for the course from Tikvah Fund, an institution committed to supporting the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people.
As cited by the CCHS’s website, Anderson said, “Stephen Rice was either too lazy or too dishonest” to look at the links he had sent him, and that Rice had mentioned in one Israeli article that the linked article said nothing about “leadership” or “training” and those words were an “invention” by Anderson.
“Murdoch’s Megaphone @riceyontheroad was either too lazy or dishonest to recognize Israeli sources backing Iran’s assertion that @KMooreGilbert took Israeli leadership training in a militarized colony at the heart of Palestine’s occupied West Bank,” Anderson also said in a tweet.
Anderson also underlined that Rice pretended Gilbert’s Israeli “leadership training” did not exist and he misled his readers.
“This willful ignorance and distortion of facts allows the Murdoch stable to keep representing the US backed regional wars in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen as humanitarian exercises,” he noted.
Gilbert traveled to different Iranian cities as part of her mission and gathered information.
Unaware that she was being watched by Iranian intelligence forces, the woman went to religious and tourist places in order to make her sojourn in Iran look normal.
She later tried to get in touch with some figures and targets to obtain economic and military information about Iran as well as the anti-Israel resistance front, but she was arrested in September 2018.
Following legal and judicial proceedings, the spy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for acting against Iran’s national security through her intelligence cooperation with the Israeli regime.
UK school textbooks slammed as “propaganda” for Israel
MEMO | April 2, 2021
Two UK school textbooks on the Middle East have been “significantly altered” following intervention from leading advocates of the Zionist state in favour of the Israeli narrative. The alterations, slammed as “propaganda under the guise of education” and “not fit for purpose” have raised serious concerns over the textbook, prompting a pause in further distribution.
Details of the extensive “biased” and “misleading” alterations were exposed by a report, by Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, Middle East specialists in History and in Arabic, respectively, and members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).
Their eight-page report uncovered” dangerously misleading” changes to the books published by Pearson, titled Conflict in the Middle East and The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, both by author Hilary Brash and are read by hundreds of thousands of GCSE students annually. GCSEs are the academic qualifications studied for by UK high school students to the age of 16.
The alterations were made last year following intervention by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) working together with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Both are amongst the most vocal pro-Israeli groups in the UK.
Describing the scale of the alterations the report noted that there are changes on almost every page, often multiple changes. “In CME (with 84 pages of history) we have counted 294 changes, in MECCC (with 104 pages of history) over 360,” said the report. “There are thus on average more than three changes per page, and the re-writing on some pages is particularly extensive. Alterations have been made to text, timelines, maps and photographs, as well as to sample student essays, and to the questions that students are asked to answer”.
Multiple examples of the changes are highlighted in the report. In one example the original version says that “international law states that a country cannot annex or indefinitely occupy territory gained by force”. This is the overwhelming international legal consensus. The revised version replaces this with: “Some argue that international law states that a country cannot annex or indefinitely occupy territory gained by force”. This change, according to the report’s authors “clearly replaces an accurate and unambiguous description of the internationally accepted legal position by a ‘fudge’ that implicitly throws doubt on that position”.
In the original version of the domestic GCSE textbook there are 10 references to Jewish terrorism and 32 to Palestinian terrorism (in each case including use of ‘terror’, ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism’). After revision there are 4 references to terrorism by Jewish groups, and 61 references to terrorism by Palestinian ones.
Concluding the report, the authors said that they had “found the process to have been biased and the outcome misleading. The outcome is two textbooks that distort the historical record, failing to offer students a balanced view of the conflict. These books, we conclude, are not fit for purpose. School children should not be supplied with propaganda under the guise of education”.
Leading experts on the Middle East have raised serious concerns over the alterations. Eugene Rogan FBA, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford said: “Given Britain’s historical responsibility, it is particularly important that the subject be taught in a way that is impartial and objective. It is a betrayal of such objectivity to allow Israel advocates the opportunity to edit teaching materials without giving Palestine advocates an equal opportunity to provide input. The result can only undermine confidence in the impartiality of the teaching of an intensely complex and sensitive issue.”
Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Queen Mary University of London, said: “Through their rigorous analysis of two GCSE text books, Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins uncover how hundreds of revisions have been inserted in order to modify and distort historical and political facts relating to Israel/Palestine. Their report suggests that when accredited publishing houses allow lobbying groups to help develop high-school curriculum, knowledge is replaced by indoctrination and our children are encouraged to adopt biased thinking.”
Khaled Fahmy FBA, Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge, said: “While it is laudable that Middle Eastern history books are regularly revised and updated, the manner in which these two school textbooks have been revised is shocking and unacceptable. School textbooks should be revised based on the advice and expertise of academics and scholars, not by reviewers selected by an organisation of lawyers whose rationale is advocating for a foreign country.”
In a statement to Middle East Eye, Pearson said “We stand by our texts but had already taken the decision to pause further distribution while we discuss further with stakeholders.”
US aid is tied to Palestinian acquiescence to the two-state illusion
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 30, 2021
The US has reversed one aspect of the Trump administration’s foreign policy in Palestine; humanitarian aid will be resumed with a $15 million grant for vulnerable Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. “Our engagements all have the same aim: to build support for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the US Representative to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, declared. Given that Washington used to give $350 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) before Trump stopped the support in 2018, this is a very limited “engagement”.
And it’s very selective support. Moreover, it comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is opposing the Palestinian Authority’s recourse to the International Criminal Court for justice over Israel’s war crimes. Such crimes, and the context of occupation in which they are carried out, contribute to humanitarian aid for the Palestinian being a necessity.
More importantly, humanitarian aid remains tied to the two-state compromise. Now that the US has returned to international consensus over the defunct paradigm, restoring humanitarian aid may be considered the next, logical step, only there is nothing logical about pursuing a strand of diplomacy that spells loss unless it results in a gain for Israel.
PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh welcomed the resumption of humanitarian aid as “an important step in the right direction.” However, Palestinians still have no political direction and the PA is merely speaking about its standing in the diplomatic arena. Following restored humanitarian aid, the next step will most likely be renewed diplomatic relations. The PA will then feed upon the illusion that it is an important negotiating partner. Perhaps it is, in terms of “negotiating” the sell-out of what remains of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project.
For ordinary Palestinians, of course, it is a different story. The resumption of humanitarian aid within the context of the two-state compromise only sustains Israeli colonialism, while allowing the Palestinian people the necessary means for daily survival. Resuming the two-state cycle of humanitarian aid in return for acquiescence to the two-state illusion is not a better option than the so-called “deal of the century”. Both have generated loss, and the PA is merely favouring one form of loss over another.
To what extent can such a move be welcomed? Humanitarian aid to promote peace is a recipe for failure, given its reinforcement of the power dynamic bolstered by the billions of dollars that Israel gets each year from the US. It would be understandable if the PA spoke of humanitarian aid in terms of alleviation, but not as an “important step in the right direction” when Israel is not facing any punitive measures for advancing its illegal settlement expansion, for example.
It is to be expected that the US selectively lauds its meager support for Palestine, especially when, in contrast to the Trump administration, US President Joe Biden is yet to face significant scrutiny. For the PA to emulate the US rhetoric, however, is a different story. It seems as if the Ramallah authority is far more interested in asserting its earlier and premature, overtures to Biden even before the new foreign policy was revealed, despite the fact that the politics of humanitarian aid are a mere convenience for the international community in its process of aiding Israel to colonise what is left of Palestine.
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US murdering 1 million Iraqis is democracy, Iran giving yogurt to Iraq is “domination”
By Ali Salaam | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2017
The New York Times, owned by the Zionist Jewish supremacist Ochs-Sulzberger family, has no problem with Iraqi suffering as long as Iran is not the one behind it.
The Iraq War was a genocide of the Iraqi people by Zionist supremacists in the Bush administration. Over 1 million innocent people were killed based on a lie. American soldiers died in an Israeli war and now an average of 22 soldiers commit suicide every day because their consciences cannot cope with the fact they committed crimes in an illegal war that served no purpose other than to benefit Israel, not America.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of the Zionist regime, once said “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Paul Wolfowitz had his sights on Iraq since his time in the first Bush administration. Former Israeli official and Bush administration official Richard Perle had his eyes on Iraq since at least his authorship of the Clean Break white paper. The Zionist regime had their eyes on Iraq since the 1980s when strategist Oded Yinon wrote his white paper in support of dividing the Arab-Muslim world along ethnic and sectarian lines. The global Zionist lobby has had their eyes on Iraq since Theodor Herzl stated that Eretz Israel’s true borders go from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq. … continue
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