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My Dream

Al-Haq | October 22, 2019

This is the story of the Palestinian dream, Khaled Abu Joudeh, who decided to build a house for his seven children, in the Kafr Aqab neighbourhood; and under the pretext of its proximity to the Annexation and Expansion wall, the so-called Jerusalem Municipality decided to demolish it on June 12, 2019.

October 22, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

DFLP criticises continuous PA security cooperation with Israel

MEMO | October 22, 2019

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) has criticised the continuous security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli occupation, a statement said yesterday.

The DFLP wondered about the “feasibility” of the security cooperation in light of the Israeli aggression on Palestinians and the daily desecration of Islamic holy sites in the occupied territories by settlers and officials.

“The daily violations carried out by the Israeli Jewish settlers and Israeli officials against the Palestinians and their properties aims to uproot Palestinians from their historic land and destroy its political and national character,” the statement said.

The DFLP said that the Israeli occupation “is carrying out daily aggression on the ground and steals Palestinian land and property.”

The movement went on to call on the PA and its leadership “to move on from issuing warnings to the international community to tangible responses.”

The DFLP demanded the PA carry out the decisions of the Palestinian National Council regarding the immediate halt of security cooperation with the Israeli occupation.

October 22, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

How Russia’s Vision for the Middle East Is Rigged against Iran

By Agha Hussain | American Herald Tribune | October 22, 2019

Stanislav Ivanov writing for the prestigious Russian state-run Valdai Club recently described ‘Israel and most of the Arab countries’ as viewing Turkey’s military presence in Syria as a counterweight to that of Iran. He also added that Iran and Turkey both waged a ‘fierce struggle’ to install a ‘puppet government’ in Damascus.

The Russian perspective is usually channeled, directly or indirectly, by its assorted major think tanks and media outlets and a very clear cut yet under-noticed aspect of Russia’s views on Iran has been made clear as daylight here.

That ‘Most of the Arab countries’ consider Iran’s presence in Syria as something that requires a ‘counterweight’ is a fallacious notion for a number of reasons. Iran’s key allies in the region are Arabs, such as Hezbollah, the Syrian Arab Army and much of the Iraqi government, clerical establishment and de facto military in the form of the Popular Mobilization Units. The same goes for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups in Gaza.

To describe the Gulf Arabs (GCC) and their consensus on Iran’s ‘need’ to exit Syria as the consensus of ‘most of the Arabs’ is thus disingenuous. Notwithstanding the weakness of that consensus itself, given how the UAE quickly distanced itself from the fiasco in the Persian Gulf through assuring signals to Iran as things heated up there, it is not likely that the author is unaware of these issues with the ‘Arabs’ tag.

Nor is it likely that Russian policymakers are unaware of the illogical, dishonest basis of this classification of ‘most of the Arabs’. It remains, regardless of this vital reality, a key cornerstone of Russia’s current geopolitical approach to the Middle East. This can be seen from the Russian outreach to the GCC it began – together with other extremely important yet under-discussed strategic adjustments – in what can be described the ‘post-ISIS’ scenario in Syria.

The Russian-GCC ‘rapprochement’ was lightning fast, with Russia offering to Saudi Arabia and the UAE what it never did to its Iranian or Syrian ‘allies’ constantly attacked by the Israeli airforce: its much-vaunted S-400 anti-air defense system. As one of the earlier examples of Russian preference for the GCC over their Iranian rival, the clarity of the message Russia was sending was illustrated by the fact that it even pitched the system to the small, militarily-insignificant Bahrain.

Russia has taken clear steps to prop up the brittle GCC whenever it has suffered major setbacks, demonstrating its ties with them are not just cordial but strategic. Saudi Arabia, having last month suffered a deadly missile attack on its Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq, received a boost on 11 October as Russia announced plans to invest $1 billion for a petrochemical facility there.

More than 20 deals were signed between Russia and Saudi Arabia during Putin’s state visit days later, including the purchase of a 30.76% in one of Russia’s leading companies, Novomet, by the two countries’ sovereign investment funds and Aramco.

The economic honeymoon, however, started after Saudi King Salman’s historic visit to Russia in 2017. Its progress since then compares starkly to Russia, contrary to expectations of its ‘Eurasianist’ supporters, having adhered to US sanctions against Iran when they were re-imposed last year.

The strategic element which drove Russo-GCC economic ties did influence the decisions of Russian giants such as Rosneft and LUKoil regarding their Iran investments, but to Iran’s detriment as they withdrew from Iran with Russo-GCC ties being a factor as well.

A team from Russia’s MGIMO university at the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate in November 2018 days after re-imposition of US sanctions on Iran declared in no unclear terms that Russia was not aligned with Iran. The prestigious institution, famed for having top Russian diplomats such as current Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov among its alumni, declared political Islam problematic and Iran to be an expansionist power.

But what are these soft spots Russia tries to hit at in Iran’s geopolitical ‘Resistance Axis’ infrastructure, and is it the GCC’s subsequent empowerment [over] Iran that makes Russia’s ‘contain Iran’ policy dangerous?

The answer lies in Israel and the regional socio-political and military network Iran has forged and sustained since 1979 pivoted around the correct recognition of Israel and Israel Lobby-induced US foreign policy as the premier driver of Middle East wars.

It [Iran] has, thus, through the chaos of Middle East geopolitics since 1979 performed an important task in countering forces of destabilization. Vital to Iran has been its deep involvement in foreign affairs and disingenuously portraying this as ‘Iranian expansionism’ has been a cornerstone of Israeli and GCC propaganda against Iran.

Nobody knows the ‘start the story from the middle’ game better than the Israelis, be it claiming Israel was ‘attacked’ by ‘the Arabs’ in 1948 whilst ignoring the entire pre-planned ethnic cleansing campaign of the 1940s by the Zionists or claiming self-defense in Gaza. The GCC in recent times have latched onto this narrative as well, but with their own crude ‘Iran seeks to dominate the Arab world’ spin.

Had Iran not intervened, the Shia-dominated Lebanese resistance against Israel’s occupation would have lacked a material supporter against the modern Zionist army and Israel would have consolidated Lebanon for both its Jewish colonies scheme and seized its vital water resources. Such had been Zionist ambition as far back as 1919.

Gaza, where the armed resistance born following the First Intifada in the vacuum left by Yasser Arafat’s inept leadership (and subsequent sell-out during the Oslo ‘peace’ hoax) receives arms from Iran, would have by now been fully swallowed by Jewish colonies. It would have shared the fate of the ‘Iran-free’ West Bank, where Mahmoud Abbas carries on the legacy of Arafat’s surrender.

Instead, Lebanon today is far more stable than at any other time in its history and the bridges Hezbollah has built with other religious parties have helped augment internal cohesion. Gaza has shown in recent times increased capability to deal with Israeli military aggression, with its Iran-backed Sunni Islamist groups possessing improved weaponry and exhibiting greater unity.

It was not international mediation and ‘conflict-resolution’ attempts that stabilized – or, given the capacity of Israel’s cohorts to rig such attempts every step along the way, ever truly even could stabilize – the parts of the Arab world worst hit by war. It was Iran’s support to these states and state-less victims of Israeli expansionism that enabled them to weather the storm inflicted upon them and mount a thus-far successful resistance.

Few pundits would, retrospectively, describe past ‘peace deals’ be they Camp David 1978 or the Oslo process of the 90s as anything other than smokescreens for unhinged Israeli warmongering.

For containing Israel, Iranian forward-presence in countries near to Israel has always been a necessity. Iran’s elaborate supply chains, part covert and part overt in nature, going to allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah are transnational and involve supporters on the ground zealously committed to Iran or even just zealously committed to opposing Israel.

Syria is one such vital node. Without Syria, Iran could not supply Hezbollah. Russia is not unaware of this when it constantly pushes for Iranian withdrawal from Syria whilst passing this off as its ‘principled’ position that all foreign forces must leave the country. This most salient stance of Russia is deceptive, given that Russia has consistently implicitly excused Israel completely from adhering to this principle.

The Russian Defence Ministry right after Israel got a Russian aircraft downed in September last year reminded everyone of how Russia at Tel Aviv’s request had pushed for ‘Iran-backed groups’ to withdraw 140 km away from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s behavior since then remained the same, but Russian attempts at Tel Aviv’s request to distance Syria from its Iranian ally only intensified, even including lobbying for the removal of heavily pro-Iran officials from the Syrian military and incorporation of ‘ex-rebels’ into its ranks.

The façade is crystal clear: Israel gets to continue its attacks but Iran – who along with Hezbollah contributed to the defeat of terrorism in Syria even before Russia intervened in 2015 – must depart Syria. The constant Russian favors to Israel are here are even more see-through than were the fraudulent regional ‘peace-processes’ of the past which leveraged almost no obligations upon Israel to cease its warmongering yet comprehensively de-fanged and neutralized whatever stood in its way.

Propping up the GCC, working to weaken Iran and looking the other way when Israel attacks its ‘allies’ (or even publicly fawn over the Zionist state at events hosted by financial benefactors of Israel’s military) are all part and parcel of Russia’s geopolitical bigger-picture.

Validating the notion that the GCC – the normalization with whom of Israel’s ties Jared Kushner has fast-tracked since 2016 as an anti-Iran front and plan B following al Assad’s survival in Syria – represents ‘most of the Arabs’ has a specific purpose.

That purpose is to rig the selection of stakeholders for any potential region-wide ‘peace initiatives’ against Iran, sidelining it and declaring the pro-Israel GCC the representatives of ‘the Arabs’. Israel would be the benefactor of any ‘peace deal’ to end the ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’ since both sides would have long ago accepted the need to eradicate longstanding barriers to Israeli hegemony.

What follows next is obvious and has been seen repeatedly in the Middle East ‘peace processes’ in the past: no actual reigning in of Israel, but a thorough neutralization of its foes. For resistance-oriented states like Iran, there is no place in Russia’s vision for the Middle East.

Agha Hussain is a Research Analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan, as well as an editorial contributor to the websites Eurasia Future and Regional Rapport. His writings have a particular focus on Middle Eastern affairs and history and Pakistan’s foreign policy.

October 22, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Panicked Israel Is a Dangerous Israel

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 21, 2019

Former US Presidential Candidate, Pat Buchanan has written, “the Middle East and world, have been awakened to the reality that, when Trump said he was ending everlasting commitments and bringing U.S. troops home from “endless wars,” he was not bluffing. The Saudis got the message when the U.S., in response to a missile and drone strike from Iran or Iranian-backed militias, which shut down half of Riyadh’s oil production, did nothing … thus, the Saudis have begun negotiating with the Houthi rebels, with whom they have been at war in Yemen since 2015. And they are seeking talks with Iran.” In other words, the paradigm has begun to shift.

The Trump decisions indeed, did send shock waves to the world. And in their wake, Twitter in the US has been ‘white hot’ with indignation and outrage.

That is one side of the Syria US forces withdrawal ‘coin’ – the outrage. The other, is that realistically, the US had been trying to achieve too many irreconcilable aims: ousting President Assad; enforcing ‘domain denial’ to both Russia and Iran; plus attempting to install an unpopular minority population (the Kurds are a minority – even in NE Syria) in a blatant nation-building ‘state-let’ project to rival Damascus. With such diverse aims, and with Russia and Iran opposing these aims, the US was achieving none.

In the same vein of an overdue dose of realism, (and as Edward Gibbons highlighted in his celebrated Decline and Fall in respect to Imperial Rome), once certain qualities are lost, decline and fall is fore-ordained. Saudi Arabia has long lost those original attributes that brought Ibn Saud power, and without which, decline follows inevitably (which Gibbons persuasively argued, is exactly what happened earlier, to Rome).

Saudi Arabia today, has not the least energy to rouse itself, and life is flaccid. The Houthis though, by contrast, exactly embody these Gibbons-esque vital qualities and virtues. The outcome to today’s Saudi-Yemeni conflict was foreshadowed in the character of its contestants – irrespective of all other disparities. The Pentagon, to be fair, saw this from the outset, but allowed the momentum of old US strategic alliances and enmities to override this key insight.

So why such hue and clamour in Washington over an overdue recognition of realities? The indignation is not so surprising – for it is not just the contrived hand-wringing over the Kurds that lies behind such a fuss and bother; but rather, it is because Trump has taken a hammer to two (inter-connected) establishment shibboleths — and shattered them into pieces.

One strand here concerns Vietnam: it’s always there, lurking in the US backdrop. In that still formative US war experience, more than two decades of involvement and half a million American troops never managed to alter the basic weakness of a U.S. proxy that could never hold the line, without constant American support. It finally collapsed under the weight of a conventional North Vietnamese invasion, in April 1975. (Think Afghanistan today?).

Here is the point. Though a majority of historians subscribe to the basic contours of the above narrative, the vast majority of senior American military officers do not.

Petraeus, Mattis, McMaster, and others entered service, when military prestige was at a low ebb. They and their colleagues were taught that the Vietnam failure was due to political pusillanimity in Washington (or in the nation’s streets), or else due to a military high command that was too weak to assert its authority effectively.

But none of the military analysis done by this post-Vietnam war generation of officers ever addressed the basic question “about whether the Vietnam War was winnable, necessary, or advisable” from the first. (Think: Syria today).

No – in this view, the Vietnam war could, and should, have been won – if only the right approach had been pursued. Thus, the ‘forever war’ notion was born: It was designed, empirically to ‘prove’ the two major military theses of the war lacunae (no ‘Clausewitz’ or COIN): That is, if both these strategies had been fully implemented in Vietnam, instead of being neglected, they would assuredly have led to an American ‘win’. (Mattis echoed this thinking when he introduced 2018 Trump’s Defense and Nuclear Reviews: America, Mattis insisted, simply must “start winning” again).

This revisionist version of Vietnam war history began in 1986 with an article by David Petraeus, in the military journal Parameters, in which he argued that the US army was unprepared to fight low intensity conflicts (such as Vietnam); and that “what the country needed wasn’t fewer Vietnams; but better-fought ones”. The definitive COIN doctrine, Field Service Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations, however, was overseen by David Petraeus, working with another officer, Lt General James Mattis (the former US Defense Secretary), who has this week been howling at Trump about the US withdrawal from Syria (the issue – prospective withdrawal – over which he resigned as then Defense Secretary).

Thus, Trump’s original team of ‘my generals’ were precisely those who had spent three administrations expanding COIN-influenced missions to approximately 70% of the world’s nations. In an interview in 2017, Petraeus described the Afghan conflict as “generational”. In short, Trump’s original most senior military advisers didn’t even pretend that the post-9/11 wars would ever end. Essentially, the Trump Administration’s National Strategy Statement put an ‘America First’ gloss on Bush’s 2002 NSS: that no rival would, or should, be permitted to challenge US political or financial primacy.

But this basic contradiction simply could not be sustained. Forever Wars were precisely those which Trump had campaigned as Candidate to end. And now, with Presidential elections again at hand, he has ditched the whole revisionist Vietnam meme.

Trump then, should be able to weather the criticism from this quarter quite easily. The US public is fed up with ‘forever wars’. And in any event, a new generation at the Pentagon now has shifted from COIN to ‘Great Power Competition’, and is intent on pivoting away from the Middle East, to China.

The other Shibboleth, still deeply embedded in certain strains of US thinking, but which now lies shattered by Trump too, is of a different order – and is far more perilous: It is the ‘Wolfowitz doctrine’, encapsulated in this 1991 exchange the then US Undersecretary for Defense had with General Wesley Clark. And for this act of iconoclasm, Trump can expect severe push-back.

Clark: “Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.”

Wolfowitz: “Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn is that we can use our military in the region — in the Middle East — and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes — Syria, Iran, Iraq — before the next great superpower comes on, to challenge us.”

Wolfowitz’s thinking was then taken up more explicitly by David Wurmser in his 1996 document, Coping with Crumbling States (following on, from his contribution to the infamous Clean Break policy strategy paper written by Richard Pearle for Bibi Netanyahu earlier in the same year). The aim of both these seminal documents was to directly counter American ‘isolationist’ thinking.

Daniel Sanchez has noted: “Wurmser characterized regime change in Iraq and Syria (both ruled by Baathist regimes) as “expediting the chaotic collapse” of secular-Arab nationalism in general, and Baathism in particular. He [asserted that] “the phenomenon of Baathism,” was, from the very beginning, “an agent of foreign, namely Soviet policy”… [and therefore advised] the West to put this anachronistic adversary ‘out of its misery’ – and to press America’s Cold War victory on toward its final culmination”.

This tract, Coping with Crumbling States, which together with Clean Break was to have a major impact on Washington’s thinking during the GW Bush Administration (in which David Wurmser would serve). What aroused the deep-seated neo-con ire in respect to the secular-Arab nationalist states was not just that they were, in the neo-con view, crumbling relics of the ‘evil’ USSR, but that from 1953 onwards, Russia sided with these secular-nationalist states in all their conflicts regarding Israel. This was something the neo-cons could neither tolerate, nor forgive. Both Clean Break and the 1997 Project for the New American Century (PNAC) were exclusively premised on the wider US policy aim of securing Israel.

The point here is that whilst Wurmser stressed that demolishing Baathism must be the foremost priority in the region, he added: “Secular-Arab nationalism should be given no quarter – not even – he added, for the sake of stemming the tide of Islamic fundamentalism”.

There was, therefore, no other option: The point is that – on this premise – the US had no other choice but to ally with the Kings, Emirs and Rulers of the Middle East. It still is.

And in return, these States benefitted from the US security umbrella — until, that is, when Saudi Arabia lost half of its oil processing capacity with the strike on Aramco, and “Trump did nothing” (in Pat Buchanan’s words). The ‘umbrella’ guarantee expired.

It is in this context – the withdrawal of US security commitment – that Trump is at real political risk. Israel is in a panic. Israeli correspondents see these linked events as Trump’s death blow to Israel, with the “strategic balance of power shifting right before Israel’s eyes”. Israel is left alone: (Smadar Peri writing in Yediot Ahoronot (in Hebrew) : “Trump abandons allies without blinking, and Israel is liable to be next”. As Ben Caspit notes, “The shift in the region is forcing Israel to change its plans, rethink its concepts and prepare for scenarios that were shelved long ago. One of them is the possibility of fighting a war on more than one front in the very near future”.

[Ex-] Israeli commentator, Gilad Atzmon observes:

“Israel has seriously mismanaged its conflict with Iran. For over a decade, Israel has relentlessly threatened and sought to intimidate Iran. Iran’s response has been effective: slowly but surely Iran encircled the Jewish state. Israel doesn’t share a border with Iran but Iran is present on so many of Israel’s borders … The recent attack on Saudi oil facilities achieved an astonishing precision of less than one meter, despite the fact that it was launched from 650 miles away, and delivered with it a clear message to Israel. Iran can attack any target in Israel from Western Iraq with precision, and without being detected. It proved that Iranian technology is decades ahead of anything offered by Israel, America or the west.

It now seems totally unrealistic to expect America to act militarily against Iran on behalf of Israel. Trump’s always unpredictable actions have convinced the Israeli defense establishment that the country has been left alone to deal with the Iranian threat. The American administration is only willing to act against Iran through sanctions, and by now the Israelis have grasped that sanctions can easily boomerang. They nourish technological and strategic independence … As things stand, Israel used the billions of dollars it squeezed from American taxpayers to build an obsolete anti-missile system that at best, might be effective against 1940 era German V2 missiles. Once again Israel prepared for the wrong war”.

Here is the ‘rub’ for Trump: It is not just that Israel’s overwhelming influence in the US Congress and amongst the élites puts him in a risky political corner. It does do that, of course. But a bigger danger is that culturally, Israel cannot change course. Netanyahu’s tardy response to Aramco was that Israel must immediately ‘spend billions on defence’.

Rationally, one might expect Israel, in these new circumstances, to rethink its strategy in respect to Iran. But can it? Is it not too culturally committed to Iran as the cosmic evil? There is little difference here between Likud and the Blue and White coalition of Gantz. Will a panicked Israel rather try somehow to recover its earlier regional military ‘edge’? Will Trump be able to maintain America’s distance, if Israel does try?

Trump probably sees himself as having taken a courageous decision (and it was that — a huge break with conventional thinking) to free America from “endless wars”. But he will need to watch his back from the repercussions arising from the Israeli realisation notes Ben Caspit, “after three years of being convinced that it was on the winning side, Israel is beginning to realise that it is on the one that’s losing; or at least [the side that] has been abandoned”. A cornered, and panicked Israel is a dangerous Israel.

October 21, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Iranian threat’ gives Israel ‘fundamental right, even obligation’ to bomb Syria, Iraq or whomever it wants – Pompeo

RT | October 20, 2019

Israel should not be constrained by international borders or laws if it feels under threat – and can always rely on US support – US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said following his meeting with Israeli PM and the chief of Mossad.

The US administration has always been “very clear” that is gives Israel a free rein in hunting down any sprouts of purported ‘Iranian threat’ across the region, using the national security threat as an ultimate excuse, Pompeo said in an interview with Jerusalem Post.

“Israel has the fundamental right to engage in activity that ensures the security of its people. It’s at the very core of what nation-states not only have the right to do, but an obligation to do.”

The withdrawal of American troops from Syria raised some concerns in Tel Aviv, but Pompeo rushed to emphasize that the US remains committed to “continuing that activity that the US has been engaged in now for a couple of years.”

“We know this is a corner where Iran has attempted to move weapon systems across into Syria, into Lebanon, that threatens Israel, and we are going to do everything we can to make sure we have the capacity to identify those so that we can, collectively, respond appropriately.”

Pompeo visited Israel following his urgent trip to Turkey, where he convinced President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to temporarily halt the cross-border operation in Syria, somewhat allowing the Trump administration to save its face after the ‘betrayal’ of its Kurdish allies.

In Tel Aviv, Pompeo held a meeting with the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, apparently reassuring them that the US withdrawal wasn’t a sign of weakness or intentions to reduce its pressure on Tehran.

October 19, 2019 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Europe’s oldest political prisoner, Georges Abdallah, has served 35 years

By Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – October 19, 2019

Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, known as the “Nelson Mandela of the Arab World”, has now marked 35 years in a French prison. The pro-Palestinian resistance leader remains Europe’s longest-held political prisoner.

In 1982, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Abdallah headed a group which accepted responsibility for the death of Israeli and American agents in Paris. Abdallah has refused to express regret or remorse for defending his country, which was under military occupation.

Abdallah has become an immense inspiration to leftists and anti-imperialists worldwide, despite a Western media blackout on his case.

Abdallah has been eligible for release since 1999, but Washington and Tel Aviv put pressure on France to deny him parole. His own lawyer has admitted to working for French intelligence, and his trial and parole process has been marked by obvious political manipulation.

Abdallah, described as a model prisoner, reads daily in four different languages. He writes letters of support for just causes, and he remains in regular contact with the outside.

Despite his unjust incarceration Abdallah continues to fight for Palestine and against imperialism, and many activists around the world will continue to fight for his release.

October 19, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Mideast Rise, Fading of Pax Americana Presents Threats, Opportunities, Israeli Media Says

Sputnik – 18.10.2019

Earlier this week, as US troops abandoned positions in northern Syria under the de facto control of local Kurdish forces amid the Turkish onslaught, Russian peacekeeping patrols quietly began operating in Manbij, northern Syria in a bid to prevent fighting between Turkish and Syrian Army forces.

The withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria signals a waning of ‘Pax Americana’ in the Middle East, and presents both “dangers” and “opportunities” for Israel in the region, former Israeli intelligence officials, diplomats and lawmakers have told The Times of Israel.

According to Amos Yadlin, former head of the Israeli military’s Military Intelligence Directorate, “All pairs of enemies in the Middle East enjoy reasonably good ties with Russia: Saudi Arabia and Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, the Kurds and the Turks, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Turkey, and so on.” Russia, Yadlin said, is not a Middle Eastern ‘hegemon’ in the traditional sense of the term, with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt sharing that title, in his view. Furthermore, he noted, Washington still has far greater forces in the Middle East than Moscow.

“The Russian success stems from their ability to use very few forces with determination and rules of engagement that only they can allow themselves, with a veto at the UN Security Council and a patriotic audience at home,” Yadlin said, without elaborating.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren said he found the US disengagement in the Middle East much more concerning than Russia’s growing influence. “We have relied for the last 45 years on a Pax Americana that no longer exists. I am not saying that the US won’t come to our assistance, but we can’t be certain of it anymore,” he said. As for Russia, Oren suggested Israel should work to reach a ‘modus vivendi’ with Moscow. “It’s useless for us to pretend that Russia is going to be an ally, but we don’t have to make them enemies either,” he said.

However, Ksenia Svetlova, a former Israeli lawmaker from the Zionist Union Party, said Russia’s rise could have “very grave” implications for Tel Aviv. “We already have Russian air defence systems, the S-300, that cover the Syrian and Lebanese shores. As soon as the Russians think that it’s smart for them to operate these systems and to halt the Israeli attacks, Israel would no longer be able to deal with the extension of Iranian power in these countries,” she said, repeating Tel Aviv’s talking point about alleged growing ‘Iranian influence’ in Syria.

Russia initially deployed its air defences only at its airbase in Latakia, northwestern Syria. However, last October, following a friendly fire incident led to the loss of a Russian aircraft and the deaths of 15 Russian airmen, Moscow began deploying S-300s to Syria’s armed forces, complicating Tel Aviv’s campaign of airstrikes into Syria and leading to a reduction in its intensity.

According to Svetlova, Iran, another Israeli adversary, was also a Russian ‘strategic ally’, and “it’s not likely that Moscow will do anything to curb the Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon.”

But Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst at the Belgium-based nonprofit International Crisis Group, believes Russia could help reduce tensions between Israel and other countries in the region. In his view, President Trump’s Syria exit would at least temporarily end “Israeli wishful thinking about the US resolving all problems militarily,” which could force Israel too to move away from military operations and turn to diplomacy and “some temporary de-facto power-sharing,” including agreements on Syria and Lebanon and perhaps even a “non-aggression pact” between Israel and Hezbollah.

The US withdrew about 1,000 troops from northeast Syria last week, thereby greenlighting a Turkish military operation Ankara says is aimed against Daesh (ISIS) terrorists and local Kurdish militants, whom Turkish authorities also classify as terrorists. Turkey’s operation brought it broad condemnation from its NATO allies, with the US slapping the country with sanctions. Late Thursday, US Vice President Mike Pence said he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and agreed to a ceasefire in Syria.

Amid the Turkish operation, Damascus reached an agreement with Kurdish-led militia forces in northern Syria, allowing Syrian Army forces to advance into Kurdish-controlled areas to mount a joint defence of the Syrian-Turkish border area. This week, Russian peacekeepers began patrols in the city of Manbij in eastern Aleppo province, with the mission aimed at preventing fighting between Syrian and Turkish forces.

October 18, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Epstein Again Disappears From View, but What About Mossad?

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 17, 2019

I have long argued that pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was clearly an intelligence agent and that he was most likely working for the Israeli external service Mossad. My belief was based on the nature of his activity, which suggested that he was able to blackmail important Americans using the sex tapes that he had been able to make at his Manhattan mansion. Put that together with the existence of his fake Austrian passport, as well as former Miami federal attorney Alexander Acosta’s comments  and it would seem that an intelligence connection is a sine qua non.

Acosta was particularly damning. When asked “Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” he replied “…that I had just one meeting on the Epstein case.” He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told to back off,” that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.”

The answers to those remaining questions about Epstein are still lacking even though he is gone, but one fears that the authorities will be disinclined to further investigate a dead man. It appears that no one in the various investigative agencies or the mainstream media has been interested in what Acosta meant, even though it would be simple enough to ask him. Who told him to back off? And how did they explain it? And then there is Epstein’s Austrian passport. Was the document fake or real, with a real name and photo substitution or alternation of both picture and name? How did he get it? Austrian passports are highly desirable in intelligence circles because the country is neutral and its holders can travel just about everywhere without a visa.

What Epstein did and how he did it was an intelligence operation in support of Mossad. There is no other viable explanation for his filming of prominent politicians and celebrities having sex with young girls. Recruiting and running American movers and shakers like Bill Clinton, with his 26 trips on the Lolita Express, former Governor Bill Richardson, or former Senator George Mitchell are precisely the types of “agents of influence” that the Mossad would seek to coerce or even blackmail into cooperation.

Other compelling evidence for a Mossad connection came from Epstein’s relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, who reportedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”

Israel and high-profile Jewish players also have continued to turn up like bad pennies in the Epstein case, but no one seems to be interested in pursuing that angle. Epstein clearly had contact with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak and Epstein patrol Les Wexner also had close ties to the Jewish state and its government.

And now, finally more evidence of the relationship has surfaced even though the mainstream media appears to have lost all interest in the subject. A recent interview given by a former high-ranking official in Israeli military intelligence has inter alia made the claim that Epstein’s sexual blackmail enterprise was from the beginning an Israel intelligence operation involving the entrapment of powerful individuals and politicians in the United States and also abroad.

In an interview with Zev Shalev, former CBS News executive producer, the retired senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, Ari Ben-Menashe, claimed not only to have first met Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged procuress, Ghislaine Maxwell, in the 1980s, but that both Epstein and Maxwell were already working with Israeli intelligence prior to that time.

Ben-Menashe, was himself involved in the notorious Iran-Contra arms deals. He claimed that he had been introduced to Jeffrey Epstein by Robert Maxwell in the mid-1980s while Maxwell’s and Ben-Menashe’s were themselves working on Iran-Contra “… he [Maxwell] wanted us to accept him [Epstein] as part of our group …. I’m not denying that we were at the time a group that it was Nick Davies [Foreign Editor of the Maxwell-Owned Daily Mirror], it was Maxwell, it was myself and our team from Israel, we were doing what we were doing.” Ben-Menashe’s account has been corroborated independently by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, describing how Maxwell, Davies and Ben-Menashe arranged the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran on behalf of Mossad and the CIA during that time period.

Ben-Menashe, who would have absolutely nothing to gain by lying, described how Maxwell stated during the introduction that “your Israeli bosses have already approved” of Epstein. Maxwell was involved in an major intelligence network in Israel “which included the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon…” and was well placed to know that of which he spoke.

Will the three simultaneous investigations currently taking place even seek to ask the right questions now that the target of the investigation is gone and the new Ben-Menashe information has surfaced? Given the high stakes in the game, quite likely there will be a cover-up both of how Epstein lived and how he died and, most importantly, whom he worked for. Unfortunately, but predictably, the media and the inside the Beltway chattering class have lost interest in the story and we the public will most likely never learn what Epstein was all about. Just another instance of Israel spying on the United States… ho hum.

October 17, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Bedouin Mass Eviction is Part of Israel’s Efforts to Drive Palestinians off their Historic Lands

Tens of thousands are to be driven out of their homes because their numbers pose a major demographic threat to a Jewish state

By Jonathan Cook | The National | October 16, 2019

The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.

Last week 36,000 Bedouin – all of them Israeli citizens – discovered that their state is about to make them refugees in their own country, driving them into holding camps. These Israelis, it seems, are the wrong kind.

Their treatment has painful echoes of the past. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by the Israeli army outside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state established on their homeland – what the Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.

Israel is regularly criticised for its belligerent occupation, its relentless expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land and its repeated and savage military attacks, especially on Gaza.

On rare occasions, analysts also notice Israel’s systematic discrimination against the 1.8 million Palestinians whose ancestors survived the Nakba and live inside Israel, ostensibly as citizens.

But each of these abuses is dealt with in isolation, as though unrelated, rather than as different facets of an overarching project. A pattern is discernible, one driven by an ideology that dehumanises Palestinians everywhere Israel encounters them.

That ideology has a name. Zionism provides the thread that connects the past – the Nakba – with Israel’s current ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the destruction of Gaza, and the state’s concerted efforts to drive Palestinian citizens of Israel out of what is left of their historic lands and into ghettos.

The logic of Zionism, even if its more naive supporters fail to grasp it, is to replace Palestinians with Jews – what Israel officially terms Judaisation.

The Palestinians’ suffering is not some unfortunate side effect of conflict. It is the very aim of Zionism: to incentivise Palestinians still in place to leave “voluntarily”, to escape further suffocation and misery.

The starkest example of this people replacement strategy is Israel’s long-standing treatment of 250,000 Bedouin who formally have citizenship.

The Bedouin are the poorest group in Israel, living in isolated communities mainly in the vast, semi-arid area of the Negev, the country’s south. Largely out of view, Israel has had a relatively free hand in its efforts to “replace” them.

That was why, for a decade after it had supposedly finished its 1948 ethnic cleansing operations and won recognition in western capitals, Israel continued secretly expelling thousands of Bedouin outside its borders, despite their claim on citizenship.

Meanwhile, other Bedouin in Israel were forced off their ancestral lands to be driven either into confined holding areas or state-planned townships that became the most deprived communities in Israel.

It is hard to cast the Bedouin, simple farmers and pastoralists, as a security threat, as was done with the Palestinians under occupation.

But Israel has a much broader definition of security than simple physical safety. Its security is premised on the maintenance of an absolute demographic dominance by Jews.

The Bedouin may be peaceable but their numbers pose a major demographic threat and their pastoral way of life obstructs the fate intended for them – penning them up tightly inside ghettos.

Most of the Bedouin have title deeds to their lands that long predate Israel’s creation. But Israel has refused to honour these claims and many tens of thousands have been criminalised by the state, their villages denied legal recognition.

For decades they have been forced to live in tin shacks or tents because the authorities refuse to approve proper homes and they are denied public services like schools, water and electricity.

The Bedouin have one option if they wish to live within the law: they must abandon their ancestral lands and their way of life to relocate to one of the poor townships.

Many of the Bedouin have resisted, clinging on to their historic lands despite the dire conditions imposed on them.

One such unrecognised village, Al Araqib, has been used to set an example. Israeli forces have demolished the makeshift homes there more than 160 times in less than a decade. In August, an Israeli court approved the state billing six of the villagers $370,000 (Dh1.6 million) for the repeated evictions.

Al Araqib’s 70-year-old leader, Sheikh Sayah Abu Madhim, recently spent months in jail after his conviction for trespassing, even though his tent is a stone’s throw from the cemetery where his ancestors are buried.

Now the Israel authorities are losing patience with the Bedouin.

Last January, plans were unveiled for the urgent and forcible eviction of nearly 40,000 Bedouin from their homes in unrecognised villages under the guise of “economic development” projects. It will be the largest expulsion in decades.

“Development”, like “security”, has a different connotation in Israel. It really means Jewish development, or Judaisation – not development for Palestinians.

The projects include a new highway, a high-voltage power line, a weapons testing facility, a military live-fire zone and a phosphate mine.

It was revealed last week that the families would be forced into displacement centres in the townships, living in temporary accommodation for years as their ultimate fate is decided. Already these sites are being compared to the refugee camps established for Palestinians in the wake of the Nakba.

The barely concealed aim is to impose on the Bedouin such awful conditions that they will eventually agree to be confined for good in the townships on Israel’s terms.

Six leading United Nations human rights experts sent a letter to Israel in the summer protesting the grave violations of the Bedouin families’ rights in international law and arguing that alternative approaches were possible.

Adalah, a legal group for Palestinians in Israel, notes that Israel has been forcibly evicting the Bedouin over seven decades, treating them not as human beings but as pawns in its never-ending battle to replace them with Jewish settlers.

The Bedouin’s living space has endlessly shrunk and their way of life has been crushed.

This contrasts starkly with the rapid expansion of Jewish towns and single-family farming ranches on the land from which the Bedouin are being evicted.

It is hard not to conclude that what is taking place is an administrative version of the ethnic cleansing Israeli officials conduct more flagrantly in the occupied territories on so-called security grounds.

These interminable expulsions look less like a necessary, considered policy and more like an ugly, ideological nervous tic.

October 17, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

And now, a message from our wannabe masters about Syria

The Saker | October 16, 2019

this just came to my inbox:

Dear The Saker,

The American Jewish Congress opposes the U.S. decision to withdraw troops from Syria and strongly condemns Turkey’s actions in Syria against the Kurds. In addition to endangering a U.S. ally, the Kurds, it also poses a great threat to Israel and to the region’s stability overall. Israel shares a border with Syria and is affected by what happens within Syria.

Syria has become a hotbed of Hezbollah and Iranian activity, which poses a direct threat to Israel; as a result of this decision, Turkey, Iran and Hezbollah win while Israel loses. Ultimately, the impact of this decision may come to outweigh President Trump’s historic actions in support of Israel. Regional stability and the security of our allies must be paramount for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Jack Rosen
President
American Jewish Congress

American Jewish Congress
745 5th Ave., 30th Floor
New York NY 10151 United States

October 16, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

The EU’s conditional aid and suppression of Palestinian rights

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 14, 2019

The European Union’s incoming Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has already signalled a continuation of the bloc’s prevailing politics when it comes to Palestine – preserve the two-state compromise by ensuring funding to the Palestinian Authority.

“If anyone helps the Palestinians today and their right to have their own state, that is Europe,” Borrell declared at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. The truth is Europe does neither; it is merely concerned with maintaining its influence when it comes to the two-state compromise and peace-building narratives, all of which serve the EU’s political agenda.

Summarising the gist of the EU’s foreign policy when it comes to Palestine, Borrell tweeted: “The EU contributes almost one million € a day to attend the Palestinian Authority. We must continue to defend a peaceful coexistence and the two states solution.” A succinct description of what EU funding constitutes – providing the PA with the necessary backing to function without the existence of a Palestinian state.

For the EU, maintaining the two-state paradigm at the helm of policy works better than implementation, which is now inapplicable anyway. The pretence of state-building, which the PA forms part of, is also a veneer that shifts focus away from the EU’s lucrative trade deals with Israel. Borrell has already stated, unsurprisingly, that the EU’s trade agreements with Israel will not be broken. In 2017, Israel-EU trade amounted to €36.2 billion, which pales in comparison to EU assistance to the PA.

For Palestinians, therefore, the EU only finances hypotheses – in Borrell’s words, “the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state that can coexist peacefully with an Israeli state.” The EU can claim to be the biggest donor to the Palestinians, yet it is financing its own agenda, rather than providing the means for Palestinians to demand their legitimate political rights.

The Oslo Accords, which allowed Israel to colonise additional Palestinian land, have not been repudiated by the EU. On the contrary, there has been no contestation of the framework on the grounds that it has stripped Palestinians of what remained of their land and freedom. With the PA a willing accomplice, the EU has never been challenged by Palestinian political bureaucrats to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people. Conversely, the PA reaches out to the EU for assistance in maintaining the violations imposed by Israel and to which the international community turns a blind eye.

Europe is not helping Palestinians towards statehood – it is maintaining the illusion of statehood as an interim project, while Israel colonises what remains of Palestinian territory. The Oslo Accords are vague and so is EU policy towards Palestine. Instead of seeking clear parameters to decolonise Palestine, the EU is adopting the same ambiguities that have transformed Palestinians into a humanitarian project against their will.

The EU is merely financing its unwarranted justification of the two-state paradigm and forcing Palestinians into conditional financial aid. While nothing new is expected when it comes to the EU’s farcical peace and state-building for Palestinians, Borrell has indicated the EU’s agenda upfront – the financing of agendas and illusions to enable Israel’s ongoing colonial project.

October 14, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

The Vela Flash: Forty Years Ago

Edited by William Burr, Avner Cohen, and Richard Wolfson | National Security Archive | September 22, 2019

Washington D.C. – An unidentified flash on 22 September 1979 in the far South Atlantic had a “90% plus” probability of being a nuclear test, according to a CIA finding from later that year. The document, among others uncovered recently through archival research, adds significant weight to the argument that the flash, detected by a U.S. VELA satellite, was not a natural event, as White House science advisers later insisted.

On the fortieth anniversary of the Vela incident, the National Security Archive supplements its earlier postings with documents recently obtained from the Jimmy Carter Library.

The collection includes new information on scientific intelligence provided by the Arecibo Observatory (Puerto Rico) concerning an ionospheric disturbance on 22 September that corresponded to similar evidence from Soviet nuclear tests in the  early 1960s.

The documents also put an unflattering cast on the methods of White House science experts who discounted the views of the intelligence agencies, eventually agreeing to hear them out only so “we can more safely ignore them later.” While chief White House scientist Frank Press argued that the intelligence community had no convincing case, recent scientific studies suggest that the case for a nuclear event interpretation is formidable.

____________________________________________________________

Forty years ago, on 22 September 1979, the bhangmeters on a U.S. VELA satellite picked up signals that were initially interpreted as most likely originating from a nuclear test in the far South Atlantic but which a high-level White House panel chaired by MIT professor Jack Ruina later interpreted as more probably the result of a non-nuclear event (e.g., a striking meteoroid) on or around the satellite. That view became the semiofficial public interpretation but it was contested and controversial. By contrast, according to a White House report published today by the National Security Archive, the Central Intelligence Agency had “assessed the probability of a nuclear test as 90% plus.” [See Document 5]

The CIA and White House science advisers raised their views almost entirely within the walls of government secrecy. In the intervening decade bits and pieces on the Vela incident—and the controversy over it—started to get declassified. Besides the CIA estimate of high probability, another release, a November 1979 memorandum from the Department of Energy included data from the Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory in Puerto Rico on an ionospheric disturbance that some interpreted as corroborating evidence of a nuclear explosion [See document 2].

Today’s posting introduces for the first time previously declassified but obscure and previously unpublished documents from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Collectively shedding light on the controversy over the Vela flash, the new documents supplement the two major collections published by the National Security Archive in 2006 and 2016.

These documents confirm that a number of senior government officials at the Energy Department, the Defense Department, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the CIA, among others, held the view that a nuclear explosion had taken place on 22 September 1979. Nevertheless, White House scientific advisers and officials were so strongly committed to the Ruina panel’s non-nuclear interpretation that they dismissed alternative explanations. They only agreed to hear out the views of dissenting officials “so that we can more safely ignore them.” [See Document 5]

In recent years, the Ruina panel’s arguments have come under critical scrutiny with scientists in the security studies field systematically reinterpreting the Vela data to make the case for a nuclear event. In recent publications, Lars-Erik De Geer (Swedish Defence Force Institute) and Christopher M. Wright (Australian Defence Force Academy) reviewed the publicly available evidence and concluded that the argument for a nuclear explosion is “founded upon three pillars, which include the original optical signal, the iodine-131 evidence, and the hydroacoustic signal.” According to De Geer and Wright, each of the pillars “by itself, is a strong indicator of a nuclear explosion.” For example, they found that the Vela signals provided stronger evidence of a test than the Ruina panel would credit. They further argued that the hydroacoustic data indicated that the test took place on or around the barren Prince Edward Island, some 955 nautical miles off the southern coast of South Africa.[1]

If the Vela sensors did detect a nuclear explosion, who set it off has also been a matter of speculation and controversy. A leading theory, advanced by former Senate staffer Leonard Weiss and others, is that it was an Israeli test conducted with South African logistical assistance.[2] In a major report the CIA also looked at scenarios involving both Israel and South Africa, among other countries, but its conclusions remain classified. President Jimmy Carter shared the view that Israel most likely played a lead role. On 27 February 1980, he wrote in his diary that “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of South Africa.” [3]

By now, forty years later, it is clear enough that South Africa could not be a suspect.  South Africa was not in a position to conduct such a test, as former South African scientists openly acknowledged years later. Israel, although presumably assisted by the South Africans, remained the sole suspect.[4]

It would be worth knowing which scientists President Carter had in mind, because the Ruina panel would have strongly disagreed with his assessment. He may have become acquainted with scientific intelligence reports as part of his daily briefing, but what they were is unknown. With major studies still classified, such as a critically important report by the Naval Research Laboratory (which the NRL cannot locate) and CIA studies as well as White House files still under declassification review or under appeal, much remains to be learned about U.S. government intelligence collection and analysis as well as the role that politics and diplomacy played in internal discussions of the Vela incident.

Documents

Document 1

White House Situation Room, Situation Room Log, “Reflections of South African Nuclear Event,” 25 October 1979, Secret

1979-10-25

Source: Zbigniew Brzezinski Material, Country Files [NSA 6] Box 72, South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 9/79-6/80

Since its creation during the Kennedy administration, the White House Situation Room has functioned as a communications center and a site for holding sensitive meetings. This record of situation room interactions with various agencies concerning the 22 September event provides an overview of the delayed and unsuccessful efforts to detect the radioactive debris that a nuclear test could have produced. The excised portions are probably a reference to the Air Force Technical Applications Center [AFTAC], which under various names has been monitoring overseas nuclear developments since the late 1940s and which played a role in the search for radioactive samples in the South Pacific after the Vela Incident..

Even though AFTAC found no traces of fallout, analysis of thyroid glands of sheep slaughtered in Australia in October 1979 showed “abnormally high levels” of Iodine 131, a “short-lived isotope that occurs as the result of a nuclear event.”

Document 2

John Deutch, Deputy Secretary of Energy, to Ambassador Henry Owen, enclosing “21-22-September Acoustic Gravity Wave Detection, Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory, Puerto Rico Facility,” 8 November 1979

1979-11-08

Source: Zbigniew Brzezinski Material, Country Files [NSA 6] Box 72, South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 9/79-6/80

Writing to Ambassador-at-Large Henry Owen, who had overlapping roles at the White House and the State Department, John Deutch sent a report of a “traveling ionospheric disturbance”—a wave in the upper atmosphere—detected by the Arecibo Observatory, a giant radio telescope nestled into the mountains of Puerto Rico. According to Deutch, the data on the ionospheric disturbance “possibly may confirm the signal from the VELA system.”

The Arecibo Observatory (now a National Science Foundation facility) can detect signals in the upper atmosphere that originate in violent events at Earth’s surface—including volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, nuclear explosions, and even rocket launches. Such events can produce strong sound waves of very low frequency (pitch), far below what the human ear can detect (the periods of these waves are measured in minutes or longer, as opposed to thousandths of seconds for humanly audible sound). These waves propagate upward through the atmosphere. When they reach the ionosphere, a layer of electrically charged particles beginning about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above Earth, they may induce so-called traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs).

The Arecibo Observatory is one of the best instruments in the world for observing TIDs. It does conventional radio astronomy for studying the cosmos, but it also sends powerful radar beams into the upper atmosphere to probe Earth’s ionosphere. Several hours after the VELA flash detection, Arecibo observed a TID. Initially downplayed in part because of Aricebo’s location thousands of miles from the VELA event, the observation produced a different perspective from DOE, which suggested that the TID was consistent with “an earthquake or explosion source” and that the wave speed was consistent with an event having come from the VELA source—although ambiguities in the exact type (mode) of the wave made a shorter distance also possible. The available declassified information notes that similar observations (although pre-Arecibo) have been associated with nuclear tests in the Soviet arctic in 1961.

The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Laboratory developed its thinking on the Arecibo signal, treating it as a possible indicator of a nuclear event. Nevertheless, the Ruina panel would discount the Arecibo data on grounds of “mathematical errors,” although the defense and energy departments strongly disagreed. Pending declassification requests may shed more light on the debate over the Arecibo data.

Document 3

White House Science and Technology [Staff] Report to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Evening Report,” 9 November 1979, Secret

1979-11-08

Source: Staff Material Science and Technology Files [NSA 30], Box 5, [Marcum Chron file]: 1-12/79

According to national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s aides, a panel organized by White House science adviser Dr. Frank Press and chaired by MIT professor Jack Ruina was already reviewing data and heading toward a “preliminary finding” that the Vela flash was not a nuclear event. According to the early findings, “it is entirely possible that the September 22 signal could have been caused by a meteroid of somewhat different velocity, size and rotational motion.” Moreover, the Vela signal “itself differs in some important ways from previous nuclear signals.” Without corroborating data, “these facts tended to make the panel somewhat skeptical that a nuclear explosion actually occurred.”

The report also mentioned Deutch’s report on the newly interpreted data from the Arecibo Observatory. While noting that the Arecibo data “has a very different timescale” and that the “relationship between nuclear explosions and ionospheric disturbances is much less well understood than for optical signals recorded by bhangmeters [on VELA satellites],” it “represents the best lead yet in the search for corroborative data.”

Document 4

Henry Owen/Jerry Oplinger, White House Staff, to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, “South Atlantic Event,”9 January 1980, Secret

1980-01-09

Source: Staff Material Global Issues Files [NSA 28], Box 55, Proliferation – South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 1/80

On 9 January 1980, a “mini-SCC [Special Coordinating Committee]” meeting discussed the 22 September event. According to participants, “The consensus was that we don’t know what happened, and must proceed in policy terms accordingly.” The effort to politicize science is implicit. In a way, that conclusion matched the findings of the Ruina panel. Agnostic semi-official conclusions notwithstanding, important elements of the intelligence community continued to hold that a nuclear event had been detected, as evidenced in a report included in the National Security Archive’s 2016 posting.

Document 5

Jerry Oplinger, National Security Council/Science and Technology Staff, to Ambassador Henry Owen, “South Atlantic Event,” 25 January 1980, Secret, Excised copy

1980-01-25

Source: Staff Material Global Issues Files [NSA 28], Box 55, Proliferation – South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 1/80

This report conveys the approach that senior White House staff took toward dissenting views on the 22 September event. A scheduled presentation by representatives of the Departments of Energy and Defense would provide an opportunity for them to express arguments that a nuclear event had occurred; they would be heard out, according to this memo, “so that we can more safely ignore them.” This can arguably be seen as another possible demonstration of a “whitewash” effort to politicize scientific evidence.

According to Oplinger’s memorandum, the CIA’s “Safeguards-D” report had “assessed the probability of a nuclear test as 90% plus.” The Safeguards-D report was one required by the U.S. Senate when it ratified the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Consistent with proposals by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the treaty be ratified on the basis of specific conditions, the Senate required the Kennedy administration to take specific implementing actions, such as recommendation D: “The improvement of our capability, within feasible and practical limits, to monitor the terms of the treaty, to detect violations, and to maintain our knowledge of Sino-Soviet nuclear activity, capabilities, and achievements.”

Having heard rumors that the CIA wanted to rewrite its safeguards report so that it corresponded to the findings of the Ruina panel, Oplinger wanted to make sure that CIA did no such thing because “nothing would suggest a whitewash more effectively.” If the CIA later decided that it wanted to update the earlier report that would be another matter as long as it could “provide solid and objective reasons.”

Document 6

Frank Press to Stan Turner, “Possible South Atlantic Nuclear Explosion,” 6 June 1980, Secret

1980-06-06

Source: Zbigniew Brzezinski Material, Country Files [NSA 6] Box 72, South Atlantic Nuclear Event, 9/79-6/80

In this memorandum to Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner, Frank Press, White House science adviser, explained the reasoning behind the Ruina panel’s conclusion that the Vela flash was “probably not from a nuclear explosion” and “more likely … caused by a natural event.” He could not have written to Turner, however, without acknowledging the dissents expressed by “key officials” at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA’s Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP), and the DOE weapons laboratories, who believed that the Vela signal detected a nuclear event. According to Press, “this is due primarily to the fact that the signal so closely resembles those from previous nuclear explosions, but the weapons laboratories have been unable to come up with a physical explanation that could explain the discrepancies observed in the signal.”

Press also noted that some of the agencies point to the “few pieces of geophysical data from September 22 that might have been related to a nuclear explosion.” He most likely referred to Arecibo data, and quite possibly also to the acoustic signals as analyzed by the naval Research Laboratory. Nevertheless, Press discounted it all: the data had “been thoroughly analyzed and none can be clearly correlated with the VELA signal.” We do not know if CIA Director Turner responded in writing to this memorandum. In the late 1990s, Turner told one of us (Avner Cohen) that he (and the Agency) had no doubt that it was a test and almost certainly an Israeli test.

Believing that White House scientists were not acting in good faith, by the spring of 1980, DIA experts saw the nuclear interpretation as settled in light of Naval Research Laboratory acoustic data that had not been available to the CIA or the Ruina panel. According to a senior DIA official, the acoustic signals were “unique to nuclear shots in a maritime environment.’”

Notes

[1]. Lars-Erik De Geer and Christopher M. Wright, “The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: The Detected Double-Flash,” Science and Global Security 25 (2017): 95-124, and “The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: Radionuclide and Hydroacoustic Evidence for a Nuclear Explosion,” Ibid, 26 (2018): 20-54.

[2]. Weiss has written extensively on this issue. See “Israel’s 1979 Nuclear Test and the U.S. Cover-up,” Middle East Policy,” Vol. 18 No.4 (2011); “The 1979 South Atlantic Flash: The Case for an Israeli Nuclear Test,” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Moving Beyond Pretense: Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation (Harrisburg, PA: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2014), 345-371; and “Flash from the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test in 1979 Matters Today,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (8 September 2015). “Flash from the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test in 1979 Matters Today.” See also Timothy McDonnell, “International Conference: The Historical Dimensions of South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Program,”4 January 2013, Nuclear Proliferation International History Project.

[3]. Jimmy Carter, White House Diary, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), p. 405.

[4]. See Sasha Polakow-Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), at 136 and 141, and Nic von Wielligh and Lydai von Wielligh-Steyn, The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme (Pretoria: Litera Publications, 2015), at 157.

October 12, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

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