The Year of War Against Anti-Semitism
Everyone is doing it
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 31, 2019
One might think that 2019 was the year war was declared against anti-Semitism judging from the pronouncements of politicians in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin. To be sure, Israel and its diaspora friends have continued to play the “anti-Semitism” card whenever their behavior is challenged but the international passion to extirpate the “new anti-Semitism” to include any and all criticism of Israel is something quite special that is being backed up by punitive legislation.
In one of its more recent victory laps, British Zionists are toasting Mazel Tov in their Hanukkah celebrations over their part in the defeat of Labour candidate Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was demonized personally by the British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis shortly before the December election and was unfairly labeled an anti-Semite by the Jewish media over his antipathy towards Israeli actions and his willingness to recognize the suffering of the Palestinians. From now on, no British politician will be willing to challenge Jewish power in the U.K. Indeed, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who claims some Jewish ancestry and spent some time in his youth on a kibbutz, has already pledged to make any criticism of Israel illegal in Britain. Moving the British Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will no doubt soon follow.
Meanwhile, and as a direct result of the unwillingness to confront Israel in any meaningful way, war crimes committed by the Jewish state proliferate. Every Friday there is a shooting gallery along the fence with Gaza, where unarmed Palestinian protesters are targeted by Israeli snipers. And in November, Israel conducted a series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip after its assassination of a senior Islamic Jihad commander and his wife. At least 34 Palestinians were reported killed and more than 100 wounded in the two days of bombardment while no Israelis were killed. An attack on the makeshift home of the al-Sawarka family killed eight members of the family, including children. A week later, a ninth member of the family, Mohammed al-Sawarka, died from from his injuries.
The Israeli army carried out a perfunctory investigation of the deaths and concluded that that the army’s intelligence section had made a mapping mistake that included the family home as part of an Islamic Jihad “compound.” So a filing error led to the deaths of nine innocent civilians in one family and, of course, no one in the Israeli military was in any way punished or even reprimanded. Or even apologized.
And when it is pushed to do so, Israel uses the anti-Semitism weapon to render itself completely unaccountable in spite of its war crimes. The recent announcement by the International Criminal Court (ICC) that it is looking into possible crimes relating to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has produced a quick response from Washington and Jerusalem. The Trump Administration, fearful lest one crime lead to investigation of another, is concerned lest atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq become the fodder for a subsequent inquiry, has reiterated its claim that the ICC has no jurisdiction over it as the U.S. has never recognized its authority. Washington has also revoked a visa held by chief prosecutor of the ICC, has threatened more visa refusals, and is also threatening sanctions as reprisals, claiming that the court is “illegitimate” while also vowing that the Trump Administration would do everything “to protect [American] citizens”.
In Israel meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to shore up his sputtering attempt to remain in office by denouncing the inquiry itself as “anti-Semitism.” He made the claim while using Judaism’s holy Western Wall as a backdrop during a candle-lighting ceremony marking the start of the eight-days of Hanukkah, saying “New edicts are being cast against the Jewish people – anti-Semitic edicts by the International Criminal Court telling us that we, the Jews standing here next to this wall … in this city, in this country, have no right to live here and that by doing so, we are committing a war crime.” He called it “Pure anti-Semitism.”
Back in the United States the war on anti-Semitism initiated by President Donald Trump and endorsed by both parties in Congress is running full speed ahead. The first lawsuit linked to the Trump executive order signed on Hanukkah that creates a mechanism for defunding universities that do not protect the “civil rights” of their Jewish students has been filed by a Israeli student at Columbia University. His lawyer Brooke Goldstein claims that the university is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for “discrimination against Jews.” He added that “We drafted and filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which is, to my knowledge, the first action of its kind since Trump’s executive order.”
Goldstein is the executive director of The Lawfare Project, which has been engaged in Jewish and Israeli advocacy. Her client, Jonathan Karten, a senior at Columbia University, alleges that he was on the receiving end of anti-Semitism on campus. The Trump executive order broadens the definition of discrimination by implying that “Jewish” is a nationality while also accepting that criticism of Israel constitutes anti-Semitism.
Goldstein claims that Karten “has been ridiculed and embarrassed because of his religion and his national identity” on campus, most particularly by members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Karten claims that he was called “a Zionist pig” and other names. And Karten complains that even a professor was mean to him when he was speaking with other students at an event hosted by the Columbia chapter of Students Supporting Israel. A “Columbia professor of Arabic literature… interrupted the conversation, pointed at Jonathan and yelled, ‘Don’t believe a word he is saying. He is Mossad.’” According to the complaint, “Jonathan felt ridiculed and embarrassed due to someone in authority publicly targeting him, accusing him of being a spy for a foreign government because of his religion and national identity.”
Karten decided to take action after a November 8th speech by a modern Arab politics and intellectual history professor named Joseph Massad. Massad reportedly gave a speech at the annual conference of the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center, where he said that “The Oslo Accords inaugurated this process of liquidating the Palestinian national struggle while the ‘Deal of the Century’ plans and hopes to conclude it … The only thing standing in its way is the ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli settler colonialism and racism that continues inside Israel and Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza; the ongoing Marches of Return in Gaza; and the armed resistance of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades to Israeli invasions in Gaza.”
The complaint notes that “The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades is the military wing of Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization [FTO]” while the “Izz al-Din al-Qassam has killed more than 650 civilians. It is also directly responsible for the kidnapping and brutal murder of Jonathan’s uncle, Sharone Edri. However, according to Professor Massad, this group’s killing of innocent Israeli citizens, like Jonathan’s uncle and countless others, is justified due to Israel’s ‘settler colonialism.’”
Karten and Goldstein maintain that their complaints fell on deaf ears within the Columbia University Administration. Karten had filed a complaint with Columbia University’s Department of Public Safety last year “… after he and his friends were repeatedly called murderers at a BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] referendum at the school.”
One might observe that Professor Massad did not say anything that is contrary to a reasonable assessment of what the Israelis and their friends have done to the Palestinians. Under international law, it is perfectly justified for a people under occupation to resist the occupiers, using whatever means are available. And it is not unimaginable that Karten reports to Mossad. One presumes that he has done his military service and perhaps he should explain what that entailed in light of claims that he was or is a “murderer.”
Jonathan Karten appears to be such a sensitive soul that being called names over what is admittedly a red-hot and very controversial political issue needs to be redressed by putting those hurling the epithets out of business permanently. That amounts to a nullification of the First and Fourth amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees freedom of speech and association. Karten himself felt free to associate with a group of Students Supporting Israel and one might safely bet that some serious invective would flow out of that organization whenever a Palestinian might appear at or near one of its gatherings. And most importantly, one should also note that Karten was not by his own admission in any way threatened. It was only words.
And lawyer Goldstein is not necessarily an objective observer pursuing “justice.” She is nothing more than a professional advocate for Israel and what are perceived as Jewish issues. As it is somewhat unclear what exactly she and her client want the university to do to address the issues they have cited, one can only guess that it would include silencing the critics and possibly even reparations of some kind, a frequent feature in the old “discrimination” game.
None of this agitation occurs in a vacuum. There is extensive advocacy for Israel at all levels, much of it hidden. In 2019 alone the Sheldon Adelson supported Maccabee Task Force “secretly funded over 3,200 pro-Israel events on 112 campuses, and brought over 2,300 student leaders on ‘transformative trips’ to Israel.” Taken all together, every bit of uncritical empowering of the Jewish state now surfacing in London, Washington, New York and in Israel itself is part of a vast international conspiracy to render the Zionist crimes against humanity unobserved and unreported whenever possible as well as always unaccountable. And when all else fails, the Israelis and, to be sure, many diaspora Jews know exactly what to weaponize when they want to win the debate. Former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni once explained how it is done: “Anti-Semitic”… ”it’s a trick, we always use it.”
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.
New Financial Crisis Looms as Israel Withholds Millions of Palestinian Tax Money
The Palestine Chronicle | December 30, 2019
Once more, the Israeli government has decided to withhold tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues, collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to prevent it from supporting families of Palestinians killed or wounded by the Israeli army.
Reuters news agency reported on Monday that the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not hand over nearly $43 million in Palestinian taxes over the PA’s “financial support for the families of slain or wounded Palestinian” activists.
The Israeli government had withheld hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian budget in the past in order for Tel Aviv to force Mahmoud Abbas’ Authority to toe the Israeli line. In February, Tel Aviv confiscated PA funds citing Palestinian government’s support for prisoners and their families.
Under the Oslo agreement, Israel is responsible for collecting taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the current sum of which, according to Reuters, is estimated at $222 million a month.
In a meeting with members of his ruling Fatah party, PA President Abbas admitted that the Israeli decision “will cost us a lot.” “But we have rights and we will not be afraid,” he added.
Israeli war minister defiles Ibrahimi Mosque
Palestine Information Center | December 30, 2019
AL-KHALIL – Israeli war minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday night desecrated the Ibrahimi Mosque in al-Khalil at the pretext of marking a Jewish event called Hanukkah.
According to the Hebrew media, Bennett was accompanied during his tour of the Mosque by senior army commander Itamar Ben-Haim, Kiryat Arba settlement chief Eliyahu Liebman and Jewish religious figures.
Addressing settlers at the Islamic holy site, Bennett claimed that al-Khalil was the heart of Israel and that the Jewish people could not live without this heart.
He vowed to build more settlements and neighborhoods for Jewish settlers in al-Khalil, affirming that he became the minister of the Israeli army in order to achieve that.
Palestinian minor prisoners in Israel jails tortured, humiliated, NGO reveals
MEMO | December 30, 2019
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission (PPC) has documented witnesses of Palestinian minor prisoners inside Israeli jails stating that they had been tortured and humiliated when they were arrested and during their investigations, Safa Press Agency reported.
Minor prisoner, Abdul-Min’em Al-Natsha, 17, revealed that Israeli undercover forces kidnapped him from the streets of Shu’fat Refugee Camp along with Usama Taha, 16.
Both boys disclosed that they were taken to an investigation centre and spent four hours being investigated. They were handcuffed, insulted and beaten.
Al-Natsha noted that members of the Israeli army unit, Nahkshon, beat him more than one time on his way to attend the court sessions.
“They beat me just because I spoke with my mother during one of the court sessions,” Al-Natsha added.
Meanwhile, Taha explained that the officers of the Nahkshon unit unleashed the police dog at him on his way to the court.
Another boy, Motasem Sheikha, 17, described his kidnapping by Israeli undercover forces while walking in the streets of Shu’fat Refugee Camp.
He added that he spent 30 days being investigated in Al-Moskobiyeh Detention Centre, where he was tortured after he was incarcerated in a room with no monitoring cameras.
Abdul-Rahman Abu-Laila, 17, was also kidnapped by Israeli undercover forces from his workplace in the city of Akka, Israel.
According to the PPC, Abu-Laila was locked up in Petah-Tikva Detention Centre for ten days. He spent each day handcuffed in an isolated cell.
Raed Rashid, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy from the West Bank of Jenin, told that the Israeli occupation forces broke down the main door of his house at night, broke into his room and arrested him while he was sleeping.
“When they saw my mother screaming as they were aiming their guns at me, they beat me harshly in front of her,” he told the PPC.
Rashid revealed that he was imprisoned in Al-Jalama Detention Centre, while blindfolded and handcuffed, for around 10 hours.
The boys Sheikha, Al-Natsha and Taha are being detained in Al-Damoun Prison and the others, Rashid and Abu-Laila, are being held in Meggido Prison.
Gaza’s Local Industries in Ruins as 500 Factories are about to Close
Palestine Chronicle – December 29, 2019
2019 was one of the worst years for local Gaza economy that is struggling to stay afloat despite the hermetic Israeli blockade.
Palestinian sources told Quds News Network that over 500 factories, which have provided much of Gazans’ domestic needs, will shut down by the end of this year, due to the increasingly dire economic situation in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Successive Israeli wars and a prolonged, suffocating siege imposed on the heavily-populated enclave for over twelve years, are the main reasons for Gaza’s economic misfortunes, where, as of September 2019, unemployment has soared to 46.7%.
According to the General Union of Palestinian Industries, “2019 was even worse than the year before as 520 factories have been (or about to) shut down this year while other factories moved outside the Strip to Jordan or Egypt, leading to layoffs and increased unemployment among other social and humanitarian problems,” Quds News reported.
A World Bank report issued in September 2018 had already warned that Gaza’s economy was experiencing “free fall”.
“A combination of war, isolation, and internal rivalries has left Gaza in a crippling economic state and exacerbated the human distress,” said Marina Wes, the World Bank’s director for the region, at the time.
“The occupation state has targeted all kinds of economic installations during its wars on the besieged enclave,” Quds News reported.
“It also prevents Gaza’s importation of much essential material and equipment”.
More Holocaust Reparations for 2020: the Gift That Keeps on Giving
Yad Vashem – Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Melania, Ivanka and Jared Kushner, Rabbi Yisrael lau. credit: Amos Ben Gershom GPO/ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Flickr)
By Philip Giraldi • American Herald Tribune • December 29, 2019
Now that 2019 has ended, it is more than seventy-four years since the end of the Second World War. America’s “Greatest Generation” that actually fought the war and endured it on the home front, is dying off and the remembrance of the conflict is increasingly experienced second hand, if at all. The war has been relegated to the history books, one might think, but that would be to ignore one aspect of it which seems to never fade from sight. That would be the so-called holocaust, which has produced a host of taxpayer funded museums, is regularly featured in the media and also is part of mandatory public education in a growing number of states and school districts.
That the established holocaust narrative lives on in spite of its irrelevancy and obvious contradictions is a reflection of Jewish power in the United States. Since the 1970s, when the regular evocations of the holocaust began in earnest, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, The New York Times. The role and influence of Jews in American politics has also developed simultaneously, with Jews heavily over-represented in the Democratic Party and in Congress.
The rise to power on the part of American Jews coincided with the trajectory of Israel in the Middle East. Protecting Israel and Jewish privilege became two sides of the same coin, leading to creation of the holocaust narrative, which Professor Norman Finkelstein has aptly described as The Holocaust Industry. And promotion of the sanctity of the holocaust story has enabled the damnation of skeptics as holocaust-deniers while also increasing the exploitation of the charge of anti-Semitism for those who would dare to criticize either the Jewish tribe itself or Israel.
One of the singular manifestations of the Jewish power in both the U.S. and in Europe has been the creation of mechanisms to address the perceived needs of “holocaust survivors.” One might argue reasonably enough that there cannot be actually that many genuine survivors remaining after 74 years, but the term has proven to be extremely elastic. It has come to include not only the actual victims who were allegedly sent to labor or concentration camps but also any Jew who survived 1939 through 1945 in Europe or even in Asia living in ghettos. And it also includes their children, even if born after the war.
Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State on Holocaust-Era Issues. Credit: U.S. National Archives/ Flickr
As a result, the so-called holocaust survivors are now well into their second generation, receiving extra Social Security and Medicare benefits in the United States as well as a steady flow of reparations from Germany and other Europeans, to include France, where forty-nine people who made it out of the Holocaust alive are receiving around $400,000 each, helped by the State Department’s expert on holocaust issues Stuart Eizenstat. The U.S. State Department even has a Holocaust Deportation Claims Program which is always staffed by Jews like Eizenstat.
The reparations programs are generally structured in a way that the payments are limited to Jews, even though there were millions more non-Jews who were victims of the German camps and prisons. Recently there have even been claims that the traumatic holocaust experience might have caused genetic damage, meaning that the need to address the issue by extorting money from the German and other governments will conceivably extend into the foreseeable future.
When in doubt about where to find the money, it is only necessary to get in touch with a professional Zionist Zealot like Eizenstat or with one of the commercial firms that is into the holocaust reparations business. The International Center for Holocaust Reparations is one of them, a corporation registered in Israel with offices located in Jerusalem, Berlin and in Pompano Beach Florida. It was founded by Israeli Zachi Porath and the actual incorporation is in his name as Zachi Porath Ltd.
The organization website headlines that it is “Pursuing Rights of Holocaust Survivors.” It is indeed doing so in a manner of speaking, but it is also a business that makes money by taking a cut of what it obtains. Its website asks what it considers to be key screening questions: “Are you a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto?” and “Are you a child of a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a Ghetto?” before getting to the crux of the matter, “You may be entitled to a large sum of money! Even if you are already receiving compensation from the Claims Conference or from the German authorities, including the German Pension Insurance you may be eligible to receive additional payments.”
According to the website “The pension is paid even to those who were interned for a short period of time in a Ghetto (including Ghettos in Poland, Romania, Czernowitz, Shanghai, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Transnistria, Amsterdam, Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus and many more). The possibilities are for a one-time retroactive compensation, as well as a monthly payment from the German Social Security… If you are an heir of a ghetto survivor, and the survivor or their spouse was alive on June 27th 2002, you may be entitled to a one-time payment… We will help you to file the claims for all the money you justly deserve… After you have received the restitution payment, we will charge a fee of 15% of the retroactive sum.”
The website also advises that even second-generation survivors whose parents were interned in a ghetto somewhere for even a short time “may be entitled to a one-time compensation payment… We have been aiding Holocaust survivors all over the world in exercising their rights and have successfully helped many survivors attain their rightful money.”
Some might object to the assertion that Jewish suffering in the war was somehow unique given the fact that far more Russians died than Jews. But the difference is one of perception, due to the effective marketing of a preferred narrative by a powerful and wealthy group that has easy access to the media, to the entertainment industry and to policy makers. And one should not be dismissive of the hard work that has gone into making holocaust reparations eternal. It takes a great deal of ingenuity to devise mechanisms that separate German, French and American taxpayers from their money in perpetuity on behalf of numerous people concentrated apparently in Israel and Florida who may not have suffered at all in the Second World War.
Hoax Confirmed: Honking on Hanukkah (2019)
Semitic Controversies | December 27, 2019
According to the ‘Times of Israel’ there has been an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, New York city.
To wit:
‘A man was arrested and accused of setting fire to a Yeshiva University dormitory on Friday using matches set out for Hanukkah, authorities in New York said.
Peter Weyand, 33, is suspected of setting three fires in the Schottenstein Residence Hall dormitory in Midtown Manhattan as students slept, New York’s Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said in a statement.
Firefighters responded within five minutes and there were no injuries in the fires, he said.
Surveillance video released by the fire department shows the suspect kicking in a glass door to break into the building at about 3:50 a.m. Friday. The department said Weyand used matches that had been set out for lighting Hanukkah candles.
FDNY
✔
@FDNY
FDNY Fire Marshals have arrested Peter Weyand, age 33, for breaking into the Yeshiva University Schottenstein Residence and using matches intended for a Chanukah menorah to set three separate fires in the building.
“Attacking any religious institution is a serious crime and we have zero tolerance for acts of arson in this city. Thanks to the thorough investigative work of our Fire Marshals, a dangerous individual has been quickly apprehended,” Nigro said.
Weyand is being charged with arson, burglary with criminal intent, reckless endangerment of property, criminal mischief, criminal trespass and aggravated harassment, the fire commissioner said.
Authorities did not indicate if there was any hate crime motive in the incident.’ (1)
Going by the video that has been helpfully provided; Weyand broke in to the lobby of the Schottenstein residence, couldn’t find or get access to anything to steal and promptly began trying to light the place on fire instead. This is clearly not an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ by Weyand if we go by the video footage and this is further supported by the lack of any ‘hate crime’-related charge being made by the authorities in New York, which has subsequently been confirmed to be the case by the NYPD. (2)
We have also been informed that Weyand is the grandson of famous jewish physicist and creator of the Hydrogen Bomb Edward Teller (born Ede Teller in Budapest) and is therefore jewish himself. (3)
Go figure.
Regardless of this however; it was quite the attempt prank… no?
(1) https://www.timesofisrael.com/man-arrested-for-setting-fire-to-yeshiva-u-dorm-with-hanukkah-matches/; alternatively see https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/nyregion/yeshiva-university-ny-fires.html
(2) https://forward.com/fast-forward/437220/yeshiva-univeristy-arson-dorm-edward-teller/
(3) Ibid.
Family of Slain Palestinian Say Israeli Officials Are Lying About How He Was Killed
IMEMC & Agencies – December 28, 2019
Although a month and a half has passed since the killing of the Jerusalemite, Faris Bassam Abu Nab, questions remain about the circumstances of his death, and his family members say Israeli officials have had contradictory and deceptive statements. Abu Nab was shot by Israeli forces near the Tunnel checkpoint, south of Jerusalem.
According to the Jerusalem-based Silwan Information Center, Bassam Abu Nab, the father of the killed Palestinian, said that he assigned a lawyer to follow up on the case of shooting his son and investigate, stressing that he continues to search for the truth of what happened to his son, and to hold the perpetrators accountable and punish them.
Abu Nab said: “AbuKbeir Institute of Forensic Medicine refuses, to this day, to give me the results of the autopsy, and I did not receive the initial or final report, and he told me that it was transferred to the Police Investigation Unit (Mahash), and when I headed to the police and asked the official, he first denied and then refused to provide any information”.
Abu Nab added that the condition of his son’s body revealed that he was killed “in cold blood”, because the bullets were in the upper part of the body, in the heart, chest, head, and neck, and the signs of assault were clear on his head from the back and lower back, as if he was dragged to the ground, in addition to dislocating his elbow, and all this refuted the occupation’s narration that only his feet were shot — but his feet did not contain any bullets.”
Abu Nab continued, “From the moment I learned about the incident, the occupation police told me that they opened fire at the vehicle from the rear on the pretext that it was ‘illegal’. But I myself found the car by chance parked in the parking lot of Al-Maskobyeh in West Jerusalem, and it had no sign of any bullets, and after examination and investigation it was found that it was legal.”
Abu Nab wondered: “Where are the surveillance cameras at the military checkpoint, and why did the Israeli media present a report on the incident with edited scenes?” He called for the full disclosure of the cameras’ recordings on the day of the incident.
He said: “The occupation forces have no right to kill anyone, whatever the reason, and they can use non-lethal electric weapons to arrest him.”
Abu Nab pointed to his pursuit and his family by the occupation authorities after his son was killed, including the invasion of his home, the assaults of himself and his children, and the interrogation of his three children last week. The interrogator told them: “Why do you say we killed your brother, the accident occurred in the West Bank. We didn’t have anything to do with it.” They also told the children to “not talk too much about this incident… it was a mistake and it happened.”
The mother of the victim confirmed that her son was committed to his work and said: “Faris was killed in cold blood, and he used his car to do delivery services and was working in cleaning restaurants and usually worked until after midnight. On the day of his martyrdom, he wore his clothes as usual and went out to work.”
The family confirmed that they would follow-up the case of their son’s martyrdom until the truth is revealed, and that they would remain steadfast in Jerusalem despite the abuse and prosecutions they are subjected to.
The Israeli occupation soldiers opened fire on Faris Abu Nab who is a resident of Silwan, on November 17th 2019, at the Tunnel checkpoint, south of Jerusalem, and his body was released to his family after three days of detention.
Netanyahu Announces Six-Point Plan to Annex Palestinian Land, Defeat Iran
Palestine Chronicle | December 28, 2019
Following his triumph in the Likud party’s primary elections on December 26, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced a political plan aimed at securing US recognition of Israel’s annexation of West Bank settlements and rolling back Iran’s influence in the region.
Netanyahu’s plan, which is likely to play a major role in his desperate attempt to cling to power after yet another general election, slated for March, also proposes the normalization of ties between Tel Aviv and Arab countries, without ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Israeli newspaper Times of Israel reported on Netanyahu’s six-point plan, which was revealed during the Israeli leader’s victory speech on Friday.
“First, we will finalize our borders; second, we will push the US to recognize our sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea; third, we will push for US recognition of our extension of sovereignty over all the communities in Judea and Samaria, all of them without exception,” Netanyahu said.
“Fourth, we will push for a historic defense alliance with the US that will preserve Israeli freedom of action; fifth, stop Iran and its allies decisively; and sixth, push for normalization and agreements that will lead to peace accords with Arab countries”.
“Israeli officials have been preparing for this moment for more than half a century, since the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were seized back in 1967,” wrote Palestine Chronicle contributor Jonathan Cook last June.
“Annexation is not a right-wing project that has hijacked the benign intentions of Israel’s founding generation. Annexation was on the cards from the occupation’s very beginnings in 1967, when the so-called center-left – now presented as a peace-loving alternative to Netanyahu – ran the government,” Cook added.
“Ultimately, Israel wants the Palestinians gone entirely, squeezed out into neighboring Arab states, such as Egypt and Jordan. That next chapter is likely to begin in earnest if Trump ever gets the chance to unveil his deal of the century’.”
In his speech on Friday, Netanyahu promised his Likud supporters that he will “fight for them” as “they fought for me,” reported The Times of Israel.
Trump Stuck Between Ending Endless Wars and his Hawkish Megadonors
By Eli Clifton | Responsible Statecraft | December 4, 2019
President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to withdraw the United States from its ongoing wars in the Middle East, and avoid the kind of military adventurism, like the Iraq war, that has destabilized the region. Trump’s track record, however, is largely detached from his promises — a disconnect perhaps at least partially explained by his largest campaign contributors’ consistent advocacy for U.S. military action in the Middle East and support for starting a preventive war with Iran.
Trump appears to understand that the American public is largely supportive of ending the endless wars in Afghanistan and the greater Middle East. “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” said Trump in his 2019 State of the Union Address to bipartisan applause. But Trump’s actions haven’t lined up with his words. Despite his reckless Syria withdrawal announcement and blessing a Turkish invasion into northern Syria, total U.S. troop levels there are expected to remain at around 900, a small reduction from the 1,000 soldiers in Syria at the time of Trump’s announcement. Meanwhile, despite Trump’s repeated claims that he’ll end the war in Afghanistan, U.S. troops will stay there “for several more years,” as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said last month.
Trump tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and a mission creep in Syria that’s expanded stated U.S. goals from containing ISIS to an “effort to push back against Iran,” according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are also a far cry from moving away from Middle East military adventurism, as Trump has always said he wants to do.
Yet as a candidate for president, Trump talked a different game. At that time he broke with GOP/neocon orthodoxy on Iran and Israel. Then, his main critique of the Iran deal wasn’t its very existence — as was and is often the right-wing attack line — but that the Iranians weren’t buying enough commercial airliners from American companies, and instead spending more in Europe. And in another move that firmly put him on his own in the race, Trump even committed to being a “neutral” party on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All of that changed, however, as Trump drew closer to clinching the nomination and as he turned to some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors to fund his general election efforts — thus evaporating his claim of being a “self-funded” candidate.
Three GOP megadonors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and Bernard Marcus contributed more than a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars to boost Trump’s 2016 campaign and support Republican congressional and senate campaigns in 2016 and 2018.
Candidate Trump even warned that the money from the biggest of these donors, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, comes with strings attached. In 2015, Trump mocked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for pursuing Adelson’s endorsement and financial support, saying, “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!”
Adelson, and his wife Miriam, are the GOP’s biggest donors, and they’re relatively transparent about why they are engaged in politics. The Adelsons contributed $35 million to the Future 45 Super PAC that supported Trump’s presidential bid and spent $205 million on GOP Republican House and Senate races in the past two political cycles.
Sheldon Adelson has a history of using his ties to U.S. politicians to shape U.S. foreign policy. In 2001, Adelson reportedly curried favor with the Chinese leadership and helped secure his casino license in Macau by calling Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), then the House majority whip, and persuading him to halt Republican opposition to Beijing’s Olympic bid.
And those views can take an extreme militarist tone regarding U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Adelson publicly advocated launching a preventive nuclear attack on Iran as a negotiating tactic and following up with a threat to nuke Tehran, a city with a population of over 8 million, if Iran did not abandon its nuclear program. The Adelsons pushed the Trump White House to fulfill a campaign pledge of relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and bankrolled efforts to push out then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster and replace him with John Bolton, who would take a harder line on Iran and oversee U.S. abrogation from the Iran nuclear deal.
Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus — who contributed $7 million to groups supporting Trump’s candidacy, over $13 million in campaign contributions supporting GOP House and Senate races in 2016, and nearly $8 million to GOP midterm campaigns in 2018 — also made clear that his political engagement is driven by a militarist worldview.
In 2015, Marcus slammed the Obama administration’s efforts to negotiate constraints on Iran’s nuclear program, because, he said, Iran “is the devil.” Marcus even once accused Holocaust victims of being weak and submissive in the face of their own mass murder in concentration camps, which he also referred to as “detention centers” and “concentration centers.” The Israelis, said Marcus, “weren’t like the other Jews” and “didn’t walk into the ghettos, didn’t walk into the concentration camps, didn’t walk into the ovens.”
Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer had set himself apart from Marcus and Adelson, and was the biggest Republican megadonor to identify with the “never Trump” wing — that is until Trump won the election when he donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Singer rarely speaks publicly about his foreign policy views, but his money, alongside Marcus and Adelson’s, supports some of the most hawkish institutions in Washington, including the now defunct Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies whose experts promote economic pressure and military strikes against Iran. Bundled together, employees of Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, were the second largest source of funds supporting the candidacy of the Senate’s most outspoken proponent of preventive war with Iran, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), in 2014.
FDD donor rolls showed that by the end of 2011, Adelson contributed $1.5 million, Singer $3.6 million, and Bernard Marcus — who still sits on FDD’s board and whose family foundation continues to provide approximately one-third of FDD’s budge t—contributed $10.7 million.
Trump and Republican members of Congress are effectively bound to take the words of these hawkish donors under consideration when soliciting campaign funds. In some cases, Trump and other Republicans appear to be torn between their instincts to avoid needless wars and campaign megadonors who hold radical foreign policy visions and expect their campaign dollars to shape the foreign policy of the politicians they fund.
Israeli forces attack final round of weekly protests in Gaza
Press TV – December 27, 2019
Israeli forces have attacked Palestinians taking part in the final round of protests held on a weekly basis near the fence separating the Gaza Strip from the occupied territories, leaving a number of protesters injured.
Palestinian media outlets reported that the Israeli forces shot and injured protesters in the east of Jabalia and the east of Khan Yunis on Friday.
Tens of Palestinians also suffered from suffocation due to inhaling tear gas used by the Israeli troops in the eastern part of Gaza.
The “Great March of Return” rallies have been held every week since March 30 last year. The Palestinians want the return of those driven out of their homeland by Israeli aggression.
Israeli troops have killed at least 307 Palestinians since the beginning of the rallies and wounded more than 18,000 others, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
In March, a United Nations fact-finding mission found that Israeli forces committed rights violations during their crackdown against the Palestinian protesters in Gaza that may amount to war crimes.
The protest organizers announced on Thursday that the rallies would be suspended until March 2020, after which it would be held on a monthly basis.
Yousri Darwish, a member of the Supreme National Committee of the Marches of Return, said the decision to suspend the rallies was made in the best interest of the Palestinian people.
He said preparations for the commemoration of the Land Day would be done in the upcoming few months in which the protests would stop. The annual event is held on March 30 to mark the killing of six Palestinians by Israeli forces during mass protests against Israel’s seizure of their land in 1976.
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards.
Israel has also launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
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Jewish Guilt is the Discourse of The Goyim
By Gilad Atzmon | April 24, 2018
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- BEN-GVIR: “ALL OF LEBANON MUST BURN” — w/ Mouin Rabbani
- There Are No Budget Constraints In New York City: “Coastal Resiliency” Edition
- The UN’s plan to levy taxes on global trade is a sinister power grab
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- UN inquiry finds Israel ‘intentionally’ targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, occupied West Bank
- Citizens Around the World Demand Israel’s Expulsion From the United Nations
- ‘Israel not party to US-Iran talks, will continue full operations in Lebanon,’ Israeli far-right minister says
- Two killed in brazen Israeli ceasefire violation in southern Lebanon
- Which Country Is the Big Loser from the Ramadan War?
- Israeli Intel Whistleblower: Israel Ended Clinton Iran Deal With Epstein Blackmail
- If Americans Knew
- UN: Israel Continues to Commit Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes by Deliberately Targeting Palestinian Children
- Bari Weiss, Free-Speech Fraud & Zionism Promoter, Would Rather Deport Than Debate
- ‘Doctor of the Poor’: Israeli Occupation Arrests Prominent Palestinian Physician
- Search for Your Church (and see if it has been targeted by the Israeli gov’t)
- Mark Levin Flying to Israel as Netanyahu Reportedly Seeks to ‘Leverage’ Levin to Trash Trump’s Iran Deal
- Watch: Zionist Brags about Israel’s Power to Get the World to Do What Israel Wants
- In Gaza, another senseless death on what should have been a joyous day – Daily Update
- The Republican & Democratic Politicians Trying to Scuttle Iran Agreement
- Israel’s continued targeting of civilians in Lebanon renders ceasefire meaningless
- U.S. intelligence warns Israel is likely to undermine Iran peace deal, officials say
- No Tricks Zone
- 3 New Studies Find Increasing Trends In Solar Radiation Since The 1980s – Easily Explaining Warming
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
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