Nasrallah: Netanyahu is Campaigning with the Blood of his People
Speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah on August 25, 2019, on the occasion of the annual commemoration of Lebanon’s Second Liberation against the takfiris terrorist groups, which was finalized on August 25, 2017.
Transcript:
[…] I now turn to the question of Israel. Pray upon Muhammad and his family.
What happened last night is very dangerous, and I’ll explain why, because (the firmness of) our position must be at the height of the event and the danger. Let no one minimize what happened and consider it offhandedly. I will offer my analysis (after recalling the facts).
This is what happened: on the night of yesterday, in the skies of the southern suburbs of Beirut, a very modern drone came —I can say it is very sophisticated because this drone is in our hands, and we may show it to the media; later we will agree on that with the official security bodies; we also have the remains of the second (suicide) drone. It is not at all the type of drone that one can rent in towns or villages to film weddings and celebrations, not at all. This is a very modern military drone, which is almost two meters wide, a very sharp military technology.
The first drone came at night in the targeted region, namely some street of the Ma’wad neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The first was a surveillance drone that had no other role but to collect information because it contained no explosive device. It descended very low, ending up between the buildings. This means it was filming its target very accurately, or at least trying to do so.
As announced by Hezbollah media relations, we have not shot down the drone. Young people in the neighborhood, seeing this two meters long drone flying so low, between buildings… The more I speak frankly and clearly, the easier it will be to understand, because we have to base our stance on truth, not on illusions or assumptions. These young people started to throw stones at this drone, which then fell. Either it fell because of a technical failure, either due to stone throwing, and it is clear that the drone was damaged by a stone. The drone therefore fell to the ground.
After a very brief moment, that is to say, a maximum of one or two minutes, another drone came aggressively and hit a certain place. So it is not a drone that was there to watch, and that they would have detonated because of an incident, not at all. What happened last night is an attack by a suicide drone against a target located in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. This is the precise description that can be done from the field data.
Why do we say it’s dangerous? The fact that there was no killing and no injuries, by the grace of God, does not make this incident less dangerous. Sure, buildings were hit, their windows and facades were damaged, as well as furniture of apartments, offices… There was property damage. By the Grace of God Almighty and Exalted, the attack occurred during the night from Saturday to Sunday, and you know that on Saturdays and Sundays, you can play soccer on the main roads of the southern suburbs of Beirut (the streets are empty) because most people spend (weekends) in the south and in the Bekaa. It is a blessing of God Most High and Exalted. For without Him, surely, there would have been martyrs and wounded. God Almighty has bestowed His kindness upon us last night.
There was a loud explosion, which many residents of the southern suburbs of Beirut were able to hear. It was not a small explosion. This suicide drone attack against a target in the southern suburbs of Beirut is the first act of aggression since August 14, 2006. For in regard to the strikes which took place against Jenta a few years ago (in February 2014), we can say that this point was located at the Syrian-Lebanese border. But today there was a clear and open aggression (against Lebanon).
Of course, all the Israeli media speak of two suicide drones or one suicide drone that struck the southern suburbs of Beirut. Now if someone in Lebanon or in the Arab world, or on satellite TV channels, wants to pretend it is only a local (minor) incident, concerning only Lebanon, with drones that anyone can buy, it’s absolutely false. We will show you this drone with the grace of God, and you’ll know for sure that this is not a drone that can be bought on the market.
In fact, Israel itself recognizes, through its official statements and everything we read in the media, that they have perpetrated this air raid. This is a flagrant violation of the rules of engagement that were established after the war of 2006. It is the first clear and major violation. I will not mention other violations, whether against our airspace, our territory, all this could be tolerated (temporarily). But this is a major and dangerous violation, and it is God who, in His Benevolence, prevented any victims.
As for us, Netanyahu and those who took this decision really are deluded if they believe we can ignore such an attack. Some may say that there are no martyrs or injuries, only property damage, and that therefore we should forget about it. But that is not the question. The bottom line is that this incursion…
Listen to me, let the Lebanese people listen carefully: if we stay silent on this violation, it will open the way for a dangerous scenario for Lebanon. For every two or three days, we will see a car bomb… Excuse me, we’ll see a drone bomb, a suicide drone target such building, such place, such field, such land, such mosque, such hall… Under the pretext that it is a drone strike, and that we cannot know (for sure) where it comes from, (we would be condemned to do nothing). In other words, it will be a repetition of the scenario that is taking place in Iraq.
Now let the whole world listen to me carefully. I will speak very precisely. There is a scenario implemented in Iraq in recent weeks. In different regions, weapons stockpiles of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are identified by drones, and right after, explosions happen right there. Whether the drone has fired a missile or whether it was a suicide drone, that’s what the investigation will show. One explosion, two explosions, three explosions, four explosions… And at the very least, they are implicitly claimed by Israel, who brags about them. For Netanyahu needs such operations now, I will speak about it in a moment. This process has run its course in Iraq: a first weapons depot, a second one, a third, a fourth, a fifth… And they continue on this path.
Now how Iraq will deal with this, be it the government, the army, the PMU or the Iraqi people, it is their problem, and I do not interfere in their decisions. But as for us in Lebanon, we do not allow such a scenario to be imposed on us. We do not accept to undergo the same thing. It’s absolutely impossible. And we will do… You’re used to such statements from us (and you know we are serious). We absolutely will do whatever is necessary to prevent such a scenario being imposed on Lebanon. All that needs to be done to prevent it, we will do it (without any hesitation, and whatever the consequences).
All this is in our hands, and we are perfectly capable of preventing that. The Lebanese State took its responsibilities and condemned (Israel’s attack), it is good. The State considers that what happened is an attack, that’s good. She complained to the UN, that’s good. She speaks to the US and to Europe (asking them to put pressure on Israel), that’s good. But this alone will not end the dangerous process that can destroy Lebanon again, returning it to the situation before 2000 (the Liberation). We, the Islamic Resistance (Hezbollah), will never allow such a scenario, regardless of the price (we have to pay to stop it).
The time when Israeli planes could strike anywhere in Lebanon while the entity usurping Palestine was safe, in any area of the entity, is well over. It’s the past, it is ancient history. Today, I read that the Israeli army told the people of the north (of Israel) that there is no danger, and that they can live their lives normally. Today, from the village of al-Ain in the Bekaa, in this second annual commemoration of the Second Liberation (of Lebanon against the terrorist groups), after we defeated Al-Nosra and ISIS in Lebanon, which are the US’ groups and Israel’s, I declare to all the inhabitants of northern Israel and everywhere in occupied Palestine: do not live (normally), do not be in peace, do not feel safe, and do not think for one second that Hezbollah will accept such a scenario (where he would suffer such attacks in his neighborhoods without retaliating against settlers).
And our first response… Our first response… Again, listen to me. Here is our first response, which needs a little explanation. Since 2000, and then since 2006, we have lived with the (constant) presence of (Israeli) drones in Lebanese skies. We had the ability to shoot them down, but we did not, so that nobody in Lebanon comes with us to philosophize, accusing Hezbollah of creating problems, of leading the country to war, of hindering tourism and the economy, etc., putting on us the blame for everything. Ok my brother, (we waited patiently) despite the fact that the presence of Israeli observation drone is not only a violation of Lebanese sovereignty, but is endangering our security. (The Israeli drones are) here, over the southern suburbs of Beirut, above (the presidential palace) of Baabda, above all Lebanese regions, in the south, where people in their villages hear (every day) the annoying noise of Israeli drones over their heads, but no one did anything about it! Since 2000 and until 2019, we did not stop asking the State and the government (to do something), and you remember that I raised this issue in many speeches, saying that a solution should be found. The UN resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war prohibits Israeli violations: why don’t they stop?
Now, I declare that Israeli drones that enter Lebanon will not be considered as drones (merely) violating our sovereignty or gathering information, but as suicide, attack drones planning to conduct assassinations. And therefore, we have every right to shoot them down. The implementation of this right depends on the circumstances: we may not do it every day or every week, maybe we’ll do it at every hour, it’ll depend on our tactics. But I say to you very clearly, although I know some people will be angry, but let them get angry! Let them get mad! From now on, we will confront the Israeli drones in the skies of Lebanon! We will work to shoot down the Israeli drones entering Lebanese airspace! Let the Israelis know it from today! We won’t wait for anyone (to solve this issue for us), no one around the world. We will not allow our towns and villages to be a shooting range, a hunting or murdering ground, or a space where our security can be violated with impunity. That time has passed. And if someone in Lebanon is anxious to avoid any problems, let him speak to the Americans, who will speak to Israel, and they will make themselves scarce! They will disappear!
The second point I have to mention is what happened in Syria. I mention these two points, and I will conclude with Netanyahu and a message to the Israelis who head towards (parliamentary) elections (in September).
Yesterday, in Syria, there have been air strikes against a house in the village of Aqraba in the suburbs of Damascus. Netanyahu boasted of what he had done, announcing with the enemy’s army that the target was Iranian Al-Quds forces, etc., etc., etc., posing as a courageous and fearless national hero.
Netanyahu lies to the Israeli people, if we can talk about a people. He lies to the (Zionist) settlers who occupy Palestine. He lies to his kin, he lies to his people. He sells them meaningless and empty words. He misrepresents the truth and the realities of the ground.
Yesterday, Israeli strikes have not targeted the Al-Quds forces, but a Hezbollah position. Those who were in… It is a simple house, it’s not even a military position. It is a simple house in which our youth rested. In the place that was hit, there are only young Lebanese Hezbollah members. And in this place last night, two martyrs fell: the martyr Hassan Yousef Zbib, and the martyr Yasser Ahmad Dhahir.
You know, O Netanyahu and the Israeli army, that we mean business, and that during all the past years, we were not kidding. After our dear brothers have been killed in Quneitra (in January 2015), our martyrs, you saw that we were not kidding (Hezbollah immediately retaliated by striking an Israeli convoy, killing two soldiers and wounding seven). And (in my speech) just a few days ago, I was not joking. We said that if you kill the least of our brothers, our brothers of Hezbollah, Lebanese… I say this so no one tells me that they strike Syrians, Iranians or Iraqis, and that we come and make problems in Lebanon, no: all (the fighters of these countries) are our dear brothers, but those who were killed (in Syria) are our (Lebanese) children, from our villages, our families, our youth!
You know (O Netanyahu) that we have made a clear commitment, and I will remind this commitment to the world: if Israel kills the least of our brothers in Syria, we will retaliate for the killing in Lebanon, and not on the (occupied) Shebaa farms! We will retaliate from Lebanon, and not from the Shebaa farms!
I declare to the Israeli soldiers at the border tonight: wait for us against the (separation) wall (standing) on one foot and a half (be ready to flee for your lives)! Wait for us on one foot and a half! Wait for us (because we’ll certainly come at you)! In one day, two days, three days, four days… Just wait for us!
And I say to the Israelis, not just those at the border, because the two issues (drone strikes in Beirut and Damascus attacks) are linked. Both attacks are actually a single question. Ultimately, if we forgot about what happened in Damascus, the first point would be enough for us to act differently (because Israel violated the rules of engagement). That is why we will not forget about what happened during last night. With us, you can not wipe the slate clean (so easily).
What I want to say to the Israelis is that Netanyahu runs his electoral campaign. The various Israeli political parties (always) conducted their election campaigns by pouring the blood of Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis and the peoples of the region. But O Israelis, this time, Netanyahu campaigned with your own blood. It’s your very lives that he puts at risk.
He attracts towards you fire from all sides. For what is he doing in Iraq? Why does he strike arms depots of the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq? He brings to you Iraqi strikes, Syrian strikes, and now Lebanese strikes. As for the Palestinian attacks, they are persistent because of your siege against Gaza, your aggression against the West Bank and your arrogance against the Palestinian people. This man who fears the election results, against whom charges of corruption are pressed, and who is expected by the courts, has only one alternative before him: becoming Prime minister, or going to jail. And he has no problem to conduct his election campaign with the blood of people, (even his own). Netanyahu takes you to the edge of the abyss, O Israel. And it is possible that he’ll throw you into the abyss, if he continues to act the way he does, and with this mentality.
O my brothers and sisters, in this commemoration that is dear and precious, we the Lebanese, the Army, the People, the Resistance, the security bodies, the State, the political forces, the people, the religious components, the regions, the families, the tribes (of Lebanon), we have shaped with our own hands our security in the Bekaa, in the South and throughout Lebanon. We shaped our security with our own hands, by the blood of our soldiers and our Resistance. We carried heavy burdens for all of Lebanon to be united, in peace and security, in the heart of this region that the US and its (terrorist) groups are destroying. We will not allow the clock to turn back. We will not allow Lebanon to be open to all intrusions, whether strikes, murders, terrorist attacks or any violation whatsoever. As for us, this is a red line, and we must all assume our responsibilities. We work so that there is a united national position, strong, bold and courageous. Going back to the old (sectarian) divisions would serve no purpose, but it would hurt the country. This would harm the country.
Thanks to the benefits of all these victories, and from a position of strength, clarity and conscience, we will defend our country on all boundaries: south, east, north, at sea, and now we will start to defend our airspace, doing our best, and in the manner required by wisdom, sense of responsibility and our interests. This is the new phase that the enemy has imposed. We will be up to the task, and you (the Lebanese people) too.
If Netanyahu imagines that we are in a position of weakness or numbness here and there, and rejoices about the financial and economic siege (imposed on us by Trump), he does not know us. He does not know us. We are prepared to endure hunger to remain dignified. That’s how we’ve always been throughout history. We sell our houses in order to (get the means to) fight. But we do not allow anyone to touch our dignity, our sovereignty, our honor and our presence in Lebanon and the region.
This is the message of the martyrs today, the message of martyr Sayyed Abbas al-Mousawi, our master and teacher; the message of our martyrs of the Bekaa, of the town of al-Ain (where is celebrated this anniversary), the Bekaa martyrs who carried our flag on all battlefields. Today, it is in your name that I proclaimed this clear and glorious message, that doesn’t need any analysis or comment. We are in a new phase. Let everyone assume their responsibility in this new phase, and we first.
I congratulate you in this commemoration. Happy Liberation and Victory Day to all.
Peace be upon you O people of the good, and God’s mercy and blessings.
Translation: http://resistancenewsunfiltered.blogspot.com
See also:
Palestinian Harvard freshman barred from entering US over Facebook posts his FRIENDS made
RT | August 28, 2019
An incoming Palestinian Harvard freshman was refused entry to the US and deported after immigration officials searched his phone and found Facebook posts – from his friends – containing allegedly anti-US political statements.
Ismail Ajjawi was deemed “inadmissible” by US Customs and Border Protection and sent back to Lebanon on Friday night, after CBP officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport confronted him with Facebook posts from his friends list containing “political points of view that oppose the US.”
An immigration official questioned the 17-year-old scholarship recipient for hours about his friends’ social media activity, after ordering him to unlock his phone and computer and spending five hours searching the devices. Ajjawi’s protestations – “I have no single post on my timeline discussing politics,” he told the Harvard Crimson on Tuesday – reportedly fell on deaf ears as the agent “screamed” at him.
“She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend list,” Ajjawi said. “I responded that I have no business with [political] posts and that I didn’t like, share or comment on them and told her that I shouldn’t be held responsible for what others post.”
Nevertheless, the officer cancelled his visa and told him he would be deported. He had been detained for eight hours – first questioned with a group of international students, then held for further questioning about his religious practices while the others were allowed to leave, and ultimately kicked out of the country over his friends’ Facebook posts.
A CBP spokesperson (ironically named McCarthy) explained “applicants must demonstrate they are admissible into the US by overcoming ALL grounds of inadmissibility including health-related grounds, criminality, security reasons, public charge, labor certification, illegal entrants and immigration violations, documentation requirements, and miscellaneous grounds” and claimed “information discovered during the CBP inspection” had rendered Ajjawi “inadmissible” to the US.
“Thoughtcrime by friends on social media” would presumably fall under “miscellaneous.”
This is not an isolated incident involving Harvard, which employs a team of immigration lawyers to resolve visa-related issues. Four Iranian graduate students in 2017 spent weeks or months tied up in red tape after President Donald Trump’s travel ban – an executive order barring travel from seven countries, including several majority-Muslim ones – prevented them from attending school.
Ajjawi is also receiving legal assistance from AMIDEAST, the organization which awarded him the scholarship to attend Harvard in the first place. He still hopes to attend Harvard, and university spokesperson Jonathan Swain said the school is “working closely with the student’s family and appropriate authorities to resolve this matter so that he can join his classmates in the coming days.”
New Jersey cops turn citizens’ phones into surveillance devices – for their own good, of course
RT | August 27, 2019
A New Jersey police department has unveiled technology that allows 911 operators to stream video from callers’ smartphones. Sounds like a good idea, at first – but where does the surveillance stop?
Gloucester Township police’s new 911eye emergency dispatch system lets emergency service operators see video live streamed from a caller’s phone, giving first responders an idea of what they’re getting into before anyone is sent to the scene. For now, the caller has to activate the livestream with a link sent by the 911 dispatcher, which allows operators to operate the phone’s camera and microphone. But this is the first step down a very slippery slope.
911eye, developed by Capita Secure Solutions and Services in conjunction with West Midlands Fire Service in the UK, represents a step toward a frankly terrifying surveillance infrastructure that can turn any internet-capable device into a remote-activated surveillance tool. West Midlands Police were the first to embrace “pre-crime” technology in the UK, developing the National Data Analytics Solution to sniff out potential offenders and divert them with ostensibly therapeutic “interventions.”
If the fact that it was developed by the people behind the real-life version of Minority Report isn’t enough of a reason to give 911eye a wide berth, take a look at Carbyne911, one of its competitors. Funded by deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein through former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Carbyne911 markets itself as the solution to mass shootings. The program – founded by current and former Israeli intelligence personnel, which isn’t at all worrisome given that country spies on the US so extensively it scares Congress – lets emergency dispatchers commandeer the camera and microphone of any internet-capable device within a certain range of the person who made the call.
Investors include Peter Thiel, whose company Palantir has been described as “using war on terror tools to track American citizens,” and its advisory board includes Patriot Act co-author Michael Chertoff, the former Department of Homeland Security chief. At least two US counties have reportedly adopted Carbyne911, despite obvious privacy issues (and the fact that while most of its employees and personnel have military-intelligence connections, few have a background in emergency services).
Of course, bad actors don’t need an “emergency services” app to turn your phone into a spying device. Israeli spyware manufacturer NSO Group’s Pegasus software has been wielded against human rights campaigners, journalists, and even politicians by governments including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to Amnesty International, which has sued the company for allowing its software to be weaponized against peaceful activists.
And how does Pegasus work? The hacker sends the target a link, and as soon as they click on it, the hacker can use the target’s smartphone camera and microphone as surveillance devices. Which sounds an awful lot like 911eye’s business model – but you can trust them. They’re the police, and they’re here to help.
US and Israeli Collectors Buy Up What Remains of Yemen’s Ancient Heritage
Four historic buildings in Sana’a’s old quarter, including the home of Saleh Ali al-Aeini, were destroyed by U.S. bombs dropped by Saudi warplanes in June, 2015. Photo – MintPress News
By Ahmed AbdulKareem – MintPress News – August 26, 2019
SANA’A, YEMEN — Yemen was once described as a living museum, but U.S. made bombs dropped by the Saudi-led Coalition’s jets have not only killed thousands of civilians and led to famine and the spread of disease but also pulverized the country’s rich architectural history and left its inimitable heritage at the mercy of the highest bidder.
“I remember how light filtered through the stained glass of the patterned crescent window (qamarias) onto the white gypsum plaster in the resting room (Deirmanah) on the top floor. At night, lights tossed dapples of color into the sky,” Saleh Ali al-Aeini recounted to MintPress from his partially destroyed high-rise apartment, continuing, “Now, only scattered glass remains amid a mound of dust and mud, thanks to American bombs.”
Saleh’s ancient tower-house was one of four historic buildings in the old quarter of Sana’a that were destroyed by U.S. bombs dropped from Saudi warplanes in June, 2015. The buildings’ many-storied tower-houses, three of them rising to 110 feet, were more than 2,500 years old. The newest of them was more than 1,000 years old, built long before the United States even existed as a nation.
The effects of airstrikes on the UNESCO-listed Old City, perched on a highland plateau more than 7,200 feet above sea level, can be noticed at a glance. Cracks show on the more than 1,975 densely-packed homes, threatening them with collapse. Labyrinths, hidden gardens, steam baths, busy markets and streets have all been affected by airstrikes on the city that was said to have been founded by Shem, the son of Noah. In fact, the ancient city has been targeted at least four times with over 30 airstrikes according to the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities.
Yet Saudi airstrikes extend far beyond Sana’a’s historic sites — to Sadaa, Shibam Hadramout, Zabid in Hodeida, Shibam Kuban, east of Sana’a, Shabwa, Aden, Amran, Taiz, and other areas of the country’s history that have also fallen victim to coalition bombing. Airstrikes and shelling have destroyed at least 66 historic sites according to Muhannad al-Sayani, chairman of the Yemeni General Authority for Antiquities
Coalition raids have targeted ancient castles and forts, museums, religious shrines housing cultural treasures; and ancient dams, including the world-famous Great Marib Dam.
Al-Sayani told MintPress that targeting of the country’s historic sites by the Saudi-led Coalition is deliberate: “These are open sites, mostly in desert areas where weapons cannot be stored.” Following many of the attacks, the Coalition often accuses the Houthis of using archaeological sites as weapons depots; however, no evidence has been provided to substantiate these allegations.
The undersecretary of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, Amat al-Razzaq Jahaf, told MintPress that most of the monuments or sites have been damaged or destroyed by Saudi airstrikes since the Saudi-led campaign began without any justification.
The United States says it does not make targeting decisions for the Coalition. But it does support Coalition operations through arms sales, the refueling of Saudi combat aircraft, and the sharing of intelligence. Just last Thursday, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone was downed in the city of Dhamar near the historic Dhamar Museum, which was leveled by a direct Saudi airstrike in June 2015.
Nothing can bring these back
Al-Aeini’s wife, who told MintPress than an American-made bomb had destroyed her home and killed her sons, accused international aid organizations of neglecting their suffering. “Lots of organizations visited us and provided only [promises] without doing anything,” she went on, “We rebuilt a part of the house by ourselves, just to have shelter for me and my husband, without any help.” Yemen’s General Authority of Antiquities complained to MintPress that the country’s heritage has been neglected by international organizations and communities.
Now, the buildings — which have stood tall for thousands of years in the historic city that surrounds the remnants of al-Aeini family home — are subject to eroding foundations and ominous cracks that line their ancient walls built of mud and stone, as a result of repeated Saudi attacks and the inability of Yemen’s government to address the deterioration amid four years of Saudi bombardment.
To make matters worse, Yemen is in the midst of its rainy season, adding to the challenges in rebuilding archaeological sites that have been targeted. “Of course, what has been destroyed is still devastating and every day the dangers [to those sites] is multiplied due to our inability to carry out operations to reduce the aggravation of damage because of the costs of rebuilding,” Jahaf told MintPress. Al-Qasimi’s house in Sultan’s orchard in ancient Sana’a, which was destroyed in another Saudi airstrike, is an example of this.
“If peace is brought to Yemen — and with it, compensation is provided — infrastructure, roads, schools, and hospitals could all be rebuilt; but nothing can bring back the historic architecture that has been destroyed,” Mohaned al-Sayani, chairman of the Yemeni General Authority for Antiquities, told MintPress.
Centuries in building, seconds in destroying
“Here, generations of my grandparents lived; why is it that the Coalition can so easily destroy it?” Hashem Ali, who fled to Sana’a after airstrikes leveled his family home in the historic Rahban area of Saada, asked MintPress. “This is the first time in nearly 600 years that my family is without a home.”
The attack on ancient Sana’a was the first of many violent assaults on Yemen’s architectural history, but the worst hit historic area has been Yemen’s northern province of Saada, the hub of the ancient Minaean Kingdom of Ma’in, founded before the fourth century B.C.
Saada’s old city, which is among the world’s oldest human-carved landscapes, once consisted entirely of historic, centuries-old multi-story homes. Now, it has been wiped out, after Saudi Arabia declared it a military zone — even the city’s hand-carved wooden doors have been reduced to ashes.
Just hours after the Coalition issued a warning on May 10, 2015, dozens of airstrikes rained down on the historic city, including on the ancient al-Hadi Mosque, which was founded nearly 1,200 years ago and is the final resting place of Imam al-Hadi ila’l-Haqq Yahya, the Zaydi imam of Yemen.
Built c. 897, al-Hadi Mosque is the final resting place of Imam al-Hadi ila’l-Haqq Yahya, the Zaydi imam of Yemen. It has been targeted several times. Ali al-Shurqbai – MintPress News
To understand Saudi Arabia’s motivation to essentially exterminate Yemen’s heritage, one must understand Yemen’s history as well as that of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the Saudi-based Wahhabi faith, which provides religious justification for targeting heritage sites under the guise of eradicating polytheism.
In ancient times, Yemen was home to several flourishing civilizations — including Ma’in, Qataban, Hadramaut, Ausan, Himyar and Saba (Sheba), which lasted for 11 centuries and was mentioned in the Quran and other ancient holy books. The Saban civilization was marked by its distinctive architecture, based almost entirely on local building materials, a style unique in the Middle East.
In contrast to Yemen’s rich and ancient history, civilization did not make its way to the Arabian Gulf until the 1930s. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s fellow coalition war partner, didn’t take root until 1971.
Many Yemenis, including Saleh Ali al-Aeini, believe that Saudi Arabia harbors severe jealousy over Yemen’s history and heritage and the unique role that it has played in human history. According to some historians, that history spans 60,000-70,000 years, when the country received its first Homo sapiens who migrated across the Red Sea from Africa to the Middle East before traveling west to Europe and east to Asia and Australia.
Moreover, Wahhabism — the official state religion of Saudi Arabia, based on a puritanical and widely rejected interpretation of Islam — sees the preservation of historic and religious sites as tantamount to idolatry. The Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia has not even spared the Kingdom’s own tombs and monuments in Mecca and Medina and shows special disdain for Yemen’s historic sites, especially those located in northern Yemen, the seat of the Shia Zaydis for over a thousand years.
Looting what was not destroyed
Yemenis see their historic sites as a social-cultural fabric linking generations to their early ancestors. “I’ve lived here for dozens of years but now I have no house; there are no more gatherings of my ones-loved on the weekend,” al-Aeini said. He continued: “Another thing to worry about is our remaining legacy being looted.”
Destruction from the air is not the only threat to Yemen’s ancient legacy. During their war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have established smuggling networks in the country to loot historic sites.
A.M.M., who asked to be identified only by his initials, worked as an antiquities smuggler for a security outfit based in the UAE. A.M.M. told MintPress that his team sold four 2,500-year-old mummies, a gilded Torah scroll, and dozens of bejeweled daggers from the early Islamic era. “They always stressed the importance of keeping [the items] from being damaged so that they will be accepted by their American friends,” he said.
The smuggling of Yemeni antiquities is often carried out by diplomats operating out of Yemeni embassies from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt in return for lucrative sums of money allegedly provided by patrons from the United States and Israel. Yemen is the cradle to many civilizations and home to multiple faiths — particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which all thrived in Yemen for millennia. For the Israelis, many of Yemen’s antiquities are seen as the rightful property of the Jewish people and there is reason to believe that Israel is also involved in the looting of Yemen’s heritage.
Officials in Sana’a say they have strong evidence that Yemeni artifacts are being sold off to American and Isreali buyers. “Artifacts featuring the Star of David or Jewish names are our priority; they often fetch a higher price than the other artifacts,” A.M.M told MintPress. “I sold one Hebrew manuscript to a UAE officer for $20,000,” he added.
Aden, in the eastern province of Marib, is favored by smugglers for shuttling stolen artifacts abroad. Here — according to the testimonies of a number of smugglers arrested by Houthi forces and now serving their sentences Sana’a’s Central Prison — smugglers are able to work in broad daylight in facilities provided to them by high-ranking officials in the ousted government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, with direct coordination of both Emirati and Saudi officials.
More weapons to destroy what remains?
“We want compensation to rebuild our house again,” al-Aeini said, perched atop the stone rubble of his destroyed ancient home. “We should get compensation from the Americans. American bombs have killed more of us than were killed in the September 11 attacks.”
Al-Aeini was sardonically referring to the duality of moral attitudes in the United States, where on one hand Saudi Arabia is asked to pay compensation to the families of victims of the September 11 attacks, yet do nothing for victims of the war in Yemen, who are often killed with U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia. “If there hadn’t been an American bomb, I would be at home now with my children and grandchildren, but they took everything,” al-Aeini said.
Many Yemenis are pessimistic about the future of their heritage. They say President Donald Trump’s recently-announced sales of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will destroy what remains of their country’s legacy. The sale includes precision-guided missiles manufactured by Raytheon as well as precision guidance parts for Paveway IV bombs used on Eurofighter and Tornado warplanes — the same type that have been blamed for much of the destruction of Yemen’s historic sites and civilian casualties alike in the Saudi-UAE air campaign in Yemen.
An old Yemeni proverb used for generations to encourage the preservation of the country’s rich heritage reads Eli maluh awal maluh taley (Whoever has no first, has no second). Many Yemenis, al-Aeini among them, fear that Yemen is already losing its heritage, much like al-Aeini lost his home, to American weapons.
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
Time to Breach the Wall of Silence on Supporting Israeli War Crimes!
By Marion Kawas | Palestine Chronicle | August 25, 2019
The federal election in Canada is coming up on October 21, 2019, and once again there is a debate, both within the Palestinian community and the solidarity movement, on the best tactics and strategies to hold politicians to account. Parameters have shifted dramatically since 2015; four years ago, current PM Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party was still a shiny new commodity with untested big promises, and the Trump/Netanyahu racist “shock and awe” assault had yet to launch. Successive Canadian governments have been complicit in dispossessing Palestinians for over 70 years now, a legacy that has cut across party lines; activists are more determined than ever that politicians will not escape responsibility for their callous and racist anti-Palestinian stands.
Trudeau has lost credibility with many in Canada who thought he would bring a fresh perspective to foreign policy, especially on the issue of support for Palestinian rights. His government has voted the same way as the previous Conservative one at the United Nations on multiple resolutions, and one Liberal MP even bragged that the Trudeau government’s record surpassed its predecessor and was “almost identical” to the U.S. in protecting Israel; they helped pass a nasty anti-BDS motion in the House of Commons which condemned even individuals who support boycotting Israel; and a government minister wrapped it all up by endorsing the dangerous IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in June of this year. The government also reversed an initial decision by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on the correct labeling of settlement wines, something that was successfully challenged in Federal Court with a recent ruling that determined the “Product of Israel” label was “false, misleading and deceptive”; whether there will be an appeal of this court decision has not yet been announced.
Meanwhile, the opposition New Democratic Party under the helm of new leader Jagmeet Singh has been sending extremely mixed signals as to where their position stands. The party voted against the federal anti-BDS motion, has expressed clear reservations about the IHRA definition, and their recent statement welcoming the court decision on labeling of settlement wines was timely and, in the landscape of Canadian politics, could be considered strongly worded. However, they also blocked a pro-Palestine resolution at their national conference in 2018 and again at a provincial Ontario NDP conference in May of this year. And they have already “de-nominated” one new candidate, Rana Zaman, for comments made about the Palestinian Great Return March (a pattern started in 2015).
Such political opportunism seems to have gripped the Green Party as well. There is a good resolution on Palestine passed by the Green Party at their December 2016 convention, arguably the best amongst the major federal parties, but the leader Elizabeth May seems determined to either ignore it or flout it. Just recently, the Party also issued a statement supporting the Federal Court decision on settlement wines, but then in the same release, May was quoted as referring to the occupied Palestinian territories as “disputed”. After strong pushback from activists and Green Party members, the “disputed” was eventually replaced by “occupied”. This followed a statement last spring, where May inferred that the BDS movement was “anti-Semitic”, saying “We are not a party that condones BDS. We would never tolerate anybody in our party who violates our core values, who are anti-Semitic.”
The Conservative Party needs no further analysis, they are simply continuing the legacy of former PM Stephen Harper, who Netanyahu greeted in 2014 by saying, “You are a great friend of Israel”; their new leader has even promised to move the Canadian embassy to Jerusalem.
In the last election, the “strategic voting” card was played to great advantage by the Liberal Party who convinced many that voting for them was the best way to ensure that the regressive policies of the previous government would be ended. But here we are in 2019, with not only a continuation of the same old tired pro-Israel caravan on Parliament Hill but also a trashing of indigenous and environmental rights along with corruption scandals. And political and financial support for Trump’s attempted coup against Venezuela.
So, what are voters to do who are interested in a fair and just foreign policy and who realize that in today’s world, global issues are of strategic importance?
Palestinian activists in Canada are promoting a new approach and rather than trying to endorse one party or the other, want to make candidates accountable on complicity in Israeli war crimes and have pro-Palestinian policies put forward in as many forums as possible. They have launched a campaign entitled #IVotePalestine which lists 9 basic demands that can be presented to candidates and has already been endorsed and supported by 17 local and national organizations.
Last federal elections, BDS Quebec registered with third-party status and ran a pro-Palestinian poster campaign; the city of Montreal took down many of the posters, which resulted in a court case that BDS Quebec finally won in late 2018 and even received damage payments. Activists are also now publicly challenging Canadian politicians and cabinet ministers during press conferences and campaign launches regarding government policy on Palestine, and also other foreign policy issues like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Haiti.
Lawyer Dimitri Lascaris, author Yves Engler and filmmaker Malcolm Guy were part of one of the most publicized interventions to date that targeted leading Zionist and former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (who has also been involved in the campaign to destabilize Venezuela). Lascaris explained the importance of such actions this way: “When it comes to the imperative that we hold Israel truly accountable for its human rights violations, there is a virtual wall of silence in the Liberal and Conservative Parties. Disrupting Liberal and Conservative advocates for Israel at public events is one of the most effective ways to breach that wall of silence.”
The time is long overdue for a hard look at the records of all candidates on Palestine policy. It is not enough to simply claim you will be better than the worst of the worst; it is not enough to say you stand with Palestine and then proceed to stay silent or even be complicit in enacting policy and legislation that does the exact opposite. It is not enough to appear for a photo-op at an Eid celebration and then claim you are sensitive to the daily oppression faced by Palestinian and Arab Muslims.
This summer saw the nascent signs of a significant shift in Canadian opinion, with support for Palestine breaking into new domains like the Federal Court and Vancouver City Council. It also showed that the Zionist lobby is not invincible; however, all of the recent achievements for Palestinian rights in Canada were not the result of any initiatives on the part of the traditional political parties nor of their “moral awakening”, but rather the hard work of grass-roots activists who were organized, loud and persistent.
If enough candidates from various parties are pressured and held accountable to actually “walk the walk” instead of just playing political football with the lives, dignity, and suffering of the Palestinian people, then this emerging shift will eventually have to reach the still-insulated House of Commons. Although federal politicians always seem to be the last to grasp what the public supports, it is time that they are made to understand that there will be a price to pay for complicity in the oppression of the Palestinian people.
– Marion Kawas is a member of the Canada Palestine Association and co-host of Voice of Palestine. Visit: www.cpavancouver.org.
Smearing Paul Findley: Jonathan Schanzer Only Confirms That the Former Illinois Congressman Was Right
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald tribune | August 25, 2019
Former Republican congressman from Illinois Paul Findley died at age 98 on August 9th. Most obituaries and remembrances of him were respectful, but one that appeared in the American Jewish Committee founded neoconservative magazine Commentary written by Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) was particularly vile. Paul was one of the first in Congress to decry the Israeli grip over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond and for that unpardonable sin the Israel Lobby has condemned him to a modern version of damnatio memoriae, the ancient Roman practice whereby the very memory of bad leaders would be condemned and expunged from the record.
I know Paul, not as well as I would have liked, as I am now executive director of the Council for the National Interest, which he co-founded more than thirty years ago. As the name suggests, the Council “advocates for Middle East policies that serve the national interest; that represent the highest values of our founders and our citizens; and that work to sustain a nation of honor, decency, security and prosperity.” In particular, Paul was concerned about how Israeli interests in particular, cynically promoted by a powerful and wealthy domestic lobby, have continued to dominate all discussions of policy in the Middle East.
Paul was seen as a threat to the Jewish state’s control of congress and the Lobby worked to replace him. As Schanzer put it, “By 1980, the pro-Israel community in Washington had clearly identified Findley as a problem. In 1982, he lost his seat…” In fact, establishing what was to become a familiar pattern in dealing with recalcitrant legislators, in 1982 Israeli partisans put up and funded generously a candidate against Findley while also engaging in a smear campaign directed at him through its extensive contacts in the media.
It should be pointed out that Paul has not been alone in his one-issue defeat for reelection. Senator William Fullbright, Senator Chuck Percy, Congressman Pete McCloskey, and Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney have all found themselves on the losing end of electoral campaigns because they dared to criticize Israel and its seemingly all-powerful Lobby. Say the right things about Israel and donors and favorable media coverage will follow. Criticize Israel, and the reverse is true. Recently elected Palestinian American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is already being confronted by an organized campaign by Detroit Jews to raise money and garner political support to replace her for “Jewish reasons.”
The Schanzer article, which runs to just under 1,900 words, is a perfect example of what used to be called “poison pen.” FDD, it should be noted, is a neocon outfit funded by the usual Jewish oligarchs that is dedicated to having the United States attack Iran. It works very closely with the Israeli government in shaping and delivering its message, but oddly, like all other Jewish/Israeli advocacy organizations, it has never been required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.
Schanzer’s article is entitled “The Congressman who hated Israel” and begins with “Consider this scenario: A legislator from the Midwest targets Israel with a passion and vitriol that smacks of anti-Semitism. The legislator alleges that Israel’s supporters in Washington are bought off with Jewish money and that they have too much influence over our politics. When many Americans express their outrage at such comments, the legislator invokes the right to free speech and insists that the sentiments expressed were all for the just cause of getting American policy on a more reasonable and moral path.”
Well, pausing right there, it might well be reasonably suggested that Israel’s sheeple in congress and the media are indeed bought off with Jewish money and few would doubt these days that Israel and its friends have too much influence over America’s politics, most particularly its foreign policy. In fact, a majority of Democratic Party voters now have more sympathy with the Palestinians than with the Israelis while the Party leadership is firmly aligned with Israel. That’s called corruption of the political process and the corruption comes from money.
Schanzer then notes that “This has been the dynamic surrounding Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar’s disturbing comments about Israel and America’s relationship with the Jewish state. But Omar’s false accusations and the outrage they’ve generated are not without precedent. She is not the first U.S. representative to give public voice to vicious anti-Israel (and anti-American) bigotry and claim the mantle of righteousness. Before Omar, there was the Republican congressman Paul Findley, who died August 9 at the age of 98.”
That’s called killing two birds with one stone. Findlay’s critique that Israel has too much power, echoed by Omar, is far from a fiction. That anti-Israeli criticism is “bigotry” is a lie and that it is also anti-American is complete nonsense, attempting to sustain the fiction that Israel and the U.S. share common interests and values. They do not.
More smearing of Findley follows, with claims that he was a terrorist supporter expressed by “concerned professionals from the pro-Israel community…” And he is condemned for having written with complete accuracy how “scores of times over the years, I have sat in committee and in the chamber of the House of Representatives as my colleagues behaved, as an undersecretary of state once described them, like ‘trained poodles’ jumping through hoops held for them.” Schanzer observes that the “them” referred to pro-Israel organizations.
Schanzer continues “After Findley left office, however, things got far uglier. The seeming gentleman from Illinois dropped all pretense. In 1985, he authored They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. In the book, updated and republished twice, Findley unleashed a torrent of venom toward Israel and its supporters, and lionized Israel’s detractors. He spoke disapprovingly of Jewish money, Jewish groups in Washington, Jewish groups on campus, Jewish congressmen, and Jewish influence. Findley claimed that the pro-Israel community had a stranglehold on congressional politics and American foreign policy… There were few realms of public life behind which Findley couldn’t detect the purported presence of Zionist manipulators. In 1990, amid the lead-up to the first war with Iraq, he asserted that Israel’s ‘zealous supporters occupy influential positions throughout U.S. society—not just in the media—and are employed by the U.S. government in every office that has any important relationship to the making of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Relentlessly, step by step, they have assiduously developed over the years a tight grip on America’s Middle East policy.’”
Thank you, Jonathan for providing the evidence that Paul Findley really nailed it. It doesn’t take much Googling to learn that everything he claimed about the many tentacles of Jewish power in the United States and its ability to corrupt our institutions from top to bottom is absolutely true. And he is correct in asserting that Zionists control every office in the United States government that has anything to do with foreign policy in the Middle East. An Israeli woman Sigal Mandelker even serves as the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which is in charge of handing out sanctions against the Iranians and other Muslim groups that Israel believes to be threatening.
Well Paul Findley is dead, and so what? The Israel Lobby operating under the cover provided by President Donald Trump reigns supreme. But the fact that Schanzer felt compelled to do a hit piece on Findley suggests that there is another agenda. To be sure there is, as Schanzer reveals the real object of his anger towards the end of his article, returning to the subject of Omar, writing that “Findley’s example shows how the vitriol exhibited today by Ilhan Omar or her co-freshman congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is nothing new. These controversial legislators are Findley’s progeny.” And they are even worse, per Schanzer as “Findley, malign as his anti-Israel animus was, didn’t have the effect on public discourse that Omar and Tlaib now enjoy.”
So Schanzer objects to what Omar and Tlaib or saying but he is more troubled that there might be an audience out there listening. He wants a country where dual loyalty and “thou shall speak no ill of Israel” prevail in the belief that what is good for the Jewish state is good for the United States. It is not. Paul Findley was one of the first to challenge that notion and Omar and Tlaib have benefitted their country by opening up discussion of a subject that has long been considered off limits. Thank you Paul, may you rest in peace, and thank you also Rashida and Ilhan.
Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi downs spy drone
Press TV – August 25, 2019
Forces from the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in Iraq have shot down a spy drone in the country’s northern Province of Nineveh.
The al-Sumaria television reported on Sunday that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was targeted by the air defenses of the 50th Brigade of Hashd al-Sha’abi while it was approaching PMU bases in Nineveh.
It was not immediately clear who was operating the drone.
The Iraqi forces had shot down another spy drone on Thursday as it was flying in the vicinity of the 12th Brigade of Hashd al-Sha’abi and over the outskirts of the capital, Baghdad.
Last week, a number of powerful blasts rocked a position held by the PMU, next to the strategic Balad airbase, which hosts US forces and contractors and which is located about 80 kilometers north of Baghdad.
Hashd al-Sha’abi commanders confirmed that the intended target of the attack was the group’s position near the Balad base.
Hashd al-Sha’abi forces played a major role in the liberation of Daesh-held areas to the south, northeast, and north of Baghdad ever since the terrorists launched an offensive in the country in June 2014.
Some Iraqi officials have said the strikes were conducted by the Israeli regime.
Earlier, senior Iraqi cleric Ammar al-Hakim called on Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi to adopt effective measures to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of strong indications that the US and Israel were involved in the series of recent attacks on PMU positions.
Two PMU fighters killed in drone strikes near Syria border
Later in the day, Iraqi popular forces issued a statement, saying that two of their fighters, including a field commander, were killed in strikes by an unidentified drone close to the Syrian border in Anbar Province.
According to Almayadeen news website, the statement added that the strike, which targeted the PMU’s 45th brigade, took place 15 km (9 miles) from the border.
An unspecified number of PMU fighters were also injured in the attack.
Reuters quoted a security source as saying that there were two air strikes. One struck the local headquarters of the brigade while the other struck a convoy of cars leaving the building.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.
US-Israeli attacks on PMU meant to revive Daesh in Iraq: Kata’ib Hezbollah
Press TV – August 24, 2019
An Iraqi resistance group says the recent airstrikes on the positions of pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are an attempt by the US and Israel to revive the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the Arab country.
In an interview with Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Ahed news website published on Friday, Kata’ib Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Muhyee said the air raids on Hashd al-Sha’abi positions are actually meant to weaken Iraqi resistance factions, empty their weapons stores and end their role in maintaining security in Iraq.
He added that the next stage, which has been planned by the US, is to return thousands of foreign-backed Daesh terrorists to the Iraqi-Syrian border.
The recent attacks “were not accidental,” but rather planned in advance after continued monitoring operations by Israeli and American drones, Muhyee pointed out.
He also accused Washington of trying to get Israel to conduct the strikes in a bid to prevent reactions from Iraqi resistance groups.
Muhyee further warned of a tough response to any future attack on Iraqi forces.
Earlier this week, a PMU ammunition depot was exploded in Iraq, the fourth in recent months. The attacks began on July 19 when a drone dropped explosives onto a PMU base near the town of Amerli, in Salahuddin Province, killing at least one resistance fighter and injuring four others.
Unnamed American officials confirmed that Israel had been behind the attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted on Thursday at possible Israeli strikes in Iraq.
“We are operating – not just if needed, we are operating in many areas against a state (Iran) that wants to annihilate us. Of course I gave the security forces a free hand and instructed them to do anything necessary to thwart Iran’s plans,” he said when asked whether Tel Aviv was considering operations in Iraq.
Daesh unleashed a campaign of death and destruction in Iraq in 2014, overrunning vast swathes in lightning attacks. Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters then launched operations to eliminate the terror outfit and retake lost territory.
The PMU had a prominent role in flushing Daesh out of the areas it had occupied in Iraq.
In December 2017, Iraq declared the end of the anti-Daesh campaign. The group’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq.
Long Before Epstein: Sex Traffickers & Spy Agencies
By Elizabeth Vos | Consortium News | August 23, 2019
The alleged use of sexual blackmail by spy agencies is hardly unique to the case of Jeffrey Epstein. Although the agencies involved as well as their alleged motivations and methods differ with each case, the crime of child trafficking with ties to intelligence agencies or those protected by them has been around for decades.
Some cases include the 1950s -1970s Kincora scandal and the 1981 Peter Hayman affair, both in the U.K.; and the Finders’ cult and the Franklin scandal in the U.S. in the late 1980s. Just as these cases did not end in convictions, the pedophile and accused child-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein remained at arms’ length for years.
“For almost two decades, for some nebulous reason, whether to do with ties to foreign intelligence, his billions of dollars, or his social connections, Epstein, whose alleged sexual sickness and horrific assaults on women without means or ability to protect themselves… remained untouchable,” journalist Vicky Ward wrote in The Daily Beast in July.
The protection of sex traffickers by intelligence agencies is especially interesting in the wake of Epstein’s death. Like others, Epstein had long been purported to have links with spy agencies. Such allegations documented by Whitney Webb in her multi-part series were recently published in Mintpress News.
Webb states that Epstein was the current face of an extensive system of abuse with ties to both organized crime and intelligence interests. She told CNLive! that: “According to Nigel Rosser, a British journalist who wrote in the Evening Standard in 2001, Epstein apparently for much of the 1990s claimed that he used to work for the CIA.”
Vicky Ward, who wrote on Epstein for Vanity Fair before his first arrest, and claimed the magazine killed one of her pieces after Epstein intervened with editor Graydon Carter, said in a Tweet that one of Epstein’s clients was Adnan Khashoggi, an arms dealer who was pivotal in the Iran Contra scandal and was on the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) payroll. This was also noted in a book “By Way of Deception” by former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky.
A former Epstein friend reported in @Salon last week that Epstein claimed “he worked for governments to recover money looted by African dictators. Other times those dictators hired him to help them hide their stolen money.” https://t.co/pYkOlFGoyY
— Vicky Ward (@VickyPJWard) July 16, 2019
The Times of Israel reported that Epstein was an “active business partner with former prime minister Ehud Barak” until 2015, adding: “Barak formed a limited partnership company in Israel in 2015, called Sum (E.B.) to invest in a high-tech startup…. A large part of the money used by Sum to buy the start-up stock was supplied by Epstein.”
Webb wrote he “was a long-time friend of Barak, who has long-standing and deep ties to Israel’s intelligence community.” On the board of their company sat Pinchas Bukhris, a former commander of the IDF cyber unit 8200.
Epstein’s allegedly protected status was revealed by Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who gave Epstein an infamously lenient plea deal in 2007. Acosta, who was forced to resign as President Donald Trump’s labor secretary because of that deal, reportedly said of the case: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
Alexander Acosta: “Told to leave it alone.” (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)
Kincora Boy’s Home
Several cases in the unsavory history linking intelligence agencies and sex scandals put the allegations against Epstein in context. Among these was the U.K. Kincora Boy’s Home, where at least 29 boys were reported to have been targeted at the Belfast, Northern Ireland, facility from the mid-1950s until the late 1970s, until it was shut in 1980. It also involved the alleged protection of child sexual abusers at the home and among their clients.
The Irish Times wrote that “destitute boys were systematically sodomised by members of Kincora staff and were supplied for abuse to prominent figures in unionist politics. The abusers – among them MPs, councillors, leading Orangemen and other influential individuals – became potentially important intelligence assets.”
The Belfast Telegraph also quoted former Labour Party MP Ken Livingstone, who said: “MI5 weren’t just aware of child abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home – they were monitoring it. They were getting pictures of a judge in one case, politicians, a lot of the establishment of Northern Ireland going in and abusing these boys.”
Three staff were eventually convicted of sexually abusing minors, which included the housemaster William McGrath, a loyalist “Orangeman” and allegedly an MI5 agent, according to the Belfast Telegraph in July 2014.
Although the U.K.’s Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry ultimately found “no credible evidence” to support the allegations, two former U.K. intelligence officers maintained their claim of MI5’s involvement: Brian Gemmell says he alerted MI5 to the abuse at Kincora and was told to stop his investigation; and a former army intelligence officer, Colin Wallace, “consistently claimed that MI5, RUC special branch and military intelligence knew about the abuse at Kincora and used it to blackmail the pedophile ring to spy on hardline loyalists,” according to The Guardian.
The Irish outlet, An Phoblacht, wrote: “The systematic abuse of young boys in the Home and the part played by the British intelligence organisations to keep the scandal under wraps ensured that one side of the murky world of Unionist paramilitarism and its links to the crown forces was kept out of the public domain for years.”
In the U.S., the New York State Select Committee On Crime in 1982 investigated nationwide networks of trafficking underage sex workers and producing child pornography. Dale Smith, a committee investigator, noted that call services using minors also profited from “sidelines,” besides the income from peddling prostitution. Smith said they sold information “on the sexual proclivities of the clients to agents of foreign intelligence.” Presumably, this information could be used to blackmail those in positions of power. Smith added that one call service sold information to “British and Israeli intelligence.”
The Hayman Affair
Another U.K. scandal included allegations that Sir Peter Hayman, a British diplomat and deputy director of MI6, was a member of the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
London headquarters of British Secret Intelligence Service.
(Laurie Nevay, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Police discovered that two of the roughly dozen pedophiles in his circle had been writing to each other about their interest in “the extreme sexual torture and murder of children,” according to the The Daily Mail.
In 2015, The Guardian reported that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been “adamant that officials should not publicly name” Hayman, “even after she had been fully briefed on his activities…. formerly secret papers released to the National Archives shows.”
Still, Hayman was unmasked as a subscriber to PIE in 1981 by M.P. Geoffrey Dickens, who also reportedly raised the national security risk of Hayman’s proclivities, implying they were a potential source of blackmail sought by intelligence agencies.
The British tabloid The Mirror reported that intelligence agencies, including the KGB and CIA, kept their own dossiers on U.K. establishment figures involved with PIE and the abuse of minors, to blackmail the targets in exchange for information.
Hayman was never charged for his association with PIE: The U.K. attorney general at the time, Sir Michael Havers, defended the decision and denied claims that Heyman was given special treatment.
Labour Party MP Barbara Castle allegedly gave a dossier she compiled on pedophiles in positions of power to U.K. journalist Don Hale in 1984 when he was editor of the Brury Messenger. Hale alleged that soon afterward, police from the “Special Branch, the division responsible for matters of national security,” raided his office and removed the Castle dossier. They then threatened him with a “D-notice,” which prevented him from publishing the story on the threat of up to 10 years in prison.
The Finders Cult
Another group accused of trafficking children, which had links to intelligence agencies, was the “Finders” cult. In 1987, The Washington Post reported that two members were arrested in connection with the alleged abuse of six children. Investigators found materials in Madison County, Virginia, which they said linked to a “commune called the Finders.”
Besides nude photographs of children, a Customs Service memo written by special agent Ramon Martinez refers to files “relating to the activities of the organization in different parts of the world, including “London, Germany, the Bahamas, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Africa, Costa Rica, and Europe.”
Martinez’s memo notes that a Finders’ telex ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong. Another expressed interest in “bank secrecy situations.” The memo also documents high-tech transfers to the U.K., numerous properties under the Finders’ control, the group’s interest in terrorism, explosives, and the evasion of law enforcement.
Martinez describes the swift end to his investigation. He wrote that on April 12, 1987, he arrived at the Metropolitan Police Department and was told that all the data was turned over to the State Department which, in turn, advised MPD that “all travel and use of passports by the holders was within the law and no action would be taken. Then he was told that the investigation into the Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report was classified, not available for review” and “No further action will be taken.”
Martinez was not the only person with unanswered questions. The U.S.News & World Report wrote that N. Carolina Rep. Charlie Rose (Dem.), chair of the House Administration Committee, and Florida’s Rep. Tom Lewis (Rep.) asked “Could our own government have something to do with this Finders organization and turned their backs on these children? That’s what the evidence points to,” says Lewis, adding that “I can tell you that we’ve got a lot of people scrambling, and that wouldn’t be happening if there was nothing here.”
The leniency shown by the State Department and the fact that the CIA would designate the investigation of the Finders group as “an internal matter” raises serious questions. What motive might have driven the CIA to associate with or protect a child abuse ring?
Harry S. Truman State Department building. (Paco8191, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The Franklin Scandal
The Franklin Scandal erupted in 1988, centering on a child-trafficking ring operating in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lawrence E. King Jr., a former vice chairman of the National Black Republican Council: It was alleged that children were provided to politicians in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, among other illegal activities.
The late former state Sen. John Decamp alleged in his book “The Franklin Coverup” that a special committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched a probe to investigate the affair, which involved King being indicted for embezzling money from the Franklin Credit Union. The committee hired former Lincoln, Nebraska, police officer Jerry Lowe, whose reports suggested that King was involved in “guns and money transfers to Nicaragua,” and was linked with the CIA.
James Flanery, an investigative reporter at The World Herald who reported on the scandal, told associates that King was “running guns and money into Nicaragua,” and that the CIA was heavily involved.”
Like many scandals before and since, the Franklin case ended with no prosecution of the perpetrators. However, Paul Bonacci, one of the alleged victims, was indicted for perjury. He had alleged that he was sexually abused as a minor in Nebraska and around the country where he was flown by Lawrence King.
In 1999, the Omaha World Herald reported Bonacci was awarded $1 million in damages due to his lawsuit against King and other alleged perpetrators. Decamp, who was Bonacci’s attorney, told the newspaper “Obviously, you don’t award $1 million if you don’t think he (Bonacci) was telling the truth.”
Given the history of child trafficking rings that were allegedly connected with or enjoyed the protection of intelligence services, it is possible that similar claims about Jeffrey Epstein are something the authorities, though unlikely given these other instances, should investigate.
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and regular contributor to Consortium News.
West Bank IED Attack Kills And Injures Israelis- A Closer Look
By Robert Inlakesh | 21st Century Wire | August 23, 2019
Earlier this Friday morning an IED attack, conducted inside the occupied West Bank, killed one Israeli and injured two others.
The incident has been blamed on unidentified Palestinians, who were said to have planted the IED the night prior to the incident, before detonating it upon the arrival of the Israeli settlers to the location.
The attack took place at the site of the Ein Buben Spring, located in between the Palestinian village of Deir Ibzi and the illegal Israeli settlement of Douleb.
A female Israeli has been confirmed dead, with two men injured, one currently on life support in critical condition and the other suffering moderate wounds. The three Israelis had originated from Lod – formerly the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramle – and had reportedly been visiting the spring, entering it from the ever expanding neighboring settlement.
As usual, the Israeli and Western press are treating this incident as if it has no link to anything occurring in the area prior to the attack.
Back in 2017 I lived in the occupied West Bank and visited the spring of Deir Ibzi many times. I remember being driven there with Palestinians friends to hang out. The first time I went I was confronted by Israeli soldiers who stopped our car and pointed guns in our faces and continued to linger in the area, watching us, for hours after the incident.
Another time I had visited, we had to quickly leave as armed settlers emerged over the hills and were heading in our direction.
I was told by people in the village of Deir Ibzi, that they fear the day when the Israelis will completely take the site for themselves.
The site, of course being home to a fresh water spring, has been a part the lives of those living in Deir Ibzi and the neighboring villages for generations. Until now, there has been no violent resistance like this recent attack, despite the illegal settlement expansion on the area and the violent forcing of the native population from their land.
Israel considers of all the West Bank as simply being part of Israel and call the land Judea and Sumaria. To Israel, there are no illegal settlers or illegal land grabs, they simply consider their actions as being reasonable expansion on God given Jewish land.
The eldest of the Israelis injured in the attack, currently being treated in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, is a Rabbi and was reported to be a decorated occupation force veteran.
Due to the constant Israeli settler and occupation force attacks upon Palestinians, in the West Bank, as well as a rise in attacks upon the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem, we now see a string of violent attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank.
This year so far, approximately 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and with the lack of action from the international community, to end the violations of international law, the siege, the occupation etc. Palestinians now have their backs to the wall.
No peace talks or peaceful demonstrations have worked. So now, due to the lack of action taken for the Palestinians, the Palestinian people are resulting to the last and only option left for them, violent resistance.
The mainstream media will paint these attacks as horrid terrorist incidents, but the reality is, this is what happens when a people have no other options.
Today, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, 152 Palestinians were injured in Gaza’s Great Return March protests, 60 were shot with live ammunition. Over 310 Palestinians have been killed in these marches since the 30th of March, 2018, with around 40,000 people being injured. So why aren’t these acts of mass murdered labelled terrorism? Are only Arabs and Muslims able to commit a terrorist act, should this perhaps be the new definition for the word?
Under international law, the Palestinian people reserve the right to armed resistance. So why is it always a terrorist attack, in the eyes of the so-called objective mainstream media, when a Palestinian decides to resist? And why isn’t Israeli settler terrorism reported as such, when 6 year old Palestinians are run down and murdered by Israeli religious fanatics?
***
Author Robert Inlakesh is a special contributor to 21WIRE and European correspondent for Press TV. He has reported from on the ground in occupied Palestine.
Featured Video
Revive Iran’s MOU Deal or Face a Forever War
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Twice as many Canadian Jews serve in Israeli military as Canada’s armed forces: Report
- Thousands of Syrian troops set to join Saudi war on Yemen
- Jared Kushner’s Diplomacy for Hire
- Russia backs Tehran’s conditions in talks with US, Iran’s envoy says
- Irish ‘fake news’ expert exposed as fake
- China expresses strong opposition to Dutch report alleging Chinese cyberattacks
- Coup d’état in Poland
- The Endgame: When the CIA Proxy War Runs Out of Ukrainians!
- Over 16,000 hectares of farms, forests burnt in Israeli offensive on southern Lebanon, says minister
- Revive Iran’s MOU Deal or Face a Forever War /John Mearsheimer
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
