Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Report on Israel funding Syrian rebels pulled on request of ‘army’s censor’

RT | September 5, 2018

IDF has forced the Jerusalem Post to remove its explosive report on the Israeli military giving weapons to the Syrian rebels, the newspaper’s managing editor confirmed to RT.

“We were told by the army’s military censor to remove that part of the story,” David Brinn, the managing editor of the Jerusalem Post told RT as he replied to a request for comment. The report, ‘IDF confirms: Israel provided light-weapons to Syrian rebels,’ which claimed that the Israeli military acknowledged for the first time that it had provided money, weapons and ammunition to the Syrian militants, was removed just hours after being published without any explanation.

According to Brinn, the story was removed “for security reasons evidently.” The IDF told RT that it would not comment on the issue.

The Jerusalem Post article was removed shortly after being published, but a version of the article can still be read using Google cache

It claimed that regular supplies of light weapons and ammunition to the Syrian militants holding the territories near the Israeli border were part of the Operation Good Neighbor, which Israel portrayed as a humanitarian mission, which was focused on providing Syrians with “food, clothes and fuel.”

Israel has been arming at least seven different armed groups in Syria’s Golan Heights, the report said. It also added that the Israeli military believed that providing weapons to the militants was “the right decision” as they sought to keep Hezbollah and Iran away from Israel’s Golan Heights by such means.

The deleted report comes on the heels of another major disclosure. On Monday, the IDF announced that Israel has carried out more than 200 strikes on Syrian targets in the past year and a half.

September 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Paraguay cancels embassy move to Jerusalem, Israel responds by closing its embassy in Paraguay

RT | September 5, 2018

Paraguay will return its embassy in Israel to Tel Aviv, after the country’s previous government relocated it to Jerusalem in May. In a tit-for-tat response, Israel announced it would close its embassy in Paraguay.

National chancellor Luis Alberto Castiglioni announced the move on Wednesday, calling the decision by former President Horacio Cartes “visceral and without justification.” Cartes, a right-winger, made the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem in May, and was present for its inauguration.

It was one of the last decisions Cartes made before President Mario Abdo Benitez took office last month, and followed the controversial decisions of the US and Guatemala to move their embassies to Jerusalem.

Benitez, the grandson of a Lebanese immigrant, said that he was not consulted about the move.

“Paraguay wants to contribute to an intensification of regional diplomatic efforts to achieve a broad, fair and lasting peace in the Middle East,” said Castiglioni on Wednesday.

The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a controversial one. East Jerusalem has been claimed as the capital of the Palestinian state, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the US embassy there as “an American settlement outpost in East Jerusalem.”

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki claimed on Wednesday that he pushed President Benitez to reverse the move to Jerusalem.

Israel responded to Paraguay’s decision by recalling its ambassador to Paraguay and closing its embassy in the Latin American country’s capital, Asuncion. Before the diplomatic spat erupted, the Israeli ambassador, Zeev Harel, had been meeting with the Paraguayan minister for education, discussing cooperation between the two countries.

September 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Family of 9 homeless as Israel demolishes Hebron home at behest of settlers

MEMO | September 4, 2018

At approximately 4am yesterday, Israeli forces entered the Palestinian village of Khirbet Qawasis and demolished the home of Yousef Abu ‘Aram following protests by settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Yaier.

The soldiers then stormed the village of Zuwaidin and destroyed several community bathrooms legally built on the side of a main road to the village. Soldiers prevented local activists from leaving their vehicles to film the demolition.

“We are sad and upset about what happened today,” says Yousef. “The Israeli authorities want to move us from our land and take it, but we will not move.”

Yousef had completed construction of the house on his land in the southern West Bank governorate of Hebron only a fortnight ago; a house he had hoped would protect his seven children from the coming winter.

“The situation is really bad,” says Yousef, who had intended to plough the land and nurture his trees in the South Hebron Hills, just a few metres from the settlers’ road to Mitzpe Yaier.

“They have left a family of seven children and their parents with no shelter, and now we sit under the trees and will be sleeping on the ground and covering ourselves with the sky.”

Israeli settlers routinely harassed Yousef during the construction of his concrete house and the Israeli Civil Administration, under pressure from the settlers, confiscated some of his building materials. The fate of the house was due to be determined at a court hearing scheduled for yesterday, however the Israeli Civil Administration unlawfully demolished the home ahead of the hearing.

Tariq Hathaleen, human rights activist in the occupied West Bank [File]

“It’s a new thing for settlers to go out to Palestinian houses to protest against the buildings,” says human rights activist, Tariq Hathaleen, who lives in the nearby village of Umm Al-Khair. “The military want to satisfy the settlers, so if there are building materials they confiscate them. If there’s a tent, they will dismantle it and take it away. If it’s a building, the Civil Administration will work very hard to demolish it.”

Hathaleen says that the rate of demolitions is increasing in the South Hebron Hills, where some 30 Palestinian villages can expect as many demolitions to occur in a month as they once did in a year.

“The number is increasing because of the settlers’ pressure. Not just them, but also because of settler NGOs, like Regavim, that works in the South Hebron Hills and across Palestine. They have people who drive cars around Palestinian villages and they also fly drones. Once they catch a Palestinian building a house, they inform the Civil Administration and the military.”

Regavim, a pro-settler not-for-profit that has received millions of shekels of public funds, is leading the legal battle to demolish the Palestinian village of Susiya.

According to B’Tselem, Israel demolished at least 1,342 Palestinian residential units in the West Bank between 2006 and 30 June 2018, displacing 6,024 people including at least 3,040 children. Israel has aggressively pursued a policy of demolishing Palestinian homes, schools, health facilities and other essential infrastructure since it began occupying the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. These demolitions are a violation of The Hague and Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Israeli authorities deny most Palestinian applications for the necessary building permits in Israeli-controlled “Area C”, which accounts for around 60 per cent of the West Bank, forcing Palestinians to build without permission and live under constant threat of demolition.

Meanwhile, Jewish-only settlements like Mitzpe Yaier continue to expand on Palestinian land with the backing of the Israeli government. Around 600,000 Israelis live in over 250 settlements and outposts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids occupying powers from transferring their civilians to occupied territory. Settlements are usually built on stolen Palestinian land in “Area C”, where Khirbet Qawasis is located.

Israel has demarcated approximately 70 per cent of Area C for unlawful settlement expansion, as well as outposts, firing zones, state lands and national parks. This policy has fractured Palestinian land and created a hostile environment for Palestinians living nearby.

“Every day we hear of a new incident of settler violence happening,” says Hathaleen. “Two people from the South Hebron Hills were attacked this year. These people were attacked in less than one week.”

According to Hathaleen, both incidents involved settlers from the illegal Israeli outpost Havat Maon. His friend Sami was injured in one incident after settlers drove their motorcycle down a Palestinian road directly at him, running him over and breaking his leg in three places. The other incident involved a shepherd, who was walking with his flock when settlers attacked him with wooden sticks, leaving him with a broken leg and injuries to his head and hand. One of the settlers tried to shoot the shepherd several times but the gun did not fire. “This man was lucky to survive,” says Hathaleen, who adds that Palestinian shepherds are routinely attacked by Israeli settlers and soldiers if they aren’t accompanied by international volunteers. “Settlers don’t attack Palestinians in front of cameras.”

Many settlers carry government-issued weapons with them outside their homes. Settlers usually attack Palestinians in groups, and attacks often involve throwing stones at people and their property; firing live ammunition at or near Palestinians, homes and schools; the burning of trees and agricultural land; and vandalising vehicles and other property.

According to UN OCHA, an average of seven incidents of settler violence a month led to Palestinian casualties in the first four months of 2018. An average of 14 incidents a month caused property damage. Israeli human rights group Yesh Din reports that only 8.1 per cent of investigations into ideologically motivated offenses against Palestinians have led to an indictment since 2005, and 82 per cent of investigations were closed due to police failures.

READ ALSO:

Israel demolishes Palestinian school near Hebron

Report by Sawsan Bastawy@SawsanHefny

September 4, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel pressured EU to cancel meeting with MK Ayman Odeh

MEMO | September 4, 2018

Israeli officials “pressured the European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini in recent weeks to cancel her meeting with Joint List chair Ayman Odeh regarding the nation-state law”, reported Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Citing sources “involved in arranging the Mogherini-Joint List meeting”, Haaretz said “Israeli officials tried to convince Mogherini to have a lower-level EU official meet with Odeh” instead.

Mogherini responded by saying “she would meet with representatives of the Joint List as she had with other Knesset parties, and hear from them about issues involving Arab citizens in Israel.”

As noted by Haaretz, “Joint List MKs are lobbying European Union officials in Brussels against the nation-state law”, and Odeh is set to meet Mogherini today.

“Odeh is expected to ask Mogherini to try to compel Israel to cancel the law and see that it is condemned in international forums, including the United Nations,” the report added.

“We have three days filled with meetings with ambassadors and ministers in the European Union, including Mogherini,” Odeh told Haaretz, speaking from Brussels. “We are going to ask the European Union to intervene with the Israeli government to cancel the law.”

Odeh “said the European Union has ways of working against the law, mainly by using trade agreements and cooperative ventures with the European Union, in which Israel is pledged to respect human rights and democratic values.”

September 4, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Fifth Column

Exercising control from inside the government

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 4, 2018

Referring to Israel during an interview in August 1983, U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer said “I’ve never seen a President — I don’t care who he is — stand up to them. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn’t writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don’t have any idea what goes on.”

Moorer was speaking generally but he had something specific in mind, namely the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship, U.S.S. Liberty, which killed 34 American crewmen and wounded 173 more. The ship was operating in international waters and was displaying a huge stars and stripes but Israeli warplanes, which had identified the vessel as American, even strafed the life rafts to kill those who were fleeing the sinking ship. It was the bloodiest attack on a U.S. Naval vessel ever outside of wartime and the crew deservedly received the most medals ever awarded to a single ship based on one action. Yes, it is one hell of a story of courage under fire, but don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make a movie out of it.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, may he burn in hell, had ordered the recall of U.S. carrier planes sent to aid the stricken vessel, saying that he would prefer the ship go to the bottom rather than embarrass his good friend Israel. Then came the cover-up from inside the U.S. government. A hastily convened and summarily executed board of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain, father of the senator, deliberately interviewed only a handful of crewmen before determining that it was all an accident. The sailors who had survived the attack as well as crewmen from Navy ships that arrived eventually to provide assistance were held incommunicado in Malta before being threatened and sworn to secrecy. Since that time, repeated attempts to convene another genuine inquiry have been rebuffed by congress, the White House and the Pentagon. Recently deceased Senator John McCain was particularly active in rejecting overtures from the Liberty survivors.

The Liberty story demonstrates how Israel’s ability to make the United States government act against its own interests has been around for a long time. Grant Smith of IRMEP, cites how Israeli spying carried out by AIPAC in Washington back in the mid-1980s resulted in a lopsided trade agreement that currently benefits Israel by more than $10 billion per year on the top of direct grants from the U.S. Treasury and billions in tax exempt “charitable” donations by American Jews.

If Admiral Moorer were still alive, I would have to tell him that the situation vis-à-vis Israeli power is much worse now than it was in 1983. He would be very interested in reading a remarkable bit of research recently completed by Smith demonstrating exactly how Israel and its friends work from inside the system to corrupt our political process and make the American government work in support of Jewish state interests. He describes in some detail how the Israel Lobby has been able to manipulate the law enforcement community to protect and promote Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda.

A key component in the Israeli penetration of the U. S. government has been President George W. Bush’s 2004 signing off on the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) within the Department of the Treasury. The group’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes however, how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”

The first head of the office was Undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, who operated secretly within the Treasury itself while also coordinating regularly both with the Israeli government as well as with pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, WINEP and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Levey also traveled regularly to Israel on the taxpayer’s dime, as did his three successors in office.

Levey left OTFI in 2011 and was replaced by David Cohen. It was reported then and subsequently that counterterrorism position at OTFI were all filled by individuals who were both Jewish and Zionist. Cohen continued the Levey tradition of resisting any transparency regarding what the office was up to. Smith reports how, on September 12, 2012, he refused to answer reporter questions “about Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and whether sanctioning Iran, a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, over its internationally-inspected civilian nuclear program was an example of endemic double standards at OTFI.”

Cohen was in turn succeeded in 2015 by Adam Szubin who was then replaced in 2017 by Sigal Pearl Mandelker, a former and possibly current Israeli citizen. All of the heads of OTFI have therefore been Jewish and Zionist. All work closely with the Israeli government, all travel to Israel frequently on “official business” and they all are in close liaison with the Jewish groups most often described as part of the Israel Lobby. And the result has been that many of the victims of OTFI have been generally enemies of Israel, as defined by Israel and America’s Jewish lobbyists. OTFI’s Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN), which includes sanctions and enforcement options , features many Middle Eastern Muslim and Christian names and companies but nothing in any way comparable relating to Israel and Israelis, many of whom are well known to law enforcement otherwise as weapons traffickers and money launderers . And once placed on the SDN there is no transparent way to be removed, even if the entry was clearly in error.

Here in the United States, action by OTFI has meant that Islamic charities have been shut down and individuals exercising their right to free speech through criticism of the Jewish state have been imprisoned. If the Israel Anti-Boycott Act succeeds in making its way through congress the OTFI model will presumably become the law of the land when it comes to curtailing free speech whenever Israel is involved.

The OTFI story is outrageous, but it is far from unique. There is a history of American Jews closely attached to Israel being promoted by powerful and cash rich domestic lobbies to act on behalf of the Jewish state. To be sure, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East and one can reasonably argue that the Republican and Democratic Parties are in the pockets of Jewish billionaires named Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban.

Neoconservatives, most of whom are Jewish, infiltrated the Pentagon under the Reagan Administration and they and their heirs in government and media (Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol) were major players in the catastrophic war with Iraq, which, one of the architects of that war, Philip Zelikow, described in 2004 as being all about Israel. The same people are now in the forefront of urging war with Iran.

American policy towards the Middle East is largely being managed by a small circle of Orthodox Jews working for presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. One of them, David Friedman, is currently U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has no diplomatic or foreign policy credentials, is a Zionist Jew who is also a supporter of the illegal settlements on the West Bank and a harsh critic of other Jews who in any way disagree with the Israeli government. He has contributed money to settlement construction, which would be illegal if OTFI were doing its job, and has consistently defended the settlers while condemning the Palestinians in speeches in Israel. He endlessly and ignorantly repeats Israeli government talking points and has tried to change the wording of State Department communications, seeking to delete the word “occupied” when describing Israel’s control of the West Bank. His humanity does not extend beyond his Jewishness, defending Israel’s shooting thousands of unarmed Gazan protesters and the bombing of schools, hospitals and cultural centers. How he represents the United States and its citizens who are not dual nationals must be considered a mystery.

Friedman’s top adviser is Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who is described by the Embassy as an expert in “Jewish education and pro-Israel advocacy.” Once upon a time, in an apparently more enlightened mood, Lightstone described Donald Trump as posing “an existential danger both to the Republican Party and to the U.S.” and even accused him of pandering to Jewish audiences. Apparently when opportunity knocked he changed his mind about his new boss. Pre-government in 2014, Lightstone founded and headed Silent City, a Jewish advocacy group supported by extreme right-wing money that opposed the Iran nuclear agreement and also worked to combat the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He is reportedly still connected financially with anti BDS groups, which might be construed as a conflict of interest. As the Senior Adviser to Friedman he is paid in excess of $200,000 plus free housing, additional cash benefits to include a 25% cost of living allowance and a 10% hardship differential, medical insurance and eligibility for a pension.

So, what’s in it all for Joe and Jill American Citizens? Not much. And for Israel? Anything, it wants, apparently. Sink a U.S. warship? Okay. Tap the U.S. Treasury? Sure, just wait a minute and we’ll draft some legislation that will give you even more money. Create a treasury department agency run exclusively by Jews that operates secretly to punish critics of the Jewish state? No brainer. Meanwhile a bunch of dudes at the Pentagon are dreaming of new wars for Israel and the White House sends an ignorant ambassador and top aide overseas to represent the interests of the foreign government in the country where they are posted. Which just happens to be Israel. Will it ever end?

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

September 4, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Julia Salazar and Jewish Privilege

By Gilad Atzmon | September 4, 2018

A few years ago in Portland, a pro Palestinian activist told me that he was a bit uneasy. A recent study of Portland’s demography had found that the number of Jews in the city had doubled overnight. This concerned my activist friend for the obvious reasons. Jewish migration is often attached to political and cultural transitions. He asked me, as an expert on Jewish affairs, what is it that brings so many Jews to his northern American city.  I thought about it for maybe 30 seconds and, even without examining the evidence, I offered a possible answer. “It is certainly easy to imagine that many Jews migrated to your city, but it is more likely that what happened is that many more people, Jews and gentiles, have chosen to identify themselves as Jews.”

Jewish identification in the 21st century is an obvious privilege, some might claim, the ultimate political privilege. As we know, Judeo-centric exceptionalist politics are protected from criticism by different legal and cultural instruments such as the bogus IHRA definition of antisemitism and the tyranny of correctness. If you are a Jew, you are perceived as a well-connected character, probably slightly more ‘sophisticated’ than the average American. Whether we like to admit it or not, a young law school graduate, may benefit from appearing to be Jewish as he interviews for his first job at a NY law firm.

Last year in San Diego, an astute Palestinian- American friend, loudly joked during the Q&A following my talk: “I really don’t understand my people. All we have to do is to convert en mass into Judaism and then make Aliya and take our land back.”

It is hardly a secret. In the world in which we live, the ultimate political privilege is reserved for Jewish ID politics. The Jewish Identitarian ethos goes far beyond Jewish political orientation. It is the piece that unites the Jewish right and left. The Zionists claim the right to live ‘in peace’ on someone else’s land. The so-called ‘anti’ Zionists insist that their Jewishness places them in the very special position to “kosher” the entire pro Palestinian movement.

N.Y. State Senate hopeful Julia Salazar is just 27 years old, but she has clearly grasped the universe around her. She wants to be elected and she understands that being a Jew is the quickest path to her goal. The Brooklyn candidate stated that her Jewishness is based largely on “family lore,” but to her great surprise, the Jews weren’t happy to take her in. Haaretz quickly pointed out that Salazar doesn’t belong to the chosen people. A Jewish ex-friend told the Israeli paper Salazar had “admitted she couldn’t go on Birthright trip because she wasn’t Jewish.”

Apparently the ‘ex friend’ told the Israeli paper that “As someone who values and cherished my Jewish identity, I’m incensed at the idea of another person fabricating a similar identity for political gain, for the purposes of recognition and to get ahead in life.” The message here is unambiguous although hardly news. Jewish identity is an exclusive tribal setting that is racially defined. Unless Salazar can show her mother’s Jewish racial purity, she is basically out of the Jewish club and can’t be a beneficiary of the Jewish privilege.

The Zionist outrage around Salazar is to be expected. For whatever political reasons, Salazar who runs in Brooklyn, decided to adopt the Jewish pro BDS position. In the eyes of Israel firsters she committed two crimes: she ‘pretends’ to be a Jew and then, if this were not enough, she actually pretends to be a ‘self hating’ one.

The good news for humanity, however, is that Salazar, like many others, can read the political transition in the west. She probably sees how popular Corbyn is in Britain despite the relentless and duplicitous campaign against him. Salazar may understand that many people see Israel as the ultimate evil. She may even believe that Trump won the election because he was “dog whistling” by pointing at Soros, the Fed, Goldman Sachs, etc. But it goes further. Salazar is living in NYC and she may well sense or even share her neighbours’ renewed anger every year when the list of “NYC 100 Worst Landlords” is published. Perhaps Salazar believes that the only chance to survive in American politics in the current climate is to become a Jew. To oppose Israel as a Jew, to oppose NYC slumlords as a Jew, to oppose AIPAC as a Jew. Perhaps Salazar believes that the only way to emancipate America from what may seem to some as Jewish hegemony, is to become a Jew. If you can’t beat them, join them.

Here is the bad news for Salazar, it is not going to work. The Jews have rejected the young Latina. Apparently she isn’t racially qualified.

The Jewishpress writes today. “There are, at least, three reasons why many of us (Jews) find her vaguely annoying. These are:1) Her apparently untrue claims to be Jewish. 2) Her antisemitic anti-Zionism. 3) Her anti-democratic socialism.”

But it isn’t only the Zionists who reject the young Latin Jewish candidate, the so-called ‘Jewish Progressives’ do not really want her either. The Jewish ‘progressive’ Forward isn’t pleased with Salazar either. Mijal Bitton writes “… the Salazar dustup revealed a fundamental and seldom explored paradox in the liberal discourse on identity: the tension between essential and exclusive identity politics predicated on group experiences on the one hand, and notions of identity that validate choice and malleability in how individuals self-identify on the other.”

Not surprisingly, Bitton, like most Identitarians, doesn’t understand the crux of ID politics. The so called ‘paradox’ she refers to is actually inherent in the dialectic tension that forms the core of the Identitarian discourse.

Identitarianism doesn’t reveal ‘what people are,’ instead it tells what people ‘identify as.’ John identifying himself ‘as a gay’ doesn’t necessarily mean that John is a homosexual. It only reveals that John likes to see himself and to be seen by others ‘as gay.’ This essential understanding of the misleading nature of the Identitarianism was explored by the comic ‘Daffyd Thomas – The only Gay in the village.’ Thomas identifies as ‘a gay.’ He adopts gay symbolic identifiers, he speaks as one, he demands the attention and the privilege of one, but at the same time he is totally removed from the sexuality that has traditionally been the crux of ‘being’ gay.

In an attempt to resolve Salazar’s Jewish identity complex, Bitton argues that Salazar’s defenders have two arguments: “The first defends her on the grounds that she represents a hybrid identity distinctly Latin/Sephardi/non-white, and as such inaccessible and misunderstood by her white, Ashkenazi, American critics. The second defends her on the grounds that Jewish identity, like Salazar’s, is malleable and does not fit into one mold.”

Both arguments can be summed into a single intellectually duplicitous doctrine that is set to block criticism of any given Identitarian discourse. It attributes blindness to the Other. But isn’t this exactly what Jewish institutions are doing routinely? Just a month ago, in a letter to the Labour Party ruling Body, British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis wrote “It is astonishing that the Labour Party presumes that it is more qualified than… the Jewish community to define antisemitism.” Essentially, the Chief Rabbi is complaining that a bunch of Goyim in the Labour party see themselves as qualified to decide what antisemitsm is for the Labour party.

So, while the British Chief Rabbi claims that ‘antisemitsm’ is a Jew -protected discourse, Bitton complains that Salazar’s identity as Latina, Sephardi, or as a Jew of Color, intrudes on protected property; “it can only be understood, and interrogated, by the small number of those born into similar identities.”

In fact, Salazar has been copying Rabbi Mirvis’ tactics. This doesn’t only confirm that she is a Jew, it may qualify her to become Brooklyn’s chief Rabbi.

Bitton says of Salazar defenders that, “According to them, Salazar’s minority group identity confers upon her certain inalienable rights of representation inaccessible to others, but she can also legitimately choose to be Jewish in her own individual way.”

This may seem a contradiction to some. But this is exactly the primary rule of Jewish ID politics. Jewish identification is largely a racially exclusive club. But those who manage to fit in are totally free to choose their own way; they can be orthodox, conservative, reform, secular, atheist, self loving, self hating, Zionists, anti or even AZZ (anti Zionist Zionists). The members of the Jewish Identitarian club are welcome to select any combination of the above while knowing that any criticism from an outsider can be dismissed as a form of ‘antisemitsm.’ But candidate Salazar can’t take part in this Identitarian exercise. Why? Because she isn’t racially qualified.

Whether Bitton understands it or not, her futile attempt to deconstruct Salazar reveals that the Jewish Identitarian concept is, in practice, an exercise in Jewish racial classification. There is no difference between Salazar’s identitarian choice and JVP or other Jewish progressive schools of thought. None of the Jewish progressive schools is asked to clear its contradictions. The JVPs are not asked to source the so called ‘Jewish values’ that stand at the core of their ‘Jewish activism.’ The only difference is that Salazar isn’t racially Jewish. Her mother’s blood is not of the right kind. She is, accordingly, rejected.

Bitton herself seems to grasp that her attempt at deconstruction of Salazar achieves little. Bitton ends her Forward article by admitting that “Salazar’s story demands that we (Jews, presumably) explore the way in which we approach identity. Is it malleable, individual and pro-choice, or it is essential, exclusive and inherited? And if it can be both, then those who choose a selective approach to identity must demonstrate moral consistency in their rhetoric.”

I guess that the answer is really simple. Jewish identity is both malleable and racially exclusive. It is elastic enough to fit different Jewish tribal interests. Salazar, I believe, would face no problem whatsoever in becoming a ‘Jew’ if she were a supporter of Israel and an enemy of BDS. Israeli patriots are noticeably racially tolerant of Goyim who support the Jewish national project as many Russians immigrants to Israeli could happily attest.

September 4, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

What Lies Beneath: The US-Israeli Plot to ‘Save’ Gaza

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | September 4, 2018

Israel wants to change the rules of the game entirely. With unconditional support from the Trump Administration, Tel Aviv sees a golden opportunity to redefine what has, for decades, constituted the legal and political foundation for the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’

While US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has, thus far, been erratic and unpredictable, his administration’s ‘vision’ in Israel and Palestine is systematic and unswerving. This consistency seems to be part of a larger vision aimed at liberating the ‘conflict’ from the confines of international law and even the old US-sponsored ‘peace process.’

Indeed, the new strategy has, so far, targeted the status of East Jerusalem as an Occupied Palestinian city, and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. It aims to create a new reality in which Israel achieves its strategic goals while the rights of Palestinians are limited to mere humanitarian issues.

Unsurprisingly, Israel and the US are using the division between Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, to their advantage. Fatah dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah while Hamas controls besieged Gaza.

A carrot and a stick scenario are being applied in earnest. While, for years, Fatah received numerous financial and political perks from Washington, Hamas subsisted in isolation under a permanent siege and protracted state of war. It seems that the Trump Administration – under the auspices of Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner – are turning the tables.

The reason that the PA is no longer the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership it used to be in Washington’s ever self-serving agenda is that Mahmoud Abbas has decided to boycott Washington in response to the latter’s recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. True, Abbas’ subservience has been successfully tested in the past but, under the new administration, the US demands complete ‘respect’, thus total obedience.

Hamas, which is locked in Gaza between closed borders from every direction, has been engaging Israel indirectly through Egyptian and Qatari mediation. That engagement has, so far, resulted in a short-term truce, while a long-term ceasefire is still being discussed.

The latest development on that front was the visit by Kushner, accompanied with Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, to Qatar on August 22. There, Gaza was the main topic on the agenda.

So, why is Gaza, which has been isolated (even by the PA itself) suddenly the new gate through which the top US, Israeli and regional officials are planning to reactivate Middle East diplomacy?

Ironically, the suffocation of Gaza is particularly intense these days. The entire Gaza Strip is sinking deeper in its burgeoning humanitarian crisis, with August being one of the most gruelling months.

A series of US financial aid cuts have targeted the very socio-economic infrastructure that allowed Gaza to carry on, despite extreme poverty and the ongoing economic blockade.

On August 31, Foreign Policy magazine reported that the US administration is in the process of denying the UN Palestinian refugees agency, UNRWA – which has already suffered massive US cuts since January – of all funds. Now the organization’s future is in grave peril.

The worrying news came only one week after another announcement, in which the US decided to cut nearly all aid allocated to Palestinians this year – $200 million, mostly funds spent on development projects in the West Bank and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

So why would the US manufacture a significant humanitarian crisis in Gaza – which suits the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu well – while, simultaneously, engaging in discussions regarding the urgent need to end Gaza’s humanitarian woes?

The answer lies in the need for the US to manipulate aid to Palestinians to exact political concessions for Israel’s sake.

Months before rounds of Egyptian-sponsored indirect talks began between Israel and Hamas, there has been an unmistakable shift in Israeli and US attitudes regarding the future of Gaza:

On January 31, Israel presented to a high-level conference in Brussels ‘humanitarian assistance plans’ for Gaza at a proposed cost of $1 billion. The plan focuses mostly on water distillation, electricity, gas infrastructure and upgrading the joint industrial zone at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. In essence, the Israeli plan is now the core discussion about the proposed long-term ceasefire.

The meeting was attended by Greenblatt, along with Kushner who is entrusted with implementing Trump’s unclear vision, inappropriately termed ‘the deal of the century.’

Two months later, Kushner hosted top officials from 19 countries to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

There is a common thread between all of these activities.

Since the US decided to defy international law and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last December, it has been in search of a new strategy that will circumvent the PA in Ramallah.

PA President, Abbas, whose political apparatus is mostly reliant on ‘security coordination’ with Israel, US political validation and financial handouts, has little with which to bargain.

Hamas has relatively greater political capital – as it has operated with less dependency on the Israeli-US-western camp. But years of relentless siege, interrupted by massive, deadly Israeli wars, have propelled Gaza into a permanent humanitarian crisis.

While a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian groups in Gaza went into effect on August 15, a long-term ceasefire is still being negotiated. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, citing Israeli officials, the truce would include a comprehensive ceasefire, opening all border crossings, expansion of the permitted fishing area off the Gaza coast, and the overhauling of Gaza’s destroyed economic infrastructure – among other stipulations.

Concurrently, Palestinian officials in Ramallah are fuming. ‘Chief negotiator,’ Saeb Erekat, accused Hamas of trying to “destroy the Palestinian national project,” by negotiating a separate agreement with Israel. The irony is that the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and PA have done just that for over 25 years.

However, delinking the future of Gaza from the fate of all Palestinians can, indeed, lead to dangerous consequences.

Regardless of whether a permanent truce is achieved between Israel and the Hamas-led Gaza factions, the sad truth is that, whatever grand illusion is harboured by Washington and Tel Aviv at the moment, is almost entirely based on exploiting Palestinian divisions, for which the Palestinian leadership is to be wholly blamed.

September 4, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel newspaper incites against Corbyn, Muslims in UK

MEMO | September 3, 2018

Israel Hayom newspaper yesterday ran an article inciting against Muslims in the UK and leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

“The British capital of London has become a base for Islamic groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood outside the Middle East and the centre for the campaign to delegitimise Israel,” columnist Eldad Beck said in an article published yesterday.

Beck added that this comes in the context of “the radical speech led by British leader Jeremy Corbyn, noting to the increase in non-governmental political movements with only one common goal that is calling for the elimination of Israel.”

“There are a number of Hamas men who are running the battle to delegitimise Israel in Britain and are working to spread it around the world in order to legitimise the elimination of Israel. They have been organising fleets for solidarity with Gaza since 2010, led by the Turkish Mavi Marmara flotilla which caused Israel unprecedented harmful propaganda,” he claimed.

“Some Hamas figures in Britain are leading the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and some have even filed legal complaints against British journalists who claimed that they have links with Hamas’ military activities, while others have issued anti-Semitic statements and got closer to Corbyn who received at the British Parliament Hamas representatives who had expressed their support for armed operations,” Beck added.

Meanwhile, former Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Major General Yossi Kuperwasser, said “Britain is witnessing the emergence of what we can call the Green-Red Alliance, and one of its objectives is to wipe Israel off the map.”

“This alliance extends from Britain to the rest of the Western countries including the United States, but Britain is still the strongest body to export the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology to the rest of the globe.”

“Palestinian activists in Britain are aiming to establish more Islamic organisations to influence the Kingdom’s internal and external policies,” he added.

September 3, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Presidents: From Ethnic Cleansing To Rape

And now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the commandments that You gave through Your servants the prophets, saying: ‘The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the impurity of its peoples and the abominations with which they have filled it from end to end. Now, therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Never seek their peace or prosperity, so that you may be strong and may eat the good things of the land, leaving it as an inheritance to your sons forever.’ – Ezra 9:11

By Robert Inlakesh | 21st Century | September 3, 2018

The Presidents of Israel say a great deal about the nature of the self proclaimed ‘Jewish State’. An Israeli President is positioned upon a pedestal, as perhaps one of the most highly regarded figures, so is of much significance to the country’s image.

Often attempts are made to whitewash, the well documented, Israeli crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Many Israeli committed atrocities have simply been glossed over as “mistakes”, whilst the line is then towed, that the State of Israel is aligned with the values of the Western World. Most mainstream media figure-heads will even attempt to paint Israel as a progressively oriented democratic state.

A state/country can often be judged by who it picks to represent it and who it chooses to project its image to the world.

The broadly accepted notion that there are “a few bad apples” that exist within the Israeli political institution, does not properly confront the recurring themes of bigotry, terrorism, sexism, fraud and xenophobia, that are found when investigating the conduct of the Presidents of Israel.

The following presents small samples of what Israeli Presidents felt comfortable sharing with the world.

 

Chaim Weizmann – First President of the State of Israel:

Israel’s first ever President was Chaim Weizmann, he remained President until his death on the 9th of November, 1952. He is, to this day, widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the State of Israel, this is due to his early involvement in the Zionist Movement.

Chaim Weizmann sums up very succinctly, his Zionist perception of Arab people, in a letter written in 1918, stating that; “The Arab is primitive and believes what he is told” (as quoted in One Palestine Complete, P. 109). The former President also denied the existence of an Arab nation inside the state of Palestine, at the time (1918), describing Arabs as “Ignorant” and “Naive” during a discussion on Arabs in Palestine.

 

Yitzhak Ben Zvi – Second President of the State of Israel:

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was Israel’s President from 1952 until 1963.

The following, extremely racist comment, was written in an article by the former President, published by the Ultra-Orthodox newspaper “Hassidic World”:

“the Arabs are a people similar to donkeys… they are a vile nation of savages… they have a great desire to murder and are even worse than the Nazi enemy.”

The above quote is but a sample of an article, reported upon by the Israeli News outlet Ynet News (on the 26th of August 2006). This blatantly racist article, was not the product of a neo-Nazi street thug, but rather a man who was Israel’s President for almost 9 years.

 

Zalman Shazar – Third President of the State of Israel:

Zalman Shazar served as Israel’s President for three days short of 10 years, between 1963 and 1973. In 1951, Zalman Shazar expressed himself, promoting an idea that has remained embedded in Israeli ideology to this day, White Jewish Supremacy.

On Page 35, of the book ‘Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews’, written by Sami Shalom Chetrit, Zalman Shazar is quoted as sharing the following statement, regarding the dangers posed by the ‘Mizrahi Aliyah’ (Non-White Jews):

“It will cost us dearly. This is Unfathomable… An Aliyah has to come to us who never knew the taste of a high school, and they are unused to so much education, to do so much learning… Suppose that, okay, we can bring them to graduate primary schools, but what will the level be then, what will the yishuv be like, would we able to be a light for the Gentiles?… Will the yishuv in Israel survive without more Europeans and Anglo-Saxons, Jews like us?”

 

Ephraim Katzir – The Fourth President of the State of Israel:

Serving from 1973 until 1978, Ephraim Katzir was the fourth President of the State of Israel.

Ephraim Katzir was infamously the man who founded the first known facility, used to produce Israeli biological weapons.

In 1993, the former President confirmed his involvement in the Israeli biological weapons program. Ephraim Katzir in an interview with Sara Leibovitz, for the Israeli newspaper ‘Hadashot’, pleaded guilty to indeed starting HEMED BEIT (Israel’s biological weapons facility). Ephraim Katzir says during the interview for Hadashot:

“I was involved in HEMED BEIT from the beginning. We planned various activities, to get a sense of what CBW is and how could we build a potential [in this area] should there be a need for such a potential.”

 

Yitzhak Navon – Fifth President of the State of Israel:

Between 1978 and 1983 Yitzhak Navon served as the Israeli President.

A point Yitzhak Navon made clear, was that the Israeli labor movements intentions were to cleanse the native Palestinians of their historic homeland. In Bernard Avishai’s, ‘The Tragedy of Zionism’ (P.340), written in 1985, he quotes the former President as saying:

“The very point of Labor’s Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as possible!”

 

Chaim Herzog – The Sixth President of the State of Israel:

Chaim Herzog was the sixth President of Israel and held his position from 1983 until 1993.

Herzog was perhaps most famous for a speech he delivered, addressing the United Nations in 1974, condemning ‘General Assembly resolution 3373’, which equated Zionism to racism. During this speech he consistently refers to the terrorism committed by Arabs and uses the holocaust along with Jewish persecution – along with frequent references to religious rights to the land – to justify committing crimes against the Palestinians.

Constantly pointing the finger at Arabs for what he defined as “terrorism”, Chaim Herzog forgets to mention that he was himself a member of the Haganah. The Haganah were considered, by British Mandate Forces in Palestine, to be a terrorist organization before the group morphed into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), post 1948.

At the 73rd Address to the Canadian Parliament, Chaim Herzog, on the 27th of June in 1989, said the following:

“As Golda Meir once said, she cannot forgive the Arabs not so much because they kill our children but because they force our children to kill theirs.”

Various Israeli websites and journalists, have attempted to claim that the words of Golda Meir (Former Israeli Prime Minister) were fabricated. The above quote shows, that not only did Chaim Herzog believe these words had came from Golda Meir, but also, that he thought that this statement was perfectly viable himself.

 

Ezer Weizman – The Seventh President of the State of Israel:

Ezer Weizman was the President of Israel from 1993 until the year 2000. He resigned from his position as President, after it emerged in 1999, that he was involved in a bribery scandal.

Ezer Weizman was known as the founder of Israel’s air-force and was a former member of the Haganah.

Ezer Weizman was widely known as a misogynist and was accused of making homophobic comments on several occasions. The former president infamously said, in the event of a female being refused to take a pilot course (1993): “have you ever seen a man sewing a pair of socks?”.

 

Moshe Katzav – The Eighth President of the State of Israel:

Moshe Katzav was President of Israel from the year 2000 until 2007. He resigned as President, handing it over as part of a plea bargain, during an ongoing court case, after being accused of raping multiple women.

Moshe Katzav was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for rape, he was granted parole after 5 years.

As well as being a convicted rapist, he also had no quarrel with spouting out his hatred of Palestinians. It was reported on the 11th of May, 2001, by the Jerusalem post, that Moshe Katzav said:

“There is a huge gap between us and our enemies – not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience”. Katsav told this to a ‘Beit Hanassi’ reporter, using the killing of two Israelis by Palestinians, as an opportunity to publicly express Jewish supremacist views. Moshe Katsav later went rambled on to the reporter, that it was terrifying to realize how much hatred the Palestinians harbor against Israelis, “for no reason”.

 

Shimon Peres – The Ninth President of the State of Israel:

Shimon Peres became Israeli President in 2007 and lasted until 2014. Many still regard Shimon Peres as a peacemaker, the reality of his legacy is quite the opposite however.

Shimon Peres was the founder of Israel’s Nuclear program, he was also the first one to endorse Israeli settlement projects in the occupied territories.

Peres said, in an interview with al-Jazeera, on the 30th of December (2012):

“They [Palestinians] are self victimizing. They victimize themselves. They are a victim of their own mistakes, unnecessarily .”

Although he loved to preach to the media, of his hopes for a ‘two state solution’, Peres’ actions spoke louder than words. He would also – as quoted above – use any chance he could to advance the image of Israeli’s, morally and intellectually, attaching the notions of Arab stupidity and Palestinian inferiority. His rhetoric was not as vicious as those before or after him, but his actions however were perhaps worse.

 

Reuven Rivlin – The Tenth President of the State of Israel:

Reuven Rivlin is the current President of the State of Israel, taking the position in 2014.

The current President of Israel, who’s Prime Minister is Netanyahu, seeks to annex the West Bank and currently works to undermine any peace effort.

Along with his calls, to absorb the West Bank into the state of Israel, the President of Israel has made it clear, his stance on Palestinian refugees. The Israeli ‘Ynet News’, published an article in 2015, in which they quote Rivlin as stating the following:

“They call for the right of the return of refugees to Israel – something which is unacceptable for the consensus in Israel and which strikes at the very heart of this issue.”

Without going into his character in too much detail, the current President seeks the end of the Palestinian people. Reuven Rivlin aims to annex the West Bank, has overseen the US recognition of Israel’s Capital as Jerusalem, takes a firm stance against refugee return and currently refuses to act as the Gaza strip is in a declared state of emergency.

 

With such criminal and obnoxious consistency, is it perhaps correct to assume that Israel’s highly regarded and symbolic figures (its Presidents), somewhat reflected/reflect the country’s attitude and/or opinions?

September 3, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Is UK Labour Now Zionist-Occupied Territory?

Befuddled Party waits to be gagged by ‘enemy within’

Jeremy Corbyn – Rally in Trafalgar Square. Image credit: Davide Simonetti/ Flickr
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | September 3, 2018

The National Executive Committee of the Labour Party will vote tomorrow (Tuesday) on whether to bow to the bullies and adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism even though it has been roundly criticised by legal experts as unworkable. If they do, it will be hailed as a mighty victory for the dark forces behind the pro-Israel lobby in their bid to shut down criticisim of that racist state.

More than two years ago Gilad Atzmon was viewing the Labour Party’s crazed witch hunt for “anti-Semites” with misgiving. He declared, in his usual robust way, that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was not so much a party as a piece of Zionist-occupied territory.

Writing in his blog about Corbyn and McDonnell’s servile commitment to expel anyone whose remarks might be interpreted by the Zionist Tendency as hateful or simply upsetting to Jews, he concluded: “Corbyn’s Labour is now unequivocally a spineless club of Sabbos Goyim [which I take to mean non-Jewish dogsbodies]. The Labour party’s policies are now compatible with Jewish culture: intolerant to the core and concerned primarily with the imaginary suffering of one people only. These people are not the working class, they are probably the most privileged ethnic group in Britain…. I did not anticipate that Corbyn would become a Zionist lapdog. Corbyn was a great hope to many of us. I guess that the time has come to accept that The Left is a dead concept, it has nothing to offer.”

Amen to that last bit.

And more recently Miko Peled, former Israeli soldier and the son of a Israeli general, warned that Israel was going to “pull all the stops, they are going to smear, they are going to try anything they can to stop Corbyn” and the reason anti-Semitism is used is because they have no other argument.

Since then we’ve had a queue of high profile Labourites and others sticking the knife into Corbyn. Last week it was the former Chief Rabbi and Zionist extremist Lord Sacks. Then the much-respected MP Frank Field, a maverick who finally quit Labour in noisy fashion giving anti-Semitism as a reason but having grumbled for a long time about a culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation within the party. Yesterday we had to suffer ex-prime minister Gordon Brown mouthing off about how the IHRA definition “is something we should support unanimously, unequivocally and immediately.” He urged Corbyn to remove the “stain” of prejudice from Labour by writing the definition and all of its examples into the party’s new code of conduct.

That’s a particularly dumb thing to say considering the Home Office Select Committee urged two caveats be included and eminent legal minds Hugh Tomlinson QC and Sir Stephen Sedley pointed out how it is trumped by our right to free expression, which is part of UK domestic law by virtue of the Human Rights Act (something every Labour member ought to know and uphold), and by other conventions. Geoffrey Robertson QC also warns that it is “not fit for any purpose that seeks to use it as an adjudicative standard. It is imprecise, confusing and open to misinterpretation and even manipulation”.

Robertson adds: “The Governments ‘adoption’ of the definition has no legal effect and does not oblige public bodies to take notice of it. The definition should not be adopted, and certainly should not be applied, by public bodies unless they are clear about Article 10 of the EHCR (European Convention on Human Rights) which is binding upon them, namely that they cannot ban speech or writing about Israel unless there is a real likelihood it will lead to violence or disorder or race hatred.”

But Brown won’t be listening. He’s a dedicated pimp for Israel and a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist. In 2008, in the first speech by a British prime minister to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, he told Israeli MPs: “Britain is your true friend. A friend in difficult times as well as in good times, a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat.”

Unlike Corbyn, Gordon Brown wouldn’t talk to Hamas because warmongers in the White House had branded them ‘terrorists’. But that’s their opinion. The state of Israel was founded by terror groups like the one that murdered 91 in an attack on the British mandate government in the King David Hotel and carried out the Deir Yassin massacre. Israel is the expert in terror. As Norman Finkelstein has remarked, “It is more than a rogue state. It is a lunatic state… The whole world is yearning for peace, and Israel is constantly yearning for war.”

The Israeli government itself was described by one of Brown’s own (Jewish) MPs, Sir Gerald Kaufman, as a ‘gang of amoral thugs’.

Brown, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, would have done well (as would all the other critics of Jeremy Corbyn and his ‘funny’ friends) to mull over the words of Gaza’s Catholic priest, Father Manuel Musallam, who told a journalist friend Mohammed Omer: “Palestinian Christians are not a religious community set apart in some corner. We are part of the Palestinian people. Our relationship with Hamas is as people of one nation. Hamas doesn’t fight religious groups. Its fight is against the Israeli occupation.”

When asked about Western media reports that Islamic oppression was forcing Gaza’s Christians to consider emigrating, Father Manuel said that if Christians emigrate it’s because of the Israeli siege, not the Muslims. “We seek a life of freedom —a life different from the life of dogs we are currently forced to live.”

Turning the tables

Corbyn isn’t the problem. Zionists are. They are the enemy within. Corbyn’s election to party leader was a surprise brought about by a sudden influx of new supporters weary of sterile and corrupt politics. They had no time to groom him, not that he’s capable of being tamed like previous leaders. Corbyn has a long record of support for the Palestinians and other justice causes and that doesn’t sit well with the ‘emininence grise‘ pulling the strings. As a loose cannon in a carefully controlled political battlefield he had to be disabled. One way to do that was to pick off his allies one by one and, with the help of a compliant media, derail his party’s election prospects. That is what they’ve been doing with considerable success by weaponising so-called anti-Semitism against Labour’s naive and easily scared troops.

But why take allegations of anti-Semitism seriously from bully-boys who themselves practise or support racism? There’s a simple two-word response to such hypocrites. Admittedly there are within Labour’s ranks too many who say idiotic things about Jews to the detriment of the campaign for justice in the Holy Land. I’ve heard remarks that are so stupidly provocative that one suspects the people responsible are Zionist plants. What is the point of bringing up Hitler and the Holocaust when there are more Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity than you can shake a stick at?

Corbyn should have acted swiftly on genuine complaints and rejected the trumped up ones. He didn’t. Outside interference should never have been tolerated. It has been and still is. The best way to deal with professional moaners like the Board of Deputies of British Jews is to politely give them the BDS treatment – ignore and refuse to engage until they change their intimidating tone. And tell them this is the British Labour Party not a flagpole of the Knesset.

Furthermore it is long past time to question Labour’s Friends of Israel about their shameless support for the criminal state and its racist leaders and the land-grabbing Zionist Project. There is no place in a socialist organisation, or in British public life at all, for people who cannot bring themselves to condemn a regime that behaves so viciously towards its neighbours, defies international law, thinks it’s exempt from the norms of decent behaviour and shows no remorse. What does aligning with apartheid Israel really say about them? And, by the way, who gave permission to use the party as a platform to promote the interests of a foreign military power?

If people holding public office put themselves in a position where they are influenced by a foreign power, they flagrantly breach the Principles of Public Life. There are far too many Labour and Conservative MPs and MEPs who fall into that category.

Strange how the upsurge in carefully orchestrated allegations of anti-Semitism coincided with the arrival of Mark Regev, former chief of Israel’s propaganda machine, spokesman for Israel’s extremist prime minister and a shameless liar, as Israel’s new ambassador in London.

Corbyn’s other option is to leave Labour, take his supporters with him and let the party stew in its own juice. Let’s face it, the party as it stood then and stands today is dysfunctional, a thing of the past and quite unsuited to the 21st century. There may still be time to build a new, clean, fit-for-purpose political party and get it established before the next general election. In it, though probably not leading it, Corbyn could at least be true to himself.

The Labour Party has repeatedly promised to review its rules to send a clear message of zero-tolerance on anti-Semitism, assuming it knows what that means and who the genuine Semites are. For balance, of course, it should match this with zero-tolerance of those who use the party as a platform for promoting the criminal Israeli regime and its obscene territorial ambitions.

And remember, in 1949 the UN took Israel to its bosom on condition that it accepted the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees and complied with General Assembly Resolution 194. Noting the declaration by the new State of Israel that it “unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a Member”, the General Assembly admitted Israel as “a peace-loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations”.

Has Israel ever honoured its membership obligations or acted as a peace-loving State?

September 3, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Supporters of Apartheid Israel Abuse Sydney Anti-War Student

By Tim Anderson | American Herald Tribune | September 2, 2018

Media, parliamentary, academic and other supporters of apartheid Israel have abused University of Sydney doctoral student Jay Tharappel for his outspoken support of Yemen, opposition to Israel and his consistent stance against the long wars 0n Syria and Korea.

Much of the western media falsely pretend that the massively internationalized war on Syria is a “civil war”. Most also refuse to recognize the simple fact that, over the past 65 years, the USA has never agreed to a peace agreement with North Korea.

The personal attacks on Jay reveal a shallow recognition of free speech in Australia. It is extraordinary that so much abuse has been heaped on one dissident voice. Demands for censorship of his political comments have come from various sources, but many of them supporters of the apartheid state of Israel.

First came the bully and smear media, from Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph, and from Channel Seven. The Murdoch tabloid, in a torrent of personal abuse, attacked Jay for rejecting the false chemical weapons claims against Syria, in April 2017. It then falsely claimed that Jay’s criticism of Murdoch journalist Kylar Loussikian was a racist attack.

In August 2018 Channel Seven manufactured another scandal about Jay, falsely claiming that a Yemeni badge he wore in China was ‘anti-semitic’. One part of that badge, seen on Jay’s shirt in one of my social media posts, said ‘death to Israel’.

The photo was simply one of the friends at lunch. Channel Seven, using the false translation “death to Israeli”, claiming it was a racist incitement. I posted in response that the Channel Seven piece ‘promotes ignorance, apartheid, and war’.

In fact ‘death to Israel’ is a political statement by the Yemeni group Ansarallah, which calls for an end to apartheid Israel, the regime that is reported to have killed a Palestinian child every three days for the past 18 years. The Australian government sells arms to the Saudis to bomb Yemen, as they ignore that terrible war and try to suppress any news about Yemen.

Later, the University of Sydney told the Sydney Morning Herald that I was “under investigation” for refusing to take down that photo of Jay and friends at lunch. After a Sydney Morning Herald [allegation] against me, I made a social media statement explaining my position.

For Channel Seven’s principal sources journalist, Bryan Seymour used two people (to represent “many in the Jewish and Muslim community”). First was a well-known supporter of Israel, Vic Alhadeff. Vic was previously a chair of the NSW Community Relations Commission but resigned in 2014 after posting in support of Israel’s bloody reign of terror in Gaza.

The other was Jordanian-Australian Jamal Daoud, who claimed to represent a Palestinian group but is best known for his repeated attacks on those who support Syria. He has abused many supporters of Syria as ‘spies’ and ‘prostitutes’. In 2017 he took an Israeli propagandist to Syria, and since then has been wanted for questioning in Syria. Earlier, in 2015, he began an online petition to challenge a security ban on him entering Lebanon.

The corporate media came back to abuse Jay after he wrote a thoughtful piece on his visit to North Korea (DPRK) in the student newspaper Honi Soit. The article defended independent Korea while it described in some detail what he had seen there. On social media pages, many appreciated the unusual article, while others responded with censorial outrage.

The Daily Telegraph added another abusive piece, which copied much of Jay’s article while adding invective. Even the state-owned ABC wrote in support of the demand that the article be taken down, simply because it was seen as too favorable to North Korea.

Why the hysteria over criticism of Israel? Well, both the Murdoch media and Channel Seven have deep business links with Israel’s occupation forces, including those who regularly demolish Palestinian homes in their ethnic cleansing purges.

Pro-Israel figures and some Jewish media in Australia predictably and falsely tried to conflate Jay’s and my opposition to Israel with anti-Jewish racism. I have made my position on Israel and racism very clear on many occasions, most recently in an article called The Future of Palestine.

A selection of pro-Israel types jumped on the bandwagon. They included federal Labor MP Tim Watts, who attacked Jay’s article and Honi Soit, saying ‘everyone associated with this article ought to be ashamed’.

When he was criticized for picking on a student newspaper he said, by way of justification, that he was trying to get at me (‘the professor’).

In fact, Tim Watts is yet another supporter of apartheid Israel. In late 2015 he went on an Israeli-government paid junket to Israel, in a group led by conservative minister Christopher Pyne. The group seemed to toe the Israeli line because Palestinian minister Dr. Sabri Saidam described them as “rude” and “not well educated” on Palestine.

Subsequently, Tim Watts took his Israel connection seriously. He strongly recommended the book ‘My Promised Land’ by Ari Shavit, which explains how Israel created “something unique and quite endearing” in a tough neighborhood.

This “unique and quite endearing” creation was described by an authoritative 2017 report to the United Nations as an ‘apartheid state’ and therefore ‘a crime against humanity’. US academic lawyers Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley wrote that “the situation in Israel-Palestine constitutes an unmet obligation of the organized international community to resolve a conflict, partially generated by its own actions”.

Professor Ariadne Vromen, a professor in Government at the University of Sydney, and opponent of the BDS campaign against Israel, jumped in, inexplicably, attacking the former Syrian Ambassador to Australia Tammam Sulayman. Ambassador Sulayman is now Syria’s envoy to North Korea, and it was he who invited us to visit that country.

Ariadne claimed that Ambassador Tammam had failed her research design course, 15 years ago. “He didn’t pass first year”, she said. After some criticism, she removed her post.

Ariadne Vromen 19a3b

Of course, it is inappropriate for academics to abuse students or former students, or to humiliate them for their grades or results. In this case, Ariadne’s comments were also false. When I enquired, Ambassador Sulayman spelled out to me the reason why he had left Ariadne’s class and his doctoral studies at the University:

“Of course I didn’t complete at that time with Ariadne because [his supervisor, another academic] started the war on me and I complained against her to the university. So I stopped everything … in my [thesis] preface I stated there is no linkage between the secular Baath party and al Qaeda … but she said ‘that does not exclude links between Saddam and al Qaeda’, and I said but we are talking about the Baath party … Then she started returning every paper I sent her … she is a clear Zionist … It is silly for [Ariadne] to say that I didn’t finish even one year without mentioning the reason.”

Professor Vromen’s abuse of a former student and ambassador is strange. Why would an academic jump in to abuse a former student, in the context of an abusive media campaign against another student? What is wrong with honest discussion?

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. The University of Sydney is well known for harboring pro-apartheid-Israel academics. It hosts a research project backed by US Government-funded agencies, called ‘The Electoral Integrity Project’. That project rates the electoral democracy of many countries. As it happens, they rate Israel’s ‘democracy’ very highly (17/127), even though the Jewish state is notorious for its institutionalized racism.

In 2007-08 the University of Sydney accepted a large grant from the American Australian Association, to establish a ‘United States Studies Centre’. This was mostly Australian Government money but came at the suggestion of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The idea of the Centre came from a desire to repair the damage done to the image of the USA in the wake of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. I wrote an article about this scandal, back in 2010.

Washington remains the major funder and arms provider to apartheid Israel, providing the racist state with more than three billion dollars every year, mostly in military subsidies.

September 2, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corbyn and the Jewish Question

By Gilad Atzmon | August 31, 2018

It doesn’t take a genius to detect the present volatile state of British Jewish institutions. To the outside observer, some of the actions of Britain’s so-called Jewish ‘leaders’ may seem to be a form of collective insanity. Yet, the Brits do not seem to be at all impressed. They are perplexed by the self-propelled collective hysteria. Naturally, many Brits do not agree with Corbyn on issues; some may not agree with his pacifist politics, others see him as a naïve delusional lefty, a few are upset by his association with controversial characters, but no one except a few Israel firsters sees Corbyn as a crazed ‘anti-Semite,’ let alone as a Hitler type who puts Jewish life under an “existential threat.” While it isn’t clear whether Corbyn can unite the Brits against their horrid government, it is increasingly likely that the Zionist lobby has the capacity to unite the Brits behind Corbyn. A comment on twitter the other day noted that “not supporting Corbyn at this point is an act of treason.”

This week the ex-chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, became completely unhinged; comparing Corbyn to Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech. In an interview Rabbi Sacks maintained that Corbyn “undermines the existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien.” What had Corbyn said that provoked such an extreme reaction from the celebrity rabbi?  Apparently, in 2013 Corbyn criticised British Zionists by suggesting that they have two problems. “One is they don’t want to study history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony.”

This raises some obvious questions: 1. What is it in Corbyn’s statement that sparked Rabbi Sacks’ outburst, and 2. How is it possible that when Corbyn speaks about Zionists, Rabbi Sacks hears ‘Jews’?

One possibility is that in Rabbi Sacks’ mind, Jews and Zionists are one and the same. After all, Rabbi Sacks believes that “anti Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.”  The rabbi freely associates ‘Zionists,’ ‘Semites’ and ‘Jews.’ Someone should remind the rabbi that the suggestion that ‘Jews’ and Zionists are somehow the same might fall within the  IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitsm. According to the definition, manifestations of anti-Semitism “might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” In his interpretation of Corbyn’s words, Rabbi Sacks seems to expand the term ‘Zionists’ into meaning ‘Jewish collectivity.’ I am afraid that our ex-chief rabbi may have fallen into the IHRA trap, something you might expect from a Talmudic Jewish scholar but not from an Oxford graduate.

The truth of the matter is that Corbyn has managed to touch the most sensitive Jewish collective nerve. In Corbyn’s universalist egalitarian offering there is no room for tribal exceptionalism. In Corbyn’s universe, Jews are just ordinary people and not God’s chosen people. Corbyn’s ‘for the many not the few’ doesn’t conform to chosenism, Jewish or identitarian. But we can see that this universalist perception of the ‘many’ is interpreted by British Jewish leadership as a casus belli – a call for a war.

Corbyn’s reference to Zionists’ ‘lack of British irony’ touched the rawest Jewish nerve. He stumbled upon the Jewish ‘assimilation complex.’

Since the emancipation of European Jewry, a 19th century political transition, Jews have been struggling to define their identity and role in the wider society. Emancipation invited assimilation, it offered Jews the ability to become an indistinguishable part of the ‘many,’ but this transformative shift would have entailed a loss of Jewish identity. This dilemma is known as the ‘Jewish Question.’ Zionism was initially an attempt to resolve the Jewish question and the assimilation dilemma. It offered Jews the ability to be ‘people like all other people’ but in a different place. Zionism promised to take the Jews away while allowing Jews to assimilate, although as a distinct nation amongst nations. Zionism gave Jews a way to resolve the tension between assimilation and preservation. The Jews were saved the danger of integrating into their host nations and allowed to preserve many if not most of their cultural traits, as Israel proves on a daily basis.

The Jewish fear of assimilation is not a secret. Golda Meir who served as Israel’s Prime Minister at the time of October War (1973), believed that Jews who assimilate are essentially partners to the Nazis, since through assimilation they are exterminating the continuation of the Jewish people. For Meir, mixed marriages, and not the Arabs, were the greatest danger to the Jewish people. With Meir’s anti assimilationist view in mind, it is clear why Corbyn’s traditional socialist view of ‘the many’ poses an existential danger to those who insist upon being ‘the few.’ Corbyn’s well meaning invitation to the Jews and everyone else to fully integrate into British society is interpreted by Zionist Jews as a threat of extermination (to use Golda Meir’s loaded terminology).

Rabbi Sacks’ reaction, however, takes us to a new level in our understanding of the Zionist mindset. The rabbi actually accused Corbyn of implying that “Jews are not fully British.” But that was not what Corbyn said or implied. He suggested that “Zionists” are not exactly British, a statement that poses no problem for most Zionists since they openly and voluntarily swear allegiance to another state, one that is nationalist, racist and expansionist and shares few, if any, values with Britain or the West.

In order to grasp Rabbi Sacks’ recent outburst we may have to appeal once again to the famous French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s astute observation: “unconscious is the discourse of the Other.” The unconscious, according to Lacan, is the fear that the Other, in this case, the gentile, the humanist or shall we say Corbyn and the Brits see you truly. It is the tormenting thought that the Goy may be able to detect the lie. It is the unbearable anxiety that the Brits know that British Zionists aren’t exactly Brits, they are deeply devoted to another state and its foreign interests, they never assimilated and do not plan to assimilate in the near future. The Lacanian unconscious is the fear that a Goy may stand up one day and decide to call a spade a spade or, way more disturbing, refer to a celebrity ex-chief rabbi as a  “far right extremist,” as Trade Union activist Eddie Dempsey suggests in the video below:

August 31, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment