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Palestine is not occupied, it is colonised

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 5, 2018

June 5 2018 marks the 51st anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

But, unlike the massive popular mobilisation that preceded the anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophic destruction of Palestine in 1948 – on 15 May the anniversary of the occupation is hardly generating equal mobilisation.

The unsurprising death of the ‘peace process’ and the inevitable demise of the ‘two-state solution’ has shifted the focus from ending the occupation per se to the larger, and more encompassing, problem of Israel’s colonialism throughout Palestine.

Grassroots mobilisation in Gaza and the West Bank, and among Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab Desert, are, once more, widening the Palestinian people’s sense of national aspirations. Thanks to the limited vision of the Palestinian leadership those aspirations have, for decades, been confined to Gaza and the West Bank.

In some sense the ‘Israeli occupation’ is no longer an occupation as per international standards and definitions. It is merely a phase of the Zionist colonisation of historic Palestine, a process that began over a 100 years ago, and carries on to this day.

“The law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian consideration; it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application”, states the International Committee of the Red Cross website.

It is for practical purposes that we often utilise the term ‘occupation’ with reference to Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land, occupied after 5 June 1967. The term allows for the constant emphasis on humanitarian rules that are meant to govern Israel’s behavior as the occupying power.

However, Israel has already, and repeatedly, violated most conditions of what constitute an ‘occupation’ from an international law perspective, as articulated in the 1907 Hague Regulations (articles 42-56) and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.

According to these definitions, an ‘occupation’ is a provisional phase, a temporary situation that is meant to end with the implementation of international law regarding that particular situation.

Military occupation’ is not the sovereignty of the occupier over the occupied; it cannot include the transfer of citizens from the territories of the occupying power to occupied land; it cannot include ethnic cleansing; destruction of properties; collective punishment and annexation.

It is often argued that Israel is an occupier that has violated the rules of occupation as stated in international law.

This would have been the case a year, two or five years after the original occupation had taken place, but not 51 years later. Since then, the occupation has turned into long-term colonisation.

An obvious proof is Israel’s annexation of occupied land, including the Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1981. That decision had no regard for international law, humanitarian law or any other law.

Israeli politicians have, for years, openly debated the annexation of the West Bank, especially areas that are populated with illegal Jewish settlements, which are built contrary to international law.

Those hundreds of settlements that Israel has been building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not meant as temporary structures.

Dividing the West Bank into three zones, areas A, B and C, each governed according to different political diktats and military roles, has little precedent in international law.

Israel argues that, contrary to international law, it is no longer an occupying power in Gaza; however, an Israel land, maritime and aerial siege has been imposed on the Strip for over 11 years. From successive Israeli wars that have killed thousands, to a hermetic blockade that has pushed the Palestinian population to the brink of starvation, Gaza subsists in isolation.

Gaza is an ‘occupied territory’ by name only, without any of the humanitarian rules applied. In the last 10 weeks alone, over 120 unarmed protesters, journalists and medics were killed and 13,000 wounded, yet the international community and law remain inept, unable to face or challenge Israeli leaders or to overpower equally cold-hearted American vetoes.

The Palestinian Occupied Territories have, long ago, crossed the line from being occupied to being colonised. But there are reasons that we are trapped in old definitions, leading amongst them is American political hegemony over the legal and political discourses pertaining to Palestine.

One of the main political and legal achievements of the Israeli war – which was carried out with full US support – on several Arab countries in June 1967 is the redefining of the legal and political language on Palestine.

Prior to that war, the discussion was mostly dominated by such urgent issues as the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees to go back to their homes and properties in historic Palestine.

The June war shifted the balance of power completely, and cemented America’s role as Israel’s main backer on the international stage.

Several UN Security Council resolutions were passed to delegitimise the Israeli occupation: UNSCR 242, UNSCR 338, and the less talked about but equally significant UNSCR 497.

Resolution 242 of 1967 demanded “withdrawal of Israel armed forces” from the territories it occupied in the June war. Resolution 338, which followed the war of 1973, accentuated and clarified that demand. Resolution 497 of 1981 was a response to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. It rendered such a move “null and void and without international and legal affect”.

The same applied to the annexation of Jerusalem as to any colonial constructions or any Israeli attempts aimed at changing the legal status of the West Bank.

But Israel is operating with an entirely different mindset.

Considering that anywhere between 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli Jews now live in the ‘Occupied Territories’, and that the largest settlement of Modi’in Illit houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews, one has to wonder what form of military occupation blue-print Israel is implementing, anyway?

Israel is a settler colonial project, which began when the Zionist movement aspired to build an exclusive homeland for Jews in Palestine, at the expense of the native inhabitants of that land in the late 19th century.

Nothing has changed since. Only facades, legal definitions and political discourse. The truth is that Palestinians continue to suffer the consequences of Zionist colonialism and they will continue to carry that burden until that original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Knesset blocks bill defining Israel as ‘country of all citizens’

MEMO |June 5, 2018

A bill calling for Israel to be defined as a state of all its citizens was stopped before it reached the Knesset for discussion yesterday.

Submitted by three Joint List Members of the Knesset, the Basic Law: A Country of All Its Citizens stood contrary to efforts to define Israel as “the state of the Jewish people” thus denied equal rights to its non-Jewish citizens.

Haaretz reported Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon “said that the legislation seemed to be aimed at altering basic principles – for example, by essentially cancelling the Law of Return (which declares the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel), and determining instead that receipt of Israeli citizenship will be based on a person’s familial affiliation to another citizen of the state.”

This is the first time proposed legislation has been thrown out before being discussed in the last two Knesset terms.

Arab MKs Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Joumah Azbarga had submitted the draft bill.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

In the absence of favourable media coverage, US and Israel seek distortion of facts

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 5, 2018

While Israel’s snipers continue to extract Palestinian lives from the Great Return March protests, it has also failed to sell its usual narrative to media outlets, causing US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman to lash out at journalists, accusing them of bias against the settler-colonial state: “Just keep your mouths shut until you figure it out.”

According to the Times of Israel, Friedman stated that nine out of 10 articles were critical of Israel and its use of lethal force against Palestinians protesting at the Gaza border. Calling the protests “unprecedented”, Friedman stated: “Without this comparative analysis, all the reporting is completely superficial.”

Bloodshed, however, fits another narrative, and one that has stood the test of comparative analysis since Israel’s inception. The analysis Friedman is after consists of parroting Israel’s propaganda of terrorism and security concerns. Refusal to adhere to Israel’s trajectories is classified as “creating impressions that have no basis in fact”, in Friedman’s words.

Yet the bullets, injuries and deaths speak for themselves, as does Israel’s premeditated decision to execute Palestinians clamouring for their right of return. Israel has not invented snipers on the border – they operate upon direct orders. Neither have Palestinians invented the extrajudicial killings of their comrades by sniper fire. On the other hand, the Israeli army has not hesitated to blame the killings on Hamas which, according to Friedman’s rhetoric, would be justified as expert opinion.

Such expert opinion as desired by Friedman would also classify the Palestinian right of return as “infiltration”. Non-lethal means of crowd dispersal, according to the US ambassador, would have been ineffective at the border.

To take up Friedman’s request of comparative analysis, it is not the protests that should be analysed, but the means used by Israel to entrench its colonial presence and violence.

Israel does not choose lethal means of containment as a last resort. Its penchant for bloodshed is an integral part of its foundation. Hence, for Israel, there is historical justification for violence based upon its fabricated narratives of ownership and expansion. Despite Friedman’s allegations of bias, a significant portion of the current reporting is still tethered to the Israeli narrative due to it being divested from the historical context that rendered Palestinians refugees and therefore within their rights to return to their lands.

It is convenient for Friedman to seek comparisons only within the immediate context in which, he rightly states, there is no precedent. To overcome that intentionally-restrictive impediment, comparing and bringing forth trends of Israeli violence since 1948 would work well in portraying Israel’s dependence upon killing Palestinians to safeguard its existence.

The nature of these protests and Israel’s response has triggered a new wave of awareness internationally. Whereas, in previous years, Gaza’s prominence was tied to the periodic aggressions waged by Israel against the enclave and thus dominated by misattributions of purported war as opposed to colonial violence, the protests have exposed Israel’s ultimate aim of maintaining its policy of killing Palestinians as part of its expansionist plans. The Great Return March protests have exposed the Israeli agenda while setting a precedent with regard to an understanding of the Palestinian right of return. For Friedman to dedicate a considerable portion of his speaking time denouncing a different approach in reporting, it is clear that Palestinians have surpassed a major obstacle in terms of disseminating their anti-colonial struggle, while Israel has remained entrenched in its atrocities, refined to the point of eliciting global revulsion.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel intelligence minister proposes ‘military coalition’ against Iran

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Press TV – June 5, 2018

Israel has proposed that “a military coalition” be formed against Iran in case Tehran pursues “military-grade” uranium enrichment, suggesting that the military force would comprise of the Israeli regime, the US, the Western states and their Arab allies.

Speaking to media on Tuesday, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz claimed that Iran had once been running an “unsupervised” enrichment scheme with the potential of arming the country with nuclear weapons.

The allies will need to issue a statement against the Islamic Republic “if the Iranians don’t surrender now, and try to return,” he said, adding that the statement would be threatening Iranians that “a military coalition will be formed against them.”

“There should be a clear statement by the president of the United States and all of the Western coalition” if Iran returns to enriching “military-grade” uranium, the minister said. “The Arabs and Israel surely would be there too,” he added.

Washington and Tel Aviv, and to a lesser extent their Western and Arab partners, have claimed that Tehran’s nuclear energy program harbors military aspects.

Iran has strictly and in all circumstances denied pursuing any military ambitions through its nuclear work.

The country asserts that under a fatwa (religious decree) issued by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, its long-established policy is to oppose the acquisition, production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons.

In December 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board voted overwhelmingly in favor of a draft resolution, which closed the so-called possible military dimensions (PMD) case in Iran’s nuclear program.

The vote brought an end to a 12-year investigation into the “past and present issues” regarding Iran’s nuclear activities, which the United Nations nuclear watchdog had been probing under pressure from the Israeli regime, the US and their allies.

The vote came after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries signed a nuclear agreement in 2015.

The US, however, withdrew from the accord last month, emboldening Israel in its efforts to try to kill the deal and rally more support for its anti-Iran campaign.

Despite Tel Aviv and Washington’s hostile endeavors, European states have vowed to keep respecting the deal and try their utmost to preserve it.

The Israeli minister’s comments come as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on a tour of Europe to persuade European leaders to follow the US and ditch the Iran deal.

This is while Iran is currently in talks with the other signatories on the future of the deal. Tehran has said it will stay in the JCPOA if the Europeans give guarantees that a deal without the US would still protect the Iranian interests.

June 5, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza Slaughter: Holy Land Still Denied Peace and Justice by Cowardly International Community

How can any sane person, after visiting Gaza, fail to demand the full force of international law and sanctions against the sadistic Israeli regime?

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | June 2, 2018

Here we go again. Jewish News reports the UK proudly announcing a new package of aid totalling £1.5 million to buy medicines and equipment for 11 hospitals in Gaza. The money will also provide services for around 4,000 people.

Live fire across the border by Israel’s snipers, slaughtering some 111 Palestinians, mostly civilians and including women and children, and wounding and maiming thousands more, shamed Britain into this latest gesture.

Middle East Minister Alistair Burt made the announcement on a visit to Gaza. He said: “I am deeply concerned about the worsening situation in the Gaza Strip, and today’s UK aid package gives a message to the world, and to the people of Gaza, that we have not forgotten them or their plight.

“Today’s support will help to ensure that hospitals which are under immense pressure are able to cope with the increased number of casualties who need medical and surgical care.”

Oh, how nice. Handing out £1.5 million of our tax money saves Burt the chore of calling the Israeli psychopaths to account. It is another cowardly subsidy to keep the illegal occupation of the Holy Land going.

Burt added:

“We have been clear that a political settlement is the only way to ensure lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike. All parties must redouble their political efforts and return to the negotiating table, not only to address the deteriorating conditions in Gaza, but to ensure tragedies of the past months are not repeated.”

Why should Palestinians ‘negotiate’ for their rights and freedom? And given the Israelis’ track record could a political settlement with them ever be fair or just? Without justice there can be no lasting peace. And without law there’s no justice. So why the continual focus on ‘negotiations’ while ignoring the rule of international law?

The BMJ (British Medical Journal) recently described the horror on the ground:

Since 2014 Israel has further tightened the passage of essential medicines and equipment into Gaza, and of the entry of doctors and experts from abroad who offer technical expertise not available locally. Gazan hospitals have been depleted of antibiotics, anaesthetic agents, painkillers, other essential drugs, disposables, and fuel to run surgical theatres. Patients die while waiting for permission to go for specialist treatment outside Gaza. All elective surgery has been cancelled since last January 2018, and 3 hospitals have closed because of medication, equipment and fuel shortages. Medical personnel have been working on reduced salaries. Gazan health professionals find it almost impossible to get Israeli permission to travel abroad to further their training. The regular episodic military assaults on Gaza and the current targeting of unarmed demonstrators are part of a pattern of periodically induced emergencies arising from Israeli policy. The cumulative effects of the impact on healthcare provision for the general population have been documented in multiple reports by NGOs, UN agencies and the WHO. This appears to be a strategy for the de-development of health and social services impinging on all the population of Gaza.

The current systematic use of excessive force towards unarmed civilians, including children and journalists, is provoking a further crisis for the people of Gaza. Since 30 March 2018, snipers firing military grade ammunition have caused crippling wounds to unarmed demonstrators. As of 23 April 5511 Palestinians, including at least 454 children, have been injured by Israeli forces, including 1,739 from live ammunition according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. As of April 27, the death toll has reached 48 and additional hundreds wounded.

The UK claims its aid is already providing Gazans with access to clean water and improving sanitation facilities to help stop the spread of deadly disease. So what? It does nothing to end Israel’s blockade, the day-to-day, hour-to-hour misery of economic strangulation and the helplessness of imprisonment within that tiny, overcrowded coastal strip.

Mr Burt and his Foreign Office colleagues are a large part of the problem. We’ve heard Burt many time before spouting the bollox of appeasement, giving away money and urging lopsided negotiations rather than enforcing UN resolutions and international law and imposing sanctions. Seven years ago, as the new minister in charge of Middle East affairs, he was handing the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his boss, president Mahmoud Abbas, £17 million for their sterling work. The official reason for such largesse with our hard-earned tax money was the dynamic duo’s progress towards creating an independent, viable Palestinian state “living in peace with a secure Israel”.

Their only real achievement, however, was having turned the Occupied Territories into a police state of the most sinister kind on behalf of their Israeli puppet masters. The gift was also a sweetener to get the Palestinian leaders back to the negotiation table. “It is critical that both sides find a way to return to talks,” said Burt. “The current impasse is of great concern and I urge all parties to take immediate steps to secure a lasting peace… We firmly believe that this should see a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is the solution which offers the best prospect of a just and sustainable peace.”

That was 2011. Where’s the peace?

“Enemies of peace will continue to use the conflict for their own purposes…”

Talk is cheap when you have no intention of following up with action. And Mr. Burt was not about to transform himself into a man of action for peace. Why not? Because he’s a creature of the Israel lobby. He used to be an officer of that detestable club of Israel flag-wavers, the Conservative Friends of Israel. The Foreign Office is stuffed with them thanks to our then prime minister, David “I’m-a-Zionist” Cameron, an individual so misguided that he proclaimed: “In me you have a Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible.”

What a ridiculous commitment for a British prime minister to make to a lawless, racist entity that respects nobody’s human rights, continually defies international law and shoots children for amusement (see ‘The methodical shooting of boys at work in Gaza by snipers of the Israeli Occupation Force’ by surgeon David Halpin and latest reports on the use of dum-dum and other soft-nose or ‘exploding’ rounds by Israeli snipers).

It is a disgrace that the Conservatives, who weren’t given a clear mandate to govern and resorted to forming a coalition with the wimpish Liberal Democrats, chose to vomit their infatuation with the thuggish Israeli regime all over the British nation and the Arab world. They continue their nauseating behaviour to this day.

In a speech to the Board of Jewish Deputies, Burt recalled how he had worked from the age of fifteen for an MP who was a president of the Board and a founder of the Conservative Friends of Israel, and how this “had a lasting effect upon me, and on my interests in Parliament”. He said: “Israel is an important strategic partner and friend for the UK and we share a number of important shared objectives across a broad range of policy areas.”

Can anyone think of a single objective they’d wish to share with those people?

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict he said that “without an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis peace in the Middle East is unobtainable”. Oblivious to the irony of his remarks, he went on: “Those who are enemies of peace will continue to use the conflict for their own purposes… We cannot allow those who want to pursue a violent agenda to succeed… We are committed to a two-state solution and we will continue to support the efforts of the US to broker a peace deal between both sides. And as an honest broker, the UK Government does not believe that economic sanctions or embargoes on Israel [are] the way to engage or to influence it.”

The “honest broker” has been happy enough to use economic sanctions to collectively punish the Gazans who are no threat to us, to punish the Iranians who are no threat to us, and even to punish the Russians who could swat us like a fly. Why so queasy about doing the same to Israel, which is a real and present danger to everyone?

I do, however, applaud Burt’s words condemning the enemies of peace who use the conflict for their own ends and his determination not to allow those who want to pursue a violent agenda to succeed. But it surely cannot have escaped his notice that Netanyahu doesn’t want peace. Land-grabbing, ethnic cleansing and other high crimes are what he does, so the jackboot of Israeli occupation stays on the Palestinians’ neck and any peace plan is treated with contempt. More to the point, no-one in the international community – and certainly not Burt – has actually told us what a two-state solution looks like. No-one, that is, since Ehud Barak made his absurd “generous offer” back in 2000.

When the Palestinians signed the Oslo Agreement in 1993 they were ready to accept a meagre 22% of pre-partition Palestine and recognise Israel within the ‘Green Line’ borders (i.e. the 1949 Armistice Line established after the Arab-Israeli War). Conceding 78% of the land that was originally theirs was an astonishing compromise.

But it wasn’t enough for greedy Israel. Its “generous offer” demanded the inclusion of 69 Israeli settlements within the 22% remnant. It was obvious on the map that those settlement blocs created impossible borders and already severely disrupted Palestinian life in the West Bank. Barak also demanded the Palestinian territories be placed under “Temporary Israeli Control”, meaning Israeli military and administrative control probably indefinitely. This two-state arrangement also gave Israel control over all the border crossings of the new Palestinian State. What nation in the world would accept that? The idiotic reality of Barak’s offer was hidden by propaganda spin.

Later, at Taba, Barak produced a revised map but withdrew it after his election defeat. The ugly facts of the matter are documented and explained by organisations such as Gush Shalom, yet Israel lobby stooges in the UK government continue to peddle the lie that Israel offered the Palestinians a “generous” peace on a plate.

In lockstep with Netanyahu’s crazed ambitions?

Since then, Netanyahu has made it clear several times that Israel will not voluntarily give up any land it illegally occupies to a Palestinian state. “We are here to stay forever. There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel. … This is the inheritance of our ancestors. This is our land.” So says an intruder who, like most of his unpleasant colleagues, actually has no ancestral links to ancient Israel. The Israeli regime occasionally gives the impression of going along with talks for propaganda reasons but will always ensure they go nowhere. Look at its track record.

Meanwhile Burt and others are still busy promoting the fantasy of a peace process that’s just around the corner. Why? Are they in lockstep with Netanyahu to prolong the conflict in order to buy more time to steal more territory? Or perhaps they need help in spotting the patently obvious: that the peace process is dead, belly-up, a write-off…. and has been for 20 years.

The Jewish Chronicle was ecstatic about Burt’s appointment as a Foreign Office minister, which it said sent “as clear a message as possible about the direction of the new [Conservative] government in the region. Mr Burt is listed as an officer in the parliamentary group of Conservative Friends of Israel and has been passionate in campaigning for visiting rights to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for the past four years…”

Funny how Burt was so concerned for Shalit, a trained killer whose capture and detention he called “outrageous” while ignoring the thousands of Palestinian civilians (including women and children) abducted from their homes and left to rot in Israeli jails without trial.

And his stance on Palestinian independence has always been nonsensical. I remember Burt saying that we would not recognise a Palestinian state unless it emerged from a peace deal with Israel. London “could not recognise a state that does not have a capital, and doesn’t have borders.” He’d been talking earlier about a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. Why had he suddenly lost the plot? And where does he suppose Israel’s borders are? Is Israel ever within them? Where does he think Israel’s capital is? And where does Israel claim it to be? In other words, is Israel where Israel ought to be? If not, how can he possibly recognise it let alone align himself with it?

“We are looking forward to recognising a Palestinian state at the end of the negotiations on settlements…” Israel’s illegal settlements are classed as war crimes. Since when did Her Majesty’s Government approve of negotiating with perpetrators of such crimes? Besides, the Holy Land’s status was ruled on long ago. International law has spoken. But instead of enforcing law and upholding justice Mr. Burt and his Government chums still push for more discredited, lopsided talks. He was one-time president of the Oxford Law Society and graduated with a law degree but he shows remarkably little regard for international legal process these days.

And where does Burt suppose the Palestinians’ offshore boundaries run in regard to the huge reserves of marine gas and oil in the Levantine Basin? Israel wants the lot and the question for many years has been: will Gaza ever get a whiff of its own gas? What does Mr. Burt, wearing the British government’s “honest broker” hat, say?

Don’t be surprised at the answer. Burt is or was a political adviser to the Henry Jackson Society, a neoconservative foreign policy think tank. Signatories and patrons include Richard Perle, William Kristol, Ambassador Dore Gold (former foreign policy advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel), Natan Sharansky (chair of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel), Denis MacShane, David Trimble (founder member of the Friends of Israel Initiative), Robert Halfon MP (former political director, Conservative Friends of Israel) and Stephen Pollard (editor, The Jewish Chronicle ).

June 4, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Supreme Court told that settlements law violates apartheid convention

MEMO | June 4, 2018

Israel’s Supreme Court heard a petition yesterday against a law that allows the expropriation of privately-owned Palestinian land for Israeli settlers, reported AFP.

The court, meeting in an expanded panel of nine justices, has been petitioned by Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, on behalf of 17 Palestinian villages.

The law was passed by the Knesset in February 2017. In August, the court issued a restraining order against the law’s implementation, pending its ruling.

According to AFP, the petition “argues that by giving preference to Jewish settlers over the rights of Palestinian landowners it [the law] breaches an international convention on Apartheid”.

“The clear, declared purpose of the law, which seeks to privilege the interests of one group on an ethnic basis and leads to the dispossession of the Palestinians, leaves no doubt that this law involves crimes under the convention,” it says.

Attorney Harel Arnon “argued in defence of the legislation in place of attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit, who has warned the government the law could be unconstitutional and risked exposing Israel to international prosecution for war crimes”, AFP reported.

Arnon told the court that striking down the law would be “abetting a coup against this administration”. It would be “the dismemberment of the sovereignty of the Knesset”, he added.

It was not known yeserday when the court would deliver its ruling, AFP noted.

The law is designed to retroactively “legalise” dozens of settlement outposts and thousands of settler homes across the occupied West Bank, homes built on privately-owned Palestinian land.

Under international law, including as reflected in United Nations Security Council resolutions, all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, are illegal.

June 4, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Two-state solution is dead, Palestinian courage should spur international action

Palestinians attend the funeral of paramedic Razan Al-Najjar, 21, shot dead by Israeli forces while healing the wounded during ‘Great March of Return’ [Mustafa Hassona – Anadolu Agency]
By Rick Sterling | RT | June 4, 2018

After 70 years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still unresolved. The conflict simmers for a few years, then erupts again with new massacres and violence.

After the failure of the two-state solution, recent events have again highlighted the need for a different approach. In the past couple months, Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers have killed 118 Palestinian protesters and seriously wounded many thousands more. The protesters were unarmed and no threat to the soldiers. Gaza hospitals overflowed with victims.

Human rights groups filed a legal petition to make it unlawful for Israeli soldiers to fire on unarmed protesters. Last week the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the petition.

Israeli violence is usually portrayed as a “response” to Palestinian violence, but the reality is the opposite. The sequence of recent events is as follows:

– From the end of March till May 25, Palestinians in Gaza protested against their oppression as close as they could get to the border fences. About 118 were killed and many thousands seriously injured by Israeli snipers. They were all shot inside Gaza.

– On May 27 – 28, the Israeli military launched tank mortars at Palestinian military outposts inside Gaza, killing at least three.

– Next day, on May 29, Palestinian militants launched unguided mortars into nearby Israel. Most of them fell harmlessly and there were no Israeli casualties.

– Then, on May 30, Israeli jets and helicopters launched guided missiles and bombs on 65 different locations within Gaza.

Clearly, the violence started with Israelis killing protesters and then militants inside Gaza, but it’s not portrayed that way. Time magazine began its article with, “Palestinian militants bombarded southern Israel….”

Pro-Israel advocates wish to prevent people from seeing what is really happening. They know the potential damage if people see video such as Israeli snipers celebrating the shooting of unarmed protesters. To prevent this, a proposed law will make it illegal to photograph or video record Israeli soldiers. Palestinian journalists have condemned this attempt to criminalize journalism.

Reality of Israeli occupation

Israel calls itself the “Startup Nation” because of the economic and technological achievements. But in Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli policies and actions strangle the economies and worsen living conditions.

Palestinians in Gaza are kept separate from Palestinians in the West Bank. There is no trade, travel or inter-family visitation. This is in violation of international agreements including the Oslo Accords.

The claim that Israel “departed” Gaza is false. Israel controls the borders, sky and waters around Gaza, a coastal strip just 5 miles wide by 25 miles in length. Unemployment in Gaza is approaching 50 percent, the highest unemployment in the world. Fishermen are prevented from going out into deeper waters and shot at when they go beyond Israel’s imposed zone. Gazan farmers cannot export independently. Israel frequently blocks the import and export of crops and products. It is almost impossible to leave Gaza. Even outstanding students winning international scholarships may have their exit denied. The electrical and water treatment facilities have been bombed and destroyed by Israel. Nearly all the drinking water is contaminated. Israel restricts the amount of food permitted to enter Gaza so there is continual shortage leading to nutritional deprivation, stunted growth and anemia.

This situation is not new. Eighteen years ago, Israeli journalist Amira Hass described the history, the facts and statistics as well as her personal experience living in Gaza in the profound book “Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege”. The situation was extremely grim then but keeps getting worse.

At the northern Gaza border, Israel is now building a “sea barrier” extending far out into the Mediterranean. It will be above and below the water line. A major reason for this expensive project is to block sewage and pollution from the waters in front of Gaza. Because of Israeli attacks on sewage treatment and electrical infrastructure, sewage flows into the sea. Last summer, Zikim Beach in southern Israel had to be closed due to the inflow of sewage from Gaza. The ‘sea barrier’ now in construction will block the sea currents. This will keep the Israeli beach clean and greatly compound the problem in Gaza.

The strangulation, impoverishment and oppression are not confined to Gaza. In the West Bank, Israeli settlements continue to expand. This increases the number of checkpoints, restrictions and repression. Travel from Bethlehem to Jerusalem is impossible for most Palestinians. The majority of West Bank water from the aquifers is transferred to Israel or provided cheaply to settlers while Palestinians must buy water and store it in tanks on their rooftops. In the last few years, Israel has made it increasingly difficult or impossible for humanitarian groups to provide medical support including breast cancer screening. A compelling new book titled “The Other Side of the Wall” describes the daily struggle in the West Bank where Palestinians and international allies protest against the theft of land, abuses, random killings and imprisonments.

Defiant Courage

There seems to be a trend towards greater Palestinian unity and strategic agreement. The tens of thousands of Palestinians protesting in Gaza were unarmed and united behind the Palestinian flag rather than separate party or movement flags of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, or DFLP.

The Palestinian protesters in Gaza show remarkable courage. Beginning on Friday March 30, they have returned week after week despite seeing thousands of their fellows shot and wounded or killed.

In an article titled “The Gaza Fence that Separates the Brave from the Cowardly”, Amira Hass wrote, “The desperate courage demonstrated by tens of thousands of citizens of Gaza over the past few weeks in general and on Monday in particular hints at the energies, the talents, the dreams, the creativity and the vitality of the inhabitants of this strip of land – who have been subjected to a 27 year policy of closure and siege aimed at suffocating and crushing them.”

Steadfast and persistent

Palestinian resistance continues despite Israeli violence and bloodshed. Seven years ago Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon held “March of Return” protests at the northern borders. Israeli soldiers killed 13 and wounded many more.

In recent days, Gazans have again challenged the Israeli port blockade which prevents ships from departing or arriving. International solidarity with the Palestinian cause is also persistent. Three ships (two Swedish and one Norwegian) recently departed Scandinavia heading for the Mediterranean Sea and Gaza. Named the 2018 Freedom Flotilla, the ships are carrying dozens of international citizens to again demand that Israel stop its blockade of Gaza.

Despite the huge imbalance today, time may be on the side of the Palestinian cause. Systemic apartheid in South Africa existed for a long time and seemed strong. But ultimately it collapsed quickly. The same may unfold in Israel / Palestine.

Today, South Africa is an important supporter of the Palestinian cause. South Africa was the first nation to recall its ambassador to protest the “indiscriminate and grave Israeli attack” in Gaza.

Israel has the military might but Palestinian resistance and courage persists. The Palestinian population is steadfast and growing. They have increasing number of allies who support their cause. Young American Jews are unlike their parents and increasingly critical of Israeli policies. Some courageous Israelis, such as Miko Peled, speak out unequivocally that Israeli apartheid must end and be replaced by one state with democracy and equality for all. A million registered Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon and Syria, patiently waiting. They have not forgotten their legal claim and right to return.

The recent bloodshed and massacres underscore the fact that there is no solution on the current path. It only leads to increasingly unlivable conditions in Gaza plus more illegal settlements and oppression in the West Bank. The so-called “two-state solution” has been dead for many years and should be forgotten. As happened in South Africa, the international community can and should help. It is time to increase international pressure and expand BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel to help bring a peaceful end to this conflict with its constant oppression and recurring massacres.

The alternative is very grim. As described by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, “The truth is that Israel is well prepared to massacre hundreds and thousands, and to expel tens of thousands. Nothing will stop it. This is the end of conscience, the show of morality is over. The last few days’ events have proved it decisively. The tracks have been laid, the infrastructure for the horror has been cast. Dozens of years of brainwashing, demonization and dehumanization have borne fruit. The alliance between the politicians and the media to suppress reality and deny it has succeeded. Israel is set to commit horrors. Nobody will stand in its way any longer. Not from within or from without.”

Palestinian courage should spur international action.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com

Read more:

‘Summary executions & unacceptable brutality’: The Gaza flotilla massacre 8 years on

June 4, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Merkel agrees with Netanyahu that Iran is a ‘concern’ for Israel’s security

RT | June 4, 2018

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that she agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran’s activities in the Middle East are a concern, particularly for Israel’s security. She made the statement after a meeting in Berlin.

“We agree that the question of Iran’s regional influence is worrying, especially for Israel’s security,” the chancellor said.

Netanyahu’s European tour this week follows the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal which France, Germany and Britain have said they will continue to respect.

The Israeli leader is also expected to meet French President Emmanuel Macron and possibly British Prime Minister Theresa May to discuss ways to stop what Netanyahu called “Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional expansionism,” Reuters said.

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

Israel joins NATO drill in Europe for the first time

RT | June 4, 2018

Israeli troops have joined NATO war games in Eastern Europe for the first time. One of the scenarios includes crushing an armed rebellion.

Soldiers from a paratrooper brigade are participating in the NATO exercise ‘Swift Response’, which “simulates combating military uprisings in Europe,” the Israeli spokesperson said on Monday.

The annual drill led by the US European Command takes place across Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, with 10 nations involved in the maneuvers. Troops from non-NATO member Israel will train alongside the US 173rd Airborne Brigade and the Texas National Guard. According to the Pentagon, the maneuvers include “rapid response infiltration”, air assault operations and the evacuation of non-combatants.

The exercise takes place simultaneously with two other NATO drills in Europe. The two-week war game ‘Saber Strike’ amasses 18,000 soldiers from 19 countries, with troops deployed in Poland and the Baltic States. They will master the deployment of military convoys to defend NATO’s eastern flank, as well as operations across rivers and bridges.

Additionally, 37 warships are docked at the Lithuanian port city of Klaipeda for an ongoing naval drill ‘BALTOPS’. All in all the exercise led by US 6th Fleet Vice Admiral Lisa Franchetti will involve 60 aircraft and 42 ships from 22 nations.

All three drills are taking place close to the Russian border, and Moscow has been regularly warning that NATO military buildup at its doorstep undermines the stability and security climate on the European continent.

Russia is “closely observing” the war games and undertaking all “necessary measures” to ensure Russia’s own security during the maneuvers, the president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. Commenting on the largest of its exercises in the region, US Army Europe has claimed that ‘Saber Strike’ “is not a provocation of Russia.”

Israel had been an active NATO partner since the 90s, and the cooperation with the Bloc intensified in recent years, particularly in the field of combating terror threats. Israeli diplomatic mission at NATO HQ in Brussels was opened in 2016, with several cooperation agreements following. However, as NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg confirmed last week, the Bloc’s security guarantees “do not apply” to Israel since it is not a member of the alliance.

Read more:

As NATO nears 70th birthday, behavior since ’91 shows it’s never been a defensive alliance

June 4, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

While Razan lost her life, Nikki Haley lost her humanity

By Professor Kamel Hawwash | MEMO | June 3, 2018

Last Friday, 1 June, a Palestinian volunteer medic, Razan Al Najar, was fasting and tending to the wounded at Gaza’s artificial fence with Israel. Thousands of miles away, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, was scheming on behalf of Israel at the world body. The day ended with martyrdom and glory for Razan and shame and humiliation for Nikki.

Just like she had done since the start of the Great March of Return on 30 March, Razan said goodbye to her family to go to the border, knowing that her skills would undoubtedly be called upon to treat Palestinians planning to march to the fence that artificially separates Gaza from the rest of historic Palestine. They have been marching to exercise their right of return to the homes they and their families hail from and which Israel and its terrorist gangs had expelled them from in 1948 and continued to do since then. Razan’s medical skills would surely be needed because Israel decided to deploy tens of highly trained snipers to kill Palestinians. The number killed has now reached 119, with over ten thousand injured; some estimates put this figure at over 13,000.

A post on Facebook whose accuracy I cannot verify says that her last words to her mother were to ask her to cook stuffed vine leaves for her breaking of the fast meal at sunset. She said her goodbyes and left to join her medical colleagues at the fence. Nikki Haley would at that time probably been having her breakfast before heading to the UN to decide how to deal with the 15-member Security Council. It had failed to agree on any statement regarding the events at the Gaza fence since the start of the marches, despite the high number of casualties. The choice for the Council that day was whether to back a resolution tabled by Kuwait calling for protection for the Palestinian people or to back an American resolution condemning Hamas for a volley of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip in response to Israeli crimes.

Twenty-one-year-old Razan was the eldest of six siblings. She had a diploma in general nursing and had completed some 38 first aid courses. Although she had not secured paid work, she volunteered in hospitals and with NGOs and medical organisations, building skills and experience that made her an asset when it came to the Great March.

In an interview with The New York Times last month, Razan explained why she had volunteered to help with the Great Return March, especially as a woman. “Being a medic is not only a job for a man,” Razan said. “It’s for women, too.”

She also bore witness to the final moments of some of those who were fatally wounded. “It breaks my heart that some of the young men who were injured or killed made their wills in front of me,” she told Al Jazeera. “Some even gave me their accessories [as gifts] before they died.”

In a post on her Facebook account on the 16 May, Razan denied claims that she and others went to the fence under duress.

On 1 June, she was shot in the back by an Israeli sniper, the human rights group Al Mezan stated, citing eyewitnesses and its investigations. She was100m from the fence the moment she was shot and was wearing clothing which clearly identified her as a medic. Her blood stained medical vest accompanied her to her grave during what was a massive funeral the following day.

Contrast the humane and selfless acts of 21-year-old Razan, with limited opportunities to bring peace and justice to her people, with the shameful and brazen attempts in the Security Council by US Ambassador Nikki Hayley to deny another people, Razan’s people, protection from Israeli terror. While Kuwait had brought a resolution to the Council to call on it to fulfill its responsibility to an oppressed people and ensure their protection, Hayley was bringing a resolution to denounce Hamas for the volley of rockets that were launched into other Israeli controlled areas following the deadly attacks at the fence and bombings of the beleaguered enclave.

Votes on the two texts came shortly after Razan’s death. Haley failed to garner any votes for the resolution except her own, with three countries voting against it and 11 abstaining. A complete humiliation for the US and for Haley personally, leaving observers scrambling through historical records to find another occasion when a resolution only had the support of the country proposing it. None were found at the time of writing this piece.

Haley was again isolated when the US vetoed a resolution to protect Palestinians. With her Israel proxy[sic], she had turned her back on a largely unarmed Palestinian people, facing the might of Israel’s military, aided by American military hardware worth billions of dollars. She had walked out of a previous Council meeting on Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters when their representative began to speak. It was a clear breach of protocol which brought heavy condemnation.  Given her overall performance as US ambassador, President Trump should, without delay, sack Haley. She has brought isolation and disgrace to her country; all for the sake of an undeserving ally, Israel.

On 1 June 2018, Razan lost her life while Nikki Haley lost her humanity defending the terrorist actions of a rogue state, Israel. Razan died a proud Palestinian full of humanity and will be remembered with the same name she was born with. In contrast, Nimrata Randhawa, the daughter of Sikh immigrants will one day pass away to be remembered by her adopted name, Nikki Haley, hiding her Indian heritage. Razan will be remembered for her selfless volunteering while Haley will be remembered for her astonishing role, supporting and shielding the world’s only apartheid state.

Razan had little power to change the dynamics and bring peace to the holy land, while Haley, from one of the most powerful offices in world politics, could have helped protect Palestinians and bring peace to the region. If only Razan had such a high profile office, the world would be a better place.

Rest in peace Razan Al-Najar, you are worth more than a million Nikki Haleys.

June 3, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pro-Israeli Groups Weaponize Jewish Cultural Initiatives to Amplify Their Anti-Palestinianism

By Yves Engler | Dissident Voice | June 3, 2018

Should “Jewish Heritage Month” be used as a cover for Israeli nationalism and to suppress Palestinian protest?

A recent incident at a Toronto high school demonstrates the depravity of the pro-Israel lobby. It also illustrates their use of Canadian cultural and “diversity” initiatives to promote a country that declares itself to be the exact opposite of diverse.

Amidst the recent slaughter of nonviolent protesters in Gaza, a half-century illegal occupation of the West Bank and weekly bombings in Syria, an Israeli flag marked with “Jewish Heritage Month” was hoisted in the main foyer of Forest Hill Collegiate Institute. After a couple days the flag created by Israeli nationalist students was moved – possibly due to complaints from other students – to a less prominent location where Jewish Heritage Month events were taking place. In response B’nai Brith, Hasbara Fellowships, Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies and Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) all claimed persecution. “Discrimination has absolutely no place in our schools”, noted a CIJA spokesperson with regards to moving the Israeli flag to a less prominent location in the school. For their part, the Wiesenthal Center said our “objective is to ensure that TDSB [Toronto District School Board] adheres to its own values of equity and inclusivity for all students” while B’nai Brith’s press release decried the “Jewish students who have had their heritage denigrated.” That group then published a story titled “Forest Hill Collegiate Has History of Alienating Jewish Students, Former Pupil Says.”

After the uproar the flag was returned to the Forest Hill Collegiate Institute’s main foyer and the TDSB apologized. At an assembly to discuss the matter, in which the principal and TDSB representative spoke standing behind a podium adorned with an Israeli flag, a student apparently yelled “Free Palestine”. B’nai Brith immediately denounced the brave, internationalist-minded high schooler, tweeting: “This morning, before an assembly about the removal of a #JewishHeritageMonth banner at Forest Hill Collegiate, a student yelled ‘Free Palestine’ during the morning announcements. We have been assured that this was not approved by the school and that an investigation is underway.”

In another Twitter post B’nai Brith claimed the Israeli flag flap made a “mockery of Canada’s first Jewish Heritage Month.” Their statement highlights a mindset that views gaining official sanction of cultural initiatives as a way to strengthen their campaign to support a violent, European colonial outpost in the Middle East.

Earlier this year the House of Commons unanimously adopted May as “Jewish Heritage Month”. The motion was sponsored by York Centre MP Michael Levitt who is chair of the Canada Israel Interparliamentary Group and a former board member of the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund. Two weeks ago the Liberal MP issued a statement, partly rebutting the prime minister, that blamed “Hamas incitement” for Israeli forces shooting thousands of peaceful protesters, including Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani.

The bill’s other sponsor was Linda Frum. Last year the Conservative Party senator called Iran “one of the most malign nations in the world” and labeled a Palestinian-Canadian’s 2014 art exhibit at Ottawa’s city hall “a taxpayer-funded tribute to a Palestinian terrorist” and “the murder of innocent civilians.”

Leaving aside the background of those driving the initiative, the likely political effect of creating Jewish Heritage Month should have been obvious. The Canadian Jewish News report on the House of Commons resolution noted that May was chosen to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month because of the “various events on the Jewish calendar, including the UJA Walk for Israel, the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, Jewish Music Week and Israel’s Independence Day.” Similarly, when Ontario adopted May as Jewish Heritage Month in 2012 United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto president Ted Sokolsky linked it to the group’s Israel campaigning. He said, “this announcement will call for an extra celebration at this year’s UJA Walk with Israel, which for 45 years has taken place in May.”

Despite the initiative being steeped in colonialist politics, the NDP voted in favour of the bill creating Jewish Heritage Month. During discussion of the motion NDP MPs Jenny Kwan and Randall Garrisson claimed it would enhance cultural/religious understanding. Garrisson said, “Jewish heritage month will help contribute to better understanding of just how diverse we Canadians are, and in doing so contribute to building a Canada free from hatred and division.”

Of course, this would be a laudable goal, but putting up an Israeli flag in a public high school while that country is murdering unarmed Palestinian demonstrators can only cause hatred and division. And it is an affront to thousands of Jewish-Canadians who do not support Israel.

The flag flap at Forest Hill Collegiate illustrates how pro-Israel groups have weaponized Jewish cultural initiatives to amplify their anti-Palestinianism. Those who seek justice for Palestinians need to recognize this fact and figure a way out.


Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation .

June 3, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Did Israel Kill the Kennedys?

By Laurent Guyénot • Unz Review • June 3, 2018

Introduction

Just after midnight of June 6, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in a backroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just been celebrating his victory at the California primaries, which made him the most likely Democratic nominee for the presidential election. His popularity was so great that Richard Nixon, on the Republican side, stood little chance. At the age of 43, Robert would have become the youngest American president ever, after being the youngest Attorney General in his brother’s government. His death opened the way for Nixon, who could finally become president eight years after having been defeated by John F. Kennedy in 1960.

John had been assassinated four and a half years before Robert. Had he survived, he would certainly have been president until 1968. Instead, his vice-president Lyndon Johnson took over the White House in 1963, and became so unpopular that he retired in 1968. Interestingly, Johnson became president the very day of John’s death, and ended his term a few months after Robert’s death. He was in power at the time of both investigations.

And both investigations are widely regarded as cover-ups. In both cases, the official conclusion is rife with contradictions. We are going to sum them up here. But we will do more: we will show that the key to solving both cases resides in the link between them. And we will solve them beyond a reasonable doubt.

As Lance deHaven-Smith has remarked in Conspiracy Theory in America:

“It is seldom considered that the Kennedy assassinations might have been serial murders. In fact, in speaking about the murders, Americans rarely use the plural, ‘Kennedy assassinations’. […] Clearly, this quirk in the Kennedy assassination(s) lexicon reflects an unconscious effort by journalists, politicians, and millions of ordinary Americans to avoid thinking about the two assassinations together, despite the fact that the victims are connected in countless ways.”[1]

John and Robert were bound by an unshakable loyalty. Kennedy biographers have stressed the absolute dedication of Robert to his elder brother. Robert had successfully managed John’s campaign for the Senate in 1952, then his presidential campaign in 1960. John made him not only his Attorney General, but also his most trusted adviser, even on matters of Foreign or Military affairs. What John appreciated most in Robert was his sense of justice and the rectitude of his moral judgment. It is Robert, for example, who encouraged John to fully endorse the cause of the Blacks’ civil rights movement.[2]

Given this exceptional bond between the Kennedy brothers, what is the probability that the two Kennedy assassinations were unrelated? Rather, we should start with the assumption that they are related. Basic common sense suggests that the Kennedy brothers have been killed by the same force, and for the same motives. It is, at least, a logical working hypothesis that Robert was eliminated from the presidential race because he had to be prevented from reaching a position where he could reopen the case of his brother’s death. Both his loyalty to his brother’s memory, and his obsession with justice, made it predictable that, if he reached the White House, he would do just that. But was there, in 1968, any clear indication that he would?

Did Bobby plan to reopen the investigation on his brother’s assassination?

The question has been positively answered by David Talbot in his book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, published in 2007 by Simon & Schuster. Robert had never believed in the Warren Report’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of his brother. Knowing too well what to expect from Johnson, he had refused to testify before the Warren Commission. When its report came out, he had no choice but to publicly endorse it, but “privately he was dismissive of it,” as his son Robert Kennedy, Jr. remembers.[3] To close friends who wondered why he wouldn’t voice his doubt, he said: “there’s nothing I can do about it. Not now.” [4]

From 22 November 1963, Robert was alienated and monitored by Johnson and Hoover. Although still Attorney General, he knew he was powerless against the forces that had killed his brother. Yet he lost no time beginning his own investigation; he first asked CIA director John McCone, a Kennedy friend, to find out if the Agency had anything to do with the plot, and came out convinced that it hadn’t. In March 1964, he had a face-to-face conversation with mobster Jimmy Hoffa, his sworn enemy, whom he had battled for ten years, and whom he suspected of having taken revenge on his brother. Robert also asked his friend Daniel Moynihan to search for any complicity in the Secret Service, responsible for the President’s security[5]. And of course, Robert suspected Johnson, whom he had always mistrusted, as Jeff Shesol documents in Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade (1997).

In fact, a mere week after JFK’s death, November 29, 1963, Bill Walton, a friend of the Kennedys, travelled to Moscow and passed to Nikita Khrushchev, via a trusted agent who had already carried secret communications between Khrushchev and John Kennedy, a message from Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy; according to the memo found in the Soviet archives in the 90s by Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali (One Hell of a Gamble, 1998), Robert and Jackie wanted to inform the Soviet Premier that they believed John Kennedy had been “the victim of a right-wing conspiracy,” and that “the cooling that might occur in U.S.-Soviet relations because of Johnson would not last forever.” [6]

Robert also contacted a former MI6 officer who had been a friend of his family when his father was Ambassador in London. This British retired officer in turn contacted some trusted friends in France, and arrangments were made for two French Intelligence operatives to conduct, over a three-year period, a quiet investigation that involved hundreds of interviews in the United States. Their report, replete with innuendo about Lyndon Johnson and right-wing Texas oil barons, was delivered to Bobby Kennedy only months before his own assassination in June of 1968. After Bobby’s death, the last surviving brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, showed no interest in the material. The investigators then hired a French writer by the name of Hervé Lamarr to fashion the material into a book, under the pseudonym of James Hepburn. The book was first published in French under the title L’Amérique brûle, and was translated under the title Farewell America: The Plot to Kill JFK. Its conclusion is worth quoting:

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with accessories and fake mirrors, and when the curtain fell, the actors, and even the scenery disappeared. […] the plotters were correct when they guessed that their crime would be concealed by shadows and silences, that it would be blamed on a ‘madman’ and negligence.”[7]

Robert had planned to run for the American Presidency in 1972, but the escalation of the Vietnam War precipitated his decision to run in 1968. Another factor may have been the opening of the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1967. Garrison was allowed to view Abraham Zapruder’s amateur film, confiscated by the FBI on the day of the assassination. This film, despite evident tampering, shows that the fatal shot came from the “grassy knoll” well in front of the President, not from the School Book Depository located behind him, where Oswald was supposed to be shooting from.

When talk of the investigation began, Kennedy asked one of his closest advisors, Frank Mankievitch, to follow its developments, “so if it gets to a point where I can do something about this, you can tell me what I need to know.” He confided to his friend William Attwood, then editor of Look magazine, that he, like Garrison, suspected a conspiracy, “but I can’t do anything until we get control of the White House.” [8] He refrained from openly supporting Garrison, believing that since the outcome of the investigation was uncertain, it could jeopardize his plans to reopen the case later, and even weaken his chances of election by construing his motivation as a family feud.

In conclusion, there can be little doubt that, had he been elected president, Robert Kennedy would have done everything possible to reopen the case of his brother’s assassination, in one way or another. This fact certainly did not escape John’s murderers. They had no other option but to stop him. This first conclusion is a sufficient reason to conduct a comparative analysis of both Kennedy assassinations, in search of some converging clues that might lead us to the trail of a common mastermind.We begin with Robert’s assassination.

Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian motivated by hatred of Israel?

Just hours after Robert’s assassination, the press was able to inform the American people, not only of the identity of the assassin, but also of his motive, and even of his detailed biography.[9] Twenty-four-year-old Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born in Jordania, and had moved to the United States when his family was expelled from West Jerusalem in 1948. After the shooting, a newspaper clipping was found in Sirhan’s pocket, quoting favorable comments made by Robert regarding Israel and, in particular, what sounded like an electoral commitment: “The United States should without delay sell Israel the 50 Phantom jets she has so long been promised.” Handwritten notes by Sirhan found in a notebook at his home confirmed that his act had been premeditated and motivated by his hatred of Israel.

That became the story line of the mainstream media from day one. Jerry Cohen of the Los Angeles Times wrote a front page article, saying that Sirhan is “described by acquaintances as a ‘virulent’ anti-Israeli,” (Cohen changed that into “virulent anti-semite” in an article for the The Salt Lake Tribune), and that: “Investigation and disclosures from persons who knew him best revealed [him] as a young man with a supreme hatred for the state of Israel.” Cohen infers that “Senator Kennedy […] became a personification of that hatred because of his recent pro-Israeli statements.” Cohen further revealed that:

“About three weeks ago the young Jordanian refugee accused of shooting Sen. Robert Kennedy wrote a memo to himself, […] The memo said: ‘Kennedy must be assassinated before June 5, 1968’—the first anniversary of the six-day war in which Israel humiliated three Arab neighbors, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.”[10]

After September 11, 2001, the tragedy of Robert’s assassination was installed into the Neocon mythology of the Clash of Civilizations and the War on Terror the story. Sirhan became a precursor of Islamic terrorism on the American soil. In a book entitled The Forgotten Terrorist, Mel Ayton, who specializes in debunking conspiracy theories, claims to present “a wealth of evidence about [Sirhan’s] fanatical Palestinian nationalism,” and to demonstrate that “Sirhan was the lone assassin whose politically motivated act was a forerunner of present-day terrorism” (as written on the back cover).

In 2008, on the 40th anniversary of Robert’s death, Sasha Issenberg of the Boston Globe recalled that the death of Robert Kennedy was “a first taste of Mideast terror.” He quotes Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz (best known as Jonathan Pollard’s lawyer), as saying:

“I thought of it as an act of violence motivated by hatred of Israel and of anybody who supported Israel. […] It was in some ways the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America. It was the first shot. A lot of us didn’t recognize it at the time.”[11]

The fact that Sirhan was from a Christian family was lost on Dershowitz. The Jewish Forward took care to mention it on the same occasion, only to add that Islamic fanaticism ran in his veins anyway:

“But what he shared with his Muslim cousins — the perpetrators of September 11 — was a visceral, irrational hatred of Israel. It drove him to murder a man whom some still believe might have been the greatest hope of an earlier generation.”

Robert Kennedy was the first American victim of modern Arab terrorism,” the Forward journalist hammered; “Sirhan hated Kennedy because he had supported Israel.” [12]

This leitmotiv of the public discourse begs the question: Was Bobby really a supporter of Israel? But before we answer that question, there is on more pressing one: Did Sirhan really kill Bobby?

Did Sirhan Bishara Sirhan really kill Robert Kennedy?

If we trust official statements and mainstream news, the assassination of Robert Kennedy is an open-and-shut case. The identity of the killer suffers no discussion, since he was arrested on the spot, with the smoking gun in his hand. In reality, ballistic and forensic evidence show that none of Sirhan’s bullets hit Kennedy.

According to the autopsy report of Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Thomas Noguchi, Robert Kennedy died of a gunshot wound to the brain, fired from behind the right ear at point blank range, following an upward angle. Nogushi restated his conclusion in his 1983 memoirs, Coroner. Yet the sworn testimony of twelve shooting witnesses established that Robert had never turned his back on Sirhan and that Sirhan was five to six feet away from his target when he fired.

Tallying all the bullet impacts in the pantry, and those that wounded five people around Kennedy, it has been estimated that at least twelve bullets were fired, while Sirhan’s gun carried only eight. On April 23, 2011, attorneys William Pepper and his associate, Laurie Dusek, gathered all this evidence and more in a 58-page file submitted to the Court of California, asking that Sirhan’s case be reopened. They documented major irregularities in the 1968 trial, including the fact that the bullet tested in laboratory to be compared to the the one extracted from Robert’s brain had not been shot by Sirhan’s revolver, but by another gun, with a different serial number; thus, instead of incriminating Sirhan, the ballistic test in fact proved him innocent. Pepper has also provided a computer analysis of audio recordings during the shooting, made by engineer Philip Van Praag in 2008, which confirms that two guns are heard.[13]

The presence of a second shooter was signaled by several witnesses and reported on the same day by a few news media. There are strong suspicions that the second shooter was Thane Eugene Cesar, a security guard hired for the evening, who was stuck behind Kennedy at the moment of the shooting, and seen with his pistol drawn by several witnesses. One of them, Don Schulman, positively saw him fire. Cesar was never investigated, even though he did not conceal his hatred for the Kennedys, who according to his recorded statement, had “sold the country down the road to the commies.” [14]

Even if we assume that Sirhan did kill Robert Kennedy, a second aspect of the case raises question: according to several witnesses, Sirhan seemed to be in a state of trance during the shooting. More importantly, Sirhan has always claimed, and continues to claim, that he has never had any recollection of his act:

“I was told by my attorney that I shot and killed Senator Robert F. Kennedy and that to deny this would be completely futile, [but] I had and continue to have no memory of the shooting of Senator Kennedy.”

He also claims to have no memory of “many things and incidents which took place in the weeks leading up to the shooting.” [15] Some repetitive lines written of a notebook found in Sirhan’s bedroom, which Sirhan recognizes as his own handwriting but does not remember writing, are reminiscent of automatic writing.[16]

Psychiatric expertise, including lie-detector tests, have confirmed that Sirhan’s amnesia is not faked. In 2008, Harvard University professor Daniel Brown, a noted expert in hypnosis and trauma memory loss, interviewed Sirhan for a total of 60 hours, and concluded that Sirhan, whom he classifies in the category of “high hypnotizables,” acted unvoluntarily under the effect of hypnotic suggestion: “His firing of the gun was neither under his voluntary control, nor done with conscious knowledge, but is likely a product of automatic hypnotic behavior and coercive control.” [17]

We know that in the 1960s, American military agencies were experimenting on mental control. Dr Sidney Gottlieb, son of Hungarian Jews, directed the infamous CIA MKUltra project, which, among other things, were to answer questions such as: “Can a person under hypnosis be forced to commit murder?” according to a declassified document dated May 1951.[18] According to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, author of Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (Random House, 2018), in 1968, an Israeli military psychologist by the name of Benjamin Shalit had concocted a plan to take a Palestinian prisoner and “brainwash and hypnotize him into becoming a programmed killer” aimed at Yasser Arafat.[19]

If Sirhan was hypnotically programmed, the question is: Who had some interest in having a visceral anti-Zionist Palestinian blamed for the killing of Robert Kennedy? Israel, of course. But then, we are faced with a dilemma, for why would Israel want to kill Robert Kennedy if Robert Kennedy was supportive of Israel, as the mainstream narrative goes?

Was Robert Kennedy really a friend of Israel?

The dilemma rests on a misleading assumption, which is part of the deception. In fact, Robert Kennedy was definitely not pro-Israel. He was simply campaigning in 1968. As everyone knows, a few good wishes and empty promises to Israel are an inescapable ritual in such circumstances. And Robert’s statement in an Oregon synagogue, mentioned in the May 27 Pasadena Independent Star-News article found in Sirhan’s pocket, didn’t exceed the minimal requirements. Its author David Lawrence had, in an earlier article entitled “Paradoxical Bob,” underlined how little credit should be given to such electoral promises: “Presidential candidates are out to get votes and some of them do not realize their own inconsistencies.”

All things considered, there is no ground for believing that Robert Kennedy would have been, as president of the US, particularly Israel-friendly. The Kennedy family, proudly Irish and Catholic, was known for its hostility to Jewish influence in politics, a classic theme of anti-Kennedy literature, best represented by the 1996 book by Ronald Kessler with the highly suggestive title, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded.[20]

Robert had not been, in his brother’s government, a particularly pro-Israel Attorney General: He had infuriated Zionist leaders by supporting an investigation led by Senator William Fulbright of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations aimed at registering the American Zionist Council as a “foreign agent” subject to the obligations defined by the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which would had considerably hindered its efficiency (after 1963, the AZD escaped this procedure by changing its status and renaming itself AIPAC)[21].

In conclusion, it is only with outstanding hypocrisy that The Jewish Daily Forward could write, on the 40th anniversary of Bobby’s death:

“In remembering Bobby Kennedy, let us remember not just what he lived for, but also what he died for—namely, the precious nature of the American-Israeli relationship.”[22]

Robert Kennedy’s death had not been a bad thing for the precious “American-Israeli relationship.” Rather, it was a great loss for the Arab world, where Bobby was mourned just as had his brother John before him.

Of course, the fact that the Zionist media lied when granting Robert Kennedy some posthumous certificate of good will toward Israel, and thereby provided Israel with a fake alibi, is not a sufficient reason for concluding that Israel murdered Robert. Even the fact that the masterminds of the plot chose as their programmed instrument an anti-Zionist Palestinian, and thereby stirred a strong anti-Palestinian feeling among Americans at the same time as getting rid of Robert, does not prove that Israel was involved. What is still lacking for a serious presumption is a plausible motive.

The motive of Robert’s assassination must be found, not in what Robert publicly declared in an Oregon synagogue during his presidential campaign, but rather in what he confided only to his most close friends: his intention to reopen the investigation on his brother’s death. Our next question, therefore, is: What would an unbiased investigation, conducted under the supervision of Robert in the White House, have revealed?

Did the CIA assassinate Kennedy?

It is obvious to anybody just vaguely informed that a genuine investigation would first establish that Oswald was a mere “patsy”, as he said himself, a scapegoat prepared in advance to be blamed for the crime and then be slaughtered without a trial. We will not here review the evidence that contradicts the official thesis of the lone gunman. It can be found in numerous books and documentary films.

Just as notorious is the theory that the plot to kill Kennedy originated from a secret network within the CIA, in collusion with extremist elements in the Pentagon. That conspiracy theory looms the largest in books, articles and films that have been produced since John Kennedy died.

That CIA-Pentagon theory, as I will call it (add the military-industrial complex if you wish) has a major flaw in the motive ascribed to the killers: besides getting rid of Kennedy, the theory goes, the aim was to create a pretext for invading Cuba, something the CIA had always pushed for and Kennedy had refused to do (the Bay of Pigs fiasco). With Oswald groomed as a pro-Castro communist, the Dallas shooting was staged as a false flag attack to be blamed on Cuba. But then, why did no invasion of Cuba follow Kennedy’s assassination? Why was the pro-Castro Oswald abandoned by the Warren Commission in favor of the lone nut Oswald? Those who address the question, like James Douglass in his JFK and the Unspeakable, credit Johnson with preventing the invasion. Johnson, we are led to understand, had nothing to do with the assassination plot, and thwarted the plotters’ ultimate aim to start World War III. This is to ignore the tremendous amount of evidence accumulated against Johnson for fifty years, and documented in such groundbreaking books as Phillip Nelson’s LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination (2010) or Roger Stone’s The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ (2013).

Another weakness in the CIA-Pentagon theory is the lack of agreement about the mastermind of the plot. In fact, one of the names that comes up most often is James Jesus Angleton, the head of Counter-Intelligence within the CIA, about whom Professor John Newman writes in Oswald and the CIA :

“In my view, whoever Oswald’s direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that Angleton was probably their general manager. No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot.”[23]

But there is plenty of evidence that Angleton, who was also the head of the CIA “Israel Office,” was a Mossad mole. According to his biographer Tom Mangold, “Angleton’s closest professional friends overseas […] came from the Mossad and […] he was held in immense esteem by his Israeli colleagues and by the state of Israel, which was to award him profound honors after his death.” [24] No less that two monuments were dedicated to him at memorial services in Israel during ceremonies attended by chiefs of Israeli Intelligence and even a future Prime Minister.[25]

Another aspect must be taken into account: if the trail of the CIA is such a well-trodden path among Kennedy researchers, it is because it has been cut and marked by the mainstream media themselves, as well as by Hollywood. And that began even before the assassination, on October 3, 1963, with an article by the New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent Arthur Krock. The article denounced the CIA’s “unrestrained thirst for power” and quotidian unnamed “very high official” who claimed that the White House could not control the CIA, and that:

“If the United States ever experiences an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government, it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon. The agency represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.”[26]

In such a way, The New York Times was planting a sign, a month and a half before the Dallas killing, pointing to the CIA as the most likely instigator of the upcoming coup. The sign said: “The President is going to fall victim of a coup, and it will come from the CIA.”

One month after Kennedy’s assassination, it was the turn of the Washington Post to use a very similar trick, by publishing an op-ed signed by Harry Truman, in which the former president said he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.” “I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations,” at the point of becoming across the globe “a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue […] there are now some searching questions that need to be answered.” [27] Truman was hinting at the CIA’s role in toppling foreign governments and assassinating elected leaders abroad. But given the timing of his article, one month to the day after Dallas, it could only be understood by anyone with ears to hear, and at least subliminally by the rest, as an indictment of the CIA in the Kennedy assassination. This article, widely reprinted in the 1970s after the creation of the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, is regarded as Truman’s whistleblowing. Yet its mea culpa style is quite unlike Truman; that is because it was not written by Truman, but by his longtime assistant and ghostwriter, a Russian born Jew named David Noyes, whom Sidney Krasnoff calls “Truman’s alter ego” in his book, Truman and Noyes: Story of a President’s Alter Ego (1997). Truman probably never saw the article prior to its publication in the Washington Post morning edition, but he may be responsible for its deletion from the afternoon print runs.[28]

So the two most influential American newspapers, while ostensibly defending the official theory of the lone gunman, have planted directional signs pointing to the CIA. Most Kennedy truthers have followed the signs with enthusiasm.

In the 70s, the mainstream media and publishing industry played again a major role in steering conspiracy theorists toward the CIA, while avoiding any hint of Israeli involvement. One major contributor to that effort was A. J. Weberman, with his 1975 book Coup d’État in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, co-authored by Michael Canfield. According to the New York Jewish Daily Forward (December 28, 2012), Weberman had “immigrated to Israel in 1959 and has dual American-Israeli citizenship,” and is “a close associate of Jewish Defense Organization founder Mordechai Levy, whose fringe group is a spin-off of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s militant right-wing Jewish Defense League.” Weberman acknowledged Neocon Richard Perle’s assistance in his investigation.[29] The Weberman-Canfield book contributed to the momentum that led the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to reinvestigate in 1976 the murders of JFK and Dr. Martin Luther King.

It is also in this context that Newsweek journalist Edward Jay Epstein published an interview of George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian geologist and consultant for Texan oilmen who had befriended Oswald and his Russian wife in Dallas in 1962. In this interview, De Mohrenschildt admitted that Oswald had been introduced to him at the instigation of Dallas CIA agent J. Walton Moore.[30] That piece of information is dubious for several reasons: First, Moore was officially FBI rather than CIA. Second, De Mohrenschildt was in no position to confirm or deny the words that Epstein ascribed to him: he was found dead a few hours after giving the interview. In fact, De Mohrenschildt’s interview published by Epstein contradicts De Mohrenschildt’s own manuscript account of his relationship to Oswald, revealed after his death.[31] De Mohrenschildt’s death was ruled a suicide. The Sheriff’s report mentions that in his last months he complained that “the Jews” and “the Jewish mafia” were out to get him.[32] Needless to say, Epstein didn’t mention anything about this. More suspicions arise from the fact that Epstein’s main source for his 1978 book, Legend: the Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, was James Jesus Angleton, who was actively spreading disinformation at the time of the HSCA, defending the theory that Oswald was a KGB agent with CIA connections.

That Israeli agents have been instrumental in spreading conspiracy theories targeting the CIA is also evidenced by Oliver Stone’s film JFK released in 1991, starring Kevin Costner in the role of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. This film, which shook public opinion to the point of motivating the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, was produced by Arnon Milchan, described in a 2011 biography as being from his youth “one of the most important covert agents that Israeli intelligence has ever fielded,” involved in arms smuggling from the US to Israel.[33] In 2013 Milchan publicly revealed his extended activity as a secret agent of Israel, working in particular to boost Israel’s nuclear program.[34] It is therefore no wonder that Stone’s film gives no hint of the Mossad connection that Garrison stumbled upon.

Who killed JFK?

By a strange paradox, the authors who stand for the consensual conspiracy theory of a CIA plot against Kennedy build their case on the biography of Oswald, while at the same time claiming that Oswald had almost nothing to do with the killing. If Oswald was “just a patsy,” as he publicly claimed, the quest for the real culprits must logically begin by investigating the man who silenced Oswald.

Oswald’s assassin is known as Jack Ruby, but few people know that his real name was Jacob Leon Rubenstein, and that he was the son of Jewish Polish immigrants. Ruby was a member of the Jewish underworld. He was a friend of Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen, whom he had known and admired since 1946. Cohen was the successor of the famed Benjamin Siegelbaum, aka Bugsy Siegel, one of the bosses of Murder Incorporated. Cohen was infatuated with the Zionist cause, as he explained in his memoirs: “Now I got so engrossed with Israel that I actually pushed aside a lot of my activities and done nothing but what was involved with this Irgun war”.[35] Mickey Cohen was in contact with Menachem Begin, the former Irgun chief, with whom he even “spent a lot of time,” according to Gary Wean, former detective sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department. So there is a direct line connecting Jack Ruby, via Mickey Cohen, to the Israeli terrorist ring, and in particular to Menachem Begin, a specialist in false flag terror. We also know that Ruby phoned Al Gruber, a Mickey Cohen associate, just after Oswald’s arrest; no doubt he received then “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” as they say in the underworld.[36] Ruby’s defense lawyer William Kunstler wrote in his memoirs that Ruby told him he had killed Oswald “for the Jews,” and Ruby’s rabbi Hillel Silverman received the same confession when visiting Ruby in jail.[37]

That is not all. At every level of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, we also find the fingerprints of the Israeli deep state. JFK’s trip to Dallas, being officially “non political,” was sponsored by a powerful business group known as the Dallas Citizens Council, dominated by Julius Schepps, “a wholesale liquor distributor, member of every synagogue in town, and de facto leader of the Jewish community,” as described by Bryan Edward Stone in The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas.[38] Kennedy was on his way to the reception organized in his honor when he was shot.

The “host committee” inviting Kennedy was chaired by another influential figure of the wealthy Jewish community in Dallas: advertising executive and PR man Sam Bloom. According to former British Intelligence Officer Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, it was Bloom who suggested to the Police “that they move the alleged assassin [Oswald] from the Dallas police station to the Dallas County Jail in order to give the newsmen a good story and pictures. ”Oswald was shot by Ruby during this transfert. Hughes-Wilson adds that,“when the police later searched Ruby’s home, they found a slip of paper with Bloom’s name, address and telephone number on it.” [39]

After the Dallas tragedy, Israel’s sayanim were also busy fabricating the official lie. Apart from its chairman Earl Warren, chosen for his figurative role as Chief Justice, all key people in the investigative Commission were either personal enemies of Kennedy—like Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by Kennedy in 1961—or ardent Zionists. The man who played the key role in fabricating the government lie purveyed by the Warren Commission was Arlen Specter, the inventor of what came to be called the “magic bullet” theory: a single bullet supposed to have caused seven wounds to Kennedy and John Connally sitting before him in the limousine, and later found in pristine condition on a gurney in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Specter, who with an ironic touch of chutzpah titled his autobiography Passion for Truth, was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and, at his death in 2012, was mourned by the Israeli government as “an unswerving defender of the Jewish State,” and by AIPAC, as “a leading architect of the congressional bond between our country and Israel.” [40]

So, at all stages of the plot, we find a Zionist cabal including business men, politicians and Irgun-connected gangsters, not forgetting media executives, all devoted to Israel.

The most plausible motive for Israel to kill Kennedy has been revealed by two books: Seymour Hersh’s The Samson Option in 1991, then Avner Cohen’s Israel and the Bomb in 1998, and the lead has been followed up in 2007 by Michael Karpin in The Bomb in the Basement. What these investigators reveal is that Kennedy, informed by the CIA in 1960 of the military aim pursued at the Dimona complex in the Negev desert, was firmly determined to force Israel to renounce it. With that purpose in mind, he replaced CIA Director Allen Dulles by John McCone, who had, as Eisenhower’s chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), leaked to The New York Times the truth about Israel’s Dimona project; the story was printed on December 19, 1960, weeks before Kennedy was to take office. As Alan Hart writes, “there can be no doubt that Kennedy’s determination to stop Israel developing its own nuclear bomb was the prime factor in his decision to appoint McCone.”[41] Then Kennedy urged Ben-Gurion to allow regular inspections of Dimona, first verbally in New York in 1961, and later through more and more insistent letters. In the last one, cabled June 15, 1963 to the Israeli ambassador with instruction to hand it personally to Ben-Gurion, Kennedy demanded Ben-Gurion’s agreement for an immediate visit followed by regular visits every six months, otherwise “this Government’s commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized.” [42] The result was unexpected: Ben-Gurion avoided official reception of the letter by announcing his resignation on June 16. As soon as the new Prime Minister Levi Eshkol took office, Kennedy sent him a similar letter, dated July 5, 1963, to no avail. Did Ben-Gurion resign in order to deal with Kennedy from another level?

Five months later, Kennedy’s death relieved Israel of all pressure (diplomatic or otherwise) to stop its nuclear program. Faced with Johnson’s complete lack of interest in that issue, John McCone resigned from the CIA in 1965, declaring: “When I cannot get the President to read my reports, then it’s time to go.”

Kennedy’s determination to stop Israel’s Dimona project was only part of the “Kennedy problem”. During his first months in the White House, Kennedy committed himself by letters to Nasser and other Arab heads of State to support UN Resolution 194 for the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Ben-Gurion reacted with a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Washington, intended to be circulated among Jewish American leaders, in which he stated:

“Israel will regard this plan as a more serious danger to her existence than all the threats of the Arab dictators and Kings, than all the Arab armies, than all of Nasser’s missiles and his Soviet MIGs. […] Israel will fight against this implementation down to the last man.’”[43]

Kennedy behaved warmly toward Nasser, Israel’s worst enemy. Historian Philip Muehlenbeck writes:

“While the Eisenhower administration had sought to isolate Nasser and reduce his influence through building up Saudi Arabia’s King Saud as a conservative rival to the Egyptian president, the Kennedy administration pursued the exact opposite strategy.”[44]

After Kennedy’s death, American foreign policy was reversed again, without the American public being aware of it. Johnson cut the economic aid to Egypt, and increased the military aid to Israel, which reached 92 million dollars in 1966, more than the total of all previous years combined.

For 50 years, the Israeli trail in the Kennedy assassination has been smothered, and anyone who mentioned it was immediately ostracized. American congressman Paul Findley nevertheless dared write in March 1992 in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: “It is interesting to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned.” One single author has seriously investigated that trail: Michael Collins Piper, in his 1995 book Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy. Piper was largely ignored by the mainstream of the Kennedy truth movement. But his work has made its way nevertheless. In 2013, Martin Sandler wrote about Piper’s work in his edition of letters by Kennedy, which included those addressed to Ben-Gurion about Dimona: “Of all the conspiracy theories, it remains one of the most intriguing.” It is, in fact, a theory widespread in Arab countries.[45]

The case against Lyndon Johnson

Several investigators have identified Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s vice-president, as the mastermind of the Kennedy assassination. It is, at least, beyond doubt that the plotters acted with the foreknowledge that Johnson, who automatically stepped in as head of State after Kennedy’s death, would cover them. The context of national crisis enabled him to bully both Justice and the press while achieving his life’s ambition. Johnson not only benefitted from the plot; he participated in its elaboration. As a former senator from Texas, he could mobilize high-ranked accomplices in Dallas to prepare the ambush. Johnson also had his men in the Navy. In 1961, Texan senator John Connally had been appointed as Navy Secretary at the request of Johnson. When Connally resigned eleven months later to run for governor of Texas, Johnson convinced Kennedy to name another of his Texan friends, Fred Korth.

Johnson’s privileged control over the Navy is an important aspect of the case because the Navy was critical in the setting up and in the cover-up of the plot. First, contrary to a widespread but erroneous belief, Lee Harvey Oswald had been recruited by the Navy and not by the CIA. He was a Marine, and as a Marine he had worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Secondly, it is at the Naval Hospital in Washington, under the control of Navy officers, that Kennedy’s autopsy was performed, after his body had been literally stolen at gunpoint from Parkland Hospital in Dallas. The report of this autopsy stated that the fatal bullet had entered the back of Kennedy’s skull, which contradicted the testimonies of twenty-one members of the Dallas hospital staff who saw two entry bullet-wounds on the front of Kennedy’s body. This was critical because Oswald was presumably shooting from behind Kennedy, and could not possibly have caused these bullet wounds.

It is noteworthy that Johnson had actually taken advantage of his connections in the Navy to participate in the greatest corruption case ever recorded at that time. His accomplice Fred Korth was forced to resign as Navy Secretary in November 1963, only weeks before the Dallas coup, after the Justice Department headed by Robert Kennedy had implicated him in a fraud involving a $7 billion contract for the construction of 1,700 TFX military aircraft by General Dynamics, a Texas company. Johnson’s personal secretary, Bobby Baker, was charged in the same case.

Because of this mounting scandal and other suspicions of corruption, Kennedy was determined to change Vice-President for his upcoming reelection campaign.[46] While in Dallas the day before the President’s visit, Nixon publicized the rumor of Johnson’s removal, and the Dallas Morning News was reporting on November 22nd: “Nixon Predicts JFK May Drop Johnson.” Instead, Johnson became president that very day.

Many Americans immediately suspected Johnson’s involvement in the Dallas coup, especially after the publication in 1964 of a book by James Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon, which portrayed Johnson as deeply corrupt. According to his biographer Robert Caro, Johnson was a man thirsting “for power in its most naked form, for power not to improve the lives of others, but to manipulate and dominate them, to bend them to his will.” [47]

The evidence incriminating Johnson does not conflict with the evidence against Israel, quite the contrary. First, both trails converge in the person of Jack Ruby, whom Nixon identified a one of “Johnson’s boys,” according to former Nixon operative Roger Stone.[48] The hypothesis that Ruby acted on Johnson’s orders is a likely explanation for some of his odd statements to the Warren Commission:

“If you don’t take me back to Washington tonight to give me a chance to prove to the President that I am not guilty, then you will see the most tragic thing that will ever happen.” “There will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don’t take my testimony and somehow vindicate me so my people don’t suffer because of what I have done.”

He said that he feared that his act would be used “to create some falsehood about some of the Jewish faith,” but added that “maybe something can be saved […], if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me.” [49] With such words, Ruby seems to be trying to send a message to Johnson through the Commission, or rather a warning that he might spill the beans about Israel’s involvement if Johnson did not intervene in his favor. We get the impression that Ruby expected Johnson to pardon him.

Yet Johnson did nothing to get Ruby out of jail. Ruby’s sense of betrayal would explain why in 1965, after having been sentenced to life imprisonment, Ruby implicitly accused Johnson of Kennedy’s murder in a press conference: “If [Adlai Stevenson] was Vice-President there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy.” [50]

Ruby died from a mysterious disease in his prison in 1967.

A Crypto-Zionist president?

Ruby is not the only link between Johnson and Israel, far from it. In truth, Johnson had always been Israel’s man. His electoral campaigns had been funded since 1948 by Zionist financier Abraham Feinberg, who happened to be president of the Americans for Haganah Incorporated, which raised money for the Jewish militia. It is the same Feinberg who, after the Democratic primaries in 1960, made the following proposal to Kennedy, as Kennedy himself later reported to his friend Charles Bartlett: “We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.” Bartlett recalls that Kennedy was deeply upset and swore that, “if he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it.” [51]

It is on record, thanks to Kennedy insider Arthur Schlesinger (A Thousand Days: John Kennedy in the White House, 1965), that the two men who convinced Kennedy to take Johnson as his running mate, were Philip Graham and Joseph Alsop, respectively publisher and columnist of the Washington Post, and strong supporters of Israel.[52] Schlesinger doesn’t reveal Graham and Alsop’s arguments, and states that Kennedy’s final decision “defies historical reconstruction”—a curious statement for a historian so well informed on the topic. But Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s personal secretary for twelve years, had her own idea about it. She believed that Kennedy was blackmailed with proofs of his many infidelities to his wife: “Jack knew that Hoover and LBJ would just fill the air with womanizing.” Whatever the details of the blackmail, Kennedy once confided to his assistant Hyman Raskin, as an apology for taking Johnson, “I was left with no choice […] those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don’t need more problems.” [53]

In 2013, Associated Press reported about newly released tapes from Johnson’s White House office showing LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel,” and pointed out that under Johnson, “the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” An article from the 5 Towns Jewish Times “Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson?” recalls Johnson’s continuous support of Jews and Israel in the 1940s and 50s, and concludes: “President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel direction.” The article also mentions that, “research into Johnson’s personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America.” And, in an additional note: “The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson’s family tree. There is little doubt that he was Jewish.” [54]

Whatever was the reason of Johnson’s loyalty to Israel, it is a fact that, thanks to Johnson, Israel could continue its military nuclear program undisturbed, and acquire its first atomic bomb around 1965. Historian Stephen Green writes: “Lyndon Johnson’s White House saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona when the reactor went critical in early 1964.” [55]

Thanks to JFK’s death, Israel was also able to carry out its plan to annex Palestinian territories beyond the boundaries imposed by the United Nations Partition plan. By leaning on Pentagon and CIA hawks, Johnson intensified the Cold War and created the climate of tension which Israel needed in order to demonize Egyptian president Nasser and reinforce its own stature as indispensable ally in the Middle East.

During the Six Day War of 1967, Israel managed to triple its territory, while creating the illusion of acting in legitimate defense. The lie could not deceive American Intelligence agencies, but Johnson had given a green light to Israel’s attack, and even authorized James Angleton of the CIA to give Israel the precise positions of the Egyptian air bases, which enabled Israel to destroy them in just a few hours.

Four days after the start of the Israeli attack, Nasser accepted the ceasefire request from the UN Security Council. It was too soon for Israel, which had not yet achieved all its territorial objectives. On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, a NSA spy ship stationed in international waters off Sinai, was bombed, strafed and torpedoed during 75 minutes by Israeli Mirage jets and three torpedo boats, with the obvious intention of sinking it without leaving any survivors. (Even the rescue channels were machine-gunned.) Meanwhile, Johnson, from the White House, intervened personally to prohibit the nearby Sixth Fleet from rescuing the USS Liberty after the crew, despite the initial destruction of its transmitters, had managed to send off an SOS.

The attack would have been blamed on Egypt if it had succeeded, that is, if the ship had sunk and its crew had all died. The operation would then have given Johnson a pretext for intervening on the side of Israel against Egypt.

But it failed. The USS Liberty affair was suppressed by a commission of inquiry headed by Admiral John Sidney McCain II, Commander-in-Chief of US Naval Forces in Europe (and Father of Arizona Senator John McCain III). Johnson accepted Israel’s spurious “targeting error” explanation. In January 1968 he invited the Israeli Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, to Washington, and warmly welcomed him to his Texas ranch. What’s more, Johnson rewarded Israel by lifting the embargo on offensive military equipment: US-made tanks and aircraft immediately flowed to Tel Aviv.

This failed false flag attack is evidence of the secret complicity of Johnson and Israel, implying high treason on the part of Johnson.

Conclusion

Let’s now conclude our overview of the evidence: beside the fact that John and Robert were brothers, their assassinations have at least two things in common: Lyndon Johnson and Israel.

First, their deaths are precisely framed by Johnson’s presidency, which was also the context for other political assassinations, such as Martin-Luther King’s. Johnson was in control of the State during the two investigations on John and Robert’s murders.

Secondly, in both cases, we find the fingerprints of Israel’s deep state. In the case of Robert, it is the choice of the manipulated patsy, which was obviously meant to disguise Robert’s assassination as an act of hatred against Israel. In the case of John, it it is the identity of the man asked to kill the patsy, a Jewish gangster linked to the Irgun.

Johnson and Israel, the two common elements in the Kennedy assassinations, are themselves closely linked, since Johnson can be considered as a high-level sayan, a man secretly devoted to Israel, or owned by Israel, to the point of committing high treason against the nation he had been elected to lead and protect.

The causal link between the two assassinations then becomes clear: even if Robert had been pro-Israel, which he was not, Israel and Johnson would still have had a compelling reason to eliminate him before he got to the White House, where he could—and would—reopen the investigation on his brother’s death.

What should have been obvious from the start now appears brightly clear: in order to solve the mystery of the assassination of John Kennedy, one has simply to look into the two other assassinations which are connected to it: the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man whose trial could have exposed the hoax and possibly put the plotters into the light, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the man who would have reopened the case if he had lived. And both these assassinations bear the signature of Israel.

At his death in 1968, Robert Kennedy left eleven orphans, not counting John’s two children, whom he had somewhat adopted. John’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., aka John John, who had turned three the day of his father’s funeral, embodied the Kennedy myth in the heart of all Americans. The route seemed traced for him to become president one day. He died on July 16, 1999, with his pregnant wife and his sister-in-law, when his private plane suddenly and mysteriously nose-dived into the ocean a few seconds after he had announced his landing on the Kennedy property in Massachusetts.

John John had long been portrayed as a superficial, spoiled and harmless young man. But that image was as misleading as young Hamlet’s in Shakespeare’s play. John had serious interests in mind, and, at age 39, he was just entering politics. In 1995 he founded George magazine, which seemed harmless until it began to take an interest in political assassinations. In March 1997, George published a 13-page article by the mother of Yigal Amir, the convicted assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The article was supporting the thesis of a conspiracy by the Israeli far-right. So JFK Jr. was eliminated while following in the footsteps of his father, entering politics through the door of journalism and taking an interest in the crimes of the Israeli deep state. Canadian-Israeli journalist Barry Chamish believes John Kennedy Jr. was assassinated precisely for that.[56]

The nonsensical notion of a mysterious curse on the Kennedy family is an obvious smoke screen. The unsolved murders of JFK and his two legitimate heirs—his younger brother and his only son—require a more rational explanation. The sense that the official stories about their deaths amount to a huge cover-up is obsessing the American psyche, a bit like a repressed family secret affecting the whole personality from a subconscious level.

President John Kennedy and his brother are heroic, almost Christ-like figures, in the heart of a growing community of citizens who have become aware of the disastrous longtime effect of their assassinations. Only when the American public at large come to grips with the truth of their deaths and honor their legacy and sacrifice will America have a chance to be redeemed and be great again.

Laurent Guyénot is the author of JFK-9/11: 50 years of Deep State, Progressive Press, 2014, and From Yahweh to Zion: Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land … Clash of Civilizations, 2018. ($30 shipping included from Sifting and Winnowing, POB 221, Lone Rock, WI 53556).

Footnotes

[1] Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America, University of Texas Press, 2013,kindle 284-292.

[2] John Lewis’ testimony is in the PBS documentary American Experience Robert F. Kennedy.

[3] Associated Press, “RFK children speak about JFK assassination,” January 12, 2013, on http://www.usatoday.com

[4] David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 278-280, 305.

[5] David Talbot, Brothers, op. cit., 2007, p. 21-22.

[6] David Talbot, Brothers, op. cit., p. 25-7.

[7] James Hepburn, Farewell America: The Plot to Kill JFK, Penmarin Books, 2002, p. 269.

[8] David Talbot, Brothers, op. cit., p. 312-314.

[9] Extract of TV news in the documentary film Evidence of Revision: Part 4: The RFK assassination as never seen before, 01:11:42

[10] Jerry Cohen, “Yorty Reveals That Suspect’s Memo Set Deadline for Death,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1968, pages 1 and 12, on latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2008/06/june-6-1968.html. Jerry Cohen, “Jerusalem-Born Suspect Called An Anti-Semite,” The Salt Lake Tribune, June 6, 1968, on http://www.newspapers.com. See also Harry Rosenthal, “Senator Kennedy’s support for Israel promoted decision declares Sirhan,” The Telegraph, March 5, 1969, on news.google.com

[11] Sasha Issenberg, “Slaying gave US a first taste of Mideast terror,”Boston Globe, June 5, 2008, on http://www.boston.com

[12] Jeffrey Salkin, “Remember What Bobby Kennedy Died For,” Forward.com, June 5, 2008. Also Michael Fischbach, “First Shot in Terror War Killed RFK,” Los Angeles Times, June 02, 2003, on articles.latimes.com

[13] Frank Morales, “The Assassination of RFK: A Time for Justice!” June 16, 2012, on http://www.globalresearch.ca; watch on YouTube, “RFK Assassination 40th Anniversary (2008) Paul Schrade on CNN.”

[14] Philip Melanson, The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination: New Revelations On the Conspiracy And Cover-Up, S.P.I. Books, 1994, p. 25. For a full overview, watch Shane O’Sullivan’s 2007 investigative documentary RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy. For more detail, read his book Who Killed Bobby? The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy, Union Square Press, 2008. See also Don Schulman’s testimony in The Second Gun (1973), from 42 min 40.

[15] In a parole hearing in 2011, failing to convince the judges for the fourteenth time. Watch on YouTube, “Sirhan Sirhan Denied Parole”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsm1hKPI9EU

[16] Shane O’Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby? The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy, Union Square Press, 2008, p. 5, 44, 103.

[17] Jacqui Goddard, “Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Robert F.Kennedy, launches new campaign for freedom 42 years later,” The Telegraph, December 3, 2011, on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/search/

[18] Colin Ross, Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, Manitou Communications, 2000,summary on http://www.wanttoknow.info/bluebird10pg

[19] David B. Green, “Brainwashing and Cross-dressing: Israel’s Assassination Program Laid Bare in Shocking Detail,” Haaretz, February 5, 2018.

[20] Ronald Kessler, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.

[21] The Israel Lobby Archive, http://www.irmep.org/ila/forrel/

[22] Jeffrey Salkin, “Remember What Bobby Kennedy Died For,op. cit..

[23] Michael Collins Piper, False Flag, op. cit., p. 78.

[24] Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: the CIA’s Master Spy Hunter, Simon & Schuster, 1991, p. 318.

[25] Michael Howard Holzman, James Jesus Angleton, the CIA, and the Craft of COunterintelligence, University of Massachusetts Press, 2008, p. 153.

[26] “Assassination studies Kennedy knew a coup was coming,” on Youtube. Image of Arthur Krock’s article is shown on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snE161QnL1U at 1:36.

[27] “Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” Washington Post, December 22, 1963, quoted in Mark Lane, Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK, Skyhorse Publishing, 2011, p. 246.

[28] Thomas Troy, “Truman on CIA,” September 22, 1993, on http://www.cia.gov ; Sidney Krasnoff, Truman and Noyes: Story of a President’s Alter Ego, Jonathan Stuart Press, 1997.

[29] Michael Collins Piper, False Flags: Template for Terror, American Free Press, 2013, p. 67.

[30] James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Touchstone, 2008, p. 46.

[31] George de Mohrenschilldt, I am a Patsy! on jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo4/jfk12/hscapatsy.htm

[32] Read the Sheriff’s Office report on mcadams.posc.mu.edu/death2.txt

[33] Meir Doron, Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon – Arnon Milchan, Gefen Books, 2011, p. xi.

[34] Stuart Winer, “Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan reveals past as secret agent,” The Times of Israel, November 25, 2013, on http://www.timesofisrael.com ; Meir Doron, Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon – Arnon Milchan, Gefen Books, 2011, p. xi

[35] Mickey Cohen, In My Own Words, Prentice-Hall, 1975, p. 91-92.

[36] Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, American Free Press, 6th ed., ebook 2005, p. 133-155, 226.

[37] William Kunstler, My Life as a Radical Lawyer, Carol Publishing, 1994, p. 158; Steve North, “Lee Harvey Oswald’s Killer ‘Jack Ruby’ Came From Strong Jewish Background,” The Forward, November 17, 2013, on forward.com

[38] Bryan Edward Stone, The Chosen Folks: Jews on the Frontiers of Texas, University of Texas Press, 2010, p. 200.

[39] John Hughes-Wilson, JFK-An American Coup d’État: The Truth Behind the Kennedy Assassination, John Blake, 2014.

[40] Natasha Mozgovaya, “Prominent Jewish-American politician Arlan Specter dies at 82,” Haaretz, October 14, 2012, on http://www.haaretz.com.

[41] Alan Hart,Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, vol. 2: David Becomes Goliath, Clarity Press, 2009, p. 273.

[42] Warren Bass, Support any Friend: Kennedy’s Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance, 2003, p. 219.

[43] Quoted in George and Douglas Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present, W.W. Norton & Co., 1992, p. 51.

[44] Philip Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans: John F. Kennedy’s Courting of African Nationalist Leaders, Oxford UP, 2012.

[45] Listen to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on the topic on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV4kvhs8I8E

[46] Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination, XLibris, 2010, p. 372.

[47] Quoted in Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind, op. cit., p. 17.

[48] Patrick Howley, “Why Jack Ruby was probably part of the Kennedy conspiracy,” The Daily Caller, March 14, 2014, on dailycaller.com

[49] Read Ruby’s deposition on jfkmurdersolved.com/ruby.htm

[50] See on YouTube, “Jack Ruby Talks.”

[51] Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, 1991, p. 94-97.

[52] Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John Kennedy in the White House (1965), Mariner Books, 2002, p. 56; Alan Hart, Zionism, vol. 2, op. cit., p. 257.

[53] Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind, op; cit., p. 320.

[54] Morris Smith, “Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? – an update!!,” 5 Towns Jewish Times, April 11, 2013, on 5tjt.com.

[55] Stephen Green, Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations With a Militant Israel, William Morrow & Co., 1984, p. 166.

[56] Barry Chamish, “The Murder of JFK Jr – Ten Years Later,” www.barrychamish.com (also on: www.rense.com/general87/tenyrs.htm).

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