Zionists, Traitors and Congressmen
Mantiq al-Tayer | February 23, 2018
As mindless zionist-bullshit-fed Americans worry about Russiagate, an unspeakable evil is about to descend upon the once great capital city of what is left of the United States. This evil is so thoroughly ingrained in the consciousness – for lack of a better term – of the inside-the-beltway crowd that it can come like a thief in the night and be mistaken for a guest, a friend, an ally. But it is none of those.
Yes, we are talking about this year’s AIPAC policy conference which will officially begin shitting on Washington on March 4th. Among the chief shitters and shit eaters are 18 members of the allegedly US Congress. To see if any of your representatives are speaking at this treason fest, go here.
And what gathering of bigoted warmongering motherfuckers would be complete without the presence as a keynote speaker of the puke-generating Nikki Haley who has got to be the worst woman on the planet? […]
Anyway, this post is actually about the video below. It’s a sort of a modern-day example of billboard correction. Video correction in honor of AIPAC’s upcoming treason fest. To see the original video you can go to AIPAC’s site and find it. I won’t even link to it here, but I digress. … Full post
Painting an Israeli Attack on Syria as Israeli ‘Retaliation’
By Gregory Shupak | FAIR | February 21, 2018
Israel claimed that it intercepted an Iranian drone in Israeli airspace on Saturday, February 10; Iran denied that it had a drone there. Israel then bombed a Syrian airbase, saying it was the command-and-control center from which Iran had launched the drone. The Syrian government shot down an Israeli jet that had bombed the base, and Israel subsequently launched more airstrikes against Syria.
Reuters (2/13/18) described the latter airstrikes as Israel having “retaliated” for the downing of its aircraft. Vice (2/13/18) too characterized them as “retaliatory”; the Los Angeles Times (2/11/18) did the same three times. These word choices wrongly imply that Israel was acting defensively, when it was Israel who fired the first shots in the weekend’s exchanges: These outlets were saying that Israel was “retaliating” against Syria for defending itself against an ongoing Israeli attack.
“Retaliation” is an exculpatory term. To say that a party is “retaliating” is to say that their actions are an understandable response to another party’s provocation. As FAIR’s Rachel Coen and Peter Hart (Extra!, 5–6/02) wrote more than a decade and a half ago, the term “lays responsibility for the cycle of violence at the doorstep of the party being ‘retaliated’ against, since they presumably initiated the conflict.” In this case, casting Syria and Iran as the aggressors rests on the dubious assumption that flying a drone over Israel—if Israel’s charge is accurate—is more aggressive than Israel dropping bombs on Syria.

Painting warplanes carrying out an aggressive bombing raid as victims
It also rests on the flawed assumption that the timeline of hostilities between Israel and the Syrian government began on Friday, February 9. However, despite the Associated Press’s untenable claim (2/10/18) that “Israel has mostly stayed out of the prolonged fighting in Syria,” Israel admits to having bombed the Syrian government and its ally Hezbollah nearly 100 times since the war in Syria began in 2011 (Reuters, 2/6/18). If Brigadier General Amnon Ein Dar, the head of the Israeli Air Force’s Air Division, is to be believed (Ynet, 2/11/18), the Israeli military has “carried out thousands of missions in Syria in the last year alone.”
A Washington Post article (2/10/18) made the similarly dubious assertion that “Israel has largely stood on the sidelines of the Syrian conflict over the past seven years.” In the next paragraph, though, the author acknowledges that “Israel has conducted dozens of covert airstrikes against [the Syrian government-aligned] Hezbollah weapons convoys in Syria,” and the piece goes on, in a spectacular display of self-contradiction, to note that “Israel has carried out a number of significant attacks in Syria in recent months.”
Israel has also supported the Syrian armed opposition for years, the Wall Street Journal (6/18/17) reported, supplying fighters with food, fuel, medical supplies “and money payments to commanders that help pay salaries of fighters and buy ammunition and weapons.” According to the Journal, the Israeli army “is in regular communication with rebel groups,” and Israel “has established a military unit that oversees the support in Syria—a country that it has been in a state of war with for decades—and set aside a specific budget for the aid, said one person familiar with Israeli operation.” There is even reason to believe that Israel has had an alliance with the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria (Middle East Monitor, 5/26/15; Electronic Intifada, 6/16/15). None of the articles cited here on the February 10 clashes mentioned this important backdrop.
Turning an Occupation Into a ‘Border’
Coverage of these events also failed to correctly describe the status of the Golan Heights, a piece of land that is central to the Israeli/Syrian conflict. Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war, fought off a Syrian effort to reclaim it in 1973, and illegally annexed it in 1981. Israel has sought to take advantage of the war that has devastated Syria for nearly seven years by, as Matt Broomfield writes in the Electronic Intifada (11/11/16), planning a fivefold increase in the number of Israeli settlers in the Golan, allocating $108 million for 750 new Israeli agricultural projects in the territory, and significantly expanding military forces along the boundary between Syria and the area under Israeli control.
The New York Times (2/10/18) made two references to “the Israeli-held portion of the Golan Heights,” a rather anodyne depiction of territory that is internationally recognized as Syrian, but which Israel seized by force of arms and claimed for itself.
The Washington Post (2/10/18) said that “Israel shares a contentious border with Syria—the Golan Heights.” But the Golan isn’t “a contentious border”; it’s a territory that, despite Israeli claims to the contrary, unambiguously belongs to Syria under international law.
A CNN report (2/11/18) closed by saying that “authorities also accused Syria in November of violating the 1974 ceasefire agreement [with Israel] by “conducting construction work” in the northern part of the Golan Demilitarized Zone.” While it’s unclear which authorities are being referenced, this passage neglects to mention that by late 2015, Israel had built 30 settlements, housing 20,000 settlers, in the Golan, or that a year later it announced plans for 1,600 new homes in the territory, “construction work” that has been roundly condemned by “authorities” like the United Nations.
Moreover, 20,000 Syrians live in the Golan, and many are directly harmed by Israeli policies. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Israel’s discriminatory land, housing and development policies in the territory have made it hard for Syrians to get building permits, leading to increasingly overcrowded Syrian towns and villages. The UNHRC also points out that Israel has demolished a Syrian home, and that a number of Syrian homeowners have reportedly received demolition notices.
This larger context of Israel’s Syria policies would have helped news readers make sense of what occurred on February 10, but it was absent. Given that Israel had just launched an airstrike on a Syrian base, has apparently bombed Syria close to 100 times in the past six years, has carried out perhaps 1,000 attacks against it in the last year, has backed an armed insurgency against the Syrian government, and has stolen and illegally colonized Syrian land while oppressing and dispossessing Syrian civilians, it is far more accurate to say that Syria retaliated against Israel on February 10.
Hamas: Abbas’s speech did not rise up to the desired level
Palestine Information Center – February 22, 2018
GAZA – Palestinian resistance group Hamas criticized Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas following his speech at the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
In a press release, Hamas underlined that the political plan presented by Abbas in his speech does not reflect the national position which calls for an end to the Oslo Accords and which opposes a resumption of negotiations with Israel.
“Abbas’s speech did not rise up to the desired level, nor did it reflect the national consensus, which wants to terminate the Oslo agreements and rejects negotiations with the occupiers,” Hamas said.
Abbas is working to create a new mechanism for the failed peace process despite Israel’s violations and crimes against Palestinian women and children and the dangerous bias of the United States in favor of Israel on Jerusalem and the refugees and the encouragement it gives Israel to commit crimes and liquidate the Palestinian cause, the statement reads.
In this context, Hamas demanded an end to Abbas’s unilateral decision-making, and instead of following the path of a political process, to accelerate the unification of the ranks within the Palestinian arena and reach an agreement on a national strategy that focuses on the path of resistance.
US Violates Iranian Nuclear Deal Almost Every Day – Tehran
Sputnik – February 22, 2018
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that the US violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) almost every day, while Trump’s public statements contribute to this.
“It is a fact that the United States is not implementing the JCPOA [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], it is a fact that it violates it almost daily,” he told the BBC.
According to him, Trump’s statements regarding the deal being “bad,” or seeking to change it are a violation of the agreement.
“This violates the letter, not the spirit of the agreement,” the deputy minister added.
Speaking further, the senior Iranian official said that Iran would withdraw from the agreement if there would be no economic benefits for the country and major banks wouldn’t work with Iran.
“The deal would not survive this way even if the ultimatum is passed and waivers are extended,” Araqchi said.
The statement comes almost two weeks after US President Donald Trump delivered an ultimatum to the heads of European countries, saying that he wouldn’t extend the US sanctions relief on Iran if the sides refused to “fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal.
“The day before, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an exclusive interview with Sputnik that “the US has never adhered to its liabilities within the JCPOA.”
Fears of Syrian War Tearing Middle East Apart
Araghchi also commented on the on-going conflict in Syria, which has recently escalated after an Israeli F-16 jet was shot down by the Syrian Army as it was about to attack Iranian positions for allegedly flying a drone into Israel’s airspace.
The Deputy FM denied the accusations, claiming that the drone in fact belonged to the Syrian government.
At the same time, he underlined the policy of double standards on the part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had earlier branded Iran as the “greatest threat to our world,” while the Israeli military itself is frequently flying drones over Syria and neighboring countries.
“They shouldn’t be angry when they are faced with something that they are doing against others on a daily basis,” Araghchi said.
The deputy minister noted that the incident has had a significant destabilizing impact on the de-escalation process in Syria and on the maintenance of peace in the Middle East.
“Fear of war is everywhere in our region,” Araghchi stated.
Nevertheless, Araghchi stressed that the presence of Iranian forces in Syria should not be misinterpreted as a threat to Israel, since their sole objective is to assist the government of Bashar al-Assad in combating terrorists.
“Just imagine if we were not there. Now you would have Daesh [the Islamic State group] in Damascus, and maybe in Beirut and other places,” he said.
The Deputy FM affirmed that the “de-escalation of tensions” is “very important” to the Iranian strategy in Syria, and the country has “worked hard to achieve that.”
The Egypt-Israel gas deal is scandalous and shameless
Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh | MEMO | February 21, 2018
After Al-Sisi opened the very large Zohr gas field about two weeks ago the newspapers celebrated and announced the news that Egypt will achieve gas self-sufficiency this year by means of the Zohr, North Alexandria, Nawras, and Atoll gas fields. The Egyptian citizens lived this dream until they awoke to a nightmare where Netanyahu is announcing that Israel is celebrating after signing a historical agreement with Egypt that stipulates Egypt will import gas from Israel for 10 years. The imported gas agreement is worth $15 billion and these billions will be added to the Israeli treasury in order to be spent on education, health services, and welfare for Israeli citizens.
Of course it was no coincidence that Netanyahu announced this great news to the Israeli people on the anniversary of President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, as such an agreement poses a new victory for Israel, no less significant than its victory in 1967 and the signing of the peace treaty. In my opinion, they are crowning their victories with this latest victory, as a result of which they control energy in Egypt and the key to the energy tap is placed in their hands. They can turn it off whenever they please. Whoever controls the energy can suffocate the states that live under its mercy and can control the decisions of these states.
This is a major crime committed against Egypt as a state and against its people. This gas is actually Egyptian gas that was seized by Israel either without the ruling government’s knowledge or in collusion with it. Instead of admitting to this crime and being ashamed of it, the government’s mouthpieces and corrupt media came up with justifications and excuses more criminal and shameless than the act itself. Some examples include but are not limited to the claims that the government has nothing to do with the Israeli gas import deal, overlooking the fact that the government facilitated the deal and prepared a draft bill allowing the private sector to import gas from abroad and sell it in the local market. Of course, the corrupt parliament, which does as the government desires and was formed under its watchful eye, approved the bill. It is foolish to make such claims when everyone knows that no private company can import anything without first obtaining government approval. Moreover, where would an unnamed company that has never operated in this field before, come up with $15 billion from to pay the Israelis?
Another justification included claims that economic interests dictate relations between countries and that there is no problem importing gas, even from an enemy, as long as it serves Egypt’s interests. However, those making these claims forgot that a country’s interests cannot be served by their enemy, and that from a purely national security standpoint, it is a strategic mistake to link Egypt’s energy security to Israel, which can stop exporting gas to Egypt if any conflict between the two countries arises.
The most absurd justification is the claim that Egypt is seeking to turn into a regional centre for energy and that the gas market has become available and open to any private company. No one bothered to mention what happened to the natural gas self-sufficiency claims made two weeks ago and ask why Egypt is importing gas when it has one of the largest gas fields, the Zohr gas field, in addition to the fields discovered in Egyptian regional waters and in the western and eastern deserts.
These mouthpieces also failed to mention why Egypt is importing gas specifically from Israel, especially since there are several alternatives, such as Algerian, Iraqi or Russian gas.
However, what is most astounding is the strange silence of the Egyptian government regarding this suspicious agreement, compared to the historical celebrations in Tel Aviv. Of course these celebrations are completely understandable given the financial, strategic, and moral benefits the agreement will grant Israel. Israel never dreamt of such benefits, even during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, their strategic treasure. What we cannot understand or accept is the fact that the corrupt Egyptian media is celebrating this agreement, despite the fact that such an agreement is the most prominent manifestation of betrayal and treachery, and the secret to the link between Egypt’s energy security and Israel’s gas.
Iran summons Sweden envoy to protest naturalization of spy on death row

Press TV – February 20, 2018
Iran has summoned Sweden’s ambassador to Tehran after Stockholm granted citizenship to an Iranian national found guilty of espionage for the Israeli spy agency, Mossad.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the ministry called in Helena Sangeland on Monday and served her with a note, communicating the Islamic Republic’s “strong protest” over the Swedish government’s move.
Ahmad Reza Jalali was arrested in 2016 upon traveling to Iran. Based on his confession, he was convicted of spying for Mossad and complicity in murdering Iranian nuclear scientists.
Iran’s Supreme Court upheld Jalali’s death sentence last December.
On Saturday, however, Stockholm confirmed that the Iranian had been granted Swedish citizenship, a measure Qassemi slammed as “uncommon, questionable, and unfriendly.”
Qassemi said the Swedish envoy was notified that Tehran does not lend credit to the naturalization and still considers Jalali to be an Iranian national.
In no country, do they accord dual citizenship in this fashion to a criminal, who has confessed to murder, and is being held in detention, the Iranian official added.
“No country is allowed to interfere in the Islamic Republic’s internal affairs under any circumstances,” the spokesman asserted.
The Swedish ambassador said she would notify her respective government of Tehran’s protest.
The Israeli regime assassinated four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.
Last March, Iran’s envoy to the United Nations atomic agency Reza Najafi said Israel had hired hitmen to assassinate nuclear scientists all over the Middle East, and yet, it continued to receive nuclear cooperation from certain countries.
In January, a book named Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman recounted some 2,700 assassination operations by the regime, which, among others, targeted Iranian and German nuclear scientists.
New checkpoint will cut off Palestinians from park built on their land
MEMO | February 19, 2018
Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have begun construction of a new checkpoint on the edge of Al-Walaja, in what has been described as “the final step in blocking the village’s access to a national park built on land confiscated from its residents”.
According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim, the Jerusalem municipality initiated the construction on 14 February, some weeks after Mayor Nir Barkat and Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin inaugurated the Emek Refaim National Park.
“The new checkpoint will replace the one now in operation between Al-Walaja and Gilo [settlement], bringing it directly to the edge of the village… in order to block resident’s access to 1,200 dunams of national park land between the village and the Green Line,” the NGO explains.
The park will thus “deepen the isolation of the village, already encircled by the Separation Barrier on its East Jerusalem side (half of the village lies beyond the municipal border, in the West Bank)”.
According to Ir Amim, these developments in Al-Walaja, “more than half of which is under threat of demolition, on its annexed side”, occur in “the context of a much larger campaign to consolidate the southern perimeter of East Jerusalem and fatally disrupt contiguity with the West Bank”.
To that end, Israel has “steadily promoted plans” in recent years including the expansion of Har Homa and Gilo settlements, and the approval of plans in Givat Hamatos, “which would supplant Har Homa as the newest settlement in East Jerusalem”.
The NGO also cites the “construction of the six-lane highway through residential Beit Safafa, which serves to further disrupt contiguity between East Jerusalem and the Bethlehem area while reinforcing the connection between settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem”.



