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Israel may force Palestinians to raise Israeli flag on Nakba Day

MEMO | May 10, 2016

Culture and sports centres in Israel, including Arabic institutions, should be made to raise the Israeli flag on Nakba Day, a senior minister has said yesterday.

Israeli Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev instructed the ministry’s Director General Yossi Sharabi to put together an initiative that would see institutions raising the Israeli flag, YnetNews reported.

The news site reported informed sources saying: “Personal judgment should not factor in here.”

If Regev’s proposal is approved by the Knesset, it would force Al-Midan Theatre in Haifa and the Doha Stadium in Sakhnin, whose population is predominantly Arab, to raise the Israeli flag.

Since she took office, Regev promised to promote the Israeli flag’s prominence.

May 10, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Majd Atwan, 22, sentenced to 45 days imprisonment for Facebook postings

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Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – May 10, 2016

Majd Yousef Atwan, 22, a young Palestinian woman from Al-Khader village, Bethlehem, and a recent beauty school graduate, was sentenced by an Israeli Ofer military court to 45 days imprisonment and a 3,000 NIS ($794) fine for posting on Facebook, which the Israeli military occupation deemed “incitement.”

Atwan is one of approximately 150 Palestinians detained and imprisoned for social media postings, including the case of Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian poet from Nazareth being prosecuted for poetry posted online. She was arrested in a 2:00 am army raid on her family home on 19 April, which was invaded by occupation soldiers. She is one of 7,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and nearly 70 women and girls.

May 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

An American Original: John Kerry – From His Remarkable Recent Commencement Address At Northwestern University To The Remarkable Career That Made It Possible

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By John Chuckman | Aletho News | May 9, 2016

John Kerry is, besides many other unpleasant things, a rather ridiculous man, and he has managed to prove that proposition time and time again.

He used his recent commencement address at Northwestern University to attack Donald Trump. It is difficult to understand why young graduates at one of America’s better universities would want to hear political boiler plate from a key member of a failed and dying administration, rather than the usual vaguely inspiring stuff about the future, but that is what the graduating class got for their student fees.

I suppose, as so often is the case in America, the empty prestige of having someone with a big job speak, even when they have nothing to say, mattered. After all, Hillary Clinton has collected countless millions doing exactly the same thing for audiences at investment banker and defense contractor banquets in recent years.

Well, the part of Trump on which Kerry focused was his proposal for a wall with Mexico.

I don’t like walls myself, and it is my belief that even if elected Trump, for many reasons, will not succeed in emulating the Emperor Hadrian. Still, you might expect from the point of view of a Secretary of State, supposedly gazing upon the world’s countries with an impartial, god-like eye, that if it is okay for Israel to keep building walls, and it has several new ones underway right now, all built on other people’s property, why can’t others? The reasoning in both cases, and in all other cases such as those in Kerry’s contemporary Europe where new walls of various forms are frantically being built, is the same: we need to stop unwanted people crossing the border.

Can anyone even imagine Kerry – this man who, once not long ago, reminisced over Champagne toasts about some distant relative or another of his who was allegedly part-Jewish (truly, has grovelling by a Secretary of State reached such levels before? I would have expected his entire audience either to choke or throw up) – ever saying a single word to Israel about its walls, walls which go far beyond serving Israel’s border fears to literally chopping up and destroying the land which supports millions of other people? It would be as though Trump were demanding a series of walls inside Mexico to balkanize the entire country and then set about building them himself with America’s armed forces. Now that would be utterly ridiculous, not to say criminal, but Israel’s doing just that is never called ridiculous or criminal, and it certainly is never questioned by Kerry.

And then, as though in an effort to reclaim the stature of his address from just political campaign boiler plate, Kerry’s rhetoric drifted off to the subject of a future borderless world.

Now that is an old idea that appeals greatly to me, but I know very well that Kerry is being dishonest here. The world in fact, not all that long ago, pretty much was borderless. It was precisely the rise of the modern nation state in the 19th century which killed off that amiable concept requiring no passports or visa or permissions for moving about. Of course, we are talking about precisely the kind of modern nation state which Kerry has lovingly served in expanding its power and influence over others for his entire adult life.

Kerry’s dishonesty extends into what he even means by a “borderless world.” Now, I have always believed the Apostle Paul in emphasizing deeds rather than words, so If we are to judge by Kerry’s actual acts and those of predecessor Secretaries of State such as Hillary Clinton or Madeleine Albright or Henry Kissinger, and not by the State Department’s regularly-broadcast, doubtful advertising claims, John Kerry’s concept of a “borderless world’ is one in which the United States runs everyone’s affairs, rendering the borders of individual countries meaningless.

Now, that is a concept which very much does not appeal to me, nor does it appeal, I suspect, to a great many of the world’s seven billion people and their governments.

Just recently, this dishonest and generally unpleasant man has put an ultimatum to the government of Syria, making threats that if he doesn’t see what he wants by the beginning of August, there will be serious consequences. That certainly sounds to me like a Mafia Don speaking, demanding payment of protection money from some business, or else.

John Kerry has no business telling the government of Syria to do anything, much less to dissolve itself. It is, and has been, a reasonably popular government, one which receives the support of a majority of Syrians in polls and elections. Among other reasons for its popularity is President Assad’s defence of religious minorities. Syria’s citizens form an elaborate quilt of various religions, and they know their rights to worship as they please are protected in a region of the world where that is not common. Some of Mr. Kerry’s closest working associates in the region cannot say the same thing, and indeed they include associates who are quite violent towards people of differing faiths.

The proxy forces which Kerry and his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, have supported for five years in tearing Syria apart consist literally of various gangs of intolerant extremists and cut-throats. Boy, when it comes to double-speak, John Kerry is your man.

By what right does he do this? None, except that might makes right. America has supported terror in Syria, supplying weapons, platoons of cut-throats, and training while supporting the thugs of Turkey and Saudi Arabia in their logistics of destruction, all while pretending in State Department advertisement after advertisement that it opposes terror. And we’ve only just learned that Hillary Clinton supported the transfer of supplies of deadly Sarin nerve gas from Gadhafi’s stockpiles in wrecked Libya (another stunning State Department achievement) through a secret pipeline (read: Turkey) to the cut-throats in Syria where it was promptly used to kill civilians in the hope of blaming Assad and creating a casus belli for the United States (or, as Obama put it in his elliptical language, responding to Assad crossing a red line).

But John Kerry still hasn’t got what he wants in Syria, so now we have a new threat. Why is Kerry so determined to topple the government of Syria? Because Assad is an independent-minded leader, one who does not immediately say “yes, sir,” to every whim of Washington’s, and if there is anything which recent history teaches us, it is that the outfit Kerry serves has no tolerance for the independent-minded. So as to emphasize the point, Washington has left behind a trail of death and destruction in the region – perhaps a million dead and millions made refugees – all of it aimed at getting rid of inconvenient independent leaders.

This intolerance by Washington of independent-mindedness is strongly supported – supported is actually much too feeble a word, demanded being more apt, and demanded regularly over heated phone lines – by the government of America’s colony in the region, the same government to whom Kerry fears even saying so much as a word about its many walls criss-crossing other people’s land.

Quite a disgusting business I think which somehow manages to be converted by our press into “foreign policy,” just as one of its authors, John Kerry, manages to be converted into a “diplomat.’

Kerry was a rich boy who, after graduating university, started his political ascent by spending four months in Vietnam, busying himself with shooting peasants in the back from an armored speedboat racing up and down rivers. He wanted to gain some war “creds” for an anticipated political career. Apart from his killings in Vietnam, he made such a muck of things, leaving behind colleagues who had only contempt for his false heroics and self-promotion. Then our man Kerry, having returned home and seeing how badly the Vietnam War was regarded by people, decided to add some new “creds” to his resume, anti-war ones. So, no matter how the political winds turned in the future, John-boy was covered. He appeared with some anti-war demonstrators, once throwing his filthily-earned medals into a bin, from which they were later quietly retrieved for him.

As to Kerry’s actual attitude towards America’s dirty colonial wars, we have the testimony of his whole career in the Senate, as a Presidential candidate, and finally as Secretary of State, faithfully serving and supporting them.

Kerry’s campaign, in running for President in 2004, was so unbelievably dreary and empty of all meaning, that the American people actually re-elected the most disliked president in the country’s history, George Bush. That feat stands as a remarkable testimonial to John Kerry’s talents.

The only big thing Kerry seems ever to have done that was genuinely successful was marrying the woman who inherited the Heinz Ketchup and Pickle Fortune. That made him wealthy beyond his dreams, perhaps planting in his brain fanciful thoughts of an ambitious young George Washington marrying the widow, Martha Custis, said to have been the wealthiest woman in the American colonies.

When John Kerry says anything on any topic, his listeners would be wise to consider the source, for even though he walks around in the appointed robes of America’s Secretary of State, he is pretty much a life-long, ambitious, and dishonest failure.

May 9, 2016 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sheikh Raed Salah begins nine-month prison term for “incitement”

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – May 9, 2016

salahSheikh Raed Salah, Palestinian leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, began a nine-month jail term for “incitement” on Sunday, 8 May. He arrived at the jail with dozens of supporters, and said that “this prison sentence will not deter us from maintaining the defence of [Jerusalem’s] Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Since 1996, Salah is the leader of the northern wing of the Islamic Movement, which organizes Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the movement banned last year, sparking widespread protest and condemnation. Salah has been imprisoned in the past for incitement and related charges; this imprisonment is related to a 2007 rally against Israeli construction work near Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Salah arrived for his sentence at Beersheba prison, and was then transferred to Nafha prison by Israeli occupation forces. He has repeatedly stated that his imprisonment is an attempt to shut down Palestinian defense of Al-Aqsa from attacks by settlers and the Israeli government.

He served as mayor of Umm al-Fahm between 1987 and 2001. In 2010, he participated in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla aboard the Mavi Marmara, the ship attacked by Israeli special forces who killed ten Turkish and American activists, as the armed forces took over the ship and prevented it from breaking the siege of Gaza.

In 2011, Salah was targeted during a visit to the UK for deportation and exclusion. Arrested in the UK, he was kept in the country until March 2012 fighting the charges, which he eventually defeated in a significant court victory.

May 9, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Bir Zeit University student arrested in night raid, student leader banned from Ramallah and Bir Zeit

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – May 9, 2016
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Alaa Assaf

Palestinian engineering student Alaa Assaf was arrested by Israeli occupation soldiers after they raided her family’s home in Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, in an early-morning armed attack on the home.

Assaf, a student in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at Bir Zeit University, was formerly a member of the university’s student council from 2014-2015. Recent elections at the university were won by the Islamic Bloc; dozens of students associated with the Islamic Bloc, the leftist Progressive Democratic Pole, and other active student organizations have been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces.

At the same time, Asmaa Qadah, the secretary of Bir Zeit student council’s cultural committee, was banned from entering Ramallah and Bir Zeit for five months. Qadah was previously held under administrative detention without charge or trial for several months. The ban on Qadah’s entering Bir Zeit and Ramallah obviously interferes with her ability to study, attend classes, and participate in the university. Her graduation – originally scheduled for July 2016 – was already delayed due to three months of arbitrary imprisonment.

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Asmaa Qadah

Alaa Assaf was among at least 14 Palestinians arrested in late-night/early-morning raids by Israeli occupation forces in home invasions.

Students and faculty at several Palestinian universities have been targeted for arrest, including students at Bir Zeit University, Al-Quds University, and Palestine Polytechnic University. Student offices were raided by Israeli occupation forces who invaded Al-Quds University, while astrophysics professor Imad Barghouthi is imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention.

samidoun@samidoun.ca

May 9, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestine’s reality: Al Nakba commemoration and the right of return or the return of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement?

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By Ahmad Moussa | American Herald Tribune | May 8, 2016

A recent conversation on security and peace between former security personnel of Saudi Arabia and Israel respectively, two weeks before Al Nakba commemoration shows that the attitude of the past on Palestine remains after 68 years.

Al Nakba is a series of events that led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the Palestinians on May 15th, 1948. This is a day to remember the displacement and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinian people into refugee camps in neighboring countries; generations of whom continue to reside in these camps, others are scattered across the world in diaspora and many more internally displaced.

As the Palestinians across the world are on the verge of commemorating these events that happen to continue today in a process that is a form of incremental genocide, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) has recently engaged two former security personnel of Saudi Arabia and Israel respectively in a conversation related to security and peace in the Middle East.  Setting aside that the said institute is a think tank that was founded by pro-Israel political figures, it is no surprise for Palestinians that an institution of this kind hosts such a choice for a duo to discuss the two topics of peace and security when both entities are serious human rights violators as well as exporters of terrorism and war; especially in the direct or indirect connection to Palestine and the Palestinians.

First and foremost, the timing of the said conversation between the two representatives of the security apparatuses of both entities reminds us that understanding the historical context is truly important for understanding the contemporary circumstances. As the events and planning took place leading up to the execution of the Nakba of 1948, there was an annulled agreement that took place prior known as the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919. This was an agreement that was signed at the Paris Peace Conference between Emir Faisal of Hejaz and Chaim Weizmann who was leader of the World Zionist Organization eventually leading to him becoming the first President of Israel. This agreement is significant in the fact that it reminds the Palestinians about the enabling and co-conspiring of the Arabs in the region and the role they played against the interests of the Palestinians; an example of which is the following:

Dr. Weizmann argued that Palestine was designed to solve “a world-wide problem” and therefore “the rights which the Jewish people has been adjudged in Palestine do not depend on the consent, and cannot be subjected to the will of the majority of its present inhabitants.” He maintained that “the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate have definitely lifted Palestine out of the context of the Middle East and linked it up with the world-wide Jewish community and the world-wide Jewish problem.” Thus the Zionists refused to let the British grant the Palestine Arabs any role in setting immigration quotas or in influencing other aspects of the development of the Jewish national home. Weizmann’s contempt for the first Arab delegation to London was apparent in his one discussion with them at the Colonial Office, in which he adopted the attitude “of a conqueror handing to beaten foes the terms of peace.”

Today’s Saudi Arabia’s role in relation to the nature of its engagement with the State of Israel, represents the same co-conspiring agenda and essence of the Faisal-Weizmann agreement under the guise of peace and security- in pursuit of self interest and Zionist led terror against the Palestinians. For example, during the latest military campaign against the Gaza Strip by the State of Israel known as Operation Protective Edge- Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasised the fact that “renewed relations” were built as a result of Saudi Arabia along with other Gulf countries engaging in security cooperation to quell the Palestinian resistance during those events.

Furthermore, the rise of the Islamic State and their reign of terror in the region has unsettling connections with these two entities. The Islamic State’s rise and political patterns in the region are leaning towards the affirmation of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement given that this group’s reign of terror has not targeted any of these entities and have the same enemies that are “branches of the same tree”. Moreover, the group wants to abolish the Sykes-Picot Agreement which in many ways has been historically perceived as having been in the way and the obstacle of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. Most importantly, aside from the damage and destruction the Islamic State has done to the Palestinians both in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State is attempting to exploit the Palestinian cause which also serves the Saudi-Israeli security interests.

And yet, with all this historical context at hand, including the horrendous human rights records of both Saudi Arabia and Israel along with an already outrageous military expenditure towards the State of Israel by the United States- the United States is granting Israel the largest military aid package in history, while simultaneously, Saudi Arabia is receiving a 15 billion dollar military arms package deal from Canada.

In Jeff Halper’s new book “War against the People” he sharply states: “In an endless war on terror, we are all doomed to become Palestinians.” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is a political entity that enables this doom. It is an institute with residues of the pro-Israel lobby that played a pivotal role in dragging the United States into founding the global war on terror that has produced more global insecurity, the rise of the Islamic State and a push for war against Iran with no end in sight- all whilst simultaneously continuing the memoricide and erasure campaign against Palestine and the Palestinians through a nostalgic revivalism of what was embedded within the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement- demonstrated through this latest discussion between the Saudi-Israeli security personnel. This is what Palestine is trying to show the world. This is part in parcel of the Nakba in continuum.

May 8, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel forces open fire on Palestinian farmers in southern Gaza

Ma’an – May 8, 2016

GAZA – Israeli forces on Sunday morning opened fire on Palestinians farmers in the southern Gaza Strip, local sources said.

Locals told Ma’an Israeli forces deployed east of Khan Yunis opened fire on farmers, preventing them from reaching their lands. No injuries were reported.

An Israeli army spokesperson said they could not confirm the incident.

The incident comes after Israeli forces targeted the southern region of the small Palestinian territory with airstrikes for four consecutive days beginning Wednesday evening. Several were injured and a Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli shelling.

Israel said airstrikes were launched in response to Palestinian resistance groups targeting its troops with mortar rounds in an attempt to thwart Israeli military excavation activities in search of Hamas-made tunnels. However, Israel’s regular incursions inside Gaza’s border areas were perceived by many as the instigator of the hostilities.

The exchange was seen as an unusual escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip since a 2014 ceasefire was brokered after Israel’s devastating 50-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave that left some 2,200 dead and 11,000 injured.

Hamas, Gaza’s de facto ruler, had widely observed the 2014 ceasefire; Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yalon in March said Hamas “hasn’t fired a bullet” since the war, and following Thursday’s hostilities, Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a senior Israeli army officer as saying that Hamas had even been instrumental in preventing terrorist attacks and rocket fire directed at Israel.

However in the almost two years since the ceasefire was declared, regular violations have been committed on the Israeli side.

Israeli bulldozers frequently enter Gaza territory, carrying out land-leveling and excavation operations while accompanied by military vehicles, with four such incursions recorded by the UN between April 26 and May 2.

On a near daily basis, the Israeli army fires “warning shots” on Palestinian fisherman, farmers, and shepherds entering the Israeli-enforced “buffer zone,” implemented after Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip a decade ago.

Due to the high frequency of the attacks, live fire often goes unreported.

While Israel typically cites security concerns when targeting Palestinian agricultural areas, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights has reported in the past that fishermen are often targeted when they pose no threat.

Approximately 35 percent of Palestinian agricultural land in Gaza is inaccessible without high personal risk, according to the center.

In 2015, Israeli naval forces opened fire on Palestinian fishermen at least 139 times, killing three, wounding dozens, and damaging at least 16 fishing boats, according to the UN Agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Israeli forces also regularly open fire on Palestinian protesters during Friday demonstrations held along Gaza’s border, with injuries sustained by live fire and rubber-coated steel bullets reported nearly every week. At least 25 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces in Gaza clashes since the beginning of October, according to UN documentation.

May 8, 2016 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Extremist settlers attack Palestinian human rights activists in Hebron

Ma’an – May 8, 2016

HEBRON – A group of extremist Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked two Palestinian human rights activists in the Tel Rumeida area in the southern occupied West Bank city of Hebron, video footage showed.

Human Rights Defenders spokesperson Badee Dweik told Ma’an that settlers attacked Emad Abu Shamsiya and Yasser Abu Markhiya, who work with the group’s Hebron office. The two were taking footage of extremist settlers carrying rods near Palestinian homes in Tel Rumeida in Hebron’s Old City.

Abu Shamsiya, who serves as coordinator of the group in Hebron, said the settlers “were preparing to attack and intimidate Palestinian residents, especially children,” and that he rushed toward the scene with Abu Markhiya after they heard children screaming.

Their video shows a group of three settlers, two boys and one adult, begin to pass by. The adult settler can be heard saying in Hebrew, “if you take footage of me I’m going to kill you.” The children approach Abu Shamsiya and Abu Markhiya and order them to put down the camera before the adult strikes Abu Shamsiya.

“They punched me and broke my camera,” Abu Shamsiya told Ma’an, highlighted that Israeli soldiers were watching when the settlers attacked him and his colleague without intervening.

Dweik told Ma’an that attacks by Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers against activists attempting to document settler attacks on Palestinian residents have increased recently, especially after footage captured by Abu Shamsiya in March of an Israeli soldier shooting and killing Abd al-Fatah al-Sharif while he was lying motionless on the ground stoked widespread international criticism.

A day after release of the video, Israeli settlers gathered outside the home of Abu Shamsiya in Hebron to threaten him.

Tel Rumeida — where Shamsiya’s house is located and the site both Saturday’s incident and al-Sharif’s killing — has long been a flashpoint for tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and military, and is location to an illegal Israeli settlement.

Mistreatment of Palestinians in the Hebron area has been common since the city was divided in the 1990s after a US-born Israeli settler, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinians inside the Ibrahimi Mosque.

The majority of the city was placed under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, while the Old City and surrounding areas were placed under Israeli military control in a sector known as H2.

The area is home to 30,000 Palestinians and around 800 Israeli settlers who live under the protection of Israeli forces. Hebron residents frequently report attacks and harassment by the settlers carried out in the presence of the forces.

May 8, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

THE OXFORD UNION FAWNS TO APARTHEID AMBASSADORS

By Hugh Jaeger · May 5, 2016

On 26 April Israel’s new Ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, spoke at the Oxford Union. Three days later I sent a 300-word letter to The Oxford Times about his speech, and a street protest against him that was held outside the building.

Any newspaper has the right to edit letters. In addition The Oxford Times sets a limit of 300 words. I write lots of letters to the paper. Usually they are on other subjects, and nearly always The Oxford Times publishes them in full.

On 5 May the paper published some of my letter about Ambassador Regev. Unusually it had been edited to less than half its length. The choice of which sentences to delete robbed the letter of all of its evidence and much of its force.

Below is the full letter as I sent it. In [brackets and italics] are the sentences that The Oxford Times deleted. Draw your own conclusions!

MARK REGEV’S APPEARANCE AT THE OXFORD UNION WAS NOT BALANCED

Thank you everyone from Oxford University Palestine Society and Oxford Palestine Solidarity Campaign who, at scant notice, protested outside the Oxford Union on 26 April.

The Union had invited Mark Regev, Israel’s new London ambassador, to speak. Regev was spokesman for Israel’s defence ministry during its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. [He notoriously defended Israel’s massacres of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in 2008–09, 2012 and 2014.

In 2008–09 Regev claimed Israel’s use of white phosphorus in the Gaza massacres didn’t break international law. He defended Israel bombarding hospitals, schools, homes, mosques, churches and a UNWRA aid store. He claimed Hamas kept weapons in mosques and carried them in ambulances. After the 2008–09 massacres the UN Goldstone report found no evidence for Israel’s claims, but accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes.]

The Oxford Union holds debates between high-calibre speakers. It could have invited Regev and a seconder to debate against equal opponents. A Palestinian advocate such as Hanan Ashrawi or liberal Israeli such as historian Professor Ilan Pappé of Exeter University would have been suitable. Or Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow, who knows the Middle East and lives in Oxford.

Instead the Union let Regev address an audience and then answer questions. [Few students, however bright, can match Regev’s experience, guile and cold cunning.] The Union treated previous Israeli ambassadors the same: Daniel Taub in 2014 and Ron Prosor in 2010. Each got off lightly.

[Regev told his audience only anarchists or Marxists distinguish between criticism of Zionism and prejudice against Jews. He claimed to support a two-state settlement! In fact his government keeps seizing Palestinian land and pouring illegal settlers into East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Online the Union repeated Regev’s propaganda but no audience criticism. It betrayed the interests of Israelis, Palestinians and students.]

May 6, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

#IsraelSaudi: A Match Made in Hell

By Alli McCracken and Raed Jarrar | CounterPunch | May 6, 2016

For decades, Saudi Arabia has been a stalwart advocate of Palestinian statehood rights and a voracious critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Saudi Arabia’s commitment to Palestine has defined the geopolitical contours of the Middle East for decades. But now that the Iran nuclear deal has been struck and as the war in Syria ravages on, those political lines are being redrawn, bringing together unexpected bedfellows: Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Marketed as a “pathbreaking public dialogue between senior national security leaders from two old adversaries,” May 5, 2016 will feature a high-profile meeting in Washington DC between officials from Saudi Arabia and Israel. Prince Turki bin Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and one-time ambassador to Washington, and retired Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Major General Yaakov Amidror, former national security advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will be speaking together at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel organization funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located down the hall from AIPAC Headquarters.

Saudi Arabia has never engaged in diplomatic relations with Israel since the Nakba in 1948, and at one point even led efforts to boycott the state of Israel. And although this is not the first meeting of its kind (Saudi Arabia and Israel had a former official speak at a Council on Foreign Relations panel last year), it is definitely the highest profile meeting and it is taking place.

While having like-minded human rights abusers such as Saudi Arabia and Israel mingle and meet publicly might come as no surprise to most of us, this event is still bad news: it signals a new era of normalization by the official sponsor of the Arab Peace Initiative.

The Arab Peace initiative, also known as the “Saudi Initiative”, is a 10-sentence proposal for an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict. It was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002 and re-endorsed in 2007, and it is supported by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas. The initiative calls for normalizing relations between the Arab world and Israel in exchange for a complete withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem). Until now, it has been the most viable blueprint for a two-state solution. The deal also addressed the issue of Palestinian refugees and called for a “just settlement” based on UN Resolution 194.

So, at this political moment when Netanyahu is not showing any willingness to withdraw from the Occupied Palestinian Territory and some of his ministers are calling for the official annexation of the West Bank, Saudi Arabia seems to be giving up on its historic commitments. By normalizing relations with Israel without demanding a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Saudi Arabia is diminishing its leverage in negotiating a two-state solution.

In a way, this meeting marks the official demise of the Arab Peace Initiative, but more importantly, as the last standing mechanism for a regionally negotiated resolution, it is yet another indicator that a two-state solution is officially dead.

Alli McCracken is co-director of the peace group CODEPINK based in Washington DC. Raed Jarrar is an Arab-American political advocate based in Washington DC.

May 6, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Labour Party witch hunt: Will the real fomenters of anti-Semitism please stand up?

By Michael Lesher | American Herald Tribune | May 6, 2016

The so-called “anti-Semitism row” embroiling the United Kingdom’s Labour Party under its new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is a fraud – a cynical fraud at that. Despite the best efforts of the notoriously tireless Israel lobby, not to mention an abundance of circling media sharks eager to seize upon the lobby’s every lurid accusation, not one actual anti-Semitic statement from a Labour politician has emerged to date.

Indeed, if the campaign has any effect at all, it will not be to eject anti-Semitism from British politics. On the contrary, it is likely to foment anti-Semitism where, up to now, little or none has existed.

It’s hard to exaggerate how ridiculous the witch hunt around Jeremy Corbyn has become. But you don’t have to take my word for that. If Anshel Pfeffer’s tortuous attempt this week to rationalize the charges of “anti-Semitism” is any indication of the merits of the smear campaign, not even its purveyors actually believe their own accusations.

Pfeffer – who published his piece in Israel’s liberal daily, Ha’aretz on May 1 – is a veteran reporter with a number of genuine stories to his credit. It stands to reason that if there were anything real behind the so-called anti-Semitism scandal, Pfeffer would find it. But not even Pfeffer can locate a single anti-Semitic slur to latch onto.

Instead, he’s reduced to redefining anti-Semitism – redefining it so broadly that it includes all criticism of Israel’s government. Pfeffer’s argument is that condemning crimes committed by Israel’s leadership is, in effect, an accusation against all Israelis, and that, since most Israelis are Jews, this means an implicit attack on Jews everywhere. Pfeffer doesn’t spell out this approach too carefully, and no wonder – if it were true, it would mean that any statement critical of, say, Bashar al-Assad would make the speaker an Islamophobe. But without this bowdlerized definition of anti-Semitism (according to Pfeffer, a critic of Israel’s illegal occupation is simply “someone who only hates Jews living in Israel”), Pfeffer’s whole attack on the Labour left would collapse.

Not even neutering the meaning of anti-Semitism is enough for Pfeffer’s purposes. To demonize critics of Israel he has to coin the peculiar notion of “anti-Jewish theories” as well. That is, to mention the Zionist movement’s early efforts to cooperate with Hitler’s government – as former mayor of London Ken Livingstone did in an off-the-cuff way while defending his colleague Naz Shah – is more or less historically accurate; certainly it isn’t an expression of bigotry. But if Jews don’t like to hear about such facts, that makes the comment an “anti-Jewish theory,” and of course anyone who would espouse an anti-Jewish theory must be an anti-Semite. Pfeffer complains that Corbyn and his supporters “are incapable of comprehending” this logic. I wonder why.

Pfeffer has more to say, but not a word of it is factual – it’s a low-rent right-wing conspiracy theory about how all socialists secretly hate Jews because they’re, well, white. Pfeffer can’t for the life of him imagine any other reason why some politicians might object to mass murder, apartheid or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians – he calls this a “Marxist class-warfare perspective” and the product of “revised history” – but he does get good and sore over the fact that Labour MP John Mann, who had the “decency” (Pfeffer’s word) to smear Livingstone on television as a “Hitler apologist,” actually got a mild reprimand for the slander. Frankly, people with moral priorities like those give me the creeps.

But again, nobody has to take my word for any of this. The facts – which people like Pfeffer studiously ignore – speak for themselves. There is no anti-Semitism scandal in the U.K. A poll conducted by the highly respected Pew Research Center just last year found that only 7% of respondents in that country held an “unfavorable view” of Jews, as compared with 19% – nearly three times as many – who expressed such views about Muslims. And as for Labour, the hysterical rush to suspend Shah and Livingstone on the flimsiest of charges (not to mention Shah’s groveling apologies for some innocuous statements made long before she even ran for office) hardly bespeaks an anti-Jewish bias.

What’s more, for all Pfeffer’s posturing, neither Zionism’s past nor Israel’s present is above critical scrutiny. The Zionist movement, though certainly not allied with Nazism, did agree with Hitler on one important point: namely, that Jews are a nation – not a religious group – and consequently do not really belong in any European country. That’s why much of established British Jewry spoke out sharply against the Balfour Declaration in 1917: they recognized it as a blow to the hopes of British Jews who wanted equal rights in their own country. For Zionists, as for Nazis, such hopes were dangerous.

That’s a matter of history, but Israel’s crimes – including the wanton killing of civilians in Gaza less than two years ago – are urgent contemporary realities. The witch hunt for Labour Party “anti-Semites” is really a crude attempt to silence the critics of those crimes. And let’s not delude ourselves: the targets of that campaign understand this perfectly well.

That’s the ultimate irony about the “anti-Semitism” canard. The witch hunt isn’t uncovering any anti-Semitism. But it may go a long way toward creating it. As the redoubtable scholar Norman Finkelstein recently said, the attacks on left-Labour politicians, supported at every step by Israeli hasbara, are “fanning the embers of hate and creating new discord between Jews and Muslims by going after Naz Shah… [S]he’s being crucified, her career wrecked, her life ruined, her future in tatters, branded an ‘anti-Semite’ and a closet Nazi, and inflicted with these rituals of self-abasement. It’s not hard to imagine what her Muslim constituents must think now about Jews.”

May 6, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Stoking More Conflict With Gaza

By Stephen Lendman | May 5, 2016

Three Israeli wars of aggression on illegally besieged Gaza since December 2008 perhaps aren’t enough for Israel’s killing machine.

Repeated inter-war ground, air and sea attacks occur regularly. Is Israel preparing the ground for another major assault – blaming Gazan victims like it always does for its high crimes against peace?

On Wednesday, Israeli tanks shelled two Hamas watchtowers provocatively. Senior Hamas official Musheer al-Masri called the attacks “dangerous developments and an obvious breach of the ceasefire in Gaza.”

“The Israeli occupation should avoid testing the Palestinian resistance. The enemy should realize that the toll would be in proportion to the Israeli crimes.”

“The Israeli escalation is a new development, and the Palestinian resistance is (deciding) how to react.”

Hamas’ armed wing al-Qassam Brigades responded with mortar fire on an Israeli bulldozer. An Interior Ministry source reported no casualties, just damage.

Islamic Jihad spokesman, Daud Shihab, said “Israel has not ceased its hostilities against the Palestinian people since the ceasefire was agreed on in 2014.”

“There are continued onslaughts and infiltrations in both Gaza and the West Bank and in other locations in Palestine.”

Gaza remains illegally blockaded since June 2007 – for political, not security reasons. According to an April UN report, about 75,000 Palestinians remain displaced from Israel’s summer 2014 naked aggression.

Affected families are forced to “liv(e) in store rooms, unfinished units, substandard apartments in relatives’ or neighbors’ buildings” or wherever else they can find shelter.

Some live in damaged homes, others in prefabricated shelters. War and displacement affected women and children hardest.

Over 30% of displaced females “liv(e) in shelter conditions… lacking safety, dignity and privacy, including tents, makeshift shelters, destroyed houses or the open air.”

Nearly all affected families lack resources and construction supplies to rebuild. Most funds pledged for reconstruction weren’t delivered.

Israel blocks or greatly restricts building supplies entering the Strip on the phony pretext of being useful to Hamas or other resistance groups.

The UN warned “(a)t the present rate, it will take years to address the massive reconstruction and repair needs, adding to the general frustration of the population following years of movement restrictions, rising unemployment and poverty.”

Gazans suffer hugely under open-air prison conditions. Israel attacks the Strip at its discretion.

Are things heading for another war? Does Israel want remaining parts of Gaza turned to rubble – thousands more of its residents slaughtered or injured?

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

May 5, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment