The White House has no “reprimand plans” in the works to punish Israel if its army launches a ground invasion into the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where 1.4 million Palestinians are taking shelter after forcible displacement.
“Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences,” POLITICO reports, citing three US officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
Measuring about 64 square kilometers in size, Rafah is severely overcrowded, with hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled there after the Israeli army designated the city a “safe zone” in its ongoing genocide campaign.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to stage a land assault on Rafah, as he announced over the past several days, where he claims the “last four battalions” of Hamas’ armed wing are entrenched.
“We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave,” Netanyahu said in an interview with US outlet ABC News on Sunday. The premier, however, failed to specify where such a large number of displaced civilians could evacuate, stating only that Tel Aviv is “working out a detailed plan.” He alleged that “there are plenty of areas” north of Rafah despite the Israeli army having flattened most buildings and infrastructure in that region.
US President Joe Biden reportedly told Netanyahu on Sunday that an attack on Rafah should not be launched “without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there,” yet he did not oppose the operation.
Hours later, bombs rained down on Rafah, killing over 100 civilians.
Over recent weeks, western media has been awash with reports that Biden is growing “frustrated” with Netanyahu, even using “disparaging terms” to refer to the Israeli premier and holding discussions about the “day after” Netanyahu.
Nevertheless, public statements by White House officials make it abundantly clear there will be no change in approach to US–Israel relations.
Newly-minted US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told reporters on Monday that the White House will “continue to support Israel … And we’re going to continue to make sure they have the tools and the capabilities” to continue military operations.
Asked on Wednesday what the US response would be to a ground invasion of Rafah without concern for civilian safety, Kirby refused to respond, saying, “I’m not going to get into a hypothetical game.” The senior US official has also come under fire for saying the Israeli military is doing a “better job at protecting civilians in Gaza” than their US counterparts would.
Furthermore, as international calls grow for Washington to cut arms deliveries to Israel, earlier this month, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, made it clear Washington has no plans to do such a thing.
“In a word, no – we are not contemplating that,” Leaf told reporters during a digital press briefing when asked if the White House is contemplating a reduction in the pace of arms deliveries to Israel.
In addition to fueling the mass murder of nearly 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the US has also provided political cover for Israel. Most recently, it threatened to review its ties with South Africa after Pretoria took Tel Aviv to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges of genocide.
Legal challenges regarding the Israel-Palestine War in Gaza are starting to fill lawyers’ briefcases and courtroom proceedings. South Africa got matters underway with its December application before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in its campaign against the Palestinians. While determining whether genocide has taken place, the ICJ issued an interim order warning Israel to prevent genocidal acts, preserve evidence relevant to the prosecution of any such acts, and ease the crushing restrictions on humanitarian aid.
In the United States, a valiant effort was made in the US District Court for the Northern District of California to restrain the Biden administration from aiding Israel’s war efforts. The application, filed by the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, argued that President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin had made genocidal conditions possible “because of unconditional support given [to Israel] by the named official-capacity defendants in this case.”
The troubled judge, while citing the convention that foreign policy could not be the subject of a court’s jurisdiction, nonetheless implored Biden and his officials to observe the obligations of the UN Genocide Convention. As, “The undisputed evidence before this Court comports with the finding of the ICJ and indicates that the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law,” declared Justice Jeffrey S. White.
A Dutch appeals court in The Hague has further added its name to this growing list of legal interventions. In siding with the human rights groups making the application, including Oxfam Novib, Judge Bas Boele had no qualms about questioning government policy towards Israel and the shipping of parts vital for its F-35 fighter jets. While the Netherlands does not assemble or produce the F-35, it hosts at least one storage facility at Woensdrecht, where US-made components are stored in advance of onward shipping to various countries.
Despite the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which commenced after the Hamas cross-border incursion on 7 October, the Dutch government had not discontinued deliveries of such parts under a permit granted in 2016. This was despite the monumentally lethal nature of a war that has killed at least 28,100 Palestinians — most of them children and women — and the ICJ decision.
The lower court had, in a similar vein to its US counterparts, adopted the position that decisions regarding export permits of weapon components tended to be of a political and policy nature, warranting wide executive latitude. The judge duly held that the Minister of Foreign Trade and Cooperation had weighed up the relevant interests in the case in deciding to continue with the exports.
Such an artificial distinction – one which finds that political acts that may lead to complicity in genocide are protected from, if not above, legal challenge – was not persuasive enough for the higher court. “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law,” the appeals court found. “Israel does not take sufficient account of the consequences for the civilian population when conducting its attacks.” Indeed, such attacks had “resulted in a disproportionate number of civilian casualties [in Gaza].”
It followed that, “The Netherlands is obliged to prohibit the export of military goods if there is a clear risk of serious violations of international humanitarian law.” The export and transit of all F-35 parts with Israel as their final destination would cease within seven days of the court’s decision.
In responding to the ruling, Oxfam Novib Executive Director Michiel Servaes called it “an important step to force the Dutch government to adhere to international law, which the Netherlands has strongly advocated for in the past. Israel has just launched an attack against the city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population are sheltering; the Netherlands must take immediate steps.”
Immediate steps have duly been taken, but not along the lines advocated by Oxfam.
The Dutch government is appealing to the country’s Supreme Court to return to the status quo. It was always likely to happen and was timed to coincide with the 12 February visit by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. “In the government’s view,” explained the official statement, “the distribution of American F-35 parts is not unlawful. The government believes it is up to the State to determine its foreign policy.”
The statement goes on to reveal the sheer scope of the F-35 supply programme and its relevance to the Dutch defence industry. Whatever the humanitarian considerations about the devastation caused by Israel’s F-35 fighters, no participant wants to miss out. “The government will do everything it can to convince allies and partners that the Netherlands remains a reliable partner in the F-35 project and in European and international defence cooperation.”
Being part of the programme is also, apparently, vital to the country’s own security, and that of Israel’s, “in particular with regard to threats emanating from the region, for instance from Iran, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.”
The Palestinian civilians hardly figured in these considerations, although Gaza warranted the briefest of mentions. “The Netherlands continues to call for an immediate temporary humanitarian ceasefire, and for as much humanitarian aid as possible to be allowed to reach the suffering people of Gaza. The situation is extremely serious. It is clear that international humanitarian law applies in full and Israel, too, must abide by it.”
As, indeed, Israel implausibly claims to be doing, even as the bombs continue to be dropped, the people continue to starve and the graves continue to be filled.
Twice already the warning of the obvious has been posted in the money markets — Israel cannot survive a long war with the Arabs and Iran.
In this long war, the gods do not favour the Chosen People, it was reported on October 27, three weeks after the Hamas offensive began. The decline in Israel’s export earnings from tourism and diamonds; the loss of imported supplies for manufacturing and consumption from the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea; and increasing risk to both imports and exports at the Mediterranean ports within range of Hamas and Hezbollah strikes were identified at that time.
The international ratings agencies, Moody’s, Fitch and Standard and Poors, postponed announcing the obvious for as long as they could.
In attrition war, on the economic front just like the Gaza and other fire fronts, the Axis of Resistance wins by maintaining its offensive capacities and operations for longer than the US and US-backed Israeli forces can defend. Like troops, tanks, and artillery pieces, the operational goal is to grind the enemy slowly but surely into retreat, then capitulation. Last week, Moody’s had already decided in-house to downgrade Israel; for several days senior management fended off a ferocious attack from Israeli officials and their supporters in the US trying to compel postponement of the downgrade and the analytical report substantiating it.
On February 6, in a review of the shekel, bond, credit default swaps (CDS), budget deficit, and other indicators, the conclusion was there could be no stopping the money markets from moving against Israel. Negative ratings from the agencies raise the cost of servicing Israel’s state and corporate bonds, and put pressure on the state budget. A ratings downgrade is a signal to the markets to go negative against the issuer – this usually comes after the smart money has changed its mind and direction. In Israel’s case, however, there has been an exceptional delay between negative outlook and downgrade. The last Fitch report on Israel was dated October 17; Moody’s followed on October 19; Standard & Poors (S&P) on October 24.
That Israeli and US tactics had forced postponement of new reports from the troika was obvious. A fresh warning was published on this website: as real estate and other tax collections collapse, Israel will have to make a large cash call on the US. This is going to come in the near future, just as the government in Kiev has been forced into calling on Congress as the Ukraine war is being lost. The longer both wars are protracted, the more obviously the loss of confidence expresses itself in Washington.
Moody’s has now caught up. According to the Israeli press, this is the first credit and currency downgrade in their country’s history.
In a report dated last Friday but not issued until Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, the agency officially reduced Israel’s rating from A1 to A2, and added pointers of further downgrading to come. The Anglo-American press immediately reacted against Moody’s. “Israel hits back”, the Financial Timesheadlined. The newspaper added: “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, in a rare statement over the Jewish Sabbath, said: ‘The rating downgrade is not connected to the economy, it is entirely due to the fact that we are in a war. The rating will go back up the moment we win the war — and we will win the war.’” In the Associated Press report, “Israel’s finance minister blasts Moody’s downgrade”. Rupert Murdoch’s platform Fox claimed: “Israel has a strong, open economy despite Moody’s downgrade”. “Israel’s creditworthiness remains high,” according to the New York Times, “but the rating agency noted that the outlook for the country was negative… A rating of A2 is still a high rating.”
The press release version of Moody’s report is republished verbatim so that its meaning can be understood without the propaganda.
Three points have been missed in the Anglo-American counterattack and Israeli government’s bluster. The first is the warning that Israel will soon have to request enormous cash backing from the US, and if there is any sign of weakening on that in Washington, the collapse of the Israeli economy and its capacity to continue its war is inevitable. The Moody’s report camouflaged the point this way: “The related issuances benefit from an irrevocable, on-demand guarantee provided by the Government of the United States of America (Aaa negative) with the government acting through USAID. The notes benefit explicitly from ‘the full faith and credit of the US’ and as per prospectus, USAID is obligated to pay within three business days if the guarantee is called upon.”
The second point strikes at announcements from Israel Defence Forces (IDF) generals and Netanyahu of their plan to expand their operations on the northern front – the Litani River ultimatum they called it in December. According to Moody’s report, “downside risks remain at the A2 rating level. In particular, the risk of an escalation involving Hezbollah in the North of Israel remains, which would have a potentially much more negative impact on the economy than currently assumed under Moody’s baseline scenario. Government finances would also be under more intense pressure in such a scenario.”
The third point is the most explosive. After cutting Israel’s rating to A2, Moody’s warned that further and deeper downgrades may follow, but that there is presently no way the ratings agency can predict what will happen next. “The ongoing military conflict with Hamas, its aftermath and wider consequences materially raise political risk for Israel as well as weaken its executive and legislative institutions and its fiscal strength, for the foreseeable future.”
In flagging those last four words – “for the foreseeable future” — Moody’s has told the markets that the strategic initiative in this war has now passed to the Axis of Resistance. Of course, the Arabs and Iranians already know. … Full article
This week President Joe Biden was again talking about his ideas of how the Israel government should exercise more restraint in its war in Gaza. But, he remains all talk and no action on this count.
It is tedious to repeatedly hear the man who is, in the absence of congressional action to provide special assistance to Israel for its war, unilaterally providing the key aid including weapons and intelligence for prosecuting Israel’s war continue to insist he supports restraint while the Israel government keeps pursuing relentless devastation.
Biden, in a Monday statement he made at the White House after meeting with Jordan King Abdullah, said the following regarding impending Israel military action:
As I said yesterday, our military operation in Rafah — their — the major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan — a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than one million people sheltering there. Many people there have been displaced — displaced multiple times, fleeing the violence to the north, and now they’re packed into Rafah — exposed and vulnerable. They need to be protected.
This schtick is way past its expiration date. The Israel war, now in its fifth month, continues to rack up destruction of life, health, and the physical manifestations of civilization in Gaza at an astounding pace, with the brunt of the suffering imposed on civilians. Israel is taking the actions. But, the US is the key accomplice to the atrocities because of the aid it provides.
This is Biden’s war as much as it is Israel’s war.
Biden is notoriously prone to make blunders in his public presentations. The blunder he made in his comment in his Monday White House statement is different than many. Biden quickly corrected his mention of “our military operation in Rafah” to clarify that the military operation is Israel’s. The slipup here was not that Biden had stated something false. Instead, it was that Biden had stated the truth that he and his administration are trying their best to hide.
BBC News Arabic evacuated its press crew from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah land crossing, after the crew covered the ongoing war there for over four months.
The Egyptian authorities facilitated the crossing of the nine-member press crew through the Rafah Crossing after their families left the Strip through the crossing weeks ago.
The Rafah crossing is the gateway that connects Gaza to the world and is used for the entry of humanitarian and relief aid and the exit of individuals wounded in Israel’s genocidal war for treatment in Egypt and other countries.
On Sunday, flouting the provisional ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel launched an air campaign on Rafah, killing more than 65 Palestinians. The city had been declared a “safe zone” by occupation forces and over a million Palestinians had taken shelter there after being forced out of their homes in the northern areas of the Strip since 7 October.
The Israeli offensive has left 85 per cent of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
The UN, Egypt, and several other countries, including the US, warned Israel against launching an attack on Rafah, as it could cause what they described as a “disaster” in the city crowded with more than half of the two million displaced civilians from across Gaza.
GAZA – The Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli targeting of the Al-Jazeera Arabic news crew for the fifth time, leading to the serious injury of the channel’s correspondent and cameraman in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza Strip.
The GMO said, in a statement on Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes targeted Al-Jazeera’s reporter Ismail Abu Omar and cameraman Ahmed Matar, stressing that “the Israeli occupation army has deliberately targeted the channel’s teams for the fifth time in a row in a complete crime in violation of the international law.”
Journalist Abu Omar has had his right leg and some fingers amputated, in addition to other various wounds. His colleague Matar sustained various injuries, as well.
The GMO pointed out that since October 7, the Israeli occupation army has killed 128 journalists, arrested 10, and injured many others, stressing that this indicates that journalists have become targets of the Israeli occupation army.
The GMO called on press unions, media agencies, and human rights groups to denounce this crime and to pressure Israel to stop targeting journalists and to halt its genocidal war against civilians.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Lebanon, said that the Israeli proposal in the context of the talks to release prisoners of war held in Gaza is a “withdrawal from the proposal that was formulated in Paris” and proves that Israel “is not serious about moving forward with the release of the captives.”
According to Hamdan, the Hamas delegation in Cairo discussed Israel’s responses to the proposal put forward in Paris. Hamdan added that Israel “is placing obstacles that make it impossible to reach an agreement.” Israel’s proposal, he explained, “does not guarantee freedom of movement, the return of refugees, or the withdrawal of its forces from the Gaza Strip and does not address the issue of opening the crossings to provide medical treatment to the wounded.”
“[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s behaviour and positions confirm that he is continuing the policy of evasion and procrastination, is not interested in reaching an agreement, and is trying to prolong the war and buy time for personal considerations related to his political future.”
He stressed that “the Hamas movement is committing to its position and was and is still keen to reach an agreement that achieves the cessation of the aggression against our people, the withdrawal of the occupation army from the Gaza Strip, relief for our people, the return of the people to their areas, reconstruction, lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and completing the prisoner exchange.”
“Netanyahu is continuing his policy of escaping reality and lying to his audience,” Hamdan said. “The truth that the whole world can see is that he is still stuck in the streets of Khan Yunis, haemorrhaging dead and wounded on a daily basis, and withdrawing destroyed vehicles.”
An Indian conglomerate has dispatched Hermes 900 killer drones to Israel as the UAVS are extensively used in the regime’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in the Gaza strip amid the genocidal war, a report says.
The sale of more of than 20 Hermes 900 medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) UAVs delivered by Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India Ltd to Israel was first reported on February 2 by Neelam Mathews for the defense-related website Shephard Media.
The Wire report said it has not yet been publicly acknowledged by either Tel Aviv or New Delhi.
In 2018, Israel’s Elbit Systems entered into a joint venture with Adani group with a 49% share and opened a $15-million facility in Hyderabad to manufacture UAVs for the first time outside of Israel.
The Wire said when it contacted Israel’s Elbit Systems a spokesperson responded that they could “confirm that Elbit Systems collaborates with Adani, which is a supplier to our UAS [Unmanned Aerial Systems] supply chain.”
Haaretz reported last February that the vice president of UAV systems in the Aerospace Division at Elbit Systems, Vered Haimovich, said the Hermes 900 has been Elbit System’s flagship drone, which has been operationally used by the Israeli Air Force since 2015. It has also taken part “in all rounds of conflict in recent years.”
Indian activists have criticized the Indian government for its double standards against Palestine, as on one hand, New Delhi backs the Palestinian cause while advocating for a free Palestinian state, but on the other, its actions suggest it supported Israel’s actions in Gaza.
After Israel unleashed a war on Gaza on October 7 following Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Strom into the occupied territories, India initially expressed unconditional solidarity with Israel.
New Delhi had even abstained on a resolution in the UN General Assembly calling for a humanitarian pause in October 2023. However, two months later, it voted in favor of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The role of an Indian conglomerate in supplying drones, which are extensively used by the IOF for attacks in densely populated urban areas in Gaza, came as the prime minister Narendra Modi government’s official position is seeking an immediate ceasefire.
Shir Hever, the coordinator responsible for enforcing the military embargo on behalf of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, expressed his disapproval of India’s current alliance with Israel, deeming it disgraceful considering India’s extensive past under colonial domination.
“This moment is a test of the international law system, and instead of siding with Israel’s genocide and its enabling of Western powers, India should take inspiration from South Africa’s global-south leadership and end its complicity with genocide,” Hever told Middle East Eye.
He also said that ever since the International Court of Justice said it’s “plausible” Israel committed genocide in Gaza, two Japanese firms ended their MoUs with Elbit, while, a Dutch high court banned the Netherlands from continuing its export of F-35 parts to Israel, “citing a clear risk of violations of international law.”
In another such instance, on Monday, the European Union foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell called on the US to cut arms supplies to Israel due to high civilian casualties in its war in Gaza.
Adani, a 60-year-old multi billionaire and one of the richest persons in the world, was accused in a report by a US investment research firm, Hindenburg’s Research LLC, of stock manipulation and accounting fraud last year, and is seen by many as someone very close to Modi and his government.
In 2005, Joan Didion published “The Year of Magical Thinking” that about grieving the loss of her husband, the unavoidable instant reduction of a rich marriage to aimless solitude.
Beyond the obvious arena of modern imperial foreign policy, magical thinking is a well-known psychological concept. It is “the belief that wishes can impose their own order on the material world.” It is driven by human goals of fulfillment “without consideration of the constraints of the external world.”
We’ve been reminded of this concept in many different ways over the past few weeks. The befuddled fumbling old man in the White House insulting reporters who ask him about his memory lapses, then demonstrating his disability several times later in the press conference.
He wishes to remain President, yet he is incapable of being President. He wants that particular fulfillment regardless of its fundamental impossibility.
We see the same in many modern political leaders, no doubt Canada’s Trudeau, who was upset that Putin, in a wide ranging interview last week, mentioned the Canadian Parliament’s celebration of World War II Ukrainian Nazi Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old surviving member of the Waffen SS Galicia Division. Zelensky had just spoken, and all present sincerely wished that killing Russians was great Western tradition, habitual and just. Instead we saw the impossibility of wishes making their own reality, their own order; the impossibility of changing fact to fantasy, and fantasy to fact.
Access to the most casual and shallow history of World War II should have revealed to any one of the hundreds of educated and cosmopolitan MPs, and the media covering the event, that those killing Russians in WWII were either part of Nazi Germany, or allied with Nazi Germany. It is modern Russian intolerance for Nazis that we find to be traditional, habitual and just. The propagandized West seeks a better world through magical thinking, not through the embrace of reality.
We see magical thinking in Kiev, but somehow I suspect Ukrainians have a far better understanding of reality than do Zelensky’s American and British advisors – who seem permanently afflicted with lies becoming truth if only we all wished for it hard enough. The best example of this is our puppet in Kiev who insists on no negotiations with Russia until the popular and extremely rational “history buff” President Putin, steps down to face the Ukrainian music for his war crimes.
Yet when Tucker Carlson asked Putin what it was all about – we found simply that the protection of Russia and Russian people are a cause for which Putin is willing to fight. It is a concept that shocks the Western empire circa 2024.
We also learned that years of western actions, like withdrawing from nuclear treaties and pursuing first strike capabilities, drove Russian development of hypersonic missiles and a whole range of capabilities to survive and defeat such extreme threats coming from an increasingly unpredictable West. Meanwhile, US and NATO naval capability is underwhelming, recruitment abysmal, technology plateaued and inappropriate for offense or defense, and funds are dwindling.
We learned that while politicians and academics continue to push for ever more massive sanctions against Russia – new markets materialized and Russia’s economy adapted and thrived, as the economy of the western allies shrank and struggled.
We learned that western cultural fetishes of magic energy replacing hydrocarbons, 72 genders, modern monetary theory and unlimited immigration without cultural integration have all been rejected – rationally and straightforwardly – by Russia. The former Communist empire has become a sanctuary for Orthodox Christianity, while the West bans and abandons Christian churches and principles in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Europe and in America. It sounds unbelievable, unpredictable, a rabbit from a hat and a lady cut in half all in one show – but it’s true.
A key advisor to Zelensky on US-UK-EU proxy war, and former UK PM Boris Johnson is an exemplar of magical thinking. He was outraged that Putin explained with evidence how the last 18 months of war in Ukraine could have been prevented, and ended peacefully, as peace talks in Turkey produced a draft treaty acceptable to both Ukrainian and Russian teams. This was abruptly canned after Boris rushed to Kiev, where he demanded the Ukrainians reject the nascent agreement. Boris, bobbing in the flotsam of magical thinking, is a liar, and yet, one marvels at the power of believing that your desires and wishes can create a new world order.
We see this in the US, in both its obsession with Julian Assange despite the utter irrationality of its pursuit of a man who exposed US lawbreaking and evil – something top politicians in the US should always be eager to correct in the name of American heroism and honor.
We see this in the continued fantasy of electoral honesty in the US, in the imperial two-tiered system of law, in the incomprehensible funding and moral support provided to Israel as it directly and systematically exterminates 2 million people, destroys their homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses, and takes their land. We see it in Israel, as it imagines what it is doing will save rather than destroy her. Magical thinking.
Joan Didion popularized the term, documenting her grief at the sudden end of a life, marriage, meaning, and purpose. Magical thinking may be part of a process by which people and institutions cope with the innate realization of irretrievable loss.
The US government, and its very federalism, is undergoing an imperial metamorphosis from rapacious caterpillar, to life in a rapidly decaying cocoon, to something entirely different and unrecognizable – life in the air, with little baggage, free, vulnerable and alive. It will own nothing and be happy. Dissolution and death of empire is a story told many times, a pattern of nature, and it cannot be stopped. Magical thinking is simultaneously necessary and futile, and Washington and many of the European capitols are deeply engaged in this phase. They are ending, ungracefully, ungratefully, undeniably.
But for the people, who live with feet on the ground, and eyes wide open, who bear the costs of the magical thinking of their governments, and the lies of their propagandists, and the waste of their wars, and the contamination of everything that was good – for us the only value is seeing the reality of things. Recognizing reality, acting upon it, rejecting even the most subtle suggestions of magical thinking and fantasy and imaginations of world orders – in this way imperial error can be stopped, and reversed.
Peace, transparency, prosperity, exchanges of goods, ideas, and many charming conversations with partners and friends around the planet – none of this is fantasy, and it doesn’t require magic. Let’s get on with it.
Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012, is a Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, and an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute.
Although unknown to almost all present-day Americans, Emperor Henry IV was one of the most powerful European monarchs of his day. Under his twenty year reign, the Holy Roman Empire of the High Middle Ages governed Germany, the Low Countries, much of Italy, and other important lands, with many considering him heir to the fabled Charlemagne.
With the arrogance that came from holding such enormous temporal power and commanding large armies, he challenged the authority of Pope Gregory VII, but the Pontiff quickly brought him low, excommunicating him from the Catholic Church and declaring that Henry’s powerful feudal vassal lords no longer owed him any allegiance. Faced with the very real prospect that he might lose his throne, the emperor traveled to Canossa in hopes of seeing the Holy Father and gaining his forgiveness, then waited three long days outside the castle walls despite the bitter cold, clad in an uncomfortable hair-shirt, and according to some accounts wearing no shoes in the frozen snow. The Pope finally allowed him to enter and granted him an audience, then accepted his capitulation and lifted the religious penalty that had been imposed. In the centuries since that famous incident, the phrase “going to Canossa” has meant the surrender of a proud, powerful figure who does penance and begs forgiveness, submitting to the forces that had humbled him.
Given this history, it’s hardly surprising that the phrase was widely circulated a couple of weeks ago when Elon Musk traveled to Auschwitz to offer his abject submission to Jewish power, donning a skullcap, promising to root out “antisemitism” on the platform he controlled, and even declaring that he regarded himself as “aspirationally Jewish.”
The two most powerful and influential figures in today’s world are surely Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But I think a reasonable case can be made that Elon Musk should be placed third on that global list.
Our current Western era is dominated by oligarchic wealth and Musk has ranked as the richest man in the world for much of the last few years. The technology industry carries enormous prestige and influence, and Musk is the owner of Tesla, the pioneering electric vehicle company, whose market value is greater than that of the world’s next five car companies combined. His very innovative SpaceX rocket company has become the central pillar of the West’s entire space program, crucial for American national security, while his equally innovative Starlink satellite company has proven itself absolutely vital to Ukraine in its NATO-backed war with Russia, inspiring imitators in China and other countries. More than a year ago, Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and took the company private, giving him a media empire far greater than that of any American television network and perhaps as powerful as most of them combined. Meanwhile his own 170 million Twitter Followers provide him a personal megaphone that would be envied by any American president or top Hollywood celebrity.
What other world figure could match Musk in such global power and influence? President Joseph Biden is elderly and doddering and widely despised, very much a Brezhnevian figure from the last days of the decaying USSR and obviously someone totally controlled by his nervous aides. Although former President Donald Trump is the all-but-certain 2024 Republican Presidential nominee and stands a better than even chance of recapturing the White House, he is facing 91 felony charges in court and is detested by nearly half the American population, including an overwhelming majority of our elites; his likely victory this November would be almost entirely due to Biden’s unpopularity. Indeed, given such glaring weakness at the top of the American political hierarchy, some shrewd observers have argued that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu probably commands greater influence in our own Congress than either Biden or Trump; but in his own country, Netanyahu’s support is at 15%, and he faces a sea of corruption charges, so he might easily end his life in a prison cell.
In our deeply-polarized society, nearly all our other politicians are admired by small devoted followings, but usually despised by many, many more, and I can’t think of any private citizen who can remotely match Musk’s wealth, technological prestige, and media reach.
Meanwhile, traditional spiritual authorities have been reduced to mere shadows of their predecessors. Some nine hundred years ago, Pope Gregory VII humbled a German emperor and even a generation or two ago, Pope John Paul II wielded great international authority, but these days our current Pope Francis only commands a tiny sliver of such influence, and no other religious leader of greater weight comes to mind. So perhaps by default, I think Musk is the most powerful figure in the Western world, and his willingness to humble himself before pro-Israel Jews at Auschwitz amidst the ongoing slaughter in Gaza provides a striking indication of the true balance of temporal and spiritual power in today’s Western world, while also demonstrating which group commands the latter.
Just a few months earlier, Musk had been riding high, having successfully dismantled Twitter’s large censorship department even as he granted an amnesty to most of the banned voices of the previous few years, notably including former President Donald Trump. Under his direction, secret documents were provided to Matt Taibbi and other investigative journalists that produced bombshell revelations of a nefarious government role in orchestrating Twitter censorship. Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter-based interview show had racked up enormous ratings, with his August Trump interview outdrawing the viewership of the official 2024 Republican Presidential debates shown on broadcast television. Musk seemed to be successfully resurrecting Twitter’s old motto that it represented “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
Most remarkably, he’d apparently seen off the challenge of the very formidable ADL, which for decades had terrified so many of the powerful. When that widely-feared censorship organization accused him of allowing “antisemitism” and “racism” to flourish on his platform and sought to intimidate his advertisers, Musk threatened to sue them for business interference, turning that weapon of “lawfare” against one of its most prolific wielders even as a #BanTheADL hashtag went viral on Twitter. The ADL had financial assets of $500 million and enormous media influence, but for the first time its leaders realized that they faced an opponent who greatly outmatched them in such resources, and fearing the risk of a multi-billion-dollar legal judgement, its leaders quickly settled, abandoning their attacks against Musk and Twitter.
However, the sudden, unexpected Hamas attacks of October 7th changed everything. Well over a thousand Israelis died, and the anger and agitation of Jewish activists in America reached an unprecedented fever-pitch. Israel soon began a merciless bombardment of Gaza in retaliation, eventually killing tens of thousands of helpless civilians, and those horrific scenes of death and devastation reached the entire world on social media, bypassing the traditional pro-Israel gatekeepers who controlled Western broadcast television and newspapers. As a result, polls shockingly revealed that younger Americans—whose information on world events came from the Internet—were quite evenly divided between Israel and Hamas or even actually favored the latter. So Jewish and pro-Israel organizations began an all-out mobilization to suppress such “antisemitic” material.
Cities and college campuses across the Western world saw large demonstrations against Israel’s televised slaughter of women and children, with Muslim immigrants naturally becoming an important element of these, causing Jewish activists to fiercely denounce those groups as “antisemitic.” For generations, Jews had overwhelmingly supported non-European immigrants, while widely praising and promoting all attacks by non-whites against white Gentile society. Most recently they had been the primary backers of the massive 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, triggered when a black lifelong career criminal died of a drug overdose while in police custody. But with “Jewish privilege” and “Israeli privilege” now suddenly coming under such hostile criticism, Jewish groups turned on a dime and demanded total censorship and suppression. Anti-immigrant right-wingers noted this rank hypocrisy in their social media posts, and in mid-November one such Tweet caught Musk’s eye, prompting him to endorse it: “You have said the actual truth” he wrote.
Those simple six words probably took Musk merely seconds to type but they may have shifted the trajectory of American history. Almost immediately, waves of Jewish and pro-Israel activists swarmed to denounce him, and many leading corporations pulled their advertising from Twitter, threatening its financial viability. Faced with such an enormous backlash, Musk traveled abroad to meet with Israel’s president, pledging to combat “antisemitism.” On that same visit, he also posed for a photo-op with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, solemnly eyeing an empty crib, which presumably symbolized the forty Israeli babies allegedly beheaded by Hamas, one of the many outrageous atrocity-hoaxes promoted by Israel and its dishonest propagandists.
In the years following Donald Trump’s upset 2016 victory, right-wingers had been heavily censored on many social media platforms, while progressives were free to run wild, but now the latter began suffering the same fate for criticizing Israel’s massacres. Since the early years of the twentieth century, Israel’s ruling Likud party and its Irgun predecessor had always used the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” promising a Greater Israel under total Jewish control and domination. But over the last couple of decades, anti-Zionist progressives had embraced those same words, advocating a unified secular democratic state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians. Musk now declared that latter phrase “genocidal” and warned that it would trigger an immediate ban from Twitter, even as Netanyahu continued publicly using it in its original Jewish-supremacist meaning.
A few weeks later, Musk traveled to Auschwitz, accompanied by his companion and guide, a young pro-Israel pundit named Ben Shapiro, whose own right-wing media empire had been lavishly funded by Zionist donors. This widely-covered quasi-religious pilgrimage seemingly marked Musk’s complete capitulation to the awesome power of Organized Jewry.
Musk was hardly the only prominent figure to bow down before the Jewish forces of Zionism, now fully mobilized by the Hamas attack and the ensuing Israel/Gaza conflict. When Musk bought Twitter in late 2022 and first began to draw fire from the ADL, another prominent public figure was also facing that organization’s wrath. As I wrote at the time:
Perhaps by coincidence, a somewhat similar controversy had recently played out in the case of a different high-profile individual, the billionaire black rapper and fashion designer Kanye West. Although I’d previously had only the vaguest impression of him, he was apparently a towering international celebrity, as well as being among the wealthiest black Americans who had ever lived, while having tens of millions of followers on Twitter and other networks.
Apparently for some reason or other, he became angry and agitated over what he saw as the overwhelming Jewish influence in the worlds of business and media, and began loudly saying so in various venues and on his social networks. As might be expected, the media reaction was swift and devastating, portraying him as a moral leper, and thereby forcing most of his business partners to cut their ties, often at enormous financial cost. Apparently 25% of the profits of footware giant Adidas came from West’s line of sneakers, but they abandoned the longtime deal at a total cost of almost $650 million when their media masters proclaimed it as a fundamental issue of morality. At the other end of the spectrum, Goodwill Industries announced that they would no longer offer their impoverished clientele the donated cast-offs associated with such a vile anti-Semite. The rapper’s longtime bank even closed his accounts and would no longer provide a haven for his money.
The immediate result of all these coordinated blows was that the bulk of West’s large fortune suddenly evaporated, while his (Jewish) personal trainer publicly declared that if he continued his bad behavior the erstwhile billionaire might end up spending the rest of his life heavily drugged and imprisoned in a mental institution. Almost none of his fellow black celebrities rallied to his side, or if they did, I didn’t hear about it. The story soon dropped from the media, perhaps permanently taking with it the once-iconic global black celebrity.
While Musk overcame his ADL challengers, West had quickly abandoned the fight and disappeared from public attention. But the black rapper now had a new album ready for release, so he and his advisors apparently decided that only the most abject sort of public surrender to Jewish power could safeguard his music sales. Even as Israel was clearly committing the greatest televised massacre of defenseless women and children in the history of the world, outraging much of his youthful rap following, West declared his boundless love and admiration for Jews and the Jewish State, recording a 40-minute video apologizing for his past antisemitic statements and Tweeting out a shorter, similar message written in Hebrew.
Back in late 2022 I’d expressed considerable skepticism that either Musk or West would succeed in their separate challenges to Jewish power, and readers can judge for themselves the extent to which my predictions proved correct.
Although Musk has now bent his knee to the broader Zionist coalition, I’ll have to admit that he actually did surprising well against his initial ADL tormentors, even without utilizing the secret history of that nefarious organization that I’d offered him during his battle.
The capitulations of Musk and West hardly surprised me. But far more noteworthy has been the case of independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose total surrender to Zionism over the last several months has deeply disappointed so many of his erstwhile admirers, certainly including myself.
Although I’d only been very vaguely aware of Kennedy until 2021 and remained deeply skeptical of much of his notorious anti-vaxxing advocacy, I’d greatly admired his vocal positions on many other important issues, especially including our disastrous Ukraine proxy-war against Russia and therefore expected to give him my vote in November.
I was particularly impressed by his remarkable courage on certain historical matters of a personal nature. Several years ago, he had publicly declared that Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged assassin of his father, was innocent of the crime and should be released after more than a half-century in prison, and he further proclaimed that his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, had also died at the hands of a conspiracy. I noted that although the mainstream media ferociously vilified him on numerous other grounds, they tended to carefully avoid these sorts of “great unmentionables” because the facts were so strongly on Kennedy’s side.
And once anyone recognized that Sirhan had not fired the fatal shot, I argued that important elements of the conspiracy would have immediately suggested the true culprits behind the crime:
David Talbot’s influential 2007 book Brothers revealed that Robert F. Kennedy had been convinced almost from the first that his brother had been struck down in a conspiracy, but he held his tongue, telling his circle of friends that he stood little chance of tracking down and punishing the guilty parties until he himself reached the White House. By June 1968, he seemed on the threshold of achieving that goal, but was felled by an assassin’s bullet just moments after winning the crucial California presidential primary. The logical assumption is that his death was engineered by the same elements as that of his elder brother, who were now acting to protect themselves from the consequences of their earlier crime.
A young Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan had fired a pistol at the scene and was quickly arrested and convicted for the murder. But Talbot emphasizes that the coroner’s report revealed that the fatal bullet came from a completely different direction, while the acoustical record proves that far more shots were fired than the capacity of the alleged killer’s gun. Such hard evidence demonstrates a conspiracy.
Sirhan himself seemed dazed and confused, later claiming to have no memory of events, and Talbot mentions that various assassination researchers have long argued that he was merely a convenient patsy in the plot, perhaps acting under some form of hypnosis or conditioning. Nearly all these writers are usually reluctant to note that the selection of a Palestinian as scapegoat in the killing points in a certain obvious direction, but Bergman’s recent book also includes a major new revelation. At exactly the same moment that Sirhan was being wrestled to the floor of the Ambassador Hotel ballroom in Los Angeles, another young Palestinian was undergoing intensive rounds of hypnotic conditioning at the hands of Mossad in Israel, being programmed to assassinate PLO leader Yasir Arafat; and although that effort ultimately failed, such a coincidence seems to stretch the bounds of plausibility.
Kennedy seemed like an intelligent, thoughtful individual, and if he had concluded years ago that Sirhan was innocent, I assumed that the remainder of this chain of reasoning would have fallen into place, producing a high-profile Presidential candidate willing to stand up for American interests against those of Israel. But instead Kennedy recently moved in exactly the opposite direction, becoming the most egregiously pro-Zionist candidate in the race and heavily relying upon his ultra-Zionist advisors Morton Klein and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. In a recent public interview, he shockingly declared that the Palestinians were “the most pampered people in the world” even as hundreds of thousands of them were currently facing death by starvation at Israel’s hands.
“Palestinian people are the most pampered in the world” — RFK Jr.
Kennedy’s apparent willingness to betray his principles—and the memories of his martyred father and uncle—was hugely disheartening to me. Moreover, with both Biden and Trump known as fervent supporters of Israel, a contrary position emphasizing a ceasefire and sympathy towards the suffering Palestinians might have provided a political home for the substantial minority of voters and activists taking that position, certainly attracting huge support among college students and other youthful Americans. But it was not to be. Imagine if Sen. Robert F. Kennedy had run in 1968 as the fiercest Vietnam War hawk in the race.
Unfortunately, the total political submission of Musk, West, and Kennedy to the massed power of Jews and Zionism is hardly a new development. Indeed, they constitute merely the latest examples in a long series of such Gentile defeats and surrenders, as I had noted at the beginning of my original 2018 article on the ADL:
Mel Gibson had long been one of the most popular stars in Hollywood and his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ became among the most profitable in world history, yet the ADL and its allies destroyed his career, and he eventually donated millions of dollars to Jewish groups in desperate hopes of regaining some of his public standing. When the ADL criticized a cartoon that had appeared in one of his newspapers, media titan Rupert Murdoch provided his personal apology to that organization, and the editors of The Economistquickly retracted a different cartoon once it came under ADL fire. Billionaire Tom Perkins, a famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was forced to issue a heartfelt apology after coming under ADL criticism for his choice of words in a Wall Street Journal column. These were all proud, powerful individuals, and they must have deeply resented being forced to seek such abject public forgiveness, but they did so nonetheless. The total list of ADL supplicants over the years is a very long one.
Musk certainly stands as the greatest of these unfortunate recent examples, but almost exactly one hundred years before his submission, a rather similar historical case occurred involving another world-famous industrialist tycoon who also sought to challenge Jewish power but ultimately apologized and abandoned the fight.
Although the name of Henry Ford remains well-known to most Americans, I doubt that more than a small fraction are fully aware of the immense global stature he had enjoyed during the early decades of the twentieth century. The assembly-line mass production techniques he pioneered at his Ford Motor Company were responsible for transforming the automobile from a mere plaything of the rich into a reasonably-priced product owned by most Americans, so his achievements completely reshaped our society and the rest of the world as a consequence. His business success established him as one of the wealthiest men in the world—one of his later biographies was entitled The Last Billionaire—but by doubling the basic wages of his ordinary workers, he also created the American middle class and became a worldwide legend.
According to some accounts, an ailing President Woodrow Wilson sought to enlist the apolitical Ford as his Democratic successor in the White House. By the early 1920s Adolf Hitler ranked Ford as one of his greatest personal heroes, but Vladimir Lenin felt much the same way, and the Bolsheviks called their Soviet industrial policy “Fordizm.” In Aldous Huxley’s famous 1931 novel Brave New World, “Fordism” had become the world’s secular religion, with the population celebrating “Ford Day,” swearing oaths “By Ford!” and displaying Christian crosses truncated into a symbol representing the Ford Model T.
But in the aftermath of the First World War, Ford became very concerned about the unprecedented growth of Jewish power in America and how the entire mainstream media was increasingly intimidated from reporting the associated crimes and abuses. He had bought his local newspaper The Dearborn Independent in 1918 and within a couple of years transformed it into a national publication with enormous circulation, seeking to rectify this situation, as I discussed in a 2018 article:
As for The Dearborn Independent, Ford had apparently launched his newspaper on a national basis not long after the end of the war, intending to focus on controversial topics, especially those related to Jewish misbehavior, whose discussion he believed was being ignored or suppressed by nearly all mainstream media outlets. I had been aware that he had long been one of the wealthiest and most highly-regarded individuals in America, but I was still astonished to discover that his weekly newspaper, previously almost unknown to me, had reached a total national circulation of 900,000 by 1925, ranking it as the second largest in the country and by far the biggest with a national distribution. I found no easy means of examining the contents of a typical issue, but apparently the anti-Jewish articles of the first couple of years had been collected and published as short books, together constituting the four volumes of The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, a notoriously anti-Semitic work occasionally mentioned in my history textbooks. Eventually my curiosity got the best of me, so I clicked a few buttons on Amazon.com, bought the set, and wondered what I would discover.
Based on all my pre-suppositions, I expected to read some foaming-at-the-mouth screed, and doubted I would be able to get past the first dozen pages before losing interest and consigning the volumes to gather dust on my shelves. But what I actually encountered was something entirely different.
Over the last couple of decades, the enormous growth in the power of Jewish and pro-Israel groups in America has occasionally led writers to cautiously raise certain facts regarding the untoward influence of those organizations and activists, while always carefully emphasizing that the vast majority of ordinary Jews do not benefit from these policies and actually might be harmed by them, even leaving aside the possible risk of eventually provoking an anti-Jewish backlash. To my considerable surprise, I found that the material in Ford’s 300,000 word series seemed to follow this exact same pattern and tone.
Although I somehow managed to plow through all four volumes of The International Jew, the unrelenting drum-beat of Jewish intrigue and misbehavior became somewhat soporific after a while, especially since so many of the examples provided may have loomed quite large in 1920 or 1921 but were almost totally forgotten today. Most of the content was a collection of rather monotonous complaints regarding Jewish malfeasance, scandals, or clannishness, the sort of mundane matters which might have normally appeared in the pages of an ordinary newspaper or magazine, let alone one of the muckraking type.
However, I cannot fault the publication for having such a narrow focus. A consistent theme was that because of the intimidating fear of Jewish activists and influence, virtually all of America’s regular media outlets avoided discussion of any of these important matters, and since this new publication was intended to fill that void, it necessarily provided coverage overwhelmingly skewed toward that particular subject. The articles were also aimed at gradually expanding the window of public debate and eventually shaming other periodicals into discussing Jewish misbehavior. When leading magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Century Magazine began running such articles, this result was hailed as a major success.
Another important goal was to make ordinary Jews more aware of the very problematical behavior of many of their community leaders. Occasionally, the publication received a letter of praise from a self-proclaimed “proud American Jew” commending the series and sometimes including a check to purchase subscriptions for other members of his community, and this achievement might become the subject of an extended discussion.
And although the details of these individual stories differed considerably from those of today, the pattern of behavior being criticized seemed remarkably similar. Change a few facts, adjust the society for a century of progress, and many of the stories might be exactly the same ones that well-meaning people concerned about the future of our country are quietly discussing today. Most remarkably, there were even a couple of columns about the troubled relationship between the earliest Zionist settlers in Palestine and the surrounding native Palestinians, and deep complaints that under Jewish pressure the media often totally misreported or hid some of the outrages suffered by the latter group.
As might be expected, Jewish organizations were ferociously hostile to Ford’s media project and they launched a fierce lobbying campaign to force him to cease his critical coverage, employing consumer boycotts, widespread vilification, and damaging lawsuits. Meanwhile, few if any prominent Americans publicly joined Ford’s efforts so several years of such relentless Jewish attacks eventually proved successful. By 1924, Ford had ended his series of articles on Jewish activities and the billionaire industrialist finally shuttered his newspaper in 1927, while also sending an apologetic public letter to the president of the ADL recanting his “antisemitic” views. Just like today’s Elon Musk, America’s greatest industrialist of the early twentieth century took his own painful trip to Canossa. Although heavily slanted against Ford, the basic facts of this story and Ford’s capitulation are provided in a lengthy section of his Wikipedia article.
By the early 1930s, Christianity had been the dominant religion of the West for nearly two thousand years and seemed so strongly rooted in American society as to be unassailable. Therefore, Huxley’s futuristic novel suggesting that it would be replaced by the secular religion of Fordism must surely have seemed an absurd possibility at the time, perhaps even constituting deliberate satire. But over the last three generations, a somewhat similar religious replacement has indeed occurred, though the doctrine elevated would surely have shocked and dismayed both Huxley and Ford.
Under the inexorable ideological pressure of heavily-Jewish Hollywood and our mainstream media organs, the traditional Christianity of the West has been steadily deconstructed and pushed aside, often replaced by the quasi-religion of Holocaustianity, which features an entirely different set of martyrs, sacred texts, and holy places. The central shrine of Holocaustianity is Auschwitz, a former Nazi concentration camp, so Musk demonstrated his complete submission to this reigning spiritual doctrine and its tenets by undertaking a pilgrimage to that hallowed ground.
In 2018, I discussed how this remarkable shift in the beliefs of the Western world, noting that even the top spiritual leaders of other global religions apparently recognized Holocaustianity as their own uber-faith, far more important in its central elements than their own.
According to Finkelstein, Hollywood produced some 180 Holocaust films just during the years 1989-2004. Even the very partial subset of Holocaust films listed on Wikipedia has grown enormously long, but fortunately the Movie Database has winnowed down the catalog by providing a list of the 50 Most Moving Holocaust Films.
Some 2% of Americans have a Jewish background, while perhaps 95% possess Christian roots, but the Wikipedia list of Christian films seems rather scanty and rudimentary by comparison. Very few of those films were ever widely released, and the selection is stretched to even include The Chronicles of Narnia, which contains no mention of Christianity whatsoever. One of the very few prominent exceptions on the list is Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ, which he was forced to personally self-fund. And despite the enormous financial success of that movie, one of the most highly profitable domestic releases of all time, the project rendered Gibson a hugely vilified pariah in the industry over which he had once reigned as its biggest star, especially after word got around that his own father was a Holocaust Denier.
In many respects, Hollywood and the broader entertainment media today provide the unifying spiritual basis of our deeply secular society, and the overwhelming predominance of Holocaust-themed films over Christian ones has obvious implications. Meanwhile, in our globalized world, the American entertainment-media complex totally dominates Europe and the rest of the West, so that the ideas generated here effectively shape the minds of many hundreds of millions of people living elsewhere, whether or not they fully recognize that fact.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI sought to heal the long-standing Vatican II rift within the Catholic Church and reconcile with the breakaway Society of St. Pius X faction. But this became a major media controversy when it was discovered that Bishop Richard Williamson, one of the leading members of that latter organization, had long been a Holocaust Denier and also believed that Jews should convert to Christianity. Although the many other differences in Catholic doctrinal faith were fully negotiable, apparently refusing to accept the reality of the Holocaust was not, and Williamson remained estranged from the Catholic Church. Soon afterward he was even prosecuted for heresy by the German government.
Just as the Popes of the Middle Ages deployed the sacred power of Christ and Christianity to humble even the most powerful of earthly monarchs and force them to submit, Jews and Zionists today use the power of the Holocaust and Holocaustianity in much the same way, with even the mightiest of Western figures such as Elon Musk helpless before it.
For generations, Hollywood and the media steadily nibbled away at the legitimacy of traditional Christianity, while academic scholars boldly questioned its truth and emphasized historical doubts. As a consequence, neither Musk nor any other prominent Westerner today trembles before Christian symbols nor bows down to the anointed representatives of that faith. But instead it is the Holocaust that has become inviolate, with the harshest social and economic sanctions visited upon those who question its elements or dispute its claims. Across much of the West, any such challenges are subject to severe legal penalties, including lengthy prison sentences, the present-day equivalent of once-common blasphemy laws. And that sweeping, transcendent doctrine has therefore become powerful enough to overawe Elon Musk or any other public figure. This situation has important real-world consequences.
Critics of the events now unfolding in the Middle East must recognize that the Jewish Holocaust of World War II stands as the central justification for the existence of the Jewish state and also as the universal excuse for any of its international crimes, including those currently being committed. Gaza and the Holocaust are so closely connected that they constitute two sides of the same coin.
Israel supporters have become a leading fascist force in Canada. They are pushing to restrict civil liberties, dismantle democratic organizations and increase policing.
Since I wrote about the phenomenon a month ago Zionist groups and journalists have deepened their ties to fascist groups and escalated their anti-democratic rhetoric in a bid to defend the genocide in Gaza. Israel lobby groups and commentators have repeatedly taken their cues from the former head of the thuggish and racist Jewish Defence League (JDL). They’ve repeatedly circulated long-time JDL head Meir Weinstein’s videos depicting anti-genocidal protesters as a threat and in a sign of this deepening alignment arch-Israeli nationalist reporter Joe Warmington recently quoted Weinstein in a story tarring protesters. In a Toronto Sun article spurred by the former JDL head’s X post headlined “Security threat against Trudeau all of Canada’s concern”, Warmington quotes Weinstein labelling Palestine solidarity protesters a “risk.”
As they deepen their ties to Khanist fascists, Zionist lobby groups have repeatedly called for marches to be banned, individuals to be fired and talks canceled. To suppress criticism of Canada’s contribution to Israel’s genocide Liberal MPs Anthony Housefather, Marco Mendicino and Ya’ara Saks have repeatedly taken up the call to suspend democratic rights. A month ago Saks posted, “As I stated last week, & will repeat again – protests within largely Jewish neighbourhoods like the ones in our riding of #YorkCentre is completely unacceptable. Targeting an overpass in an area that is known to be local Jewish community is a form of intimidation.”
In response to pressure from Saks, Weinstein, B’nai Brith, CIJA and others, the Toronto police barred protests on an overpass of Highway 401. They then arrested three people for asserting their right to assemble. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) condemned the police’s move and CCLA executive director Noa Mendelsohn Aviv pleaded in the Canadian Jewish News against the Zionists’ push to suppress civil liberties. (A B’nai Brith suit to expand the anti-protest zone was rejected.)
As part of this push to supress demonstrations, Israeli nationalist city councillor James Pasternak pushed Toronto representatives to develop a “policy and framework for the management and monitoring of rallies and protests.” In mid-January Pasternak declared, “It does not take much to see the [Palestinian] gatherings taking place downtown are not Charter-protected.”
In a similar bid to shut down basic democratic rights B’nai Brith called for suppressing the public’s rights to ask questions at city council meetings. Reportedly, on December 21 a handful of members of the public showed up at a meeting of the Agglomeration Council of Montreal in response to Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi telling me he would support Israel even if they killed 100,000 Palestinian children since “good needs to prevail over evil”. Apparently, they asked about Levi’s genocidal apologia and a Hampstead law to send money raised from fines for ripping down posters of hostages to Israel, which led B’nai Brith to file a complaint with the Quebec Municipal Commission (The Commission rejected it). When members of the public asked questions at the January meeting B’nai Brith filed a second complaint (also rejected). The arch Zionist Suburban newspaper/website has published three stories on the matter and a week ago the Montreal Gazette put the Zionists complaints on its front page in a story headlined “Agglomeration council won’t act on antisemitism complaint, Montreal mayor says”.
CIJA and B’nai Brith recently succeeded in pressuring Concordia and Carleton universities to cancel their stops on a national speaking tour with British commentator Sami Hamdi, organized by the Canadian Muslim Political Affairs Council. A recent Zionist sponsored lawsuit also called for the Concordia administration to block students from funding their union. In a similar vein, Conrad Black penned a commentary last week headlined “SHUT CUPE DOWN” due to their Palestine solidarity and in the same National Post newspaper lawyer Howard Levitt called on Zionist members to decertify the Canadian Union Public Employees union.
Fascists have long targeted labour unions. Ditto for books. Montreal’s Jewish Public Library recently pulled the books of Quebec’s most prominent children’s author, Elise Gravel, from their displays because she posted against genocide. A councillor in Côte-St-Luc, Mike Cohen, called for his municipality to do the same.
On X Israel supporters regularly respond to videos of large numbers protesting Canadian complicity in genocide by calling for protesters to be deported. In a similar vein, JSpace board chair Joe Roberts recently called protesters “fifth columnists” whose “real enemy has always been the liberal democracies of the west.”
To supress the “fifth column”, the establishment Jewish groups are campaigning for increased police funding. On January 18 CIJA instigated a letter writing campaign demanding “Reverse the police cuts” in Toronto. Two weeks later, the advocacy agent for Canada’s Jewish Federations wrote, “We continue to urge Council to take action to prevent any shortfall in funding for the Toronto Police Service, so that our police have the tools they need to enforce the law and safeguard the Jewish community and all Torontonians from the threat of hate-motivated and all other types of crime.”
B’nai Brith recently called for increased funding to Montreal police and a slew of Zionist voices have called for the provincial government to allow security guards at schools to carry guns. City councillor Sonny Moroz, who previously worked for arch Zionist federal MP Anthony Housefather, submitted a motion calling for greater police presence in part of Montreal.
CIJA, B’nai Brith and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center have extensive ties to police forces across the country. Recently it was reported that the RCMP’s controversial Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG), which has spied on indigenous and pipeline protests, has been targeting Palestine solidarity protests. In internal budgetary documents C-IRG labelled one protest a “Hamas Day of Action”.
Zionists have long sought to criminalize support for Palestinians. In a bid to promote the slaughter in Gaza, they’ve become cheerleaders for authoritarianism, cancel culture and other forms of intimidation historically associated with fascism.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) confirmed, Sunday, that the Israeli army exiled a Palestinian female journalist from the occupied West Bank to the devastated and destroyed Gaza Strip, after abducting her earlier this month.
The PPS said the army abducted the journalist, Seeqal Yousef Qaddoum, 51, after stopping her at a military roadblock near Ramallah, in the central West Bank, on February 1st.
While the detained journalist was born in the Gaza Strip, she has been living for many years in the Shiokh Palestinian town, east of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The PPS added that the army transferred the detained journalist from one of its prisons to the Kerem Shalom Crossing, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, before exiling her to the devastated and destroyed coastal enclave.
Seeqal works for the official, government-run Palestine TV, and was abducted by the soldiers on February 1st after they stopped her at a military roadblock near Ramallah.
She was first taken to HaSharon Israeli prison and then to the Damoun prison, and was interrogated but was never facing charges.
The PPS said the number of female Palestinian detainees in Damoun Israeli prison is more than 45, and added that it doesn’t have any available data on the number of detainees, who were abducted in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, due to Israel’s restrictions on such information, even to international human rights groups, and added that many detainees are subject to “forced disappearances.”
On Sunday morning, the PPS said the number of Palestinian political prisoners has exceeded 6,950 Palestinians, including many elders, women, and children, mostly from their homes, and the dozens who were taken prisoner at military roadblocks, across the occupied West Bank.
Since October 7, the Israeli army began a massive abduction campaign in the West Bank, targeting women, men, and children, and dozens of Palestinians, including laborers from the Gaza Strip who have been living and working in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Detainees’ Committee said the abductions have seriously escalated, and include massive searches and destruction of homes and property across the West Bank, including in and around occupied Jerusalem.
It added that while not all of the abductees remain imprisoned, most are either in interrogation facilities, and various prisons and detention camps and dozens were slapped with arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, held without charges or trial for renewable periods that generally vary between three and six months each time.
On February 5, 2024, the Ad-Dameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said the number of political prisoners held by Israel reached 9,000, including 70 women and 200 children, in addition to 3,484 Palestinians held under Administrative Detention orders.
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | February 27, 2013
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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