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How Israeli Military Censors Shape One US Network’s Gaza Coverage

“CNN has agreed not to be an independent news outlet”

Sputnik – 05.01.2024

It’s long been observed that mainstream media in America tends to favor Israel in their ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. But one outlet in particular makes an unusual effort to make sure Israeli authorities are satisfied with their reporting.

Analysis published Thursday documented how the television channel CNN treats their coverage of the Palestine-Israel conflict unlike any other journalism the network produces, ensuring Israeli military censors are able to exercise control over its content.

As a US-based outlet, CNN isn’t legally obliged to abide by the instructions of the Israel Defense Force’s military censor, which has operated in the country for over 70 years.

However, the channel has a long-standing practice of routing all relevant coverage through the network’s Jerusalem bureau anyway, ostensibly in order for it to be reviewed by people on the ground there. The practice means all coverage relating to Israel is overseen by journalists operating under the IDF’s censors.

“Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the bureau,” said one CNN employee who spoke anonymously about the policy.

“Or, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management – from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance.”

Jim Naureckas of the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting slammed the policy. “When you have a protocol that routes all stories through one checkpoint, you’re interested in control, and the question is who is controlling the story?” he said.

“In a situation where a government has been credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information, to give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn’t news is really disturbing.”

When reached for comment, a representative for CNN defended the practice. “The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” the spokesperson claimed. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”

But the policy imbues Israeli reporters and government officials with an air of legitimacy not granted to their Palestinian counterparts. In October, the network’s News Standards and Practices division sent an email to employees instructing them how to cover Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza.

“Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as ‘Hamas-controlled’ whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict,” read the message.

Death counts released by Gaza’s health ministry have repeatedly been determined to be accurate by international experts. If anything, the 22,438 reported deaths in the enclave are likely to represent a low estimate, with thousands more trapped under rubble from Israeli airstrikes.

Civilians make up a large majority of the casualties, with women and children representing about 70%.

“Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed,” confirmed the CNN spokesperson.

The control exercised by Israeli journalists in the Jerusalem bureau is reportedly stringent at times, with people there even determining specific terms and language that can be used. The bureau isn’t obligated to submit content to the IDF before publishing, but censors in the military have intervened against reporting found to be unacceptable in the past. People working there would likely be well aware of the government’s preferred line.

In another voluntary act of cooperation with Israeli officials, CNN recently agreed to send all footage shot in the Gaza strip to the IDF for approval before its release. The agreement was reached in exchange for IDF protection in the besieged enclave. Executive vice president of the Quincy Institute Trita Parsi slammed the move, saying, “In other words, CNN has agreed not to be an independent news outlet.” Writer Shailja Patel called the network, “officially an IDF propaganda outlet.”

The practice of “embedding” journalists with members of the military has become a common practice since the days of the Vietnam War, when adversarial reporting on the conflict is thought to have played a major role in its unpopularity.

The practice provides the military with ultimate control over what journalists are allowed to witness and report on.

Several prominent personalities at CNN like anchor Jake Tapper are strong public supporters of Israel. Wolf Blitzer, perhaps the channel’s most prominent on-air figure, is a self-avowed Zionist who formerly worked for the lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Analyst John McEvoy recently documented how government agencies covertly shape news coverage of Israel on CNN and other media outlets. After the bombing of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital in October sparked massive controversy, think tanks with ties to Western and Israeli intelligence served as sources for analysis in British state media that absolved the IDF of responsibility for the atrocity. The incident reveals one way US-aligned state actors are able to mold reporting even when it’s presented by more ostensibly neutral journalists.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

US military buildup in Red Sea ‘serious’ threat to intl. shipping: Yemen

Press TV – January 5, 2024

Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement has cautioned that the US militarization of the Red Sea in an attempt to serve the Israeli regime will pose a serious threat to international shipping in the strategic waterway.

Ansarullah made the statement on Friday after the United States, which has over the past weeks been spearheading a maritime coalition in the Red Sea under the pretext of safeguarding the transit of vessels in the area, claimed that the Yemeni forces and the popular resistance movement were targeting international ships and jeopardizing the security of the Red Sea.

The United States and the coalition members warned Yemen’s Armed Forces of “consequences” if they continued their missile and drone attacks against ships en route to Israeli ports in support of Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Ansarullah said the Yemeni armed forces never attacked international ships and that the security and safety of international maritime transport in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait was guaranteed by them.

“The US claim and the statement of 12 countries regarding the [Yemeni] threat to international shipping is not true. This threat stems from the militarization of the Red Sea by the United States to serve the Israeli regime and encourage the regime to continue its crimes against Gaza,” the resistance movement said in a statement.

“The Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and its genocidal crimes against Palestinians, which has entered the fourth consecutive month, should have forced the so-called international community or the UN Security Council to stop such massacres by the Israeli regime,” it added.

Ansarullah categorically censured the Israeli aggression against the besieged territory and said it has so far killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, injured tens of thousands of others, and “destroyed everything in Gaza.”

“The bloody events that have been taking place in Gaza for the past three consecutive months would not have been possible without the support of the United States and the complicity of Western countries with the criminal Zionist regime and encouraging it to continue its crimes against civilians in the Gaza Strip,” Ansarullah said.

Underlining that the regional countries cannot remain idle in the face of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and its suffocating siege on the Palestinian territory, the resistance movement said, “The Yemeni armed forces have carried out their missile, drone and naval operations to target the ships of the Israeli regime or the ships that move towards the ports of occupied Palestine.”

The statement said the US and its allies should know that their “evil alliance” will not prevent Yemen from continuing to support the oppressed people of Gaza by carrying out military operations against the ships of the Israeli regime or the ships that move towards the occupied Palestinian ports.

“Any attack on Yemen calls for a large-scale response, and Yemen does not accept any threat to its security and stability, and rejects the claim of the United States and its allies that Yemen is a threat to international shipping in the Red Sea,” Ansarullah said.

“The alliance of the United States and its allies was formed to support the Israeli regime and protect the ships of this regime, which is a real threat to the security and safety of international shipping and the security of the entire region,” the movement added, stressing that the coalition should bear the consequences of its escalation in the strategic waterway.

Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.

The relentless Israeli military campaign against Gaza has killed at least 22,438 people, most of them women and children. More than 57,614 individuals have been wounded.

Reports revealed that Israeli shipping companies have already decided to reroute their vessels in fear of attacks by Yemeni forces.

Yemeni forces have also launched missile and drone attacks on targets in the Israeli-occupied territories after the regime’s aggression on Gaza.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza destroys western divide-and-rule narratives

By Sharmine Narwani | The Cradle | January 4, 2024

It could be a clean sweep. Decades of western-led narratives crafted to exploit differences throughout West Asia, create strife amid the region’s myriad communities, and advance western foreign policy objectives over the heads of bickering natives are now in ruins.

The war in Gaza, it transpires, has blown a mile-wide hole in the falsehoods and fairytales that have kept West Asia distracted with internecine conflicts since at least the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Shia versus Sunni, Iran versus Arabs, secular versus Islamist: these are three of the west’s most nefarious narrative ploys that sought to control and redirect the region and its populations, and have even drawn Arab rulers into an ungodly alliance with Israel.

Facts are destroying the fiction

It took a rare conflict – uncooked and uncontrolled by Washington – to liberate West Asian masses from their narrative trance. Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza also brought instant clarity to the question of which Arabs and Muslims actually support Palestinian liberation – and which do not.

Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi resistance factions, and Yemen’s Ansarallah – maligned by these western narratives – are now visibly the only regional players prepared to buttress the Gaza frontline, whether through funds, weapons, or armed clashes that aim to dilute and disperse Israeli military resources.

The so-called ‘moderate Arabs,’ a misnomer for the western-centric, authoritarian Arab dictatorships subservient to Washington’s interests, have offered little more than lip service to the carnage in Gaza.

The Saudis called for support by hosting Arab and Islamic summits that were allowed to do and say nothing. The Emiratis and Jordanians trucked supplies to Israel that Ansarallah blockaded by sea. The mighty Egypt hosted delegations when all it needed to have done was to open the Rafah Crossing so Palestinians can eat. Qatar – once a major Hamas donor – now negotiates for the freedom of Israeli captives, while hosting Hamas ‘moderates,’ who are at odds with Gaza’s freedom fighters. And Turkiye’s trade with the Israeli occupation state continues to skyrocket (exports increased 35 percent from November to December 2023).

Palestine, for the pro-west ‘moderate Arabs,’ is a carefully handled flag they occasionally wave publicly, but sabotage privately. So, they watch, transfixed and horrified today, at what social media and tens of millions of protesters have made crystal clear: Palestine remains the essential Arab and Muslim cause; it may ebb and flow, but nothing has the power to inflame the region’s masses like this particular fight between right and wrong.

The shift toward resistance

It is early days yet in the battle unfolding between the region’s Axis of Resistance and Israel’s alliances, but the polls already show a notable shift in public sentiment toward the former.

An Arab barometer poll taken over a six-week period – three weeks before and three weeks after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation – provides the first indication of shifting Arab perceptions. Although the survey was restricted to Tunisia, the pollsters argue that the country is “as close to a bellwether as one could imagine” and that it represents views similar to other Arab countries:

“Analysts and officials can safely assume that people’s views elsewhere in the region have shifted in ways similar to the recent changes that have taken place in Tunisia.”

The survey results should be of paramount concern to meddling western policymakers: “Since October 7, every country in the survey with positive or warming relations with Israel saw its favorability ratings decline among Tunisians.”

The US saw its favorability numbers plummet the most, followed by West Asian allies that have normalized relations with Israel. Russia and China, both neutral states, experienced little change, but Iran’s leadership saw its favorability figures rise. According to the Arab barometer:

“Three weeks after the attacks, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has approval ratings that matched or even exceeded those of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed.”

Before 7 October, just 29 percent of Tunisians held a favorable view of Khamenei’s foreign policies. This figure rose to 41 percent according to the conclusion of the survey, with Tunisian support most notable in the days following the Iranian leader’s 17 October reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide.”

The Saudi shift

Prior to the 7 October operation by the Palestinian resistance to destroy the Israeli army’s Gaza Division and take captives as leverage for a mass prisoner swap, the region’s main geopolitical focus was on the prospects of a groundbreaking Saudi normalization deal with Tel Aviv. The administration of US President Joe Biden flogged this horse at every opportunity; it was seen as a golden ticket for his upcoming presidential election.

But Operation Al-Aqsa Flood ruined any chance for Saudi Arabia – home to Islam’s holiest sites – to seal that political deal. And with Israeli airstrikes raining down daily on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Riyadh’s options continue to shrink.

A Washington Institute poll conducted between 14 November and 6 December measures the seismic shift in Saudi public sentiment:

A whopping 96 percent agree with the statement that “Arab countries should immediately break all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, 91 percent believe that “despite the destruction and loss of life, this war in Gaza is a win for Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.” This is a shockingly unifying statement for a country that has adhered closely to western narratives that seek to divide Palestinians from Arabs, Arabs among themselves, and Muslims along sectarian lines – geographically, culturally, and politically.

Although Saudi Arabia constitutes one of the few Arab states to have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, favorable views of Hamas have increased by 30 percent, from 10 percent in August to 40 percent in November, while most – 95 percent – do not believe the Palestinian resistance group killed civilians on 7 October.

Meanwhile, 87 percent of Saudis agree with the idea that “recent events show that Israel is so weak and internally divided that it can be defeated some day.” Ironically, this is a long-stated Resistance Axis refrain. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was famously quoted as saying “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web,” upon its defeat by the Lebanese resistance on 25 May, 2000.

Prior to 7 October, Saudis had strongly favored economic ties with Israel, but even that number dropped dramatically from 47 percent last year to 17 percent today. And while Saudi attitudes toward the Resistance Axis remain negative – Saudi Arabia, after all, has been the regional epicenter for anti-Iran and anti-Shia propaganda since the 1979 revolution – that may be largely because their media is heavily controlled.

Contrary to the observations of the Arab masses, 81 percent of Saudis still believe that the Axis is “reluctant to help Palestinians.”

The Palestinian shift

Equally important to the discussion of Arab perceptions is the shift seen among Palestinians themselves since 7 October. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip between 22 November and 2 December mirrors Arab views, but with some nuances.

Gazan respondents, understandably, displayed more skepticism for the ‘correctness’ of Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which triggered Israel’s genocidal assault on the Strip in which over 22,000 civilians – mostly women and children – have so far been brutally killed. While support for Hamas increased only slightly in the Gaza Strip, it tripled in the West Bank, with both Palestinian territories expressing near equal disdain for the western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs from Ramallah.

Support for acting PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party was hit hard. Demands for his resignation are at nearly 90 percent, while almost 60 percent (the highest number recorded in a PSR poll to date in relation to this matter) of those surveyed want a dissolution of the PA.

Over 60 percent of Palestinians polled (closer to 70 percent in the West Bank) believe armed struggle is the best means to end the occupation, with 72 percent agreeing with the statement that Hamas made a correct decision to launch its 7 October operation, and 70 percent agreeing that Israel will fail to eradicate the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

Palestinians have strong views about regional and international players, who they largely feel have left Gaza unprotected from Israel’s unprecedented violations of international law.

By far the country most supported by respondents is Yemen, with approval ratings of 80 percent, followed by Qatar (56 percent), Hezbollah (49 percent), Iran (35 percent), Turkiye (34 percent), Jordan (24 percent), Egypt (23 percent), the UAE (8 percent), and Saudi Arabia (5 percent).

In this poll, the region’s Axis of Resistance dominates the favorability ratings, while pro-US Arab and Muslim nations with some degree of relations with Israel, fare poorly. It is notable that of the four most favorable countries and groups for mostly-Sunni Palestinians, three are core members of the “Shia” Axis, while five Sunni-led states rank lowest.

This Palestinian view extends to non-regional international states, with respondents most satisfied with Resistance Axis allies Russia (22 percent) and China (20 percent), while Israeli allies Germany (7 percent), France (5 percent), the UK (4 percent), and the US (1 percent) struggle to maintain traction among Palestinians.

 

 

The numbers depend on the war ahead

Three separate polls show that Arab perceptions have shifted dramatically over Israel’s war on Gaza, with popular sentiment gravitating to those states and actors perceived to be actively supporting Palestinian goals, and away from those who are perceived to support Israel.

The new year starts with two major events. The first is the drawdown of Israeli reservists from Gaza, whether because Washington demands it, or due to unsustainable loss of life and injury to occupation troops. The second is the shocking assassination of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri and six others in Beirut, Lebanon, on 2 January.

All indications are that Israel’s war will not only continue, but will expand regionally. The new US maritime construct in the Red Sea has drawn other international actors into the mix, and Tel Aviv has provoked Lebanon’s Hezbollah in a major way.

But if the confrontation between the two axes escalates, Arab perceptions will almost certainly continue to tilt away from the old hegemons toward those who are willing to resist this US-Israeli assault on the region.

There will be no relief for Washington and its allies as the war expands. The more they work to defeat Hamas and destroy Gaza, and the more they lob missiles at Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, and besiege the Resistance Axis, the more likely Arab populations are to shrug off the Sunni-versus-Shia, Iran-versus-Arab, and secular-versus-Islamist narratives that have kept the region divided and at odds for decades.

The swell of support that is mobilizing due to a righteous confrontation against the region’s biggest oppressors is unstoppable. Western decline is now a given in the region, but western discourse has been the first casualty of this war.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

McDonald’s latest business titan to face impact of pro-Israel stance

The Cradle | January 5, 2024

The CEO of McDonald’s, Chris Kempczinski, said on 4 January that several markets in West Asia and some outside of the region were facing a “meaningful business impact” due to the war between the Palestinian resistance and Israel. 

Kempczinski also said that “associated misinformation” about the company has been a reason for the financial issues the brand is facing, and that the misinformation surrounding McDonald’s was “disheartening and ill-founded.”

Western Israeli-linked fast food chains, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, have seen large grassroots boycott campaigns emerge over pro-Israel stances and alleged financial ties with Israel. 

“In every country where we operate, including in Muslim countries, McDonald’s is proudly represented by local owner-operators who work tirelessly to serve and support their communities while employing thousands of their fellow citizens,” Kempczinski said in a social media post. “That local community connection is the genius of the McDonald’s system.”

West Asian locations of McDonald’s are part of the company’s international developmental licensed markets division, a section that generates around 10 percent of the company’s revenue. 

McDonald’s franchisee in Malaysia, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Lionhorn Pte Ltd, filed a lawsuit against BDS Malaysia, accusing the group of “defamation,” and is seeking damages of over $1 million. Meanwhile, the Israel franchisee has supported the Israeli army by supplying its forces with free meals, according to BDS, “during the ongoing genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.”

Starbucks, another Western, Israeli-linked company, has also come out to say that the negative views brought upon the brand have been “influenced by misrepresentation on social media of what we stand for.”

In December 2023, the losses of Starbucks, a Seattle-based company, stood at $11 billion in value during the last quarter, due to Palestinian solidarity boycotts and employee strikes. 

The company tried to bounce back on losses by implementing a scheme during the holiday season that would allow consumers to receive a free holiday cup with every purchase. 

When announcing the gimmick in mid-November last year, the company’s market share crashed by 8.96 percent, accounting for billions in losses, the lowest the company has experienced since 1992.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli police unable to verify ‘Hamas rape’ stories

The Cradle | January 5, 2024

Israeli police are unable to verify accounts of sexual assault allegedly committed by Palestinian fighters on 7 October, Haaretz reported on 4 January.

“The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault from the Hamas attack, or people who witnessed such attacks, and decided to appeal to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come forward,” the newspaper reported.

“Even in the few cases in which testimonies were collected about sexual offenses committed on October 7, police failed to connect the acts with the victims who were harmed by them.”

Adi Edri, a police investigator tasked with probing alleged sexual crimes committed during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, told Haaretz there are “circumstantial indications” that there are survivors of the 7 October attack who police have yet to contact.

“We’re looking for more than a single witness. For each scene, we’re looking for support for what happened there.”

Israeli police claim to have collected a small number of eyewitness testimonies. These testimonies include those of military personnel and of the Israeli search and rescue team, Zaka – which was behind some of the debunked stories of atrocities committed by Hamas, among them the claim of 40 beheaded babies.

“Despite having no expertise in forensic investigations or documenting crime scenes, these volunteers were given access to the various kibbutzim and Nova party sites to collect the bodies,” says The Cradle’s William Van Wagenen, US investigative journalist who has conducted extensive research into the events of 7 October.

Van Wagenen raises further questions about Zaka’s credibility, detailing how it “was suspected of using shadow organizations to funnel millions of dollars of donations for private use, even as the organization faced bankruptcy,” citing a 2019 report by Hebrew media.

Additionally, Zaka’s founder Yehuda Meshi-Zahav has been implicated in the sexual assault and molestation of women and children, according to a 2021 Haaretz investigation.

Haaretz reported in November 2023 that a significant lack of forensic evidence made it difficult to determine what happened on October 7. The November report also found that many of the allegations by volunteer workers, officials, and military personnel did not add up.

The latest Haaretz report comes one week after the New York Times (NYT) published a report detailing what it called the “weaponization” of sexual violence on 7 October.

The report centered around the case of Gal Abdush, who was killed on 7 October. NYT identified Abdush as “the woman in the black dress” whose corpse was seen in a video filmed after the attack – which was said to show evidence that she had been raped.

However, some of Abdush’s family members denied that she was sexually assaulted and claimed that NYT took advantage of them by interviewing them under “false pretenses.”

Questions continue to be raised over the veracity of many of the alleged atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October, particularly with the growing amount of information that has surfaced regarding Tel Aviv’s role in the death of Israeli civilians that day.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

USA: mask of peacemaker and human rights defender dropped

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 05.01.2024

The meeting of the UN Security Council on December 8 was a rather sad and very instructive event for all mankind. At this meeting, the United States used its veto right to brazenly and rudely single-handedly block a resolution introduced by the United Arab Emirates and supported by 97 countries. This resolution, as we know, demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in order to put an end to the insane, unprecedented and deliberate daily killings of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli army. With its shameful vote, the United States proved and showed to the whole world that it is not only complicit in Israel’s murder of Palestinians, but also actually complicit in all those crimes committed by the Israeli military and the crazed Netanyahu government in the Gaza Strip.

Saying that almost 18,000 people were killed and 50,000 injured in just over the first 60 days may be a difficult statement to make, especially when the majority of those killed are innocent civilians, mostly women and children. This is not an earthquake or a natural disaster. This is a deliberate, reckless act of revenge directed against all Palestinians, undertaken in the hope that such war crimes will forever put an end to the Palestinians’ desire to free themselves from occupation and establish an independent Palestinian State. Nevertheless, this is a reality that the US administration, led by President Joe Biden, has decided to ignore in spite of the whole world, giving Israel additional time to take the lives of even more innocent people.

This is not the first time that the United States has used its veto right to protect Israel from harsh condemnation by the overwhelming majority of the world for continuing violations of all kinds of UN and human rights conventions in order to maintain its racist occupation of Palestine since 1948. It was US veto No. 46 in favor of Israel, confirming the isolation of the Jewish state, double standards and hypocrisy of successive US administrations when it comes to the rights of Palestinians and Arabs. Even the British government, in an effort to avoid harsh criticism from its own people for supporting Israel’s criminal war, decided to abstain from voting on the resolution.

The UN Security Council has rarely been a forum for Arabs and the peoples of developing countries in general to seek justice, given the balance of power between its five veto-wielding countries. After all, this body charged with maintaining international peace and security failed to stop the illegal war waged by former US President George W. Bush to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003, or to force Israel to comply with dozens of Security Council resolutions calling for an end to the occupation of, or the construction of illegal settlements in, the occupied West Bank of Jordan and East Jerusalem.

However, this time the case is different by all standards. After all, it was the Western media that pointed out that nowhere on earth has there been such a brutal bombing campaign against such a tiny enclave as Gaza, where more than 2.3 million people live in appalling conditions. Comparisons were made with the Allied bombing of Dresden (Germany) during World War II, noting that the total weight of bombs dropped by Israel on Gaza could be equal to two atomic bombs that the United States used against Japan in the same war. Apart from the heavy loss of life among Palestinian women and children, which prompted the brave UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to use Article 99 of the UN Charter for the first time since 1971 to call for the intervention of the Security Council to end the war, there was the fact that many more people could have died of hunger and disease due to the appalling living conditions in Gaza since Israel had began its “war of revenge.”

Antonio Guterres said he invoked Article 99 because “there is a high risk of a complete collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza.” The UN expects that this will lead to a “complete disruption of public order and increased pressure for mass displacement to Egypt.” The Gaza Strip is at a “tipping point,” he said, and desperate people are in serious danger of starvation. Guterres said that the HAMAS action in Israel on October 7 would “never be able to justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” The UN chief had earlier angered Israel, which called for his resignation, when he reminded the world at a previous Security Council meeting that the HAMAS attack had not happened “in a vacuum”, but had occurred after more than 56 years of Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights exceeding the right to self-determination. Besides, the right to self-defense of the Palestinians and Palestine has never been terminated by anyone. Or should we assume that in this case, the right to self-defense only exists for Israel, while the Palestinians, according to one Israeli minister, “these animals” should be destroyed by using atomic weapons? What does it feel like for the world in the 21st century to listen to this caveman Israeli, and moreover a minister? Apparently, this is not only his personal opinion, but the dominant view of the entire cabinet under the leadership of “conductor Netanyahu.”

Antonio Guterres described in detail the “humanitarian nightmare” faced by Palestinians in Gaza, referring to the intense, widespread and ongoing Israeli attacks from the air, land and sea, as a result of which, according to incomplete data, 339 educational institutions, 26 hospitals, 56 medical institutions, 88 mosques and three churches were completely destroyed. According to reports, more than 60 percent of housing in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged, about 85 percent of the civilian population has been forced to leave their homes, the health system is collapsing, and “nowhere in Gaza is safe.”

Nevertheless, all these facts seemed to be empty words for the US representative at the Security Council meeting, who, like a well-trained parrot, repeated the same senseless and false arguments that ending the war now would allow HAMAS to carry out new attacks on Israel in the future. It is well known that Israel’s security will be ensured only by the creation of an independent Palestinian State that will be able to build peaceful relations with the Israelis. Echoing the ridiculous fabrications of the Israeli Prime Minister, US officials stupidly and irresponsibly stated that they supported some kind of illusion of “eliminating HAMAS”, although they know that this is practically impossible. Both Israel and the Biden administration insist on arrogant and outrageous disregard for the fact that the only way to prevent future attacks on the Israeli State and put an end to any violence is to end Israel’s racist occupation of Palestinian lands.

Even if HAMAS theoretically disappeared, it would not prevent the emergence of new Palestinian resistance groups as long as the suffering of Palestinians under occupation and the apartheid system continues. Thus, instead of using the same old arguments about protecting Israel’s security and right to exist, an alternative strategy should be to stop putting Israel above all international laws. Take, for example, the fact that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and has managed to create both nuclear weapons and their means of delivery under the “American umbrella”. Perhaps this explains the fact that Israel allows itself to disobey international laws and regulations of international organizations and is still actively preventing the creation of an independent Palestinian State.

By using its veto right to prevent an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the United States has lost many friends in the Arab region as well as around the world. It has also lost all credibility in asserting that human rights occupy any place on its foreign policy agenda. Washington has completely thrown off the mask of a peacemaker and a champion of human rights and appeared in its true selfish and unsightly form, and no matter how hard it tries, the former prestige, respect and reverence cannot be restored. This is the new current unenviable fate of Americans.

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza Testimonies; Torture and Abuse in Israeli Detention

Al-Haq | January 4, 2024

“If you lift your head, the soldier would hit you with the rifle butt or whatever he has in his hands. They also had knuckle punches to hit you whenever you move. If you move, complain or utter “ouch”, you get tased – forms of torture we have never seen.”

#CeasefireNOW

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Are We Losing Free Speech in America?

Israel is the catalyst for a major loss of freedom

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 4, 2024

There is little appreciation inside the United States for the grave damage being inflicted on our country by President Joe Biden’s foreign policy being conducted through the mechanism of starting or sustaining a new war every year. The justifications provided by the White House, State Department and Pentagon are so vacuous that they have succeeded in creating a new low standard for the art of government lying. The country is burdened by unsustainable debt yet we have the so-called Secretary of the Treasury Janice Yellen declaring in October that another war beyond Ukraine, presumably to directly intervene supporting Israel in destroying Gaza, can “certainly” be afforded. And with the current US military build-ups near China and in the Middle East to confront Iran there presumably is enough gas in the tank to pick up on another conflict or two before Genocide Joe stands for reelection later this year.

But in spite of the damage to our economy, which is quite real, some of the gravest threats come from within, from the attacks delivered by special interest groups directed against our fundamental liberties. The most significant assaults have of late been directed against the First Amendment, freedom of speech, which is the bedrock of all the rights and which is currently being assailed continuously by that most protected of all protected groups, America’s Jewish and Israeli Lobby.

Hardly a minute of the day passes without a new article in the mainstream media about “surging antisemitism.” The journalists involved, most of whom are Jewish, hardly ever observe that Israel’s slaughtering of 30,000 Gazans, mostly women and children, just might have something to do with how the public is beginning to regard the behavior of the Jewish state and its leaders. What actually fuels public outrage that groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) choose to regard as antisemitism is Israel slaughtering ten thousand children under a flag displaying the Star of David and stating its intention to continue the massacre until all the Palestinians have fled to other countries or been killed. We are talking of 2 million plus people but Israel’s friends in the US regard them as little more than “sub-humans” or “terrorists.”

The Jewish/Israel lobby in America does not forgive and forget. Witness the continuing attacks on America’s universities for not rolling over and purging all suspected antisemites among faculty and students. Liz Magill, the President of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned almost immediately after being interrogated by the US Congress and the multiple attacks began. Poor Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, hung on but eventually also resigned after she was subjected to near continuous harassment by Israel’s friends, including in the US Congress, because she, like her presidential colleagues, had not accepted that nearly all criticism of Israel in the context of Gaza is based on Jew-hatred, which she was apparently expected to assert. To no one’s surprise, in her resignation letter she was not even honest about who had brought her down, blaming it instead mostly on racism. The letter did not even include the words “Congress” or “Gaza” or “antisemitism” or even “Israel.” To be sure, Gay is not a top level academic and probably was an affirmative action hire but has anyone ever heard of a Congressional committee going after an academic for the sin of plagiarism before? The involvement of the phony claims of antisemitism and the desire to protect Israel are what has made the difference in this case and led to the intensity and persistence of the attacks.

Indeed, the ADL’s revolting director Jonathan Greenblatt is demanding that there be more “consequences” for “antisemites on campus” and the media is hot on the story. Sally Kornbluth, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who has not resigned after the ridiculous encounter of the three presidents with Congress is still being hotly pursued by that body. Also engaged in the hunt are the many US Government entities whose sole task is to root out antisemites and holocaust deniers. The Department of Justice, headed of course by Jewish Attorney General Merrick Garland nee Garfinkel, is reportedly investigating a number of leading universities including Tulane and Rutgers for failure to “protect the civil rights of Jewish students.” It is a typical pattern where Jewish officials investigate alleged crimes against other Jews and come up with a predictable conclusion.

The universities are scrambling to comply with the government demands to get tough with alleged antisemites. At Columbia University, for example, certain slogans and chants used by Palestinian students have been banned and blocked, but there is no corresponding interference with Jewish student activities. Professor Rashid Khalidi has written a response to the university administration saying:

“Our deans state that the Columbia community should acknowledge ‘that hearing chanted phrases such as ‘by any means necessary,’ ‘from the river to the sea,’ or calls for an ‘intifada’—irrespective of intentions and provenance—is experienced by many Jewish, Israeli, and other members of our community as antisemitic and deeply hurtful. They have thus unilaterally decided that no one should rise up [the actual meaning of ‘intifada’] against 56 years of illegal military occupation; that Palestine should remain unfree from the river to the sea; and that the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression. They have come to this decision because hearing otherwise is ‘antisemitic and deeply hurtful’ to some. This statement amounts to a new norm that prohibits using or learning about these terms and their histories, in favor of the privileging of a politics of feeling. While perhaps appropriate to a kindergarten, it is hard to imagine an approach more contrary to the most basic idea of a university. This statement is characteristic of a university that picks a task force nearly devoid of expertise on antisemitism and on Palestine/Israel (much of which exists among the faculty), but packed with outspoken advocates for Israel, a university that has decided that faculty expertise on freedom of speech or on language to be proscribed should be rigorously excluded from deliberations on such issues. With complete disregard for the principle of faculty governance, crucial matters like these are being decided upon by administrators, presumably with hefty input from trustees, donors and politicians, who have negligible expertise, but robust and one-sided opinions.”

Khalidi might also have observed how pro-Israel groups at colleges are compiling and blacklisting names of student-critics of the Gaza situation so they can be denied jobs after they graduate. And beyond the damage done to freedom of speech and critical thinking at the universities there are already plenty of other possible consequences for those who are choosing to speak up about the atrocities that are underway but they only appear to apply to Palestinian and antiwar groups that are demonstrating against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans. Ambitious politician wannabe Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida was one of the first to respond, banning Palestinian groups at all state universities due to their alleged “antisemitism.” He did not ban or even criticize a single Jewish group for cheerleading the slaughter of the Palestinians. And this has been the pattern elsewhere with the banning or denying of facilities to Palestinian and antiwar groups, but leaving Hillel and other Jewish groups alone no matter what they do. Is that freedom of speech? Of course not, but it is a measure of who has power in the United States and who does not. Speak ill of whomever you choose but leave Israel alone or you will be in real trouble!

And protecting Israel also extends to the punishing of supporters of completely nonviolent action, like boycotting or divesting from Israeli products to put pressure on the Benjamin Netanyahu regime. If you belong to a group that opposes Israeli policies you could be denied goods and services for that fact alone. In more than thirty states one can be compelled, for example, to sign an agreement not to support any action against Israel if one wants a job or government services. This special arrangement is unique to Israel and there are also special trade missions often manned by American Jews or Israelis, including in my state Virginia, which create special investment opportunities for Israel that do not exist for any other country.

But perhaps the most insidious attempt to complete America’s falling under the control of Israel-thinks is what is taking place in lower-to-mid level public education. Many school districts and even state educational boards require courses in the horrors of antisemitism and the so-called holocaust. The courses are, of course, being pushed most ardently by Jews and by select Evangelicals who are sitting around waiting for the Second Coming, a prophecy that involves in their minds the return of Jews to the Holy Land as a prerequisite. Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who is, of course, Jewish, has just introduced legislation called the “Never Again Education Act,” which has an impact nationwide. The “Never Again Education Act” was first introduced in July of 2019 before passing in the House in January 2020 with 300 co-sponsors and in the Senate in May 2020. As it is set to expire in 2025, Senator Rosen is looking to have the Act reapproved to extend it to 2030 to “provide funding for training and lessons on the ethnic cleansing of Jews.”

The problem with the Act is that it rests on a contrived narrative that is essentially political in nature, including as it does many non-historical and even fabricated assertions about what took place in the 1930s and 1940s. The Act is intended to bestow on Jews a special victimhood that in turn conveys on them and on Israel exemption from normal rules regarding their behavior. It, of course, is part of the narrative that is giving Netanyahu and his rogues a more-or-less free pass from the US for their crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.

So the America we once knew is under siege. Free speech is being eroded and will soon be subject to criminal penalties if one says the wrong thing about Israel. This is intolerable and one prays that the American people will have its own “intifada” and wake up to the new infamy and put an end to it.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

January 4, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli family of key case in NY Times report refutes story of alleged rape by Hamas fighters

Press TV – January 4, 2024

The Israeli family of a key case in the New York Times report on alleged sexual violence by Hamas fighters on October 7 renounces the published story, saying reporters have manipulated them.

On December 28, the New York Times published a story, claiming that fighters of the Palestinian Hamas resistance group allegedly committed a pattern of gender-based violence against Israeli women when the group carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity on October 7.

Authors of the report – Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, along with Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella – claimed that they had compiled the story based on over 150 interviews they conducted with purported victims or their families, mainly repeating October 7 testimonies that have been previously published and already debunked and discredited.

A third of the report, however, was devoted to the Abdush family, a working-class Mizrahi Jewish family who lost their daughter, Gal, known as “the woman in the black dress”, back then and how she was allegedly raped during the Hamas attack.

The report focused on footage that was captured on October 8 by a woman called Eden Wessely, who published it on her social media accounts. According to the report by the New York Times, “The video went viral, with thousands of people responding, desperate to know if the woman in the black dress was their missing friend, sister or daughter.”

A day after the report was published, the Israeli Ynet news site conducted an interview with Gal’s parents, who stressed that there is no proof she was raped, and that the paper’s reporters interviewed them under false pretenses, saying that they knew nothing about the sexual assault issue until the piece in the American daily was published. Furthermore, Gal’s sisters also strongly denied allegations of rape.

On January 1, Nissim Abdush, Nagi’s brother-in-law, repeatedly denied that his sister-in-law was raped in an interview with Israeli Channel 13.

Hamas has strongly rejected Israel’s allegations of rape and sexual assaults against its fighters, saying the regime is striving to demonize the resistance by such fabricated stories.

“We reject the Israeli lies about raping, which aim to distort the resistance and tarnish our humane and moral treatment of captives,” Hamas said in a statement in early December.

The Israeli regime waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched its operation against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.

Since the start of the US-backed offensive, the Israeli regime has killed at least 22,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 57,000 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble.

January 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Gaza withdrawal, a prelude to full-out war

By Hasan Illaik | The Cradle | January 4, 2024

At the start of the new year, Israel’s occupation army began implementing the withdrawal of a large portion of its forces from the northern Gaza Strip.

This withdrawal did not mean the end of the war on Gaza, and it certainly did not suggest calm on the Lebanese-Israeli front. On the contrary, reducing the pace of the war in the Gaza Strip increases the possibilities of an Israeli war on Lebanon.

The battles taking place between the occupation army and Hezbollah along the southern Lebanese border since 8 October, in support of the resistance in Gaza, have been increasing in intensity day after day.

Washington and Tel Aviv have sought to maximize pressure on Hezbollah by warning of the possibility of a large-scale war between Israeli forces and the Lebanese resistance. These tactics were in effect long before the assassination of Hamas’ Deputy Head of the Political Bureau Saleh Al-Arouri on 2 January by an Israeli air strike in Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut. The killing of Al-Arouri now increases the chance of the war expanding.

The third stage is coming

The first stage of Tel Aviv’s war was the mass destruction and occupation of northern Gaza; the second stage is the occupation of key points in the south of the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian civilians have flocked for safety. The current troop withdrawal from the territory’s north means that the Israelis are cementing their southern plans and preparing to move on to phase three: the long, low-intensity war.

As it enters the third stage, the occupation army intends to maintain a geographical buffer surrounding the northern Gaza Strip. It also plans to continue occupying the Gaza Valley area (central Gaza), while completing its operations in Khan Yunis in the south.

The fate of the Philadelphia axis – or Salah ad-Din Axis – a strip of land on the border between Gaza and Egypt which Israel wants to control, will be left to deliberations between Tel Aviv and Cairo. This is to ensure that incidents do not occur that lead to tension between the two parties, as well as to guarantee that refugees do not flow from the south of the Gaza Strip towards Sinai.

Israel’s ground withdrawal from northern Gaza is taking place primarily because the occupation army’s target bank has been depleted. All targets prior to the start of the war have been destroyed, and all new operational targets have been bombed.

Despite this, the Palestinian resistance continues to carry out operations against Israeli forces. These organizations remain relatively unscathed in the entire area of ​​the northern Gaza Strip, which will increase the ability of the resistance to inflict losses on occupation ranks, now and in the future.

This clear Israeli loss – in terms of Tel Aviv’s stated war objectives – has been made evident by two basic factors: First, that the occupation army cannot ‘cleanse’ the northern Gaza Strip house by house or tunnel by tunnel, because this process will take years, expose more of its soldiers to danger, and cannot be implemented without further displacing the entire population of northern Gaza or massacring them. It should be noted, despite Israeli attempts to portray matters otherwise, that hundreds of thousands of civilians are still present in the north.

Second, the Israeli government needs to gradually re-inject reserve soldiers into the country’s economy to jump-start it, and to ensure that the productive sectors are not exposed to damage from which recovery will take a long time. This, despite the fact that the US and much of Europe appear ready to assist Israel’s economy, if necessary.

These measures are being taken because Israel has patently failed to achieve the two main goals of its war, namely, eliminating the Hamas-led resistance in Gaza, and liberating the Israeli prisoners captured by the resistance on 7 October.

There remains a basic motive that must be noted: The Israeli army is currently putting all its efforts into implementing a US decision to push the war from its first and second phases into the third phase before the end of January 2024. This requires the war to be managed at a slower boil, drawing less attention to Israeli carnage and the mass suffering of Palestinians.

After three months of brutalities, Washington has assessed the Israeli army as unable to eliminate the resistance or the possibilities of regional escalation, and has noted the significant harm caused to the US administration of Joe Biden as he enters the presidential primary season.

An escalation with Lebanon

As the Israeli occupation army moves to focus its operations on the southern Gaza Strip, the intensity of military operations along the Lebanese border between Hezbollah and the Israeli army has also been ratcheted up.

Hezbollah increased its targeting of occupation soldiers, both in their visible locations and inside the settlements of northern Palestine.

The information capabilities of Hezbollah have developed in both sophistication and accuracy during the past months. The Lebanese resistance fighters have employed missile types not previously utilized, which have a greater range and better destructive capacity than previous generations.

On the other hand, Tel Aviv has doubled the firepower it used in southern Lebanon. The Israelis continue to limit their operations to the area south of the Litani River, and are not expanding their scope except to target resistance groups that carry out strikes across the border. In recent weeks, the occupation army’s destructive power has risen dramatically since the early days of the battle.

By increasing its strikes, Israel’s leadership seeks to inflict the greatest possible number of losses among the ranks of the resistance fighters, as well as to spread panic among southern Lebanese residents – displacing more of them, and destroying the largest possible number of homes. This places a burden on both Hezbollah and the Lebanese state in the reconstruction process after the end of hostilities.

But there is a longer-term goal to this Israeli military performance. The government in Tel Aviv, according to its official statements, wants Hezbollah to withdraw from the south of the Litani, to ensure the security of Israeli settlers in northern Palestine who abandoned their homes, either voluntarily or under evacuation orders from their army. By some estimates, the number of Israelis fleeing their settlements in occupied north Palestine has reached more than 230,000 people.

In parallel with the public statements, messages began arriving in Beirut, from the US and from European capitals, demanding what they call ‘the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,’ meaning Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the south of the Litani River.

According to emerging information, Tel Aviv is betting that Hezbollah will be deterred, as the 2019 economic collapse from which Lebanon has not yet recovered and the country’s long-running internal tensions are factors that will ultimately prevent Hezbollah from waging war.

Israel is therefore hoping that Hezbollah will yield to pressure and meet its demands regarding the withdrawal of its fighters from the border area with occupied Palestine.

The Israeli assessment of Lebanese affairs preceded its assassination of Al-Arouri in Beirut on 2 January. But in the same way that Israel military commanders and politicians have under-estimated and dismissed armed Palestinian resistance initiatives within occupied lands prior to 7 October, they continue to cling to a dated Israeli calculus that Hezbollah will never fully retaliate, or that it will only do so in a way that stops short of war.

Granted, Hezbollah does genuinely seek to limit the scope of the military confrontation, and has often pushed for a Gaza ceasefire to end hostilities throughout the region. Hezbollah is equally concerned about not disrupting the lives and livelihood of southern residents.

But while Hezbollah takes into account the complex political and economic Lebanese reality, it is not prepared to make concessions. Sources in the resistance axis say that Israel, as Hezbollah sees it, is not in a position to go to war with Lebanon when it cannot even compensate or digest the massive strategic losses it has incurred from Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Despite its desire to not expand the war, Hezbollah has already begun to prepare for it. Hezbollah’s party statement, issued after the assassination of Al-Arouri, indicates this, and field measures and developments will begin to appear in time.

What Israel was unable to achieve in Gaza (restoring deterrence) while facing the tight ranks of the region’s Axis of Resistance, it will most certainly not be allowed to gain in Lebanon.

The first signs of this will appear in the plans that Hezbollah is expected to carry out in response to Israel’s 2 January raid on Dahiyeh to assassinate Al-Arouri – the first of its kind since August 2006 – and to which its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had previously threatened he would respond.

The bottom line is that Tel Aviv’s assessment of a war with Lebanon is based on its reading that Hezbollah wishes to prevent a major confrontation at any cost. Not only is this calculus wrong, but it has also muddled Israeli minds to the point where this may itself lead to the outbreak of a destructive war between the two sides.

January 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Lesser “Grade” of Human

Will the more than 100 Iranians killed by terrorist bombs today be mourned in the West as victims of terrorism? Certainly not.

By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | January 3, 2024

Will the more than 100 Iranians killed by terrorist bombs today be mourned in the West as victims of terrorism? Certainly not. Allied doctrine has it that the killing of Israeli or American civilians is a crime of cosmic proportions, while shedding the blood of “enemy” women and children is perfectly acceptable; indeed commendable.

The West does not memorialize the hundreds of thousands of civilians bombed by the U.S. in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and every major German city 1943-1945. America’s fire-bombing of the city of Tokyo by General Curtis LeMay in March 1945 was followed by Harry Truman’s atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year. Truman never had a moment of doubt or regret over the murder of more than a 100,000 Asian children, mothers and non-combatant boys and men. It was business as usual for the “noble” Allies during the “Good War.”

In the West human rights signifies passionate concern only for civilians designated as truly human: Israelis first, then Americans and British, followed by their satraps.

This inhumanity is the legacy of Talmudic ideology, beginning with tractate Sanhedrin 57a from 400 A.D., concerning liability for capital punishment: “If a Jew murders a gentile, he is exempt.”

This teaching of contempt was reiterated in the dogma of Chabad Lubavitch founder Rabbi Shneur Zalman in the 18th century:

“In the Tanya of Zalman we encounter the doctrine that the souls of the gentiles contain no good whatsoever: Tanya Likutei Amarim I: ‘This law is taught: in the case of Israel, this soul of the kelipah is derived from kelipat nogah, which also contains good, as it originates in the esoteric ‘Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ The souls of the nations of the world (gentiles) however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever.”

The unbroken chain of this dogmatic hate speech was continued by the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in the 1920s.  Kook weaponized the Talmud by uniting it with war-Zionism. He took the racism of the Talmud and “married” it to the Herzl/Ben Gurion ideology. Kook reiterated the Talmud’s ancient hostility to gentiles. He declared:

“The difference between the Israelite soul… and the souls  of all the nations (gentiles), in their various grades, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul…of man and the soul of animals. For between the latter there is only a quantitative difference, while between the former there exists a qualitative, essential difference.”

[Source: David Dishon,“The Beauty of Yefet in the Tents of Shem-Gentiles and Jews in the Thought of Rav Kook,” in Havruta: A Journal of Jewish Conversation. Shalom Hartman Institute. 1 (2): 80–89.]

Talmudic Zionist delegation to New York, 1924. Jerusalem Chief Rabbi Kook is on the right. Mayor John Hylan is at center.

The Cryptocracy clandestinely reverences the Talmud and the Kabbalah as the holiest books of Western civilization. This esteem has emerged in public in “Conservative” circles in the US and Britain, where Talmudism is hailed as an integral pillar of western civilization, an assertion which is unsustainable from the point of view of historiography, but a fervent article of faith on the Right, in that the Right wing believes that its agenda can’t prevail against the winds of woke without swearing fealty to this myth.

Influential Conservative Pastor Douglas Wilson advances his pro-nationalist views on the coattails of Talmudist philosopher Yoram Hazony of the Jerusalem Herzl Institute. I’m probably on safe ground in supposing that Rev. Wilson would never do the same partnered with an exponent of the Quran. Wilson, in spite of being acutely aware of the hate speech and blasphemous contents of the Talmud, offers a qualified “two cheers” for it in his new book, American Milk and Honey.

The august Acton Society, which bills itself as a paladin in the revival and restoration of our civilization, last month virtually canonized Lord Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. Their gushing paean, brimming with rapture for Sacks’ life work, cited his mentor, the late Zionist Grand Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Chabad-Lubavitch, disciple of the aforementioned racist Shneur Zalman.

The Acton Society wrote:

“It was the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as Schneerson is known, who inspired Sacks to pursue his rabbinic ordination and dedicate himself to the Jewish people. These encounters would influence Sacks’ intellectual sensibility and approach to Jewish institutional leadership for the rest of his career.

“… Sacks delivered the Erasmus Lecture, hosted by First Things magazine in New York… under the auspices of Pope Francis, Sacks delivered the keynote address at the Vatican’s International Colloquium on ‘The Complementarity of Man and Woman.”

The Talmudic content of Rabbi Sacks’ teaching is not mentioned by the Acton institute. In a review of Jonathan Rosen’s book, The Talmud and the Internet, Chief Rabbi Sacks wrote:

“Rosen loves, as I do, the extraordinary moment in the Talmud in which God is outvoted on a point of Jewish law and celebrates the fact that his children have defeated him. In the world of the rabbis not only do men study the Word of God, God studies the word of men.”

Rabbi Lord Sacks was referring to tractate BT Bava Metzia 59b in which Rabbi Yehoshua contradicts God by declaring that the law is rightfully decided on earth by the rabbis, not in heaven. The Talmud has God admit he was wrong. It puts these words into God’s mouth: “My sons have defeated me! “My sons have defeated me!”

This is what Sacks “loves.” What does Mr. Sacks’ rabbinic megalomania have to do with the gospel of Jesus, or the literature of Augustine, Aquinas or Shakespeare? Nothing. In fact, it is profoundly inimical to it: the Talmudic mentality boasts of contradicting God. The Talmud of Mystery Babyon is an occult dictatorship emanating from the Torah sheBeal peh (the counterfeit “Torah” founded upon “the traditions of men” — cf. Mark 7 and Matthew 15).

The grandaddy of the farcical campaign to associate Talmudism with Christian law and society was Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an ardent promoter of the “Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.” Scalia worked to apply Talmudic halacha to the American judicial system. (Cf. “A Supremely Talmudic Supreme Court Justice,” in The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome [2017], pp. 352-353 and 588-593).

The bipolar contradictions evident in the promotion of the demonstrably false legend of the West’s civilizational debt to Orthodox rabbinic theology carry the seeds of the downfall of the Conservative movement.

Meanwhile, Muslims in Iran today, and Arab civilians both Muslim and Christian in Gaza, die under the bombs of Western-enabled terrorists. This bloodshed is privately applauded in the salons and think tanks of America and Britain, given that the victims have been judged “qualitatively” and “essentially” to be a lesser “grade” of human.

Michael Hoffman manages the podcast, Revisionist History®. He is the author of the banned 2008 textbook Judaism Discovered (1,102 pages), and nine other volumes of history and literature, as well as 122 issues of the periodical, Revisionist History®. He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press and a former consultant to the news department of the New York Times. His books have been published in translation in Japan and France. He resides with his family in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Revisionist History® is a registered trademark of Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright©2023 by Independent History and Research

January 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Increasingly clear ‘all Gazans must be destroyed,’ says Israeli MK

MEMO | January 4, 2024

A member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said on Tuesday that it is becoming increasingly clear to Israelis that “all Gazans must be destroyed,” it has been reported.

“My friends at the prosecutor’s office, who fought with me on political matters, in debates, tell me, ‘Moshe, it is clear that all the Gazans need to be destroyed,’ and these are statements I have never heard,” Moshe Saada told Channel 14. He claimed that the rise in calls to destroy all Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip proves that the right-wing was correct “all along”.

Today, he added, the matter is simple. “Everywhere I go, they [Israelis] tell me that all the residents of Gaza must be destroyed.”

Explicit calls for Israel to annihilate the population of the Gaza Strip have increased in number since the start of the apartheid state’s war on the Gaza Strip on 7 October.

Commenting on the MK’s comments, Israeli journalist Avner Hopstein said: “A former senior official in the law enforcement agencies is submitting evidence to the [International Criminal] Court in The Hague, saying that his friends in the Attorney General’s Office insist that all Gazans must be exterminated… The man is very stupid. When [former Attorney General] Shai Nitzan fired him, he did at least one good thing.”

January 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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