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American Arabs and the visa waiver programme

By James Zogby | MEMO | January 11, 2022

The Jerusalem Post has reported in the past few days that Palestinian Americans will be allowed to land at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on their way to the West Bank, rather than being required to cross the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. Israel is offering to make this change in its treatment of Palestinian Americans in order to join the US Visa Waiver Programme.

If Israel succeeds, its citizens will be able to travel to the US without requiring a visa. This is a privileged position that Israel has sought since the establishment of the programme.

One of the main reasons this status has not been achieved, despite continued pressure from supporters of Israel in Washington, is that every country that joins the programme must ensure reciprocity; that is, ensuring that all Americans are treated without discrimination, since the US agrees to do the same with the citizens of the other country. There is clear evidence of Israel’s decades-long mistreatment of US citizens of Arab descent who travel to the self-declared Jewish state.

The Jerusalem Post story has mentioned that Israel is willing to meet at least some of the American requirements, but this Israeli move is questionable and totally insufficient. It is suspicious, because in 2014, the last time Israel pressed to join the programme, Haaretz published an article titled “Israel to US: We’ll Ease Stance on Palestinian-Americans, if We Join Visa Waiver Programme”.

At the time, the Israelis blamed the Oslo Accords for their refusal to allow Palestinian Americans to travel to Ben Gurion Airport, claiming that the condition of crossing the Allenby Bridge was based on respect for the agreements and the Palestinian Authority. However, there is no such clause in the Oslo Accords. Seven years later, they haven’t made any adjustments and the promised Israeli step is not enough at all. It is true that Palestinian Americans’ ability to travel to Israel is important, but this is only one of many important issues related to Israel’s behaviour towards Palestinians and other Arab Americans. Even more disturbing is Israel’s treatment of Arab Americans upon entry, whether at the airport or at the bridge.

Individuals suspected of being of Arab descent are often automatically subjected to particular scrutiny, which includes hours of harsh interrogation and the extraction of information from their phones and laptops. This applies not only to Palestinian Americans, but also to every person who holds a Palestinian identity card; they are all given such treatment, and not only upon entry. We have witnessed statements by hundreds of Arab Americans who reported poor treatment when entering Israel and leaving as well. The US State Department did not take any action despite being informed of such reports, and it contented itself with publishing “Travel Advisories” that inform Arab Americans to expect discriminatory treatment.

When the victims of these abuses called the US Consulate in Jerusalem for help they were told, “There is nothing we can do.” It is true that a number of US foreign ministers have raised this issue with the Israeli government, but “raising the issue” is apparently not enough because the mistreatment continues. This is not just about visa waiver; it’s also about the US government’s failure to take its obligation seriously to protect the rights of its citizens. The US passport reads, “The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.”

The 1951 Friendship, Commerce and Navigation Treaty between the US and Israel allows US citizens bound for Israel to “travel therein freely, and to reside at places of their choice”. The treaty also prohibits Israel from engaging in “unlawful molestations of every kind” and stipulates that citizens “receive the most constant protection and security, in no case less than that required by international law.”

Regardless of the Visa Waiver Programme, protecting the rights of American citizens should not be up for discussion or negotiation between the US government and any other country. Hollow gestures such as allowing Palestinian Americans to land at Ben Gurion Airport do not absolve the US government or Israel of the requirement to fulfil their obligations.

January 11, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Victory in Oldham: Elbit forced to sell Ferranti after sustained direct action campaign

Palestine Action | January 10, 2022

After 18 months of sustained direct action taken at the Elbit Ferranti site in Oldham, Greater Manchester, with 36 people arrested, Elbit have now sold Ferranti technologies, with its continued operation in Oldham appearing unfeasible. Activists have occupied, blockaded, smashed, disrupted, and protested regularly at the site, ultimately succeeding in ending the factory’s production of specialist military technologies for Israel’s fleet of combat drones.

In November 2021, anonymous sources revealed to Palestine Action that mass redundancy notices had been issued to staff working at the factory, and that premises were being cleared in preparation for Elbit leaving the site. Today, it was publicised that Ferranti has indeed been sold to TT Electronics, a British electronics firm. This major restructuring – selling a subsidiary which Elbit has consistently promoted as a success and which has helped Elbit to land multi-million pound contracts with the British government – suggests that Elbit is under significant pressure to tighten its UK operations. This is most likely due to the impossibility of continuing at the often-occupied site, the massive financial impact of occupations, and an attempt to avoid more bad publicity.

Early in 2021, Elbit attempted to make the Oldham factory a viable production site by improving security. Elbit increased spending massively for round-the-clock security, and also benefitted from a rapid police response for protestor removal. Neither of these measures succeeded in keeping out activists, with the site continuing to be targetted regularly.

The first action taken in Oldham by Palestine Action, in late August 2020, involved spraying premises in blood-red paint, symbolising the Palestinian bloodshed made possible with Elbit Ferranti technologies. Following this, actions accelerated. Windows were smashed in an occupation in November 2020, while an action taken in collaboration with XR North in February 2021 caused over £20,000 in damages. In April 2021, activists not only occupied the site but gained entry to the factoy, smashing the roof, windows, air vents, and undermining future operations by covering equipment and computers in red paint – over £100,000 of damages were caused, and the site remained shut for well over a week. On July 5th, three activists gained entry to the site, allegedly causing £500,000 of damage and closing the factory for a number of weeks. More recently, in August of this year, activists blockaded the factory – blocking roads with vehicles and locking onto gates – and occupied the factory itself again. There have been a number of other actions taken at the Oldham site, with the factory forced to close for a significant number of weeks in total due to damage caused.

The site has also been subject to regular protests called by Oldham Peace and Justice and Manchester Palestine Action, with large crowds gathering outside the factory on a weekly basis since the massive and brutal bombardments of Gaza by Israel in May. Sustained pressure, through both protests and an extended campaign of effective direct action, has generated immense challenges for Elbit, who have now sold the subsidiary and left the site.

A Palestine Action spokesperson has stated:

“The sale of Ferranti and the closure of the Oldham factory is a huge victory for the movement. So far, our actions have undermined and disrupted operations – but this news vindicates our long-term strategy. Direct action works – the brave individuals who occupied the factory over the past year can proudly say that drone technologies are no longer in production in Oldham. But its not enough that just one of these death-factories shuts down. We want to see Elbit itself shut down for good, and all of their businesses forced out of Britain – we will keep escalating our actions until that happens.”

This site had been targetted due to the crimes committed against Palestinian civilians using Elbit Ferranti products. The Oldham factory was used for the manufacture of specialist military products and technology, including the SkEye persistent surveillance system aboard Elbit’s Hermes 450 and 900 drones. Ferranti also manufacture the SpectroXR ultra long-range imaging system for Hermes drones. Hermes drones have been used extensively by Israel in bombardments of Gaza, notably during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 in which over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 526 children. The site was also used for the production of IronVision helmets for use in battle tanks such as the Carmel – specficially designed for operations in densely built urban areas, such as Gaza.

January 11, 2022 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Australia artists boycott Sydney Festival over Israel funding

MEMO | January 4, 2022

Almost 30 Australian artists and organisations are boycotting the 2022 Sydney Festival due to the Israeli Embassy providing $20,000 to put on a performance by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin.

Melbourne funk/soul band Karate Boogaloo are the latest act to withdraw from the event as part of an ongoing cultural boycott.

In a statement shared yesterday on Instagram, the band wrote: “Boycotts and divestments have a strong track record of holding governments and corporations accountable for their actions.”

“Karate Boogaloo is standing in solidarity with Palestinian people, and boycotting the Sydney Festival as a result of it accepting money from the human rights abusing regime that is the Israeli Government.”

In addition, Blake Prize-winner Khaled Sabsabi, musician Malyangapa and Barkaa, Bindi Bosses, the Arab Theatre Studio and the Bankstown poetry slam and comedian Nazeem Hussain have withdrawn from this year’s festival which is due to be held from 6-30 January.

Last week, the Palestinian Justice Movement Sydney said in a statement that the deal was signed in May – the same month that Israel launched the 11-day offensive on Gaza, killing 256 Palestinians.

“The Israeli government uses culture to hide its apartheid practices and present itself as a free, fair and enlightened democracy. By partnering with Israel, Sydney Festival will be complicit in Israel’s strategy to art-wash its crimes, and contribute to the normalisation of an apartheid state”, the advocacy group said in a statement.

However, in response, Chair of the festival’s board David Kirk said the money would not be returned nor the performance stopped, however, similar donations may not be accepted in future.

“All funding agreements for the current Festival – including for Decadance [the Israeli-sponsored performance] will be honoured, and the performances will proceed. At the same time, the Board has also determined it will review its practices in relation to funding from foreign governments or related parties,” the statement read.


January 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Israel arrests 75 Palestinians from Gaza in 2021

MEMO | January 4, 2022

The Israeli occupation forces have arrested 75 Palestinians in total last year at the Erez Crossing between Gaza and Israel, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Centre for Studies.

The Israeli army bans Palestinians in the Gaza Strip from entering the 300-meter area adjacent to its border with the enclave and shoots or arrests anyone who breaches it.

The Palestinian Prisoners Centre for Studies observed that the number of arrests last year was the same as the year 2020, during which 76 Palestinians were arrested, despite the enclave not being under direct occupation like the occupied West Bank.

Researcher, Riad Al-Ashqar, Director of the Centre, stated that the Israeli occupation forces use the Erez Crossing as a means for collective punishment.

He added that the Israeli forces blackmail Palestinians to work with the occupation by providing information in exchange for allowing them to cross, especially patients and merchants.

Al-Ashqar noted the arrest of 35-year-old Walaa Muhammad Mustafa Al-Rifai, from Maghazi in the Gaza Strip, while accompanying his wife, who is ill with cancer.

They had attempted to reach the Makassed Hospital in occupied Jerusalem, where his wife had previously obtained a medical referral for treatment there and had obtained Israeli permits that allow them to pass through the checkpoint to reach the hospital for treatment.

However, the Israeli forces arrested Walaa and transferred him to Ashkelon Prison for investigation.

Al-Ashqar also expressed concern for Israel’s heavy naval presence, restricting any traffic in and out of the enclave as well as the distance Gaza’s fishermen can travel to fish, severely affecting the livelihoods of some 4,000 fishermen and at least 1,500 more people involved in the fishing industry.

Palestinian fishermen often suffer from multiple Israeli violations, including attempting to sink Palestinian boats in the sea, firing at them, as well as narrowing the fishing area for long periods.

Gaza has been under a strict Israeli siege for 14 years and has been subject to repeated Israeli onslaughts during that period which have led to wide scale damage, high rates of unemployment and poverty.

January 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Zionist Shadows of Woodrow Wilson During World War I and Its Aftermath in Paris

Dissecting the Treaty of Versailles’s “Big Four”

BY KACEY GUNTHER • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 4, 2022

In a Daily News Bulletin issued February 4, 1924, by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jewish leaders across the nation publicly mourned the passing of former war-time president Woodrow Wilson, the self-described “staunch friend of the Jews.” The telegram goes on to commemorate Wilson’s “intense interest in Jewish questions” by reviewing his political deeds as president, appointing Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court Bench despite vigorous opposition from the Court itself and urging the approval of the British Mandate over Palestine following the Balfour Declaration.[1]

Nearly a century later, this adulation of America’s twenty-eighth president continues to be echoed by prominent Jewish leaders and intellectuals. In Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg’s book, “Wilson,” this formidable Head of State has influenced the decision-making of each succeeding American president up to former President Donald Trump. Furthermore, Berg argues that Wilson is the most pro-Jewish president in US history.[2] This is attributed to Wilson’s breakaway from American isolationism, which guided the nation’s political function on the world stage for a hundred and twenty-five years.

Six months after winning a second consecutive term as president on the Democratic ticket (the first time since Andrew Jackson’s second term), Wilson asked the legislature to declare war on Germany in an imperative speech to Congress on April 2, 1917. His justification was to answer the question of the role the United States would play in the world – it was America’s duty to ensure that “the world must be safe for democracy.” This rhetoric has been repeated repeatedly by American politicians at all levels in subsequent generations, followed by military action.

As Wilson plunged the nation into Europe’s devastating four-year war which wrought 17 million deaths and 25 million wounded, he often portrayed himself as the beacon of progressive ideals, a missionary of self-determination, democracy, and multilateralism to the world and, by involuntary extension after the First World War, its conquered colonies from the ashes of the defeated German and Ottoman Empires. The question is on whose behalf and if foreign elements were acting abroad, at home, or both.

For example, it is entirely plausible today to assert that the invasion of Iraq was contrived almost entirely by high-ranking Jewish Zionists in the Bush administration for the long-anticipated purpose of removing Israel’s arch-nemesis at the time—Saddam Hussein—in another mission to destroy the Jewish State’s Arab neighbors and assert dominion over the region.[3]The catch was that Israel would not be fronting the 2 trillion dollar bill and sacrificing 190,000 lives; that was left to the Americans.[5]

Eighty years prior, before the founding of modern Israel, this similarly established Zionist paradigm in America’s political institutions persuaded the Wilson administration to do the same. Instead of winning the hearts and minds of the public through unbridled war propaganda and an unprecedented national tragedy for the specific purpose of creating a homeland for Jews, a cooperative network of Zionists in Britain, Russia, and the United States worked towards this goal through the imperial hand of the idealistic Wilson.

Jews long held Woodrow Wilson in high regard for his liberal politics and inclination to address their requests. When the former governor of New Jersey first ran for president in 1912, Boston’s Jewish Advocate published a political ad, pressing readers to join with “practically all the great Jewish leaders throughout the country” in endorsing him.[6]These leaders included financier Jacob H. Schiff, philanthropist Nathan Straus, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. At the time, beginning in 1906, the United States was faced with the difficult task of admitting roughly ten million immigrants, mainly from Eastern and Southern Europe.

This sudden influx overwhelmed several facets of the native populace, whereby the “restrictionists” emerged with literary test campaigns as a method by which to curtail subsequent waves of immigration. The American Jewish Committee was the most active and significant anti-restricionist lobby group in each of these battles through delay and outright blockage of the legislative passage. During his tenure as president, Wilson assisted by vetoing three restrictive measures he believed were aimed principally at Jews before being overridden by Congress. The AJC’s particular fixation on the plight of Russian-Jewish immigrants caused an extensive lobbying endeavor in America’s foreign policy.[7]

This emerging conflict of interest was sidestepped upon the outbreak of the First World War. The intense pogroms and anti-Jewish sentiment of Czar Nicholas II caused the American Jewish community to side more with Germany than with Allied forces. Immigrant Jews even prayed that the “more civilized” Germans would liberate their suppressed brethren in Eastern Europe from Russian harassment. In the Yiddish press, the enemy was portrayed vividly as: “The Jews support Germany because Russia bathes in Jewish blood.” Who will dare say that it is a crime for Jews to hate their torturers, their oppressors and murderers?”[8] The German Foreign Office took advantage of this position in order to maintain its favor in the Jewish community; in September, 1914, Dr. Isaac Straus was even sent to the United States to manage propaganda work among Jews for the German Information Bureau located in New York.

The German Information Bureau, despite official American neutrality, could not be more pleased following its meeting with the Jewish press. This came at a time when most Americans would rather side with French and British allies out of strong ancestral ties: “So far as our relations with the very influential Jewish press are concerned, they are in good shape, and will be carefully nourished. It is critical in this regard that all news pertaining to them elevate Jewish self-esteem; for example, the appointment of Jewish officers, the installation of Jewish professors, and honors bestowed upon Jewish professors should all be sent here.”

While war efforts were being bolstered in the Jewish press, American Zionist leaders adopted a policy of neutrality for the time being, stemming from Theodor Herzl’s stance on non-partisanship in a neutral country as war raged. During this time, it was Britain’s Grand Fleet that managed the naval blockade of supplies into Germany, starving 400,000 German civilians to death. For the first two years of the First World War, German war efforts nevertheless proved supreme thanks to their unexpected arsenal of submarines against the wealthier, more weaponized Allied Powers. Imperial German forces nearly captured Paris, expelled Russia from the war, and drove the French Army into mutiny, all before a Western Front victory was barely in their grasp by 1918. On three separate occasions throughout 1916, Germany pursued avenues to negotiate for peace, but both British and French resolve maintained that peace would only come about upon Germany’s defeat.[9]

Zionist leaders eventually came to the realization that Allied victory meant Russia’s influence would be amplified in the Near East. In early 1915, a conditional Entente agreement even allocated Constantinople to Russia. This posed an issue as Constantinople rested in the possession of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany and Austro-Hungary. High-profile Zionists had their eyes eastbound on Palestine as a suitable place to lay the groundwork for a Jewish homeland. In 1896, the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, approached Sultan Abdul Hamid II and offered to pay off the Ottoman debt in exchange for a charter that permitted Zionists access to Palestine.[10] The Sultan outright refused.

The prospect of a promised land for Jews never escaped one highly influential man’s attention — Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Through Brandeis, Zionist leadership “passed into American hands by default.” He was considered one of the men of “light and lead” on whom Wilson relied.[11] Born in 1856 to secular Jewish immigrant parents from the present-day Czech Republic, he graduated from Harvard Law School at the age of 20 and settled in Boston to open a law firm focused on progressive social causes. In his early career, he was distinguished for his public advocacy against powerful corporations, mass consumerism, monopolies, and public corruption while advising methods to restrict the influence of big banks and money trusts in his collection of essays, Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It.[12]

These progressive positions would later be taken up by Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson on the larger question of the role of the national government and the future of the American economic system. By that time, Louis Brandeis was head of both the Federation of American Zionists and the American Zionist Movement after meeting the English-born Zionist leader and close associate of the late Herzl, Jacob de Haas. The prominent Jewish lawyer was converted into a staunch Zionist under the mentorship of leading Zionists during that time, such as Aaron Aaronsohn, Horace Kallen, Shmarya Levin, Bernard Rosenblatt, and Nahum Sokolow.[13] From August 31, 1914, to October 1, 1916, Brandeis was also chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for general Zionist affairs.

The Brandeis-Wilson coalition was the start of a political partnership with far-reaching consequences on the international scene until Wilson’s death. The opportunity for career advancement presented itself so visibly that Brandeis switched parties and carried his advocacies, including Zionism, into American political institutions as a high-ranking political figure with direct access to the newly elected U.S. president.

Upon Wilson’s presidential win in November, he noted to Brandeis, “You were yourself a great part of the victory.” During Wilson’s first year as president, Brandeis was instrumental in the behind-the-scenes creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The ambitious president attempted to make Brandeis his Attorney General and later Secretary of Commerce, but intense resistance from corporate executives forced Wilson to rescind his plan to make the renowned radical part of his cabinet. Instead, he nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916, and he was sworn in amid a public outcry.

At a time when correspondence between Zionist leaders and the American president was steadily rising, as the Great War intensified in its first year, Brandeis approached Wilson about Zionist plans, to which Wilson seemed receptive. By 1916, Brandeis established regular contact with the State Department on the future fate of the declining Turkish Empire following the war, with Hungarian-born leading Zionist and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in communication with Wilson’s chief adviser on European politics and diplomacy during the First World War, Edward Mandell “Colonel” House, on Zionist objectives. Specifically, Wise functioned as an intermediary between Wilson and House from 1916 to 1919. Wise began his Zionist career in the late 1890’s by assisting the movement’s ideological development and organization of its membership. Another acquaintance of Herzl’s, he served as American secretary of the World Zionist Movement and was instrumental in producing the aforementioned Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs.[14]

Opposition to American entry into the First World War cut across political, racial, and economic lines. Various factions of society, including socialists, anarchists, syndicalists, pacifists, civil libertarians, Marxists, rural southerners, Canadian and Irish nationalists, and women’s groups, were just some of the small but vocal minorities opposing American militarism. International socialist groups, for example, were keenly aware of the capitalist mobilization the war promised to big business rivals. The working class fought, while the ruling class profited.[15] This was America’s first debut as a global military power and pitted citizen against citizen until eventually the government itself grossly violated civil liberties under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.

In 1916, Wilson reignited his bid for re-election through his continued commitment to progressive change by calling for legislation regulating work hours and a minimum wage. Democrats campaigned on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War,” insisting to voters that a Republican victory would mean war with Germany. Just four months after his second inauguration, Wilson reneged on his campaign promise of neutrality and officially declared war. By this time, public resistance to this betrayal was minute. The preceding years of preparedness campaigns, patriotic zeal, and heavily propagandized press cycles swayed the consensus into viewing the war as just and necessary. Thousands more dissenters continued to be jailed, silenced, and deported under newly solidified justification.

Shortly after the U.S. entered into the war, the British Foreign Minister, Arthur J. Balfour, arrived in Washington. In a cable, James Rothschild urged Brandeis to discuss Zionism with Balfour on the viability of an English Zionist program to recognize Palestine as the Jewish national homeland. “Unanimous opinion is the only satisfactory solution for Jewish Palestine under British protectorate,” Rothschild explained in a telegram. Russian Zionists fully approve. Public opinion and competent authorities here are favorable… It would greatly help if American Jews would suggest this scheme to their government.[16]The charitable activity of the Zionist movement was over. Now an era of wielding political power has commenced to shift the tide of international conflict under the London-Moscow-New York axis.

Only one month after American entry into the war, Brandeis followed through with Rothschild’s request. Appealing to Wilson’s progressive vision for the globe, Brandeis explained that a Jewish Palestine would fulfill the conditions of the peace settlement Wilson desired; Turkish despotism would be swept aside for a democratic government where economic and cultural development would be undertaken by a historically suppressed people.[17]In reaction to the Balfour Declaration, Wilson said, “The allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our government and people, agree that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth.”[18]

Partnered with Brandeis in courting Wilson was the Austrian-born Jewish lawyer and professor, Felix Frankfurter, a lifelong committed Zionist and member of the Zionist Organization of America. Frankfurter became acquainted with Brandeis in the Parushim, a secret Zionist society, reform movement, and arguably the first modern militant Zionist organization in America. Found by their former mentor, Horace M. Kallento, Zionist purpose was “a group much like the Peace Corps, young men and women who saw the Utopian opportunity that existed for the Jewish people in Palestine and who were willing to devote themselves to an ideal.”[19]

The ideological motivations for endorsing Zionism were personal for Wilson as well: “To think that I, the son of the manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people.” With Wilson formally persuaded, Brandeis passed along the good news via urgent cables to Rothschild in London. Two weeks later, Jacob de Haas, now advisor to Brandeis, cabled Russian born-Zionist leader and future president of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, not only outlining the plan for Palestine but to communicate “an accurate statement of the prevailing sentiment in the United States to be presented to the Allied Governments.”[20]

President Wilson was later asked directly by the British government about the likelihood of issuing a declaration of sympathy for the Zionist movement. Wilson responded that the time was not ripe. A month later, Wilson placed his full backing behind the affirmation as pressure mounted against Germany’s Turkish ally to make dispensations to the Zionists. The topic of the Balfour Declaration was on the table between the two world powers. Colonel House complained to Wilson in a note: “The Jews from every tribe have descended in force, and they seem determined to break in with a jimmy if they are not let in.”[21]

Brandeis’ influence over Wilson in regards to Zionist ambition could not be understated. Wilson once remarked that it was Brandeis to whom he owed his career. According to Frank Edward Manuel, Wilson’s interest in Zionism and including it as part of his foreign policy was “being slowly nurtured by Louis Brandeis, one of the men who stood closest to him in the early years of the administration and who became the key figure in future American intervention in Palestine.”[22]

A roadblock in the way of the highly anticipated declaration was the Counselor to the State Department, Robert Lansing. Lansing was completely bypassed in House and Wilson’s correspondence on the Balfour Declaration. In response, Lansing argued in a letter to Wilson why America must decline Balfour’s promise, noting that, among several reasons, “many Christian sects and individuals would undoubtedly resent turning the Holy Land over to the absolute control of the race credited with the death of Christ,” a flagrant secession from the protracted Christian support for the prophetic restoration of Israel.

Lansing ordered Ambassador Walter Hines Page to investigate and report prudently the British reasons for the Balfour Declaration. In spite of political opposition within the State Department, the declaration was officially signed by Lord Balfour after a two-year process of edits by British and American Zionists and officials. Despite its official status as a British document, it was Brandeis who spearheaded its drafting and application through Wilson.

News rapidly spread worldwide upon the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, with heaps of telegrams addressed to Wilson expressing their gratitude for his contributions. Leaflets were dropped over German and Austrian territory announcing, “The hour of Jewish redemption has arrived…” The Allies are giving the land of Israel to the people of Israel… Will you join them and help to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Stop fighting the allies who are fighting for you, for all the Jews… An Allied victory means the Jewish people’s return to Zion.”[23]

By the summer of 1918, Turkish resistance was waning and President Wilson took this time to formally announce his public endorsement of the Balfour Declaration in August. Three months later, Germany was the last of the Central Powers to sign an armistice agreement with the Allies. The war was over. The next battle would be held in Paris.

The ambitions of Wilson’s liberal internationalist foreign policy were outlined in the Fourteen Points and used as the basis of terms for Germany’s surrender at the Paris Peace Conference. The Peace Conference produced five treaties, one of which was the notorious Treaty of Versailles. There were a number of high-profile Jews present, not just in diplomatic positions but in many senior and important functions within the Allied delegations.[24] This included Baron Sonnino for Italy, Edwin Montagu for Britain, Louis Klotz for France, and Paul Mantoux as the interpreter for the “Big Three”—United States, Britain, and France.

Wilson also endorsed Rabbi Wise to promote the Jewish program for Palestine in Paris. Another Zionist delegate was Frankfurter, who was among the nearly one hundred intellectuals that signed a statement of principles for the formation of the League of Free Nations Associations. This formally enacted Wilson’s mission to dispel isolationism in favor of increasing American participation in international affairs.[25]

In the midst of empirical savagery slicing up Germany and parceling out Europe’s colonial holdings, the case for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was presented by a delegation of the Zionist Organization led by Weizmann. The terms of the newly established British Mandate involved promoting Jewish immigration and settlement, suggesting boundaries, self-government, and the assurance of religious liberty.

At the request of President Wilson, Jewish statesman and Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch attended the Paris Peace Conference as an advisor to negotiate a deal with the victorious Allied powers on the destiny of Germany.[26] He served as a member of the American Delegation to the Preliminary Peace Conference and on the Committee on Form of Payments of Reparations. Baruch is credited with managing America’s economic mobilization in the First World War while chairman of the War Industries Board. While Baruch opposed the strenuous financial tenets of punishing Germany, he nonetheless attempted to assist the Senate in passing the Treaty of Versailles.

Baruch also played a significant role in securing France’s vote in favor of the Palestine Partition Plan. He swayed their vote by visiting France’s UN delegate and heavily suggesting that failure to support the resolution could result in America withholding desperately needed monetary support as the war devastated France’s financial market.[27]

The renowned English economist, John Maynard Keynes, was also in attendance at the Peace Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury. Disgusted by the ravenous nature of the treaties, particularly the Versailles Treaty, Keynes publicized a negative portrayal of the treaties in his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In response, Baruch paid John Foster Dulles $10,000 to ghostwrite his own book, The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty, to counter Keynes by exalting the treaties.[28]

The most significant of American Jewish attendees, however, was Justice Brandeis himself, whose task at the world’s peace tables was to assist Colonel House “in collecting peace data for President Wilson.” The task was clear: “Colonel House will devote his attention to problems concerning the war in the west, while Justice Brandeis will study the near eastern question.” Their work will form the basis for the country’s contention.”[29]

For a liberal president known for endorsing and exporting democratic ideals even through coercion, its inconsistent implementation was noted during the peace talks and formally addressed on August 28, 1919, through the presentation of the King-Crane Commission. The commission argued that the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would inevitably lead to an immediate violation of the right of the indigenous Palestinian people to self-determination and deemed the Zionist program incompatible.

The report also stated that meetings with Jewish representatives led them to conclude that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine through armed forces” and begged the Peace Conference to reject Zionist proposals. The findings of this report were suppressed for three years by Brandeis until after the Peace Accords were passed. Working diligently to ensure the stipulations of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated into the final arrangement was Frankfurter, who found the findings of the commission to “cheat Jewry of Palestine.”[30]

As the dissolution of the former Ottoman Empire began via the Treaty of Sevres, the vehicle for colonizing Palestine as spelled out by the Balfour Declaration was put into effect under the Brandeis-guided Wilson. The Council of the League of Nations and the United States both approved the Mandate for Palestine in July of 1922. It was clear from the beginning that the flagrant denial of self-government for the Palestinian population would continue until the Jews were strong enough to take the reins of government in the region.

For four days in April 1922, Congress debated resolutions brought forth to reaffirm the colonial implications of the Balfour Declaration as urged by Zionists. One of the vocal participants of its opposition was Professor Edward Bliss Reed, who testified in a prophetic hearing before Congress about the outcome of what American support entailed: “If you indorse the Balfour declaration, you are caught absolutely in the mandate…” What I want to warn you against is getting caught up in the mandate in what I consider an impasse. It will devastate this country, Palestine. I want to prevent my country from doing something that will bring it untold trouble.”[31]

Nevertheless, Congress was subjected to endless Zionist pressure and passed the Lodge-Fish Resolution endorsing the British Mandate for Palestine as laid out by the Balfour Declaration, which was signed by Wilson’s presidential successor, Warren G. Harding, on September 21, 1922.

When Wilson died two years later, the President of the Zionist Organization of America, Louis Lipsky, stated publicly, “Mr. Wilson followed with interest the progress of the Zionist movement even after he retired to private life.” In 1921, when informed that the Mandate for Palestine had been finally ratified, he telegraphed to the Zionist Organization of America: “I am proud that it should be thought that I have been of service to the Jewish people.”[32]

The First World War was proclaimed to represent “the war to end all wars”, bringing about a golden future on the promise of self-determination, democracy, mutual security, and peace. The cost would only be the blood and ashes of young, idealistic men committed to the service of their nation. What resulted was the pervasive indifference and lack of cohesive understanding of the memory of the war in spite of its devastating cost. As Steven Trout tried to explain the lack of American consciousness toward the war, “What exactly should the nation recall about the war? Is neutrality failing? The bravery of the combat soldier? The futility of trench warfare? The racial discrimination that permeated the ranks? Are there domestic attacks on German Americans? The botched peace processes? ”

Not to mention the American public that had opposed entry into Europe’s war was forced to grapple with the casualties of 120,000 soldiers and the reintegration of 200,000 wounded men, crippled of mind and body. For Wilson, it was his lifelong and close political partnerships with notable Jewish Zionists fully entrenched in American institutions that prompted his breakaway from isolationism—to which the United States has never returned. More consequential was Wilson’s setting the pattern for amplifying and servicing the dominance of a foreign state as the costs continue to rise.

Footnotes

[1] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, INC., “Leaders Pay Tribute To The Passing Of A Great Statesman,” Daily News Bulletin, last modified February 4, 1924, https://pdfs.jta.org/1924/02-04_025.pdf.

[2] Galia Licht, “Who Was the Most Pro-Jewish U.S. President? Woodrow Wilson, Obviously, ” Haaretz.com, September 25, 2013, https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/premium-which-prez-was-most-pro-Jewish-1.5340052.

[3] Casey Titus, “History’s Deceptive Buildup Against Saddam Hussein,” The Duran, accessed March 22, 2021, https://theduran.com/history/deceptive-buildup-against-Saddam-Hussein

[4] Nathan Guttman, “Top White House posts go to Jews,” The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/top-white-house-posts-go-to-jews, last modified April 25, 2006.

[5] Paulina Cachero, “According to reports, US taxpayers have paid an average of $8,000 per person and more than $2 trillion in total for the Iraq War alone.”Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-taxpayers-spent-8000-each-2-trillion-iraq-war-study-2020-2, last modified February 6, 2020.

[6] Jonathan D. Sarna, “Woodrow Wilson: A Jewish Hero.”What Should We Do with His Racism? ” The Forward, November 15, 2016, https://forward.com/opinion/450092/woodrow-wilson-was-a-hero-to-jews-what-should-we-do-about-his-racism/?

[7] Joseph Rappaport, “The American Yiddish Press and the European Conflict in 1914.” 113–28 in Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 3/4 (1957).http://www.jstor.org/stable/4465551.

[8] Rappaport, page 116.

[9] Jon Guttman, “Did the Germans Try to Make Peace in 1916?,” HistoryNet, https://www.historynet.com/did-the-germans-try-to-make-peace-in-1916.htm, last modified December 18, 2014.

[10] Elis Gjevori, “How Theodor Herzl Failed to Convince the Ottomans to Sell Palestine,” https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-theodor-herzl-failed-to-convince-the-ottomans-to-sell-palestine-46991, last modified May 25, 2021.

[11] Adler, Selig. “The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 303–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615334.

[12] Jewish Virtual Library, “Louis D. Brandeis,” last modified January 2016, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/louis-d-brandeis.

[13] Jonathan D. Sarna, “Louis D. Brandeis: Zionist Leader,” Brandeis University, last updated in 1992, https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/sarna/americanjewishcultureandscholar.

[14] American Jewish Archives, “A Finding Aid to the Stephen S. Wise Collection, 1893-1969,” The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, accessed December 31, 2021, https://collections.americanjewisharchives.org/ms/ms0049/ms0049.htm

[15] Catherine Gilchrist, “Socialist Opposition to World War I,” Dictionary of Sydney, last modified in 2014, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/socialist_opposition_to_world_war_i

[16] Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann to Brandeis (cable), April 21, 1917 (received April 25), Zionist Archives, New York City, Jacob de Haas Archives.

[17] Lebow, Richard Ned. “Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration.” The Journal of Modern History, 40, no. 4 (1968): 507 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1878450.

[18] Jewish Virtual Library, “U.S. Presidential Quotes About Jewish Homeland & Israel,” Jewish Virtual Library, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/u-s-presidential-quotes-about-jewish-homeland-and-israel-jewish-virtual-library, accessed December 31, 2021.

[19] Schmidt, Sarah. “The ‘Parushim’: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65, no. 2 (1975): 122. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23880453

[20] De Haas Archives, Brandeis to Rothschild (cable), May 9, 1917.

[21] Adle, Selig. “The Palestine Question in the Wilson Era.” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 4 (1948): 306. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615334.

[22] Ahmed, Hisham H. “From the Balfour Declaration to World War II: The U.S. Stand on Palestinian Self-Determination.” Arab Studies Quarterly 12, no. 1/2 (1990): 9–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41858937.

[23] Brendan Devenney, “Chapter One—Zionism: The Beginning,” Medium, last modified November 2, 2021, https://medium.com/@dubhelloco/chapter-one-b8d8b77b38b8.

[24] Levene, Mark. “Nationalism and Its Alternatives in the International Arena: The Jewish Question in Paris, 1919.” Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 3 (1993): 522. http://www.jstor.org/stable/260644.

[25] Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, 261.

[26] “BERNARD BARUCH: A PUBLIC MAN’S PRIVATE LIFE,”https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/, n.d.https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/bernardbaruch/world-war-i/.

[27] Saul J. Singer, “Bernard Baruch: ‘America First’,” The Jewish Press-Breaking News, Opinions, Analysis and More on Israel and the Jewish World | Last modified March 29, 2017, https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-Jewish-world/bernard-Baruch-America-first/2017/03/29/.

[28] Gates Brown, “Baruch, Bernard Mannes | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1),” 1914-1918-Online. WW1 International Encyclopedia, last modified March 16, 2015, https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/baruch_bernard_mannes.

[29] Butler Citizen, “Zionist Louis Brandeis Takes Control of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference,” Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/35334878/zionists-louis-brandeis-takes-control/, last modified October 2, 1917.

[30] Ahmed, 23,

[31] United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Sixty-seventh Congress, Second Session, on H. Con. Res. 52, Expressing Satisfaction with the Re-creation of Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish Race April 18, 19, 20, and 21, 1922 (Kessinger Publishing, 1922), 23–24.

[32] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Jews Mourn the Death of Woodrow Wilson,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, https://www.jta.org/archive/jews-mourn-death-of-woodrow-wilson, last modified in 1921.

January 4, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Senator Calls for Renewed Investigation of Murder of Palestinian Activist Alex Odeh

Alex Odeh with his daughters months before he was assassinated. Photo: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
IMEMC | January 3, 2022

In a report filed Saturday in Liberation magazine by Reem Zubaidi, the author explains that new information has come to light about the assassination of Alex Odeh, a Palestinian-American human rights activist killed in 1985 by a pipe bomb planted in his office.

Odeh’s murder was never solved – and he was one of a number of Palestinian and Arab activists targeted in the 1980s by anti-Arab terrorist groups operating in the United States.

Zubaidi writes: New information has come to light through a recent Los Angeles Times interview with a former Santa Ana police officer. The revelations prompted U.S. Senator Richard J. Durbin, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to call upon the FBI to “intensify its efforts to investigate the murder of Mr. Odeh and bring his killers to justice.”

On Oct. 11, 1985, Alex Odeh, 41, was killed in a premeditated attack upon opening the door to his Santa Ana office. Odeh’s office was broken into and the pipe bomb that killed him was planted the night before.

Odeh was a Palestinian activist and the west-coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, an organization that protects the civil rights of Arabs and Arab-Americans in the U.S. He was also a poet and father of three young daughters at the time of his murder 36 years ago. As of yet, no one has been charged for the murder despite strong evidence against suspects who fled to Israel following the attack.

The Arab-America Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said they welcome renewed interest in Odeh’s case, but want to put it in context. “While, understandably, we have focused on bringing Alex’s killers to justice, we also want to ensure that this attack is not viewed as an isolated incident. This was a deliberate attempt to silence an Arab-American civil rights icon and organization,” said Samer Khalaf, ADC National President, adding that ADC offices were also targeted in Boston and Washington, DC.

The attack occurred during a wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria whipped up here by the media in response to international incidents where American lives were lost. Odeh was killed just hours after he appeared on two TV news shows defending the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), explaining that that the PLO had no role in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro ship.

The FBI classified the bombing as a terrorist attack. The assassination was condemned by President Ronald Reagan and even by Zionist organizations like the American Committee on Israel and the Anti-Defamation League. Two weeks after Odeh’s death, the FBI attributed the assassination — along with two other bombings —to the Jewish Defense League, a terrorist organization founded by fascist American-Israeli politician Martin Kahane. The national chair of the JDL, Irv Rubin,  made a public statement after the bombing saying: “I have no tears for Mr. Odeh. He got exactly what he deserved.”

In response to the FBI’s statement linking the JDL to the attack, Rubin denied involvement. After facing backlash, the FBI went back on their original stance, saying instead that further investigation was needed before any final attribution was made, although the JDL was “probably” responsible for the attacks.

36 years later Justice Department still dragging its feet

For decades, the Justice Department has dragged its feet on bringing justice to Odeh and his family. During that time, evidence has continued to surface that further implicates the suspects of the murder, who were under surveillance at the time. A few years ago, retired law enforcement officers who were on the case at the time expressed frustration at the failure to make any arrests despite having named suspects: “We know who did it. We know where they lived. We know why they did it, how they did it.”

The suspects moved to Israel where two of them are still living freely in a West Bank settlement. Israeli officials continuously thwarted efforts to obtain information about the JDL’s movement between the U.S. and Israel despite the fact that organization and suspects were linked to several other attacks in the U.S. Extradition requests were previously denied until 1993 when one suspect was extradited to face charges in another murder after two years of extradition proceedings, but not for the attack that killed Odeh.

ADC Legal and Policy Director Abed Ayoub explained on Dec. 21, “To have a senior member of the Senate, Majority Whip and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee take a serious look at this case is welcoming, and long overdue. We hope that it brings some answers from the FBI about what’s taking so long in this case and why justice hasn’t been brought for those responsible for Odeh’s murder.”

Zubaidi writes in her piece in Liberation magazine that she believes Odeh’s murder and law enforcement’s failure to bring justice to him and his family decades later makes evident the fact that the U.S. government is a partner in silencing pro-Palestine activists.

She adds that she believes there is a double standard in how these cases are handled. For example, the U.S. government unjustly designated the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Islamic charity in the U.S., to be a “terrorist organization,” shut it down and even jailed its organizers and activists. Yet the U.S. supports Israeli NGOs that raise funds in the U.S. for illegal Zionist settlements and settler terrorism.

Most recently, on Dec. 15 the civil rights group the Council for American Islamic Relations revealed that informants there were recording and passing confidential information to an anti-Muslim hate group with links to the Israeli government. Yet there has been no media outcry or Justice Department investigation.

January 3, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Aggression on New Year’s Weekend

By Stephen Lendman | January 2, 2022

Any pretext or none at all unjustifiably justifies Israeli aggression against blockaded/defenseless Gazans.

At its discretion, the apartheid state bombs, shells, invades, and otherwise immiserates long-suffering Strip residents.

Despite Israeli state terror repeating with disturbing regularity, the world community yawns and ignores its worst crimes of war and against humanity against Palestinians for the “crime” of not being Jewish.

NGO Gisha supports enforcement of the rule of law and free movement of Palestinians — especially illegally blockaded Gazans, explaining the following:

Since Israel illegally occupied the West Bank and Gaza with intent to steal and develop Palestinian land for exclusive Jewish use, its ruling regimes instituted “a complex system of rules (and) restrictions” in flagrant breach of international law.

Fundamental rights of Palestinians — especially Gazans — are consistently and repeatedly violated.

Israeli regimes deny them “the right to life, the right to access medical care, the right to education, the right to livelihood, the right to family unity and the right to freedom of religion.”

Gisha’s website explains the following:

For nearly 15 years under illegal Jewish state blockade, Gazans suffer from oppressively “high unemployment, long blackouts, and severe shortages of clean water.”

Their basic rights Gazans are denied — with no world community to help reverse what no one should have to tolerate.

“Electricity is only available for about half the day” — on some days for a few hours alone or none at all.

The vast majority of Gazans have no access to clean water.

“More than 70% of Gaza’s population relies on humanitarian aid to meet basic needs.”

“The vast majority of residents do not meet Israel’s (apartheid) criteria for travel permits.”

They have little or no chance to leave the Strip for employment, education, medical care unavailable to them under blockade,

“or to visit or reunite with family members living in Israel, the West Bank, and abroad.”

Israel blocks free land, sea and air movement to or from the Strip.

It “oversees entry of goods into Gaza… demands to know (what) they’re intended for, (who’ll) receive them, and who paid for them.”

Its ruling regimes decide “what goods produced in Gaza can be sold outside the Strip, how much, when and where.”

They also decide how much electricity the Strip is allowed to have — reducing or cutting it off entirely at its discretion.

They repeatedly close “Gaza’s crossings and den(y) access to its sea space as a means of punishing and pressuring the population.”

At all times, Israel enforces severe restrictions on the movement of goods and people.

It “blocks access to opportunities, prevents economic development, and violates basic human rights.”

B’Tselem said Gazans endure made-in-Israel “humanitarian crisis” conditions at all times.

Its ruling regimes “sentenced” two millions Gazans “to a life of abject poverty and… inhuman conditions.”

They control “critical aspects of life” in the blockaded Strip.

“Isolating Gaza from the rest of the world, including separating it from the West Bank,” is part of a longstanding Israeli policy.

What began in the 1990s has grown more oppressive since that time for invented reasons.

Two million Gazans are virtually held captive in the world’s largest open-air prison.

Over 80% of Gazans need humanitarian aid to survive.

Even with what Israel allows into the Strip, nearly two-thirds of its people are food insecure — unsure where their next meal is coming from.

Gazan infrastructure and public services are bare-bones.

Over 95% of Strip water is contaminated and unpotable.

What’s considered normal in Israel and the West is nonexistent in Gaza.

At its discretion for invented reasons, Israel wages war on Gaza.

Any time for any reason or none at all, it terror-bombs, shells, or otherwise strikes Strip targets — including residential buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques, and shops.

Free-fire policy lets IDF soldiers shoot Gazan children, farmers in their fields, and other Strip residents for target practice.

Blockades are acts of war by other means, Law Professor Francis Boyle explained — “because of the(ir) belligerent use of force…”

Gazans pose no threat to Israel.

Blockading the Strip is solely for political reasons, not security ones.

On most issues, Al Jazeera’s reports resemble US/Western propaganda — fake news over the real thing.

All things related to Israeli state terror against Palestinians is an exception to its standard practice on most other issues.

On New Year’s eve, Qatar-based Al Jazeera (AJ) spoke to Gazans injured and disabled from Israeli aggression last May.

“The assault… killed at least 260 people, including 39 women and 67 children, and wounded more than 1,900, according to the health ministry in Gaza,” AJ reported, adding:

“The bombardment also destroyed 1,800 residential units and partially demolished at least 14,300 other units.”

Since that time, the Netanyahu and Bennett regimes blocked entry of many reconstruction materials on the phony pretext of alleging their dual use, including for military purposes (sic).

Israeli aggression last May blinded 7-year-old Mohammed Shaban.

His new year’s wish is to see his mother’s face, he said.

Badly damaged by Israeli terror-bombing last May, his eyes couldn’t be saved and were surgically removed.

“I can’t stop crying whenever I see him,” his mother said, adding:

“He keeps asking his siblings, ‘Why can I only see black darkness? Why can’t I go to my school?’ ”

“Last night, he told me: ‘Mum, I wish I could see your face.’ ”

Recently enrolled in a school for visually challenged children, his mother, Somayya Shaban, expects no positive change in the new year.

“I believe Gaza’s destiny is to face more torture and suffering,” she said.

She wishes her son ,Mohammed, could see again. “I wish I could give him my eyes,” she stressed.

Countless thousands of other Gazans were killed, injured or disabled from multiple Israeli wars and other attacks on the Strip since 2008.

On New Year’s weekend, Israel terror-bombed and shelled Strip targets again.

Its latest aggression came in response to two rockets allegedly fired from the Strip on New Year’s day.

Reportedly, they fell harmlessly into offshore waters, harming no one, doing no damage.

According to an IDF statement, no sirens were sounded for Israelis to take cover.

The Bennett regime’s Iron Dome air defense system wasn’t activated.

In its yearend annual report, Israel said only five rockets were fired from the Strip, injuring no one.

According to the Times of Israel (TOI) on Sunday:

IDF “warplanes and helicopters hit (multiple) Hamas targets” overnight — over virtually nothing, TOI left unexplained.

“Palestinian media first reported airstrikes in the southern part of the Strip shortly before midnight” on Saturday.

“Hamas media claimed ‘resistance fighters’ launched ‘experimental rockets’ toward the sea.”

Gaza’s health ministry said three Palestinians were wounded from strikes on northern Strip targets.

How many others may have been injured or killed is unclear as of early Sunday morning — or the extent of damage to Strip targets.

Life in blockaded Gaza is harsh by any standard.

Israeli inflicted misery on Strip residents followed Hamas’ sweeping January 2006 electoral triumph to become historic Palestine’s legitimate government.

At the dawn of a new year, the message of weekend terror-bombing and shelling of the Strip shows that dirty Israeli business as usual continues unchanged.

Two million Gazans are victimized by apartheid ruthlessness — with no end of it in prospect.

The same goes for all occupied Palestinians.

Largely ignored by the world community, the highest of Israeli high crimes of war and against humanity continue to go unpunished.

The same reality applies to US-dominated NATO’s war on humanity at home and abroad.

January 2, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel demolished 69 homes, issued 172 demolition orders in Silwan in the year 2021

WAFA | December 30, 2021

JERUSALEM – Israeli occupation authorities demolished 69 homes belonging to Palestinians in the East Jerusalem town of Silwan, and issued 172 other home demolition orders during the year 2021.

Fakhri Abu Diab, the member of the Defense of Silwan Land Committee, said the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem, and its Planning and Building Committee, delivered during the year 2021, 172 demolition orders against Palestinian homes in Silwan, noting that 150 other homes are threatened with demolition under the Israeli Kaminitz Law; which means that the occupation municipality can demolish it at any moment.

He said that the occupation demolished 69 houses in the town of Silwan in 2021, and displaced 342 Jerusalemites; 66% of whom are children and minors. The occupation during the year 2021 filed indictments against 90 houses and fined their owners 4,370,000 Shekels under the pretext of the so-called illegal construction, he added.

The number of demolition orders against homes and structures in Silwan has reached 7800 orders since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, he added.

The implementation of the demolition and eviction orders will leave 10,000 Jerusalemites threatened with displacement and ethnic cleansing.

He noted that settlers and Israel’s ‘Nature Authority’ confiscated 2015 dunums of land during the year 2021.

December 30, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers watch as settlers open fire at Sheikh Jarrah homes

MEMO | December 30, 2021

Israeli Occupation Forces stood by as settlers opened fire on Palestinian homes in the occupied East Al-Quds neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

According to a Wafa News Agency correspondent, the soldiers also detained a 13-year-old Palestinian boy from the flashpoint neighbourhood.

More than five hundred Palestinians living in twenty eight houses in the neighbourhood are facing threats of forced expulsion at the hands of settlement associations, backed by the Israeli government and its judiciary system, which recently issued a decision to displace seven families.

Jewish settler groups claim the homes were built on land owned by Jews before 1948, claims which official Jordanian and UN documents refute.

The United Nations Special Coordinator for the peace process in the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, last week, called on Israel “to cease the advancement of all settlement activities immediately,” describing the move as a “flagrant violation of UN resolutions.”

Referring to the evictions carried out against Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem, at a UN Security Council briefing, Wennesland called on the occupation authorities “to end the displacement and eviction of Palestinians, while enabling them to build legally and address their development need.”

The UN official also expressed his “continued concern” over the “deteriorating security situation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Extremist Israeli settlers’ violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by the Israeli authorities.

They often coordinate their raids and assaults against the Palestinians with Israeli Occupation Forces, who provide them with cover and protection.

December 30, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel refuses to provide evidence for banning Palestinian rights groups

MEMO | December 28, 2021

The Israeli occupation authorities have failed to provide evidence for outlawing six Palestinian human rights and civil society groups, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) said on Tuesday.

“The organisations have not received any of the evidentiary materials that the Israeli authorities purport to justify this draconian and sweeping measure,” Adalah said in a statement.

Adalah pointed out that it had sent a letter to the Israeli security authorities, demanding that they reveal all of the evidence forming the bases of the designations.

“There is no justice, fairness or due process for the organisations, without access to these materials in their entirety in order to defend themselves,” Adalah stressed.

On 19 October 2021, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz designated six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as “terrorist organisations” under Israel’s domestic Counter-Terrorism Law which was ratified in 2016.

The Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank also outlawed all the six groups, declaring them “unlawful associations.”

Adalah’s legal team said that “the designations constitute a blatant political decision aimed at destroying Palestinian civil society, based on arbitrary law and emergency measures.”

In its statement, Adalah described the six groups as “the most vocal against Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies locally and internationally and provide needed services to a wide range of Palestinian communities,” hinting that this is the real reason behind banning them.

“These baseless designations aim to delegitimise and discredit the work of these groups, placing the organisations, their staff and their supporters in danger of criminal charges,” the statement said.

Adalah reiterated that the six groups did not have any information about the reason for their designation. “To date, they have had no meaningful opportunity to review and challenge the bases of the designations, as no evidence has been provided to them,” Adalah said.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Why is Israel Amending Its Open-Fire Policy: Three Possible Answers

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 28, 2021

At the outset, the Israeli military decision to revise its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank seems puzzling. What would be the logic of giving Israeli soldiers the space to shoot more Palestinians when existing army manuals had already granted them near-total immunity and little legal accountability?

The military’s new rules now allow Israeli soldiers to shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinian youngsters with live ammunition for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli ‘civilian’ cars. This also applies to situations where the alleged Palestinian ‘attackers’ are not holding rocks at the time of the shooting.

The reference to ‘civilians’ in the revised army manual applies to armed Israeli Jewish settlers who have colonised the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in defiance of international law and Palestinian sovereignty. These settlers, who often operate as paramilitary forces in direct coordination with the Israeli army, endanger the lives of their own families by residing on occupied Palestinian land. Per Israel’s twisted standards, these violent Israelis, who have killed and wounded numerous Palestinians throughout the years, are ‘civilians’ in need of protection from rock-throwing Palestinian ‘assailants.’

In Israel, throwing rocks is a “serious crime” and Palestinians who throw rocks are “criminals”, according to Liron Libman, Israel’s former chief military prosecutor, commenting on the new rules. For Israelis, there is little disagreement on these assertions, even by those who are questioning the legality of the new rules. The point of contention, according to Libman and others, is that “a person who is fleeing does not present a threat,” though, according to Libman himself, “the new policy could potentially be justified,” The Times of Israel reported.

The ‘debate’ on the new open-fire policy in Israeli media, gives one the false impression that something fundamental has changed in the Israeli army’s relationship with occupied Palestinians. This is not the case at all. There are numerous, daily examples in which Palestinians, including children, are shot and killed with impunity, whether throwing rocks or not, going to school or merely protesting the illegal confiscation of their land by the Israeli military or armed settlers.

In the Palestinian village of Beita, in the northern occupied West Bank, eight unarmed Palestinians have been killed since May. This small village has been the scene of regular demonstrations against Jewish settlement expansion and against the illegal settlement outpost of Eviatar, in the Palestinian rural area of Mount Sabih. The victims include Muhammad Ali Khabisa, the 28-year-old father of an eight-month-old child, who was shot dead last September.

Though the new rules have placed much emphasis on the status of the supposed Israeli victims, labelling them ‘civilians’, in practice, the Israeli military has used the exact same standard to shoot, maim and kill Palestinian alleged rock-throwers, even when armed settlers are not present.

A famous case, in 2015, involved the killing of a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, Mohammad Kosba, at the hands of an Israeli army colonel, Yisrael Shomer. The latter alleged that Kosba had thrown a rock at his car. Subsequently, Shomer chased down the Palestinian teenager and shot him in the back, killing him.

The Israeli officer was “censored” for his conduct, not for killing the boy, but for not stopping “in order to aim properly,” according to The Times of Israel. The Israeli military chief prosecutor at the time concluded that “Shomer’s use of deadly force under the framework of the arrest protocol was justified from the circumstances of the incident.”

Israel’s disregard of international law in its targeting of Palestinians is not a secret. Israeli and international human rights groups have repeatedly condemned the Israeli army’s inhumane and barbaric behaviour in the occupied territories.

In an extensive report as early as 2014, Amnesty International condemned Israel’s “callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank” over the years. AI said that such killings had taken place “with near total impunity.”

“The frequency and persistence of arbitrary and abusive force against peaceful protesters in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and police officers – and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators – suggests that it is carried out as a matter of policy,” the Amnesty report read.

Even Israel’s own rights group, B’tselem, concurs. The organisation decried the Israeli army’s “shoot-to-kill policy”, which is also applied to “people who have already been ‘neutralized'”. Indeed, in the case of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian man who was shot point-blank in Al-Khalil (Hebron), by an Israeli military medic, Elor Azaria, in 2016, was not only ‘neutralized’ but also unconscious.

According to B’tselem, Israeli “soldiers and police officers have become judge, jury and executioner”. With this tragic and sinister trajectory in mind, one is left to wonder why the Israeli army would amend its open-fire policy at this particular moment. There are three possible answers:

One, the Israeli government and army are anticipating a surge in Palestinian popular resistance in the coming months, possibly as a result of the massive expansion of illegal settlements and forced evictions in occupied East Jerusalem.

Two, by perfectly aligning the existing open-fire policy with the aggressive shoot-to-kill military practice already in place, Israeli courts would no longer have to contend with any legal repercussions for killing Palestinians, including children, regardless of the circumstances of their murders.

Finally, the revised rules would allow Israel to make a case for itself in response to the open investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), concerning human rights violations and war crimes in occupied Palestine. Israel’s Attorney General will now argue that no war crimes are taking place in Palestine since the killing of Palestinians is consistent with Israel’s own military conduct and judicial system. Since the ICC is investigating alleged war criminals, not the government itself, Israel hopes that it can spare its own murderers from having to contend with the legal expectations of the Court.

Though the timing of the Israeli military decision to amend its open-fire policy may appear sudden and without much context, the decision is still ominous, nonetheless. When a country’s military decides that shooting a child in the back without any proof that the alleged ‘criminal’ posed any danger whatsoever is a legal act, the international community must take notice.

It is true that Israel operates outside the minimum standards of international and humanitarian laws, but it is the responsibility of the international community to protect Palestinians, whose lives remain precious even if Israel disagrees.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

A More Aggressive Israel Lobby Is Coming in 2022

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW  • DECEMBER 28, 2021

Those Americans who dare to challenge the strangle-hold that Israel and its friends have over US foreign policy will likely find themselves targeted even more aggressively in the upcoming year. Two weeks ago the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), widely reckoned to be the largest and most powerful component of the Jewish state’s lobby, declared that it will now begin directly funding political candidates who are perceived as pro-Israel. Up until now, AIPAC has preferred to operate somewhat in the shadows, representing itself as a organization that is in part “educational” to justify its 501(c)3 tax exempt status which it uses to send all new congressmen on propaganda trips to Israel.

Of course, that has always been a bit of a fiction enabled by a Justice Department that is inclined to ignore all Israeli misbehavior. There are a number of reasons why AIPAC should be regarded for what it is, i.e. an organization that has as a priority the promotion of Israeli interests without any concern for the damage being done to the United States and its institutions. Under US law, specifically the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1937, AIPAC should be compelled to forfeit its special tax status and register, which would permit the government to have full access to its finances and also require a record of its frequent meetings with the Israeli Embassy in Washington as well as with senior Israeli officials in Israel. It would also have to report its significant and unparalleled lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. AIPAC would deny that it is actually directed or possibly funded in part by the Israeli government, but its website somewhat puts the lie to that conceit where it describes itself as “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” before elaborating how “We are proud to be a diverse movement of passionate pro-Israel Americans.”

The other lie promoted by AIPAC is that, up until now, it has not funded the political campaigns of its many friends both in Congress and in state and local governments. The reality is that AIPAC and some of its associated groups have aggressively vetted candidates for office at all levels. During its annual summit in Washington, politicians in attendance have routinely held fundraisers at hotels and restaurants not at the AIPAC event but often at hotels within walking distance. It is known that AIPAC publishes for-internal-use-only a candidates’ “scoring card” prior to elections reflective of views on Israel. As AIPAC is itself funded by Jewish billionaires and is in regular contact with them, the exchange of information on who is a “friend” and deserving of campaign money would be easily accomplished without having to use AIPAC as a conduit.

The new structure will consist of a regular political action committee (PAC) able to contribute $5,000 maximum donations to identified candidates per race, and a super PAC, which can raise unlimited money for an individual candidate. AIPAC PAC will be the name of the regular PAC, while the super PAC has not yet received a label.

AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittman sent out an email explaining the changes. In perhaps one of the most chilling statements that I have read recently, Wittman asserts that “The creation of a PAC and a super PAC is an opportunity to significantly deepen and strengthen the involvement of the pro-Israel community in politics.” Given Israel’s current dominance of Congress, the White House and the mainstream media one fears what might come next if stronger “involvement of the pro-Israel community in politics” becomes a reality. Jews constitute less than 2% of the US population and they already are hugely overrepresented in elite professions and politics while at the same time reserving to themselves perpetual victimhood to justify the preferential anti-democratic policies that they actually promote. Will Joe “I’m a Zionist” Biden’s cabinet be required by law to be 100% Jewish? Will Congress require a Jewish majority? Will the government be setting up gulags somewhere out west for people like me who oppose such dominance and the “Israel Project”? Where does this ever end to satisfy the Jewish lobby?

One might well ask why AIPAC is changing its platform to make itself even more accessible since it would seem that the shift to PACs does not much change what happens behind closed doors when politicians come begging for money. The answer may lie in the perception by Jewish groups and the Israeli government that Zionism is in trouble due to the accumulation of egregious human rights violations and war crime attacks on neighbors. The world view of Israel is increasingly negative. So the response is to open the door a bit to visibly dangle more money, which the Israeli Lobby has plenty of, to take on critics.

Israel and its friends are particularly concerned over the handful of progressives in Congress who have expressed reservations about the blind approval of Israeli crimes against humanity. The PACs will enable a more robust response by providing readily available money to run pro-Israel candidates against them to bring about their removal from Congress. The Zionists also worry about the growing support for the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which seeks to put the same kind of economic pressure on Israel that once brought about change in South Africa. Already Israel advocacy groups at the state level have succeeded in passing legislation in 27 states that in one way or another punishes anyone one who supports “boycotting” Israel. AIPAC would like that number to become 50 and it is also pushing hard on Congress for “hate legislation” that creates harsh criminal and civil penalties for anyone who questions the holocaust or criticizes Israel, which will be defined by the legislation as anti-Semitic acts.

Hand in hand with the moves at the state level, Jewish groups are rewriting text books to include more on the so-called holocaust, to sometimes include mandatory holocaust instruction at grade school and high school levels. In one bizarre incident in Washington DC, students were made to reenact “scenes” from the holocaust including mass executions and burials. One student was made to portray Adolph Hitler and instructed to include a simulated suicide at the end of the exercise.

This overreach all comes packaged together with alarming reports, put out inevitably by Jewish groups, regarding a surge in what it chooses to label as anti-Semitic crimes. Such “crimes” include numerous no-victim incidents like scrawled graffiti on walls or display of posters defending the Palestinians. The Anti-Defamation-League (ADL), which leads the pack in its constant cries of anti-Semitism, hypocritically claims blandly that it is working to “Combat Extremism and Hate.” That definition apparently does not include the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of its co-religionists in Israel.

Indeed, the tendency of the Israel Lobby to overreach because it has become so arrogant due to its power is perhaps the key to bringing it down. A recent exchange in Florida demonstrates how the ADL, sensitive to any possible slight, actually reacted harshly to someone who was actually on its side. Five weeks ago, rabidly pro-Israeli Governor Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary, Christina Pushaw tweeted a sarcastic comment stating that there was “no weird conspiracy theory stuff here” about press reports regarding the Republic of Georgia’s Prime Minister meeting with Rothschild & Co about investment opportunities. The ADL Florida Regional Director Sarah Emmons took offense and responded with the following:

“The belief that the Rothschilds manipulate currency and influence global events for personal enrichment and world domination is a staple of antisemitic conspiracy theorists. It’s deeply disturbing to see these kinds of conspiracies promoted by a member of Governor Ron DeSantis’ staff. Conspiracy theories, especially those with antisemitic origins, don’t belong in Florida’s highest office — or anywhere in the Sunshine State. We’ll be reaching out to the governor’s office to voice our concerns and discuss the issue.”

Jews and banking in the same sentence? Must be an anti-Semitic trope, as the expression goes. What if Pushaw had actually been bold enough to say something more to the point, like “Israel is trying to drag us into an unnecessary war with Iran”? In any event, the Zionists are preparing their offensive and we of the Israel-as-ally-agnostic community will find the upcoming year to be even more trying as the Jewish state and its friends tighten the screws to eliminate and even criminalize all criticism. Be prepared!

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.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment