Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Here’s what’s wrong with Israel branding human-rights groups ‘terrorists’

By Eva Bartlett | RT | November 3, 2021

The Israeli government has designated several human-rights groups ‘terrorist organisations’ in a blatant attempt to further cover up the crimes they commit against the Palestinian people.

On October 22, Israel branded six respected Palestinian human-rights groups “terrorist organisations,” outraging the UN and the wider global community. This, coming from a state that imprisons and kills Palestinian children, and murders uniformed medics.

On the Israeli Defense Ministry’s list were Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

The groups either document Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, which, in my opinion, routinely amount to terrorism themselves, provide legal support to targeted or imprisoned Palestinians, or work to empower Palestinian civilians. In what bizarre world can they be deemed “terrorist groups”?

A joint statement by leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem and numerous other Israeli and Palestinian rights organisations described the ministry’s action as “a draconian measure that criminalises critical human-rights work,” and noted the importance of documentation, advocacy, and legal aid for the protection of rights worldwide. “Criminalising such work is an act of cowardice, characteristic of repressive authoritarian regimes,” it said.

A number of UN special rapporteurs have condemned the decision as “a frontal attack on the Palestinian human-rights movement and on human rights everywhere.”

Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack unarmed protesters with rubber bullets, live ammunition and tear gas; approve new buildings in illegal Jewish colonies on Palestinian land; and bulldoze centuries-old Palestinian graves in Old Jerusalem; and Israeli colonists continue to brutalise Palestinian civilians, as they have long done. And, of course, Gaza remains under a cruel blockade – the longest lockdown in the world. The roughly two million Gazans barely living in the territory are deprived of the most basic essentials, including urgently needed medical supplies, and Israel guns down and abducts their fishermen, often destroying their boats.

But, no, according to the state responsible for these and countless other acts of terrorism, the “terrorists” are the human-rights groups. This is the state that not only abuses and murders Palestinian civilians, and flattens entire neighbourhoods of Gaza, deliberately destroying vital infrastructure, but also occupies Lebanese and Syrian land, violates Lebanese airspace, and routinely illegally bombs Syria.

This is not the first time Israel has harassed Palestinian (and Israeli) rights organizations.

The children’s agency, DCIP, is “an independent, local Palestinian child-rights organisation dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” In July 2021, prior to its “terrorist” designation, its main office was raided by Israeli forces.

At the time, DCIP described the raid as “the latest act by Israeli authorities to increasingly push forward a campaign to delegitimise and criminalise Palestinian civil society and human rights organisations.” They also noted this was a campaign that has been on the rise in recent years, “advanced by a network of rising nationalist Israeli civil society organisations and associated organisations elsewhere, with the support of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

With the minister of defence designating such groups as “terrorists” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs supporting the delegitimization campaign, it is not credible to argue the persecution is not coming from the Israeli government itself.

For one of the other listed groups, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Israel’s targeted harassment caused the Dutch government to cease funding. Israel’s 972 magazine reported on this, saying “for years, a global network of Israel advocacy groups had been lobbying European governments to cut off funding to UAWC, a group that assists Palestinian farmers to cultivate and remain on their land, market their produce, and develop water infrastructure.”

Some of the work UAWC had done in recent years, the article noted, included establishing “52 cooperatives in the West Bank and Gaza, [and] rehabilitating almost 10,000 dunums of Palestinian land that were under threat of confiscation by Israeli authorities in Area C.”

It also planted nearly two million trees, and developed connecting routes amounting to almost 700km in distance. “UAWC also worked to provide better water access to Palestinians in Area C, where water and sanitation services are regularly interrupted by Israeli settlement expansion,” the article also said.

My experiences in Gaza, volunteering for years with impoverished Palestinian farmers and farm labourers coming under Israeli live fire on a near-daily basis, demonstrated to me that the work of groups like UWAC is essential to help farmers rehabilitate destroyed farmland. These are people simply trying to eke out an existence, being maimed and murdered by Israeli fire while doing so, their farmland and wells bulldozed and destroyed, their crops burned.

I also have some experience with the work of DCIP, which documents Palestinian child detainees in Israeli prisons, including children in solitary confinement, as well as children killed by Israeli soldiers or colonists. Without groups like this documenting these crimes, advocating for the children becomes all the more impossible. Clearly, this is one of the reasons Israel has made the outrageous terrorist designation.

But DCIP also helps sick and injured Palestinian children get medical care. The group helped rehabilitate a terribly injured, bedridden, 16-year-old Palestinian teen I met in a Cairo hospital in July 2008, months after an Israeli soldier shot him in the spine.

In March 2008, Abdul Rahman Abu Oida went to the roof of his home, checking the water tank to see why the family suddenly had no water, and was shot in the spine by an Israeli sniper hiding on another rooftop.

As I later wrote, “The bullet destroyed three vertebrae; the shot left Abed paralysed in a puddle of his own blood until his 13-year-old brother, 15 minutes later, found him and dragged him downstairs. Ambulances were prevented from accessing the area. Abed lay untreated for three hours before he reached a hospital in Gaza City.”

In the Cairo hospital where I met him, he was emaciated, with appallingly large bedsores on his backside and feet. These festering bedsores would be the cause of other ailments which plagued him and eventually caused his death. Through a contact at DCIP, Abed began to get proper treatment for his original wound and the consequences of the bedsores.

Although he survived the 2008/9 Israeli massacre, including Israel’s attack on the rehabilitation hospital in which he and 60 other patients were, in 2014 he finally passed away. But without DCIP’s intervention, Abed would surely have died not long after I met him in 2008.

I have written many times about the crimes Israel has perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, including sniping at medics and killing and maiming still other medics, including with dart bombs – both war crimes – as well as assassinating children and infants, and firing white phosphorus on civilian areas. These are all just from my personal documentation in the span of a few years.

Without people to document these crimes, Israel’s actions could be even more monstrous than they already are.

Last May, in an attempt to prevent journalists from reporting its war crimes, Israel precision-bombed key media buildings in Gaza (which it had previously done in 2009, 2012, and 2014).

Throughout occupied Palestine, the work of human rights groups in documenting Israel’s crimes remains imperative, and the country’s continued harassment of these groups – including their “terrorist” designation – indicates the effectiveness of their advocacy and the determination of Israel to whitewash its crimes.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

November 5, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Journalists’ unions seek ICC probe into systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists

Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas near reporters as they disperse Palestinian protesters on July 31, 2021 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]

Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas near reporters as they disperse Palestinian protesters on July 31, 2021 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]
MEMO | November 3, 2021

There are “strong grounds” to conclude that Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists working in Palestine and its failure to properly investigate killings of media workers amount to war crimes, a complaint being submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) will say.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), working with the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), has asked Bindmans and Doughty Street Chambers to submit a complaint to the ICC detailing “the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists on behalf of four named victims – Ahmed Abu Hussein, Yaser Murtaja, Muath Armaneh, and Nedal Eshtayet – who were killed or maimed by Israeli snipers while covering demonstrations in Gaza. All were wearing clearly marked PRESS vests at the time they were shot.”

“At least 46 journalists have been killed since 2000 and no one has been held to account,” the IFJ said in a statement on its website.

The complaint will also include the “bombing of the Al-Shorouk and Al-Jawhara Towers in Gaza City in May 2021″.

IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “The targeting of journalists and media organisations in Palestine violates the right to life and freedom of expression. These crimes must be fully investigated. This systematic targeting must stop. The journalists and their families deserve justice.”

November 3, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Still No Accountability From Israel Over the 1956 Massacre of Kafr Qasem

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 31, 2021

On the 65th anniversary of Israel’s brutal massacre on the village of Kafr Qasem, where 48 Palestinians were gunned down by border police, the colonial entity has still failed to formally acknowledge its responsibility for the killings. A bill presented at the Knesset by Arab Israeli MKs was once again voted down. The bill would have required educational instruction in Israeli schools about the massacre, as well as the publication of any classified documents.

The Kafr Qasem massacre is an example of Israel’s premeditated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On the same day it attacked the Suez Canal, along with its French and British allies, a curfew was placed on eight Palestinian villages and communicated late, to ensure that Palestinians travelling back home from work would be out after the time restriction. The massacre is one example of Israel’s ongoing Nakba, and one that targeted Palestinians in Israel. Through re-enactment of terror reminiscent of the Nakba, Israel was aiming at further Palestinian dispossession.

It was only 25 days after the massacre that the international community became knowledgeable of the killings, through a press release by Tawfik Toubi, which explained the gruesome massacres in detail. “In some cases, the police stomped on the heads of the dead and sunk their bayonets in the bodies of the women,” an excerpt from the press release included in Samia Halaby’s book, Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacres, reads.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended this year’s memorial. His presence was an example of Israel’s hypocrisy when it comes to Palestinian history as a result of colonial violence. Asking for “forgiveness”, Herzog stated, “For it is clear to all of us: the killing and injury of innocents are absolutely forbidden. They must remain beyond all political arguments!”

But Israel has never made the distinction of the innocent. All Palestinians are a target, since each Palestinian stands in the way of Israel’s colonial expansion. In the case of Kafr Qasem, however, Israel is not averse to making a distinction between this massacre and other previous bouts of ethnic cleansing. Why should Palestinians “forgive” Israel for the Kafr Qasem massacres when the colonial enterprise is failing to institutionalise its culpability? Furthermore, why ask forgiveness for Kafr Qasem and not for the earlier massacres which paved the way for Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing?

Herzog’s words attempted to steer clear of what he called “political argument”. At the commemoration, he declared, “This is our opportunity, as a human society, to empower what we have in common as citizens and as neighbours.”

There is no equality between what Herzog calls citizens and neighbours without decolonisation. The Israeli president spoke from a privileged position to Palestinians who have lost family members, knowing that the perpetrators faced only a charade of justice. The convicted officials responsible for the murders were released from prison by 1960, by means of reduced sentences or pardons, meaning that the Israeli justice system failed to recognise the severity of the crime and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Speaking about the massacres politically as well as in terms of criminal culpability is necessary to ensure that the Palestinian narrative emerges. It is well documented that Israel’s existence is rooted in massacres and Palestinians’ dispossession.

With Kafr Qasem, as well as with other massacres, Israel needs to set the record straight – it is a perpetrator, with intent, and with an entire political structure that has supported its ethnic cleansing for decades. There should be no dissociating from political accountability merely to ensure that Palestinian memory remains distinct from the history which Zionist colonisation perpetrated since the Nakba.

November 1, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Is Biden any different from Trump on Palestine?

WASHINGTON, USA - AUGUST 27: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY – MANDATORY CREDIT - "GPO / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett (R) meets U.S. President Joe Biden (L) at the White House on August 27, 2021 in Washington, DC, United States. ( GPO - Anadolu Agency )

Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett meets U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on August 27, 2021 in Washington, DC, United States [GPO – Anadolu Agency]
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 26, 2021

When Joe Biden was declared the winner in the US presidential election last November, expectations in Ramallah were high. A Biden administration, compared with the brazenly pro-Israel Donald Trump administration, would surely be much fairer to Palestinians. That was the conventional wisdom at the time.

Unsurprisingly, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was among the first world leaders to congratulate Biden enthusiastically. “I look forward to working with the president-elect and his administration to strengthen Palestinian-American relations and to achieve freedom, independence, justice and dignity for our people,” said Abbas immediately after the election result was finally confirmed.

In contrast, the then Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, waited for a relatively long time to offer his congratulations in the hope, perhaps, that his close friend and staunch political ally Trump would succeed in reversing the election outcome.

Nearly a year later, however, it is hard to understand the Palestinian euphoria that prevailed in late 2020. And how do we explain the absence of criticism of the Biden administration for failing to reverse most of Trump’s pro-Israel decisions? These include the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital and the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city in violation of international law and even America’s own declared policies.

Why does the PA leadership remain largely silent on the fact that Biden and his team, despite their rhetoric about peace and dialogue, maintain the same degree of commitment to Israel as Trump? The short answer is money.

The only tangible step with regard to Palestine that the Biden administration has taken in the past year has been the restoration of funds that Trump had cut from Palestinian aid in 2018, reversing at a stroke nearly three decades of America, along with other “donor countries”, bankrolling the PA.

In April, the White House declared its intention to restore some, though not all, of such funds given to the Palestinian Authority. An amount of $235 million was to be paid as $75m in economic and developmental assistance; $10m in “peacebuilding” programmes to be provided by USAID agency; and the remainder in humanitarian assistance to the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA.

The latter, however, did not come without caveats. On 14 July, UNRWA reached an agreement with Washington regarding the use of this money. The so-called Framework for Cooperation stipulated that, “The US will not make any contributions to UNRWA, except on the condition that UNRWA takes all feasible measures to ensure that no part of the US contribution is used to assist any refugee receiving military training” from any Palestinian resistance group. Under the agreement, which was strongly criticised by the Palestinians, UNRWA will receive an additional $135m from the US.

On the political front, however, there is little else to report. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) office in Washington, although expected to be reopened by Biden after its abrupt closure by Trump in September 2018, remains closed. Moreover, the US Consulate in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, which was also shut down by Biden’s predecessor, remains “a major point of contention” between Israel and the US, according to Axios.

As soon as the Biden administration declared its intention to reopen its mission in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, top Israeli officials poured into Washington to prevent even this symbolic Palestinian gain from taking place. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett raised the issue with Biden during their White House meeting in August, requesting the president to refrain from carrying out such a move. According to the Times of Israel, Bennett asked the Americans to open the consulate in Ramallah rather than Jerusalem.

In September, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned Washington that reinstating the US mission in East Jerusalem was a “bad idea”, suggesting that such a move could force the collapse of Israel’s fragile coalition government.

The subject also topped the agenda of Lapid’s meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington earlier this month. Israeli officials revealed that Lapid told Blinken, “I don’t know how to hold this coalition together if you reopen the consulate.” This too was reported by Axios.

To avoid a confrontation and to buy time for the Israeli government, Blinken proposed the establishment of a joint committee to “discuss the issue with maximum discretion.” The Israeli government is thus using the current fractious ruling coalition as a pretence to defer the US decision on the consulate. It is hinting that if the US reopens the consulate before the government budget passes in November, the coalition will dissolve, with the ominous possibility of Netanyahu’s return.

It is expected that the committee will not be formed until the budget vote. Even then, it is unclear if Washington will succeed in persuading Israel to respect Biden’s consulate decision.

Notably, while the matter of the consulate should concern Palestinians the most, no Palestinian official will be included in the exclusive and secretive Blinken-Lapid committee. More bizarrely, the PA does not seem to mind this snub. There has been no public outcry by Abbas and his officials. This, of course, is typical of the PA, and will remain the case for as long as US funds are finding their way into PA coffers. All other issues appear to have little or no urgency. It’s all about the money.

If a political compromise is found, and the US Consulate is finally reopened, will it alter the reality on the ground? Since 1994, the consulate has played a largely symbolic role, one that mattered most to the PA. It hardly changed the political equation in favour of the Palestinians. In a telling and surreal reference to the consulate, Noga Tarnopolsky wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2019: “The consulate was known for hosting one of the liveliest parties on Jerusalem’s annual schedule, a 4 July gala held on the front lawn.”

A stone’s throw away from the city’s “liveliest parties”, hundreds of Palestinian families are either being evicted from their homes or face the risk of eviction by the US-funded Israeli police and army. A little further away is Israel’s apartheid wall that continues to segment occupied Palestine according to race, ethnicity and religion. We are justified, then, in not being too optimistic that the reopening of the US mission will change the horrific status quo in any way whatsoever.

The Joe Biden administration is proving to be nothing but a soft facade for the same policies enacted by Donald Trump. The only apparent difference is that, this time, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, for self-serving reasons, do not seem to mind.

October 27, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Not Question “the Holocaust” in Schools?

The standard narrative does not stand up to serious historical scrutiny

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 26, 2021

There has been major pushback against a Texas state education official who said that if schools are adhering to a new state law that mandates teaching alternative points of view on controversial issues having a course and a book on the holocaust, for example, would suggest providing material that reflects other interpretations of that historical event. The comment came from a Texas school district administrator named Gina Peddy in the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, who was in a training session explaining to teachers her directive regarding which books can be available in classroom libraries. She told teachers that if they have books about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they should also have books that offer “opposing” or “other” viewpoints on the subject.

Reportedly a staff member who was present secretly made an audio recording of the training session which was then shared with NBC News, which broke the story.

The Texas law was and is intended to lessen the impact of the current “woke” campaign by progressive educators to rewrite American and international history to reflect the dark side, notably by emphasizing issues like slavery and oppression of minorities. Texas legislators insist, not unreasonably, that presenting an essentially negative view of American history as envisioned by Critical Race Theory (CRT) must be balanced by having a curriculum that also includes discussion of the many positive achievements of the United States of America. In the recording, Peddy, the school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, told the teachers that the new law applies to any “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. She was quoted as saying “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

Predictably, on such a hot wire issue Peddy has had little or no support from her peers either locally or in the education establishment. The school district Superintendent Lane Ledbetter posted on Facebook an “apology regarding the online article and news story.” He said Peddy’s comments were “in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history. Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust. We also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts.”

Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, responded “We find it reprehensible for an educator to require a Holocaust denier to get equal treatment with the facts of history. That’s absurd. It’s worse than absurd. And this law does not require it.” Republican state Senator Bryan Hughes, who wrote the bill that became the law, denied that anyone should come up with alternative views on what he called matters of “good and evil” or to remove books that offer only one perspective on the Holocaust.

Jews in Peddy’s school district and elsewhere in both Texas and nationally have inevitably also risen to the bait, denouncing any attempt made to challenge what they view as an issue fundamental to their understanding of their place in the world and in history. One Jewish former student Jake Berman asserted that “The facts are that there are not two sides of the Holocaust. The Nazis systematically killed millions of people.”

Ledbetter, Robison and Hughes should perhaps consider that they are suggesting that their new law should only apply on “controversial” racial issues, not on other historical developments and it is curious that educated people should consider a multi-faceted transnational historical event that has inter alia a highly politicized context a “fact.” The holocaust narrative in and of itself is the creation of men and women after the fact with an agenda to justify the creation and support for the State of Israel and should be subject to the same inquiry as any other facet of the Second World War and what came after.

The tale of “the holocaust” is essentially a contrived bit of history that serves a political objective wrapped up in what purports to be a powerful statement regarding man’s inhumanity to man. Jewish groups generally speaking consider the standard narrative with its highly questionable six million dead, gas chambers, extermination camps, and soap made from body fat to be something like sacred ground, with its memorialization of the uniqueness of Jewish suffering. Serious scholars who have actually looked at the narrative and the numbers and sequences of events are not surprisingly skeptical of many of the details.

As a first step, it is helpful to look at controversial Professor Norman Finkelstein’s carefully documented book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Finkelstein, to be sure, believes there was something like a genocide of European Jews and even lost some family members due to it. He does not, however, necessarily believe many of the details provided by the standard narrative and official promoters of that story to include the numerous holocaust museums. In his view, powerful interests have hijacked “the Holocaust,” and use it to further their own objectives. He wrote “Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel’s and its own indefensible policies. Nazi genocide has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these policies.”

And there is also a money angle, as there often is. Per Finkelstein, Jewish organizations in the US have also exploited the situation of the dwindling number of aging holocaust survivors to extort “staggering sums of money from the rest of the world. This is not done not for the benefit of needy survivors but for the financial advantage of these organizations.”

As taking courses in the holocaust are mandated in the public school systems of twenty states (and soon to be more due to pressure from local Jewish groups) and is used to validate the billions of US taxpayer dollars given annually to the state of Israel it would seem that supporters of the narrative should have the confidence as well as sufficient integrity to defend their product. But that is, of course, not the case. They would prefer to have their chosen narrative unchallenged, raising the usual claims of anti-Semitism and “holocaust denial” to silence critics. One of the “textbooks” frequently used in public schools that mandate holocaust education is Night by Elie Wiesel, whom Finkelstein has dubbed “the high huckster of the holocaust.” “Night” claims to be autobiographical but is full of errors in time and place. It is at least in part a work of fiction. Similarly, the “Diary of Anne Frank” was published after editing by her survivor father and parts of it have been challenged.

As a general rule, contentious issues where advocates attempt to silence opponents by claiming that what they are promoting is based on fact and cannot be challenged should be challenged. In Europe, powerful Jewish constituencies have even made it illegal to criticize or deny the holocaust narrative. In America, that day may soon be coming as Jewish groups increasingly seek to criminalize questioning of the factual basis of the holocaust as well as any criticism of Israel.

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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

October 26, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Direct Flight from Saudi Arabia Lands in Zionist Entity Monday Evening: Report

Al-Manar | October 25, 2021

A direct flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will land at Zionist entity’s Ben Gurion Airport on Monday evening, Israeli media reported.

“The flight will be a VIP class Boeing 737-700 aircraft with registration A6-AIN owned by the Emirati Royal Jet airline,” Kan pubcaster said.

The Riyadh-Tel Aviv flight comes after a report that White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan raised the possibility of Saudi Arabia joining the so-called Abraham Accords during a meeting last month in Riyadh with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), according to three US and Arab sources involved in the talks.

The sources said that during the conversation, MBS did not immediately reject the proposal to establish diplomatic ties with the Zionist entity, listing the steps needed to make the move, including improving the relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

October 25, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Youth from Gaza survives Israeli airstrike that killed his father and three sisters

Defence for Children Palestine | October 14, 2021

Yousef A. from Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip survived an Israeli airstrike in May 2021 that killed his father and three of his sisters. He is still recovering from his injuries.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Human Rights NGOs will not be Silenced

Statment By Al-Haq independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation, October 23, 2021:

Al-Haq strongly rejects the designation made by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, on 19 October 2021, of Al-Haq and five fellow Palestinian civil society organisations as “terror organisations,” under Israel’s domestic Anti-Terrorism Law, 2016 and calls for international solidarity and concrete measures to ensure its immediate rescission.

The baseless allegations represent an alarming and unjust escalation of attacks against the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, justice and  the right to self-determination. Israel’s widespread and systematic smearing of Palestinian human rights NGOs and human rights defenders aims to delegitimize, oppress, silence and drain their work and resources.

Further, the unlawful application of Israel’s domestic law to the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) serves to entrench the maintenance of its settler-colonial and apartheid regime of institutionalised racial discrimination and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole.

For decades, Al-Haq has struggled to end Israel’s illegal settler-colonial policies and practices which, since 1948, have denied the Palestinian people from exercising their inalienable right to self-determination. Al-Haq is one of the leading Palestinian organizations calling for accountability and an end to Israel’s impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is no coincidence that Israel’s recent escalation of punitive measures against Al-Haq and fellow civil society organisations, has come in the immediate aftermath of the opening of an International Criminal Court investigation into Israel’s crimes in the Situation in Palestine. To that end, Al-Haq will tirelessly maintain its efforts to ensure that Israeli perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes are held accountable.

The history of human rights advocacy and defense, from Africa to Latin America and other corners of the globe, have shown that the means and methods of the oppressor have no limits. In striving towards the liberation of Palestine from Israel’s apartheid and settler colonial regime, our work as human rights defenders will not be deterred or silenced.  We are confident in the solidarity of our friends and partners around the world in confronting these obstacles placed before us.

The Palestinian struggle is a universal struggle against oppression and the denial of self-determination in the pursuit of justice and the ability to live in dignity.  We remain steadfast in advocating for a dignified future for the Palestinian people and the liberation of Palestine from the shackles of Israel’s unlawful colonial rule.

Justice will prevail.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Here lies Colin Powell…

By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | October 23, 2021

Following his death from Covid-19 earlier this week, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s legacy will be examined by many people for many different reasons. Some will eulogise him as one of America’s top diplomats and presidential advisers. Many more, I suspect, will remember him as the man who lied for his country again, and again, and again.

One of the Greek sages, Chilon of Sparta, said we should not speak ill of the dead (what is now the Latin aphorism “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est”), a maxim with which I would generally agree. However, it is precisely because of the dead that I am writing these words.

The dead to which I refer come from many nations around the world; countless men, women and children who left this earth in the absence of mercy, a voice or justice. Millions of others have yet to have any sort of closure or peace due to US militarism, wars, interventions and atrocities over many decades. Powell supported, excused and covered up most of them from Vietnam to the present day.

A memorial service for General Powell will be held at the Washington National Cathedral in the US capital next month. The so-called great and good will eulogise the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US Secretary of State. My own contribution is not for Powell and the mourners, but for the forgotten survivors who will have been propelled back into very dark places at seeing his name in the headlines this week.

To the Iraqi people, Powell was the man who did the dirty work in arguing the case for a war that created more than a million widows and orphans. Estimates of the number of dead in Iraq continue to be amended. It was Powell who stood before the UN on behalf of President George W Bush in February 2003 and spoke with great authority, using photographs to “prove” that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). This was a lie, and he knew it.

A couple of weeks ahead of his speech, some Algerian refugees were arrested for allegedly producing ricin in Wood Green, North London. The British media splashed with the headlines that anti-terror police had uncovered an Al-Qaida cell poised to unleash the deadly poison on an unsuspecting public. The more lurid reports also claimed that the “ricin factory” contained bomb-making equipment. British Prime Minister Tony Blair — another man with a long-distance relationship with the truth — whipped up a frenzy of hysteria claiming that, “This danger is present and real, and with us now.”

Blair was backed up by Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council; both men were pushing the case for war against Iraq. Powell cited the London “find” gravely as an “Iraq-linked terrorist network”. Despite the fact that the British government’s chemical weapons research facility at Porton Down knew that there was no ricin in Wood Green in early January 2003, Powell went ahead and peddled his lies regardless. Blair and Powell both appear to have ignored the facts. In a nest of vipers, it’s always difficult to separate one snake from another.

Two years later a very different story emerged during the Old Bailey trial of the Algerian refugees: there was no ricin and no sophisticated Al-Qaida plot. Jury foreman Lawrence Archer was so outraged at what emerged during his seven-month odyssey in court that he co-wrote a book with journalist Fiona Bawdon exposing the lies told by Powell backed up by “shamelessly distorted” words from the British government, media and security agencies.

Powell claimed later to regret his performance at the UN. That didn’t help the Algerians, though, who were held in a high-security prison for more than two years until the case against them in their infamous trial by jury collapsed. The US official knew that there was no ricin plot; indeed, that there was no ricin, so what was the white powder in the vial he waved around so dramatically in the Security Council meeting?

To the people of Vietnam, Colin Powell was the soldier who covered up the war crimes carried out in Mỹ Lai by a unit of US troops who slaughtered 500 civilians. Powell admitted in a 1968 memo that there might have been be “isolated cases of mistreatment”, but in August 1971 he eventually told the truth in a sworn affidavit during the war crimes trial of Brigadier General John Donaldson who, it was alleged, had routinely “killed or ordered the killing of, unarmed and unresisting” Vietnamese civilians from his helicopter.

Powell ingratiated himself in 1985 as a senior assistant to US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, when he helped cover up the selling of weapons to Iran so that the Reagan administration could funnel money to the US-backed and funded right-wing Contra counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua. Weinberger faced five charges related to the so-called Iran-Contra scandal only to be pardoned by President George H.W. Bush before he could be put on trial. It emerged that Powell took part personally in at least one covert weapons sale in exchange for hostages.

He had his finger in many pies in subsequent years which saw the demise of some dictatorships and the rise of others in US military action in Panama, the Philippines, Somalia, Liberia, Bangladesh, Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.

To the Palestinians — and myself, I must add — Powell will always be the man who was treacherous and duplicitous towards them. He lied about Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) tried desperately to hide one of its many war crimes committed in the occupied West Bank when its soldiers killed at least 52 Palestinians in the refugee camp between 1 and 11 April at the height of the Second (Al-Aqsa) Intifada. Ariel Sharon’s cowardly troops would have made a quick exit but for the dilemma of how to cover up the killing of so many people. It’s a dilemma that focused the minds of those in charge of so-called Operation Defensive Shield.

As I wrote in MEMO last year, “[They] decided to enforce a siege so tight that no one, despite global protests, could get past Israel’s ring of steel; it was a total lockdown and lasted for weeks while the Israeli government did its best to keep journalists and human rights observers away from the Palestinian city…

“The atmosphere was tense and the UN announced that it was planning to launch an investigation into compelling allegations of Israeli war crimes said to have been committed in the refugee camp. The Israelis did what they do well, and mobilised malleable politicians and government advisers to mislead a gullible media and public.”

The then US Secretary of State Powell was brought in to use calm, authoritative tones at a press conference in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which Zionist terrorists blew up in 1946, killing 91 people and wounding 41 others. The irony wasn’t lost on the Palestinians and the watching world.

He claimed to have seen “no evidence” of a massacre. In last year’s article I pointed out: “By 23 April Powell was back in Washington briefing senators: ‘Right now, I’ve seen no evidence of mass graves and I’ve seen no evidence that would suggest a massacre took place.’ He wasn’t lying, of course, because he never went to Jenin, so could not have ‘seen’ the evidence even if he had wanted to.”

I was one of the first journalists on the scene, though, and was in the refugee camp in Jenin on the day that the former general presented his less than honest briefing to the world’s media. The anger and frustration I felt listening to his lies was probably nothing compared with the feelings of the Palestinians in Jenin who told me how their mothers, wives, children and other relatives had been killed before their eyes. I remember seeing a group of Palestinian women tearing at the rubble with their bare, bloodied hands trying to find the bodies of loved ones. The stench of death was overwhelming. Moreover, while Powell said that he saw “no evidence” of a massacre, Human Rights Watch disagreed, and said so when it published a hard-hitting report on what happened in Jenin.

The Jacobin online magazine has published a brutally savage obituary of Powell. “There’s Nothing Honourable or Decent About Colin Powell’s Long List of War Crimes” was the headline. I and millions like me couldn’t agree more. He was buried on Friday morning, but as yet there’s no official tombstone. When it is eventually fixed on his grave, it should be very simple: “Here lies Colin Powell – in death as in life”.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Israel outlaws 6 Palestinian human rights groups

MEMO | October 22, 2021

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz today declared six prominent Palestinian human rights groups terrorist organisations which funnel donor money to outlawed groups.

Under the ruling, the work of Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Busan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees has been banned. Gantz said the groups have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group banned by the Israeli occupation.

The groups, which document alleged human rights violations by Israeli occupation forces and authorities and the Palestinian Authority (PA) against Palestinians, include Addameer, which represents Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli military courts, and Defense for Children-International, a group that advocates for Palestinian children.

“[The] declared organisations received large sums of money from European countries and international organisations, using a variety of forgery and deceit,” Gantz said, alleging the money had supported PFLP’s activities.

Addameer and another of the groups, Defense for Children International – Palestine, rejected the accusations as an “attempt to eliminate Palestinian civil society.”

“They may be able to close us down. They can seize our funding. They can arrest us. But they cannot stop our firm and unshakeable belief that this occupation must be held accountable for its crimes,” Al-Haq Director Shawan Jabarin told the Times of Israel.

The designations authorise Israeli authorities to close the groups’ offices, seize their assets, arrest their staff in the occupied West Bank and ban supporting their activities.

The United Nations Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories said it was “alarmed” at the announcement.

“Counter-terrorism legislation must not be used to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work,” it said, adding that some of the reasons given appeared vague or irrelevant.

“These designations are the latest development in a long stigmatising campaign against these and other organisations, damaging their ability to deliver on their crucial work,” it said.

An official with the PFLP said they maintain relations with civil society organisations across the West Bank and Gaza, without specific mention of the six bodies in this ruling, Reuters reports.

“It is part of the rough battle Israel is launching against the Palestinian people and against civil society groups, in order to exhaust them,” PFLP official Kayed Al-Ghoul said.

In a joint statement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International said the “decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organisations.”

“Silencing, intimidating & criminalizing #Palestinian civil society org’s & human rights defenders are #Israel‘s way of covering up its abuses while maintaining its impunity. It’s the occupation that must be held to account,” wrote Palestinian diplomat Hanan Ashrawi on Twitter.

The decision comes just four days after Israel revoked the residency of Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri from his hometown of Jerusalem on the basis of “breach of allegiance” to the state, paving the way for his forced deportation from his homeland. Hamouri, the son of a Palestinian father and French mother, is a prominent lawyer and human rights advocate for Addameer.

October 22, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

The cultural genocide in Palestine: On Sally Rooney’s decision to boycott Israel

Sally Rooney attends a photocall during the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22 August 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. [Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images]

Sally Rooney during the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22 August 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. [Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images]
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 19, 2021

The pro-Israel crowd on social media was quick to pounce on award-winning Irish novelist, Sally Rooney, as soon as she declared that she had “chosen not to sell … translation rights of her best-selling novel, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ to an Israeli-based publishing house”.

Expectedly, the accusations centered on the standard smearing used by Israel and its supporters against anyone who dares criticise Israel and exhibits solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people.

Rooney’s laudable action was not in the least ‘racist’ or ‘anti-Semitic’. On the contrary, it was taken as a show of support for the Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), whose advocacy is situated within anti-colonial and anti-racist political discourses.

Rooney, herself, has made it clear that her decision not to publish with Modan Publishing House, which works closely with the Israeli government, is motivated by ethical values.

“I simply do not feel it would be right for me, under the present circumstances, to accept a new contract with an Israeli company that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the U.N-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people,” she said in a statement on 12 October.

In fact, Rooney’s contention is not with the language itself, as she stated that “the Hebrew-language translation rights to my new novel are still available, and if I can find a way to sell these rights that is compliant with the BDS movement’s institutional boycott guidelines, I will be very pleased and proud to do so.”

Rooney is not the first intellectual to take an ethical position against any form of cultural normalisation with Israeli institutions, especially those that directly support and benefit from the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. Her position is consistent with similar stances taken by other intellectuals, musicians, artists, authors and scientists. The ever-expanding list includes Roger Waters, Alice Walker and the late Stephen Hawking.

The BDS movement has made it abundantly clear that, in the words of the movement’s co-founder, Omar Barghouti, “the Palestinian boycott targets institutions only, due to their entrenched complicity in planning, justifying, whitewashing or otherwise perpetuating Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights.”

Of course, some are still not convinced. Those critics of the BDS movement intentionally conflate between anti-Semitism and a legitimate form of political expression, which aims at weakening and isolating the very economic, political and cultural infrastructures of racism and apartheid. The fact that numerous anti-Zionist Jews are supporters and advocates of the movement is not enough to make them reconsider their fallacious logic.

One of the ‘politest’ denunciations of Rooney, appearing in the Jewish Forward magazine, was penned by Gitit Levy-Paz. The author’s logic is puzzling, to say the least. Levy-Paz accused Rooney that, by refusing to allow her novel to be translated into Hebrew, she has excluded “a group of readers because of their national identity.”

While the Forward writer is guilty of confusing political ethics and nationality, she is not the only one. Israeli Zionists do this as a matter of course, where the Zionist ideology and the Jewish religion – and, in this case, language – are quite often interchangeable. As a result, the definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ has been stretched to include anti-Zionism – though Zionism is a modern ideological construct. Since Israel defines itself as a Jewish and Zionist state, it follows that any form of criticism of Israeli policies are often depicted as if a form of anti-Semitism.

One of the most interesting aspects of this conversation on language is that the Hebrew language has been used by the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948 as the language of oppression. In the minds of Palestinians, anywhere in Palestine, Hebrew is rarely the language used to communicate culture, literature, social coexistence and such. Instead, every military ordinance issued by the Israeli army, including closures and home demolitions, let alone the proceedings of military court hearings, and even the racist anti-Palestinian chants in football stadiums, are communicated in Hebrew. Palestinians are then excused if they do not view the modern Hebrew language as a language of inclusion, or even innocuous, everyday communication.

These realisations are not the outcome of daily experiences only. Successive Israeli governments have passed numerous legislations over the years to elevate Hebrew at the expense of Arabic. For over seven decades, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people has been coupled with the erasure of their culture and their language, from the Hebraicisation of historic Arabic names of towns, villages and streets, to the demolition of ancient Palestinian graveyards, olive groves, mosques and churches, the Israeli ethnocide is a top item on the Israeli political agenda.

The Israeli Nation State Law of 2018, which elevated Hebrew as Israel’s official language and downgraded Arabic to a “special status”, was the culmination of many years of a relentless, centralised Israeli campaign, whose sole purpose is to dominate the Palestinians, not only politically but culturally as well.

All that in mind, the hypocrisy of Israel’s mouthpieces is unmistakable. They welcome, or at least remain silent, when Israel tries to demolish and bury Palestinian culture and language, but cry foul when a respected author or a well-regarded artist tries, though symbolically, to show solidarity with the oppressed and occupied Palestinian people.

The Palestinian boycott movement is conscious of its morally-driven mission, thus can never duplicate the tactics of the Israeli government and official institutions. BDS aims at pressuring Israel by reminding peoples all over the world of their moral responsibility towards the Palestinians.

BDS does not target Israelis as individuals and, under no circumstances, does it target Jewish individuals because they are Jews, or the Hebrew language, as such. Israel, on the other hand, continues to target Palestinians as a people, downgrades their language, dismantles their institutions and systematically destroys their culture. This is rightly referred to as cultural genocide, and it is our moral responsibility to stop it.

October 20, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Ethnic Studies Mandated in California

Perpetual victim Jews constitute a “marginalized community”

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 19, 2021

It is more-or-less accepted that Jewish Zionists pretty much control many aspects of what comes out the other end of US foreign policy formulation and have plausibly done so since the time of President Bill Clinton, if not before. It was also a given that President Donald Trump, for all his talk of Making America Great Again, would shower benefits on Israel, a propensity that has already become well established for the Joe Biden Administration. And it should also surprise no one to learn that the benefits derived from the Israel-lean in foreign policy accrue to the Jewish state, allowing it to continue its human rights violations and war crimes at will. The benefit to the US Taxpayer, who generously funds the enterprise, amounts to nothing in return but the scorn of much of the rest of the world that sees Washington as Jerusalem’s poodle.

But what is perhaps somewhat more interesting to observe as it unwinds is the penetration of state and local governments by advocates of policies and legislation that is narrowly focused on Jewish or Zionist interests. Florida, with its large Jewish population and the leadership of a governor who desperately wants to become president, has not surprisingly led the way. Its “Florida Stands With Israel” license plate is so far unique, as was Governor Ron DeSantis’s stunt holding his first state cabinet meeting in Jerusalem in May 2019 disguised and funded as a “trade mission,” accompanied by a planeload of his most ardent Zionist supporters. That no one appears to find this pandering to a foreign country that has been accused of multiple crimes appalling is itself appalling.

State governments have been adhering to demands by Israel to punish those who seek to boycott the Jewish state and its illegal West Bank settlements, both individually and through pressure on corporations, as has taken place with Ben & Jerry ice cream. Universities have also fired faculty and banned instruction that is critical of Israel. But much of the manipulation of ties with local governments has a financial objective, as the various trade agreements entered into between Israel and individual states, though described as investments, only lead to a cash flow in one direction. Grant Smith, who heads the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP), has detailed how one such board that he has identified is a unique example of a state’s economic policies being manipulated by a dedicated Israeli fifth column in government. It is named the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB).

The VIAB is unique because it is actually part of the Virginia state government. It is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is able to access funds from other government agencies to support Israeli businesses. It is staffed by Israelis and American Jews drawn from what has been described as the “Israel advocacy ecosystem” and is self-administered, appointing its own members and officers. Only Virginia has such a group actually sitting within the government itself, ready to make secret preferential agreements, to arrange special concessions on taxes and to establish start-up subsidies for Israeli businesses. Israeli business projects have been, as a result, regularly funded using Virginia state resources with little accountability.

Smith reports how VIAB is not just an economic mechanism. Its charter states that it was “created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda.” Smith also has observed that “VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.” The board grew significantly under Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe’s administration (2014-2018). McAuliffe, who is running again, regarded by many as the Clintons’ “bag man,” received what were regarded as generous out-of-state campaign contributors from actively pro-Israeli billionaires Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker, who were both affiliated with the Democratic Party. McAuliffe met regularly in off-the-record “no press allowed” sessions with Israel advocacy groups and spoke about “the Virginia Advisory Board and its successes.” That was, of course, a self-serving lie by one of the slimiest of the Clinton unindicted criminals. In short, the VIAB is little more than a mechanism set up to carry out licensed robbery of Virginia state resources being run by a cabal of local American Jews and Israelis to benefit their co-religionists in Israel. As a side benefit to us Virginians, its reckless activities have led to numerous zoning and environmental violations.

Other initiatives in a number of states are “educational” or cultural. The pressure is constantly on to memorialize the claimed perpetual victimhood and suffering of Jews. This has led to taxpayer supported holocaust museums springing up like mushrooms and the mandatory teaching of holocaust courses in 20 states. Lest there be any confusion, the courses are used inter alia to support the mythology about the founding of Israel, indoctrinating yet another generation of Americans on the “right thinking” over the issue.

It is perhaps inevitable that California, with 500,000 wealthy and politically powerful Jewish residents clustered around Los Angeles and San Francisco, would have to climb on to the Israel and Jewish-interests gravy train sooner or later. Indeed, Californians are already overloaded with the Zionist narrative. School children in 8th and 9th grade English courses are required to read, study and discuss the Diary of Anne Frank. In 10th grade they move up to the largely fictional “Night” by Elie Wiesel. History textbooks, as nearly everywhere in the United States, heavily emphasize the holocaust in World War 2, together with the repeated false claim that the war was initiated by German Chancellor Adolf Hitler largely to exterminate Jews.

In spite of all that already in place, it is interesting to note the back story behind Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent signing of State Assembly Bill 101 which mandates a curriculum reform for the state’s public and charter schools that creates an Ethnic Studies requirement for graduation. The bill was focused on “telling the stories” of California’s “historically marginalized communities.” The legislation to authorize the curriculum was actually delayed for over one year due to organized Jewish objections that led to a veto by Newsom and numerous revisions of the text moderated by those same Jewish groups and their associates in government. Their pushback was spearheaded by the progressive California Legislative Jewish Caucus, which claimed that the original text would open the door to possible school student exposure to groups like the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement. It was also feared that it could lead to discussion of claims of brutal treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis.

There were also objections because there was no section on anti-Semitism specifically, that the Jewish experience of bad treatment and suffering in America was not part of the curriculum. It was an odd claim given the prosperity and power of the California Jewish community, which has been prominent for over a century and concentrated in wealthy enclaves like Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

Newsom delayed in doing anything as he was engaged in what eventually became a serious recall fight, in which he needed Jewish money and both political and media support. With that in mind, he accepted that the curriculum reform would have to be amended to include anti-Semitism, and even went so far as to define any discussions of Muslims as part of a consideration of Islamophobia, effectively closing the door to any independent look at the Palestinian cause.

To be sure, there were nevertheless objections from more extreme Zionist groups, including the Amcha Initiative, which protested with the following somewhat ironic statement: “While certainly not all in the ethnic studies field fall into this category, there is a vocal and active faction of extremists who have long been seeking to inject their antisemitic and anti-Zionist agenda into our nation’s classrooms.” One might observe that if that were true, they are only following the model established by Jewish zealots.

So, under Jewish pressure, “Ethnicity” came to be primarily defined as Jews, Muslims, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and Blacks. Sikhs and Armenians were to be allowed to discuss their own ethnicities in schools where they have a large presence, but no Irish nor Italians need apply, even though they both constituted numerically more Americans than many of the other groups, far more than the number of Jews. And, though Europeans and white, they also had their own “ethnically” derived problems as immigrants, with the Irish systematically denied jobs and housing in nineteenth century America while President Teddy Roosevelt described Southern Italians as the “most fecund and least desirable population of Europe.” In 1902, future President Woodrow Wilson added his view “but now there came multitudes of men of the lowest class from the south of Italy … having neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence.”

And there is, of course, a back story to the back story. California Jewish media reports that “The signing comes two days after Newsom held a press conference and photo-op announcing a new initiative supported by a number of Jewish groups and Holocaust educators, to form a governor’s council to improve Holocaust and genocide education for young people across the state.”

The Israeli media quickly picked up on the good news which means more money and political support for the Jewish state and other Jewish causes. “The council will provide educational resources regarding the Holocaust and other instances of genocide to students at California schools and ‘provide young people with the tools necessary to recognize and respond to on-campus instances of antisemitism and bigotry’ according to the governor’s office. ‘We find ourselves in a moment of history where hate pervades the public discourse,’ Newsom said. ‘National surveys have indicated a shocking decline in awareness among young people about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.’”

So, once again Israel wins both ways in California, joining states like Texas, Florida and Virginia that are already fully on board. Not only has the mandatory Ethnic Studies program largely shut out the Palestinians and turned Jews into perpetual victims, Governor Newsom has also put his markers down on increasing the consumption of the standard holocaust myth to indoctrinate young Americans who have the misfortune to attend California schools. And the trend is unfortunately a national one as more states appear poised to get on board the pander to Israel movement.

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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

October 19, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »