Israeli Intelligence Warned White House Of “Iran Plot” To Strike US Troops
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 05/06/2019
On Sunday night US national security advisor John Bolton threatened Iran with “unrelenting force” while announcing the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf region, saying further it sends a “clear and unmistakable” message to the Iranian regime.
Bolton’s statement also cited a “number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran, which later on Monday morning CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr described based on unnamed US defense officials as including “specific and credible” Iranian threats against US assets in Syria, Iraq, and at sea.
CNN’s Starr reported the following:
US officials tell me the threats from Iran included “specific and credible” intelligence that Iranian forces and proxies were targeting US forces in Syria, Iraq and at sea. There were multiple threads of intelligence about multiple locations, the officials said.
It turns out, perhaps predictably, that the ultimate source of these claims is none other than Israeli intelligence.
Axios White House correspondent Barak Ravid reports:
Israel passed information on an alleged Iranian plot to attack U.S. interests in the Gulf to the U.S. before national security adviser John Bolton threatened Iran with “unrelenting force” last night, senior Israeli officials told me.
This also comes as some high level Israeli defense officials have claimed Iran ordered the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to initiate a conflict in Gaza in order to distract Israel from stopping supposed Iranian expansion inside Syria.
Thus it appears an entire US carrier strike group is now responding to what the White House believes is credible intelligence provided by the Israelis. Or, it could simply fit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long stated intent to convince Washington to take preemptive military action against Iran.
Axios reports the Israeli intelligence is “not very specific at this stage” but that the “intelligence gathered by Israel, primarily by the Mossad intelligence agency, is understood to be part of the reason for Bolton’s announcement.” The threats against US interests also reportedly include locations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
But the most obvious question must be asked: could Tel Aviv be setting up its more powerful ally in a “wag the dog” scenario to initiate war against Israel’s archenemy Iran?
Details of Ceasefire Reached with Israeli Occupation in Gaza
Al-Manar | May 6, 2019
Palestinian sources reported reaching a truce between Palestinian resistance and Israeli occupation after three days of Israeli aggression in the besieged Gaza strip.
The sources listed terms of the Egypt-brokered deal as follow:
- IOF has to refrain from shooting at Palestinian protesters during Great March of Return rallies at the border with Gaza
- ‘Israel’ to implement previous understandings which comprise lifting all forms of siege on Gaza
- Hostilities to be ceased at 04:45 a.m. on Monday (01:45 GMT)
- The deal to be committed to by both sides
- ‘Israel’ vows not to violate the truce as in previous deals
- International organizations to be allowed to offer aid to Palestinians who were harmed by the aggression which started on Friday (May 3, 2019)
- ‘Israel’ vows not to carry out assassination attempts against military and civilian Palestinian figures
- Fishing zone of the coastal enclave to be extended to 12 miles
- IOF to refrain from targeting Palestinian farmers east of Gaza
The sources also reported that Palestinian resistance factions informed the Israeli occupation it should not “cross the red lines” and attack Palestinians in Al-Quds and West Bank.
More New ‘AIPACs’ Popping Up
Concern that Israel is losing its grip on U.S. politicians is breeding even more pro-Zionist lobby groups
By Philip Giraldi | American Free Press | April 30, 2019
New organizations dedicated to “defending” Israel are proliferating due to concerns that the American people are finally waking up to the fact that they have been getting ripped off by a vast Zionist conspiracy for the past 70-plus years. Ironically, while it has become possible to criticize Israel even in the mainstream media, the United States government itself has become more firmly in the grasp of the Israel lobby, most recently manifested in bills passed by Congress pledging undying love and affection for war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and all his works. This has been due in large part to the effective lobbying by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which met in Washington in March and drew 18,000 of its supporters to both show up and lobby their congressmen.
The congressional love affair with Israel has been accompanied by billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer-provided Danegeld per annum plus a de facto commitment to send American soldiers to fight and die for Israel even if Netanyahu starts a war for no reason whatsoever.
By one estimate there are 600 groups operating in the United States with the objective of promoting Israel’s interests. They run the gamut, politically speaking, and include leftward leaning organizations, like J Street, that aggressively support a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine while at the same time ignoring the fact that Israel has expanded its settlements in such a fashion as to make a Palestinian state unrealizable. On the extreme right is a group founded in 2010, which calls itself the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), headed by none other than Bill Kristol, former editor of the now thankfully defunct Weekly Standard magazine. The ECI board included Rachel Abrams, wife of pardoned felon Elliott Abrams, who is currently seeking to destroy Venezuela.
ECI is largely inactive at the present time, but when it was launched it claimed to be the most pro-Israel of all pro-Israel groups, which would be quite an achievement. It was most active in 2010-14 when it ran full-page ads against liberal advocacy groups, attacked the Occupy Wall Street movement for being anti-Semitic, and criticized individual congressmen for not being sufficiently pro-Israel. In 2013 the group came out against the proposed appointment of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense because he had once mildly criticized Israel.
The recent controversy over comments critical of Israel and its lobby made by newly elected Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has sparked a wave of pro-Israel activism in and around Congress. At the end of January a new political group was formed by several prominent veteran Democrats, “alarmed by the party’s drift from its longstanding alignment with Israel.” The new group, which is calling itself the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMI), will support Democratic Party candidates who “stand unwaveringly” with the Jewish state.
The group, which is headed by Mark Mellman, a leading Democratic Party pollster, already has some “substantial” funding from the usual Jewish Democratic Party donors and it is interested in assisting potential candidates who are unambiguously supportive of Israel because of “shared values” and its contribution as “one of America’s strongest allies.” The website promises: “We will work to maintain and strengthen support for Israel among Democratic leaders including presidential and congressional candidates as well as with the grassroots of progressive movements. We are committed to doing so because we recognize that America’s relationship with Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East, is a mutually beneficial one based on shared values and shared interests.”
Due to the fact that the common values and interests are difficult to identify—as they hardly exist and Israel is neither an ally nor a democracy—it might be tough sledding to convince skeptics of the actual value of the relationship for Americans. Instead, one suspects that the group will rely on the usual appeals to tribal or religious sentiment and citations of the holocaust coupled with threats of anti-Semitism leveled against those who question the formula. In reality, DMI, which will be active in state primaries, will likely create incentives through development of a funding mechanism for potential candidates who are enthusiastic about Israel while withholding funds from those who are not.
And there will be opposition to the snake oil DMI is selling, not only from Omar. She and Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib of Michigan both support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and there are also a number of other new congressmen who will not hesitate to criticize Israel when it uses lethal force against Palestinian demonstrators. There are also reports that Democratic Party-declared presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, and Julian Castro have all confirmed they didn’t attend the AIPAC conference this year, possibly linked to a call by the leading progressive grassroots organization MoveOn for a boycott. Opinion polls also indicate that Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians is at an all-time low of 19%.
Another new bipartisan pro-Israel political action committee was also launched in March in Washington. Pro-Israel America is headed by two former senior AIPAC staff members, Jonathan Missner and Jeff Mendelsohn. It is intended to provide political donations to candidates from either major party who adopt pro-Israel positions. On its initial list, it endorsed a total of 27 candidates— 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans—all of whom have demonstrated a willingness to support pro-Israel legislation in Congress.
The list predictably includes Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.); Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the majority leader in the House; Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the Foreign Affairs Committee’s ranking Republican.
A press release from Pro-Israel America composed by Mendelsohn stated its mission: “The best way to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship is to elect pro-Israel candidates to Congress, and that requires political action from the thousands of Americans who care deeply about this issue.”
The Pro-Israel America website, which is still under construction, will reportedly encourage small donations to political campaigns, unlike the usual practice of bundling to create large contributions. Potential donors will be able to go to the website, evaluate candidates based on their pro-Israel credentials, and then contribute directly to their campaigns.
Finally, there is a third new online group called Jexodus, headed by a swimsuit model named Elizabeth Pipko, that is trying to convince Jewish voters to leave the Democratic Party and become Republicans because the GOP is now the party of Israel. It is hard to argue with that, as President Donald Trump has now moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has declared that God elected Trump to save the Jews from Iran. There will likely be even more concessions to Netanyahu in the lead-up to America’s own upcoming election in 2020.
All of the pro-Israel groups taken together constitute a veritable political juggernaut that seeks to advantage Israel and benefit it directly without regard for the damage done to American democracy and to actual U.S. interests. They should rightly be seen as organizations that regard their loyalty to the United States as negotiable, but they try to obfuscate the issue by claiming, wrongly, that there exist compelling reasons why Israel and the U.S. should continue to be best friends.
As Americans increasingly begin to appreciate how Israel is in fact a serious liability, that line will not continue to sell very well, no matter how many congressmen and tame journalists are bought and no matter how many new groups pop up like mushrooms funded by Jewish billionaires. Change is coming.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
Mahathir: Israel “ root cause of world instability”
Palestine Information Center – May 2, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamed has described Israel as a terrorist nation and the root cause of instability in the world.
Addressing youths at Al Sharq Annual Conference 2019 in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian leader stressed that the time had come for the international community to stand together and end Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
“Apartheid, genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression and all the evil that mankind can inflict on others can be compiled in Palestine — courtesy of the barbaric, arrogant, terrorist nation called Israel.”
“Until and unless the international community is committed to finding a solution to bring an end to the occupation of the land belonging to the Palestinians, the region and the rest of the world will not have much of a chance for stability and order,” he said in his keynote address before opening the conference, held the first time in Malaysia.
His remarks received overwhelming applause from the participants.
Mahathir also said the senseless murder of innocent people continued in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US-led coalition in 2001 and 2003 which had seen more tumult than stability in the region before the Arab Spring came about.
“Nations like Syria, Libya and Yemen today provide images of a human tragedy while the rest of the world watch helplessly.”
“Their sufferings did not originate from internal strife but rather interference and interventions from external powers which obviously were doing it out of self-interest, disguised under the veil of democracy and human rights,” he said.
The premier underlined that ancient civilizations or rather these cradles of civilization were pummeled to pulp by present day powers that have styled themselves as the leaders of modern-day civilization.
“There is nothing civilized in their actions or behavior. The only thing they can showcase is technology capable of producing weaponry that are extremely efficient in maiming, killing and murdering people by the thousands,” he stressed.
US lawmaker’s bill would ban funds to Israeli military
MEMO | May 1, 2019
Veteran Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit US funding to any foreign military that detains children, including Israel, Anadolu reports.
The bill would additionally authorize the creation of an annual $19 million fund to support non-governmental organizations that monitor rights abuses pertaining to the Israeli military’s detention of children.
“Israel’s system of military juvenile detention is state-sponsored child abuse designed to intimidate and terrorize Palestinian children and their families,” McCollum said in a statement announcing the bill’s introduction.
McCollum said Israel’s military detention of children “must be condemned,” adding that “it is equally outrageous that US tax dollars in the form of military aid to Israel are permitted to sustain what is clearly a gross human rights violation against children.”
Roughly 10,000 children have been detained by Israeli security forces since 2000 and subjected to military court proceedings, according to McCollum’s bill.
“Israeli security forces detain children under the age of 12 for interrogation for extended periods of time even though prosecution of children under 12 is prohibited by Israeli military law,” it says.
It further goes on to note that Human Rights Watch reported in 2018 that Israel’s military “detained Palestinian children “often using unnecessary force, questioned them without a family member present, and made them sign confessions in Hebrew, which most did not understand.”
McCollum’s bill faces an uphill battle in Congress where it is likely to face near-uniform opposition from Republicans and is unlikely to garner sufficient Democratic support to clear the House if Speaker Nancy Pelosi chooses to send it to the floor.
Still, the Democratic lawmaker was adamant that “Congress must not turn a blind eye to the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.”
Israel killed 102 Palestinian journalists since 1972
Palestine Information Center – May 1, 2019
RAMALLAH – The Palestinian Journalists Union in the West Bank on Tuesday said that Israeli occupation forces have killed 102 Palestinian journalists since 1972.
Naser Abu Baker, head of the union, said during his speech for a conference on press freedom in Ramallah that 19 journalists have been killed since 2014.
During the past four months, the Palestinian Journalists Union documented 136 Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists, and 838 in 2018, including the killing of Yaser Murataj and Ahmad Abu Hussein in Gaza.
In 2018, 52 Palestinian journalists were arrested, and 47 were injured by live ammunition, 189 by tear gas canisters, and 17 by rubber-coated metal bullets.
Baker said that 2018 witnessed an unprecedented increase in the violations and crimes committed against Palestinian journalists, including attacks carried out by settlers.
Attacks on Samidoun: PayPal’s complicity in silencing Palestinian prisoners
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | April 30, 2019
The Israeli state and the Zionist movement are continuing their attacks on the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestine solidarity movement. One of the most recent effects of these attacks was the closing of Samidoun’s PayPal account. On its face, this is nothing new: PayPal has shut down the accounts of numerous groups supporting Palestinian rights around the world, including BDS campaign organizations, political parties and even media organizations at the behest of demands from various pro-apartheid politicians and agencies.
On the other hand, the sensationalistic attacks posted in pro-Zionist, pro-apartheid media on anyone who struggles for the rights of the Palestinian people and especially the Palestinian prisoners reflect an ongoing effort to isolate the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails by cutting off international moral and political support for their freedom struggle. As a grassroots, unfunded organization, Samidoun very much relies on the small and generous donations provided by contributors, people of conscience who want to ensure that Palestinian prisoners – and the Palestinian people – are not silenced.
On 23 April, we were suddenly told that our account had been “permanently limited,” due to the “nature of our activities.” This is word-for-word the same message that numerous other global Palestine advocacy organizations have received over the years to block them from receiving donations via PayPal. No appeal mechanism is permitted. This cannot be separated from the company’s ongoing refusal to provide services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while continuing to make its products available to illegal Israeli settlements.
Closing our PayPal account is another method designed to make it more difficult for us to continue to do our work. We are committed to do so, however. So long as Palestinian women and men, children and elders, are held behind colonial bars because they struggle for freedom, we are determined to work alongside them to achieve that goal – for the prisoners and all of Palestine.
Your contribution can help to push back against these attacks. You can donate online to Samidoun here, and if you are interested in donating another way or giving your time to help us, please email us at samidoun@samidoun.net.
An entire Israeli state ministry, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, has been granted an undisclosed budget that reportedly numbers in the tens of millions of dollars to fight back against the growing popular movement around the world in solidarity with the just cause of the Palestinian people. In particular, this ministry has directed its efforts against supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. It has also taken a special interest in attacking Palestinian human rights defenders and solidarity organizations working to expose Israeli repression against Palestinian political prisoners and campaign for their freedom, including Samidoun.
This ministry is headed by Gilad Erdan, a far-right Likud politician who also heads the Ministry of Internal Security in Netanyahu’s government – overseeing the Israel Prison Service itself. It was the “Erdan commission” that promulgated the recent repressive attacks against Palestinian prisoners that led to the collective hunger strike of April 2019 – ending in a victory for the prisoners. It comes as no surprise that the same institutions responsible for confiscating the rights gained by Palestinian prisoners through years of struggle also want to silence, criminalize and suppress all activists and organizations who work to support those prisoners’ rights on an international level.
Most recently, this ministry published a report, “Terrorists in Suits.” Full of misinformation, deception and outright false information, the report aims to cast support for Palestinian prisoners, the boycott of Israel and human rights defense as “terrorism.” Samidoun was attacked alongside many other Palestinian and international organizations for one simple reason – because we defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners.
The Ministry is also heavily involved in interfering in campaigns for justice around the world. It was referred to repeatedly in the US “The Lobby” Al-Jazeera documentary series, censored and then revealed by the Electronic Intifada, working to pass anti-BDS laws and attack student groups and community organizers in the United States. It claimed credit for prohibiting a speech by former Palestinian prisoner and torture survivor Rasmea Odeh in Germany, as well as the stripping of her Schengen visa.
Via its social media accounts, it continues to attack Belgian artist, worker and activist Mustapha Awad after he returned home from being released after 253 days of unjust Israeli imprisonment. The ministry’s social media page has hosted death threats against Mustapha from various far-right, racist commenters – after even the notoriously biased Israeli court system released him early from Israeli imprisonment. It is difficult to see these ongoing attacks as anything other than an attempt to silence him from telling his story, including his experiences of cruel and inhumane treatment, and that of his fellow Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The Palestinian people are facing conditions of siege nearly everywhere, of course most notably in the Gaza Strip and in the Israeli occupation prisons. These arbitrary attacks – and PayPal’s acquiescence to these groundless threats over and over again – are but one small part of that larger siege which we are struggling to break, on the road to victory and liberation for Palestine.
Israel government to fund hotels in illegal West Bank settlements
MEMO | April 30, 2019
The Israeli government will subsidise hotels in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as part of a plan to attract more tourists to the area.
According to an article in Arutz Sheva, citing a report by Israel Hayom, Israel’s Tourism Ministry “will aid entrepreneurs who want to invest in building or expanding hotels in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank]”.
The entrepreneurs can now apply for a grant of up to 20 per cent of their intended investment.
Israel Hayom reported that a meeting held earlier this year between senior settler officials and the managers of Israeli travel agencies in the occupied West Bank “showed that the number of guest units is insufficient, causing tourists to avoid staying in the area for more than a day”.
According to the report, the government grants “are intended to encourage investors to open additional guest units in [illegal settlements in] Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley [the occupied West Bank]”.
Settler leader (Yesha Council chair) Hananel Dorani stated: “We thank [Tourism] Minister Yariv Levin (Likud) for his important work on the issue of tourism in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley.”
“Building hotels and guest houses in the area is an important step which shows the deepening of our roots in the ground and paves the way for Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” he added.
“Giving grants for the creation of hotels is another supplemental step which will help solve the problem of where to sleep and will strengthen settlements and our hold on Judea and Samaria.”
Blame Palestinians for Gaza
Israel is the perpetual victim
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 30, 2019
If you have read a recent New York Times op-ed entitled “Care about Gaza? Blame Hamas” written by none other than the White House “special representative for international negotiations” Jason Greenblatt you would understand that the misery being experienced by Palestinians in Gaza is all their own fault. Greenblatt, who is Jewish of the Orthodox persuasion, just happens to be a strong supporter of Israel’s settlements, which he claims are “not an obstacle to peace.” He is very upset because some naysayers are actually putting some of the blame for the human catastrophe in Gaza on Israel, which we Americans all know is our best friend in the whole world and our most loyal ally. If that were not so, the New York Times and those fine people in Congress and the White House would surely inform us otherwise. And anyway, what are a few lies and war crimes between friends?
Greenblatt, who knows nothing about foreign policy and diplomacy apart from advising Donald Trump on Israel while serving as the Trump Organization chief legal officer, is supposed to be working hard with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner negotiating “deal of the century” peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Betting is that the arrangement on offer in June will consist of American acquiescence in Israel declaring sovereignty over nearly all of land that the Arabs still hold on the West Bank with the remaining local population being bribed heavily to either move to Jordan or stay in designated non-Jewish sectors and stop complaining.
Jason Greenblatt is a perfect example of the type of “dual” loyalist who cannot appreciate that his overriding religious and ethnic allegiances are incompatible with genuine loyalty to the United States. Willingness to subordinate actual American interests to a those of a foreign nation means that he and others like him are contributing to the decline and fall of the country he was born in and which has made him wealthy. If he had any real integrity, when presented by Trump with the opportunity to benefit Israel at the expense of the United States he should have declined the offer knowing that he would inevitably be biased, making it impossible for him to fairly consider either American interests or those of the Palestinians.
Greenblatt knows that whatever lies he tells it will not matter in the least because no one will ever hold him accountable and it is all done for a great cause, which is Israel, to include anything that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants. And what could be better than to hold down a job that pays in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year plus a full benefits package for doing nothing but “creating facts on the ground” for the country that one loves best?
The Greenblatt op-ed includes some really choice “analysis” that does not correspond with the reality of what is going on in what remains of Palestine. He begins immediately with a heavy dose of Israeli propaganda, asserting that “Hamas has left Gaza in shambles,” before providing a partially accurate but morally neutral assessment of the sorry state of the enclave: “Life there is difficult, sad and abnormal. Only buildings with generators actually maintain steady power. The lack of power affects everything from preserving fresh food to treating sewage. If a person in Gaza falls ill, he is likely to find trained medical professionals unable to help because of the lack of equipment and medicines. The people there — even the talented and educated — can’t find jobs. The store shelves are empty. The shoreline, which in many other places in the Mediterranean would be filled with beach resorts, is covered in the raw sewage and debris from successive wars. The cost of conflict is seen in all aspects of life in Gaza.”
The dismal picture of conditions in Gaza, largely true, does not admit to any Israeli role in the suffering, or, at least, Greenblatt is blind to it. Israel controls both the land border and the seafront. It manages the enclave as if it were an outdoor concentration camp and military free-fire zone for its 2 million Arab inhabitants. Lack of power is caused by Israeli bombing of power plants, which also makes it impossible to treat sewage. Proliferating sewage appears to be a preferred weapon for Israelis as settlers on the West Bank are also fond of letting it flow onto Palestinians farms and villages.
Food in Gaza is limited only to what can be grown locally or to what the Israelis allow in. Likewise medicines are only available when Israel permits. Gazans cannot leave without Israeli permission and on the seafront, fisherman who are brave enough to go out are frequently shot dead by Israeli gunboats if they go too far.
Israel bombs hospitals, schools and places of worship indiscriminately, always claiming that they are being used by terrorists even when United Nations observers are on site and declare that the allegations are palpably untrue. And then there are isolated incidents , to include the deliberate murder by naval gunfire of four young boys innocently playing soccer on a beach and the killing by missiles of nine other children who were watching television. An American military attache stationed in Israel once observed soldiers on the Israel side engaging in target practice by shooting at women hanging out their laundry on the Gaza side of the fence and Israeli snipers have proudly worn t-shirts showing a graphic of a pregnant Arab woman in a gunsight with the text “two for one” underneath.
Currently, protests by unarmed Gazans along the Israel-Gaza fence have resulted in 260 Palestinian deaths, mostly by Israeli sniper fire. Nearly 7,000 others have been shot and wounded. Those killed include 32 medical workers and 50 children. Twenty-one children have had their limbs amputated and many more have been permanently disabled.
Thousands more Palestinians have died from Israeli bombs, rockets and artillery shelling since 2009. In 2014 alone, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and more than 10,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled. More than 7,000 homes were destroyed. The grossly disproportionate carnage in Gaza initiated by Israel was so outrageous that even many Americans began to wake up to what their tax dollars were buying. After 2014’s death toll, support for Israel began to wane. Currently 51% of Americans view the Israeli government unfavorably in spite of relentless pro-Israel propaganda by the U.S. media.
Jason Greenblatt goes on to claim that “The Arabs in Israel generally live normal lives and, in many cases, thrive. In fact, Arab citizens of Israel live freely compared with Arabs in many other countries in the region… Why are others moving forward while Gaza sinks further into despair and disrepair? Because Hamas, the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, has made choices… Hamas is to blame for Gaza’s situation.”
Greenblatt is wrong about the claimed happy lot of Palestinians living in Israel. Israel has recently declared itself a Jewish State. In practice, there are more than fifty laws and regulations that make Christians and Muslims second class citizens. Churches and Mosques are regularly vandalized and Christian and Muslim holy sites are regularly destroyed by the authorities while a prominent Rabbi has recently declared in the wake of Sri Lanka that proposals that all churches should be destroyed inside Israel should be considered but are “complicated.” Arab Israelis cannot get building permits, their schools are underfunded and they are discriminated against or ignored in nearly all their interactions with the government. Local communities can declare themselves Arab-free zones and they can refuse to sell houses to Palestinians.
The fundamental problem with Greenblatt and others like him is that they have a very selective moral compass and choose not to recognize apartheid even when it is right in front of them. Israel is a fundamentally racist occupying power with a colonial-settler mindset, which sees the Arabs as ignorant savages that have to be ideally removed, but if not, restrained by force or even killed if necessary. And, like all purveyors of war crimes, the Israelis and their diaspora cheerleaders blame the victims for their plight. Greenblatt will have an excuse for any atrocity committed by Israel. The Israel Defense Force is shooting Palestinians individually now but if it starts doing them in groups he would no doubt come up with a good rationalization justifying the practice.
Israel is a Middle Eastern superpower, heavily armed and unconcerned over the consequences for starting wars and killing Arabs. To argue as Greenblatt does that there is some kind of “fighting” going on with Hamas “instigating” wars against Israel is ludicrous given the disparity in power between the two sides. It is largely retaliatory Hamas homemade bottle rockets, which kill or injure very few, against fighter jets, snipers and artillery barrages that kill thousands. And the really sad part for Americans is that the United States is deeply complicit in what goes on, sending “special representatives” like Greenblatt into the region on the taxpayer’s dime to argue Israel’s case.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation 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.
50,000 Palestinian Children Imprisoned by Israeli Kangaroo Courts Since 1967
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | April 29, 2019
JERUSALEM — According to figures released by the Prisoners’ and Freed Prisoners’ Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Sunday, the state of Israel has imprisoned more than 50,000 children since the occupation of Palestine’s West Bank began in 1967. The PLO report, which was cited by Middle East Monitor, also noted that around 17,000 of those child arrests had occurred since the year 2000. The report used the UN definition that states that a child is any person younger than 18 years of age. However, Israel’s government has defined children younger than 16 as children, while applying the UN definition to Israeli children.
The PLO report — titled “Child Detention… Facts and Statistics… Effects on the Reality and Future of Palestinian Childhood” — was made public as the head of the PLO Prisoner committee, Abdul Nasser Ferwaneh, gave testimony to the 5th European Union conference in support of prisoners. In delivering his report and testimony, Ferwaneh noted that the rate of child imprisonment by the Israeli state had nearly doubled, averaging around 700 children imprisoned annually from 2000 to 2010 but rising to around 1,250 between 2011 and 2018.
Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), citing data from the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and Israeli army temporary detention facilities, recently reported that 414 Palestinian children were imprisoned by Israeli military courts in just the first two months of 2019.
An apartheid system with kangaroo courts
Since 1967, Palestinian children have been subjected to Israeli military law while Israeli settlers living in illegal West Bank settlements are governed by Israel’s civilian criminal legal system. Aside from the fact that subjecting two different populaces in the same area to two different legal systems is a clear manifestation of apartheid, Israel is the only country in the world that automatically tries children in military courts, courts that lack basic fair trial guarantees and have a near-automatic conviction rate. In addition, many Palestinian children are arbitrarily detained, or imprisoned without charge.
Most Palestinian children tried in military court are accused of throwing stones — which, as of 2015, can carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. No Israeli child has ever been tried in an Israeli military court.
Children in detention in Israeli jails are often subjected to various forms of abuse, including “slapping, beating, kicking and violent pushing” as well as verbal abuse, according to prisoner-rights group Adameer. Adameer has also noted that Palestinian children are sometimes threatened with rape in order to extract confessions, which are often written in Hebrew — a language most Palestinian children can’t read or understand.
Obaida Akram Jawabra, a 15-year-old who has already been arrested twice by Israel, told DCIP that in prison “[Israeli] soldiers would beat me in places that would leave no marks so there wouldn’t be evidence on my body that I could use to testify against them.” Figures released by DCIP claim that 75 percent of Palestinian child prisoners report being subjected to physical violence while in prison and 62 percent report being subjected to verbal violence.
The majority of Palestinian children in detention are unable to receive family visits, since nearly 60 percent of all child detainees are transferred from the West Bank to Israeli prisons upon conviction. This practice, which violates the Fourth Geneva Convention — coupled with restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the West Bank and the long delays in issuing permits for entry to Israel — prevents the vast majority of West Bank Palestinian families from visiting their imprisoned children.
While Israel’s government often touts itself as the “only democracy” in the Middle East, it is also the only government in the entire world that detains children through military courts with a near 100 percent conviction rate, something that even Saudi Arabia does not do. Israel’s practice of imprisoning Palestinian children is a clear violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Israel in 1991, as it routinely robs thousands of children of their right to a safe childhood.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
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Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
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