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Israel releases Palestinian mail held since 2010

MEMO | August 14, 2018

Israeli occupation forces yesterday gave the Palestinian Authority tonnes of post which it has been holding since 2010, Felesteen.ps reported.

PA Minister of IT and Communications, Allam Mousa, said in a statement that Israel stopped tonnes of Palestinian mail arriving from Jordan since 2010.

Palestine signed an agreement of direct mail delivery to Jordan with Israel in 2016, noting that agreement was brokered by the Global Mail Union.

He added: “Israel, in violation of international law, has not yet implemented the agreement and does not allow the export or import of mail directly through Jordan.”

Israel controls the movement of Palestinian trade and people through international crossings and borders.

Occupation authorities have also been holding back postal revenues due to the Palestinians worth thousands of dollars, Mousa added.

August 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Culture Ministry funds settlers ‘squatting illegally’ in Palestinian home

MEMO | August 14, 2018

Israel’s Culture Ministry has been funding a Jewish religious institute “whose founders illegally took over a Palestinian home in the central West Bank”, reported the Times of Israel.

According to the report, “an investigation into the financials of the Mishpetei Eretz (‘laws of the land’) institute revealed that it has received at least NIS 200,000 ($54,786) annually for the past three years from the Culture Ministry.”

In total, the settlement-based academy has received 781,617 shekels ($214,039) in government funding since 2015.

The state funds have come “despite a 2013 Jerusalem District Court decision concluding that the compound housing the institute still belongs to its original Palestinian owners, and that the settler group claiming to have purchased the building had forged the necessary documents.”

The Israeli army, meanwhile, has not tried “to remove the squatters”, but instead, has “built a fence around the compound with the stated goal of protecting its Israeli inhabitants.”

“We see here another example that reveals the corrupt system that Israel maintains in the West Bank,” the Kerem Navot settlement watchdog said.

“Rather than enforce the law, and evict and punish the settlers who invaded the property, the IDF [army] issued a corrupt military order based on security needs that de facto enables them to stay there.”

In a Facebook post summarising the story, Kerem Navot further slammed Israel’s Culture Minister Miri Regev for “subsidising criminals”.

August 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza and the ‘Great March of Return’

Wikimedia Commons/gloucester2gaza
By Ron Forthofer | Boulder Weekly | August 2, 2018

The illegal Israel blockade of Gaza begun in 2007 and the three major Israeli attacks on Gaza since then have created a living hell for Palestinians there. In 2006, before the siege was implemented, Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the goal for Gaza was “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Despite Israeli claims, Gaza is an occupied territory and, in actuality, Palestinians and their leadership have little control over their lives. For example, Israel, abetted by Egypt, controls all of Gaza’s borders and determines what and who may or may not enter the area. Israel’s control has turned Gaza into what many call the “largest open-air prison in the world” while others call it a concentration camp.

Making matters worse, the two major Palestinian groups, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, have been at odds for years and their in-fighting adds to the incredible hardships Gazans face.

In 2012, the UN issued a report saying that Gaza would be unlivable by 2020. In 2017, the group Save the Children said it considered Gaza to be unlivable then. Among the many things it cited are:

  • Gaza struggling with just two to four hours of electricity per day.
  • 741 schools struggling to function without electricity.
  • Breakdown of health and emergency services putting children’s lives at risk.
  • Water-borne diseases increasing because of power shortages.
  • Environmental disaster due to untreated sewage.
  • Children unable to sleep, study or play.

With the above background, let’s now consider the Palestinian ‘Great March of Return’. This march  is a grassroots-led and mainly peaceful effort despite the media’s attempt to portray it as a cynical and violent Hamas ploy.

The media coverage, besides being biased, is also incomplete in that it seldom considers the reasons that led Gazans to participate in this resistance action and to return week after week. Generally, as shown above, Palestinians in Gaza face dire living conditions. In addition, many have lost confidence in the Palestinian leadership that has been unable to bring about relief. Thus the grassroots are organizing and acting. In particular, Palestinians are:

1) protesting the illegal Israeli siege that will likely bring about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza;

2) standing up for their internationally recognized right of return to their former homes or for compensation for their losses; and

3) protesting the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

The Israeli reaction to this mainly peaceful march was to have well-protected snipers firing from long range into crowds and even at people away from the protest. The media desperately tried to justify this reaction.

Only one side was shooting and killing/wounding large numbers of people. Some Palestinians, against the stated desire of the grassroots organizers, have thrown rocks or flown burning kites over the fence setting some fields on fire.

To date, the Israeli snipers have killed 136 Palestinians including women, children, press, doctors and nurses and wounded over 14,000 whereas one Israeli soldier was slightly wounded when hit by a rock.

Unfortunately, perhaps these killings could have been or were foreseen. For example, in 2004, Arnon Soffer, a Haifa University demographer and advisor to Ariel Sharon, said: “when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. … The pressure at the border will be awful. … So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day….If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist.”

This abominable Israeli behavior towards Palestinians will continue as long as the US provides political cover at the UN, vetoing resolutions that would impose any penalties on Israel for its crimes. The most effective current approach for changing Israeli behavior is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

Israel falsely claims that BDS is anti-Semitic and that BDS is also challenging its legitimacy. Unfortunately, similar to this false claim, the anti-Semitic charge has been so abused, like the boy who cried wolf, that there is an increased risk many will ignore the claim even in cases when the charge is actually warranted.

Regarding Israel’s legitimacy, it is Israel’s own brutal and illegal policies that are delegitimizing it. Support BDS to change this intolerable situation.

– Ron Forthofer, Ph.D. is a retired professor of biostatistics and an activist with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Boulder, CO.

August 14, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Confronting Israel Is Important

The Jewish state is no friend

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 14, 2018

I am often asked why I have this “thing” about Israel, with friends suggesting that I would be much more respected as a pundit if I were to instead concentrate on national security and political corruption. The problem with that formulation is that the so-called “special relationship” with Israel is itself the result of terrible national security and foreign policy choices that are sustained by pervasive political and media corruption, so any honest attempt to examine the one inevitably leads to the other. Most talking heads in the media avoid that dilemma by choosing to completely ignore the dark side of Israel.

Israel – not Russia – is the one foreign country that can interfere with impunity with the political processes in the United States yet it is immune from criticism. It is also the single most significant threat to genuine national security as it and its powerful domestic lobby have been major advocates for the continuation of America’s interventionist warfare state. The decision to go to war on false pretenses against Iraq, largely promoted by a cabal of prominent American Jews in the Pentagon and in the media, killed 4,424 Americans as well as hundreds of thousands Iraqis and will wind up costing the American taxpayer $7 trillion dollars when all the bills are paid. That same group of mostly Jewish neocons more-or-less is now agitating to go to war with Iran using a game plan for escalation prepared by Israel which will, if anything, prove even more catastrophic.

And I can go on from there. According to the FBI, Israel runs the most aggressive spying operations against the U.S. among ostensibly “friendly” nations, frequently stealing our military technology for resale by its own arms merchants. Its notable successes in espionage have included the most devastating spy in U.S. history Jonathan Pollard, while it has also penetrated American communications systems and illegally obtained both the fuel and the triggers for its own secret nuclear weapons arsenal.

Israel cares little for American sovereignty. It’s prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have both boasted how they control the United States. In 2001, Israel was running a massive secret spying operation directed against Arabs in the U.S. Many in the intelligence and law enforcement communities suspect that it had considerable prior intelligence regarding the 9/11 plot but did not share it with Washington. There was the spectacle of the “dancing Shlomos,” Israeli “movers” from a company in New Jersey who apparently had advanced knowledge of the terrorist attack and danced and celebrated as they watched the Twin Towers go down.

Jewish power, both in terms of money and of access to people and mechanisms that really matter, is what allows Israel to act with impunity, making the United States both poorer and more insecure. A well-funded massive lobbying effort involving hundreds of groups and thousands of individuals in the U.S. has worked to the detriment of actual American interests, in part by creating a permanent annual gift of billions of dollars to Israel for no other reason but that it is Israel and can get anything it wants from a servile Congress and White House without any objection from a controlled media.

Israel has also obtained carte blanche political protection from the U.S. in fora like the United Nations, which is damaging to America’s reputation and its actual interests. This protection now extends to the basing of U.S. troops in Israel to serve as a tripwire, guaranteeing that Washington will become involved if Israel is ever attacked or even if Israel itself starts a war. The current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley is little more than a shill for Israel while America’s Ambassador in Israel David Friedman is an open supporter of Israel’s illegal settlements, which the U.S. opposes, who spends much of his time defending Israeli war crimes.

And here on the home front Israel is doing damage that might be viewed as even more grave in Senator Ben Cardin’s attempt to destroy First Amendment rights by making any criticism of Israel illegal. The non-violent Israel Boycott movement (BDS) has already been sanctioned in many states, the result of intensive and successful lobbying by the Israeli government and its powerful friends.

So if there is a real enemy of the United States in terms of the actual damage being inflicted by a foreign power, it is Israel. In the recent Russiagate investigations it was revealed that it was Israel, not Russia, that sought favors from Michael Flynn and the incoming Trump Administration yet Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidently not chosen to go down that road with his investigations, which should surprise no one.

Noam Chomsky, iconic progressive intellectual, has finally come around on the issue of Israel and what it means. He has always argued somewhat incoherently that Israeli misbehavior has been due to its role as a tool of American imperialism and capitalism. At age 89, he has finally figured out that it is actually all about what a parasitic Israel wants without any regard for its American host, observing on “Democracy Now” that

… take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done… I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015….

Politicians are terrified of crossing the Jewish lobby by saying anything negative about Israel, which means that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu always gets a pass from the American government, even when he starves civilians and bombs hospitals and schools. Netanyahu uses snipers to shoot dead scores of unarmed demonstrators and the snipers themselves joke about their kills without a peep from Washington, which styles itself the “leader of the free world.”

Just recently, Israel has declared itself a Jewish State with all that implies. To be sure, Israeli Christians and Muslims were already subject to a battery of laws and regulations that empowered Jews at their expense but now it is the guiding principle that Israel will be run for the benefit of Jews and Jews alone. And it still likes to call itself a “democracy.”

A recent television program illustrates just how far the subjugation of America’s elected leaders by Israel has gone. British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is featured on a new show called “Who is America?” in which he uses disguises and aliases to engage politicians and other luminaries in unscripted interviews that reveal just how ignorant or mendacious they actually are. Several recent episodes remind one of a February 2013 Saturday Night Live skit on the impending confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. A Senator asks Hagel. “It is vital to Israel’s security for you to go on national television and perform oral sex on a donkey… Would you do THAT for Israel?” A “yes” answer was, of course, expected from Hagel. The skit was never aired after objections from the usual suspects.

Baron Cohen, who confronted several GOP notables in the guise of Colonel Erran Morad, an Israeli security specialist, provided a number of clues that his interview was a sham but none of the victims were smart enough to pick up on them. Cohen, wearing an Israeli military uniform and calling himself a colonel, clearly displayed sergeant’s stripes. Hinting that he might actually be a Mossad agent, Cohen also sported a T-shirt on which the Hebrew text was printed backwards and he claimed that the Israeli spy agency’s motto was “if you want to win, show some skin.”

Cohen set up Dick Cheney by complimenting him on being the “the king of terrorist killers” before commenting that “my neighbor in Tel Aviv is in jail for murder, or, as we call it, enhanced tickling.” Morad went on to tell Cheney that he once waterboarded his wife to check for infidelity and then convinced the former Vice President to sign a “waterboarding kit” that “already had” the signatures of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon and Demi Lovato.

Another more spectacular sketch included a Georgia state senator Jason Spencer who was convinced to shout out the n-word as part of an alleged video being made to fight terrorism. After Cohen told Spencer that it was necessary to incite fear in homophobic jihadists, Spencer dropped his pants and underwear, before backing up with his exposed rear end while shouting “USA!” and “America!” Spencer also spoke with a phony Asian accent while simulating using a selfie-stick to secretly insert a camera phone inside a Muslim woman’s burqa.

In another series of encounters, Cohen as Morad managed to convince current and ex-Republican members of Congress — to include former Senate majority leader Trent Lott — to endorse a fictional Israeli program to arm grade school children for self-defense.

Cohen’s footage included a former Illinois congressman and talk radio host named Joe Walsh saying: “The intensive three-week ‘Kinderguardian’ course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars. In less than a month — less than a month — a first-grader can become a first grenade-er.”

Both controversial Alabama judge Roy Moore and Walsh were fooled into meeting Cohen to attend a non-existent pro-Israel conference to accept an award for “significant contributions to the state of Israel.” Representative Dana Rohrabacher, meanwhile, also was interviewed and he commented that, “Maybe having young people trained and understand how to defend themselves and their school might actually make us safer here.” And Congressman Joe Wilson observed that “A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a ‘Hello Kitty’ pencil case at it.”

Cohen’s performance is instructive. A man shows up in Israeli uniform, claims to be a terrorism expert or even a Mossad agent, and he gains access to powerful Americans who are willing to do anything he says. How Cohen did it says a lot about the reflexive and completely uncritical support for Israel that many American politicians — particularly Republicans — now embrace. This, in a nutshell, is the damage that Israel and its Lobby have done to the United States. Israel is always right for many policymakers and even palpably phony Jews like Colonel Morad are instantly perceived as smarter than the rest of us so we’d better do what they say. That kind of thinking has brought us Iraq, Libya, Syria and the possibility of something far worse with Iran.

Israel routinely interferes in American politics and corrupts our institutions without any cost to itself and that is why I write and speak frequently regarding the danger to our Republic that it poses. It is past time to change the essentially phony narrative. Israel is nothing but trouble. It has the right to defend itself and protect its interests but that should not involve the United States. One can only hope that eventually a majority of my fellow American citizens will also figure things out. It might take a while, but the ruthless way Israel openly operates with no concern for anyone but itself provides a measure of optimism that that day is surely coming.

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

August 14, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Foreign Power in American Democracy? Guess Which One?

By Frank Scott | Legalienate | August 7, 2018

Americans schooled by films, comics, sitcoms and other forms of capital media might well believe Russia invaded the USA during our 18th century revolution and that’s why we’ve been enemies ever since. Actually, the USA and its future European lap dogs, along with Japan, invaded Russia in 1918 under various pretenses covering the need to destroy an uprising that had the gall to replace a holy family of royal wealth with some stupid ideals about ending poverty and promoting actual rule by a democratic majority.

That bloody foreign intrusion into a civil war which further wrecked an economy already near total destruction as a result of the First World War, saw Russia lose more lives than any other country involved and was a preview of more recent history; the present assault on its borders by NATO, all following in the same imperial footsteps to the current moment of reducing innocent Americans into a near frenzied psycho-neurotic mob over alleged horrors committed to our cherished democracy by evil Russians.

That religiously worshipped fictional system has never in history existed nor produced one American president actually elected by a majority of the electorate. In fact, the image of a supposedly “brutal authoritarian thug” Putin, a description widely accepted by duped twits under merciless American mind management, received a much larger share of the Russian electorate’s voting support than either the despicable or deplorable lesser evil candidates in the last billionaire’s campaign we have been taught to call “our” democracy. This produced the frenzy of established power’s brain assault committed on a public with minds so reduced to pulp it may be too late for some to survive even with decent emergency treatment. Which they might only get in a foreign country given the private profit crazed madness in our alleged “health care” market. In fact, if paying a private insurance company before being able to acquire the services of a doctor or nurse is “health care”, then paying a pimp in order to acquire the services of a sex worker is “love care”. But away with logic and back to the supposed identity of a foreign force wreaking havoc with our cherished national perversion passing for democracy.

While hate crazed elders of the bureaucratic un-intelligence class formerly seen as enemies of the people take on the role of heroic fighters for the masses, the president elected by millions in the usual minority vote for bogus chief executive is treated as a treasonous, racist, homophobic, sexist, child molesting, bank robbing, unsafe driver and any other charge possible by almost all establishment voices. He certainly is a rich, arrogant, egomaniacal super twit, but his crude dim-witted honesty over-qualifies him for the job of CEO of a rich, arrogant, egomaniacal nation programmed to think itself god’s gift to humanity and what more regular presidential puppets of wealth have called the “essential” nation. And truthfully, what other giant of morality and intellect could spend trillions on war, billions on pets, and leave hundreds of thousands of its people living in the street? Such is the marketing fiction forcing insanity into the minds of near helpless consumers of commodified crap in diets leading to digestive and psychological disorders bordering on terminal social malfunction. These are usually diagnosed as personal problems needing therapy and drug cures, which bring massive private profits to a dwindling minority and massive public loss to an expanding majority.

Meanwhile, Trump’s alleged treasonous love affair with Putin occupies consciousness controllers and their near helpless consumers while Trump’s burying his economic face in Netanyahu’s political crotch attracts attention only from those long trying to wake the nation to its government falling under the control of a foreign power, Israel, where all manner of atrocities both moral and financial are excused under the banner of protecting the only democracy in the middle east. This lie is greater than the one sold here about our own minority rule cartel but helps perversely rationalize the need to slaughter, pillage, and destroy much of the Islamic world in pursuit of racial supremacy to be enjoyed by those who shout loudest that racial supremacy must be fought. Except when they practice it.

While the breast-fed-into-adulthood brigades swallow tales of Russian meddling in our billionaire financed minority perversion of democracy, Israel’s continued role in getting the USA to murder hundreds of thousands in the middle east increasingly moves to extend the fanatic bloodletting to Iran. Always in Israeli sights because it is totally disrespectful of European rule, given both its fundamental Islamic stance against much of modernity but mostly western values seen as immoral – because they frequently are – and its long history dating from ancient times of being both a global and more recently local power not given to taking guff from anyone. It has always been critical of the most blatant western invasion of the 20th century in the establishment of a euro-colony in Palestine and the total disregard for the people who’ve lived there since biblical times. How dare they disrespect the only other “essential” nation, along with the U.S.A. Are they crazy or what?

The perennially facing extermination mindset of the Israelis has dominated American politics since before that nation’s origins, officially in 1948 but pending since long before the days of Nazi Zionist partnership to make Palestine the home for Jews seeking a separate and superior homeland. The later bloody Nazi assault, murders and ethnic cleansing inflicted on lower economic class European Jews who could not afford to buy their way out, as their one percent did, has become the most well known, publicized and often fictionalized assault on humanity ever recorded in global consciousness. This even after the facts of western murders of countless millions in colonializing much of the world, and especially here in the USA where entire nations of indigenous people were wiped out or ethnically cleansed and where American Jews, descended from immigrants, far outnumber American Indians, the horror of the European Jewish experience takes precedence over what was done to native Americans. And Trump, like every single president before him, has not only embraced every fictional foundation story to cover injustice, but unlike previous hypocrites who did it only for the money provided by the Israeli lobby, he probably believes it and thus may be even more dangerous.

So as the saber rattling toward Iran increases, with the most extreme racists in the USA and Israel licking their chops over the thought of wiping out more Middle Eastern people, the mind boggling idiocy of alleged Russian involvement in organized crime in America – the electoral system – approaches sending millions to a mental health crisis center, none of them able to afford the drugs needed to possibly calm their over stressed minds. And the leaders in this rush to further crisis for capital are not the usual right wing loonies who used to find commies under their beds, but what passes for sophisticated neo-liberals who unashamedly assume the role of the most demented force in American politics and one that can almost make the insect brain in the white house seem thoughtful by comparison.

The idea that a nation which suffered more than any other with 25 million deaths in the two capitalist “world” wars, which saw its country invaded, bombed and reduced to starvation and cannibalism by this bloody experience, is a threat to America which by comparison lost less than half a million people – some .02% of the Russian total – is one that can only be placed into consciousness by creating a vast pool of unconsciousness. Americans with knowledge of material reality would not accept the dreadful drivel being poured into their heads, which is why rulers are pouring it on faster, and with more fury. If it truly is darkest just before the dawn, we are hopefully experiencing what will become the most shining burst of light imaginable. Hopefully non-nuclear.

August 11, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli plan to isolate four Palestinian villages from Bethlehem

Palestine Information Center – August 11, 2018

BETHLEHEM – The Israeli occupation government has embarked on carrying out a massive settlement project that will lead to the isolation of four Palestinian villages from Bethlehem in the West Bank as a prelude to annexing them as Israeli state land.

The new plan is aimed at turning the villages of Battir, Wadi Fukin, Nahalin and Husan, which are located in the west of Bethlehem province, into communities under Israel’s sovereignty after isolating them from Bethlehem.

The area where those villages are located is called locally Arqoub villages and there are about 20,000 Palestinian citizens living there.

According to the plan, Israel intends to expand Road 60 that lead to the illegal settlement of Beitar Illit, which was built on annexed land in Bethlehem, and connect it with roads between these villages to make this new expanded road available only for Jewish settlers.

On the ground, Israeli engineers and surveyors started to put up signs and numbers in the heart of Nahalin town to prepare for the plan.

August 11, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

2-minute video about mother and toddler killed in Gaza by Israeli forces

If Americans Knew

On August 9, 2018, Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed Enas Khammash, 23, and her 18-month-old daughter Bayan. Enas was nine-months pregnant with another daughter, whom she had named Hayat, Arabic for “Life.”

U.S. news media paid little attention to these deaths, rarely even reporting their names.

Virtually all framed their news stories as Israel allegedly “responding” to Palestinian attacks, despite the fact that Israeli forces had first killed two Palestinians in the recent round of violence, and that Israeli forces have killed 172 Gazans in the past four+ months (including children, medics, women, journalists, etc), while Gazan resistance fighters have killed one Israeli (a soldier).

For a list of Palestinians and Israelis killed since 2000, see this Timeline.

For all If Americans Knew Timeline videos see this playlist.

Congress is currently voting on a $28 billion aid package to Israel, which the US media has also failed to inform Americans about. This is the largest such aid package in US history. Learn more here.

August 11, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli minister urges assassination of Hamas leaders

Press TV – August 11, 2018

Israeli culture and sport minister has called for the assassination of the leaders of Hamas Palestinian resistance movement, stressing that Israel should reinstate its policy of targeted assassinations.

Miri Regev told a recent meeting of local leaders of Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip that the Palestinian resistance movement’s senior officials should “live in fear”.

“We must go back to the policy of targeted assassinations of leaders of this murderous terrorist group,” she added, referring to Hamas.

Other Israeli politicians likewise called on the Israeli leadership to come down harder on Hamas, which controls Gaza and has defended the enclave against three Israeli wars.

Leader of Israeli party Zionist Union Avi Gabbay, who was visiting the city of Sderot in the west of Negev Desert, was recently quoted by media as saying that Israel had “a strong army and weak politicians,” who would not intensify the regime’s aggression.

The current regime “doesn’t know how to deter a terrorist organization or to negotiate,” he added.

Israel has assassinated many Hamas figures over the past years.

Last March, it assassinated Mazen Fuqaha, one of the group’s senior figures, in Gaza. The victim was shot with four bullets to his head.

In 2010, Israel had itself embroiled in an international scandal when its operatives used false European and Australian passports to assassinate senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the United Arab Emirates.

Oren Hazan, an Israeli lawmaker from Likud Party, also recently said, “We are not hitting Hamas hard enough for fear of an ongoing conflict, even though we are deep inside one”.

“If we would have hit them, they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to shoot 200 rockets in one day. So enough with the stories that we hit them hard. The public isn’t stupid, and neither is Hamas,” he added.

Besides staying prepared to take the territory under wholesale warfare, Israel regularly strikes Gaza, saying it needs to target Hamas.

Earlier in the week, Israeli raids on the coastal enclave killed three Palestinians who included a pregnant mother and a toddler.

Israel ramped up attacks on March 30, shortly after Gazans began weekly rallies near the territory’s fence in support of their right to return to their homeland.

The demonstrations and Israeli offensives especially hiked on May 14, the anniversary of the Nakba Day in 1948, when Israel claimed existence after a deadly war against Arab territories.

Nearly 160 Palestinians have been killed and some 17,500 others wounded during the Israeli military’s attacks targeting the March of Return protests, the Palestinian Health Ministry says.

August 11, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

BBC bows to pressure from Israel and changes Gaza headline

Israel carried out air strikes in Gaza City on 9 August 2018 [Mahmoud Khattab/Apaimages]
MEMO | August 10, 2018

The BBC has once again come under sharp criticism over its coverage of violence perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians. Critics called the BBC out over its bias after the broadcaster bowed to pressure from the Israeli Foreign Ministry and changed the headline of a news piece concerning Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

The BBC headline read: “Israeli air strikes ‘kill woman and baby’” for a news piece related to the killing of three Palestinians including a pregnant mother and toddler in Gaza on Wednesday night.

The headline attracted the attention of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who is currently leading a bitter campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over a definition of anti-Semitism that conflates criticism of Israel with racism against Jews.

Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon shot the BBC down and demanded for the headline to be changed “IMMEDIATELY”:

The Board of Deputies joined the act, denouncing the BBC headline as “appalling”. They said that they had lodged a complaint and encouraged others to do the same.

A short while after the complaints the BBC completely changed the headline: “Gaza air strikes ‘kill woman and child’ after rockets hit Israel.”

The dramatic change in headline caught the attention of social media users who were astonished by BBC’s capitulation to the dictates of a foreign state.

British commentator Owen Jones tweeted:

Others pointed to the influence of the Israeli lobby in the UK citing the Al Jazeera documentary “The Lobby,” which exposed how the Israeli embassy was providing covert assistance to supposedly independent groups within the Labour Party, and led a campaign to remove not just Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan, but also Crispin Blunt MP, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee for their strong views on Israel. Many of these groups are now at the centre of the anti-Semitism row within the Labour Party.

“Looks like the influence of a foreign power on our political landscape and media never went away,” tweeted a social media user who also shared a video of Israeli embassy staff Shai Masot attempting to organise a takedown of British MPs sympathetic to the Palestinians and possibly hostile to the Israeli state.

Many responded with personal accounts to highlight the extent to which the BBC is bullied into taking a pro-Israel stance. A video clip of a famous study “Bad News from Israel” by the renowned Glasgow University Media Group resurfaced. Its author Greg Philo can be heard saying:

“I spent time with BBC journalists and a senior producer said to me, ‘We wait in fear for the phone call from the Israelis,’” referring to the trepidation felt by BBC editors when publishing negative stories about Israel.

It is unusual for the BBC to publish a story about Israeli aggression using headlines that doesn’t make excuses. On this occasion the fact that the story appeared in BBC World perhaps explains why the headline may not have gone through the rigorous vetting that many suspect stories about Israel are subjected to.

A BBC spokesperson admitted that “although the original headline was not factually incorrect, we updated it to add more context to the story”.

August 10, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

When humanitarian aid and rhetoric serve the interests of the Israeli oppressors

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 9, 2018

There has been yet another instance where the UN has preferred to try to predict the future instead of acknowledging the current deterioration in Gaza with the aim of permanently reversing colonialism. Israel has yet again refused the entry of fuel into the enclave which is needed to power emergency generators and provide some relief for the power cuts suffered by the Palestinian people.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (OCHAoPt) quoted Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick: “The well-being of two million people, half of whom are children, is at stake. It is unacceptable that Palestinians in Gaza are repeatedly deprived of the most basic elements of a dignified life.”

Depletion of basic necessities is edging towards the total absence of such resources. Hospitals are facing closures and patients who rely upon electrical devices are at risk of their treatment being interrupted. Furthermore, OCHAoPt has remarked on the deteriorating funds for emergency fuel, stating that $4.5 million is required “to ensure that a minimum level of essential services can continue to run through the end of the year.”

McGoldrick spoke about the need for “longer-term solutions so we can move past this cycle of repeated or worsening crises, including that Palestinian authorities prioritise provision of fuel for essential services.” Until that happens, he stated, Israel should reverse its restrictions and donors should contribute towards funding emergency fuel.

The difference between UN representatives’ rhetoric and Israel’s calculated oppression makes it impossible to turn towards permanent solutions for Palestinians. International institutions play upon the immediate scenario with the intent of keeping to short-term alleviation each time Israel repeats its violations, or embarks upon a new round. Maintaining this ambiguity has created the dynamics of attempting to repair a sliver of damage while Israel unravels its next step in the colonisation process. In doing so, the correlation between aid and abuse increases to the point of creating a cycle of dependency between both concepts.

Meanwhile, Gaza is forced to manage a situation wherein every decision taken is unlikely to reap any benefit for Palestinians. The illegal blockade on Gaza, which is part of Israel’s colonial strategy, is mentioned towards the end of the OCHAoPt briefing to underscore that it has “raised concerns over collective punishment and human rights violations, alongside an unresolved internal Palestinian political divide.” While the latter is true, it is still only a part of the bigger framework. One must ask why the UN is intent on blurring the lines between Israel and the Palestinian factions. Palestinian Authority collaboration with Israel aside, such merging only serves to eliminate Israeli accountability and cast serious doubts upon the lauding of international law when it serves nothing other than the means through which to determine how far colonial violence can stretch its parameters.

While the UN and Israel are busy perfecting their strategies, Palestinians exist in a realm where remembrance of their plight is tied to a generated, short-term response, as opposed to relating to their humanity. It is not only Israel that has dehumanised Palestinians. In limiting responses to Israel’s violations rather than Palestinian rights, the international community has dehumanised Palestine internationally.

August 10, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel celebrates 40 years of illegal settlement

MEMO | August 10, 2018

Two thousand Israelis yesterday gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the illegal West Bank settlement of Shiloh, south of Nablus.

The celebration was attended by Israel’s Agriculture Minister, Uri Ariel, who is a member of the Religious-Zionist Jewish Home party. According to Arutz Sheva, the head of Israel’s “Binyamin Regional Council”, the group which oversees 42 of Israel’s illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank, also attended. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, sent a letter of congratulations to the illegal settlers, claiming historic links between the Bible and the modern-day occupied Palestinian territory.

Uri Ariel has a long history of pro-settlement activity, previously serving as head of Beit El council, an illegal Israeli settlement situated north east of Ramallah. Ariel was also previously secretary general of the Yesha council.

In July it emerged that Uri Ariel had previously approved plans to demolish Khan Al-Ahmar, the Palestinian Bedouin village that has been slated for demolition. The plans, which were made in the late 1970s, proposed a “Jewish corridor” of illegal settlements be built on some 100,000 to 120,000 dunams (25,000 to 30,000 acres) of Palestinian land, including the villages of Hizme, Anata, Al-Azariya and Abu Dis on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Demolishing these villages would make way for expanding two illegal settlements – Ma’ale Adumim and Kfar Adumim – situated on the Jerusalem-Jericho road.

Shiloh was one of the first locations targeted for illegal Israeli settlement as early as 1974 by Gush Emunim, the orthodox right-wing settlement movement that rose to prominence in the wake of the 1973 War. Gush Emunim was later succeeded by the Yesha council that Uri Ariel previously affiliated with. During the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, Shiloh was identified as an example of an area that should be returned to Palestinian control given the high density of Palestinians living in the area.

Illegal settlement in the West Bank has been pursued as a policy by the State of Israel since it occupied the territory in the 1967 Six Day War, along with the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem states that, as of the end of 2015, there were 127 Israeli government-sanctioned settlements in the West Bank (not including occupied East Jerusalem and Hebron). When combined with 100 non-recognised outposts and 15 Israeli neighbourhoods inside the Jerusalem Municipality, these settlements are inhabited by approximately half a million illegal settlers.

August 10, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Meet Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales: Ex Porn Peddler Paid by ‘Israel’ to Spread Zionist Propaganda

Empire Strikes Black | August 10, 2018

In the midst of the ongoing ‘Israeli’ government campaign against Jeremy Corbyn,(1) Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has entered the fray launching an inexplicable attack on the Labour leader. His tweet posted on the 9th of August 2018 lambastes Jeremy Corbyn for apparently failing to condemn Hamas rockets.

Wales tweets: 150 rockets fired at Israel by Hamas. @jeremycorbyn silent

To those well-versed on the history of Palestine this statement rightfully seems absurd and somewhat topsy-turvy. How can an occupied, brutalised and imprisoned people be castigated for merely defending themselves? While ‘Israel’ occupies land that does not belong to it – including Gaza which has no semblance of freedom with its borders and airspace locked down by the occupying regime which routinely commits bloody massacres with huge civilian death tolls – it absolutely must distort the facts in order to shape public opinion in its favour. ‘Israel’ committed and commits every day the causal acts of violence of ethnically cleansing Palestine and keeping the natives imprisoned, occupied and disenfranchised. The ‘Israel is acting in self-defence’ trope is then in fact the only form of rhetorical recourse that the Zionists can resort to in order to justify the historical and ongoing crimes against humanity committed every day in Palestine.

Jimmy Wales: Porn-Peddler-cum-Paid-Hasbara-Agent

In a revelation that will no-doubt raise eyebrows amongst Wikipedia users, in 1996 Jimmy Wales co-founded an online Internet portal called Bomis which sold porn and explicit material to users. The following, actually taken from the Wikipedia article for Bomis(2) adds context:

Bomis became successful after focusing on X-rated media. “Bomis Babes” was devoted to erotic images; the “Bomis Babe Report” featured adult pictures. Bomis Premium, available for an additional fee, provided explicit material. “The Babe Engine” helped users find erotic content through a web search engine. The advertising director for Bomis noted that 99 percent of queries on the site were for nude women.

Even the New York Times reports that the creation of Wikipedia was financed by Wales’ earlier porn venture,(3) whereby he would literally hand deliver cheques from Bomis porn revenues in order to keep Wikipedia’s servers running. On a perhaps related but definitely unsurprising note, the same New York Times article also reveals that via his wife, Jimmy Wales is very closely connected to Tony Blair(3) who even attended their wedding.

Though peddling porn may not be illegal, at the very least it sheds light on the true character of this man. What heroic agent of free information exchange makes money from selling pornography?

Wales has close links to ‘Israel’ and was awarded $1 million ‘Israeli’ prize for his services

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales poses in a sleazy Bomis advertisement

In 2015 Jimmy Wales told The Times of Israel (4) that he had visited ‘more than ten times’, suggesting links to the Zionist enclave. He even told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,(4) “I’m a strong supporter of Israel, so I don’t listen to those critics.” Laughably Wales cites ‘women’s rights’ as one of his reasons(4) for his support of the illegitimate Zionist entity. This is a statement that rings as hollow as a drum considering this man made his money in an industry that degrades women and enslaves vulnerable girls.

Wales’ numerous visits to ‘Israel’ during this time period must be understood in the wider context of Zionist information warfare. In 2010 the UK Guardian reported that Zionist groups were establishing Wikipedia editing courses(5) in order to sway Wikipedia entries in the Zionist regime’s favour. Additionally in 2012 The National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS) launched a program(6) to pay Israeli university students $2,000 to spread pro-‘Israel’ propaganda online for 5 hours per week.

Moreover, in the same year (2015) Mr. Wales was awarded $1 million by the ‘Israeli’ Dan David Foundation(7) after being selected by the prize committee for spearheading what they referred to as ‘the information revolution’.

The Electronic Intifada reports that the ‘Israeli’ government itself has been implicated in running the information war against Jeremy Corbyn. As part of this campaign, the ‘Israeli’ government has used its Act.IL software application to issue a mission for social media users to post negative comments against Jeremy Corbyn(1) suggesting he is an ‘anti-Semite’.

Let’s bring things full circle. Not only is Jimmy Wales a man of highly questionable moral character. Wales has close links to the Zionist regime, having visited it numerous times during the very same time period that Zionist groups were running Wikipedia editing courses and the ‘Israeli’ government was literally paying people to spread Zionist propaganda online. Wales’ efforts have culminated in him being awarded $1m by an ‘Israeli’ charitable organisation for his efforts in the ‘information revolution’. And now, interestingly, Mr. Wales is taking part in the very same information warfare campaign against Jeremy Corbyn that the ‘Israeli’ government has itself launched.

What is most alarming here is not merely Wales’ questionable character – having peddled porn and sleaze to make money – but the alarming indications that he could in fact be a de facto paid agent of the Zionist regime.

Notes

(1) ‘Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn’ – The Electronic Intifada, 7 August 2018.
(2) ‘Bomis’ Wikipedia.com entry as of 10 August 2018.
(3) ‘Jimmy Wales Is Not An Internet Billionaire’ – The New York Times, 27 June 2013.
(4) ‘Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales likes Israel but stays neutral’ – The Times of Israel, 19 May 2015.
(5) ‘Wikipedia editing courses launched by Zionist groups’ – The Guardian, 18 August 2010.
(6) ‘Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook’ – The Electronic Intifada, 4 January 2012.
(7) ‘Wiki founder wins $1m Israeli prize’ – The Times of Israel, 10 February 2015.

August 10, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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