Israeli forces Wednesday took over an archaeological house in the Old City of Hebron and turned it into a military outpost.
The house is located in an area that has been under full Israeli military control for over 15 years now.
The house, which is located in an area that was declared a closed military zone and belongs to two Palestinian families; al-Qudsi and al-Kard, is considered one of the oldest heritage houses in the area.
Hebron Rehabilitation Committee said Israeli forces blocked the windows with sand bags and turned the roof into a military outpost.
Director General of the committee, Imad Hamdan, said archaeological buildings in Hebron’s Old City are considered a strategic target for both the Israeli authorities and settlers.
He explained that Israeli authorities take over the archaeological buildings in the area, turn them into military outposts and prevent Palestinians from living there and from rehabilitating them, while settlers steal their stones and use them on their own homes to give the houses a historic landmark status in an attempt to falsify history.
Hewlett Packard (HP) faces over $120 million in potential losses since India’s largest student federation passed a resolution to support the BDS movement and to boycott Hewlett Packard companies over their well-documented complicity in Israel’s grave violations of Palestinian human rights.
Apoorva Gautam, the India-based South Asia coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, which leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, explained:
The Students Federation of India (SFI) is more than 4 million members strong, and on June 9, they joined the global campaign to boycott HP. This means that Hewlett Packard companies now risk losing over 4 million potential clients in India because of their complicity in Israel’s gross violations of Palestinian human rights.
Given that the cheapest HP laptop in India costs about $300, this means that HP may be losing a potential student market of over $120 million. This is enormously significant.
What Palestinians and Indian students are showing is that companies seeking to profit from Israel’s military occupation and discriminatory regime face growing popular opposition and risk a serious hit to both their reputations and pocket-books.
HP has provided technology and services that support Israel’s military occupation and racial discrimination policies, including its devastating siege suffocating nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.
Today, HP-branded companies provide the Israeli government with the servers that house its notorious population registry, a key component in the apparatus of apartheid. Records also indicate that HP-branded companies are still responsible for selling computers to the Israeli military. As such, HP products and services enable racial segregation and denial of basic rights.
In its resolution to boycott HP, the Students Federation of India (SFI) condemned Israel’s recent violence against unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, where Israel killed at least 121 Palestinians and injured more than 13,000 in just the last two months. It also criticized the current right-wing government in India for its “close security and military ties with Israel” and for having become “the largest arms buyer from Israel.”
Vikram Singh, the federation’s General Secretary, promised that the campaign to boycott HP in India would grow:
Our federation will spread the BDS movement and the HP boycott campaign in college and university campuses across India. We will work to convince university administrations to adopt procurement policies that prohibit doing business with HP companies until they prove that they are no longer complicit in Israel’s egregious violations of Palestinian human rights. Until then, this boycott will continue and will grow even stronger.
Abdulrahman Abunahel, a Gaza-based community organizer and coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) welcomed the resolution:
Palestinian students and youth movements deeply appreciate the solidarity expressed by our counterparts in the Students Federation of India. As a young Palestinian in Gaza, I know first hand how difficult it is to study, and to simply live, under decades of Israel’s brutal military rule and devastating siege. And I’m heartened by this important gesture of support from India, which reaffirms that where governments fail, people have the the power to act and make a difference.
In the past few years, US church denominations such as the US Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ have divested from HP. Friends Fiduciary Corporation, the socially responsible investment firm serving over three hundred Quaker institutions in the United States, divested from HP in 2012. Most recently, the Dublin City Council joined the BDS movement and called for ending ties with HP because of the company’s complicity in Israeli apartheid.
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, has strongly denounced the participation of some Indonesian religious figures in the Zio-American interfaith conference in Occupied Jerusalem.
In press remarks, Sheikh Hussein described the conference as part of Israel’s systematic misleading campaigns that are intended to embellish it and make it appear as a country that advocates for peace and rapprochement between religions.
He condemned the Indonesian delegation’s visit as “a crime against the Palestinian cause and against the Muslim nation,” and said it ignored the international boycott campaigns against the occupation and its racist practices, especially after the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem.
The Mufti also slammed the visit as “shameful and unacceptable” and “contradicting the official and popular Indonesian position that support the Palestinian people and their just cause.”
A reporter at the most influential paper in English-language media appears to not know the difference between a government “tightly editing” and selectively editing video.
New York Times reporter Herbert Buchsbaum (6/7/18) wrote up a propaganda video posted by the Israeli Defense Force, showing Rouzan al-Najjar–a 21-year-old medic the Israeli Defense Force shot and killed earlier this month—apparently throwing a tear-gas canister, along with a brief clip of her purportedly saying, “I am here on the front line and I act as a human shield.”
The video seems to suggest that throwing a device spewing caustic gas away from people into an empty field is a sort of violence. (“This medic was incited by Hamas,” the video reads as she grabs the canister.) But the primary problem with the IDF video is that it deceptively edits her comments to distort what she said—a fact not noted by the Buchsbaum until paragraph 20, when he threw in this crucial piece of information:
In the longer video, the comment that the military translated as “I act as a human shield” was part of a sentence in which Ms. Najjar said, “I’m acting as a human rescue shield to protect the injured inside the armistice line.”
“Acting as a human shield to protect the injured inside the armistice line” has a radically different meaning than the commonly understood canard about Palestinians using “human shields” to protect “terrorists.” This hugely consequential fact should have led the story; instead, it’s casually tossed out in the third-to-last paragraph. The story here is that the IDF—as it has been doing for decades—casually lies and distorts facts to suit its narrative. Like all militaries, the Israeli military is not presenting a “dueling narrative” in good faith, as a New York Timestweet suggested; it’s manipulating video, hoping credulous journalists help them muddy the waters, as Buchsbaum did.
Indeed, the bizarre IDF press release write-up serves no other purpose than to reframe the gunning down of the unarmed medic from a clear crime committed by Israel to a Fog of War “dueling narratives between Israel and Hamas” tale of “both sidesism.” Buchsbaum vaguely alludes to—but strangely omits—the deceptive editing in the opening with his risible turn of phrase in paragraph two:
The tightly edited video shows a woman identified as the medic, Rouzan al-Najjar, throwing what appears to be a tear-gas canister.
“Tightly edited”? What does this mean, exactly? “Tight” editing is generally considered a compliment in the film and TV world, and says nothing about deliberate omissions for the purposes of misleading the viewer. When videographer Tate B. James confronted Buchsbaum about this fact, Buchsbaum appeared to think he had covered his bases:
hey herbert, any reason why you waited until the 20th paragraph to let folks know the video was selectively edited?
Either Buchsbaum doesn’t know he’s being misleading, and is thus severely unqualified to be writing for a major paper, or he knows he’s spinning in Israel’s favor, but was hoping no one would really notice. Either way, the New York Times is once again (FAIR.org, 7/14/17, 5/17/18, 5/15/18) using its pages to confuse readers to the benefit of the Israeli military.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTOpinion). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Israeli authorities were caught on video excavating portions of the historic Bab al-Rahma cemetery next to Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. The cemetery is believed to contain the final resting places of two companions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
Video from June 5 shows about a dozen men, presumably members of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, at a work site in the Bab al-Rahma cemetery, through which Israel is planning to build a national park trail.
The cemetery sits adjacent to Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. It is believed to hold the graves of Ubada ibn as-Samit and Shadad ibn Aus, two of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions. The cemetery has remained in use for more than 1,000 years.
Israel plans to seize about 40 percent of the cemetery for the national park under murky legal pretexts, Sputnik News recently reported. The plan has supposedly been in place since 2015, but Palestinian lawyers and conservation activists claim Israel is jumping the gun, as court cases over the fate of the cemetery remain pending.
Israeli authorities have recently resumed work on the park and have been seen digging up and marking graves, removing trees and fencing off areas to halt future burials. During the first weekend of June, several Palestinians were injured and arrested while protesting the desecration of the cemetery.
Outside of Jerusalem proper, in the West Bank, authorities are also clearing the way for a new settlement over the village of al-Khana Ahmar, a village mostly inhabited by Bedouin refugees who were expelled from southern Israel in 1952. In 2009, an Italian aid organization constructed a school there, but Israel ordered it to be demolished one month after it opened. After that, residents in neighboring Israeli settlements petitioned the courts to demolish the community, which has been slated for destruction since February 2010. In 2015, authorities confiscated solar panels that provided the only source of electricity to the village.
Israel plans to relocate them yet again, this time north to a village called An-Nuway’imah, allowing Jewish settlers to claim the strategically significant spot. Building an Israeli settlement there would allow the government to connect the urban Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem and to control the gateway between northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
Abu Khamiss, a spokesman for the current Khan al-Ahmar villagers, told France 24 in 2014 that “the place where Israel wants us to ‘relocate’ would be like a prison for us. We’d be surrounded by Israeli settlements, a checkpoint and military training camps.”
The demolition is expected to begin any day now. Already, Israeli authorities have been accused of poisoning locals’ dogs under cover of night, robbing the villagers of the “faithful shepherds.”
For Palestinian children living in the West Bank, getting to school is an incredibly difficult task because of their scarcity and the difficulty of traveling due to the abundance of Israeli checkpoints that control movement around the territory and can take hours to pass through. Israel is slated to destroy the Palestinian school in al-Khana Ahmar as well, a move the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said in 2011 “would effectively deny the children of the community their education and jeopardize their future.”
According to a January report from the the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 61 schools in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have pending demolition orders or stop work orders against them from the Israeli government.
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – The Israeli government intends to build a new settlement outpost for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank after a court verdict recently ordered the dismantling of Netiv Ha’avot outpost, which was built on privately-owned Palestinian land.
According to Haaretz newspaper, Israeli security forces are expected to demolish 15 structures in this outpost Tuesday morning.
In the presence of right-wing Israeli ministers, thousands participated on Monday in a mock protest against the evacuation of settlers from the outpost.
Israeli army sources told Haaretz that an agreement had been reached with the settlers under which they accepted to only resist the demolition of two structures in the outpost. The source added that the evacuation would go smoothly and with no problems.
The Israeli government has allotted 60 million shekels (approximately $16.5 million) for the slated demolitions and the construction of a new outpost. The sum will be used to compensate evacuated settlers and reconstruct stone structures for them on a nearby tract of land that is not privately owned.
The Israeli military has closed an investigation into the tragic death of a 15-year-old Palestinian, who was killed two years ago after the soldiers mistakenly opened fire on a car full of West Bank teens.
In June 2016, Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Mahmoud Raafat Badran after “showering” a car on Route 443, a major West Bank highway, with live fire.
Four other Palestinian teens, who were returning from a nearby swimming pool, were also injured in the incident, which unfolded as the Israeli soldiers tried to quell Palestinian youths in the vicinity but “misidentified” the suspects’ vehicle.
The four injured were Mahmoud’s two brothers – 16-year-old Amir and 17-year-old Hadi – as well as Daoud Abu Hassan, 16, and Majdi Badran, 16.
Following a comprehensive investigation into the incident, the Military Advocate General ordered the closure of the probe, admitting that the Israeli Army had “mistakenly” identified the teens as a group of Palestinian youths who had earlier assaulted Israeli cars with stones and Molotov cocktails.
While noting there were “professional failings” during the incident, the Advocate General found opening fire on the car was justified and the mistake was “earnest and reasonable.”
According to the Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem, the shooting of the 15-year-old Palestinian boy was “deliberate, entirely unjustified and a direct result of military policy”.
The Palestinian Authority has sent a defiant message to Israel over Tel Aviv’s attempt to freeze tax money used by the PA to pay victims of Israeli violence.
“There is no force in the world that can cause us to renounce our prisoners and the martyrs”, Yusuf Al-Mahmoud, spokesman for the PA government said, regarding Israel’s attempt to freeze Palestinian tax revenue.
Al-Mahmoud claimed that Israel bore full responsibility for violence in the region and said that it was “stealing their [Palestinian] money on the pretext of offsetting tax revenues”.
His comments follow repeated attempts by the Israeli government to use Palestinian tax revenue to gain political concession. The tax collection regime in the occupied territory, which grants Israel the right to collect tax on behalf of the Palestinians and then distribute it, is one of the many oddities to come out of the Oslo Accords.
The Knesset is currently discussing a bill to impound tax revenue that would have been handed to families and victims of violence perpetrated by the Israeli army. Protesters killed and injured in Gaza would be eligible for these payments, which Netanyahu is trying to block.
Israeli sources reported that last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Meir Shabbat, chief of Israel’s National Security Council, to deduct money from the taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in order to pay for the damage from fires caused by “rioter-terrorists” in Gaza sending kites attached to firebombs into Israeli territory.
“The martyr’s fund”, as it is known, has become a highly contentious issue. While Palestinians feel they have every right to use their own funds to provide welfare and social security to families of injured or deceased protesters resisting Israel’s brutal occupation, Israel feels it can exploit the tax situation to pile further pressure on the PA.
In addition to the bill discussed at the Knesset, senior members of the Israeli government have conditioned future negotiations on the PA suspending its welfare programme. Commentators have pointed out that this was another crude attempt to blame the victims. Insisting on the PA conceding on an issue that is a red line in the eyes of Palestinians is an attempt to shift the blame for the ongoing conflict away from Israel, and possibly stymie any future negotiations.
Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East including the Question of Palestine at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, United States on 1 June, 2018
What is taking place in Palestine is not a ‘conflict’. We readily utilise the term but, in fact, the word ‘conflict’ is misleading. It equates oppressed Palestinians with Israel, a military power that stands in violation of numerous United Nations Resolutions.
It is these ambiguous terminologies that allow the likes of United States UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, to champion Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’, as if the militarily occupied and colonised Palestinians are the ones threatening the security of their occupier and tormentor.
In fact, this is precisely what Haley has done to counter a draft UN Security Council Resolution presented by Kuwait to provide a minimum degree of protection for Palestinians. Haley vetoed the draft, thus continuing a grim legacy of US defence of Israel, despite the latter’s ongoing violence against Palestinians.
It is no surprise that out of the 80 vetoes exercised by the US at the UNSC, the majority were unleashed to protect Israel. The first such veto for Israel’s sake was in September 1972 and the latest, used by Haley, was on 1 June.
Before it was put to the vote, the Kuwaiti draft was revised three times in order to ‘water it down’. Initially, it called for the protection of the Palestinian people from Israeli violence.
The final draft merely called for “The consideration of measures to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in the Gaza Strip”.
Still, Haley found the language “grossly one-sided”.
The near consensus in support of Kuwait’s draft was met with complete rejection of Haley’s own draft resolution which demanded Palestinian groups cease “all violent provocative actions” in Gaza.
The ‘provocative actions’ being referred to in Haley’s draft is the mass mobilisation by tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, who have been peacefully protesting for weeks, hoping that their protests will place the Israeli siege on Gaza back on the UN agenda.
Haley’s counter draft resolution did not garner a single vote in favor, save that of Haley’s own. But such humiliation on the international stage is hardly of essence to the US, which has wagered its international reputation and foreign policy to protect Israel at any cost, even from unarmed observers whose job is merely to report on what they see on the ground.
The last such ‘force’ was that of 60 – later increased to 90 – members of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH).
TIPH was established in May 1996 and has filed many reports on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian city, especially in Area H-2, a small part of the city that is controlled by the Israeli army to protect some of the most violent illegal Jewish settlers.
Jan Kristensen, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Norwegian army who headed TIPH had these words to say following the completion of his one-year mission in Hebron in 2004:
“The activity of the settlers and the army in the H-2 area of Hebron is creating an irreversible situation. In a sense, cleansing is being carried out. In other words, if the situation continues for another few years, the result will be that no Palestinians will remain there.”
One can only imagine what has befallen Hebron since then. The army and Jewish settlers have become so emboldened to the extent that they execute Palestinians in cold blood with little or no consequence.
One such episode became particularly famous, for it was caught on camera. On 24 March 2015 an Israeli soldier carried out a routine operation by shooting in the head an incapacitated Palestinian.
The execution of Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sharif, 21, was filmed by Imad Abushamsiya. The viral video caused Israel massive embarrassment, forcing it to hold a sham trial in which the Israeli soldier who killed Al-Sharif received a light sentence; he was later released to a reception fit for heroes.
Abushamsiya, who filmed the murder, however, was harassed by both the Israeli army and police and received numerous death threats.
The Israeli practice of punishing the messenger is not new. The mother of Ahed Tamimi, Nariman, who filmed her teenage daughter confronting armed Israeli soldiers was also detained and sentenced.
Israel has practically punished Palestinians for recording their own subjugation by Israeli troops while, at the same time, empowering these very soldiers to do as they please; it is now in the process of turning this everyday reality into actual law.
A bill at the Israeli Knesset was put forward late May that prohibits “photographing and documenting (Israeli occupation) soldiers”, and criminalising “anyone who filmed, photographed and/or recorded soldiers in the course of their duty”.
The bill, which is supported by Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, demands a five-year imprisonment term for violators.
The bill practically means that any form of monitoring Israeli soldiers is a criminal act. If this is not a call for perpetual war crimes, what is?
Just to be sure, a second bill is proposing to give immunity to soldiers suspected of criminal activities during military operations.
The bill is promoted by deputy Defence Minister, Eli Ben Dahan, and is garnering support at the Knesset.
“The truth is that Ben Dahan’s bill is entirely redundant”, wrote Orly Noy in the Israeli +972 website.
Noy cited a recent report by the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din which shows that “soldiers who allegedly commit crimes against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories enjoy near-full immunity”.
Now, Palestinians are more vulnerable than ever before, and Israel, with the help of its American enablers, is more brazen than ever.
This tragedy cannot continue. The international community and civil society organisations – independent of the US government and its shameful vetoes – must undertake the legal and moral responsibility to monitor Israeli action and to provide meaningful protection for Palestinians.
Israel should not have free reign to abuse Palestinians at will, and the international community should not stand by and watch the bloody spectacle as it continues to unfold.
The United States has a long history of betraying “allies” and going back on agreements. A few examples include:
–The decision recognise Philippine independence from Spain only to then replace Spain as the imperial overlord of The Philippines.
–The covert Wall Street funding of the Bolshevik Revolution in the USSR only to then wage a Cold War on the Soviet Union.
–The staunch opposition of the US Congress to going to war with Germany to being an enthusiastic participant in the Second World War.
–The strong US alliance with Saddam’s Iraq followed by two major wars against Saddam’s Iraq.
–The support of the Afghan Mujaheddin and Taliban followed by the Taliban’s overthrow by the US in 2001.
–Fighting Serbian/Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević in the early/mid 1990s only to embrace him during the 1995 Dayton Accords and then going to war against him and ousting him in 1999.
–Opposing the the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s only to covertly support them against Vietnam and the USSR throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
These are just the most strident examples of US betrayal and hypocrisy on a very long list.
Because of this, it goes without saying that the US has set a clear precedent for going back on deals seemingly entered into in a spirit good faith on both sides. Iran just experienced Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) in spite of the UN finding that Iran is fully compliant with the original agreement and in spite of the protestations of Washington’s traditional European allies.
This has led many in Iran to voice a resounding scepticism regarding the Korean peace process insofar as many Iranian commentators do not feel that Kim Jong-un should place an ounce of trust in Donald Trump or any other American leader. While the US may betray the DPRK, using the JCPOA as a specific precedent is ultimately misleading and unhelpful for the following reasons.
The DPRK is geographically fortunate and Iran is geographically cursed
The north east Asian region that is home to the DPRK is among the most stable in the world. South Korea, China, Russia and Japan are nations whose societies and governments are not only wealthy and strong but incredibly stable to the point of being largely predictable. None of these countries are prone to aggressive war and while China and Russia are too powerful for the US to actively destabilise without causing a world war to end all world wars, Japan and South Korea are close US allies.
The fact that the DPRK has not been invaded by the United States since the 1950s is as much because of America’s fear of starting a new war beside the Chinese and Russian nuclear armed superpowers as it is by the DPRK’s own nuclear deterrent which in any case will likely soon be a thing of the past. Likewise, South Korea and Japan have sought to avert such a war as they realise that they would be the penultimate victims of such a conflict, along with North Koreans themselves.
By contrast, the US has invaded and continues to occupy Afghanistan and parts of Iraq with total impunity. Iran’s neighbors to the east and west are therefore filled with US bases, as are the anti-Iranian Arab monarchies a short boat ride across the Persian Gulf. Likewise, with Iraq being the only thing standing between Iran and Syria’s border, it is fair to say that Iran is surrounded by hostile US assets throughout its region.
So while Iran’s region is one that the US has a long history and present stance of treating recklessly, in recent decades, the US has tended to tread more lightly in the DPRK’s region. Because of this, there is less of a danger of the US using the Korean peace process as a delaying tactic before inevitably reverting to a policy of pressure as was the case with the JCPOA from the beginning – however cynical this might sound.
It’s the “Israel” Lobby, Stupid!
While the DPRK has always been a staunch supporter of Palestine and indeed goes much further in terms of rhetorical support for Palestine than most Arab states in 2018, North Korea is ultimately very far removed from the Palestine conflict both in terms of geography and in terms of its ability to influence the situation militarily, financially or diplomatically. As a state whose population is 0% Muslim and 0% Jewish, there is also no strong emotional attachment to the issue in the way that there is in Iran. For the DPRK, the issue is one of many anti-imperialist causes rather than one of opposing confessional imperialism and standing up for the rights of Muslims to worship in some of their holiest sites that are currently under occupation.
By contrast, Iran is not only nearer to Palestine than is the DPRK in terms of geography but Iran has armed allies in Syria and Lebanon, two states which both border occupied Palestine. Because of this, the always powerful and increasingly right-wing “Israel” lobby in the United States leverages its influence against Washington to force the development and implementation of American foreign policy that tends to be a carbon copy of Tel Aviv’s official policies.
Because Donald Trump had close links to many Zionists even before becoming President, it shouldn’t be a surprise that if all US Presidents tend to follow the lead of the “Israel” lobby, that Trump should take things that much further and follow the most extreme elements of the lobby. As Tel Aviv is pursuing stridently anti-Iranian policies under the Netanyahu regime, so too is the United States.
While there is a right-wing staunchly anti-communist Korean lobby in the US, its power is nothing when compared to the “Israel” lobby. Therefore, peace in Korea could be a vote winner because of the clear Cold War style optics of detente, while it could in no way be described as a vote loser the way that anti-Zionist policies could see the “Israel” lobby waging open war against an American political candidate.
The Obama factor
Finally, there is the most petty but nevertheless very real factor of Donald Trump tending to oppose anything and everything championed by Barack Obama and his political allies. While Donald Trump’s peace process with the DPRK has all the trappings of the made for T.V. Presidency that is the Trump administration, Obama’s JCPOA was always a source of contention for Trump. In fact, just about everything from health reform to foreign policy is a source of contention for Trump if the policies in question have anything to do with Barack Obama. Thus, it is not difficult to see why the JCPOA was an extremely easy target for Trump irrespective of any other global developments.
Conclusion
Iran has suffered the perfect storm of living in a neighbourhood that the US treats with less respect even than its Latin American backyard, combined with being on the receiving end of the well oiled and incredibly well funded “Israel” lobby’s wrath. When one then realises that Donald Trump loves most things “Israeli” and hates just about all things Obama, it is frankly surprising that Trump didn’t withdraw from the JCPOA sooner than he did.
By contrast, even if the US rejected the peace process, the US cannot realistically do much more to the DPRK apart from sanctions, sanctions and more sanctions. When one then realises that sanctions clearly cannot go much further than they already have, one realises that a hostile US policy towards the DPRK would amount to little more than a protracted war of words that would not have changed the status quo. Furthermore, China and Russia would simply not tolerate a major war on their border and the South Korean and Japanese people feel exactly the same way, as would the 32,000 American servicemen still stationed in South Korea.
When you combine these harsh realities with the fact that making peace with the DPRK makes Trump look Presidential and strong at home while going against Tel Aviv is something of a political death sentence for any US leader, it is clear that while the JCPOA was doomed from the beginning, the Korean peace process will likely succeed in some form, even if it takes a form less desirable than the optimistic proposals discussed earlier today.
The Israeli occupation forces yesterday closed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron to Muslim worshippers without prior notice.
Israel’s 0404 website claimed that an explosive device was found in the vicinity of the mosque earlier in the day.
Israel forces intensified their presence in the area and closed the mosque following the incident, the sources added.
No further details were given, nor is it known when the mosque would be reopened.
Muslims are observing the fast during the holy month of Ramadan which is due to come to an end this weekend. Additional prayers are held in the mosque on a daily basis during this period.
Palestinian residents of Hebron’s Old City face a large Israeli military presence on a daily basis, with at least 20 checkpoints set up at the entrances of many streets, as well as the entrance of the Ibrahimi Mosque itself.
They are also not permitted to drive on Al-Shuhada Street, have had their homes and shops on the street welded shut, and are not allowed to walk on some roads in the Old City.
Meanwhile, some 800 notoriously violent Israeli settlers in Hebron move freely on the street, drive cars, and carry machine guns.
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
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