America stumbles through another year, spreading chaos and trivia everywhere in its path
By John Chuckman | Aletho News | December 30, 2014
The Palestinians are seeking a vote in the United Nations’ Security Council on a resolution favoring their statehood, unquestionably a reasonable proposal in the minds of most of the world’s people. Of course, the United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, would automatically veto such a resolution, as it vetoes all efforts to restore order to the chaos of the Middle East. And of course, were such a resolution somehow miraculously to pass, Israel would simply ignore it, as it has ignored a long list of binding UN resolutions. But a veto and certain contempt are not enough for an upright, God-fearing Southern gentleman like US Senator Lindsey Graham. He busied himself recently with threatening America’s withholding funds from a United Nations that gets involved in the “peace process.” Imagine, the United Nations getting involved in peace? That is a chilling thought. Since the United States has a history of withholding its UN dues against its solemn treaty obligations to bully its way to certain changes, such threats do carry weight.
Senator Graham, regarded neither as an idealist nor a voice for peace, is only doing what so many American politicians do under the unbelievably corrupt, money-drenched American election system, and that is to make ridiculous public statements about the Middle East in return for generous dollops of campaign funds from the world’s most tireless political lobby, that for Israel. You might think that the lobby itself would tire of funding backwater blowhards demanding the other ninety-five percent of humanity play the game by America’s rules or America is picking up its marbles or chips or whatever and going home, but clearly it does not.
“The peace process” is the longest running farce on the planet, continuing for nearly fifty years. It might have been funny in the vein of The Mouse That Roared, but there is nothing remotely funny in the killing of thousands of people and the extreme abuse and hopelessness of millions. You just could not make a worse hash of a diplomatic and human welfare situation than America has made in the Middle East. And the situation has only intensified in its cruelty and injustice. Today, Israel openly and regularly steals homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It threatens ancient Muslim shrines and desecrates some of them. It has savaged Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison camp, twice, killing close to four thousand including nearly a thousand children. It has attempted to starve Gaza’s people out with a years-long embargo, and is making ugly noises about still another invasion. It is about to steal Syrian oil on the occupied Golan Heights, drilling there illegally, and it is busy arranging the theft of offshore natural gas that belongs to Gaza and Lebanon. It does all of this with complete impunity and not even a cross word from the likes of Senator Graham. I do think the Middle East provides the strongest possible evidence of the complete unsuitability of the United States to play a dominant role in international affairs. It is genuinely a case of the inmates running the asylum.
In another example of chaos mixed with farce, the United States pretends to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and while that charade continues, planes loaded with American weapons keep flying out of Turkey to make the seeming lunatics even stronger. Indeed, the various ragtag factions trying to overthrow the Syrian government, cutthroats assembled by the US and its friends from all corners of the globe in a kind of hellish foreign legion, announced a new alliance, so telling Washington’s approved terrorists in the conflict from those who haven’t made the cut is more difficult than ever. Recently, one or another of the lunatic mobs shot down two fighter jets, and how do you think they managed that without American anti-aircraft missiles? Turkey’s certifiably unbalanced president, Tayyip Erdoğan, one day makes fiery speeches threatening Israel (to please the poor fools voting for him) and the next makes new secret deals with Israel. Remember, this is a man who just built a one-thousand room palace for himself – yes, that’s right, exactly one thousand rooms – and it is the ugliest, most pointless large structure built since the early Soviet era, a kind of gigantic sprawling warehouse incrusted with jewels and filled with porcelain.
Well, dippiness is no barrier to membership in a secret club in the region which includes the UAE, Saudia Arabia, and Israel, all lovingly assisted by the US. They are all governments who regard change as desirable only when it results in an even more rigid status quo, as in Egypt. Never mind the welfare of the region’s people or democracy or human rights or national boundaries. These guys resemble twelfth century lords seeing paupers cross their paths: they run them down and proceed to a rollicking good dinner in the great hall. The club is all about security for hereditary monarchs, security for America’s crusader fortress colony in the Middle East, and security for helper states in the American agenda. We’ve had many reports recently of secret air-freight flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. We also have reports of flights out of Turkey into Syria. The never explained events at Benghazi were undoubtedly blowback from an operation collecting unemployed thugs and arms for secret shipment to Turkey and then into Syria. Saudi Arabia is voluntarily taking a bath by pushing oil prices down, a favor to the US and Israel and Turkey and a way of hurting Russia, Iran, Syria, and even Venezuela – all current members in good standing of Captain America’s ever-changing galaxy of villains – aka, the Axis of Evil. The US is willing to sacrifice for the time being its booming shale oil industry, whose more costly production requires higher prices than Saudi conventional crude, in return for the Saudi sacrifice.
Since both countries are desperate to hurt Russia, Iran, and Syria, the deal is a marriage made in Realpolitik heaven. Russia has helped Syria and does business with Iran, while Saudi Arabia and Israel hate Iran and Syria. The US has made a large investment in toppling Syria for Israel’s benefit, but the plan has been thwarted by Syrian endurance and Russian help. The plan also overlooked the loyalty of important Syrian societal groups to President Assad, but America often overlooks details as it attempts to reshape the world to its liking with bombs. Of course, there was also the precedent of Iraq, a bloody fiasco that achieved nothing but a million deaths and splintering a country into pieces. That splintering, by the way, continues with the ISIS fiasco: Iraq’s Kurds are being used against ISIS to strengthen their own region’s quasi-independence from Iraq.
The chaos the secret club-member countries have created in Syria – perhaps 200,000 killed and a couple of million refugees – appears not to bother them in the least, just so many paupers in the roadway when galloping home to dinner at the great hall. The victims do provide useful free material for the propaganda war being waged, the understanding implicit in America’s and Canada’s and Europe’s press being always that President Assad is responsible for the catastrophe. The US, and cheerleaders on the sidelines like Canada’s current dismal right-wing government, are doing virtually nothing for the refugees, or for the many civilians crippled or wounded. Ironically, Israel actually accepts for treatment in its northern medical facilities some of the very fanatics wounded in the dirty work. After all, it is ultimately Israel’s dirty work they do, regardless of their fanaticism. It’s a phenomenon we might call selective terrorism: fanatical killers who do America’s work, or Israel’s, are not treated as terrorists at all. No matter how many women and children you kill, no matter how many places you bomb, you only become a terrorist if you oppose the interests of America or Israel.
The toll in killed and wounded and homeless in Eastern Ukraine continues to mount. New punitive measures come regularly from Kiev, undoubtedly with American advice about possible vulnerabilities – after all, a top cabinet minister in the coup-created government is American. Only the other day we read reports of Ukrainian militia-types, the kind of right-wing thugs who helped the US overthrow an elected government in Kiev, blocking food traffic into the East. Attempting to starve people into submission is defined in international law as a war crime, but we hear no word of concern from America, just as we heard no word of concern for Israel’s original blockade of Gaza which actually included a calculated level of calories intended to just keep the population alive (since modified under intense secret international pressure).
In all these induced chaotic situations, we hear little or nothing from the UN, an institution which should be among the first condemning aggressive behavior. But the UN, despite the many differing private views of its members, is now in all official capacities under the thumb of the US. Its current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, a candidate favored by America, is ineffectual and behaves at times almost as though he headed an organization having nothing to do with peace or human rights.
Well, there is some intimidating history. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the only UN secretary-general not to be elected to a second term in office, and the reason was an American plan to be rid of him, one of Madeleine Albright’s glorious career achievements. America vetoed his second term because it was most unhappy when he did not embrace the bombing of Bosnia, and they disliked other of his views which tended to be thoughtful and compassionate. Earlier, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, a much admired man, was assassinated in an engineered plane crash, said to have been the work of Belgian mining companies unhappy with the UN’s policies in Congo, a place the mining companies had drained of wealth for decades of brutal exploitation, but I think it unlikely anything of that nature happened without at least a nod of approval from Washington, which after all was a major customer for the products of Congo.
The evidence is piling up, despite delays and many irregularities in the official investigation into the crash of airline Flight MH-17 in Ukraine, that a Ukrainian pilot deliberately shot the plane down. His fighter jet is said to have been armed with air-to-air missiles on take-off, something completely out-of-the-ordinary in the conflict since Eastern Ukrainians have no air force. It returned, according to an eye-witness, with no missiles and the pilot muttering cryptic phrases. Of course, this would be the kind of act you might expect from people who used sniper rifles earlier this year to kill many hundreds of civilians in Maidan, the central square of Kiev, in order to terrorize the population and start the coup. But where is America’s voice in these grotesque doings? As Russia has patiently pointed out, an American spy satellite was virtually overhead at the time of the crash, so definitive evidence exists without a doubt but is not produced. But then neither is it produced for the destruction of Flight MH-370 in the Indian Ocean, an event it is virtually certain was the work of American forces at the secret Diego Garcia base as the plane came their way for whatever unknown reason.
The irregularities around Flight MH-17’s investigation include Malaysia, owners of the airline, being excluded from the group conducting the investigation and include the fact that segments of the wreckage were left behind at the crash site, and that after taking a very long time to get there in the first place, making manipulation of forensic evidence possible and even likely. We also have the absence of any American satellite or radar records, and we have not a word about the autopsy on the pilot, something which might solve the entire mystery, as from the discovery of Ukrainian missile fragments in his body.
What kind of world do we want to live in? One where coups and civil wars are engineered for the pleasure of others? One where airliners full of people are shot down deliberately? This is the chaos, and just part of it, America has bestowed upon us in the twenty-first century. I won’t even go into the financial tsunami it created in 2008 with the same lack of caution for others and concern about doing things correctly. The full impact of that has yet to strike us all.
But America brings laughable trivia, too. The President of the United States spending time and breath on the hacking of a private company’s web site? A Japanese company, no less? And turning the relatively trivial business of hacking, which happens every day now somewhere, into an international incident by blaming, almost certainly incorrectly, North Korea?
The President said the FBI had investigated and assured him that North Korea was responsible. What he didn’t tell us was that the FBI has a decades-long record of being wrong, seriously wrong, a great deal of the time. Given the FBI’s history, it certainly is in the running for the title of Most Incompetent Security Organization in the Western World, although, like other national security institutions in the United States, it is grossly over-funded with money gushing out like water from broken plumbing. Americans pay more per unit of misinformation than likely any other people on the planet.
Anyone familiar with the record of the FBI listens to assurances like the President’s with a sarcastic smile at best (see FOOTNOTE for a partial list of the FBI’s viciousness and incompetence over the years). Shortly after the president’s silly words, we had several world-class tech experts tell us why it could not have been North Korea, and I’ll take bets against the FBI on this one from anyone.
It likely was someone at Sony doing a publicity stunt to promote what by all reports is a dud of a film, but why should the man with the biggest job in the world join in? Consider also the fact that if you make what can be viewed as a threatening comment or presentation of any kind against the President of the United States, you will be visited and interviewed by the Secret Service, who will then keep you on file permanently. Why is it okay to make a movie about the assassination of North Korea’s president then, the subject of The Interview ? Sony certainly has a right to do stupidly foolish things, but it is more than a little muddled for the President, eagerly, to support it. Will he now address the rights of porn actors in California to work without condoms?
As I write this, a British newspaper reports that some Sony employees have been quietly dismissed. Reported also is the discovery of a web site strongly suggesting disgruntled employees. See what I mean about America overlooking the facts before it acts?
FOOTNOTE ON HOW WRONG AND DISHONEST THE FBI HAS BEEN: The FBI was wrong in claiming there was no such thing as the Mafia, something J. Edgar Hoover insisted for many years while he gambled at their racetracks and stayed at their resorts for free, some biographers believing Hoover had been compromised by the Mafia with photos of his secret gay, cross-dressing life. The FBI was wrong in focusing huge resources for many years on the pathetic American Communist Party, half of whose small membership is said to have consisted of FBI agents. The FBI was wrong about the threat of Albert Einstein, seeking his extradition for a time and checking the contents of his garbage to his dying day. The FBI was wrong about the danger of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it played judge and jury with his personal life. The FBI was wrong about Dr. Wen Ho Lee of Los Alamos being a spy, although it ruined his career. The FBI was wrong about the crash of TWA Flight 800, taking an inordinate amount of time trying to let public interest cool and avoid the obvious fact that the crash was an accidental shoot-down by the American military, there being a radar track showing something like a missile rising towards the plane. Despite its vast resources, the FBI never saw 9/11 coming. One of its own senior agents, Robert Hanssen, was one of the more damaging spies of modern times, a man whose carelessness in many details, classic indicators of a paid spy, went unnoticed for years. The FBI was wrong in the Atlanta Olympic bombing, ruining the life of another innocent man. It couldn’t have been more wrong in its handling of the sad kooks at Waco, effectively murdering them all. So, too, at the Ruby Ridge standoff where an FBI sniper killed a woman and her child needlessly. The FBI Crime Labs were cited in the 1990s by the Inspector General for misconduct and manipulating evidence, something many had suspected for years. The FBI specialized for years in hurting the reputations of those it didn’t like or those it merely suspected, as by asking questions at their place of work and neighborhood, not have any proof of wrong-doing. The FBI, at least under J. Edgar Hoover, held career-threatening information obtained by spying over the heads of many prominent congressmen and government leaders, effectively blackmailing them to do its bidding. It did the same with non-government officials where it felt so inclined. The FBI was wrong about the assassination of President Kennedy, it being the only investigative agency for the lamentable, embarrassing Warren Commission, thereby assuming at least equal responsibility for its inaccurate, dishonest report. Indeed, the FBI did not reveal at the time that Oswald secretly worked for them as a paid informant (since documented). It also lied about evidence a senior FBI agent destroyed after the assassination, a note Oswald had written.
Gaza, Syria, militarized cops, and ‘lone-wolf’ shootings: during a brutal year, 9/11 truth held its own
The people of Gaza experienced real terrorism during a siege that left 2,100 dead
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | December 30, 2014
Gaza, ISIS, Syria, Ukraine, Ferguson, militarized cops, Malaysian planes, torture, drones, and “lone-wolf” shootings. It has been a tough year for the truth.
But in the midst of all the deception and brutality, it has been an intriguing year for the struggle to expose the lies of 9/11. The elusive breakthrough that 9/11 truthers fantasize about may not be coming any time soon, but there are encouraging signs on a number of fronts. There were also some disappointments, but even those don’t seem so bad if you subscribe to the idea that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
A major highlight was the spectacular sight of an 89-foot wide electronic billboard in New York City’s Times Square repeatedly showing the destruction of WTC 7 throughout the month of September. An estimated two million New Yorkers saw the message. Who would have thought something like that would ever happen? This latest project was the initiative of Rethink 9/11 and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which were responsible for billboards in major cities around the world last year.
At the beginning of December we had the presentation of a petition asking the Canadian government to conduct a Parliamentary review of the evidence of 9/11. For years, no politician was willing to touch this subject or this petition in Canada until Green Party leader Elizabeth May agreed to present it to Parliament. Of course the likelihood of Parliament reviewing the evidence is about as good as Congress doing so in the U.S. But anything is positive that gets 9/11 into the news and lets people know that the movement continues to fight.
Unfortunately, May chose to tell the mainstream media that she only presented the petition because Parliamentary rules obligated her to do so. They don’t. She also said she doesn’t agree with the petition, which was regrettable but predictable. Any politician who shows any openness about 9/11 is going to get roasted in the media, and she was. But at least May was willing to take some political risk. Following up on the petition effort, AE911Truth has commissioned a poll of Canadians, asking them their views about 9/11.
Speaking of media, the High-Rise Safety Initiative launched by the New York Coalition for Accountability Now got 9/11 into the news even though it ultimately did not succeed in getting the initiative on to the New York City ballot. The goal was to force a change to the city charter obligating the Department of Buildings to investigate any building collapses going back to Sept. 11, 2001 (including Building 7 but not the twin towers).
The money was raised and the signatures were collected. It was quite an effort. But the courts did what they always do, dashing hopes for the time being. I know many truthers are quick to say that no official investigation will ever get to the truth of 9/11 – and that’s probably true – but the publicity the effort would produce would be worth it. Mayor Bill De Blasio calling the initiative “inappropriate after all the suffering that went on 9/11,” got the subject some welcome mainstream coverage.
The most hostile – and incoherent – attack on 9/11 truth occurred after AE9/11Truth distributed information pamphlets at the opening of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero. The hook was that the pamphlets used the same design to offer an alternative view of what happened on 9/11. CNN’s Jake Tapper and his guest, Slate editor Emily Bazelon combined on a five-minute piece that made the usual gibberish about conspiracy theories seem intelligent.
My favorite quote from Bazelon: “You see these dark corners of the Internet where people pile on, and there’s this minute parsing of the technicalities of the supposed evidence, and more and more detail gets added and accumulated, and it kind of feeds on itself.”
Don’t you hate it when conspiracy theorists parse evidence and examine details?
Then there was the vicious maligning of Richard Gage and all truthers as being anti-Semitic hate mongers by the Canadian “news” network, Sun News. This came in an interview of Gage done by right wing hack Michael Coren in Toronto. I filed two complaints against Coren with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and waited more than six months for a decision from their adjudicating panel. I got an email from the national chair of the Council, Andrée Noel, saying that the complaint did not deal with anything that hadn’t been ruled on in the past, and that she had dismissed both complaints without giving them a hearing.
In an interview, Noel said that Coren’s accusation that Gage was a hate monger was “not unduly aggressive.” Riiiight. The only recourse left is to refer the complaint to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). My expectations for that are not high.
The year produced some excellent research material relating to 9/11 in the form of books, films, and art. Graeme MacQueen published an important book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, which explains the failure of the anthrax false flag and reveals how 9/11 was its twin false flag. This excellent book was the subject of a review on Truth and Shadows by Barrie Zwicker.
David Hooper also released his personal documentary The Anatomy of a Great Deception, which chronicles his awakening about 9/11 as well as offering an excellent overview of the evidence that the official story of what happened at the World Trade Center is false.
The most pleasantly unexpected bit of news was that a wonderful piece of 9/11 truth art was (inexplicably) accepted into the private collection of the “official” 9/11 Museum. And the best part is that the artist, Anthony Freda, is a prominent illustrator who works with mainstream media like the New York Times and Rolling Stone, but who is also an articulate voice on behalf of 9/11 truth. The donation of the art will also be featured in an upcoming documentary called Behind Truth Art by John Massaria.
The bigger picture in 2014
While progress on the 9/11 front was encouraging but slow, world events were neither and seemed to be filled with ever more contrived chaos, deception and violence. The supposed “war on terror” – which was truly launched by the 9/11 false flag deception – played out in the CIA-backed assault on Syria, and the appearance of ISIS, the latest Muslim “threat.” The convenient and implausibly sudden emergence of this well-funded and outfitted band of “extremists” has provided the West with all the excuse it needs to bomb Iraq and Syria. There were highly suspicious videos of beheadings and a highly unbelievable back story to explain ISIS, the latest excuse for more military action in the Middle East and the stripping away of more civil liberties at home.
The U.S. Senate torture report got lots of press in 2014, but of course that’s because it serves the illusion that terrorists are truly a genuine threat, and the most important issue is how we deal with them.
On the domestic front, there was the police state crackdown on protests in Ferguson, Missouri after a cop shot unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown. Not only did this focus attention on the targeting of blacks for police violence, but also on the militarization of police forces across America – a process that has been ongoing for two decades.
We’re being conditioned to accept police in military gear as being standard and normal. In the U.S., 2014 was a truly disturbing year during which a shocking number of individuals were killed by police, often for minor infractions or no infractions at all. The most visible of those was the choking of Eric Garner as he was held down by five New York City police officers. Finally, we had the killing of two NYPD cops, seemingly in retaliation for police violence.
And the number of “lone wolf” shootings (in some cases labelled terrorist attacks) continued to increase in 2014. While the media automatically accepted all of these as being authentic and focused on the emotional and sensational aspects of each, many alternative voices seriously questioned whether some of the shootings were either staged or perpetrated by organized entities rather than crazed extremists or disturbed loners.
We had the killings of two soldiers in Canada in October. There was the Santa Barbara shooting, the Portland shooting, the Las Vegas shooting, the LAX shooting, the Seattle shooting, the Vancouver shooting, the Moncton shooting, and finally the Sydney hostage taking and shooting.
In the case of the LAX event, a drill had been practised three weeks before using “the exact same scenario,” according to an LAPD spokesman. We learned that in the few weeks before the Canadian one-two punch, authorities had carried out an exercise simulating a terrorist attack in Quebec followed by one in a large Canadian city – exactly what happened. We found out that police in Melbourne, Australia had practised their response to a hostage taking in a cafe just six weeks before the real thing happened in Sydney. They had also held a drill a year before in Martin Square where the hostage taking would play itself out 12 months later.
With all this, the story that affected me more than any other was Israel’s brutal siege against Gaza, leaving 2,100 Palestinians dead, tens of thousands homeless, and turned large parts of the city to rubble. And while this human catastrophe was going on the Israeli government and its apologists in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere were making the Orwellian claim that Israel was the victim, that Hamas was the aggressor, and that it was the Palestinians’ own fault for electing them.
Palestinian youth shot dead by Israeli forces south of Nablus
Ma’an – 29/12/2014
NABLUS – A Palestinian youth was shot dead by Israeli forces at the Tappuah checkpoint south of Nablus in the northern West Bank on Monday.
Local Palestinian sources told Ma’an that Israeli troops opened fire at two young Palestinian men in the Jabal Sbeih area within Beita village, near the Tappuah checkpoint, which is also known to Palestinians as Zaatara.
The youth who was killed in the incident was identified by Nablus TV as Imam Jamil Dweikat, a resident of Beita. His age was not yet clear, however.
The other victim was identified as Nael Thiab, 19, and he was reportedly evacuated to a hospital in Nablus with moderate to serious gunshot wounds following the incident.
Palestinian security sources confirmed that the Israeli liaison department officially notified the Palestinian Authority that Israeli troops shot dead a young Palestinian man and that his body is still with the Israeli army.
The slain youth is the 50th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2014, bringing the total Palestinian dead at Israeli hands so far this year, including those who died in Gaza as a result of Israel’s summer offensive, to around 2,335.
An Israeli military spokeswoman told Ma’an that an Israeli military patrol was passing through the area when they “encountered a group of Palestinians hurling rocks at a main road, which endangered both civilians and vehicles.”
“The forces called them to halt and fired warning shots, and when they didn’t comply they responded to the threat with direct fire which wounded one of the attackers.”
She said that the military treated him on site but he later died of his wounds.
“A military police investigation has been opened into the matter,” she added.
Palestinians stress their right to respond to Israeli escalation
MEMO | December 26, 2014
All Palestinian factions hold Israel responsible for the latest escalation in Gaza and regard it as a violation of the Egypt-brokered ceasefire agreement. The groups met on Thursday to discuss the latest Israeli aggression against the enclave, which led to the killing of Tayseer Al-Semari, a member of the military wing of Hamas.
Speaking on behalf of all factions, Shaikh Khaled Al-Batsh, a senior official of Islamic Jihad, said that they reject the notion that Palestinian blood is a price to be paid by electioneering Israeli politicians. “We will not stand idle in front of this repeated escalation so that Netanyahu can be re-elected,” he stressed.
Al-Batsh called on Egypt to resume talks with Israel and put pressure on the Israeli government to stop its latest aggression. He also urged the international community to assume its responsibilities and stop Israel’s repeated attacks on the Gaza Strip in particular and the Palestinian people in general. The blockade should be lifted, the crossings opened and reconstruction materials allowed in, he insisted.
The Islamic Jihad official added that the Palestinian unity government must also assume its responsibility for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
Haniyeh says Hamas committed to ceasefire as long as Israel is
Ma’an – December 26, 2014
GAZA CITY – Deputy head of the Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday that the group is committed to the ceasefire with Israel but called for international attention to ensure Israel abide by its terms.
“We are committed to what was agreed on in Cairo as long as the occupation is,” he said in a statement to the press.
He said that Hamas was contacting Egypt and other outside parties to ensure Israel uphold its side of the bargain, which includes a partial lifting of the seven-year-old siege of Gaza that has not come to pass.
Haniyeh also called on Egypt to permanently open the Rafah crossing, assuring the country’s authorities that “the security and stability of Egypt is our priority.”
Egypt has closed Rafah, the principal connection between Gaza and the outside world due to the Israeli siege, for the majority of the past two months, only opening it for a few days at a time for limited passage.
Egyptian authorities blame Hamas for supporting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and anti-government militants in the Sinai Peninsula, charges Hamas strenuously denies.
The Palestinian presidency must withdraw its project
Al-Araby Al-Jadid – December 23, 2014
If the aim behind promoting a draft resolution for the recognition of a Palestinian state is to recognise the Palestinian-ness of the land and undermine the legitimacy of settlement expansion, then the clauses [of this resolution], especially as they have been amended under US pressure, seek to reinforce the Israeli occupation and prevent any Palestinian political, cultural or armed resistance.
The original draft of the resolution was already problematic to begin with without any amendments. The reason for this is that it demands the recognition of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and this ignores the very core of Palestinian rights, most notably the right of return for Palestinian refugees among other historical and legitimate demands.
While the original draft makes no reference to compromising on Palestinian rights, it also does not make any explicit reference to the Palestinian right of return except to say that the plight of the refugees should be solved as it was outlined in UN Resolution 194. This claim does not adhere to the full implementation of the resolution but simply refers to it as a non-negotiable reference, which quite frankly is the problem in itself.
The vague wording of UN Resolution 194 is so ambiguous that it presents a sort of loophole that gives officials the opportunity to fully ignore the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. And yet, as if the ambiguity of this resolution was not enough for the United States, they also insisted on adding amendments that would force the Palestinian people to give up their original demands for the return of the original Palestinian state thereby giving up their claim to all of historic Palestine and the right of return.
It is also wrong to assume that the extent of the injustices would stop at forcing the Palestinians to give up their right to historic Palestine in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state on less than 20 per cent of the original land with East Jerusalem as the sovereign and independent capital of Palestine. The new amendments outline that Jerusalem will be the joint capital among both sides, a suggestion that ultimately declares that the Israelis have the right to all of Jerusalem, which goes back to the Israeli suggestion that the Palestinian Authority can extend its mandate over Abu Dis and the surrounding neighbourhoods located just outside of Jerusalem.
Thus, it is also not enough to prevent the Palestinians from establishing a Palestinian state or to allow them to establish some semblance of a semi-sovereign and geographically fragmented entity composed of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as the new amendments now propose the idea of land swaps and completely ignore the illegitimate nature of Israeli settlements. These amendments not only wholly ignore the UN’s patchy attempts to salvage the remnants of the Palestinian state, but it also carves out large blocs of land as they are constituted by Israeli settlements and the annexation of the Jordan Valley among other pockets of land desired by Israel.
In order to prevent the Palestinian people from practicing their right to determine their fate, two new amendments have been introduced and one of them prohibits both sides from making any unilateral decisions including land confiscations and the displacement of land owners, Israeli bombardments, preventing Palestinians from ascending to and accessing diplomatic channels and international forums, undermining all attempts at Palestinian resistance (to the occupation). All of these measures ultimately undermine all former international resolutions including the fourth Geneva Convention and the UN charter.
Moreover, the Palestinian administration is, as always; keen to close all the outstanding gaps and build an impenetrable wall that confirms Israel’s conditions and outlook on the conflict, which could be as complex as preventing attempts at Palestinian resistance or as simple as preventing any information on the history of the Palestinian revolution from being broadcast on Israeli media because it confirms the historical claim and presence that the Palestinians have to the land.
Finally, the emphasis that has been placed on ensuring Israeli security serves as a pre-requisite to any step forward with our without the US veto. What this ultimately does is hinder all progress and more importantly, renders the veto completely irrelevant as the amendments mentioned above secure Israeli interests. The Palestinian presidential administration must withdraw this resolution immediately.
Translated by MEMO
Israel razes Arab land in Jaffa, evicts residents
MEMO | December 24, 2014
Israeli police yesterday broke into an Arab house belonging to the Qubran family in the Al-Ajami neighbourhood of Jaffa, Arabs48.com reported.
The Israeli police razed trees and the garden, and handed over an eviction notice to the family ordering them to leave in order for the house to be destroyed.
Israel has been putting pressure on the Arab population in Jaffa and the other cities in order to push them to leave their houses and land. Properties belonging to Arabs in the diaspora are sold to Jewish investors at auction.
The Israeli Planning and Construction Committee escalated its activities against Arabs and their properties. Since the start of December, it has issued six demolition orders.
Authorities also gave families in the Al-Nozha neighbourhood in Jaffa 30 days to evacuate their stores, claiming the Arabs have been using these stores illegally. The families will be forced to pay for the cost of demolition, Arabs48 said.
A member of one of the families which were ordered to evacuate said the Israel Land Council refused to give them any documents leaving them unable to appeal against the eviction at the Supreme Court.
Israeli police shoot 5-year-old in the face while exiting school bus
Ma’an – 24/12/2014
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces on Wednesday afternoon shot a 5-year-old Palestinian child in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet in East Jerusalem as he was getting out of a school bus on his way home, relatives said.
“An Israeli soldier fired a black rubber-coated bullet at the child from a close distance, injuring him under the eye,” the uncle of 5-year-old Muhammad Jamal Ubeid told Ma’an.
The incident reportedly took place in the East Jerusalem village of al-Issawiya, where Muhammad’s family lives.
The child’s uncle said that Muhammad and his 14-year-old sister stepped out of a school bus and had started to walk home when the Israeli forces shot him.
The uncle said there were no confrontations at all in the area between Israeli forces and Palestinians at the time of the shooting.
An Israeli police spokesman did not return a request for comment.
Muhammad was evacuated to the nearby Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus where medical authorities said he had a fracture in the bone below his eye.
The boy was later transferred to the Hadassah Medical Center in the Ein Karem neighborhood in West Jerusalem for treatment.
East Jerusalem neighborhoods like al-Issawiya have seen months of heavy police presence and widespread protests amid increasing anger over the Israeli occupation and perceived discrimination.
Palestinians in East Jerusalem have residency rights but not citizenship since Israel occupied the city in 1967, despite the fact that the vast majority are born and raised in the city and trace their heritage back generations.
Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognized abroad. The international community sees East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory.
Barghouti criticizes UN draft resolution on Palestinian statehood
Al-Akhbar | December 23, 2014
Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti criticized on Monday the UN resolution submitted to the Security Council by the PLO, urging the Palestinian Authority (PA) to reword the proposal.
In a letter sent to Ma’an news agency from jail, Barghouti said the UN resolution is an “unjustified fallback which will have a very negative impact on the Palestinian position.”
The senior Fatah leader said he always urged the leadership to take the question of Palestine to the UN to obtain a security council resolution, but any proposal must be in line with inalienable national principles.
Barghouti urged the leadership to comprehensively revise the wording of the draft resolution to focus on the major issues of settlement expansion, Jerusalem, prisoners, and the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
He added that any talk of land swap will weaken the sovereignty of any future Palestinian state on the lands occupied in 1967, and its right for self-determination, noting that such a measure would be used to legalize settlement building.
Barghouti urged the PA to insist on the illegality of the Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem, slamming settlement building as a “war crime.”
According to the Fatah leader, the PA should continue to assert on the centrality of East Jerusalem as a capital of the state of Palestine and the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes in Occupied Palestine as stated in UN General Assembly resolution 194.
Moreover, Barghouti criticized the UN resolution’s lack of emphasis on the issue of Palestinian prisoners.
“The PA should make it clear that freeing all prisoners is an absolute right and a precondition for peace.”
He also said the draft resolution must include an article demanding the immediate lifting of Israel’s “crippling siege” on Gaza.
“Unless all these demands are ensured, we should put an end to these useless negotiations,” Barghouti stated.
A senior figure within the Fatah, Barghouti was arrested in 2002 and sentenced two years later. He is serving five life sentences for alleged involvement in attacks on Israeli targets.
Barghouti’s letter comes after Jordan presented a resolution draft to the UN Security Council last Wednesday.
The PA has sought Arab backing for a draft UN resolution that would set a two-year deadline for reaching a final settlement with Israel and pave the way for a two-state solution.
The draft resolution calls for a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace solution that brings an end to the Israeli occupation” of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and “fulfills the vision” of a Palestinian state, within the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the “shared capital.”
The measure also provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 according to a timeframe that doesn’t “exceed the end of 2017.”
If the resolution is to be put to vote, the US State Department will most probably use its right to veto.
Many international players have long insisted that a promised Palestinian state must come through negotiations with Israel. Palestinians have retorted that repeated rounds of talks have gone nowhere, with Israel unwilling to compromise on the issues of illegal settlements and prisoners.
European politicians have become more active in pushing for a sovereign Palestine since the collapse of US-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in April, and the ensuing conflict in Gaza, where more than 2,000 Palestinians, at least 70 percent of them civilians, and 72 Israelis were killed this summer.
Sweden’s decision in October to recognize Palestine preceded non-binding votes by parliaments in Britain, France, Ireland, and Spain in favor of recognition demonstrated growing European impatience with the stalled peace process.
The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.
In 1988, Palestinian leaders led by Yasser Arafat declared the existence of a state of Palestine inside the 1967 borders and the state’s belief “in the settlement of international and regional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the charter and resolutions of the United Nations.”
Heralded as a “historic compromise,” the move implied that Palestinians would agree to accept only 22 percent of historic Palestine in exchange for peace with Israel. It is now believed that only 17 percent of historic Palestine is under Palestinian control following the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
It is worth noting that numerous Palestinian factions and pro-Palestine advocates support a one-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians would be treated equally, arguing that the creation of a Palestinian state beside Israel would not be sustainable and that it would mean recognizing a state of Israel on territories seized forcefully by Zionists before 1967.
They also believe that the two-state solution, which is the only option considered by international actors, won’t solve existing discrimination, nor erase economic and military tensions.
(Ma’an, Al-Akhbar)
Israel, the United States and International Lies
By Robert Fantina | IIPRC | December 22, 2014
Israel and the United States are forever talking about Israel’s ‘vulnerability’, proclaiming it as the U.S.’s ‘best friend’ in the Middle East, the only democracy there, and the one with the most moral army in the world. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, ‘Methinks they do protest too much’.
Let us look at these points in a little detail, to see how quickly they unravel.
• Thanks solely to the U.S., Israel has the fourth most powerful military organization in the world. With nothing in return but campaign contributions to so-called representatives, the U.S. gives $3 billion to Israel every year. One might think that U.S. cities, say, for example, Detroit, which earlier this year was struggling to find $1 billion to stay afloat, and which receives no money from the federal government, might be a better place to spend all that money. With that military organization, Israel periodically bombs its mortal enemy, Palestine, which has no army, navy or air force.
• It is probably true that Israel is the U.S.’s major ally in the Middle East, although prior to the bloody and violent establishment of the country, the U.S. had no real enemies there. And it can be argued that, if the U.S. were to even the playing field in the Middle East, reducing aid to Israel and increasing it (from nothing) to Palestine and other countries in the region, it might be looked upon a bit more favorably. The U.S. then might have more than one ally in the region. Additionally, if the U.S. were to stop protecting Israel from the international consequences of its abominable human rights abuses, the reputation of the U.S. might improve, not only in that part of the world, but around the globe.
• Elections do not a democracy make. Arabs living in Israel have fewer rights than Israelis, and this lack of equal rights is institutionalized. Africans living there are also not afforded the same rights as Israelis. A foundational precept of democracy is the equality of the people living in that country, each with the same power to enact laws and live by those laws. There is equality in the rights of all citizens, and in their privileges. This does not exist in Israel. For example, until a court ruled it illegal in September, Africans seeking asylum in Israel could be detained for months without charge. In October, Israelis demonstrated against this court decision, using flags that resemble those used by ISIS, with one demonstrator claiming that the court’s decision is ‘more dangerous to Israel than ISIS’. The protestors want no African non-Jews present in Israel. This demonstration took place in an African refugee neighborhood, where protesters took to the streets and damaged African-owned businesses.
Much of Israeli’s land is mandated by law to be owned and occupied only by Israelis; Arabs need not apply. There are separate schools for Arab and Israeli children, with the conditions and educational quality of the schools for Israelis being far superior.
• To say that Israel’s army has any morality at all is a joke, but, unfortunately, no one is laughing, due to the death and suffering that army causes and has caused for generations. Consider the following:
• Since 2000, while 133 Israeli children have died due to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, at least 2,060 Palestinian children have been killed. Catherine Cook, author of Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children, said this about those children: “The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers.”
• During Israel’s brutal bombardment of the Gaza Strip in July and August of this year, when over 500 children were killed, a video was widely circulated showing an event that was also witnessed by several journalists. During a lull in the fighting, four Palestinian children ventured out to play on a beach. Israeli soldiers shot each one to death.
• In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers routinely break into Palestinian homes at all hours of the day or night, ransack them and arrest without charge any males in the home. They routinely shoot and kill children and adults, often in reprisal for throwing stones at their tanks, and standby and do nothing as Israeli settlers harass and kill Palestinian adults and children.
Additionally, many U.S. cities, for some inexplicable reason, have received training from the Israeli military. This might explain why so many innocent, unarmed citizens die at the hands of U.S. police officers.
Today, Israel continues to violate the terms of the cease-fire agreement that ended its most recent brutal bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Palestine has maintained its part of the bargain. Israeli terrorists, also known as IDF soldiers, continue to shoot Palestinian fishermen and sink their boats, in blatant violation of international law and the recently-signed peace agreement. Israel refuses to allow farmers in Gaza to transport their crops to the West Bank for sale, again, one of the things Israel agreed to allow as part of the cease fire.
According to international law, an occupied nation (Palestine) has the right to resist the occupying force (Israel). So any resistance efforts by Palestine are legal. The occupying force is required by international law to protect the citizens of the occupied nation. Israel kills innocent men, women and children indiscriminately. The occupied nation, according to international law, must not disrupt commerce, yet by its complete blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel has destroyed the Palestinian economy. International law states that education and normal pursuits must not be disrupted any more than is absolutely necessary to keep peace, yet due to the checkpoints established by Israel in the West Bank, the simple tasks of going to school, work or the local store take hours, if they are allowed at all.
The occupying force is also forbidden from moving its own citizens onto the occupied territory. Israel has moved over 500,000 settlers onto occupied land.
And ultimately, occupation is to be a short-term, temporary measure. Israel’s occupation of Palestine has continued for decades.
The brutality of the Israelis would not be possible without the complete and total financial support of the United States. That nation, which cares nothing for human rights, as demonstrated by the racism, poverty and other injustices that are so prevalent within its own borders, legislates as powerful lobbies demand, not for the good of the citizens. Israeli lobbies funnel substantial funds to most elected officials for their election and re-election campaigns, and not wanting to jeopardize that funding, these officials will countenance any degree of horrific violations of international law, and will be blind to blatant human rights abuses. The U.S. then uses its veto power in the United Nations to prevent any real progress towards peace and justice for Palestine.
Israel and the United States, along with a few other countries, are out of step with what the rest of the world sees and is increasingly addressing. The U.S. was one of the last nations to oppose apartheid in South Africa, and will be one of the last to oppose the apartheid Israeli regime. But with world opinion now clearly moving in Palestine’s direction, the U.S. will not be able to thwart the Palestinian right to self-determination and freedom forever. The world will move ahead without the U.S.
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From the Archives
Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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