Israel’s Plan for Postwar Gaza Ignores Will of Palestinians
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 04.05.2024
Israeli government officials have been quietly discussing a scheme to rule Gaza once the war is over, according to the New York Times.
Citing individuals familiar with the talks, the newspaper wrote that Israel appears to be ready to share oversight of the strip with a number of Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as with the US.
Under the plan, the coalition of nations would govern the strip for about 7-10 years and then allow Palestinians residing in Gaza to vote on whether to become subordinate to the united Palestinian administration. The Israeli military would maintain its presence in Gaza in the meantime, as per the proposal. The NYT emphasized that Tel Aviv would agree to the scenario in exchange for normalization of relations with Riyadh.
According to the newspaper, Arab officials and analysts have largely denounced the plan since it does not contain provisions opening the door to legalizing the Palestine state.
“I don’t see the possibility for this plan to become a reality,” Dr. Mehmet Rakipoglu, assistant professor at Mardin Artuklu University and researcher at the Dimensions for Strategic Studies London-based think tank, told Sputnik. “Even if it’s implemented, I don’t see any concrete solution for the problem, because the problem is all about the US and Israel.”
Rakipoglu argued that the proposal directly contradicts a two state solution, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1947 and then upheld by the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. The expert noted that the peace solution formulated by King Abdullah in 2002 and endorsed by the Arab League in 2002, 2007 and 2017 appears unacceptable to Tel Aviv.
The Abdullah plan envisaged a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights and the establishment of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem in exchange for normalization of relations between Israel and Arab nations.
“Netanyahu has no intention not only to end the [Gaza] war but also they don’t have any intention to withdraw,” Rakipoglu said.
Eyal Pinko, an Israeli military expert, is similarly skeptical about the proposal described by the NYT. According to Pinko, Washington is interested in finding a quick solution ahead of the US presidential elections in November. According to the expert, the challenge lies in the impossibility of reaching a swift resolution due to the conflicting interests of various state and non-state actors regarding the future of the Gaza Strip.
Similarly, Palestinians residing in Gaza are unlikely to accept the plan: almost 85% of the Gaza population supports Hamas and doesn’t want the Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern the strip, according to the military expert.
What’s more, most Israeli politicians would have preferred to stay out of Gaza and not solve this tricky dilemma. Per Pinko, just a small group of conservative hardliners in the Israeli government want to maintain total control of the strip in a bid to overhaul it and eradicate Hamas.
“The majority of Israeli public opinion – from the right, from the center, from the left, – the majority of the Israeli people want to stay out of Gaza like it was in the last 17 years. Not going back over there. Not to put any kind of civilian authority over there. Nobody wants it, really. We understand this is like a hornet nest.”
Even though Arab states want to normalize with Israel to ensure regional stability, they cannot do this without solving the Palestine dilemma first, Rakipoglu highlighted. The only way to start untying the Gordian knot is to bring Iran, Russia, Turkiye and Qatar along with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the negotiating table in order to work out a balanced solution, according to the analyst.
“Hamas has announced that four countries must be at the negotiation table: one of them is Turkiye, the second one is Russia, as well as Qatar and Egypt. Without bringing these countries to the negotiation table, Hamas and other resistance movements will not accept any plan. It will only empower the anger for Hamas to be against the Western countries,” the analyst concluded.
Columbia crackdown led by university prof doubling as NYPD spook
BY WYATT REED AND MAX BLUMENTHAL · GRAYZONE · MAY 2, 2024
The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school’s own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared.
During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force.
“She was the one that was monitoring the situation,” Adams explained, adding that the crackdown was carried out after “she was able to — her team was able to conduct an investigation.”
On April 30, dozens of police in riot gear descended on Columbia’s Hamilton Hall after students seized the building earlier in the day, citing a request from the administration. Several hours later, officers used a heavily armored NYPD BearCat vehicle to enter the building through the window on the second floor and arrested those inside, while another team swept up members of the encampment outside.
Starting on April 17, students at Columbia escalated their ongoing protest against Israel’s genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. They encamped on school grounds, stating their refusal to leave until the university fully divested from its Israeli-related investments. That protest model has since spread to over 100 other universities in the US, and even been taken up abroad, with similar actions occurring at Leeds University in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris.
Just a few hundred meters from the Gaza protest encampment, Weiner maintained an office at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an “Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs” who simultaneously serves as the “civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department’s Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau.”
In that role, according to SIPA, Weiner “develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence.”
The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau currently maintains an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, where it coordinates with Israel’s security apparatus and maintains a department liaison. Weiner appears to serve as a bridge between the Bureau’s offices in Israel and New York.
A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called “Demographics Unit” operated secretly within the NYPD’s Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area, and even on students at campuses outside the state who were involved in Palestine solidarity activism. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA, which has refused to name the former Middle East station chief it posted in the senior ranks of the NYPD’s intelligence division.
The “Demographics Unit” appears to have been inspired by Israeli intelligence as well. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to “map the city’s human terrain” through a program “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.”
A lawyer by training, Weiner oversaw negotiations between the NYPD and lawyers for local Muslims who had their civil liberties violated by its “Demographics Unit.”
Weiner is the granddaughter of Stanislaw Ulam, the Polish Jewish mathematician who helped conceive the hydrogen bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. “I’m very proud of that legacy,” Weiner said of her grandfather’s work upon being appointed as NYPD intelligence chief.
NYPD/Columbia’s Weiner: militarized raid was response to student “rhetoric associated with terrorism,” Tiktok posts
During the NYPD’s triumphant May 1 post-raid press conference, Weiner blamed “outside agitators” for triggering the military-style police crackdown at Columbia. However, she refused to name the outsiders supposedly on the scene.
According to Weiner, the police response was not necessitated by any criminal behavior, but by the radical language and symbols of the students. “This is not about students expressing ideas,” she claimed. The real problem, Weiner maintained, was the alleged “change in tactics” by protesters, which she said represented “a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism.”
Proof of this dynamic, Weiner suggested, could be seen in what she claimed was the “common” trend of wearing of “headbands associated with foreign terrorist organizations” on college campuses; the “reissuing of Osama Bin Laden’s 2002 letter to America” on TikTok; and a brief visit to Columbia by Nahla Al-Arian, who Weiner incorrectly described as “the wife of somebody who had been convicted for material support to terrorism.”
“That’s not somebody who I would want necessarily influencing my child if I were a parent of somebody at Columbia,” Weiner commented.
Nahla’s husband, Palestinian academic Sami Al-Arian, had been indicted on flimsy terrorism charges in 2003, but a jury refused to convict him. Nevertheless, her brief stop at the Columbia encampment — where she says she did not even interact with any demonstrators — was cited by Adams during three separate media engagements to justify the police repression.
Throughout the press conference, Mayor Adams repeatedly cast the city’s crackdown on student speech as the only possible solution to ongoing campus encampments, citing undefined threats to the minds of impressionable youth.
“There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not gonna wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it,” Adams proclaimed.
“Young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children,” he insisted, without specifying. “And I’m not gonna allow that to happen as the mayor of the city of New York.”
After angrily proclaiming that his “uncle died defending this country,” Adams declared: “It’s despicable that schools will allow another country’s flag to fly in our country.”
However, as an enthusiastic participant in New York City’s annual Celebrate Israel parade, Adams is no stranger to waving another country’s flag.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams waves Israel’s flag during the Celebrate Israel parade on June 4, 2023
Hostile Takeover: How NATO Annexed Macedonia
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | May 3, 2024
In Macedonia – or North Macedonia, or FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) – a counter-revolution impends. On April 24th, citizens went to the polls to choose their next President. Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova of Russophilic, pro-Serbian VMRO-DPMNE trounced Western-backed incumbent Stevo Pendarovski, albeit not by an absolute majority. The second round will be held May 8th, although opinion polls point to the challenger’s crushing victory. As we shall see, this development is a devastating blow to NATO, which could have far-reaching consequences regionally.
Pendarovski is a darling of EU and US officials. His upset win in 2019 was widely hailed in the mainstream media as illustrative of Macedonians’ yearning to at last become fully-fledged members of the transatlantic community, and rejection of VMRO-DPMNE’s “anti-Western” politics, which prominently included resisting NATO membership. His success also removed the last remaining barrier to Skopje joining the military alliance – a bitter, fraught, and protracted process, opposed by a significant proportion of the local population.
How Macedonia reached that point is largely unknown outside the country. It is a sordid tale of election meddling, subverted democracy, brazen swindles, high crimes and misdemeanours, and expansive American and British skullduggery, the full dimensions of which may never publicly surface. Now, Siljanovska-Davkova’s seemingly inevitable victory threatens to not only overturn those malign machinations, but reverse the US Empire’s ongoing effort to forcibly enmesh the entire Former Yugoslavia within NATO.
As with the election of Robert Fico in Slovakia, VMRO-DPMNE’s triumph comes at a very bad time for Washington. Across the West, public and state support for the proxy war in Ukraine is rapidly deteriorating, while Kiev faces total frontline collapse, and its forces are retreating everywhere. The prospect of Skopje’s withdrawal from NATO risks kickstarting another destabilising domino effect. The question of how, and whether, the alliance would be able to prevent this is an open one. Although it’ll undoubtedly try.
Dropping ‘Bombs’
NATO’s oft-repeated official mantra is that countries are free to choose their own security arrangements. As residents of the Balkans know only too well, in practice this simply isn’t true. For example, The Grayzone has previously exposed how alliance membership was violently imposed upon Montenegro in 2017, against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the population. Macedonians were slightly more amenable to joining, although there was for many years a seemingly insurmountable hurdle preventing accession – their country’s name.
Following Yugoslavia’s breakup, Macedonia applied to join a welter of international organisations and institutions. Athens, worried Skopje’s nationalist leaders might use their newfound independence to make irredentist claims on its own territory, successfully lobbied the United Nations et al for Macedonia to be forever referred to as FYROM in international fora. Officials charged there was no connection between the modern state, populated by ethnic Slavs, and the Greek land of antiquity.
In 2008 however, Greece blocked Skopje’s bid to begin NATO’s accession process under the FYROM moniker, explicitly due to its official name. Athens proposed the country rebrand itself New or Upper Macedonia, before trying again. Three years later, the International Court of Justice judged this was improper and discriminatory, although did nothing to prevent a subsequent repeat. Both the alliance and EU remained steadfast that the issue needed to be resolved, before membership negotiations for either body could begin.
Contemporary polls showed 82.5% of Macedonians opposed changing the country’s name, a position wholeheartedly shared by the government. VMRO-DPMNE was in office at this time, led by hardline nationalist Nikola Gruevski. Pledging that Macedonia would always be called Macedonia, as if to specifically spite Athens, he thereafter launched an ambitious construction project, “Skopje 2014”. Swaths of the capital’s brutalist architecture were razed to make way for faux neoclassical buildings, and a giant statue of Alexander the Great was constructed in the city centre.
From NATO’s perspective, however, Macedonia’s alliance “aspirations” were “set in stone” when Skopje inked a “Membership Action Plan” in 1999. VMRO-DPMNE’s popularity, and Gruevski’s leadership, were therefore highly problematic for Washington. In the year following Russia’s March 2014 reunification with Crimea, NATO’s efforts to expand into Moscow’s “near abroad” became turbocharged. As if on cue, opposition party SDSM’s leader Zoran Zaev began regularly dropping what he and domestic media dubbed “bombs”.
These were highly incriminating audio recordings and wiretaps of private conversations between prominent local government officials, businesspeople, journalists, and judges. Purportedly captured illegally by Skopje’s intelligence agencies, and provided to Zaev by whistleblowers, they appeared to implicate Gruevski and his ministers in gross wrongdoing, and abuses of power. For his part, the Macedonian premier claimed SDSM was attempting to blackmail him into holding a snap general election, and had threatened to publicise damaging intelligence “gathered with the help of a foreign spy service.”
‘Only Consultative’
A political crisis duly erupted in Macedonia. The EU and US stepped in, mediating a deal whereby SDSM would appoint ministers to government departments in an interim administration, Gruevski would resign by January 2016, and new elections would be held in June that year. USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a component of the intelligence cutout concerned with “political transition” – in other words, regime change – subsequently set up shop in Skopje.
OTI went on to funnel tens of millions of dollars to anti-government, pro-NATO groups, political parties, and NGOs. In all, $16.2 million was allocated for ensuring Macedonia’s untroubled entry to NATO alone. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations was also handed vast sums to cause chaos. A final report on these efforts produced by USAID bragged that its “Macedonia Support Initiative” had “reinforced the US Government’s foreign policy goal of strengthening Macedonia’s democratic reform processes leading to greater Euro-Atlantic integration.”
Yet, in the resultant election, SDSM fell short of victory, and was forced to scrape together a fragile coalition government. Incongruously, around 70,000 Albanians in Macedonia – one third of the country’s total population – supported Zaev, when they would normally vote for ethnic Albanian parties. They hadn’t backed SDSM before in significant numbers, and haven’t since. Local sources suspect Skopje’s US and British embassies “worked with village elders, imams, and local mafia elements, to get Albanians to switch their vote this one time.”
Despite its vulnerability, the coalition administration was the breakthrough necessary to end Skopje’s name dispute once and for all. So it was in June 2018, the Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers met by Lake Prespa to sign a historic agreement. North Macedonia was born, and its NATO membership was imminent. Or so the alliance thought. While parliament rubberstamped the move, President Gjorge Ivanov of VMRO–DPMNE refused, pointing out the agreement contravened Skopje’s constitution.
Panicking, the Macedonian government opted to hold a referendum on the name change that September. In the intervening three months, authorities – backed and financed by the EU and US – bombarded citizens with slick advertising and propaganda, intended to sell the public on the benefits of joining NATO. Simultaneously, vast protests raged throughout the country, under the banner of “Never North, Always Macedonia”. Ivanov, and countless posters in major cities, urged voters to boycott the plebiscite. As a constitutional scholar explained:
“The name of a country is a name that comes from and is created by the people who created this country and live in it. The state created by the Macedonian people is called the Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonian people will never refer to their country with [another] name… We can never accept to change something that we’ve used for centuries, a name that has been carried by this state for more than 50 years.”
When the referendum’s results trickled in, Western leaders and Zaev hailed how a staggering 94% voted in favour of renaming Macedonia. They neglected to mention turnout was just 37%, therefore nullifying the result. Under Skopje’s constitution, 50% of the public must vote for the government to honour a referendum’s outcome. No matter – Zaev simply shifted goalposts, claiming the plebiscite was “only consultative”. The name change could and would go ahead regardless.
In January 2019, parliament approved dubious and highly controversial constitutional “reforms”, allowing the country to be renamed without a public vote, or even the President’s blessing. This required corralling two thirds of lawmakers to back the changes. The SDSM-led coalition achieved this feat by bribing, intimidating, and blackmailing MPs, pardoning MPs facing prosecution for serious crimes, and other cynical connivances. Subsequent investigations uncovered “serious breaches” of domestic laws and international standards perpetrated by authorities during the referendum campaign.
The next month, NATO’s 29 members accepted North Macedonia’s accession. The alliance welcomed its newest inductee on March 27th 2020. How extraordinary it would be, if the country was the last one in, and first one out. Although, long before the latest Presidential election, there were unambiguous indications Skopje sensed geopolitical breezes have begun to blow in new directions. In November 2023, Macedonian officials announced their airspace would open to Russia, allowing Sergei Lavrov to visit a local OSCE ministerial summit.
Sweden rules out international Nord Stream probe
RT | May 4, 2024
There is no need for an international investigation into the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines, Sweden’s Foreign Ministry has told RIA Novosti news agency.
Last week, China’s deputy envoy to the UN, Geng Shuang, called for a probe into the September 2022 blasts that ruptured the pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe. Countries should work together on an investigation “to bring the perpetrators to justice in order to prevent the reoccurrence of similar incidents,” Geng said.
When asked about Beijing’s proposal by RIA Novosti on Friday, the Swedish Foreign Ministry insisted that “there is no need for an international investigation. It’s going to achieve nothing.”
“An investigation into the incidents was carried out by the Swedish authorities in accordance with the fundamental principles of independence, impartiality and the rule of law. Other national investigations are still ongoing,” the ministry stated.
Sweden conducted its own probe as the explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines occurred in the country’s exclusive economic zone. Germany and Denmark carried out separate inquiries. However, in February, the Swedish and Danish investigations were aborted. Stockholm said it had come to the conclusion that the case did not fall under Swedish jurisdiction, while Copenhagen concluded that “there was deliberate sabotage” of the pipelines, but found insufficient grounds to pursue criminal proceedings.
Russia is carrying out its own investigation into the Nord Stream blasts despite the refusal of Western nations to cooperate. Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov said earlier that Moscow had sent more than a dozen requests for legal assistance to Germany, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and Sweden, but only received a single formal reply from Copenhagen.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials suggested previously that the pipelines were targeted by the US or on Washington’s behalf.
Odessa massacre 10 years on… Western media silence covers up NATO incrimination
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 3, 2024
Ten years ago this week, a shocking and brutal massacre was perpetrated by supporters of the NATO-backed Kiev regime in Odessa.
At least 42 men and women were murdered on May 2, 2014, when the Trade Unions House in the historic port city was set ablaze by a fascist mob.
Last year to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the atrocity, our weekly editorial provided a rationale for Western silence. We commented:
“In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.
However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.
This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.
The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.
For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.”
Now 10 years on, the Western media do not even make any mention of the atrocity. In earlier years, the Western media sought to distort the incident by claiming that it was a confused melee and the tragic result of a clash between unknown rival factions. There were even deplorable attempts by Western media to make out that claims of an atrocity were “Russian disinformation”.
The cover-up has given way to total silence as if the horrific event was consigned to an Orwellian “memory hole”.
Russia continues to call for an international independent investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Kiev regime persists in rebuffing any serious investigation for the simple reason that a thorough probe would probably show that the atrocity was carried out by the leadership of the Kiev regime in collusion with Western intelligence agencies.
What happened in Odessa on May 2, 2014, was not some random event of chaotic violence that got out of control. This is what the Western media initially reported.
No, it seems quite clear now that the massacre was a well-planned, deliberate act of mass murder to terrorize the Ukrainian opposition into complying with the NATO regime. It was an act of state terrorism.
The victims were all from Odessa who had been participating in a peaceful protest outside the landmark building in the city center. The building was closed due to the May Day holiday. As in several other southern and eastern regions of Ukraine at the time, there were many protests against the NATO-sponsored coup in Kiev that had taken place only weeks earlier in February of that year.
Many Ukrainians were not happy – indeed were appalled – that the so-called EuroMaidan coup in Kiev had brought to power ultranationalists and fascists who glorified NeoNazi figures and paramilitaries. Cities like Odessa suffered terribly under Nazi occupation during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Now they were seeing a regime exulting in those Nazi memories and wanting to banish all Russian cultural connections.
In those pivotal months of 2014, the CIA’s plan to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian bulwark was not a foregone conclusion due to the formidable opposition to the new regime in cities like Odessa, Kherson and Kharkov – as well as of course the Crimea Peninsula and the Donbass.
Former Odessa lawmaker Vasily Polishchuk who witnessed the violence that day testifies that senior figures in the Kiev regime were present in Odessa in the days before May 2. One of those was Andriy Parubiy who had been appointed head of national security. Parubiy is also implicated in the sniper shootings in Kiev on February 20 – a false flag provocation killing dozens of protesters and police officers – that precipitated the coup against the elected pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Two weeks before the Odessa massacre, the then CIA director John Brennan was in Kiev on an unannounced visit. Even some U.S. lawmakers complained at the time that it was not a good look for the United States to be seen collaborating with the Kiev regime. Brennan was not only giving the green light to the “anti-terror operation” (civil war) that the Kiev regime was about to launch against the Donbass. It seems plausible that the United States was also helping to formulate a scorched-earth policy of terror to quell any dissent across Ukraine.
The mass killings in Odessa on May 2 were the selected terror demonstration.
Eyewitnesses tell of how thousands of Kiev regime paramilitaries who had been instrumental in the coup in the capital weeks earlier were bussed into Odessa and put up in camps. Andriy Parubiy was seen inspecting their ranks and overseeing the supply of body armor.
When the anti-Maidan protesters were attacked on May 2, they were herded by baseball-bat-wielding thugs into the Trade Union House. The building was then assailed with incendiary devices.
People who jumped from the blazing building were bludgeoned to death by NeoNazi gangs shouting “Death to all Russians”.
The dereliction of duty by the police that day to protect the peaceful protesters and the subsequent quashing of any crime investigation is proof that the security forces were complicit. That could only have been enabled by senior orders most likely issued by those in Kiev.
This is essential background to understand the current conflict in Ukraine and why Russia decided to intervene on February 24, 2022. Moscow maintains that Ukraine is a proxy war orchestrated by the United States and its NATO allies as a geo-strategic confrontation to subjugate Russia. Western regimes and their propaganda media make out that Ukraine is a democracy under aggression from Russia.
Understanding how the Kiev regime was installed with CIA and NATO engineering and how it rapidly used its fascist violence to turn Ukraine into a terror state corroborates the analysis of the current conflict being a Western imperialist proxy war.
The Western-lionized “democracy” has repressed all opposition parties and media.
The United States and its NATO accomplices do not want the Western public to understand the truth about their criminal machinations in Ukraine. These powers want the bloodshed to continue to the last Ukrainian because the war racket is so damn lucrative.
Thus the Western powers must shove episodes like the Odessa massacre down the memory hole and keep a lid on it. It is imperative to keep the fiction going of a democracy under attack otherwise the West’s collusion with a NeoNazi regime would reveal the Western powers’ inherent fascism.
Several events and developments around the world – brutal police repression of peaceful protests in the U.S. and Europe, the enabling of genocide by a fascist Israeli regime, the unprovoked aggression toward China, and the nefarious involvement in Ukraine – all point to Western states degenerating into full-fledged fascism.
Russia shoots down four US-made long-range missiles – MOD
RT | May 4, 2024
Russian air defenses have shot down four US-manufactured long-range missiles over Crimea, according to the Defense Ministry in Moscow.
On Saturday night, Kiev’s forces attempted “to carry out a terrorist attack” against the Russian peninsula using surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) supplied by Washington, the ministry said in a post on Telegram. The strike was intercepted, it added.
On Tuesday, the Defense Ministry claimed that six ATACMS projectiles had been downed in a single day, without specifying the location of the strikes. In total, 15 such missiles have been intercepted in the past seven days, Moscow reported on Saturday.
In late April, US officials confirmed earlier media reports that the Pentagon had secretly shipped an unspecified number of long-range missiles to Ukraine as part of an arms package announced by President Joe Biden in mid-March.
The “goal” of supplying Kiev with ATACMS was to put more pressure on Crimea and allow Ukrainian forces to target the peninsula “more effectively,” the New York Times reported at a time, citing an unnamed Pentagon official.
Moscow said the provision of long-range missiles would only spell “more problems” for Kiev. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted that the use of ATACMS would not impact the outcome of the conflict, or prevent Russia from achieving its security goals.
On Friday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that any Western-backed Ukrainian attack against the Russian peninsula, or the Crimean Bridge which connects it to the Krasnodar Region, would spark a forceful response.
“I would like to again warn Washington, London, Brussels, that any aggressive actions against Crimea are not only doomed to failure, but will also be met with a retaliatory blow,” she said during a media briefing.
Pandemic Officials are “Disappointed in Themselves”, per the New York Times
By Igor Chudov | May 3, 2024
An article in the New York Times is titled “Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?” (no paywall)
The author, Apoorva Mandavilli, was correctly described by Vinay Prasad as the worst science reporter. She states her surprise about “thousands” who believe that Covid vaccines harmed them. While we know that number to be an understatement, it is interesting how the New York Times recognizes them after years of stonewalling.
But in a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration, who retired in February, said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but “serious” and “life-changing” reactions beyond those described by federal agencies.
“I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.”
FDA’s Dr. Woodcock is disappointed in herself:
“I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”
The article discusses thousands of people gaslit by vaccine promoters and their doctors, who were intimidated not to report vaccine injuries:
Similar sentiments were echoed in interviews, conducted over more than a year, with 30 people who said they had been harmed by Covid shots. They described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular.
All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends — despite the fact that they supported vaccines.
Even some key vaccine promoters report vaccine injuries, which they could not report anywhere:
Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.
He received polite responses to his many emails, but “I just don’t get any sense of movement,” he said.
The federal officials in charge of setting the policy still refuse to believe these reports:
Federal health officials say they do not believe that the Covid vaccines caused the illnesses described by patients like Mr. Barcavage, Dr. Zimmerman and Ms. France. The vaccines may cause transient reactions, such as swelling, fatigue and fever, according to the C.D.C., but the agency has documented only four serious but rare side effects.
The excuse that these officials give for ignoring vaccine harms is that they were fighting misinformation :
The rise of the anti-vaccine movement has made it difficult for scientists, in and out of government, to candidly address potential side effects, some experts said. Much of the narrative on the purported dangers of Covid vaccines is patently false, or at least exaggerated, cooked up by savvy anti-vaccine campaigns.
Questions about Covid vaccine safety are core to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Citing debunked theories about altered DNA, Florida’s surgeon general has called for a halt to Covid vaccination in the state.
“The sheer nature of misinformation, the scale of misinformation, is staggering, and anything will be twisted to make it seem like it’s not just a devastating side effect but proof of a massive cover-up,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University.
So, get this please, the massive coverup was necessary to debunk ‘“misinformation” about the existence of a massive coverup. I hope it makes sense to you, my dear reader!
They finally note miscarriages caused by COVID vaccines:
Among the hundreds of millions of Americans who were immunized for Covid, some number would have had heart attacks or strokes anyway. Some women would have miscarried. How to distinguish those caused by the vaccine from those that are coincidences? The only way to resolve the question is intense research.
Another way to get the alarm signal of miscarriages is to ask, why does the Moderna vaccine cause 42% more miscarriages, compared to the Pfizer vaccine.
Why Now?
Are we observing a paradoxical awakening of honesty among federal officials and vaccine researchers? Have Apoorva Mandavilli and her employer finally decided to come clean about Covid vaccines?
Did these dishonest people suddenly straighten their ways, after being paid millions in research grants, CDC vaccine promotion fees paid to the media, etc? As much as I hope people can improve, I doubt that explanation.
The most likely explanation is that:
- Most vaccine-injured people are Democrats
- Facing a tough election in 2020, the Democratic party is afraid that the victims of vaccines that their party promoted and that disproportionally affected their core voters, might divert their votes and vote for an anti-vax Democrat, Robert Kennedy.
That might explain a puzzling turnaround in reporting vaccine injury in major newspapers such as the New York Times.
Police State Revealed: US Student Protesters Tracked and Spied Upon
A State trooper stands gurad near pro-Palestinian demomstrators at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas – © AFP / Suzanne Cordeiro
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 03.05.2024
Thousands of American students at pro-Palestinian rallies face increased surveillance and scrutiny from police and university authorities.
Pro-Palestinian college students in the US may encounter surveillance on campuses following their protests, according to Axios.
The media outlet warned that the extent that law enforcement agencies and universities use social media monitoring tools and facial recognition software is greater than the public imagines.
Over the past two weeks, more than 2,000 protesters have been arrested due to close cooperation between law enforcement officers and university authorities. Citing Albert Fox Cahn, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s (S.T.O.P.’s) founder, Axios noted that police and universities have a long history of security cooperation, which includes sharing campus video footage, students’ geolocation, and social media posts.
US educational institutions have also mastered surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, installing all sorts of surveillance tools and apps for public safety. For instance, some installed automated license plate readers while others reportedly used state law enforcement’s facial recognition databases.
As per the media outlet, at least 37 universities have been clients of Social Sentinel (also known as Navigate 360), a US technology firm that tracks students’ social media behavior with a declared aim of preventing self-harm or violence on campuses. It turned out that the technology has also been used to spy upon student protesters since 2015, according to a 2022 journalist investigation.
In addition to abusing students’ privacy, various artificial intelligence tools could mislead their users. For example, facial recognition applications are prone to errors, especially when it comes to non-white individuals. That could lead to potential misidentification, with little to prevent officials from inadvertently or intentionally abusing the technology.
Columbia University, which has recently emerged as a focal point of student protests, has been a target for police that tracked student groups since at least 2006, according to the Associated Press.
There is fear that participants of student movements could face continued surveillance by law enforcement agencies post-graduation. US college and university students appear to be aware of the potential threat: many wear masks and other face coverings to avoid identification during the protests.
Anti-Semitic Awareness Bill Direct Attack on Free Speech
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.05.2024
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed the HR 6090 Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would encode the definition of anti-Semitism defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance into the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin.
The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act would legally define criticism of the government or state of Israel as an act of anti-Semitism, and should concern every American, regardless of their views on Israel.
“It would be as if you could not criticize US capitalism, and if you were to do so, you would be considered to be a bigot,” Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. “Indeed, I think that you should correctly sense a whiff of what befell the United States in the 1950s with the so-called ‘House un-American Activities Committee’.”
Speech that the bill would define as anti-Semitic includes “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel [than the US], or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”
In October, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) wore an Israeli Defense Force uniform, the same uniform he wore while serving in Israel’s military. That led some to question where his loyalties lie, an accusation that would be deemed anti-Semitic under this law.
It also would define “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” as anti-Semitic. Many pro-Palestinian advocates argue that having a country specifically designed for a group of people, in this case, Jews, is in itself a racist act, just as a country only for white people, Christians or any other group of people would be.
The bill would also ban “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy of that of the Nazis,” which is a comparison many are making after seeing the images coming out of Gaza which has been described as a Genocide by multiple human rights organizations, heads of state and protesters.
It would also ban the “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” a definition so broad, that it could be used to shut down any criticism of Israel that the government determines the speaker has not applied to another country.
Similar laws have been enacted in Europe and have had a chilling effect.
In France, two individuals were arrested for wearing shirts to a grocery store that read “Boycott Israel, Free Palestine” and handing out pro-Palestine flyers on the bus.
In Germany, a German-Israeli activist was arrested for holding a sign that read “As a Jew and Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza.”
“Europe’s experience with similar laws shows why this [bill] would be a mistake.” Jacob Mchangama, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression posted on X on Thursday.
“It’s part and parcel of what can fairly be considered [a] sort of thought crimes,” Horne warned. “There are going to be thought police who are going to ferret out these alleged offenders of these thought crimes.”
There have been several laws passed in states across the US that attempted to ban boycotting Israel, they have all been shot down by federal courts as unconstitutional, and the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act is sure to face a similar challenge if it passes but there is no guarantee how the courts will rule.
“Israel wields a great deal of power in the United States. All you have to do is look at the bill that passed today to see what opinions you are allowed to express and what opinions you are not allowed to express,” explained award-winning journalist and former lawyer Glenn Greenwald on his show on Wednesday. “Therein is the proof of the people and the countries who occupy and exert the greatest power and they have now used that power to formally attack the free speech rights of American citizens in some of the most glaring and explicit ways that I’ve ever seen.”
Later on Thursday, Senate leadership attempted to fast track the bill but were denied by members who oppose the bill, but that won’t be the end of it. “We’re going to look for the best way to move forward,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters.
Legal experts debunk Israeli, US claims challenging ICC jurisdiction
Anadolu Agency | May 3, 2024
For days now, there is growing speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is poised to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials for the ongoing war on Gaza.
Most of the hype has been fuelled by Israel itself, first with regular reports by Israeli news outlets about increasing apprehension among the top brass, followed by direct statements from Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacking the ICC and urging his Western allies to pressure the Court.
Another tactic employed by Israel and its supporters, particularly the US, has been to question the ICC’s power and jurisdiction to act against Israeli officials.
Spokespersons for the White House and US State Department have explicitly conveyed that the US does not believe the ICC has jurisdiction to move against Israel, specifically because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that forms the basis of the ICC.
Legal scholars, however, have refuted these assertions, stressing that Israel not recognising the ICC or not being a signatory to the Rome Statute does not have any impact on the Court’s powers.
The ICC has been leading an investigation since 2021 into potential war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian groups dating back to 2014. The probe has grown to include ongoing attacks in the war in Gaza.
“Palestine is a state party to the ICC, and the ICC has accepted that it has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” Gerhard Kemp, a professor of criminal law at the University of the West of England Bristol Law School, told Anadolu.
The ICC also has jurisdiction over crimes committed by Palestinian nationals outside the Territory of Palestine, for example in Israel on 7 October, 2023, he said.
“The short answer is that there is not much that Israel can do to challenge the ICC jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed in Palestine,” he explained.
Another legal expert, Mark Kersten, asserted that the ICC is able to “very clearly, logically and legally exercise jurisdiction in this case.”
The ICC has territorial jurisdiction on Palestine, which it understands as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, he said.
First, this means it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed by citizens of Palestine, so it has the power to act against Hamas members for the 7 October attacks, even though most of it happened on the territory of a non-state party, Israel, he said.
“Second, it has jurisdiction over any crimes committed on the Territory of Palestine … which means it has jurisdiction over any Israeli authorities who have committed mass atrocities, international crimes in Gaza or the West Bank,” explained Kersten, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada.
‘Attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten ICC’
In the current situation, Kersten said the ICC is facing immense pressure from various countries, including Israel and the US.
“There’s definitely ongoing political pressure … I think pressure is probably too soft of a term. I have no doubt that various states are effectively threatening the ICC with certain consequences,” he said.
“There are definitely ongoing attempts to interfere, undermine and threaten the ICC. It is up to the ICC Prosecutor and, indeed, to a certain extent the judges, to withstand that.”
On Friday, Prosecutor Karim Khan’s office issued a sharply worded statement asserting that “all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence (ICC) officials must cease immediately.”
“Such threats, even when not acted upon, may also constitute an offence against the administration of justice under Article 70 of the Rome Statute,” read the statement, without mentioning any cases or countries.
Kersten pointed out that pressure tactics are “nothing new” for the ICC, with both the US and Israel having previously threatened the Court.
The administration of ex-President Donald Trump even “issued sanctions against the Prosecutor and certain other ICC staff, as well as threatening to sanction their families,” he recalled.
“We have seen US policymakers and lawmakers say the same, that they would support literally sanctioning the only independent permanent international criminal tribunal in the world,” Kersten added.
What happens if warrants are issued?
According to the swirling reports, the Israeli leaders who could soon be facing ICC warrants include Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli military chief, Herzi Halevi.
If warrants are issued, all 124 countries that are state parties to the ICC are obligated to act.
“If an arrest warrant is issued against Netanyahu, he cannot legally step onto the territory of Germany or the UK or Canada,” said Kersten.
Being ICC member states, these countries will be obligated under both their own laws and also international law “to arrest and surrender Netanyahu to the ICC”, he said.
Non-state parties, however, do not have that obligation, he added.
On a potential timeline, Kersten said the ICC has often released “some of its most important and most significant decisions … at around 4 p.m. Hague time on a Friday, when the media isn’t really covering these issues.”
As for the possible basis of the warrant, he said it could be “about the issues of starvation or the denial of aid to Gaza,” adding that these are points “the Prosecutor has spoken about repeatedly, especially since 7 October.”
Kersten also believes that any warrant against Netanyahu would be “unsealed” and publicly announced, citing past examples of warrants against Russian President, Vladimir Putin, or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
However, there have been instances in the past where ICC judges have accepted the Prosecutor’s request to issue sealed arrest warrants, he said.
These can then be unsealed in “a moment of vulnerability for the accused, for example, during travel to a member state of the ICC,” he added.
“Then, all of a sudden, that state has the obligation to catch the accused and surrender them to the ICC, in this massive kind of surprise moment,” said Kersten.
For someone as high-profile as Netanyahu, the expert reiterated that he does not believe a “sealed arrest warrant” is likely.
“It would be diplomatically inappropriate to issue a sealed arrest warrant for the head of a government … or a defence minister,” he said.
Complementarity challenge
While Israel has no standing when it comes to questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction, the one thing it can do is challenge the admissibility of any case in which warrants are issued on the basis of complementarity, according to Kemp, the Bristol Law School professor.
“This is because the ICC has complementary jurisdiction, meaning the ICC can only try a case if a national criminal justice system with jurisdiction over the matter is either unwilling or unable to try the case,” he said.
When Israeli nationals are accused of war crimes in Gaza, if Israel can show that its own courts will prosecute them “in a genuine prosecution and not a sham trial, then the ICC will stand back and will let Israel proceed with the case”, he explained.
“Of course, the ICC will evaluate the situation with reference to all the available facts,” Kemp added.
Anti-genocide groups are being targeted by media and government
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 2, 2024
Well friends, the verdict is in! If you are opposed to Israel’s slaughter of something like forty thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, or the clearly enunciated plans by that nation’s government to ethnically cleanse the rest of historic Palestine, making the developing Eretz or Greater Israel a legally Jewish state, and are prepared to protest or speak up about it, then you are an antisemite Jew-hater and probably even a holocaust denier. If you are a student demonstrating against the slaughter you are increasingly being referred to by talking heads and the media as a pro-Hamas terrorist. That you must be condemned and sanctioned or even criminalized as a consequence of the labels is only fair in a country that apparently has come to believe that Jews and Israel, uniquely, cannot be criticized due to their cited ad nauseam victimhood and their anointment by God no matter what the First Amendment to the US Constitution relating to freedom of speech might say. After all, it’s just an old piece of paper though it might strike some as a bit odd that a group of people carrying out a genocide are being given a pass while those trying to stop it are being beaten, going to jail and, in some cases, being denied that degree they earned from four years at college.
That antisemites and even evil foreign governments like China are behind the recent student demonstrations over the atrocities in Gaza is gradually becoming part of the new Gospel, ritually endorsed by the cowering university administrators themselves as well as by a large majority in Congress, the White House and the mainstream media. Pro-Palestinian groups are being routinely shut down and their supporters clubbed, gassed and arrested while Jewish groups supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” are being allowed to express their rage violently, as occurred at the University of California in Los Angeles last Tuesday night with police standing by to let the pro-Israel attackers (who were mostly non-students) have access to beat on the pro-Palestinian campers. It was an alignment of hearts and minds that apparently serves both justice and God, who has declared Jews to be his “chosen.” The University of Southern California’s administration has labeled pro-Palestinian groups as “homegrown violent extremists” as an excuse to shut down graduation ceremonies later this month. Governors in Texas and Florida have declared war on those despicable antisemites, insisting that there will be no Jew haters in their states and expressing a willingness to use police and national guard to make sure that that is the case. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has vowed that any student who speaks up or demonstrates against Israel will be expelled from college. National Guard troops have also been called in to clear campuses in a number of other states, with more than a thousand demonstrators being arrested and removed on Tuesday alone.
Some jest how it is Israel that controls much of US foreign policy “wag the dog,” not to mention interfering in elections and dictating what must be taught about world i.e. Jewish history in public schools together with mandatory trips to taxpayer funded holocaust museums that are sprouting up like mushrooms throughout the land. The United States is pledging itself to become antisemitism free as quickly as possible, which is surely the right thing to do given all those holocaust survivors who are living down in Miami and apparently starving to death according to all those ads one sees on TV and hears over the radio featuring dispensationalist hucksters like Mike Huckabee, who should move to Israel immediately since he loves the place so much, taking those of a like mind in Congress with him when he goes.
America under Joe Biden and also undoubtedly under Donald Trump if re-elected is pledged to take the lead in protecting Jews worldwide and will sanction anyone who violates that trust. Who else, for example, is so uber sensitive to Jewish issues as to have a Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues and an Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism entrenched with ambassador status and full staffs and budgets in their Foreign Ministry? Not even the cringing Krauts who routinely let Israel lie to them and intimidate them while still sending millions to the apparently endless series of so-called holocaust survivors in Israel as they also are shipping arms to Tel Aviv to assist in killing more Palestinians. That’s what true friends and allies are for! Britain has Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel which together constitute a majority in Parliament. Both UK party leaders do their best to make love to Israel on a regular basis. And France, Canada and Australia? There is no space between them and Netanyahu. They are as “ironclad” on Israel as Joe Biden constantly professes himself to be!
Greater love hath no man nor no woman to compare to the love of American politicians for Israel! Look what Papa Joe Biden has done for Israel over the past four years out of appreciation for the more than $4 million in donations that he has received from the Israel Lobby in political donations in his career. The $26 billion in the pipeline for Netanyahu is certainly an appropriate reward for the great man who single handedly has prevented Iran from getting a nuclear arsenal, something he has been warning about for the past twenty-five years! Biden’s first rule in politics, which he has been observing for forty years, is always do what Israel wants no matter what the cost because the Jewish state and the Jewish US domestic lobby together with its media wing are crucial to getting nominated and elected!
Only American politicians have the gall to call in heads of major universities and berate them or even call for their firing if they are not doing enough about antisemitism! During an April 17th House hearing on antisemitism US Congressman Rick Allen asked Columbia University President Minouche Shafik if she was concerned that God might “curse” the university. Allen had first quoted a passage from the Bible that says God will curse those who curse Israel and added that he personally views Jerusalem as the “center of the universe”. He also suggested the university should create a course teaching students about the Bible so they can learn about “the wrath of God” and how “indoctrinating” professors fail to tell students that don’t know how they “will be cursed by God”.
If Israel is truly America’s greatest friend in the world and best ally there should be some positive evidence of that in the interaction of the two countries. So let’s take a look in terms of reciprocity relating to what has been happening over the past couple of weeks! First of all, at the macro level, i.e. continuing the fighting, Biden has warned the Israelis that if they invade Rafah they will not be supported. Netanyahu has responded, “We will enter Rafah and obliterate all the Hamas battalions there — with or without a deal, to achieve total victory” lest there be any confusion about what he intends to do no matter whether a temporary ceasefire with a hostage exchange is arranged or not. Biden and his amazing talking horse Anthony Blinken did not respond apart from pushing even harder for a ceasefire on Israel’s terms, which would be bad for the Gazans in any event given the key word “temporary” in front of “ceasefire.” Israel will be free to resume killing even though more fighting will be bad for Biden’s electoral prospects in November and he knows it. So does Netanyahu.
Blinken has called for an impartial international investigation of the two mass graves recently discovered at the bombed hospital sites in Gaza, containing four hundred or more bodies, many of which were tortured and/or executed with their hands tied behind their backs or dragged out of hospital beds to be buried still alive in deep pits. Some bodies showed signs of hasty surgery indicating that their organs, a valuable commodity, were removed, a regular signature piece appearing on victims of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the Most Moral Army in the World according to that strange looking Franco-Jewish so-called intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy. The Netanyahu and the IDF replied that Israel would do its own investigation saying “What is there to investigate?” Blinken did not object.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is preparing to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and two other senior Israeli officials in connection with war crimes. Netanyahu is reportedly wildly reaching out to his many “friends” to prevent such a development. He tweeted that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense. The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it.” ICC deliberations are secret so it appears that an American or British jurist has leaked the story to enable Netanyahu to mount a campaign against it. The White House and Congress are already moving full speed ahead to make the warrants go away up to and including threats to directly take on and discredit the court if the Israelis are actually punished. Zionist Speaker Mike Johnson has pressured the White House and State Department to “use every available tool to prevent such an abomination.” The US has never before threatened the ICC and has nothing to gain and much to lose in so doing. Rule of Law anyone? There are reports that prosecutors from the ICC have interviewed medical staff at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals their investigation of other possible war crimes committed by Israel in connection with the mass graves.
To be sure some pushback from inside the US government as well as from voters is developing. Fully 92% of Israelis fully support the slaughter of the Palestinians by Netanyahu and his psychopaths but 72% of Americans do not approve of what is taking place in Gaza, for which Biden will likely pay a heavy electoral price. A group of American lawyers, at least 20 of whom work in the Biden administration, are also calling on the US government to stop selling arms to Israel and are, of course, being ignored. There have also been other lawsuits as well as resignations of senior government officials who have been shocked by the US support of the genocide being conducted against the Palestinians.
Congress has just passed by an overwhelming vote pf 320 to 91 the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which will, inter alia, place antisemitism monitors in American colleges and universities. Criticism of Israel, defined as ipso facto antisemitism, will be part of their brief. It is being pushed by groups like the infamous Anti-Defamation League (ADL) whose leader Jonathan Greenblatt has called pro-Palestinian demonstrators “Jew haters” and has demanded criminal charges. Several congressmen have likewise called for all Palestinians to be killed, but there seems to be no demand for an Anti-Palestinian Act to protect the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu has also called out the demonstrators saying “What’s happening on America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. The response of several university presidents was shameful.” By shameful Netanyahu means that the presidents did not crawl enough and beg forgiveness from himself, Israel, and all diaspora Jews as well as from a Zionist Congress and White House.
Joe Biden intends to sign the anti-antisemitism legislation in spite of its direct assault on the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution. The new legislation will join the recently approved FISA renewal that will allow the US government to spy on citizens without a warrant. It should surprise no one to learn that the FISA bill was particularly pushed by Greenblatt and ADL to “protect Jews” by making it easier to spy on suspected antisemites. The US government ban on TikTok was also promoted by ADL due to the fact that the site includes too much information critical of Israeli behavior. Clearly, the US Congress does what Greenblatt wants.
Finally, a US pledge to determine responsibility and sanction perpetrators for the killing of American citizens in Israel, as well as the harassment and killing of Palestinian civilians on the West Bank, has not gone anywhere. The State Department investigation found that five IDF units had committed “individual incidents of gross violations of human rights” prior to October 7th, including the beating to death of an 80 year old Palestinian-American and the sniper execution of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh. The investigation determined that there was one particularly nasty extremist-fundamentalist Netzah Yehuda battalion which had killed the octogenarian and others whose capital offense consisted of walking in their town on the West Bank. They could have joined the roughly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held in “preventive” detention without any charges by the Israeli government, but instead they were picked up on the street, were not charged with anything, and were then beaten and killed. The killing should surprise no one. On Monday Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the death of Gaza saying “There are no half measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. ‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven’ – there’s no place under heaven.” The reference to “Amalek” was from a line in the Hebrew Bible where Amalek was a nation that the Israelites were commanded to destroy, God telling them to “slay both man and woman, infant and suckling.” Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir came up with a similar genius solution to the country’s overcrowded prison problem – many of the Palestinians should be released and then killed to make more room.
Blinken, who has not commented on either the Smotrich or Ben-Gvir suggestions, has been sitting on the IDF report but was confronted with a challenge by House Speaker Mike Johnson who threatened to take steps to block any White House action directed against our best friend in the whole world Israel. As a result, the State Department will now neither restrict military aid nor in any way sanction the punishment of any of the units in question, even though it is actually illegal under US law to provide arms to governments committing human rights violations and war crimes. The US backdown also came after Netanyahu stated that the US would not be allowed to in any way punish or interfere with IDF units. Blinken then rolled over completely when confronted by the power of the Jewish state with a State Department spokesperson saying the units “have effectively remediated these violations,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
So killing Americans does not even merit a slap on the wrist if Israel is involved… That is where we Americans now find ourselves: fundamental rights are disappearing and our government and society are victims of Israel and its army of paid-up friends here in the US. Will Americans wake up in time to stop the rot? Not likely, as the mainstream party choices Biden and Trump will do whatever the Jewish state demands. That is our dilemma.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
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From the Archives
Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
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