Diplomatic Cables: Biden’s Support for Israel Has Poisoned Allies’ Attitudes Toward US
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.02.2024
The Biden administration has offered unequivocal support for Israel’s punitive operations in spite of international condemnation of Tel Aviv and calls for an urgent ceasefire. Top US allies in the Middle East have taken or threatened to take serious steps to distance themselves from Washington amid the crisis.
US diplomats stationed in Middle Eastern countries have been sending warning signals to Washington about the lasting anti-American sentiment stirred up in the region thanks to the Biden administration’s stubborn support for Tel Aviv’s military actions in Gaza.
The warnings, collected by the State Department over recent weeks and seen by ABC News, reportedly prompted a meeting between officials and US intelligence services to evaluate just how much damage had been done.
A cable from the US diplomatic mission in Morocco, for example, indicated that pro-US “collaborators” in the Northwest African country felt that ties with the US were now “toxic” thanks to the “blank check” Biden gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel’s Gaza operations.
“Criticism of the US position has proven unshakable despite significant adjustments to US messaging to highlight the need to protect civilian lives,” the cable, marked ‘sensitive’, warned, complaining that US messaging about sending “aid into Gaza or diplomatic pressure for Israel to avoid civilian casualties” were falling on deaf ears in the Moroccan press. The Embassy’s social media accounts have been targeted by “waves of unfollows or negative and abusive comments,” according to the cable.
An anonymous official told the network that the issue has spread beyond the Middle East to other Muslim majority countries, including Indonesia. Meanwhile, the “enduring hit to US popularity” in the Mideast is said to pose a threat to US plans for post-conflict diplomacy, as well as Washington’s long-standing push for normalization with Israel.
US intelligence agencies reportedly believe the negativity will blow over in the long term, while State Department officials fear it could take up to a “generation” to reestablish frayed ties.
The diplomatic downturn abroad has also been matched at home, with the administration quietly reaching out to American Muslim communities in battleground states like Michigan amid fears that they could stay home come November instead of coming out to reelect Joe Biden.
Biden’s handlers have sought to balance his comments on the Palestinian-Israeli crisis in recent weeks, but despite the posturing, the US is reportedly proceeding with plans to supply Israel with additional weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits and bomb fuses, while simultaneously calling publicly for a temporary ceasefire.
Washington’s duplicity has threatened to unravel decades of US diplomacy in the region. Last week, officials warned that Egypt is considering suspending its landmark 1978 Camp David peace agreement with Israel – the keystone to US normalization strategy.
Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of former regional arch adversaries Saudi Arabia and Iran vowed on Friday to expand their bilateral cooperation, while jointly blasting Israel over its “crimes” against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Saudi Arabia welcomed Iran’s proposal for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s foreign ministers to stop Israel’s “genocide.”
The latest escalation of the 75-year-old Palestinian-Israeli crisis began on October 7 after Hamas carried out surprise raids into southern Israel, catching the military off guard and taking hundreds of hostages. Over 1,450 Israelis and nearly 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in the conflict to date, with some 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents displaced in the fighting.
Washington readies thousands of bombs for Israel despite ‘push for truce’
The Cradle | February 17, 2024
US President Joe Biden and other White House officials are preparing to send additional bombs and other weapons to Israel even as the US claims to be pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 16 February.
Citing current and former US officials, the WSJ says the proposed arms delivery includes 500-pound MK-82 bombs, KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack Munitions that add precision guidance to bombs, and FMU-139 bomb fuses.
The value of the weapons deliveries is estimated to be “tens of millions of dollars.”
The proposed delivery is still being internally reviewed and must be approved by a congressional committee.
As of December 2023, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has twice used emergency measures to bypass congressional review to send weapons to Israel.
While publicly asking Israel to kill fewer Palestinians during its military operations, Blinken and Biden have been staunch supporters of Israel’s military, refusing to set any red lines on the use of US weapons.
President Biden recently stated that the US would take no action against Israel should it invade Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where over 1 million displaced are sheltering, despite warnings from aid agencies that such an invasion would be a “bloodbath.”
Israel has dropped tens of thousands of US bombs, including hundreds of 2,000-pound BLU-109 bunker buster bombs, on Gaza, destroying entire residential neighborhoods, creating 40-foot craters in crowded refugee camps, and killing dozens at one time.
Israel’s air and ground offensive on Gaza since 7 October has killed 28,775 people, mostly civilians, and displaced nearly all of its more than 2 million inhabitants from their homes.
The Israeli campaign is widely viewed as genocide, while Israeli leaders openly discuss their desire to ethnically cleanse the besieged enclave, annex it, and establish Jewish settlements on the remains of destroyed Palestinian cities.
What are the facts and reasons for Biden’s unconditional support for Israel
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 17.02.2024
Joe Biden’s emotional embrace with Benjamin Netanyahu on 18 October on the tarmac of Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv was seen around the world and is still being commented on by the world media. The embrace, which took place 11 days after the shameful failure of Israel and its “famous” Mossad intelligence agency on October 7 in the south, gave the Israelis carte blanche to do whatever they wanted against not only the militant organisation Hamas, but also against peaceful Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
On that trip, Biden demonstrated his “ironclad” commitment to Israel, despite the crimes the Israeli army was committing in Gaza, cutting off access to food, water, medicine and other necessities for a population of 2.3 million and destroying homes, hospitals, universities, schools, churches, mosques, etc. And yet, the “Democrat-in-Chief” told Netanyahu, “I come to Israel with a single message: you are not alone. You are not alone.”
The unequivocal support for Israel, which has the most extremist government in power since its creation in 1948, has especially intensified since Biden and his pro-Israel administration took office. Not only has the U.S. begun supplying arms to Israel, but it has also gone against the will of the world at the United Nations, which has demanded an immediate ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the besieged territory. On 3 November, the US House of Representatives also passed a Republican-drafted plan to provide $14.5 billion in military aid to Israel. The Pentagon also sent two aircraft carriers to the region as a sign of support for Israel.
Biden’s strong support for the right-wing party in Israel has even embarrassed some figures in his administration. On 19 October, Josh Paul, director of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said he was resigning because of the White House’s “intellectually bankrupt” decision to increase military aid to Israel. He said the Biden administration is “repeating the same mistakes Washington has made for decades”.
Paul also said the administration’s “blind support for one side” led to policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unfair and contrary to the very values we publicly espouse”. In an interview with the New York Times, Paul also said that continuing to give Israel “carte blanche to destroy a ‘generation of enemies’ only to create a new one is ultimately not in the interest of the United States.”
It has come to the point where Biden openly states that he is a Zionist and is proud of it, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist,” Reuters quoted Biden as telling an Israeli military cabinet. Politicians and generals gathered in a hotel ballroom in Tel Aviv nodded approvingly, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the remarks behind closed doors.
This explains the unconditional US support for the Israeli state, its huge funding and the dispatch of the most modern weapons, which are now actively used by the IDF to destroy Palestinian civilians, the constant shelling of Lebanon’s borders, and the unpunished bombing of Syrian territory. Such remarks are made at a time when Israel’s 75-year history is associated with the theft of Palestinian land, the displacement of indigenous Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees inside and outside Palestine, the building of homes on stolen land, the killing of children, the destruction of olive trees, the burning of agricultural land, the imprisonment of those who oppose the occupation, etc.
In his 26 October speech, Biden said: “I will say it 5,000 times in my career: The United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel is based on our principles, our ideas, our values.” The values of Israel stand for making a mockery of international law and qualify any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Of course, it’s no secret that the United States doesn’t care about international law when it comes to Israel’s crimes and illegal actions, and whenever it seems that its commitment to international law doesn’t match its desires, just like what it did regarding the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA).
Biden’s alliance with Israel has dealt a serious blow to the image of the United States. People around the world now view the Biden administration as complicit in the crimes Israel is committing in Gaza. Israel has dropped more than 22,000 U.S.-supplied bombs on Gaza in the first month and a half of the war alone, according to intelligence data provided to Congress and revealed by The Washington Post.
It is quite obvious that Biden considers himself indebted to the Zionist lobby. During his 36 years in the Senate, Biden was the largest recipient of donations from pro-Israel groups in the chamber’s history, receiving $4.2 million, according to the Open Secrets database, Reuters reported on 21 October.
In a speech to the Senate on 5 June 1986, Biden defended annual military aid to Israel, saying: “This is the best three-billion-dollar investment we are making. If there were no Israel, the United States of America would have to invent Israel to ‘protect its interests in the region.’”
A 4 November 2023 report on the US news site Axios states: “While the timing of the new security package remains unclear, the U.S. is by far the largest provider of military aid to Israel, having provided some $130 billion since its founding.”
In addition, as vice president, Biden often mediated the testy relationship between Barack Obama and Netanyahu. Dennis Ross, a Middle East adviser during President Obama’s first term, recalled that Biden intervened to prevent Netanyahu from retaliating against him for a diplomatic outburst during a 2010 visit. According to Ross, Obama wanted to respond harshly to Israel’s announcement of a major expansion of housing for Jews in East Jerusalem. “Whenever the situation in Israel got out of control, Biden was the liaison,” Ross said. “His commitment to Israel was so strong … And that’s the instinct we’re seeing now.”
During a visit to the United States in July 2023, Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog gave a speech to Congress. He called the bond between Israel and the United States “sacred” and said that calling Israel a racist state is anti-Semitism. Describing the alliance between Israel and the US as sacred is ideological and extremely dangerous. Such a term resembles the language used by ideologically motivated terrorist groups who hold their vicious ideas sacred and others as enemies to be purged. Describing ties between Israel and the US as sacred inherently conveys the idea that any Israeli action is right. For example, Israel believes it has an inalienable right to steal Palestinian land, demolish their homes in the West Bank, ethnically cleanse the population in Gaza, and starve all Palestinians to death without facing any consequences because the US as the most powerful country in the world will protect you. It’s as if loyalty to Israel is carved in stone to the point that if any official dares to criticise Israel, they are forced to back down from their position.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressives Caucus, who called Israel a “racist state,” came under pressure from both Democrats and Republicans. They called the comments anti-Semitic, forcing her to retract her remarks. The House of Representatives then overwhelmingly passed a resolution declaring that Israel “is not a racist or apartheid state” by a vote of 412 to 9. Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli Knesset, was also suspended after criticising the bombing in Gaza.
Democrats and Republicans are competing to win Zionist support in Israel and the US, regardless of American public opinion. Harsh criticism of senior American officials is tolerated in the US, but it is unacceptable when it comes to Israel. Furthermore, the decades-old repeated statements by Democrats and Republicans that they support a two-state solution in which Palestinians and Israelis live together peacefully are not genuine.
The West’s blind and unconditional support for Israel that its crimes in Gaza are unbelievable, astonishing and shocking, has also infuriated some officials on both sides of the Atlantic. More than 800 officials in the United States, Britain and the European Union published an open letter of dissent against their governments’ support for Israel on Friday. “The current policies of our governments weaken their moral character and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights around the world,” the letter reads. It adds: “There is a real risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to serious violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”
Amid such crimes and protests against Israel’s behaviour in Gaza, it seems that Biden, who boasts of a 50-year political career, has lost touch with reality to the extent that his support for war criminals in Israel has brought shame to him and a bad reputation to the United States. Biden turned a blind eye to mass rallies around the world, especially in Western cities, against Israeli crimes in Gaza. No doubt, he has seen protesters carrying placards calling him “Genocide Joe.” Biden should also have read a book written by his colleague, Democratic President Jimmy Carter, entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
A month after Russia launched a special military operation against the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, the US government was quick to accuse Russia of committing aggression. However, when South Africa submitted an 84-page document to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of actions in Gaza that are “genocidal in nature because they are intended to destroy a significant portion of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group,” the Biden administration dismissed the accusation as “baseless.” This is despite the fact that Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine is in no way comparable to what Israel is doing in Gaza.
In a 3 December article, The Washington Post stated: “The United States is making it clear that it will not stand up for international rules and norms if one of its closest allies violates them.”
And that is true. Nevertheless, it will take the United States many years, perhaps even decades, to regain the reputation it lost because of the ironclad commitment and ill-considered policies of Biden and his administration officials towards Israel.
Victor MIKHIN is a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Science.
Time’s up: Threats won’t prevent US ouster from Iraq after years of occupation
By Wesam Bahrani | Press TV | February 17, 2024
All eyes in Iraq are glued to the negotiations taking place at the moment between American officials and the government of Mohammad Shia’ al-Sudani, aimed at ending the years-long military occupation.
The climate of these talks is believed to be tense. A source familiar with the latest security developments in the Arab country said the Iraqi resistance has threatened to shut down the US embassy in Baghdad, which has long been accused of acting as a US military base instead of a diplomatic mission.
This would also see all Western embassies affiliated with the US-led military coalition getting closed if the American occupation rejects popular and growing calls to withdraw from Iraq, the source noted.
The Iraqi government can also expect threats from Washington during the meetings. With the revenue of Iraqi oil sales heading to the US Treasury in a very unfair measure, Washington can threaten to impose sanctions that could weaken the Iraqi Dinar.
This sinister ploy would be aimed at downgrading the living standards of Iraqi families in a bid to turn the people against their government and the resistance. They may both (as Washington would hope) be blamed for any damage to the country’s economy, despite the US pulling the strings.
The Iraqi resistance is seeking a clear timeline from the government for the expulsion of US forces and is not willing to settle for anything less, including vague assurances of withdrawal dates.
How the resistance will execute its threat against the US embassy is unclear, but it appears that America has already decided to withdraw from the country. The only question is when and how.
Washington is aware that its military presence in Iraq is deeply unpopular. This was evident when the White House held back from ordering strikes against the resistance, which had attacked US bases in Iraq and Syria around 200 times since the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.
But after the recent deadly US strikes on the Iraqi-Syrian border followed by the assassination of the Iraqi military commander Abu Baqr al-Sa’adi in the capital Baghdad, all the indications suggest that nothing will return to normal for the US occupation even if the Israeli-American war on Gaza ends.
Al-Sa’adi was a highly respected commander within the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, whose factions have been integrated into the national armed forces.
The PMU’s Chief of Staff, Abu Fadek, asserted that “avenging the martyrdom of Abu Baqir al-Sa’adi is the removal of all foreign forces” and that the resistance “will not accept anything less than this.”
Abu Fadek did not go into specifics on how the US occupation will be removed; only saying the PMU will coordinate with “all relevant Iraqi parties,” including the government.
The PMU, which was established in 2014, needs the green light from the Iraqi government to wage military operations against the US occupation.
The Iraqi resistance was established in late 2003 to resist the US invasion. Many of its factions later joined the PMU in its fight against Daesh and, in turn, got involved in the country’s political system.
The resistance has also warned that the US seeks to return Daesh terrorism to Iraq should its troops leave the country for a second time, and this assertion does not look far-fetched.
It was no coincidence that when the Iraqi resistance kicked out the US occupation in late 2011, the Arab Spring turned into a terrorist Autumn that saw the US creation of Daesh (by the admission of American officials themselves), and allowed the US military to slip back into Iraq through the backdoor.
The resistance has been waging drone and missile operations on US bases in Iraq and Syria in solidarity with Gaza and to end the Israeli regime’s partner in crime, the American occupation, without government coordination.
That does not make its military measures illegitimate as it has the legal authority to resist an occupying entity. The resistance cooperates with government officials in the field of security. Deep down, the government knows it won’t be sitting in Baghdad today without the sacrifices of the resistance.
In the vast number of battles against terrorism, it has handed over many terrorists to the relevant government authorities to face trial. A large proportion of terrorists in Iraqi jails today were captured by the resistance, so the country owes its security to the resistance.
It has also acted independently during its operations against the US occupation, which have surged under the banner of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, following the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza.
Nevertheless, the recent deadly US bombings in Iraq have violated all the rules of engagement and agreements with Baghdad and the so-called US-led military coalition could see the potential entry of the PMU in the fight against the American occupation, should it not depart after the current negotiations between Iraqi and US officials.
It won’t be surprising to see a suspension of attacks by the resistance against American bases in the lead-up to a US withdrawal from the country.
This is what happened in 2011 when Washington requested third parties to plead with the resistance for a two-month pause in attacks against US forces so that President Barack Obama could paint a picture back home that American troops are not leaving under fire.
The two leading factions of the Iraqi resistance today, Kataib Sayyed al-Shuhada (KSS) and Harakat al-Nujaba operate – like all other Iraqi resistance forces – independently of any third party, contrary to US claims that these factions receive support or orders from Iran.
The Secretary-General of KSS, Abu Ala’a al-Walai, fought the former Iraqi Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein, the first US occupation, and more recently Daesh terrorists and the second US occupation.
The senior Iraqi resistance official was imprisoned by Saddam’s West-backed regime for ten years and the US occupation for three years.
“We were grateful for Iran’s support toward the resistance in the past, in particular against Daesh terrorists. Today we have our own opinions and make our own decisions. These repeated questions that ‘we fight on behalf of Iran’ or ‘take orders from Iran’ have become irritating,” he said.
Iran has repeatedly stressed that these resistance movements in the region act on their own accord.
The reality is that the Iraqi resistance has gained significant experience on the battlefield and much of the credit for that goes to the late Haj Radwan (Imad Mughniyah), a senior commander with Lebanon’s Hezbollah who was assassinated by a joint Israeli-American operation in February 2008.
The experience of the Lebanese guerilla-style resistance that ended the Israeli army’s occupation of Lebanon in 2000 suited the Iraqi resistance in its operations against the US army’s first occupation of the country from 2003 until 2011.
Furthermore, in all the US airstrikes against the arms depots of the resistance, there were never any Iranian weapons, such as short-range missiles that have been hitting US bases recently, found in the caches.
The irony is that Washington itself is fully aware of this, but has repeatedly branded the Iraqi resistance as “Iranian-backed” – repeating this hollow rhetoric many times since October 7.
The Americans argue their presence in Iraq has seen a transition from a combat mission to an “advisory” role. But there is nothing “advisory” about bombing the country dozens of times and killing its soldiers.
That was evident by America’s deadly combat mission in the country.
As the Secretary-General of Harak al-Nujaba, Sheikh Akram al-Kaabi said “The end of the resistance operations depends on Gaza and the US withdrawal from Iraq.”
One of the stumbling blocks to the US withdrawal from Iraq is some Sunni and Israeli-backed Kurdish parties that have shown little desire for the end of the occupation.
This was evident during the parliament session that was held to discuss the occupation in the aftermath of the US assassination of al-Sa’adi.
Sunni and Kurdish members were notably not in attendance at the session, which passed a bill for the parliamentary defense and security committees to review the violations of the occupation.
It appears that some Kurdish parties are complicit in the destabilization of their own country by inviting the Israeli Mossad to operate from the northern regions they control.
But many factions of Iraqi society, including its people from all faiths and backgrounds, the majority of its parliament, presidency and government have publicly voiced their rejection of the US occupation and are calling for the swift withdrawal of its military.
The government meetings with the US can see this task accomplished. America pretty much knows its time in Iraq has come to an end unless it seeks a major escalation.
As Iraq approaches the 21st anniversary of the US invasion that left a lasting imprint on its security infrastructure, the journey towards self-sufficiency has been a challenging one for the country, with persistent obstacles hindering its ability to stand firmly on its own feet.
Behind all of these setbacks that Iraq has suffered is the US.
The challenges that have faced the country are multifaceted. The deadly American occupation from 2003 until 2011 was intertwined with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which saw terrorist attacks killing dozens, if not hundreds, of civilians on an almost daily basis.
Not a single market in Baghdad was spared. At one point, 24 terrorist bombings took place in one day.
This was followed by the brutal Daesh terrorism that marked another dark chapter in the country’s history and then came the second wave of a very sinister and trouble-making US occupation in 2014.
It all proves that consecutive governments were incapable of providing stability, the government of Haider al-Abadi’s agreement to allow the Americans back in 2014, was strongly opposed by the resistance and the government of al-Sudani is now regretting that decision.
Iraq stands at a crossroads, grappling with the legacies of the past while striving for a more secure and stable future. The journey ahead is undoubtedly challenging, but the strength of the resistance remains a beacon of hope.
The incumbent government has declared that the PMU and other Iraqi armed forces are capable of securing the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and acknowledges that a destabilizing US occupation, which violates Iraqi skies every day, is standing in the way.
Iraq needs resistance until it is capable of providing security to its people and sovereignty for the country. Baghdad needs to purchase anti-air defense systems that can secure its skies from intruding aircraft. It needs a stronger army to secure its borders.
The PMU is doing an effective job on the Syrian border despite being bombed by the US. But all of the borders need to be protected. This will help bring security to the country and the wider region.
Wesam Bahrani is an Iraqi journalist and commentator.
China demands US lift ‘illegal unilateral sanctions’
RT | February 17, 2024
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to remove sanctions on the country’s businesses when the two met on the sidelines of the 60th Munich Security Conference on Friday.
The meeting is the latest in a series of highest-level talks since US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in November of last year. Shortly after their summit, the US leader caused outrage in China when he stated that he stood by an earlier comment labeling his Chinese counterpart a “dictator” in response to a question by a journalist.
The two countries ended 2023 with an uneasy detente after a year that brought American panic over alleged Chinese spy balloons, and US tech sanctions that restricted China’s access to advanced chip-making tools and artificial intelligence processors. The two nations have also been locked in a growing military rivalry.
Wang said that pursuing the aim of “decoupling from China” will eventually backfire on the US, as cited by the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s press service. He called on Washington to lift the “illegal unilateral sanctions” against Chinese companies and individuals and not to undermine China’s legitimate right to develop.
Most of the recent sanctions against China were imposed in 2018, when the administration of then-President Donald Trump banned US agencies from using equipment and services from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, fearing that the company was facilitating espionage.
Tensions escalated further in October 2022, when the Biden administration announced new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, a step aimed at blocking Beijing’s access to critical technologies.
While speaking to his Chinese counterpart on Friday, Blinken raised concerns about China’s alleged support for Russia’s military industrial base. In 2022, the US imposed sanctions against several businesses in China for what Washington claims was aid provided to the Russian military amid the Ukraine conflict.
China has repeatedly denied US claims that it is considering arming Russia. Since the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, China has consistently called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Beijing has also stood up to Western pressure to join sanctions on Moscow, while instead boosting economic cooperation with Russia. Chinese customs data shows that trade turnover between the two countries has grown by 26.6% percent in the past year, reaching a record $240 billion.
Germany swims or sinks with NATO
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 17, 2024
There couldn’t be a better metaphor than what a Chinese analyst used to characterise NATO while commenting on its secretary general Jens Stoltenberg’s recent remark that the West does not seek war with Russia but should still “prepare ourselves for a confrontation that could last decades.”
The Chinese commentator compared Stoltenberg to a firm of undertakers, “a store owner of coffin and casket, which makes no money in peacetime. As an undertaker, NATO needs conflict, bloodshed for earnings. So it spreads fear and panic in order to ensure its member countries continue to contribute military funding.”
Stoltenberg’s remark appeared in an interview with German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag on Feb. 10, soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s famous interview with Tucker Carlson where the Kremlin signalled that Russia did not refuse and is not refusing negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Stoltenberg spoke for the Pentagon, no doubt.
Moscow, having reached an unassailable position in the war, is not interested in a full-scale war to realise its objectives, as eventually, the West will have to co-exist with Russia. Putin’s interview with Carlson was timed carefully — with hardly a fortnight left for the war to enter its third year.
Putin’s “message” that Russia is open to dialogue caught Washington off guard. For one thing, the bandwidth of the Biden Administration is dominated by the Israel-Palestine crisis. On the other hand, the two-year anniversary of the war is marked by a signal battlefield victory by Russian forces in the strategic eastern town of Avdiivka, a gateway to Donetsk city, and effectively on the front line ever since 2014 when the conflict in Donbass started.
All attempts by Russian troops to liquidate the big Ukrainian base in Avdiivka threatening Donetsk city had failed so far. Avdiivka is key to Russia’s aim of securing full control of the two eastern Donbass provinces — Donetsk and Luhansk. Its capture not only boosts the Russian morale but also consolidates Donetsk as a major Russian logistics hub for further westerly operations in the direction of the Dniepr river.
In political terms, it underscores that all along the almost 1000-km frontline, Russian forces are presently advancing. The Ukrainian military suffered a rout in Avdiivka.
Biden’s re-election bid will be bumpy if such distressing news keeps appearing from Ukraine highlighting the gravity of his foreign policy disaster, as NATO stares at another humiliating defeat after Afghanistan. Donald Trump is relentlessly challenging Biden on the issue of Russia-Ukraine and on NATO. Contrary to earlier prognosis, the US election has turned into one of the most influencing factors in the Ukraine conflict.
The path in the US Congress towards a military aid package for Ukraine is uncertain. The main obstacle all along was the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a majority. Apart from the Republican Speaker of the House being not in any hurry to table the bill passed by the Senate, the Congress is also about to shift back towards domestic fiscal policies, so that the foreign aid bill might simply fall down the list of priorities in the legislative agenda.
Meanwhile, the hearing in the Supreme Court on Trump’s candidacy signals that the talk that he might be debarred from running for the presidency is only wishful thinking. That means, if Trump maintains his lead in the South Carolina primaries on 24th February, the Republican race will be essentially over and he will be the party’s presumptive candidate. Trump has also widened his lead over Joe Biden in the polls.
The flow of finance to Ukraine is already ebbing and there is a pall of gloom among Ukraine’s cheerleaders in Europe after having discovered finally that Kiev is not winning the war. The West’s proxy war without a clearly set war goal means that there is no exit strategy, either.
A Trump victory would badly expose the European partners. Plugging the funding gap by Europe is going to be highly problematic. The US has so far committed €71.4 billion, more than half of it in the form of military aid. Number two is Germany with €21 billion, followed by the UK with €13.3 billion. Norway comes fourth. The paradox is, while the three largest European donors are all NATO members, it is only Germany who is a member of the European Union.
And Germany is not big enough to fill the gap left by the US on its own. But the biggest obstacle to a common European response is the lack of common ground between France and Germany. The special Franco-German relationship has largely become a historical artefact. The two EU giants are pursuing incompatible economic strategies — on fiscal policy and nuclear energy — and their economies are diverging, and so are their politics and defence strategies.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reoriented German defence co-operation away from France and towards the US. The power struggle between the EU’s two biggest powers that had its origins in the lack of chemistry between French president Emmanuel Macron and Scholz has turned into an antagonism manifesting as two different visions of the world.
Macron’s concept of “strategic autonomy”, which calls for Europe not to rely on outside powers in vital areas that could give them political leverage, is rubbing against Germany’s historical reliance on the American military umbrella (which France does not require.)
After a meeting with Biden at the White House in Washington on February 9, Scholz said, “Let’s not beat about the bush: support from the United States is indispensable if Ukraine is to be capable of defending itself.” Scholz strongly advocated stepping up military aid to Ukraine, emphasising an imperative need to send out a “very clear signal” to Putin.
As he put it, “We need to show that he (Putin) can’t count on our support waning.” Scholz added: “The support we provide will be on a big enough scale and it will last long enough.” By hyping up the war-like atmosphere, Germany seeks to maintain the relevance and financial stability of NATO through the conflict in Ukraine.
Biden responded to Scholz purring like a cat showing pleasure. Biden will next host Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk for a meeting in Washington on March 12. The US is re-energising its coalition with Germany and Poland for the next phase of Ukraine war. France stands outside looking in, while Britain lies in coma.
Simply put, while Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s delusion is that he can win this war, NATO’s delusion is that it will do whatever it takes. But the undertaker’s money is running out and further business depends on prolonging the war.
The veil has come off the western narrative — this war was never about Ukraine. The enemy image of Russia has become the cornerstone of NATO’s very existence and function.
Certainly, taking orders from an undertaker is not in Germany’s interests. The noted German editor Wolfgang Münchau wrote recently about “a general disorientation in Germany that accompanies the geopolitical and social change” manifesting in the faltering economy, the de-industrialisation that is happening and the absence of a post-industrial strategy for the country as such.
Clearly, European interests lie in shouldering their own defence and making peace with Russia so as to focus attention on the economy. Germans themselves are conflicted over this war. Scholz is not a man of charisma or of big ideas, Münchau noted, and the German public no longer trusts him. But then, there is also “the deeper problem: it is not really Scholz. It is that Germany has become a lot harder to run.”
Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic
Strategic Culture Foundation | February 16, 2024
The claims about Russian space-based nuclear weapons unraveled to become a joke. Fortunately, the death of Western-sponsored dissident Alexei Navalny then occurred to enable Western media to go into a frenzy of anti-Russia headlines.
First up was the scaremongering story about Russia allegedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon. Initially, it was dramatically trialed as posing a serious national security threat to the United States. Despite the sensational reporting, the story quickly became a laughingstock. Even some U.S. lawmakers dismissed it as “bullshit” and a blatant attempt by the Biden White House and intelligence agencies to push Congress into passing a new mega military aid bill for Ukraine worth $61 billion.
We’ll get to the Navalny story in a moment. But let’s just first parse the orchestration of the alleged Russian space nukes.
The drama began on Wednesday when Mike Turner, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (a dodgy source if ever there was one), made public appeals to President Joe Biden to declassify intelligence on “a serious threat to national security”. Turner is a Republican member of the House of Representatives but he is a close ally of the Democrat White House in terms of keenly supporting military aid to Ukraine. The latest bill passed the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate the day before, February 13, but it is unlikely to be approved by the House where many Republican lawmakers are staunchly opposed to it.
Accompanying the “concerns” of the intel committee chairman Turner, media outlets then vented anonymous US intelligence sources “revealing” that the national security threat was from Russian nuclear weapons allegedly under development for destroying American communication satellites in space. The White House then “confirmed” the intel the next day, February 15. It was a flagrant put-up job. But the Biden administration sought to tamp down any public panic by saying that the threat was not imminent and the alleged Russian satellite-killing weapon had not been deployed in orbit, nor would there be any danger to Earth. (So, what was all the fuss about?)
Ironically, derisive comments from incredulous U.S. lawmakers were also echoed by the Kremlin. The latter’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov made a similar assessment that the Biden administration was playing tricks to push through the military funding package for Ukraine.
That bill has been delayed since the end of last year. The Biden administration has been cajoling Congress for months to vote it through. After the Senate finally passed the bill this week, President Biden put pressure on the House, saying that “history is watching you”. The bill has been exalted as having existential importance in defeating “Russian aggression” in Ukraine. The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.
The American public, as with the European public, has become increasingly skeptical about the relentless funneling of taxpayer funds and weapons to Ukraine. Many citizens in the West – a majority, according to polls – have become critical of fueling a bloody war for the dubious cause of “defending democracy” in a regime dominated by NeoNazis. At a time of deep social and economic hardship in the U.S. and Europe, the Western public is rightly disdainful of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros being wasted on death and destruction and also being siphoned off by a corrupt cabal in Kiev.
The $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine is just the latest tranche that Washington is seeking to throw at the black hole of its proxy war against Russia – a war that is really all about defeating Russia as a geopolitical obstacle to U.S. hegemony. Another driver is the massive profits that taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex at the rotten heart of Western capitalism.
There’s a huge lot at stake with the failure of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine. The Kiev regime is facing a collapse in the face of a superior Russian military.
That’s why the passing of the latest bill by Congress has taken on such an imperative importance – for the warmongers.
To get this bill into law, the U.S. deep state rulers and the pliant Biden White House along with the media-intelligence establishment sought to demonize Russia with a desperate story about alleged nuclear weapons for outer space. Oh, those dastardly Ruskies!
But as noted above the space nukes scar-story turned into farce. It was too obvious that the public was being manipulated, or gaslighted as one US lawmaker put it. When a psyops fails, the blowback is dangerous for the authors because of the damaging revelation and contempt it engenders. The Biden administration was open to ridicule.
There are several telltale signs that the story was total hogwash from the outset. Bruce Gagnon, U.S.-based coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, said the claims are absurd. In an email exchange with the Strategic Culture Foundation for this editorial, Gagnon said Russia has already developed formidable non-nuclear kinetic weapons to destroy satellites if it wanted to. He also remarked that the United States possesses anti-satellite weapons (ASATs).
In other words, there is no need for Russia to develop a risky nuclear weapon to knock out satellites. The nuclear details flagged up in US media this week are a gratuitous embellishment designed to alarm the public and to demonize Russia as an evil rogue state.
Russia is a co-signatory to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty as are the United States, China, and over 120 other nations.
Bruce Gagnon commented: “I believe the Russians have a long history of generally honoring treaties while the U.S. does not. And remember that Russia and China every year for at least the last 20-30 years go to the UN and introduce a new treaty called Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) to ban all weapons that fall outside of the 1967 treaty. The U.S. always refuses, saying there is no need for a new treaty.”
Apart from the paramount issue of getting additional funding for the proxy war in Ukraine, another timing issue is the aftermath of the blockbuster interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin by American journalist Tucker Carlson. Since the interview was aired last Thursday, February 8, it has broken all records for public audiences around the world. It has garnered over 300 million views, and counting.
The one-on-one interview was seen as a breakthrough world exclusive, an informative platform for Putin to comprehensively give Russia’s point of view on the whole Ukraine conflict, and more. The Russian leader was seen by American and European audiences as reasonable, intelligent, articulate, and convincing. The Western propaganda caricature of Putin was dispelled and for a rare moment, the Western public was persuasively informed of the bigger causes of the conflict in Ukraine. That is, how the U.S.-led NATO axis had instigated the war by fomenting an anti-Russian regime dominated by NeoNazis. The impact of the interview dealt a devastating blow to the Western narrative of “Russian aggression” and “evil Putin”.
Plausibly, the U.S. warmongering establishment was incensed by this exposé.
Hence, to wrest back control of the narrative and corral the Western public, the space-based nukes scare-story was unleashed. Unfortunately, that psyop attempt failed to gain traction and indeed was fast descending into a farce.
Next up, luckily, came the news of Navalny’s death. Western media immediately blared headlines and comments that he had been killed by the “Putin regime”.
Navalny was serving 19 years in prison on multiple corruption convictions. He died Friday apparently from a blood clot. The 47-year-old was a broken and forgotten figure facing a futile existence, having been used and abandoned by Western intelligence handlers as a cut-out dissident figure. His future looked bleak. Who knows at this stage what caused his death? He was last seen by his lawyer during a prison meeting this week two days before his passing. Did his lawyer pass something to Navalny? Was the washed-up Western asset offered a deal for his family’s benefit if he agreed to one last, ultimate psyop on behalf of Western handlers? Taking his own life? His death in prison has certainly provided the Western media with a bonanza opportunity to change the narrative and precipitate an avalanche of Russophobia, just as required.
As for the far-fetched Russian space nukes and the death of Navalny, the criminologist’s question of Who Gains? and the factor of timing are often reliable indicators.
France: ANY Criticism Of The mRNA DEATHVAX™ Platform Punishable Up To 3 Years Imprisonment And 45,000 Euros
2nd Smartest Guy in the World | February 15, 2024
The WEF-captured government of France has pushed through a draconian new law entitled Article 4. This Orwellian and unconstitutional color of law power grab is a purposely poor attempt at obscuring the irrefutable slow kill bioweapon death and destruction data.
What makes Article 4 particularly incendiary is that the majority of the French population has been outright refusing all “vaccinations.” Throttling their free speech as it pertains to gene modifying poisons will only increase the already heightened tensions between the criminal Macron administration and the awakening French populace, by design.
Between WEF puppet Trudeau in Canada and WEF puppet Macron in France, there is now a race to create the most totalitarian technocommunist nation in the West, with France now taking a slight lead; to wit:
These policies and “laws” are nothing more than an extension of the ongoing democide, and the associated iatrocide.
Meanwhile, back in the USSA, the Center for Disease Crimes (CDC) is still at it with their “Trust the Science” mendacity and murder:
Readers of this Substack fully appreciate the myocarditis and turbo cancer epidemics currently underway — not to mention soaring excess non-PSYOP-19 mortality — since the rollout of the “vaccines:”
Removing all BigPharma legal liabilities and prosecuting the various “health” agencies like the FDA, CDC, NIH, et al. has never been more urgent.
France’s Article 4 is just a hint at what is to come, especially if the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty scam ever passes in the various nations that they are attempting to further hijack.
They want you dead.
Do NOT comply.
The Great Reset Didn’t Work: The Case of EVs
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | February 15, 2024
We are living through one of history’s longest and most excruciating versions of “We told you so.” When in March 2020, the world’s government decided to “shut down” the world’s economies and throttle any and all social activity, and deny kids schooling plus cancel worship services and holidays, there was no end to the warnings of the terrible collateral damage, even if most of them were censored.
Every bit of the warnings proved true. You see it in every story in the news. It’s behind every headline. It’s in countless family tragedies. It’s in the loss of trust. It’s in the upheaval in industry and demographics. The fingerprints of lockdowns are deeply embedded in every aspect of our lives, in ways obvious and not so much.
Actually, the results have been even worse than critics predicted, simply because the chaos lasted such a long time. There are seemingly endless iterations of this theme. Learning losses, infrastructure breakages, rampant criminality, vast debt, inflation, lost work ethic, a growing commercial real estate bust, real income losses, political extremism, labor shortages, substance addiction, and more much besides, all trace to the fateful decision.
The headlines on seemingly unrelated matters go back to the same, in circuitous ways. A good example is the news of the electric vehicle bust. The confusion, disorientation, malinvestment, overproduction, and retrenchment – along with the crazed ambition to force convert a country and world away from oil and gas toward wind and solar – all trace to those fateful days.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “As recently as a year ago, automakers were struggling to meet the hot demand for electric vehicles. In a span of months, though, the dynamic flipped, leaving them hitting the brakes on what for many had been an all-out push toward an electric transformation.”
Reading the story, it’s clear that the reporter is downplaying the sheer scale of the boom-bust.
That’s not to say that Tesla itself is going bust, only that it has a defined market segment. The technology of EVs simply cannot and will not become the major way Americans drive. It might have seemed otherwise for a moment in time but that was due to factors that traced exactly to pent up demand caused by lockdowns and huge errors in supply management due to bad signaling.
Looking back, the lockdowns hit in the spring of 2020 and supply chains were entirely frozen by force. This might have been a major problem for car manufacturers that had long relied on just-in-time inventory strategies. However, at the very time, the demand for travel collapsed. Commutes came to an end, and vacations too. At that same time, pre-arranged government subsidies and mandates for EVs flooded the industry, all of which were later ramped up by the Biden administration.
As demand picked up, retailers sold their old inventory of cars and looked to manufacturers for more but the chips needed to complete the cars were not available. Many cars were put on hold and lots emptied out. This continued through the following year as used car prices soared and stock was otherwise depleted.
By the time matters became desperate in the fall of 2021, manufacturers discerned a heightened demand for EVs and began to retool their factories for more. There was even a time when cars were being shipped without power steering, just to meet the demand.
It might have seemed for a time like the crazed period we just lived through was birthing a completely different way of life. A kind of irrationality, born of shock and awe, swept industry and culture. The EV was central to it.
This demand seemed to pan out in 2022 as Americans grabbed whatever cars were available, perhaps willing to give the new doohickies a shot. So on it went as more carmakers threw more resources at production, benefitting from massive subsidies and staying in compliance with new mandates for reducing their carbon footprint.
There was no particular reason to think anything would go wrong. But then the next year began to reveal uncomfortable truths. Cold weather dramatically cuts the range of the EVs. Charging stations are not as readily available on longer trips, charging takes longer than one expects, and having to plan such matters adds time. In addition, the repair bills can be extremely high if you can find someone to do it.
Tesla as a manufacturer had planned out all such contingencies but other carmakers less so. Very quickly the EVs gained a bad reputation on a number of different fronts.
“Last summer, dealers began warning of unsold electric vehicles clogging their lots. Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and others shifted from frenetic spending on EVs to delaying or downsizing some projects,” writes the Journal. “Dealers who had been begging automakers to ship more EVs faster are now turning them down.”
In short, “the massive miscalculation has left the industry in a bind, facing a potential glut of EVs and half-empty factories while still having to meet stricter environmental regulations globally.”
Today, lots are selling the cars at a loss just to avoid the costs of keeping them around.
Truly, this has been one spectacular boom-bust in a single industry. There seems to be no real end to the bust either. These days it appears that everyone has given up on any chance of actually converting the mass of American cars to become EVs. All recent trends are headed in the other direction.
Meanwhile, the EV is deeply loved by many as 1) a second car, 2) for well-to-do suburban commuters, 3) who own homes, 4) can charge overnight, and 5) have a gas car as a backup for cold weather and out-of-town trips. That is to say, the market is becoming exactly what it should be – a street-worthy golf cart with very fancy features – and not some paradigmatic case for the “great reset.” That’s simply not happening, despite all the subsidies and tax breaks.
“A confluence of factors had led many auto executives to see the potential for a dramatic societal shift to electric cars,” writes the Journal, including “government regulations, corporate climate goals, the rise of Chinese EV makers, and Tesla’s stock valuation, which, at roughly $600 billion, still towers over the legacy car companies. But the push overlooked an important constituency: the consumer.”
Indeed, the American economy, much to the chagrin of many, still primarily relies on consumers to make choices in their best interest. When that doesn’t happen, no amount of subsidies can make up the difference.
This story is impossible to understand without reference to the crazed illusions caused by lockdowns. Those are what provided the respite of time to allow automakers to retool. Then they boosted demand artificially for transportation after a long period in which inventory had been depleted.
Then the whole ridiculous ethos of the “great reset” convinced idiotic corporate executives that nothing would ever be the same. Maybe we would get 15-minute cities powered by sunbeams and breezes after all, along with a social-credit system that would allow the authorities to decommission our ability to drive in an instant.
It turns out that the entire bit, including the fake prosperity of the lockdown economy, made possible by money printing and grotesque levels of government spending, was unsustainable. Even sophisticated car companies bought into the nonsense. Now they are paying a very heavy price. The new market depended on a panic of buying that turned out to be temporary.
In short, the illusions of these horrible policies have come crashing down. It was born of liberty-wrecking policies under the cover of virus control. Every special interest seized the day, including a new generation of industrialists seeking to displace the old ones by force.
More and more, it’s obvious what a disaster this was. And yet no one has apologized. Hardly anyone has admitted error. The big shots who wrecked the world are still in power.
The rest of us are left holding the bag, and paying very high repair bills for cars that are non-optimal for driving from one town to another and back again in the cold weather that was supposed to be gone by now had the “climate change” prophets been correct. They turn out to be as correct as those who promised us that we would no longer need “fossil fuels” and that the magic inoculation would protect everyone from a killer virus.
What astonishing illusions were born of this nutty and destructive period. At some point, not even corporate CEOs will be tricked by the experts.
Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute.
US-UK attacks in Yemen ‘illegal’ – Russian security chief
RT | February 16, 2024
The US-led strikes against targets in Yemen are illegitimate and have no justification under the UN Charter, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Friday at a meeting of security officials from regional powers.
The US and UK, with support from allies, have launched dozens of attacks since January against the Houthis, a Yemeni armed movement. The stated intention was to protect maritime traffic from the militants, who have targeted trade vessels with raids and drone strikes in an attempt to put pressure on Israel.
”Washington and London have unleashed a war with Yemen under the pretext of securing freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. They are trying to drag other nations of the region into it,” Patrushev said. “However, their strikes on the positions of the Houthis are absolutely illegitimate and have nothing to do with the right of self-defense… contrary to what Washington claims.”
The Houthis were a major party in the civil war in Yemen and the primary opponents of the Saudi-led military intervention launched in 2015. They have emerged from the conflicts as the de-facto government of a large portion of the country.
Houthi forces have been targeting passing ships they believe to have ties with Israel in an attempt to enforce a naval blockade of the Jewish state – in retaliation for Israel’s siege of Gaza, which West Jerusalem has conducted with the stated goal of obliterating the Palestinian militant movement Hamas.
Tensions are on the rise globally, Patrushev said, claiming that the core reason for the violence is “the Western intention to hold on to its dominance in world affairs at all cost.”
“People in Washington are convinced that doing so would be easiest amid a global chaos,” he added.
Patrushev delivered the report to his counterparts from China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. The event’s main focus was on the situation in Afghanistan.
Why Israel’s war on UNRWA is so sinister
By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | February 16, 2024
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing the gravest existential crisis in its 74-year history, as funding cuts by several western countries come on top of ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
The UN agency is unique in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas, and the only relief organization that operates a full-fledged educational system. UNRWA is also the only organization mandated to work in Gaza and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starved in the besieged enclave.
To compound these challenges, the occupation wants to see it dismantled.
UNRWA must be destroyed
In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian members of UNRWA’s staff participated in the resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, leading the US and 18 other nations to swiftly suspend funding for the organization.
The suspensions were met with shock, as UNRWA plays a key role in providing food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive Israel’s siege and bombardment of the coastal enclave.
However, Israel’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA. It believes that UNRWA “works against Israel’s interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the idea of armed struggle against occupation.
The foreign ministry plan leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:
First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; second, reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers; and third, transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity.
Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly, given that the US government sees UNRWA as crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The foreign ministry is seeking to gradually build the case for ousting the organization as part of the discussions on “the day after” the war – should Hamas be dismantled.
A sequence of events
According to a report by The New York Times, the “sequence of events” that led the US to suspend UNRWA funding began on 18 January when Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA in Tel Aviv.
Weissbrod showed Lazzarini a dossier from Israeli intelligence claiming that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the 7 October attacks.
After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the validity of the claims. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began firing the employees, a UN official said.
The Guardian reported that Lazzarini was later asked in a press conference if he had looked into whether there was any evidence for the allegations presented to him by Weissbrod.
“No,” Lazzarini replied, “the investigation is going on now.”
Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” due to “the explosive nature of the claims,” rather than any evidence.
Lazzarini said he did not even read the dossier himself because it was in Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “was reading this and translating for me,” he said.
How did the US know?
The same New York Times report notes that UNRWA informed US officials about the allegations on 24 January. Just two days later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the suspension of funding to UNRWA.
Shockingly, the State Department made the announcement amid reports that Gaza was on the brink of famine, and despite acknowledging that “UNRWA plays a critical role in providing lifesaving assistance to Palestinians, including essential food, medicine, shelter.”
Like Lazzarini, Blinken made the decision without seeking any evidence from Israel, but solely based on the supposedly serious nature of the allegations alone. Blinken justified his decision to suspend aid to starving Palestinians by saying, “We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible.”
In a seemingly coordinated effort, other countries – including Germany, Britain, and Australia – swiftly followed suit. Even Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged suspending aid without first receiving any evidence from Israel or even asking Lazzarini to share any evidence he might have.
The funding crisis escalated to such an extent that Juliette Touma, the UNRWA director of communications, said that after “decades of working together,” in “just over 24 hours, nine of our donors suspended funding to UNRWA.”
Another dodgy dossier
As criticism of the aid suspensions mounted, Israeli foreign ministry officials released a dossier to several foreign news organizations.
But after seeing the dossier, both the Financial Times and the UK’s Channel 4 reported that it provided “no evidence” for the claims.
Former UNRWA head Chris Gunness compared it to the “dodgy dossier” used by Tony Blair to take Britain to war in Iraq.
“There is no actual evidence. There are accusations,” Gunness concluded.
Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, tried to justify its refusal to provide any actual evidence by claiming, “the very nature of the allegations makes it impossible for Israel to share all the evidence it has with UNRWA.”
“They think that we can give them intelligence information, knowing that some of their employees work for Hamas? Are you serious?” he asked.
But Israeli propagandist and spokesperson Eylon Levy declined to say if Israel had provided evidence even to the US and UK governments. “I’m not personally aware of what material may have been passed on between our intelligence agencies,” he stated to Channel 4 when pressed for proof of the claims.
Links to Hamas?
The Israeli foreign ministry continued to implement the three-step leaked plan to destroy UNRWA by making additional allegations of UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas.
On 29 January, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported claims based on Israeli intelligence that “1,200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000 employees in Gaza has links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close relatives who belong to the Islamist militant groups.”
The article also provided no evidence, citing only Israeli intelligence, and was co-written by Carrie Keller-Lynn, an American who volunteered for the Israeli military and has a personal relationship with an Israeli army spokesperson.
Even if true, the allegations are meaningless. Hamas is the governing party in Gaza, making it self-evident that many UNRWA employees would be sympathetic or have family ties to the resistance movement.
Similarly, it would be unsurprising if an employee of an Israeli NGO or aid group was sympathetic to the Israeli army or had family members in the ruling Likud party.
As Haaretz noted, UNRWA employees in the West Bank and other countries where the organization operates are usually more aligned with whatever Palestinian faction is dominant in that area.
‘We could not verify this’
The Israeli foreign ministry’s plan to paint UNRWA as linked to Hamas soon continued with new and bizarre allegations that Hamas had placed a massive data center directly underneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.
The Times of Israel claimed that the data center was “built precisely under the location where Israel would not consider looking initially, let alone target in an airstrike.”
But Israel has been bombing UNRWA schools and other UN facilities for decades, including when large numbers of civilians have been sheltering in them. No Hamas leader would imagine this would provide it any protection.
But as OSINT analyst Michael Kobs has shown, the alleged data center the Israeli army showed to foreign journalists was not under the UNRWA headquarters.
Kobs also notes that when Tageschau journalist Sophie van der Tann was taken through a tunnel to see the alleged data center, she stated, “We could not verify” it was under the UNRWA headquarters.
Erasing the right of return
But why is Israel determined to destroy UNRWA?
One reason is Israel’s ongoing effort to slowly starve Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
At the beginning of the war on 7 October, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant notoriously ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, saying, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” The late January campaign to suspend UNRWA funding then came at a time when “famine” was already “around the corner” in Gaza, according to UN Emergency Relief Chief Martin Griffiths. Israeli officials knew that suspending funding for UNRWA at this time would only bring famine closer. One Israeli military official acknowledged to the WSJ on 13 February that “Without UNRWA, there is no humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
But there is another reason Israel wants to destroy UNRWA, which predates the current war.
Palestinian political analyst and researcher Hanin Abou Salem explained that Israel wants to dismantle UNRWA because it transmits refugee status from generation to generation, which keeps the right of return for Palestinian refugees alive and “ensures that their hopes for returning to their ancestral homeland do not perish with the death of the original 1948 refugees.”
If UNRWA is dismantled and replaced by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), as Israel hopes, this will guarantee that Palestinians can only be resettled in third countries and never return to the homes and lands from which Israel forcibly expelled their grandparents during the Nakba.
In 2017, Israel launched a propaganda campaign against UNRWA and succeeded in convincing the Trump administration to cut around $300 million in funding to the organization the following year, only for the Biden administration to restore $235 million in 2021.
Destroying an idea
But with the start of the war on 7 October, Israel feels it has a second chance, not only to destroy the right of return, but also the “idea” of armed struggle to achieve it.
Noga Arbell, a researcher at the right-wing Kohelet Forum, recently explained that UNRWA needs to be “annihilated” because it is the “source of the idea.”
“It gives birth to more and more terrorists in all kinds of ways. UNRWA needs to be wiped out immediately – now – or Israel will miss the window of opportunity.”
UNRWA allegedly ‘gives birth to terrorists’ through its 706 schools, where some 543,075 Palestine refugee children receive free basic education.
In Gaza, UNRWA uses Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks and supplements these with its own materials. Israel has long been irked that these textbooks include lessons on the life of one of the most famous symbols of Palestinian armed resistance, an 18-year-old young woman and Palestinian refugee born in Lebanon, Dalal al-Mughrabi.
In 1978, Mughrabi led a group of Palestinian guerrillas from PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party to carry out an operation in Israel.
According to the Israeli version of events, Mughrabi “led one of the deadliest suicide attacks in Israel’s history,” by hijacking a bus and taking its passengers hostage on the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. During the operation, the bus exploded, and “38 Israelis were murdered, including 13 children.”
Israel claims that UNRWA is, therefore, teaching “mass murder” by using PA books that encourage everyone to be like Mughrabi.
However, Palestinians claim that Israeli forces killed the hostages.
You can kill a revolutionary, but not the revolution
According to a 2008 report in the Guardian, Mughrabi and the Palestinian guerillas intended to attack the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and hijacked two buses carrying civilians on the coastal road near Haifa. Along the way, they engaged in an intense 15-hour gun battle with Israeli forces.
Palestinians maintain the bus exploded, killing the guerillas and hostages, after it was fired on from the air by Israeli helicopters or elite Israel commandos, in a possible early instance of the mass Hannibal Directive.
Israeli forces implemented the Hannibal Directive on 7 October, killing large numbers of their own civilians – and burning many of them alive – using attack helicopters, tanks, and drones, while blaming all these deaths on Hamas.
Even if Israel succeeds in executing its plan to destroy UNRWA, while starving and bombing tens of thousands to death in Gaza, it will not be able to erase the spirit of Dalal al-Mughrabi and the thousands of martyrs like her who have sacrificed themselves for the freedom of Palestinians.
Within 24 hours of the unsubstantiated accusations against UNRWA, the US, the UK, and 14 other nations suspended funding to the organization the Wall Street Journal described as the “main pillar of operations to move food aid, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza.”
The abruptness of these cuts was particularly jolting in light of the looming threat of famine, as highlighted by Griffiths, who warned that Gaza was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
These drastic measures were instigated by allegations based on a dubious six-page dossier, arguably part of a meticulously crafted plan orchestrated by Israel’s foreign ministry, aimed at dismantling the humanitarian and educational infrastructure serving internally displaced Palestinians.
This concerted effort to undermine UNRWA is nothing short of a calculated strategy to exert control over the narrative surrounding Palestinian refugees and to once again reshape the demographics in Palestine.
American Foreign Policy Seems to Have Nowhere to Go
Just like the caged-up Palestinians
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 15, 2024
Over the past four months I have carried out my daily morning scan of the major online news websites increasingly concerned over what I would be seeing given the mainstream media’s reluctance to report honestly and the persistent management by government propaganda mills of what is leaked to the journalists. News regarding what is taking place with Russia-Ukraine suffered initially as the war turned sharply in Moscow’s favor late last year, so much so that the likely outcome is only being challenged on neocon dominated sites like American Enterprise Institute, Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the National Review. President Joe Biden and team are now only struggling to raise $61 billion for Volodymyr Zelensky to prolong the conflict through the US election later this year so Biden can appear to be a strong “wartime” president fighting hard to defend the United States from the threatening Red Hordes. That the money will essentially drop down the hole of Ukrainian corruption seems to bother no one in the White House, but the game goes on with Biden saying “This bipartisan bill sends a clear message to Ukrainians and to our partners and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom. We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone, and certainly not to Vladimir Putin. So, let’s get on with this… Are [we] going to side with terror and tyranny? Are [we] going to stand with Ukraine, or are [we] going to stand with Putin? Will we stand with America or – or with Trump?” The president is also currently pumping the line that he is somehow saving or protecting “democracy.” The fact that Ukraine, banning political parties and even religious groups and the Russian language, is no democracy does not seem to impact on the narrative. And don’t forget how the Zelensky government recently murdered American journalist Gonzalo Lira for his exercising freedom of the press!
Biden argues that standing by America’s “allies,” even when they are not actual allies, is essential to maintain confidence in the United States and its leadership mission to create a “rules based international order” and thereby save the world. Beyond Ukraine, there is, of course, America’s “best friend” and “greatest ally” Israel which also is no democracy as Palestinian citizens have limited rights, with those living on the Israeli army occupied West Bank having effectively no protection from being arrested arbitrarily or even shot on sight by rampaging soldiers and settlers, who fear no consequences for killing and robbing Arabs because there are no consequences. The bombing of Gaza into the stone age continues with hardly any coverage in the mainstream media as if it is an atrocity that will disappear from the collective conscience if no one refers to it in spite of the rows of dead women and children. The US and European media meanwhile blithely report every new “Hamas atrocity” promoted by the habitually lying Israeli Army (IDF) as if it were the truth while Biden is pulling out the stops to provide the cash ($14 billion) and weapons to enable the IDF to kill more Palestinians while at the same time mock-mourning the slaughter of the innocents that is taking place. The ghastly death toll is a direct result of Joe’s lack of any action to force the Israelis to change course, which he has the leverage to do with a phone call to Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to cut off the cash, arms and political support. But the administration has made plain that it has no intention to do anything like that.
But even given all of that excitement last week there is one story that stands out, the video of former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo in Israel grinning and dancing with celebrating Israeli soldiers, who presumably have just returned from Gaza after having had the pleasure of blasting a few more score of civilians, including a large percentage of children. The Israeli Army’s latest stunt is to position snipers and tanks around the last functioning major medical facility in Rafah district in the south of Gaza, the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The Palestinians trying to survive in Gaza were previously ordered by Israel to go to Rafah where they would be “safe” but it was a self-serving lie and the military then proceeded to bomb and shoot civilians, even when they were trying to surrender, and also destroying infrastructure like hospitals and schools to make the area uninhabitable. The army snipers have now joined in the fun by shooting Gaza’s doctors and patients inside the building and on the grounds to force Nasser Hospital to evacuate and shut down. They followed up on the shooting gallery by storming the hospital, allegedly in search of “hostages.” It is all part of what is developing as Netanyahu has announced that the ground invasion of Rafah will soon begin even though the encaged Palestinians, who are already starving due to the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid, have nowhere to go and many more thousands will die one way or another.
As a taste of what is to come that is even more bizarre than what has already transpired, Israel’s “most moral army in the world” has now also gone into the entertainment business. It has begun to invite groups of Israeli civilians into detention centers and prisons that have been holding West Bank Palestinian prisoners as well as detainees from the Gaza Strip. The civilians are able to observe the detainees, stripped to their underwear, and laugh and jeer as the men are being beaten, humiliated and tortured, with many of the viewers also allowed to film what is happening on their own cell phones to share with their friends and families. Mike Pompeo, who is a Christian Zionist of dispensationalist persuasion, believes that the former Palestine belongs to the Israelis because it says so in the Bible, which he has carefully “studied.” He also, while Trump’s Secretary of State, declared that the US no longer regards the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank as “illegal” and he similarly approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights as perfectly acceptable under international law, which it is not. Wonder what Mike as a self-identified pious Christian thinks about all those dead and mutilated Palestinian babies if he ever chooses to think about it at all?
Also in the running for god-awful narrative of the week was a piece claiming that the successful first step by way of a majority vote in the House of Representatives to bring about the richly deserved impeachment of Department of Homeland Security’s ghastly Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday was the result of an “antisemitic conspiracy theory” because he is a “Sephardic Jew,” not due to his own incompetence which he has been demonstrating regularly for the past three years. The deep hole of depression that I crawled into as I watched the fat twerp Pompeo cavorting while the midget Mayorkas touted his Jewish credentials drove me to rethink the whole issue of US foreign and national security policy. I came to the conclusion that the players are caricatures and it should not be taken seriously and should instead be regarded as a comedy routine, something like Monty Python but terribly lethal and without the intelligence and wit of John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman.
To be sure the Biden administration can always be counted upon to produce a laugh, particularly when it brings on the clowns named Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, Karine Jean-Pierre and Jake Sullivan. There has been a lot of funny stuff lately, most particularly the chatter about a solution to the Palestinian genocide, even though Biden seems quite comfortable to let the Israelis finish their ethnic cleansing of Gaza before anyone looks for a place willing acquire two million more stateless and homeless Palestinians. Former presidential aspirant and totally owned Zionist stooge Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has already declared that no Palestinians should be allowed into the US as refugees as they are “antisemites.”
Nevertheless, Biden and Blinken’s State Department want to come up with some kind of formula, if only because the worldwide blowback due to the White House’s unflinching support for Israeli brutality has begun to have consequences as it constitutes complicity in crimes against humanity. Some kind of limited sovereignty, disarmed for sure, allowed to Palestine is envisioned but Netanyahu and his political allies, long opposed to a two-state solution, have recently repeatedly rejected proposals for any Palestinian sovereign entity. Israel is even now using its formidable lobby and international press/narrative control to work assiduously against any diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state by individual countries or as a full member at the UN. Not surprisingly, the greatest effort to keep things on track is being directed against voices raised in support of Palestine in the United States. Biden is listening to be sure and is having both Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan carefully coordinate every step the administration takes with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs and former ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer. Even though Israel and Netanyahu definitely hold the whip hand, the president is nevertheless inevitably looking over his shoulder and is fearful of alienation of voters with the national election coming up if the carnage in Gaza continues. Not for the first time the endless farce of US internal politics will likely at least somewhat influence what eventually takes place in countries six thousand miles away. And given Biden’s propensity to avoid doing the right thing, one can be pretty sure that the result won’t be pretty!
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
A Lesser “Grade” of Human
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | January 3, 2024
Will the more than 100 Iranians killed by terrorist bombs today be mourned in the West as victims of terrorism? Certainly not. Allied doctrine has it that the killing of Israeli or American civilians is a crime of cosmic proportions, while shedding the blood of “enemy” women and children is perfectly acceptable; indeed commendable.
The West does not memorialize the hundreds of thousands of civilians bombed by the U.S. in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and every major German city 1943-1945. America’s fire-bombing of the city of Tokyo by General Curtis LeMay in March 1945 was followed by Harry Truman’s atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year. Truman never had a moment of doubt or regret over the murder of more than a 100,000 Asian children, mothers and non-combatant boys and men. It was business as usual for the “noble” Allies during the “Good War.”
In the West human rights signifies passionate concern only for civilians designated as truly human: Israelis first, then Americans and British, followed by their satraps.
This inhumanity is the legacy of Talmudic ideology, beginning with tractate Sanhedrin 57a from 400 A.D., concerning liability for capital punishment: “If a Jew murders a gentile, he is exempt.”
This teaching of contempt was reiterated in the dogma of Chabad Lubavitch founder Rabbi Shneur Zalman in the 18th century. … continue
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