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Israel to tighten grip on Arab schools, ease restrictions on firing Arab teachers

MEMO June 1, 2023

The Israeli Knesset advanced two bills yesterday that stipulate increasing the security grip over Arab schools in Israel and easing restrictions on firing Arab teachers, local media reported.

According to Haaretz, if approved, the bills would see the Israeli authorities upping the Israeli secret service’s background checks on staff and making it easier to fire teachers who affiliate with or support anti-occupation Palestinian groups.

The bills refer to the anti-occupation groups as “terror organisations” and stipulate punishments for supporting them.

Critics of the bills say they pose serious threats to freedom of expression and would undermine the right of teachers to condemn the aggression of the Israeli occupation.

One of the bills proposes the reinstatement of a permanent Shin Bet representative to the education ministry – a position which was cancelled in 2005.

In a previous report, Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that Shin Bet has a say regarding the recruitment of new Arab teachers.

The Cradle

… The bill was submitted by Ami Halevy, a Likud lawmaker, in order to establish licensing of Palestinian schools dependent on their “accommodating the fundamental requirements of the Israeli school system.”

This announcement came a day after the Israel Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, told Knesset members that the supreme court must feature judges who “understand” why Jewish settlers are “not prepared” to live alongside Arabs, which ultimately underlines the cabinet members’ pro-apartheid rhetoric. … Full article

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces shoot Palestinian toddler in the head

MEMO | June 2, 2023

A two-year-old Palestinian toddler has been severely wounded after being shot in the head by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank yesterday.

According to the Wafa news agency, the toddler was shot in the head while sitting in a car with his 40-year-old father in front of their home.

The toddler was flown to Israel’s Sheba hospital by helicopter and is currently in a critical condition, while his father, who was shot in the arm, was driven to a hospital in Ramallah.

Local Palestinian activist, Bilal Tamimi, told Wafa that the toddler was shot in the head as a result of a raid imposed by Israeli occupation forces on the village.

The army said it was opening an investigation into the shooting, saying it “regrets harm to noncombatants” and that it does “everything in its power to prevent such incidents.”

Meanwhile, Naji Tamimi, the head of the Nabi Saleh Village Council, said Israeli soldiers locked the iron gate at the village entrance and proceeded to invade several neighbourhoods and fire live rounds at protesters.

Tension has been escalating across the occupied West Bank for months, amid Israeli raids on Palestinian towns.

More than 155 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces this year, including 26 children, according to Palestinian figures. Last year was deemed the deadliest for the occupied West Bank since 2015, but this year’s death toll has already exceeded the number of those killed in 2022.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Zionist Circles: Threats against Iran Disregard Mistaken US Withdrawal from Nuclear Deal

Al-Manar – June 2, 2023

The Zionist circles commented on the threats issued by some Israeli officials against Iran, stressing that they disregard the mistaken withdrawal of Trump’s administration from the deal.

It is worth noting that the Israeli threats came in light of the reports that indicate the rapid progress of the Iranian nuclear program and Washington’s endeavor to conclude a new deal with Tehran.

Israeli Channel 12 correspondent Nir Devori considered that intensifying threats is caused by the US tendency to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran away from the Zionist will.

The former Zionist prime minister Ehud Olmert noted that the Israeli failure occurred when Tel Aviv convinced Washington to withdraw from the deal, adding that reports confirmed Iran did not violate the pact.

Israeli circles also warned against an imminent rift between ‘Israel’ and the international community amid deep local crises.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

US, UK disrupt peace efforts in Yemen

The Cradle | June 2, 2023

Washington and the UK have been continually disrupting peace negotiations in Yemen, informed sources in Sanaa were cited as saying in a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar on 2 June.

“Washington and London are actively disrupting the Yemeni-Saudi political negotiations,” the newspaper wrote.

According to Al-Akhbar, the US and UK are trying to “obstruct all efforts that could lead to peace, and put among their first considerations the Israeli interest.”

This “Israeli interest” is the reason that Saudi Arabia has been “procrastinating” in the agreements it made with Sanaa, which include lifting all blockades and paying government employee salaries, Al-Akhbar said.

This, along with US and UK involvement, aim to keep Yemen in “a state of no war but no peace.”

Al-Akhbar’s sources were quoted as saying: “The political leadership in Yemen knows from the outset that … Riyadh is unable to abide by the terms of the agreement and … end the repercussions of the war due to the divergent regional interests.”

“The [coalition], as much as they agree on undermining Yemeni independence and sovereignty, they are in conflict with each other,” the sources added.

They went on to say that the Ansarallah resistance movement and the Sanaa government do not regret the political flexibility they showed during recent Omani-mediated talks with the kingdom. They warned, however, that time is not on the coalition’s side and that their military power has grown significantly.

The report goes on to explain how Saudi interests diverge from those of the UAE, the west, and Israel.

According to the Al-Akhbar report, Saudi Arabia has realized – despite its procrastination as a result of external pressure – that its interest lies in ending the war and withdrawing from “the Yemeni quagmire.”

However, the UAE wishes to maintain its occupation of Yemen’s ports and oilfields, as well as its occupation of the country’s waterways and particularly its islands, including the Socotra archipelago, which Abu Dhabi has been working in collaboration with Israel to transform into joint military and intelligence hubs. There have also been recent concerns over UAE-backed separatist ambitions in the south.

This also falls in line with the US and Israeli interest to maintain and bolster influence in the Red Sea.

The report adds that Israel is also particularly interested in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which it considers a “vital artery” for trade with the east, and a key factor in strengthening influence in the Horn of Africa.

It concludes that the Israeli security establishment has significant concerns over Ansarallah’s capability to strike Israel with missiles.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Meaningless rhetoric from the PA and the international community over Ein Samiyah

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | May 30, 2023

As Israeli colonial violence resulted in the forced displacement of the 200 residents of Ein Samiyah in Area C of the Occupied West Bank, the range of reactions, from silence to pathetic commentary, only increased impunity for the settler-colonial enterprise. A day after Al Jazeera reported on the recent Palestinian displacement, EU diplomats issued yet another futile reproach urging Israel to stop settlement expansion, warning that “settlement expansion has resulted in increased settler violence”. Do Palestinians really need EU diplomats to point out what they have been experiencing daily for decades?

Ein Samiyah’s displaced residents have now moved to Al-Mughayyir and Al-Nuwaimah, still within reach of settler violence, and illustrating how Israel’s ongoing Nakba has been perfected by the state for normalisation by the international community.

As expected, the Palestinian Authority excelled in nothing but complacency. Comments to Al Jazeera by the PA’s presidency spokesman, Ibrahim Melhem, not only highlighted Ramallah’s complicit silence, but also the carefully crafted impunity which it enjoys as a result of its collaboration with Israel.

“The PA does not have the ability to prevent such crimes,” Melhem stated. “It is a victim of these crimes, since the international community does not implement the agreed-upon decisions in dealing with Israel.”

The statement is partly true – the international community relishes non-binding resolutions when it comes to Israel’s war crimes and international law violations. However, the PA is to blame for its blind endorsement of the two-state paradigm, which provided Israel with the opportunity to expand into Palestinian territory, just as the 1947 Partition Plan paved the way for the colonial enterprise to take shape.

When Israel creates refugees, the PA stays silent, not because it is a victim, but because it does not want to veer away from the role the international community and Israel intended it to play. The current term of forcibly displaced Palestinians conveniently detracts from the perpetual cycle of refugees which Israel created since the 1948 Nakba. Yet, for the PA to stop at forced displacement is a form of political violence which Palestinians should not be suffering from their illegitimate, expired leadership.

Even if the PA does not have the ability to prevent settlement expansion – its illegitimate rule adds to its restrictions already imposed by the international community – there is much it could do if Palestine and Palestinians were truly a political concern. The PA stands in the way of political change by refusing to hold democratic elections, by failing to give refugees the necessary political space, by detaining and torturing its opponents, by exploiting the cycle of refugees Israel creates for the sake of temporary rhetorical embellishment and meaningless international solidarity gestures.

“Our main goal is to pressure for their return to their lands, not to submit to moving,” Melhem declared of the Ein Samiyah residents. The question is, how? How can the PA call for return when it persists in ignoring Palestinian refugees? At some point, the collective Palestinian refugees, who have now become a nameless multitude, were also current concerns. How long before Ein Samiyah’s people suffer the same fate, and the PA lapses into the same silence about Palestinian refugees’ political rights?

May 30, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Washington’s obsession with crushing Russia has dismantled its Middle East agenda

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | May 29, 2023

Once the undisputed hegemonic power in the Middle East, thought to be indispensable for the security and success of a range of regional leaderships, the US has been fading into the background to the benefit of its adversaries.

As armed conflict erupted between NATO-backed Ukraine and Russia in February of 2022, the Joe Biden administration in Washington decided to throw its weight behind Kiev and focus on a project to bog down Moscow, while unleashing wave after wave of sanctions. Despite spending at least $75 billion dollars on assistance to Ukraine and making Russia the most sanctioned nation on earth, the US has failed to bring Moscow to its knees. In fact, one could say that it is the US that has been cut down to size in the global arena, especially in the Middle East, an area it once considered its own backyard.

As the months pass, blow after blow has been inflicted on US power in the Middle East. In direct opposition to Washington’s agenda, the Syrian Arab Republic was readmitted to the Arab League following a 12-year hiatus, paving the way to end the crisis in Syria, which the US seeks to prolong. China has also entered Middle East politics in a dramatic way, brokering an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement back in March, and this then spurred a wider normalization wave. Although the US attempted to play off the Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement as an acceptable and welcomed move, this has now clearly worked to collapse Washington’s long-term effort towards regional supremacy, which was based on feeding a proxy conflict between the two powers.

The failure of US sanctions

Western leaders publicly predicted that Russia’s economy would collapse under sanctions, a result which clearly has not materialized, with the IMF predicting the Russian economy will grow. Similarly, the US “maximum pressure” sanctions that were first introduced against Iran under the Trump administration, were expected to severely hinder the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue its developments in the defense field, but have failed to achieve those goals.

Russia is now exporting more oil than it did in 2021, as its relations with China, the primary global competitor to the US, have advanced. Gulf States have also repeatedly let the US down and refrained from yielding to pressure to cut oil production. There is also the example of Algeria, which has become Italy’s largest gas supplier and raked in over $50 billion dollars in oil and gas revenues during 2022 alone, even as it retains close relations with Moscow. And when it comes to the West’s ban on Russian gold bullion, the UAE, Türkiye and China have reportedly stepped in to fill the gap.

However, perhaps the worst blowback against Russia sanctions has been the nullification of previous limits to Moscow-Tehran economic relations. The two nations are already the most sanctioned on earth, so they need not worry about the potential consequences from their trade, which has encouraged further cooperation between them. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed a deal to finance an Iranian railway line as part of a North-South Transport Corridor.

Failed propaganda

The Biden administration has employed hardline propaganda tactics in order to demonize Russia and lionize Ukraine. Although for some Western audiences the arguments set forth may have proven effective, in the global community and especially the Middle East, such rhetoric is tiresome and clearly hypocritical.

After having illegally invaded Iraq, inflicting around a million deaths, over a concoction of factually-challenged conspiracy theories about weapons of mass destruction, it comes off as laughable that the US is now claiming to oppose illegal invasions. Former Bush administration officials, such as Condolezza Rice, have even appeared on national television shows in the US to condemn illegal invasions of foreign countries. Even former US President George W. Bush seemingly condemned the “holy unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq… I mean of Ukraine” in a Freudian slip.

The US has positioned itself now as being opposed to the illegal occupation of foreign territory, in addition to claiming it stands in principle against annexation. When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked by a CNN correspondent whether his government supported the annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights by Israel, he answered: “Look, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security,” again demonstrating Washington’s double standards. Washington continues to maintain its recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, which not only defies international law, but also the majority opinion at the United Nations.

The faltering image of the US

From the perspective of Middle Eastern nations, the US is overcommitted to the conflict in Ukraine, even as they have refrained from taking a clear side and instead remained neutral for the most part. Neither the people nor the governments of these countries buy the platitudes espoused by US officials when it comes to Ukraine. The stark difference between the way Palestinians and Ukrainians are portrayed for the exact same actions are enough to make eyes roll.

Now that China is presenting opportunities for countless Middle East nations, especially in the economic sphere, the US has a real competitor. However, the US continues to operate as if the world has not undergone a dramatic shift and refuses to rein in its allies. Ukraine in some respects is getting the special treatment that Israel has enjoyed for years: unlimited aid with few or no questions asked. In the case of Israel, as its government proceeds with introducing controversial legal reforms, takes steps to change the status quo at the al-Aqsa Mosque and pursues hardline far-right policies against the Palestinian people, all coming at a cost to Washington itself, the Biden administration refuses to put it in its place. What Israel is currently doing is embarrassing its own Arab allies that recently normalized ties, even threatening to put a wedge in relations with the likes of neighboring Jordan.

It is this refusal to recalibrate that is not only costing the US its influence, but also evaporating the prize of bringing Israel and Saudi Arabia together, which has clearly been a foreign policy achievement goal dear to the Biden administration. Now that Riyadh and Tehran have restored relations, the excuse of combating Iran’s regional influence is gone for negotiating a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. The refusal to punish Israel for its constant provocations also makes it more difficult for Saudi Arabia to normalize with an unrestrained Israeli government that continues to insult the Muslim world and invites popular Arab support for the Palestinian cause. If there is no change to the arrogant and out of touch approach of the US, which rules with an iron fist and a “my way or the highway” approach, it will be the US itself that is going to be taking a hike from the Middle East.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

May 29, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | 4 Comments

America Has a Political Assassination Problem

Suspicions about Dr. Buttar’s death are not unwarranted

BY KEVIN BARRETT | MAY 27, 2023

Dr. Lucy Morgan Edwards has impeccable establishment credentials (Ph.D International Relations, Exeter; former political advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul). She’s calm, sensible, down-to-earth, and blessed with uncommonly good judgment. If the invaders and occupiers of Afghanistan had listened to her, things might have turned out differently. (See her book The Afghan Solution for details).

So why, her establishment ex-colleagues must wonder, does Dr. Morgan-Edwards suspect that Dr. Rashid Buttar, the famous COVID dissident physician, may have been assassinated? Does she really take seriously Dr. Buttar’s ravings about a COVID vaccine depopulation plot? What could have led her to wander so far off the reservation?

The answer, of course, is that Lucy Morgan-Edwards has experienced the extreme untrustworthiness of today’s Western elites first-hand. Given the outrageous mendaciousness and utter corruption of the Western oligarchy and its propaganda-pumping mainstream media, the notion that a faction of Big Pharma biowarriors may have simultaneously developed COVID and mRNA vaccines for nefarious purposes is hardly implausible. Indeed, a fair bit of evidence points in that direction. And when one of the most prominent voices warning of such possibilities, Dr. Rashid Buttar, claimed he was poisoned during an appearance on CNN, and then dropped dead a few months later at age 57, you don’t have to be paranoid to wonder whether “they” might have been out to get him.

It is an article of faith in mainstream media that only crazy people worry about politically suspicious deaths… at least in the USA. If an enemy of Putin or Xi or Assad or the Iranian government or any other “hostile” regime dies suspiciously, we are supposed to automatically assume the worst. But as we all know, politically-motivated assassinations by insiders could never occur in America. Or as Frank Zappa memorably put it, “It can’t happen here.”

How do we know that it can’t happen here? Because the CIA told us so! In CIA Document 1035-960, “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report,” distributed in January 1967 to Agency moles illegally infiltrating the media, we learn that only crazy “conspiracy theorists” harbor suspicions about such events as the murder of President John F. Kennedy. And since only a conspiracy theorist would care that the CIA invented the whole “conspiracy theory” meme in order to cover up its own murder of a sitting president, we can all sleep well knowing that bad things never happen in America.

One of Dr. Rashid Buttar’s supporters, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,* knows better than anyone that America has a political assassination problem. His father and uncle, America’s two most promising post-WWII leaders, were shot dead in the two-part coup d’état that defined the 1960s and shaped the course of subsequent American history.

The 1960s were also defined by the assassinations of America’s two most charismatic black leaders, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Both were killed not only because they were mobilizing African-Americans to demand change, but because they had begun to criticize the US empire and side with Third World insurgents rising up against it.

The 1960s assassination epidemic illustrates the fact that the American empire’s domestic assassination problem is related to its murderous activities abroad. The majority of the most prominent suspected political assassinations in America have been related to foreign policy rather than domestic issues, power-plays, or grudges between factions. The reason most of these people have been killed, it appears, is that they were viewed as a threat to the US empire (and/or to the Zionist occupation of Palestine).

Let’s consider a few of the most prominent suspected assassinations and the likely motive.

December 21, 1945: Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. is shot dead with a blunt object during a rigged car crash. William Donovan and his OSS, which would become the CIA, were probably responsible. Patton’s opposition to the genocidal occupation policies in Germany, and his intention to run for president on an off-script platform, were the likely motives.

May 22, 1949: Secretary of Defense James Forrestal plunges to his death from a 16th floor window. Strongly opposed to the creation of Israel, Forrestal was probably killed by Zionists.

November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is murdered in Dallas, almost certainly by a coalition of US imperial hardliners and Zionists panicking over Kennedy’s efforts to eliminate Israel’s nuclear program.

February 21, 1965: Malcolm X is killed in the Audubon Ballroom, New York, in the wake of his attempts to unite Muslims and blacks with Third World anti-US-empire forces. As usual, elements of the CIA are lead suspects.

June 6, 1968: Robert F. Kennedy is shot from behind by a gun pressed against the back of his head, shortly after a hypnotized Palestinian patsy distracted onlookers by firing randomly from 10 feet in front. The same hardline-CIA-plus-Israel group that killed JFK was almost certainly responsible.

December 10, 1968: Thomas Merton is murdered in Bangkok, Thailand. The world’s most influential Catholic (with the possible exception of the Pope), Merton had turned hard against the Vietnam war before he was killed. Once again, elements of the CIA were likely responsible.

October 16, 1972: US Rep. Hale Boggs (D-LA), a member of the Warren Commission who privately rejected and scoffed at its findings, is killed in a rigged plane crash. He was presumably on the Hit List of many dozens, if not hundreds, who were killed as part of the JFK-RFK assassination coverup.

July 20, 1993: Vince Foster is murdered in Washington, DC, probably for knowing too much about the Clinton crime family and its links with CIA drug smuggling.

April 3, 1996: Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown dies in a rigged plane Croatia after a failed bid to broker a corrupt deal between the CIA-linked Clinton crime family and Croatian dictator Franjo Tudjman. Once again, the CIA and its corrupt international dealings are on display.

October 25, 2002: Senator Paul Wellstone, along with his wife, daughter, and campaign staff, die in a rigged plane crash in Minnesota. Wellstone’s desire to investigate 9/11, and his opposition to the looming war on Iraq, almost certainly motivated his killers.

December 19, 2008: High-level Republican software consultant Micheal Connell dies in a rigged plane crash shortly before he is scheduled to testify against Karl Rove. Connell allegedly rigged the 2004 presidential elections by hacking voting machines. (That election was probably rigged in order to prevent the appearance of voters rejecting and rebuking the 9/11 and 9/11-wars perpetrators in and around the Cheney-Bush Administration.)

July 10, 2016: Seth Rich, the suspected DNC Wikileaker, is shot dead. Deep State backers of the empire’s anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton, are obvious suspects.

The above list obviously comprises only a minuscule fraction of likely US domestic political assassinations since World War II. Plausible reports that such towering figures as Franklin D. Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover were poisoned, that Jack Ruby and Hugo Chavez were dosed with fast-acting cancer, and that the CIA has a weapon that can induce heart attacks indistinguishable from natural ones suggest that America’s “Murder Incorporated” can easily disguise assassinations as natural deaths. So the real number of US political assassinations is quite possibly orders of magnitude larger than even the longest list of suspected hits compiled by the most paranoid conspiracy theorist.

If we asked “Bodycount Bill” Clinton why America has so many officially-unsolvable political assassinations, he might perchance reply: “It’s the empire, stupid.” A cursory review of the above list belabors the obvious: Getting seriously in the way of the empire’s dirty deeds in general, and wars in particular, can get you snuffed. People rarely get offed because of their views or actions on tax policy, social questions, educational reform proposals, or other domestic issues. Messing with your local sheriff or school board or state legislator or even governor probably won’t place your life in jeopardy. But if you stand in the way of empire as an “actionable threat,” you’d better wear body armor and stay out of small planes.

The domestic assassination epidemic represents classic imperial “blowback”—what Malcolm X called “the chickens coming home to roost.” To maintain an international empire, a great many high-IQ people with psychopathic tendencies are trained to, in the immortal words of Mike Pompeo, “lie, cheat, steal”… and, last but far from least, kill. Since the US empire has killed roughly 60 million people worldwide since World War II, according to the well-documented Chomsky-Vltchek estimate, the empire seems to have trained a considerable number of highly proficient murderers. These well-paid liars, cheaters, stealers, and killers are unlikely to magically change their skunk-stripes every time they return across the US border. Trained to commit assassinations abroad, they inevitably find ways to use their black ops skills at home.

The ever-worsening epidemic of foreign political assassinations that accompanied the rise of the US empire post-WWII is ably summarized in Ron Unz’s recent article “Assassinating Vladimir Putin?” Unz notes that “this American policy represented a radical change from the practice of past centuries, with the major Western countries having abandoned the use of assassination in the 17th century after the end of the bloody Wars of Religion.” He aptly remarks that the ascent of neocon supporters of Israel, the worst assassination outlaw state in history, is a likely factor driving the US government’s ever-accelerating assassinations—the great majority of which target Muslim enemies of Israel. Given the palpable strategic idiocy of America’s drone assassination program, one wonders whether the Israelis are deliberately making the US commit senseless acts that will enrage the Muslim world against America in order to distract from Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

Though Unz is right that the West largely abandoned assassination after the Wars of Religion, it’s worth noting that the re-emergence of assassination has coincided with a decline in religious belief and observance among the elites charged with making such decisions. The neocons, the worst offenders, are avowed atheists who believe that the nonexistence of God frees man to be as evil as he wants to be. Whole articles, even books, could be written on the return of political assassination as a symptom of moral and spiritual decline.

But this is not the place for those articles and books. Instead, I will terminate this essay with proverbial extreme prejudice by tersely noting that yes, it is the empire, stupid, and that if we want to solve the assassination problem, or at least mitigate it, we need to roll back—or, better yet, end—the empire.

*I’m asserting that RFK Jr. supported Dr. Rashid Buttar’s right to speak his mind and at least some of his claims, not that he agreed with all of Dr. Buttar’s positions. Some of Buttar’s statements, including arguments that all COVID vax recipients will be dead within a few years, were obviously fallacious.

May 27, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

The Prince And The Spy

By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | May 12, 2023 

A TLAV investigation has found that Erik Prince, the man behind the Blackwater mercenary group, recently teamed up with an Israeli spy, creating a front company with her to help Israeli defense technology providers exploit loopholes and sell their products to the American military.

For years, Erik Prince – the founder of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Academi) – has been a major source of controversy. Ever since he left Blackwater over a decade ago, Prince has appeared in the news for pushing to privatize several wars, his ties to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his violation of international arms embargoes and his unusually close ties with Project Veritas, among other notable events and connections.

However, some of Prince’s antics in recent years have not yet made it into the news – namely his decision to team up with an Israeli spy to build a very secretive company that has – until now – evaded scrutiny. That company, Comframe Solutions, appears to operate as an intelligence front and explicitly targets parts of the American military involved in highly sensitive combat operations. As this investigation will show, Prince’s partner in Comframe – Lital Leshem – has been tied to a series of apparent, and admitted, Israeli intelligence front companies, several of which have a focus on technology. Yet Prince and his close associate Chris Burgess – Comframe’s supposed president – have done everything they can to hide their association with the incredibly secretive company. Why might that be and what exactly is Comframe up to?

From “Army Brat” to Cyber Spy

Lital Leshem was raised as an “army brat” in Reut, Israel and Pennsylvania, USA. She later enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as she was “truly devoted to safeguarding the State of Israel.” She quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Operations Officer in the IDF of the besieged Gaza Strip and later becoming a Major, a position she continues to hold to this date through her “reserve duty activities.” According to her LinkedIn, she served in Israeli military intelligence from 2005 to 2011 and, more specifically, served in its signals intelligence unit – Unit 8200. She later attended IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university deeply tied to its military and intelligence apparatus. There, she met Amir Elichai and the two would co-create the company Reporty, which later became Carbyne911 – today known only as Carbyne.

Carbyne was originally founded as Reporty in 2014 by Leshem, Elichai and Alex Dizengof. Leshem and Elichai are Unit 8200 veterans, while Dizengof previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office. Before it was revealed that Jeffrey Epstein had poured at least 1 million dollars into the company at the behest of his close associate Ehud Barak, Cabryne’s board of directors – which Barak chaired – included the former commander of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris, as well as Epstein associate turned venture capitalist Nicole Junkermann. In the wake of the Epstein scandal, Buchris, Barak and Junkerman, among others, were removed from the board and were largely replaced with veterans and former heads of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Leshem had left the company in 2017, but has continued to own shares in the company.

Carbyne is a Next-Generation 9-11 (NG911) platform and the explicit goal of NG911 is for all 911 systems nationwide to become interconnected. It is currently active throughout the United States, its main target market. Its software has been criticized due to “serious privacy concerns” about the amount of information it harvests from smartphones that call a 911 call center running Carbyne’s software. For instance, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the following information from the phones on which it is installed:

“Device location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the call center, text messages in a two-way chat window, any data from a user’s phone if they have the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any information that comes over a data link, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice link drops out.”

The potential for Carbyne as a tool for mass surveillance has been extensively reported by NarativMintPress News and other outlets. In addition, Carbyne stores all data on past calls and events in order to “enabl[e] decision makers to accurately analyze the past and present behavior of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns.” As a result, Carbyne – along with other Israeli intelligence-connected companies seeking to dominate the American “public safety” market – has the potential to facilitate controversial “predictive policing”, i.e. pre-crime, policies.

In addition to Carbyne, Leshem also worked for Black Cube, which has since been removed from her LinkedIn. There, she had been the firms Director of Marketing. Black Cube was specifically outed as an Israeli intelligence front organization in a 2019 article published by Calcalist Tech. That same article also contains the stunning revelation that many Israeli companies, including Black Cube, have been founded as fronts for intelligence operations since 2012. It states that “since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that in some cases were built for this exact purpose.” The article also adds that:

“In some cases, managers of development projects in the Israeli military and intelligence arms were encouraged to form their own companies which then took over the [military and/or intelligence] project.”

With Leshem having worked for one company already known to be a product of this deliberate policy, it is worth scrutinizing Carbyne as being one such front, especially considering the common tie of Ehud Barak to both companies. In addition, Leshem has also worked for another company tied to Barak that has been described as worse than the NSO Group, which produced the notorious Pegasus software. Called Toka, its top executives – like Carbyne – are largely veterans of Israeli’s Unit 8200, where Leshem also served, or former commanders of Israeli military cyber operations.

Toka, which Ehud Barak founded in 2018, is very, very likely to be one of the front organizations produced as a result of the aforementioned 2012 Israeli intelligence policy. The company is directly partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and other Israeli intelligence and security agencies since its founding and the company only sells its products to countries that are considered allies of Israel. It purports to be able to hack, not just smartphones, but any device with internet connectivity, such as doorbell cameras and other “smart” devices. As will be noted later in this article, Leshem herself has noted that Toka has a relationship with the CIA.

After being involved with a series of Israeli intelligence fronts and her enduring ties to Israeli military intelligence through her “reserve duty activities”, Leshem was courted by a surprising figure – Erik Prince, war profiteer and founder of the controversial mercenary outfit Blackwater.

Partnering with Prince

Leshem says that she met Prince after she “randomly stumbled across his path and joined his team.” There, per her website, she “managed his business portfolio and his global investments.” Her LinkedIn lists her as serving as the executive director of global business development of Frontier Resource Group (FRG) from 2018 to 2021. Frontier Resource Group was founded by Prince and is “an Africa-dedicated investment firm partnered with major Chinese enterprises, including at least one state-owned resource giant that is keen to pour money into the resource-rich continent,” according to the South China Post. It not only operates in Africa, but also other countries due to its contracts to support China’s One Belt One Road initiative, which were signed in 2019.

FRG is a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group (FSG), which Prince also founded. In 2013, he sold a majority share of FSG to the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned Chinese investment company that is among the largest of the country’s state-run conglomerates. CITIC, during the mid-1990s, was chaired by Wang Jun, who doubled as China’s chief arms dealer and was a key figure in the “Chinagate” scandal of the Clinton White House. As detailed in One Nation Under Blackmail, that scandal involved the illicit transfer of American military technology to China and the illicit transfer of Chinese weapons, whose sale in the US was banned during this time, into the United States. Mark Middleton, a White House aide, and Jeffrey Epstein are some of the names apparently involved with those activities. “Chinagate” appears to have been a joint venture between factions of the CIA and Israeli intelligence and has never been properly investigated by federal authorities. It seems that Prince, who was (and may still be) a CIA asset, and Leshem have engaged in similar activities via FRG/FSG. For example, TRTWorld reported that Leshem is “speculated” to have transferred Carbyne’s technology to China via her role at FRG and her connection to Prince. China launched an app that was nearly analogous to Carbyne, but more explicitly focused on surveillance, at the same time that Carbyne launched its first 911 call system in the United States.

In addition, TRTWorld notesthe company DarkMatter, a UAE surveillance and intelligence group that employs former US intelligence operatives, attracted the attention of Chinese officials at a smart cities conference in 2015. DarkMatter, which was launched to modernize Emirati intelligence and military operations, signed a Global Strategic Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. The middle man in this sale was none other than Erik Prince. Leshem and another Prince associate, Dorian Barak, also have business ties to the UAE via their prominent roles at the UAE-Israel Business Council.

As TRTWorld concluded:

“With similar technology being used, and the same mercenary middle-man between Carbyne and China who brought together UAE’s DarkMatter surveillance technology with China, indications point to a likely transfer of surveillance technology from Epstein’s Israeli company [Carbyne] to China.”

Comframe – Secretive Company or Intelligence Front?

Prince’s and Leshem’s joint activities after Leshem left FRG suggest that this pattern of behavior has not only continued, but deepened. According to Leshem’s website, a year and a half after she started working for Prince, she and Prince “joined forces to found Comframe, a company that takes the best of Israeli defense technology providers, and helps them penetrate the American market by bridging prevalent gaps.” Leshem also says Comframe was assisted by her “premier integrator and business development platform for deploying advanced military, special operations, public safety and HLS solutions in the United States, and a wide network of partnership, both government and civilian.”

In discussing Comframe elsewhere, Leshem writes that the company she co-founded with Prince “is led and staffed by Special Operations and defense procurement veterans with billions of dollars of successful sales to USG and foreign government to their names.” She says that Comframe has a “track-record of success implementing complex procurement and integrations programs from intelligence gathering & analysis, to contracting, program sales and personnel deployment, is exceptional.”

What Leshem says of the company clashes with Comframe’s threadbare public presence. For instance, its website, which is notably short on content, lists the following companies as partners – TomCarBlueBird Aero SystemsGeneral RoboticsSafeStrikeOps-Core (now part of Gentex Corp) and Axon. On its partners page, Comframe says that this is “a small sampling of our current partners we have chosen to work with.” Most of these companies were created by Israeli military/military intelligence veterans.

Aside from the partners page, there is little other information available on the Comframe site. It describes its mission as “to source cutting-edge, innovative technologies that safely and securely solve articulated U.S. government problems” and touts its “get it done” commitment and how its employees “wake up every morning wanting to find solutions that keep the U.S. government safe and more lethal.” It lists the company’s president as Chris Burgess. Burgess, a former NAVY Seal who trained with Erik Prince, does not list Comframe on his LinkedIn or in any other site discussing his work history. He is currently the CEO of military contractor Regulus Global. Burgess previously ran a mercenary firm he founded, Greystone Ltd., that was previously affiliated with Prince’s Blackwater and was originally intended to be Blackwater’s “sister company.”

Both Blackwater (now Academi) and Greystone have been accused of sending mercenaries to fight in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Both companies deny this. The accusations came after Prince had planned to create a “private army” in Ukraine, something he has attempted to do (and sometimes succeeded) in various conflict zones, such as Afghanistan. Prince has also attempted to offer “lethal services” to Russia’s Wagner group.

Aside from Burgess’ apparent unwillingness to associate himself publicly with Comframe, there is also the fact that the only employee publicly associated with Comframe at all is Lital Leshem. Indeed, even Erik Prince has declined to publicly affiliate himself with the company. Another oddity is the fact that Comframe’s website has an “Industry News” page that contains several blog posts with titles discussing oil markets and geopolitics. However, the content of the posts themselves are all filler generated by WordPress. Was Comframe also intended to work in commodities markets? The odd and sparse nature of the website seems to clash with Leshem’s characterization of the company.

So, what is Comframe exactly and what is it intended to do? Why are the only people associated with the company two professional mercenaries, one of whom is a known CIA asset, and an Israeli spy? A 2020 article published in the Jerusalem Post seems to highlight Comframe’s mysterious inner workings and likely purpose.

That article notes that Comframe acted as a middleman in forging an agreement to create an assembly line in El Paso, TX in order for the Israeli company Tomcar to “offer its latest models to the US Armed Forces.” The agreement was made between Tomcar and Prince Manufacturing, a major contract manufacturing company that works with Ford, General Motors and Tesla, among others. Prince Manufacturing was notably founded and run for many years by Edgar Prince, Erik Prince’s father. Notably Tomcar, its founder – Yoram Zarchi – and his son (works for Tomcar) – Ram Zarchi – appear in the Panama Papers as does the former holding company that owned Tomcar from 2004 to 2011.

The article notes that Comframe “is focused on recognizing needs in the US defense industry and matching them to possible solutions, usually involving innovative Israeli companies.” However, the article notes, “to meet the demands of American security needs, one must have an American entity.” Leshem is then quoted as saying, “Ram [Zarchi of Tomcar] had been living in Phoenix for 15 years, but he can’t do that [sell to the American military because he is not a US citizen]. We can.”

In other words, per Leshem, Comframe utilizes Prince and presumably Burgess to sell Israeli defense technology and products to the American military that would otherwise not happen due to national security concerns around buying foreign-made products for sensitive defense and military operations. Leshem goes on to state Comframe sells “to the US Special Forces and other branches of the service [i.e. US military],” noting that Comframe is specifically targeting Special Ops. She also suggests that, aside from the US military, another intended market for the company is NATO – she told the Jerusalem Post that the US “controls 70% of NATO’s defense industry.”

The article ends by stating that, for Comframe, when sales are related to national security, one still has to have “boots on the ground,” suggesting why Comframe has such a minimal web and online presence. This is similar to another company Leshem has been working for while at Comframe, Ehud Barak’s Toka. Notably, at the end of this very article, Leshem uses Toka as an example regarding Comframe’s “boots on the ground” sales approach. She states:

“Hi-tech companies like Toka with clients like the CIA, can’t discuss what they do using Zoom.”

A New Pattern for Prince

Comframe is a very suspect company – it is highly, highly secretive, targets sensitive American military agencies with foreign technology, and its known employees are apparent spooks and intelligence-linked mercenaries. Not only that, but the history of Israeli espionage in the United States – from Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS to Comverse and beyond – shows a concerted effort to target the American military and security agencies, often with bugged or “backdoored” technology.

In addition to the above, Prince has also recently engaged in efforts to market a very suspect smartphone to MAGA Republicans as being “unhackable” and “unsurveillable.” That phone was “designed in Israel” and the company that produces it is called Unplugged. According to reports, Unplugged’s “day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee of CommuniTake, the Israeli start-up that gave rise to the now infamous hacker-for-hire firm NSO Group.” Karpen, like Leshem, is also a veteran of Unit 8200.

Notably, DarkMatter, the UAE private intelligence company that was mentioned earlier due to its association with Prince, once marketed an “ultrasecure” phone called Katim, only to be later outed for hacking dissidents and journalists. In addition, Prince debuted Unplugged’s phone on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program. Both Prince and Bannon have controversial relationships with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo.

That Prince would help market this phone specifically to MAGA Republicans is disturbing given that his associate Leshem and other Israeli intelligence veterans and operatives have played a major role in developing the infrastructure for the US’ “War on Domestic Terror,” which is mainly targeted at the political right and has already utilized mass surveillance through smartphones and other technologies to justify arrests, including “pre-crime” arrests. Given the content of this investigation, Prince’s ties to foreign governments and intelligence agencies should be heavily scrutinized, especially Comframe – whose secretive activities may be drastically undermining American national security.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Iranian President: US Claims to Promote Democracy Are ‘Fake’

By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 24.05.2023

Claims by the US government that it pursues the promotion of democracy abroad are simply “fake,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday.

“The United States and [some] Western countries are not after democracy, but domination and plundering of other countries’ wealth,” Raisi said during an official visit to Indonesia, according to Iranian media.

“With the rise of emerging powers, the era of US domination has come to an end, said Iran’s chief executive,” media summarized.

Raisi pointed out that if Western powers are really after democracy and self-determination, they can start by guaranteeing Palestinians the right to choose their own destiny.
“Let the Yemeni and Afghan people decide for themselves,” he concluded, asking: “Why are you interfering in their affairs?”

The statements, delivered during a speech urging unity among Muslims at an Islamic center in Jakarta, came as Raisi seeks to bolster bilateral relations on his first official trip to Indonesia.

During a meeting with Indonesian House Speaker Puan Maharani, Raisi said the “expansion of ties between the Islamic Republic and Indonesia holds great promise for the progress of the two nations, the region, and the broader Muslim community,” state media reported.

“Despite the unjust threats and sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made significant progress and has achieved capabilities that have created good opportunities for the development of bilateral relations,” Raisi is quoted as saying.

On Tuesday, the two countries’ presidents and high-ranking officials met to sign off on 11 cooperation agreements.

The deals relate to “preferential trade, visa waivers, cultural exchanges, cooperation on supervising the production of pharmaceutical products, collaborations in scientific, technological, and innovative arenas, and bilateral cooperation in oil and gas sectors,” media indicated.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , | 2 Comments

It’s Good News Week

Joe Biden is creating enemies everywhere

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 23, 2023

Well, if you thought the American Civil War ended back in 1865, you are apparently wrong. No less an authority than President Joe Biden, in a May 13th commencement speech to historically black Howard University’s graduates, told the overwhelmingly black students and their families that “The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy. And I’m not saying this because I’m at a Black HBCU, I say it wherever I go.” Indeed, both Biden and his inert Attorney General Merrick Garland nee Garfinkel have delivered that same message on a number of occasions, but this was the first time it was employed in such a racially charged environment. It was clearly a pre-electoral call to arms against white people in America, placing government sanctioned targets on the backs of whites who are generally peacefully struggling to retain their communities, identities, religion, heritage and culture, all of which are being engulfed by the White House’s tidal wave of self-serving and politically motivated “woke” promotions.

Five days later, on the 18th, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an 80 page report revealing that the FBI had deliberately miscategorized its investigations into the events surrounding the January 6th Capitol Hill violent demonstration to substantially inflate the numbers suggesting a dramatic increase in domestic terrorism in the United States. The GOP report, based largely on whistleblower testimony, stated that “whistleblowers assert that the FBI pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist, while manipulating its case categorization system to feign a national problem.” The FBI’s Washington Field Office deliberately categorized its Capitol disturbance cases to make the rise in DVE cases look more like a national problem than a one-time post-electoral incident.

The report includes “According to whistleblower information, the FBI has manipulated the manner in which it categorized January 6-related investigations to create a misleading narrative that domestic terrorism is organically surging around the country.” The manipulated statistics, based on regarding every individual even peripherally or allegedly involved in an incident as a terrorist suspect rather than as part of a group interaction, were then used to support the Biden Administration’s increasing rhetoric about “domestic terrorism.” One whistleblower explained how “By opening a separate case for each individual as opposed to one case with however many subjects are involved, they’ve turned one case into a thousand cases… And by spreading them to the field, they’ve given the impression that those domestic terror cases are around the country…”

Using the new parameters, the FBI Director Christopher Wray was able to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August 2022 that “the number of FBI investigations of suspected DVEs has more than doubled since the spring of 2020.” The FBI was, in fact, conducting approximately 1,400 pending domestic terrorism investigations at the end of fiscal 2020, a number that jumped to 2,700 domestic terrorism investigations by the end of fiscal 2021. The Bureau arrested approximately 180 domestic terrorism subjects in 2020, a number that increased to 800 such subjects in 2021.

And then there was the May 15th release of the long-awaited Durham Report on the shenanigans engaged in by Team Clinton in 2016 to use the nation’s security apparatus to make it appear that Donald Trump was being directed by the Russian government. Predictably, there will likely be no political or legal consequences relating to the revelation. No one in the FBI or CIA , or even in the Clinton campaign, will be held accountable for efforts made to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and to denigrate Trump personally using what they knew to be lies. The FBI leadership has reportedly apologized and says it will not engage in such activity in the future, but many are skeptical, particularly as there was something of a repeat performance in 2020 involving the letter signed by 51 members of the intelligence and national security community claiming that the Hunter laptop allegations were nothing more than a Russian disinformation operation. “Will it ever end?” one might ask.

And there’s more. Nina Jankowicz, who made the news briefly back when she was about to assume the post of the Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Czar in April last year before she abruptly resigned three weeks later on May 18th is now, one year later, suing Fox News. She claims the network has been “waging a campaign of ‘vitriolic lies’ against her that amounts to a threat to democracy [by] damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns.”

Biden simultaneously got cold feet about systematically criminalizing what Americans were saying and writing and shut down The Disinformation Governance Board abruptly in the wake of attacks by Fox and others that the new DHS division Jankowicz led was itself part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by President Biden. Janowicz is claiming that no less than Tucker Carlson, the news channel’s then primetime ratings star fired by Fox recently in the wake of the Dominion settlement, led the charge. In his opening monologue on April 28th 2022, Carlson described Jankowicz as a “moron” and said that what she was doing constituted a “full-scale attack on free speech.” He also referred to the disinformation board as “the new Soviet America”.

Finally, what would the week be like without hearing more about the Biden Administration’s endless war against anti-Semitism? There were predictably numerous anti-Semitism developments during the week but the most compelling was the demand by Deborah Lipstadt, the US government’s renowned holocaust expert who serves as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, that one of the world’s richest men Elon Musk must be taken to task for daring to criticize George Soros. Lipstadt elaborated how “You can criticize George Soros — many people do — for his economic policies, even for his political programs, for his foundation. But when you turn him into the Rothschild of the 21st century, then you’re engaging in antisemitism. When you link his activities to his Jewish identity, when you disparage his activities — some of which I may disagree with — and when you turn him into this villainous character, which has antisemitic overtures, you’ve crossed the line.”

Lipstadt was responding to Musk’s tweet “Soros reminds me of Magneto.” He was comparing Soros to a Marvel supervillain/hero character named Magneto, who is also Jewish like Soros and, also like him, a claimed holocaust survivor. Lipstadt believes that even mentioning the Jewish globalist Soros, or referring to someone as a “globalist” or “cosmopolitan,” just might be considered as “invoking antisemitic tropes,” as it implies that they are Jews. Per Lipstadt, “What you’re saying is Jews do not have loyalty to the country in which they live in, that they have loyalty one to the other and that they are out to destroy the countries in which they live in.”

And you will be hearing more from Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, who also states flatly that “Antisemitism is not a niche issue… it is an existential threat to democracy,” possibly later this week when President Biden will be unveiling the first-ever national plan to counter “anti-Jewish bigotry.” She explains how “America has never done something like a national plan to fight antisemitism, which involves most of the major agencies of the US government. There will be some things that people will disagree with. But when I see the time and effort that has gone in by White House, by high-ranking individuals, it’s a message that we take this seriously.”

The plan was developed in recent months by an interagency task force created by Joe Biden last December. It incorporates claimed conversations with more than 1,000 Jewish community leaders across denominations in the United States. President Biden, at May 9th’s White House celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month, said it will “include more than 200 measures that government agencies, social media platforms and elected officials can adopt to counter rising antisemitism.”

There is considerable irony in all of this much ado about little based on deliberately inflated numbers promoted largely by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claiming that antisemitism is surging. Neither the hideous Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL nor Dr. Lipstadt has suggested to their Israeli friends that the sometimes negative perception of Jews in America might improve if the self-declared Jewish state were to stop killing Palestinian children. Indeed, real antisemitic prejudice that produces negative consequences is hard to identify as American Jews have notably become the best educated and wealthiest demographic in the United States. Though only two per cent of the population, they dominate in key economic and social sectors to include finance, entertainment, the media and education. They occupy many if not most of the key policy making positions in the Biden Administration and are greatly overrepresented in Congress and in government in general. They constantly seek and regularly obtain benefits that accrue only to them, like the 90% of Homeland Security discretionary grants that go to them for “security.”

That new “measures” are being implemented to give Jews even more enhanced protected status that directly limits free speech might be considered ridiculous if it were not so downright dangerous, one more step in handing the keys of the kingdom over to an autocratic and self-centered tribe that describes itself as “chosen” by God. We will no doubt be hearing a lot more about their victimhood over the summer to justify what repressive new measures will be put in place. Will criticizing the so-called holocaust and the apartheid state of Israel become hate crimes with large fines and jail time attached? Stay tuned!

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.

May 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 2 Comments

No progress in Saudi-Israel détente as MBS rejects Netanyahu’s request to meet

Press TV – May 23, 2023

A foreign diplomatic source says there has been no progress in the normalization of diplomatic ties between the Tel Aviv regime and Saudi Arabia, as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has rejected a request from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet.

Netanyahu and bin Salman spoke on the phone twice in recent weeks. Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani facilitated the calls.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, the 73-year-old Israeli leader and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler held talks before and after last week’s Arab League meeting in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah to discuss the possibility of rapprochement.

The leaders also did not discuss the possibility of direct flights from the Israeli-occupied territories to Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage Hajj to the holy city of Mecca this year.

According to the N12 news site, Saudi authorities presented a list of demands for Israeli concessions vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

Those demands include allowing the Palestinian security apparatus to be strengthened at the expense of Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank, the report said.

MBS also requested Palestinian security control over al-Aqsa Mosque compound and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the occupied Old City of al-Quds.

Last week, Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen told The Jerusalem Post newspaper normalization with Saudi Arabia was “not a matter of if, but of when. We and Saudi Arabia have the same interests.”

He said White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk and Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security Amos Hochstein had spoken to the Saudi crown prince about détente with Israel during their visit to Jeddah earlier this month.

Normalization with Saudi Arabia could come within the next six months to a year, though senior Saudi officials have always said publicly that headway must be made between Israel and the Palestinians for Riyadh to take that step, Cohen told N12 Saturday night.

“The Palestinian issue was and remains the central issue for Arab countries, and it is at the top of the kingdom’s priorities,” MBS said at the Arab League summit in Jeddah.

“We will not delay in providing assistance to the Palestinian people in recovering their lands, restoring their legitimate rights and establishing an independent state on the 1967 borders with East al-Quds as its capital,” he noted.

Saudi Arabia did not show any opposition when the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020 became the first Arab countries in decades to normalize relations with Israel in a deal brokered by former US President Donald Trump.

The oil-rich kingdom is yet to jump on the bandwagon, but the two sides have seen growing contacts and de-facto rapprochement in recent years, despite claims that it is committed to the 2002 so-called Arab Peace Initiative, which conditions normalizing ties with Israel on the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

The Riyadh regime in November 2020 granted permission for Israeli airlines to use its airspace, hours before the first Israeli flight to the UAE was set to take off.

Palestinian leaders, activists and ordinary people have repeatedly rejected Arab-Israeli normalization deals as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people.”

May 23, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment