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Iran: A New US-Israeli Provocation

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 07.03.2024 

In an exclusive interview with Tehran Times, the deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Pejman Shirmardi, rejected claims that his country’s nuclear program is not fully transparent. “From day one, we have made it clear that our nuclear activities are exclusively peaceful. Every time the IAEA has asked us for clarification, we have given them answers. Nothing has changed. Tell us what part of our nuclear program isn’t transparent, and we will prove that it is. As the leader of the Islamic Revolution once said, ‘The West knows very well that it is lying about our nuclear activities,’” the Iranian said.

Condoning Israel’s Nuclear Policy

Pejman Shirmardi made the remark after IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, during a summit earlier this month, accused Iran of not being fully transparent about Iran’s relationship with his agency. Even the Western press, however, has picked up on the background to this opinion, writing that the IAEA director general’s reaction is most likely that he chose to ignore Israel’s alarming nuclear threats against the Palestinians in recent months and to shift the focus, as usual, to Iran. Israeli National Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu has twice since the beginning of the Gaza war proposed destroying the Strip and the Palestinian civilians living there with nuclear weapons. According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, the Israeli minister’s statements clearly confirm that Israel has nuclear weapons.

“Against the background of Israel’s historical policy of uncertainty about possessing nuclear weapons, these statements not only explicitly confirm the country’s possession of such weapons, but also demonstrate a willingness to seriously consider their use in completely inadequate scenarios,” the diplomat said.

“This is a very serious reason to think about where the extremist representatives of Israel may be led by the realization of their permissiveness in the conditions of virtually unlimited patronage from the West,” she stressed. In this regard, many noted that IAEA inspectors have never attempted to inspect Israel’s nuclear facilities, despite repeated calls from countries in the region that do not feel safe because of the warmongering policies of the Israeli regime and the West behind it.

It should be noted that experts estimate that the Israeli regime has between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal because of its deliberate ambiguity regarding its nuclear policy. It has repeatedly refused inspections of its military nuclear facilities, not to mention its refusal to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Yet Iran, as a decent and responsible member of the global community, is a party to the NPT and has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively civilian in nature and subject to the strictest UN oversight in the world. The policy of double standards is crystal clear. When it comes to stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Israel is absolved of responsibility. As a signatory to the NPT, Iran has a peaceful program for energy and medical purposes, yet it is subject to the most stringent inspection program in IAEA history. And it is against the Islamic Republic, not its counterpart, that the West has imposed the most painful sanctions regime. Israel, with hundreds of nuclear warheads, is not subject to any punitive measures. On the contrary, the regime is endlessly rewarded with more military weapons (paid for by US taxpayers), more money, and more diplomatic and political support.

Grossi’s Hypocritical Policy

The policy of hypocrisy and double standards is clearly seen in the behavior of the Western proxy, IAEA Director General Grossi, which was clearly manifested in his repeated statements on inspections of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. Anytime inspections were conducted in Iran and official reports confirmed Iran’s compliance with its obligations, Grossi spoke in Tehran and said that everything was going on normally, giving no cause for concern. However, upon his return from Iran and after accusations were made against Iran by the West and especially the US, he consistently changed his viewpoint without proper explanation. He began proclaiming Iran to be a violator, accusing it of not following rules that no one seemed to know. A number of media publications, especially Israeli media, mentioned Grossi’s changing narrative after his return from Iran, noting that he suddenly started criticizing the Iranian side, contrary to previous statements, accusing them of violating international rules.

Thus, based on relevant publications in media all over the world, it is clear that Grossi has repeatedly changed his point of view after the inspections in Iran. He, being a supporter of dialog and cooperation, suddenly started accusing Iran of violating the rules without explaining his position in sufficient detail. This raises serious questions about his integrity and objectivity.

This ambivalent behavior has its own underlying causes, which can be interpreted in various ways. Perhaps political or economic factors influenced Grossi to change his position on Iran. He may have been subjected to pressure or manipulation, causing him to change his point of view. In general, Grossi’s dislike of Iranian inspections is based more on political bias than on facts. However, the change in his position after his visit to Tehran raises questions about his true motives and possible reasons for his ambivalent attitude.

The complicated state of relations between the IAEA and Grossi personally with Iran is a relevant and complex issue in today’s geopolitical arena. Although Grossi, as a professional, is supposed to be objective in his assessments, his harsh bias against Iran can be explained by several factors. First, Grossi, as a security and political expert, is aware of the many factors negatively affecting the stability and security of the region. Iran, in his opinion, is playing an active role in the Syrian conflict by supporting the Assad government and engaging in hostilities. In addition, Iran is suspected by the West of developing nuclear weapons, although there is no evidence to that effect. In light of these circumstances, Grossi probably sees Iran as a potential threat to stability in the region. Second, Grossi may likely be influenced by a number of domestic factors that affect his personal beliefs and interests. For example, he may have strong ties to states and regions that have strained relations with Iran. This connection is extremely personal and may be for historical, religious, or commercial reasons. Such ties may make him more likely to deny or exaggerate Iran’s vulnerability. Finally, Grossi, as the person responsible for communicating information and analysis, may face public and political pressures that may affect his objectivity.

However, despite these factors, as a professional, Grossi must constantly strive for objectivity and carefully weigh all facts and arguments. As a result, Grossi’s subsequent analyses and assessments should be based on facts, taking into account a variety of viewpoints and striving for objectivity as an international UN official serving the interests of the world, not just the whims of the United States.

Provocations of the United States and Israel

With the Israeli regime bogged down in Gaza, the Israeli and US intelligence communities are busy planning a new nuclear crisis with Iran that will overshadow the catastrophic humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in the Palestinian enclave. It has been a relatively long time since Iran’s nuclear program last made global headlines. The last instance of constructive diplomacy between Tehran and Washington occurred when the two sides successfully negotiated a deal to exchange prisoners and release Iranian assets frozen in South Korean bank accounts. The deal was a kind of temporary détente, partly aimed at preserving the status quo and preventing escalation. The unexpected operation by Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip on October 7 and the Israeli atrocities that followed seemed to further set back the already stagnant nuclear diplomacy.

Now things are changing again, but not in the direction of problem-solving, but towards creating a new nuclear crisis, the consequences of which are expected to make the whole drama in Gaza trivial. While there is nothing new in Iran’s nuclear activities, there is a growing trend on Israel’s part to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran ahead of the next meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency scheduled for March 6. Articles are appearing in the Western media suggesting that Israel, together with the US, is pushing the world toward a new nuclear crisis, this time accusing Iran of enriching uranium to 90 percent, the weapons-grade purity level. By making such dangerous accusations against Tehran, they seek to create a hostile atmosphere with the ultimate goal of censuring Iran at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting.

According to information obtained by the Tehran Times, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has personally approached the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about the matter, saying he will advance the planned crisis through hype and convince the CIA at some point in the future. Mired in the quagmire of Gaza, Netanyahu feels increasingly isolated domestically and internationally given his disastrous war in the Strip. As the turmoil over Rafah continues to plague Tel Aviv, Netanyahu has floated the idea of igniting a nuclear crisis with Iran, a scheme designed to divert world attention away from Gaza and undermine the Biden administration by portraying it as weak and unable to deal with Iran’s nuclear program.

Whether the Israeli regime will succeed in provoking a global crisis with Iran through machinations remains to be seen. Iran has so far refrained from any strong negative initiatives and, most recently, even expressed hope that the now defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would come back to life. In addition, Iran has begun preparations for the upcoming visit of IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to Tehran, during which a number of issues of mutual interest are expected to be addressed. The planned escalation of tensions at the next IAEA Board of Governors meeting, however, could derail ongoing efforts to strengthen nuclear de-escalation.

March 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Regime Exploited ‘Loophole’ to Sell Weapons to Israel – Report

By Mary Manley – Sputnik – 07.03.2024

The US has reportedly made more than 100 “quiet” weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas. Despite half-baked calls from the administration for Israel to spare civilian lives, the US has continued to restock their supply of weapons, helping to create one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.

The sales were reportedly made in silence—as they escaped congressional oversight—meaning they were processed without any public debate because they each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to notify Congress, according to a Washington, DC newspaper, which first reported the story.

But altogether, the weapons sales make up a massive amount of arms for a country that has been accused of committing a genocide.

The sales reportedly included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid. Public sales to Israel already included: $320 million in precision bomb kits in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106 million and $147.5 million of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December. The deliveries made in December were made under an emergency authority.

“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International.

Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest over the Biden Administration’s response to the conflict, said that the “arms transfer process lacks transparency by design”. He argued that foreign military sales—which is largely financed by more than $3.3 billion in US taxpayer funds—is something that US citizens deserve to know.

Matt Miller, the US State Department Spokesperson, said the Biden Administration has “followed the procedures Congress itself has specified to keep members well-informed and regularly briefs members even when formal notification is not a legal requirement.” He also said that US officials have “engaged Congress” on arms transfers to Israel “more than 200 times” since the conflict in Gaza first began.

But some US lawmakers, particularly those who belong to the same political party as US President Joe Biden, are fed up with the administration’s decisions.

“You ask a lot of Americans about arm transfers to Israel right now, and they look at you like you’re crazy, like, ‘why in the world would we be sending more bombs over there?’” said Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, during an interview.

“These people already fled from the north to the south, and now they’re all huddled in a small piece of Gaza, and you’re going to continue to bombard them?” Castro added, in reference to Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah where nearly 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are now seeking refuge.

Castro and other House Democrats have also spearheaded a group that sent a letter to Biden on Tuesday, telling him that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could violate the administration’s requirement that US military aid be used in accordance with international law.

And Representative Jason Crow (D-CO), who is also a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, recently petitioned Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide details on the shared intelligence between Israel and the US including an “explanation of any restrictions the US has place on the Israeli government’s use of the intelligence we share”.

“I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error,” wrote Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This doesn’t just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law, it’s an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” added Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy thinktank.

In January, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered Israel to take immediate measures to reduce the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, and to prevent the genocide of Palestinians after South Africa brought the case to their attention. At the same time, The Defense for Children International-Palestine, an international NGO, also claimed that the Biden Administration violated the Genocide Convention by supplying weapons and other military equipment to Israel’s military.

The war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023 has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians as a famine now looms over the region. Reports of Israeli soldiers targeting civilians and preventing them from being able to access aid has led many experts to accuse Israel of committing a genocide against the Palestinians.

March 7, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Unpopular Wars Reap Mass Death and Nuclear Brinkmanship

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | March 7, 2024

President Joe Biden, better known as Genocide Joe, in cooperation with a perfunctory legislative branch has mired the American people in savage, reckless, costly, and unpopular wars. The White House’s catastrophic foreign policy may force American society to a breaking point.

The American public is increasingly rejecting Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which has already cost well over $100 billion, put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, and seen Ukrainians killed or injured by the hundreds of thousands.

As Americans are more concerned with simultaneous crises of inflation, healthcare, immigration, and crime, according to the latest Harris poll, 70% of Americans oppose Biden’s policy of unending military aid going to the Ukrainian meat grinder and instead want a diplomatic settlement.

The disconnect between those living in the country and those in Washington DC is highlighted by members of the U.S. Senate openly salivating about drawing Russian blood and funneling tens of billions of dollars into the military-industrial complex.

Arch-neocon and top State Department official Victoria Nuland is threatening Moscow that the United States will assist Ukraine to “accelerate [its] asymmetric warfare” and provide “nasty surprises on the battlefield.” At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron says deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to fight Russia should not be off the table.

Subsequent to a meeting with other leaders in Europe concerning the effort to weaken Russia with the Ukrainian battering ram, Macron declared, “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.”

In response to Macron’s bluster, Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in a speech to the Federal Assembly “[our] strategic nuclear forces are on full combat alert, and the ability to use them is assured.” The Russian leader continued, “Now they have started talking about the possibility of deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine…They must grasp that we also have weapons—yes, they know this, as I have just said—capable of striking targets on their territory.”

Concurrently, the head of the German Air Force has been caught on a leaked tape discussing with his officers plans to provide Taurus missiles to Kiev, weapons which have a range of roughly 300 miles, in hopes of carrying out attacks against Russia. London confirmed last week that “a small number” of British troops are on the ground “supporting the armed forces of Ukraine.”

On numerous occasions last year, neo-Nazis armed with NATO weaponry and ties to Ukrainian military intelligence attacked civilian areas across the border in Russia. Using Western intelligence, Kiev has already waged drone warfare deep inside Russia.

Despite Putin’s ominous remarks and the sentiments of the American people, NATO is launching massive war games, including on Russia’s borders, in preparation for war with Moscow. As the Libertarian Institute’s News Editor Kyle Anzalone reports, “[These] latest drills are a part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender military exercises—the bloc’s largest series of war games, which will see over 90,000 troops participate in about a dozen maneuvers from January through August.”

Biden’s unpopular war with Russia has brought humanity closer to a nuclear holocaust than ever before. But perhaps more widely despised and devastating to the American soul is the genocidal campaign unleashed by Israel against the Palestinian Muslims and Christians inhabiting the besieged Gaza Strip.

Per a recent Data For Progress poll, two-thirds of the American population oppose the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel and instead want the White House to back a permanent ceasefire. 77% of Democrats, 69% of Independents, and a staggering 56% of Republicans agree regarding this issue.

However, Israel’s globally livestreamed mass killing spree—primarily against women and children—is fully supported by the White House. The same government which practically every member of America’s political class swears is “our greatest ally” has cut Gaza off from food, water, fuel, and electricity. Israel is destroying Gaza, making it uninhabitable by bombing cities, neighborhoods, apartments, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, ambulances, UN shelters, mosques, churches, greenhouses, orchards, and refugee camps.

So far, the Israeli apartheid army has butchered over 30,000 people, including more than 12,000 children. Unfortunately, these confirmed figures paint a picture less macabre than reality, as thousands of men, women, and children are buried beneath rubble and presumed dead. One can only imagine what the final death toll and excess death rate will be.

Often using dystopian AI programs to select targets, the United States and Israel have leveled a greater percentage of infrastructure in Gaza than the Allied bombings in Dresden during World War II. The Guardian recently reported, “As of 17 January, analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher of the City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University reveals that between 50% and 62% of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.”

Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, approximately half of which are children, have been bombed everywhere. At times, this has included 2,000-pound bombs raining down on the Israeli-designated safe zones. Virtually every city in Gaza has been eradicated except Rafah, where 1.5 million refugees have fled to and which the Israeli war cabinet plans to hit with a blitzkrieg this month.

Social media feeds in every American household have been flooded with graphic videos and images showing countless Palestinian babies, children, women, elderly people, and men being blown to bits, killed, shot, mutilated, or permanently disfigured with our weaponry.

Last week, in what is known now as the “Flour Massacre,” the Israeli occupation opened fire killing over a hundred Palestinians and injuring hundreds more near Gaza City as they desperately attempted to obtain what they could from a trickle of aid that was allowed into the Strip.

Biden, previously known as “Israel’s man in Washington,” is fond of reciting his assertion that “If Israel didn’t exist, [the United States] would have to invent it.” But each day, new horrors and atrocities are unearthed, revealing Israel to be nothing more than a rogue state (incidentally armed with dozens, if not hundreds, of nuclear weapons).

Caitlin Johnstone perfectly sums up the reaction of normal people with a conscience to the unending stream of Israeli barbarism reported daily:

So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother… You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.” The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.

This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”

However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.

Palestinians are being subjected to inhumane torture as well. After The New York Times analyzed a report from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the paper reported, “Detainees said they were beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused, and denied access to lawyers and doctors, often for more than a month.”

The Times article continues, “Some detainees, according to the report, told UNRWA investigators that they had often been beaten on open wounds, had been held for hours in painful stress positions, and had been attacked by military dogs.”

One prisoner was “beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and that there was still blood present in his urine… guards made him sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and played music so loudly that his ear bled.”

This coincides with numerous Israeli media reports of torture inflicted against the occupied Palestinians at the hands of their Zionist army captors. In January, +972 Magazine reported on the hellish scenes inside Israeli detention centers holding untold numbers of civilians rounded up in Gaza:

“Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day… Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.”

Israel has the population of Gaza trapped in an open-air concentration camp, with 75% of Palestinians crammed into a single city. More than 90% of the Palestinians living in the Strip have been internally displaced amidst the Israeli onslaught.

Tens of thousands of bombs have been dropped in Gaza, as the United States has delivered Israel some 25,000 tons of weapons including thousands of 2,000 pound bombs and tens of thousands of artillery shells.

It is a repudiation of every treasured American value for our government to make all of us a party to such atrocities under any conditions.

The whole world sees this for what it is. Half of Americans who voted for Biden in 2020 believe he is complicit in genocide. Indeed, the International Court of Justice has issued a preliminary ruling that Israel’s actions may plausibly constitute genocide. Nevertheless, our Congress is committed to financing this systematic destruction of Gaza with another $14 billion of the American people’s hard-earned money.

Palestinians are not only being ripped apart with American bombs and shells, they are being starved to death by the hundreds of thousands. As Antiwar.com News Editor Dave DeCamp reports:

At least 16 Palestinian children have starved to death in the Gaza Strip over the past few days due to the US-backed Israeli siege, and the UN’s child relief agency is warning that the number of child deaths will “rapidly increase” if conditions don’t immediately change.

“Last week, we warned that an explosion in child deaths was imminent if the burgeoning nutrition crisis wasn’t resolved,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Now, the child deaths we feared are here and are likely to rapidly increase unless the war ends and obstacles to humanitarian relief are immediately resolved.”

The latest Palestinian child reported to die of hunger was Yazan al-Kafarna, a 10-year-old with cerebral palsy who was in the al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. Fifteen children have also died of malnutrition and dehydration at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

The UN has previously warned that Gaza’s entire population of about 2.2 million people is facing “crisis” levels of food insecurity, and at least 576,000 Palestinians in Gaza are “facing catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.”

Despite the dire situation, the State Department reaffirmed on Monday that it will continue to provide military assistance for Israel’s genocidal war.

The last vestiges of our deluded American exceptionalism burned up in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. with Aaron Bushnell last month. As the former member of the U.S. Air Force stated before his self-immolation in protest of the genocide in Gaza, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

But regardless of what excuses White House spokespeople are able to conjure up in an attempt to hide the blood on their hands, this is not normal and the American people will never accept it. As evidenced by the public opinion polls and protest movements across the country, Biden will pay dearly in the coming election for his role in the mass murder ongoing in Palestine.

NBC News revealed the Biden reelection team has taken “extraordinary steps” to avoid antiwar protesters including “by making [their events] smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, and avoiding college campuses.”

Additionally, the more than 100,000 “uncommitted” protest votes in the Michigan Democratic primary last week foreshadows things to come for Genocide Joe and the Democratic Party establishment. Demonstrators camped out daily in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s residence chant “Blinken! Blinken! We see you and all the war crimes that you do!”

In his last words, Bushnell said he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His message was one that resonates with perhaps a majority of Americans. But in Washington, his message could not be more alien.

Americans have witnessed the true nature of the U.S. empire, its allies, partners, and proxies. They have voiced their abhorrence to their government and have been shocked at the abject lack of empathy for the Palestinian women and children being slaughtered, tortured, and deprived to death on an industrial scale.

In a video last month, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) was told by a peace activist on Capitol Hill, “I’ve seen the footage of shredded children’s bodies. That’s my taxpayer dollars that are going to bomb those kids.” Ogles responded proudly, “I think we should kill ’em all, if that makes you feel better.”

An American antiwar populace cannot be ruled by unrepentant and unAmerican warmongers in perpetuity; a breaking point cannot come soon enough.

March 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Too many people watched’ – George Galloway explains why RT was banned

RT | March 5, 2024

Fresh from his election to the British parliament, MP George Galloway spoke with RT on Tuesday about the state of media freedom in Britain and London’s disastrous policies in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Galloway trounced both Tory and Labour candidates in last week’s Rochdale by-election, winning twice as many votes than both major parties combined. PM Rishi Sunak denounced the result as “beyond alarming” and a threat to “our democracy itself.”

As Galloway pointed out, however, he has been elected to Parliament a total of seven times – far more than Sunak or Labour leader Keir Starmer.

“These people are hypocrites. Things like democracy, human rights, rule of law, rules-based international order, it’s just lipstick on a pig. They wipe the lipstick off whenever they no longer feel the need to look prettier,” he claimed.

“As Sunak’s speech outside Number 10 [Downing Street] on Friday about my election makes clear, it’s not beyond them even to cancel elections,” he added.

British authorities have banned RT and the Iranian PressTV outright, refused to renew the license of China’s CGTN, and blocked outlets like Venezuela’s TeleSur.

“The reason is pretty simple if you think about it: Too many people were watching these TV channels. Too many people were watching RT. Not just in Britain, but even more so in Germany. That is why RT was closed down. Because too many of the public were watching it. How’s that for freedom?” said Galloway.

The best illustration of press freedom in the UK is that “a good friend of mine is lying in the dungeon of Belmarsh top security prison,” Galloway said.

“His name is Julian Assange He is convicted of no crime. And yet he is being held with mass murderers and terrorists in the worst prison for the worst people in England. And for what? For telling the truth as a publisher.”

He admitted the government might retaliate against him for speaking to RT, but said, “I don’t care.”

“I give interviews to everybody. I’m a free man, I’m an elected free man. I have the right to speak and I will go on speaking to whomsoever wants to hear me. Nothing is solved by covering things up. Nothing is solved by denying people access to a different point of view,” Galloway said, recalling RT’s long-time slogan, “Question More.”

Galloway is no stranger to RT. He has written many op-eds for the outlet and hosted his own TV show called ‘Sputnik Orbiting the World’ during his hiatus from Parliament.

Video report

March 6, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Social media platforms block Iran’s Al-Alam accounts over coverage of Gaza war

Press TV – March 5, 2024

In a new attack against freedom of expression, a number of American social media platforms have blocked the accounts of the Iranian Arabic-language news network Al-Alam without prior notice.

Al-Alam reported on Tuesday that video-sharing website YouTube, social media giants X and Instagram have blocked its pages and accounts over the network’s support for Gaza and publishing news related to the Israeli regime’s attacks on the besieged Palestinian territory.

The latest moves prove that CEOs of American social media giants, despite their claims about freedom of speech and human rights, do not allow the publication of facts, Al-Alam said in a statement.

These social media platforms are trying to cover up the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians by disabling the accounts of networks that reflect the occupying regime’s war crimes in Gaza.

The Arabic-language news network said it will continue to support the oppressed people of Palestine and reflect the reality on the ground by creating new pages.

This is not the first time that YouTube and other social medial platforms have deleted Al-Alam accounts or pages without any prior notice or justification.

Back in March 2022 and in a similar move, Facebook “permanently” removed the page of Al-Alam TV from its platform despite the fact that the network’s Facebook page had some 6,000,000 followers at the time.

Facebook claimed the Tehran-based network had not complied with its terms regarding the publication of photos of the flags and the leaders of Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansarullah and Palestinian resistance groups.

Over the past years, Facebook — along with YouTube, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Google — have repeatedly targeted media outlets of Iran and the countries critical of the West and the Israeli regime’s occupation of Palestine.

March 6, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Tel Aviv torture trail: Israel’s role in the Abu Ghraib scandal

Israel’s documented torture and abuse of Palestinians may evoke comparisons to US tactics employed during the Iraqi occupation, but a closer look reveals their distinct origins rooted in the Zionist entity.

By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | March 6, 2024

Just five days after the start of the war on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers detained three Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank village of Wadi al-Seeq. Stripped down to their underwear, they were then blindfolded, savagely beaten with an iron pipe, photographed in their humiliation, and subjected to the ultimate indignity of being urinated upon.

One victim, Mohammad Matar, recounting the ordeal to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, likened the barbarity to the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. “It’s exactly like what happened there,” he stated. “Abu Ghraib with the [Israeli] army.”

The sexual humiliation and torture of Palestinians continued – and expanded – following Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza two weeks later. Soon, Israeli soldiers were detaining and humiliating large groups of Palestinian men and women, subjecting them to sexual abuse across various detention facilities.

On 21 February, Khaled al-Shawish became the ninth Palestinian to die while in Israeli prisons since 7 October, likely due to torture.

However, similarities between the torture perpetrated against Palestinians now and against Iraqis 20 years before in Iraq come as no surprise. Israel and the torture techniques its intelligence services pioneered over decades of occupation played an important and largely overlooked role in the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal, most notably through the use of sexual humiliation and rape.

Civilian contractors

In the chaotic aftermath of the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had no prior experience in prison management, found herself overseeing Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities – 15 in total, in southern and central Iraq. Though military police (MPs) under her command were ill-equipped for interrogation, Major General Geoffrey Miller, infamous for his tenure at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray, advocated for their involvement in the process.

Karpinski stated that after Miller’s visit, large numbers of civilian contractors began arriving at Abu Ghraib to conduct interrogations. These civilian contractors then gave orders to the low-level reservist MPs who carried out the torture depicted in the notorious torture photos that were later leaked to the media.

She notes further that the MPs seen torturing and humiliating Iraqis in the leaked images were deployed to Abu Ghraib just before the first photographs were taken. This means they began torturing Iraqi prisoners in sophisticated ways immediately upon arrival at the prison:

They replaced the national guard unit serving there because they had been deployed for a year. Soldiers don’t just decide one morning, ‘hey, let’s go to abuse some prisoners’ … The date-stamp on some of the photographs is late October, November. So what happened?

Among the contractors interrogating prisoners were employees of the private security firm CACI. One of the interrogators, Eric Fair, was stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison and in the restive city of Fallujah in 2004. He said interrogators in Iraq were taught to use a torture device known as the “Palestinian chair” by the Israeli military during a joint training exercise.

In January of that year, CACI president Jack London traveled to Israel as part of a high-level delegation of US Congressmen, defense contractors, and pro-Israel lobbyists.

During the visit, then-Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented London with an award at a gala dinner for “achievements in the field of defense and national security.”

The trip included a visit to Beit Horon, “the central training camp for the anti-terrorist forces of the Israeli police and the border police,” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Brigadier General Karpinski also noted the presence of Israeli interrogators in Iraq. She explained that at a Baghdad intelligence facility, “I saw an individual there that I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there.” He answered, “Well, I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic, but I’m not an Arab; I’m from Israel.”

Who is Stephen Cambone?

In November, roughly the time the first photos depicting torture at Abu Ghraib were taken, US Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq, signed an order to transfer command of Abu Ghraib from Karpinski to Colonel Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.

US military intelligence at that time was under the control of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. The post was created for him in March 2003, just as the Iraq invasion was underway.

Journalist Jason Vest reported for The Nation that Cambone’s post was originally conceived by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a “centralizing measure,” a way to give him “one dog to kick” rather than a “whole kennel” of individual civilian and uniformed defense intelligence agencies.

Although Cambone had no intelligence experience, Rumsfeld viewed him as a protégé and loyal partisan. Under Rumsfeld’s patronage, Cambone rose from his position as principal deputy to Under Secretary Doug Feith, another architect of the Iraq war.

Vest added that a memo from Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Cambone’s immediate superior, indicated that Cambone had the authority to provide oversight and policy guidance for intelligence activities in all organizations within the US Department of Defense.

In other words, Cambone controlled US military intelligence, which controlled Abu Ghraib by November 2003 when the first torture photos were shot.

Like Feith, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, Cambone was a pro-Israel neoconservative who had worked for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a US think tank that hosted Republican neocons out of government during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.

In 1998, PNAC famously advocated a shift toward a more assertive US foreign policy, including toppling Saddam Hussein, which would only come following “some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Striking similarities

A November 2003 report in the Los Angeles Times described the close relationship between Israeli and US military intelligence under Cambone.

“Those who have to deal with like problems tend to share information as best they can,” he was quoted as saying. A senior US Army official also told the newspaper:

[The Israelis] certainly have a wealth of experience from a military standpoint in dealing with domestic terror, urban terror, military operations in urban terrain, and there is a great deal of intelligence and knowledge sharing going on right now, all of which makes sense … We are certainly tapping into their knowledge base to find out what you do in these kinds of situations.

The torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib came to light two months later, in January 2004, after an MP at the prison, Joseph Darby, passed a CD with photos depicting the torture to the military’s Criminal Investigations Division (CID).

The tactics used to torture the detainees were summarized in an email that circulated in the Defense Department. The email said 10 soldiers were shown, involved in acts including:

Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.

These tactics were further described by Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who was tasked with investigating events at Abu Ghraib.

In May 2004, Taguba was summoned to a meeting with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cambone, and other Defense Department officials, who all professed ignorance of what happened at Abu Ghraib.

Taguba said, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Taguba said elsewhere that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee” as well as “photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties.” As he explains it:

From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups.

But Taguba was only allowed to investigate the military police, not the military intelligence brigade in control of the prison after November, nor any higher officials overseeing military intelligence, such as Cambone, or other top Defense Department officials with strong links to Israel, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

These MP troops were not that creative … Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.

The most infamous of the torture photos showed an Iraqi man, Saad, standing on a box, wearing a black blanket and hood, with electric wires attached to his hands, feet, and penis.

Facility 1391

But the “creative” torture techniques focusing on sexual humiliation and rape have a clear origin.

Israeli interrogators were teaching US contractors and MPs torture techniques that Israel has long used against Palestinians and other Arabs.

In November 2003, as Cambone was lauding Israel for its assistance in Iraq, the Guardian published a report detailing the torture Israel subjected prisoners to at a secret prison known as ‘Facility 1391.’

“I was barefoot in my pajamas when they arrested me, and it was really cold,” says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. “When I got to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then they gave me a black sack,” for his head.

Other former prisoners at Facility 1391 have described how they were stripped naked for interrogation, blindfolded, handcuffed, and threatened with rape.

The Guardian report details how torture took place at the facility for decades. The first prisoners at the facility were Lebanese kidnapped by Israeli forces during their 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon starting in 1982.

Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid, a spiritual leader in the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, was abducted in 1989 and taken to Facility 1391. Obeid had been involved in guerilla operations to expel Israeli forces occupying the country. He was kidnapped from his home in the village of Jibchit in southern Lebanon by Israeli commandos arriving by helicopter.

During the raid to take Obeid, Israeli forces also kidnapped a young man, Hashem Fahaf, who was visiting the sheikh to seek religious guidance. Fahaf was never charged with a crime but was held in Israeli prisons, including Facility 1391, for the next 11 years.

Israel held Fahaf and 18 other Lebanese as hostages, or bargaining chips, to win the return of Israeli airman Ron Arad, whose plane crash-landed in Lebanon while bombing PLO targets.

Haaretz reports that a reserve army colonel from Unit 504, known as “Het,” recounted how one interrogator at the facility “stripped a suspect naked and forced him to drink tea or coffee from an ashtray full of cigarette ashes and then forced shaving cream or toothpaste into the suspect’s mouth.”

Het recalled another instance in which the interrogator, known as “Major George,” inserted “a baton into a suspect’s rectum and asked him to sit on the baton unless the suspect was willing to speak.”

Rather than prosecuting Major George, Israeli authorities opened a criminal case against Het for revealing the torture taking place at Facility 1391.

Dividing Iraq for Israel’s interests 

The anger created by the Abu Ghraib revelations is widely viewed as having stoked the Iraqi insurgency seeking to expel US forces. The insurgency itself began after the same pro-Israel conservatives in the Bush administration made the fateful decision to disband the Iraqi army.

This blunder left hundreds of thousands of trained military personnel without employment, many of whom subsequently joined the ranks of the insurgency. With their intimate knowledge of Iraqi army weaponry and tactics, these former soldiers became formidable adversaries in the campaign against US occupation forces.

The violence soon spiraled out of control and evolved into a sectarian civil war, dividing Iraq’s Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed as the country was nearly torn apart.

Wired noted years later that although a consensus eventually emerged in the US defense establishment that “the choice to invade Iraq was ill-considered and that the initial plan to stabilize the country was even worse,” Stephen Cambone had another view.

For Donald Rumsfeld’s one-time intelligence chief, the Iraq war and the chaos it created was “one of the great strategic decisions of the first half of the 21st century, if it proves not to be the greatest.”

In the eyes of the Zionist neocons, the cost of human lives and suffering was a necessary sacrifice to achieve their long-standing objectives in West Asia. The architects of the Iraq war, including Cambone, Rumsfeld, Feith, and Wolfowitz, viewed the devastation they wrought as a means to an end – neutralizing potential threats to Israel.

Yet it’s clear, in light of the actions taken by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, that their grand designs have ultimately floundered.

March 6, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza is paying the ultimate price for decades of media pandering to Zionist bigotry

By Jonathan Cook | March 6, 2024

The Guardian and other media continue to prioritise the ‘sensitivities’ of an ideological minority over the public’s right to protest against a genocide in which our elites are complicit

We all understand that, shamefully, a number of Zionist Jews and non-Jews identify so completely with Israel that they are not only willing to excuse the mass slaughter and starvation of civilians in Gaza but think others should not even be allowed to express disquiet at the slaughter.

Hardline Zionists tell us they find concern for the welfare of Palestinians “offensive”, and that they feel “unsafe” when others raise such concerns or call for a ceasefire to end the bloodshed.

The question for the rest of us is: How do we deal with those “sensitivities”, and how much do we prioritise the “offence” taken by hardline Zionists?

Not unreasonably, most ordinary people place very little weight on the “sensitivities” of those who believe mass slaughter and the starvation of children should be allowed to proceed, at least when weighed against the sensitivities of those opposed to mass death.

What’s so weird is the way, as far as official bodies and the western media are concerned, those priorities have been turned upside down.

Here, in typical fashion, the Guardian falls over backwards to indulge the “feelings” of a few Jewish Arsenal fans because they “felt unsafe” and “betrayed” by their club for not more aggressively stopping protests last weekend at a Women’s Super League game by other fans over the complicity of the UK government in Gaza’s genocide.

No evidence is produced by either the fans or the Guardian that any Jewish fan was in any danger whatsoever. Just that a few Palestinian flags were smuggled into the stadium, that leaflets and stickers were handed out, and that some protesters tried to “engage” with fans as they arrived at the stadium – presumably in that dangerous tradition of trying to persuade others of the validity of one’s position.

But the Guardian sympathetically dedicates a great deal of space to relaying the concerns of the handful of Jewish fans who “believe their safety was compromised by security staff not curtailing the protest” – that is, those who wanted to prevent an entirely peaceful demonstration taking place in a public space outside the ground.

The story is risible. It is news as therapy for Zionists and gaslighting for the rest of us.

But it is decades of nonsense journalism about Israel and its apologists of precisely this kind that has led us to the dismal place we are today.

The constant indulgence by the political and media class, the constant elevation of these kinds of ugly, ignoble “feelings” – feelings that dehumanise and vilify Palestinians, as well as anyone acting in solidarity with their suffering – the constant treatment of Zionist bigotry as warranted, as justified, as normal, that has gotten us to a position where Israel can commit genocide and its western allies and parts of their Jewish populations can treat it as “offensive” to raise the matter.

If we had not got so entirely used to it, we would immediately understand how completely nuts – and catastrophically inhumane – the coverage is.

March 6, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Iranian Court Seizes US-Owned Tanker to Compensate Sanctions Victims

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 06.03.2024

The decision comes in the wake of a series of frivolous rulings by US courts over the past decade ordering the confiscation of frozen Iranian assets to pay American plaintiffs, including an outrageous 2018 decision requiring the Islamic Republic to pay $6 billion in compensation to families of 9/11 victims.

An Iranian court ordered the confiscation of a American-owned oil tanker on Wednesday on the basis of a complaint by Iranians suffering from a rare skin disease affected by crushing US sanctions.

The ship – the Advantage Sweet, a Marshall Islands-flagged crude tanker chartered by Chevron and carrying crude oil from Kuwait to Texas, was detained by Iranian Navy commandos in April of 2023, “in compliance with a confiscation order issued by Iranian judicial authorities,” after it collided with an Iranian fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman and attempted to flee the scene.

Wednesday’s ruling was made after a group of Iranians suffering from Epidermolysis Bullosa – a painful skin condition resulting in easy blistering of the skin which can evoke skin cancer, appealed to a Tehran court to challenge US sanctions which blocked the export of life-saving medications and special medical bandages exported from Sweden.

Gothenburg-based medical device company Molnlycke Health Care was forced to stop selling its products to Iran in 2018, citing US sanctions unilaterally imposed by the Trump administration after Washington walked out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal. The Biden administration revived talks on US reentry into the agreement, but talks stalled after Joe Biden said he would be ready to “kill” the JCPOA to keep Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Washington’s “terror” listing.

The Fars News Agency confirmed Wednesday that the Advantage Sweet had been seized, and that Iran would be unloading about $50 million worth of crude oil from the vessel following the ruling.

Wednesday’s ruling comes following a series of US seizures of commercial ships carrying Iranian crude oil, including the move by US authorities last year to seize and unload a cargo of Iranian oil in Texas from the Suez Rajan, another Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, on grounds that it violated US sanctions by trying to ship Iranian oil to China. The tanker, renamed the St. Nikolas, was consequently seized by Iran in January in a tit-for-tat move while carrying 145,000 of crude oil from Iraq to Turkiye.

The ruling also follows a series of controversial lawsuits in US courts over the past decade ordering the Islamic Republic to pay for acts of terrorism it had nothing to do with, including the 1983 bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, and the 9/11 terror attacks.

In December, a Tehran court ordered the United States to pay nearly $50 billion in compensation for the 2020 assassination of IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, with the award issued to over 3,300 plaintiffs for “material, moral and punitive damages” ruled to have been caused by Soleimani’s murder. The court held Donald Trump, former Secretary of Defense Mike Pompeo, US intelligence agencies including the NSA and the CIA, and 38 other individuals, organizations and entities responsible for the commander’s killing.

The US has shown no indication of plans to honor the Iranian court-ordered payout.

March 6, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas rejects UN accusations of sexual violence in 7 October attack on Israel

MEMO | March 5, 2024

Palestinian group, Hamas, on Tuesday rejected accusations by a UN Special envoy for its fighters of sexually assaulting Israeli women during its 7 October cross-border attack into Israel, Anadolu Agency reports.

Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said in a report on Monday that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the Hamas attack.

Hamas dismissed the accusations by the UN envoy as “false” and “baseless”.

The report “came out after failed Israeli attempts to prove this false accusation to demonise the Palestinian Resistance and cover up … horrific human rights violations committed by Israeli Occupation forces against Palestinian women and girls,” it said in a statement.

Last month, UN experts expressed alarm over “credible allegations” of egregious human rights violations that Palestinian women and girls continue to face in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Hamas said the allegations “clearly contradict with testimonies of freed Israeli hostages of good treatment by Hamas fighters while in captivity.”

“This false accusation will not succeed in erasing the ugliness and horror of the Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip,” the Palestinian group said.

Israel has launched a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since a 7 October,  2023 Hamas attack, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

More than 30,600 Palestinians have since been killed and over 72,000 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 per cent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

March 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel has killed 364 health personnel in Gaza

The wreckage of an ambulance after an Israeli attack on Wednesday in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on January 11, 2024 [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | March 5, 2024

A spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, has said that the Israeli occupation forces have killed 364 health personnel since 7 October. At least 269 others, including hospital directors in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza, have been detained by the occupation forces, Quds Press reported on Monday.

Al-Qudra added that the Israeli forces have destroyed 155 health institutions and put 32 hospitals and 53 health centres out of service. The occupation state has targeted 126 ambulances, and put them out of service as well, while the infrastructure of hospitals in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza has been destroyed. They are now basically just triage points.

He noted that the health situation in Gaza is catastrophic and is getting worse due to the lack of essential medical aid.

“The [Israeli] occupation has deliberately caused an unspeakable humanitarian and health catastrophe that contributed to the spread of epidemics and infectious diseases,” said Al-Qudra. He pointed out that the health ministry has recorded around one million cases of infectious diseases for which the necessary treatment is not available.

The residents of northern Gaza, he warned, are struggling with the famine arising from the scarcity of drinking water and food. This has claimed the lives of dozens of children, women and the elderly.

The Palestinian official called on the UN to activate international humanitarian law to protect civilians, institutions and health teams, and prevent the humanitarian catastrophe from getting much worse.

March 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The United Kingdom: Zionism’s covert nerve center

UK’s century-long commitment to Zionism and collaboration with Israel today plays an often overlooked role in perpetuating oppression and genocide

By Kit Klarenberg | The Cradle | March 5, 2024

Britain’s role in sustaining the Zionist entity

On 9 February, British Defense Minister James Heappey informed parliament that Israeli military operatives are “currently … posted in the UK,” both within Tel Aviv’s diplomatic mission “and as participants in UK defense-led training courses.” This hitherto unacknowledged arrangement amply demonstrates how, despite recent calls from officials in London for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to exercise restraint in its genocide of Gaza – if not institute a ceasefire – the UK remains international Zionism’s covert nerve center.

Mere days earlier, Heappey likewise admitted that nine Israeli military aircraft landed in Britain since Operation Al Aqsa Flood on 7 October last year. Investigations by independent investigative website Declassified UK show that Royal Air Force aircraft have flown to and from Israel in the same period, along with 65 spy plane missions launched from the UK’s vast, little-known military and intelligence base in Cyprus.

The purpose of those flights and who and/or what they carried are a state secret. Freedom of Information requests have been denied, Britain’s Ministry of Defense has refused to comment, and local media is by and large silent.

Nonetheless, in July 2023, British ministers admitted that the UK’s training of Israeli military personnel includes battlefield medical assistance, “organizational design and concepts,” and “defense education.” It is unknown if that “education” has in any way informed the slaughter of more than 30,000 Palestinians since 7 October.

British military presence in occupied Palestine 

Yet, indications that London has long provided a highly influential guiding hand to Tel Aviv in its oppression and mass murder of Palestinians are unambiguous, even if hidden in plain sight. For example, in September 2019, the Israeli air force participated in a joint combat exercise with its British, German, and Italian counterparts.

The Israelis deployed F-15 warplanes for the purpose, which have been blitzing Gaza on a virtually daily basis since 7 October, indiscriminately flattening schools, hospitals, businesses, and homes and killing untold innocents.

A year earlier, in October 2022, it was quietly admitted in parliament that London maintains several “permanent military personnel in Israel,” all posted in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv:

“They carry out key activities in defense engagement and diplomacy. The Ministry of Defense supports the HMG Middle East Peace Process Programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. The program aims to help protect the political and physical viability of a two-state solution. We would not disclose the location and numbers of military personnel for security reasons.”

‘Joint activity’

Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have openly and repeatedly boasted of their personal role in blocking Palestinian statehood. We are thus left to ponder what these British operatives are truly concerned about – it certainly isn’t protecting “the political and physical viability of a two-state solution,” as that entire project was evidently never “viable,” by design. It could be those “permanent military personnel” who are present under the auspices of a highly confidential December 2020 military cooperation agreement inked by London and Tel Aviv.

British Ministry of Defense officials describe the agreement as an “important piece of defense diplomacy,” which “strengthens” military ties between the pair while providing “a mechanism for planning our joint activity.”

Its contents are nonetheless concealed not only from the public but also from elected lawmakers. Speculation can only abound that the agreement compels Britain to defend Israel in the event it is attacked. Such suspicions are only compounded by the visible presence of the UK’s elite SAS forces in Gaza today.

As a December 2023 investigation by The Cradle revealed, this apparent deployment is protected from media and public scrutiny by a dedicated Ministry of Defense-issued D-notice, as are other ominous indicators Britain is shaping the theater and setting the stage in West Asia for a full-blown, protracted region-wide war.

This included an as-yet-failed effort to pressure Beirut into allowing armed British soldiers total, unrestricted freedom of movement within Lebanon, along with immunity from arrest and prosecution for committing any crime.

The monarchy’s departure from neutrality

At countless protests the world over in solidarity with Palestinians since last October, demonstrators have brandished banners and signs imploring US President Joe Biden to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, if not order Netanyahu to seek peace. It is a noble demand, yet potentially misdirected. The true power to halt Tel Aviv’s current push to fulfill Zionism’s genocidal founding mission may not lie in Washington DC but in London – specifically, Buckingham Palace.

An extraordinary and largely unremarked upon development since Israel’s military assault on Gaza began has been the British monarchy’s shameless abandonment of “political neutrality” over Israel.

Queen Elizabeth II, publicly at least, refrained from commenting on current affairs or appearing to take “sides” on any issue throughout her 70-year reign. However, her recently coronated son has apparently, without fanfare, comprehensively shredded that longstanding convention.

King Charles the Zionist 

Within hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s eruption, King Charles openly condemned Hamas, saying he was “profoundly distressed” and “appalled” by the “horrors inflicted” by the resistance group and its “barbaric acts of terrorism.” Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist entity by a majority of countries internationally, while the BBC – which has relentlessly manufactured consent for genocide in Gaza every step of the way – rejects the designation’s use.

In the years immediately prior to taking the throne, Charles made his Zionism abundantly clear, breaking with his mother’s unspoken policy of not visiting Israel, secretly attending the funerals of former Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. In the latter instance, in 2016, he also visited the graves of his grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, Grand Duchess Elisabeth, in a cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, near the world’s largest Jewish cemetery. Both were Christian Zionists.

The Jerusalem Post approvingly dubbed Charles’ Zionist sympathies and familial connection to the Mount “a problem for Palestinians,” arguing he has a clear view of “who the city and the country belong to.” Meanwhile, the Times of Israel has hailed him as “a friend” to Jewry “with special and historic ties to Israel.” One such “tie” was an intimate friendship with Britain’s former chief Rabbi and President of United Jewish Israel Appeal, Jonathan Sacks.

Educational indoctrination 

Among other proselytizing acts, Sacks oversaw and advocated a number of operations intended to indoctrinate schoolchildren of all ages in Zionism, often under the bogus aegis of countering “antisemitism” in classrooms and on campuses. It may well be no coincidence then that the Department for Education has softly unveiled a multimillion-pound effort to train “staff and learners” at British schools, colleges, and universities to “identify and tackle incidents of antisemitism.”

A noble endeavor, one might argue. But it is evidently in keeping with Sacks’ pet projects. Among the program’s key stated objectives is “providing education staff with the necessary tools to hold and facilitate discussions on the historic and current conflicts [in West Asia] and tackling disinformation … including on the situation in Israel following the terrorist attacks on 7 October.” It also intends for universities to “demonstrate practical commitment to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.”

Manufacturing and maintaining the Zionist entity 

Most British universities have accepted the highly controversial IHRA definition under direct government threat of funding cuts if they refused. The definition’s validity and legitimacy have been widely challenged, including by academic David Feldman, one of its authors. In 2017, he expressed grave concerns that “this definition is imprecise,” falsely equating Judaism and Israel with an overwhelming focus on the latter, producing “a danger that the overall effect will place the onus on Israel’s critics to demonstrate they are not antisemitic.”

The initiative is unambiguously concerned with stifling criticism of Israel and its occupation while ensuring British youth are, from the earliest, most formative age, propagandized in its support.

His Majesty’s government clearly believes in Tel Aviv’s future endurance, and is in for the long haul, in terms of helping preserve the Mephistophelian project. There can surely be no greater proof that the current crisis in West Asia was made in London.

March 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Canada faces legal action over arms exports to Israel

Press TV – March 5, 2024

A group of Canadian and Palestinian human rights lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government for “contributing” to the bombardment of the Gaza Strip through sending arms to Israel.

The coalition of the lawyers filed a complaint against Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly on Tuesday over issuing permits for export of military equipment to Israel.

The group includes Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights and Al-Haq – Law in the Services of Man, an independent Palestinian NGO.

In the lawsuit, the group argued that Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act prevents the federal government from issuing permits for export of military goods and related technology to Israel because those exports can pose serious risks by undermining peace and security.

They said the weapons could be used to commit serious violations of international law and serious acts of violence against women and children in Palestine.

The lawyers said the government needs to stop contributing to Israel’s mass starvation of Palestinians and bombardment of Gaza.

Back in January, Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR), one of the groups involved in the case, urged the government to “immediately halt” all arms exports to Israel.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also stands accused of misleading the public over weapons sales to Israel.

Trudeau has repeatedly been urged to end arms exports to the Israeli regime. But his government has so far tried to downplay the country’s role in helping Israel build its arsenal.

On Friday, a group of more than 200 lawmakers from 12 countries, including the United States and Canada, signed a letter to call on their governments to impose a ban on arms sales to Israel.

Niki Ashton, a member of Canada’s Parliament was among the signatories of that letter.

Ashton said in a message on the X social media platform that the Canadian government has approved $28 million worth of weapons exports to Israel since the regime started its brutal military campaign in early October.

“That is horrifying,” Ashton said, adding, “Make no mistake. These weapons are directly used to kill and maim starving Palestinians.”

Countries supplying arms to Israel have been facing mounting pressure to halt weapons sale to Tel Aviv since the regime launched its military offensive against Gaza in early October. Israeli forces have so far killed more than 30,500 Palestinians, mostly children and women, in the besieged territory.

March 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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