Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

O Little Town of Bethlehem, Palestine

If Americans Knew

All the clips in this video took place in Bethlehem (see the sources below). Bethlehem is in the Palestinian West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. It is encircled by a wall erected by Israel in 2002. All entrances and exits are controlled by armed Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces regularly invade the area, beating and abducting residents – see https://israelpalestinenews.org/unhol… and https://imemc.org/article/category/re… Israeli forces sometimes kill them, including prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh, from a Christian family from Bethlehem. See https://israelpalestinenews.org/shire… and https://israelpalestinenews.org/?s=sh…

For other deaths see https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/ 

Due to the influence of the Israel lobby, U.S. taxpayers give Israel over $10 million per day – see https://ifamericansknew.org/stat/usai…

The churches shown at the end of the video are the Church of the Nativity and Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Please donate so we can continue to give Americans the facts on this issue.

We are an American 501c3 nonprofit so donations are fully tax deductible. https://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/…

SOURCES for the clips in the video are listed below:

Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKle…

Clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWLb7…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrMio…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97NQC…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rGG3…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=282TR…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXXPv…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=804_P…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy39v…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6ig…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HULfH…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyv0T…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4VAR…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJWiy…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASidm…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7eYE…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uyso…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlrJ…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVy3…

December 24, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

More on Anti-Antisemitism

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 20, 2022

It seems that if there is one thing that those at the top of the United States government and the national media really want for the holidays it is to be able to accuse someone new of being an antisemite. Since the Kanye West story exploded, anti-antisemitism has suddenly become big business in America with the White House hosting a December 7th conference on that theme featuring the media and the usual agitprop suspects and groups proclaiming from on high how hatred of the Jewish people is surging. Of course, it is those very groups that compile the numbers on the alleged surge to benefit their argument and one sometimes wonders if a poster on a college campus wall announcing a meeting to support Palestine that annoys a Jewish student is really antisemitism.

One of the loudest voices calling for a crack-down on the alleged hate criminals, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Executive Director Jonathan Greenblatt, calls the latest developments a “national crisis.” He has been particularly vocal in demanding strong hate crime type countermeasures to deal with those who dare to challenge the reality of Jewish power in the United States and has inter alia been successful in helping to convince the federal government to define criticism of Israel as ipso facto antisemitism. That leaves many of us wondering what happened to the First Amendment right to free speech, particularly as Israel is a foreign country with a dubious human rights and foreign relations history that merits considerable criticism.

The posing by Israel and its supporting cast of characters as perpetual victims is somewhat ironic, as Jews are the wealthiest, best educated and most politically powerful demographic in the United States. Joe Biden’s special envoy to monitor antisemitism worldwide Deborah Lipstadt oddly disagrees, saying that “For too long, Jew-hatred has been belittled or discounted because Jews have erroneously been considered white and privileged. This is a very real threat to Jews…” but who is she trying to kid? Jews dominate and control the entertainment and news reporting sectors of the economy and are way over represented in many high profile, highly paid and high prestige professions, including medicine, law, financial services, government and academia. Beyond that, more than 90% of the discretionary spending by the Department of Homeland Security goes to Jewish groups and organizations to provide them with “security.”

Much of the Jewish success is due to persistent and successful networking within their ethnicity to advance themselves even when it is achieved at the expense of the common good. When necessary, both antisemitism and the so-called holocaust are cited to silence critics and justify the murderous and genocidal excesses committed by a succession of Israeli governments, likely reaching its peak when the new ultra-conservative government of Benjamin Netanyahu is formed in the next few days.

Politicians, understanding that being perceived as anti-Israel or opposed to the corruption of the political system itself wrought by Jewish money, quickly learn to avoid antagonizing the Tribe. Those who do not, are removed from the system as soon as possible, frequently when they find themselves running for their next office against an exceptionally well-funded and media endorsed opponent.

The recent White House sponsored closed-door meeting bringing together Jewish leaders to discuss what to do about the antisemitism problem was addressed by no less than Doug Emhoff, the Hollywood lawyer described as the “Second Gentleman” by virtue of his marriage to the woman who currently pretends to be the Vice President of the United States. He is the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president.

Emhoff described his boyhood growing up Jewish in New Jersey and New York and lamented the developing “epidemic of hate” directed against Jews by certain entertainers and public figures. He elaborated ““Let me be clear — words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud, they are screaming them,” Emhoff said. “We cannot normalize this. We all have an obligation to condemn these vile acts. We must not stay silent. There is no either or. There are no two sides. Everyone must be against this.”

The meeting, held in the in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington, also featured State Department anti-Semitism envoy Lipstadt and White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. There were representatives from a dozen Jewish organizations, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Agudath, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, American Jewish Committee, Orthodox Union, Jewish on Campus, National Council of Jewish Women, Hillel, Secure Community Network, Religious Action Center, Anti-Defamation League, Integrity First for America and American Friends of Lubavitch.

Many of those present urged a major federal government effort to address the developing antisemitism problem, as they see it. Some stressed the importance of improving education on Jews and anti-Semitism in schools where such issues are not taught, which would mean wholesale adoption of the acceptable narrative on both Jewish issues and on what is increasingly referred to as holocaust denial.

The antisemitism meeting was preceded by a December 5th letter to the White House that was originated by Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada and signed by 124 other Congressmen identifying themselves as the House and Senate Bipartisan Task Forces for Combating Antisemitism. The letter called on the White House to take action against the antisemites through a “unified national strategy.” President Joe Biden responded by setting up an interagency task force to focus on the antisemitism problem, directed by the National Security Council. The group’s first task is coming up with a strategy to tackle the problem. Presidential spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre elaborated how “This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antisemitic harassment and abuse both online and offline, seek to prevent antisemitic attacks and incidents, and encourage whole-of-society efforts to counter antisemitism and build a more inclusive nation.”

So the United States government and the so-called Justice Department will soon likely be going to war against alleged antisemites. Like all of America’s pointless wars, this war will be expensive and fundamental liberties will be sacrificed as the government intrudes in the daily lives of its citizens to enforce complete conformity. There are perhaps other signs that the war has already begun, at least for some public figures. One of the most astonishing stories to appear recently concerns how the Democratic Party majority on the House Foreign Affairs committee by a 26 to 22 vote margin rejected a resolution presented by a group of Republican lawmakers that would initiate auditing of the money going to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to determine how it is being spent (or wasted).

The bill had been introduced by controversial Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and a small group of mostly conservative Republicans who either oppose or seek restraint on US aid to Ukraine, but it also received some strong support including from more hawkish Republicans who generally back the war. Republican congressmen Thomas Massie (KY), Matt Gaetz (FL), Barry Moore (AL), and Andrew Clyde (GA) cosponsored Greene’s bill.

Several Democratic congressmen alleged that the legislation to set up the audit was due to the sponsors having been taken in by Russian propaganda, but the prize for Democratic Party response must go to Congresswoman Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, who opined that the bill was “a political stunt designed to tie up and slow down our critical efforts to help Ukrainian forces.” But that was preceded by a personal rant attacking Marjorie Taylor Greene. Wild told her colleagues that “I want to begin on a personal note. As a Jewish American at a time when powerful public figures, including several celebrities with global platforms are putting Jewish communities across our country at risk of violent attacks by engaging in vicious antisemitism and holocaust denial […] it is beyond shameful to see support for a measure like this one introduced by representative Greene. I am not going to attempt to recite even a fraction of the patently false, bigoted, and hateful statements and actions that have characterized Representative Greene’s time as a member of this body. I will just say that her antisemitic conspiracy theories and trivializations of Nazism stand out as particularly reprehensible reflections of her ideology and approach to holding public office. I cannot in good conscience remain silent about any of this. I find the idea of Rep. Greene — the legitimacy that comes with elevating one of her pieces of legislation to be profoundly offensive.”

So, for someone in Congress the fate of a reasonable and much needed bill to audit the billions of dollars going to Ukraine turns out to be all about the alleged antisemitism of the legislation’s sponsor, which is not true in any event unless one defines criticizing the Rothschilds and globalist demon George Soros as antisemitism. Unfortunately, Susan Wild is far from unique.

Another antisemitism event heavily promoted in the media recently concerns Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer-diplomat who is currently the United Nations human rights special rapporteur in charge of monitoring the situation in the Palestinian territories. American officials sharply criticized several social media messages that Albanese wrote in 2014, which seemed to them to confirm charges of anti-Israel bias in the UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where Albanese’s office is located. Michele Taylor, the US Ambassador to the UNHRC exploded, saying “We are appalled. This is outrageous, inappropriate, corrosive, and degrades the value of the UN.”

So, what was among the Albanese messages, which appeared on Facebook? She opined that “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed — the Palestinians — who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities.” In another message she described Israeli behavior as “greedy.”

After the wave of attacks on her Francesca Albanese maintained that the observations were made long ago and that she had failed to contextualize them properly. I will leave it up to the reader to judge the comments, but I find them perfectly acceptable given the reality of what is going on in Israel-Palestine as well as the de facto domination of the process and narrative by Israel and its powerful lobbies in both the anglophone world and Europe. In fact, I would go farther and suggest that the essentially contrived anti-antisemitism campaign that seems to be gaining momentum in both Europe and the US indicates that, if anything, Albanese has understated her case.

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.

December 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s opposition to criticism exposes its colonial violence

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | December 15, 2022

The Times of Israel ran a lengthy article this week pinpointing the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s criticisms of Israel, notably her use of the term “Jewish lobby” – a reference from 2014, years prior to her appointment by the UN. Yet, what stands out in the article is that Israel resents being called out for its colonial existence and violence, which have been extensively documented, even though the UN is too entrenched in its complicity with Israel to call for the decolonisation of Palestine.

For example, one criticism directed against Albanese is her refusal to normalise Israeli colonialism as a “conflict”. Undoubtedly, normalising decades of Israel’s colonial enterprise as a conflict has been profitable not only for Israel, but also for the UN. The imaginary equivalence between the coloniser and the colonised does not lend itself to Palestinian rights as an emphasis on decolonisation would. Each time Israel is faced with a prominent figure calling out its inherent violence, suddenly diplomatic endeavours weave their way into opposing the individual, despite the fact that Israel’s only concern with diplomacy is maintaining its security narrative and impunity.

As the article portrayed, any criticism of Israel is considered unsuitable, whether it pertains to the Israeli presence in the occupied West Bank, Zionist colonial expansion, mentioning Israel’s war crimes, which have also been considered as such by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and disputing Israel’s security narrative within the wider colonial framework of violence and Palestinian legitimate armed resistance. The UN itself recognises the right of the colonised to resistance by all means, even if in practice the UN has supported Israel against the Palestinians. Yet, the clause exists, and Palestinians are within their rights to anti-colonial resistance. It is the UN that is in the wrong by denying Palestinians the political support they need.

Another contention the article raised is Albanese’s disagreement with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) non-legally binding definition of anti-Semitism, which has been exploited by Israel and pro-Israeli entities to stifle criticism of Israel and silence the Palestinian narrative. One such instance is the IHRA’s description of: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” as anti-Semitism. If Israel practices apartheid based on its colonial origins and expansion, why would such criticism be classified as anti-Semitism? Why not turn attention towards Israel’s colonial enterprise and manipulation of the Jewish religion to sustain its settler-colonial existence?

If Israel continues to express outrage or irritation at criticism of its colonial violence, it must look at itself, not its critics. How much of its historical colonial violence has Israel concealed within its archives? How much of it has been exposed, documented and proven? While on opposite ends of the spectrum, both that which is known and hidden testify to the brutality unleashed upon Palestinians through the Zionist paramilitary organisations prior to Israel’s establishment. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land, their villages destroyed and their people massacred. The means have changed, but the intent to expand across all of historical Palestine has not. In light of Israel’s historical and current violations, what security concerns would the settler-colonial state be facing if it made more of its archives accessible?

December 15, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestine welcomes UN resolution confirming its sovereignty over its resources

MEMO | December 15, 2022

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) welcomed the adoption of a resolution by the UN General Assembly regarding the rights of Palestinians over their natural resources.

In a statement the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Hussein Al-Sheikh, said: “We welcome the UN resolution in the General Assembly on the rights of the Palestinians to the natural resources in their homeland.”

“This UN resolution is an addition to hundreds of resolutions that affirm the Palestinian right and the illegality of the occupation and its aggressive and racist measures and practices.”

The official Palestinian News Agency, Wafa, said that the UN General Assembly “adopted a resolution tonight by an overwhelming majority regarding the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over their natural resources.”

The agency noted that “159 countries voted in favour of the resolution, 10 countries abstained from voting, while 8 countries opposed it.”

December 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Israel crushes water pipelines with bulldozers in occupied West Bank

MEMO | December 15, 2022

The Israeli occupation army destroyed the main water pipelines in the village of Al-Auja, in the north-east of Jericho, reported Wafa news agency.

The destruction is seen as being part of the apartheid state’s efforts to control all water sources in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Local residents said that occupation soldiers forced their way into the village and welded-shut the sole pipeline which supplies water to more than 1,200 people and used a bulldozer to crush it beneath the land.

In recent years, Ein Al-Auja villagers have suffered from Israeli demolition and persecution campaigns and repeated attacks and violations by illegal settlers and soldiers.

The supervisor of the Al-Baidar Organisation for Defending the Rights of the Bedouins, Hasan Mleihat, said the community is one of the largest in the West Bank and is a target of frequent assaults and violations by the Israeli soldiers and settlers.

He also noted that such assaults are intended to displace the community and seize their water and land to make room for colonial settlement construction.

Israel violates international law by destroying and pillaging water resources in occupied Palestine. It then uses stolen water to increase the supply to illegal Israeli settlements, which have a much higher demand and consumption rate. The state discriminates blatantly by not boosting or even protecting water supplies to Palestinian communities.

Mleihat noted that Israel’s restrictions force Palestinians to buy water directly from the occupation state, even as it prevents them from constructing their own wells or engaging in other projects to enhance access to fresh water.

Like hundreds of other Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, Al-Auja village is located in ‘Area C’ according to the Oslo Accords, putting it under full Israeli military and administrative control.

December 15, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

US playing ‘dangerous game’ in Yemen, insists on aggression: Ansarullah

Press TV – December 14, 2022

Yemen’s popular resistance Ansarullah movement has warned against the United States’ military presence in the country, saying Washington is playing a “dangerous game” as it insists on pursuing a policy of aggression while impeding the national peace process.

Ali al-Qahoum, a member of Ansarullah’s Political Bureau, made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network on Tuesday night.

“The presence of US troops in the Bab al-Mandab and off the coast of Yemen poses a serious threat to maritime navigation,” he said, adding that it further proves Washington’s aggressive policy against the impoverished country.

He went on to say that Saudi Arabia’s war and blockade against Yemen over the past eight years has been fully coordinated by the US, noting that “Riyadh is nothing but a tool in the hands of Washington to execute its policy of aggression with the participation of Israel, the UK and France.”

The Ansarullah official further noted that “the US and UK’s tendencies to keep the conflict ongoing and impose more embargo on Yemen, demand the utmost national responsibility of enhancing steadfastness.”

“If the Americans insist on aggression and blockade, the response will be in a way that achieves the required effect and sufficient pressure on the aggressor, whoever it may be,” he added.

Al-Qahoum further stated that our message to the Saudi-led coalition is that “elusiveness, gaining time, changing tools, and all the aspects of aggression and conspiracies are unacceptable.”

“We tell the aggressor countries not to rely on time and not to count on the deceptiveness of the United Nations and the US envoys as the overall equation is changing and the reality is different,” he added.

He further pointed out that “the only guarantor for the return of the ceasefire is that the demands of the Yemeni people and their rights be respected, which will open the prospects for peace, and there is no way to achieve this through deception.”

The UN-brokered truce between the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen first came into effect in April and has been extended twice since.

In mid-October Yemeni Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf said there would be no talks about the extension of the six-month truce which expired on October 2 unless the nation’s legitimate demands were fully met.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015. The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Washington and London have been providing the coalition with direct arms, logistical, and political support, including through outfitting it with precision-guided ammunition that the Saudi-led forces have been using amply against Yemen’s civilian population.

December 14, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to Trash a Movie in Support of a Lie

The cover-up of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians during the Nakba continues

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 13, 2022

Israel’s new government is planning to give de facto operational control of the national police and heavily armed border police to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of a party of right wing, racist extremists. It can perhaps be regarded as the prelude to the last phase in the uprooting and displacement of the Palestinian people. Those who resist will be killed and not a single Israeli soldier or policeman will be punished for carrying out what the Benjamin Netanyahu government will frame as a war against terrorists blessed by Yahweh in support of his “Chosen” people.

The Zionist view of what should be done to the indigenous inhabitants of a place once called Palestine has been unflinching since the founding of the state of Israel. The Zionist historic boast that a Jewish homeland would be built on “A land without a people for a people without a land” ignored the fact that Palestine already had plenty of inhabitants and a well-established economy where Jews were a distinct minority, less than 20% of the population in the 1930s.

The solution to correct the numbers was to compel the natives to leave by one means or another. Israel’s founding father David Ben Gurion early on endorsed a policy of removal by force if necessary the Christians and Muslims. The fighting that followed in 1948 after the United Nations’ partition of the country into two separate states left the mostly unarmed Palestinians helpless before the well-armed Jewish militias, which quickly expanded their zone of control well into the area that was granted on paper to the Palestinians. It is estimated that 15,000 Palestinians were killed outright by the Zionist forces while 800,000 more were driven from their homes, to which nearly all were denied any right to return. Four hundred Palestinian occupied villages were “ethnically cleansed” and in some cases physically destroyed.

The de facto seizure of the remainder of historic Palestine outside the borders of the Jewish state after the June 1967 Six Day war gave Israel direct control of all key strategic areas as well as land in Syria and Lebanon. Since that time, successive Israeli governments have pursued an ethnic cleansing policy both in Israel itself and on the West Bank consisting of gradually forcing the remaining Palestinians to leave to be replaced by all-Jewish towns and settlements. The Palestinians know that the final push is indeed coming and have begun to resist, though having few weapons they are helpless against the heavily armed Israel Defense Force (IDF), which has killed 195 Palestinians, mostly teenagers, in the past eleven months.

A recent killing captured on surveillance video shows an Israeli border policeman shooting a young man dead after an encounter on the main street of a West Bank town. Far-right Otzma Yehudit Party leader and incoming National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, praised the policeman who did the shooting as a “hero,” citing his “Precise action, you really fulfilled the honor of all of us and did what was assigned to you.”

The Palestinians refer to their dispossession and killing at the hands of the Jewish soldiers in 1948 as the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe,” which has sometimes been popularized as the Arab version of the so-called holocaust. I have recently watched a controversial film called Farha, made in Jordan by a woman filmmaker of Syrian descent, which views the Nakba through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old village girl. She, the eponymous Farha that gives the film its title, was preparing to go off to advance her education, presumably in Jerusalem, when Israeli soldiers attacked her village. The Israelis used loudspeakers to announce that all residents must leave immediately. Anyone seeking to remain would be killed. In a panic, the girl’s father, the village chief, locked her into a storage shed for safety as he tried to figure out what to do, but he then disappears from the tale and it might be presumed that both he and the rest of the family were killed.

Farha has only a crack in the door to witness what is going on outside. In a particularly dreadful sequence, a Palestinian man and his family who are trying to escape but are apparently confused regarding what way to go are detained by an Israeli officer and his men. After some perfunctory questioning, the father, mother and two children are lined up against a wall and shot dead. A newborn baby was left lying on the ground, alive, crying for its mother. The officer tells one of his men to kill it, but adds “Don’t waste a bullet on it.” The soldier prepares to stomp on the baby’s head to carry out the order, but cannot bring himself to do it and walks away. The baby continues to wail until later that day it stops, presumably dead from exposure or other factors.

Eventually Farha escapes from her prison and the movie concludes with her walking away in tears to an uncertain future. The film is very powerful, with excellent acting, cinematography and direction and it is based on a true story as handed down by Director Darin J. Sallam’s mother’s best friend, but I ended up wishing that it were stronger in its depiction of the savagery exercised by the Israelis, perhaps recreating an actual major massacre of Palestinian civilians, like occurred at Deir Yassin, where 107 Arabs, including many women and children, were shot dead by Israeli militiamen from the Irgun and Lehi groups. Other massacres took place in hundreds of villages across Galilee as well as in cities like Haifa or Akka, all far worse than what is revealed by the film. For those who are interested, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine describes, in detail, the brutality of what Israeli forces unleashed on the largely unarmed Palestinian people during the Nakba.

But even though the film deliberately avoided cliched scenes of mass violence, it has proven very powerful with supporters and critics lined up along the completely predictable political lines. The Israelis have in particular come down hard on the film and they and their many friends in the United States, have reacted in their usual tribal fashion, attacking Netflix, which is streaming Farha on its network including in the United States and Europe. The Israel firsters are advocating striking back against Netflix for its temerity by canceling the service and attacking the decision to air the film at all. Ironically though not surprisingly, Netflix has hitherto been a leader in obtaining and streaming Israeli films and even television series.

In Israel, the government has declared war on the film, also a characteristic of that nation’s circle-the- wagons paranoid response to anything that might even suggest that Jews are just as capable of evil as anyone else. Last month ultra-nationalist Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman moved to block scheduled screenings of the film in Jaffa, saying that “Israel is a place to present Israeli and international works, but is certainly not the place to slander IDF soldiers and the security forces who are acting day and night to defend and protect all the citizens and residents living here.”

Lieberman, a Russian Jew known for his ethnocentric and essentially racist views, apparently does not believe that soldiers and security forces should actually protect Palestinians and afford them at least some measure of free speech, which is only allowed to Jews. Israel’s ironically titled Culture Minister the oddly named Chili Tropper also attacked the film for its so-called “false plots against IDF soldiers” denouncing how their actions were presented as similar to “behavior of the Nazis in the Holocaust.”

Former IDF soldier and current right wing apologist, Yoseph Haddad also tweeted, “I saw the movie ‘Farha’ and I can tell you that it is much worse than you think. The IDF soldiers are presented there as inhuman with unimaginable evil, all they care about is murdering and slaughtering without mercy (which is the exact opposite of the truth). This is a blood libel that will certainly increase antisemitism and incitement against Israel. If you haven’t canceled your Netflix subscription yet – do it now.”

In an Instagram post, Israeli model Nataly Dadon also demanded that Israelis and their supporters internationally should drop their Netflix subscriptions in an Instagram post, claiming that Farha’s “sole purpose is apparently to increase anti-Semitism against the Jewish people.” Mondoweiss also reports how “author and photographer Laura Ben-David tweeted a photo of her cancellation message with the streaming app and wrote, ‘Buh-bye Netflix! Supporting the false and anti-Israel film Farha is unacceptable.’”

So Israel, which is passionate about its rejection of the non-violent pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) economic pressure movement, is united in its desire to punish Netflix’s bottom line. And the old reliable anti-Semitism tag is being liberally attached to how the argument is being framed. Former Al Jazeera reporter Ahmed Shihab-Eldin suggested to the Middle East Eye that “The pacing of [all the negative posts] reveals it was coordinated. With each passing hour, dozens and dozens of vapid and vile reviews would appear, making wild accusations trashing the film. It was clear people had not seen the film, and only wanted to damage its reputation.”

Finally, it would not be about Israel and Jews if there were not space in The New York Times to twist and spin the story. A review of the film by one Beatrice Loayza, a Peruvian-American film critic based in Brooklyn, describes the movie oddly as a “brutal coming-of-age-story.” At one point, Farha discovers an old handgun wrapped up within a sack of lentils. She eventually uses it to shoot the lock and escape the storage room. But this is how the Times reviewer describes the sequence: “She finds a gun buried inside a sack of grains — was the threat present all along? One day, a scene of great barbarity plays out before her tiny window.” Aha! So those crafty Arabs actually were potentially using the old handgun among the lentils trick to threaten the friendly Israel soldiers who just happened to drop by to shoot to death a Palestinian family, which is dismissed as a “scene of great barbarity” without any suggestion of what that might have been. In truth, the garbage being peddled by the Times as a review of a story of an atrocity committed by Jews is actually achieved without having to include any context or feature any Jews at all. “Remarkable” is all I have to say in conclusion.

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.

December 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Film Review | , , , , | Leave a comment

Algeria’s growing influence is putting it in the US crosshairs

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 13, 2022

As Algiers continues to play a more prominent role in Middle Eastern and African affairs, will it face US pressure and even regime change attempts for its foreign policy stances that do not align with those of the West?

In September, US Congress members evoked the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), to call for sanctions to be placed upon Algeria over weapons deals with Moscow. This plea came shortly after the same argument was made by Republican Senator Marco Rubio in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Since the days of the Cold War, the Algerian state has been outside the orbit of the West, lending its favor instead to national liberation movements and pursuing a more tailor-made foreign policy platform. This pitted it against its western neighbor, Morocco, which opted to align itself with the West. Today, tensions are boiling again between the neighboring North African leaderships over a similar alignment of sorts, especially since Morocco decided to normalize ties with Israel owing to pressure from the administration of then-US President Donald Trump. An arms race has been developing between the two nations since 2015, as both governments find themselves further tied to their East-West allegiances.

Against the backdrop of tensions with its Western-aligned North African neighbor, Algiers has emerged in 2022 as a revived regional player. As the global energy crisis continues amid the West’s standoff with Russia in Ukraine, Algeria has come off well and with more wealth. In the first five months of this year alone, Algeria’s oil and gas earnings skyrocketed by more than 70%, amounting to a total of $21.5 billion. This has given Algiers greater freedom to work on its defense goals and infrastructure projects.

Algeria is making significant strides at building sustainable living and working on projects to provide more jobs to its citizens. One such project is the construction of a futuristic city called Boughezoul. The city will not only house 400 new residents as part of its strategy to eliminate slums and derelict housing, but also seeks to host the Algerian space agency, a new railway station, and a new international airport. Efforts such as these, combined with the revival of military displays on the nation’s independence day, seem to represent a real effort to reassure the population of the government’s intentions after years of mistrust and mass demonstrations.

Along with the ongoing attempts to make the best of the new economic advantages domestically, Algiers also seems fixated on having its own impact on regional affairs. As the nation has cut off ties with neighboring Morocco, due in part to Israel’s intelligence and military influence, as well as the alleged Moroccan backing of Kabylie separatist groups, it now seeks to align itself with Tunisia to a greater degree.

Algeria, the third largest gas supplier to Europe, has attracted significant interest this year, becoming the top supplier now for Italy, as military ties also seem to deepen. In the case of Tunisia, Algeria has granted recognition to the nation’s president, Kais Saied, who relies on Algerian gas and is receiving supplies at a discounted rate. Tunis is facing an acute economic crisis and has been accused of trading its historically cordial relations with Morocco for closer ties with Algeria. The Tunisian president invited Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front – a movement that fights for the disputed territory of Western Sahara, against Morocco – to the eighth Tokyo International Conference on African Development that was hosted in Tunisia in August. Inviting the sworn enemy of Morocco to the country triggered the subsequen withdrawal of ambassadors between Tunisia and Morocco. Algeria supports the Polisario Front in its fight over Western Sahara.

For Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune, keeping Tunisia on its side is an important issue, as it fears the UAE-Saudi-Egyptian bloc will assert its own dominance over Tunis’ policies. Kais Saied, who seized power in October of 2019, is clearly within the UAE’s sphere of influence, as opposed to his opponents in the Ennahda party that align with Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Due to such a strong influence from Abu Dhabi in North Africa, Algeria is made to play a careful balancing game.

Another major issue that Algiers is now involving itself in is Palestinian reconciliation. It has hosted a number of meetings between rival parties Hamas and Fatah in order to bridge the gap and develop a stronger platform from which to argue for Palestinian statehood. The issue of achieving Palestinian statehood also played out as a central theme in the Arab League summit in November, as Algeria attempted to bolster its position regionally by hosting the meeting.

Despite having to play a careful balancing act, both regionally and internationally, Algeria has emerged this year as a key player in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. It has even held strong against its former colonizing power, France, forcing President Emmanuel Macron to change his rhetoric about Algiers and has paved the way to dropping French in the education system and opting to adopt the English language instead, eroding France’s influence further.

All the moves being made by Algeria are signaling that it intends to continue along the lines of adopting policies that do not necessarily align with Western interests, sometimes coming into direct conflict with them. This is why threats from US congressmen and senators to impose sanctions on Algeria have begun to raise eyebrows. America’s ambassador to Algeria, Elizabeth Moore Aubin, has refused to answer questions on hypothetically imposing sanctions, opting to focus on what her job entails, which may indicate that such decisions may not be on the immediate minds of high-ranking US officials. However, Republican party officials have certainly stirred the pot. The question now becomes how far Washington will go to punish Algeria for refusing to ditch Moscow and whether the strategy going forward may be to use Morocco against Algeria.

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’. 

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Social media’s history of suppressing Palestine content

By Kathryn Shihadah | Israel-Palestine News | December 12, 2022

For years, social media have been making it difficult for Palestinian and their allies’ voices to be heard – even as Israel’s stranglehold on Palestinians has grown stronger, and as increasing amounts of US tax money have been sent to Israel and to various countries for Israel’s direct benefit.

Social media users, especially Palestinian human rights advocates, have reported puzzling occurrences on the major platforms Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – especially during times of Israeli crackdowns.

Users who shared information on the situation in the Palestinian territories described posts being deleted as “hate speech or symbols,” or “violence,” inexplicably losing followers and views of their content, or having entire accounts abruptly frozen or deleted.

One rights group documented over 700 instances of social media networks restricting or removing Palestinian content in May 2021 alone, during a time of especially heavy Israeli state violence.

Another group reported that nearly half of the Palestinian-themed content that disappeared off of Instagram during this time period

occurred without the company providing the user a prior warning or notice. In an additional 20 percent of the cases, Instagram notified the user but did not provide a specific justification for restricting the content.

When users appealed the censorship, often their content or account would be restored, with a message that it never should have been deleted to begin with. But by the time this resolution came, the opportunity to inform and influence readers was past.

For example, in May 2021, during a time of escalating Israeli violence, Twitter restricted the account of Palestinian-American journalist Mariam Barghouti, who had been posting photos and videos of the violence in Jerusalem. It later restored Barghouti’s account and apologized for the suspension, saying it was done “by mistake.”

A long report on social media actions regarding Israel-Palestine in the Columbia Journalism Review pointed out: “Some of those who have been covering such issues for years don’t think these kinds of things are a mistake; rather, they believe social networks are deliberately censoring Palestinian content.”

Barghouti explained the significance of Twitter to the Palestinian rights movement:

It’s our only avenue for speaking with the world from under a military occupation that controls all our entry and exit points. We’re left to share through soundbites of 280 characters. If even that is taken away, we’re looking at the slaughter of Palestinians in silence.

Social media suppression is particularly critical since mainstream media tend not to cover Israel and Palestine with the kind of accuracy and context that would enable Americans to understand the issue.

In essence, social media have been preventing the victims of Israeli violence from sharing their experiences or building support for their plight.

Excuses

Although owned by two different companies, the three platforms, Twitter and Facebook/Instagram, have offered duplicate “explanations” for what has happened, including glitches that just happened to affect posts and hashtags about Israel, and  “widespread global technical issue not related to any particular topic.”

One Facebook spokesperson stated,
While these [glitches] have been fixed, they should never have happened in the first place. We’re so sorry to everyone who felt they couldn’t bring attention to important events, or who felt this was a deliberate suppression of their voice. This was never our intention – nor do we ever want to silence a particular community or point of view.
Human rights advocates familiar with the years-long social media battle were not convinced.

TRT World reported another case in which Twitter restricted information on Palestine:

Pro-Palestinian activist Hebh Jamal’s Twitter was targeted with complaints over a post detailing an emotional conversation between her husband and his little cousin in Gaza. The young cousin admitted to wanting to brush his hair before sleeping for fear that the Israeli fire may kill him in his sleep. He said he wanted to look good in case he died. Hebh’s post was flagged for deletion, and restricted by Twitter.

Since the German government has implemented legal measures to make social media companies accountable to users, Twitter later confessed to Hebh that the complaints against her post were baseless. Under German law, Twitter has to inform the user if their post or account is being investigated. This only applies because Hebh and her family reside in Germany. For most Palestinians hailing from Gaza City, there’s a different set of rules, and a radically different set of rights.

TRT reports: “Hebh now faces a video review for every post she makes. She’s also been reported on TikTok as well, with her account deleted before.”

Journalist Bayan Ishtaiwi explained: “For Palestinians sealed-off in open-air prisons like Gaza, social media is all they have. Whoever uses words like occupation or martyr, is penalized for three days at least, which happened to me, or face a ban on live videos for a month.”

Whistleblowing

A group of Instagram employees confirmed the human rights activists’ suspicions when they protested the platform’s blocking of pro-Palestinian content during Israel’s violence in May 2021 – even after the issue had already been reported.

An employee circulated an internal document, which was later shared with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in which he asked,

Can we investigate the reasons why posts and stories pertaining to Palestine lately have had limited reach and engagement, especially when more people than ever from around the world are watching the situation unfold?

Other employees added comments, including,

I’d really like to understand what exactly is breaking down here and why. What is being done to fix it given that this is an issue that was brought up a week ago?

Soon after, nearly 200 Facebook employees signed on to an open letter demanding that Facebook address the allegations of censorship.

Israel calls the shots

Foreign Policy reports:

“Since 2015, the Israeli Justice Ministry has operated a Cyber Unit that has issued tens of thousands of content removal requests to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, mostly alleging violent incitement or support for terrorism.

Technically, these requests are voluntary. They are not legally binding and are therefore not tracked in the transparency reports that technology companies use to disclose formal government censorship orders.

Nonetheless, social media companies have complied with the Cyber Unit’s requests roughly 90 percent of the time.”

Israel’s infamous Cyber Unit patrols social media, searching for “incriminating” content, passing along thousands of requests to social media administrators to remove what the unit finds unacceptable.

In 2016, the Israeli government and Facebook agreed to collaborate on ways to combat what Israel considers “incitement to violence” on the platform.

Then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked noted that at the time, Facebook’s compliance with Israel’s requests to take down content was up to 95%, but expressed hopes that the plan would result in even more censorship.

Neither Israel nor the platforms have been transparent about this practice.

In 2020, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs issued a report on allegedly “phony” online profiles that put out content critical of Israel.

Within a day, Twitter “suspended dozens of Palestinian and pro-Palestine accounts,” claiming the information they circulated violated its terms of service.

It may be noteworthy that both Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk have had private audiences with top Israeli leaders.

Israelis abound in Silicon Valley, with about 60,000-100,000 in the Bay Area, and Israel partisans are also ever-present. A recent photo of Musk shared on Twitter was of him with his friend Ari Emanuel, son of a former Irgun terrorist and brother of Rahm Emanuel, who once volunteered with the IDF.

One Palestinian activist summed up the situation:

Rather than being some kind of enabler of democracy, social media has come to be the epitome of political silencing and repression as tech giants have collaborated with various oppressive governments, including the Israeli government, to censor and delete content that exposes their true oppressive character.

Facebook, Instagram report card

Facebook’s Oversight Board recommended that Meta (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) undergo an evaluation of its treatment of Palestinian content in May 2021. Meta hired the consulting company Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) for the work.

Jewish Currents summarized BSR’s final report in an article entitled “Human Rights Due Diligence of Meta’s Impacts in Israel and Palestine”:

The report underscored heavy-handed content moderation by Facebook and Instagram, which Palestinian social media users claim censors critics of Israeli repression.

These restrictions have undermined Palestinian users’ effort to use social media to document Israeli human rights abuses.

BSR contrasted Meta’s over-enforcement of Palestinian social media posts with its under-enforcement of Hebrew-language posts, which the report attributes to Meta installing an algorithmic “hostile speech classifier” for Arabic, but not for Hebrew.

The report concludes that Arabic language content is over-regulated because Hamas, the ruling, elected party in Gaza, is on Facebook’s blacklist, so it was standard to remove posts that appeared to “praise, support, or represent” that group or others on the list.

Other reasons for the interference lie in the fact that the Palestinian content was not reviewed by Palestinian dialect speakers of Arabic, nor was the algorithm developed with the proper “linguistic and cultural competence.”

Internet policy experts summed up the situation at Facebook and the other platforms:

Social media companies have] shown a willingness to silence Palestinian voices if it means avoiding potential political controversy and pressure from the Israeli government.

“Unintentional”? Really?

BSR’s report speculated that the impact of Facebook’s actions – Palestinian users’ loss of rights to expression – was unintentional. Rights groups disagreed.

Dozens of groups signed a public statement in response to BSR’s report, insisting that they had been

calling Meta’s attention to the disproportionately negative impact of its content moderation on Palestinians for years, [so] even if the bias started out as unintentional, after knowing about the issues for years and not taking appropriate action, the unintentional became intentional.

Looking ahead

The BSR report ends with 21 recommendations to Meta, some of which Meta has committed to, either fully or in part.

Marwa Fatafta, a policy manager for a digital rights group, had mixed feelings:

The report validates the lived experiences of Palestinians… They cannot tell us anymore that this is a system glitch. Now they know the root causes…

But regarding Israel’s interference in content restriction, he added,

We’ve wanted more clarity on this because Meta refuses to provide answers. Users deserve transparency on whether their piece of content has been removed as a result of the Israeli government’s request.

Bottom line

Social media have for years – and for various reasons – repressed content about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

In some particularly egregious situations, like Israel’s aggression in May 2021, the companies have offered excuses and apologies. But impartial analysis has proven these excuses false and the apologies hollow.

Not only are social media platforms inherently skewed to over-regulate Palestinian voices, but they are influenced by a powerful foreign government (and no doubt, its US lobby) to an extent we can only imagine.

And Palestinians continue dying.

A report in Foreign Policy by Emerson T. Brooking and Eliza Campbell described the situation with rare eloquence:

The 4.8 million residents of the occupied Palestinian territories live in two simultaneous and vastly different realities. In the physical world, Palestinians are captives, crammed into Gaza or West Bank enclaves and blockaded by Israeli military checkpoints…

But on the internet, the checkpoints disappear. Palestinians can converse with family from whom they are separated by barbed wire and machine gun emplacements. They can share their stories with observers and sympathizers around the world.

In doing so, Palestinians can call themselves citizens of a sovereign State of Palestine: one recognized by 138 countries and admitted in 2012 as a non-member observer state to the United Nations. This second, digital Palestine represents a fulfilment of the internet’s optimistic and largely forgotten promise to give voice to the voiceless and illuminate the darkest corners of the world.

It is also under threat of being extinguished. This is due to a confluence of three forces. The first is the expansive police and surveillance apparatus of the State of Israel, which is used to track, intimidate, and imprison Palestinians in the occupied territories for their online speech.

The second is a network of formal and informal institutions used by the Israeli government to target pro-Palestinian expression across the globe.

The third—and most surprising—force is that of American social media companies, which have shown a willingness to silence Palestinian voices if it means avoiding potential political controversy and pressure from the Israeli government.

Together, these forces demonstrate how it is possible for an ostensibly democratic government to suppress a popular online movement with the acquiescence of ostensibly liberal Silicon Valley executives. The playbook being pioneered against Palestinians will not stay in the Middle East forever. In time, it may be deployed against activist communities around the world.

December 13, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli sniper kills 16-year old Palestinian girl in West Bank raid

Jana Zakarneh, 16, was killed by Israeli forces in Jenin. (Photo: via WAFA)
MEMO | December 12, 2022

The Palestinian Health Ministry said a girl child was killed by an Israeli sniper last night in Jenin City, north of the Occupied West Bank, The Palestinian Information Centre reports.

According to local sources, 16-year-old Jana Zakarnah was found dead on the roof of her home after an Israeli sniper targeted her and fatally injured her in the head.

The incident happened after Israeli soldiers from a special unit stormed the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin City on Sunday night.

Fierce armed clashes reportedly took place in the area between the soldiers and resistance fighters.

The Health Ministry said that one citizen was moderately injured during the protests, while the Red Crescent said that its ambulance crews provided assistance to three citizens after they suffered bullet injuries in their lower extremities.

In a statement, Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas affirmed that a group of its fighters and others exchanged fire with undercover soldiers from the Duvdevan unit in Al-Bayader area in Jenin City and targeted them with explosive devices.

Meanwhile, local sources reported that the Israeli Occupation Forces kidnapped three young men, including two brothers, from Jenin City during the same raid.

The Hebrew media claimed that one of the detainees was intending to carry out operations against Israeli targets.

December 12, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel defence minister ordered 1954 explosions that hit US, UK targets in Egypt

MEMO | December 10, 2022

A document has revealed that late Colonel Binyamin Gibli, head of Israeli Military Intelligence between June 1950 and March 1955, was directly ordered by then-Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon to bomb US and UK targets in Egypt in 1954, Arab48.com reported on Friday.

Known as Operation Susannah, Gibli ordered nine Egyptian-Jewish undercover agents, members of Unit 131, to bomb UK and US targets.

The bombing aimed to turn the US and UK against then-Egyptian revolutionary leader Gamal Abdul Nasser and push the UK to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Suez Canal, which was nationalised by Abdul Nasser.

Gibli wrote in his biography, which had been banned, that Lavon disowned him after the operation was uncovered.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, he accused Lavon of: “Throwing him to the dogs and turning him into a scapegoat.”

The operation failed as Egyptian security forces uncovered the unit and arrested its members. One of them committed suicide in prison, two were executed and others spent long periods in jail.

Israeli authorities carried out several investigations into the issue, known as the Lavon Affair, that led to contradictory findings, resignations and political divisions. The case was never closed.

December 11, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

UK-Israel Tech Hub facilitates Zionists’ penetration into British governance

Press TV – December 11, 2022

A leading British academic has depicted the integration of the UK-Israeli tech industry as a tool of Zionist “operatives” to infiltrate into the “very fabric” of the British governance.

David Miller, a former professor at Bristol University and a scholarly critic of Israel, made the comments on Press TV’s Palestine Declassified aired on Saturday, clarifying on the UK Israel Tech Hub’s true mission.

The UK Israel Tech Hub is based in the British Embassy in the occupied Palestine and is funded directly by the British taxpayer.

The organization, committed to Israel’s economic and tech interests, receives its financial resources through the British Foreign Office along with departments for Trade and Media.

The UK Israel Tech Hub, Miller said, is there to encourage integration between the tech industry in the UK and Israel, which is already happening and “on many occasions, we are seeing a penetration essentially into the very fabric of British governance by operatives of the Zionist regime.”

“A large number of people have gone straight from working for the Zionist entity into effectively working for the British taxpayer,” Miller said.

Indeed, when glancing at the employees of this organization who sit inside the British Embassy, the picture of state capture becomes clearer.

Haim Shani, the chairman of the UK Israel Tech Hub, previously served as director general of the Israeli ministry of finance. The director of this suspicious organization is Keren Shurkin, who started in the liaison department of the Israeli military.

The deputy director of the UK Israel Tech Hub is Ella Caplan, who claims to have been directly behind all interactions between a specific foreign army and the Israel military during her time in the liaison department.

Avital Levitsky went from working in Israeli military intelligence to the cyber security sector lead at the UK Israel Tech Hub in the British Embassy. And the list goes on.

Miller also added that the tech contracts between the UK and the Zionist regime are being used simply as a sort of data grab for the Israeli intelligence, citing Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous efforts to send people from Israeli intelligence organizations, in particular the signals intelligence Unit 8200, into the tech startups.

“These are people who are intended by the regime to carry the interests of Israel into the startups that they are engaged in,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mick Napier, a co-founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, also described the UK Israel Tech Hub a “job creation program” for Israelis and a part of “100 percent full spectrum complicity” between the UK and Israel.

Napier stated that such projects “clearly” aim to defeat the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign “as far as it possibly can.”

It is worth mentioning that BDS works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.

Israeli firms infiltrate NHS

It is “very worrying that Israeli tech firms, staffed by people from former Israeli intelligence agencies, are able to get access to data in the British National Health Service (NHS),” Miller said of the Israeli tech industry penetration into the UK NHS.

The British Embassy-backed project, UK Israel Tech Hub, has been integral to the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Israel and the Northern Health Services Alliance (NHSA) to facilitate the expansion of the Israeli tech industry into the NHS.

Accordingly, the UK-Israel Tech Gateway, established through the tech hub, is set to grant the access of vast swathes of British citizens’ health data to Israeli tech companies.

Napier also voiced concerns over Israel’s access to British citizens’ health data saying that it allows “all sorts of blackmail” and “force people to collaborate and change their political behavior.”

Miller termed the extensive digital collaboration between Britain and Israel as “melding” rather than integration which is not merely limited to business activities but have an “intelligence component or interest.”

“There is integration increasingly between the interests of the Israelis and parts of the [UK] government apparatus, there are many other examples of people who are effectively operating for the interests of the Israelis inside the governmental apparatus in the [Palace of] Whitehall at Westminster,” Miller concluded.

In another episode of Palestine Declassified aired on November 26, Huda Ammori, a Palestinian activist and co-founder of the direct action network Palestine Action said that tech companies including Amazon and Google, are working with the Israeli military, and aiding in human rights violations and the colonization of the Palestinian people.

Ammori was making a reference to the notorious Project Nimbus Google’s $1.2bn artificial intelligence and surveillance contract with Amazon and the Israeli military.

December 11, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment