The hidden goal behind Gaza’s assault
By Batool Subeiti | Press TV | August 7, 2022
The Zionist regime’s unprovoked blitz on Gaza since Friday afternoon was, firstly, a direct message to Lebanon, that it is not interested in going into war over the maritime boarders, thereby conceding to line 23 and the Qana fields that Lebanon has demanded full sovereignty over. Secondly, the regime seeks to test the waters through this limited confrontation.
The limited scope of the confrontation between Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Zionist regime implies the objective is not aimed at weakening the resistance, rather it is to measure the reactions of this confrontation on many levels and to send underlying messages in the process.
The Zionist regime considers the Palestinian resistance to be the easiest target within the resistance axis and has therefore sought calculated confrontation with this entity. Through its assaults on Gaza, the regime is interested in testing the extent of unification of the regional resistance factions in decision making, logistical support, the readiness of factions to get involved if the battle escalates, how willing they are to expand the war in addition to their stock of weapons, their capabilities, and capacities.
This is also happening at a time when the Zionist regime will hold its fifth election in four years this November, thereby seeking to rally the settler population over a point of unity – that is usually attacks on Gaza. The regime seeks to paint the image that it is unafraid to attack in any circumstance to ensure their ‘security’, with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid stating on Friday that, “the country has ‘zero tolerance’ for attacks from Gaza”. However, he also made it clear in the same press conference that there is no interest in a ‘broader battle’.
More importantly, the Zionist regime is approaching a due position and that is drawing the maritime boarders with Lebanon, which if it does not end up playing in the interests of Lebanon, poses an imminent danger, and calls for an imminent war, as made clear by the Secretary General of the Islamic resistance party in Lebanon. The Zionist regime wishes to prevent a war at all costs and that means it has no choice but to compromise, which appears as a point of weakness for the settler population in the context of the elections, as they wish for a candidate that takes a strong stance on such issues. This smaller scale attack was therefore launched in order to avoid a larger war, and for the regime to grant itself some credit as well.
It is also important for the Zionist regime to reinforce the phobia of war within the minds of the settler population, such that the mass general opinion formed is one that aligns with the Zionist government’s decision to compromise on the maritime boarders, in order to prevent a wider scale war where the battle front is opened beyond one Palestinian resistance faction, the PIJ, and in the worst case extends to the Lebanese resistance that has over 100,000 rockets.
The reason that the Zionist regime seeks to compromise on the boarders are because it knows the resistance capabilities are very strong, such as when they sent three unmanned aircraft (UAV) targeting the gas rigs in July. The regime however also seeks to paint the image that they are strong through launching an offensive attack on the resistance, however the reality is that they don’t wish for a war and in fact know that other Palestinian resistance organizations such as Hamas, the Popular Front do not intend to get involved and the operation is of a limited nature. The head of Shin Bet reportedly told cabinet ministers overnight on Saturday that Tel Aviv, “met most of the objectives it set at the outset of the operation in Gaza.”
In this process, the Zionist regime has sought to send a message to the internal resistance in Palestine that the head of PIJ, Ziad Nakhala is in Tehran whilst key commanders of the group are being assassinated, thereby seeking a show of display for their supposed lack of fear and strength. However, the unmasked reality is that since the regime are seeking compromise, they want to grant themselves false credit regarding their strategic strength and seek to gain publicity without it affecting their elections. The reality is that the regime is deceiving its own population through putting forth titles that sound big but are empty, as they know the resistance won’t be dragged into the square they want, and their aim is to appeal to the public opinion of the Zionist settlers through deception.
Batool Subeiti is an Energy Engineer and political analyst based in London, UK.
Israeli airstrike kills 5-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza
Defense for Children International – Palestine | August 5, 2022
An Israeli airstrike killed a 5-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza City today as the Israeli military announced a new military offensive on the Gaza Strip.
Alaa Abdullah Riyad Qaddoum, 5, was killed around 4:30 p.m. on August 5 by an Israeli airstrike in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. The Israeli airstrike hit a group of people gathered outside Abu Samra mosque in the Wadi Al-Arayes area of Shuja’iyya neighborhood. Alaa’s six-year-old brother, Riyad, and father, Abdullah, were injured in the same attack.
“Israeli forces routinely use explosive weapons in densely populated civilian areas with complete disregard for the indiscriminate effects,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “There is no safe space in the Gaza Strip for Palestinian children and their families and they increasingly bear the brunt of Israel’s repeated military offensives.”
5-year-old Alaa with her kindergarten diploma. (Photo: Courtesy of the Qaddoum family)
Alaa was killed instantly and sustained injuries to her forehead, chest, and right leg from shrapnel, according to a doctor at Al-Shifa hospital.
At least two other Palestinians were killed in the same attack, including Alaa’s 24-year-old cousin Yousef Salman Mohammad Qaddoum, according to information collected by DCIP.
Alaa is the 19th Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in 2022, according to documentation collected by DCIP.
The Israeli military launched airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least ten people and injuring at least 55, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. The Israeli military offensive comes days after Israeli forces arrested a senior Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin and killed 16-year-old Dirar Riyad Lufti Al-Haj Saleh, also in Jenin, who was protesting the Israeli military’s incursion into Jenin refugee camp.
International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and requires all parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between military targets, civilians, and civilian objects. Israel as the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Gaza Strip, is required to protect the Palestinian civilian population from violence.
Israeli authorities have imposed a closure policy against the Gaza Strip since 2007 by strictly controlling and limiting the entry and exit of individuals; maintaining harsh restrictions on imports including food, construction materials, fuel, and other essential items; as well as prohibiting exports. Israel continues to maintain complete control over the Gaza Strip’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters.
Rutherford Institute Challenges Anti-Boycott Law, Denounces Attempt by Texas Officials To Muzzle Political Viewpoints
The Rutherford Institute | August 5, 2022
HOUSTON, Tex. — The Rutherford Institute is denouncing as unconstitutional an attempt by Texas officials to muzzle political viewpoints expressed in the form of boycotts and protests.
Weighing in before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in A&R Engineering and Testing, Inc. v. Paxton, Rutherford Institute attorneys are challenging a Texas anti-boycott law that prohibits the government from doing business with companies that boycott or criticize Israel. Approximately 33 states have adopted laws that seek to punish those who criticize Israel by denying them government contracts.
“Boycotts are a protected part of the American tradition of political protest that dates back to the American Revolution, when early Americans expressed their outrage over Britain’s oppressive taxes and military occupation by staging boycotts of British goods and organizing public protests, mass meetings, parades, and other demonstrations,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Anti-boycott laws are a thinly disguised plot to muzzle dissent, silence those who would challenge government authority, and undermine our First Amendment rights, which assure us of the right to free speech, expressive activities, protest, and the right to criticize the government.”
Anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) laws, which have gained traction across the country, restrict government funds being paid to persons or entities who boycott Israel or take any action intended to penalize or inflict economic harm on Israel, such as by giving speeches or sponsoring protests against Israel. Anti-BDS laws have arisen in response to a political movement that seeks to apply international, nonviolent pressure on Israel so long as it occupies the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and further seeks to achieve full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. The state of Texas, which has been actively courting business with Israel for the past few years, first enacted an anti-BDS Law in 2017, which prohibits government agencies from doing business with companies that boycott Israel.
A&R Engineering and Testing has contracted with the city of Houston for 17 years and provided more than $2 million worth of services to the city. However, A&R’s owner Rasmy Hassouna has attended protests in support of Palestinian rights and personally boycotts Israel over its occupation of Palestine (he also boycotts Venezuela). As a result of the state’s anti-BDS law, A&R Engineering was unable to renew its government contract. A&R Engineering filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Southern District of Texas against the City of Houston and the Texas Attorney General challenging the anti-BDS law as an unconstitutional attempt by the government to force Hassouna to relinquish his right to political expression. The court found that Hassouna’s pro-Palestinian political views are protected by the First Amendment and issued an injunction to stop the government from enforcing the law and requiring the clause in A&R’s contract. The Attorney General appealed the ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In support of A&R’s right to political expression, The Rutherford Institute has asked that the injunction be upheld and argued in favor of its being expanded beyond this particular case.
John S. Friend of Friend Law P.S.C. advanced the arguments in the A&R Engineering and Testing, Inc. v. Paxton amicus brief.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
DOCUMENTS
Eight Palestinians killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza
Palestine Information Center – August 5, 2022
GAZA – At least eight people were killed – including an Islamic Jihad commander and a five-year-old child – and 44 were wounded in a series of Israeli aerial strikes on various areas of the Gaza Strip on Friday evening.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said at least eight people were killed, including the Islamic Jihad commander Taysir al-Jabari and a five-year-old girl.
At least 44 people were wounded and are being treated at hospitals as a result of the Israeli raids, the ministry added.
Jabari, a commander of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, was killed in an air strike on an apartment in the Palestine Tower in the center of Gaza City, the Islamic Jihad group said in a statement.
Multiple blasts were heard and seen throughout Gaza, while Israeli reconnaissance drones were heard hovering over the besieged territory.
The Israeli attack follows days of tension after the arrest of a senior Jihad leader in the occupied West Bank.
“The IDF is currently striking in the Gaza Strip. A special situation has been declared on the Israeli home front,” the Israeli military said in a statement. It said further details would follow.
Israel has been imposing tight restrictions on the Gaza Strip for the fourth consecutive day, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the besieged enclave.
Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid held a security consultation with Israeli officials to discuss the security situation in the south, Lapid’s office said.
Biden and Allies Continue to Put Iran in the Crosshairs
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | August 5, 2022
In addition to escalating brinkmanship with Russia and China, President Joe Biden’s administration is flirting with war against Iran. The clearest evidence of this includes the ever expanding “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, as well as the development of a U.S.-led, NATO style alliance encircling Iran. There is also ample support for Israel’s incessant drone strikes, assassinations, and ceaseless bombings of allegedly Iranian targets in Syria.
Last month, Biden traveled to the region to publicly genuflect before the rulers of America’s cherished Gulf tyrannies and apartheid Israel. The aforementioned burgeoning alliance topped his agenda.
In May, Tel Aviv’s U.S. taxpayer subsidized military murdered Shireen Abu Akleh, a world renowned Al Jazeera journalist, a Palestinian Christian, and American citizen. During a raid on the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, the Israeli Occupation Forces shot her in the face while she was wearing a press vest. They also attacked her funeral procession, attempting to knock her casket to the ground while mourners were carrying it.
But Biden, “Israel’s man in Washington,” got off the plane at Ben Gurion airport and said our bilateral relationship is “bone-deep.” And speaking for the “vast majority” of Americans, he stated emphatically we are “completely devoted to Israel’s security without any ifs, ands, or buts—without any doubts about it.”
He went on to sign a joint declaration with acting Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid committing the U.S. to use all of its “national power” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
During an interview ahead of his Israel visit, Biden said he would use force, threatening war against Iran “as a last resort.” It is not enough for the Israelis, they demand an “offensive” and “credible” military threat against Iran. Lapid called it “the real thing.”
Biden refuses to lift the necessary sanctions to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal, which means at least the brutal economic war on Iran will persist in perpetuity. This week, Biden levied fresh sanctions on Iran. Biden’s issuance of sanctions has become more frequent in recent months and ever since the other members of the P5+1 began approaching a finalized deal.
As Dave DeCamp, news editor at Antiwar.com, reported,
The U.S. on Monday issued fresh sanctions against Iran meant to target the Islamic Republic’s oil and petrochemical sales to East Asia.
The new sanctions targeted three Chinese firms and one UAE firm accused of doing business with the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. (PGPICC), which the U.S. Treasury Department says is one of Iran’s largest petrochemical brokers.
According to the Treasury Department, PGPICC facilitated the “sale of tens of millions of dollars worth of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products from Iran to East Asia” through the firms that were hit with sanctions.
The sanctions are the latest sign that the Biden administration is not serious about reviving the Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked if the U.S. was ready to return to JCPOA, but he sidestepped the questions and put the responsibility on Iran.
Donald Trump and Biden’s “maximum pressure” campaign has led to 40-50% inflation rates and medical shortages. Washington has deliberately suffocated the Iranian people, almost half of whom live below the poverty line.
Last year, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told Biden his “strategic vision” for Iran was “death by a thousand cuts,” or myriad military and diplomatic attacks, as well as clandestine attacks, “the gray-area stuff.” Bennett went on to demand U.S. troops remain indefinitely in both Syria and Iraq.
But the decades of lies and unsubstantiated assertions by hawks about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons may remain a useable casus belli. Americans aware of Israel’s arsenal, which includes 200 or more nuclear weapons and makes U.S. aid illegal, are considerably outnumbered statistically by those who falsely believe Iran has the bomb. The Iranians have never sought nuclear arms, and they recently reiterated twice that they have the technical capability but, despite their encirclement, Tehran has chosen not to take this course. The development of such weapons is haram under Islamic law, forbidden by the Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwah.
However, this was never about the phony threat of Iran nuking Israel. The Iranians’ latent threat is unacceptable for Tel Aviv because it may finally restrict the Israelis’ ability to attack their neighbors with impunity, the way they bomb Syria every week.
In the book Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, Scott Horton, the Libertarian Institute’s Director, explains,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the former prime minister Ehud Barak, admitted in 2010 that even if Iran were hypothetically to gain atomic weapons, the Israelis were not afraid the Ayatollah would attack them in a first strike, as they constantly tell the public. Instead they were merely concerned that it would limit their “freedom of action” against other regional adversaries, such as Hezbollah, and could cause a “brain drain” of talented young Israelis to the United States. Netanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the New York Times that, “Just as Pakistan had the bomb and nothing happened, Israel could also accept and survive Iran having the bomb.” Former Clinton administration State Department official Jamie Rubin also explained in Foreign Policy that the problem was never an Israeli fear of a first strike by Iran, but “Israel’s real fear – losing its nuclear monopoly and therefore the ability to use its conventional forces at will throughout the Middle East – is the unacknowledged factor driving its decision-making toward the Islamic Republic.”
Horton continues quoting Rubin,
[F]or Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. It’s the fact that Iran doesn’t even need to test a nuclear weapon to undermine Israeli military leverage in Lebanon and Syria.
Earlier this year, the Israelis simulated a massive bombing campaign over Iran, with a series of repeated airstrikes against the Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program. The drills took place over the Mediterranean Sea, spanned over 10,000 kilometers, and saw more than 100 military aircraft and navy submarines participating.
These simulations capped off a month long military exercise called Chariots of Fire which practiced for war with Iran and other contingencies. The U.S. General overseeing Central Command was in attendance. The IDF’s chief of staff has now announced the Israeli military’s primary focus is preparing an attack on Iran. In the Red Sea, the U.S. and Israel are now conducting joint war drills.
The Iran situation is another deadly indication that presidents and administrations may change, but the overall foreign policy agenda does not. Apparently, it only gets worse. The U.S. empire is in decline and the American people feel it. But the neocons and their liberal interventionist partners are holding onto their dream of a “Unipolar Moment.”
As the world adjusts to a multipolar world order, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, left and right, has picked fights with its enemies, not ours.
Americans’ only enemy is our own ruling class who would drag us into wars (proxy wars or otherwise), including with nuclear armed world powers to fulfill their desires to violently dominate the planet, funneling trillions of our dollars into the military-industrial complex. This establishment’s geopolitical and monetary schemes are destroying our nation’s future. As the Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams recently said, “[American] foreign policy is the FED with nukes.”
We have been stuck with a bill for more than $10 trillion after more than 20 years of war and killing in the Middle East, with millions dead and tens of thousands of soldiers committing suicide. It is long past time Americans put their foot down.
We have a choice. Do we want to continue gambling on the apocalypse, fighting wars with Iran, Russia, and China in memory of the disgraced neocon Charles Krauthammer’s “Unipolar Moment?”
Or should we pursue “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none?”
The answer should be obvious.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.
Coincidence or Conspiracy: What Are the Odds?
You do the math
BY KEVIN BARRETT • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 4, 2022
A man takes out a lavish, grossly excessive insurance policy on his wife. The next day she keels over dead. Which hypothesis should guide the detective assigned to the case? (A) It’s probably just a coincidence, no need to investigate. (B) There’s a significant probability of foul play, so the husband should be considered a suspect, at least until a thorough investigation definitively clears him.
Intuitively, most of us know that the correct answer is “B.” We don’t need probability theory to tell us that, any more than we need Einstein to tell us that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.
But wait! Here comes a mathematically-inclined professional debunker, who explains: “Actually, more than ten million life insurance policies are taken out every year, with the insured person averaging 19.2 years of life expectancy after the initial policy purchase, so 500,000 annually-insured people die each year which means more than 1300 annually-insured people die each day. The insured wife in your example could easily have been one of those 1300 people who just happened to die on that particular day, which just happened to be the day after the husband bought the policy. So it must have been a coincidence. No need to investigate.”
Wikipedia, The New York Times, Snopes, DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board, and assorted fact-checkers all agree. Social media labels people who suspect the husband of murder and insurance fraud “conspiracy theorists” and disables the accounts of those who voice their suspicions.
And then it gets worse. The husband uses part of his gargantuan insurance settlement (with additional help from unknown but very wealthy parties) to sue selected alternative media outlets for libel. He says the alternative media has tormented him by reporting on the people who want him investigated for murder and insurance fraud. He says his feelings have been hurt and he has had to move and change his phone number and seek psychological counseling. He says the “conspiracy theorists” are tormenting him by being so disrespectful of the dead (his wife) and the grieving survivor (himself).
A reasonable judge and/or jury might rule:
“We’re terribly sorry, Mr. Innocent Widower, but even assuming that you really are innocent, it was and remains entirely reasonable for alternative media outlets to voice their suspicions based on the undeniable fact that you bought a grossly excessive insurance policy on your wife the day before she keeled over dead.”
But what if Mr. Innocent Widower could produce an expert witness: a mathematician who swears on a stack of Principia Mathematicas that probability theory proves the odds are over 95% that Mr. Widower is innocent, and the timing of the insurance purchase was just a coincidence? In the absence of expert testimony to the contrary, and with the entire mainstream media supporting poor bullied Mr. Widower, the judge and jury might jettison common sense and say: “Jeepers, that pretty much proves the guy’s innocent! Those conspiracy theorists sure are a stupid, nasty bunch of reality deniers! Why won’t they just ‘trust the science’?”
The above example is, of course, fictitious and hypothetical. But its resemblance to actual events is more than coincidental.
Take Richard Gutjahr—please! Gutjahr has a way of popping up in the strangest places. As I wrote in 2018:
Remember the amazing “terror journalist” Richard Gutjahr? The man with the uncanny ability to show up, pre-positioned, to take iconic footage of “Islamic terror” attacks?
Gutjahr, married to Israeli black ops specialist Einat Wilf, just happened to be on a balcony in Nice, France to film the beginning of the “truck attack.” His footage was essentially the ONLY footage of the event ever seen by the world.
Then one week later, Gutjahr and his daughter both just happened to be at the shopping mall in Munich where the next big “Islamic terror” event burst into the headlines. Once again, the MSM led with Gutjahr’s (and his daughter’s) footage.
It takes chutzpah to pre-position yourself to get the lead footage of two “terror attacks” one week, and 800 km, apart. But it takes even more chutzpah to sue journalists who report your apparent foreknowledge.
Gutjahr, apparently not lacking in chutzpah, sued German journalist Gerhard Wisnewski for reporting the highly suspicious facts. But even in Zionist-owned-and-operated Germany, such chutzpah was too much for the courts to stomach. Below is Wisnewski’s report on his legal victory over the hapless Gutjahr, a more obvious terror suspect than Bin Laden ever was, who obviously needs to be arrested and interrogated. Anybody out there who can rendition him?
I stand by my 2018 statement that Gutjahr is an obvious terror suspect. But he’s just a suspect. He could be innocent. It could be just a coincidence that he happened to be perfectly positioned to film the most-used media footage of two spectacular, ultra-media-hyped “Islamist terror attacks,” in two different nations, in the same week…and that he also just happens to be married to an Israeli intelligence officer. But… what are the odds?!
Now here is where it really gets weird. Gutjahr has just “shown up” at another “suspicious location”: A seemingly well-financed website called Rootclaim that pretends to have developed an app for determining the odds that any given “conspiracy theory” is true:
Rootclaim was developed by one of Gutjahr’s in-laws, a certain Saar Wilf, who is presumably related to Gutjahr’s wife Einat. (These people know how to keep it in the family!) Saar and Einat Wilf not only share a last name, but have co-authored an article on COVID. Of course that might be mere coincidence; they could be completely unrelated. But…what are the odds?
Rootclaim seems reasonably open to non-mainstream perspectives… at least on issues where the Wilf-Gutjahr family doesn’t have skin in the game. It tells us there is an 86% chance that Putin does not have cancer, a 96% chance that the anti-Assad US-NATO backed forces (not Assad) attacked al-Ghouta with chemical weapons, and an 86% chance that COVID-19 “was developed during gain-of-function research and was released by accident.”
That’s all well-and-good. But again: What are the odds that Richard Gutjahr, or any TV host for that matter, would just happen to be the unique person in position to shoot the first and most-used footage of two successive major terror attacks? For some strange reason, Rootclaim hasn’t run those calculations.
When we estimate the odds of such things, we need to consider background information. For example: How relevant is the fact, attested to by Wikipedia, that Richard Gutjahr is married to a former Israeli intelligence officer?
Wikipedia tells us that Gutjahr’s “coincidental presence at events gave rise to conspiracy theories, alleging his presence at both events could not have been a coincidence. Gutjahr has pressed charges against those who make the allegations,[21][22] which he sees mostly motivated by antisemitism against his wife considering the often antisemitic nature of the hostilities.” (Funny how Wikipedia tells us that Gutjahr “pressed charges” against journalists like Gerhard Wisnewski but fails to mention the outcome: Gutjahr suffered a crushing defeat in court.)
And then…bring on the obligatory charges of anti-Semitism! Whoever is editing Wikipedia apparently thinks it is “anti-Semitic” to notice that Israel is the only nation that has benefited from the “war on terror,” an episode of international mass hysteria elicited by a string of alleged “Islamic terror attacks” in which the Israeli government in general, and its intelligence community in particular, is the leading suspect.
Was it just a coincidence that the people who happened to be pre-positioned near the New Jersey waterfront at the perfect spot to film the attack on the Twin Towers, and who filmed and wildly celebrated the attacks before being arrested, were Israeli spies who later confessed they had been sent there “to document the event”?
Was it just a coincidence that the mysterious “Janek” who was pre-positioned on a rooftop to film the iconic footage of “the Charlie Hebdo terrorists’ escape” turned out to be an Israeli agent? As Hicham Hamza wrote:
At the origin of this (iconic Charlie Hebdo) video – filmed, oddly enough, without apparent fear of being hit by a stray bullet – in which one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers (who would soon flee in the direction of a Parisian establishment used by the Israeli army) declaims, with his left index finger pointed towards the sky, that he had “avenged the Prophet” – is a mysterious anonymous Pole, blurred by the television media, who vanishes without a trace – having been employed by a long-standing family enterprise of Laurent Dassault, ultra-Zionist multimillionaire connected to the military and radical wing of the Tel Aviv regime.
There is a mass of evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, that implicates Israel in 9/11, the 7/7/2005 London bombings, the Paris attacks of January and November 2015, and indeed most of the highest-profile GWOT terror incidents attributed to “Islamic extremists.” So Richard Gutjahr’s being married to an Israeli intelligence officer, and then magically showing up to film the beginnings of two successive terror attacks, does seem a tad suspicious. And his presence at a website selling an app that claims to mathematically arbitrate between mainstream and non-mainstream narratives seems not just suspicious, but bizarre… if not downright absurd. If noticing such things makes you “anti-Semitic,” then the alternative to “anti-Semitism” is sheer unmitigated idiocy.
Is mainstream media idiotic… or complicit? What are the odds?
Policing the World Is a Full-Time Job
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 2, 2022
Every leader and top official now in power in the so-called Western World seems to have forgotten that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as an alliance that was ostensibly defensive in nature, intended to counter the expansion of Soviet style communism in Europe. That role continued to be the raison d’etre of the organization until communist governments themselves collapsed in both Russia and in the Eastern European states that collectively made up the Warsaw Pact during the 1990s. After that point, NATO no longer had any reason to exist at all as the alleged military threat posed by the Kremlin and its allies vanished virtually overnight.
But clever politicians were quick to put the alliance on life support instead of simply dismantling it. Lacking the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact, NATO was forced to come up with other reasons to maintain military forces at levels that could quickly be enhanced and placed on a wartime footing. Washington and London took the lead in this, citing the now shopworn defense of a “rules based international order” as well as of “democracy” and “freedom.” And fortunately for the national defense industries and the generals, it soon proved possible to find new enemies that provided justification for additional military spending. The first major engagement outside the obligations defined by the original treaty took place in Europe to be sure, but it was in the Balkans where of NATO during the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force. The war ended after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on December 14th 1995. Peace negotiations were finalized a week later but fighting resumed between Kosovo and Serbia in the following year, which led to another NATO intervention that eventually ended with the restoration of Kosovo’s autonomy and the deployment of NATO forces, which bombed the Serbs to compel their compliance with a draft cease fire agreement.
NATO also played a role improbably enough in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which was justified by claiming that an Afghanistan free to set its own course would become a hotbed of terrorism which would inevitably impact on the United States and Europe. It was a paper-thin argument, but it was the best they could come up with at the time and it also eventually involved soldiers from additional friendly countries like Australia. As we have subsequently seen, however, it was all an argument without merit as Afghanistan became a money pit and a graveyard for thousands of locals and foreign soldiers. It is now again in the hands of the Taliban after a bungled withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the puppet government in Kabul that Washington had installed.
Turn the clock forward to the present. As everyone but President Joe Biden has recognized, the United States and NATO are currently engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which many observers already believe has some of the attributes of World War III. As Russia neither threatened nor attacked any NATO member state, the argument that the response in arming and training Ukraine was defensive was rendered irrelevant. Nor can it be credibly claimed that Russia is a haven for terrorists, quite the contrary. Nevertheless, Biden has stated that the US will be in the fight on behalf of Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” Does he mean years, and all done without a declaration of war by Congress as required by the US Constitution?
And more appears to be coming. Joe Biden, during last week’s trip to Israel, made clear that the United States is “prepared to use all elements of its national power” to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and has signed a pledge with the Israeli government to commit itself to do so. If Biden presses the argument that Iran is an international threat due to its impending development of nuclear weapons, will he appeal to NATO to support a joint military option to disarm it? I believe he just might do that. And he might just want to consider how the entire set-up and framing of the issue by Israel is somewhat of a trap. Israel considers Iran’s current nuclear program to be intended to create a weapon, which “they continue to develop,” and there are plenty in the US Congress who would agree with that.
So, if Iran is clearly creating a thermonuclear device, the time to strike is now, isn’t it? And bear in mind how the US/Israeli campaign to condemn is multifaceted. Shortly before the meetings held by Biden and his crew with the Israelis, US government sources set the stage for what was to come by going on the offensive regarding reports that Iran may be selling highly capable offensive drones to Russia for use in Ukraine as well as subsequent claims coming out of Washington that the Iranians are seeking to assassinate senior US officials in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guards General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. One wonders why they waited so long and why the White House has chosen to publicize these stories at this point.
And the US and NATO are also getting involved with China’s geopolitical policies, on a path that Beijing is warning is extremely hypocritical and which might lead to armed conflict. The signs that the Chinese might be targeted by NATO, possibly over the Taiwan independence issue, came following a stark warning by US Secretary of State Tony Blinken delivered at the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June. Blinken accused China of “seeking to undermine the rules-based international order,” the same type of critique recently leveled against Russia and Iran. Blinken’s comment was elaborated on by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who observed how “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan … monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation.”
Stoltenberg’s indictment of China was followed by a NATO issued “strategic concept” document last that declared for the first time that China poses a “systemic challenge” to the alliance, alongside a primary “threat” coming from Russia. The document copied Blinken’s language, citing “The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.”
Finally, the US and British governments collaborated to condemn China as the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” The declaration came in a July 6th joint news conference in London, where Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, and Ken McCallum, director general of Britain’s MI5, accused China, like Russia, of interfering in US and UK elections. Wray also warned the business leaders in the audience that the Chinese government has been “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian initially responded a few days after the NATO summit, observing that the “so-called rules-based international order is actually a family rule made by a handful of countries to serve the US self-interest,” adding that “[Washington]observes international rules only as it sees fit.” Addressing the issue of the role of NATO specifically, Zhao accused Blinken of using NATO to “hype up competition with China and stoke group confrontation.” He added that “The history of NATO is one about creating conflicts and waging wars… arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians, even to this day. Facts have proven that it isn’t China that poses a systemic challenge to NATO, and instead it is NATO that brings a looming systemic challenge to world peace and security. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, [NATO] has not yet abandoned its thinking and practice of creating ‘enemies’ … It is NATO that is creating problems around the world.”
China has a point. What NATO is threatening is war, as it is a military alliance. The Chinese appear to understand that NATO is the world’s largest military bureaucracy which has developed since 1991 an overriding institutional commitment to ensuring its permanent existence, if not expansion, even after it has clearly outlived its own usefulness. So Beijing might justifiably wonder, how does China – on the other side of the globe – fit into NATO’s historic “defensive” mission? How are Chinese troops or missiles now threatening Europe or the US in ways they weren’t before? How are the Americans and Europeans suddenly under military threat coming from China?
The Chinese appear to understand that if there is no threat to “defend” against, then a threat must be manufactured, and that is precisely what we are seeing vis-à-vis Russia, China, Iran and even Venezuela. Washington has become addicted to war and NATO is the chosen tool to give those wars the patina of legitimacy. To launch those conflicts requires either inventing an imaginary threat, or, as in the case of Russia, provoking the very threat the “defensive” bureaucracy was designed to deter or thwart. All indications are that NATO – now embracing 30 countries – is doing both and the results could easily be disastrous for all parties involved. Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard particularly abhors the cynical recklessness of the Biden Administration driving the process, explaining how “The reality is, President Biden, members of Congress, leaders in our country, the wealthy, they will have a safe place to be in the event of a nuclear war that they are behind causing while the rest of us in America and Russia, people around the world, will be decimated from this event.”
Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has also defined the unthinkable that is at stake, and it is past time for Americans and Europeans to take note and stop the madness. Hedges opines that “The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust.” One might also note that New Yorkers are now being informed about what to do if there is a nuclear attack. Yes, that is precisely the problem – we have an administration in Washington that should be protecting the people living in this country, not setting up scenarios that might lead to their slaughter. Will someone please point that out to Joe Biden?
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.
Israel demands disbanding of UN committee investigating attacks on Gaza
MEMO | August 1, 2022
Israel demanded on Sunday the disbanding of the UN committee investigating crimes committed during the occupation state’s military offensive against Gaza in May last year. It is alleged that remarks made by one member of the committee were “anti-Semitic”.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid made the demand in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in which he referred to the statements by Miloon Kothari, a member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry, in a media interview.
“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by, whether it is the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” Kothari said on a Mondoweiss podcast on 25 July. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”
Israel boycotted the investigation and prevented the commission’s investigators from entering the apartheid state. It claimed that the commission’s partial findings in June were “the latest in a series of biased reports.”
In his letter to Guterres, Lapid claimed that, “The fight against anti-Semitism cannot be waged with words alone, it requires action. This is the time for action; it is time to disband the Commission. This Commission does not just endorse antisemitism — it fuels it.”
The UN spokesman did not respond immediately to requests for comment, but Mondoweiss published a message from the committee’s chair, Navi Pillay, in which she said that Kothari’s comments were intentionally taken out of context.
The US and other Western countries, including Germany, Britain and Austria, denounced — very predictably — Kothari’s comments as “anti-Semitic”.
The US representative to the UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador Michele Taylor, tweeted, “We are outraged by recent anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments made by a member of the Israel COI. These unacceptable remarks sadly exacerbate our deep concerns about the open-ended nature & overly broad scope of the COI and the HRC’s disproportionate & biased treatment of Israel.”
Although the commission was set up to investigate the Israeli attack on Gaza, which lasted 11 days in May last year, its mandate includes human rights violations before and after that, in addition to investigating the root causes of the tension.
At least 250 Palestinians as well as 13 people in Israel were killed during the Israeli aggression, which saw severe Israeli attacks and raids that exacerbated the destruction caused by the 2014 military offensive. Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip fired several thousand rockets in response to Israel’s ongoing brutal military occupation and siege.
Hezbollah Releases Coordinates of Israeli Platforms in Mediterranean: “Within Our Reach”
Al-Manar | July 31, 2022
Hezbollah’s Military Media Department released on Sunday video showing the Israeli platforms operating in the Mediterranean, warning the Zionist enemy of its attempts to plunder Lebanon’s gas and oil fields.
The video shows surveillance scenes taken from land and air, some form yesterday, for Israeli vessels at the Karish field near the Lebanese maritime borders.
Starting with Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah’s warning that “procrastination is useless”, the video shows Hezbollah’s anti-ship missile readying to be launched.
The footage included detailed coordinates of Israeli platforms, showing their names and locations.
The one-minute-video, which includes subtitles in Hebrew, concluded by “within our reach”, referring to previous threats by Sayyed Nasrallah that all Israeli platforms and targets are within the reach of the Lebanese Resistance missiles.
The video was released just hours before the US’ so-called ‘mediator’ Amos Hochstein arrives in Lebanon, probably holding a message from the Zionist entity concerning the maritime border talks and gas extraction.
Sayyed Nasrallah earlier this month, warned the Israeli enemy that if Lebanon is prevented to extract oil and gas off its shore then the Zionist regime won’t be able to do so.
US judge throws out malicious anti-Semitism claim against university professor
MEMO | July 29, 2022
In a victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, a US judge has thrown out bogus anti-Semitism claims against a professor at Pittsburgh university in a lawsuit based on the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Jewish racism.
Pro-Israel groups have been advocating IHRA’s adoption for several years saying that the non-binding definition will not stifle free speech on Israel. Critics, however, have consistently warned that not only will the IHRA have a chilling effect on free speech, but it will also give ammunition to radicalised Zionist groups to pursue malicious lawsuits against critics of the Apartheid State.
Robert Ross, who teaches literary arts and social justice studies at Point Park University appears to have been the victim of such spurious and malicious lawsuits which are designed to intimidate critics of Israel as much as to instil fear in anyone advocating for Palestinian rights.
The lawsuit against Ross was filed in 2019 by Channa Newman, a professor at the university. Newman claimed that she was a target of anti-Semitism due to her Zionist beliefs. According to the Electronic Intifada, Newman’s lawsuit alleged Ross used his position to foster “a militant version” of the BDS movement and “hateful views against Israel” that “are anti-Semitic.”
Newman, who made her case using the US State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism which has very similar wording to the IHRA, further alleged that the political views of Ross, and those of his students, led to a hostile work environment for her. As is the case with the IHRA, the State Department definition includes claims that it is anti-Semitic to say Israel’s foundation was a “racist endeavour” or to apply “double standards” to Israel by requiring from it “behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
In his ruling, the judge asserted that if the court accepted Newman’s allegations, it would “invalidate” on its face and on civil rights grounds “an entire academic and public debate” and that it would give Newman “a veto over others engaging in that same debate.” The judge further added that Newman was effectively seeking to “compel” the speech and views of others to be consistent with hers.
“I am relieved and thrilled,” Ross told the Electronic Intifada. “The judge took the time to articulate why he’s not granting this work environment claim and that there’s nothing inherently hostile with [advocating for] BDS. In these times, we’ll take what we can get. I think it’s a victory,” he explained.
“The judge, to me, made it clear that there’s nothing legally wrong with teaching BDS, participating in BDS, or advocating for it,” Ross added. The dismissal of the hostile work environment claims, Ross added, “should be empowering, it should be a green light for other folks to engage in this movement.”
Israel fears a nightmare scenario as the crisis with Russia escalates
By Dr Adnan Abu Amer | MEMO | July 27, 2022
Israel is convinced that Moscow’s threat to close down the Jewish Agency in Russia is retaliation for the Zionist state’s positions on the war in Ukraine. In fact, Israel now fears that the crisis with Russia will escalate further, which has prompted officials in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice, and the National Security Council, to hold urgent discussions to assess the situation.
The feeling is that Israel is running out of time to deal with the crisis with Russia, because the Russian Jews in the occupation state maintain close links with their homeland. Israeli diplomats are working to guarantee that the “vital” activities and services provided by the Jewish Agency continue.
By closing the offices of the agency, Russia has dealt a severe blow to Jewish migration from the country to Israel, hence the occupation state’s concern. There is now even more tension between Moscow and Tel Aviv.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Israel’s interim Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has taken a hard line against the Russians. He was the first to join the West in issuing strong condemnations of President Vladimir Putin and accusing Moscow of “war crimes”. He also led Israel’s decision to support the condemnation of Russia at the UN. He has not spoken to Putin since taking over as prime minister, nor did the Russian leader call to congratulate him on his new role. This suggests that Russia’s closure of the Jewish Agency is purely political, an act of revenge, although it is alleged that the agency has broken Russian law.
Jewish immigrants to Israel from Russia are increasing in number, with 19,168 people making the move since the beginning of the year. In the whole of 2021, only 7,824 Jews made “aliyah”. The figures show that so far this year 48 per cent of all Jews migrating to Israel are from Russia.
Israel’s position on the war in Ukraine is not the only reason for the crisis with Russia. Another reason being talked about in Israel is the occupation state’s ongoing aggression in Syria, especially the recent attack that led to the closure of Damascus International Airport, and the attack on the port of Tartus, where there is a Russian naval base.
A third reason is related to the Russian demand for ownership of Alexander’s Court in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, which was blocked by an Israeli court. Putin sent a personal message to former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in this regard, but nothing happened, and things got to the point where Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke about the alleged “Jewish roots” of Adolf Hitler.
It is understandable to be astonished at Israel-Russia relations right now. They once enjoyed an era of mutual interests and harmony which led to great success for Jewish capitalists in Moscow, where some occupied influential positions in the Kremlin and others owned major media outlets. It also led to the largest migration of Russian Jews, close to one million people, to Israel between 1990 and 2006. That was the largest such migration since the upheaval of the occupation of Palestine in 1948.
Israeli leaders made routine official visits to Moscow. Of all world leaders, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Kremlin more than any other between 2016 and 2020. Moreover, the strategic regional environment saw Israel boosting its desire to build bridges with Russia, as the Middle East became a very competitive arena.
Decision-making circles in Tel Aviv intensified their communication with their counterparts in Moscow, after realising the weakening of the US position in the region, especially since President Joe Biden took office and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. It slowly dawned on Israeli officials that Washington was leaving behind a huge vacuum.
None of this prevented Israel from following the West in its position on Ukraine, in line with the international stance and the return of a Cold War atmosphere. Israel has been trying to curry favour with both sides in the war, as it usually does, but it did not succeed this time. Hence, the deteriorating relations with Moscow. The longer the war continues, the higher the price that Israel will have to pay.
Israelis tend to agree that they do not want the current tension with Moscow to become irreversible to the point that Russia would ban Israel’s air force jets from using Syrian airspace; that would be a nightmare scenario for Tel Aviv. At the time of writing, Israel does not have a clear idea of what its reaction would be if things get to that stage, but it would push it into a corner and limit the options on its northern front.
Many Israelis believe that they will need a miracle to get Russia to reverse the decision to close the Jewish Agency. Moscow seems to be heading towards the end of Jewish migration from Russia, and orders from the highest levels have been issued in this regard. This is not a whim, but a serious initiative stemming from the Kremlin’s vision for global leadership.
Hence the Israeli worry that things will not stop at the closing down of the Jewish Agency. Other Jewish institutions that disseminate information about Israel and teach the Hebrew language may also face closure. Putin appears to have decided to escalate the crisis with Israel, and the occupation state’s efforts and achievements over the past thirty years may well be negated as a result.
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The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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