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Court invalidates Balfour Declaration, holds UK responsible for Palestinian plight

Press TV – February 22, 2021

A Palestinian court has declared as invalid the Balfour Declaration, a document issued by the British government in 1917 that paved the way for the creation of Israel, as it violates the rules of international law.

The Court of First Instance in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Sunday also held Britain legally responsible for the consequences of the Balfour Declaration, demanding an apology to the Palestinians.

The Balfour Declaration came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. It was published on November 2, 1917.

The declaration was made during World War I (1914-1918), and included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

It is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, when Zionist armed paramilitary groups, who were trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II, forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, captured huge swathes of the Arab land, and proclaimed existence of Israel.

The lawsuit was filed by Palestinian lawyers in October last year on behalf of the National Assembly of Independents, the International Foundation for the Follow-up of the Rights of the Palestinian People, and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, against the British government.

“Britain and its foreign minister at the time, Arthur James Balfour, from whom the ‘Balfour Declaration’ was issued at the time, neither owned Palestine nor did they have the right to determine the fate of its people,” the court ruled Sunday.

Britain’s acts violate “the rules of international law, local laws, international norms and the decisions of the United Nations League and the United Nations during the period of its occupation of the Palestinian territories throughout the period of the British Mandate, including its implementation of the Balfour Declaration,” it said.

The ruling said the declaration deprived “the Palestinian people of their legal, human and political rights, and prevented them from their right to self-determination on their Palestinian lands”.

The court’s decision was welcomed by the Palestinians, with the head of the Supreme Islamic Authority, the preacher of the al-Aqsa Mosque, Ikrimah Sabri, saying it “came to expose the crimes of the occupation”.

The head of the National Assembly of Independents, Munib al-Masri, also described the ruling as “historic”, saying it was a fair trial.

He noted that the next step would be bringing the case to the British courts.

Deputy governor of Nablus Anan al-Atire said, “What we are witnessing in terms of legal battle confirms that our people will not forget the historical injustice, and we will not forgive those who put us under this colonial occupation.”

Palestinians, she said, “will only accept independence, an independent state with Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital, the return of refugees, and the expulsion of these colonists from our land.”

“We will continue the battle of struggle and resistance in all its forms.”

February 22, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Greg Palast, the left wing of the Lobby

By Israel Shamir

I always had a problem with Greg Palast. Apparently this critic of Bush and Blair, an opponent of the war in Iraq, who wrote for the Guardian and the Observer is a man on our side, a good left-wing guy. He is apparently against the corporations, against the neoliberal setup; some of his ideas are surely good. He is considered “Chomsky for Dummies” [“more accessible than Chomsky”, his publisher-suggested quote from a newspaper] and he has a good class attitude, for instance: “The world’s three hundred richest people are worth more than the world’s poorest three billion. The market’s up, but who is the market? The Gilded One Percent own 4/5th of the nation’s stocks and bonds.” His philippics against Bush (“an evil sonovabitch”) are as fiery as those of a preacher in a mosque in my neighbourhood, and this is not a fault in my eyes. He is equally outspoken against the war in Iraq. What else could one ask from a guy?

But at the second sight, there were small alarums. He was against Bush and passionately – for Gore and Kerry. As if Gore and Kerry would keep the US troops out of Iraq. As if Gore and Kerry would pass the spoils of three hundred richest men to the poorest three billion. He claimed that Bush administration covered up… “Saudi financing of terror”. This smacked of a familiar claim – that the US made a mistake to attack Iraq – instead of Saudi Arabia, or Iran. He disliked America, his native land, with too strong a passion. “Antisemite is one who dislikes Jews too much”, quipped Yael Lotan, an Israeli writer. The same goes about America: it’s quite all right to dislike the superpower, but do not dislike it too much, it’s bad for your karma.

Palast wrote: “The United States is ugly. [It is] a numbing repetitive vortex of sprawled Pizza Huts, Wal-Marts, Kmarts, the Gap, Jiffy Lubes, Kentucky Fried Chickens, Starbucks and McDonald’s up to and leaning over the Canyon wall.” In my view, this is too much. Even if your mother – and one’s native land should be as important as your mother – is ugly, you do not say it, not even think it.

Palast’s unequivocal support for unlimited immigration was not inspired by his compassion to les miserables of the Third World (also an erroneous position, in my view, but still comprehensible), but by his profound disdain of the ordinary local indigenous native. Characteristically, in his Best Democracy Money Can Buy Palast argues with a London cockney cabby, whether England should accept millions of refugees and asylum seekers. The cabby was horrified by his multiculturalist attitude, by his indifference to local culture and tradition. But Palast pooh-poohed “the cabby’s fear of losing his English identity. Face it, Shakespeare’s dead. England’s cultural exports are now limited to soccer hooligans, Princess Di knickknacks and Hugh Grant.” Face it, Palast, “England’s cultural exports are now limited to soccer hooligans” because England’s cultural imports were limited to Greg Palast and others of your ilk. A new Shakespeare may be alive in England, as well as a new Melville in the US, but you won’t recognise him for he won’t fit your ideas. For you, ordinary people are “brown-shirted antiforeign electoral mobs”, for us – the sovereign people.

Palast is obsessed with money, as evident from his title Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He is not even aware of other motives, whether noble or vile. For him, “the number one question on the minds of Americans was not, “Does Saddam really have the bomb?” but “What’s this little war going to cost us?”

I have no idea of Palast’s ethnic background, but ideologically, nobody can be more Judaic than this man, who worships money, despises the native and wishes to bomb some place in the Middle East. These are classic Judaic attitudes, so I was not surprised when Palast emerged as an apologist for the Jews and an accuser of greedy WASPs and Arabs. In his Was the Invasion of Iraq A Jewish Conspiracy? essay published in the Jewish ‘progressive’ magazine Tikkun, Pallast pulls usual ropes; for him, whoever thinks that the Jewish establishment pushed for the war on Iraq (including Mearsheimer and Walt, apparently) must adhere to the Elders of Zion and Christ-killers paradigm. He writes: “after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel?” Not surprisingly, he finds the Jews “not guilty”. The bad guys are “a devout Christian, Norquist [who] channeled a million dollars to the Christian Coalition”, and “the Houston-Riyadh Big Oil axis”. The Jews? Forget it: “Wolfowitz and his neo-con clique— bookish, foolish, vainglorious—had their asses kicked utterly […] A half-dozen confused Jews, armed only with Leo Strauss’ silly aphorisms, were no match for Texas oil majors and OPEC potentates.”

This is not the place to repeat the discussion of the Jewish Lobby. This was done by many people, including Mearsheimer and Walt (their recent response to Lobby’s attacks is on http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3506  ), by Philip Weiss (whose blog makes more and more sense – actually, this man grew a lot since his triumphalist pieces of 2001, and I read him with great interest), by our friend Jeff Blankfort, whose emailing list scans much of American and British media, and even by my humble self.

The conclusions we reached are only fortified by the massive apology for the Lobby coming from various Trots, from Socialist Viewpoint, from Greg Palast and others. The Jewish Lobby is like a Stealth jet, and these guys provide it with invisibility. Palast will have to live many more years if he wants to see us weeping over the “neo-con leader of the pack Wolfowitz being cast out of the Pentagon war room and tossed into the World Bank”. We know of worse fate. And he will have to live as long as Methuselah to see us feeling sorry for General Jay Garner, the first Gauleiter of occupied Iraq sacked by his superiors –see item 4.

In short, we went part of the way with Mr. Palast, but what’s enough, enough. Let him prefer General Jay Garner to Paul Bremer III, Kerry to Bush, Jews to Texans and Saudi Arabia to Iraq as a good place to bomb. Coprophagi may choose between various kinds of excrements, but we are free from this worry.

P.S. After the first publication of the article, our friend Ian Buckley wrote: According to this, Greg Palast is indeed ‘a Jewish leftie’ :  http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.08.15/faces.html . He is often funny and has an agreeable habit of getting up the noses of some of the powerful, but the above article illustrates his deficiencies… The article in the Jewish newspaper Forward makes it clear:

[In his eyes] his fans are too conspiracy-theory-minded. Too anti-American. Too antisemitic. “A large part of my European readership I wouldn’t urinate on,” Palast told the Forward. Some Europeans aren’t so wild about him, either. Unlike some of his fellow Jewish lefties, Palast is not ready to dismiss antisemitism when he sees it. “The members of the Jewish left — and I certainly am one of them — are very glib about antisemitism and the dangers out there,” he said. “The British left is infused with the worst elements of antisemitism.”

He even sees antisemitism in the pages of his own newspaper.

“When the Hebrew teachers in Tehran, in Iran, were put on trial as spies for Israel — which was beyond unlikely — my paper had an editorial by some fool saying, well, we shouldn’t attack Iran — there’s very good evidence, and we shouldn’t vilify everyone George Bush says is our enemy,” he said. “They want Israel to release people who are admitted child killers, but the Hebrew teachers should rightly be in jail.”

Never one to compromise his opinions, when the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera offered Palast a job, he turned it down cold; he refers to the station as TNN, Terrorist News Network.”

Thus an opinion of Mr Palast about the Lobby is as valid as that of Abe Foxman and Daniel Pipes.

P.P.S. To my great regret, our wonderful Cynthia McKinney accepted Greg Palast’s help in her electoral campaign, and she wrote:

From: “Cynthia McKinney” Subject: Free!! Blog with Greg Palast and me 7:00 this evening!

Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:12:47 -0400

If you’d like to blog directly with Greg Palast and me, please join us by following the directions sent to me below by Christy in Palast’s office.  It’s free and hopefully, will be loads of fun!

Probably we shall witness erosion of her position vs. Israel very soon. She is not to be blamed: no politician in the US can do without a pipeline to the Lobby.

  1. Here is a response of Jeff Blankfort:

This is an interesting article by investigative journalist Greg Palast who has, in the past, has avoided any mention of Israel or the Israel lobby even in his book, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” when, if he really wanted to know who the biggest buyers were, he could have readily found them in the internet among the Mother Jones 400, and the big donors from the Communications and Finance industries on the Center for Public Integrity site, and they are not oil men. Of the 400 top donors to the 2000 election cycle, 7 of the top 10, 12 of the top 20 and at least 125 of the top 250 were Jewish. Haim Saban, an Israeli-American, and a big backer of AIPAC, gave to the Democrats in 2002, $12.3 million, which is two million more than Ken Lay and Exxon gave to the Republicans over a 10 year period but strangely, it didn’t get the same media attention.

On the other hand, this article of his bears out what I have been saying for the three years, that the neo-con notion to take over and privatize Iraqi oil was nonsense and flied in the face of how the oil industry operates, that the neo-cons were no longer running the show, but what Palast doesn’t deal with is the initial opposition to the war on the part of Bush Sr., as well as James Baker, and oil company executives including Phillip Carroll of Shell, nor does he, once again, mention that not only were the neo-cons the main tub thumpers for the war, it was also supported by the major organizations of the Israel lobby, led by AIPAC and the parade of pro-Israel Jewish columnists who are nationally syndicated and led by Tom Freedman, William Safire (since replaced by David Brooks), Charles Krauthammer, Jeff Jacoby, and all the publications of Rupert Murdoch and Mortimer Zuckerman. The war was also called for by the major principals of both Likud and Labor in Israel, Sharon, Netanyahu and Peres, as well as Chef of Staff Shall Mofaz who said that after taking care of Iraq, the US should do the same with Syria and Iran.

If Palast was not so intent on shielding Israel and its American supporters from scrutiny, he would have acknowledged that the reason that the Democrats joined the Bush administration in supporting the war was that the majority of their funding comes from pro-Israel lobbyists which makes the Party, as Prof. Francis Boyle recently said, “a front for AIPAC.” Now that the war has taken out Saddam and literally destroyed the country, the Democrats are allowed to criticize the conduct of the war, but not so directly the war itself, and will be ready to serve the lobby’s call when it comes to taking on Iran. They have already overwhelmingly approved the Iran Freedom Act, the latest AIPAC war-mongering effort.

It is a shame that Palast has not employed his excellent investigative skills to examine this aspect of American society and instead has allowed them to play second fiddle to his attachment to Israel. Otherwise, he would not also be trying to convince us that both Bolton and Wolfowitz have important roles still to play for the Bush regime.

February 21, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

No Biden Regime Fresh Start with Iran

By Stephen Lendman | February 21, 2021

On Friday, Biden regime press secretary Psaki said “(t)here’s no plan” to lift (illegal) sanctions on Iran or take other good faith steps.

No plans exist for direct negotiations with Iran, no intention to shift from confrontation to engaging in good faith diplomacy.

Ignoring US responsibility for wrecking the JCPOA nuclear deal, Psaki changed the subject with a bald-faced Big Lie, saying: “Iran is a long way from compliance (sic).”

Iran fully complies with JCPOA provisions in stark contrast to flagrantly breaching them by the US, UK, France and Germany (E3 countries).

Once again, she raised the phony issue of “Iran… acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Knowing no such threat exists, she ignored nuclear armed and dangerous Israel like always before by the US.

Last week, the London Guardian reported that the Netanyahu regime is “expand(ing) its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear (bomb) arsenal.”

In the mid-1980s, Dimona nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu publicly revealed the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

Today its thermonukes can destroy large cities. In 2009, anti-nuclear activist John Steinbach published a paper on Israel’s nuclear weapons program, saying:

“With several hundred weapons and a robust delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear power, and now rivals France and China in terms of the size of its nuclear arsenal.”

Its secret program is likely further advanced, more robust and dangerous today — while continuing to maintain nuclear ambiguity, fooling one one.

Last week, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stressed the following:

“We have heard many nice words and promises (from the US and E3), but in practice, they have not been honored and on the contrary, they have acted against those promises.”

“It is no use talking. It is no use giving promises. This time, only actions matter!”

“If we see actions on the part of the other side, we will take action too.”

“This time, the Islamic Republic will not be satisfied with hearing such and such words and promises.”

“Things will not be like the past.”

Even when positive actions are taken by the US and West, time and again they’re reversed.

Despite agreeing to the JCPOA and affirming it by Security Council Res. 2231, the US and E3 breached their obligations.

It’s clear proof that they can never be trusted no matter what they say or agree to.

Negotiations leading to agreements with the US-dominated West aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

And when Washington abandons international agreements, colonized Britain and EU countries follow suit, in compliance with their US boss.

There’s virtually no prospect that Biden will engage with Iran responsibly.

It’s virtually certain that he and hardliners around him will continue dirty business as usual — no lifting of illegal sanctions, no return to the JCPOA in its affirmed form, no good faith diplomacy — just empty rhetoric and hollow promises when made.

At the same time, the US falsely blames Iran for its own breaches of international law.

On Friday, Biden’s national security advisor Sullivan said Iran must “take the steps required to assure the world and to prove to the world that their program is for exclusively peaceful purposes (sic).”

It’s done this consistently. Its legitimate nuclear program has no military component, no evidence suggesting otherwise.

It’s more intensively monitored by IAEA inspectors than any other nations with nuclear power.

In sharp contrast, nuclear armed and dangerous USA and Israel won’t let IAEA inspectors near their bomb-making facilities.

Sullivan saying that the Biden regime “is prepared to come back into compliance with (JCPOA) terms if Iran is ready to come back into compliance” ignores Tehran’s fulfillment of its obligations while the US and E3 remain in breach of their own.

Defying reality, Sullivan falsely accused Iran of “refus(ing) to cooperate with the (IAEA) to ensure that nothing in Iran’s program is being used for weapons purposes.”

Obsessing over Iran’s legitimate nuclear program by inventing a bomb-making threat that doesn’t exist continues endlessly.

No matter what Tehran does to comply with its obligations, it’s never good enough.

It never will be as long as the Islamic Republic is free from US control.

That’s the core issue, the reason for US/Western hostility toward the country.

Claiming an Iranian nuclear threat is head fake deception. There is none.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei religiously banned development and production of nukes.

Yet the West ignores his fatwa that’s obeyed to the letter. Not a shred of evidence suggests otherwise.

A Final Comment

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said the following:

Talks with the US and E3 will begin when they fulfill their JCPOA obligations.

They’ve been no actions by Biden to comply with Washington’s obligations, just broken promises.

So far, he’s continuing failed Trump regime maximum pressure.

Illegal US sanctions remain in place.

Iran responded to US maximum pressure with “maximum resistance.”

“Pressure never works with Iran, only respect.”

“The US is addicted to sanctions, bullying, and pressure. But it doesn’t work” and never will with Iran.

Unacceptable Trump regime policies followed by Biden assures continued “maximum failure.”

“Iran (did not) violat(e) (the) JCPOA. (It) implement(ed) remedial measures” as permitted under Articles 26 and 36.

After Trump’s lawless abandonment of the JCPOA in May 2018, the US and E3 breached virtually all their obligations mandated by its provisions.

Because of what happened and overall Western war on Iran by other means in cahoots with apartheid Israel, there’s virtually no chance of these countries engaging with Iran in compliance with their international law obligations.

February 21, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

France: Macron Government Looks to Outlaw More Anti-Immigration Activist Groups

By Eric Striker | National Justice | February 20, 2021

Two Jewish organizations in France, CRIF (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions) and LICRA (International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism), are lobbying the embattled Emmanuel Macron government into beginning the process of outlawing Generation Identitaire (GI), a group that uses art and symbolic gestures to protest against globalization and immigration.

According to French media, Macron and a wide variety of Jewish groups believe that outlawing GI and other “far-right” groups could be useful in undermining Marine Le Pen’s 2022 electoral prospects.

The government in France has been aggressively disbanding nationalist groups in recent years. In 2019, the CRIF pressured the Macron government into moving forward on banning Bastion Social, a patriotic group made up mostly of students that advocated for the ethnic French poor, after its members defended themselves from repeated attacks by criminals and anarchists. Bastion Social’s headquarters in Lyons, which sought to provide shelter to the homeless, was raided and closed down by the police.

While the media repeatedly links Le Pen to GI’s publicity efforts that bring attention to the immigration problem in Europe, she has prohibited members of her party, Le Rassemblement national (RN), from protesting in defense of GI’s right to advocacy. Her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, has publicly condemned her for the decision.

Starting in 2011, Le Pen has purged numerous members — including her own father — for opposing homosexuality, Zionism, or a variety of other positions. This has allowed her party to receive somewhat friendlier treatment in some circles of the French elite, most notably BFM TV which is controlled by the Jewish plutocrat Alain Weill.

Le Pen’s shift away from an ethnic grounded nationalism towards a more liberal type focused on the effects of Islamic culture has helped her party avoid banishment and state pressure, but Macron has cynically capitalized on this. Macron has been aggressively campaigning against Islam after the brutal murder of a liberal French teacher, leaving Le Pen vulnerable to being outflanked on her main issue in next year’s election.

As for GI, much of the commotion created around them is based on lies. The organization specifically bans “anti-Semites” from membership, but this did not stop Zionist groups from inventing a brazen lie, claiming that they were chanting “dirty Jews” at one of their events (video emerged showing that the people chanting this were counter-protesters).

While Macron and his supporters have recently condemned the influence of anti-white American culture in their educational system, there is no reason to believe they are sincere. In France, the native majority is regularly persecuted for advocating for their own interests, particularly when their interests clash with the local Jewish power structure.

February 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Ex-MP Williamson slams University of Bristol for failure to defend anti-Zionist professor

RT | February 19, 2021

Former Derby North MP Chris Williamson has called out the University of Bristol for its “outrageous lack of solidarity” with sociology Professor David Miller, currently under attack by the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has been targeting Miller, a professor in the University of Bristol’s sociology department, with a series of accusations, most recently blaming the academic on Friday for putting Jewish students at risk of “real physical harm” by sharing his view that the “Zionist movement” is the “enemy of world peace.” The group’s latest letter was addressed to Hugh Brady, the university’s vice chancellor.

Specifically, Miller had stated that Jewish students on UK university campuses were “being used as political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing” – that is, the Israeli government. The Board of Deputies framed the statement as targeting the students themselves, even though “being used as political pawns” suggests that they are being led by the nose.

Williamson, a former Labour MP, tore into Brady for his university’s failure to muster more than a “mealy-mouthed response” to attacks by a “politically motivated lynch mob,” a lack of action that had encouraged “bad faith actors to continue pursuing this censorship drive.”

Williamson should know. He is no stranger to spurious allegations of anti-Semitism himself, and was suspended from the Labour Party for arguing that it had apologized unnecessarily for something of which it was not guilty – namely, the ‘chronic anti-Semitism’ the party was accused of by its own Blairite faction and media collaborators. Williamson witnessed the danger of excessive apologies secondhand, having watched his colleague Jeremy Corbyn get slowly buried under a pile of unnecessary apologies as the party’s phantom anti-Semitism plague invited further attacks upon him.

Declaring the rhetorical assault on Miller to be part and parcel of “a pernicious campaign of censorship that is currently being waged against British universities by apologists for the state of Israel,” Williamson urged Brady to come forward with “an unambiguous statement in support of Professor Miller,” to whom – as his employer – he owed it to protect him from “malicious complaints.”

Miller himself refused to be silenced, issuing a statement on Friday morning that affirmed his belief that “Zionism is and always has been a racist, violent, imperialist ideology premised on ethnic cleansing.” Hitting back at the Union of Jewish Students, who he accused of targeting him with “a campaign of manufactured hysteria for two years” in an effort to have him fired, he claimed the group even planted a fake student in one of his classes, who was not registered for the class at all, but was merely there “for the purpose of political surveillance.”

Miller concluded that the war on academics critical of Zionism was “an age-old Israel lobby tactic imported from the US, where academics are routinely harassed for teaching about Zionism and its effects.” Should any other foreign lobby try such an approach, they would be “laughed out of the room,” Miller pointed out, insisting “Israel and its advocates deserve the same treatment.”

Far from rendering Jewish students unsafe, Miller declared, the campaign of censorship against critics of the Zionist regime put Arab and Muslim students in danger – as well as anti-Zionist Jewish students.

While the comments about Zionism seem to have topped the list of the Board of Deputies’ grievances, the professor was also denounced as a conspiracy theorist for directing the Organization for Propaganda Studies (which, among other wrongthink views, takes issue with the squeaky-clean image of Syria’s White Helmets favored in the UK and US). Additionally, his concerns over the meddling of pro-Israel organizations in the previous two UK elections were pooh-poohed as mere fantasy, even though in one case an Israeli foreign agent was actually discovered working undercover in Labour Friends of Israel, caught on film plotting the downfall of Corbyn and his allies.

February 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel prepares law to prohibit cooperation with ICC

MEMO | February 18, 2021

Israeli authorities are preparing a law that would prohibit any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and would propose five years in prison for any violations of this law, RT reported yesterday.

Reporting Israeli TV Channel 7, RT said the law would also include a ban on handing over Israeli nationals to the ICC, financing the expenses of legal defence before it and imposing penalties on the court and those working for it.

This, it explained, comes as part of a series of measures taken by Israel against the ICC after its announcement that it would probe potential Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

Channel 7 reported that the bill is being inspired by the American Civil Service Protection Act, which was enacted in Congress in 2002.

The US law, which was known as the Invasion of The Hague, gives the US president wide ranging powers to do anything in order to release any American citizen arrested by the ICC, including the use of force.

Reporting the Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin, Channel 7 said that the Israeli law aims to create a legal safety network for Israeli soldiers and senior officials who could be prosecuted.

It will also sanction the tribunal’s members, ban them from entering Israel and impose restrictions against foreign entities that help them.

The ICC’s declared intention to investigate possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories has enraged Israel. The government has apparently drafted a list of its officials and former officials who should avoid foreign travel as they may be arrested and charged with such crimes.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel violates international law anew, again bombing Syria… to further indifference of Western media

By Eva K Bartlett | RT | February 16, 2021

Israeli missiles reportedly targeted Syria again on Monday. Usually carried out under the pretense of “targeting Iranian/Iranian-backed militias,” Israel’s strikes violate Syria’s sovereignty and breach international law.

Israel’s military chief of staff boasted earlier about hitting over 500 targets in just 2020 alone. Bearing in mind that Syria’s air defenses do intercept Israeli missiles, it is clear that Israel attacked Syria exponentially more than 500 times last year, and an untold number of times more in the many years that Israel has been bombing Syria.

This latest assault on Syria comes after an Iranian official clarified any Iranian forces in Syria are there at the invitation of the Syrian government to fight terrorists in Syria. This of course applies to all of Syria’s allies, but not to the illegal US and Turkish occupation forces.

Yet, one of the many ironies regarding reporting on Syria is that, while Syria and her allies are fighting terrorism, they are routinely lambasted by Israeli and Western officials, both Israel and Western nations have long been supporting terrorists in Syria, claiming they are “opposition forces” although they are either part of Al-Qaeda in Syria, closely aligned to them, or members of equally brutal factions, including even Islamic State ( IS, formerly ISIS).

If Israel’s routine bombings of Syria are reported in Western media at all, it is with the usual downplaying of (and normalizing of) Israel’s violations of international law.

A SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency) report on the February 15 bombings read as most reports prior over the years, noting the Israeli aggression and that Syria’s “air defenses intercepted the missiles and downed most of them.”

Reuters’ account, referring to the SANA report, put Israeli aggression in quotation marks, as though the bombings don’t amount to an aggression. Perhaps Reuters views them as late Valentine’s greetings…Google “Iranian” or “Russian aggression” and see how often quotation marks are used.

Did Reuters or similar media bother to speak with civilians terrorized by these and the many prior Israeli assaults on Syria? Would they ever mention the psychological component of bombing at night, which is inevitably when Israel usually bombs?

Unlikely. Their narrative is to establish that “Iranian militias” are overtaking Syria and pose a threat to Israel that justifies Israel’s incessant bombings of Syria.

Who do Israel’s bombs target besides “Iranian/Iranian-backed militias” ?

If Western media reported honestly on Israeli bombings of Syria, they would be forced to acknowledge not only that Syrian civilians, including children, have been killed in the bombings, but perhaps offer a human face. Given the frequency of Israeli attacks and disregard for civilians, it is likely that the number of civilians maimed or killed by such bombings is not low.

Even in media traditionally hostile to Syria, one can find reports of civilians killed by Israeli bombings in Syria.

Western media do periodically mention that civilians were killed, but always usurp that point with justifications, like Israel, “periodically attacks what it says are threats to Israeli security in Syria.”

In June 2019, I travelled to Quneitra, southern Syria. Standing near al-Baath City, with around 2,000 civilians living there, and around 4km from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, security there spoke of Israeli attacks in previous years and also just roughly two weeks before my visit.

While their emphasis was on the fact that every time Israel attacked it enabled terrorists (al-Nusra and other groups) to advance, the other take away was that the bombings took place next to or where civilians were living.

In July 2019, among the routine Israeli bombings of Syria was an attack that killed at least four civilians, including an infant, injuring many more. A France 24 mention of the bombings reported six civilians killed, including three children. The report was careful to also specify “pro-regime” for fighters killed, weighted lexicon so common in Western media.

Of that day’s attacks, the BBC ran with: “Israeli jets ‘hit Iranian targets in Homs and Damascus’’. The BBC justified, as the BBC does, Israel’s bombings with: “It periodically attacks what it says are threats to Israeli security in Syria.” Were the dead civilians Israelis, you can bet they would have made the BBC’s headline and not be buried in a justification.

More recently, on the morning of January 22, 2021, Israel (violating Lebanese airspace) bombed Tartous, Hama and Homs countryside. The bombings resulted in the deaths of at least five in one suburb.

Writing from Beirut and Gaza, AP cited the highly partial Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, who from their position afar in the UK attributed the cause of deaths to a Syrian air defense missile. The media ran with that.

And although the big corporate media networks have abundant “unnamed sources,” “citizen journalists” and other credible anonymous sources to support claims of Russian or Syrian atrocities, when it comes to attacks by Israel or the US or allies, these networks run strangely dry of sources and dry of empathy for the victims.

So it is that we never hear of the personal tragedies that come with such bombings.

Regarding the January 22 bombings, journalist Vanessa Beeley went to Kazu, Hama, which she wrote, “took a direct hit with four rockets landing in a narrow residential street.” Beeley reported on how five members of an internally displaced family from Idlib were killed in their sleep (one later dying of her injuries). And sharing horrifying nuances you will not find in Western corporate media, she wrote:

“Hossam was the first on the scene and to see the broken bodies, crushed by the debris of the blast. He told me that he later found the mobile phone of the daughter visiting from Tartous. Her husband had heard news of the attack and had been trying to call her, unaware that his wife had been killed alongside their daughter. Hossam told me that one family member had been sleeping when the shrapnel sliced into their face, tearing skin from bone…”

Now just imagine these were Syrian bombings killing Israeli civilians and children. There would be hell to pay, and the media would scream about it 24/7.

Because some lives matter, but most do not, when it comes to reporting on Syria.

I asked Beeley about the SOHR claims. She replied:

“All survivors of the attack that I interviewed were adamant that four Israeli rockets targeted the narrow residential streets, killing five members of one family and grievously injuring four other relatives living in the same house.”

Why does this hypocrisy matter?

Perhaps people far from the war in Syria and inundated with other terrible information and news wonder why I’m harping on about something that has happened a million times (figuratively) before, Israeli bombings of Syria. Yes, it isn’t news, yes it happens routinely. But it shouldn’t. That’s the bottom line. And it wouldn’t be accepted were a Western nation the target.

These are beyond hypocritical times, when repeatedly bombing a sovereign nation, killing civilians in doing so, merits no outrage, much less any UN or other actions against the offender.

But fighting designated terrorists in Syria warrants media indignation, accusations from Western politicians and the UN itself, and the cruel sanctioning of the people affected.

So why does the hypocrisy matter? Because every time Israel bombs Syria, it is either killing civilians, enabling terrorism (which kills civilians), or preventing the forces fighting terrorism from doing so.

And it matters because Syrians aren’t just numbers behind headlines about “Iranian-backed” fighters. They are people long-abused by Israel and the West’s backing of terrorism and by media complicity.

February 17, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

ICC to Investigate Israeli War Crimes

United States will punish ICC

By PHILIP GIRALDI •  UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 16, 2021

Well, as usual, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has finally received authorization to proceed with the investigation of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel-Palestine, to include both the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and also Hamas in Gaza. On February 5th ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that her office is now studying the decision made to confirm ICC’s jurisdiction and would be “guided strictly by its independent and impartial mandate” to investigate and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has already ruled in December 2019 that “war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip” but was waiting for confirmation that it had jurisdiction to proceed. Both the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and armed groups including Hamas were named as possible perpetrators.

The bad news is that Bensouda has been replaced as the United States is already intervening in support of its best friend and closest ally in the whole world and will inevitably do all sorts of stupid things that do not serve its own interests when the Israeli tail starts wagging the American dog. Count on it. That has apparently already included pressure exerted both by Washington and Jerusalem behind closed doors to make Bensouda go. She was replaced last Friday by British human rights lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, who is expected to be more accommodating to Israel and might even decide not to proceed with the investigation.

There has also been some speculation that the ICC was waiting for Donald Trump to be gone as Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had already more-or-less declared war on the ICC back in June 2020. The Trump White House had sanctioned key members of the court and had also blocked the travel to the U.S. by investigators associated with it. It threatened to arrest anyone who cooperated with the investigation. Washington also warned in the strongest terms that there would be “consequences” for any attempt by the court to investigate or punish Israel.

The Joe Biden White House clearly is on the same page on the issue, releasing the following State Department press statement on February 5th, immediately after the ICC decision became public: “Today, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a decision claiming jurisdiction in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, while expressly recognizing the serious legal and factual questions that surround its ability to do so. As we made clear when the Palestinians purported to join the Rome Statute in 2015, we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and therefore are not qualified to obtain membership as a state, or participate as a state in international organizations, entities, or conferences, including the ICC. We have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel. The United States has always taken the position that the court’s jurisdiction should be reserved for countries that consent to it, or that are referred by the UN Security Council.”

State Department Spokesman Ned Price provided additional commentary on the press release, saying “We will continue to uphold President Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.” Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC. The argument Washington is using is essentially a legal one, at least at this point, that Palestine is not a “sovereign state” and that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over any county that is not a signatory. Both are, of course, debatable. Israel has also taken steps to prevent any investigation by the court on its soil, to include the occupied territories and it is not clear if Egypt will allow ICC investigators to enter Gaza from Sinai.

The initial issue that turned Washington against the court in 2018 was the concern that it would begin inquiries into possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan since 2003, where both avoidable deaths and torture have been well documented. The U.S. used at the time the argument that it was not a signatory to the ICC but, as Prosecutor Bensouda observed, one does not have to be a signatory to be investigated as the court was specifically set up by the Rome Statute in 2002 to inquire into atrocities where there had been no accountability, either because the local government had no ability to do so or chose not to investigate itself.

So, it is all a bit of a non-starter since Israel and friends are non-signatories and will not cooperate while the United States will be using all its resources to stop the process stillborn. But that is not exactly the way it might play out. If the court holds the Israeli government accountable for war and human rights crimes those countries in Europe and elsewhere that are signatories to the ICC might consider themselves obliged to honor arrest warrants naming senior Israeli government officials whenever they are traveling. Israel is predictably reported to be already seeking to make arrangements whereby it will be warned by “friends” in foreign chanceries whenever such warrants are issued.

And then there is the matter of Israel’s approval rating vis-à-vis the rest of the world, which is already low, hovering down at the bottom of the list together with the United States. To be sure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands all that and has reacted sharply to the ICC decision to proceed. He said: “When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure anti-Semitism. The court established to prevent atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people is now targeting the one state of the Jewish people. First, it outrageously claims that when Jews live in our homeland, this is a war crime. Second, it claims that when democratic Israel defend itself against terrorists who murder our children, rocket our cities, we’re committing another war crime. Yet the ICC refuses to investigate brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria who commit horrific atrocities almost daily. As Prime Minister of Israel, I assure you, we will fight this perversion of justice with all our might.”

Israel’s security cabinet subsequently endorsed Netanyahu’s criticisms, describing the “outrageous” decision as one that “exposes the court as a political body, standing in one line with international organizations driven by antisemitic principles.” The Netanyahu government’s response is, of course, typical boilerplate that seeks to cast the Jewish state as a perpetual victim surrounded by a sea of anti-Semites. The only thing Netanyahu’s statement left out is the claim that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in weeks, but the Biden Administration’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken has already said that for him. The drum roll includes “fake war crimes,” “Nazi Holocaust,” “pure anti-Semitism,” “defend itself against terrorists who murder our children,” and “brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria who commit horrific atrocities almost daily.” The reality is quite the reverse with the Israelis committing real war crimes by attacking its neighbors almost daily to include frequently killing Palestinian children. The horrific atrocities are being committed by the Israeli Army and the armed monstrous settlers against helpless Palestinians on both the West Bank and in Gaza. One might add the theft of Arab land, the destruction of their houses and livelihoods, and the lack of any due process for those who live and die under the brutal occupation. The numbers tell the tale. According to United Nations records, 3,601 Palestinians have been killed and over 100,000 injured by Israel between 2010 and 2019, versus 203 Israelis killed and 4,700 injured in the same time period.

And now, when there at last might be some real accountability for Israel’s crimes, the United States, under Netanyahu’s thumb, is yet again on the wrong side of the argument.

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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Bernays and Propaganda – The Marketing of War

By Larry Romanoff for the Saker Blog  | February 15, 2021

In the revelation of propaganda as a tool of public mind control and its use for war marketing, it is worthwhile to examine the historical background of Bernays’ war effort. At the time, the European Zionist Jews had made an agreement with England to bring the US into the war against Germany, on the side of England, a favor for which England would grant the Jews the occupation of Palestine for a new homeland. Palestine did not ‘belong’ to England, it was not England’s to give, and England had no legal or moral right to make such an agreement, but it was made nonetheless. The Jews had created in US President Wilson an intense desire to enter the war, but the American population had no interest in the European war and public sentiment was entirely against participating.

To facilitate the desired result, Wilson created a body named the Committee on Public Information (CPI), to propagandise the war by the mass brainwashing of America. The group was led by a muckraking publicist/advertising man named George Creel, and the CPI was known as “The Creel Commission”, but it appears Creel was only a ‘front’, with little contribution to the events that actually occurred. The CPI was staffed with a heavy slate of psychologists and carefully-selected men from the media, academia, advertising, and the movie and music industries. Two of the most important members were Walter Lippmann, whom Wilson described as “the most brilliant man of his age”, and Edward Bernays, who was the group’s top mind-control expert, both Jews and both aware of the stakes in this game. Bernays planned to combine his uncle Freud’s psychiatric insights with mass psychology, blended with modern advertising techniques, and apply them to the task of mass mind control. Movies were already powerful new tools for misinformation and opinion control, as was radio, and TV would soon be added to this list.

“Wilson’s agreement to create the CPI was actually a turning point in world history, the first truly scientific attempt to form, manipulate and control the perceptions and beliefs of an entire population.” (1) (2) (3)

With Wilson’s authority, these men were given almost unlimited scope to work their magic, and in order to ensure the success of their program and guarantee the eventual possession of Palestine, these men and their committee carried out “a program of psychological warfare against the American people on a scale unprecedented in human history and with a degree of success that most propagandists could only dream about”.

In his 1922 book Public Opinion, Lippmann wrote, “The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event … For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.” And it was this psychological manipulation that these men employed to turn an entire nation of peaceful Americans into rabid war-mongers. (4) (5)

Note to readers: Some part of the immediately-following paragraphs is not mine. They are partially verbatim and partially paraphrasing, of some content I discovered many years ago and, even with diligent effort, I am today unable to locate the original source.

Having received permission and broad authority from the US President to “lead the public mind into war” and, with success threatened by widespread anti-war sentiment, these men determined to engineer what Lippmann called “the manufacture of consent”. The committee first identified all the different ways that information flowed to the population, examined the characteristics of each, and filled every channel with specially-crafted pro-war material. Their effort was unparalleled in its scale and sophistication, since the CPI had the power not only to manufacture false news and distribute it nationally through all channels, but to officially censor news and withhold information from the public. “They produced and distributed many thousands of ‘official’ press releases, virtually functioning as the information arm of the US government and were in fact the major provider of war news to the nation.”

These men wasted no time in organising a vast propaganda network and began flooding the US with anti-German propaganda consisting of hate literature, hate movies, songs, media articles and much more.

Lippmann and Bernays divided their Committee into nineteen ‘divisions’, each responsible for a different type of propaganda, and each utilising the expertise of vast numbers of psychologists, advertising experts, media personnel and movie moguls. (6) (7) The intention was to flood every means of communication with the goal of inciting hatred of everything German and to promote American entry into the war as the only option for patriotic Americans. They filled every part of US print media with anti-German hate propaganda. In the News Division alone, in an average week, more than 20,000 newspaper columns carried entirely false propaganda articles produced by the CPI, promoting hatred of Germany and Germans, describing atrocities that had never occurred and painting the Germans as vicious and inhuman monsters. Lippmann and Bernays not only instituted (compulsory) “voluntary guidelines” for the inclusion of their monstrous tales in all media, but they rigidly enforced a censorship in the American mass media to suppress any contradictory content.

Bernays cleverly realised that much of the public is disinclined to read long articles, and so formed a special division to produce brief rants and sound bytes meant to arouse the loathsome emotions of those with short attention spans. They created a Syndicated Features Division employing popular novelists to produce essays containing the official propaganda, which reached 10 to 15 million people each month. Another division was responsible for the cartoon sections of newspapers and other media, with the stated intention to “mobilize and direct the scattered cartoon power of the country for constructive war work”. They employed thousands of cartoonists who “achieved new heights in hate-mongering”, picturing the Germans as primitive and evil animals who stole, killed or raped everything they encountered.

They created a similar Division for Cinema that resulted in the Hollywood production of dozens of outrageous and virulently anti-German movies, hate films containing completely fictional tales of atrocities and bestialities committed by the Germans. Bernays was the source of movie scenes where “dirty” Germans (and later the dirtier Japanese) machine-gunned brave American pilots while parachuting to the ground. (8) None of these tales were ever true; these and all others were total fabrications. Then, as now, the motion picture industry in the US was entirely controlled by Jews who were eager to assist. One Jewish editorial stated that “every individual at work in this industry wants to do his share . . . through slides, film leaders and trailers, posters and newspaper publicity they will spread that propaganda so necessary to the immediate mobilization of the country’s great resources”.

In addition to movies produced by the film studios, the CPI created its own Film Division which produced 60 or 70 “official” films that were viewed by many tens of millions of people each week. They created an Advertising Division to influence commercial advertisers to insert anti-German war propaganda into newspaper and magazine advertising, with almost every major US publication carrying a large quota of these ads. Then, as today, much of the media was Jewish-owned or controlled, and these men received much free space.

They created a ‘Division of Work with the Foreign Born’ (9) to reach all immigrants in the country in their own languages, and used members of these communities to propagandise their own people, especially targeting all military-age foreigners who might become war conscripts. The CPI hired bi-lingual speakers to target every specific immigrant group in the US, and even had a Sioux ‘Four-Minute Man’ delivering speeches in seven native languages. They specially targeted all Jews in America, providing Yiddish speakers in thousands of theaters and workplaces. There also was a Foreign Section with sixteen divisions, which established offices in over thirty countries, to propagandise the populations of other nations.

Lippmann and Bernays wrote: “It is a matter of pride to the Committee on Public Information, as it should be to America, that the directors of English, French, and Italian propaganda were a unit in agreeing that our literature was remarkable above all others for its brilliant and concentrated effectiveness”.

Bernays’ Speaking Division organised a group known as the “Four-Minute Men’, 75,000 volunteers who gave speeches provoking hatred and fear of Germany and Germans, and urging war. They used farmers to appeal to farmers and businessmen to businessmen, with short, rousing speeches filled with imagery. These were so emotionally-loaded they often had dreadful consequences, in thousands of instances mobs gathering afterward and vandalised German homes and businesses in their city. (10) In total, their speakers gave nearly 8 million speeches to more than 300 million listeners, all provoking hatred of Germany and Germans, and urging war. (11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

A continuing atrocity is that even today misinformation sources like Britannica and the Smithsonian, and many American history websites, carry articles claiming “the CPI’s representatives, known as four-minute men, traveled throughout the U.S. urging Americans to buy war bonds and conserve food.” (16)

The Committee particularly targeted women, establishing a major Women’s Division, from fear that women “might constitute a subversive element in the nation, detrimental to wartime unity and the smooth functioning of [mandatory military conscription]”. They created a womens’ Four-Minute Man division to speak at womens groups and matinees to counteract the resistance to sending their sons and husbands to war. They inserted themselves into many women’s magazines where they controlled the cover and much of the internal content, encouraging women to send their sons to war, claiming he would return as “a man” instead of a corpse. The Ladies Home Journal, once the most inoffensive of publications, had many covers with dirty anti-German posters and most every issue with patriotic articles written by Bernays’ staff extolling the sacrifices of war.

One of Bernays’ mind-control divisions was responsible for popular music, the CPI hiring thousands of songwriters to create songs with anti-German lyrics, these playing constantly on the nation’s radio stations. Another division was responsible for public library content, tasked with the removal of any books favoring Germany, including the works of famous German authors and philosophers. Everything favorably German was censored, removed from public accessibility, or destroyed.

Perhaps the division most indicative of the moral bankruptcy of these men was their work with public school children. They heavily utilised psychologists in programs to spread hatred of Germany throughout America’s public school system where small children were taught the full gamut of Bernays’ hateful propaganda, then used as travelling salesmen to visit other schools and spread the hatred to their classmates, delivering totally fabricated tales of German atrocities to other small children. Uncounted thousands of children were organized as Four Minute Men speakers, with more than 200,000 schools participating. Bernays’ psychologists did their work well: American children became not only hate-filled but terrified of Germans. After these inflamed propaganda sessions, many American children demonstrated their “patriotism” by groups attacking German-Americans and stoning them, sometimes being congratulated by local newspapers for “doing their duty”. The ‘patriotic’ Boy Scouts of America contributed to the effort by regularly burning bundles of German newspapers that were on sale, and Germans were regularly insulted and spat upon by other citizens.

Bernays’ group published many thousands of children’s books and comics containing the most vile and hateful propaganda lies. Libraries sponsored anti-German children’s ‘story hours’ that used hate propaganda supplied by Bernays. Sunday school children were given coloring books depicting and encouraging violence against Germans.

Bernays’ Public literature attacked everything German in America, including schools and churches. In many schools the German language was forbidden to be taught to “pure Americans”, and administrators were urged to fire “all disloyal teachers”, meaning any Germans. The names of countless towns and cities were changed to eliminate their German origin: Berlin, Iowa became Lincoln, Iowa. German foods and food names were purged from restaurants; sauerkraut became ‘liberty cabbage’ and German Shepherds became ‘Alsatians’.

All American orchestras were ordered to eliminate from their performances any music by classic German composers like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. In some states, the use of the German language was prohibited in public and on the telephone. German professors were fired from their universities, German-language or German-owned local newspapers were denied advertising revenue, constantly harassed, and often forced out of business.

Bernays instituted a program of questioning the patriotism and loyalty of all Germans in America, including those who had lived there for generations. He created a plan that enlisted volunteers to gather information on Germans, forming a semi-official organisation named the American Protective League that eventually had more than 200,000 members deputised as FBI agents to “police” community loyalty. This group and others “investigated” every German, and soon every person with anti-war views, as prima facie evidence of treason.

http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/tarred-and-feathered.jpg

Germans were forced to gather in public meetings and denounce Germany and its leaders. They were forced to purchase war bonds and publicly declare their allegiance to the US flag. As Bernays’ rhetoric reached dangerous levels, the anti-German hysteria and violence increased proportionately. Many Germans were forcibly removed from their homes, often torn from their beds during the night, taken out into the street and stripped naked, beaten and whipped, then forced to kneel and kiss the American flag. Many were tarred and feathered, then forced to leave their cities or towns. Some were lynched from trees. Priests and pastors were dragged out of their churches and beaten for giving sermons in German. (17) (18) (19) (20)

The anti-German hysteria had people seeing spies everywhere, with House and Bernays greatly inflaming this trend by preparing Wilson’s infamous “Flag Day” speech (21) (22) where he claimed “The military masters of Germany have filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and have sought to corrupt the opinion of our people”. Newspaper editors were screaming that all Germans were spies who were poisoning American water supplies or infecting medical shipments to hospitals, and that most “ought to be taken out at sunrise and shot for treason”. The Saturday Evening Post, one of America’s most popular and influential magazines, announced that it was time to rid America of Germans, “the scum of the melting pot”. Congressmen recommended hanging or otherwise executing all Germans in America, State Governors urging the use of firing squads to eliminate “the disloyal element” from the entire state. The US Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels stated that Americans would “put the fear of God into the hearts” of these people.

According to Bernays, the key was to dehumanise and demonise the German people by filling American minds with fabricated tales of horror. The compliant media, largely Jewish-owned, obediently carried fake stories of poisoned candy being dropped from airplanes, German soldiers skewering babies like shish kebabs, the raping of nuns, and so much more. Eventually, the stories were accepted as true and the public’s natural resistance to war was overcome. From his uncle Freud, Bernays learned that a particularly effective strategy for demonising Germans was the use of atrocity stories. According to Harold Lasswell:

“So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate. A handy rule for arousing hate is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man.” (23)

The CPI used every weapon available to spread their message to, as Creel would later say, “turn the American people into one white-hot mass (of hatred) . . .” Their psychological travesty so indoctrinated the public that daily life in America became infused with hatred and with Americans automatically conditioned to disgust and hatred for all things German.

They succeeded, and not only in the US. Teams of the same Jewish ‘specialists’ were following the same script in most other nations, all instilling massive hatred for Germans who, in every nation were vehemently portrayed as evil incarnate, simply from the fact of their German origin. In countries all around the world, the media spread the same message of hatred against Germany and the Germans.

In Brazil, anti-German demonstrations and riots consumed the country, with German businesses being destroyed and Germans being assaulted and killed. The Brazilian press carried Bernays’ intensely anti-German atrocity propaganda, stimulating demonstrations that were very ugly anti-German affairs. In some cities, hundreds of businesses, schools and homes were burned. In Porto Alegre, almost the entire German district was burned to the ground. In others, almost all German assets were seized. (24)

In almost every nation, the German-language press and use of the German language completely disappeared during the war from fear of reprisal, as did all German schools and most businesses. None re-opened. In Canada and Australia, many names of towns or streets were changed to eliminate their German origin. In Britain, France, and Canada also, thousands of people were falsely interned and their apartments and shops most often looted. They didn’t miss any opportunity; in one case, they found a photo of a German soldier with a child on his knee and published it with the caption, “One wouldn’t believe I have just killed the mother.” The Jews’ atrocity war propaganda in Canada was almost as bad as in the US, with even the military vandalising German businesses, and all Germans not imprisoned having to register with the government. (25)

The UK was as bad as the US. Persons bearing a German name were driven to despair, driven out of their positions and their businesses ruined. The Guardian archives document that anti-German riots in England were remarkable for their destruction and violence. “Some Germans were pursued into their homes by the mob and pitched through the windows into the street, others were ducked in troughs, and others had their clothing stripped off their backs.” (26) The anti-German hysteria became so severe that King George V had to change his German name of ‘Saxe-Coburg’ to ‘Windsor’, and relinquish all his German titles. (27)

Most Americans are aware that during the (again Bernays-induced) national hysteria during the Second World War the US government forced more than 100,000 US-born Japanese into concentration camps, but history has deleted the fact that many more Germans were interned in concentration camps in the US prior to and during the First War. German Mennonites who refused the draft as conscientious objectors were given prison sentences for as long as 30 years, and many died from abuse and torture in US prisons. Not only were Germans imprisoned, but all their assets were confiscated, this during both world wars, and not only personal assets but entire corporations owned by Germans were simply seized and sold. The government amassed more than half a billion dollars in seizures, nearly equivalent to the entire national budget at the time. Bayer in America was auctioned off on its own doorstep, to a friend of the Administration. (28) In fact, the US military entered every country with a German corporate presence and claimed ownership of all German assets. This portion is of such consequence I have dealt with it in detail in a separate article. (29)

While Bernays was “making the world safe for democracy”, that safety was not meant for Americans. Under the coaching of Col. E. M. House who was Wilson’s Jewish handler, Wilson passed oppressive legislation including the Espionage Act and Sedition Act that were prepared by Bernays, were entirely fascist in content and which made illegal anything that might hinder American entry into the war. Freedom of speech and assembly, and press freedom virtually disappeared from America during this time, it eventually becoming illegal to say or write anything critical of the US government, its officials and even its “symbols”.

Any expression of objection to American entrance into the war would result in a fine of $10,000 (ten years’ average wages at the time) or 20 years in prison, with much of the policing power given to what were in effect private vigilante groups like the infamous American Protective League that operated virtually without oversight. The suppression of public opinion and of dissent, and the control exercised on anti-war communication was universal. The Espionage Act stated “Every letter, writing, circular, postal card, picture, print, engraving, photograph, newspaper, pamphlet, book, or other publication, matter or thing of any kind containing any matter which is intended to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States is hereby declared to be non-mailable.” Nothing was permitted that might prevent the successful recruitment of American soldiers for a war that only the Jews wanted.

Because of Bernays, atrocity propaganda, the deliberate spreading of fabricated evils and inhuman war crimes became the foundation of the Committee’s efforts. With all of this and much more, Bernays and Lippmann turned America into a hotbed of hatred for the entire German population, accomplishing the goal of the Zionist Jews to use the US military as a tool, their own private army in the European war to fulfill their ambition for Palestine, and thus these two men changed the course of history.

Of course, the causes and aims of the propaganda were far more evil than anything the supposed ‘enemy’ had contemplated, but the goal was to not only invent an enemy but to make that enemy “appear savage, barbaric, and inhumane”, and thus worthy of destruction. This process has been followed many dozens of times in recent history, the latest being the US-Israeli destruction of Iraq, Libya and Syria. Usually, the compliant media repeat and embellish the stories without attempt at confirmation and, in virtually every instance, later attempts to confirm the atrocity tales prove fruitless with researchers able to uncover no evidence whatever of the events. Think of Iraq’s gassing of hundreds of thousands and burial in mass graves and the tales of Libyan Viagra; these and many others proved groundless fabrications – typical atrocity propaganda. Prior to the Iraq invasion, stories appeared of Saddam using wood shredders to eliminate political opponents and dissidents but, as always, researchers later determined there was no evidence whatever to support those horrendous allegations. Thanks to Bernays, there were World War One tales of Germans cutting off the breasts of every woman they encountered, of eating babies, of rendering the bodies of massacred Jews for fat and glycerine to make weapons, tales of a tub-full of eyeballs collected by the Nazis. After the war, Bernays openly admitted that he used fabricated atrocities to provoke hatred against Germany. It appears the media will cooperate in propagating the most fantastic lies, and the people will believe almost everything they read.

Bernays and his group produced thousands of posters containing lurid descriptions of these fake atrocities (30), to say nothing of the newspaper articles, cartoons and so much more, but the historical record of this years-long tapestry of lies and hate has been quite well buried. It is possible to find copies on the internet of many wartime posters, but this collection has been well sanitised with virtually all of the genuinely evil and dirty productions apparently lost to history. The narrative today in the history books casually dismisses all this as “an innovative use of graphic arts to stir patriotism”, but it was hatred rather than patriotism that was being stirred, and both America and the Jews will one day need to openly face this entire reprehensible chapter of history.

The official story is that after World War One, propaganda developed such a poor reputation that the US Congress terminated the Committee in disgust, “ending these activities amidst great controversy”, and refused to bother with funding to preserve and archive its vast collection of hate literature and propaganda, but the truth is that the White House, Congress and the Committee conspired to eliminate or destroy much of the evidence of their crimes. There exists a section of Records of the Committee on Public Information in US Government archives (31), but little of use remains, the more dangerous elements all sanitised. And in fact, far from developing a bad reputation, Bernays and his propaganda methods became widely popular with governments and large corporations for both consumerism and the control of public perception during peacetime.

This wouldn’t be the last time Lippmann and Bernays would use these techniques against Germany. This massive attack was repeated little more than ten years later to destroy Germany and push it into yet another war the Germans didn’t want. In the 1930s, the same Jewish European bankers with largely the same agenda wanted the US to join another war they planned to initiate against Germany. In 1933 they embarked on an extensive worldwide commercial war intended to destroy Germany financially, with newspaper headlines screaming “Judea Declares War on Germany”. They had already induced in Roosevelt “an intense desire for war”, but were having the same problem again with the unwilling American public. And they employed precisely the same solutions, this time demonising Hitler.

In all of this, Lippmann and Bernays were not working independently or without guidance. Prior to their massive ‘war effort’ in the US, they had operated a successful pilot test case in the UK, using British newspapers owned by their controllers, primarily Rothschild, to determine the efficacy of their methods. You may want to think about this next sentence and apply it to recent world events. “They (Bernays and his group) practiced revealing fabricated stories of atrocities, false accusations of terror and brutality against any nation or people they wanted the public mind to view as “the enemy”, then tested and evaluated public reactions to their manipulations of this false propaganda.”

Compare those words with George W. Bush’s demonisation of Iraq, the sordid tales of mass slaughters, the nuclear weapons ready to launch within 15 minutes, the responsibility for 9-11, the babies tossed out of incubators, all the fake propaganda against Saddam and Iraq to get the public mind onside for an unjustified war launched only for political and commercial objectives. Compare them to the demonisation of Khaddafi in Libya, his supplying of Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women, the long list of fabrications and lies to get the public onside for yet another war launched for more political and commercial objectives. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and dozens of other demonisations followed this same template, usually culminating in wars and invasions. It was Bernays who created “war marketing”, the theory and the template for the manipulation of public opinion, the plan and pattern for the propaganda and lies that the US government would use repeatedly for the next century to successfully deceive the American public about its motivations and actions in more than 100 military adventures, and to blind everyone to the tragic results of America’s brutal foreign policy. This is the man Americans celebrate today as “the father of Public Relations”.

The plan to mass-engineer public opinion began in a propaganda factory at Wellington House in London in the early 1900s, with Lords Northcliffe and Rothmere, Arnold Toynbee, and of course our two war-marketing geniuses Lippmann and Bernays. It was from this source that the scheme was hatched to force the Rothschild’s privately-owned Federal Reserve banks onto the US Congress, and that trained and coached Lippmann and Bernays on the methods of molding American public opinion to push the US into the First World War for the promotion of Zionism. Bernays’ book ‘Propaganda’ offers a clear vision of his training, not only for war marketing but for the pathology of American consumption, automobiles, the hysteria of patriotism and much more.

Funding reportedly came from the UK Royal Family, the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, and eventually included the formation of trans-Atlantic relationships. At various periods, memberships in the Tavistock Institute, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Rothschild’s Round Table, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, the Stanford Research Institute, the Trilateral Commission and NATO, were interchangeable. They also created the ideology for the large American Foundations like Rockefeller and Carnegie that today play a silent but major role in population management.

Wellington House eventually morphed into the Tavistock Institute, which was created at Oxford University in London by the founders of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Round Table (Rothschild again), and was essentially a kind of mass brainwashing facility beginning as a psychological warfare bureau. It was the Tavistock Institute’s studies in psychological programming that were used to create and then exploit a grand mass hysteria during the cold war, evoking fearful delusions of a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union that even led to millions of Americans building bomb shelters in their back yards. In Tye’s biography of Bernays (32), he wrote that:

“It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs.”

Many dirty things emerged from this rat’s nest of Satan-worshippers, one being Britain’s Psychological Warfare Bureau which hatched a plan to destroy Germany not by attacking the military but by virtual genocide of the population. It seems that international bankers owned munitions plants and other valuable military targets on both sides of the war fence, and wanted their property maintained in working order in spite of the war. The solution was saturation bombing of the civilian population to collapse the morale of the German people. These ‘scientific sociologists’ determined that the destruction of 65% of German housing, usually including its occupants, would be sufficient to achieve such a collapse. This was the origin of the fame of the British aviation hero “Bomber” Harris, who carried out these night raids – always at night – that culminated in the fire-bombing of Dresden. The explanation of night raids is usually given as safety for the bomber crews, but its purpose was mostly to engender more terror among the civilian population. Working class housing areas were targeted because they had a higher density and firestorms were more likely.” This would disrupt the German workforce and Germany’s ability to produce war materials in its defense. Harris’ widespread deliberate massacres of German civilians – and those by the Americans as well – were desperately kept secret from the public and still appear nowhere in history books in useful detail or with any sincere attempt to accurately estimate civilian casualties. As I pointed out elsewhere, this was the plan that US General Curtis Lemay was following, the same low-level night raids attempting to exterminate the populations of Japan and Korea.

Everything we have seen, read, or heard in the past 70 years that demonised other nations, usually leading to military intervention or “color revolutions”, stems from this template by Lippmann and Bernays originally to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and to promote the agenda of Zionism. This template has been in constant use by the US government since the World War I, ‘engineering consent and ignorance’ in the American and Western populations to mask nearly a century of atrocities, demonising innocent countries and peoples in preparation for 60 or 70 politically-inspired ‘wars of liberation’ fought exclusively for the financial and political benefit of a handful of European bankers, using the US military as a private army for this purpose, resulting in the deaths and miseries of hundreds of millions of innocent civilians.

It does not appear widely-known, but the intense anti-German propaganda surrounding World War I (and also World War II) had an aim additional to the seizure of Palestine, and this was the destruction of the culture and the very soul of Germany. Churchill was clear on this matter, stating “This war is for the soul of the German people.” It was largely successful. There is no question that Bernays’ propaganda had a devastating effect on Germans and their cultural heritage. (33) Germany today is a cowed nation, still humiliated and still paying billions in reparations for crimes it never committed, in large part because the propaganda has never ceased. Even today, movies and TV programs depict Germans as cold robots lacking humanity, and we were recently treated to a widely-publicised revelation that Hitler had been cursed with a “twisted micro-penis”. Few peoples today are ashamed to admit their national heritage, but no Germans boast of being German. Where in America do we find German beer halls and restaurants, German churches or newspapers? In 2004, The Guardian published a review of a book titled “The loneliness of being German”. (34) This is not an accident.

In one CPI publication, Professor Vernon Kellogg asked “Will it be any wonder if, after the war, the people of the world, when they recognize any human being as a German, will shrink aside so that they may not touch him as he passes, or stoop for stones to drive him from their path?” (35) No wonder at all.

In this context, you may care to read my recent article titled “The Anger Campaign against China”, (36) and think of the physical and other attacks ethnic Chinese are experiencing today in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and other Western nations. Consider the accusations of ‘genocide’ in China’s Xinjiang, China’s ‘cover-up’ and full blame for COVID-19, all the (undocumented) tales of spying, of IP theft, of prison camps, of forced abortions, of being ‘Communists’, and much more. Only the atrocity details have changed; all else is the same. Bernays’ template is being followed to the letter, in preparation for World War III.

Introduction – If America Dissolves – http://thesaker.is/if-america-dissolves/

Part 1 of 5 – Bernays and Propaganda – http://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda/

Part 2 of 5 – This current essay


Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 30 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English-language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com

Notes

(1) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/

(2) https://theconversation.com/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-76270

(3) https://www.history.com/news/world-war-1-propaganda-woodrow-wilson-fake-news

(4) https://www.amazon.com/Public-Opinion-Original-Walter-Lippmannn/dp/1947844563

(5) https://archive.org/details/publicopinion00lippgoog

(6) https://propagandacritic.com/previous-version-propaganda-critic/articles/ww1.cpi.html

(7) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/

(8) Cinema as an imperialist weapon: Hollywood and World War I; https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/08/holl-a05.html

(9) https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1917-72PubDip/comp1

(10) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/

(11) https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/one-hundred-years-ago-anti-german-hysteria-consumed-cincinnati/

(12) https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/03/11/anti-german-hysteria-city-during-wwi/98895422/

(13) https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWantigerman.htm

(14) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/index.html

(15) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/german-triangle.html

(16) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wilson-asks-for-declaration-of-war

(17) https://www.npr.org/2017/04/06/522903398/lynching-of-robert-prager-underlined-anti-german-sentiment-during-world-war-i

(18) https://journal.historyitm.org/2013/10/17/feathered-and-tarred/

(19) https://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2014/05/wwi-and-german-americans.html

(20) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4992032/Germans-AMERICA-World-War.html

(21) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-president-woodrow-wilson-gives-flag-day-address

(22) https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/president-wilson-proclaims-flag-day-224127

(23) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/cpi-propaganda.html

(24) https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1168&context=historyfacpub

(25) https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/life-at-home-during-the-war/enemy-aliens/anti-german-sentiment/

(26) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/13/anti-german-riots-lusitania-1915-first-world-war

(27) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25450726

(28) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-confiscated-half-billion-dollars-private-property-during-wwi-180952144/

(29) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/04/the-greatest-intellectual-property.html

(30) https://www.historyhit.com/anti-german-propaganda-posters-from-world-war-one/

(31) https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/063.html

(32) https://www.amazon.com/Father-Spin-Edward-Bernays-Relations-ebook/dp/B0091I177W

(33) https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/german-americans-during-world-war-i/

(34) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/07/germany.society

(35) https://propagandacritic.com/previous-version-propaganda-critic/articles/ww1.demons.html

(36) https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/08/blog-post_49.html

February 15, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Guardian writer insists cancel culture doesn’t exist, gets whacked by Big Israel

By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 11, 2021

The meaning of ‘free speech’ is devolving rapidly, with an ever-widening swathe of journalistic content deemed deplatform-worthy, but one writer’s run-in with the Israeli lobby should remind us where “cancel culture” began.

Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, a columnist for the Guardian, tripped over Tel Aviv’s time-honored third rail back in December. He was incensed – as any sane American might be – by the truly preposterous piles of money that were being bundled off to Israel as part of what was supposed to be an omnibus spending bill combined with Covid-19 stimulus passed by Congress as a life-raft for a desperately needy American populace. So he sent out a tweet.

Robinson’s tweet – which wryly suggested “it’s the law” that “the US Congress is not actually allowed to authorize any new spending unless a portion of it is directed toward buying weapons for Israel” – was a joke that took a moment to recognize as a joke, given its resemblance to reality, as the best satire often is. But, at some point, he seemed to get cold feet, following up the tweet with a qualifier noting while it wasn’t really the law, it was “at least so customary as to be functionally identical” to it.

Apparently smelling weakness (and finding satire a wholly inappropriate pastime for a Guardian columnist), the Guardian’s US editor ordered him to delete the tweets, declaring they were not “helpful to public discourse.” One might ask how 95 percent of what’s printed in the Guardian is helpful to public discourse, but one would probably not receive a reply. The email also included what seemed to be a forwarded message from some humorless individual who denounced the tweets as “clearly anti-Semitic,” arguing they were “saying that the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world” and were liable to “inform murderous hatred.”

“Delete this and apologise,” the nameless critic demanded.

Robinson at this point was going to get fired no matter what. He could have stood his ground, explaining to his editor that only the unsigned letter-writer had claimed “the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world,” a conclusion which was nowhere to be found in Robinson’s tweets. He could have pointed out that deeming criticism of Israel “anti-Semitic” was itself anti-Semitic, because plenty of Jews disapprove of the sociopathic actions of the Israeli government and don’t appreciate being used as human shields for those actions. Or he could have just said “no.”

Instead, he went the route traveled by so many journalists desperate to save their jobs, deleting the tweets, groveling at the feet of his editor, and even asking for guidance from the Guardian on what was off-limits – only to be told there was no such code, just an “unwritten one.” Thus was Robinson sucked into the apology vortex that has destroyed so many upwardly-mobile political and media figures – including UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – who’ve dared to oppose the “war crimes” of a foreign country.

After weeks of emails going unreturned, Robinson was informed his services would no longer be needed.

His fate certainly had a ring of poetic justice – his last column published by the Guardian denied the existence of “cancel culture,” gloating that “bigots like Jordan Peterson” aren’t owed a platform after some employees at the publisher who’d already inked a deal with Peterson complained.

However, the Israeli lobby has been bullying journalists since long before “cancel culture” had a name, as Robinson himself documented in a typically long-winded piece posted to his website after he discovered his groveling had been for naught. Indeed, today’s “cancel culture” practitioners most likely learned their craft from observing the craven sneak-attacks practiced by the Lobby that dare not speak its name.

Like the Israeli lobby’s defenders, cancel culture practitioners pile on their targets without regard for logic, fact, or common sense. They hammer away at not only their victim, but their victim’s employer until it becomes easier to just give them what they want, even if the “offensive” statement that started the controversy was utterly unimpeachable.

Robinson’s criticism of the US dumping billions of taxpayer dollars at the feet of Israel while millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet was accurate, as most job-killing jabs at Israel are. Because there is no way of justifying the expenditure of $3.8 billion per year on a country that deliberately antagonizes its neighbors in order to justify the purchase of more American weaponry, Israel’s defenders merely lob the same “anti-Semitism accusation” grenade, again and again. As former Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni has freely admitted, “it’s a trick, we always use it.”

“The ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong.”

It doesn’t matter if the critic of Israel is himself or herself Jewish, either: The list of Jewish critics of the Israeli government’s heinous crimes, all dismissed as “self-hating Jews,” could fill a book (whose publication would no doubt be censored). The Israeli government does not represent the Jewish people, no matter how hard it pretends to, and to suggest it does is itself anti-Semitic.

Unfortunately, the American establishment is utterly unwilling to stand up to these bullies for fear of being smeared as anti-Semitic itself, leading to the spectacle satirized so well in a New York Times cartoon from two years ago – one which also got its creator fired.

It’s a trick they will keep using until someone in the media establishment grows a backbone. As more and more self-styled aggrieved groups pick up on how ‘cancel culture’ works, eventually journalists will be unable to speak at all.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

February 11, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Iraq’s Muqtada Al-Sadr warns of looming normalisation with Israel

MEMO | February 11, 2021

Leader of the Iraqi Sadrist Movement and prominent Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr said yesterday that his movement will not allow normalisation between Iraq and Israel, even if the price is “blood”.

“Normalisation is at the door, and the parliament must prevent this. We will not allow normalisation at all, even if it costs us blood,” Al-Sadr told reporters in the southern city of Najaf.

Al-Sadr did not provide further details, however, in January a new movement named October 25 was formed under the leadership of Secretary-General Talal Hariri who called to have good relations with Israel.

The Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, has not issued a clear position on the movement’s demand.

Iraq does not officially recognise Israel, and there are no relations between the two sides.

In October 2017, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution prohibiting raising the Israeli flag and punishing violators with imprisonment.

Last year, the UAEBahrain Sudan and Morocco signed normalisation deals with Israel. At the time of the first announcements, Iraq declared that its laws prohibited it from normalising relations with the occupation state.

February 11, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Arranging The Middle East Narrative To Push The Agenda Forward

South Front | February 11, 2021

The United States is returning to a level of activity in the Middle East unseen in nearly 4 years. This development has become obvious over the weeks since Joe Biden became US President, firstly with a large deployment into Syria, and subsequently with smaller ones.

On February 9th, the Pentagon said that it was no longer in Syria to protect and exploit oil fields.

It is now back to hunting ISIS. Back to the square one of 2014 and the Obama era. ISIS somehow obliged by ramping up their activities throughout Syria.

It is a mystery that they were able to make such a sharp and sudden resurgence. It should also be noted that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces allegedly have about 10,000 ISIS terrorists imprisoned.

This statement of intent denotes a massive shift in posture for the US. When defending the oil fields the US troops were mostly static, when hunting ISIS they can, once again, roam around and carry out various operations.

It appears likely that Idlib is now also in focus – US combat drones were observed surveying Greater Idlib. Idlib is a mixed bag – it has Turkish troops, Russians, the Syrian Arab Army along with terrorists and the moderate opposition, although confusing these two groups can be forgiven. The newest, future, US ally is there – the soon-to-be-rebranded Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.

An indication of expected escalations and attacks are the Russian and Syrian military drills being carried out near Aleppo during effective wartime. Russia, separately, carried out a naval drill near Tartus.

And, as if by design, long-range missiles attempted to strike Russia’s forces at the Hmeimim Air Base. Drones occasionally attempt to infiltrate its airspace, but missiles are a rare sight.

Meanwhile in Western Daraa, the rebel leaders submitted to Damascus, likely fearing the upcoming chaos and wanting to choose a side.

Finally, the Biden administration is also working to secure Israeli support. The State Department said it doesn’t endorse Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, but doesn’t oppose it. It also provided a $9bn weapon sale as consolation. Tel Aviv is likely to use these weapons to counter its nemesis – Iran. It does so by targeting alleged Iranian interests in Syria.

Syria remains the lynchpin of US Middle East policy but the US posture in Iraq and Afghanistan has also changed. Withdrawing from the region is now out of the question – ISIS is making a resurgence, and there are other groups targeting American forces and convoys.

In Afghanistan, specifically, if the withdrawal does not move forward, the Taliban are also likely to begin targeting the US again.

The democrats are back in control and back to spreading democracy in the Middle East.

February 11, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment