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Hamas: Australia aligned itself with Israel’s terrorism

Palestine Information Center | February 17, 2022

Senior Hamas official Hisham Qasem has condemned Australia’s intention to designate his Movement as a terror group as “a reflection of blatant bias in favor of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.”

In press remarks to Quds Press, Qasem said that “the Israeli occupation regime sees every opponent as a terrorist party, although it practices organized state terrorism day and night against the Palestinian people at home and abroad.”

“Hamas has never been hostile to any country of the world and only resisted the occupation inside the occupied Palestinian territory, which makes any terror designation by Australia ‘a step against logical reasoning’ and ‘without foundation.’ It is rather complete adoption of the occupation’s aggressive narrative,” the Hamas official underlined.

“The Australian step against the Movement will not change its conviction about upholding its path of resisting the occupation until it achieves its final goal of liberation and return,” he said, stressing that Hamas would never deviate from this path.

Flouting the fact that Hamas is a national liberation movement that resists an occupying power in accordance with international laws and resolutions, the Australian government has declared its intent to add the Hamas Movement to its list of terror groups.

Australia had previously listed the armed wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, as a terror group in 2003, but the new designation, which will come into effect in April, will blacklist the Movement in its entirety.

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Mulls to bolster Mideast Operations with Israeli-made Vessels

An unmanned Israeli navy vessel test fires missile off Ashkelon
Al-Manar | February 16, 2022

The US Navy is examining the possibility of bolstering its joint operations in the Middle East with Israeli-made unmanned vessels, a US official told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

The report did not specify who would be operating the boats, but noted that additional Israeli military involvement in the Gulf region could anger Iran.

The unnamed official said the US military was examining a number of options, including using Israeli unmanned vessels during current Gulf exercises.

The Zionist entity is a participant in a massive US-led naval exercise focusing on unmanned naval systems and the use of artificial intelligence. The International Maritime Exercise, known by its acronym IMX, kicked off last month and is set to end on Thursday.

The Israeli navy has a fleet of unmanned ships that are used to complement its manned patrol boats around the occupied Palestinian coastal waters.

The Reuters report said the US was showing interest in Israeli-made surface drones that can be deployed in tandem with air and underwater UAVs.

“The Israelis are definitely vested in leveraging this technology,” the unnamed official said, adding that a US fleet commander had made a recent trip to Haifa to examine the surface drones.

The comments by the US official were made during a trip by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Bahrain, the first official visit by an Israeli premier to the Gulf kingdom, Israeli media reported.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

America’s return to UNESCO will work in Israel’s favour

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 15, 2022

In 2017, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), citing “mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.” A few hours later, Israel followed suit, with then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing the organisation as “a theatre of the absurd.” The Israeli ambassador to the UN at the time, Danny Danon, opined, “Today is a new day at the UN where there is a price to pay for discrimination against Israel.” On 1 January 2019, the US and Israel officially left the organisation.

Last year, though, the US announced its intention to re-join UNESCO, “to counter Chinese influence or promote other US interests,” reported Reuters. The Jerusalem Post added that Israel has no intention of rejoining, although last year Foreign Minister Yair Lapid considered following in America’s footsteps, arguing that Israel’s absence from UNESCO had no effect on “anti-Israel bias”. He also admitted that Israel’s decision to quit UNESCO made it difficult to influence foreign policy.

To rejoin UNESCO, the US Congress would have to waive a bill that prevents Washington from funding international organisations which accept the Palestinian Authority as a full member. The US decision is said to have been influenced by UNESCO changing its approach towards Israel, while America is expected to counter any anti-Israel bias, following talks between Israeli and US officials.

Israel had opposed UNESCO’s designations of Palestinian heritage sites, which it described as erasing history and memory. Never mind that Israel is built upon the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erasure of their collective memory and sites. Perhaps the biggest and most obvious erasure in Israeli memory is that the settler-colonial state did not exist prior to the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and so neither Palestinians nor UNESCO can be faulted for designating Palestinian heritage sites which date from well before Israel was created as “Palestinian”.

Moreover, accusing UNESCO of anti-Israel bias follows no logic, given that UNESCO has recognised sites as pertaining to Israeli heritage, including Tel-Aviv’s “White City”, which means that the organisation has also legitimised Israel’s violent settler-colonial origins and existence. If Israel decides to follow Lapid’s suggestion, UNESCO is expected to increase the number of heritage sites attributed to Israel.

For now, the US is expected to pave the way for Israel’s return, hence the Israeli government’s insistence that it will not oppose the Biden administration’s decision to re-join the UN body. Meanwhile, Israel will seek to extort further concessions, all the while planning to return to the organisation and condescend to grace UNESCO with its presence, rather than a reappearance gloating at having colonised and appropriated more Palestinian land, history and memory.

This whole gimmicky process makes Israel’s accusations of international institutions harbouring “anti-Israel bias” collapse. All international institutions have legitimised Israel’s origins and existence, despite violations of international law and war crimes committed by Zionist paramilitary gangs prior to 1948, and in the uniforms of the “Israel Defence Forces” from then to the present day. The debacle of departing and hinting at returning is a ploy for colonial gain, and for such gain to be recognised by international resolutions and declarations. America’s return to UNESCO will thus work in Israel’s favour. It wouldn’t do so otherwise.

February 15, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel offers Arab state the opportunity to tackle Iran together

RT | February 15, 2022

Since Israel and Bahrain both view Iran as a threat, they could team up and counter Tehran together, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said on his landmark visit to the Gulf monarchy.

“We will fight Iran and its followers in the region night and day. We will aid our friends in strengthening peace, security, and stability, whenever we are asked to do so,” Bennett pledged in an interview with the Bahraini state-linked Al-Ayyam outlet on Tuesday.

The PM blamed Tehran of striving to “destroy moderate states” in the Gulf region in order to replace them with “bloodthirsty terrorist groups.”

When asked about the possibility of creating an alliance to resist Iranian influence, which could include Israel, Bahrain, and some other Arab nations, he gave a positive response: “We all understand that we face the same challenges, so why not work together to tackle them?”

Bennet, who became the first Israeli prime minister ever to visit Bahrain, assured the journalists that “Israel is a strong and reliable country.”

The idea of such a block was first floated by Israeli general Tal Kelman last year. According to Kelman, who heads the IDF’s Strategy and Third Circle Directorate, “the moderate axis” of Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt and others should resist “the radical axis” of Iran and what he called its “proxies” in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.

Israel and Bahrain normalized relations in late 2020 as part of the so-called Abraham Accords, a US-backed drive to improve ties between the Jewish state and some Arab countries after decades of strife.

Bahrain is a small island nation of around 1.5 million. The majority of its population is Shia Muslims, but the country is being run by a Sunni monarchy. The rulers in Manama have been concerned by Tehran’s activities as Iran, which is located less than 800 kilometers (497 miles) away, often faces accusations from its rivals of supporting Shia groups in other countries.

February 15, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From Tantura to the Naqab, Israel’s roll call of shame is being exposed

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | February 8, 2022

A succession of events in recent weeks all point to the inescapable fact that nearly 75 years of Israel’s painstaking efforts to hide the truth about its origins and its racist apartheid regime are failing miserably. The world is finally waking up, and Israel is losing ground quicker than it is able to gain new supporters or whitewash its past and ongoing crimes.

First, there were the revelations about Tantura, a peaceful Palestinian village whose inhabitants were mostly exterminated by Israel’s Alexandroni Brigade on 23 May, 1948. Like many other massacres committed against unarmed Palestinians over the years, the Tantura massacre was mostly remembered by the village’s few survivors, ordinary Palestinians and Palestinian historians. The mere attempt in 1998 by Israeli graduate student Theodore Katz to shed light on that bloody event ignited a legal, media and academic war, forcing him to retract his findings.

In a recent social media post, Professor Ilan Pappé revealed why, in 2007, he had to resign his position at Haifa University. “One of my ‘crimes’,” wrote Pappé, “was insisting that there was a massacre in the village of Tantura in 1948 as was exposed by MA student, Teddy Katz.”

Now, some Alexandroni Brigade veterans have finally confessed to the crimes in Tantura.

“They silenced it. It mustn’t be told, it could cause a whole scandal. I don’t want to talk about it, but it happened.” These were the words of Moshe Diamant, a former member of the Alexandroni Brigade who, with other veterans, revealed in the documentary “Tantura” by Alon Schwarz, the gory details of the horrific crimes that were committed in the Palestinian village.

An officer “killed one Arab after another” with his pistol, said former soldier Micha Vitkon. “They put them into a barrel and shot them in the barrel. I remember the blood in the barrel,” explained another. “I was a murderer. I didn’t take prisoners,” admitted Amitzur Cohen.

Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Tantura in cold blood. They were buried in mass graves, the largest of which is believed to be under a car park at the Dor Beach, to which Israeli families flock daily.

The Tantura massacre is arguably the most glaring representation of “hidden” Israeli criminality on the occupation state’s roll call of shame. However, this is not the story of Tantura alone. The massacre in the village is representative of something much bigger, of ethnic cleansing on a huge scale, forceful evictions and mass killings. Thankfully, the truth is now being unearthed and exposed.

In another example, the Israeli army launched a full-scale military operation in 1951 to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouins from the Naqab Desert. The tragic scenes of entire communities being uprooted from their ancestral homes were justified by Israel with the usual cliché that the terrible deed was carried out for “security reasons”.

In 1953, Israel passed the so-called Land Acquisition Law, which allowed the occupation state to seize the land of the Palestinians who had been forced out of their homes. By then, Israel had unlawfully expropriated 247,000 dunams of land in the Naqab, with 66,000 remaining “unutilised”. The remaining land is currently the epicentre of an ongoing saga involving Palestinian Bedouin communities in Israel and the Israeli government, which makes ludicrous claims that the land is “essential” for Israel’s “development needs”.

Extensive research conducted by Professor Gadi Algazi points to Israel’s narrative in the Naqab being a complete fabrication. According to numerous newly-revealed documents, Moshe Dayan, then the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, was central to an Israeli government and military ploy to evict the Bedouin population and to “revoke their rights as landowners”, under the conveniently created Israeli law, which allowed the government to “lease” the land as if it was its own.

“There was an organised transfer of Bedouin citizens from the north-western Negev eastward to barren areas, with the goal of taking over their lands,” Algazi told Haaretz. “They carried out this operation using a mix of threats, violence, bribery and fraud.”

The entire scheme was organised in such a way as to facilitate the claim that the Palestinians had moved “voluntarily”, despite their legendary resistance and “the stubbornness with which they tried to hold onto their land, even at the cost of hunger and thirst, not to mention the army’s threats and violence.”

Furthermore, a newly-released volume by French historian Vincent Lemire has entirely dismissed the official Israeli version of how the Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem was demolished in June 1967. Although Palestinian and Arab historians have long argued that the destruction of the neighbourhood — 135 homes, two mosques and more — was done as per the order of the Israeli government through the then Jewish Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, Israel has just as long denied that version. According to the official Israeli account, the demolition of the neighbourhood was carried out by “15 private Jewish contractors [who] destroyed the neighbourhood to make space for the Western Wall plaza.”

In an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Lemire said that his book offers “definitive, written proof on the pre-meditation, planning and coordination of this operation,” and that includes official meetings between Kollek, the commander of the Israeli army and other top government officials.

The story continues with more heartbreaking revelations as a well-integrated version of the truth exposing long-hidden or denied facts. The days of Israel getting away with these crimes seem to be behind us. For the third time in a little over twelve months, a major human rights organisation, on this occasion Amnesty International, has condemned Israeli apartheid.

Amnesty’s report, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: A Look into Decades of Oppression and Domination”, is 280 pages of damning evidence of Israel’s racism and apartheid. It does not shy away from connecting Israel’s violent present with its equally bloody past, nor does it borrow from Israel’s deceptive language and self-serving division of Palestinians into disconnected communities, each with a different claim and a different status. For Amnesty, as was the case with Human Rights Watch’s report in April last year, Israeli injustices against the Palestinians must be recognised and duly condemned in their entirety.

“Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony,” wrote Amnesty, “while minimising the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights.” This could only happen through mass killing, ethnic cleansing and genocide, from Tantura to the Naqab, to the Moroccan Quarter, the Gaza Strip and Sheikh Jarrah. The Israeli roll call of shame is long.

February 8, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Volunteers’ group targets Facebook for suppressing Palestinian content

MEMO | February 4, 2022

A Palestinian group of volunteers that monitors Facebook has raised an alarm that the social media platform was increasingly blocking and suppressing the content posted by Palestinian journalists, activists and influencers, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a report, the volunteers’ group, Sada Social, has mentioned that Facebook had limited the reach of the accounts of the Palestinian influencers recently when they were highlighting the issues of Shaikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Gaza Strip.

According to the statistics issued by the group, Facebook had banned the users from reaching the hashtag “Al-Aqsa” in 2021, where many activists were writing about the events happening in Palestine.

“Facebook and Instagram had blocked as many as 1,500 posts in 2021. Almost 44 per cent of posts were posted by journalists and authentic media institutions,” said Iyad Refai, a social media specialist and the Director of Sada Social.

He said that access to the accounts that covered the incidents was restricted through algorithms that identify the digital content, adding that new words were added to expand the restrictive practices.

Facebook catches the words like “to support the Palestine cause” and other words like these, and then blocks the account. In addition, the restrictive practices have been expanded to the names of Palestinian factions, leaders, or martyrs, in addition to any pictures or videos related to this.

“After each violation, we contact Facebook to clarify that we have the right to tell our story. All the discussions with them are about the importance to have a clear and certain adoption of standards of the concepts about violence and hatred since Facebook policies do not follow the UN standards about violence and hatred,” said Refai.

In its annual statement, Sada Social said, in contrast to the efforts of defenders of the right to free expression and a sense of security in digital space, in 2021 there was a growing tendency to impose coercive powers on people’s practices in digital space.

Refai emphasised that, despite repeated calls to Facebook to put an end to the bias shown against the Palestinian content, there has been an increase in attacks on media platforms during the coverage of the recent war and events in Jerusalem. Palestinian news pages like Maydan Al Quds were finally pulled down last year in November.

“It is a US company and US law defines the Palestinian struggle as acts of terrorism,” he added.

According to the annual statistics released by the Sada Social, more than 390 Palestinians were detained by the Israeli forces and exposed to interrogation because of highlighting issues related to Palestine on Facebook.

February 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

46 Israel violations against Palestinian journalists in January

Journalists flee after being attacked with grenades in the West Bank on 22 February 2019 [HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images]

MEMO | February 2, 2022

An Arab journalists’ rights group has recorded 46 Israeli violations of Palestinian media freedoms in January, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a report on Wednesday, the Journalists’ Support Committee which documents media violations across the Palestinian territories, said the Israeli violations varied between “arrest, extortion and direct field assault” of media personnel among other forms of harassment.

According to the NGO, four Palestinian journalists were arrested by Israeli forces last month.

It noted that the Israeli army and settlers committed “17 cases of assault and injury against journalists” during their coverage of the demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and rallies in the West Bank.

The Israeli army often used rubber bullets and gas bombs against Palestinian journalists, the report said.

The NGO also documented 18 cases of journalists being blocked from covering Israeli violations against the Palestinians.

According to the report, Israeli forces raided the house of one journalist, threatened two female journalists, while restricting the social media accounts of four others for “violating publishing instructions.”

Last month, the NGO said that 17 Palestinian journalists and media workers were held in prison by Israel.

February 2, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

They’re Coming to Take You Away

Biden Administration steps up its war on the American People

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 1, 2022

What would a completely unscrupulous chief executive whose sole purpose in life is to seize power and never relinquish it do to conceal his evil intentions? He or she would use deception to change the narrative. Many are beginning to recognize that that is precisely what the Democrats are doing and their game plan includes demonizing both Russia and China to create plausible external enemies while also generating fear and uncertainty around alleged domestic threats as well as the COVID menace, to include initiating mandates designed to make the people submissive and fearful of legal and personal consequences for defying the government. Well, be that as it may, the penny has finally dropped and it is now clear that Biden-Pelosi-Schumer are intent on changing the rules and using lawfare and other tools to create a permanent governing majority.

The key to power in this case has been exploiting the legal system to criminalize many forms of dissent. For the past year President Joe Biden and his Department of Justice sidekick Attorney General Merrick Garland have been making noises about all the terrorists running around loose in the country. And they have not been shy about suggesting that the alleged terrorists are nothing less that “white supremacists” who are allegedly promoting violence to address their grievances against the new administration in Washington. Well, it has now become official. The Biden government has mobilized and has finally declared “war on the American people,” most particularly the third or so of the population that has concerns about the conduct and results of the 2020 election as well as over the “woke” racial preference policies that the government has been aggressively promoting.

On January 11th, Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI has now created a special unit that will deal exclusively with “domestic terrorism,” which it further describes as constituting an “elevated threat” to American democracy. Olsen claimed that there has been a large increase in “domestic extremism” reports having doubled in 2021 compared with the previous year. The new unit will “augment the existing approach” by way of additional resources that have been made available to identify the dissidents, track them down, arrest them and try them under the authority of various laws that were originally conceived as a legal tool to combat the perceived international terrorist threat after 9/11.

Olsen, citing what he referred to as the January 6th 2021 “riot” at the Capitol in Washington, elaborated how the Department of Justice believes that the nation now faces a serious threat from “domestic violent extremists — that is, individuals in the United States who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” He also suggested a racist motive behind some of the violence, adding that “We’ve seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus…,” and observed that the “terrorists” often are “anti-Authority,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

Olsen did not mention that the war on dissent has even included monitoring the social media of America’s military personnel lest they harbor dangerous thoughts. To be sure, the driving force behind the government’s campaign to criminalize the actions of the many citizens who object to the Biden Administration policies appears to be Olsen’s boss Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is very well placed to engage in mischief that will potentially affect all Americans. In fact, he has proven to be a more than willing accomplice in the social engineering that the Biden Administration is engaged in, to include his declaration last year that white supremacists are the single greatest terrorist threat the United States faces today.

Garland and others in the Biden Administration unashamedly propose that America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. “Building Back Better” requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.

If there were any doubts about Biden’s intentions, they were dispelled in a speech made in Georgia on the same day that Olsen was addressing the Senate. Biden issued a call to arms that was full of race-baiting, claiming that those who are resisting the voting “reforms” that he is promoting are little better than notorious civil-rights era racists like George Wallace and Bull Connors. In reality, however, the voting changes that the Administration is promoting by fiat are, in fact, licenses to steal votes and commit large scale electoral fraud as they will strip states of the right to demand that voters prove both that they are citizens and legal residents.

On January 26th the Department of Homeland Security got into the game, releasing a memo suggesting that the “domestic extremists” are seeking to make the lives of all Americans more difficult. The dissidents “have been developing plans to attack the US electric sector… since at least 2020.’” The report stated that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure” but it did not provide even a single piece of evidence that the “threat” had ever proceeded beyond the talking stage, suggesting that the report was generated to create fear on the part of the public regarding the “domestic terrorism” issue.

In yet another instance demonstrating how the White House is interpreting its national security mandate in a highly partisan fashion, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated last week that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) works closely with the Bureau to identify and investigate instances of anti-Semitism in the United States. That should raise questions about a private group with an agenda working as a source for the police and intelligence services and it suggests in particular that critics of Israel and its policies will find themselves increasingly targeted by law enforcement under “hate crime” legislation. Such statements citing rising anti-Semitism and “holocaust denialism” also generate more fear among the public to justify “protection” by a dominating and intrusive national security apparatus.

Witness how this has already played out in Europe where “holocaust denial” has been widely criminalized by way of so-called “memory laws [which] prohibit the denial, justification, or trivialization of the crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II… France has had a ban on Holocaust denial in place since 1990. Austria’s ban was adopted in 1992, and Belgium’s is from 1995. Germany itself did not adopt an explicit ban until 1994, though it countered Holocaust denial before then through laws against defamation, incitement, and disparaging the memory of the dead… Holocaust denial laws were also approved in the 1990s by the European Court of Human Rights (under the Council of Europe), which stated that the negation or revision of ‘clearly established historical facts — such as the Holocaust — … would be removed from the protection’ of free speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.”

Eliminating free speech, the most fundamental right, would allow government and a compromised media to gain control of the narrative of government that prevails in the United States and would be a significant step towards totalitarian control. Going beyond that, the Administration is even reported to be considering devastating proposals to make all illegal immigrants citizens to allow them to vote. New York City has already declared that all residents will be able to vote on local issues, whether they are in the country legally or not. More to the point, the discussion comes at a time when the nation’s southern border has become an out-of-control entry point for anyone who can reach Mexico.

Even though the Biden Administration’s enemies list admittedly features white supremacists regarded ipso facto as extremists, it is now notoriously also including those parents who do not support the various formulae being employed to install programs seeking to establish what is referred to as “equity” in the nation’s public schools. That the agenda is both reverse racism and detrimental to good educational practice is why parents are protesting. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has observed how “The Department of Justice’s fight against angry parents is a real testament to the authoritarian nature of the Biden administration and indeed, the entirety of the left. It takes a lot of hubris to declare that you know how to raise someone’s child better than them and send authorities to shut you down when you protest that.”

Senator Paul’s father former Congressman Ron Paul has also responded to the threat coming from a government that he perceives as trending towards totalitarianism by way of a single state model for education, commenting how “If government can override the wishes of parents in the name of ‘education’ or ‘protecting children’s health’ then what area of our lives is safe from government intrusion?”

If it is indeed true that Joe Biden is not completely in control of what his administration appears to be doing, one then has to wonder who is directing his appointed officials to pursue policies that are destructive of all the freedoms and other positive things that this nation once represented. One thing for sure, the mask is now off and the Democratic Party plan to create something like a totalitarian state with one party rule in perpetuum is right there for everyone to see.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

February 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The act of theatre that shows Israel’s contempt for Gaza

By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 30, 2022

Israel has apparently reprimanded a soldier for firing rounds into Gaza. That’s all very well, but what about the countless other soldiers who have done the same for years, maiming and killing Palestinian civilians?

The soldier, who posted his bravado video to TikTok, reportedly got 10 days in military prison. According to an Israeli army statement, “The soldier’s behavior in the video does not conform with the norms expected of soldiers and commanders.”

His sentencing and the media reporting around the incident is pure theatre, given the reality of how the Israeli army routinely targets Palestinians working on land in Gaza’s east and northern regions. While this one particular soldier received a mild punishment, many others who attack unarmed civilians are not held accountable.

Since pulling the illegal settlers out of Gaza in 2005, Israel has implemented a kill zone – dubbed the “buffer zone” or “no go zone” – where, on a regular basis, its soldiers shoot at Palestinian civilians. Ostensibly, it comprises a band of land 300 metres from the fence encaging Palestinians in Gaza. In reality, Israeli soldiers fire upon civilians well over a kilometre away, or even further, as I have experienced myself.

As I reported some years ago, “According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the 300 metres off-limits area extends in areas to at least 1.5 km. PCHR [the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights] has documented the Israeli army targeting of Palestinian civilians as far as 2 km from the border.”

Israeli soldiers in sniper position. © Eva Bartlett

Between 2008 and 2013, I regularly accompanied farmers and other civilians in border areas, and on many of the occasions that we came under fire, we were 500 metres or more from the fence. Among the disturbing incidents was an attack one morning in February 2009, when I came under prolonged Israeli gunfire while accompanying a group of farm labourers on land roughly 500 metres from the fence. By then, I was accustomed to the routine – I would walk with farmers on their land, the Israeli soldiers would arrive in jeeps, assume sniper position and begin firing at us.

On this occasion, the young men had finished their parsley harvest and were pushing a stalled pickup truck when the Israeli gunfire began. The incident was captured on video, as I was there to document such attacks, and as I wrote at the time, “The lightly-dressed, unarmed farmers were clearly visible to… the several Israeli army jeeps and the Hummer which had patrolled the border fence, stopping for long intervals to watch the farmers work, then moving on.” I noted that the soldiers had observed us for a good half hour before shooting, choosing to fire at precisely the time when the farmers were leaving.

Shooting just beyond where I stood in a fluorescent vest, an Israeli soldier hit 20-year-old Mohammad al-Buraim in his leg, and continued to fire at us for a further 15 minutes. Some weeks prior, an Israeli soldier shot his cousin Anwar in the neck, killing him and leaving his wife, young children, and extended family without a breadwinner. Anwar had been on land 600 metres from the fence, also doing farm labour work.

When someone gets injured in these areas, the injury is compounded by the fact that ambulances cannot reach them, as they are targeted by the Israeli army. So, locals need to somehow get the injured to a point where an ambulance can safely reach them. If this is not done quickly enough, the injured risks bleeding to death.

On another occasion, again with farm workers in Gaza’s southeast, I came under intense Israeli fire lasting over 40 minutes from soldiers roughly 500 metres away. Bullets flew within metres of our hands, heads, and bodies. This proved to be an especially interesting case, as a representative from the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv – who had been informed of the shooting by other volunteers – called me to express concern for my safety.

This dissipated as soon as she realized I was being fired on by an Israeli soldier, and not a Palestinian. Her superior, the then-attache in the Tel Aviv office, had the gall to state quite clearly that they were fine with Israel’s “security measures” – firing on an unarmed Canadian and unarmed Palestinians and internationals, who in no way posed any threat to the heavily armed Israeli soldiers – and that we should be aware of the risks.

In another example, in February 2009, also in the southeast on land 550 metres from the fence, I accompanied elderly farmers and their families who intended to harvest some of their meagre crops. Shortly after we had arrived on the land, Israeli soldiers started firing very close to us, less than a metre from where we stood.

As I wrote at the time, “We could almost taste Tuesday’s firing, and the distinct ping-whizz sound they make was somehow impossibly loud, so close the shots were. One of the older women was having trouble walking away, stumbling in her fear. As the shots dug in around her she fell to the ground in terror. Positioning ourselves between the elderly farmers and the Israeli snipers, we accompanied them off the field. A few hundred metres away, the Israeli snipers continued to shoot. Another elderly woman had dived in terror behind a rock and adamantly wouldn’t get up. “They’ll kill me, they’ll kill me,” she cried in fear…”

Thankfully we did make it away that day in one piece. But this was just one of many examples of the terror Palestinian farmers face on a daily basis. And it’s not just farmers – at around the same time, a 17-year-old girl standing around 800 metres from the fence, near the ruins of her home (destroyed in the war just a month previously), was shot in the kneecap by an Israeli sniper.

Children going to school in the eastern village of Khoza’a were, at the time, being fired upon by Israeli soldiers at the fence 1km away. Teens and young men gathering scrap metal from demolished homes routinely come under Israeli fire. One example was 15-year-old Said Abdel Aziz Hamdan, who went to an area in Gaza’s north with his 13-year-old brother, to try to earn money for their large family. After finishing his work, an Israeli soldier fired at him, hitting his leg, without warning.

“People go there every day to gather bits of metal and concrete. The Israelis see us and know we are just working, it’s normal,” he told me when I visited him in hospital.

Palestinians don’t only face Israeli sniper fire, but also flechette shelling – dart bombs – which Israel has indiscriminately used against civilians and medics. One victim was 17-year-old Saleh Ahmad al-Medani, whose shoulder and neck were punctured by the two-inch-long, razor-like, dart-shaped bits of metal packed by the thousands into a single shell. He was attacked while walking home after midnight in June 2009, in northwestern Gaza, over 1km from the wall.

As I wrote at the time, “Due to their design, flechettes dig deeply into their target, with their “tails” frequently breaking off, leaving multiple injuries and rendering them nearly impossible to extract without inflicting more injury in the surgical search. In most cases, doctors opt against surgery, leaving the darts inside the victim’s body.”

The routine and very dangerous Israeli policy of harassment, which risks maiming or killing targets, also means farmers frequently stay off their land, meaning plants don’t get watered, and crops don’t get harvested. These are not isolated and random instances. They are part of a policy that aims to cut off any means of self-sufficiency the Palestinians try to engage in. Other Israeli army tactics include burning Palestinian crops, destroying wells and cisterns, and demolishing homes, livestock farms, and trees throughout the border regions.

So, please, let’s not get carried away with the fact that Israel has thrown one soldier in prison for unacceptable behaviour. It is quite clear that Israel doesn’t hold its own soldiers accountable for their crimes, including killing children or firing white phosphorus on heavily populated civilian areas. Neither does the United Nations nor anybody else appear willing to make Israel take responsibility for its decades of crimes against Palestinians.

One headline about one soldier being reprimanded for posting his tough-guy video on TikTok should not fool anyone.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

January 30, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

One third of Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists

By Gideon Polya | Dissident Voice | January 27, 2022

The US became increasingly Zionist subverted in the 1960s after Apartheid Israel gained nuclear weapons and after the assassinations of JFK and Robert Kennedy. Support for Apartheid Israel (and hence for  the repugnant crime of Apartheid) is now a pillar of US politics, with anti-racist critics of Israeli Apartheid ferociously attacked, side-lined, and falsely defamed  as anti-Semitic. However Zionist control and hubris are now blatant: 32 percent or about one third of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet are Jewish Zionists and the remainder are moderate Christian Zionists.

(a). Jewish Americans are an astonishing 17-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. Jewish Americans total 6.4 million people, or  1.9% of the total US population of 333 million. However Jews represent 8 of the 25 people in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet (including Joe Biden himself) or 32% of the Cabinet. If we consider people who are Jewish or have Jewish spouses we must add Kamala Harris to get 9 out of 25 or 36% of the Cabinet. Thus Jews are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an astonishing factor of 32%/1.9% = 16.8-fold. The sine qua non of US politics is fervent support for theism, America first, neoliberalism and Apartheid Israel (and therefore for Apartheid) — accordingly the non-Jewish 68% of the Biden Cabinet fervently support Apartheid Israel, albeit as moderate Christian Zionists as opposed to the ferocious, Biblical literalist, and genocidal evangelical Christian Zionists who support Trump. If we realistically assume that 50% of Jewish Americans are anti-racist and reject the genocidal racism of Zionism and Israeli Apartheid, then Zionist Jewish Americans are 34-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet.

(b). African Americans are about 2-fold  over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. African Americans total 46,936,733 or 14.2% of the total US population, but comprise  6 out of 25 or 24% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus African Americans are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a  factor of 24%/14.2% = 1.7-fold.

(c).  Hispanic and Latino Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Hispanic and Latino Americans total 65.3 million or 19.5% of the overall US population, but comprise 4 out of 25 or 16% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Hispanic/Latino Americans are under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an unexceptionally modest degree of 16%/19.5% = 0.8-fold i.e. their representation in the Biden Cabinet is a modest 0.8 times less than expected.

(d). Asian Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet.  Asian Americans (mainly  Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans but also notably  including  Korean, Vietnamese, Afghan, Arab and Japanese Americans) total 24 million or 7.2% of the US population, but comprise 2 out of 25 or 8% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Asian Americans are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by an unexceptionally modest factor of 8%/7.2% = 1.1-fold. Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans total 5 million, 4.3 million, and 4 million people, respectively, or 1.5%, 1.3% and  1.2% of the total US population.

(e). Indigenous Americans are equitably represented in the Biden Cabinet. Indigenous Americans total 9,666,058 or 2.9% of the total US population, but comprise 1 out of 25 or 4% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus Indigenes are over-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a modest factor of 4%/2.9% = 1.4-fold (the lowest figure possible short of having no Indigenous people in the Biden Cabinet).

(f). Non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans are 2.5-fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet. Thus from the 2020 US Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were White alone, and 71.0%, or 235,411,507 people, were White alone or combined with another race. Non-Latino White Americans totalled roughly 191,697,647, or 57.8%. White Latino Americans totalled about 12,579,626, or 3.8% of the population. Non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans total 191,697, 647 – 6,400,000 = 185,297,647  or 55.6% of the US population, but comprise only 6 out of 25 or 24% of the Biden Cabinet. Thus non-Jewish and non-Latino White Americans are substantially under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a significant degree of  24%/55.6% = 0.4 fold i.e. their representation in the Biden Cabinet is 0.4 times less than their “fair share.” However the even more remarkable thing about these 6 non-Jewish and non-Latino White members of the Biden Cabinet is that they are all Catholics. Of the 17 non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet all but 5 (i.e. 12) are Catholics.

(g). Female Americans are slightly under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor  of 0.9.  Thus females represent 50.5% of the American population, but comprise 11 out of 25 or 44% of the Biden Cabinet. Women are thus slightly under-represented in the Biden Cabinet by a factor of 44%/50.5% = 0.9.

(h). Catholic Americans are 3-fold over-represented in the Biden Cabinet. The US has the world’s largest Christian population. About 48.9% of Americans are Protestants, 23.0% are Catholics, and 1.8% are Mormons. In 2016, 74% of Americans identified as Christians while 18% claimed no religious affiliation. However, all (100%) of the 6 non-Jewish and non-Latino White members of the Biden Cabinet are Catholics. Of the 17 non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet, 12 (71%) are Catholics, i.e. while Catholics are 23.0% of the US population they are 71% of the non-Jewish members of the Biden Cabinet, and thus are disproportionately over-represented by a factor of 71%/23% = 3.1-fold.

(i). Protestant Americans are 2–fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet. While Protestants are  48.9% of the US population, a maximum of only 6 out of 25 (24%) of the members of the Biden Cabinet are Protestants i.e. they are 48.9%/24% = 2.0-fold under-represented in the Biden Cabinet.

(j). Republicans, Pentecostal Christians (Evangelical Christians), and Racist Religious Right Republicans (R4s) are totally absent from the Biden Cabinet.  Not surprisingly there are no Republicans in the Biden Cabinet, and despite its representational inequities, the Biden Cabinet is blessed by the absence of Biblical literalist and genocidally pro-Zionist Pentecostal Christians (Evangelical Christians), and of Racist Religious Right Republicans (R4s) in general. Biblical literalists are simply nuts.

(k). All of the members of the Biden Cabinet are fervently theist, nationalist, neoliberal, pro-market, pro-One Percenter, anti-socialist, pro-nuclear terrorism, pro-US hegemony, pro-militarism, pro-US interventionism, pro-Apartheid Israel (and hence pro-Apartheid) and pro-Zionist. To state the obvious, American politicians have to observe the sine qua non pillars of US politics of theism, capitalism, nationalism and support for Apartheid Israel (and hence for Apartheid).

America portrays itself as a “democracy” but this assertion is highly flawed because of differential representation and influence as illustrated here, neoliberal One Percenter domination, and entrenched lying by commission and omission by mass media journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes. A Zionist-subverted and obscenely neoliberal US has transmuted from a one-person-one-vote democracy to a kleptocracy, plutocracy, Murdochracy, lobbyocracy, corporatocracy, and dollarocracy in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, votes and hence more political power and more private profit. The support for Apartheid Israel and hence for Apartheid by the non-European members of the Biden Cabinet is particularly disgusting.

This Zionist perversion and subversion of America is deadly serious because 1.7 million Americans die preventably each year from “life-style choice” and “political choice” reasons, and since 9/11 about 33 million Americans have died thus in this ongoing American Holocaust. The long-term accrual cost of the War on Terror has been about $6 trillion. About 32 million Muslims have died from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity. Thus Zionist-subverted America has committed $6 trillion to killing over 30 million Muslims abroad instead of trying to save over 30 million American lives at home. For a very detailed and documented analysis see Gideon Polya, “Zionist-subverted America: Jewish Zionists Are One Third Of The Biden Cabinet,” Countercurrents, 27 January 2022. Wake up America!

Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

January 28, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Born in Deir Yassin (2017) Complete Film with English Subtitles

January 22, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

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