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Oligarchs: Russia, Israel, and Media Omissions

BY ALISON WEIR | IF AMERICANS KNEW | FEBRUARY 17, 2005

As is often the case with AP’s coverage of news having to do with Israel, there’s a serious omission in its reporting on the Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United States.

The day after the State of the Union Address, two Interpol fugitives attended the “National Prayer Breakfast” held in Washington DC. The day before that, these fugitives from the law were the guests of honor at an hour-long meeting of the International Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, invited by ranking Democrat Tom Lantos (Calif.)

You would think it would be hot news when wanted men being hunted by European police suddenly pop up in the US particularly on Capitol Hill and at events attended by the US president.

Yet, there was not a single AP story in the US on any of this. 1 Not a single national network television or radio news program even mentioned these facts. In fact, Google and LexisNexis searches four days after these events took place turned up only three newspaper articles on them anywhere in the entire country. 2

Who are these fugitives from the law, wanted by Interpol, who are meeting at the highest levels of the US government? And why didn’t we learn of them?

Therein lies the story. These two men, it turns out, are just the tips of a colossal iceberg. And this iceberg doesn’t just have 90 percent of its mass hidden under water; this iceberg is almost entirely submerged.

They are Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, Israeli-Russian partners in the giant Russian oil company Yukos. They, along with a number of their cronies, are wanted by Interpol for allegedly bilking Russian citizens out of billions of dollars. To elude Russian prosecution, these men have taken up residence in Israel. 3

As the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz explains: “In recent years Russian authorities began investigating [Yukos], its managers and major stockholders, many of whom are of Jewish origin. The probes caused several of the managers to flee to Israel, and resulted in Khodorkovski’s [Yukos CEO] arrest and a Kremlin attack on Yukos.”

The fact is that Israel is an important factor in the ongoing, nation-shaking power struggle now going on in Russia. Yet AP virtually never reports this connection. For example, a few months ago in a typical AP story on this power struggle, “Report: Russia again charges Berezovsky,” 4 Moscow AP Bureau Chief Judith Ingram makes no mention anywhere that Berezovsky is an Israeli citizen, or of his many connections to Israel.

Such omissions by AP and large swaths of the American media leave Americans seriously disadvantaged in deciphering what is going on in Russia, and its profound significance for the world.

In order to make sense of this Russian power struggle, and to understand its importance to the rest of us, it is necessary to understand the usually omitted Israeli subtext. When this is understood, the friendship of such pro-Israel Congressional leaders as Rep. Lantos to fugitive Russian oil tycoons begins to make sense.

To explore this background it is often useful to turn to the Israeli press. In July a major Israeli publication, the Jerusalem Post, carried an article headlined: “Boris Berezovsky: Putin’s Russia dangerous for Israel.” Before describing what this contained, let us first go into a little of the background.

The Oligarchs

Boris Berezovsky is one of seven “oligarchs,” as they are known both inside and outside Russia: massively rich, powerful manipulators who through violence, theft and corruption acquired a mammoth percentage (reports range from 70 to 85 percent) of Russia’s resources, from its oil to the auto industry to mass media outlets.

At the same time, the group steadily gained control over much of the country’s political apparatus. Using extraordinary financial resources and insider dealing, the oligarchs handpicked prime ministers and governmental leaders and barely even bothered to do this behind the scenes.

In 1997 Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the group and Russia’s sometimes richest man (several of the oligarchs trade the top spot back and forth) told an interviewer before he was arrested and imprisoned by Putin last year:

“If we rank all the fields of man’s activity by profitability, politics will be the most lucrative business. When we see a critical situation in the government, we draw lots in order to pick out a person from our milieu for work in power.” 5

Almost all of these oligarchs, it turns out, have significant ties to Israel. In fact, Berezovsky himself has Israeli citizenship a fact that caused a scandal of Watergate proportions in Russia in 1996 when it was exposed by a Russian newspaper. 6

Do Berezovsky’s dual loyalties really matter? Yes. In the realm of global dominance, Israel’s interests and Russia’s are considerably divergent. It is in Israel’s interests to bring to power a regime in Russia friendly to Israel, rather than the current one under Putin, which Israeli leaders feel is supportive of its enemies. Not long ago, for example, Putin met with Syrian leaders an action highly disturbing to Israel.

Having an Israeli citizen at the highest levels of the Russian government is ideal, from Israel’s point of view. In Berezovsky they had such a man. The Jerusalem Post article mentioned above is revealing. It describes Berezovsky as “the Godfather of the Oligarchs’ and Kingmaker of Russia’s Politics’” and reports Berezovsky’s statement that “Putin’s Russia is dangerous for Israel.” Berezovsky goes on to assert that Putin “supports terror” in the Middle East through Russia’s previous relations with Iraq and current relations with Iran. 7

While Israelis may have been delighted at Berezovsky’s position in Russia, It is not surprising that Russian citizens were somewhat less so. Finding that a powerful leader and member of the Russian Security Council was an Israeli citizen was disconcerting, at best.

As a result of the media uproar over Berezovsky’s Israeli citizenship and other events, the Oligarchs’ connections to Israel are widely known in Russia and elsewhere. In Israel they are covered frequently, often with adulation, including a recent hit Israeli TV series called “The Oligarchs.”

“Some of its episodes,” according to Israeli writer Uri Avnery, “are simply unbelievable or would have been, if they had not come straight from the horses’ mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their despicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia.”

Avnery writes that the oligarchs used “cheating, bribery and murder,” as they “exploited the disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews.” 8

According to a Washington Post story by David Hoffman, the group bought and controlled Russian governmental officials at the highest levels. After financing Yeltsin’s election in 1996, Hoffman writes: “The tycoons met and decided to insert one of their own into government. They debated who and chose [Vladimir] Potanin, who became deputy prime minister. One reason they chose Potanin was that he is not Jewish, and most of the rest of them are, and feared a backlash against the Jewish bankers.” 9

In Russia, the oligarchs are deeply loathed, considered villains who worked to bleed the country dry; during their reign many Russian citizens saw their life savings disappear overnight. A new term was coined for their dominance, “semibankirshchina” (the rule of the seven bankers), and they were widely known to have wielded small, murderous armies. There are rumors that Berezovsky, subject of the respectful AP article, was even responsible for the gunning down of an American journalist, Forbes Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov.

While no one has been charged with the murder of Klebnikov, who had written a book on Berezovsky, many suspect a Berezovsky connection. As a friend of Klebnikov wrote: “Experienced expatriates in Russia shared an essential rule: Don’t cross these brutal billionaires, ever, or you’re likely to go home in a box.” 10

The Chechnya Connection

There is evidence that Berezovsky’s responsibility for death and tragedy may be vastly greater.

“Berezovsky boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya,” Avnery reports, “in which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been going on since then.

“In the end,” Avnery writes, “there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.)”

Yet, apart from the Washington Post, American media report on almost none of this. Instead, US coverage largely portrays Berezovsky and his crowd as American-style entrepreneurs who are being hounded by a Russian government whose actions are, to repeat the media’s commonly used phrase, “politically motivated.”

US news stories, even when they occasionally do hint at questionable practices, tend to use such phrases as “brash young capitalists” to describe the oligarchs. 11 For example, a long series co-produced by FRONTLINE and the New York Times referred to these men as “shrewd businessmen,” and asked “what it’s like to be young, Russian and newly affluent?” 12 Massive violence, dual loyalties, and control of resources are rarely, if ever, part of the picture.

When AP Moscow bureau chief Ingram was asked for this article about Berezovsky’s Israeli citizenship, she claimed to know nothing about it, a curious contention for someone who has been an AP news editor in Moscow since 1999. When Ingram was queried further, she hung up the phone.

An examination of Ingram’s reporting on the Berezovsky story cited above raises serious questions. Though she is located in Moscow, Ingram interviewed only two people for her news story: Berezovsky, who is in London, and Berezovsky associate Alex Goldfarb, in New York. One wonders why she interviewed none of the Russians residing around her.

Similarly, one wonders why not a single AP story has identified Berezovsky’s considerable connection to Israel.

Further, nowhere does Ingram’s article convey the ruthlessness of the oligarchs’ actions, or the significance of their holdings, including control of its media. Unnoted in Ingram’s report is the fact that her subject and fellow oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky have been two of Russia’s most powerful media tycoons.

Before Putin’s crackdown, according to the Washington Post, oligarchs had succeeded in seizing “the reins of Russia’s print and broadcast media, vital to the evolution of the country’s fledgling democracy and growth of its nascent civil society.” Berezovsky crony Gusinsky, who is close friends with Rupert Murdoch and was about the launch a satellite network, fled to Israel when it appeared he would be arrested.“ 13

Somehow, AP’s bureau chief seems to have missed all this.

Does this matter to Americans?

AP is the major news source for the thousands of news outlets around the country who cannot afford to have their own foreign correspondents. When AP chooses not to cover something, its omission is felt throughout the nation. When national news networks and others leave out the same facts, the cover-up is almost total.

Russia, despite its current turmoil, contains enormous power. Its natural resources are gargantuan: it possesses the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. It is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter, and the third largest energy consumer.14 Russia’s significance on the world stage now, as in the past, is immense.

Similarly, the United States is currently the most powerful nation on earth. It is therefore essential that its citizens be accurately informed on issues of significance. Israeli citizens, Russian citizens, and citizens of nations throughout the world know the information detailed above. It is critical that American citizens be no less well informed.

For years, the neocons’ push for war against Iraq was largely not covered by the US media. For even longer, the neocons’ close connections to Israel have gone largely unmentioned in mainstream American news reports. As a result, very few Americans know to what degree many of those responsible for the tragic US invasion and occupation of Iraq have been motivated by Israeli concerns.

The omission in coverage of Iraq has been profoundly disastrous, both for the Middle East and for Americans. In fact, it is quite likely that only history will show the true extent of this disaster. It is deeply troubling to see the same kind of omission occurring on Russia.

End Notes

  1. Interestingly, an AP report sent out only on its Worldstream wire (i.e. to Europe; Britain; Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa; India; Asia; England, but not to US papers) contained information on this at the end of the report.
  2. Washington Post: “Prayer Breakfast Includes Russian Fugitives” (overall, the Post has been an exception to the general blackout on this subject); the Seattle Times, which ran the Post story, and the New York Times, in a short story on page 12 on Sunday, three days after the event. Interestingly, the NY Times story was filed from Moscow (not Washington) and quotes a “spokesman” for the two men, Charles Krause, who has worked as a correspondent in Israel for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In the Times story Russian attempts to prosecute these men are described as “politically motivated.”
  3. This is a wise move, since Israel is known for often failing to Jewish extradite citizens, no matter what their crime. Even requests for such cooperation by the US, which gives Israel over $10 million per day, sometimes go unheeded by the Israeli government. Private citizens wanted for committing murder in the US, for example, have sometimes not returned for trial.
  4. Associated Press, Sept. 22, 2004
  5. “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 28, 1998; Page A01
  6. “Media and Politics in Transition: Three Models,” Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter, Issue 35, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Feb. 27, 1997
  7. “Boris Berezovsky: Putin’s Russia dangerous for Israel.’, Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2005
  8. “The Oligarchs”, Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, Aug. 3, 2004
  9. “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 28, 1998; Page A01,
  10. “Same Old Ruthless Russia,” by Michael R. Caputo, Washingtonpost.com
  11. Washington Post, Aug 28, 1998
  12. October 2003, Sabrina Tavernise,
  13. “Powerful Few Rule Russian Mass Media,” David Hoffman, Washington Post, March 31, 1997; Page A01
  14. Russia Country Analysis Brief

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky and the Zionist Plot To Provoke Russia

NAUMAN SADIQ | BLACKLISTED NEWS | MARCH 15, 2022

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took to Twitter [1] Sunday to express heartfelt gratitude to Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg for taking a clear stand on the Ukraine crisis and letting users violate rules against hate speech: “War is not only a military opposition on UA land. It is also a fierce battle in the informational space. I want to thank @Meta and other platforms that have an active position that help and stand side by side with the Ukrainians.”

“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement [2] March 11.

It naturally piques the curiosity why the social media behemoth is bending over backwards to violate its own longstanding regulations against hate speech to let Zelensky win the propaganda war in “the informational space” unless one takes into account the obvious fact that both Zuckerberg and Zelensky are Zionist Jews and take orders from Israel’s clandestine security agencies.

Born to Oleksandr Zelensky and Rymma Zelenska, both Russian-speaking Jews, in Jan. 1978, Volodymyr Zelensky was groomed by covert Mossad operatives in Ukraine since his student life while he was studying law at the Kryvyi Rih National University.

Instead of pursuing legal career, he chose acting as a profession at the behest of his influential patrons to gain nationwide publicity, particularly through the comedy television series “Servant of the People” in which Zelensky “prophetically played” the role of the Ukrainian president.

In fact, his production company Kvartal 95, which produces films, cartoons and television shows, was generously funded by deep pockets of Zionist billionaires. Comically exposing corruption and sleazy dealings of Ukraine’s politicians and oligarchs, the series “Servant of the People” aired from 2015 to 2019 and struck a chord with Ukrainian masses.

Riding on the wave of media publicity, Zelensky won a landslide presidential election in 2019. Later, his political party, which he “coincidentally” named “Servant of the People,” won an overwhelming victory in a snap legislative election held shortly after his inauguration as president.

In the 2001 census, a third of Ukraine’s over 40 million population registered Russian as their first language. In fact, Russian speakers constitute a majority in urban areas of industrialized eastern Ukraine and socio-culturally identify with Russia. Ukrainian speakers are mainly found in sparsely populated western Ukraine and in rural areas of east Ukraine.

Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian together belong to the East Slavic family of languages and share a degree of mutual intelligibility. Thus, Russians, Byelorussians and Ukrainians are one nation and one country whose shared history and culture goes all the way back to the golden period of 10th century Kyivan Rus’.

What do Ukrainians have in common with NATO powers, their newfound patrons, besides the fact that humanitarian imperialists are attempting to douse fire by pouring gasoline on Ukraine’s proxy war by providing caches of lethal weapons to militant forces holding disenfranchised Ukrainian masses hostage.

Russians and Ukrainians share Byzantine heritage and their longstanding dispute with Zionist Jews goes back to the medieval era. Byzantine emperors regarded Jewish subjects as gentiles and were particularly wary of wealthy Jewish merchants maintaining a stranglehold over banking and commerce sectors of the empire.

In addition, Russians and Ukrainians together belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, one of the oldest Christian denominations whose history goes all the way back to Christ and his apostles. Protestantism and Catholicism are products of the second millennium after a Roman bishop of the Byzantine Empire declared himself pope following the 1054 schism between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

Since 2019, after being elected president through questionable methods, Zelensky has surreptitiously been working on a clandestine project to foment a crisis with Russia on a flimsy pretext. Any other political leader with an iota of rational faculties, even somebody as rogue as his predecessor Petro Poroshenko, would promptly have agreed to the Kremlin’s reasonable proposal that Kyiv must give a solemn pledge it won’t join the transatlantic NATO military alliance.

Not only did he scornfully rebuff the Russian proposal but he also let Ukraine’s security forces stage joint military exercises and naval drills alongside NATO forces in the Black Sea right under Russia’s nose. His reckless disregard for the suffering of Ukrainian masses with whom he does not identify being a Zionist himself and suicidally provoking Russia into an armed confrontation aside, he is merely a pawn in the grand scheme of things.

Israel’s Zionist regime, to whom not only Ukrainian but also American presidents bow, has a score to settle with Russia. Donald Trump literally forced four Arab states, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, to sign so-called Abraham Accords lending official recognition to Israel at the coaxing of his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner and in order to canvass Zionist lobbies for support in the run-up to Nov. 2020 presidential elections.

Washington’s principal objective in Syria’s proxy war was ensuring Israel’s regional security. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report [3] of 2012 clearly spelled out the imminent rise of a Salafist principality in northeastern Syria – in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor which were occupied by the Islamic State from 2014 to October 2017 – in the event of an outbreak of a civil war in Syria.

Under pressure from the Zionist lobbies in Washington, however, the Obama administration deliberately suppressed the report and also overlooked the view in general that a proxy war in Syria would give birth to radical Islamic jihadists.

The hawks in Washington were fully aware of the consequences of their actions in Syria, but they kept pursuing the ill-fated policy of nurturing militants in the training camps located in Syria’s border regions with Turkey and Jordan in order to weaken the anti-Zionist Bashar al-Assad government.

The single biggest threat to Israel’s regional security was posed by the Iranian resistance axis, comprising Iran, Syria and Lebanon-based Hezbollah. During the course of the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel and Israel’s defense community realized for the first time the nature of threat that Hezbollah posed to Israel’s regional security.

Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what would happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel.

Therefore, the Zionist lobbies in Washington persuaded the Obama administration to orchestrate a proxy war against Damascus and Lebanon-based Hezbollah in order to dismantle the Iranian resistance axis against Israel.

But following the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 after Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and Washington imposed sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015, after a clandestine visit to Moscow by General Qassem Soleimani, the slain commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force who was assassinated in an American airstrike on a tip-off from the Israeli intelligence at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.

When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington, the Zionist regime and their regional clients were on the verge of driving a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.

With the help of Russia’s air power and long-range artillery, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington, the Zionist regime and their regional allies, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf States.

Over the years, Israel has not only provided material support to militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of the terrorists and mounted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the decade-long conflict.

In an interview to the New York Times [4] in January 2019, Israel’s former Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his recommendations in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched on the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed [5] by Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September 2018.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purported rationale of the Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security. However, after Russia provided S-300 air defense system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli incursion into the Syrian airspace on September 2018, killing 15 Russians onboard, Israeli airstrikes in Syria have been significantly scaled down.

Following the friendly-fire incident, though Israel has mounted occasional airstrikes at the capital Damascus, in Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria and Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria, Israeli airstrikes in northwest Syria, including Aleppo, Hamah and Homs, which is within the range of advanced missile defense systems deployed at Khmeimim Air Base near coastal Latakia, have almost entirely ceased.

Last month, the Kremlin issued an unequivocal condemnation [6] of recent Israeli airstrikes in Syria as “crude violation” of Syria’s sovereignty that up until now were reluctantly tolerated by the Russian forces based in Syria’s Tartus naval base and Khmeimim airbase southeast of Latakia, and also pledged that the Russian Air Force would conduct joint air patrols alongside the Syrian Air Force that would pre-empt the likelihood of further Israeli airstrikes.

“Israel’s continuing strikes against targets inside Syria cause deep concern,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “They are a crude violation of Syria’s sovereignty and may trigger a sharp escalation of tensions. Also, such actions pose serious risks to international passenger flights.”

Although Israel claims its air campaign in Syria is meant to target Iran-backed militias, the airstrikes often kill Syrian soldiers. Syrian state media said one soldier was killed and five more were wounded in one of the latest Israeli attacks at Damascus, which occurred on Feb. 9.

Russia has held talks with Israel on Syria, and said last month it would begin joint air patrols with Syria. The patrols will include areas near the Golan Heights in southern Syria bordering Israel, a frequent site of the Israeli airstrikes, and Israel is said to be considering discontinuing the strikes altogether or slowing them down significantly.

The Times of Israel noted that this marked a momentous change in policy for Russia: “Following the patrol, Ynet reported that Israeli military officials were holding talks with Russian army officers to calm tensions.”

The report added, “Israeli officials were struggling to understand why Russia, which announced that such joint patrols were expected to be a regular occurrence moving forward, had apparently changed its policy toward Israel.” The report claimed that Israel might limit its air campaign in Syria as a result of Russia’s inexplicable policy reversal in Syria.

In conclusion, it favored Israel’s strategic objectives to escalate the conflict in Ukraine in order to divert Russia’s attention and military resources to Eastern Europe, as the Zionist regime would then get a free hand to mount airstrikes in Syria and Lebanon with impunity, and might even attempt to rekindle the decade-long proxy war alongside its Gulf Arab, Turkish and Jordanian allies in order to eliminate the security threat posed by the Iran-led resistance axis comprising Syria and Lebanon-based Hezbollah once and for all.

Citations:

[1] Zelensky tweet thanking Facebook for allowing hate speech:

[2] Facebook allows posts urging violence against Russian invaders:

[3] US Defense Intelligence Agency’s declassified report of 2012:

[4] An interview with Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s chief of staff:

[5] Israel Katz: Israel conducted 200 airstrikes in Syria in 2017 and 2018:

[6] Russia cites ‘deep concern’ over ongoing Israeli strikes in Syria:

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to alternative news media.

March 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Weathering the global storm: Why neutrality is not an option for Palestinians

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | March 14, 2022

A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.

Despite repeated calls on the Palestinian Authority by the US Biden Administration and some EU countries to condemn Russia following its military intervention in Ukraine on 24 February, the PA has refrained from doing so. Analyst Hani Al-Masri was quoted in Axios as saying that the Palestinian leadership understands that condemning Russia “means that the Palestinians would lose a major ally and supporter of their political positions.” Indeed, joining the anti-Russia western chorus would further isolate an already isolated Palestine, desperate for allies who are capable of balancing out the pro-Israel agenda at US-controlled international institutions, like the UN Security Council.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of its Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s, Russia was allowed to play a role, however minor, in the US political agenda in Palestine and Israel. It participated, as a co-sponsor, in the Madrid peace talks in 1991, and in the 1993 Oslo accords. Since then a Russian representative took part in every major agreement related to the ‘peace process,’ to the extent that Russia was one of the main parties in the so-called Middle East Quartet which, in 2016, purportedly attempted to negotiate a political breakthrough between the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership.

Despite the permanent presence of Russia at the Palestine-Israel political table, Moscow has played a subordinate position. It was Washington that largely determined the momentum, time, place and even the outcomes of the ‘peace talks’. Considering Washington’s strong support for Tel Aviv, Palestinians remained occupied and oppressed, while Israel’s colonial settlement enterprises grew exponentially in terms of size, population and economic power.

Palestinians, however, continued to see Moscow as an ally. Within the largely defunct Quartet – which, aside from Russia, includes the US, the European Union and the United Nations – Russia is the only party that, from a Palestinian viewpoint, was trustworthy. However, considering the US near complete hegemony on international decision-making, through its UN vetoes, massive funding of the Israeli military and relentless pressure on the Palestinians, Russia’s role proved ultimately immaterial, if not symbolic.

There were exceptions to this rule. In recent years, Russia has attempted to challenge its traditional role in the peace process as a supporting political actor, by offering to mediate, not just between Israel and the PA, but also between Palestinian political groups, Hamas and Fatah. Using the political space that presented itself following the Trump Administration’s cutting of funds to the PA in February 2019, Moscow drew even closer to the Palestinian leadership.

 A more independent Russian position in Palestine and Israel has been taking shape for years. In February 2017, for example, Russia hosted a national dialogue conference between Palestinian rivals. Though the Moscow conference did not lead to anything substantive, it allowed Russia to challenge its old position in Palestine, and the US’ proclaimed role as an ‘honest peace broker.’

Wary of Russia’s infringement on its political territory in the Middle East, US President Joe Biden was quick to restore his government’s funding of the PA in April 2021. The American President, however, did not reverse some of the major US concessions to Israel made by the Trump Administration, including the recognition of Jerusalem, contrary to international law, as Israel’s capital. Moreover, under Israeli pressure, the US is yet to restore its Consulate in East Jerusalem, which was shut down by Trump in 2019. The Consulate served the role of Washington’s diplomatic mission in Palestine.

Washington’s significance to Palestinians, at present, is confined to financial support. Concurrently, the US continues to serve the role of Israel’s main benefactor financially, militarily, politically and diplomatically.

While Palestinian groups, whether Islamists or socialists, have repeatedly called on the PA to liberate itself from its near-total dependency on Washington, the Palestinian leadership refused. For the PA, defying the US in the current geopolitical order is a form of political suicide.

But the Middle East has been rapidly changing. The US political divestment from the region in recent years has allowed other political actors, like China and Russia, to slowly immerse themselves as political, military and economic alternatives and partners.

The Russian and Chinese influence can now be felt across the Middle East. However, their impact on the balances of power in the Palestine-Israel issue, in particular, remains largely minimal. Despite its strategic ‘pivot to Asia‘ in 2012, Washington remained entrenched behind Israel, because American support for Israel is no longer a matter of foreign policy priorities, but an internal American issue involving both parties, powerful pro-Israel lobby and pressure groups, and a massive rightwing, Christian constituency across the US.

Palestinians – people, leadership and political parties – have little trust or faith in Washington. In fact, much of the political discord among Palestinians is directly linked to this very issue. Alas, walking away from the US camp requires a strong political will that the PA does not possess.

Since the rise of the US as the world’s only superpower over three decades ago, the Palestinian leadership reoriented itself entirely to be part of the ‘new world order’. The Palestinian people, however, gained little from their leadership’s strategic choice. To the contrary, since then the Palestinian cause suffered numerous losses – factionalism and disunity at home, and a confused regional and international political outlook, thus the haemorrhaging of Palestine’s historic allies, including many African, Asian and South American countries.

The Russia-Ukraine war, however, is placing the Palestinians before one of their greatest foreign policy challenges since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Palestinians, neutrality is not an option since the latter is a privilege that can only be obtained by those who can navigate global polarisation using their own political leverage. The Palestinian leadership, thanks to its selfish choices and lack of a collective strategy, has no such leverage. 

Common sense dictates that Palestinians must develop a unified front to cope with the massive changes underway in the world, changes that will eventually yield a whole new geopolitical reality.

The Palestinians cannot afford to stand aside and pretend that they will magically be able to weather the storm.

March 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

IRGC warns Israel after missile strike on Mossad bases in Erbil

Press TV – March 13, 2022

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has issued a stern warning to Israel following a retaliatory missile strike on the “strategic center of Zionist conspiracy and evil” in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan city of Erbil.

In a statement issued Sunday, the IRGC indicated that the operation was in response to an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus last Monday, in which two IRGC officers were killed.

“Following the recent crimes of the fake Zionist regime and the previous announcement that the crimes and evils of this infamous regime will not go unanswered, the strategic center for conspiracy and evil of the Zionists was targeted by powerful and pinpoint missiles of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps,” it said.

A dozen ballistic missiles hit secret Mossad bases in Erbil, reportedly leaving several Israeli operatives dead.

Citing security sources, Iraq’s Sabereen News reported that two Mossad training centers were targeted by ballistic missiles in the early hours of Sunday.

Al-Mayadeen said a Mossad base on the Masif-Saladin street in Erbil was “fully razed to the ground and a number of Israeli mercenaries were killed or injured”.

Last week, IRGC identified the two slain officers as colonels Ehsan Karbalaipour and Morteza Saeidnejad, warning that Israel would “pay for this crime”.

On Thursday, Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations had written to the UN secretary general and the Security Council, saying Tehran “reserves its inherent right to self-defense, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, to respond to such criminal act whenever it deems appropriate”.

Iran “recognizes that the Israeli regime is fully responsible for all the consequences of these criminal acts, and seriously warns the regime about taking further adventuristic and malevolent measures,” it said.

The Sunday statement by the IRGC said, “Once again, we warn the criminal Zionist regime that the repetition of any evil will face harsh, decisive and destructive responses.”

“We also assure the great nation of Iran that the security and peace of the Islamic homeland is the red line of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran and they will not allow anyone to threaten or attack it.”

March 13, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

The “Israel Lobby”: Facts and Myths

Swiss Policy Research 

Updated: March 2022
Languages: English / German

High-quality documentaries and reports on the role of the “Israel Lobby” in politics and the media.

Note: This compendium does not advocate anti-Jewish or anti-Israel positions.

General/Politics

  1. 🎥 The Lobby — USA (Investigative documentary, Al Jazeera, 180 min., 2018; more)
  2. 📰 Israel and Internet Censorship (Alison Weir, The Ron Unz Review, 2018; video)
  3. 🎥 Netanyahu at US Congress: 23 standing ovations (The Telegraph, 2015; more)
  4. 📰 The Israel Lobby – A Partial List (The Council For The National Interest, 2012)
  5. 🎥 Defamation: The Movie (Yoav Shamir, First Run Features, 90 min., 2009; Wiki)
  6. 📖 Persecution, Privilege, and Power: 30 Articles (Mark Green, editor, 2007; archive)
  7. 🎥 The Israel Lobby in the United States (VPRO Documentary, 50 minutes, 2007)
  8. 📖 The Israel Lobby (Professors Mearsheimer & Walt, treatise, LRB, 2006; Wiki)
  9. 🎥 “Antisemitism: It’s a trick, we always use it.” (Shulamit Aloni, DN, 2002; more)
  10. 📰 Antisemitism: The IHRA definition controversy (MEE, 2021; more; more)
  11. 📰 AIPAC and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Forward, 2018; more)
  12. 📖 They Dare to Speak Out (Congressman Paul Findley, 1985/2003; archive)

US Presidents

  1. 📰 Trump as Cyrus (Laurent Guyénot, The Unz Review, 2020; more)
  2. 📰 Trump and Russia: The Countless Israeli Connections (Haaretz, 2018)
  3. 📰 Sheldon Adelson: Top US Political Donor (Whitney Webb, MPN, 2018; more)
  4. 📰 “Meet Joe Biden’s whole big Jewish mishpocha” (Times of Israel, 2020; more)
  5. 📰 “US Jews contribute half of all donations to the Democratic Party” (JPost, 2016)
  6. 📰 “The Jewish billionaire who cost Hillary her presidency” (Haaretz, 2016)
  7. 📰 Obama, the Iran Deal, and the Israel Lobby (Tablet Magazine, 2015; more)
  8. 🎥 Ben Rhodes on the Israel Lobby in the US (Interview, FMEP, 45 min., 2021)
  9. 🎥 Ronald Reagan – A Custom Made President (Wichita Films, 50 min., 2015; more)
  10. 📰 George W. Bush: Who are the Neoconservatives? (Guyénot; VoltaireNet, 2013)
  11. 📰 Israeli Assassinations and American Presidents (Weir, AntiWar, 2012; more)
  12. 📰 “Israel blackmailed Bill Clinton with Monica Tapes” (New York Post, 1999)
  13. 📰 New Tapes Reveal Depth of Nixon’s Anti-Semitism (WaPo, 1999; more; more)

Great Britain

  1. 🎥 The Lobby in Britain (Investigative documentary, Al Jazeera, 90 min., 2017)
  2. 📰 Third of British cabinet funded by Israel or pro-Israel lobby groups (DM, 2021)
  3. 📰 “The Israelis think they control the Foreign Office. And they do!” (DM, 2021)
  4. 📰 “After Corbyn, Israel Lobby Turns Guns on British Academia” (CN, 2021)
  5. 📰 “We ‘slaughtered’ Jeremy Corbyn, says Israel lobbyist” (EI, 2020; more)
  6. 📰 “US pro-Israel groups boosting UK anti-Muslim extremists” (ToI, 2019)

Media/Hollywood

  1. 📰 “Who said Jews run Hollywood?” (Lisa Klug, Times of Israel, 2016)
  2. 📰 “Jews Do Control The Media” (Elad Nehorai, The Times of Israel, 2012)
  3. 📰 Do Jews run Hollywood? (Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times, 2008)
  4. 📰 Do Jews dominate in American Media? (Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 2008)
  5. 🎥 Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies, and the American Dream (Jacobovici, 100 min., 1998)
  6. 📰 Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan reveals past as Israeli spy (Guardian, 2013; more)
  7. 🖼 Jewish executives and journalists in US media (Reddit, archived, 2018)
  8. 📰 15 Popular Internet Companies and Their Founders (SML, 2019; Facebook)
  9. 📰 Anti-Defamation League, tech firms team to fight online hate (CNet, 2017)
  10. 🌐 Alleged Jewish ‘Control’ of the American Motion Picture Industry (ADL, 1999)

Finance/Banking

  1. 📰 America’s Top 20 Billionaires Who Support Israel (Abra Forman, BIN, 2015)
  2. 🖼 America’s Richest Hedge Fund Managers (Jewish Contributions, 2020)
  3. 📰 Jews on the Forbes 200 List (Jewish Virtual Library, 2015; more)
  4. 📰 The World’s 50 Richest Jews (parts two, three, four, five; Jerusalem Post, 2010)
  5. 📰 The Jewish Story Behind the US Federal Reserve (Lowenstein, Forward, 2015)
  6. 📰 “When a Jewish Fed chief was novel” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2013; more)
  7. 🌐 Jewish “Control” of the FED: A Classic Antisemitic Myth (ADL)

Intelligence, Assassinations, Terrorism

  1. 🎥 Israel and the Assassinations of The Kennedy Brothers (Guyénot, 90 min., 2020; more)
  2. 📰 Mossad Assassinations (Ron Unz, book review, The Unz Review, 2020)
  3. 📰 Mega Group, Maxwells and Mossad (Whitney Webb, Mint Press, 2019; more)
  4. 📰 Israel’s Role in Global Cyber-Election Meddling (Wayne Madsen, MPN, 2018; more)
  5. 🎥 Solving 9/11 (Christopher Bollyn, presentation, 60 minutes, 2015; book)
  6. 📰 The Israeli Connection to 9/11 (Overview, Biblioteca Pleyades, 2010)
  7. 📰 The 2001 Anthrax Letter Mystery: Solved (Robert Pate, 2009; more; more)
  8. 📰 The SITE Intelligence Group, ISIS and Al Qaeda (James Tracy, 2014; more)
  9. 📰 Israel’s Use of False Flags in Global Terrorism (Michael Piper, AFP, 2013)
  10. 📰 The Anti-Defamation League Spy Scandal (Counterpunch, 2013; more)
  11. 🎥 Israel and the Bomb: A Radioactive Taboo (Pohlmann, Arte, 50 min., 2012)
  12. 📰 The Jonathan Pollard Spy Case (Jeffrey T. Richelson, NSA/GWU, 2012; more)
  13. 🎥 USS Liberty: Dead in the Water (BBC Documentary, 70 min., 2002; more)
  14. 📰 CIA, Mossad links to German La Belle disco bombing (WSWS, 1998; video)
  15. 🎥 A lecture by Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky (C-SPAN, 60 min., 1995)
  16. 📰 The 1954 Lavon Affair (Leonard Weiss, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2016)
  17. 📰 Operation Opera (1979): Mossad sabotage in France (Haaretz, 2021; video)
  18. 🎥 The Little Drummer Girl (Film based on novel by John le Carré, 1984; book)

Mafia, Organized Crime

  1. 📖 The Jewish Mafia (Hervé Ryssen, 2008/2018; interview)
  2. 📰 The Judeo-Russian Mafia (Johnson, Barnes Review, 2006)
  3. 📰 Mafia Jews: Inside a Genuine Cabal (Jewish Forward, 2006)
  4. 📖 The Supermob (Gus Russo, Bloomsbury USA, 2006; archive)
  5. 📰 History and origin of Bronfman family wealth (Frank Parlato, 2018)
  6. 🎥 Trump’s Ties to the Russian-Jewish Mafia (Blackstone, 2019; more)
  7. 🎥 Ronald Reagan – A Custom Made President (Wichita Films, 2015; more)

Russia, USSR, Communism

  1. 📰 Russia bows to the ‘rule of the seven bankers’ (Irish Times, 1998; more)
  2. 📰 The Russians Called Them ‘The Oligarch Yids’ (Haaretz, 2002; more)
  3. 📰 From Rags to Riches: Jewish Oligarchs in Russia (Goldman, EEJA, 2000)
  4. 📰 Was the Russian Revolution Jewish? (Jerusalem Post, 2017; more)
  5. 🎥 The Jews, Communism and the Russian Revolution (Ryssen, 80 min., 2017)
  6. 📰 “Stalin’s Jews” (Sever Plocker, YNet News, 2006)
  7. 📰 The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution (Mark Weber, IHR, 1994)
  8. 📰 Solzhenitsyn breaks last taboo of the revolution (Guardian, 2003; more)

World Wars (excl. Holocaust revisionism)

  1. 📰 The Forgotten Truth about the Balfour Declaration (Kramer, Mosaic, 2017)
  2. 🎥 Balfour at 100: Interview with Lord Rothschild (Weizmann Institute, 2017)
  3. 📖 “Against Our Better Judgement” (Alison Weir, CNI, 2014; video/lecture)
  4. 📰 “The Jewish Hand in the World Wars” (Dalton, Unz Review, 2013; part 2)
  5. 📰 “The Jewish Declaration of War on Nazi Germany” (Johnson, TBR, 2001)
  6. 📰 “Too many Jews at Nuremberg” (Ami Eden, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2007)
  7. 📰 Frankfurt School: The Jewish Intellectuals Who Made the 60’s (ANU, 2019; more)
  8. 📖 “The Holocaust Industry” (Norman Finkelstein, Verso Books, 2000; archive)
  9. 🌐 Holocaust denial: Prosecutions and convictions (Wikipedia)

Migration, Multiculturalism, Nationalism

  1. 📰 “White supremacists and Israeli immigration policy” (Times of Israel, 2021)
  2. 📰 “Domestic Extremism Committee Run By ADL and SPLC” (Unz Review, 2021)
  3. 📰 “DHS installs new leadership at its intelligence arm” (Politico, 2021; more)
  4. 📰 “Critical Race Theory, US Schools, and the Attorney General” (Forbes, 2021)
  5. 📰 “US pro-Israel groups boosting UK anti-Muslim extremists” (ToI, 2019; more)
  6. 📰 The ADL in American Society (Ron Unz, The Unz Review, 2018; more)
  7. 📰 “The Jews Who Run the ‘Alt-Right’ Media” (Jon Swinn, NV, 2018; more)
  8. 📰 “The ‘Alt-Right’, Jews, and Israel.” (The Jewish Forward, 2017; more)
  9. 📖 Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy (MacDonald, 1998)
  10. 📰 “Rabbi Baruch Efrati: Islamization of Europe a good thing” (YNet, 2012)
  11. 🎥 Barbara Lerner Spectre on European multiculturalism  (IBA News, 2010)
  12. 📰 “Sephardi leader Yosef: Non-Jews exist to serve Jews” (JTA, 2010)
  13. 🎥 “Israelis: Do you see non-Jews as equal to you?” (The Ask Project, 2020)
  14. 🌐 Advisory Board on Domestic Terrorism & White Supremacy (AJC)

Historical Aspects

  1. 🎥 The origins of Ashkenazi Jews and Yiddish (Eran Elhaik, 2019; more)
  2. 📖 “The Invention of the Jewish People” (Shlomo Sand, 2009; more)
  3. 📖 The Culture of Critique (Kevin MacDonald, Praeger, 1998/2013)
  4. 📖 Essays on Jewish Power (Laurent Guyénot, 2020; more)
  5. 🌐 Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry (Wikipedia)

Science and Culture

  1. 🌐 Jewish Contributions (JewishContributions.com)
  2. 🌐 Jewish Nobel Prize Laureates (Jewish Virtual Library; more)
  3. 📖 The Super Achievers (Ronald Gerstl, 2020; more)
  4. 📖 The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement (Steven Pease, 2009; more)
  5. 📖 The Jewish Century (Yuri Slezkine, Princeton University Press, 2006)

March 10, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Film Review, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Israel seizes 30 cryptocurrency wallets allegedly funding Hamas

MEMO | March 1, 2022

Israeli authorities have seized dozens of cryptocurrency wallets from accounts allegedly affiliated with the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, in what they claim is a crackdown on funding to the group through digital means.

The seizure of around 30 wallets from 12 accounts was approved by Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, who said in a statement that “We continue to expand our tools to deal with terrorism, and with companies that supply it with an economic oxygen pipeline.”

The wallets – reportedly owned by an exchange company named Al-Mutahadun in the Gaza Strip and having had an estimated value of tens of thousands of Israeli shekels – were confiscated in a joint operation by the Defence Ministry, police and military.

According to Israeli news outlets, the wallets were the result of Hamas’s efforts to acquire funds from international donors through the use of cryptocurrencies – an experimental project launched by the group around three years ago to help counter its financial troubles and circumvent the traditional banking system.

Al-Mutahadun is reportedly owned by the Shamlah family, prominent amongst the Hamas leadership, who Gantz said “assists the Hamas terror group, and especially its military wing, by transferring funds amounting to tens of millions of dollars a year.”

In 2020, Gantz authorised the seizure of $4 billion in funding allegedly transferred from Iran to Hamas and, last year, Israel claimed that it seized $121,000 sent to the group from members in Turkey.

While the Israeli reports cannot be verified, if true, then Tel Aviv’s seizure of the digital wallets signifies its advancing capability to counter alleged financial aid to Hamas in the form of cryptocurrencies – a commodity that has long been lauded by many as relatively safe from the reach of states and banking institutions. It was in July when the Israeli government launched its campaign to target crypto wallets it says is used by Hamas.

March 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Leading law firm issues Facebook letter of complaint over ‘anti-Palestinian bias’

MEMO | February 23, 2022

Leading law firm Bindmans LLP has sent a formal letter of complaint to Facebook over its “anti-Palestinian bias.” Instructed by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), the London based firm demanded explanation for the “systematic” and “far-reaching” censorship of content and accounts related to Palestine.

The complaint was also sent to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression. It requests an urgent review of, and explanation for, the decisions made by Facebook, which was rebranded last October as Meta Inc, to suspend accounts and posts which are affiliated to Palestinian news agencies, commentators and journalists.

Monday’s letter of complaint to Facebook is the second in nine months sent by Bindmans LLP to the social media giant. A previous communication submitted in May 2021 was made on behalf of five journalists and news agencies in Palestine. Facebook is said to have interfered with their accounts and/or posts and was accused of breaching their fundamental right to freedom of expression as well as its own Corporate Human Rights Policy.

In the May 2021 complaint, the main questions posed by Bindmans LLP included whether the censorship decisions were carried out by an algorithm or by a person exercising their discretion, and details regarding Facebook’s policy in justifying their censorship decisions, in addition to steps taken by the company to resolve unfair censorship.

In its response to the letter, a month later, Facebook said that it had investigated the accounts referenced in the letter and, after further review, has restored content and/or accounts where applicable. Notably, no substantial answers were provided to any of the main questions cited in the original communication.

Despite the commitments made by Facebook in their letter sent in June 2021, the censorship remained, said ICJP in its press release detailing the content of the complaint. The centre is an independent organisation of lawyers, academics and politicians that work to promote and support Palestinian rights.

Monitoring group, Sada Social, which has been documenting the suspension of Palestinian content and accounts on Facebook, recorded in 2021 alone, hundreds of instances of inappropriate censorship of social media content in support of the rights of Palestinians. This censorship was exacerbated significantly during the last Israeli offensive on Gaza in May 2021.

The complaint reinstates the request that Meta/Facebook discloses and reviews its decision-making process, and explains why the accounts were closed, suspended or posts taken down, and whether in doing so an algorithm or human discretion was used.

February 23, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

New textbook to be published without ‘undue influence of pro-Israel groups’

MEMO | February 22, 2022

UK Publisher, Pearson, has given assurances that UK lobby groups supporting the State of Israel will no longer play a role in their editorial decision-making process in the soon to be released textbook covering the Middle East.

Pearson, a major international education company, which oversees national exams for 14- to 16-year-olds in the UK, came under the spotlight over two of its GCSE school textbooks, after revelations last year that they had been significantly altered following pressure from pro-Israel groups. GCSEs are the academic qualifications studied for by UK high school students to the age of 16.

Details of the extensive “biased” and “misleading” alterations were exposed by a report, by Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, Middle East specialists in History and in Arabic, respectively, and members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).

Their eight-page report uncovered “dangerously misleading” changes to the books published by Pearson, titled “Conflict in the Middle East” and “The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change”, both by author Hilary Brash, which are read by hundreds of thousands of GCSE students annually.

The alterations were made following intervention by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), working together with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Both are amongst the most vocal pro-Israeli groups in the UK.

Pearson finally withdrew the textbooks in June. The publisher confirmed earlier this month that it is partnering with specialist educational charity, Parallel Histories, to develop new educational materials on the topic.

Writing in the Times Higher Education recently, Chalcraft urged academics to keep an eye out for bias in school textbooks. Recounting what he called the “undue influence of pro-Israel groups on a history textbook”, Chalcraft stressed the value of engagement to avoid a similar interference in the future.

Commenting on the report Chalcraft co-authored with Dickins, he said that the modified textbook “read to [me] as though it had been reworked by lawyers acting as if for a client (Israel), rather than by historians acting to educate schoolchildren about a complex history”.

Equally problematic, warned Chalcraft, was the discovery “that the pro-Israeli lobby groups had been invited into the editorial process, and had collaborated with Pearson over many months”. He revealed that no pro-Palestinian groups had been invited to the table and that “something” had gone “dangerously wrong”.

Chalcraft said that he and Dickins had been reassured by Pearson that no lobby groups are involved in the production of new materials on the topic.

February 22, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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

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