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Relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in crisis

By Lucas Leiroz | September 17, 2020

In early August, the diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia increased considerably when Pakistani Chancellor Shah Mehmood Qureshi officially criticized the Arab country for its lack of support for Islamabad’s interests in the dispute with India over Kashmir. According to the Pakistani government, there should be greater cooperation between both countries due to the fact that they share religious ties, and this is not happening.

Qureshi recently said during an interview that Islamabad expects the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to convene a meeting soon to discuss the issue of Kashmir. Furthermore, he said that if the OIC does not convene such a meeting, Pakistan itself will be obliged to organize a meeting of Islamic countries in order to obtain support in the dispute for Kashmir. Qureshi’s words were immediately received by the Saudis as a threat of conspiracy against the OIC for the creation of a new bloc, led by Islamabad.

There are three countries that unconditionally support Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, which are Turkey, Iran and Malaysia. These countries, in December 2019, met at the Kuala Lumpur Summit, where they discussed various topics related to the entire Islamic world. Since then, Saudi Arabia sees the alliance of these countries as a threat to its interests and to the role of hegemony it exercises over the OIC. So, if Pakistan convenes a meeting with such countries, a major step will be taken towards the creation of a new group of Islamic nations.

Qureshi’s comment was made to warn the Saudis, but the consequences were disastrous. Riyadh immediately refused to give a third of the 3 billion dollars loan it had granted Pakistan in 2018, and the 3.2 billion dollars oil credit line that was also part of the 2018 deal has not been renewed.

Until now, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have shared close ties, forming an important alliance in Asian geopolitics. Both countries have shared strategic ties of mutual interest for decades and on several occasions have supported each other diplomatically, economically and militarily. Examples of this shared interest can be seen in events such as the placement of Pakistani troops in the Saudi territory, joint military exercises, oil supply by Saudi Arabia amid sanctions on Pakistan due to its nuclear tests and several other cases of economic aid and diplomatic support.

But, occasionally, the interests of both countries have collided. There were reprisals after Pakistan’s refusal to send troops within the Saudi-led coalition in the 2015 Yemen war, for example. Interestingly, in Yemen Iran and Saudi Arabia face each other in a proxy war. Iran supports Pakistan in Kashmir, while the Saudis hesitate on this issue. Certainly, the cases are related, but that is not enough to explain the current crisis.

The geopolitics of the Islamic world is changing completely. The Arab countries’ peace agreements with Israel, mediated by the US, are becoming a strong trend. Saudi Arabia has already denied the possibility of entering into such an agreement, but the precedent set by Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates is significant and it is very likely that, over time, pro-Western Arab nations will gradually join peace with Israel. Such Arab nations have not changed their views on Palestine, but the current situation in the region has become too dangerous for them. These countries fear the advance of the Muslim Brotherhood supported by Turkey, which grew a lot in the Syrian War. And, above all, the rivalry with Iran cannot be ignored, especially when Tehran and Ankara progressively tighten their ties.

With Pakistan trying to get closer to the Kuala Lumpur Group – which includes Iran and Turkey – the tendency is for the Saudis to not only distance themselves increasingly from Islamabad, but also to carefully consider the possibility of joining peace with Israel, which, indeed, is the only condition for the kingdom to continue to receive the Western support it currently receives.

This “schism” in the Islamic world will be costly for Pakistan, which has always received great economic support from the Saudis. Currently, Saudi Arabia is home to around 2.5 million Pakistani expatriates, whose remittances contribute highly to Islamabad’s economy. Remittances abroad represent about 86% of Islamabad’s foreign reserves. Of these, 30% are inflows from the Saudi kingdom. In addition, Pakistan imports about a quarter of its oil from Saudi Arabia. In 2019, 74% of their bilateral trade, totaling 1.7 billion dollars, was due to oil imports. In addition, there are latent cultural issues. Saudi Arabia has in its territory the sacred sites of Mecca and Medina, where about 500,000 Pakistanis travel each year on pilgrimage.

However, economic and cultural issues tend to be overlooked when topics involve national security, defense and risks of war. A new bloc of Islamic nations is likely to emerge, rivaling the OIC, opposing Iran, Turkey and Pakistan against the Saudis. Interestingly, such a split will lead to an ethnicization of the geopolitics of the Islamic world, considering that Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia are not Arab nations, and this may be another focus of tensions in the future.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

September 17, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Expert skeptical US would return to Iran nuclear deal under Biden

Press TV – September 15, 2020

A former American Senate foreign policy analyst has expressed skepticism that a Joe Biden administration would re-enter into the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that if elected he will return the United States to the Iran nuclear deal as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.

Biden said in a recent article for CNN’s website that the US will rejoin the 2015 deal if Iran returns to what he called “strict compliance” with the nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

James Jatras, a former Senate foreign policy adviser in Washington, told Press TV on Tuesday that “It’s hard to know how much we can make of Joe Biden’s claim that he would return to the JCPOA, if he is elected president.”

“I noticed that he caveats that with ‘Iran must return to full compliance.’ And of course, we know that Iran has taken certain steps that she feels to be necessary given the US pullout from the agreement and the fact that the Europeans have failed to follow through with their obligations under the agreement,” he added.

“So I don’t know what Biden or more importantly his advisors, like Nick Burns or Evelyn Farkas, have in mind of what would constitute full Iranian compliance such that Biden could say: ‘OK, fine now, we’ll enter into this plan,’” he noticed.

“He also talks about follow on negotiations, which raises the specter that additional demands would be placed on Tehran before even a Biden administration would be comfortable re-entering the agreement. So I am somewhat skeptical that he would actually do that,” he observed.

Biden’s Republican rival, President Donald Trump, withdrew the US from the Iran deal over two years ago. Trump said it was a bad deal that needs to be re-negotiated.

Iran has time and again said it will not renegotiate the existing accord or make a new one with the US as long as sanctions remain in place.

Since scrapping the JCPOA in May 2018, the Trump administration has unleashed its “toughest ever” sanctions to bring Iran’s economy to its knees, but it keeps humming and is getting back on its feet.

September 15, 2020 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Qatar, Pakistan rule out possibility of normalization with Israel

Press TV – September 15, 2020

A high-ranking Qatari official says Doha will not follow in the footsteps of neighboring Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to normalize relations with Israel, emphasizing that Doha will not take such a measure as long as the Palestinian issue is unresolved.

“We don’t think that normalization was the core of this conflict and hence it can’t be the answer,” Qatari Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lolwah Rashid al-Khater, said in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg television news network on Monday.

She added, “The core of this conflict is about the drastic conditions that the Palestinians are living under” as “people without a country, living under occupation.”

Last week, Bahrain joined the UAE in striking an agreement to normalize relations with Israel.

In a joint statement, the United States, Bahrain and Israel said the agreement to establish ties was reached after US President Donald Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah.

The deal came one month after the UAE and the Tel Aviv regime agreed to normalize ties under a US-brokered accord.

Bahrain will join Israel and the UAE for a signing ceremony at the White House hosted by Trump later on Tuesday. The ceremony will be attended by Netanyahu, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani and Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Elsewhere in her remarks, Khater pointed to the attempts, backed by Kuwait, to end the economic and diplomatic blockade Saudi Arabia and a number of its allies imposed on gas-rich Qatar in June 2017, noting that the efforts have not yet reached a tipping point.

“In the past couple of months, there have been messages and messengers going back and forth,” she said.

“It’s very early to talk about a real breakthrough,” but “the coming few weeks might reveal something new,” the top Qatari official pointed out.

“We’re beyond this point. The point we are at is engaging constructively in unconditional negotiations and discussions” that “do not necessarily need to include all parties at once,” Khater said.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar on June 5, 2017, after the quartet officially accused Doha of meddling in regional affairs and supporting terrorism.

The quartet later issued a 13-point list of demands in return for the reconciliation, which was rejected as an attack on Qatar’s sovereignty.

‘Pakistan won’t compromise on Palestine cause’

Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan reacted to Bahrain’s normalization of ties with the Israeli regime following the UAE, saying, “Any recognition of Israel will face strong opposition from Palestinian people. We cannot make a decision which runs counter to the aspirations of the oppressed Palestinian nation. We will continue to support the fair resolution of the Palestinian issue.”

“If the whole world wants to recognize Israel, Islamabad would not do so and would never make a decision contrary to the wishes of the Palestinian people” Khan told Urdu-language 92 News television news network on Tuesday.

He underlined that the Pakistani government will never compromise on its fundamental principles of supporting Palestine and its liberation, as stated by the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

“Until a just solution to the Palestinian issue is produced, any recognition of the Zionist regime is ruled out. How can we accept to normalize with the Zionists when the main Palestinian parties do not accept it?” the Pakistani premier said.

September 15, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Democrats Go All-Out for Israel

Joe is a Zionist and Kamala panders to Jewish donors

Sen. Kamala Harris speaks at the 2017 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, March 28, 2017, at the Washington Convention Center. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • September 15, 2020

Those of us who have longed for an end to America’s military engagement in the Middle East have hoped for a candidate who was not tied hand and foot to Israel, which is the root cause of the badly-broken and essentially pointless U.S. foreign policy in the region. But the real tragedy is that in spite of Israel’s near-constant interference in government process at all levels in the United States, no candidate will mention it except in the most laudatory fashion. It will be praised as America’s best friend and closest ally, but there’s a price the U.S. has paid for all that balderdash while it has simultaneously been turning itself into the slave of the Jewish state will never surface.

The Democratic Party leadership is owned by Israel through its big Jewish donors whose billions come with only one string attached, i.e. that the Jewish state must be protected, empowered and enriched no matter what damage it does to actual U.S. interests. Number one Israeli-American billionaire donor Haim Saban has said that he has only one interest, and that is Israel. How such a man can have major influence over American foreign policy and the internal workings of one of its two major parties might be considered the death of real democracy. At the Israel America Council’s National Conference Nancy Pelosi explicitly put Israel’s interests before America’s: “I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid… and I don’t even call it aid… our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”

Jews are not surprisingly considerably over-represented in the Democratic Party Establishment. The influence of powerful Jewish Democrats recently insured that there would be no criticism of Israel, nor mention of Palestine, in the party platform for November’s election. So extreme is the virulence of some Jews against the Palestinians that a liberal Zionist Rabbi Mark Winer speaking at a Joe Biden rally in Florida recently denounced “progressives” as infected with the “anti-Semitism virus” over their support for Palestinian rights and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. No one even sought to challenge him. Another progressive Zionist Rabbi Jill Jacobs tweeted about how liberals have to embrace Israel to avoid offending Jews. She wrote: While Israel is likely the most divisive issue in the progressive world, setting a litmus test that one cannot consider oneself pro-Israel, or support two states, would divide the vast majority of Jews from the left. Not what we need when fighting white nationalism.

So-called white nationalists therefore appear to be the preferred enemies of progressive Jews, requiring one to close ranks even – or perhaps especially – when Palestinians are being brutalized. Joe Biden does not venture into that extreme-think zone, but he has made his loyalties clear. He has said that “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. I am a Zionist.” More recently he has denounced Trump as “bad for Israel.” And to demonstrate his bona fides, he kicked Democratic Party Palestinian-activist Linda Sarsour under the bus when she appeared on a DNC convention panel discussing how to appeal to Muslim voters. Biden’s campaign office issued a statement saying that he “… has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of anti-Semitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform. She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.”

With that lead in, it is difficult to imagine how Biden would suddenly recognize the humanity of the long-suffering Palestinians, to include those who are, like he claims to be, Catholic. Biden is close to AIPAC and has spoken at their annual convention a number of times. He is opposed to putting any pressure on the Jewish state at any time and for any reason, which presumably includes not even protecting U.S. interests or the lives and property of American citizens.

Biden also worked for President Barack Obama and was a colleague in office of Hillary Clinton. Both did the usual pander to Israel and neither was particularly well disposed to the Palestinians, though Obama talked the talk of a man of peace so effectively that he was awarded a Nobel Prize. Bear in mind that Obama personally disliked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he increased the money from the U.S. Treasury going directly to Israel to $3.8 billion per annum and guaranteed it for ten years, an unprecedented move. The fact is that money was and is illegal under American law due to the 1976 Symington Amendment, which banned any aid to any country with a nuclear program that was not declared and subject to inspection under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Obama, who claims to be a “constitutional lawyer,” surely was aware of that but rewarded Israel anyway.

One can expect nothing from Kamala Harris. Her husband is Jewish and she has made her career in California by sleeping with power brokers and pandering to Israel. She, like Biden, has been a fixture at the AIPAC annual conference. She has already made her mark with the party’s pro-Israel crowd by having a conference call with 1,800 Jewish Democratic donors, during which she repeatedly assured them a Biden-Harris Administration will never resort to cutting current levels of aid over any “political decisions that Israel makes,” adding personally “… and I couldn’t agree more.” She promised to demonstrate what she described as “unwavering support” for Israel. She also reminded the donors that Joe Biden had been behind the “largest military aid package” to any country ever when President Obama signed off on the $38 billion package in 2016.

Optimists point to the fact that the Democrats have now elected a number of congressmen who are willing to criticize Israel and they also cite opinion polls that suggest that a majority of registered Democrats want fair treatment for the Palestinians without any major bias in favor of the Jewish state. In spite of a news blackout on stories critical of Israel, there is broad understanding of the fact that the Israelis are serial human rights abusers. But those observations matter little in a situation in which the top of the party, to include those who manage elections and allocate money to promising prospective candidates, identify as strongly and often passionately friends of Israel. That is not an accident and one can assume that major effort has gone into maintaining that level of control.

How exactly this fissure in the Democratic Party will play out after November is anyone’s guess and, of course, if Trump wins there will be an autopsy to find out who to blame. Israel certainly won’t be looked at because no one is allowed to talk about it anyway, but some progressives at least will demand a review of a foreign policy platform that was heavy on intervention and global democracy promotion and light on getting along with adversaries, making it largely indistinguishable from that of the Republicans.

Israel for its part has played its cards carefully. It knows that either Biden or Trump will do whatever it wants, but it has deferred its planned annexation of much of the Palestinian West Bank, which will now take place after the election. It did that knowing that otherwise some liberals in the Democratic Party might try to turn Israel into an issue and split the Jewish community while also alienating Jewish donors and some Jewish voters if the annexation had taken place. After November 3rd, no matter who wins Israel will benefit and will have a free hand to do anything it wishes to the Palestinians. Or perhaps one should say the “remaining Palestinians” until they are all gone.

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

September 15, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

PLO: Normalisation prepares for formation of military alliances led by Israel

MEMO | September 14, 2020

Secretary-General of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Saeb Erekat, said yesterday that the UAE and Bahraini normalisation deals with Israel prepare for the formation of military alliances in the region led by Israel, Anadolu reported.

In a press conference held in Ramallah, Erekat said: “Israel will never be a tool to protect the security of Arabs, but a tool to undermine the security of the Arab states.”

“The Bahraini, Israeli, American agreement to normalise relations is now part of a bigger package in the region. It is not about peace, it is not about relations between countries. It is a military alliance being created in the region led by Israel.”

On Friday, Bahrain joined the UAE in normalising ties with Israel, a move that caused outrage among Palestinians.

“Normalisation does not serve the Palestinian or the Arab interests,” he said, “whoever depends on Israel commits a strategic mistake.”

He also noted that the normalisation deals did not include any indications to the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution for refugees.

“What happened was an implementation of the US deal of the century,” he said, stressing that these deals will not achieve peace if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved first.

 

September 14, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bahrain civil society groups reject normalisation agreement

MEMO | September 14, 2020

Civil society groups in Bahrain have rejected the government’s normalisation agreement with Israel which is expected to be signed formally in Washington DC on Tuesday. Seventeen organisations have issued a joint statement to this effect, with signatories including the General Federation of Workers’ Trade Unions in Bahrain, the Bahraini Bar Association and the Bahrain Women’s Association.

“We adhere to the constants of the Bahraini people regarding the just Palestinian cause and the provisions of the constitution that criminalise normalisation with the Zionist entity, in accordance with the official and popular Arab and Islamic consensus rejecting normalisation with this criminal entity,” said the groups. “All forms of normalisation with the Zionist entity initiated by some countries have neither produced peace nor restored the usurped rights of the Palestinian people, but have, rather, encouraged the enemy to commit more crimes against Palestine and the holy Arab and Muslim sites, foremost of which is Holy Jerusalem.”

The statement added that “what is known as a peace treaty between Bahrain and the Zionist enemy under the auspices of the US administration has brought about tremendous shock, resentment and widespread popular rejection among the Bahraini people, their political forces, civil society institutions, and all national actors and personalities.”

As a result, the signatories pointed out, nothing arising from the normalisation deal will have any popular legitimacy. “Generations of Bahrainis have believed in the just nature of the Palestinian cause,” they concluded.

September 14, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Jewish settlers torch agricultural land in West Bank town of Mikhmas

Palestine Information Center – September 13, 2020

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – A group of Jewish settlers on Saturday set fire to swaths of agricultural land belonging to Palestinian citizens in Mikhmas town in the northeast of Occupied Jerusalem.

According to local sources, a horde of settlers were seen touring an area near Mikhmas town before entering a Palestinian-owned grove and then setting trees ablaze.

Eyewitnesses said that the settlers fled the area and ran towards illegal settlements near the town.

Many olive trees were burned in the fire after the local residents experienced difficulty in extinguishing and controlling the flames due to the rugged nature of the area and the presence of Israeli soldiers who prevented them from reaching some plots of land.

September 13, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Normalisation with Israel means RIP international law, it’s been nice knowing you

By Ibrahim Hewitt | MEMO | September 12, 2020

The news that Bahrain has followed the UAE, Jordan and Egypt into Israel’s criminal embrace was no surprise; nor will it be shocking to hear that Saudi Arabia is following suit, as it almost certainly will. The raising of the Israeli flag in Riyadh will happen sooner rather than later. The groundwork for this has already been prepared by what passes for a government in the Saudi capital, with Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, a state-controlled Imam in Makkah, doing a 180 degree U-turn on peace with Israel in a recent sermon.

These deals have been written in the blood of the people of occupied Palestine. Recognition of the colonial state of Israel is acceptance of the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians by the nascent state and its terrorist militias in and around 1948, and the subsequent death and destruction that the “Israel Defence Forces” have rained down on Palestinians ever since. It is also the acceptance of the death of international law, which surely has no place left to hide if the world accepts what is going on in the name of “peace” in the Middle East.

Once again, the Palestinians are the fall guys in all of this, but what should they do? What can they do? It is tempting to think that they have been backed into a corner and will now be expected to roll over and die, metaphorically or literally; or possibly both. The fact is, though, that they still have some cards to play, but it will require a major shift in the strategy that has dominated Palestinian politics for more than a quarter of a century.

The rot started when the Palestine Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat gave up on “liberation” as a goal and signed the Oslo Accords. Palestine and its people have paid a heavy price ever since, with their leaders making concession after concession while Israel has conceded nothing. On the contrary, the occupation has become even more entrenched during the farce of “negotiations” which have now been on hold for years.

Is there any other place in the world where the victims of criminal activity have been told to negotiate with the criminals in order for justice to be served? Or where justice has never actually been on the agenda of such talks because it would expose the criminals and their allies for what they really are?

Is there any other conflict in the world where the aggressors claim “self-defence” every time they bomb civilians “back to the stone age”, and where this is accepted by the international community even though an occupation state has no such legitimate claim under international law? Or where the legitimate right to resist military occupation by every means at your disposal is regarded as “terrorism”, as it is when you are a Palestinian resisting Israel’s brutal occupation of your land?

We can and should argue that the Palestinian Authority hasn’t got a leg to stand on with complaints about the UAE and now Bahrain doing a deal with Israel, for the simple reason that not only has it been happy to rely on support from Egypt and Jordan for decades, both of which have peace treaties with the Zionist state, but it has also continued to protect Israel and Israelis through its “security cooperation” with Tel Aviv. This cooperation — a euphemism for collaboration — has been described as “sacred” by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, probably because he knows that his Palestinian No Authority Whatsoever was created to serve Israel’s interests, not the interests of the people of occupied Palestine, and is funded accordingly. No collaboration, no funds.

Abbas and his PLO-Fatah-PA cronies can complain as much as they like about “normalisation”, but they know that their words can only ever serve as rhetoric unless and until real changes are made. As my colleague at MEMO Motasem Dalloul wrote this week, such complaints are all for media consumption.

It is surely time for the PA to call it a day and dissolve itself. Abbas should step aside; his “ministers” should clear their desks; and the “Palestinian security apparatus” should be disbanded. Annexation is going to happen no matter what the PA or anyone else says or does, so let Israel declare its sovereignty over the whole of the occupied Palestinian territories. Such a move will still be illegal, if international law has any meaning left at all, and the status quo won’t really change as far as those living under occupation are concerned. Oppression is still oppression whether your jailers wear Israeli or Palestinian uniforms.

With no PA as its lapdog, Israel will have sole responsibility for security and the civilian infrastructure for everyone living within its as yet undeclared borders (alone amongst all UN member states, Israel has never said where its borders lie), Jews and Arabs alike. That will place a huge financial and logistical burden on Netanyahu and his increasingly far-right government, a burden which it is unlikely to be able to cope with if it wants to retain the mirage that it is “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

Not that Israel has ever really cared what the rest of the world thinks as long as its lobbyists are able to make Western governments dance to their tune. This has allowed Israel to act with impunity and treat international laws and conventions with contempt for more than 70 years, and its leaders have been and remain war criminals and guilty of crimes against humanity. And yet those ostensibly democratic governments in the West, for reasons known only to themselves, continue to declare their undying loyalty to what is, by any measure, a rogue state.

The guardians of international law at the UN are toothless and have acquiesced with Israel’s occupation and presence in the Middle East simply by not acknowledging that it is a settler-colonial state which rides roughshod over Palestinian rights, including the refugees’ right of return. UN agencies provide essential services to the refugees but have to labour under the constraint which has turned Palestine into a humanitarian rather than a political issue.

Moreover, the absurdity of the Security Council veto afforded to the post-World War Two nuclear states means that nothing will happen at the UN if any one of the US, Britain, Russia, China or France disagrees. The rest of the world can have opinions and even majority opinions but that tiny exclusive club will always carry the vote and then apply undue pressure on other countries to do as they are told.

The normalisation of Arab states, therefore, doesn’t really mean “peace” as we are being led to believe; it simply means that they too are displaying contempt for international law; that they too condone the Nakba and the Naksa; that they too condone the ongoing colonisation of Palestine and the oppression of its people; and that they too are bowing to Zionist hegemony in the region, and perhaps the rest of the world as well. Normalisation with Israel actually means RIP international law, it’s been nice knowing you.

September 12, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US ‘Pressing’ Lebanon to Sign Unfavourable Deal With Israel, Analysts Suggest

Sputnik – 11.09.2020

A number of Lebanese politicians expressed concern that the United States is pressuring Lebanon, pushing it to sign a border demarcation agreement that would jeopardise Beirut’s plans to develop gas fields on the Mediterranean shelf.

Sputnik spoke to Lebanese experts to find out whether Israel and the United States are thus trying to take advantage of Lebanon’s current economic and political weakness and force it to agree to all the conditions which are favourable to them, as well as whether Lebanon will be able to resist them.

According to US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker, the maritime border demarcation negotiations between Beirut and Tel Aviv are gradually advancing.

“I hope I will soon come back to Lebanon to sign a framework agreement with Israel,” he said during a telephone press conference with Lebanese journalists.

Schenker refused to talk about the existing obstacles to signing the agreement and the disagreements between the parties.

US Pressure

In turn, Lebanese political scientist Osama Wahby sees direct US pressure on extremely weak Lebanese political elites, which complicates the internal crisis with external issues.

“I’d like to point out that absolutely everyone is pressuring Lebanese politicians for any reason today: government formation, Beirut restoration, receiving money from the IMF and, of course, maritime border demarcation with Israel. While France is pressing Lebanon to solve domestic policy issues, the US is pressing to solve foreign affairs. They are interested in border demarcation and find it interesting for Israel. Undoubtedly, Washington will promise the government financial assistance in exchange for a good deal: they understand very well that Lebanon has no funds to rebuild Beirut after the explosion. There is a danger that Beirut will not receive any international assistance until it concedes to American and Israeli interests,” he said.

“Washington is pressuring individual movements and parties through sanctions. For example, two ministers of the current government have been sanctioned. And this is one of the key indicators of how much the United States expects Lebanon to do what it needs,” he added, speaking about US pressure on Lebanese politicians.

The Streets are Against?

However, Lebanese political scientist Riyad Isa believes that if the government is engaged in such negotiations, the Lebanese public will strongly oppose a framework agreement with Israel, and won’t allow it to be adopted.

“It’s surprising that the United States is speaking of some kind of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, while Beirut is negotiating border demarcation exclusively with Washington. Such details will face serious consequences in Lebanon. It’s important to understand that the public doesn’t trust the current government and its actions. If they really do sign any kind of agreement with Israel, people will take to the streets. No one will recognise it [the agreement] as valid,” he said.

According to the expert, the US is ready to take advantage of any Lebanese weakness to fulfil its own desires and interests in the region. Nobody will wonder about Lebanon’s interests. If the country were in a better position, it could show some resistance, but not now.

Lebanon rejects Israeli claims to offshore block 9 in the Mediterranean, which is believed to have large hydrocarbon reserves. It is a plot of 856 sq. km, which each party considers a part of its exclusive economic zone. Beirut also shows its discontent with the land border line at 13 points, including the port of Naqoura and Adaisseh, where the Israelis have built a barrier.

September 11, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

US Fails to Control Lebanon Because Hezbollah, Amal ‘Represent the Majority’ – Journalist

Sputnik – 10.09.2020

While US officials claim that their recent sanctioning of former Lebanese government ministers was designed to expose the corruption of the country’s politicians, one expert tells Sputnik that Washington’s recent action is nothing more than a continuation of a longstanding, but unsuccessful, Western campaign to control Lebanon.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenke declared on Tuesday that political allies of Hezbollah will have to “choose between bullets and ballots,” as they stand to be held “accountable for any enabling of [Hezbollah’s] terrorist and illicit activities,” Arab News reported.

This came amid the two-day Lebanon leg of Schenke’s tour of the Middle East, which also included stops in Qatar and Kuwait.

That same day, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned former Lebanese Minister of Transportation and Public Works Yusuf Finyanus and former Lebanese Minister of Finance Ali Hassan Khalil, who Washington claims “provided material support to [Hezbollah] and engaged in corruption.”

Laith Marouf, an award-winning multimedia producer as well as a media policy and law consultant with the Community Media Advocacy Center, joined Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary on Wednesday and told hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman that what is occurring right now is a continuation of “twenty-some” years of attempts by Washington and “imperial forces” to control Lebanon’s government.

Marouf explained that Khalil is a member of the Amal Movement, which is “allied with Hezbollah,” and Finyanus is aligned with the Christian Marada party of Suleiman Frangieh. These parties are “allied with the sovereigntist movements in Lebanon,” which virtually means they “represent the majority of the [country’s] population.”

Because of this, he asserted, the US’ attempts to gain control have been unsuccessful. “The majority of the Lebanese have lived [through] the crises,” he said, referring to a “cycle” of Western military aggression and sanctions that has occurred in the years following the Lebanese Civil War.

“There’s not going to be a change in the population demographics without a major, major war,” he argued.

September 10, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Funds America’s Israel Lobby, While U.S. Taxpayers Pay for Endless Fraud Against Themselves

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 10, 2020

Imagine for a moment that there is a foreign government that receives billions of dollars a year in “aid” and other benefits from the United States taxpayer. Consider beyond that, the possibility that that government might take part of the money it receives and secretly recycle it to groups of American citizens in the United States that exist to maintain and increase that money flow while also otherwise serving other interests of the recipient country. That would mean that the United States is itself subsidizing the lobbies and groups that are inevitably working against its own interests. And it also means that U.S. citizens are acting as foreign agents, covertly giving priority to their attachment to a foreign country instead of to the nation in which they live.

I am, of course, referring to Israel. It does not require a brilliant observer to note how Israel and its allies inside the U.S. have become very skilled at milking the government in the United States at all levels for every bit of financial aid, trade concessions, military hardware and political cover that is possible to obtain. The flow of dollars, goods, and protection is never actually debated in any serious way and is often, in fact, negotiated directly by Congress or state legislatures directly with the Israeli lobbyists. This corruption and manipulation of the U.S. governmental system by people who are basically foreign agents is something like a criminal enterprise and one can only imagine the screams of outrage coming from the New York Times if there were a similar arrangement with any other country.

The latest revelation about Israel’s cheating involves subsidies that were paid covertly by Israeli government agencies to groups in the United States which in turn took direction from the Jewish state, often inter alia damaging genuine American interests. The groups involved failed to disclose the payments, which is a felony. They also failed to register under the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which mandates penalties for groups and individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments. In particular, FARA mandates that the finances and relationships of the foreign affiliated organization be open to Department of the Justice inspection. It states that “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or otherwise acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal.” Those who fail to disclose might be penalized by up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

Israel’s various friends and proxies, uniquely, have been de facto exempt from any regulation by the U.S. government. The last serious attempt to register a major lobbying entity was made by John F. Kennedy, who sought to have the predecessor organization to today’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) comply with FARA. Kennedy was killed before he could complete the process.

To be sure, the U.S. government has recently been aggressive in demanding FARA registration for other nations as well as for Americans working for foreign powers. There have been several prominent FARA cases in the news. Major Russian news agencies operating in the U.S. were compelled to register in 2017 because they were funded largely or in part by the Kremlin. Also, as part of their plea deals, the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn both conceded that they had failed to comply with FARA when working as consultants with foreign governments.

A leading recipient of the Israeli government’s largesse has been the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), which has a presence in 43 countries worldwide, though it is registered in the U.S. as a non-profit. It received a grant of $100,000 from Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry in 2019, part of the $6.6 million that was doled out to eleven American organizations in 2018-9. Israel Allies particularly uses Lawfare to target the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has a large and growing presence on university campuses. Effective lobbying by IAF in the U.S. has resulted in more than half of all states passing legislation that bans or limits the BDS activity while legislation that would criminalize organizations working against Israel has also been moving through congress. IAF has been directly involved in drafting such legislation and has more recently been pushing for new laws that would legally define criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.

The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs initially, in 2015-7, tried to give money openly to diaspora organizations but found that many American Jewish groups, to their credit, would not take it due to concerns over FARA and being accused of “dual loyalty.” So, the Ministry created an ostensibly non-government “public benefit company” cut-out to distribute the cash in a more secretive fashion. The mechanism was given the operational name Concert.

Concert’s sole purpose was to provide money to diaspora advocacy groups that would work primarily against BDS and other efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Concert had an independent board, but its activity of directed by the Strategic Affairs Ministry’s director-general.

Concert’s internal documents are predictably vague in describing the activities that it was funding, and one might assume that they are purposely misleading. They refer to “defensive and offensive” actions, on “corporate responsibility,” “the digital battlefield,” and regarding “amplification units” that would provide “support for organizations in a pro-Israeli network.” The intention was to improve Israel’s image due to the widespread and completely accurate perception that its human rights record is among the worst in the world. Concert was created to serve as a mechanism to be exploited where situations prevailed that “require an ‘outside the government’ discussion with the different target audiences… [and] provide a rapid and coordinated response against the attempts to tarnish the image of Israel around the world.”

Interestingly, one of the most recognizable recipients of Concert funds was Christians United for Israel (CUFI), America’s largest pro-Israel group, which received nearly $1.3 million in February 2019 to pay for several 10 week-long “pilgrimages” to the Holy Land. Each pilgrimage involved thirty “influential Christian clerics from the U.S.” who were clearly propagandized while they were in the Middle East. Other large disbursements went to predominantly Jewish student groups, presumably to provide them with both resources and necessary training to oppose campus critics of Israel.

The simple way to deal with the massive and illegal Israeli influencing operations that are being directed against the United States would be first of all to deduct every identifiable dollar that is being spent by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to empower supporters in America from the $3.8 billion plus that Israel receives each year directly from the U.S. Treasury. Israel would not be concerned if the United States were to recover a paltry $10 million or so, but it would definitely send a message.

And then one might follow-up by requiring all the Israeli proxies that together make up the Israel Lobby to register under FARA. One might start with AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) but there will be many, many more before the work is done. And CUFI, for sure. The fundamentalist Christian head cases that place Israel’s interests ahead of those of their own country finally need to have their bell rung.

September 10, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

Plot meant to smear pro-Palestinian group exposed in Scotland

By Robert Carter | Press TV | September 9, 2020

A major scandal has come to light in Scotland. A fake anti-Semitic plot spearheaded by pro-Israel individuals aiming to smear a prominent pro-Palestine activists group, the “Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.”

The story turned on its head after the Law Society of Scotland fined a pro-Israel lawyer, Matthew Berlow, £500 for playing a key part in faking a graffiti attack on his own home and then placing full blame on the SPSC.

Luckily for the pro-Palestine activists, an investigation found that Berlow knew that an associate of his, pro-Israel former teacher Ed Sutherland, had created a fake Facebook identity under the name “Stevie Harrison” to infiltrate the SPSC in January last year.

And it was the imaginary “Stevie Harrison” who highlighted the vandalism on Berlow’s home in a Facebook post with the comments: A certain “Jewish lawyer” — referring to Barlow — woke up this morning to find ‘Free Palestine’ spray-painted on his home.

Berlow, knowing this to be a false attack, played the victim, claiming it was “typical SPSC behaviour.”

Speaking to members of the pro-Palestine group, they explain how these deceitful tactics are nothing new. These actions don’t sit too well given that allegations of Israeli activists weaponizing anti-Semitism against the Palestinian cause has been expressed many times, including in Britain’s biggest opposition party, the Labour Party, under former pro-Palestine leader Jeremy Corbyn.

September 9, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

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