Hamas: Israel’s aggressive mindset poses a threat to the entire region
Palestine Information Center – February 24, 2020
GAZA – The Hamas Movement has called for pooling the Arab nation’s efforts to confront the Israeli expansionist project in the region.
In a press release on Sunday night, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said that Israel’s “bombing of resistance sites in Damascus vindicated further the Israeli government’s aggressive mentality that keeps targeting the Arab nation and posing a threat to their region.”
“This entails uniting and integrating the entire nation’s efforts in order to confront the Zionist expansionist project and put an end to its ongoing aggression and its existence on the Palestinian land,” spokesman Qasem added.
The spokesman also described Israel’s renewed aggression against the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian resistance’s response to its crimes as “an ongoing battle between an arrogant colonial power and a people striving to extract their freedom and live with dignity on their own land.”
“This battle is to be won by our people, the rightful owners of the land and history, while the passing colonist will not have a place on our Palestinian land,” he said.
US-Palestinian intelligence talks focus on Abbas’ successor
By Dr Adnan Abu Amer | MEMO | February 24, 2020
Just two days after the announcement of the “deal of the century” in late January, Gina Haspel, director of the CIA, secretly arrived in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and met with Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian Intelligence Service, and a number of senior Palestinian officials. They assured her that Palestinian-American security coordination would not be affected after the announcement of the deal.
This visit took place after Israel revealed it had thwarted an assassination attempt on Majed Faraj, at the order of Tawfik Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee and former head of the General Intelligence Service.
The CIA director’s visit came as a surprise, she could have sent one of her aides or summoned Majed Fatah to Washington. There are some who believe that the visit aimed to persuade the Palestinians to accept the deal of the century.
Perhaps the American security visit is related to the preparation for the succession of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, especially since the visit coincided with the revelation of the assassination attempt on Faraj.
Haspel’s visit came despite Abbas’ announcement that security relations with the Israelis and Americans were being cut, which raised big questions about his credibility.
The information received regarding Haspel’s meeting in Ramallah with Palestinian intelligence leaders indicates that the meetings lasted three days, with 16 officers from both sides participating to discuss in depth scenarios and plans to eliminate the Palestinian resistance system, in the Gaza Strip in particular. They also drew plans to ensure that no chaos occurs in the West Bank that causes the situation to explode in the face of Israel.
On the first day, the meetings discussed all the scenarios to deal with the Palestinian resistance, and the general objectives of each scenario. The second day was dedicated to discussing Palestinian intelligence preparations to implement these scenarios, and on the third day a general American-Palestinian debate was opened to discuss what was described as “creative ideas” to emerge from the crises.
In the end, the meetings concluded with several points, the most important of which is the necessity of progressing from containing Hamas to attacking it, by using the conflicts between the leaders inside Palestine and abroad, and inciting against its leader, Ismail Haniyeh’s visit to Tehran and his participation in Qassem Soleimani’s funeral. This constituted clear proof of the political failure to contain the movement, either by Israel or Egypt. Moreover, Hamas’ attempts to strengthen its relationship with Hezbollah and its failure to comply with the Egyptian conditions of not visiting Iran both serve the interest of the same conviction.
At the end of their meetings in Ramallah, the Palestinian and American security sides concluded that it is not possible to eradicate Hamas, because it has a wide popular base, and therefore a strategy must be worked on to weaken it. In this regard, a proposal was made by the Palestinian general intelligence calling for containing the movement and pushing it to be part of the political system in the context of the PLO, along with draining their sources of funding, in agreement with the US Treasury.
This conclusion, reached by Faraj’s men in the Palestinian intelligence services with their American counterparts, or rather their handlers, is related to what Hamas revealed in April 2019 about the details of a long-term plan prepared by the PA’s intelligence services to ignite an internal conflict in the Gaza Strip, in preparation for changing the political reality in Gaza. It is a plan directly supervised by Majed Faraj, which aims to create chaos and disrupt the masses in the Gaza Strip, as well as affect the harmony and coordination between Hamas, which manages the affairs in Gaza, and the rest of the Palestinian factions.
The American visit may also relate to asking Faraj and his security apparatus, which controls the West Bank, to maintain a state of security in it, and not to allow popular demonstrations and mass activities to take place that may spiral out of control to become confrontations with the Israeli army.
Faraj, 58, has been at the head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service since 2009, and holds the rank of major general. He was born in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, in the south of the West Bank. He is considered the highest figure among the heads of the Palestinian security services, the only one who practices political activity, and the closest to Abbas. He is directly responsible for contact with the Israelis, participating actively in the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians in 2014. He is well known to all international players, and is the main partner in the reconciliation talks with Hamas.
In coincidence with Haspel’s visit to Ramallah, the Israeli media revealed it had thwarted an attempt to assassinate Majed Faraj. This was met with official Palestinian silence, which may suggest the authenticity of the Israeli narrative, because it reveals the secret struggle over the succession of Abbas, who is turning 85.
The Palestinian Preventive Security Service arrested a cell of Fatah members who intended to target Faraj and his family. Some of its members were former Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons with links to Major General Tawfik Tirawi, a member of the Central Fatah Committee, and the former head of the Palestinian Intelligence Agency.
Tirawi is said to have good relations with Muhammad Dahlan, the dismissed Fatah official and the personal archenemy of Abbas and Faraj.
The Preventive Security Services located the weapons and explosives in possession of the members of the cell who planned to bomb Faraj’s private vehicles after following his family members.
Faraj is considered one of the people with a very high chance of his succeeding Abbas as president. The man in command of the intelligence definitely has American-Israeli acceptance, as well as acceptance from countries that are influential inside the Palestinian territories, particularly Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, because everyone in Palestine is aware that any future president must be the result of regional and international understandings.
He has a strong network of relationships with senior CIA officers making him the main and likely favourite of Israel and the US due to his ability to provide adequate security in the West Bank, after his ability to eradicate Hamas, confiscate its weapons and limit its military influence. The group has already taken a hit in the West Bank due to Faraj’s efforts.
New settlement on Qalandia Airport Land to isolate East Jerusalem
By Madeeha Araj – PNN – February 24, 2020
The National Bureau for defending land and resisting settlements stated in its latest weekly report, that although the Israeli-American “Deal of the Century” proposes the right to establish a ‘special Palestinian tourism zone’ in the Atarot area (i.e. the old Qalandia Airport north of Jerusalem), to support Muslim tourism, the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to build a new settlement there, to be larger than “Ma’aleh Adumim” settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Qalandia airport has been closed by Israeli authorities since the outbreak of the second Intifada, in the year 2000.
In an obvious escalation to isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, the Occupation Government decided to build the new settlement as the Israeli PM Netanyahu vowed to build 9,000 settlement units, commercial centers and a hotel, as well as water tanks and others, adding that the number of units will reach 11,000, by 2030. Thus, signs and marks were placed by the Israeli occupation, on 21 Palestinian homes in order to be demolished.
Within his campaign for the upcoming Knesset’s elections, the Israeli PM, Netanyahu, announced plans to build 5,200 new settlement units in Jerusalem, including 2,200 in the “Har Homa” settlement, and 3,000 settlement units in the “Givat Hamtus” settlement, which means increasing the number of settlers there up to 10.000 settlers. For his part, Minister of the Occupation Army, Naftali Bennett, decided to hold a meeting for the Higher Planning Committee affiliated to the Israeli Civil Administration, to approve the building of 1900 settlement units in the West Bank, in the Ramallah Governorate, of which 600 settlement units in the Eili settlement, and 534 units in the Shvut Rachel settlement.
It is also noted that the Israeli Government plans to control Areas B in the West Bank, as the Minister of the Israeli Occupation Army, Naftali Bennett decided to prevent the Palestinians from building in these areas under security pretext. Accordingly, the Israeli occupation forces started to build a 7-kilometer settlement road with a cost of NIS 100s of millions, including tunnels and bridges south of Nablus, extended from the Za’tara village through Hawara town, and Beita and Udala villages, which means confiscating about 406 dunums of 7 Palestinian villages.
For their part, a delegation from the American Congress visited settlements, and the Ibrahimi Mosque’s courtyard in Hebron, and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, and the Gush Etzion’s pool as well. The delegation consisted of 2 Congress members, who said that these areas have to be part of Israel.
On the other hand, the UN Human Rights Office issued the black list of companies operating in settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. For his part, Michael Link praised the decision, saying it is ‘an important step.’ Adding that because of settlements, thousands of Palestinian dunums were confiscated, thousands of homes and properties were destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees were displaced, and several natural resources were leveled.
With regard to the giant American corporations that encourage settlement, the Financial Times newspaper conducted an extensive investigation on the Amazon corporation that provides free shipping to all Israeli settlements, but it does not provide the same free service to the Palestinians unless they include Israel as their country during the completion of the registration process. The newspaper pointed out during its investigation that the free shipping includes orders that exceed US$ 49, noting that the company started its activity there in last November. It stipulated that it provides the same free service to the Palestinians, in case they mentioned that they live in Israel.
Bahrain and Palestine: At the Heart and Front of the Struggle Against US and Zionist Occupation
By Julia Kassem | American Herald Tribune | February 18, 2020
Nine years ago, on February 14 of 2011 to the date, massive anti-government protests swept Bahrain.
Yet the common narrative of Bahrain’s uprising as on the backburner of the failed Egyptian movement downplayed the real significance of Bahrain in struggle. Rather than writing it off as a failed after effect of the 2010-2011 Arab Spring protests, Bahrain should be recognized as a struggle of liberation against Western imperialism and occupation on par with the Palestinian struggle.
With a long, established root in history, and as the Resistance Axis scales up the regional call to expel US occupation following the assassination of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani, Bahrain deserves increasing attention.
Bahrain is a Persian Gulf island under the monarchist rule of the Al-Khalifa clan that had ruled Bahrain over two centuries, soon receiving the support of Britain following an 1820 treaty with the Al-Khalifa monarchs.
Post-Cold War, the United States would eclipse Britain as the main imperialist backer of Bahrain’s monarchy in the Middle East. As Britain tightened its relationship with Bahrain in 1919, it had also carved out the blueprint for the occupation of Palestine in 1917 under the Balfour Declaration.
The movement in Bahrain was brutally suppressed not just because of its uprising against one monarchy, but because of the unrelenting popular consensus by demonstrators for a government that is anti-Zionist, anti-American, and democratic. These calls were met with a brutal crackdown by Saudi-backed authorities that intervened a month later to quell the popular revolt.
Western media narratives had cast Bahrain’s uprising in the shadow of Egypt’s failed ‘revolution,’ relegating it to the backburner of a co-opted Arab “Sting.”
Bahrain may not have the highest number of American troops occupying the tiny island, with just neighboring Kuwait and Qatar hosting up to 13,000 US occupying forces each. Yet the tiny island, packs over 7,000 US troops, stationed, as of January 2020, in a tiny 765 km2 area.
It also has been made home to a US naval base since 1947, the oldest of its kind in the Middle East, established one year before the 1948 Nakba, the year the illegal Zionist occupation was made legitimate in the eyes of the so-called “international community.”
The United States’ Navy 5th Fleet, established in Bahrain in 1944 as the largest combat fleet in the world was only reestablished in 1995 after being inactive for 48 years. Yet it has situated itself as the useful output of US regional hegemony in the Persian Gulf, where the “area of responsibility for American fleets shuttling aircraft carriers and destroyers include pretty much every West Asian nation along the Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf, and some of the Indian Ocean.
Poised for the US to have an easier shot at a number of nations under its threat, occupation, or watch, from Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or Yemen, to a station to safeguard its the regimes it backs, like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE, its positionality is becoming even more critical in light of the US’s assaults, sea and land alike, against Iran.
History: Previous uprisings
To understand the reason behind the Western/Gulf insecurity behind popular uprisings in Bahrain, historically, one must draw upon the history of resistance against the monarchist elite in Bahrain.
An approximately 5-year uprising that began in 1994, the “uprising of dignity” by a coalition of both Shia and leftist factions against the ruling regime.
In 2006, the Al Bandar report revealed Saudi plans of sowing the seeds of sectarian tension in Bahrain, where a nearly $3 million financing of secret cells in the Bahraini government and its intelligence apparatuses, government-operated cover-NGOs, and sectarian propaganda was aimed at an intentional targeting of Bahrain’s more than 70% Shia majority.
That same year, Sheikh Abdul Amir al-Jamiri, a main spiritual leader of Bahrain’s Shia, passed away after decades of commitment and leadership to bringing justice to Bahrain. Al-Jamiri, the main leader of the mid-90s uprising, was credited for bringing secular leftist and Shia factions together in a unified call against a regime that, in its monarchy, was in service of capitalism, imperialism, and Zionism.
Yet al-Jamiri’s passing would later inspire the unified call for reform and revolt 17 years later. Unfortunately, Bahrain’s opposition coalition would accept the concessions put forth by the then-new emir Hamad al-Khalifa, enshrined in Bahrain’s 2001 National Action Charter.
Like the many agreements and negotiations handed to the Palestinians, this agreement, while bringing the country back to some provisions in the previous constitutional rule the monarchy clan stamped out in 1975, had the effect of doing little to curtail the economic and political supremacy of the monarchy and its systematic oppression of its majority population.
The Bahrain-Palestine connection
Both the oppressed of Bahrain and occupied Palestine have suffered for decades under the US’s ambitions to use their lands as military bases, supporting and backing neo-colonial regimes to help instill their political, economic, and military hegemony.
The illegitimate governments of both countries continue to US hegemony by, obviously, their military role as US-military bases but also for their benefits for US-dominated capitalism. For example, the Zionist entity’s tech sector has found its footing and high dependency on the U.S. economy. According to a December 2019 report by the ‘Israeli’ Ministry of Finance, US investments accounted for 35% of those in ‘Israeli’ tech in 2018, with the total amount of Israeli investors being lower at 30%. In Bahrain, the royal family has amassed at least $40 billion alone from 2000 to 2010 from land-grabbing schemes for development, both buying properties from the UK and brokering free-trade agreements with the US.
The result, in taking the lion’s share of land available for people’s commerce and trade, has caused a hike up in land and property prices, compounding the existing and intentional economic conditions of high native unemployment (at 35%) that afflicts the local youth. The Bahraini regime has accomplished essentially what the Israeli regime has in its occupation of Palestine: the weaponization of land grabbing as a regime-building tool as well as flooding the country with cheap, foreign labor effectively barring the native underclass from any economic agency or access.
More significant is the tactic and prevalence of arbitrary and forced detention endemic to the preservation of both US-backed regimes. Bahrain is the top country globally for political prisoners, with over 14,000 cases of arbitrary detention between 2011 and 2019 alone. This includes the detention of over 1,700 children. The Zionist entity, similarly, replicates this tactic and these projections: since 1967, the occupation has arrested over 800,000 Palestinians, including 50,000 children, with over 1,250 minors under arbitrary detention between 2011 and 2018 alone.
Characteristic of the Zionist and Bahraini regimes, in addition to their routine arbitrary detention of civilians and children, is their brutal imprisonment and torture of movement leaders and dissidents; especially those that have played vital roles in uniting the opposition.
This is exemplified by the detention of Marwan Barghouti or Khalida Jarrar in occupied Palestine or Ayatollah al-Qassem and Ebtisam el Sayegh in Bahrain. These are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of leaders and activists that have endured torture, repeated arrests, in order to quell the rich ideological leadership committed to resistance to occupation and oppression in both the Bahraini and Palestinian nations.
Both the Deal of the Century and the recent uptick in torture against Bahraini prisoners of conscience can give their thanks to the acceleration of support and reinforcement from the United States under the Trump administration.
The Obama administration did no more than offer a trickle of lip-service criticism against the Zionist and Bahraini regimes in his time in office, countered anyway by his first-term Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s warm embrace of both: Clinton has always considered herself a “strong supporter” of the Occupying Entity as she did commend Bahrain’s king.
While the US’s arms sales to Bahrain had somewhat halted under Obama’s term, which had otherwise undergone the steady increase of bombings and drone warfare in the Middle East, due to human rights concerns, the Trump administration had carried out $5 billion in sales of Lockheed’s F-35 fighter jets to the monarchy in 2017.
In 2009, the Bahraini government had planned to spend a billion on security and defense in the country, looking to several Saudi and American defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, for its purchases.
Just as Trump unveiled and greenlit his development-oriented “Deal” for Palestine, he had also, greenlit massive torture, along with arms sales, to the Zionist, Saudi, and Bahraini regimes.
As one torturer famously said to el Sayegh: “Do you know that we have a green light from Trump?”
Similar to how the Zionist entity employs its handsome security packages–a 2018 gift of $38 billion over 10 years–towards brutal neighborhood raids in the West Bank, its next site of total mass expulsion thanks in part to the Deal, Bahrain too has put Trump’s generous donations and pledges to mass raids.
Like the Zionist entity, the Bahraini regime regularly engages in mass-raids. Shortly after the 2011 uprising, over 430 members of the opposition Al-Wifaq party, also teachers, clinicians, and day-laborers were violently arrested in night raids.
The largest and most brutal case came shortly after Trump’s May 2017 “green light.” Bahrain’s security forces raided Sheikh al-Qassem’s home, shot and killing five demonstrators and arrested 286.
As Sondoss Al Assad, a Lebanese journalist who focuses especially on Bahrain wrote in a recent article for American Herald Tribune:
“Blessed by Trump’s Green Light, Manama has intensified its brutal measures, which also met out collective reprisal against scores of peaceful opposition figures and human rights advocates.”
Just last June, the convening to pass the Zionist-American “Deal of the Century” was hosted in Bahrain, signifying the tight-knit connection both the Zionist and Bahraini regimes have in extending their influence in the Levant and Persian Gulf fronts, transforming the lands they occupy into development enterprises as well as American military bases.
A Bahraini man Monday was sentenced three years for burning the flag of the illegal Zionist entity at an anti-’Israel’ demonstration last May. Bahrain, through history and in its present, is truly emblematic of, as Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a February 16th speech, ‘a treachery platform conspiring against the Palestinian cause.”
For this reason, it is imperative that both Bahrain and occupied Palestine be at the heart of the Middle East’s liberation struggle. It is expected that the Deal will ignite an intifada and regional rejection that has been consistently brewing in occupied Palestine. At the same time, a regional consensus amongst the resistance axis to expel American presence and forces from all Arab and Muslim soil, particularly in Iraq, will be crucial in Bahrain, and draw the curtains of occupation on both these two birth-sites of US and British imperialism in the region.
Trump-Kushner “Peace” Plan ignores elephants in the room: Israel created this mess
The Trump-Kushner ‘Peace’ Plan is slick and businesslike, with an aura of objectivity and balance – but it’s exactly the opposite, and something about it stinks.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump are always accompanied by their shared comfort animal, the elephant in the room (Photo-collage by If Americans Knew)
By Kathryn Shihadah – If Americans Knew – February 21, 2020
There is a giant herd of elephants circling the Trump-Kushner Peace Plan, and they’re not going away. The fragrance of pachyderms is unmistakable, but Trump administration, the Netanyahu government, and Israel partisans have decades of experience in ignoring whatever is inconvenient to their agendas.
That unmistakable throng of elephants is the disenfranchisement and subjugation of the Palestinian people that has gone for a hundred years, and is presently so flagrant that numerous human rights organizations and experts have called it apartheid.
And while the Trump administration claims it wants a future of peace, this Plan will not bring peace.
Because, elephants.
Elephants from the get-go
Shortly after the Plan’s release, Kushner boasted on Fox & Friends, “This is an 80 page proposal, with a map. Never been done before.” Pachyderm prints are on every page (and the map), starting with the very first sentence:
“Israelis and Palestinians have both suffered greatly from their long-standing and seemingly interminable conflict.”
To start the document with this statement is to ignore a fundamental truth: the creation of Israel – the Zionist project – wreaked havoc on the people of Palestine, and continues to do so today.
Yes, both sides have suffered, but only one side has lost its homeland, lived under decades of injustice and oppression, and is being slowly starved and poisoned.
“Since 1946, there have been close to 700 United Nations General Assembly resolutions and over 100 United Nations Security Council resolutions in connection with this conflict.”
Missing factoid: Almost every one of the 800+ resolutions (Kushner left out 45 UN Human Rights Council resolutions) connected with this conflict, was critical of Israeli policies and actions that defied international law.
“These resolutions have not brought about peace.”
The resolutions have not brought about peace because (elephant alert) Israel has defied every one of them.
Elephants in basic assumptions: Palestinians “need” the Plan
The basic premise on which the Trump-Kushner Plan is based shows disdain for fundamental facts:
Palestinian society is languishing because of Israel’s policies – not some deficiency in Palestinians or their leadership.
Blaming Palestinian resistance
“For comprehensive peace to be achieved, it is up to the Palestinian people to make clear that they reject the ideologies of destruction, terror and conflict.”
Palestinian people aren’t committed to conflict – they are committed to resistance against occupation and apartheid (resistance is legal, but occupation and apartheid are illegal). For comprehensive peace to be achieved, Israel must abandon the elephants of discrimination and violence, and adhere to international law.
Blaming Palestinian backwardness
“The economic plan will empower the Palestinian people to build the society that they have aspired to establish for generations. It will allow Palestinians to realize a better future and pursue their dreams…By developing property and contract rights, the rule of law, anti-corruption measures, capital markets, a pro-growth tax structure, and a low-tariff scheme with reduced trade barriers, this initiative envisions policy reforms coupled with strategic infrastructure investments that will improve the business environment and stimulate private-sector growth.”
This suggests that the Palestinian people have been unable to build a great society because they lack a pro-growth tax structure and other first-world, art-of-the-deal schemes. While Kushner’s words dazzle, they ignore the myriad, incessant turmoil and economic hardship created by occupation, apartheid, and blockade. Israel has initiated wars, withheld food and medicine, and traumatized generations of Palestinians.
A 2016 publication by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted:
The relationship between the Israeli economy and that of the Occupied Palestinian Territory remains that of two dissimilar and unequal economies, whereby the large, dominant economy practices policies that keep the small economy weak and dependent…depriving the Palestinian people of their ability to produce and, in the process, cultivating a dependence on the Israeli economy and donor aid.
Without the occupation, the Palestinian economy could easily produce twice the GDP it currently generates, while the chronic trade and budget deficits, as well as poverty and unemployment, could recede and the economic dependence on Israel could end.
Blaming Palestinian ineptness/laziness
“This Vision has been developed to reduce over time the Palestinians’ dependence on aid from the international community.”
Palestinians have been aid-dependent because farmers have been restricted access to their fields, fishermen the sea, and workers their jobs; Israel has collected taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and then refused to hand funds over; Israel denies access to needed medicines, building supplies, and parts to repair crucial equipment like power plants and flour mills; and Israel has often destroyed or confiscated items that were donated to the Palestinian people.
UNCTAD reported in 2019 that between 2000 and 2017, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank cost the Palestinian people approximately $47.7 billion – over $2.5 billion a year. As Israel controls agriculture (more below), exports, natural resources, and tourism, it deliberately siphons money away from the Palestinian economy and into its own coffers.
The way to reduce Palestinians’ dependence on aid is to free them from occupation and blockade so they can work and produce, instead of standing at checkpoints and fighting a system that is stacked against them.
Blaming Hamas
“Gaza has tremendous potential but is currently held hostage by…terrorist organizations committed to Israel’s destruction… [that are] fueling a war machine of thousands of rockets and missiles, dozens of terror tunnels and other lethal capabilities… Gaza is run by terrorists who provoke confrontations that lead to more destruction and suffering for the people of Gaza…
As a result of Hamas’ terror and misrule, the people of Gaza suffer from massive unemployment, widespread poverty, drastic shortages of electricity and potable water, and other problems that threaten to precipitate a wholesale humanitarian crisis.”
While Hamas’ rule leaves much to be desired, Hamas is not the cause of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Gaza is under a brutal blockade because its people dare to resist the de facto occupation of their land. Some militants shoot mostly-homemade rockets toward Israel in defiance – these “lethal” rockets (which began after Israeli violence) have killed about 50 Israelis in 19 years, while Israel’s army (the most powerful in the Middle East) has killed over 7,000 Gazan Palestinians in the same time period and at least 461 West Bankers and East Jerusalemites.
In the rush to demonize Hamas, Israel and its supporters (including Jared Kushner) once again disregard inconvenient facts: Hamas’ efforts are nothing more or less than resistance against oppressive, illegal Israeli policies; Hamas operations have been restrained; and – contrary to Israeli hype – its actions are not provocations but responses to Israeli provocation (not the least of which is the catastrophic blockade); Hamas has on multiple occasions offered long-term ceasefire deals, to which Israel has responded with violence; and most brokered ceasefires (79%) have been broken by Israel.
Hamas and other resistance groups’ actions have been less deadly than Israel’s by a large margin. Witness these statistics from Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem:
“Peacetime,” Sept 2000 – Dec 2008
- 136 Israelis killed (14 by rockets)
- 3,000 Gazans killed
Israeli incursion into Gaza, 2008-9 (“to stop rockets”)
- 9 Israelis killed (4 by rockets)
- 1400 Palestinians killed
“Peacetime,” 2009-2012
- 3 Israelis killed (by rockets)
- 291 Palestinians killed
Israeli incursion into Gaza, 2012 (“to stop rockets”)
- 6 Israelis killed (by rockets)
- 174 Palestinians killed
“Peacetime,” 2012-14
- 1 Israeli killed (not by a rocket)
- 27 Palestinians killed
Israeli incursion into Gaza, 2014 (“to stop rockets”)
- 72 Israelis killed (17 by rockets)
- 2,200 Palestinians killed
Gaza/Israel since 2014
- 5 Israelis killed (1 by Gazan sniper, 4 by rockets)
- over 400 Gazans killed (most by Israeli snipers)
It is perhaps not surprising that multiple human rights organizations have placed the blame for the humanitarian crisis squarely on Israel’s shoulders.
For a Timeline of deaths in the conflict go here.
Elephants in basic expectations of the “Peace” Plan
Basic expectations of the Kushner Plan are unsound, blatantly partisan, and tell only the convenient parts of the story:
There will be no population transfer
“Peace should not demand the uprooting of people – Arab or Jew – from their homes. Such a construct, which is more likely to lead to civil unrest, runs counter to the idea of co-existence.”
This is a handy position to take after Israel has illegally transferred 600,000 Jews onto West Bank and East Jerusalem land stolen from Palestinians. “No population transfer” would have been a useful policy in 1948, to stop the Zionist army from depopulating hundreds of Palestinian villages and exiling 750,000 Palestinians, and then refusing to allow them to return. Transfer of population into occupied territory has been against international law since the Fourth Geneva Convention was ratified in 1949.
The transfer of Israeli Jews from their settlements back to Israel (also stolen) no doubt would cause “civil unrest,” but it was a grave error to position them in someone else’s land to begin with.
As an aside, when Palestinians participated in civil unrest circa 1939, protesting British rule and the population transfer of Jews into Palestine, they were brutally suppressed. In 1987, Israeli soldiers employed “force, might, and beatings,” in addition to live ammunition to subdue unarmed demonstrations against the occupation. The Great March of Return in Gaza, a massive and ongoing peaceful protest, has been answered with sniper fire. When Palestinians are the ones with grievances, no attempt is made to appease and avoid civil unrest.
Israel will sacrifice historical claims
“This Vision provides for the transfer of sizable territory by the State of Israel [to the Palestinians] – territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people — which must be considered a significant concession.”
This statement completely ignores Palestinians’ legal and historical claims to the land – their ancestral homeland. And while the claim of Jewish Israelis is based on a religious document and a short-lived mini kingdom 3,000 years ago, Palestinians have lived on the land recently enough to have Ottoman-era ownership records and deeds. Meanwhile, Israel controls all of the land. A large number of Palestinians have expressed willingness to settle for just 22% of what was once theirs. Is this not a significant concession on the part of Palestinians?
Of course, resolving a problem with these complexities isn’t easy, but no resolution will be valid when the arbiter is disingenuous.
Normalization as a starting point
“Since the moment of its establishment, the State of Israel has not known a single day of peace with all of its neighbors…The United States will strongly encourage Arab countries to begin to normalize their relations with the State of Israel…These countries are expected to end any boycott of the State of Israel and oppose the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (commonly referred to as BDS) movement and any other effort to boycott the State of Israel.”
The statement that “Israel has not known a single day of peace with all of its neighbors” provokes another elephant alert: Israel started or caused its wars (Israel launched the Six Day War, the 1973 war was waged by countries trying to regain land that Israel had unlawfully taken over, and Israel has invaded Lebanon several times). In addition, both Jordan and Egypt recognized Israel long ago.
Ordering Arab neighbors to normalize relations with Israel in the current environment overlooks the legitimate reasons for the global BDS movement: Israel’s noncompliance with international law (not anti-Semitism).
Conflict with Israel’s neighbors was inevitable since the state was created on land belonging to another people group, who were pushed out to become a burden on their neighbors.
First Israel must make the appropriate changes. Then its neighbors – and the world – may consider normalizing relations.
Elephants in the education plan
“The [education] initiative will empower the Palestinian people to realize their ambitions. Through new data-driven, outcomes-based education options at home, expanded online education platforms, increased vocational and technical training… students can fulfill their academic goals and be prepared for the workforce.”
Again, the Trump-Kushner plan neglects the true reason why Palestinians can’t “realize their ambitions.” Under occupation, students often can’t get past checkpoints in time for classes; school days are regularly interrupted by Israeli military tear gas attacks or invasions, followed by arrests of students and/or teachers; a huge number of students have been traumatized by Israeli violence.
Against the odds, Palestinians have among the highest literacy rates in the world, and Gaza has one of the highest rates of PhD holders per capita in the world.
“While Palestinians have among the highest graduation rates in the region, many Palestinian schools are stretched beyond their capacity, with too few teachers and classrooms to support their students.”
In this statement, the Plan glosses over the fact that Palestinian students are succeeding at an impressive rate under impossible conditions. Their academic achievements should lead to a prosperous society, but it does not – because of the elephants.
The statement also fails to mention that overcrowding is due to Israeli forces’ regular practice of demolishing and refusing building permits for West Bank schools. In Gaza, over half of the schools were damaged during an Israeli assault in 2014 – and many are still not rebuilt, since Israel regularly blocks the delivery of construction materials.
“Unfortunately, Palestinians currently experience one of the highest youth-unemployment rates in the world… By providing the Palestinian public sector with policy advice on best practices, encouraging private-sector attention to this problem, and promoting a comprehensive strategy to empower youth and women, more women and youth will join the Palestinian labor force.”
Senior Advisor Kushner is under the impression that Palestinians can’t flip their graduates into successful careers because they need foreign billionaires to give them advice. This is the height of arrogance.
Elephants in the agriculture plan
“While agriculture accounts for approximately eight percent of Palestinian employment, this sector has not met its potential due to limited access of Palestinian farmers to land, water, and technology. An improved business environment in the West Bank and Gaza and access to more land will create an enormous opportunity for farmers to expand their operations.”
Why in the world would Palestinian farmers have “limited access” to their own land? It’s a simple question with a simple answer: Israel has built a wall that separates farmers from much of their farmland. The International Court of Justice declared the wall illegal in 2004 (when it was less than half built) and ordered it torn down. In spite of this, Israel has continued construction along a route that effectively severs Palestinians from the nearly 10% of West Bank land – much of it agricultural – that lies outside the wall.
A 2016 publication by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted some of the measurable effects of the occupation on Palestinian agriculture:
Since the onset of the occupation in 1967, the Palestinian people have lost access to more than 60 per cent of West Bank land and two thirds of its grazing land. In Gaza, half of the cultivable area and 85 per cent of fishery resources are inaccessible to Palestinian producers…
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reports that inside the wall, the Israeli expropriation for expanding illegal Israeli settlements and Jewish-only roads “includ[es] the most fertile and best grazing land.”
For those Palestinians who are able to access their land during the harvest season, much or all of their crops can be lost “due to violence and threats by settlers” – who are aided and abetted by the Israeli military.
Up to 1 million olive trees and 2.5 million fruit trees have been uprooted since 1967, many due to illegal Israeli settlement expansion and the construction of the wall, others as a form of vandalism.
All told, the occupation caused a drop in agricultural sector from over half of the Palestinian GDP prior to 1967, to just 6% by 2012.
In addition, Israeli military and illegal settlers destroy or vandalize infrastructure, buildings, and water systems, and the Israeli government restricts the import of fertilizers, seedlings, and certain types of livestock, ensuring “that most of the advantages present in the Israeli agricultural sector are beyond the reach of Palestinian farmers.”
Again, the assistance Palestinians need is not advice from billionaires, but freedom from Israeli domination and oppression.
Elephants in the water and wastewater plan
“The parties [must] recognize mutual water rights… [s]hared aquifers… and jointly seek to provide easily available, reasonably priced water to both parties.”
The wording in this statement suggests that Israel and the Palestinians endure roughly equal water hardship and suffer from exorbitant prices.
In reality, one of the “parties” already has more than enough water, the other too little, too expensive, and too toxic. Again, UNCTAD spells out the cause:
Palestinian farmers are denied the right to construct wells to meet the growing demand for water, even when that water originates almost entirely in the West Bank… [O]rganizations, such as Oxfam, report that Palestinian assets, including sources of water, have often been vandalized by Israeli settlers…
Environmental degradation is also caused by settlers, through the discharge of untreated wastewater into nearby wadis and release of solid domestic and industrial waste from settlements onto Palestinian lands. In addition, several incidents of dumping of hazardous and toxic waste in the West Bank have been documented.
Israel confiscates 82% of Palestinian groundwater for its own use or that of its settlers, piping it efficiently to Israelis, but avoiding Palestinian villages. Many poor Palestinian families spend up to 40% of their meagre income on trucked-in, high-priced water.
In addition, the Israeli military routinely destroys Palestinians’ own water pipes and wells. And as a variation on the theme, the Israeli military uses skunk water to break up protests or as collective punishment. (some US police forces have imported the product).
In Gaza, the situation is even more dire, with 97% of its water unfit for human consumption, thanks in great part to Israeli restrictions on import of supplies needed for wastewater treatment.
Elephants in the healthcare plan
“The [healthcare] program will provide new resources and incentives to transform the Palestinian healthcare sector and ensure the Palestinian people have access to the care they need within the West Bank and Gaza. This program will rapidly increase the capacity of Palestinian hospitals by ensuring that they have the supplies, medicines, vaccines, and equipment to provide top-quality care and protect against health emergencies.”
Once again, the Kushner Plan insinuates that Palestinians lack proper health care because they lack enlightenment or competence.
In reality, the healthcare sector in Gaza is in disarray because hospitals have been bombed, medicines and equipment have been withheld by the blockade, and huge numbers of critically wounded people seek medical help – many with devastating injuries from Israeli weapons that are likely illegal. Over the years, the Israeli military has shown a pattern of denying Palestinian women in labor permission to go to the hospital; Israeli soldiers chase away ambulances (even from small children), ultimately leaving Palestinians to die.
To top it off, the Trump administration recently cut off aid to hospitals in East Jerusalem.
These are some of the factors that have caused an infant mortality rate in the Palestinian territories of 18.8 per 1,000 births (in Israel mortality is 3.7/1,000), and an average life expectancy for Palestinians of 74 (vs. 83 for Israelis).
Elephants in the sports and athletics plan
“[S]ports and athletics can help Palestinian youth foster new ties…and Palestinian teams can be a source of entertainment and pride for all Palestinians. This project will expand options for competitive, healthy activities for Palestinians through the construction of public athletic facilities in the West Bank and Gaza. This project seeks to inspire the next generation of Palestinian athletes dreaming to be on, and training for, future Palestinian teams competing on the world stage.”
Sports and competition are already in the hearts of Palestinians – they don’t need Jared Kushner to inspire them. What they do need is an end to the occupation that denies them permits to participate in events, holds them back from competing in the Olympics, and maims their bodies. Even children playing soccer on the beach are unsafe under Israeli oppression.
Elephants in the transportation plan
“[Palestinians face] transportation challenges. The lack of ports has raised the costs of Palestinian economic activity. Though the State of Palestine will include Gaza, security challenges make the building of a port in Gaza problematic for the foreseeable future.”
This notion is illegal according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Gaza has 25 miles of shoreline, but the Israeli-American coalition would forbid Palestinians from building a port. This is not how self-determination and sovereignty work. The Plan would essentially enforce the devastating, 13-year-old, illegal blockade, and license the now 53-year de facto occupation, as Israel would control all Palestinian imports and exports.
Conclusion
“Generations of Palestinians have lived without knowing peace, and the West Bank and Gaza have fallen into a protracted crisis.”
Did Palestinian bad luck cause them to “fall” into a “protracted crisis”? No, Palestinians have had a protracted crisis forced upon them – by Israel. They have resisted in every way they know how, but to no avail.
Reading the Kushner Plan, one would never know that the devastation, the desolation within Palestinian society was created by Israel. In 181 pages and a map, there is no acknowledgement that the Zionist project brought great injustice to generations of Palestinians.
“Yet the Palestinian story will not end here. The Palestinian people continue their historic endeavor to build a better future for their children.”
Correct: Palestinians have endeavored for generations to build a future that includes justice, freedom, and equality – and they have no intention of giving up.
“If implemented, Peace to Prosperity will empower the Palestinian people to build the society that they have aspired to establish for generations. “
Incorrect: Palestinians don’t need a plan imposed on them by Western businessmen – they need justice, freedom, and equality, which Israel has steadfastly withheld.
“Ultimately, however, the power to unlock it lies in the hands of the Palestinian people. Only through peace can the Palestinians achieve prosperity.”
A better statement might be, “Only through justice can there be peace and prosperity. Israel and the US have the power to bring justice.”
“While the vision is ambitious, it is achievable. The future of the Palestinians is one of huge promise and potential. The Palestinian story does not end here. Their story is just being written.”
The story is just being written…by a partisan, privileged group that has nothing but disdain for the Palestinian people. They promise no peace, only more elephants.
Netanyahu between the Nakba Arabs and the Arabs who are a joke
By Wael Qandil | Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed | February 21, 2020
The Arabs agreed in 1948 on the decision to form combat groups against the Zionist colonisation of the land of Palestine, which was known as the Nakba. Exactly 72 years later, the Arabs seem closer to form a united combat force to fight those rejecting the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.
It does not seem that the joke recently posted by a sarcastic Twitter activist about Saudi Arabia’s condemnation of the Palestinian people’s actions against the Israeli occupation will remain a joke for long, as all of the facts and indications say that the Arab capitals are very close to taking measures against those who refuse normalisation and the “deal of the century”. The Arab leaders’ patience is running out with the Palestinian resistance factions, who are disturbing the relationship between these leaders and Israel.
Matters rushing in this direction is not a new phenomena. It was announced and put into effect at least five years ago and many are competing to serve this. They are not ashamed to voice their approval of Israel’s leadership in the region and the first to voice this was General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who is loved and supported by all Zionists, especially their rabbis and generals.
More than four years ago, the right-wing Zionist newspaper Makor Rishon revealed that Al-Sisi confirmed, before the leaders of the American Jewish organisations, his admiration for Netanyahu’s personality and leadership capabilities. The newspaper’s correspondent, Zvika Klein, wrote that the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations in the United States informed Netanyahu during their meeting with him, on the side-lines of a meeting organised by the committee in occupied Jerusalem, that Al-Sisi told them that Netanyahu is “a leader with great powers that help him not only lead his country, but also could propel the region – even the world – forward.”
Well, here is the ruling general of the oldest Arab sister stripping his country of leadership of the region and giving it to Israel/Netanyahu to succeed him. Following in his footsteps is Mohammad Bin Salman, Saudi crown prince, who learned from Al-Sisi how to reach power through Israel. The story begins with hosting Trump and his family in Riyadh in order to establish the “moderate” alliance, the idea of which was proposed, formulated and developed years ago by Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump then leaves Saudi Arabia with more than $450 billion and lands in occupied Jerusalem wearing a skullcap.
In 2018, in anticipation of Saudi Arabia’s hosting of the Dhahran Summit, the Saudi crown prince held an interview with America’s Atlantic magazine, in which he announced a vision completely aligned with Israel’s for the Middle East according to extremist rabbis, violent generals and the Knesset hawks and doves. He spread his free kisses and gifts by stating that he was surrounded by enemies except for Israel and the so-called “axis of moderation” made up of the four parties that besieged Qatar. He said: “We are in an area not surrounded by Mexico, Canada, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. We have ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, and even pirates.”
This insight took a practical form when Al-Riyadh newspaper, the mouthpiece of the government, stated, before the summit opening: “Today, the Arabs have no choice but to reconcile with Israel, to sign a comprehensive peace agreement, to devote themselves to confronting the Iranian project in the region and its nuclear program, and to put an end to its interference in Arab affairs. This is an option that cannot be delayed with any justification, even [accusations of] bargaining with and auctioning the Palestinian cause, because Iran poses a direct threat to all.”
Thus, without vagueness, and very early on, the capitals of the two largest Arab countries delivered the badge and cloak of leadership to Israel, until we reached a stage where Benjamin Netanyahu was authorised, alone, to speak about the pilgrimage trips from Israel to Saudi airports, promising that the Israelis will fly in the skies of Saudi Arabia soon. It is at this same stage that the Egyptian military man may find himself entrusted with the war against the Palestinian people, if the gas pipeline from the occupation to Egypt is damaged or endangered, when an uprising breaks out in the areas the pipeline passes through.
What misery awaits a nation that clashes with itself over who will serve its enemy more?
Translation by MEMO.
The PA is blindly accepting international impositions on Palestinians
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 20, 2020
Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been trading the same rhetoric about not having a suitable partner for diplomatic negotiations. The senior adviser and spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, recently took the statement further to again assert the PA’s distaste for legitimate armed resistance. This was his attempt to reassure Israel about the PA’s commitment to remain tethered to failed diplomacy.
“The Palestinians do not want violence and it is very important for us that the Israelis know this and understand that our path is not violent,” Abu Rudeineh told Israeli political correspondents. Why would the PA seek to reassure the colonial presence in Palestine built and maintained upon violence that the colonised population are not seeking to use violent measures to escape from the Israeli yoke?
Unlike Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population and other measures such as its colonial settlement expansion, which are clearly defined as war crimes by international law, Palestinian resistance against the colonial violence of occupation is entirely legitimate. Abu Rudeineh is doing Palestinians yet another disservice by refusing to recognise the whole spectrum of the anti-colonial struggle. Furthermore, the PA does not differentiate between various forms of violence, which are defined by context.
It is the Palestinians who should be seeking reassurances that no further violence will be inflicted upon them. However, the normalisation of Israeli violence, combined with the diplomacy which allows Israel to function as a violent colonial state, prevent Palestinians from making such demands.
![A group of protesters gather in front of United Nations headquarters to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East plan as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the UN Security Council meeting in New York, United States on 11 February 2020. [Islam Doğru - Anadolu Agency]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/20200211_2_40796245_52056273.jpg?resize=933%2C622&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
Protesters at the UN headquarters oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, speaks at the UN Security Council meeting in New York on 11 February 2020. [Islam Doğru – Anadolu Agency ]
What’s more, Palestinians are not guaranteed protection from Israeli violence; their rights are simply brushed aside. To make matters worse, Abu Rudeineh has eliminated this factor in his discussions regarding future “peace negotiations” to enable the façade of Israel’s “victim” status to be preserved. In keeping with the parameters set by the international community’s endorsement of Israel’s false “security” and “self-defence” narrative, Abbas’s spokesman is misrepresenting the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and, as a result, regaling Israel with further opportunities to portray itself as the only democratic partner in negotiations. The PA would do well to remember that such talks would not have been necessary if the UN had taken the necessary steps to halt the earlier settler-colonial presence in Palestine and thus prevented Israel from manifesting itself on ethnically-cleansed Palestinian land.
However, the PA is merely absorbing the external narratives imposed by the international community on one hand, and the US on the other, the latter through its so-called “deal of the century”. The constant definition of the Palestinians according to external agendas have damaged the Palestinian cause beyond recognition.
Non-violent resistance and diplomacy have been manufactured by the international community as acceptable paths for Palestinians precisely because, on their own, they fragment the efficacy of anti-colonial struggle. The right to resist colonialism by all means is legitimate, whether diplomatic negotiations are taking place, or might be taking place in the future. Neither the international community nor the PA have the right to prevent Palestinians from exercising their right to armed struggle. It is a decision that must be made by the people themselves, since the Palestinian leadership has long abandoned the Palestinian cause to curry favour with the international community for its own self-serving hierarchy.
There is no need to reassure Israel as Abu Rudeineh has done; the only reminder that Israel needs is that Palestinians have every right to reclaim their land. Beyond that assurance, the PA’s rhetoric must be seen for what it is; an additional means of destroying the Palestinian struggle, for the benefit of Israel and the international community.
Putin questions America’s creepy collection of Russian DNA for possible bio-weapons program
The US Air Force is trying collect samples of ethnic Russian DNA. If history is a guide, the purposes of this new US program are highly nefarious.
By Adam Garrie | The Duran | November 1, 2017
In recent months, the US Air Force has issued calls for ethnic Russians to provide DNA samples for a mysterious “research” program. US Air Force Captain Beau Downey claimed that the samples were required for “locomotor studies to identify various biomarkers associated with trauma.”.
Downey further stated,
“The request (by the research centre) did not specify where the samples should be received from, but to continue the study, similar samples were required. Since the supplier originally provided samples from Russia, suitable for the initial group of diseases, the control group of the samples should also be of Russian origin.
The goal is the integrity of the study, not the origin (of the samples)”
However, given the fact that the US military has attempted to obtain Russian DNA samples without the permission of the Russian government and furthermore, given the low state of Russia-US relations, many are questioning whether the sought samples are intended to be part of a biogenetic weapons program.
Biogenetic weapons are defined as biological agents designed to inflict debilitating diseases or other internal bodily afflictions on a specific group of people, based on a shared genetic code.
While it is unclear if such a weapon has ever successfully been developed, the US and Israel have in the past, attempted to create such a devastating bio-genetic weapon.
In the late 1990s, it was reported that Israel had successfully created a biogenetic weapon which was specifically designed to target Arabs and only Arabs.
An archived press clipping from 1998 reports,
“According to a Jerusalem Post report quoting the London-based Foreign Report, Israel has successfully developed what is being called an ‘ethnic-bullet’, which will target only Arabs. The report quotes an ‘unconfirmed report’ which originated in South Africa, which details how Israeli scientists have made a biological weapon tailor made to attack targets with the Arab genetic system. Long-term studies of Iraqi Jews was credited with providing the genetic code needed to target Arabs. According to the report, the ethnic-bullet program was originally developed for use in Apartheid South Africa for use against blacks. Scientist in both countries worked together towards the development of the Israeli program. Israeli officials declined to confirm the existence of the ‘ethnic bullet,’ but one told the newsletter: ‘We have a basket full of strategic surprises which we will not hesitate to use if we feel that the State of Israel is under serious threat”.
The popular US based technology magazine Wired, also ran a story on Israel’s biogenetic weapons program in 1998. The story reads,
“ISRAEL IS REPORTEDLY developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London’s Sunday Times. The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.
The ‘ethno-bomb’ is reportedly Israel’s response to the threat that Iraq may be just weeks away from completing its own biological weapons.
The ‘ethno-bomb’ program is based at Israel’s Nes Tziyona research facility. Scientists are trying to use viruses and bacteria to alter DNA inside living cells and attack only those cells bearing Arabic genes.
The task is very complex because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples. But according to the report, the Israelis have succeeded in isolating particular characteristics of certain Arabs, ‘particularly the Iraqi people.’
Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament, denounced the research in the Sunday Times. ‘Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied.’
Last month, Foreign Report claimed that Israel was following in the ignominious footsteps of apartheid-era research, in their supposed efforts to develop an “ethnic bullet.”
A year later, a report from Reuters citing British scientists, confirmed that such a biogenetic weapon was possible given the advanced state of genetic mapping, although the report neither confirmed nor denied the existence of an Arab killing Israel biogenetic weapon.
Russians are therefore clearly worried that the US military intends to collect samples of Russian DNA in order to engineer a biogenetic weapon similar to the ones Israel is said to have created in the 1990s. The fact that genetic mapping technology has advanced even further since the 1990s, makes this fear all the more magnified.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union feared that the AIDS virus was created in a US military bio-weapons lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. While the story was dismissed by the US as geo-political propaganda, many black Africans and African-Americans continue to believe that the CIA had a hand in either creating or weaponising the AIDS virus. To this day, AIDS continues to disproportionately effect black men across the globe.
The notion that AIDS was part of a CIA experiment aimed at population modification, was spoken of widely in the 1980s. The American musician Frank Zappa even wrote a musical about the alleged phenomenon called ‘Thing Fish’.
In the year 2000, the neocon think-thank that would provide the George W. Bush administration with many important advisers, the Project for the New American Century published a report which spoke of the desirability of weaponising genetically mapped biological agents for use in 21st century warfare. This was one of the factors leading to Russia banning the export of domestic DNA samples in 2007, as was reported in Russian mainstream media at the time.
While exporting Russian DNA samples remains illegal in most circumstances, the US military is still keen on flaunting Russian law.
President Vladimir Putin has responded to the latest attempts by the US military to collect Russian DNA samples in the following way,
“Do you know that biological material is being collected all over the country, from different ethnic groups and people living in different geographical regions of the Russian Federation? The question is – why is it being done? It’s being done purposefully and professionally. We are a kind of object of great interest.
Let them do what they want, and we must do what we must”.
The latter part of Putin’s statement derives from the Melian Dialogue of the Athenian historian Thucydides. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounts Athenian envoys trying to convince the small island of Melos to surrender its sovereignty or be destroyed. The dialogue includes a famous line which is usually translated as “The strong do as they will and the weak submit as they must”.
Putin therefore is suggesting that no matter what the US has in store for Russia, the leadership of the Russian Federation is able and willing to take defensive matters in any scenario. The seemingly cautious statement from Putin, is actually incredibly forceful when read carefully.
Based on past experiences, the US is not operating under innocent intentions and therefore, Russia should not take any chances.
Israeli policy of assassinations cannot terrorize Palestinians to accept Trump’s deal: Nakhala
Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement Ziad al-Nakhala speaks during a televised speech broadcast live from Gaza City on February 19, 2020.
Press TV – February 19, 2020
The secretary-general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement says the Tel Aviv regime’s plan to return to “the policy of assassinations” against distinguished figures of Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip cannot terrorize Palestinians to acknowledge US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The policy of assassinations will not make the Palestinian people give up their rights, nor will it manage to break up the resistance front. We will respond to any assassination in time, and any act of aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip will be met with resistance that the occupation [Israel] has not experienced before,” Ziad al-Nakhala said in a televised speech broadcast live from Gaza City on Wednesday afternoon.
He added, “The threats of enemy leaders will not intimidate us, nor will make us accept what they have crafted and called the deal of the century. They will not make us relinquish our historical rights in Palestinian lands and al-Quds (Jerusalem).”
‘Oslo Accords bore nothing for Palestinians other than humiliation’
Nakhala also censured the Oslo Accords signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli regime more than two decades ago, stating that the set of agreements brought nothing for Palestinians other than humiliation, shame and delusions.
“We presented our history as well as our children, and sacrificed them on the altar of delusion of peace. We reaped nothing other than despair that was represented by the deal of the century,” he pointed out.
The Oslo Accords — consisting of Oslo I and Oslo II accords — were signed by the late chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, respectively in Washington DC, in 1993 and Egypt in 1995. The purported goal of the accords was to achieve peace based on the United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and to realize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
The senior Palestinian official also lambasted some Arab and Muslim countries for supporting and acknowledging Trump’s proposal in the eye of the international community.
Nakhala then called upon all Palestinian resistance movements to join forces, and tirelessly protect Jerusalem al-Quds and the Palestinian cause from liquidation.
‘The US decision to declare al-Quds as the capital of Israel was not surprising, given that America is the sponsor of the Zionist project ever since its inception (back in 1948). It is a full partner to this project, and is in fact spearheading the Western project in our region,” he underscored.
On January 28, Trump unveiled his so-called deal of the century, negotiated with Israel but without the Palestinians.
Palestinian leaders, who severed all ties with Washington in late 2017 after Trump controversially recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Israeli regime, immediately rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying it “belongs to the dustbin of history.”
Palestinian leaders say the deal is a colonial plan to unilaterally control historic Palestine in its entirety and remove Palestinians from their homeland, adding that it heavily favors Israel and would deny them a viable independent state.
Will Censorship Prevail Over The First Amendment?
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | February 18, 2020
I remember when censorship in America was a limited phemonenon. It applied during war time—“loose lips sink ships.” It applied to pornography. It applied to curse words on the public airwaves and in movies. It applied to violence in movies. There could be violence, but not the level that has become common.
Today censorship is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. In the United States censorship is both imposed from above and flows from the bottom up. Censorship is imposed from above by, for example, TV and print media, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and by laws in 28 states prohibiting criticism and participation in boycotts of Israel and by President Trump’s executive order preventing federal funding of educational institutions that permit criticisms of Israel. Censorship flows from the bottom up by, for example, people of protected races, genders, and sexual preference claiming to be offended.
The ubiquitous censorship that today is characteristic of the United States has shut down comedians. It has shut down criticism of non-whites, homosexuals, transgendered, feminists, and Israel. Official explanations are shielded by labeling skeptics “conspiracy theorists.” The ubiquitous censorship in the United States is an extraordinary development as the US Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and a free press.
We owe journalist Abby Martin appreciation for reminding us of our right to free speech. Abby is suing the state of Georgia, one of 28 states that have violated the Constitutional protection of free speech.
Abby was scheduleded to give the keynote speech at a conference at Georgia Southern Univeristy. She discovered that in order to speak publicly at a Georgia college she had to sign a pledge of allegiance not to criticize Israel. Her refusal to sign resulted in the conference being cancelled.
Here we have the state of Georgia blocking free speech because it will not support the Israeli position on Palestine. See: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/no_author/journalist-abby-martin-sues-state-of-georgia-over-law-requiring-pledge-of-allegiance-to-israel/ . Also: https://www.timesofisrael.com/filmmaker-who-wouldnt-sign-georgias-oath-not-to-boycott-israel-sues-us-state/
Think about this for a moment. More than half of the 50 states that comprise the United States have passed laws that are clear violations of the US Constitution. Moreover, these 28 states have imposed censorship in behalf of a foreign country. Americans have gags stuck in their mouths because 28 state governments put the interest of Israel higher than the First Amendment of the US Constitution. When government itself is opposed to free speech, what becomes of democracy and accountable government?
Why would 28 states legislate against the US Constitution? One explanation is that the state governments were bought by the Israel Lobby with money under the table, by promises of political campaign donations, or by threats of financing rival candidates. How else do we explain 28 state governments imposing censorship in behalf of a foreign country?
Abby Martin is one person who will not stand for it. She has brought a lawsuit that—if the US Supreme Court is still a protector of the First Amendment—will result in the 28 state laws and Trump’s executive order being overturned. The protection of Israel against boycotts parallels state laws passed in the 1950s that prevented Martin Luther King’s movement from boycotting businesses that practiced racial segregation. These laws were overturned by the Supreme Court.
The outcome of Abby Martin’s suit will tell us whether the US Constitution is still a living document.
Sanders tells New York Times he would consider a preemptive strike against Iran or North Korea
By Jacob Crosse and Barry Grey | WSWS | February 14, 2020
Bernie Sanders has won the popular vote in both the New Hampshire and Iowa presidential primary contests in considerable part by presenting himself as an opponent of war. Following the criminal assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani last month, Sanders was the most vocal of the Democratic presidential aspirants in criticizing Trump’s action. His poll numbers have risen in tandem with his stepped-up anti-war rhetoric.
He has repeatedly stressed his vote against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, reminding voters in the Iowa presidential debate last month, “I not only voted against that war, I helped lead the effort against that war.”
However, when speaking to the foremost newspaper of the American ruling class, the New York Times, the Sanders campaign adopts a very different tone than that employed by the candidate when addressing the public in campaign stump speeches or TV interviews.
The answers provided by Sanders’ campaign to a foreign policy survey of the Democratic presidential candidates published this month by the Times provide a very different picture of the attitude of the self-styled “democratic socialist” to American imperialism and war. In the course of the survey, the Sanders campaign is at pains to reassure the military/intelligence establishment and the financial elite of the senator’s loyalty to US imperialism and his readiness to deploy its military machine.
Perhaps most significant and chilling is the response to the third question in the Times’ survey.
Question: Would you consider military force to pre-empt an Iranian or North Korean nuclear or missile test?
Answer: Yes.
A Sanders White House, according to his campaign, would be open to launching a military strike against Iran or nuclear-armed North Korea to prevent (not respond to) not even a threatened missile or nuclear strike against the United States, but a mere weapons test. This is a breathtakingly reckless position no less incendiary than those advanced by the Trump administration.
Sanders would risk a war that could easily involve the major powers and lead to a nuclear Armageddon in order to block a weapons test by countries that have been subjected to devastating US sanctions and diplomatic, economic and military provocations for decades.
Moreover, as Sanders’ response to the Times makes clear, the so-called progressive, anti-war candidate fully subscribes to the doctrine of “preemptive war” declared to be official US policy in 2002 by the administration of George W. Bush. An illegal assertion of aggressive war as an instrument of foreign policy, this doctrine violates the principles laid down at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi officials after World War II, the United Nations charter and other international laws and conventions on war. Sanders’ embrace of the doctrine, following in the footsteps of the Obama administration, shows that his opposition to the Iraq war was purely a question of tactics, not a principled opposition to imperialist war.
The above question is preceded by another that evokes a response fully in line with the war policies of the Obama administration, the first two-term administration in US history to preside over uninterrupted war.
Question: Would you consider military force for a humanitarian intervention?
Answer: Yes.
Among the criminal wars carried out by the United States in the name of defending “human rights” are the war in Bosnia and the bombing of Serbia in the 1990s, the 2011 air war against Libya that ended with the lynching of deposed ruler Muammar Gaddafi, and the civil war in Syria that was fomented by Washington and conducted by its Al Qaeda-linked proxy militias.
The fraudulent humanitarian pretexts for US aggression were no more legitimate than the lie of “weapons of mass destruction” used in the neo-colonial invasion of Iraq. The result of these war crimes has been the destruction of entire societies, the death of millions and dislocation of tens of millions more, along with the transformation of the Middle East into a cauldron of great power intervention and intrigue that threatens to erupt into a new world war.
Sanders fully subscribes to this doctrine of “humanitarian war” that has been particularly associated with Democratic administrations.
In response to a question from the Times on the assassination of Suleimani, the Sanders campaign calls Trump’s action illegal, but refuses to take a principled stand against targeted assassinations in general and associates itself with the attacks on Suleimani as a terrorist.
The reply states:
Clearly there is evidence that Suleimani was involved in acts of terror. He also supported attacks on US troops in Iraq. But the right question isn’t ‘was this a bad guy,’ but rather ‘does assassinating him make Americans safer?’ The answer is clearly no.
In other words, the extra-judicial killing of people by the US government is justified if it makes Americans “safer.” This is a tacit endorsement of the policy of drone assassinations that was vastly expanded under the Obama administration—a policy that included the murder of US citizens.
At another point, the Times asks:
Would you agree to begin withdrawing American troops from the Korean peninsula?
The reply is:
No, not immediately. We would work closely with our South Korean partners to move toward peace on the Korean peninsula, which is the only way we will ultimately deal with the North Korean nuclear issue.
Sanders thus supports the continued presence of tens of thousands of US troops on the Korean peninsula, just as he supports the deployment of US forces more generally to assert the global interests of the American ruling class.
On Israel, Sanders calls for a continuation of the current level of US military and civilian aid and opposes the immediate return of the US embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
On Russia, he entirely supports the Democratic Party’s McCarthyite anti-Russia campaign and lines up behind the right-wing basis of the Democrats’ failed impeachment drive against Trump:
Question: If Russia continues on its current course in Ukraine and other former Soviet states, should the United States regard it as an adversary, or even an enemy?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Should Russia be required to return Crimea to Ukraine before it is allowed back into the G-7?
Answer: Yes.
Finally, the Times asks the Sanders campaign its position on the National Security Strategy announced by the Trump administration at the beginning of 2018. The new doctrine declares that the focus of American foreign and military strategy has shifted from the “war on terror” to the preparation for war against its major rivals, naming in particular Russia and China.
In the following exchange, Sanders tacitly accepts the great power conflict framework of the National Security Strategy, attacking Trump from the right for failing to aggressively prosecute the conflict with Russia and China:
Question: President Trump’s national security strategy calls for shifting the focus of American foreign policy away from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and back to what it refers to as the ‘revisionist’ superpowers, Russia and China. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Answer: Despite its stated strategy, the Trump administration has never followed a coherent national security strategy. In fact, Trump has escalated tensions in the Middle East and put us on the brink of war with Iran, refused to hold Russia accountable for its interference in our elections and human rights abuses, has done nothing to address our unfair trade agreement with China that only benefits wealthy corporations, and has ignored China’s mass internment of Uighurs and its brutal repression of protesters in Hong Kong. Clearly, Trump is not a president we should be taking notes from. [Emphasis added].
In a recent interview Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman and national co-chair of the Sanders campaign, assured Atlantic writer Uri Friedman that Sanders would continue provocative “freedom of the seas” navigation operations in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, while committing a Sanders administration to “maintain some [troop] presence” on the multitude of bases dotting “allied” countries from Japan to Germany.
Millions of workers, students and young people are presently attracted to Sanders because they have come to despise and oppose the vast social inequality, brutality and militarism of American society and correctly associate these evils with capitalism. However, they will soon learn through bitter experience that Sanders’s opposition to the “billionaire class” is no more real than his supposed opposition to war. His foreign policy is imperialist through and through, in line with the aggressive and militaristic policy of the Democratic Party and the Obama administration.
The Democrats’ differences with Trump on foreign policy, though bitter, are tactical. Both parties share the strategic orientation of asserting US global hegemony above all through force of arms.
No matter how much Sanders blusters about inequality, it is impossible to oppose the depredations of the ruling class at home while supporting its plunder and oppression abroad.
Sanders is no more an apostle of peace than he is a representative of the working class. Both in foreign and domestic policy, he is an instrument of the ruling class for channeling the growing movement of the working class and opposition to capitalism back behind the Democratic Party and the two-party system of capitalist rule in America.
EU delaying tactics bring it closer to Trump’s deal
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 18, 2020
For all its purported peace-building efforts and support for Palestinian rights, the EU is committed to supporting Israel’s colonial-settler expansionism. Its feeble response to US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” was accentuated in the recent decision to refuse to pass any official resolutions until after next month’s Israeli General Election.
Palestine is never a priority in foreign policy anywhere. Yet the Palestinian Authority persists in pursuing non-existent international support, notably that of the EU, ostensibly to navigate the labyrinth of dispossession which the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan forced upon the people of Palestine. The truth is that the PA is scrambling to retain its bequeathed diplomatic standing and the funding that allows it to function as the “sole representative” of the Palestinians.
In return, the PA facilitates the waiting game for the international community, while Palestinians suffer statements such as the latest by EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell. “We briefly discussed how best to relaunch a political process that is acceptable to both parties and how best to defend the internationally agreed parameters, equal rights and international law,” he declared on Monday. Defending internationally agreed parameters has nothing to do with protecting Palestinian rights, and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is aware of this discrepancy.
Meanwhile, Israel is lobbying EU countries to refrain from taking a stance against Trump’s plan. Israeli media highlights the fact that recognition of the State of Palestine by several European countries has “little, if any, diplomatic effect.” While in previous years, recognition of Palestine raised Israel’s ire, it is now being touted as a futile PA effort in comparison with the US-Israeli partnership to colonise Palestine, as well as the EU’s increasingly non-committal stance towards Palestinians and their legitimate political rights.
Nevertheless, Israel will not take any risk that the EU might voice a unified condemnation of Trump’s plan. The delay communicated by the EU with regard to its response over US-Israeli scheming indicates diplomatic activity that favours Israel. The latter allegedly “fears” the EU playing a major role in any future negotiations. Netanyahu has pledged to carry out the annexation of the occupied West Bank if re-elected, and the EU has done nothing other than issue the usual bland condemnation. If the EU does indeed take on a more influential role in negotiations, whether these are based on the defunct two-state compromise or Trump’s proposal, it will clearly adopt a pro-Israel stance.
Behind the scenes, Israel is lobbying for such a scenario and there is nothing to impede the EU from continuing with its track record of marginalising Palestinians. Before Trump’s deal was revealed, EU diplomats attempted to differentiate between the allegedly law-abiding EU and the international law-abusing US. The illusion of a political struggle between both entities was the focus of analysis, which suited Israel as it shifted attention away from the Palestinians.
The final step in this process will matter little to Israel as long as the EU does not depart from its decades-long policy of pretending to support Palestinian rights while actively pursuing stronger ties with Israel. One point, however, must be clarified. If the EU is seeking additional delays before issuing a statement regarding the deal of the century, the words of former EU representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini must be recalled: the EU would consider working with the US plan if the two-state paradigm is included. One obsolete imposition has now been replaced by another that offers fragments of a state, which the EU and its backing for Israeli expansionism has supported tacitly all along.
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From the Archives
The 9/11 “Double-Cross” Conspiracy Theory
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.
A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue
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