“… Israel is a strong ally and an important friend to the United States. Good friends can disagree and a candid expression of concerns does not diminish our friendship…”
Edmund Burke Rides Again
But this time the horse is paid for by Israel
Portrait of Edmund Burke (1729-97); Anglo-Irish politician, orator and political thinker; anti-French Revolution; by Northcote, James; Royal Albert Memorial Museum
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • June 4, 2019
A new pro-Israel group that is pretending to be a standard bearer for conservative opinion in the United States was founded in January, a fortuitous bit of timing as it will not have to reveal its sources of income until next year. The Edmund Burke Foundation describes itself as “a new public affairs institute” having “the aim of strengthening the principles of national conservatism in Western and other democratic countries. The Foundation will pursue research, educational and publishing ventures directed toward this end.”
The Foundation’s launch will be at an open-to-the-public conference that will be held at Washington’s Ritz-Carlton on July 14-16, 2019. So as not to confuse the possible audience unduly over who Edmund Burke was or what he stood for, the conference is being advertised somewhat lamely as “National Conservatism: A Conference in Washington D.C.” on its website nationalconservatism.org. Note that neither the name of the foundation nor the promotion of its stellar cast of speakers includes the word “Israel,” but the Jewish state is really what it is all about.
The conference website explains that
“Politics in America, Britain, and other Western nations have taken a sharp turn toward nationalism—a commitment to a world of independent nations. This has been disorienting to many, not least the American conservative movement, which has, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, grown increasingly attached to a vision of a global ‘rules-based liberal order’ that would bring peace and prosperity to the entire world while attenuating the independence of nations.
“The return of nationalism has created a much-discussed ‘crisis of conservatism’ that may be unprecedented…The conference on ‘National Conservatism’ will bring together public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing.”
It is obvious to most actual conservatives that nationalism has never really gone away, but what the conference organizers are really getting at is a revival of unabashed nationalism as the excuse for countries when they behave badly while promoting their own interests without regard for the interests of others. Israel and the United States are the prime examples of such behavior and the argument that they have a special entitlement to justify their actions is frequently made, most notably by other Israel-firster groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). FDD argues that democracy promotion by force is a legitimate foreign policy of powerful countries like the United States, while threatened democracies like Israel must be protected. That, of course, is a complete misrepresentation regarding just how democratic the two countries actually are and the idea that being democratic empowers some sort of leadership role or exempt status is in itself ridiculous.
Why do I suggest that the Edmund Burke Foundation is just another pro-Israel puppet? Look at the people running it. Its President is David Brog, who is also the executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, “an effort launched in 2015 to combat the anti-Israel BDS movement. He also sits on the Board of Directors of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), where he served as executive director for its first ten years. Before CUFI, Brog worked in the United States Senate for seven years, rising to be chief of staff to Senator Arlen Specter and staff director of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has also worked as an executive at America Online and practiced corporate law in Tel Aviv, Israel and Philadelphia, PA. Brog is the author of Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State (2006) and In Defense of Faith: the Judeo-Christian Idea and the Struggle for Humanity (2010). In 2007, the Forward newspaper listed Brog in its ‘Forward 50’ most influential Jews in America.”
The Edmund Burke Foundation’s Chairman is an Israeli Yoram Hazony, who describes himself as a “Jewish philosopher.” He resides in the Jewish state and is a well-known Israeli nationalist, having written that nationalism empowers “the collective right of a free people to rule themselves.” He declares that “We should not let a hairbreadth of our freedom be given over to foreign bodies under any name whatsoever, or to foreign systems of law that are not determined by our own nations.” He adds “My first concern is for Israel.”
In other words, for Hazony all external criticism of what Israel is and does is illegitimate while Brog is what might be described as someone who has made a career out of being Jewish, along the way advancing what he perceives as Israeli interests. So why are they heading an ostensibly American foundation?
Indeed, it doesn’t require a Trumpean level of genius to see what this is all about and where it is going. If there is an unfortunate development arising from the National Conservative conference it is the inclusion as speakers of some genuine conservatives among the crowd of usual Zionist hacks, with National Security Bloviator John Bolton leading the dark side of the list. The real conservatives, who are invited to give the event credibility, should know better and ought to avoid the Edmund Burke Foundation like the plague. I will not call them out by name here and now but they can be identified from the speakers’ list. One has to wonder if they are being paid for their services…
In fact, new organizations dedicated to defending and promoting Israel are not exactly unusual. They tend to pop up in the United States and Western Europe like wild mushrooms in the spring time. By one estimate, there are 600 such organizations in the U.S. alone, running the gamut from the liberal left to the conservative right. They exist because there is a certain paranoia on the part of prominent Jews and leading Jewish organizations due to fear that the American people are finally waking up to the fact that they have been getting used and abused by a vast Zionist conspiracy for the past 70-plus years.
Why do some American Jews betray the interests of their own country to support another nation that is manifestly a pariah due to its own behavior? It might just be because to do so is painless and can, on the contrary, lead to personal advancement. Brog’s career demonstrates how it works, particularly if one can latch on to a Jewish Zionist Senator like Arlen Specter along the way. And the benefits for Israel are enormous, amounting to hundreds of billions of U.S. Treasury dollars as well as a de facto commitment for American soldiers to fight and die for Israel even if Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu starts a war for no reason whatsoever.
Taken together, all of the pro-Israel groups constitute a veritable political juggernaut that seeks to advantage Israel and benefit it directly without regard for the damage done to American democracy and to actual U.S. interests. They should rightly be seen as organizations that regard their loyalty to the United States as negotiable, but they try to obfuscate the issue by claiming, wrongly, that there exist compelling reasons why Israel and the U.S. should continue to be best friends due to “shared values.” And, as self-defined leading democracies, the Israel-apologists argue that both are immune to criticism because they are acting on the basis of legitimate nationalist interests. It is a compelling argument for some, but ultimately false in that it suggests that there are no restraints on the behavior of either government. The Israelis have, for example, used the argument to justify the killing by army sniper fire hundreds of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators.
Promoting “democratic nationalism” to pander to Israel without any real understanding of actual interests has led the United States into a seemingly bottomless Middle Eastern quagmire. And, the sense of invulnerability that America’s uncritical support has encouraged among some Israelis also will not benefit the Jewish state in the long term. The creation of the Edmund Burke Foundation is just one more card in a losing hand and it hopefully will run out of steam as abruptly as it was created.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Palestinian Photojournalist at Risk of Deportation
IMEMC News & Agencies | June 2, 2019
For the past five months, Mustafa al-Kharouf has been languishing inside Israel’s Givon prison, away from his wife Tamam and their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Asia. But, now, he faces deportation to Jordan.
The 32-year-old photojournalist, son to an Algerian mother and a Palestinian father, has been living in Jerusalem since 1999, when his family returned.
Despite repeated attempts, over the past decade, he has been denied permanent residency status, which he is entitled to, thus rendering him stateless.
By the time Kharouf’s family met the conditions set by the policy, to get residency, Mustafa was 18 years old and his family was not able to submit an application for either reunification or child registration, on his behalf.
In January, Mustafa, who worked with Anadolu Agency, was detained after his lawyer challenged the Israeli interior ministry’s decision to reject his request for legal status.
His fate is now in the hands of an Israeli high court, which will decide if he will be deported to Jordan, a country he has no ties to.
In order to attain their “legal” status as Palestinians in the city, Kharouf’s family applied for family reunification, Al Jazeera/Al Ray further reports.
But, at the core of Israel’s complicated laws for Palestinian residents of Jerusalem – who are granted residency rights but not Israeli citizenship – is the “center of life” policy, which has been described as a legalized ethnic cleansing.
The policy, which requires Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem to prove they keep a center of life in the city, to uphold their legal status, has been criticized by rights groups as discriminatory, and as a precursor to forcible transfers – a serious violation of international law.
Legal status rejected by Israeli interior ministry
Adi Lustigman, Kharouf’s lawyer from the Israeli rights organization HaMoked, told Al Jazeera that Kharouf tried to regulate his status in Jerusalem for years, but to no avail.
“He had an interim order during some periods, but, the rest of the times, he has just managed, like many other stateless and status-less Jerusalemites do,” Lustigman said.
“It is, of course, enormously difficult to be a person with no rights, no work permit, and nowhere to go, in order to be legal.”
From October 2014 to 2015, Kharouf was granted an Israeli B/1 work visa, on a “humanitarian basis”. Yet, requests for a visa extension were eventually rejected by the ministry of interior for “security reasons”.
Lustigman believes that the ministry’s rejections are related to his work as a photojournalist documenting human rights abuses committed by the Israeli authorities, in occupied East Jerusalem.
After Kharouf was married, in 2016, to his wife Tamam, a Palestinian Jerusalemite, he filled out another family reunification application, but it was again rejected in December of 2018, by the interior ministry.
According to Lustigman, the decision was based on unfounded accusations that Kharouf was a member of Hamas, which is banned by Israel.
The lawyer appealed the decision on January 21, 2019, but, the next day, Israeli forces raided Kharouf’s home and abducted him, and he has since been placed under administrative detention – indefinite imprisonment without trial or charge.
“My husband is the most optimistic person I know. But, now, he is beyond miserable,” Kharouf’s wife Tamam told Al Jazeera.
Tamam is permitted to visit her husband once a week, for a maximum of 20 minutes, behind a glass window.
“His spirits have deteriorated so much since his arrest,” the 27-year-old school counselor said. “He has lost 10 kilograms, and is very depressed.”
A few months later, in April, the Israeli District Court rejected Kharouf’s appeal and gave an interim order not to deport him, so he is able to take his case to Israel’s High Court, with May 5 given as the deadline. The appeal has already been filed, but the High Court has yet to make a decision. Kharouf remains at imminent risk of being forcibly deported to Jordan.
Deportation order ‘illegal’
Saleh Hijazi, the head of Amnesty International’s Jerusalem office, described the Israeli decision to refuse Kharouf’s residency application and deport him as “cruel and unlawful”.
“[Kharouf] must be released immediately and granted permanent residency in East Jerusalem, so he can resume his normal life with his wife and child,” Hijazi said.
“The arbitrary detention and planned deportation of Mustafa al-Kharouf reflect Israel’s long-term policy to reduce the number of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, while denying them their human rights,” he continued.
Following Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, at least 14,600 Palestinians have had their residency permits revoked.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the deportation of protected people from an occupied territory is illegal. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court stipulates that “the deportation or transfer [by the occupying power] of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory” constitutes a war crime.
“A person cannot be left stateless”, Jessica Montell, Executive Director of HaMoked, said in an April press release.” On the practical level, there is no sense holding Mustafa ‘pending deportation’ when there is no country to which Israel can deport him.
“The High Court of Justice has recognized East Jerusalemites as an indigenous population with a unique status. Israel must therefore release Mustafa without delay and give him the legal status to which he is entitled, as a Jerusalemite.”
Tamam has been busy consulting with lawyers, to see what can be done. But, she said that most of them say her husband’s case is too complicated, and refuse to take it on.
“I haven’t thought about an alternative plan for us,” Tamam said. “If Mustafa gets deported to Jordan, he will not receive residency, let alone citizenship.
“In fact he’ll get detained by Jordanian authorities as soon as he crosses the border, for as long as it will take them to review his files and come to a decision on what to do with him,” she continued.
“If he gets deported, it won’t be just one family that will be fragmented. He’ll be ripped away from me and my daughter, from his parents, and from his in-laws.”
Lustigman says that the importance of highlighting Kharouf’s case can make the difference in not uprooting the photojournalist’s life.
“We hope that public opinion, press interests, and NGO actions would have a certain weight and be of help,” the lawyer said.
The Apparently Irresistible Cry of Anti Semitism
By Eve Mykytyn | June 3, 2019
What does it take to force a university to act contrary to the principles of free expression that are at the core of academic freedom? If the story of Dr. Maaruf Ali is representative, then the answer is: not much. In the 25-30 news stories I read in preparing this summary, each article repeated the characterization of Dr. Ali’s posts as anti Semitic and none offered any counter interpretation. It seems no institution offered support to Dr. Ali. Not a union, nor a political party nor the university itself.
Dr. Ali’s problems at The University of Essex began with a vote the student union held in February over whether to authorize a proposed new Jewish student society, a branch of the Union of Jewish Students. The UJS is frankly Zionist and political, offering on its website as its ‘core values:’ 1.) cross communalism defined as “open to all Jewish students regardless of political or religious affiliation or denomination. 2.) Peer-leadership 3.) Representation: “… Jewish students should have their voices heard both locally and nationally.” And, 4.) Engagement with Israel. “… to strengthen, celebrate and explore a personal relationship with Israel as part of an evolving expression of Jewish identity.”
The few students who bothered to vote on the issue voted overwhelmingly in favor of the new society. 200 students out of the 600 who voted (the University of Essex boasts over 15,000 students) voted against the society. None of the news outlets that covered this story mentioned that very few students cared to participate, exaggerating the importance of the issue at the University. Apparently panicked by this lopsided vote in its favor, the student union cancelled the vote and authorized the society’s immediate creation.
Histrionics prevailed in the Jewish press and among the UK’s Jewish advocates. Following the vote, the national Union of Jewish Students said the fact that so many people were against the ratification of the society was “simply shocking.” Apparently not constrained by facts, Amanda Bowman, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews said: “This is racism, pure and simple. Those students who voted to exclude Jewish students should hang their heads in shame.” Of course, 200 students voted against a society, there was no vote to exclude Jewish students.
Luckily for those seeking to extract revenge for the elusive sin of anti Semitism, they had an object for their wrath in University lecturer, Dr. Maaruf Ali. Ali opposed the society and shared a number of posts alleging that “the Zionists next want to create a society here at our University.” This quote was widely circulated as evidence of his anti Semitism although UJS is an openly Zionist organization.
In support of his opinion Ali posted that: “50,000 Jews protest[ed] Israel” in New York, but that there was a “total mainstream media blackout by the Zionist mafia.” There indeed was such a protest in New York, and it was only lightly covered in the media.
Ali wrote that Israel planned to expel 36,000 Palestinians from the Negev. In fact, Israel was expelling 36,000 Palestinian Bedouins from the Negev, and his point was correct.
Then Ali shared a claim from smoloko.com that a French police officer allegedly killed in terror attacks in Paris was actually a Mossad agent. I couldn’t verify this claim, but there are many such theories about the 2015 attacks See.
Dr. Ali also shared the following post from Edgar Steele, an Idaho lawyer who defended members of the Aryan nation.
Hello, World!
The Incredible Disappearance of Shai Masot
By Craig Murray | June 2, 2019
A Google news search reveals that not one single mainstream media outlet has mentioned Shai Masot in 2019. Not even once.
Yet the main political news story the last two days has been the suspension of Labour’s Peter Willsman for “anti-semitism” for making the suggestion that the “anti-semitism” witch-hunt is promoted by the Israeli-Embassy. This has been demonstrably a massive story:
The overwhelming majority of the tens of thousands who will read this article know who Shai Masot is and know why his activities are absolutely central to the Willsman story.
And here is the truly terrifying thing.
The overwhelming majority of the mainstream media “journalists” who produced those scores of stories about Willsman also know exactly who Shai Masot is and why his activities are central to the Willsman narrative. And every single one of those journalists chose to self-censor the crucial information that casts a shade over the “Willsman is an anti-semite” line. Every single one. Their self-censorship is not necessarily a conscious and singular act, though in many cases it will be. They are simply imbued with the line they are supposed to adopt, the facts they are supposed to ignore, to forward their career and remain accepted in their social group.
Because the plain truth is that the Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby (part 1 below) showed to the entire political world that Mr Willsman’s thesis about the involvement of the Israeli Embassy in British politics and its objectives is broadly true. It says something about the current dystopia that is the UK, that this truly shocking documentary did not result in any official action against Joan Ryan (who has thankfully since hurtled herself into the political abyss), but that pointing out the undeniable truth about Israeli Embassy interference in British politics is an expulsion offence.
I should be very happy to go on the BBC and say this and so would many other people. Yet the mainstream media have been unable to quote this point of view from a single person. Yesterday’s 12 noon news on the BBC had Willsman as the top story with interviews with first Charlie Falconer, calling for Mr Willsman’s expulsion, then a six minute live rant from extreme zionist John Mann, calling for Mr Willsman’s expulsion. There was no attempt to balance this at all with a remotely sane guest. To be fair, the presenter did baulk at some of Mr Mann’s more frothy mouthed utterances, but the BBC knew precisely what they would get when they invited him, and the decision to have a major news item with only two intervewees, both from the same side of the argument, was a quite deliberate one.
This was a much worse example of lack of balance than those for which Russia Today is routinely censured by Ofcom and threatened with closure. But doubtless as it was a pro-Israel and anti-Corbyn lack of balance (Corbyn was condemned by both interviewees) Ofcom will take no action whatsoever. I am however putting in a complaint to Ofcom about this specific news item and I urge you to do the same.
Al Jazeera’s exposure of Shai Masot led to his quietly being removed from the UK, however he was but the tip of the iceberg. With my FCO inside knowledge I could show that the Israeli Embassy has an extraordinary and disproportionate number of “technical and administrative staff” like Masot, and that there was a mystery over what kind of visa he had to live in the UK. The FCO refused to answer my questions and no mainstream media “journalist” was willing to pursue the case.
The readership of this blog has grown fast over the last two years. I therefore do recommend that you read this blog post which ties in Masot’s activities to the Mossad collaboration of Liam Fox and Adam Werritty – which was the real story behind the Werritty scandal, again completely hidden by the mainstream media. I should mark my debt to the late Paul Flynn MP in helping me prove that fact beyond dispute, as you will see if you read the article. Not one of the media and political hypocrites who so recently eulogised Paul was willing to support him in this or even mention the facts that he had winkled out. Jeremy Corbyn also helped me expose the Werritty/Israel links in his pre-leadership days by asking parliamentary questions.
I do blame Jeremy for not taking a more robust line. Genuine anti-semitism should always be called out and condemned, and it plainly exists, even in the Labour Party. But the open attempt to stifle all criticism of Israel, and in effect to make adherence to Zionism a pre-condition for membership of the Labour Party – or indeed acceptance in wider society – is a vicious form of authoritarianism that should have been repudiated robustly from day one.
Israeli paper betrays scandalous details of ‘deal of century’
Press TV – June 1, 2019
US President Donald Trump’s “the deal of the century” wants Palestinian refugees to be naturalized and settled in several countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, Israeli daily Haaretz reports.
As the world marked the International Quds Day on Friday, political leaders warned of mysterious aspects of the much-touted US plan and its ramifications for the future of Palestinians.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said one definite prospect is that the plan seeks to do away with the issue of returning 6 million refugees to their homeland.
“To realize this goal, America is about to arrange an economic deal and get its money from the miserable Persian Gulf countries,” he said in Tehran.
Haaretz said Washington is thought to be pressing Lebanon to grant citizenship to Palestinian refugees living in the country.
“In the process, this is seen as defusing the issue of a right of return of refugees to Israel, which has been a major obstacle to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the paper said.
According to UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, about 450,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon.
Other reports have put the figure lower, prompting Lebanese groups to say that the census had been conducted under US pressure designed to under-report the real numbers because that way Lebanon could absorb a modest-sized population.
The Lebanese constitution, however, provides that the country’s territory is indivisible and that refugees living there are not to receive citizenship.
The official reason for this is that the absorption of Palestinian refugees would impair their claim to a right of return.
However, the US has sugarcoated the plan with a lifeline to extract Lebanon from its economic crisis, where the country’s debt is estimated at more than $85 billion (about 155 percent of GDP), Haaretz said.
According to the Israeli paper, giving Palestinians citizenship is likely to prompt the roughly 1 million Syrian refugees in the country to demand similar status.
However, Lebanon isn’t the only country concerned about Washington dictating a solution to the refugee problem.
Jordan is horrified over the prospect that the United States will demand it absorb hundreds of thousands or even a million Palestinian refugees in the country, Haaretz added.
The paper cited investigative journalist Vicky Ward recounting in her new book “Kushner Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption” that the Trump administration’s plan sees Jordan providing territory to the Palestinians and receiving Saudi territory in return.
The Saudis, for their part, would get the islands of Sanafir and Tiran from Egypt, it said.
“Land swaps appear to be the magic formula that the Trump administration has adopted, and not just for Jordan,” Haaretz said.
According to Ward, it has been suggested that Egypt give up territory along the Sinai coast between Gaza and el-Arish, to which some of the Gaza population would be transferred. In return, Israel would give Egypt territory of equivalent size in the western Negev.
Haaretz, meanwhile, revealed lucrative projects to be funded by European countries, the US and wealthy Arab states, including an underwater tunnel which Israel would allow to be dug between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Egypt, the paper said, has been promised a whopping $65 billion to help boost its economy which is currently in shambles.
The plan also says Palestinian refugees in Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries would receive citizenship in exchange for generous assistance to the host countries.
The Israeli paper, however, cast doubt on the viability of the “plan of generous financial compensation and empty tracts of land for new housing”.
“The problem is that the Palestinian refugees are the supreme symbols of Palestinian nationhood,” it said.
“An American deal that blatantly relies on buying up that symbol for cash, even lots of it, can’t be acceptable to the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza,” it added.
The Trump administration is set to unveil the economic portion of the so-called “deal of the century” during a conference in Manama, Bahrain, on June 25-26.
All Palestinian factions have boycotted the event, accusing Washington of offering financial rewards for accepting the Israeli occupation.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have said they will send delegations to the Manama forum and Israel’s Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has said he intends to attend.
Nasrallah Vows to Confront US Middle East Plan
Al-Manar | June 1, 2019
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah stressed on Friday that the axis of resistance is stronger than ever before, while ‘Israel’, despite its military strength, is weaker than ever.
During a ceremony held by Hezbollah to mark Al-Quds International Day in Dahiyeh, Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that the Palestinian resistance was advancing and developing immensely and it “became able to control large areas in occupied Palestine in any future war, at a time when the image of ‘Israel’ was destroyed after the defeat of its ground army who couldn’t stop the resistance rockets.”
Sayyed Nasrallah rejected the US conditions for mediating a border and maritime dispute with the Zionist entity, saying Washington, through its envoy who was tasked to negotiate the land and maritime border demarcation between Lebanon and the Zionist entity, was using the talks to the Israeli benefit, bringing up an Israeli claim that Hezbollah has precision missiles factories. “The US wants to blackmail the negotiations on border demarcation in order to open the issue of Hezbollah’s precision rockets arsenal,” he said, but warned that [David] Satterfield should focus on the border demarcation issue and only that.
The Hezbollah leader acknowledged that Hezbollah has the weapons but do not produce them. However, he said Hezbollah may consider setting up such factories if Washington continues to use the talks on border demarcation to discuss the resistance capabilities since it is Lebanon’s right to defend itself. “We have in Lebanon precision rockets that are able to target direct posts in ‘Israel’ and that would change the face of the region,” he said, but warned that Hezbollah will respond to any Israeli aggression on any resistance target in Lebanon quickly, directly and strongly.
His Eminence said that ‘Israel’ fears the resistance in Lebanon and that Israeli officials talk about resistance deterrence and capabilities, pointing out that Hezbollah has “accurate missiles that can reach all the targets required in ‘Israel’ and that are able to change the face of the region.
“The US attempts to control Iraq have failed, the Iraqi stance from regional issues is totally different and uncontrolled,” he said. “Iraq today returned to its regional role and has a capable, struggling and influential people in the region’s issues,” He said.
Sayyed Nasrallah gave the so-called Deal of the Century the lion’s share in his speech, assuring that the US was mistaken by betting on regional people’s weariness to impose the deal. “The main challenge today in front of Palestine and Al-Quds is the deal of the century, or Trump’s deal, and it’s our duty to confront it.”
“We have a deep hope that we, the people of this region, can stop the ‘crime of the century’,” he said, indicating that the US administration and ‘Israel’ are working day and night with Arab regimes to realize the deal.
The US, he said, was able to “contain the Arab Spring popular protests and derail it towards a wrong way, however, Syria overcame the scheme of destroying it, and it remained pro-resistance.”
“Yemen, which is an essential part of the resistance axis, rejects the deal of the century and protests in support for Al-Quds,” Sayyed Nasrallah said. “American tools in the region are unable to protect themselves and some regimes are concerned of implementing the deal of the century,” he said, pointing out that the three summits in Mecca were a proof of the Saudi failure and weakness.
The S.G. said the Zionist entity and the US were no longer as strong as before. “‘Israel’ fears missiles from Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and claims the existence of rockets in Iraq,” he said, adding there’s no leadership in ‘Israel’ and total reliance on US support. However, he said the US was no longer the same as before 20 years after it sent its troops to the region and came out of it defeated.
Sayyed Nasrallah detailed the reasons why the possibility of an upcoming war against Iran was remote. “One reason that there’s no war is that Iran is strong, otherwise the war could have been launched. The other reason is that the CIA knows that a war on Iran will set the region on fire and won’t stop behind its borders.”
“The whole region will ignite and the US troops and interests will exterminate if a war on Iran was launched,” Hezbollah leader warned.
A war on Iran will make ‘Israel’ and Al Saud pay the price, his eminence indicated, wondering how Saudi Arabia, which failed and was defeated in Yemen, would be able to wage war on Iran.
“Trump fears own interests and is only after an economic war against Iran and other states,” he went on to say.
While he hailed the balanced Iraqi stance in the emergency summit that convened Arab leaders in the Saudi city of Mecca overnight Thursday, Sayyed Nasrallah rejected and condemned the Lebanese delegation participation in the summit, saying the Lebanese official stance was inconsistent with the dissociation item in the ministerial statement and violated it.
Sayyed Nasrallah began his speech by saluting the participants and demonstrators across the world to mark this special day. “I thank you, this audience, for reviving this jihadi-moral occasion that is linked to our fate, our pride, our freedom and our sanctities.”
“Attempts to make this day as for a certain sect have failed,” the S.G. said, adding that “the sincerity of all those who walk on the road to restore Al-Quds could be stronger than any siege.”
“Throughout 40 years, Al-Quds enemies bet that this day will be forgotten, but they were mistaken,” he said. “We have been commemorating the week of Al-Quds in many cities of the world. Al-Quds Day protests in Bahrain confirm that the Bahraini people and scholars are innocent of the Deal of the Century’s summit.”
“Al-Quds rallies in Iran serve as a message to US and regional regimes,” his eminence said, adding that Trump will wait for a long time before receiving a phone call from Iran.
The ceremony marking Al-Quds day, with its main emblem “Towards Al-Quds”, was held in Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahiyeh) Friday overnight gathering a huge public and political participation. During the ceremony, organized by Hezbollah, a symbolic military parade was held in which Hezbollah fighters chanted “Oh Quds, we shall march towards you” during the parade. Hezbollah fighters also recalled the oath of allegiance to resistance leaders, Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, Sayyed Ali Khamenei & Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah.
In July 1979, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Imam Ruhollah Al-Khomeini, announced Al-Quds International Day, voicing a complete support to the Palestinian cause against the Zionist enemy.
Although this Day is marked annually every last Friday of the Holy Islamic Month of Ramadan, Imam Khomeini has deliberately given it an international attribute in order to be the day of all the oppressed worldwide.
A Robust Message from Palestine’s Foreign Minister and an Attempt at Israeli Propaganda from BBC Israeli Hasbara Asset Raffi Berg
Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riad Al-Maliki, talking in Catham House, London, May 2019
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | May 29, 2019
Chatham House, the international affairs think-tank in London, recently invited Dr Riad Malki, Palestine’s minister of foreign affairs, to talk about the future of Palestine ahead of the “Deal of the century” dreamed up by the Trump administration. Malki is involved in shaping the Palestinian response to that initiative when it is finally revealed.
During questions Raffi Berg (pictured at right), editor of the BBC News website’s Middle East section, said that while the official Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) position is for two states as the solution to the conflict, he mischievously suggested that the recent Israel election results showed that Israelis consider the Palestinians’ position to be “insincere”. He asked: “Can you make clear whether you fully accept the presence of Israel as a country in the Middle East within/outside [indistinct] the 1967 ceasefire line?”
This sounded a little off-key from the BBC, which is supposed to maintain an air of utter impartiality. However, Malki dealt with the unfriendly prod quite firmly:
We have made it very clear that we are going to accept, and we have taken the decision to accept, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, to accept the historic compromise that the state of Palestine will be established on the 22 per cent of historic Palestine. It is not only the Palestinian position, it is the position of almost every country around the world.
He reminded the audience that there is international consensus about the two-state solution and that the Palestinian state should be established on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem the capital of Palestine and of Israel. He continued:
We have also agreed in principle that we are ready during negotiations to talk about territorial exchange but always to keep the 1967 border as the border of the state of Palestine. So, we are not going to accept anything less than that.
If anyone talks about the State of Palestine on less than the 1967 border, or the State of Israel beyond that line, this is not acceptable because it defies not only the negotiating position but international law and the international consensus.
I recently wrote about Hanan Ashrawi, a long-time member of the PLO executive and an all-round formidable lady, saying we should see and hear more of her in a front line spokes role. The same goes for Raid Malki who is well informed and articulate and came across well at Chatham House. That they remain invisible to the Western world is the fault of the PLO and Palestinian Authority who are simply not media savvy and stubbornly intend to remain that way. Their embassies (or missions) around the globe are the same.
Malki was a one-time leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and has a PhD in civil engineering from the American University. His impressive CV includes Head of the Civil Engineering Department at Birzeit University, the European Peace Prize in 2000 in Copenhagen and the Italian Peace Prize (Lombardi) in 2005. He is a visiting professor at several European universities.
In his Chatham House speech Malki pulls no punches: “I know that some may be uncomfortable to hear the words ‘colonialism’ and ‘apartheid’ associated with Israel. But they are what we experience on a daily basis and what is visible to the naked eye.”
As for America, “the US administration has shown nothing but disregard for Palestinian rights and Palestinian lives, for international law and the internationally recognised terms of reference, and for common sense and decency”.
The Palestinian people, he insists, “want freedom not conditional liberty. They want sovereignty and not limited autonomy. They want peace and coexistence not domination and subjugation. He continued:
There are two ways to end the conflict: a peace accord or capitulation, meaning a surrender act. We continue to stand ready to negotiate the peace accords based on the internationally recognised terms of reference and the pre-1967 borders, under international monitoring holding accountable the parties and within a determined and binding timeframe. We will never be ready to sign a surrender act.
It is worth watching the video. Sparks are set to fly when Trump and Kushner eventually unveil their big deal.
I’m not a reader of the BBC News website. Long ago I came to distrust the BBC’s reporting of Middle East affairs, so I tend to ignore it. Berg’s line of questioning prompted me to look deeper and I found this piece from 2013 by Amena Saleem in Electronic Intifada titled “BBC editor urged colleagues to downplay Israel’s siege of Gaza”, in which she reports that Berg, during Israel’s eight-day assault on Gaza in November 2012 which killed nearly 200 Palestinians, emailed BBC staff to write more favourably about Israel. He urged them, allegedly, not to blame Israel for the prolonged onslaught but to promote the Israeli government line that the “offensive” was “aimed at ending rocket fire from Gaza”, despite the fact that it was Israel which broke the ceasefire.
In another email, he told them: “Please remember, Israel doesn’t maintain a blockade around Gaza. Egypt controls the southern border.” However, the United Nations regards Israel as the occupying power in Gaza and had called on Israel to end its siege, which is a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1860.
It is interesting to read that Berg’s boss until last year was James Harding, an ex-Murdoch editor and self-proclaimed Israel supporter – a strange choice for a supposedly non-partisan head of BBC News. Almost as strange as the appointment around the same time of ex-Labour minister and former Chairman of Labour Friends of Israel James Purnell as director of strategy at this beacon of impartiality. Purnell is still there.
UN Rapporteur: Canada’s trade agreement with Israel violates international law
![Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied Michael Lynk [Alhadath24/Facebook]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017_3_21-Michael-Lynk.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied Michael Lynk [Alhadath24/Facebook]
MEMO | May 31, 2019
Canada’s updated trade agreement with Israel violates international law, the UN Special Rapporteur for the [occupied] Palestinian territories, Professor S. Michael Lynk, has said in an article published by the Australian news site, The Conversation.
Commenting on legislation known as Bill C-85 — the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act — which received royal assent on Monday, Lynk said that it lacks “a human rights provision, which would commit both parties to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law.” The Act also allows goods and services originating on illegal Israeli settlements to enter Canada without any tariffs. These “glaring” omissions, said Lynk, not only violate international law but also Canadian law.
The article, which was co-written with Alex Neve, the Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, explained that Canadian foreign policy and Ottawa’s own legislation “has long recognised the Israeli settlements as illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
According to the authors, “The 1957 Geneva Conventions Act commits Canada to respect the strict obligations of the convention, including the prohibition against civilian settlements in occupied territory. And the 2000 Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act designates civilian settlements in occupied territory as a war crime.”
Clarifying their position further, they cite the UN Human Rights Council, which in 2016 urged all states to ensure that: “They are not taking actions that either recognise or assist the expansion of [Israeli] settlements… in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, including with regard to the issue of trading with settlements, consistent with their obligations under international law.”
They also cite a number of UN Resolutions, including Security Council Resolution 2334 which states that the Israeli settlements are “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of a two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”
Lynk pointed out that while Israel denies that it is an occupying power, there is in fact “a virtual wall-to-wall consensus among the international community — including the United Nations, the European Union, the International Court of Justice, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Canada — that the laws of occupation, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, apply in full to the Palestinian territory.”
The authors state that the Bill “makes no distinction between Israel and its illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory and it provides encouragement to the economic growth of the settlements by allowing their goods and services to enter Canada tariff-free.”
In conclusion, Lynk and Neve say that the Bill “entangles Canada in the serious violations of both international human rights and humanitarian law that are part and parcel of the Israeli occupation.”
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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