Deal of the Century, minus one: Is Trump’s peace plan for the Middle East the deletion of Palestine?
By Helen Buyniski | RT | March 27, 2019
It has become clear that US President Donald Trump, despite his vaunted prowess as the Dealmaker-in-Chief, isn’t interested in brokering peace between Israel and Palestine. His Middle East peace has no room for Palestine at all.
Trump promised to bridge the impossible gap between the incredible shrinking Palestinian territories and the Israeli government that long ago left behind such niceties as international law. Along with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Trump declared he would build a peace where none before him had succeeded. Unfettered by the rules of international sovereignty, as he displayed by handing Israel a Golan Heights that wasn’t his to give, Trump’s peace-making abilities are – in theory at least – limited only by his imagination.
Instead, his “Deal of the Century” – which Kushner has hyped across the Middle East for months – remains unseen by Palestinian eyes, and even Trump’s own diplomats have expressed concern over the viability of an Israeli-Palestinian peace that lacks any input from the Palestinian side. To make matters worse, February’s Warsaw conference that was supposed to tease a peaceful way forward for the region instead exposed the US and Israel’s real agenda when Israeli PM Netanyahu mistweeted its goal was “to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”
The “Deal of the Century” is rumored to throw Palestine a few economic crumbs in exchange for Jerusalem, most of the West Bank, and relinquishing the right of return. Is it any wonder that no countries appear to be taking it seriously?
Trump claims the deal will be revealed in all its glory after the Israeli election in two weeks, when Netanyahu is presumably reelected, though with even staunch allies like Saudi Arabia condemning Trump’s gift-wrapping of the Golan as a dire threat to regional peace, it’s difficult to believe such a peace could be revived.
Lucky for him, then, that it doesn’t have to be. The big plan – and the reason it’s kept such a big secret from Ramallah – doesn’t include Palestine at all. When Trump’s through, there will be no Palestine left worth negotiating with.
Like his Golan Heights move, Trump’s out-of-left-field decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem last year provoked international condemnation. The UN censured the move; the Palestinians took to the streets, where a few more were gunned down by IDF soldiers than on a typical Tuesday. But this week’s AIPAC conference has seen several US allies quietly sign on with their own embassy moves. Recent US coup-beneficiary Honduras joined its neighbor Guatemala in moving its embassy to Jerusalem, while Romania broke with the EU to do the same.
Bezalel Smotrich, deputy speaker of the Knesset, knows a giving mood when he sees one and has matter-of-factly asked Trump to recognize over half a century of illegal West Bank settlements by handing over the whole territory. It wouldn’t be any more of a stretch than the Golan was, after all – the same UN resolutions and international law have condemned the Israeli land-grab, the same US vetoes in the Security Council have negated the condemnation, and the same Manifest Destiny has spurred the theft of other people’s land. Trump’s primary financial backer, casino magnate and IDF fan-boy Sheldon Adelson, is one of the main funders of West Bank settlements, so the business connections are already in place. The ostensibly Palestinian territory is already so honeycombed with illegal dwellings, walls, and apartheid roads it’s practically a done deal.
Perhaps most tellingly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted a highlight reel of his pre-AIPAC Israeli jaunt, complete with the al-Aqsa mosque – a Muslim holy site sitting on real estate revered by both Jews and Christians – surgically excised, replaced by a rendering of the Third Temple. Pompeo spent his CIA years buttonholing colleagues in the hallway to chat about the coming Rapture – the Third Temple means a lot to him, eschatologically speaking. Palestinians, Muslims, international law? Not so much.
Earlier this month, the new and improved US embassy in Jerusalem absorbed the consulate that had served as de facto Palestinian Authority liaison. So goes the last diplomatic link with the would-be Palestinian state. Most US lawmakers espouse support for a two-state solution, even as Israeli settlements have engulfed the West Bank over the last decade and Netanyahu has legally declared non-Jews second-class citizens; Trump has refused to commit to either model. It’s clear what state he prefers.
Lest anyone think the move to efface all traces of Palestine is accidental, a parallel linguistic campaign is underway. No longer do US government reports refer to the “occupied” West Bank or Golan Heights, both territories illegally seized by Israel in 1967 and held to this day. Israeli groups have even rewritten history textbooks to frame Israel’s conquests in a more flattering light – why not remove Palestine altogether.
The US has curtailed its financial support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, leaving a $125 million hole in the group that sustains much of what’s left of Palestine’s civilian infrastructure after decades of ruinous blockades, bombardments, and apartheid policies so egregious South Africa has recoiled with déjà vu. The decision followed the discontinuation of $200 million in economic aid for the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu applauded the financial coups de grace, calling the millions of Palestinians descended from those who were evicted from their land during the 1948 Nakba “fictitious refugees.” Kushner himself has called for two million Palestinian refugees living in Jordan to be delisted as “refugees.”
And what of Gaza, which international observers have called an “open air concentration camp” and “Israel’s weapons-testing laboratory”? They have a few more weapons to test before taking it over completely, and Uncle Sam has already got his checkbook out. It’s no wonder Trump is more popular in Israel than he is in his own country. If there were truth-in-advertising laws governing elections, MAGA would be MIGA: Make Israel Great Again.
Sayyed Nasrallah: “Liar” Pompeo Visited Lebanon to Incite against Hezbollah
Al-Manar – March 26, 2019
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah lashed out at “liar” US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who visited Lebanon last week, stressing that the US official’s remarks didn’t contain just single true issue.
In a speech broadcast via Al-Manar on Tuesday, Sayyed Nasrallah commented on Pompeo’s joint press conference with Lebanese Foreign Minister, Gebran Bassil last week.
The resistance leader stressed that the US official had visited Lebanon to incite the Lebanese people against Hezbollah, noting that had it not been for Hezbollah, Pompeo would have not made his visit to Lebanon.
On the other hand, Sayyed Nasrallah commented on the US decision to recognize the so-called “Israeli sovereignty” on the occupied Golan Heights, describing the move as “crucial and decisive event in the Arab-Israeli struggle.”
Recognition of ‘Israeli Sovereignty’
Sayyed Nasrallah started his speech by offering condolences to Iraqis over the Mosul ferry disaster which killed dozens of people earlier last week.
His eminence then saluted Palestinian people over their steadfastness in face of continued Israeli aggression in Gaza and West Bank.
Sayyed Nasrallah also didn’t forget to salute Yemeni people, over their heroic achievements throughout four years of Saudi-led war on the Arab impoverished country.
Hezbollah S.G. described the US move to recognize ‘Israeli sovereignty’ over Golan Heights a crucial and decisive event in the Arab-Israeli struggle, noting that “condemnation statements are no more enough.”
Talking about the indications of the US move, Sayyed Nasrallah said President Donald Trump’s decision means that he doesn’t care about millions of Muslims and Arabs- including his allies-, as well as about international laws, noting that the entire world recognizes the Syrian sovereignty on the Golan Heights.
“The entire world recognizes Golan as a Syrian land. Only Trump was the exception, just for the sake of ‘Israel’. This proves that the US administration neither recognize the United Nations nor the international laws, and uses these organizations just to serve its own interests.”
In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the international organizations and laws are incapable of restoring the rights of the people.
“The top priority of the US administrations and especially the current administration is ‘Israel’. There is no consideration for any other issue when it comes for the interest of ‘Israel’.”
Sayyed Nasrallah meanwhile, recalled when Trump administration recognized Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of the Zionist entity, stressing that the silence of the Muslim and Arab world “opened the door for all these violations.”
“After the move to recognize Al-Quds what was been left more? The Arabs and Muslims stance towards Al-Quds has encouraged Trump to take similar actions regarding the Golan,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.
Sayyed Nasrallah called on Arab states to withdraw the 2002 Arab initiative during an upcoming Arab summit in Tunis. On the other hand Sayyed Nasrallah stressed that the only way to regain Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian occupied lands from the Zionist entity is the resistance.
“Liar” Pompeo
Sayyed Nasrallah the commented at statement made by Pompeo last week at length, discussing most of the points mentioned by the US official during his press conference with FM Bassil.
“First, in shape: Pompeo was reading a written statement in which Hezbollah was mentioned 18 times while Iran was mentioned 19 times. He refused to answer the reporters’ questions.”
“We feel happy when an official from the world’s most powerful state is concerned over our role. We feel happy when the administration of The Great Satan is annoyed by Hezbollah.”
Sayyed Nasrallah said that Pompeo’s remarks on Hezbollah “made us more faithful that we are in the right position.”
“Second, in the content: I didn’t find in Pompeo’s remarks a single true and right statement. The US is fighting in the region on behalf of ‘Israel’.”
“Pompeo talked about stability and prosperity in Lebanon. He described Hezbollah as the main problem in the country and the region for the past 34 years. However he didn’t mention massacres and crimes committed by the Israeli occupation throughout these years. According to Pompeo, ‘Israel’ poses no threat to Lebanon and the region, but Hezbollah does, and this is a big lie.”
“Pompeo said that Hezbollah is an obstacle in front of the Lebanese people’s dreams. Is that true? The Lebanese people dream of securing peace in their country, dream of regaining its land and in preventing other countries from violating its wealth, dream of building a powerful state and countering corruption. Does Hezbollah pose an obstacle in this regard, or it is a party that has been working to achieve these dreams?” Sayyed Nasrallah wondered.
Commenting on Pompeo’s remarks that Hezbollah is seeking destruction through its “terrorists wing”, Sayyed Nasrallah lashed out the US official, stressing that the US itself has been for many years seeking destruction and committing crimes across the world.
Touching upon Hezbollah’s engagement in the Syrian war, Sayyed Nasrallah said that Pompeo in his remarks last week in Beirut was addressing Hezbollah’s incubating environment, stressing that the Lebanese resistance party had defended Lebanon against Takfiri terrorists supported by the US.
“All know what Lebanon’s fate would have been if ISIL and Nusra had controlled Syria.”
Commenting on Pompeo’s question on how Hezbollah missiles can save Lebanon, Sayyed Nasrallah described such remarks as “stupid”, stressing that Israeli attacks against Lebanon have been since years ago.
“An official from the most terrorist state in the world came to Lebanon to incite the Lebanese people against Hezbollah’s resistance.”
Sayyed Nasrallah then described Pompeo as a “liar”, recalling the US official remarks on Syrian refugees.
“The US has been preventing Syrian refugees in Rukban camp and other areas from returning to their land.”
Commenting on Pompeo’s remarks when he asked “what Hezbollah and Iran have offered to Lebanon,” Sayyed Nasrallah addressed the US official as saying: “Had it not been for Hezbollah, you would have not made your visit to Lebanon.”
UN and EU statements reveal their overt support for Israel

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | March 26, 2019
Predictably, the UN’s first remarks about Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip focused more on a single rocket reaching north of Tel Aviv than the Zionist state’s ongoing colonial violence against Palestinian civilians and its destruction of what remains of the enclave. Likewise, the Palestinian people themselves will be of no concern to the international body unless there is a rising death toll and images of severely wounded people splashed across social media.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, we are told, is “gravely concerned” and, again predictably, has asked for maximum restraint from “both sides”. However, his “concern” was framed thus: “Today’s firing of a rocket from Gaza towards Israel is a serious and unacceptable violation.”
Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, echoed the statement from Guterres in a tweet which deplored the firing of a rocket as “absolutely unacceptable”. So far, Mladenov has not updated his concerns to describe the shelling of Gaza by Israel in the same terms, despite its bombs inflicting infinitely more damage. The EU has followed suit, emphasising its “fundamental commitment to the security of Israel.” The lives and property of Palestinians mean nothing to such people.
Even as a ceasefire was purportedly reached, Israel continued targeting the densely-populated enclave and the Gaza border was declared to be a closed military zone. It is more than likely that international institutions are waiting for further violations before they order pointless inquiries and studies, and issue conclusions and recommendations, all the while forcing Palestinians into diplomatic irrelevance by allowing Israel to exacerbate the humanitarian situation which has conveniently erased the political obligation to end colonisation.
Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel has targeted Gaza repeatedly to the point that it has now normalised air strikes and the international community has accommodated its violence and rights violations by refusing to respond and react accordingly. Both Israel and international institutions, however, need a point of reference to justify such impunity. A rocket, despite its relative insignificance, when compared with Israeli air strikes and shelling, is enough to prompt official statements that start off with concern and end with declaring the priority of Israel’s security over Palestinian lives.
An unnamed diplomatic source referred to by Israel National News has dismissed the possibility of a large-scale operation and described the reinforcements along Gaza’s nominal border as “deterrents”. Air strikes, however, are set to continue.
In line with the current General Election frenzy in Israel, several ministers and candidates, including former Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, have requested further action. Gantz described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who also holds the defence portfolio — as having “lost his grip on security”, while Economy Minister Eli Cohen called for targeted assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. All this in retaliation for a rocket, as Israel would have the rest of the world believe.
As an aggressive occupier, though, Israel cannot define its actions as “retaliation” and “self-defence”. It is an instigator and has committed war crimes ever since its creation on Palestinian land in 1948.
Why, we must ask, are the UN and the EU intent on removing the distinction between possible war crimes and security when it comes to Israel? Both are trying to frame their political intent as a response to the rocket which landed north of Tel Aviv, yet the UN and the EU have clearly planned strategically for the moments when they can declare their allegiance and support for Israel without having to maintain an illusion of concern for human rights. Yet another opportunity for them to reveal their overt support for the colonial-occupation state arrived on Monday.
‘Lone Wolf’ Myth Covers Up Possible Mossad Role in New Zealand Terrorist Attack
By Max Parry • Unz Review • March 27, 2019
Ever since the news broke on March 15 of two consecutive mass shootings at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, corporate media has been determined to establish that suspect Brenton Tarrant acted alone in the terrorist attacks that took the lives of 50 innocent Muslim worshippers and wounded 50 others. While mainstream media has been predictably eager to parade the tragedy as another chapter in the wave of rising Islamophobia and right-wing extremism globally, they have put equal effort into conscientiously avoiding any evidence that contradicts the ‘lone wolf’ theory they decided on in the initial hours following the first mass shooting in New Zealand since 1997.
Whenever terrorism is committed by Arabs or Muslims, the fourth estate is usually anxious to speculate whether or not the suspect is connected to a larger radical syndicate. However, the same scrutiny is seldom applied to white nationalists like Tarrant. In fact, they are even hesitant to label it ‘terrorism’ at all, with everyone from The Daily Telegraph to the fanatical Zionist Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News settling for the choice words ‘mass shooting.’ While Tarrant denies being part of any group in his public declaration, he does hint that he is part of a broader extremist network:
“I am not a direct member of any organization or group, though I have donated to many nationalist groups and have interacted with many more. No group ordered my attack, I make the decision myself. Though I did contact the reborn Knights Templar for a blessing in support of the attack, which was given.”
As many have noted, the “Knights Templar” is the name of an anti-Muslim militant group that another infamous right-wing terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, claimed to belong to. During the 2011 Norway attacks, Breivik targeted a government building in the city of Oslo and a youth camp of the ruling Labour party on the island of Utøya in a sequential car bombing and mass shooting that killed a total of 77 people. However, the media and prosecutors in Breivik’s trial were insistent that the group was fictional and the only possibility was that he was an ‘army of one’ while suffering from a psychiatric disorder, another trait that is apparently only applicable to white-skinned terrorists. There was no serious inquiry into whether he was part of a larger nexus, even though he had direct contact with groups like the English Defense League (EDL), the British far right Islamophobic group led by neo-fascist agitator Tommy Robinson. Breivik was portrayed as a fundamentalist Christian but was curiously a member of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons, an organization with a history of ties to the espionage world and susceptible to infiltration because of its inherent secrecy. The original Knights Templar, or “Templars,” were a Christian army founded in the 10th century who initially shielded pilgrims voyaging to the Holy Land and later fought against Muslims during the Crusades while the name is drawn from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
What has been downplayed by the yellow press is the specific brand of Islamophobic extremism that was the basis of Tarrant’s attacks. His ideology is revealed in a 73-page manifesto, entitled “The Great Replacement” in reference to the ‘white genocide’ theory held by white nationalist identitarians, which he dispatched less than ten minutes prior to the ambush in emails to several media outlets and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office. While the corporate press is correct that Tarrant and Breivik clearly follow the practices of the anti-Islam xenophobic movement on the rise in Europe, North America and now Oceania, the key element they have deliberately avoided mentioning is a strong collective affinity for the state of Israel. The coverage of Christchurch has repeated the same pattern displayed following the 2011 Norway attacks where the distinguishing characteristic of the extremism both culprits adhere to is of a staunchly pro-Zionist variety which has been decidedly overlooked. In the eight years between the two attacks, the pro-Israel European right has only augmented in size. In his manifesto, Brenton Tarrant even boasted the unverified claim to have had “brief contact with Knight Justiciar Breivik” while taking “true inspiration” from him. His Norwegian idol had his own 1,500 page manifesto where Israel was approvingly name-dropped nearly 400 times while he declared:
“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists.”
The combination of far right nationalism and support for Israel may seem like an unlikely combination, but it is an ideology shared by most of the Islamophobic and anti-immigrant political parties throughout Europe that have performed impressively well in European Parliament elections. These include Hungary’s Fidesz, the Italian League and Five Star Movement, the Flemish Flaams Belang, Poland’s Law and Justice, Belgian People’s Party, the Progress Party of Norway (of which Breivik was a member), True Finns Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Deutschland, and many others. It is likely that Tarrant, like Breivik, is not anti-semitic and actually views Jews as ‘allies’ in a civilizational crusade against Islam. Just as Israel has helped orchestrate the US wars in the Middle East against its enemies that has contributed to the mass influx of refugees seeking asylum in the West, it has fostered the Islamophobic backlash to it by supporting the growing far right movement that is ascendant.
Following the tragedy in Christchurch, it was revealed that 28-year old Tarrant had traveled extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia, including to Afghanistan, Pakistan and even North Korea. The year prior, he also visited Israel for nine days, just as his fellow Christian Zionist Breivik had done several times prior to 2011. Tarrant’s journey in Europe included a stop in Ukraine, a hotbed of neo-Nazi activity and as it happens during the massacre he donned the SS wolf’s hook symbol used by the right wing paramilitary group Azov Battalion to which Israel has provided weapons support in its fight against pro-Russian separatists. The blend of such considerable travel activity while stockpiling a cache of semi-automatic firearms with a digital footprint espousing his extremist views online makes the likelihood that Tarrant managed to remain under the radar of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) difficult to believe. It is especially doubtful they would be unable to detect him considering he was reportedly interviewed by New Zealand police prior to obtaining his firearms license in 2017.
Judging by the Facebook live-streamed video of the massacre shot by the suspect himself wearing a GoPro head-mounted camera that resembled first-person shooter video game shows he was no amateur and possibly professionally trained as a militant. Given his extensive travel and the apparent expertise used to carry out the attacks, there are many legitimate questions about how his ventures were sponsored and whether he had accomplices. Police found undetonated car bombs in addition to his arsenal and believe he was planning on carrying out a third attack with them. What was he doing in his travels? Was he really able to finance everything alone using crypto-currency investments as purported by the media? He could very well have been a patsy in a larger plot or received support from abroad. For instance, from a certain national intelligence service whose notorious motto is “for by cunning stratagems, you wage war.”
Mossad covert operations have been exposed several times over the years violating New Zealand’s sovereignty and international law which caused a series of diplomatic rows between the two countries. Most recently was in 2011 following a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch which caused significant damage to the city and killed 185 people, coincidentally the very same week as the attacks in Norway by Anders Breivik. Incredibly, a stone structure of a building collapsed onto a van during the earthquake which killed a man inside who turned out to be an Israeli national. His death accidentally unearthed a ring of Mossad agents after the man was discovered with multiple fake passports and USB flash drives which contained confidential data believed to have been illegally downloaded from the New Zealand police’s national computer system. The other agents in the Israeli sleeper cell were able to flee the country less than a day after his body was discovered, probably to avoid the fallout that occurred after an earlier incident in the country just a few years prior. In 2004, two Israeli men who turned out to be Mossad agents were arrested trying to obtain fraudulent passports and travel documentation that included stealing the identity of a quadriplegic. The two men were subsequently jailed for six months for engaging in criminal enterprise.

Pictured: Uriel Zosha Kelman, an Israeli spy, arrives in court in disguise in 2004 (left)) / Zev Barkan, another spy (right).
Mossad seemed to have developed a habit of revealing themselves in light of the infamous arrest of five of its agents in Secaucus, New Jersey on the morning of September 11th, 2001 by the FBI who were tipped off that a group of men were observed suspiciously dancing and celebrating while watching the WTC towers ablaze and collapsing across the Hudson River. The “dancing Israelis” were found with $5,000 in cash which raised suspicions while their vehicle was traced to a shady moving company called Urban Moving Systems that was suspected to be a front for an intelligence operation after their headquarters was abandoned and its owner, Dominick Suter, immediately fled to Israel following their apprehension. During their two month detention, the CIA intervened and halted the probe while the agents were subsequently deported in a deal with the Israeli government for overstaying their visas but not before it was confirmed that at least two of the men were intelligence officers and no ordinary moving company employees.
The world was briefly reminded of this mysterious case when Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 made the wild exaggeration that on 9/11 he had personally observed “thousands of Muslims” celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers across the river in New Jersey. It is likely that Trump mixed up two different reports from 9/11, one of Reuters footage widely circulated by major networks of a small group of Arabs in East Jerusalem celebrating the attacks and the reports about the Israelis arrested in New Jersey who were initially believed to have been of “Middle Eastern appearance” and descent. One wonders if Trump would accurately recall his other observations that morning now that he is in the service of his Saudi and Israeli masters. Needless to say, this widely suppressed story which should have been front page news led many to rightly suspect there was prior knowledge and even direct involvement among Israeli intelligence in the 9/11 attacks, along with a trove of other evidence.
ABC News Friday 06/21/2002 05:42:40 pm-05:46:50 pm (Studio: Elizabeth Vargas) Report introduced. (Studio: John Miller) Exclusive ABC News investigation into what five Israelis were doing on …
The New Jersey cell were also in possession of foreign passports. Mossad has typically used fake passports, including that of Australians and Kiwis, regularly for its clandestine operations and carrying out assassinations like the 2010 targeted killing of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai which one of the spies apprehended in New Zealand, Zev Barkan, was involved in. After the arrest of the two spooks in New Zealand in 2004, the government imposed diplomatic sanctions against Israel and temporarily severed high-level contacts between the two countries in what became a significant diplomatic rift. WikiLeaks diplomatic cables revealed that the U.S. was not at all pleased.
Relations had returned to normal between the countries until December 2016 when along with Malaysia, Senegal, Venezuela and others, New Zealand co-sponsored the controversial United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 which condemned Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories during the last months of the Obama administration. The same motion briefly became mired in the Trump-Russia investigation when former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI about lobbying activities related to the resolution during the transition between administrations on behalf of Israel. The Trump White House has since proven to be the most fanatically Zionist presidency since the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948. Over the years, New Zealand has shown a willingness to stand up to Jerusalem and its brazen disregard for international law that other nations could learn from. Despite being a small nation, it has played an important role in pro-Palestinian activism and the prospect of Palestinian statehood just as it did in protesting South African Apartheid in the 1980s. In 2018, when New Zealand-born popular musician Lorde canceled a concert in Tel Aviv in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, she became the target of vicious Zionist smear campaign which saw right-wing Trumpist Rabbi Schmuley Boteach take out a full-page ad in The Washington Post denouncing her as a bigot while a $13,000 lawsuit was filed by the Mossad-linked Shurat HaDin lawfare NGO. Meanwhile, unlike Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Jacinda Ardern has been critical of the Trump administration’s move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, stating it undermines the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
New Zealand’s relatively even-handed foreign policy has likely rattled the Zionists and their far right Islamophobic counterparts in the West and it is possible that it is viewed as a threat to the interests of Israel and the U.S. The feasibly manufactured terrorist attack against New Zealand has greatly disrupted the small country, a state which in 2018 had its lowest homicide rate in 40 years and averages well below 100 murders per year, making this attack an extremely rare occurrence for the peaceful country. In light of the attacks on the mosques in Christchurch, it could now end up acquiring the police state model of the U.S. and Israel as part of the global ‘War on Terror.’ The country immediately issued a ban on semiautomatic weapons following the tragedy in a disturbing rollback of civil liberties while engaging in an unprecedented censorship effort to criminalize sharing and possession of Tarrant’s manifesto and video. Prior to Breivik’s perpetration of the attacks in Norway, there had been significant political tensions between Oslo and Jerusalem in the months leading up to the violence due to Norway’s intent to recognize a Palestinian state and the circumstances in relations between New Zealand and Israel prior to Christchurch is eerily reminiscent.
Israel has a storied history of being a state sponsor of international terrorism as well as the use of ‘false flag’ operations to achieve its political objectives, most notably in the 1954 Lavon Affair, codenamed Operation Susannah, where the Aman branch of its military intelligence services recruited Egyptian nationals to commit bombings to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood in order to maintain desired British military presence in Egypt. It continues such cloak-and-dagger tactics to this day with the use of terror proxies such as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) and Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to undermine Iran, as well as the arming and funding of al-Qaeda affiliated Syrian jihadist groups against the Assad government. If it is willing to co-sponsor radical Islamists with its ally Saudi Arabia to attack their mutual regional enemies, now that the ruling Likud Party has made strange bedfellows with far right Islamophobes in the West it is within the realm of possibility it would continue to do the same especially when the victims are Arab or Muslim.
Regardless of whether or not there turns out to be any Mossad fingerprints discovered on the Christchurch shootings, if the world is serious about confronting the emerging far right internationally it must be willing to accurately diagnose the phenomenon. One of its most distinctive attributes is its Christian Zionism and a shared belief that the Bible gives Israel evidential right to Palestinian land and that Jews are inherently non-indigenous to Europe. The ever-expanding colonization of the West Bank and Gaza has solidified Israel’s nationalist foundations, especially now that Arabic has been removed as a second official language and the passing of the 2018 Nationality Law defining Israel as an ethno-nationalist state with Arabs officially second-class citizens. If Israel did not directly participate in the 9/11 attacks by infiltrating the al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany and directing the airplane hijackings as many legitimately suspect, it has certainly facilitated the U.S. wars in the Middle East against its regional enemies and now it is nurturing the Islamophobic far right in the West hostile to the flood of displaced refugees fleeing them. Israeli policy has principally benefited from all this but one can only expect the hasbaric retaliation of ‘anti-Semitism’ smears like those against UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota for pointing this out. In the meantime, the Russiagate hoax has deflected attention away from Jerusalem toward Moscow in regards to foreign cultivation of the growing far right nationalist movement in the West. One hopes the recent bust of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report will put some of the distraction to rest and shift the speculation toward Israel where it belongs.
Finally, the political confusion of zealots like Tarrant needs to be addressed as entirely predictable instead of as unintended consequences of the War on Terror and the financial crisis. Recently, 2020 Democratic U.S. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang became the subject of establishment-led smears simply for acknowledging verifiable facts about declining birth-rates of white Americans where he was vilified as adjoining with the views of those like Tarrant. Yet these statistics designated by race that Yang recognized are expressions of the results of class conflict while genuine anger is being misdirected toward immigrants instead of capital and its never-ending changes in labor demands. This is the cycle which must be broken if this holy war between the West and Islam stirred up by Zionists or what the orientialist Samuel Huntington called the ‘clash of civilizations’ is to end. If not, we cannot only expect the U.S. empire to continue its downward slide and its fear of a multipolar world to culminate in an internecine that will turn the whole world into a tragedy like Christchurch.
Trump’s Stance on the Golan will allow Israel to Operate with Impunity Elsewhere
By Jonathan Cook – The National – March 25, 2019
When President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem last year, effectively sabotaging any hope of establishing a viable Palestinian state, he tore up the international rulebook.
Last week, he trampled all over its remaining tattered pages. He did so, of course, via Twitter.
Referring to a large piece of territory Israel seized from Syria in 1967, Mr Trump wrote: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability.”
Israel expelled 130,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights in 1967, under cover of the Six Day War, and then annexed the territory 14 years later – in violation of international law. A small population of Syrian Druze are the only survivors of that ethnic cleansing operation.
Replicating its illegal acts in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel immediately moved Jewish settlers and businesses into the Golan.
Until now, no country had recognised Israel’s act of plunder. In 1981, UN member states, including the US, declared Israeli efforts to change the Golan’s status “null and void”.
But in recent months, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu began stepping up efforts to smash that long-standing consensus and win over the world’s only superpower to his side.
He was spurred into action when Bashar Al Assad – aided by Russia – began to decisively reverse the territorial losses the Syrian government had suffered during the nation’s eight-year war.
The fighting dragged in a host of other actors. Israel itself used the Golan as a base from which to launch covert operations to help Mr Assad’s opponents in southern Syria, including Islamic State fighters. Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, meanwhile, tried to limit Israel’s room for manoeuvre on the Syrian leader’s behalf.
Iran’s presence close by was how Mr Netanyahu publicly justified the need for Israel to take permanent possession of the Golan, calling it a vital buffer against Iranian efforts to “use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel”.
Before that, when Mr Assad was losing ground to his enemies, the Israeli leader made a different case. Then, he argued that Syria was breaking apart and its president would never be in a position to reclaim the Golan.
Mr Netanyahu’s current rationalisation is no more persuasive than the earlier one. Russia and the United Nations are already well advanced on re-establishing a demilitarised zone on the Syrian side of the separation-of-forces line. That would ensure Iran could not deploy close to the Golan Heights.
Mr Netanyahu is set to meet Mr Trump in Washington on Monday, when the president’s tweet will reportedly be converted into an executive order.
The timing is significant. This is another crude attempt by Mr Trump to meddle in Israel’s election, due on April 9. It will provide Mr Netanyahu with a massive fillip as he struggles against corruption indictments and a credible threat from a rival party, Blue and White, headed by former army generals.
Mr Netanyahu could barely contain his glee, reportedly calling Mr Trump to tell him: “You made history!”
But, in truth, this was no caprice. Israel and Washington have been heading in this direction for a while.
In Israel, there is cross-party support for keeping the Golan.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US and a confidant of Mr Netanyahu’s, formally launched a plan last year to quadruple the size of the Golan’s settler population, to 100,000, within a decade.
The US State Department offered its apparent seal of approval last month when it included the Golan Heights for the first time in the “Israel” section of its annual human rights report.
This month, senior Republican senator Lindsey Graham made a very public tour of the Golan in an Israeli military helicopter, alongside Mr Netanyahu and David Friedman, Mr Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Mr Graham said he and fellow senator Ted Cruz would lobby the US president to change the territory’s status.
Mr Trump, meanwhile, has made no secret of his disdain for international law. This month, his officials barred entry to the US to staff from the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, who are investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The ICC has made enemies of both Washington and Israel in its initial, and meagre, attempts to hold the two to account.
Whatever Mr Netanyahu’s spin about the need to avert an Iranian threat, Israel has other, more concrete reasons for holding on to the Golan.
The territory is rich in water sources and provides Israel with decisive control over the Sea of Galilee, a large freshwater lake that is crucially important in a region facing ever greater water shortages.
The 1,200 square kilometres of stolen land is being aggressively exploited, from burgeoning vineyards and apple orchards to a tourism industry that, in winter, includes the snow-covered slopes of Mount Hermon.
As noted by Who Profits, an Israeli human rights organisation, in a report this month, Israeli and US companies are also setting up commercial wind farms to sell electricity.
And Israel has been quietly co-operating with US energy giant Genie to explore potentially large oil reserves under the Golan. Mr Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has family investments in Genie. But extracting the oil will be difficult, unless Israel can plausibly argue that it has sovereignty over the territory.
For decades the US had regularly arm-twisted Israel to enter a mix of public and back-channel peace talks with Syria. Just three years ago, Barack Obama supported a UN Security Council rebuke to Mr Netanyahu for stating that Israel would never relinquish the Golan.
Now Mr Trump has given a green light for Israel to hold on to it permanently.
But, whatever he says, the decision will not bring security for Israel, or regional stability. In fact, it makes a nonsense of Mr Trump’s “deal of the century” – a regional peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that, according to rumour, may be unveiled soon after the Israeli election.
Instead, US recognition will prove a boon for the Israeli right, which has been clamouring to annex vast areas of the West Bank and thereby drive a final nail into the coffin of the two-state solution.
Israel’s right can now plausibly argue: “If Mr Trump has consented to our illegal seizure of the Golan, why not also our theft of the West Bank?”
Honduran president calls Jerusalem Israeli capital, not moving embassy yet
MEMO | March 25, 2019
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez on Sunday called Jerusalem Israel’s capital, saying the Central American country would open a trade office there, but he stopped short of announcing plans to move his embassy from Tel Aviv, Reuters reports.
Hernandez has in recent months signalled that his government is mulling moving the Honduran embassy to Jerusalem, and made his comments on the holy city during his appearance at a conference on U.S.-Israeli relations in Washington.
“Today I have announced the first step, which is to open a trade office in Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel, and this will be an extension of our embassy in Tel Aviv,” Hernandez said in a statement issued by his government.
“I’ve said that a second step will draw a lot of attacks from the enemies of Israel and the United States, but we will continue along this path,” Hernandez added.
Hernandez’ comments follow the formal recognition by US President Donald Trump of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Last May, Trump moved the U.S. embassy to the disputed city.
Trump’s move was criticized by many foreign governments and caused anger among Palestinians, who with broad international backing seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they want to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
East Jerusalem is still considered occupied under international law, and the city’s status is supposed to be decided as part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
Hernandez, an ally of the United States, said the trade and cooperation office would open immediately in Jerusalem.
His foreign ministry said in a statement that Israel would in a reciprocal gesture open an office for cooperation in Tegucigalpa, giving it diplomatic status.
In 2017, Guatemala and neighbouring Honduras were two of only a handful of countries to join Israel and the United States in voting against a UN resolution calling on Washington to drop its recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
Guatemala moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in May after the United States, fueling expectations that Hernandez might follow suit.
Honduras and Guatemala are two of the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas. Both depend economically to a significant degree on U.S. aid and investment, and the leaders of the two have generated significant controversy.
Hernandez’ legitimacy was called into question during his 2017 re-election bid after the official vote count ground to a halt when he appeared to be headed for defeat.
After the count restarted, the trend turned against his opponent and the electoral authority declared him victor, a decision later backed by the United States.
Meanwhile, his Guatemalan counterpart, Jimmy Morales, has clashed with the United Nations for closing down a UN anti-corruption body that sought to have him impeached.
Romania breaks with EU to relocate its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem
RT | March 24, 2019
Romania will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Prime Minister Viorica Dancila announced at the AIPAC summit in Washington on Sunday, in a controversial move that goes against the rest of the European Union.
Speaking at the Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference, Dancila said Romania intends to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which she referred to as Israel’s capital, in a move that follows the US’ controversial decision to do so last year.
Most nations with diplomatic relations with Israel have their embassies in Tel Aviv, as, although Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital, it is not recognized as such by the international community. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their future capital, and Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 war, when it annexed the area from the rest of the West Bank.
Dancila is currently president of the Council of the European Union and the move is a marked departure from the position held by the rest of the EU. Romania, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, reportedly blocked an EU resolution objecting to the US embassy move, which said Jerusalem should be capital of both Israel and Palestine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Dancila to move Romania’s embassy when she visited Israel in January. “I hope you will act to stop the bad resolutions against Israel in the European Union,” he said. “And also, of course, to move your embassy and other embassies to Jerusalem.”
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called for Dancila to resign last April after she pushed a secret memorandum to move the embassy without consulting him, and after she went on a state visit to Israel without consulting him. As president, Iohannis is in charge of foreign policy and has the final decision on such moves.
Speaking before another meeting between Romania and Israel in November, Netanyahu explained some of the reasons they enjoy good relations: “We cooperate in matters of security, anti-terror. Romania stands often with Israel in difficult diplomatic arenas and we appreciate this. We recognize our friends and we consider Romania a great friend.” Netanyahu also referred to their shared concerns about “radical Islam.”
The president of Honduras also told AIPAC it would open diplomatic representation in Jerusalem, and hinted that if AIPAC would lobby on behalf of his country, he would consider opening an embassy too, Haaretz reports. Brazil has also said it will consider moving its embassy. Guatemala is the only country apart from the US to have moved its embassy to Jerusalem so far.
Alan “Israel Did 9/11” Sabrosky: Most Censored Man in America

By Kevin Barrett • Unz Review • March 24, 2019
Who’s afraid of Alan Sabrosky? Whoever they are, they have the ability to monitor and censor YouTube live-streams in real time. And they apparently don’t want you to know what Sabrosky thinks about the Holocaust.
That’s the obvious takeaway from the highly unusual example of YouTube censorship that disrupted the March 22 live broadcast of False Flag Weekly News. The broadcast, which live-streamed from Vimeo to three different YouTube channels, transpired normally up to the 59:31 mark, when Sabrosky stated that the Holocaust was “a technological and logistical impossibility—“ and suddenly his mike was cut… but only on the YouTube stream, archived here:
If you want to hear the rest of Dr. Sabrosky’s Holocaust statement (instead of long stretches of dead air) you’ll have to watch the Vimeo version, which was not censored:
False Flag Weekly News 03/22/2019–New Zealand False Flag? from No Lies Radio on Vimeo.
Whoever did this must have been monitoring the broadcast in real time. It must have been a human, not an AI algorithm. The censor must have had his or her finger hovering over the “cut his mike” button throughout the show. And that censor must have been trained and given the power to cut Sabrosky’s mike within a couple of seconds of Sabrosky starting to “deny the Holocaust.” Altogether quite an amazing feat of censorship!
But however logistically and technologically impressive this bizarre crime against free speech may have been, it seems even more impressively stupid and self-defeating. Can they really believe that actions like this are going to stop people from asking questions about the Holocaust? Haven’t they heard of the Streisand Effect? Isn’t everyone who hears about this going to say, “gee, if they have to take such extreme measures to silence this guy, maybe he’s onto something?”
It is really quite a tribute to Dr. Sabrosky and False Flag Weekly News that someone went to so much trouble. They must be spending far more money to monitor and censor us than we are spending doing the show in the first place. Talk about asymmetrical information warfare!
But I don’t believe the people behind this are as stupid as they seem. Such apparently counterproductive acts sometimes do serve strategic purposes. In this case, I assume the censors were beta-testing protocols for censoring live-streams in real time. It is no coincidence that this attack on Alan Sabrosky’s First Amendment rights came exactly one week after the allegedly live-streamed Christchurch shooting. Since the Christchurch terror event, Facebook and YouTube representatives have been all over the MSM announcing that they have to fix their systems to prevent “the live-streaming of hate.”
If I were a paranoid conspiracy theorist I would wonder whether the Christchurch attack was a set-up to roll out the beta testing of precisely this sort of censorship. I would note the incongruity of the fact that the people pushing for internet censorship are almost all Zionist Jews, not Muslims—yet the censorship is being rolled out on the pretext that it is supposed to protect Muslims and “honor the sacred Christchurch victims.” Since when did Zionists care about Muslim lives? They proudly slaughter a Christchurch worth of Palestinian Muslims every month or two. And they have murdered 32 million Muslims, and created tens of millions of refugees, in the 9/11 wars for Israel.
It’s as if the people behind the Christchurch push-for-censorship PR op, and the subsequent deployment of new censorship systems like the one just beta-tested against FFWN, are trying to conceal their true identities. Perhaps that is why they made sure that the word “Jew” was almost entirely absent from the Tarrant manifesto. As Daniel Haqiqatjou notes:
The 73-page document reads like it was written by someone who is trying very hard to pretend to be a White Nationalist… But there is one glaring inconsistency. If you ever visit places on the internet frequented and owned by White Nationalists, such as 4chan, 8chan, Daily Stormer, or Gab, one immediate, indubitable fact hits you in the face: These people hate Jews. More than anyone else, White Nationalists hate Jews and are not afraid of expressing it with thousands of different memes…. What is bizarre about Tarrant’s alleged manifesto is that he says a great deal about this (Jewish) plot. He rails against immigration, fertility rates, and “White genocide.” But he doesn’t mention who the supposed plotters are. Why? Why is Tarrant following the White Nationalist script to the letter but doesn’t mention Jews once in the entire 73 pages?
(Except one passing mention that they’re fine when they’re Israeli!)
If the perps were hiding their identities while orchestrating Christchurch and the internet censorship campaign it launched, they dropped the mask when they silenced Alan Sabrosky. We all know who reacts reflexively against “Holocaust denial.” And we all know who hates Alan Sabrosky, the former US Army War College Head of Strategic Studies who came out as a 9/11 truther on my radio show in March, 2010—and announced that Israel did it.
The Zionist fear and loathing of Sabrosky is so off-the-charts that the mere mention of his name can get you arrested. That’s what happened to Jeremy Rothe-Kushel in May 2016 when he tried to ask Dennis Ross a question during the Q&A after Ross’s talk at the Kansas City Public Library.
Tellingly, the Times of Israel report on Rothe-Kushel’s free speech lawsuit tiptoes around Sabrosky’s unspeakable name.
Alan Sabrosky, “he who must not be named,” is also “he who must not be broadcast.” Bonnie Faulkner’s Guns and Butter radio show, one of the most popular and respected Pacifica staples, was abruptly terminated by KPFA management last August due to Sabrosky’s appearance there.
“Somebody” apparently doesn’t want Sabrosky on False Flag Weekly News, either. Last January 4th Alan Sabrosky made his debut appearance as a regular FFWN co-host. The audience gave him a huge thumbs-up. But when he tried to return on a regular basis, his computer suddenly started coming down with bizarre ailments. It always seemed to happen right before the show. His computer would be working fine, and then suddenly WHAM—it would melt down right before broadcast time and we’d scramble to find a replacement. This has happened so many times in the past three months that I have lost count. Tech experts who have tried to solve the problem say Sabrosky is the victim of a highly sophisticated cyber-attack. It was only this past Friday, March 22, that after elaborate precautions we were finally able to get Alan broadcasting again on FFWN. And miraculously enough, he somehow got through 58 minutes of live-streaming before they cut his mike.
Why is Dr. Alan Sabrosky the most censored man in America? Those seeking to silence him don’t want you to know what he thinks about two issues: 9/11 and the Holocaust. Specifically, they don’t want you to know that he thinks 9/11 was “a Mossad operation, period.” And they don’t want you to know that he thinks the official Holocaust narrative of six million Jews killed mostly in gas chambers is “a technological and logistical impossibility.”
Why are these two issues so sensitive? The Holocaust, whatever it was, happened 75 years ago. And 9/11 happened more than 17 years ago. Isn’t all that stuff ancient history?
The answer, I believe, is that both Official Conspiracy Theories (OCTs) are foundational myths of Zionism. The myth (sacred narrative) of the Holocaust is Israel’s primary basis of legitimacy in global public opinion and especially Jewish opinion. The Platonic guardians of Zionism need the Holocaust horror story to bludgeon world Jewry into accepting the necessity of establishing and maintaining a “Jewish state.”
Likewise the sacred official myth of 9/11 is the lynchpin of the “clash of civilizations,” which in essence is a long-term Western war against Israel’s enemies. Were it widely known that Israel itself orchestrated 9/11 and the ensuing crusade, Israel’s already-dubious future wouldn’t just be dubious—it would be nonexistent.
Alan Sabrosky happens to be one of the world’s best-credentialed and most-eloquent voices debunking the two foundational myths of Zionism. The fact that he hails from a Jewish background makes him that much more annoying—and that much more credible. Dr. Sabrosky is extremely well-informed, and he expresses himself in an engagingly straight-shooting manner. An ex-Marine as well as Strategic Studies professor, Alan Sabrosky has a full clip of info-ammo and unloads it with uncanny accuracy and alacrity. In many respects he is the Zionists’ worst nightmare.
No wonder “Doc Sabrosky” is the most-censored man in America.
Trump Koshers the Seizure of the Golan Heights
By Eve Mykytyn – March 23, 2019
On Thursday President Trump announced that the United States should recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and effectively annexed it in 1981. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal characterized Trump’s move as a favor to Netanyahu who is facing a challenge for reelection and Netanyahu called it a “Purim miracle.”
Despite any boost this may give to Netanyahu’s reelection, the effort to persuade Trump to endorse Israel’s claim to Golan began well before Netanyahu’s campaign and was described by Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz as “topping the agenda” in US/Israeli diplomatic talks in May 2018.
Trump’s announcement contravenes the 1981 UN resolution passed in reaction to the annexation and co-written by the United States, that: “The Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect.”
At least at the moment, action by the US is unlikely to change the European Union or Russia ’s support for the UN resolution and both announced that they would not change their positions on the Golan Heights without a UN declaration. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, tweeting from a meeting with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said all the ministers were shocked by Mr. Trump “continuing to try to give what is not his to racist Israel: first al-Quds [Jerusalem] & now Golan.”
It is unclear how Trump’s twitter declaration on its own can change the U.S.’s official position on Golan. But his avowal may soon be law, Senators Cruz and Cotton along with Representative Mike Gallagher who each applauded the president’s move, introduced legislation in the House and Senate to formally “recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.” Importantly, the proposed bill includes the Golan Heights as part of Israel in any spending and trade bills and approves joint scientific, industrial and agricultural projects in the occupied territory.
Since 1981, Israel has treated the Golan as a resource rich part of its country. The Golan provides over a third of Israel’s fresh water. And the Golan has provided Israel’s first major oil find. Afek Oil and Gas, a division of Genie Oil has obtained oil rights for the huge oil fields in the Golan Heights. In October 2015, October 2015 Afek Oil and Gas confirmed the discovery of vast oil reserve oil in the Golan Heights. Genie Oil has powerful political connections. Keith Murdock, Vice President Cheney, Michael Steinhardt Jacob Rothschild and Larry Summers are among its Board Members.
Despite Genie’s influence, under current conditions, Genie’s Israeli subsidiary can not sell any oil it extracts from the Golan on the international oil market because that would violate UN resolutions. However, if Washington declares Golan to be part of Israel, then oil could be legally traded with the US. Russia Today speculates that “Genie Energy’s investments in the Golan are likely the strongest factor pushing the U.S. towards the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territory.”

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.