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Theresa May Recruits Royalty to Thwart BDS

By Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle | March 8, 2018

Prince William, second in line to the throne, is being sent to the Holy Land by the UK Government “to promote diplomatic and cultural ties”. In effect he’ll be helping to normalize 70 years of Israeli occupation and sanitize the unimaginable cruelty that has gone with it. His trip cuts across the Boycott Divestment & Sanctions movement’s efforts to bring pressure for justice.

Kensington Palace has announced in a tweet that “the Duke of Cambridge will visit Israel, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian territories in the summer.”

The visit “is at the request of Her Majesty’s Government.”

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately welcomed the news, saying: “It is a historic visit, the first of its kind, and he will be received here with great enthusiasm.” And President Reuven Rivlin wrote on his Twitter account that Prince William will be “a very special guest” and his visit will be “a very special present for our 70th year of independence.”

Royals are supposed to remain aloof from politics, at home and abroad. The Monarch, for good reason, has avoided any state visit to Israel since the entity established itself in treacherous circumstances back in 1948.

So why the sudden change in Palace policy?

Recruiting Prince William to shmooze the Zionists follows the warm welcome extended to Netanyahu by Theresa May to the infamous Balfour Declaration celebrations in London last November and her earlier speech oozing adoration for Israel.

In that speech she attacked the successful BDS campaign calling it unacceptable and warning that her government would “have no truck with those who subscribe to it”.  The Israel lobby meanwhile has agitated furiously for the UK to shut down BDS.

Mrs. May was ticked off for her hostility to BDS by 200 legal scholars and practicing lawyers from all over Europe who pointed out to her that BDS is a lawful exercise of freedom of expression and outlawing it undermines a basic human right protected by international convention.

Any efforts to repress BDS amount to support for Israel’s violations of international law and a failure to honor the solemn pledge by States to ‘strictly respect the aims and principles of the Charter of the United Nations’.

So why is she so stiff-necked about it? After all, Netanyahu is on many a wanted list for crimes against humanity and should, in a sane world, be locked up. What’s more, he is under investigation for corruption in his own country. Israel, as everyone knows, is in flagrant breach of umpteen UN resolutions of the sort that would have brought crippling sanctions down on any other offender.

The international community’s failure to act has left civil society no option but to fill the vacuum with BDS.

All the same Mrs May and the Israel lobby are pressing ahead with their anti-BDS programme and it looks like they’re getting special help from the Royal Family. But if Prince William seeks to undo the efforts of civil society he sets himself against the people.

According to May’s Middle East minister Alistair Burt, the official reason for the royal trip is that it’s “an important and unique opportunity to promote diplomatic and cultural ties in the region”, which is shorthand for enriching big business post-Brexit. So that’s OK then. Don’t let the misery of decades-long military occupation get in the way of new riches, eh?

Kensington Palace’s tweet received this reply from a certain Suzanne Levy, who describes herself as a full-time ‘kook’:

“Fantastic news, but please correct your erroneous terminology. The Palestinian Territories are not occupied by Israel – they are under the rule of Hamas and the PA.”

As if jumping to her kooky instruction the British embassy in Israel released a Hebrew-language version of the Kensington Palace announcement omitting the words “occupied territories” and replacing them with “Israel and the Palestinian Authority”.

In denying the Israeli occupation Ms Levy, like other hasbara trolls, is at odds with the United Nations, international law, world opinion and documented history. Even the UK Government officially refers to Palestine as the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories), so the edit by its own embassy is puzzling.

Unless, of course, it tells the truth and the plan is to prevent Prince William from actually experiencing the Occupied Territories by confining him to the witless ‘Palestinian Authority’. The PA has precious little legitimacy and is led by a ‘quisling tendency’ who have done next to nothing for the Palestinians. Their reward for wasting the nation’s time and wrecking its prospects is a life of comparative luxury, very different from that suffered by the unfortunate people they are supposed to serve. They can be relied upon to give the Prince a suitable skewed view of things.

Here’s acid test number 1. The Occupied Territories include Gaza. So will the Israelis and May allow Prince William to visit there, shoot the breeze with Hamas (whose political wing are not proscribed as  terrorists in the UK and who struggle to run the devastated place after 10 years of vicious blockade, almost daily air strikes, repeated military ground incursions and occupation of its territorial waters and airspace by Israel) and to see for himself the true horror of the humanitarian crisis all this has caused? If the answer is no, the entire visit should be called off. But it won’t be.

Acid test number 2 is this. Prince William will likely succeed to the throne one day and become Defender of the [Christian] Faith, a 500-year-old obligation. As a true Christian – if that is what he is – he’ll know all about the cry for help issued only months ago by the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine to the World Council of Churches and the entire ecumenical movement. It was signed by over 30 organisations in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

They say:

“We are still suffering from 100 years of injustice and oppression that were inflicted on the Palestinian people beginning with the unlawful Balfour declaration…. A hundred years later and there is still no justice! Discrimination and inequality, military occupation and systematic oppression are the rule…. Despite all the promises, endless summits, UN resolutions, religious and lay leader’s callings – Palestinians are still yearning for their freedom and independence, and seeking justice and equality.”

The message ends with these ominous words:

“Things are beyond urgent. We are on the verge of a catastrophic collapse…. This could be our last chance to achieve a just peace. As a Palestinian Christian community, this could be our last opportunity to save the Christian presence in this land.”

William must be allowed to hear direct the serious concerns of the Christian and Muslim communities and take a robust line that involves consequences for the occupier if those concerns are not properly dealt with.

Prince William’s wife Kate (Duchess of Cambridge) is expecting their third child towards the end of April so he’ll probably make the trip without her. But expect the visit to be accompanied by waves of media rapture over the new arrival, with Israel’s propaganda machine working flat-out to milk maximum PR benefits and subliminally stamp the Royal seal of approval on their apartheid regime.

If Prince William does set foot in the Holy Land his mission must obviously be very different to the one described by Alistair Burt or wished for by Netanyahu and May.  If he is seen to lend legitimacy to a grasping, racist enterprise like the Israel project, which shows no respect for human rights or international law, it will surely come to haunt him.

March 8, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Only Jewish Ghetto in the Middle East

By Gilad Atzmon | March 8, 2018

AlJazeera reported yesterday that the Israeli parliament has passed a law that allows the Minister of Interior to revoke the residency rights of any Palestinian in Jerusalem on grounds of a “breach of loyalty” to Israel.

Under the new measure, Israel’s Interior Minister, Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox political party Shas and a convicted criminal , has the authority to revoke the residency documents of any Palestinian whom he deems a “threat.”

It doesn’t take a genius to grasp that this law is racially oriented: it only applies to non-Jews. This type of law follows from the fact that  Israel defines itself as the ‘The Jewish State,’ and operates as a tyrannical Jewish shtetl in which the Palestinians are Goyim du jour –0n a daily basis they  are confronted by the most extreme forms of Jewish exceptionalism (choseness).

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), described the law as “an extremely racist piece of legislation.  By unethically stripping the residency of Palestinians from Jerusalem and depriving the rights of those Palestinians to remain in their own city, the Israeli government is acting in defiance of international law and is violating international human rights and humanitarian laws.”

Aljazeera points out that  “despite Israel’s claims that occupied East Jerusalem is part of its ‘eternal, undivided’ capital, the Palestinians who are born and live there do not hold Israeli citizenship, unlike their Jewish counterparts.” Apparently the ‘un-dividedness’ of Jerusalem only applies to the members of one tribe and the land they manage to grab by force.

Palestinians in Jerusalem are granted “permanent residency” ID cards and temporary Jordanian passports that are only valid as travel documents. This leaves them stateless, stuck in legal limbo – they are not citizens of Israel, nor are they citizens of Jordan or Palestine.

Zionism vowed to fix diaspora Jews by means of a ‘homecoming.’ It promised to make the ‘new Hebrews’ into ‘people like all other people.’ The project has been a total failure. Israel is a humongous racist ghetto. It is a country like no other. It has managed to amplify every symptom Zionism was born to eliminate.

March 8, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran no threat to any country, says President Rouhani

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (C) talks during a cabinet session in Tehran on March 7, 2017. (Photo by president.ir)
Press TV – March 7, 2018

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the Israeli regime is in no position to call Iran a threat to the Middle East, stressing the development of the country’s missile program is aimed at safeguarding peace and security.

“Those who have over the past 70 years created tension, launched wars and caused destruction in the region and have committed genocide and caused [the] Sabra and Shatila [massacre] are in no position to portray Iran as a threat,” Rouhani said during a cabinet session on Wednesday.

“Iran is no threat to anyone. Iran is [the pillar] of stability and security for the entire region. But of course it will strongly defend its rights,” he added.

The Iranian president made the remarks a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Iran was responsible for “darkness descending” on the Middle East and said Israel faced threats from the Islamic Republic.

In a hawkish address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington on Tuesday, Netanyahu also alleged that Iran was increasing its influence in the Middle East and sought to dominate regional countries.

Rouhani criticized attempts by certain nations of the region to promote Iranophobia, saying Iran had never invaded and would not invade any country.

“History shows that the Iranian nation has never… occupied any country. We have never bombarded our neighbors or piled up pressure on regional nations. Not only haven’t we driven people out of their countries, but we have welcomed refugees,” he noted.

Iran seeks the progress and prosperity of all regional countries, Rouhani said, stressing Iran’s economic, political and military power was for deterrence not attacking other countries.

“Our weapons are meant to promote peace, strengthen stability and security, and to prevent others from thinking about invading our country. Therefore, no one should be concerned about Iran’s weapons, missiles or strengthening of its defense might,” Rouhani stressed.

March 7, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Forces Attack Students at Hebron Technical University

Palestine Chronicle | March 5, 2018

Clashes broke out on Sunday between Israeli forces and Palestinian students of Palestine Technical University in the West Bank district of Hebron, with no injuries reported until the moment, according to director of students’ affairs department, Issa al-Amla.

Israeli occupation forces reportedly fired rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters toward the students and the university’s campus; however, no injuries or arrests were reported.

The director said Israeli forces deliberately provoke students through their almost daily presence at the university’s entrance, where they often search and interrogate students on their way to or from campus.

March 6, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Lies and Self-deceptions at Work Within Israel’s “Moral” Army

By Jonathan Cook | The National | March 5, 2018

It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying.

A child horrifically injured by soldiers was arrested and terrified into signing a false confession that he was hurt in a bicycle accident. A man who, it was claimed, had died of tear-gas inhalation was actually shot at point-blank range, then savagely beaten by a mob of soldiers and left to die. And soldiers threw a tear gas canister at a Palestinian couple, baby in arms, as they fled for safety during a military invasion of their village.

In the early 2000s, at the dawn of the social media revolution, Israelis used to dismiss filmed evidence of brutality by their soldiers as fakery. It was what they called “Pallywood” – a conflation of Palestinian and Hollywood.

In truth, however, it was the Israeli military, not the Palestinians, that needed to manufacture a more convenient version of reality.

Last week, it emerged, Israeli officials had conceded to a military court that the army had beaten and locked up a group of Palestinian reporters as part of an explicit policy of stopping journalists from covering abuses by its soldiers.

Israel’s deceptions have a long history. Back in the 1970s, a young Juliano Meir-Khamis, later to become one of Israel’s most celebrated actors, was assigned the job of carrying a weapons bag on operations in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. When Palestinian women or children were killed, he placed a weapon next to the body.

In one incident, when soldiers playing around with a shoulder-launcher fired a missile at a donkey, and the 12-year-old girl riding it, Meir-Khamis was ordered to put explosives on their remains.

That occurred before the Palestinians’ first mass uprising against the occupation erupted in the late 1980s. Then, the defence minister Yitzhak Rabin – later given a Hollywood-style makeover himself as a peacemaker – urged troops to “break the bones” of Palestinians to stop their liberation struggle.

The desperate, and sometimes self-sabotaging, lengths Israel takes to try to salvage its image were underscored last week when 15-year-old Mohammed Tamimi was grabbed from his bed in a night raid.

Back in December he was shot in the face by soldiers during an invasion of his village of Nabi Saleh. Doctors saved his life, but he was left with a misshapen head and a section of skull missing.

Mohammed’s suffering made headlines because he was a bit-player in a larger drama. Shortly after he was shot, a video recorded his cousin, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, slapping a soldier nearby after he entered her home.

Ahed, who is in jail awaiting trial, was already a Palestinian resistance icon. Now she has become a symbol too of Israel’s victimisation of children.

So, Israel began work on recrafting the narrative: of Ahed as a terrorist and provocateur.

It emerged that a government minister, Michael Oren, had even set up a secret committee to try to prove that Ahed and her family were really paid actors, not Palestinians, there to “make Israel look bad”. The Pallywood delusion had gone into overdrive.

Last week events took a new turn as Mohammed and other relatives were seized, even though he is still gravely ill. Dragged off to an interrogation cell, he was denied access to a lawyer or parent.

Shortly afterwards, Israel produced a signed confession stating that Mohammed’s horrific injuries were not Israel’s responsibility but wounds inflicted in a bicycle crash.

Yoav Mordechai, the occupation’s top official, trumpeted proof of a Palestinian “culture of lies and incitement”. Mohammed’s injuries were “fake news”, the Israeli media dutifully reported.

Deprived of a justification for slapping an occupation soldier, Ahed can now be locked away by military judges. Except that witnesses, phone records and hospital documentation, including brain scans, all prove that Mohammed was shot.

This was simply another of Israellywood’s endless productions to automatically confer guilt on Palestinians. The hundreds of children on Israel’s incarceration production line each year have to sign confessions – or plea bargains – to win jail-sentence reductions from courts with near-100% conviction rates.

It is more Franz Kafka than Hollywood.

A second army narrative unravelled last week. CCTV showed Yasin Saradih, 35, being shot at point-blank range during an invasion of Jericho, then savagely beaten by soldiers as he lay wounded, and left to bleed to death.

It was an unexceptional incident. A report by Amnesty International last month noted that many of the dozens of Palestinians killed in 2017 appeared to be victims of extra-judicial executions.

Before footage of Saradih’s killing surfaced, the army issued a series of false statements, including that he died from tear-gas inhalation, received first-aid treatment and was armed with a knife. The video disproves all of that.

Over the past two years, dozens of Palestinians, including women and children, have been shot in similarly suspicious circumstances. Invariably the army concludes that they were killed while attacking soldiers with a knife – Israel even named this period of unrest a “knife intifada”.

Are soldiers today carrying a “knife bag”, just as Meir-Khamis once carried a weapons bag?

A half-century of occupation has not only corrupted generations of teenage Israeli soldiers who have been allowed to lord it over Palestinians. It has also needed an industry of lies and self-deceptions to make sure the consciences of Israelis are never clouded by a moment of doubt – that maybe their army is not so moral after all.

March 5, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Who Loves Ya, Saudi?

Just the UK’s Theresa May and her deluded Foreign Office, and the callous death merchants of Washington and Tel Aviv

Prime Minister Theresa May met with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud on her visit to Saudi Arabia. Image credit: Number 10/ flickr
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | March 3, 2018

It’s amazing what unprincipled people will admit to when goaded. A petition has been posted on the parliamentary website calling on prime minister Theresa May to withdraw her invitation to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, to visit the UK. It reads:

“The Saudi Arabian regime has one of the worst human rights records in the world. Torture and arbitrary detention are widely documented. In 2017 alone, over 100 people were executed.

“The Crown Prince has directed the bombardment of Yemen. Tens of thousands have been killed or injured. There is widespread famine and cholera, creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Yet, the UK still sells arms to Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudi regime has supported repression in Bahrain, where its military intervened to end peaceful protests in 2011.”

An Early Day Motion (EDM865) has been tabled in Parliament also asking for the visit to be cancelled. It notes that the Saudi regime actually executed 142 people last year.

Bin Salman arrives in London on 7 March. He’ll be met by angry protesters.

The petition has well over 11,000 signatures so far. Of course, their request will be ignored. The UK Government is a great admirer of terror regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, which are now bosom-pals. They share many ambitions, such as the de-stabilising and overthrow of countries they don’t happen to like with the help of their useful idiots in Washington and Westminster. Prime targets are Iran and Syria. And they are itching to annihilate resistance groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and any others that get in their way.

They also share utter contempt for human rights and international norms of behaviour.

Successive British governments have gone to extreme lengths to invent preposterous reasons why they adore and support the criminals who run Israel, slaughter the Palestinians and menace the region (and indeed the rest of the world) with their undeclared and unsafeguarded nuclear arsenal. Now Westminster ties itself in knots trying to explain why we continue to snuggle up to the Saudis who are eager to join the US-UK-Israeli axis.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our mainstream media, instead of wringing their hands and broadcasting disinformation about the Middle East, investigated and named the evil warmongers who recruit, bankroll and arm the corrupt regimes, rebel militia, mercenaries and assorted hoodlums who started and now perpetuate the horror and devastation in Syria and Yemen?

Saudi Arabia a partner for “tackling international terror and extremism”? Seriously?

Responding to the petition, the ever-inventive Foreign Office says our strong relationship with Saudi Arabia “is important for mutual security and prosperity” and includes meaningful discussion on reform and human rights. The statement says it has helped make both of our countries safer and more prosperous. “We have vital national security and economic interests in maintaining and developing our strong relationship, including how we can work together to tackle international challenges such as terrorism and extremism.”

And Saudi intelligence “has saved potentially hundreds of lives in the UK”, according to Mrs May.

What’s more, the Crown Prince has embarked on a series of reforms to modernise society and the economy such as allowing women to drive and attend football matches, reopening cinemas and a commitment that women will make up one third of the Saudi workforce by 2030. “The visit will usher in a new era in bilateral relations focused on a partnership that delivers wide-ranging benefits for both the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

As for the apalling state of affairs in Yemen, the Government says the UK “is committed to securing a political solution that ends the humanitarian disaster” and will continue to play a leading role in “supporting the UN to find a peaceful solution through close engagement with our regional and international partners”.

We’ve heard this claptrap many times before, especially in relation to never-ending crimes against the Palestinians.

What else does our upstanding Government say? “The UK supports the Saudi-led Coalition military intervention [in Yemen]…. We regularly raise the importance of compliance with International Humanitarian Law with the Saudi Arabian Government and other members of the military Coalition. Saudi Arabia has publicly stated that it is investigating reports of alleged violations of IHL, and that lessons will be acted upon.”

So why not wait for real evidence of that before rolling out the red carpet and infuriating decent people by allowing the Crown Prince of this obnoxious regime to pose on the steps of Downing Street for the world’s media and be filmed poncing around with our Royal Family? From his track record Bin Salman understands only too well the value of PR, which he exploits for all its worth, while precious little changes beneath the elaborate ‘modernising’ veneer.

Guilty as hell of complicity

Since Bin Salman’s bombing campaign in Yemen started three years ago the UK, instead of condemning such murderous aggression, has showered Saudi Arabia with £billions worth of aircraft and other weaponry to help deliver death and destruction. All principles are jettisoned, it seems, and all concerns for human suffering forgotten so that greedy business can milk the obscene wealth of that part of the world.

Last summer the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) brought a legal action against the Secretary of State for International Trade for continuing to grant export licences for arms to Saudi Arabia, arguing that this was a breach of UK policy which states that the Government must refuse such licences if there’s a clear risk that the arms might be used to commit serious violations of International Humanitarian Law.

It was, by then, undeniable that Saudi forces had used UK-supplied weaponry to violate International Humanitarian Law in their war on Yemen. According to the United Nations, well over 10,000 people had been killed up to that point, the majority by the Saudi-led bombing raids that had also destroyed vital infrastructure such as schools and hospitals and contributed to the cholera crisis. 3 million Yemenis had been displaced from their homes and 7 million were on the brink of dying from famine. UNICEF were reporting that a child died in Yemen every ten minutes from preventable causes including starvation and malnourishment.

A crippling naval blockade aided and supported by the US had been a key cause of the humanitarian crisis. The European Parliament and numerous humanitarian NGOs had condemned the Saudi air strikes as unlawful. And 18 months earlier a UN Panel of Experts had accused Saudi forces of widespread and systematic targeting of civilians.

The UK Government at that time had licensed £3.3 billion worth of arms such as aircraft, helicopters, drones, missiles, grenades, bombs and armoured vehicles to the Saudi regime and refused to suspend this lucrative trade even when the horrors stared them in the face. It was claimed that the Government ignored warnings by senior civil servants and its own arms control experts, and that some records of expressed concern had gone missing.

Despite the glaring facts, the High Court decided to allow the UK Government to carry on exporting arms to Saudi Arabia for use against Yemenis.

The CAAT website today reports that the UK has licensed over £4.6 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the bombing began in March 2015:

£2.7 billion worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)

£1.9 billion worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

£572,000 worth of ML6 licences (Armoured vehicles, tanks)

And the UK government admits that Saudi Arabia has used UK weapons in its attacks on Yemen. Typhoon and Tornado aircraft, manufactured by BAE Systems, have been central to the attacks. The Government confirms that they have been deployed on combat missions in Yemen and further Typhoons have been delivered. Meanwhile, BAE and the UK government are pushing for a new contract, so who knows what triumphant announcement compounding these crimes against humanity will be made during the Crown Prince’s visit?

The Government has also admitted that UK-supplied precision-guided weapons have been used in Yemen and that it “accelerated delivery of Paveway precision-guided bombs” in response to Saudi requests.

At the start of the conflict in March 2015 former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said:

“If we are requested to provide them with enhanced support – spare parts, maintenance, technical advice, and resupply – we will seek to do so. We’ll support the Saudis in every practical way short of engaging in combat.” [emphasis added]

In September 2016 the House of Commons Business, Innovation & Skills and International Development Committees commented:

“Given that the UK has a long history of defence exports to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, and considering the evidence we have heard, it seems inevitable that any violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the coalition have involved arms supplied from the UK.” [emphasis added]

And in December 2016, the UK government finally admitted that UK-made cluster bombs had also been deployed in the conflict.

How sick is that?

March 3, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Convention provokes rage against NDP machine

By Yves Engler · March 1, 2018

They came, mostly young people, to fight for justice. They came to support the rule of international law, to help solve a longstanding injustice through non-violent means; they came to tell an oppressed people you have not been forgotten; they came to do what is right for a left wing political party; they came to speak truth to power.

And how did the left wing party respond? By using the “machine” — orders from on high, backroom arm-twisting, opaque block voting and procedural manoeuvring — to prevent debate. Silence in class!

While NDP insiders probably feel they dodged the “Palestine Resolution” bullet at their recent convention, many party apparatchiks may come to regret their undemocratic moves. Their naked suppression of debate might stir rage against the machine they’ve proved to be. At a minimum it has provoked many to ask why.

Why, when the Palestine Resolution was endorsed unanimously by the NDP youth convention and by over 25 riding associations, did the powers that be not want it even discussed?

Given the resolution mostly restated official Canadian policy, except that it called for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation” one can only assume that the party machine either supports the indefinite Israeli occupation of Palestinian land or has some sort of problem with boycotts and economic sanctions. Clearly the NDP is not against boycotts and economic sanctions in principle since they’ve recently supported these measures against Russia, Venezuela and elsewhere.

If, after a half-century of illegal occupation, one can’t call for boycotting Israeli settlement goods, then when? After a century? Two?

Or is the problem the particular country to be boycotted? Does the NDP hierarchy believe that anti-Semitism can be the only possible motivation for putting economic pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state? Or perhaps it is simply a worry that the dominant media would attack the party?

Whatever the ideological reason the bottom line is the Palestine Resolution was buried to ensure it wouldn’t be discussed. When its proponents sought to push it up the priority list at an early morning session before the main plenary, the party hierarchy blocked it. In a poorly publicized side room meeting they succeeded 200 to 189. NDP House Leader Guy Caron mobilized an unprecedented number of current and former MPs, including Murray Rankin, Randall Garrison, Craig Scott, Tracey Ramsey, Alexandre Boulerice, Hélène Laverdière, Nathan Cullen and others, to vote against debating the most widely endorsed foreign policy resolution at the convention (Niki Ashton was the only MP to support re-prioritizing the Palestine Resolution.)

Apparently, the party leadership discussed how to counter the resolution at two meetings before the convention. In a comment on a Guardian story about the need for the NDP to move left, Tom Allen, a staffer for Windsor Tecumseth NDP MP Cheryl Hardcastle, describes “panicked” planning to defeat the resolution. “As for the part about the ‘party establishment (being) easily able to deflect challenges from the left.’ I would respectfully submit that this is wrong. As an NDP staffer I can tell you that it wasn’t easy at all this time and, especially with regards to the ‘Palestinian Resolution,’ which required a great deal of panicked last minute organizing to defeat (and only then by a close margin).”

Why would the party establishment risk turning off so many young activists, exactly the sort of member new leader Jagmeet Singh claims he wants to attract?

A quick look at some of the more prominent supporters of shutting down debate suggests an answer.

Victoria area MPs (defence critic) Randall Garrison and (justice critic) Murray Rankin who voted against debating the Palestine Resolution are members of the Canada Israel Inter-Parliamentary Group and took a Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs paid trip to Israel in 2016. After the IDF slaughtered 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza in the summer of 2014, Rankin offered words of encouragement to an emergency fundraiser for Israel.

Party foreign critic Hélène Laverdière, who voted to suppress the Palestine Resolution, took a paid trip to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s conference in Washington in 2016 and participated in a Jewish National Fund event in Israel.

British Columbia liaison and critic for democratic institutions, Nathan Cullen also voted against debating the Palestine Resolution. “I am strongly in support of Israel”, Cullen bellowed in a 2016 statement about how people should be allowed to criticize that country. In 2014-15 Cullen’s office took in Daniel Gans through CIJA’s Parliamentary Internship Program, which pays pro-Israel university students $10,000 to work for parliamentarians (Gans then worked as parliamentary assistant to NDP MP Finn Donnelly). In 2014 Cullen met representatives of CIJA Pacific Region to talk about Israel, Iran and other subjects. According to CIJA’s summary of the meeting, “Mr. Cullen understood the importance of a close Canada-Israel relationship.”

Maybe the loudest anti-Palestinian at the convention was former president of the Ontario NDP and federal council member Janet Solberg. Unsatisfied as a settler in Toronto, Solberg pursued a more aggressive colonial experience when she moved to historic Palestine as a young adult.

Just before the convention the President of the Windsor-Tecumseh Federal NDP, Noah Tepperman, sent out an email to all riding associations calling on them to oppose Palestine resolutions. In it he claimed, “boycotts based on religion, nationality or place of origin directly contravene the spirit of inclusiveness to which we in the NDP are committed.” He further alluded to an anti-Jewish agenda by connecting the different solidarity resolutions to “a backdrop of already-high-and-rising antisemitism here in Canada as well as abroad.” But, Tepperman sits on the board of the Windsor Jewish National Fund, which is an openly racist organization.

The truth is pro-Israel-no-matter-what-it-does NDP members in positions of power within the party won a narrow battle. How the war goes will depend on the lessons learned by those seeking a party that’s an instrument of real change, that fights against all forms of racism and oppression.

March 2, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Lebanese Nuclear Physics Student Found Dead in France

Al-Manar | March 1, 2018

A Lebanese man studying nuclear physics was found dead earlier this week in France, while reports on his death were conflicting.

It was initially reported that Hisham Salim Mourad- from the southern town of Braikeh in Nabatieh, was stabbed in his house.

However, Lebanon’s consul general in Marseille, Sonia Abou Azar, said the Grenoble police published its report on the death of Mourad and determined that he died after falling from the balcony of his house.

Mourad was studying at the Joseph Fourier University in the city of Grenoble. It was the last year of his master’s program.

The death sparked outrage among Lebanese people in Lebanon and abroad who were also shocked last week by the killing of another Lebanese student in Canada.

Hasan Ali Kheireddine, 23, was killed on Feb. 13 at a student residence on the St. Mary’s University campus in the Canadian region of Halifax.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced earlier on Sunday that instructed the Lebanese embassy in Canada to “follow up on the case in order to unveil the details of this horrible crime and the motives behind it.”

Although Canadian authorities have been downplaying the murder of Kheireddine, it is seen by many in Lebanon as suspicious, especially that the bright student was studying economics and had been well-known for his research on the influence of Zionism on the international economy.

March 1, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran trade is not vulnerable to US sanctions

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | February 28, 2018

The fear mongers among the Indian elite spread a canard that India needs to be watchful of American wrath if it expands economic ties with Iran. Of course, that is plain baloney. The Modi government has announced a decision to sequester India-Iran relations from US sanctions by allowing Indian companies and entities to use the national currency. This decision coincided with President Hassan Rouhani’s recent visit and becomes a landmark event in the chronicle of India-Iran relations.

Interestingly, European countries are also moving in the same direction as India. Their plan is to offer euro-denominated credits to Iranian buyers of their goods and services, which will keep the transactions beyond the reach of any US sanctions. France has already announced its intention to offer dedicated, euro-dominated export guarantees to Iranian buyers, which dispense with any US link, whether to the dollar or otherwise.

Like India, European countries also are staunch supporters of the Iran nuclear deal. Like India, they also are on the lookout for increasing their trade with Iran. The head of France’s state-owned Public Investment Bank (Bpifrance) Nicolas Dufurcq said last week with a touch of sarcasm, “This is a completely separate flow (of money). There is no dollar in this scheme… no one holding a US passport.” (One might say about the Indian elite, perhaps – “no one holding a Green Card.”)

Dufurcq was addressing French lawmakers in Paris. He disclosed that there is a pipeline of about 1.5 billion euros in potential contracts for French exporters in the Iranian market. France used to have close business ties with Iran and French manufacturing plants are still operating in Iran. Other European countries such as Germany, Belgium, Austria and Italy are also following the French example to insulate their economic relations with Iran from US sanctions. Italy and Iran agreed recently on a framework agreement that provides Italian credit up to 5 billion euros for its companies making investments in Iran. The credit agreement is between state-owned agencies in the two countries.

Unfortunately, Indian analysts largely go by the jaundiced opinions about Iran disseminated by the US media. The stunning reality is that in the last financial year the post-sanctions Iranian economy surged by 16%. Importantly, Iran is unique among the petrodollar states of the Persian Gulf in having a concerted strategy to grow its non-oil economy. And that is where lucrative business opportunities lie for Indian trade and industry.

Of course, the stabilization of oil prices above $50 per barrel also helps boost Iran’s income. Thus, the Modi government’s plans for a huge expansion of economic relations with Iran are based on a sound assessment. This is what Professor Juan Cole, the noted American expert on the Middle East wrote in his blog Informed Comment :

  • US pressure on Iran is not insignificant and does slow its economic progress. But if you tallied up wins and losses, there does not seem much question that Iran is gradually winning. That progress by Tehran is because of the nuclear accord, which reassured most of the world. Tehran should stick with it.

To be sure, Iran intends to stick to the nuclear accord and keep its part of the bargain so long as the international community abides by the July 2015 agreement. Tehran places great store on the support from European countries. (Read a piece in LobLog by former British diplomat Peter Jenkins, A Nuclear Deal With Iran Remains The Least Bad Option)

Iranian foreign policy is making an historic shift in its integration with the international community. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on February 19 in a national address, “In foreign policy today, the top priorities for us include preferring East to West.” Of course, it is another side of the Iranian ideology of preserving the country’s strategic autonomy. Yet, importantly, Khamenei didn’t exclude the West.

Détente with the US was Iran’s expectation in negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal but the growing feeling is that this will not be possible so long as the Trump administration is in power. It was an historic mistake on the part of the Obama administration not to have taken the nuclear deal to its logical conclusion by removing the residual US sanctions that hamper banking ties and, secondly, by engaging Iran constructively on issues of regional security and stability. The bottom line is that Iran has a surprisingly flexible foreign policy – pragmatic to dealings with the West. It’s the Israeli lobby, stupid – in Washington and Delhi!

February 28, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Occupation Forces arrest former governor of al-Khalil

Palestine Information Center – February 28, 2018

AL-KHALIL – The Israeli Occupation Forces arrested Tuesday evening former governor of al-Khalil city Abdel Halim Ja’bari after being summoned for investigation.

Local sources affirmed that Ja’bari, 70, was summoned Tuesday morning for investigation in Etzion investigation center where he was later detained.

Ja’bari was the head of al-Khalil University for Academic Affairs, al-Khalil’s governor between 2002 and 2007, and Jericho’s governor in 2008.

February 28, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

U.S. Escalates Threat Against Iran After Russia U.N. Veto

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | February 27, 2018

The United States has escalated international tensions with Iran, threatening unilateral action against the Islamic Republic on Monday after Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council motion to call out Tehran for allowing weapons to fall into the hands of Yemen’s Houthi group.

“If Russia is going to continue to cover for Iran then the U.S. and our partners need to take action on our own. If we’re not going to get action on the council then we have to take our own actions,” said U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley during a visit to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.

Haley did not specify what type of action she meant, however the Russian veto was a big blow to the United States which has been lobbying for months to hold Iran accountable at the U.N. – while also threatening to withhold waivers on U.S. sanctions unless the “terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal” are fixed.

“Obviously this vote isn’t going to make the decision on the nuclear deal. What I can say is it doesn’t help,” Haley said. “That just validated a lot of what we already thought which is Iran gets a pass for its dangerous and illegal behavior.”

President Trump warned European allies in January that they would need to commit to fixing the nuclear deal by May 12.

President Donald Trump warned European allies last month that they had to commit by mid-May to work with Washington to improve the pact. Britain drafted the failed U.N. resolution in consultation with the United States and France.

The initial draft text – to renew the annual mandate of a targeted sanctions regime related to Yemen – wanted to include a condemnation of Iran for violating an arms embargo on Houthi leaders and include a council commitment to take action over it. –Reuters

Russia has questioned the findings of January U.N. report which concluded that Iran supplied the Houthi group with weapons in a proxy war between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iranian-allied Houthi rebels in what appears to be another attempted regime change in the region.

In mid-January, Yemeni Houthi rebels claimed to have struck targets inside Saudi Arabia after launching two ballistic missiles, according to Houthi military media. Some pro-Houthi sources also reported the destruction of a Saudi military base in Najran, which lies in southwest Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia disputed that the missiles hit their targets, with Saudi state TV Ekhbariya reporting that Saudi missile defense has intercepted one near Jizan Regional Airport, a busy transport hub in southern Saudi Arabia, though it is unclear what happened to the reported second missile.

Following Monday’s Security Council vote, Iran’s mission to the U.N. accused the United States and Britain of abusing council privileges to “advance their political agenda and put the blame of all that happens in Yemen on Iran.”

Iran, meanwhile, has grown frustrated with what they’re getting out of the nuclear deal – with deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi telling a London audience last Thursday that they would likely pull out of the nuclear deal before the May 12 deadline if western banks don’t start doing business with them.

Most of it is because of this atmosphere of uncertainty which President Trump has created around JCPOA, which prevents all big companies and banks to work with Iran, it’s a fact, and it’s a violation lead by the United States. -Abbas Araghchi

Araghchi also criticized President Trump for his increasing rhetoric over the nuclear deal:

You know, every time President Trump makes a public statement against JCPOA saying it’s a bad deal, it’s the worst deal ever, I am going to fix it, I am going to change it, all these statements, public statements are a violation of the deal. Violation of the letter of the deal, not a sprit, the letter. If you just see paragraph 28 it clearly says that all JCPOA participants should refrain from anything which undermines successful implementation of JCPOA, including in their public statements of silly officials.

“If the same policy of confusion and uncertainties about the (deal) continues, if companies and banks are not working with Iran, we cannot remain in a deal that has no benefit for us,” Araqchi told an audience at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “That’s a fact.”

February 27, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

America’s Foreign Policy Made in Israel

By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | February 26, 2018

It was refreshing to hear then aspirant to the GOP nomination for president Donald Trump tell a gathering of Republican Jews in New York City that he didn’t need their money. It was, of course, a lie, like so many other lies that came out of the electoral campaign, but it seemed to open the door on a new era for American foreign policy. Combined with Trump’s pledge that he would not rush headlong into any new wars in the Middle East, linked to a robust condemnation of what had gone wrong in Iraq, it seemed to indicate that the Israel Lobby would no longer be defining the playing field for U.S. engagement in the region and that a Trump presidency just might take office with considerable wariness about Jewish power in the United States. Or so it seemed.

Two years later, how things have changed. The real Donald Trump has emerged as a dedicated supporter of the most hardline elements in Israel, whose aspirations are fueled by the money flowing from American Jewish billionaires. And nowhere in sight is any actual American national interest.

Trump’s A-team in the Middle East is headed by his son-in-law Jared Kushner who is being advised by a group of Orthodox Jews. The Ambassador to Israel is David Friedman, a former bankruptcy lawyer, who is a passionate supporter of the illegal Israeli settlements and his chief “international negotiator” for the Middle East is Jason Greenblatt, the former Trump Organization lawyer. Both are Orthodox Jews with strong ties to Israel and Friedman has already distinguished himself by condemning the Palestinians at every opportunity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing criminal charges for corruption, is reportedly delighted with Trump and his “team.” To be sure, Israel has benefited from the White House’s reconstruction of what might be referred to as U.S. Middle East policy to favor Israel even more strongly than did George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is a de facto affirmation of Israel’s “right” to annex and control of all of the city and its surroundings, a violation of the United Nations resolutions that established Israel in 1948. Having received what is perceived to be a green light from the White House, the expansion of Israel’s equally illegal settlements in the West Bank has been accelerating in expectation that Netanyahu will eventually move to incorporate nearly all of what might have become a Palestinian state.

Trump is also making Israel happy in other ways, to include Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Jeremiads at the United Nations and the withholding of U.S. funding to assist Palestinian refugees. Beyond that, the pressure on what Netanyahu perceives as his arch-enemy, the state of Iran, has been unrelenting both from Washington and Jerusalem, with Donald Trump repeatedly asserting that he will tear up the “terrible” nuclear agreement. Some pretext for war will surely follow with the United States having to bear much of the burden as well as most of the consequences, including what is likely to be a large casualty list as the Iranians will surely fight back.

And then there is Syria, where the U.S. looks the other way as Israel bombs targets that it claims to be Iranian or Hezbollah based on alleged intelligence that only it seems to have obtained, while Washington maintains an active presence on the ground to further destabilize the country, a major Israeli objective.

But all of the above pales beside the recent news coming from the bought-and-paid-for politician front, a congenital feature of American democracy capitalist style that Donald Trump promised to end. Jewish- Israeli mega billionaire and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who contributed $25 million to the Trump campaign and $5 million to his inauguration ceremony, is calling in his markers. It is widely believed that Adelson is the man who pressured the White House into making the embassy shift in the first place, and now he is offering to help pay for the new building, which will take several years to construct, to accelerate and institutionalize the process. The White House has folded, declaring that a temporary embassy will now be opening in May, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel and the dispossession and scattering of the Palestinians. Trump had previously declared that the opening of the embassy would take some time, but money talks, apparently.

Even the New York Times, citing some “Adelson allies,” expressed concern that the gesture “could be seen as a well-heeled financial contributor effectively privatizing – and politicizing – American foreign policy.” Bingo.

For those who are unfamiliar with Adelson and his obsession with Israel, it is possible to gain some insights from the following reports concerning his views and behavior. Adelson served in the U.S. Army in World War 2 but has since declared that he is ashamed of that service and would much prefer having served in the Israel Defense Forces. He and his wife Miriam, an IDF veteran, have stated that they would like to raise a son who would become an Israeli sniper. Adelson has declared that his primary goal in life is to obtain 100% U.S. support for Israel, to include annexation of all of historic Palestine and expulsion of its Arab inhabitants. He has referred to Palestinians as “fake people.” Regarding Iran, Adelson has recommended that Washington drop a nuclear bomb on it in a desert area with a warning that the next one would be in the middle of Tehran.

So, it turns out that Donald Trump was not so rich that he could not be bought by Adelson, worth an estimated $40 billion, who had to spend less than one-thousandth of that to ensnare an American president. It was a bargain for Israel but a very bad deal for those of us who wish to see a United States government promoting policies that benefit the American people rather than a badly-behaved tiny client-state five thousand miles away.

February 26, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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