Hamas: Abbas’s speech did not rise up to the desired level
Palestine Information Center – February 22, 2018
GAZA – Palestinian resistance group Hamas criticized Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas following his speech at the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
In a press release, Hamas underlined that the political plan presented by Abbas in his speech does not reflect the national position which calls for an end to the Oslo Accords and which opposes a resumption of negotiations with Israel.
“Abbas’s speech did not rise up to the desired level, nor did it reflect the national consensus, which wants to terminate the Oslo agreements and rejects negotiations with the occupiers,” Hamas said.
Abbas is working to create a new mechanism for the failed peace process despite Israel’s violations and crimes against Palestinian women and children and the dangerous bias of the United States in favor of Israel on Jerusalem and the refugees and the encouragement it gives Israel to commit crimes and liquidate the Palestinian cause, the statement reads.
In this context, Hamas demanded an end to Abbas’s unilateral decision-making, and instead of following the path of a political process, to accelerate the unification of the ranks within the Palestinian arena and reach an agreement on a national strategy that focuses on the path of resistance.
When Will Congress Investigate All Interference in Elections?
By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 22.02.2018
The atmosphere in the United States regarding possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is something like hysteria, with a real danger that bilateral relations might break down completely as a result. Indeed, a number of politicians and senior government officials have described the allegations that Moscow sought to influence the election results as an “act of war” with Congressman Jerold Nadler even declaring that it was similar to Pearl Harbor.
Assuming that the indictment against 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies filed last week by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is accurate, the reported activity of the Internet Research Agency could indeed have been part of an intelligence operation seeking to influence developments in the US, but the organization’s employees also displayed considerable amateur behavior, suggesting that they were not professional spies, supporting the stronger argument that it was not a Russian government-run operation at all.
And the United States is hardly innocent when it comes to interfering in the domestic politics of both friends and enemies. That is very often what intelligence agencies are designed to do, and no one is more active in interfering in foreign governments and elections than the United States of America. The Russian election featuring Boris Yeltsin in 1996 was arranged by Washington working with the International Monetary Fund, and more recently there was the $5 billion invested in bringing “democracy” to Ukraine in 2014. The US was also involved in many of the elections in post-war Europe, most particularly in countries whose own democratic systems were still evolving. The CIA worked to keep communists out of the government in Italy’s 1976 national election. Conservative parties received sacks of money and articles warning about communism appeared in all the major newspapers. The major covert action proceeded even though Italy was a NATO member and the corruption that the intervention brought with it has blighted Italian politics to this day.
And then, there are America’s friends who in similar fashion interfere in US politics to support their own national agendas. Most active recently have been Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which have an identical foreign policy goal, which is to end what they describe as the Iranian threat in their region. As neither has the resources to go it alone, both seek to involve the United States in what would likely be a catastrophic war for all involved, leaving Riyadh and Tel Aviv standing on the sidelines to pick up the pieces.
The Saudi lobby in the United States operates largely below the surface, working on individual congressmen and through the funding of think tanks. Israel’s manipulation of the US is, however, much more in the open. One can argue that what we are now calling Russiagate all started when Trump National Security Adviser designate Michael Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, on December 22, 2016. The call was made at the direction of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who, in turn, had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change a U.N. vote critical of Israel.
Kushner asked Flynn, the soon-to-be National Security Adviser, to help Israel by undermining what was being done by the still-in-power American government in Washington headed by President Barack Obama. In legal terms this most certainly could be construed as covered by the “conspiracy against the United States” statute that the Mueller investigation has exploited in the recent Russian indictments.
Mueller’s indictment specifically claimed that the Russians created false US personas while also stealing actual identities. But the Russians are being accused of involvement in activity that Israel engages in openly. It has interfered in US elections, to include promoting Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in 2012, and has a powerful and well-funded lobby in AIPAC that intervenes aggressively in American foreign and domestic policy. And the Israeli government’s propaganda arm uses its hasbara to use false internet identities to confuse and deflect critical stories. They do so routinely and do not even try to hide what they are doing. Part of their agenda is to smear critics and elect politicians favorable to them.
So, when will Mueller and the several congressional committees that are investigating the Russians move on to the topic of Israel and Saudi Arabia to find out what really effective foreign influencing operations looks like? Given the power of Israel and the Saudis over Congress, probably never.
Israel may pay settlers millions to leave illegal outpost
Yair Lapid (centre) and Naftali Bennett (left) joined settlers on 23 July 2017 at the inauguration of a monument that was rebuilt in the illegal settlement outpost of Netiv HaAvot after the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the outpost’s demolition and the evacuation of all settlers [Yigal Dilmoni/Twitter]
MEMO | February 20, 2018
The Israeli government is preparing to give 20 million shekels ($5.68 million) in compensation to settlers who have been living in an illegal outpost on private Palestinian land, reports Haaretz.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking the approval of his coalition partners, ahead of the impending evacuation of 15 Israeli settler families from Netiv Haavot settlement outpost.
One of the buildings in Netiv HaAvot was demolished in November 2017. The Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state to demolish the other 15 houses in March, but, according to Haaretz, “the state is expected to request that the supreme court delay the outpost’s evacuation”.
Government ministers Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked “visited the outpost on Sunday and promised the residents they would try to postpone their eviction by three months, until construction starts on alterative homes nearby, for ‘humanitarian’ reasons”, the paper added.
According to the Times of Israel, residents of the illegal outpost will establish a “protest test” outside Netanyahu’s Jerusalem office, where they will demand “an immediate solution to prevent the evacuation as well as the construction of 350 homes in the Etzion [settlement] bloc”.
Israeli NGO Peace Now slammed the compensation plan as “political bribery for building offenders”.
“The residents of Nativ Ha’avot stole land, took control of it, and built their homes on it without permission from any official source.”
“This is not according to us, but rather according to the state, which issued demolition orders for all the structures,” said NGO official Shabtay Bendet.
“Now they are receiving very generous financial compensation from the same state.”
Read also:
Israel refuses to return Palestinian land, handing it to settlers
Argentina: Fernandez Brands ‘Iranian Pact’ Allegations ‘Arbitrary,’ Demands Immediate Trial
teleSUR | February 20, 2018
Argentine senator and former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has requested a public trial be held “immediately” to “expose the arbitrariness of the accusation (against her) to the whole society.” Fernandez is being prosecuted for an alleged cover-up of Iranian officials and citizens accused of perpetrating a terror attack in 1994.
In July 1994 the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a Jewish community center, was attacked with a car bomb killing 85 people and injuring 300 more.
In a legal recourse sent Monday to judge Claudio Bonadio by Fernandez’s lawyers, Alejandro Rua and Graciana Peñafort, they demand the investigation be elevated to a public trial.
Judge Bonadio prosecuted the former head of state and other former government officials, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Hector Timerman, for concealment and treason.
The treason charge was dropped in a second instance hearing, but the National Chamber of Criminal and Correctional Appeals confirmed the prosecution of the defendants for concealment arguing they covered up Iranians accused of the AMIA attack through a Memorandum of Understanding with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.
The memorandum, which would have created a Truth Commission to investigate the case, was never applied because it wasn’t ratified by the Iranian parliament.
The case against Fernandez was opened after federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman formally accused her and other politicians in 2013 of covering up Iranian suspects. Nisman was found dead in 2015, before testifying.
A federal judge dismissed the case arguing the minimum conditions to launch a criminal investigation were not met. According to Pagina 12, a local newspaper, five prominent Argentine jurists agreed that there was no crime in Nisman’s accusation. However, the dismissal was revoked last year after an appeal by the Delegation of Israeli Argentine Associations.
In the document elevated to the court by Fernandez’s lawyers, they claim Bonadio’s conclusions “are false and are contradicted by the collected proof,” and clarify they will not request the dismissal because their client “does not expect Justice” from Bonadio’s court.
Rouhani Phones Erdogan, Highlights Necessity of Respecting Syria’s Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity
Al-Manar | February 20, 2018
Iran’s President Sheikh Hassan Rouhani reiterated the necessity of respecting Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, underlining the need to restore security and stability to it as soon as possible and provide appropriate conditions that will enable all Syrian displaced people to return home.
Rouhani’s remark came during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday.
The Iranian President added that talks between the leaders and officials of Iran, Russia and Turkey in Astana and Sochi have been promising in terms of enhancing security and stability in Syria.
He stressed that this constructive track should be further reinforced through the continuous consultations among the heads of the three states.
Rouhani said that fighting terrorism, cleansing Syria of terrorist organizations and countering separatist attempts in the region are among the common objectives of Iran and Turkey, adding that “We should not allow terrorist groups to regain strength and return again to the region.”
He pointed out to the US-Zionist conspiracies against the countries of the region, noting that Iran and Turkey have common objectives regarding the regional and international issues.
The Iranian President called for consolidating cooperation in line with implementing the decisions reached in Astana.
Iran summons Sweden envoy to protest naturalization of spy on death row
Press TV – February 20, 2018
Iran has summoned Sweden’s ambassador to Tehran after Stockholm granted citizenship to an Iranian national found guilty of espionage for the Israeli spy agency, Mossad.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the ministry called in Helena Sangeland on Monday and served her with a note, communicating the Islamic Republic’s “strong protest” over the Swedish government’s move.
Ahmad Reza Jalali was arrested in 2016 upon traveling to Iran. Based on his confession, he was convicted of spying for Mossad and complicity in murdering Iranian nuclear scientists.
Iran’s Supreme Court upheld Jalali’s death sentence last December.
On Saturday, however, Stockholm confirmed that the Iranian had been granted Swedish citizenship, a measure Qassemi slammed as “uncommon, questionable, and unfriendly.”
Qassemi said the Swedish envoy was notified that Tehran does not lend credit to the naturalization and still considers Jalali to be an Iranian national.
In no country, do they accord dual citizenship in this fashion to a criminal, who has confessed to murder, and is being held in detention, the Iranian official added.
“No country is allowed to interfere in the Islamic Republic’s internal affairs under any circumstances,” the spokesman asserted.
The Swedish ambassador said she would notify her respective government of Tehran’s protest.
The Israeli regime assassinated four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.
Last March, Iran’s envoy to the United Nations atomic agency Reza Najafi said Israel had hired hitmen to assassinate nuclear scientists all over the Middle East, and yet, it continued to receive nuclear cooperation from certain countries.
In January, a book named Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman recounted some 2,700 assassination operations by the regime, which, among others, targeted Iranian and German nuclear scientists.
New checkpoint will cut off Palestinians from park built on their land
MEMO | February 19, 2018
Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have begun construction of a new checkpoint on the edge of Al-Walaja, in what has been described as “the final step in blocking the village’s access to a national park built on land confiscated from its residents”.
According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim, the Jerusalem municipality initiated the construction on 14 February, some weeks after Mayor Nir Barkat and Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin inaugurated the Emek Refaim National Park.
“The new checkpoint will replace the one now in operation between Al-Walaja and Gilo [settlement], bringing it directly to the edge of the village… in order to block resident’s access to 1,200 dunams of national park land between the village and the Green Line,” the NGO explains.
The park will thus “deepen the isolation of the village, already encircled by the Separation Barrier on its East Jerusalem side (half of the village lies beyond the municipal border, in the West Bank)”.
According to Ir Amim, these developments in Al-Walaja, “more than half of which is under threat of demolition, on its annexed side”, occur in “the context of a much larger campaign to consolidate the southern perimeter of East Jerusalem and fatally disrupt contiguity with the West Bank”.
To that end, Israel has “steadily promoted plans” in recent years including the expansion of Har Homa and Gilo settlements, and the approval of plans in Givat Hamatos, “which would supplant Har Homa as the newest settlement in East Jerusalem”.
The NGO also cites the “construction of the six-lane highway through residential Beit Safafa, which serves to further disrupt contiguity between East Jerusalem and the Bethlehem area while reinforcing the connection between settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem”.
Israeli taboos must be broken for honest and open discussion
View from the tower of the Church of Redeemer shows the Dome of the Rock mosque and the cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, [Saeed Qaq/Apaimages]
By Hossam Shaker | MEMO | February 19, 2018
Palestine was never really there. A thousand years is just a worthless length of time, and all you see on the ground is a layer waiting to be stripped away completely. This is not my imagination speaking; it is what dominates the mindset of too many Israelis and their supporters thanks to decades’ worth of sustained propaganda, which has fed the minds of generations with uncompromising convictions which accept neither discussion nor review.
One of the most sensitive taboos in this respect is the mere recognition of the existence of the Palestinian people in the past, or even in the present. The truth is at odds with the very roots of Zionism. Israelis used to talk crudely about “Arabs”, a convenient solution to the problem of saying “Palestinian”. The Arabs, they reason, are just people who came from the desert and can go back to it or can be expelled there. “This country won’t be enough for all of us together,” the Zionists argue. “They have 20 Arab countries, why won’t they go there?” Such naïve “logic” can be used both ways: You have a great friend in US President Donald Trump, so why didn’t you go and join him?
This Israeli mentality has provided the cultural pretext for the ethnic cleansing that Israel’s “New Historians” have described in detail, starting with Benny Morris up to the expanded works of Ilan Pappé. Hence, don’t exhaust yourself searching for references to “the Palestinian people” in anything issued by Israeli officials during the “peace process” for a quarter of a century, because you won’t find it. There are only “Palestinians”, but the people have a homeland, history, identity, roots and rights, and these are concepts that Israelis cannot imagine as part of a country which is not Palestine at all in their view. The forgotten fact today is that the founder of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, and his colleagues in the early World Zionist Organisation had no choice but to call it Palestine, a name which was also included in all subsequent documents, including the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
In Israeli hands, archaeology and history are saturated with propaganda. Israeli excavations and museums are guided by an arrogance and ideology to reach specific conclusions. The Zionist narrative began in Europe in the late nineteenth century and not in Palestine. Archaeological propaganda must invent an imaginary country to match the Israeli myth. It does not recognise what happened during the past 2,000 or 3,000 years, and does not pay attention to what is beyond even that.
The Israelis face a dilemma, though: what do they do with a place that obviously has an indigenous culture and character; and is an Arab and Palestinian, Muslim and Christian environment, with evidence of this equally obvious? How should they deal with all these minarets, domes and church towers which survived demolition and destruction; the well-known Arab architecture; and even the olive trees and palm trees that have survived the uprooting and burning? The Israeli trick to overcome this very real dilemma is to escape from the reality by basing their state on a relatively very short period of ancient history, smothered with nationalist ideology. This is significant, because what we see of Israel today is superficial; peel this particular layer back and what you will find underneath actually belongs to the Palestinians. Nevertheless, the Zionist myths appeal to Trump and his predecessors in the White House, although only he has dared to declare that Jerusalem is there for Israelis alone.
The celebration of the Israeli narrative justifies the sweeping aside of vast periods of historical facts that are denied in order to create a scenario that corresponds to the imagined history based on Zionist ideology and mythology. In June 1967, for example, a few days after occupying the eastern part of Jerusalem (having occupied the western sector since 1948), Israeli bulldozers destroyed a historic neighbourhood in the heart of the Old City. This represented one of the most extensive campaigns of destruction in the 20th Century. The Moroccan Quarter included 135 historic buildings dating back centuries; it was destroyed completely in order to create an empty space in the heart of Jerusalem that is now a large square next to the Western (“Wailing”) Wall. Who is strong enough today to compare the images of this area before and after 1967? Who remembers the historic Moroccan Quarter, with all the features of the archaeological sites that precede the era of Saladin? Who asks where the rubble of the Quarter’s ancient stones and monuments which lasted for more than 1,000 years has gone?
What is striking about this, as with other incidents of mass destruction that discreetly and hastily followed the military occupation, is the fact that these events have not yet been discussed in any great depth amongst Israelis themselves, or even internationally. This sort of thing remains one of the major Israeli taboos. Everything related to occupied Palestine’s indigenous identity and history is a very serious no-no for discussion in Israeli circles.
Israeli propaganda has shackled its audience to an ideology, which provides them with naive perceptions of the land 2,000 or 3,000 years ago and, of course, not before or since. This propaganda begins with the words of the Zionist anthem, Hatikvah, which the Zionist Organisation later manipulated to include Jerusalem, though the city was not mentioned by the writer, Naftali Herz Imber, when he wrote the song in 1877. This is not only about the historical fabrications of the propaganda, but it is also about the manipulation of the words in the anthem, since some were taken from the Polish national anthem, and its melody was stolen from popular European folk songs in many versions.
The propaganda feeds politicians’ speeches so that they can fill Israeli minds with a specific concept: You were here yesterday, and you are back here today. The implication is that all who were here between “yesterday” and “today” are of no value. They were just wanderers with neither roots nor history of their own. Some enthusiasts who favour this logic may understand it as giving them the green light to destroy the “wanderers” and their property and expel them if necessary. It is the mentality of “transfer” and ethnic cleansing; it is the logic of the bulldozers that are crushing history in favour of an invented history creating “facts on the ground” in accordance with the mindset of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right party that is backed by the army, illegal settler gangs, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Antiquities Authority.
Danny Ayalon, a close associate of Netanyahu, served as Deputy Foreign Minister for years, and was a fierce advocate of illegal Israeli settlements built on the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Ayalon appeared in a popular propaganda video about Jerusalem in which he appeared to sneak into tunnels under the Old City and started to imagine himself walking around 2,000 years ago. The video is full of historical naivety, as usual, but it includes a truly horrifying image: the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and its surrounding compound, as if the most prominent Jerusalem landmark is just a fast food takeaway or suchlike that can be destroyed and replaced by a garage.
Well-known for his social media activity, Ayalon has done in the virtual realm what the neo-fascist religious organisations have tried to do in the real world by carrying out attacks and incursions of the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa for decades. These far-right Jewish groups want to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock Mosque and other Islamic and Christian monuments. This started with an arson attack on Al-Aqsa in 1969, since when there have been numerous plots to bomb the sanctuaries. Jerusalem, for them, is just something to be eliminated, as suggested by Ayalon in the video clip.
The so-called “price tag” attacks by Jewish settlers include arson, vandalism and graffiti on mosques, churches, monasteries, houses and the graves of Muslims and Christians, with demands in Hebrew that they leave the country. The people responsible are the products of the Israeli education system. They were subjected to Zionist propaganda, which filled their minds with the notion that they are the masters of history and the masters of the land. The result has been an apparently endless stream of attacks since the beginning of this century, some of which resulted in burning families and children; the then 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned alive along with his parents in a 2015 arson attack on their home; his four-year-old brother Ahmed survived, but with serious burns.
A whole raft of theatrical propaganda and props have been created to fuel the mentality of hate that produces the perpetrators of such acts. One of the most important institutions of the state that was founded on the ruins of Palestine is the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Members of the Knesset sit facing a large artificial stone wall, which is meant to provide a sense of historical depth to their country. Racist laws are drafted by these parliamentarians so that the state can impose a Jewish identity on the country while ignoring its real history and denying the existence of the Palestinian people. Such laws are increasing in number, along with restrictions on Israeli human rights organisations that oppose the official propaganda.
Among the Knesset members there are fanatical settlers who live in houses built on lands stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank by force of arms. They are convinced that God gave them this land thousands of years before the inauguration of Netanyahu’s government. Some of them give you the impression that God is there on the side of the armed thugs who use automatic rifles to intimidate Palestinians in their own homes, and burn their olive trees. Because they are the undisputed masters of history, their carefully fortified settlements are usually built in strategic locations on the hills, where they have a superior view over the Palestinian villages at their feet.
In the cities and towns on the Mediterranean coast, the most difficult questions that the resident of a house that has been stolen since 1948 might face are, “Who built this house, father? Who planted this tree, mother? Who made this road, grandfather?” Such questions cover very sensitive Israeli taboos; if peace is to be a genuine option, they must be broken and opened up to honest and open discussion.
US carrot-and-stick policy to Lebanon could push it into abyss
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson waits at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon February 15, 2018. © Mohamed Azakir / Reuters
By Martin Jay | RT | February 19, 2018
Rex Tillerson’s visit to Beirut didn’t resolve Lebanon’s persistent war threat from Israel, or Hezbollah’s perceived threat to Washington. The US has its own agenda for this country, which is spooking Lebanon’s president.
It might have been just a miscalculation, rather than a diplomatic faux pas, as Rex Tillerson did in fact arrive early for his meeting with Lebanese dignitaries, but he had to wait a few minutes before a door at Baabda Palace was opened and he was greeted by President Michel Aoun. It couldn’t have been an easy moment, shaking hands with Lebanon’s Hezbollah-supporting President, but Aoun and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil both viewed the visit by Trump’s own envoy with some suspicion. And they were right to.
The day before, in Jordan, Tillerson appeared to have gone off message while recognizing Hezbollah’s political role both in Lebanon and the region, but few in Lebanon held out any real hope that the 65-year-old Texan was going to either resolve Lebanon’s gas and oil dispute with Israel, or for that matter its border spat, following Israel’s land grabbing as it carries out construction of a wall. Tillerson said that Lebanon’s own security was compromised by Hezbollah, which he referred to more than once as a “terrorist” organization when he met Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. The latter pointed out that Israel’s constant threats of attack and encroaching on Lebanon’s sovereignty were making a permanent ceasefire hard; earlier, Aoun had asked the US to “play an effective role” in resolving the tension.
But both Aoun and Hariri know that the US has plans for Hezbollah of its own, which will make a mockery of Tillerson’s endearing comments about wanting to help Lebanon “prosper.” There are two critical plans by Washington that are likely to cause chaos in Lebanon if enacted upon that may come into play at the backdrop of the US pouring money into supporting Lebanon’s army, which it believes is the key to redressing the power balance in Lebanon between the state and Hezbollah.
Lebanese banks cleaned up their act for Congress
One, is how far the US goes in targeting Hezbollah’s finances. In January, it ratcheted up its sanctions on the Shiite group’s key money people. This recent move follows Obama’s ‘Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act,’ which was expected to both destabilize the Lebanese banking sector and impact Hezbollah, which the US accuses of using Lebanese banks to launder money.
In fact, it did neither – and now the US is eager to find new ways of blocking the flow of Hezbollah’s money both inside and outside of Lebanon, as it has yet to find a way of preventing Iran’s $800 million dollars from circulating in the banking system. The US money laundering crackdown, aimed at Hezbollah and Shias in general, has actually resulted in Lebanese banks cleaning up their act, with some analysts even going as far to say that Hezbollah knows it can no longer even use the banks. And, given that the US has provided $1.5 billion USD to Lebanon since the beginning of the Syrian conflict (through the banking system), and Lebanese expatriates are sending less money back to make up the $8 billion USD annually that the central bank receives, Lebanon is more committed than ever to working with the US.
But now, with reports in January that Iran’s military budget is about to rise, Washington may be planning another ruse which could destabilize Lebanon and direct anger towards Hezbollah. While Aoun asked Tillerson to assist in the return of almost a million Syrian refugees, he also hinted that he knows Washington is always the ultimate threat to Hezbollah’s led government, which is to cut aid to both Syrian refugees and the Palestinians. Such a move could have seismic implications in Lebanon, as an ‘intifada’ against Israel and the West could easily be carried out in Lebanon itself with 175,000 Palestinians who live in camps that Lebanese security forces fear to enter.
The carrot and stick of Washington – increase military spending to Lebanon’s army, while at the same time causing widespread insecurity – seems like a nefarious tactic. But Washington is facing tough challenges when it comes to reigning in Hezbollah. Aoun wants help with repatriating Syrians and the US wants Hezbollah to reduce its regional intervention. Is there a deal there to be made?
Aoun knows that if the US cuts aid to Lebanon, it would be a catastrophe in terms of (local) crime rates, not to mention many turning to terrorism. The situation in the Palestinian camps is at breaking point and there have been a number of ugly incidents in recent months. Lebanon has a lot to lose as the terrorism in Tripoli, which was dealt with in 2014 with the number of key arrests, might return, as hardcore extremist groups already exist in the Palestinian camps. Or, if Palestinians want to fight Israel, they have Fatah and Hamas inside Lebanon who can organize and train them. This is Aoun’s worry about the US cutting aid to UNRWA, which he says so far only affects Palestinians in Gaza.
It’s a similar situation in the Syrian refugee camps, where this year has been dire, as a funding shortfall was the biggest yet. Most years, the UN falls short of its requests from member states, but this year it was at an unprecedented low, so refugees, in general, are suffering like never before. If a Palestinian-led insurgency got off the ground in Lebanon, many from Syrian camps might join it, as there was evidence in recent years that some from the camps have joined ISIS.
But Tillerson is not the deal maker for this. He is not respected by all the main players, so the Lebanese leaders know he is not the one to cut a deal. But, they also know that, even within Lebanon, Washington’s carrot-and-stick game is idiotic at best and dangerously ill-conceived at worst. The more the Americans interfere, the stronger Iran and Hezbollah get. Washington’s meddling in the Syria war has allowed the fatuous Tillerson and others to whine about Iran’s presence in Syria, rather like an old man complaining about how ungrateful the younger generation is these days. And Aoun and the political elite in Lebanon know only too well that, just as it was in Iran and Hezbollah, in Syria, which wiped out most of the Sunni extremist groups there, the same is the case along Lebanon’s border with Syria. Tillerson mentioning Hezbollah as a stoic political entity is what is important about this trip, as it is a coded message that the Americans are ready to talk, which is a milestone in itself. The US program to destabilize Hezbollah and the Lebanese banking system has simply backfired, as Congress under-estimated the resilience of the Lebanese and its formidable central bank governor. It seems Tillerson is going to have to get used to waiting.
Rachel Notley’s Alliance with the Enemies of Tenure, Peer Review, and Academic Freedom at Alberta’s Universities
Premier Rachel Notley. Image credit: Premier of Alberta/ flickr
An Open Letter to the NDP Premier of Alberta from Prof. Tony Hall | February 17, 2018
Dear Premier Rachel Notley;
I am writing you this open letter to defend myself against your attack on me personally and professionally. What is the evidentiary basis behind your characterization of my academic work as “repulsive, offensive and not reflective of Alberta”? Why have you decided to set yourself up, Premier Notley, as some sort of arbitrator of what scholarly work in Alberta universities meets the criteria of being “reflective of Alberta”?
Is your opinion about what is or is not reflective of Alberta to become a new test of how curriculum will be created and how faculty members will be chosen in this province? What lies behind your decision to disseminate a caricature of me “standing at the head of the class” in order to “spread lies and conspiracy theories”? [1]
Since I began teaching in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Lethbridge in 1990, I have never once seen in a student evaluation that reflects the kind of accusations you are pressing publicly on me. How is it you think you know more about me, including and what goes on in my classroom, than my own students?
After a year and a half of being subject to a ruthless trial-by-media, a new process is only now being initiated that from my perspective allows me to come forward for the first time to tell my side of the story before an investigating tribunal operating within the terms of our collective agreement. The process is going forward because of a court contestation that the U of L Board of Governors lost due to its unwillingness to adhere to the laws of labour relations in Alberta. Whose advice was the Board depending on when its members put themselves in such an untenable position?
Before we have even started the process that has come about because of the determined stand of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association (ULFA) and the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), you, Premier Notley, chose to inject a politicized salvo into the onslaught of vituperation against me that began on Aug. 26 of 2016.
Here is how the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association described your ill-advised political intervention:
15 Jan., 2018
Re: Premier’s statement re Anthony HallThe Faculty Association wishes to express its disappointment in the Premier’s words. As the union that represents Professor Hall in his employment relationship with the University of Lethbridge, the Faculty Association has endeavoured to have a fair and objective process employed for adjudicating Professor Hall’s academic scholarship and accountability through procedures in the collective agreement. We finally achieved this following significant effort and cost on our part and have a great deal of confidence in the appropriate academic procedures to which Professor Hall is now subject.
Having the Premier draw conclusions about the acceptability of Professor Hall’s academic work prior to any decision rendered by an expert panel of qualified academics has the potential to undermine this very process we have fought to achieve. At worse, though, these words have the real potential to bias the outcome of any such fair and objective process.
The Faculty Association has greatly appreciated the hard work the Premier and her government have done to advance the rights of post-secondary labour. We believe it is a dangerous precedent, however, for elected officials to intervene so directly in a complex labour matter such as this one.Sincerely,
Andrea Amelinckx,
ULFA PresidentCc Honourable Minister M Schmidt
One of the core points I intend to bring forward in my self- defense in the forthcoming process, is to describe the mounting of a negative media campaign against me based on the atrocious contents of a maliciously-engineered Facebook post. According to B’nai Brith Canada, the core agency in orchestrating this media deception, the post appeared on, and then disappeared from, my Facebook wall during an interval of a few hours on Aug. 26, 2016. I did not invite this digital item onto my Facebook wall. I did not sanction its abhorrent contents. In fact I condemned the post’s contents publicly in mid-Sept. when I first became aware of the digital item and the way that it was being deployed to destroy my reputation.
You, Premier Notley, were presented with a deceptive account of my relationship to the Facebook post long before I even knew about the B’nai Brith Canada operation. Recently I learned from the results of a FOIP investigation of the Alberta Ministry of Justice that on Aug. 27, 2016 you and other Alberta cabinet ministers were sent a slanderous account of the Facebook post as if it “came from my lips.” People in the inner circle of your office reported you had seen the communication that slanderously misrepresented me as an “advocate for the murder of Jews.”
If you would actually take a genuine interest in my academic work, Premier Notley, you would realize I have a record of studying all sorts of genocide and condemning this crime against humanity in all its manifestations, including the Jewish Shoah. [2]
Perhaps the people who lied to you about me in late August of 2016 are still holding you captive in terms of filtering the information that has caused you to think whatever it is you believe you know about me. The President of the University of Lethbridge, Dr. Michael J. Mahon, went along with the Facebook deception to suspend this tenured full professor on Oct. 3 and 4, 2016. I was pulled from the classroom in mid-term and banned from stepping foot on campus. This purge took place entirely outside the terms of the collective agreement between the university’s faculty and administration.
This suspension initially without pay essentially declared me guilty until proven innocent. Severe punitive measures were imposed on me all without even an ounce of adjudication by a neutral third-party. From the correspondence I have been receiving from all over the world, I can say my suspension quickly became a shot heard throughout the global academic realm, a shot signaling that an Albertan university is leading an attack on the institutions of tenure, peer review and academic freedom.
Now you have joined in that attack too Premier Notley. You have allied yourself with the position of B’nai Brith Canada, the organization that recently interfered in the leadership race for the new leader of the federal NDP. The same people that set in motion the trial-by-media aimed at me attacked the NDP leadership candidate, Niki Ashton. According to B’nai Brith’s CEO Michael Mostyn, Ms. Ashton’s concern for the violated human rights of Palestinians people made her “an advocate for vile terrorists” and “convicted murders.” It revealed Ms. Ashton’s “defective moral compass.” [3]
What is your view, Premier Notley, of the condemnation directed at the new NDP federal leader, Jagmeet Singh, when B’nai Brith Canada took aim at him for intervening to provide a venue at the Ontario provincial legislature for a presentation by academic advocates of the rights of educator Nadia Shoufani. The condemnation came in late Augusts of 2016 when Mr. Singh was MLA for the riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton and Deputy Leader of the Ontario NDP.
At the same time as it was attacking Jagmeet Singh, B’nai Brith Canada was leading the effort to have Ms. Shofani, a Canadian of Palestinian and Christian background, criminalized by police and fired from her teaching job in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board. The criticisms directed at Ms. Shoufani are similar to those directed at Ms. Ashton. Similarly, the effort to criminalize Ms. Shoufani and bar her from the classroom anticipated the similar treatment to which I was about to be subjected. The attack on Ms. Shoufani’s job and her reputation was based on allegations about her supposed “terror-supporting remarks” made in a Quds Day speech in Toronto in July of 2016. [4]
It seems, Premier Notley, your political intervention on the wrong side of the University of Lethbridge case reflects your reactionary alliance with the thought police and speech police at B’nai Brith Canada. Your reactionary stance identifies you with the backward policies of former NDP leader, Tom Mulcair, when he purged pro-Palestinian candidates from the federal election of 2015. This atrocious move was in all probably a significant factor in the disappointing electoral showing of the NDP as it lost its position of Canada’s Official Opposition Party. [5]
Now in Feb. of 2018 B’nai Brith Canada has resumed its efforts to quarterback the NDP, lobbying aggressively to stop a resolution from being put on the floor of the recent NDP convention. The vote, neverthess, was close, 189 for putting the resolution forward and 200 for sidelining it. The resolution included provisions on a Canadian boycott against products produced in the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
Those supporting the boycott resolution included the unanimous support of the Young New Democrats, 28 electoral riding associations covering six provinces and many current and former MPs. Geneviève Nevin, a supporter of the resolution from Victoria, observed, “There’s a generational divide on this issue.” In his account of this divide within the NDP, journalist Derrick O’Keefe suggested Jagmeet Singh would be wise to look to the example of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. Mr. Corbyn has mobilized on behalf of the Labour Party considerable electoral support from his attentiveness to the plight of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. [6]
By siding so strongly, Premier Notley, with the U of L administration’s collaboration with the Isreal lobby including B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, you have identified yourself and your government with agencies that condemned Hassan Diab wrongly as a terrorist. B’nai Brith Canada played a major role in calling for pulling the sociology teacher from his Carleton University classroom in Ottawa. This intervention helped set in notion a miscarriage of justice that saw the Lebanese Canadian academic incarcerated for a decade in Canada and France for a crime he didn’t commit. [7]
You have identified yourself and your government, Premier Notley, with notorious enemies of academic freedom who brought forward during the 50th anniversary of York University all sorts of false allegations much like those I am facing now. This fiasco unfolded when B’nai Brith Canada, the CIJA, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Jewish Defence League tried to shut down an academic conference on Israel/ Palestine at York University in 2009.
The effort to sabotage this academic initiative was foiled because the York University President, Mamdou Shoukiri, and the York University Board of Governors stood up for the imperatives of academic freedom. [8]
In 2018 in Alberta the equation is very different. The President and Board of University of Lethbridge have adopted the position of the Israel lobby. Now Premier Notley, you have intervened to strengthen this political coalition favouring the stifling of fee and open at Alberta universities. Please consider revisiting you provocative and intellectually bankrupt position on this matter.
Yours Sincerely,
Anthony J. Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies,
University of Lethbridge
Endnotes
[1] Chuck Millar’s Letter to the Alberta Premier—11 January, 2018 at
https://academicfreedomanthonyhall.ca/chuck-millars-letter-to-the-premier-january-11-2018/
Premier Notley indicated on November 24, 2017
There is no question that the views of this individual are repulsive, offensive and not reflective of Alberta. Our classrooms are a place for freedom of speech and expression but that does not mean individuals get to stand at the head of the class and spread lies and conspiracy theories. I am terribly disappointed to learn that this individual has been reinstated, but let me be clear that legislation that our government introduced did not give him his job back. I can confirm that this individual is now under investigation by a committee at the University.”
[2] See, for instance Hall, Earth into Property” Colonization, Decolonization, and Capitalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), Chapter 14, “Genocide and Global Capitalism,” pp. 655-711
[3] Tony Hall, “Palestinians, B’nai Brith and Canada’s New Democratic Party, Canadian Dimension, 30 July, 2017 at
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/palestinians-bnai-brith-and-canadas-new-democratic-party
[4] B’nai Brith Canada, “NDP Deputy Leader Facilitates Pro-Shoufani Press Conference at Queen’s Park,” 24 Aug., 2016 at
http://www.bnaibrith.ca/ndp_deputy_leader_facilitates_pro_shoufani_press_conference_at_queen_s_park
[5] Marion Kawas, “New Democratic Party Purges Candidates over pro-Palestinian positions in lead up to Canadian elections, Mondoweiss, 24 Aug., 2015 at
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/democratic-candidates-positions/
[6] Derick O’Keefe, “Palestinian Resolution Narrowly Stopped from Hitting NDP Convention Floor, Richochet, 16 Feb. 2018 at
[7] Judy Haven, “After 10 Years Hassan Diab is Finally Free,” Independent Jewish Voices Canada, at
http://ijvcanada.org/2018/diab-is-finally-free/
[8] Susan G. Drummong, Unthinkable Thoughts, Academic Freedom and the One-State Solution for Israel and Palestine (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014); Jon Thompson, No Debate: The Israel lobby and free speech in Canadian universities (Toronto: Lorimer, 2011)
***
Dr. Hall is editor in chief of American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.
Featured Video
Revive Iran’s MOU Deal or Face a Forever War
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- U.S. Midterms – a Referendum on Israel and Zionist Power
- Twice as many Canadian Jews serve in Israeli military as Canada’s armed forces: Report
- Thousands of Syrian troops set to join Saudi war on Yemen
- Jared Kushner’s Diplomacy for Hire
- Russia backs Tehran’s conditions in talks with US, Iran’s envoy says
- Irish ‘fake news’ expert exposed as fake
- China expresses strong opposition to Dutch report alleging Chinese cyberattacks
- Coup d’état in Poland
- The Endgame: When the CIA Proxy War Runs Out of Ukrainians!
- Over 16,000 hectares of farms, forests burnt in Israeli offensive on southern Lebanon, says minister
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
