47 Israeli violations against journalists in July
Palestinian Information Center – August 2, 2016
GAZA – The Journalist Support Committee (JSC) said that Israel’s military and security forces committed 47 violations against journalists and media workers during July 2016.
In a recent report, the JSC said that the Israeli army and police arrested eight Palestinian journalists from Jerusalem, Qalqilya and Ramallah, and released most of them later during the month.
The Israeli authorities also extended the detention of journalist Adib al-Attrash and postponed the trial of another one called Samah Duweik.
According to the report, an administratively detained journalist named Malik al-Qadi was reportedly exposed to torture and maltreatment in an Israeli jail, which prompted him to go on hunger strike Other violations against journalists during the reporting month included raids on homes, confiscation of cars and cameras, assaults, harassment, banishment orders and removal of Facebook pages.
The report also highlighted several violations committed by the Palestinian Authority security apparatuses, including the arrest of journalists Mohamed Abu Juhaisha and Mohamed Khabisa, raids on homes, and banning journalists from holding a news conference.
Struggling U.S. Gives Israel Largest Aid Package Ever
teleSUR – August 1, 2016
With more unemployed people than at any time in U.S. history, President Obama next week is scheduled to sign the most lavish foreign aid package in the country’s history – $3.1 billion in military assistance to Israel – raising an urgent question: can the U.S. afford it?
The United States already transfers $3.1 billion in taxpayer money to Israel every year, far more than any other country, but the deal that will be signed into law next week will guarantee foreign aid to the country until the year 2027, a decade after Obama has left office. In Monday’s edition of The Intercept, the journalist Glenn Greenwald notes that Israeli living standards already surpass those in the U.S. in some critical areas.
While Israeli citizens enjoy universal health care, 33 million citizens in the United States don’t have coverage, Greenwald notes. Israelis also have a higher life expectancy, 82.27 years, compared to 79.68 years in the U.S. And Israel’s infant mortality rate – one of the best indicators of human development – is one of the lowest in the world, at 3.55 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Conversely, in the United States, 5.87 babies die before their first birthday.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last year that the number of Americans 16 years and older who were not in the workforce eclipsed 93 million people, an all-time high and nearly a third of the total US population of 321 million.
A 2012 Congressional Resources Service report, as reported by The Intercept, found that “U.S. military aid [to Israel] has helped transform Israel’s armed forces into one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.” Despite that aid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly demanded as much as US$5 billion in aid a year.
What’s more, he has also opposed U.S. requirements that some of that money is spent with U.S. military contractors rather than Israeli ones. With the U.S. presidential elections just three months away, both political parties are campaigning to restore the once-vaunted middle-class prosperity in the country, but Israeli aid is all-but-sacrosanct in the electoral discourse. Early in the campaign Trump had suggested that he might not oppose the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, against Israeli-made products – but has since reversed his position.
Renouncing Jewishness: Shlomo Sand and Gilad Atzmon
By Eric Walberg | July 30, 2016
For years now, I’ve known there was something wrong when my well-meaning anti-Zionist Jewish friends found it necessary to join Jewish anti-Zionist groups opposing Israel. In the US, Jewish Voice for Peace, in Canada, Not in Our Name; in Britain, Jews Against Zionism — every country has its group, usually more than one. “I am a Jewish witness against Israel,” I would be told. Sounds good, even brave. Sand’s latest deconstruction of Jewishness and Israel, How I Stopped Being a Jew (2014), makes it clear why my suspicions were well founded.
Barely 100 pages, it is a page-turner, a precis of his earlier more scholarly works, arguing that the romantic, heroic age of Jewish nationalism, as embodied in the creation of a Jewish state, is coming to an end. Israel will not disappear, but it is an anachronism, an embarrassment in the postmodern age. A reminder of the horrors of Nazism, but not as the Zionist crafters of the “holocaust industry”, or “holocaust religion”, would have it. The Zionist project is exposed by Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir and many more Jewish critics as reenacting the same policies of yesteryear. A flawed answer that is doomed, “an insidious form of racism“.
For the Israeli Sand, the Jewish “national” identity is a fraud (an Israeli identity is fine); the only viable Jewish identity is a religious one, and as a nonbeliever, he logically concludes, “Cogito, ergo non sum.”
Gilad Atzmon takes Sand’s logic further. He tore up his Israeli passport, becoming an ex-Israeli as well as an ex-Jew.
What’s so wrong with a secular, ethnic Jewish identity? Well, it can be based on only one of two things: persecution (being “forced” into being a Jew whether one likes it or not, as in the Nazi’s racial laws) or being “born” into the Jewish people. The former is no longer an issue and the latter is full of holes, and based on a dangerous myth.
When was the Jewish People invented?
Sand’s answer is simple: “At a certain stage in the 19th century, intellectuals of Jewish origin in Germany, influenced by the folk character of German nationalism, took upon themselves the task of inventing a people ‘retrospectively’, out of a thirst to create a modern Jewish people.” For Jews, this required a homeland, and the westernized Jewish elite were able to provide this. As the West suffered one mortal blow after another (WWI&II), Zionism took on a new meaning. Voila! Israel.
But the exile legend is a myth. Sand is a historian and couldn’t find any texts supporting it. The Romans did not exile peoples. “Judaic society was not dispersed and was not exiled.” Jews continued to live in the Holy Land through thick and thin, freer under Muslim rule than Christian, but even the latter never “ethnically cleansed” them. Most converted to Christianity or Islam. Voila! The (Christian, Muslim) Palestinians. However, a tiny core stuck stubbornly to the original monotheism, nurtured by the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC (the only bona fide exile–from which they returned, the earlier Egyptian exile legend being crafted much later, when the Torah was written down and collected in the 3rd century BC).
Jews are not a race but rather a collective of many ethnic groups who were hijacked by a late 19th century ‘national’ movement. There is no racial or ethnic basis for being Jewish any more than there is for being Christian or Muslim. The great majority of those who today consider themselves Jewish are descended from converts in Central Asia, eastern Europe and north Africa, not from ancient Hebrews expelled from the Holy Land by the Romans. They are not ethnic “Semites”, of near eastern origin, or ethnic anything else.
Atzmon is a noted jazz musician, and deconstructs a popular 1970s Israeli pop song by Shlomo Artzi: All of a sudden a man wakes up in the morning. He feels he is people and to
everyone he comes across he says shalom. Artzi’s youth suggests Jews suddenly became “people” thanks to the state of Israel, conflating being Jewish with being Israeli, suggesting only Israelis can really feel free as Jews. What Artzi ignores is that feeling proud to be an Israeli is only for those Israelis who have “Jew” stamped in their passport, and, among them, only those who are blind to the bloody colonial basis for this privilege. Hardly a recipe for a healthy feeling.
Can a liar tell the truth?
Israel is a “democratic and Jewish state” according to Israeli law. The “Jewish” nature was first defined in the Declaration of Independence of 1948. The “democratic” character was added by the Knesset in 1985. This is a contradiction in terms, as Jewish by definition determines the state according to race, making it undemocratic for those in the state not Jewish. In cartesian lingo, both ‘A’ and ‘not A’ are true.
This flawed logic now lies at the heart of what it means to call oneself a secular Jew, either Israeli or ‘diaspora’. Sand joins other ex-Jews, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir, and Will Self, who have renounced Jewishness, either as secularists, or as converts to Christianity, shedding a contradictory, now empty, signifier. Given what Israel has become, “democratic” and “Jewish” are no longer compatible. Sand rejects the faux Jewish nationalism served up by Zionism, which excludes non-Jews from the narrative, and is left with nothing except himself, his books, his sense of right and wrong. A lonely world.
Atzmon takes Sand’s attack on identity politics a step further, arguing in The Wandering Who that secular Jewish anti-Zionism feeds into the Zionist narrative, the do-gooder counterpoint to the more sinister role of the diaspora, taking Sand’s concerns to an even more uncomfortable conclusion: The Jewish Diaspora is there to mobilize lobbies by recruiting international support. The Neocons transform the American army into an Israeli mission force. Anti-Zionists of Jewish descent (and this may even include proud self-haters such as myself) are there to portray an image of ideological plurality and ethical concern.*
Sand dismisses both religion and nationalism as the basis for his identity. Atzmon argues both are legitimate, though they both are perverted in the case of the Israeli state. Nationalism is an authentic “bond with one’s soil, heritage, culture, language”, a cathartic experience, not at all “empty” as a signifier. Though nationalism may well be an invention, it is still “an intrinsically authentic fulfilling experience”. It can be misused, is often suicidal, but nonetheless, “it sometimes manages to integrate man, soil and sacrifice into a state of spiritual unification.”
What is especially moving about ex-Jews like Sand, and ex-Israel ex-Jews like Atzmon, is that they are trapped by their own Israeli heritage, whether or not they emigrate. Reading Sand’s book in Hebrew, writes Atzmon, “is for me, an ex-Jew and ex-Israeli, a truly authentic experience that brings me closer to my roots, my forgotten homeland and its fading landscape, my mother tongue or shall I simply say my Being.” He is confronted not by some “‘identity’ or politics but rather the Israeliness, that concrete nationalist discourse that matured into Hebraic poetry, patriotism, ideology, jargon, a dream and a tragedy to follow.” Israel’s present state has “robbed him of that Israeliness which was once to him a home.”
Hollow identity
Most still yearn to keep a diaspora Jewish identity alive. Judith Butler’s Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2013) is by a liberal-leaning Jew who feels she must salvage her Jewishness from Israel’s nationalism and occupation policies. “A new Jewish identity might emerge that connects Tel Aviv with New York’s Upper West Side, Berlin, Paris, London and Buenos Aires — and all of them on an equal footing,” writes Carlo Strener in his review.
For Sand and Atzmon, there is no “new Jewish identity” possible, because there is no diaspora. French Jews are French. Canadian ones are Canadian. It’s fine to be a believing ‘person of the Book’, and even an Israeli, speaking Israeli (really a new language) and being a citizen of a well-behaved multi-ethnic nation state, based on universal norms, like France or Canada. But everyone eats matzo balls already.
Assimilation is not like extermination, despite Golda Meir’s cries of “Wolf!” Non-religious Jewishness will continue to evaporate, along with Christian and Muslim identities for those who abandon their faith. There is no shame in calling oneself an ex-Christian or ex-Muslim.
Occam’s Razor: less is more
Anti-Zionists “rightly see [Zionist] policies as threatening the renewal of Judeophobia” that identifies all Jews as a “certain race-people, and confuses them with Zionists.”** Yes, but, as Atzmon argues, this “confusion” is part of the agenda, pushing Jews outside of Israel to support Israel unthinkingly and accept the resultant resentment they experience as “anti-Semitism”.
And even if they protest–as Jews–they inadvertently support the “Zionist world conspiracy”:
If those who call themselves anti-Zionist Jews without having lived in Israel, and without knowing its language or having experienced its culture, claim a particular right, different from that of non-Jews, to make accusations against Israel, how can one criticize overt pro-Zionists for granting themselves the privilege of actively intervening in decisions regarding the future and fate of Israel?*
The Jewish signifier undermines the anti-Zionist one. Slots muddy things. Medea Benjamin, a “one percenter, a nice little Jewish girl” founded the now legendary peace group Codepink. QAIA (Queers against Israeli apartheid) folded when its organizers realized by highlighting their ‘gay’ signifier, they were doing more harm than good. The queers don’t have the luxury of renouncing their queerness, but thoughtful Jews like Benjamin similarly downplay their own tribalism, and Sand and Atzmon have renounced it, as the honorable way out of their Catch-22.
* Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who?, Zero Books, 2011, p70.
** Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped being a Jew, Verso, 2014, p94–95.
Israeli forces hunt for Palestinian children in Hebron market
International Solidarity Movement | August 1, 2016
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – On Sunday, 31st July 2016, Israeli forces in the Old City souq, the Palestinian market, of occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), were searching for a group of three Palestinian boys. Claiming they were throwing stones, Israeli forces were searching for them in order to arrest and incarcerate them.
A group of Israeli soldiers went into the Palestinian market in search for the children they claimed were throwing stones, stopping any child they encountered on their way, that more or less fit the age-group of around 10-14 years old. They stopped and questioned a 12-year old boy at Bab al-Baladiyya, one of the entrance and exit-points for the soldiers to enter from the illegal settlements located on Shuhada Street into the Palestinian market. Without any family or a lawyer present, the soldiers questioned the boy, first claiming that he was throwing stones and threatening to arrest him and take him to the police station. Only because of the intervention of a local, the boy wasn’t kidnapped by the Israeli forces, which eventually admitted that the video-evidence they have does not even show him. Still, they claimed that he was there and thus were attempting to force him into giving information.
After they finally allowed the boy to leave, they arbitrarily stopped any child that fit their age group to question them about their whereabouts and where they were going, even entering a Palestinian shop to interrogate a child. After about half an hour, they gave up their search, but approached human rights observers to ‘justify’ their behaviour, showing them a video on a phone that showed a boy throwing small stones, at a securely fenced military tower, without any possibility of the pebbles even hurting anyone. Despite only one boy throwing these small stones, Israeli forces were out looking for all the three children in the video. Israeli forces ‘justified’ their search for the children to the human rights observers, stating that because of what can be seen in the video, they went out to look for ‘a boy in a white T-Shirt’ – despite the boy in the video clearly wearing a green T-Shirt. In spite of both these facts, they stopped and interrogated any child loosely fitting the age-group of around 10-14.
Israeli forces cornering children in the street for interrogation
In the evening, Israeli forces again entered the market, to stop, harass and question children fitting this age-group, and another arrest of an arbitrarily picked child could only be prevented by the intervention of a local.
The fact that the arrest of any children under the age of 12 is illegal even under Israeli military law that applies to all Palestinians in the West Bank, did not bother the Israeli forces. Despite the boy in the video clearly being less than 12 years old, they went out to hunt down children that are below the legal age for arrest even under the apartheid military law, the orders in clear violation of not only international law, but even the racist and apartheid Israeli military law.
Middle East prepares for Hillary’s war
By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | July 28, 2016
The big question this week ought to be about Hillary Clinton’s wars, if she gets elected as the next US president. Her hawkish temperament and her bandwagon comprising neoconservative ideologues, Israeli-Saudi lobbies, military-industrial complex and so on brings us to the epilogue of the ‘Obama Doctrine’ in US foreign policies.
Where will it be that Hillary will choose to wage her war? The high probability is that she will choose the Middle East – not Eurasia or Asia-Pacific. Why is it so?
For a start, Hillary Clinton, unlike her predecessor Barack Obama will not seek indeterminate wars. She will calculate how a war in her first term would help her win a second term in the 2020 election. Neither Russia nor China can be defeated in a short, swift war, while on the contrary, there is the real danger of her triggering World War III with horrific consequences that are impossible to predict.
It is in the Middle East that the neo-conservatives in the US will look for action, given their unfinished agenda of sending Iran to the Stone Age, an outcome without which the destruction of Iraq and Syria hasn’t ensured Israel’s regional hegemony.
Israel and Saudi Arabia, estranged allies of the US, are expecting a Middle Eastern war under Hillary. Last week, a former Saudi general visited Tel Aviv and held discussions with Israeli officials. (Times of Israel ) See an analysis by Simon Henderson at the Washington Institute titled Riyadh’s Diplomatic Dance with Israel.
The bottom line is, Israel and Saudi Arabia feel regional isolation. They failed to entrap Iran in a quagmire in Syria and/or Iraq. With Turkey’s course correction on Syria, Iran’s position further strengthens. The Islamic State and the extremist organizations, which Israel and Saudi Arabia covertly supported, are in retreat.
The latest incident of a Hezbollah drone flying over Israeli skies, photographing military deployments on the Golan Heights dramatically highlights that regional military balance is shifting. Meanwhile, Russia also refuses to ‘moderate’ Iran or Hezbollah, contrary to Israeli expectations.
Similarly, Turkey’s course correction following the July 15 coup attempt is a devastating blow to Saudi hopes of challenging Iran in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia also cannot expect Israel to come and fight its war in Yemen or suppress the uprising in Bahrain. Israel knows it will get overstretched in any such misadventure in a Muslim country. Alas, Saudi Arabia cannot count on Egypt’s support, either. Egypt is a much weakened country and is also having serious problems in the Sinai region, apart from domestic political disarray.
In such a bleak scenario, how will Hillary manage to start a war in the Middle East? By the time she settles down in the White House, the ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria may have become an extinct species. Besides, without access to Turkey’s territory, the US will be had-pressed to stoke the fires of renewed conflict in Syria and Iraq.
Therefore, all things taken into account, Hillary may have to settle for a war directly involving Iran. Of course, that will also be the preferred choice and demand of her Saudi Arabian and Israeli friends.
But, how can Hillary provoke Iran into a war? Tehran has the intellectual resources and diplomatic acumen to avoid fighting wasteful wars to secure its interests.
However, there is one way out of this strategic dilemma – ratchet up tensions by undermining the 2015 nuclear deal, notwithstanding Iran’s compliance with its terms. If the US undermines the deal, that is sure to provoke Iran to retaliate by reviving its nuclear program. There is a powerful lobby in the US Congress that favors a return to confrontation with Iran.
Of course, if Iran retaliates by restarting its nuclear program, that can be the perfect alibi for Hillary to clamp sanctions and revert to the ‘containment strategy’. There is speculation that a Saudi-Iranian conflict is also within the realms of possibility. The Saudis are also coordinating with Israel. (New York Times )
Make no mistake, Iran will defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity with all the force at its command. It may even seek the help of Hezbollah. The recent appearance of a Hezbollah drone on Israeli skies could have been a display of capability. (See my blog Hezbollah thumbs the nose at Israel.)
Indeed, the US would have the perfect excuse to get involved militarily in the event of such a conflict affecting Saudi-Israeli security. Weakening Iran and setting it back by a few years will immensely help restore Israel’s regional supremacy, apart from removing from the Middle East region an insufferable thorn in the American flesh. An outright invasion is not necessary for that purpose. In geopolitical terms, it is a double whammy insofar as Russia will also be deprived of an irreplaceable ally without which its effective role on the Middle Eastern chessboard is unsustainable.
Palestinian children subject to solitary confinement, administrative detention
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – July 29, 2016
An escalating number of Palestinian children are being held in solitary confinement or detained without charge or trial under administrative detention. 16 Palestinian children have been detained without charge or trial under administrative detention since October 2015, reported Defense for Children International on 28 July.
DCI highlighted the case of Abdel-Rahman Kamil, 15, of Qabatiya in Jenin, arrested in February of this year. He was interrogated in the Salem military camp near Jenin without being allowed to consult a lawyer, and asked about alleged intentions to stab a soldier, throwing stones at invading Israeli occupation forces, or knowing young men from his town who participated in Palestinian resistance activities. Despite denying all of this, he was ordered to a six month administrative detention order without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence. Despite a court reducing the order to four months, his administrative detention was then again renewed for an additional four months in June. He was one of seven children whose administrative detention orders were renewed in the month of June.
DCI also reported that “from January through June, Israeli authorities held at least 13 Palestinian children in solitary confinement for two or more days, compared to a total of 15 cases during 2015.” One 16-year-old boy from Yabad near Jenin spent 22 days in isolation. DCI noted that “the use of isolation for Palestinian child detainees is solely for interrogation purposes to obtain a confession and/or gather intelligence or information on other individuals.”
They highlighted the case of Rami K., 18, who was held in solitary confinement for 16 days for interrogation purposes. He reported that he was interrogated for 45 hours over a period of days, and that his hands and feet were bound to a metal chair during interrogation in stress positions. Rami is currently serving a 10 month prison sentence and a 3000 NIS fine ($780). He will spend another three months in prison if his family cannot pay.
The Israeli occupation prosecutes nearly 700 Palestinian children each year in military courts, alongside its use of administrative detention against Palestinian child prisoners. Two debates have been held in the British parliament on Palestinian children in Israeli military custody in 2016, while 20 members of the U.S. Congress urged President Obama to appoint a “special envoy for Palestinian youth,” to address issues relating to the human rights of Palestinian children and youth. Meanwhile, the Israeli state is escalating laws used to punish and imprison Palestinian children.
As DCI notes:
“The amendments to the Israeli penal code in 2015 included stricter penalties in mandatory sentencing laws such as a maximum 10 year sentence for throwing a stone, or other object, at traffic, without intent to cause injury, and 20 years for throwing a stone, or other object, at traffic with intent to cause injury. While the 20-year maximum sentencing existed prior to 2015, the word “stone” was added to specifically target Palestinian society.
Minimum penalties for stone-throwing offenses, one-fifth of the maximum penalty, were also added to the penal code. In a controversial decision, the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, added to the scope of punishment the denial of National Insurance benefits to families whose members have been convicted of throwing stones.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), proposals are also in the works to impose life sentencing for children under the age of 14.”
US, Israel forces stage secret military drill
Press TV – July 29, 2016
Israel and the United States have reportedly staged a joint secret war game in southern Israel amid growing military cooperation between the two sides.
Israeli media said on Thursday that the drill dubbed ‘Noble Shirley’ was held in Negev Desert to improve cooperation between American and Israeli forces.
The drill, which was said to have been conducted during day and nighttime hours over the past week, involved the US Marine Corps as well as special units from the Israeli air, naval and ground forces.
During the exercise, the troops and commandos took part in drills simulating helicopter landings behind enemy lines, and urban warfare above and below ground. They also practiced close-range combat and military takeover techniques.
Israel’s so-called ‘David’s Sling’ missile system, which targets medium to long-range missiles, was also used in the maneuver.
Moreover, forces also simulated both night-time and day-time combat situations at the Ze’elim training facility, which was built to look exactly like a Palestinian city.
The drill comes some three weeks after Israel’s ministry of military affairs and the US Missile Defense Agency completed a test aimed at ensuring Israeli and American missile systems can operate cooperatively in a future war.
During the trial, the physical connectivity between the systems was tested. The test involved sites scattered around the United States, Europe and Israel.
Elisra Group, which is an Israeli manufacturer of high-tech electronics, led the trial, which was designed to see if Israel’s David’s Sling and Arrow systems could link up with American systems.
Also in February, the US and Israel held joint ‘Juniper Cobra’ exercise in Israel. The drill is held every two years between United States’ European Command and the Israeli military.
Israeli and US authorities claim that growing military cooperation is aimed at countering terrorism. However, critics blame the US and its closest ally Israel for pursuing a vicious agenda amid ongoing militancy in the Mideast region.
‘Safe zone’ in Syria
Meanwhile, Kamal al-Labwani, a Syrian opposition figure with strong ties to Israel, has confirmed an increased interest in the creation of a so-called safe zone in southern Syria.
On July 11, the Israeli army deployed several bulldozers and a tank 300 meters (328 yards) inside Syrian territory in Quneitra and began digging, threatening to shoot anyone who approached them.
According to Labwani, the zone is supposed to run 10 kilometers deep into Syrian territory and approximately 20 kilometers along the Syrian border.
The developments come as the Damascus government says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri militant groups operating inside the Arab country.
The Syrian army has repeatedly seized huge quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside Syria.
Reports say Tel Aviv has set up field hospitals in the Israeli-occupied side of Syria’s Golan Heights for the treatment of injured militants.
In December 2015, the Daily Mail said the Israeli regime had saved the lives over 2,000 Takfiri militants at the cost of around USD 13 million since 2013.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
A jolly bit of tender
Crimes Of Britain | July 28, 2016
Churchill has been chosen by the Bank of England’s to be the face on their new £5 note set to be in circulation from September 2016.
The Governor of the Bank of England stated “Our banknotes acknowledge the life and work of great Britons. Sir Winston Churchill was a truly great British leader, orator and writer. Above that, he remains a hero of the entire free world. His energy, courage, eloquence, wit and public service are an inspiration to us all. I am proud to announce that he will appear on our next banknote”.
Churchill is fawned over in Britain. He was voted ‘Greatest Briton’ of all time in a poll run by the BBC in 2002. He is praised across the political spectrum, held up as the man who stopped Brits speaking German. When the truth is Churchill was never an opponent of fascism. He was a white supremacist who talked of the need of non-Anglo Saxons to “recognise the superiority of race”. In 1927 he praised Mussolini, “What a man! I have lost my heart!… Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world”. He went on to hold Hitler up as the ideal figure to lead Britain if they were to be defeated, “If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations”.
Winnie was still swilling champagne when he engineered a famine in Bengal which saw at least 4 million men, women and children to starve to death. Food literally taken from the mouths of starving people to ship it where it wasn’t even needed. The Black and Tan thugs were his brainchild. An advocate for the use of poison gases whilst Secretary for War and Air. He assisted greatly in the looting of Iran which kept Britain afloat. And when the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh threatened British ‘interests’, Churchill was there ready to desecrate democracy. He believed that Kenya’s fertile highlands should be only for white colonial settlers, and approved the removal of the local population. Over 150,000 men, women and children were forced into concentration camps. It was Churchill who arranged for Ibn Saud to receive a subsidy of £100,000 a year in 1922. He later gifted the founder of Saudi Arabia a Rolls Royce and lamented that his “admiration for him was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us”. When the democratically elected government in ‘British Guiana’ rolled out their nationalisation plan Churchill sent war ships and 700 British troops to put a stop to that. He assisted Zionism and was rewarded with a bust in Al Quds for his contribution in helping create the colonial settler state of ‘Israel’. Winston and his cabinet were deeply concerned about British people viewing Black American GIs favourably in WW2. He was obsessed so much that he wanted to get the Americans to stop sending Black soldiers to Britain. His racism didn’t stop there, when debating the adoption of new laws limiting immigration from the Caribbean he suggested the use of the motto “Keep England White”. All of Churchill’s wars were for defending and preserving the thieving British Empire.
I am releasing an in depth piece on his genocidal campaigns in the coming weeks. The British press have churned out a few articles here and there on Churchill but have glossed over the true extent of his crimes. Presenting them as OK because he led the Brits in their ‘finest hour’.
It really is no surprise that he is to decorate English currency, he is your archetypal Brit at the end of the day.
The U.S. Tentacles Reach For Syrian Political Parties
By Afraa Dagher – Activist Post – July 27, 2016
On June 23, 2016, The Daily Star reported that the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party announced that it would hold a vote next month in order to choose a new leader after a party tribunal rejected the re-election of incumbent Asaad Hardan.
There is now a new movement inside the Syrian Socialist National Party (SSNP) which calls itself the Movement of July 8 which has worked to overthrow Hardan.
The opposition to the re-election of Assad Hardan has criticized him for his policy towards the leadership in Syria. In other words, he has been criticized for his support of Syria in its war for sovereignty and unity, an idea that is supposed to be a basic principle of the SSNP itself.
Under the SSNP’s own document and the section entitled “The Aim Of The Syrian Socialist National Party,” the SSNP clearly states:
I. THE BASIC PRINCIPLES
The eight basic principles of the SSNP embody the doctrine of Syrian nationalism. They proceed in a logical order from a declaration of the existence and nature of the Syrian nation (first principle), to an identification of the character of its cause (second and third principles), to a clarification of its genesis (the fourth principle) and its homeland (fifth principle). The basis of national unity (sixth principle), the sources of national character and consciousness (seventh principle), and the guiding principles of national militancy (eighth principle) are then defined.
First Basic Principle: Syria is for the Syrians and the Syrians are a complete nation.
Second Basic Principle: The Syrian cause is an integral national cause completely distinct from any other cause.
Third Basic Principle: The Syrian cause is the cause of the Syrian nation and the Syrian homeland.
Fourth Basic Principle: The Syrian nation is the product of the ethnic unity of the Syrian people which developed throughout history.
Fifth Basic Principle: The Syrian homeland is that geographic environment in which the Syrian nation evolved. It has distinct natural boundaries and extends from the Taurus range in the northwest and the Zagros mountains in the northeast to the Suez canal and the Red Sea in the south and includes the Sinai peninsula and the gulf of Aqaba, and from the Syrian sea in the west, including the island of Cyprus, to the arch of the Arabian desert and the Persian gulf in the east. (This region is also known as the Syrian Fertile Crescent).
Sixth Basic Principle: The Syrian nation is one society.
Seventh Basic Principle: The Syrian Social Nationalist movement derives its inspiration from the talents of the Syrian nation and its cultural political national history.
Eighth Basic Principle: Syria’s interest supersedes every other interest.
In order to make it appear as if they are being reasonable, the SSNP attempts to present Hardan as a “government agent” by saying “Assad Hardan is supporting the Syrian government,” and then going on to criticize the relationship saying that the SSNP is a secular socialist party, not a sectarian or Alawite party. Of course, using the words “Alawite” or “sectarian” is simply a sneaky way to abandon Syria and all of Syrians under a false pretext. The Syrian government is not “Alawite” or “Sectarian” and this has been proven time and time again. This specific use of language is that which has been used by the U.S.-backed rebels and the West itself. The idea is to present the Syrian government and Syrian society as being comprised of sects in order to misrepresent both and divide everyone amongst themselves in Syria.
Another tactic used by these critics is to claim that Hardan is too concerned with what is happening inside Syria and that he should focus on the war with Israel. This is a clear attempt to force the SSNP to stop fighting with the Syrian government against terrorists because who could ever separate the war on Syria from Israel? Even the most naïve people, those who may not belong to any party or have any education, should be able to recognize this. You do not have to be Syrian or Arab or know anything about Syria’s history to recognize this ploy.
Without a doubt, especially after over five years of war, it should be clear that this war is not against one sect. It is a war waged by deception, a proxy war against the unity of Syria and the whole region for Israel’s benefit and the creation of “Greater Israel.”
The critics of Hardan are nothing but tools of the United States. The U.S. has its own agenda which involves the shredding of Syria and creating another strange entity within the wider country called Rojava in Northern Syria, for one thing. But the opposition faction within the SSNP also supports this idea of a Kurdistan in Northern Syria.
At this point, I should mention a point about the Kurds and their Constitution.
As Al-Monitor reports,
The name Rojava-Northern Syria Democratic Federal System was chosen from among three proposed names, including Rojava-Kurdistan Democratic Federal System Marbo Beth Nahrin and Northern Syria Democratic Federal System. The regulatory committee members have indicated in previous statements that the Constituent Assembly is based upon the Swiss model.
According to some media analyses, the Kurds prepared and approved the draft constitution too soon. Article 5 specifies that the federation shall have an independent flag, and Article 66 paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations with foreign countries, despite the Syrians having yet to agree on the form of the future Syrian state. The majority of them fear that the declaration of the federation would be the beginning of a project to divide Syria, since it would be made by the Kurds and the Kurdish self-administration, which the Syrians view as enemies.
Furthermore, it should be noted that the Kurds forces are fighting along with the US backed forces, like the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces!
With all of this in mind, one can see why the U.S. is interested in working with the SSNP in order to manipulate it and further divide the Syrian opposition to Western aims. Of course, whenever the United States praises a party or attempts to work closely with it, it is never for a good reason. It is always so that it can use that party in its war or somehow at the negotiating table when it wants to wrest some type of “political solution” for the countries whom the United States is trying to destroy.
So here, in a nutshell, is the U.S. plan:
The United States is interested in using the SSNP against Syria and the Ba’ath party in the future but they cannot do so with a pro-Syria leader like Asaad Hardan. The opposition faction within the SSNP like Hardan’s critics, however, tend to support the “federalization” of Syria and the creation of a Kurdistan within Syrian territory. These individuals can indeed be useful to the United States.
As Andrew Korybko wrote in his article “The Democratic Partition Of Syria,” Additionally, the US establishment curiously seems to be on the verge of accepting the SSNP as a legitimate party in Syria, which is extraordinarily odd because it has hitherto only held out this “right” for the “moderate rebel” terrorists that it and its regime change coalition support.
The al-Ba’ath Party (Ba’ath meaning “renaissance” or “resurrection”), is a mixture of Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism, Arab socialism, and anti-imperialism. It calls for unification of the Arab world into a single state and its motto is “Unity, Liberty, Socialism” which refers to Arab unity and freedom from non-Arab interference and control.
Despite all of the U.S. treachery, the Ba’ath Party and the SSNP have a mutual interest – the unity and sovereignty of Syria. Hopefully, the opposition within the SSNP that is currently arrayed against Hardan and who are falling into the hands of the United States, will not succeed in assisting in the division of Syria and the Syrian people.
The United States has made many attempts to destroy Syria from the inside. Whether it is by the proxy terrorists known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, a plan for “federalization,” or by corrupting and infiltrating Syrian political parties like the SSNP, the U.S. has not given up on its attempt to destroy the secular government of our country.
The Syrian Constitution welcomes every political party and does not base recognition on religion. Syria needs all of its patriotic parties. If the SSNP is now working with the U.S., it needs to be revealed. Syria must never be divided.
Afraa Dagher is a political analyst currently residing in Syria. She has made numerous media appearances commenting on the current state of affairs inside Syria as well as the nature of the current crisis. She has appeared on RT, PRESS TV, and is a regular guest on Activist Post writer Brandon Turbeville’s Truth on the Tracks radio program.
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Book Review
New paperback: Butchered by “Healthcare”
Lies are Unbekoming | October 20, 2026
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
Butchered by “Healthcare” is available on Lulu now.
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