Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Israeli military today arrested three Palestinian boys, aged around 10, in Hebron after they were attacked by several children from illegal settlements in the centre of the city. One Swedish activist was also arrested after intervening in the arrests of the children.
Before 1pm Palestinian children were walking home from school when they had sticks thrown at them by the children of extremist settlers living in the centre of Hebron. Eyewitnesses state that the Palestinian children called back in response to the attacking children, but did not attack in return. However, the settler children immediately called for soldiers at nearby checkpoints who came running. The settler children pointed out four Palestinian children, all aged around 10 years, who were violently grabbed and pushed against a wall by soldiers. One child managed to run away but the other three were then arrested. The Israeli soldiers took no action against the settler children who had instigated the attack.
Around forty Palestinians, including the headteacher of a nearby school, gathered and insisted that the arrest was unacceptable. A non-violent Swedish activist who also intervened peacefully on behalf of the children is being charged with assaulting a soldier. The three children and Swedish activist were taken away separately in military jeeps. The Swedish activist is currently being held in Givat Havot settlement near Hebron city, whilst the three Palestinian boys are being held in interrogation centres.
Let us be clear. The United States can verify absolutely nothing about the use of chemical weapons (CWs) in Syria. Any suggestion to the contrary is entirely false.
Don’t take it from me – here is what US officials have to say about the subject:
A mere 24 hours after Washington heavyweights from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department brushed aside Israeli allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and the White House changed their minds. They now believe “with varying degrees of confidence” that CWs have been used “on a small scale” inside Syria.
For the uninitiated, “varying degrees of confidence” can mean anything from “no confidence whatsoever” to “the Israelis told us” – which, translated, also means “no confidence whatsoever.”
Too cavalier? I don’t think so. The White House introduced another important caveat in its detailed briefing on Thursday:
“This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. For example the chain of custody is not clear so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions.”
“The chain of custody is not clear.” That is the single most important phrase in this whole exercise. It is the only phrase that journalists need consider – everything else is conjecture of WMDs-in-Iraq proportions.
I asked a State Department spokesperson the following: “Does it mean you don’t know who has had access to the sample before it reached you? Or that the sample has not been contaminated along the way?”
He responded: “It could mean both.”
Chuck Hagel expands on that jaw-dropping admission: “We cannot confirm the origin of these weapons.” Although he goes on to conclude anyway: “but we do believe that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would very likely have originated with the Assad regime.”
Four-year-olds shouldn’t have confidence in the US intelligence community at this point. Yet we are supposed to believe that the Syrian government must be behind a chemical weapons attack because Hagel says so.
Let’s consider the facts. The Syrian government has clearly stated it would not use chemical weapons during the crisis “regardless of the developments” unless “Syria faces external aggression.”
The US and other western states have warned for more than a year now that as the government of Bashar al-Assad begins to “topple,” the likelihood of using CWs as a desperate last measure will increase.
The White House reiterated this point yesterday: “Given our concern that as the situation deteriorated and the regime became more desperate, they may use some of their significant stockpiles of chemical weapons.”
Assad’s government is clearly not on its last leg. If anything, the Syrian army has made tremendous gains in the past few weeks by thwarting rebel plans to storm Damascus, pushing them out of key surrounding suburbs, and cutting off their supply lines in different parts of the country.
This recent reversal of fortunes tends to validate the observations of those who have met with Assad and say the president remains confident that he can repel rebel forces whenever and wherever he chooses to do so.
Which frankly removes a major “motive” from any calculation by the Syrian government to use chemical weapons against civilians.
The constant reference to CWs in this conflict is suspect – there is no conceivable military advantage to be gained from the use of these munitions. Writing for Foreign Policy in December, Charles Blair says using CWs against rebels makes no tactical or strategic sense:
“The regime would risk losing Russian and Chinese support, legitimizing foreign military intervention, and, ultimately, hastening its own end. As one Syrian official said, ‘We would not commit suicide.’”
In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the government has calibrated its military responses throughout this conflict to avoid scenarios that would create a pretext for foreign military intervention on “humanitarian grounds.”
Just as there is evidence aplenty that rebel forces will go to great lengths to create a pretext for foreign intervention that would help them oust Assad.
On March 19, a suspected chemical weapons attack near Aleppo prompted the Syrian government to ask the United Nations to launch an investigation. Witnesses reported the “smell of chlorine in the air,” which led to speculation that this could have been a rebel-led attack given that opposition militias had seized Syria’s only chlorine gas bottling plant, east of Aleppo, that August.
The use of chlorine gas-based explosives by insurgents was seen not so long ago in Iraq, where attacks against both authorities and civilians are traceable to 2006. US military spokespeople, at the time, claimed that insurgent tactics had become deadlier, seeking to draw maximum attention and impose widespread suffering.
The Iraq connection and insurgent tactics there are important to the Syrian conflict because of the influx of jihadist rebels flooding over the Iraqi border, bringing with them experience and know-how from fighting the US occupation. That border also allegedly hosts training camps for groups in both countries allied with al-Qaeda – a development that has come to light since a recent announcement linking al-Nusra Front to al-Qaeda’s central group.
The White House’s allegations on Thursday specified a sarin gas connection to at least one other suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. Even if this were true, a clear-cut connection linking the use of a CW explosive to the Syrian government is not at all inevitable. In 2004, an IED roadside bomb – a common insurgent tactic – containing the nerve agent was detonated in Iraq. There are no guarantees whatsoever that chemical munitions have not found their way into the hands of rogue elements – or in fact that they are not producing them in small quantities themselves.
At this point, almost everything being discussed in relation to chemical weapons inside Syria is conjecture – and to be honest – highly suspect.
The Times of London (which is behind a paywall so I cannot link to it) just published a detailed and timely “investigation” of an alleged CW attack in Aleppo, claiming: “the Syrian regime prefers to gas its opponents in this small-scale way, testing the elasticity of President Obama’s ‘red line.’”
The article then goes on to describe the harrowing account of what appears to be a sarin gas attack from a victim, witnesses, and medical staff. But experts are now questioning these accounts, saying that the evidence is “far from conclusive.”
In reference to the video of the alleged CW attack referenced by The Times, Jean Pascal Zanders, a senior researcher at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, tells McClatchy News that there are red flags in the footage.
“Why only one person?” he said, referring to the video showing one patient it said was a victim. “Why do I find the hospital setting, again, unlike what I would expect in a case of chemical exposure? Why is the guy ‘foaming’ in the hospital, considering the rapid action of sarin.” Zanders explained that without an antidote, death is possible within one minute after exposure to sarin.”
The Times article then gets even stranger. To quote:
“In the chaos of Syria’s civil war, no hospital in the rebel-held areas has the facilities to test which gas was used. Yet medical sources in northern Syria have told The Times that in the immediate aftermath of the attack a team from “an American medical agency” arrived at the hospital in Afrin. They took hair samples from the casualties for testing at ‘an American laboratory.’
It is likely that these samples formed part of the evidence cited by the US Defence Secretary yesterday.”
Really? A CW attack takes place in the middle of the night in Aleppo, and in its “immediate aftermath” an “American medical agency” arrives to collect samples for testing?
There’s more…
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Free Syrian Army Chief of Staff General Salim Idriss says that Israel is knowledgeable about the Syrian government’s use of CWs, because the Mossad has agents in the country: “Israel has this information because there are many, many members of security services who are now very active in Syria.”
Idriss is, of course, referencing the statements by Israel this week that kicked off all the recent speculation on Syrian CWs:
Israeli army intelligence analyst Brig. Gen. Itai Brun has been quoted far and wide on this issue, mainly referencing the April Aleppo incident highlighted by The Times and debunked by experts.
It is likely that all the speculation in the past few days revolves around an incident that is looking more and more like the “false flag” operations anti-rebel Syrians have been warning about this past year. Given where the “evidence” is coming from, and the alleged presence of a western or American “medical agency” present on the ground, it is quite remarkable that Washington went full-press on this.
It is almost as bad as the account in 2011 of a middle-aged, Iranian-American, ex-car dealer who, by virtue of some familial relationship with a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, decided to collude with a Mexican drug cartel to plot the assassination of the Saudi ambassador in Washington at a popular DC eatery.
Having just passed the ten year anniversary of an Iraqi invasion and occupation based entirely on false and falsified data on Weapons of Mass Destruction, western media needs not to be asking about “red lines” as much as for iron-clad evidence.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. You can follow Sharmine on twitter @snarwani.
Silwad, Occupied Palestine – Around 50 Palestinians supported by around 20 international activists, demonstrated against the apartheid wall yesterday in Ni’lin, which is a village close to Ramallah. The residents attempted to dismantle the wall and were met with violence. Around 20 were treated for tear gas inhalation and one demonstrator was injured when he was shot in the chest with a tear gas canister.
The demonstration started when around 100 people from the community gathered for the Friday prayer in an olive field. After prayers the demonstrators approached the apartheid wall, chanting peace slogans in Arabic and Hebrew. In a speech, a member of the Popular Committee expressed the injustices that Ni’lin has faced in the past and continues to face today because of the actions of the Israeli military.
Residents tried to open the metal door that separates them from most of their land that has been appropriated illegally by the establishment of settlements and the construction of the wall. Soldiers fired tear gas at the demonstrators. One demonstrator, who had climbed the wall using a ladder, was speaking to the soldiers through a megaphone before they shot him directly in the chest with a tear gas canister. The impact caused him to fall off the ladder and require medical treatment. More tear gas was fired at other demonstrators, photographers and internationals. The demonstration lasted about one hour, weakening the wall and showing the resilience of the population of Ni’lin.
Ni’lin’s history is characterised by land theft, starting with the first Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948. Before 1948 the village of Ni’lin owned 58’000 dunams of land, from which 40’000 were stolen with the creation of Israel. The 1967 occupation lead to the construction of illegal settlements on Ni’lin’s land, stealing a further 8’000 dunams. The illegitimate establishment of the wall, which began in 2008, has stolen a further 2’500 dunams. Furthermore, the entrance of the village was closed in order to build a tunnel exclusively for settlers that lead to a further land theft of 200 dunams, highlighting the apartheid nature of Israeli policy. Nearly 90% of Ni’lin’s original land has been lost due to this systematic theft from war, settlements and the wall.
The non-violent demonstrations since 2008 have lead to the killings of five Palestinians. 10 year old Ahmed Moussa, 17 year old Yousef Amera, 22 year old Arafat Khawaja, 20 year old Mohammed Khawaja and 36 year old Yousef ‘Akil’ Srour. The residents of Ni’lin still struggle for peace and justice, and will not give up hope in spite of Israel’s use of extreme force and oppression.
A Catholic monastery and convent in a secluded valley outside Bethlehem lost a seven-year legal battle against the building of Israel’s apartheid wall on its land on Friday, according to its lawyers.
The Society of Saint Yves, a Catholic human rights group which argued the case on the monastery’s behalf, said an Israeli appeals court had endorsed a plan to expand the barrier it had built in the area.
The apartheid wall would surround the convent on three sides and cut it off from most of its land, Saint Yves said in a statement.
Salesian monks and nuns tend lush vineyards and olive trees on terraced hillsides under the gaze of Israeli settlements there. A convent school teaches 400 local children.
Israel started building the barrier, a mix of metal fencing, barbed wire and concrete walls, in 2002. It claims the apartheid barrier keeps its citizens safe from militants.
Saint Yves said “that the plan would violate international law and conventions protecting religious minorities and the right to education and freedom of religion”, said Anica Heinlein, its advocacy officer.
Around 50,000 Palestinian Christians, including 17,000 Catholics, live among 4 million Muslims in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza.
They say Israel’s checkpoints and apartheid barrier cut them off from their neighbors and holy places in Jerusalem.
Some 90 percent of Palestinian Christians live in a 20-km stretch from Ramallah and East Jerusalem to Bethlehem – an area locked in a labyrinth of Jewish settlements, Israeli-only roads and a drab concrete walls.
Built mostly within occupied land and not on the “Green Line”, which was the de facto border before the 1967 War, the apartheid barrier inside the West Bank is deemed illegal by the UN’s International Court of Justice.
The Palestinian Authority says the Christian population in the West Bank has shrunk over the last three decades due to emigration, but it lacks accurate figures.
“The occupation hurts Christians and Muslims both, but affects the Christian community more because it’s a smaller percentage of the population,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a diplomat in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
“This is a matter of their survival, as this is one of the last pieces of land the community owns,” he said.
Israeli President Shimon Peres will meet the newly elected pope next week during a visit to Italy.
The two men are due to discuss ties between Israel and the Vatican and improving relations between Christians and Jews. It was not immediately clear if the new pontiff would raise the issue of the monastery.
JENIN – Israeli security forces detained the sons of a local Hamas leader overnight in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, locals said.
Locals told Ma’an that Israeli troops raided Gamal al-Haija’s home and detained sons Abed al-Salam, Asem and Hamzeh. Their whereabouts are unknown, residents added.
Teacher Khaled Mohammad al-Haj was also detained after Israeli forces raided his home to the east of the city, a source told Ma’an. Summons were also handed down to three Palestinians in the district, requiring them to meet with Israeli security agents.
Residents also told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided the nearby Jalqamus and al-Yamoun villages, setting up checkpoints at the villages’ entrance and stationing near Yaba’s eastern border.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed three of the four detentions. At least five Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces across the West Bank on Monday.
Three Palestinians were detained in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. A local source identified them as Murad Karaja, 20, Ahmad Hajajra 21, and Ahmad Amer, 21. A resident said Hajajra’s mother was taken to hospital after collapsing during the raid.
Israeli forces also raided a home in the area and handed down summoning notices to brothers Muhammad, Khaled and Aboud al-Azza, the local added.
Troops also raided the refugee camp’s youth center, the resident said.
A source said Israeli forces raided the Azza refugee camp, also in Bethlehem, detaining Jihad Abu Shira and injuring his brother. The brother was taken to the al-Arabiya Hospital in Beit Jala for treatment, the source added.
Meanwhile, Ahmad Ali Musa and Amid Ahmad al-Azza, both 20, were detained by Israeli forces from the village of al-Khader in Bethlehem.
Israel’s army confirmed the detentions in Aida refugee camp but did not return requests for comment on the summons and raids.
New York City, New York – Shock is a curious thing. The human mind is at its most susceptible when the proverbial rug has been pulled from under its feet. When a momentous, shocking event occurs we are thrust into an uncomfortable, unfamiliar, frightening place. We look for explanations, try to make sense of chaos whilst we are at our most vulnerable. Our malleable minds accept and subconsciously cling to the first narrative our ‘protectors’ offer, whether real or imagined, whether plausible or nonsensical.
The events of 9/11 were not only faithful to this rule, but they represented a paradigmatic example of this concept in play. The ‘shock therapy’ that has been unleashed on nations by means of bombs, bullets, and economic warfare, equally applies to the human psyche. It is not only nations but also people, that can be remade. While a shell-shocked America reeled over the most shocking, heinous, and dramatic terrorist attack the United States has ever suffered, the very architects of this attack moved to cement their ‘new world order’ narrative – ushering in the ‘War on Terror’. Before the toxic dust had even settled on Manhattan, the afraid, angry masses would be given their enemy and they would be given their saviours, as an equally toxic cloud of delusion descended on the American consciousness.
Ehud Barak, the BBC, and the birth of a pre-packaged lie
As the largest broadcaster in the world with over 20,000 employees, the Zionist-controlled BBC was the chosen outlet for the birth of the myth that is the ‘War on Terror’. As the attacks were unfolding, the BBC already had its pre-prepared propaganda agenda in hand. Later in the day the BBC would unwittingly expose this fact most obviously when they reported, ticker and all, the fall of WTC-7 over 20 minutes before it even happened. Former Prime Minister of Israel and former commander of the elite IDF intelligence unit ‘Sayeret Matkal’, Ehud Barak, would narrate the macabre theatre.
It is important to remember at this point, this is precisely how such events work; ‘false flag’ terrorism is a form of psychological warfare. In order for the operation to be successful, the perpetrator must be able to establish the intended narrative at the very outset – as soon as the minds of the subjects have been traumatised, dazed, and ‘blank-slated’. This is the fertile ground needed for the lie to take root, and the lie must be planted as soon as possible.
Relinquishing his post as Israeli PM to genocidal war criminal Ariel Sharon in March 2001, Barak was to travel to the United States and spend the months preceding 9/11 consulting for Electronic Data Systems and SCP Partners, which is a Mossad-run company specialising in security-related work. Within SCP Partners’ business portfolio are a number of firms which specialise in the creation of advanced niche specialty metals and complex metals products for industries such as energy, aerospace, infrastructure, and specialty metals and chemical industries.
Of course on the morning of the 9/11 plot’s gruesome conclusion, he would be miraculously present at the offices of the largest broadcaster on the planet. Literally as American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 hurtled towards the twin towers, Ehud Barak (born Ehud Brog) was backstage at the BBC World offices in London, preparing to forge the War on Terror’s Zionist narrative in the vulnerable shell-shocked minds of his global audience.
“We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”
Within the BBC’s pre-prepared news report – immediately before Barak is given the stage – a peculiar thing happened. Yasser Arafat, proudly clad with his Keffiyeh – the ultimate symbol of resistance to oppression – is interviewed in what was on the face of it a bizarre display of the utmost irrelevance. What on god’s green earth did the Palestinians have to do with an ongoing terror attack halfway across the globe, the perpetrators of which were at the time a complete mystery? As the BBC report would indicate with increasing clarity, the purpose of this was very simple: the Zionist narrative of the ‘War on Terror’ was being pulled out of its box and the Cellophane removed. Palestine – the righteous resistance at the very epicentre of Israel’s expansionist, hegemonic, genocidal ambitions – was the threat. Israel, the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ was the solution and here was its former Prime Minister with the answer.
As if presiding over a court case with a defendant and a plaintiff, the BBC reporter proceeds with his script, “That’s the view from the Palestinian side,” and Ehud Barak takes to the screen.
“This is an attack on our whole civilisation.” Who did it? “I believe we will know in twelve hours.” But that’s not important. What we need is a “globally concerted effort, led by the United States, the UK, Europe, and Russia.” Notice that Israel is conspicuously absent from the list; Israel doesn’t get its hands dirty unless it needs to.
“Bin Laden sits in Afghanistan,” the oracle tells us, but he’s not saying bin Laden did it. Yet. Ask him again in 11 hours, 59 minutes. “Within six or ten years,” Barak insists, Iran, Iraq, and Libya, the ‘rogue states’ must be taken down. Six or ten years on, and it’s two down, one to go.
Dehumanise the enemy: the ‘celebrating Palestinians’ propaganda
At four minutes and fifty-nine seconds through the video you see a Reuters feed flash up during the BBC’s live report. The dispatch alludes to: “Palestian [sic] celebrations” in Jerusalem. The next act of the script is being played out as Palestinians, and by extension Muslims, are dehumanised and portrayed as heartless, bloodthirsty animals.
Scenes of ‘Palestinians celebrating’ in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem), filmed by Reuters and AP, were later broadcast on TV on the BBC, Fox, CNN, and several other corporate-Zionist controlled media outlets:
Ten days after the event, in a piece titled Die Macht der TV-Bilder (‘The power of TV images’), well-respected German paper Der Spiegelutterly exposed this pernicious anti-Palestinian propaganda as being staged and manipulated.
It transpired that the lady who can be seen cheering and celebrating in front of the camera was told to do so, and offered cake in return. She later told German reporters of this, and was absolutely horrified to learn of the fraudulent context in which the footage was broadcast to an information-hungry world in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Further to this, you can clearly see in the video that there is only a very small number of children and people celebrating. In the background, one can see several people standing around nonchalantly, or simply walking from one place to the next.
Also, notice that the footage consists of only close, narrow shots. Long, wide shots would have shown the entire scene on the street: small groups of children and a handful of people celebrating, who were being urged and provoked to do so by those filming.
This footage, consisting of no more than a few seconds and a few people, was repeatedly broadcast to global audiences, alongside the chilling footage of Flight 175 slamming into the South Tower. By the time the hoax was exposed (albeit only by a German-language paper), the damage had already been done.
The big lie: peppered with Israeli fingerprints from preparation to orchestration and narration
The ‘mainstream’ 9/11 truth movement exhibits an acute case of selective vision. Whether through fear of the dreaded ‘anti-Semite’ epithet, or through aversion to the ubiquitous (but not entirely unfounded) ‘Jewish power & conspiracy’ stereotypes, the obvious and central Israeli connections to 9/11 are ignored.
The 9/11 false flag, and the torrent of Israeli-prescribed propaganda that followed as the towers fell, was engineered to instigate the War on Terror. Without a doubt, the axis consisting of the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and the myriad of ‘disaster capitalism’ multinationals, benefited greatly from and colluded to differing degrees in 9/11. However, attributing the central role of planning and orchestration of 9/11 to these actors is born of short-sightedness. The BBC’s evidently pre-planned Zionist propaganda set-piece provided a clue to this, but this was merely the tip of the iceberg.
Not only did Israel benefit economically, politically, and militarily from 9/11 more so than any other nation on the planet, but ardent Zionists with close links to Israel, US-Israeli dual nationals, and even Israelis, are found at every pivotal nook and cranny of the plot.
The clues are abundant, and lay at the very core of the 9/11 conspiracy (how absurd it now seems to use that long-abused word in its proper context).
From the unprecedented privatisation of the WTC six weeks prior to the events, to the sophisticated hardware used to fly the remotely-controlled jets; from the missing trillions at the Pentagon, to the Israeli spies caught with explosives and subsequently released in New York, to the man who let them go – the same man who co-authored the Patriot Act and headed up the Department of Homeland Security; from the advance warnings received by Israeli communications company Odigo and part Israeli state-owned company ZIM (which terminated its WTC tenure one week before the event incurring a $50,000 bill), to the Israeli company that ran security at the 9/11 airports. This company, ICTS International, even ran security for the ‘shoe bomber’ airport, the ‘underpants bomber’ airport, as well as the 7/7 London bus service that was bombed in 2005. Yet another Israeli company, Verint Systems, ran the camera system in the London Tube network when it told the world that its cameras ‘weren’t working’, in an attempt to explain why there was no footage of any of the alleged bombers entering their respective tube trains. But I digress. The blue and white six-pointed star can be uncovered in all of the most obvious central aspects of the 9/11 game plan.
Six weeks before 9/11 the WTC ownership was transferred into private hands for the first time in history. Ronald Lauder lobbied for this to happen. Lewis Eisenberg, head of the Port Authority, presided over the deal. It was awarded to Larry Silverstein and Frank Lowy. All of these men are staunch Zionists with close links to Israel; Silverstein – former IDF soldier – even speaks to Benjamin Netanyahu on a weekly basis. Billionaire Lauder is closely involved with several pro-Israel Jewish organisations including the JNF (which appropriates Palestinian land for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers). He even accompanied President Bush on his 2008 delegation to Israel, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Nakba.
Lowy fought in the Nakba as a member of the Golani brigade and, like Silverstein, miraculously steered clear of the WTC on that fateful Tuesday morning. All four men are intimately involved in the abhorrent Anti-Defamation League.
On September 10, 2001, the very day before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld announced $2.3 trillion in missing funds at the Pentagon. The Bush-appointed man responsible for the Pentagon’s finances at that time was staunch Zionist and Rabbi Dov Zakheim – a man who had been the Chief Executive of Systems Planning Corporation for the previous fourteen years – since 1987. SPC manufactures advanced aviation technology used for the remote piloting of large jet aircraft.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, residents of Bergen, New Jersey, saw five men stood atop a white van. These men had set up a camera to record the twin towers before the first plane had hit. Upon the impact of Flight 11 and the instantaneous, hellish death of hundreds of innocent people, these men celebrated and cheered together. The horrified residents reported the men, who were later apprehended by police. The Israeli men tested positive for explosives, but were not charged with anything and were later released.
A second van was found later that day in even more suspicious circumstances. By the George Washington bridge, which connects New York City to New Jersey, two Israeli men were caught driving the van containing a truckload of explosives. Dan Rather, news anchor for CBS, would report:
“Two suspects are in FBI custody after a truckload of explosives were discovered around the George Washington Bridge. That bridge links New York to New Jersey over the Hudson River. Whether the discovery of those explosives had anything to do with other events today is unclear, but the FBI, has two suspects in hand, said the truckload of explosives, enough explosives were in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge.”
All of these Israelis were subsequently released ultimately by Michael Chertoff – ardent Zionist and son of a Talmudic Rabbi and the first hostess for El Al Airlines, a suspected Mossad front. Chertoff also co-authored the Patriot Act – legislation used to spy on Americans and stifle dissent in the name of ‘national security’.
It cannot be denied that politically and militarily, Israel benefited from 9/11 more than any other nation on the face of the earth. The false flag terror attacks afforded the Zionist entity endless political capital to pursue and accelerate its genocidal ambitions against Muslims in Palestine, and its goals of regional hegemony in coaxing the U.S. to invade Iraq.
In addition to this there is the important element of economic benefits; even the Israeli government admits that its economy is centred around the homeland security and weapons industry.
As a direct result of 9/11, the homeland security industry has boomed to astronomical proportions, eclipsing Hollywood and the music industry. Unprecedented security paranoia, war, and conflict are racking the planet. An ever-growing number of U.S. and Israeli-made drones (and Israel is considered the leading player whilst five NATO countries are using Israeli drones in Afghanistan) are patrolling the skies of the Middle East and Central Asia. Is it any wonder that Israel is one of the few nations on the planet that has largely avoided the post-9/11 economic slump?
The Zionist-controlled BBC’s pre-prepared ‘kick-off’ propaganda set-piece ‘hosted’ by Israeli Zionist heavyweight Ehud Barak, erected the ‘War on Terror’ before the events of 9/11 had even come to pass. The former Israeli Prime Minister’s appearance in what was a uniquely Zionist and anti-Palestinian news report as Manhattan burned provided a telling clue as to the perpetrators of the 9/11 psychological warfare operation. While real Israelis cheered in Manhattan, the world’s TV screens showed manipulated footage of Palestinians ‘celebrating’ 9/11.
Not only are Israel’s fingerprints all over 9/11 (something which is apparent even from the incomplete break-down above), but the new global paradigm that was forged on that day, empowered and benefited Israel in every conceivable way.
Your cause may be the Palestinian struggle, waged in the occupied holy lands of the Middle East. Your cause may be the fight against the unstoppable, destructive free-market neoliberal economic doctrine. Your cause may be the battle against fear, struck into our hearts by the ‘al Qaeda’ ghost – kept alive by psychological warfare outfits such as the Zionist-run SITE group. Your struggle may be against the decade of wars now expanding into Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Perhaps your cause is all of the above. In any case, what cannot be denied is that 9/11 is the seminal event, inextricably and intimately linked to almost every major problem the world faces today. Only through establishing the whole truth about this Zionist deception can we even begin to glimpse peace.
After a ten hour debate that began Wednesday evening and continued through the night, the Student Senate at the University of California – Berkeley voted to divest University funds from three companies that profit from Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Three years ago, UC-Berkeley’s Student Senate passed a similar resolution calling for divestment, but the then-President of the Student Union vetoed the measure. Thursday’s vote follows the narrow defeat of a similar divestment resolution at UC-Santa Barbara last week. Two weeks ago, students at UC-Riverside overturned a resolution they had passed the week before calling for divestment.
The heated debate at UC-Berkeley included the voices of dozens of Jewish and Arab students who supported the divestment resolution, and led some students to break down in tears as emotions ran high.
“There are few experiences more traumatic than losing your home or being forced out of the place you call home,” said UC Berkeley junior Kamyar Jarahzadeh, according to the student newspaper The Daily Cal. “This university’s money — our money — is complicit in the deprivation of human rights.”
In addition to the students, many community members attended the hearing – most were in favor of the resolution, but some opponents also attended. Pulitzer-prize winning author Alice Walker spoke in favor of the divestment resolution, as someone who participated in a flotilla to Gaza that attempted to break the Israeli siege put in place in 2007.
Students opposed to the resolution organized a party called ‘SQUELCH!’, aimed at stopping the divestment resolution from passing. In the Daily Cal newspaper, SQUELCH! Party chair Noah Ickowitz commented, “We will take home that this body takes divestment as a weapon of choice when that is not the only weapon in our arsenal.”
According to the Daily Cal, “SB 160, authored by Student Action Senator George Kadifa, calls the UC system a “complicit third party” in Israel’s “illegal occupation and ensuing human rights abuses” and seeks the divestment of more than $14 million in ASUC and UC assets from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Cement Roadstone Holdings. According to the bill, these companies provide equipment, materials and technology to the Israeli military, including bulldozers and biometric identification systems.”
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – There are growing concerns for the safety of non-violent Palestinian activist and organiser Issa Amro, following a recent letter to Israeli security forces from Israeli settlers of Hebron, accusing Amro of terrorism and incitement, and warning that a failure of the Israeli authorities to remove him “could be costly”, and threatening “bloodshed”. This is the latest in a long line of threats and attacks against UN human rights award winner Amro.
In the letter, the mayor of the Jewish “Hebron Municipal Council” and the director general of the “Hebron Jewish Community” insist that army commanders “use administrative detention until you are able to find a long-term solution to completely end this hostile and dangerous activity” referring to Amro’s extensive work with various human rights groups. The full letter can be read here.
Amro has been violently attacked by this same community of Israeli settlers many times in the past – his nose and wrist have been broken and he received five stitches to his head. He and his family regularly receive death threats from the settlers of Hebron over the phone, continuing their campaign of threats and violence against him.
Despite having received numerous death threats and abuse from settlers over a period of many years, Amro is particularly concerned about the letter of the 20th March, because of the status and influence of its authors. Various Zionist websites have since issued calls for his execution, publishing various pictures of his face marked by red circles. Despite Amro’s long dedication to non-violent principles he is constantly identified as a terrorist by these websites.
Amro states “I have been arrested and detained on too many occasions to count, but I have never been charged with anything.” He says that he is regularly abducted by soldiers from his home, blindfolded and driven around for several hours before being left back at his house. On other occasions, he has been beaten by soldiers who have threatened to kill him and his family. During his most recent arrest in March 2013, Amro was stripped naked and made to stand outside for three hours.
On the 27th of March 2013 there was an arson attempt against the Youth Against Settlements community centre in Tel Rumeida – Amro was verbally abused and humiliated by police officers when he attempted to file a complaint and was ejected from their office twice before the complaint was filed. There has yet to be any investigation by the police.
Background
Issa Amro has been involved in founding many non-violent organisations in Hebron, working peacefully against the occupation. This includes the Hebron branch of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the Arab Non-Violence Network, Youth Against Settlements and the Hebron Defenders. He won the One World media award in 2009 for his involvement B’tselem’s “Shooting Back” project, which provides media training and distributes cameras to Palestinians to document settler and military abuse for Palestinians. Amro’s work with these organisations, as well as numerous other projects intending to document and non-violently resist human rights abuses and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements led to his winning of the UN OHCHR ‘Human Rights Defender of the Year in Palestine’ award in 2010.
Few with any sense of intellectual or historical integrity would still question the bloody massacre that took place in the village of Deir Yassin 65 years ago, claiming the lives of over 100 innocent Palestinians. Attempts at covering up the massacre have been dwarfed by grim details by well-respected historians, including some of Israel’s own.
Even narratives offered by historians such as Benny Morris – an honest researcher who remained committed to Zionism despite the ghastly history he had himself uncovered – presented a harrowing version of the events that unfolded on that day: “Whole families were riddled with bullets… men, women, and children were mowed down as they emerged from houses; individuals were taken aside and shot. Haganah intelligence reported ‘there were piles of dead. Some of the prisoners moved to places of incarceration, including women and children, were murdered viciously by their captors…”
It was the Irgun Zionist militias of Menachem Begin and the Stern Gang (Lehi) lead by Yitzhak Shamir that took credit for the infamy of that day; and both were rewarded generously for their ‘heroism’. The once wanted criminals rose to prominence to become Israeli Prime Ministers in later years.
The importance of the Deir Yassin massacre to historians often obscures important facts. One amongst them is that Deir Yassin was one of many massacres perpetrated by Zionist troops, including Haganah units. Another is that these militias had jointly formed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) following the official Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948 despite their supposed differences during the conquest of Palestine. David Ben-Gurion had made his decision on May 26 and hesitated little to include both the Irgun and Lehi, alongside the Haganah. Not only did the leaders of the terrorist militias command respect and enjoy prestige within Israeli society, armed forces and the political elite, but the very murderers who butchered innocent men, women and children were empowered with bigger guns and continued to ‘serve’ and terrorize for many more years. Another often overlooked fact is that what started at Deir Yassin never truly finished. Sabra and Shatila, Jenin, Gaza and many more are only recreations of the same event.
But another sad reality also emerged and crystalized in the last 65 years. Since then the right to credible narration has still largely been reserved for Israeli historians. Most of these historians, whether sympathetic or otherwise, either played no part in that history, were privileged by its outcome or were themselves active participants. Still, it would take an Israeli historian to ‘discover’ a Palestinian massacre in some village at some point in time. For example, only when Israeli journalist Amir Gilat chose to run a story in Ma’ariv newspaper a few years ago, citing the research of Israeli master’s degree student Theodore Katz, did western media acknowledge the Tantura massacre. It mattered little that the descendants and relatives of 240 victims of that grief stricken village who were killed in cold blood by Alexandroni troops, never ceased remembering their loved ones. A ‘massacre’ is only a massacre when half-heartedly acknowledged by an Israeli historian no matter how long it takes for that admission to resurface.
Even Palestinian historians, at least those who are held accountable to the rules of western media and academia, find themselves borrowing mostly from Israeli sources, aggrandizing Israeli writers and celebrating Israeli historians who are supposedly more trustworthy than Palestinians. The logic has it that a sympathetic Israeli narrative would win greater acceptance by American or British audiences than one told by a Palestinian, even if the Palestinian historian had lived the event and experienced its every gory detail.
It is a travesty for the Palestinian narrative to live on borrowed analogies, borrowed histories and borrowed historians in order to enjoy an iota of credibility. This is just the tip of the iceberg and the problem runs much deeper than this.
In my last book, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story, I charted a detailed account of the Massacre of Beit Daras, when scores of inhabitants of that brave village, located in southern Palestine, were gunned down by Haganah troops only weeks after Deir Yassin inhabitants were massacred in a similar fashion. Beit Daras is the village from which my family was dispossessed to subsist in an impoverished refugee camp in Gaza.
Although Beit Daras was located at the north eastern part of the Gaza District in southern Palestine, it was high on the Zionist leadership agenda as early as the first months of conquest. The small village was one of a few villages and towns marked for destruction in Operation Nachshon and Harel aimed to completely cut off the Jaffa-Jerusalem landmass. The war for Beit Daras began early, as heavy shelling began between March 27-28, 1948, killing 9 villagers and destroying large areas of the village’s crops.
Several attempts had failed to drive the resilient villagers out. What turned out to be the last battle took place in mid-May. Um ‘Adel and Um Mohammed were two young girls in Beit Daras at the time. Now old women in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, they helped me connect some of the pieces regarding what happened on that day. I provided their historically consistent accounts in my book on Gaza. Here are few excerpts:
Um ‘Adel recalls: “The women and children were told to leave because the news of the Deir Yassin massacre was spreading and with it lots of fear. We were told that the Jews not only massacre people, but rape women. The women had to be sent away, but the men wouldn’t leave. But so many of them were killed. The men fought like lions, and many were killed as well, including Abu Mansi Nassar and his two brothers, Ali Mohammed Hussain al-Osaji, and four youth from al-Maqadima.”
Um Mohammed elaborated: “The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. They surrounded it all, from the direction of Isdud, al-Sawafir and everywhere. We wanted to pursue a way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house.
“The armed men came and said, ‘the road to Isdud is open, evacuate the people.’ The Jews let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I… started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hand. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured, and those who went through the fields. The firing was falling on the people like sand. The bombs from one side and the machine guns from the other. The Jews were on the hill; there was a school and a water reservoir for people and the vegetables. They showered the people with machine guns. A lot of the people died and got injured.
But many fighters remained in Beit Daras. Not even a massacre would weaken their resolve. The wounded were gathered in many houses, but with little medical care to count on. Some of the dead were hurriedly buried. Many others were unreachable, lying in the sun amidst the blooming fields of spring.
– Ramzy Baroud’s latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).
The US Defense Department plans to spend nearly 400 million dollars during the next two years on Israel’s Iron Dome missile system, despite budget cuts affecting the lives of many Americans.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the Pentagon intends to allocate $220 million for the Israeli missile batteries in fiscal year 2014, which starts on October 1.
Washington also plans to spend $175.9 million in 2015.
If the budget is approved during the annual defense budget process, it will be added to the $486 million that Washington has already spent on the Israeli regime’s Iron Dome missile system during the past few years.
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is planning to travel to Israel in a few days.
“Our interests are very clear and common,” Hagel said at a US House hearing on Tuesday, adding, “I think the Israelis know that.”
The Israeli regime receives more than three billion dollars from the United States in direct foreign assistance every year.
Hagel recently reassured Tel Aviv that Washington would continue funding Israel’s costly Iron Dome.
On March 5, Hagel held a meeting with then Israeli Minister for Military Affairs Ehud Barak at the Pentagon, during which he voiced Washington’s “strong commitment” to backing funding for the Iron Dome, despite fiscal uncertainty for the US administration.
A report written by Israeli Journalist, Gideon Levi, and published by Haaretz Hebrew Language daily, accuses the Israeli military of deliberately executing two Palestinians, who were recently shot by the army at the Ennab roadblock, east of Anabta near the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.
The two Palestinians, identified as Naji Al-Balbisi, 18, and Amer Ibrahim Nassar, 17, were shot by several rounds of live ammunition from a close range. At least four Palestinians have been injured.
Levy said that “on the eve on Wednesday April 3rd, and under the military monitoring tower, near the entrance of Tulkarem, an execution took place…. There can be no other words to describe what happened there, when four Palestinians walked towards the roadblock and the soldiers kept monitoring them, until they were nearly 2 kilometers away”.
“The soldiers monitored the Palestinians approaching, and repeatedly trying to light their Molotov cocktails, but they [the soldiers] did not do anything to stop them, the Palestinians then hurled their cocktails at the concrete wall of the military tower,” they were participating in clashes that took place after detainee Maisara Abu Hamdiyya died on April 2nd an advanced stage of cancer resulting from the lack of medical attention in Israeli prisons. Abu Hamdiyya is from the West Bank city of Hebron.
Levy added that two soldiers then fired rounds of live ammunition killing Amer Nassar, while Dia’ Nassar was kidnapped. Another Palestinian, identified as Fadi Abu Asal, was injured and was kidnapped a few days later.
“The soldiers then started chasing Naji Al-Balbeesy, who ran to the yard of a nearby leather factory. Soldiers approached him, opened fire at him from a very close range, and executed him”, Levy said, “This happened despite the fact that the soldiers, fortifying themselves in the monitoring tower, were never in any real danger”.
The Israeli journalist said that the slain Palestinians did not deserve to die, especially since they ran away, “but a soldier, or two, decided to teach Al-Balbeesy a lesson, by executing him”. The Milad News Agency reported.
Following the death of Abu Hamdiyya, dozens of Palestinians, including children, have been shot and wounded by Israeli military fire during clashes that took place with the army, while several Palestinians have been killed and dozens, including several children, have been kidnapped.
Tom Hurndall was shot through the head by the Israeli army. We follow his grieving family who came to Gaza to see what their son was doing. Five-year-old Salamah was one of three children Tom was attempting to rescue when he was shot. He had frozen in fear when soldiers began firing at him. Another young peace campaigner, Brian Avery, is lucky to be alive after a burst of machine gun fire ripped off half his face. He now lies in hospital with horrific scars barely able to talk. The Israelis are cracking down on foreigners entering the Gaza Strip.
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.