from Crikey .....

Australian government out of step with public opinion on Israel/Palestine

Antony Loewenstein writes from New York:

During this year's Gaza war, Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was incapable of condemning Israeli brutality against the Palestinians. Her upcoming visit to Israel (and a few spare minutes with the Palestinian Authority) has caused loud protests across the country.

A petition that I signed asked that, "Every parliamentarian ought to think seriously about the moral implications of Australia normalising relations with a state that is still under investigation for war crimes committed during Israel's Cast Lead operation."

The Australian smeared critics of the propaganda trip as "Israel's enemies".

A new study, released last week by Roy Morgan polling, suggests that the Australian government, Murdoch press and Zionist leaders are profoundly out of step with public opinion over the Israel/Palestine conflict. Israel's own extreme actions are killing its image and chances of long-terms survival.

Commissioned by the Sydney-based Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP) and Adelaide's Australian Friends of Palestine (AFOPA) organisations, the figures reveal public scepticism towards Israeli claims.

When the 636 Australians aged 18 years and over were asked whether they knew about January's Gaza war, 38 percent said they knew "a lot" or "a fair amount" about the crisis and 61 percent said they did not know much at all or "nothing". Of those 38 percent informed respondents, a far bigger percentage expressed sympathy for the Palestinians (44.5 percent) over the Israelis (29.5 percent).

When asked which side of the conflict they supported more, 28 percent sided with the Palestinians, 25 percent with neither and 24.5 percent with the Israelis. Twenty-three percent were unsure.

Journalist and academic Peter Manning, the CJPP Convenor, says that, "the national poll shows the federal Labor Government is out of step with public opinion when it cuddles up to Israel. Julia Gillard's current delegation to Israel is out of step not only with President Obama's policies but with what Australians think."

In relation to Gaza -- where Jimmy Carter said this week that the Palestinians there were being treated "like animals" thanks to the Israeli and Western-led blockade -- Manning is even harsher:

"Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was well out of step with public opinion when she expressed sympathy [in January] for the few Israelis who died from rocket attacks rather than the 1400 Palestinians being slaughtered by Israeli gunfire on schools, hospitals and residential buildings."

These results shouldn't be surprising. Consistent polling in the US shows that American Jews are fundamentally opposed to the neo-conservative worldview and believe in engagement with the Palestinians. A 2007 study by the American Jewish Committee found decent support for a Palestinian state and even a majority of American Democrats polled in January this year questioned the necessity of invading Gaza.

Even more ominously for Israel's supporters, a new study by The Israel Report finds only 49 percent of American voters call themselves supporters of Israel, down from 69 percent last September. Other results from the study are equally startling; a minority of respondents believe the Israelis are serious about reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.

This is significant and represents the gradual decline of support for Israel in the West. Many Americans I am meeting here in New York confirm the polling; Israel is heading towards permanent apartheid. The "special relationship" between Israel and America is being challenged like never before.

The Australian government is still waiting for the press release from the White House.

More settlements

Israel's defence ministry has proposed legalising 60 existing homes at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, and building another 240 homes at the site, despite US calls for a halt to settlement growth.

Construction at the outpost, known as Water Reservoir Hill, near the Talmon settlement, north of Ramallah, would "greatly damage" the freedom of movement of Palestinian farmers in the area, according to Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights group.

It said the construction plan was put forward for public inspection shortly after the Israeli government was formed this spring and was first approved by Ehud Barak, the defence minister. It was now awaiting final approval.

But Bimkom added: "In virtually all cases, plans deposited for Israeli settlements were subsequently approved."

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Jewish Americans and complaints that they had apparently been making about Christian evangelists come up in a phone call with the Reverend Billy Graham. Together, they agree that the Jews risk stoking a new wave of anti-Semitism if they persist. "What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up," the president remarks, before going on: "It may be they have a death wish. You know that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries."

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Two Israeli warships have sailed through the Suez Canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Israeli and Egyptian officials say.

Israeli media described the passage of the two Saar class missile boats as a "message" to Iran.

Israel believes Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, something Iran denies.

Israeli officials say an Israeli submarine used the canal in June, returning on 5 July.

An Israeli official said deployment of the two ships was linked to the Israeli navy's "recent activities around the Red Sea".

Correspondents say that although Israel vessels regularly use the canal, the recent moves have - unusually - been publicised by the Israelis.

From the American Conservative: A review of Samatha Power book By Chase Madar:

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

....

To be sure, the human-rights industry is not all armed missionaries and laptop bombardiers. Human Rights Watch, for example, is one of few prestigious institutions in the U.S. to have criticized Israel’s assault on Gaza, for which its Middle East and North Africa division has endured much bashing not just from right-wing media but from its own board of directors. That said, HRW’s rebuke was limited to Israel’s manner of making war, rather than Israel’s decision to launch the attack in the first place—the jus in bello, not the jus ad bellum.

Human-rights organizations can do a splendid job of exposing and criticizing abuses, but they are constitutionally incapable of taking stands on larger political issues. No major human-rights NGO opposed the invasion of Iraq. With their legitimacy and funding dependent on a carefully cultivated perception of neutrality, human-rights nonprofits will never be any substitute for an explicitly anti-imperialist political force. In the meantime, America’s best and brightest will continue to explore innovative ways for human rights to serve a thoroughly militarized foreign policy.

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Gus: And there was this fascinating insight into the Indonesian invasion of East Timor :

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In nearly 600 pages of text, Power barely mentions those postwar genocides in which the U.S. government, far from sitting idle, took a robust role in the slaughter. Indonesia’s genocidal conquest of East Timor, for instance, expressly green-lighted by President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger, who met with Suharto the night before the invasion was launched and carried out with American-supplied weapons. Over the next quarter century, the Indonesian army saw U.S. military aid and training rise as it killed between 100,000 and 200,000 East Timorese. (The figures and the designation of “genocide” come from a UN-formed investigative body.) This whole bloody business gets exactly one sentence in Power’s book....

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See toon at top... And please note that there are many Human Rights organisations that do expose the trickery and the unjustness of "just" wars... But those organisations that are dependent of government for funds tend to limit their protest to particular events, not wrong ideologies if these ideologies are those of the hand that feed them. Organisations that survive independently from governments often lack the funds to be heard loudly. And for obvious reasons, the media rarely expose in full the tragedies of not just abuses, but of the wrongfulness of bloody crusades. In regard to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, when the film BALIBO comes your way go and see it.

If one good deed  was done by John Howard, helping the independence of Timor Leste was his best.

Israel's foreign ministry has summoned for consultation a senior diplomat for criticising the government for harming ties with the United States.

Nadav Tamir, consul-general in Boston, will travel to Jerusalem next week to give "clarification" to the ministry.

In an internal memo, Mr Tamir wrote that public clashes with Washington over settlement construction were "causing strategic damage to Israel".

The government said he had violated protocol by expressing political views.

The three-page document, entitled "Sad thoughts on Israel-US relations", was leaked to Israel's Channel 10 TV.

Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak has approved permits to build 455 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank, a move that conversely could pave the way for a construction moratorium demanded by the United States.

A defence ministry list of the first such permits since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in March showed the homes would be built in areas Israel has said it intends to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israeli officials announced on Friday (local time) that Mr Netanyahu intended to give the go-ahead for the new projects, drawing swift condemnation from the White House.

But the step was widely seen in Israel as an attempt by Mr Netanyahu to mollify pro-settler members of his right-leaning government and Likud Party before agreeing to a freeze of construction starts in the settlements.

US President Barack Obama has brought strong pressure on Mr Netanyahu to bend on settlements in order to open the way for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks suspended since December.

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A report on Iran's nuclear program issued by the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month generated news stories publicizing an incendiary charge that US intelligence is underestimating Iran's progress in designing a "nuclear warhead" before the halt in nuclear weapons-related research in 2003.

That false and misleading charge from an intelligence official of a foreign country, who was not identified but was clearly Israeli, reinforces two of Israel's key themes on Iran - that the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is wrong, and that Tehran is poised to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible.

But it also provides new evidence that Israeli intelligence was the source of the collection of intelligence documents which have been used to accuse Iran of hiding nuclear weapons research.

The committee report, dated May 4, cited unnamed "foreign analysts" as claiming intelligence that Iran ended its nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because it had mastered the design and tested components of a nuclear weapon and thus didn't need to work on it further until it had produced enough sufficient material.

That conclusion, which implies that Iran has already decided to build nuclear weapons, contradicts both the 2007 NIE on Iran, and current intelligence analysis. The NIE concluded that Iran had ended nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because of increased international scrutiny, and that it was "less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005".

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF05Ak01.html

As the carnage in Gaza reached a crescendo in the beginning of August, Jon Voight, one of Hollywood's most vocal conservatives, penned a harsh attack on fellow actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in response to a letter they signed condemning the latest Israeli bombing of Gaza in which he accused them of "inciting anti-Semitism all over the world". Many activists dismiss Voight's letter as the rantings of an unthinking actor who long ago lost touch with political reality - a poor relation of conservative icon Charlton Heston. But Voight's vitriol, and the narratives behind them, have for decades been quite effective in silencing criticism of Israel in Hollywood or among entertainers more broadly. 

Indeed, they provide the intellectual cover for even more extreme attacks by celebrities like Joan Rivers, who in an "epic rant" worthy of an Israeli Knesset member, declared that Palestinians in Gaza "deserved to be dead". This level of hatred mirrors the increasingly genocidal discourse against Palestinians within Israeli political and culture.

Yet it also gives cover for a growing blacklist by "top industry executives" against actors like Cruz and Bardem who dare criticise Israel publicly and without the level of deference that has long defined Hollywood's treatment of the Jewish state.

Like most Hollywood scripts, the narratives on which the views of Voight, Rivers and other Hollywood Israel supporters are based are far removed from the historical and contemporary realities they purport to describe. Yet their power remains secure precisely because they are the same narratives used by the seemingly reasonable mainstream media and political actors - from the New York Times to President Obama - whenever the conflict is discussed.

Historical myths

There are three fundamental "myths", to borrow a phrase from one of Israel's founding revisionist historians, Simha Flapan, surrounding Israel's birth and subsequent history that cohere the traditional narrative Voight is re-voicing. 

read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/08/dear-jon-voight-letter-about-ga-201481193915415651.html

 

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The United States has criticised Israel’s announcement of a land appropriation for possible settlement construction in the occupied West Bank as “counterproductive” to peace efforts, and urged the Israeli government to reverse the decision.

Israel laid claim to nearly 1,000 acres (400 hectares) in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem, a move which an anti-settlement group termed the biggest appropriation in 30 years and a Palestinian official said would cause only more friction after the Gaza war.

“We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity,” a State Department official said. “This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue is counterproductive to Israel’s stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians.”

“We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision,” the official said in Washington.

Israel Radio said the step was taken in response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers by Hamas militants in the area in June, one of the sparks for the seven-week war in Gaza that left more than 2,000 people dead.

The notice published on Sunday by the Israeli military gave no reason for the land appropriation decision.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/us-criticises-israel-appropriation-land-settlements

During the last few days, Israeli media have produced frequent reports that it is preparing to launch a new war on Gaza, using the dramatic changes in the region. The Israeli media used the same justifications and arguments they did before the last three military operations, accusing the armed groups of building tunnels and training on new equipment.

Is Israel about to start a new war on #Gaza? | Dr Saleh Al-Naami |https://t.co/BvOFkCtcMp

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) January 28, 2016

It has been the old story of justification since 2010 when Israel killed more than 5,000 people and destroyed thousands of houses and displaced 100,000 families. It is clear that Israel does not want political compromises. It only wants to drag the Palestinian groups into armed violence to end the current wave of popular resistance.

The Palestinians don’t need a new war. They need to live in dignity and freedom in their own Palestinian independent state.

Dr. Ibrahim Natil is International Human Rights Campaigner. Dr. Natil also is a visiting Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin (UCD).

https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/is-israel-planning-a-new-war-on-gaza,8621

As the beginning of the endgame on Syria commences, Israel is signaling its intention to join in the feasting on Syria's decaying sovereignty - demanding international recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights captured from Syria in the June 1967 war.

The occasion for this demand was an extraordinary cabinet session in on the Golan plateau - the first ever - where, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reckoning, 50,000 Israeli settlers reside.

"I chose to hold this festive cabinet meeting on the Golan Heights in order to deliver a clear message," Netanyahu declared at the outset of the meeting. "The Golan Heights will forever remain in Israel's hands. Israel will never come down from the Golan Heights."

read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/04/israel-golan-heights-syrian-endgame-160421062818750.html

An Israeli official has accused Barack Obama of colluding in a “shameful move against Israel at the UN” over a planned security council vote on Israeli illegal settlements.

In striking language underlining the long-running depth of hostility between the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration, the unnamed official accused Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, of “secretly cooking up with Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution”.

The comments emerged in the midst of 24 hours of extraordinary diplomacy that saw the US president-elect, Donald Trump – who has yet to be sworn into office – undermine the foreign policy of a sitting president and intervene to see a vote on the resolution on Thursday evening postponed.

That appears to have been only a temporary respite as it emerged that other members of the security council were pushing ahead with a vote on the same text later on Friday.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/23/israeli-official-accuses-b...

 

read from top... Meanwhile:

 

The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution urging an end to illegal Israeli settlements after the US refused to veto it.

The Egyptian-drafted resolution had been withdrawn after Israel asked Donald Trump to intervene but it was proposed again by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela.

The US has traditionally sheltered Israel from condemnatory resolutions.

Israeli officials have condemned the US abstention.

Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said: "This is not a resolution against settlements, it is an anti-Israel resolution, against the Jewish people and the state of the Jews. 

"The United States tonight has simply abandoned its only friend in the Middle East."

President-elect Trump, who will be inaugurated on 20 January, tweeted after the vote: "As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th."

The issue of Jewish settlements is one of the most contentious between Israel and the Palestinians, who see them as an obstacle to peace.

 

read more:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38421026

John Kerry is due to lay out a US framework for a Palestinian-Israeli agreement as the Obama administration and its international allies scramble to protect what is left of the peace process before Donald Trump takes office.

The US secretary of state will outline the proposals on Wednesday, at a time when US-Israeli relations have reached their lowest point in decades. The government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has accused Washington of conspiring against it when a UN security council vote on Friday demanded an end to settlement building in the West Bank. 

The Kerry speech at the State Department at 11am (4pm GMT) is expected to restate the Obama administration’s continued faith in a two-state solution to the chronic impasse. It is a parting shot after eight years in office, during which there has been a dearth of diplomatic progress. It is not expected to lead to any new initiative but rather lay down a marker on a longstanding US and international approach to the region before the US president-elect, whose commitment to such a solution is in doubt, assumes office.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/27/obama-and-allies-seek-to-i...

The US president has threatened the Palestinians with withdrawing millions of dollars in aid if they do not participate in peace talks with Israel under the auspices of Washington. The PLO refused to comply with this injunction.

Palestinian officials on January 25 rejected pressure from US President Donald Trump to return them to negotiations with Israel under the auspices of the United States.

"Refusing to meet your oppressor is not disrespectful, it is respecting oneself," Hanane Achraoui, a senior leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told AFP. after Donald Trump accused the Palestinians of "disrespecting the United States".

They disrespected us [...] by refusing to receive our excellent vice-president

Donald Trump announced on January 25 the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Palestinians unless they agree to participate in peace talks under the auspices of Washington. "They disrespected us last week by refusing to receive our excellent vice president," said the White House tenant during a warm meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "We gave them hundreds of millions [and] this money will not be paid to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace," he added.

Mike Pence snubbed by Palestinians

Furious after Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Palestinian leaders decided to snub Mike Pence, the US Vice President who toured Egypt, Jordan and Israel from January 20-23.

Mike Pence left on January 23 for Washington without meeting any of them.

 

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Israel’s main international airport has rejected a billboard campaign calling on women to stand up to gender discrimination by refusing to give up their airplane seats at the behest of ultra-Orthodox men.

The notice, initiated by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) – the advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel – hoped to inform passengers at Ben-Gurion Airport of their rights during the Passover travel season.

...

Haredi men say that the modesty law of their religion forbids them from sitting beside any woman who is not their wife. This has resulted in airlines asking some women to switch seats so that a Haredi man does not have to sit next to her.

Last year, Israel’s national airline El Al was told by a court in a landmark ruling that it could not ask a woman to move seats because of the religious beliefs of an ultra-Orthodox man. The legal action was taken by the IRAC after Renee Rabinowitz, an 82-year-old holocaust survivor, was pressured to change her seat on an El Al flight by a flight attendant because a Haredi man refused to sit next to her.

Right-wing lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich has slammed the Reform movement as a “bunch of trolls” and criticised the advert for calling on the public to disregard God’s beliefs and act without kindness. Some other social media users appeared to agree with the view of the IRAC but described the advertisement as inciting and offensive.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/422993-israeli-airport-haredi-women/

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Ranan conducted lengthy conversations with his interview partners. About half were women, and most had completed high school or studied at college. "I didn't want to interview any hormonal 15-year-old boys who had seen the previous night how Israel is bombing Gaza and were repeating mindless slogans." 

But that didn't stop him from hearing some disturbing opinions. Two 21-year-old students, for instance, were obsessed with figuring out where they could shop in good conscience.

"But many brands belong to you! I have heard that Aldi belongs to a Jew -- … but it's only something I heard -- I don't know for sure."

"Starbucks, I heard,… but that doesn't keep me from going to Starbucks and getting a coffee or from going to Aldi."

"But there are surely people who don't go shopping there anymore! Rossmann, the drugstore DM, that's also supposed to be Jewish:…"

"Where do I know that from? It's same way that people say there are German nationalists. We don't know any, but we know they exist."

There are a number of patterns to be found in the transcripts. For example, most had read something about a supposed Jewish global conspiracy or heard about it from friends or family. A female engineer who grew up in a Turkish family in Germany said, "People talk about it, that the world is governed by some families, about 120 families. They are Jewish and that they control the government, more or less. All these diseases, bacteria, that are being spread everywhere in the world here, supposedly also come from there, that means the whole system in the world! I do think that Jews very, very much manipulate the world and also control it."

The people he spoke with seldom referred to the Koran or religious questions. For most of them, the Middle East was much more important.

One of the stories they told Ranan mirrored the plot of the Iranian TV show "Zahra's Blue Eyes," in which a leading Israeli politician has a Palestinian girl kidnapped to have her blue eyes transplanted into his blind son. The Palestinian territories' ambassador to the United States, Riyad Mansour, made a similar claim in 2015. He wrote to the UN secretary-general that Israel was organ-harvesting Palestinians who had been killed and that "bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs."

 

Read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/david-ranan-wrote-a-book-abo...

 

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The State of Israel is a rogue state - this is a truth that can no longer be denied, except by those who believe illegal occupation, illegal settlements, apartheid, the theft of resources, collective punishment, siege, and regular bouts of mass murder are the legitimate actions of a state that proclaims itself the only democracy in the Middle East.

The latest bout of mass murder committed by soldiers of the IDF, the ‘most moral army in the world', took place on March 30 at the start of Passover, the most sacred festival in the Jewish calendar. It left 18 unarmed Palestinian civilians dead and, according to some reports, as many as 1700 wounded.

In response to the massacre, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Gideon Levy made the salient point that it "shows once again that the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201804031063178756-gaza-israel-palest...

 

On April 23rd, the great independent investigative journalist, Craig Murray — a former British diplomat — headlined at his blog, “Condemned By Their Own Words”, and he posted there the translated-to-English transcript (excerpted below) to this Israeli radio Hebrew broadcast on April 21st, in which an Israeli Brigadier-General, named Fogel, explained why Israel’s troops are doing the right thing to shoot and even to kill Gazans who come (an unspecified) too close to the wall which separates Israel from Gaza:

FOGEL: Any person who gets close to the fence, anyone who could be a future threat to the border of the State of Israel and its residents, should bear a price for that violation. If this child or anyone else gets close to the fence in order [the soldier thinks possibly] to hide an explosive device or [to] check if there are any dead zones there or to cut the fence so someone could infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel to kill us…

NESIEL [the interviewer]: Then, then his punishment [for being suspected] is death?

FOGEL: His punishment is death. As far as I’m concerned then yes, if you can only shoot him to stop him, in the leg or arm – great. But if it’s more than that then, yes, you want to check with me whose blood is thicker, ours or theirs. It is clear to you that if one such person will manage to cross the fence or hide an explosive device there …

NESIEL: But we were taught that live fire is only used when the soldiers face immediate danger. … It does not do all that well for us, those pictures that are distributed around the world.

FOGEL: Look, Ron, we’re even terrible at it [at suppressing those pictures]. There’s nothing to be done, David always looks better against Goliath. And in this case, we are the Goliath. Not the David. That is entirely clear to me. … It will drag us into a war. I do not want to be on the side that gets dragged. I want to be on the side that initiates things. I do not want to wait for the moment where it finds a weak spot and attacks me there. If tomorrow morning it gets into a military base or a kibbutz and kills people there and takes prisoners of war or hostages, call it as you like, we’re in a whole new script. I want the leaders of Hamas to wake up tomorrow morning and for the last time in their life see the smiling faces of the IDF [Israel’s army]. That’s what I want to have happen. But we are dragged along. So we’re putting snipers up because we want to preserve the values we were educated by [that Israel’s soldiers are jury, judge, and even executioner, when suspecting a Gazan — Gaza is Israel’s free-fire zone].

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/03/how-social-media-platforms-suppress-...

 

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Israeli police have arrested the Italian graffiti artist who depicted Ahed Tamimi on a West Bank separation wall mural in Bethlehem, to coincide with the Palestinian teenage heroine’s release from prison.

Agostino Chirwin, also known as 'Jorit Agoch,' wrote on his Instagram account “We are in prison from Israeli army.  Who can help us please do it” on Saturday. He was detained with another Italian artist and a Palestinian, whose identities were not released, according to Reuters.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/434555-tamimi-mural-artist-agoch-arrested/

 

 

Meanwhile:

 

Palestinian protest icon Ahed Tamimi returned home to a hero's welcome in her West Bank village on Sunday after Israel released the 17-year-old from prison at the end of her eight-month sentence for slapping and kicking Israeli soldiers.

Ahed and her mother, Nariman Tamimi, were greeted with banners, cheers and Palestinian flags as they entered their home village of Nabi Saleh.

Ahed was arrested in December after the then-16-year-old confronted two Israeli soldiers in the driveway of her home in the occupied West Bank — pushing, shoving and slapping them after they refused to leave her yard.

Her mother filmed the incident and posted it on Facebook, where it went viral and, for many, instantly turned Ahed into a symbol of resistance to Israel's half-century-old military rule over the Palestinians.

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-29/ahed-tamimi-palestinian-who-slappe...

 

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by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

 

The Jewish state gives chutzpah new meaning. It seeks $250 billion from seven Arab states and Iran in connection to its theft of historic Palestine - one of history's great crimes.

It took 78% in 1948, the Palestinian Nakba, the remainder in June 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the UN-declared international city, illegally occupied by Israel, illegally declared its exclusive capital.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, set the tone during the Nakba for what followed, saying "(e)very attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion" - forcefully eliminating resistance, assuring Israeli control over historic Palestine.

According to Israeli Hadashot TV news, Israel demands Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria Tunisia and Yemen correct what it calls a "historic injustice" - a colossal perversion of truth.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/news/world/09-01-2019/142166-israel_stealing...

 

 

No verification of this item available yet, but quite hysterical if true.

 

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From Rand Paul

 

I am not in favor of boycotting Israel. Israel has been a good ally. I have traveled to Israel, and it was one of the best and most meaningful trips I have taken with my family. Standing at the Western Wall was special and powerful. Visiting old Jerusalem was incredible, and sailing on the sea of Galilee while a double rainbow glowed above us is something I will never forget. Israel is truly a unique and special place.

I also agree with both supporters of Israel and PLO leaders that a boycott has the potential to hurt both Israel and the Palestinians.

At the same time, I am concerned about what the role of Congress can and should be in this situation. I strongly oppose any legislation that attempts to ban boycotts or ban people who support boycotts from participating in our government or working for our government.

I firmly believe we have to be very careful what powers we exercise in government—and think through whether or not we would want them used if the situation were different.

...

It was their right, and the right of those from Ralph Abernathy to E.D. Nixon to Martin Luther King, to lead these protests.

But throughout the more than year-long protest, the homes of Dr. King and Mr. Nixon were bombed. And on a single day in 1956, over 80 leaders of the protest were indicted on “conspiracy” charges in an attempt to stop the boycotts.

This was wrong, but we don’t fully understand the way the rule of law and our freedoms work if we think it was wrong because we agreed with their boycott.

It was wrong regardless of what was being protested and what was being boycotted. The law shouldn’t be used to shut down protests or boycotts, no matter what the dispute involves.

Courts have ruled on this as well, notably in NAACP v Claiborne Hardware Co. The court held that the economic boycott of white-owned businesses by blacks was entitled to First Amendment protection, as should be the case. It argued that a “non-violent, politically motivated boycott” was political speech and protected. I agree fully.

Whether or not to support a boycott depends on the merits of the argument. Whether or not to allow boycotts should be independent of the merits of the boycott. The First Amendment is about speech you like and speech you don’t like. If anything, it is more about protecting unpopular speech or the speech of minorities, whether they be a minority by the color of their skin or the shade of their ideology.

Let’s hope calmer heads prevail. Let’s hope Congress votes against limiting boycotts or free speech of any kind.

Rand Paul is the junior U.S. senator from Kentucky and a Republican.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/americans-have-a-right-...

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On 6 January 2018, the US television channel, CBS, broadcast an interview with Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi [1] as part of their programme “60 minutes”, In this interview, President al-Sissi declared “that his army is working with Israel to fight terrorists in the North of Sinai”.

CBS’s announcement that it planned to broadcast this interview had alarmed the Egyptian ambassador to Washington. The latter had asked that the interview not be aired, a request that fell on deaf ears.

Whilst President al-Sissi is talking about collaboration, most actors in the region are persuaded that the Israeli air force had struck what Daesh call Wilayat Sinaï (“the province of Sinaï “) more than a hundred times during the last three years.

According to the website of the Israeli Left Walla!, joint operations against Daesh are being used to conceal actions against the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the pro-Iranian, armed branch of the Palestinian Hamas [2].

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

 

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Israel's military says it has started hitting Iranian targets in Syria.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says its operation is against the Quds Force - elite units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

It provided no details. But there are reports of strikes around the Syrian capital Damascus early on Monday.

Syrian media say air defences have repelled "an Israeli aerial attack". On Sunday the IDF said it had intercepted a rocket over the Golan Heights.

What do we know about the operation?

The IDF announced the start of its operation in a tweet early on Monday.

End of Twitter post by @IDF

Syrian state media reported that the country's air defences shot down "hostile targets".

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says Israeli rockets were targeting "the vicinity of the capital Damascus".

Witnesses in Damascus spoke of hearing loud explosions in the night sky. The extent of the damage is not clear so far.

Netanyahu's warning

The operation comes after Israeli said that "a rocket was fired at the northern Golan Heights and was intercepted by the Iron Dome Aerial Defence System".

The popular winter tourist site on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights was closed as a result.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning during his visit to Chad on Sunday. 

"We have a set policy, to target the Iranian entrenchment in Syria, and to harm whoever tried to harm us," he said.

Israel rarely admits carrying out attacks on targets inside Syria.

But in May 2018, Israel said it had struck almost all of Iran's military infrastructure there in its such biggest assault since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

 

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As Anti-terror Fantasy Camps Are Popping Up Throughout Israel and the West Bank and Tourists Are Eating It Up in a two-hour simulation includes a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem marketplace, a stabbing attack, a live demonstration with attack dogs and a sniper tournament. 'I wonder whether a Jew in Auschwitz could have dreamed that this would ever exist in Israel'

 

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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-anti-terror-fantasy-camps-a...

 

 

If the West Bank Ran Israel, or Dr. Seuss' Guide to Judea 

 

When I heard the prime minister tell his ministers about settlers and Hebron, the book "If I Ran The Circus" popped into my head. Now I know why.

Bradley Burston 

"In all the whole town, the most wonderful spot is behind Sneelock's Store, in the big vacant lot. It's just the right spot for my wonderful plans," said young Morris McGurk  " if I clean up the cans."

When I [Bradley Burston] was small, one of my favorite books was "If I Ran the Circus" by Dr. Seuss. It was the story of a preposterous idea with an ironclad internal logic, a fantasy of contortion and construction which grows and grows until it takes over everything – with absolutely no heed paid to any one of the possible disastrous consequences.

It's a book that explains what might happen if the West Bank [Jewish settlements] ran the rest of us. That is, if the settlement movement, out there behind Mr. Netanyahu's store, ran the state of Israel.

For some reason, it was that book that popped into my head as I was listening to the prime minister address the Sunday cabinet meeting. "The government supports settlements at all times, especially these days" he began, with an oddly Seussian lilt to the cadence of his prepared remarks.

The prime minister had been pressed to explain why two days before, his defense minister – decrying "intruders" who had acted in "brazen" disregard of the law – had forcibly evicted dozens of settlers who broke into and took over two buildings in the West Bank flashpoint of Hebron.

The eviction sparked a mutiny in Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling right-wing bloc, with two of the scariest clowns in the settler-circus coalition, MKs Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) and Oren Hazan (Likud) threatening to absent themselves from a vote on a vote which Netanyahu does not want but politically sorely needs – the much-vilified, much-hyped, right-elite-driven NGO Bill.

Not to worry, the prime minister assured the settler-rich, settler-subservient cabinet in a display of high-flying, daredevil, split-second bureaucracy unlike anything Israelis experience under any other tent: "The moment that the processes of purchasing [the structures] are approved, we will allow the two homes in Hebron to be moved into, as has happened in similar cases in the past."

Then the prime minister, flying without a legislative safety net, took the trapeze even higher, adding a crowd-gasping flip. "The process of checking [the legality of the alleged purchases of the houses] begins today. We will do this as fast as possible.” 

In an apparent finale, he let go of the trapeze and appeared to wing it, adding another breathtaking clerical turn: "In any event, if it is not completed within a week, I will see to it that a report on its progress is provided the cabinet."

It was his landing, though, that confirmed the true status of the cabinet as the Settlers' Big Top. Throwing Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon under the clown car, Netanyahu signaled that he was moving to strip Ya'alon of the authority to evacuate settlers from West Bank homes. The power to do so would be transferred to an unspecified committee – at the request of settler circus ringmaster Naftali Bennett. 

No worries. Naftali Bennett merely took another leaf from the example of young Morris McGurk. Just a tree to chop down in a vacant lot, junk to haul out, a few tents to put up. And there you are.

"The Circus McGurkus! Collossal! Stupendous! Astounding! Fantastic! Terrific! Stupendous! I'll bring in my acrobats, jugglers and clowns, from a thousand and thirty-three faraway towns. To the place that you'll see 'em, ladies and gents, right behind Sneelock's Store, in the Great McGurk tents! 

"And I don't suppose old Mr. Sneelock will mind, when he suddenly has a big circus behind."

As long as we let Mr. Sneelock, or Mr. Netanyahu, have a fancy suit and stand out front as the titular master of ceremonies, he'll be fine with it. 

"After all, Mr. Sneelock is one of my friends. He might even help out doing small odds and ends."

In fact, whatever we settlers ask him to do, he'll be fine with it. Even if, some day, we need him to take a fall for us. He is, after all, expendable. As opposed to us.

His nerves are like iron, his muscles like steel. And he plunges! Down! Down! With his hair still combed neat. Four thousand six hundred and ninety two feet!

Then he'll land in a fish bowl. He'll manage just fine. Don't ask how he'll manage.

That's his job, not mine.

For the rest of us, that could be the only good news in any of this. That, and the clown corps, which may be the only group in this entire huge circus of ours which is capable, one of these days, and inadvertently, of bringing the big top of occupation down on their own heads.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-if-the-west-bank-ran-israel-or-...

 

Haaretz, originally Ḥadashot Ha'aretz – "News of the Land of Israel" is known for its left-wing and liberal stances on domestic and foreign issues. As of 2016, the newspaper had a weekday exposure rate of 3.9% in Israel. According to the Center for Research Libraries, among Israel's daily newspapers, "Haaretz is considered the most influential and respected for both its news coverage and its commentary.”

 

Adapted from wikipedia

 

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moving to the next stage: highway robbery...

What does Avigdor Lieberman know?

by Thierry Meyssan

For seven months now, and probably for the next five months, Avigdor Lieberman has been directing the decisions of the Israëli ruling class. Considered a racist by the international Press, he is in reality a pragmatic and reasonable nationalist, as opposed to the « Greater Israël » project as he is to that of the binational State. He could become an asset for Moscow.

The resignation, on 14 November 2018, of Avigdor Lieberman, Minister for Defence of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, triggered a major political crisis in Israël. Legislative elections were held in advance, but they were not enough to unite a new majority in the Knesset (Parliament). Since no government was formed within five weeks, new legislative elections were planned for 17 September.

Lieberman’s resignation occurred when Netanyahu imposed an agreement with Qatar which implied a cease-fire with Hamas and the direct management of the salaries of Gazan civil servants by the Qatari Emir.

Nobody at the international level reacted to what looked like the secession of Gaza from the Palestinian Territories and its pure and simple annexation by Qatar. For Lieberman, this meant the organisation of a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship at the gates of his country. Many people had interpreted this event as a preliminary to the « Deal of the Century » put forward by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump. However, it appears today that the United States had planned to put Gaza under the control of Egypt, not Qatar.

Progressively, during his electoral campaign, Avigdor Liberman deployed a new argument concerning the refusal to exempt students in the yeshivas from military service – this is the refusal to obey a Halakhic order, coercion and religious privileges. This is not a new theme, but it had never played a central role strong enough to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from forming a new government.

Lieberman became known as an immigrant from Transnistria, which united Russian-speaking Jews by creating, in 1999, a secular political party, Israel Beytenou (« Israël, our home »). More than one million Soviet citizens emigrated after the Jackson-Vanik amendment (1974) which threatened to isolate the USSR economically if it refused to allow the Jews to leave for Israël. These Russian-speaking citizens are legally Jewish, (they all have a Jewish grandparent), but are not necessarily Jews in the religious sense (meaning they have a Jewish mother). Lieberman’s initiative was financed by an Ouzbeki oligarch, Michael Cherney, who was at that time close to Boris Eltsine [Yeltsin].

Until then, Liberman was known as an employee of the Likud, of which he was the general director – he became the Chief of Staff for Prime Minister Netanyahu, but did not seek any elective function. This ex-night club bouncer speaks loudly, with a pronounced Russian accent. He never misses an occasion to sneer at and threaten his interlocutors… before doing business with them.

In October 2003, Michael Cherney financed an unusual meeting at the King David hotel in Jerusalem [1]. It was designed to gather Russian-speaking Israëli politicians, including Lieberman, with US disciples of the philosopher Leo Strauss (generally speaking, ex-collaborators of one of the co-authors of the Jackson-Vanik amendment) and with their « Christian » allies (as opposed to Communist atheists) in the United States. To do so, he was clearly afforded the support of the Bush Jr. administration, which had no intention of allowing this minority to gravitate to the orbit of the new master of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin. The entire Israëli right wing of that time, starting with Benjamin Netanyahu, took part in this meeting.

The conference developed a credo - theopolitics - which has since become widely-used in certain circles. Peace is possible in the world, but only if it is centred in Israël. A world government would prevent any new war. Its headquarters would be in Jerusalem. This is the line held by Jacques Attali in France.

At that time, Avigdor Lieberman had no problem with religious people as long as they shared or supported his Israëli nationalism. For example, he allied with the Tkuma party. He was also unafraid of the mixture of political and religious ideas. His Straussian friends (the disciples of Leo Strauss [2] who had worked for a time with Senator Jackson) claimed unashamedly that the Nazi episode had revealed the weakness of the democracies, and that in order to prevent a new Shoah, Jews would have to construct a new dictatorship. His Christian friends had imagined at the Pentagon [3] an alliance of all Jews and all Christians, the « Judeo-Christians » [4] to lead the battle against Communist atheism.

His ideas are known. He has never changed his mind. According to him, it is necessary to know where one’s loyalty lies. The Palestinians are divided between Palestinian nationalists and Islamist nationalists (the latter are fighting not for the Palestinian state, but for the Ummah). They are unable to live together, and will be even more unable to live with the European Jews (if we admit that Russia is European). They are two different people. In the name of realism, Lieberman therefore opposes the UNO plan for a binational state, and even considers it impossible to maintain the Israëli nationality of those « 1948 Arabs » who contest the existence of Israël.

He has often been called a racist, because of the aggressive manner with which he expresses himself. So, in 2001, he spoke about the possibility of bombing the Aswan dam in order to subdue Egypt. Or, in 2003, he declared that he was prepared to drive a bus full of Palestinian prisoners to drown them in the Dead Sea, etc. But these declarations are more a result of his « loud mouth » and not his ideology. In the same way, in 2004, he qualified President Mahmoud Abbas as a « terrorist diplomat » but, in 2008, it was Benjamin Netanyahu whom he described as a « liar, a cheat and a scoundrel ».

In reality, during his ministerial functions, Lieberman nominated many senior civil servants of Ethiopian, Bedouin and Druze origins. He simply declares that citizenship implies loyalty to the state. A left-wing personality, like the ex-Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Eitan Ben Eliyahu, assures that he is in no way an extremist (unlike Netanyahu, partisan of « Greater Israël »).

The question, therefore, is not to determine whether or not Lieberman is a right-wing extremist, nor what his personal future may be, but what forces led him to break his 1990 alliance with Netanyahu, and his 2003 alliance with the religious movements. All this is being played out in the context of the « Deal of the Century », which is always announced, but never revealed, although it is already in operation.

The Kushner-Trump project considers resolving the Israêlo-Palestinian conflict by economically developing the Arabs and taking into account their successive military defeats. Moscow has declared the planned avoidance of international Law to be « unacceptable ». However, since the Geneva Conference of June 2012, Russia has been trying to gain a foothold in the Middle East and acquire a shared suzerainty (with the United States) over Israël. Lieberman is culturally much closer to the Kremlin than his partners in the White House or the Pentagon.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

 

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"The Age of Deceit"

 

 

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