Global Research

The National Priorities Project headlines “U.S. Military Spending vs. the World” and reports: “World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total.” But it can’t be believed, because, even if other nations aren’t under-reporting their military expenditures, the U.S. certainly is — under-reporting it by about 50%. The reality is approximately twice the official figure, so that America’s current annual military expenditures are around $1.5 trillion, which is to say, almost equal to that entire global estimate of “more than $1.6 trillion in 2015.”

America’s actual annual military budget and expenditures are unknown, because there has never been an audit of the ‘Defense’ Department, though an audit has routinely been promised but never delivered, and Congresses and Presidents haven’t, for example, even so much as just threatened to cut its budget every year by 10% until it is done — there has been no accountability for the Department, at all. Corruption is welcomed, at the ‘Defense’ Department.

Furthermore, many of the military expenditures are hidden. One way that this is done is by funding an unknown large proportion of U.S. military functions at other federal Departments, so as for those operations not to be officially “‘Defense’ Department” budget and expenditures, at all. This, for example, is the reason why Robert Higgs, of The Independent Institute, was able to report, on 15 March 2007, “The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here”. He found that America’s military expenditures, including the ones he could identify at other federal agencies, were actually already nearly a trillion dollars ($934.9 billion) a year:

“To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2006, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $499.4 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.6 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $69.1 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $25.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $69.8 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $38.5 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2006 total by nearly half again, to $728.2 billion.”

Furthermore,

 “Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. efforts to abate perceived threats. … [As regards] Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. … The Federal Bureau of Investigation … devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury informs us that it has ‘worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.’”

But, almost everything there relied upon mere estimates, because the Congress and the President always supply to the public numbers that are sadly uninterpretable by anyone who wants to know what percentage of the federal government is actually military.

For example, on April 3rd, the White House, as required by law, sent to Congress “the Seven-Day-After report for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (Public Law 115-141). The President signed this Act into law on March 23, 2018.” That’s the current authorized spending for the entire U.S. federal Government. It was broken down there into twelve categories, some of which were for multiple federal Departments, in order to make the reported numbers as uninterpretable as possible — for example, nothing was shown for the Treasury Department, but something was shown for “Financial Services and General Government Appropriations” and it didn’t even mention the “Treasury” Department. And nothing was shown for the Justice Department, nor for the Commerce Department, but something was shown for “Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies” (whatever those are). However, as bad as this is, the military (or invasions) department is even less fathomable from the publicly available reports than those other ones are. The ‘Defense’ Department is the only one that’s still “unauditable” so that in one of the attempts to audit it:

“The audits of the FY 1999 DoD financial statements indicated that $7.6 trillion of accounting entries were made to compile them. This startling number is perhaps the most graphic available indicator of just how poor the existing systems are. The magnitude of the problem is further demonstrated by the fact that, of $5.8 trillion of those adjustments that we audited this year, $2.3 trillion were unsupported by reliable explanatory information and audit trails or were made to invalid general ledger accounts.”

Largely as a consequence of this, Wikipedia’s “Military budget of the United States” is a chaotic mess, though useful for links to some sources (all of which are likewise plagued as being uninterpretable). 

On 1 March 2011, Chris Hellman headlined “The Real U.S. National Security Budget: The Figure No One Wants You to See”, and he estimated (using basically the same approach that Higgs had done in 2007, except less accurate than Higgs, due to failing to base his numbers on “the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available” but instead using only the President’s budget request) that at that time, the U.S. Government was spending annually on ‘Defense’, “$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)” That amount was far less than the totals that the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense had been reporting, in some of its periodic investigations (such as the one just cited), to have been missed or undocumented or falsely ‘documented’ as having been spent, by that Department; but, for some mysterious reason, the American people tolerate and re-elect ‘representatives’ who ‘debate’ and rubber-stamp such corruption, which is of enormous benefit to corporations such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, whose sales and profits depend upon the U.S. Government and its allied governments. Any such privatization of the ‘Defense’ industry, in America or any other country — treating its military operations so as to produce profits for investors (investors in mass-murder) — thus guarantees that the national-security function will be heavily loaded with lobbying and graft, because the military industry’s entire market is to one’s own government and to its allied governments: it’s not a consumer market, but a government one. Thus, privatized military suppliers grow virtually to own their government; democracy consequently becomes impossible in such nations. And, one outcome from that is the uninterpretable financial reports by America’s government, regarding ‘Defense’. 

For example, probably fewer than 1% of Americans have even been informed by the press as to what the currently authorized annual federal spending for the ‘Defense’ Department is. When the Washington Post, on 23 March 2018, reported their main story about the FY 2018 federal spending authorizations (“In late-night drama, Senate passes $1.3 trillion spending bill, averting government shutdown”), the figure for the ‘Defense’ Department was buried inconspicuously in a 52-word passage within that 1,600-word ‘news’-report, which was otherwise loaded with distractive trivia. This buried passage was: “The legislation funds the federal government for the remainder of the 2018 budget year, through Sept. 30, directing $700 billion toward the military and $591 billion to domestic agencies. The military spending is a $66 billion increase over the 2017 level, and the nondefense spending is $52 billion more than last year.” That’s all. For readers interested in knowing more, it linked to their 2,200-word article, “Here’s what Congress is stuffing into its $1.3 trillion spending bill”, and all that it said about the military portion of the new budget was the 27-word passage, “defense spending generally favored by Republicans is set to jump $80 billion over previously authorized spending levels, while domestic spending favored by Democrats rises by $63 billion.” Though 23 categories of federal spending were sub-headed and summarized individually in that article, ‘Defense’ wasn’t one of them. Nothing about the budget for the U.S. Department of ‘Defense’ — which consumes more than half of the entire budget — was mentioned. However, the reality was that, as Defense News reported it, on 7 February 2018 — and these figures were unchanged in the bill that President Trump finally signed on March 23rd — “Senate leaders have reached a two-year deal that would set defense spending at $700 billion for 2018 and $716 billion for 2019.” This year’s $700 billion Pentagon budget thus is 54% of the entire $1.3 trillion FY 2018 U.S. federal budget. Another article in Defense News on that same day, February 7th, noted that,

“‘I’d rather we didn’t have to do as much on non-defense, but this is an absolute necessity, that we’ve got these numbers,’ said the Senate Armed Services Committee’s No. 2 Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma.”

So: 54% of the federal budget wasn’t high enough a percentage to suit that Senator; he wanted yet more taken out of non-‘defense’. How can people (other than stockholders in corporations such as Raytheon) vote for such a person? Deceit has to be part of the answer.

Using similar percentages to those that were employed by Higgs and by Hellman, the current U.S. annual military expenditure is in the neighborhood of $1.5 trillion. But that’s more than the total authorized federal spending for all departments. Where can the extra funds be coming from? On 5 February 2018, CNBC bannered “The Treasury is set to borrow nearly $1 trillion this year”. Then, charts were presented on 10 May 2018 by Dr. Edward Yardeni, headlined “U.S. Government Finance: Debt”, in which is shown that the U.S. federal debt is soaring at around a trillion dollars annually; so, that extra money comes from additions to the federal debt. Future generations of U.S. taxpayers will be paying the price for the profligacy of today’s U.S. aristocracy, who receive all the benefits from this scam off the public, and especially off those future generations. But the far bigger losses are felt abroad, in countries such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, where the targets will be suffering the consequences of America’s invasions and coups.

Notwithstanding its pervasive corruption and enormous uncounted waste, the U.S. military is, by far, the U.S. institution that is respected above all others by the American people. A great deal of domestic propaganda is necessary in order to keep it that way. With so many trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for, it’s do-able. All that’s needed is a tiny percentage of the huge graft to be devoted to funding the operation’s enormous PR for ‘patriotism’. And this treasonous operation has been sustainable, and very successful (for its ultimate beneficiaries), that way, in the U.S., at least for decades.

I have previously explained why specifically military corruption has come to take over the U.S. Government, but not certain other governments. And the result of its having done so has by now become obvious to people all around the world, except in the United States itself. Furthermore, ever since the first poll was taken on that matter, in 2013, which showed that globally the U.S. was viewed as the biggest national threat to peace in the world, a subsequent poll, in 2017, which unfortunately was taken in fewer countries, showed that this negative impression of the U.S. Government, by the peoples in those fewer countries, had actually increased there during the four intervening years. So: not only is the situation in the U.S. terrible, but the trend in the U.S. appears to be in the direction of even worse. America’s military-industrial complex can buy a glittering ‘patriotic’ image amongst its own public, but America’s image abroad will only become uglier, because the world-at-large dislikes a country that’s addicted to the perpetration of invasions and coups. Just as bullies are feared and disliked, so too are bully-nations. Even if the given bully-aristocracy becomes constantly enriched by their operation, economies throughout the world suffer such an aristocracy, as being an enormous burden; and, unfortunately, the American public will get the blame, not America’s aristocracy — which is the real beneficiary of the entire operation. This deflection of blame, onto the suckered public, precludes any effective response from the publics abroad, such as boycotts of U.S.-branded products and services might be. Instead, American tourists abroad become increasingly perceived as ‘the ugly American’. The restored ‘Cold War’ — this time with no ideological excuse (such as communism) whatsoever — could produce a much stronger global tarnishing of America’s global reputation. The beneficiaries, apparently, just don’t care.  

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This article was originally published on The Saker.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez / Truthout.

Featured image: Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa

21st Century Wire says…

Bahrain’s foreign minister tweeted out ‘Israel had a right to defend itself from Iran’ on May 11th. In an unprecedented show of support for the Zionist regime, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa issued the extraordinary statement on the social media platform:

“As long as Iran has breached the status quo in the region and has (yet to) evacuate its troops and missiles, any state in the region, including Israel, is entitled to defend itself by destroying the sources of danger.”

Peter Ford, who was British Ambassador to Bahrain 1999-2002, has resigned from his position as adviser to the Royal Charity Organisation of Bahrain, in protest at Bahrain’s new found support for Israel.

Peter Ford (image on the right) told 21st Century Wire:

“This is the latest step in the downward path Bahrain has been taking recently, distancing itself from its previous staunch support for Palestinian and Arab rights. The exchange of fire was started by Israel and not Iran, in a transparent design to provoke an Iranian reaction following President Trump’s decision to end the Iran nuclear deal.

It doesn’t matter that the wars are coming
It doesn’t matter that the wars just came
It doesn’t matter that we had our warning
To you all wars are just the same

 I thought you really loved me
I thought you really cared
I thought that when the bombs were falling
You’d shelter me when I was scared

But now I know that you’re a liar
I should have trusted my dear heart
You sided with your dirty killers
You walked beside them from the start

It doesn’t matter that the wars are coming
It doesn’t matter that the wars just came
It doesn’t matter that we had our warning
To you all wars are just the same

I guess we’ll have to go and die now
While you go on your merry way
We’ll travel on our final journey
But some day you will have to pay

 So thanks for all the kisses that you threw me
I almost caught them on the fly
They seemed so gentle in the twilight
Until I heard them whisper die

It doesn’t matter that the wars are coming
It doesn’t matter that the wars just came
It doesn’t matter that we had our warning
To you all wars are just the same

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Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely; he is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

This article was first published on Global Research in March 2017.

Below is the text of a report co-authored by Virginia Tilley and myself, commissioned by the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) that examines the argument for regarding Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ with respect to the whole of the Palestinian people, that is, not only those Palestinians living under occupation, but also those living as residents of Jerusalem, those living as a minority in Israel, and those enduring refugee camps and involuntary exile.

The report concludes that Israel is guilty of the continuing crime of apartheid as it is defined in the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

The report reviews the evidence for such a finding, and offers recommendation for acting upon such a conclusion within the United Nations, by national governments, and by civil society. Upon the release of the report on March 15, 2017 there was an immediate reaction of condemnation by American and Israeli representatives at the UN, including calls for its removal from the UN website and the repudiation of the report.

The Executive Secretary of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, has resigned after refusing to remove the report from the ESCWA website, and has made strongly supportive statements about the quality of the report as issued.

It should be noted, as stated below, that the report is an independent academic work that has at the present time been neither endorsed or repudiated by any part of the UN System. It is the hope of the authors that the report encourages debate and action that deepens involvement with the Palestinian quest for a just peace and the end to their prolonged ordeal of suffering; it is also our hope that the study will be taken seriously within Israel itself.

Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1

United Nations Beirut, 2017 © 2017 All rights reserved worldwide

Photocopies and reproductions of excerpts are allowed with proper credits.

All queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), e-mail: [email protected].

The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Links contained in this publication are provided for the convenience of the reader and are correct at the time of issue. The United Nations takes no responsibility for the continued accuracy of that information or for the content of any external website.

References have, wherever possible, been verified.

Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures. Mention of such a symbol indicates a reference to a United Nations document.

United Nations publication issued by ESCWA, United Nations House, Riad El Solh Square, P.O. Box: 11-8575, Beirut, Lebanon.

Website: http://www.unescwa.org.

Acknowledgements

This report was commissioned by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) from authors Mr. Richard Falk and Ms. Virginia Tilley.

Richard Falk (LLB, Yale University; SJD, Harvard University) is currently Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus at Princeton University. From 2008 through 2014, he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. He is author or editor of some 60 books and hundreds of articles on international human rights law, Middle East politics, environmental justice, and other fields concerning human rights and international relations.

Virginia Tilley (MA and PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and MA in Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University) is Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University. From 2006 to 2011, she served as Chief Research Specialist in the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa and from 2007 to 2010 led the Council’s Middle East Project, which undertook a two-year study of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition to many articles on the politics and ideologies of the conflict in Israel-Palestine, she is author of The One-State Solution (University of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005) and editor of Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Pluto Press, 2012).

This report benefited from the general guidance of Mr. Tarik Alami, Director of the Emerging and Conflict-Related Issues (ECRI) Division at ESCWA. Mr. Rabi’ Bashour (ECRI) coordinated the report, contributed to defining its scope and provided editorial comments, planning and data. Ms. Leila Choueiri provided substantive and editorial inputs. Ms. Rita Jarous (ECRI), Mr. Sami Salloum and Mr. Rafat Soboh (ECRI), provided editorial comments and information, as well as technical assistance. Mr. Damien Simonis (ESCWA, Conference Services Section) edited the report.

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

Appreciation is extended to the blind reviewers for their valuable input.

We also acknowledge the authors of and contributors to Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A Reassessment of Israel’s Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under International Law, whose work informed this report (see annex I) and was published in 2012 as Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Preface

The authors of this report, examining whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, fully appreciate the sensitivity of the question.[1] Even broaching the issue has been denounced by spokespersons of the Israeli Government and many of its supporters as anti-Semitism in a new guise. In 2016, Israel successfully lobbied for the inclusion of criticism of Israel in laws against anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States of America, and background documents to those legal instruments list the apartheid charge as one example of attempts aimed at “destroying Israel’s image and isolating it as a pariah State”.[2]

The authors reject the accusation of anti-Semitism in the strongest terms. First, the question of whether the State of Israel is constituted as an apartheid regime springs from the same body of international human rights law and principles that rejects anti-Semitism: that is, the prohibition of racial discrimination. No State is immune from the norms and rules enshrined in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which must be applied impartially. The prohibition of apartheid, which, as a crime against humanity, can admit no exceptions, flows from the Convention. Strengthening that body of international law can only benefit all groups that have historically endured discrimination, domination and persecution, including Jews.

1 This report was prepared in response to a request made by member States of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) at the first meeting of its Executive Committee, held in Amman on 8 and 9 June 2015. Preliminary findings of the report were presented to the twenty-ninth session of ESCWA, held in Doha from 13 to 15 December 2016. As a result, member States passed resolution 326 (XXIX) of 15 December 2016, in which they requested that the secretariat “publish widely the results of the study”.

2 Coordinating Forum for Countering Antisemitism (CFCA): FAQ: the campaign to defame Israel. The CFCA is an Israeli Government “national forum”. “The new anti-Semitism” has become the term used to equate criticism of Israeli racial policies with anti- Semitism, especially where such criticism extends to proposing that the ethnic premise of Jewish statehood is illegitimate, because it violates international human rights law. The European Union Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism has accordingly included in its working definition of anti-Semitism the following example: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour” (see EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism). In 2016, the United States passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, in which the definition of anti-Semitism is that set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti- Semitism of the Department of State in a fact sheet of 8 June 2010. Examples of anti-Semitism listed therein include: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.” (Available here).

Secondly, the situation in Israel-Palestine constitutes an unmet obligation of the organized international community to resolve a conflict partially generated by its own actions. That obligation dates formally to 1922, when the League of Nations established the British Mandate for Palestine as a territory eminently ready for independence as an inclusive secular State, yet incorporated into the Mandate the core pledge of the Balfour Declaration to support the “Jewish people” in their efforts to establish in Palestine a “Jewish national home”.[3] Later United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions attempted to resolve the conflict generated by that arrangement, yet could not prevent related proposals, such as partition, from being overtaken by events on the ground. If this attention to the case of Israel by the United Nations appears exceptional, therefore, it is only because no comparable linkage exists between United Nations actions and any other prolonged denial to a people of their right of self-determination.

Thirdly, the policies, practices and measures applied by Israel to enforce a system of racial discrimination threaten regional peace and security. United Nations resolutions have long recognized that danger and called for resolution of the conflict so as to restore and maintain peace and stability in the region.

To assert that the policies and practices of a sovereign State amount to apartheid constitutes a grave charge. A study aimed at making such a determination should be undertaken and submitted for consideration only when supporting evidence clearly exceeds reasonable doubt. The authors of this report believe that evidence for suspecting that a system of apartheid has been imposed on the Palestinian people meets such a demanding criterion. Given the protracted suffering of the Palestinian people, it would be irresponsible not to present the evidence and legal arguments regarding whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses the Palestinian people as a whole, and not to make recommendations for appropriate further action by international and civil society actors.

In sum, this study was motivated by the desire to promote compliance with international human rights law, uphold and strengthen international criminal law, and ensure that the collective responsibilities of the United Nations and its Member States with regard to crimes against humanity are fulfilled. More concretely, it aims to see the core commitments of the international community to upholding international law applied to the case of the Palestinian people, in defence of its rights under international law, including the right of self-determination.

3 The Council of the League of Nations, League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, December 1922, article 2. Available here.

Contents

1. The Legal Context: Short History of the Prohibition of Apartheid 11

Alternative definitions of apartheid 12

2. Testing for an Apartheid Regime in Israel-Palestine 27
3. The political geography of apartheid 27 B. Israel as a racial State 30 C. Apartheid through fragmentation 37 D. Counter-arguments 48
4. Conclusions and Recommendations 51
5. Conclusions 51 B. Recommendations 52

Annexes

1. Findings of the 2009 HSRC Report 57 II. Which Country? 63

Executive Summary

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law.

The analysis in this report rests on the same body of international human rights law and principles that reject anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including: the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for its definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid Convention):

The term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to… inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

Although the term “apartheid” was originally associated with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, according to which:

“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Against that background, this report reflects the expert consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).

The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by this report should not be confused with usage of the term in popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing apartheid as discrete acts and practices (such as the “apartheid wall”), a phenomenon generated by anonymous structural conditions like capitalism (“economic apartheid”), or private social behaviour on the part of certain racial groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in certain contexts. However, this report anchors its definition of apartheid in international law, which carries with it responsibilities for States, as specified in international instruments.

The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid Convention, which sets forth that the crime of apartheid consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire the status of crimes against humanity only if they intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination. The Rome Statute specifies in its definition the presence of an “institutionalized regime” serving the “intention” of racial domination. Since “purpose” and “intention” lie at the core of both definitions, this report examines factors ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension — especially, the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in law and the design of Israeli State institutions — to establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.

That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose was found to be evident in the body of laws, only some of which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope. One prominent example is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law (Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of Israel, the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish National Fund shall not be transferred in any manner, placing its management permanently under their authority. The State Property Law of 1951 provides for the reversion of property (including land) to the State in any area “in which the law of the State of Israel applies”. The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of the land within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews. Those laws reflect the concept of “public purpose” as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be changed by Knesset vote, but the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits any political party from challenging that public purpose. Effectively, Israeli law renders opposition to racial domination illegal.

Demographic engineering is another area of policy serving the purpose of maintaining Israel as a Jewish State. Most well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country. The World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency are vested with legal authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish statehood. Some laws involving demographic engineering are expressed in coded language, such as those that allow Jewish councils to reject applications for residence from Palestinian citizens. Israeli law normally allows spouses of Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied territory or beyond. On a far larger scale, it is a matter of Israeli policy to reject the return of any Palestinian refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to territory under Israeli control.

Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial domination must be present to qualify the regime as an instance of apartheid. The first involves the identification of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific “racial group”. This report accepts the definition of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of “racial discrimination” as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. On that basis, this report argues that in the geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can be considered “racial groups”. Furthermore, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is cited expressly in the Apartheid Convention.

The second attribute is the boundary and character of the group or groups involved. The status of the Palestinians as a people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On that basis, the report examines the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian people as a whole, considering the distinct circumstances of geographic and juridical fragmentation of the Palestinian people as a condition imposed by Israel. (Annex II addresses the issue of a proper identification of the “country” responsible for the denial of Palestinian rights under international law.)

This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines how the history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the Palestinian people being divided into different geographic regions administered by distinct sets of law. This fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a unified and effective resistance. Different methods are deployed depending on where Palestinians live. This is the core means by which Israel enforces apartheid and at the same time impedes international recognition of how the system works as a complementary whole to comprise an apartheid regime.

Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what the report refers to as four “domains”, in which the fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly treated differently but share in common the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime. Those domains are:

1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;
2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living in the city of Jerusalem;
3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel’s control.

Domain 1 embraces about 1.7 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. For the first 20 years of the country’s existence, they lived under martial law and to this day are subjected to oppression on the basis of not being Jewish. That policy of domination manifests itself in inferior services, restrictive zoning laws and limited budget allocations made to Palestinian communities; in restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities; and in the mostly segregated landscape in which Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel live. Palestinian political parties can campaign for minor reforms and better budgets, but are legally prohibited by the Basic Law from challenging legislation maintaining the racial regime. The policy is reinforced by the implications of the distinction made in Israel between “citizenship” (ezrahut) and “nationality” (le’um): all Israeli citizens enjoy the former, but only Jews enjoy the latter. “National” rights in Israeli law signify Jewish-national rights. The struggle of Palestinian citizens of Israel for equality and civil reforms under Israeli law is thus isolated by the regime from that of Palestinians elsewhere.

Domain 2 covers the approximately 300,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, who experience discrimination in access to education, health care, employment, residency and building rights. They also suffer from expulsions and home demolitions, which serve the Israeli policy of “demographic balance” in favour of Jewish residents. East Jerusalem Palestinians are classified as permanent residents, which places them in a separate category designed to prevent their demographic and, importantly, electoral weight being added to that of Palestinians citizens in Israel. As permanent residents, they have no legal standing to challenge Israeli law. Moreover, openly identifying with Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory politically carries the risk of expulsion to the West Bank and loss of the right even to visit Jerusalem. Thus, the urban epicentre of Palestinian political life is caught inside a legal bubble that curtails its inhabitants’ capacity to oppose the apartheid regime lawfully.

Domain 3 is the system of military law imposed on approximately 4.6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestinian territory, 2.7 million of them in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip. The territory is administered in a manner that fully meets the definition of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention: except for the provision on genocide, every illustrative “inhuman act” listed in the Convention is routinely and systematically practiced by Israel in the West Bank. Palestinians are governed by military law, while the approximately 350,000 Jewish settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is further confirmed by the fact that all West Bank Jewish settlers enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not. This dual legal system, problematic in itself, is indicative of an apartheid regime when coupled with the racially discriminatory management of land and development administered by Jewish-national institutions, which are charged with administering “State land” in the interest of the Jewish population. In support of the overall findings of this report, annex I sets out in more detail the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory that constitute violations of article II of the Apartheid Convention.

Domain 4 refers to the millions of Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles, most of whom live in neighbouring countries. They are prohibited from returning to their homes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel defends its rejection of the Palestinians’ return in frankly racist language: it is alleged that Palestinians constitute a “demographic threat” and that their return would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish State.

The refusal of the right of return plays an essential role in the apartheid regime by ensuring that the Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine does not grow to a point that would threaten Israeli military control of the territory and/or provide the demographic leverage for Palestinian citizens of Israel to demand (and obtain) full democratic rights, thereby eliminating the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Although domain 4 is confined to policies denying Palestinians their right of repatriation under international law, it is treated in this report as integral to the system of oppression and domination of the Palestinian people as a whole, given its crucial role in demographic terms in maintaining the apartheid regime.

This report finds that, taken together, the four domains constitute one comprehensive regime developed for the purpose of ensuring the enduring domination over non-Jews in all land exclusively under Israeli control in whatever category. To some degree, the differences in treatment accorded to Palestinians have been provisionally treated as valid by the United Nations, in the absence of an assessment of whether they constitute a form of apartheid. In the light of this report’s findings, this long-standing fragmented international approach may require review.

In the interests of fairness and completeness, the report examines several counter- arguments advanced by Israel and supporters of its policies denying the applicability of the Apartheid Convention to the case of Israel-Palestine. They include claims that: the determination of Israel to remain a Jewish State is consistent with practices of other States, such as France; Israel does not owe Palestinian non-citizens equal treatment with Jews precisely because they are not citizens; and Israeli treatment of the Palestinians reflects no “purpose” or “intent” to dominate, but rather is a temporary state of affairs imposed on Israel by the realities of ongoing conflict and security requirements. The report shows that none of those arguments stands up to examination. A further claim that Israel cannot be considered culpable for crimes of apartheid because Palestinian citizens of Israel have voting rights rests on two errors of legal interpretation: an overly literal comparison with South African apartheid policy and detachment of the question of voting rights from other laws, especially provisions of the Basic Law that prohibit political parties from challenging the Jewish, and hence racial, character of the State.

The report concludes that the weight of the evidence supports beyond a reasonable doubt the proposition that Israel is guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, which amounts to the commission of a crime against humanity, the prohibition of which is considered jus cogens in international customary law. The international community, especially the United Nations and its agencies, and Member States, have a legal obligation to act within the limits of their capabilities to prevent and punish instances of apartheid that are responsibly brought to their attention. More specifically, States have a collective duty:

(a) not to recognize an apartheid regime as lawful;

(b) not to aid or assist a State in maintaining an apartheid regime; and

(c) to cooperate with the United Nations and other States in bringing apartheid regimes to an end.

Civil society institutions and individuals also have a moral and political duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise, and to exert pressure on Israel in order to persuade it to dismantle apartheid structures in compliance with international law. The report ends with general and specific recommendations to the United Nations, national Governments, and civil society and private actors on actions they should take in view of the finding that Israel maintains a regime of apartheid in its exercise of control over the Palestinian people.

Introduction

This report examines the practices and policies of Israel with regard to the Palestinian people in its entirety. This is not an arbitrary choice. The legal existence of the “Palestinian people” and its right, as a whole people, to self-determination were confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its advisory opinion on the separation wall in occupied Palestinian territory: [1]

As regards the principle of the right of peoples to self-determination, the Court observes that the existence of a “Palestinian people” is no longer in issue. Such existence has moreover been recognized by Israel in the exchange of letters of 9 September 1993 between Mr. Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Mr. Yitzhak Rabin, lsraeli Prime Minister. In that correspondence, the President of the PLO recognized “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and made various other commitments. In reply, the Israeli Prime Minister informed him that, in the light of those commitments, “the Government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people”. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 28 September 1995 also refers a number of times to the Palestinian people and its “legitimate rights” (preamble, paras. 4, 7, 8; article II, para. 2; article III, paras. 1 and 3; article XXII, para. 2). The Court considers that those rights include the right to self-determination, as the General Assembly has moreover recognized on a number of occasions (see, for example, resolution 58/163 of 22 December 2003).

The status of the Palestinians as a people is therefore legally settled (although Israel contests it), and so the practices and policies of Israel towards the whole Palestinian people, despite the Palestinians being fragmented geographically and politically, should be addressed as a single, unified matter. That view is reinforced by the realization that there is no prospect for achieving fundamental Palestinian rights, above all the right of self-determination, through international diplomacy as long as this question remains open.

The authors hope that this report will assist United Nations Member States in making responsible and full use of their national legal systems in the service of the

1 Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004, p. 136. Available here. global common good. Civil society organizations are also urged to align their agendas and priorities with the findings of this report. Nonetheless, it is primarily incumbent on Israel to comply with international criminal law. Apartheid as an international crime is now viewed by jurists as a peremptory norm (jus cogens) of international customary law, which creates obligations erga omnes. In other words, it is an overriding principle, from which no derogation is permitted, and which is therefore binding, regardless of the consent of sovereign States, and cannot be renounced by national Governments or their representatives.[2] In effect, this means that even States that do not accede to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (hereinafter the Apartheid Convention) are responsible for adhering to its obligations. Israel is thus bound by its obligations to end a crime of apartheid if authoritative findings determine that its practices and policies constitute such a criminal regime.

2 John Dugard, ”Introductory note to the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law, 2008. Available here.

1. The Legal ContextShort History of the Prohibition of Apartheid

The prohibition of apartheid in international human rights law draws primarily from two areas:

(1) prohibitions of discrimination on the basis of race; and

(2) rejection of the racist regime that governed in the Republic of South Africa between 1948 and 1992.6

The prohibition of racial discrimination traces to the earliest principles of the United Nations. While a full list would overburden this report, foundational statements include Article 55 of the United Nations Charter and article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Later instruments, particularly the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, spelled out the prohibition in greater detail. Thus Member States of the United Nations are obligated to abide by the prohibition of apartheid whether or not they are parties to the Apartheid Convention.

The juridical history of international rejection of apartheid in South Africa dates to the early years of the existence of the United Nations. General Assembly resolution 395(V) of 1950 was the first to make explicit reference to apartheid in southern Africa, which it defined as a form of racial discrimination.7 Resolution 1761(XVII) of 1962 established what came to be called the Special Committee against Apartheid.8 In the preamble to the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, alarm is expressed about “manifestations of racial discrimination still in evidence in some areas of the world… such as policies of apartheid, segregation or separation” (emphasis added). In article 3, signatories to the Convention “particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and

6 The precise date given for the end of apartheid varies with the benchmark used: decriminalization of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990; the launching or closure of the CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) talks in 1991 or 1993 respectively; the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993, which triggered the capitulation of the apartheid regime; the election of Nelson Mandela as President in 1994; or passage of the new Constitution in 1995. Taking the meaningful collapse of apartheid’s legitimacy as a rough signpost, the fall of apartheid is here dated to 1992.

7 Resolution 395(V) addressed racial discrimination against people of Indian origin in South Africa (A/RES/395(V)). Concern for that population had been expressed earlier, beginning with resolution 44 (I) of 1946 (A/RES/44(I)).

8 A/RES/1761(XVII) undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction” (emphasis added).

The Apartheid Convention of 1973 classifies apartheid as a crime against humanity (in articles I and II) and provides the most detailed definition of it in international law.9 It also clarifies international responsibility and obligations with regard to combating the crime of apartheid. In the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (hereinafter Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions), apartheid is defined as a war crime. The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), hereinafter the Rome Statute, lists apartheid as a crime against humanity (article 7 (1) (j)), bringing its investigation and possible prosecution under the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Although only 109 States are parties to the Apartheid Convention, most States (currently 177) are parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, under which they commit themselves to “prevent, prohibit and eradicate” apartheid (article 3). As of 31 January 2017, 124 States had ratified the Rome Statute. Hence, most States have a legal responsibility to oppose apartheid and take measures to end it wherever it may arise. That responsibility concerns not only human rights violations resulting from apartheid but the threat it poses to international peace and security. The Apartheid Convention further provides that States parties should act at the national level to suppress and prevent the crime of apartheid, through legislative action and prosecutions and legal proceedings in any competent national court.

This report proceeds on the assumption that apartheid is a crime against humanity and that all Member States of the United Nations are legally responsible for acting to prevent, end and punish its practice.

Alternative definitions of apartheid

Arguments about whether a State practices apartheid rest on how apartheid is defined. Several definitions are currently used in polemical debate with regard to Israel, which is frequently labelled an “apartheid State” for its practice of discrete

9 When the Convention was drafted, apartheid had already been described as a crime against humanity by the General Assembly, as in resolution 2202 (XXI) of 1966 (A/RES/2202(XXI) A-B).

“acts of apartheid”, such as the “apartheid wall”.10 Those who insist that Israel cannot be held culpable for apartheid argue that the country’s laws are fundamentally different from those of apartheid South Africa: for example, because Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote.11 These diverse arguments arguably fall outside a study grounded in the tenets of international law as set forth in the pertinent instruments, but a quick overview of them here is warranted. This brevity should not be taken to imply a dismissal of such definitions, which have their place beyond strict considerations of international law. Rather, the overview serves to explain why they are not employed in this report. Neat divisions cannot always be made between these definitions, and some clearly overlap, but they can be identified as types or tendencies.

1. Defining only regimes consistent with the apartheid regime in South Africa as being apartheid, so that, by definition, digressions from South African practices preclude any charge of apartheid.
2. Treating discrete practices considered to have qualities of apartheid, such as the so-called “apartheid wall” (“separation fence” or “separation barrier” in official Israeli discourse), as signifying that a State has established a comprehensive apartheid regime.
3. Defining apartheid as the outcome of anonymous structural global forces, such as global corporate influences or neoliberalism, as enforced by Bretton Woods institutions.
4. Defining apartheid as the aggregate body of private racist practices by the dominant society as a whole, whereby State involvement is a contingent tool for enforcing a draconian social system based on racial hierarchy, discrimination and segregation.
5. Treating apartheid as pertaining only to Palestinian citizens of Israel, or only to Palestinians in the occupied territory, or excluding Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles living outside territory under Israeli control.12

These types of definition, and the reasons that make them unsuitable for this report, are elaborated upon below.

10 A literature review of such references exceeds the scope of this report.

11 CERD/C/ISR/14-16.

12 Palestinians expelled from the occupied Palestinian territory by Israel and not allowed to return.

14 | Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

1. The comparison with southern Africa

Arguments about whether Israel has established an apartheid regime often compare the policies and practices of Israel with the system of apartheid in southern Africa (South Africa and Namibia).13 The very term “apartheid” may suggest that the system of racial discrimination as practised by the South African regime constitutes the model for a finding of apartheid elsewhere.14 The comparison does sometimes provide illuminating insights: for instance, by clarifying why existing proposals for a two-State solution in Mandate Palestine are most likely to generate a Palestinian Bantustan.15 Such insights are found by examining the South African distinction between so-called “petty apartheid” (the segregation of facilities, job access and so forth) and “grand apartheid”, which proposed solving racial tensions with the partition of South African territory and by establishing black South African “homelands” delineated by the regime. Be that as it may, the South African comparison will be mostly avoided in this report, because (1) such comparison contradicts the universal character of the prohibition of apartheid and (2) because apartheid systems that arise in different countries will necessarily differ in design. Nonetheless, because they tend to have much in common, this approach requires brief elaboration.

(a) Reasons for the error of comparison

The first reason people turn to the South African case is that the collective memory of the South African struggle and the term “apartheid” itself encourage this error. On coming to power in 1948, the Afrikaner-dominated Nationalist Party translated its constituency’s long-standing beliefs about racial hierarchy into a body of racial laws designed to secure white supremacy and determine the life conditions and chances of everyone in the country on the basis of race. The Nationalists’ term for this comprehensive system was apartheid (Afrikaans for “apart-hood” or “separate development”).16 The opposition to apartheid (coordinated by the African National Congress, the Pan-African Congress, the domestic United Democratic Front and

13 The term “southern” Africa reflects the practice of South Africa in extending apartheid to South West Africa (now Namibia), which South Africa had held under a League of Nations mandate and refused to relinquish after the Second World War.

14. Afrikaans is the adapted Dutch of the indigenized Dutch-European “Afrikaner” settler society in southern Africa.
15. For a study of how arrangements for the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority replicate the South African“homelands”, or Bantustans, see Virginia Tilley, “A Palestinian declaration of independence: implications for peace”, Middle East Policy, vol. 17, No. 1 (March 2010). Available here.

16 The National Party was the principal party in South Africa expressing the Afrikaner worldview and white-nationalist political goals. Hold-outs against United Nations denunciations of apartheid in South Africa included Israel, which maintained a close alliance with the regime throughout its duration, and the United States of America, which had close business ties with South Africa.

other southern African actors, as well as sympathetic international human rights networks) accordingly adopted the term in order to denounce it. The General Assembly did the same, using the term for a series of measures concerning South Africa. For many people, this long history of legal activism naturalized the association between apartheid and South Africa to the point of conflation.

That this conflation is a legal error can be seen in the history of usage through which the term gained universal application:

• 1962 – The General Assembly established the Special Committee on the Policies of Apartheid of the Government of South Africa, later renamed the Special Committee against Apartheid;
• 1965 – Under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, apartheid was classified as a form of racial discrimination (preamble and article 3) with no mention of South Africa;
• 1973 – The Apartheid Convention clarified that “inhuman acts” that constitute the crime of apartheid would “include” acts that are “similar to” those of apartheid South Africa;
• 1976 – The Secretariat of the United Nations set up the Centre against Apartheid;
• 1998 – Apartheid was listed in the Rome Statute as a crime against humanity, with no mention of South Africa.That the term has come to have universal application is clarified by South African jurist John Dugard (a leading legal scholar of apartheid):

That the Apartheid Convention is intended to apply to situations other than South Africa is confirmed by its endorsement in a wider context in instruments adopted before and after the fall of apartheid… It may be concluded that the Apartheid Convention is dead as far as the original cause for its creation – apartheid in South Africa – is concerned, but that it lives on as a species of the crime against humanity, under both customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (emphasis added).17

This report assumes that the term “apartheid” has come to have universal application in international law and is accordingly not confined to the South African case.

17 John Dugard, “Introductory note to the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”. Available here.

(b) The paucity of precedents

A second reason people turn to the South African comparison is that, because no other State has been accused of the crime of apartheid, South Africa stands as the only case providing a precedent. Given the importance of precedents in the interpretation of law, it is arguably natural for people to look at the “inhuman acts” of apartheid in southern Africa as the models or benchmarks for what apartheid “looks like”. For example, some claim that Israel clearly does not practise apartheid because Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote in national elections, while black South Africans did not. That the design of apartheid regimes in other States must necessarily differ — due to the unique history of their societies and the collective experience shaping local racial thought, such as settler colonialism, slavery, ethnic cleansing, war or genocide — is neglected in such a simplified search for models.

Nevertheless, the case of southern Africa does serve to expose some legal arguments as specious. For example, it might be argued that the treatment by Israel of Palestinian populations outside its internationally recognized borders (that is, in the occupied Palestinian territory and abroad) falls beyond the scope of the question, making its policies on Palestinian refugees and Palestinians living under occupation irrelevant to a charge of apartheid. That this argument is unsupportable is confirmed by reference to ICJ advisory opinions regarding the behaviour of South Africa in South West Africa (Namibia).18 In 1972, the ICJ found South African rule over Namibia illegal partly on the grounds that it violated the rights of the Namibian people by imposing South African apartheid laws there.19 South Africa was thus held to account for apartheid practices outside its own sovereign territory and in respect to non-citizens.

This report assumes that the question of formal sovereignty is not germane to a finding of apartheid.

18 In the 1960s, South Africa administered South West Africa (Namibia) as a fifth province and applied to it its doctrine of apartheid, complete with Bantustans. The policy attracted repeated criticism from the General Assembly.

19 The ICJ was addressing the legality of South Africa’s continued rule of South West Africa in violation of a Security Council resolution calling for its withdrawal. See especially the last of four opinions issued between 1950 and 1971: International Status of South-West Africa, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1950, p. 128; Voting Procedure on Questions Relating to Reports and Petitions Concerning the Territory of South West Africa, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1955, p. 67; Admissibility of Hearings of Petitioners by the Committee on South-West Africa, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1956, p. 23; Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) Notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 16 (especially paras. 131 and 133).

2. Apartheid as discrete practices

Discrete acts by Israel are frequently labelled as examples of “apartheid”: for example, as noted earlier, in references to the “apartheid wall”. Such references are useful to those wishing to highlight how the forcible segregation of groups strongly suggests apartheid. Yet it would be erroneous to take such isolated practices as indicative that a State is constituted as an apartheid regime.20 Rather, the Apartheid Convention provides a definition that stresses the combination of acts with their “purpose” or intent:

For the purpose of the present Convention, the term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of (emphasis added) establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them (article II).

The Convention then lists six categories of such “inhuman acts”. In article 7 (2) (h), the Rome Statute formulates the same concept differently, but again places emphasis on such acts as reflecting an “intention”:

“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1 [i.e., “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”], committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Both instruments thus establish that discrete acts are crimes of apartheid only if they are part of an institutionalized regime and have the “intention” or “purpose” of racial domination and oppression. The same acts, if not observably part of such a regime or lacking such a clear purpose, may be denounced as reprehensible instances of racism but do not meet the definition of a crime of apartheid. For that reason, a check-list method alone — such as looking for the “inhuman acts” mentioned in the Apartheid Convention — would be a misreading of the

20 Former special rapporteurs John Dugard and Richard Falk highlighted the problem of determining when “features of apartheid” signify that an apartheid regime is operating, which would constitute a matter that might be referred to the ICJ. For both rapporteurs, the question arose with regard to the legality of the Israeli occupation. Mr. Dugard described “road apartheid” in the occupied Palestinian territory and noted that the Israeli occupation has “features” or “elements” of apartheid. However, whether Israel is constituted as an apartheid regime remained for Mr. Dugard a question still to be legally determined (A/62/275). Mr. Falk adopted a similar position (A/HRC/25/67, p. 21).

Convention’s intention. In article II, it explicitly establishes that such acts are illustrative, not mandatory, and are crimes of apartheid only if they serve the overarching purpose of racial domination. Hence, such acts can be considered crimes of apartheid only after the existence of an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination” has been conclusively established.

The very existence of the Apartheid Convention indicates that apartheid is rightly distinguished from other forms of racial discrimination, already prohibited under instruments such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, by its character as a regime. The Rome Statute expressly refers to apartheid as a regime. In political science, a State regime is the set of institutions through which the State is governed, principally regarding its arrangements for exercising power. In the oft-cited formulation by political scientist Robert Fishman:

A regime may be thought of as the formal and informal organization of the centre of political power, and of its relations with the broader society. A regime determines who has access to political power, and how those who are in power deal with those who are not… Regimes are more permanent forms of political organization than specific governments, but they are typically less permanent than the State.21

On the basis of this definition, relevant evidence for an apartheid regime in Israel- Palestine must go beyond identifying discrete acts and determine whether the regime blocks access to “the centre of political power” on the basis of race. Moreover, the Apartheid Convention specifies that “organizations, institutions and individuals” may be culpable for the crime of apartheid (article I, para. 2). This, too, means that the State as a whole may be held accountable for committing that crime.

Finally, identifying apartheid as a regime clarifies one controversy: that ending such a regime would constitute destruction of the State itself. This interpretation is understandable if the State is understood as being the same as its regime. Thus, some suggest that the aim of eliminating apartheid in Israel is tantamount to aiming to “destroy Israel”. However, a State does not cease to exist as a result of regime change. The elimination of the apartheid regime in South Africa in no way affected the country’s statehood.

To determine whether specific acts constitute evidence of apartheid, this report examines whether they contribute to the overarching purpose of sustaining an institutionalized regime of racial oppression and domination.

21 Fishman, Robert M., “Rethinking State and regime: Southern Europe’s transition to democracy”, World Politics, vol. 42, No. 3 (April 1990).

3. Apartheid as generated by anonymous structural conditions

Some writers have begun to define apartheid as the racialized impact of anonymous socioeconomic forces, such as the capitalist mode of production. It may indeed be heuristically useful to use the term “economic apartheid” to describe situations where economic inequality feeds into racial formation and stratification, even in the absence of any deliberate State policy to achieve this result.22 (Scholars of race relations will identify this as the illimitable race-class debate.) In this model, “apartheid” is used to flag discrimination that emerges spontaneously from a variety of economic conditions and incentives. Some argue that the entire global economy is generating a kind of “global apartheid”.23

The trouble with this hyper-structural approach is that it renders agency, particularly the role of a given State, unclear or implicitly eliminates it altogether. International law interprets apartheid as a crime for which individuals (or States) can be prosecuted, once their culpability is established by authoritative legal procedures. No such criminal culpability could pertain when treating apartheid as the product of the international structure itself, as this would not signify whether the State regime is configured deliberately for the purpose of racial domination and oppression — the distinguishing quality of apartheid according to the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute.

This report considers that the question of whether or not an apartheid system is in place should be analysed at the level of the State, and that the crime of apartheid is applicable only to that level.

4. Apartheid as private social behaviour

The term apartheid is also used to describe racial discrimination where the main agent in imposing racial domination is the dominant racial group, whose members collectively generate the rules and norms that define race, enforce racial hierarchy and police racial boundaries. The primary enforcers of such systems are private, such as teachers, employers, real estate agents, loan officers and vigilante groups, but they also rely to varying degrees on administrative organs of the State, such as the police and a court system. It follows that maintaining these organs as compliant with the system becomes a core goal of private actors, because

22 For more on this, see Cass Sunstein, “Why markets don’t stop discrimination”, Social Philosophy and Policy, vol. 8, issue 2 (April 1991).

23 Anthony H. Richmond, Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism, and the New World Order (Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1994).

excluding dominated groups from meaningful voting rights that might alter that compliance is essential to maintaining the system.

Social racism doubtless plays a vital role in apartheid regimes, by providing popular support for designing and preserving the system, and by using informal methods (treating people with hostility and suspicion) to intimidate and silence subordinated groups.24 Social racism is rarely entirely divorced from institutionalized racism. Law and practice are so interdependent that the difference between them may seem irrelevant to those oppressed by the holistic system they create.

Nonetheless, one significant difference distinguishes the two: the role of constitutional law. Where a State’s constitutional law provides equal rights to the entire citizenry, it can provide an invaluable resource for people challenging discrimination at all levels of the society. However, if constitutional law defines the State as racial in character — as in Israel (as a Jewish State), and apartheid South Africa (as a white-Afrikaner State) — movements against racial discrimination not only lack this crucial legal resource but find themselves in the far more dangerous position of challenging the regime itself. Such a challenge will naturally be seen by regime authorities as an existential threat and be persecuted accordingly.25

In short, it is crucial for a finding of apartheid to establish whether the State’s constitutional law (the Basic Law in Israel) renders discrimination illegal or renders resistance to discrimination illegal. The latter case fits the definition of apartheid in the Apartheid Convention, which lists as a crime against humanity “persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid” (article II (f)).

5. Apartheid and the question of race

The Apartheid Convention defines apartheid as “domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons…”. The Rome Statute uses similar wording: “…systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups…”. However, neither Jews nor Palestinians are

24 Surveys of Jewish Israeli attitudes towards “Arabs” and Palestinians are omitted here because they do not pertain to a study of the State’s institutionalized regime. This omission in no way intends to suggest that popular views are not key guardians and enforcers of that regime.

25 Although the Constitution of the United States of America states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, race relations always complicated this principle in practice. Constitutional law favouring white supremacy included the key “separate but equal” provisions in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896). They were overturned only in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483, which was later followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

referred to as “races” today. Moreover, Jews are correctly argued to include many “races” in the sense of the old colour categories: black, white, Asian and so forth. Thus, one challenge to any accusation that Israel maintains an apartheid regime is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not racial in nature. Hence, the argument goes, Jews cannot be racist toward Palestinians (or anyone else) because Jews themselves are not a race.

Such arguments reflect a mistaken and obsolete understanding of race. Through the first half of the twentieth century, the idea of race was seen as scientifically established and measurable. Since the Second World War, however, it has come to be recognized as a social construction that varies over time and may be contested within each local context. One illustration of such variability is the North American “one-drop rule”, which has long operated to label as “black” anyone with a perceptible element of African phenotypes or known black ancestry. Yet the same “black” person, travelling to Latin America, finds the one-drop rule working in reverse, such that s/he is not considered “black” if s/he has any portion of “white” blood, instead being called mestizo or mulatto. Thus racial identity changes with the setting.

Consequently, there can be no single, authoritative, global definition of any race. The only way to determine how racial identities are perceived and practiced locally is through historical studies of racial thought and by field observations in each local setting. The question is therefore not whether Jewish and Palestinian identities are innately racial in character wherever they occur, but whether those identities function as racial groups in the local environment of Israel-Palestine.

This point raises another question on how race is handled in United Nations instruments.26 For the purposes of human rights law, a finding of racial discrimination is based less on how groups are labelled than how they are treated. For example, although Jews today are not normally referred to as a “race”, anti- Semitism is correctly seen as a form of racism. It would indeed be unethical and politically regressive sophistry to argue that Jews cannot be subject to racial discrimination simply because they are not normally referred to as a “race”.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination captures that point by defining “racial discrimination” as embracing a range of identities:

26 The exception that proves the rule regarding definitions of race is the isolated effort by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: see Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgement (TC), 2 September 1998, Akayesu Trial Judgment, paras. 511-515.

22 | Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

In this Convention, the term “racial discrimination” shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life (part I, article 1) (emphasis added).

By invoking that Convention in its preamble, the Apartheid Convention suggests that its language regarding “racial group or groups” embraces the same range of identities.

Recognizing this contextual meaning of “race” is not haphazard. Since the mid- twentieth century, scholars of international law have joined social scientists in coming to understand racial identity as fundamentally a matter of perception, rather than objectively measurable qualities. Racial identities are usually signally somatic and so are seen as stable and permanent, acquired at birth and thus immutable. That races are actually social constructions is evidenced by how such constructions vary from society to society: that is, the significance of specific somatic criteria, such as skin colour or eye shape, to a racial typology. Where such perceptions of an essential identity persist, the difference disappears between language about groups understood as racial or “ethnic”, as descent groups, and that which sees them as sharing a particular national or ethnic origin. What matters in all those cases is that all members of a group — including infants and others who cannot possibly constitute a “racial threat” — are embraced by one policy. A pertinent example of this conflation of terms has been discrimination against Jews, for whom a mix of labels (race, religion and ethnicity) has been used by those pursuing anti-Semitic segregation, persecution or genocide. The question here is, therefore, whether relations between Jews and Palestinians in Mandate Palestine rest on ideas that each group has an immutable character, such that their relations fit the definition of “racial” discrimination.

A comprehensive review of how Jewish and Palestinian identities are understood locally in Israel-Palestine would overburden this report. Fortunately, one factor confirms the racial quality of both identities in this context: both are considered descent groups (one of the categories in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination). Palestinian identity is explicitly based on origins or ancestral origins in the territory of Mandate Palestine. The 1964 Charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)27 expresses this

27 See this.

The Arab countries and which together form the great Arab homeland.

Principle by affirming that Palestinian identity is passed down through the paternal line and is intergenerational:

Article 5: The Palestinian personality is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred from fathers to sons.

Palestinian national identity has always been nested within pan-Arabism, an ethno- national identity formulated first as a modern territorial nationalism by Sherif Hussein of Mecca. “Arab” was certainly the generic term for Arabic-speaking people in Palestine when the Zionist movement began to settle the area. General Assembly resolution 181(II) of 1947,28 which recommended the partition of Mandate Palestine into an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State”, drew from that discourse. Updated and promoted especially by Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser to craft an anticolonial Arab identity bloc across the Middle East and North Africa, Arab identity became a vital identity and political resource for the PLO, as reflected in its Charter:

In this conception, Palestinians are integral members of the Arab “Nation”, but it is the “Palestinian people” that holds the right to self-determination in Mandate Palestine, thus conveying the international legal meaning of “nation” to the Palestinian people.

In contrast, Jewish identity combines several contradictory elements.29 “Jewish” is certainly a religious identity in the sense that Judaism is a religious faith to which anyone may convert if willing and able to follow the required procedures. On that basis, opponents of Israeli policy insist that Jewishness is not a national identity but simply a religious one, and so Jews qua Jews are not a “people” in the sense of international law and therefore lack the right to self-determination. Supporters of Israel use the same point to deny that Jewish statehood is racist, on the grounds

28 A/RES/181(II).

29 Internal debates about “who is a Jew” are irrelevant to the State’s construction of Jewishness as a single people, and thus not pertinent to this report. On such debates, see, for example, Noah Efron, Real Jews: Secular Versus Ultra-Orthodox: The Struggle For Jewish Identity In Israel (New York, Basic Books, 2003).

Article 1: Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the rest of

… Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab Nation. It shares the sufferings and aspirations of the Arab

Nation and its struggle for freedom, sovereignty, progress and unity… that Zionism and Israel cannot be racist if Jews are not a race. However, those arguments are flawed, even disingenuous, as religious criteria alone are not adequate for defining what it is to be “Jewish”.

Like many other groups that today are now commonly called “ethnic” or “national”, until the mid-twentieth century Jews were often referred to as a “race”. Jewish-Zionist thinkers adopted the same approach, reflecting contemporary concepts of what races were, how races composed peoples and nations, and how on that basis they had the right to self-determination. For example, Zionist philosopher and strategist Max Nordau commonly used the term “race” for Jews in speaking of Jewish interests in Palestine.30 For decades, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, Vladimir Jabotinsky, wrote passionately about the Jewish “race” and how the “spiritual mechanism” associated with it granted transcendental value to a Jewish State.31 Today, this usage persists in the Memorandum of Association of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which in article 2 (c) cites one of its objectives as being to “benefit, directly or indirectly, those of Jewish race or descent”. In none of those sources is religious faith even mentioned (because it is recognized to vary): the concern is entirely with descent. Halachah (often translated as “Jewish law”) and social norms in Jewish communities provide that Jewish identity is conveyed from mother to child, irrespective of the individual’s actual religious beliefs or practice. The State of Israel enshrined the central importance of descent in its Law of Return of 1950 (amended in 1970),32 which states that:

For the purposes of this Law, “Jew” means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.

Descent is crucial to Jewish identity discourse in Israel because direct lineal descent from antiquity is the main reason given by political-Zionist philosophers for why Jews today hold the right to self-determination in the land of Palestine. In this view, all Jews retain a special relationship and rights to the land of Palestine, granted by covenant with God: some schools of Zionism hold that Israel is the successor State to the Jewish kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. That claim is

30 See, for example, Max Nordau, “Address to the First Zionist Congress”, 29 August 1897. Available here.

31 See Vladimir Jabotinsky, A lecture on Jewish history (1933), cited in David Goldberg, To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought (London, Penguin, 1996), p. 181.

32 Passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950 and amended on 10 March 1970.

expressed, inter alia, in the Declaration of Independence of Israel,33 which affirms that Jews today trace their ancestry to an earlier national life in the geography of Palestine and therefore have an inalienable right to “return”, which is given precedence over positive law:

The Land of Israel 34 was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book
of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. […]

That claim to unbroken lineal descent from antiquity attributes collective rights to the “land of Israel” to an entire group on the basis of its (supposed) bloodlines. The incompatible claim that Jewishness is multiracial, by virtue of its character as a religion to which others have converted, is simply absent from this formula.

The emphasis on descent implicitly portrays all other descent groups — including Palestinians — as lacking any comparable right by virtue of their different descent. Thus the claim to Palestine as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people rests on an expressly racial conception of both groups. This means that Jews and Palestinians are “racial groups” as defined by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, accordingly, for the purposes of the Apartheid Convention.

33 Provisional Government of Israel, The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, Official Gazette, No. 1 (Tel Aviv, 14 May 1948). It is also commonly referred to as the Declaration of Independence. Available here.

34 Eretz-Israel in Hebrew.

2. Testing for an Apartheid Regime in Israel-Palestine

The design of an apartheid regime in any State will necessarily reflect the country’s unique history and demography, which shape local perceptions of racial hierarchy and doctrines of racial supremacy. The first task here is, therefore, to consider how local conditions in Israel-Palestine constitute such an environment. The main feature, stemming from the history of wars and expulsions, is the geographic fragmentation of the Palestinian people into discrete populations that are then administered differently by the State regime. Those components include Palestinians living under direct Israeli rule in three categories (as citizens of the State of Israel, residents of occupied East Jerusalem, and under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) and Palestinians living outside direct Israeli rule: refugees and involuntary exiles expelled from the territory of Mandate Palestine who

are prohibited by Israel from returning. The next section clarifies how those four categories have emerged from the territory’s history of warfare and incremental annexation.

1. The political geography of apartheid

The geographic unit of “Mandate Palestine” was established by the League of Nations in 1922 with the stated intention of fostering the future independence of Palestine as a State, as specified in the League of Nations Charter.35 Famously, the Palestine Mandate included contradictory provisions for a Jewish “national home” (not a State) and the special authority of the Jewish Agency in establishing that “home”. Later British commissions and white papers specified that “national home” had not been intended to signify a Jewish State, but that position was not

35 The borders of Mandate Palestine were derived from the Sykes-Picot agreement, which divided Ottoman imperial territory after the First World War and placed it under British or French Mandates. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations provided for various classes of mandate territory. Palestine was considered one of the most advanced areas, whose “existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone”. In that context, “independent nations” signified independent statehood, thus informing language in the Mandate for Palestine. The early history of Palestine’s mandate borders, which combined Transjordan and Palestine, is not considered material to this report, but for that history, see especially Victor Kattan, From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949 (London, Pluto Press, 2009).

accepted by the Zionist leadership. Endemic violence that emerged from this contradictory formula, combined with imperial exhaustion after the Second World War, ultimately led Great Britain to withdraw from its role as Mandatory Power and submit the fate of Palestine to the United Nations. In 1947, the General Assembly passed resolution 181(II) by a modest majority of 36 Member States, recommending the territory’s partition into a “Jewish State” and an “Arab State”. The same resolution specified conditions and measures deemed essential to make partition viable, including borders that provided for racial majorities in each titular State, constitutional protections for minorities, economic union between the two States and a special international regime for the city of Jerusalem.36

In the 1948 war, however, the Zionist movement took over territory far beyond what had been assigned to the Jewish State under resolution 181(II) and, by so doing, rendered moot its labyrinthine provisions, including acquiescence by the internationally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people. In 1948, the Zionist leadership declared the independence of Israel in territory under its military control, although its final borders had yet to be established. In 1949, the General Assembly recommended admission of the State of Israel to membership even though its borders had still not been finalized. Palestinians remaining in Israel, who had not fled or been expelled in the 1948 war, became citizens of Israel, but Israel administered them under emergency laws and denied them civil rights, such as the franchise, until 1966.

From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) was governed by Jordan, while the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt. As a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, both territories came under Israeli military occupation and rule, yet were not formally annexed.37 The geographic separation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has suggested the existence of two discrete territories. However, the United Nations commonly refers to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the singular as the “occupied Palestinian territory”, treating both as geographic fragments of “Palestine” as established under the League of Nations Mandate.38 Pursuant to article XI of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and

36 Resolution 181(II) was the result of work by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), with its two subcommittees providing options for a partitioned or unified State.

37 Although effectively annexed, the occupied Syrian Golan is excluded from the scope of this report because that territory was not part of the Palestine Mandate and is considered legally to be Syrian territory. However, many of this report’s findings could apply to Israeli policy in the Golan and may be consistent with apartheid, as Israel has used Jewish settlement to stake a claim to the land and the population of the four Druze villages there live in conditions of relative deprivation.

38 Steps taken by the General Assembly to recognize a “State of Palestine” have prompted some to suggest that occupied Palestinian territory should now be referred to as “occupied Palestine”. However, since recognition of such a State still lacks any final agreement about its borders, the authors here continue to use the term “occupied Palestinian territory” to refer to territory delineated by the 1949 Armistice Agreement and occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

the Gaza Strip (also known as the Oslo II Accord or Oslo II), for the purposes of negotiation those areas were considered a “single territorial unit” (article XI). Hence, international jurists and the United Nations consider Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be under one legal category: that is, civilians under belligerent occupation, whose rights and protections are stipulated primarily in the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War (1949).

East Jerusalem (that part of Jerusalem on the east side of the Armistice Line or “green line” of 1949) obtained a special status. Although seamlessly integrated with the West Bank between 1948 and 1967, East Jerusalem retained the aura of the diplomatic character, proposed by resolution 181(II), of a corpus separatum, reflecting its vital importance to all three Abrahamic faiths. After the 1967 war, however, Israel passed legislation making East Jerusalem part of the unified city of Jerusalem, radically expanding the city’s borders, and extending Israeli civil law throughout. After the second intifada (from September 2000), parts of East Jerusalem were re-segregated from Jewish areas physically by the separation wall and its security gates and Israeli checkpoints. This forced separation has allowed Israel to separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank in juridical terms and so has generated the category of Palestinian “residents” of East Jerusalem, whose rights stem largely from Israeli law on permanent residency.39

The territory’s history has further generated the separate case of Palestinian citizens of Israel: people who remained inside the internationally recognized borders of Israel after 1949 and their descendants. Granted Israeli citizenship although not full “national” equality as non-Jews in a Jewish-national State, this Palestinian population now makes up 20 per cent of the country’s citizenry.40

How Israeli law and doctrine has defined this population as citizens but not “nationals” of the State is addressed below. Here it is incumbent only to recognize that Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise a distinct legal category. The situation of refugees and involuntary exiles comprises the final category, distinct from the others in that they are governed by the laws of the other States in which they reside.

39 The Knesset passed Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel on 30 July 1980 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 980 of 5 August 1980, p. 186).

40 Jewish Virtual Library, Vital Statistics: Latest Population Statistics for Israel (January 2017). Available here.

Testing for an Apartheid Regime in Israel-Palestine

By developing discrete bodies of law, termed “domains” in this report, for each territory and their Palestinian populations, Israel has both effected and veiled a comprehensive policy of apartheid directed at the whole Palestinian people.41 Warfare, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and occupation in Palestine have, over the decades, generated the complex geography in which the Palestinian people have become fragmented into different juridical categories and are administered by different bodies of law. What matters for the purposes of a study of apartheid is how Israel has exploited this fragmentation to secure Jewish-national domination.

1. Israel as a racial State

A test of apartheid cannot be confined, methodologically, to identifying discrete policies and practices, such as those listed under the Apartheid Convention. Such policies and practices must be found to serve the purpose or intention of imposing racial domination and oppression on a subordinated racial group. In somewhat circular reasoning, international law provides that discrete “inhuman acts” acquire the status of a crime against humanity only if they intentionally serve that purpose, but establishes that such a purpose requires the identification of related inhuman acts. The solution is to examine the context in which acts and motives are configured: that is, whether the State itself is designed to ensure “the domination of a racial group or groups over any other racial group or groups”. (For example, in South Africa, State institutions were designed to ensure incontestable domination by whites and, particularly, Dutch-Afrikaners.)

In this study, it is vital to establish the racial character of the regime that the system of domains is designed to protect. Otherwise, their internal diversity — the laws that comprise them — can convey the incorrect impression of discrete systems.

That Israel is politically constructed as the State of the Jewish people requires no extended explanation here, but will be discussed briefly.42 Since the turn of the twentieth century, the history of the Zionist movement has been centred on creating and preserving a Jewish State in Palestine. That aim remains the cornerstone of

41 “Domain” is used in the report in the sense of logic or discourse analysis, in which concepts and actors are understood as part of one “universe” of references. Hence, the domains in Israeli policy consist of definitions of the populations themselves (domestic, foreign, citizens or otherwise, “Palestinians” oriented toward Palestinian self-determination or “Arabs” as an Israeli minority, and so forth), as well as the laws, practices, norms and other measures, formal and informal, by which Israeli definitions of those identities are imposed on Palestinian populations in each domain.

42 For a more complete discussion, see Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chaps. 3 and 4.

Israeli State discourse. During the Mandate years, the Jewish Agency and Zionist leadership argued that the “Jewish national home” promised under the Mandate was to be a sovereign Jewish State. The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel specifically referred to the new State as a “Jewish State in Eretz- Israel”. The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty43 and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation44 specify concerns with “the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State”.45 The 1952 World Zionist Organisation–Jewish Agency (Status) Law,46 which establishes those organizations as “authorized agencies” of the State on a range of responsibilities, including land settlement, specifies that Israel is “the creation of the entire Jewish people, and its gates are open, in accordance with its laws, to every Jew wishing to immigrate to it”.

The mission of preserving Israel as a Jewish State has inspired or even compelled Israel to pursue several general racial policies.

1. Demographic engineering

The first general policy of Israel has been one of demographic engineering, in order to establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel. As in any racial democracy, such a majority allows the trappings of democracy — democratic elections, a strong legislature — without threatening any loss of hegemony by the dominant racial group. In Israeli discourse, this mission is expressed in terms of the so-called “demographic threat”, an openly racist reference to Palestinian population growth or the return of Palestinian refugees. Related practices have included:

1. A global programme, organized by the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, launched at the end of the nineteenth century and accelerating into the early 1930s, to bring Jewish immigrants to Palestine in numbers large enough to ensure the demographic majority needed for building a Jewish State with democratic characteristics;

43 Passed by the Knesset on 17 March 1992 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 1391 of 25 March 1992). Available here.

44 The law amending the original 1992 legislation was passed by the Knesset on 9 March 1994 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 1454 of 10 March 1994). Available here.

45 A controversial bill to declare this principle as a central tenet had been tabled in the Knesset but not yet passed at the time of writing. See Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, Ministry of Justice. Available here. Accessed 5 February 2017.

46 The Status Law was amended in 1975 to restructure this relationship: see World Zionist Organisation–Jewish Agency for Israel (Status) (Amendment) Law, 1975.

2. Ethnic cleansing (forcible displacement) in 1948 of an estimated 800,000 Palestinians from areas that became part of the internationally recognized territory of Israel;47
3. Subsequent measures undertaken by Israel to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority within its internationally recognized territory, including by:(a) Preventing Palestinian refugees from the wars of 1948 and 1967 from returning to homes in Israel or in the occupied Palestinian territory, which they had abandoned due to fighting, dispossession, forced expulsion and terror;48

(b) Composing the Law of Return and Citizenship Law (often wrongly translated as Nationality Law) to provide Israeli citizenship to Jews from any part of the world, while denying citizenship even to those Palestinians who have a documented history of residency in the country;

(c) A range of other policies designed to restrict the size of the Palestinian population, including harsh restrictions placed on immigration, the return of refugees, and rules prohibiting Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from gaining legal residency rights in Israel.

4. The affirmation in the Basic Law that Israel is a “Jewish and democratic State”, thus establishing Jewish-racial domination as a foundational doctrine.

Together, those measures have been highly effective in maintaining an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel. In 1948, the ratio of Palestinians to Jews in Palestine was approximately 2:1 (some 1.3 million Arabs to 630,000 Jews).49 Today, Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute only about 20 per cent of the population, rendering them a permanent minority.

2. Banson challenges to racial domination

Israel reinforces its race-based immigration policy with measures designed to prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from challenging the doctrine and laws that purport to establish Israel as a Jewish State. Article 7 (a) of the Basic Law: Knesset (1958), for instance, prohibits any political party in Israel from adopting a platform that challenges the State’s expressly Jewish character:

47. See Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London, Oxford One World Press, 2006).
48. Ibid. The right of refugees to return is specified in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial

Discrimination (article 5 (d) (ii)).

49 Censuses categories under the British Mandate were ordered by “religion” rather than ethnicity. Statistics therefore grouped together Arab and non-Arab Christians. In 1947, Christians and Muslims numbered 143,000 and 1,181,000 respectively.

A candidates list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset, and a person shall not be a candidate for election to the Knesset, if the objects or actions of the list or the actions of the person, expressly or by implication, include one of the following:

(1) Negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State (emphasis added)…50

Voting rights lose their significance in terms of equal rights when a racial group is legally banned from challenging laws that perpetuate inequality. An analogy would be a system in which slaves have the right to vote but not against slavery. Such rights might allow slaves to achieve some cosmetic reforms, such as improved living conditions and protection from vigilante violence, but their status and vulnerability as chattels would remain. Israeli law bans organized Palestinian opposition to Jewish domination, rendering it illegal and even seditious.

3. Israeli Jewish-national institutions

Israel has designed its domestic governance in such a way as to ensure that the State upholds and promotes Jewish nationalism. The term “Jewish people” in political Zionist thought is used to claim the right to self-determination. The quest of an ethnic or racial group for its own State amounts to a national project, and so Israeli institutions designed to preserve Israel as a Jewish State are referred to in this report as “Jewish-national” institutions.

In Israel, an interplay of laws consolidates Jewish-national supremacy. For example, regarding the central question of land use, Basic Law: Israel Lands51 provides that real property held by the State of Israel, the Development Authority or the Keren Kayemet Le-Israel (JNF-Jewish National Fund) must serve “national” (that is, Jewish-national) interests and cannot be transferred to any other hands. It further establishes the Israeli Lands Authority (ILA) as administrator of such lands. The ILA (as successor of the Israeli Lands Administration) is charged with administering land in accordance with the JNF Covenant, which requires that land held by the JNF be held in perpetuity for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish people. The ILA also operates in accordance with the World Zionist Organization- Jewish Agency Status Law (1952), which sets forth the responsibility of those conjoined organizations for serving Jewish settlement and development. Thus, State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of land within the country’s

50. Basic Law: Knesset. Available here.
51. Passed by the Knesset on 19 July 1960 (published in Sefer Ha-Chukkim No. 312 of 29 July 1960).

34 | Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid internationally recognized borders, is managed through laws prohibiting its use by non-Jews.52

In a legal process that Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard has called “channelling”, Israel has extended the application of laws regarding land to the occupied Palestinian territory.53 Large areas of the West Bank have been declared “State lands”, closed to use by Palestinians and administered in accordance with Israeli regime policies that, as described above, by law must serve the Jewish people.54 In other words, much of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is under the authority of an Israeli State institution that is legally bound to administer that land for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish people. The same arrangement once governed Israeli Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, but since the Israeli “disengagement” of 2005 and the withdrawal of Jewish settlements, such laws apply only to small portions of the Strip, such as the unilaterally imposed security zone by the fence.

The Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organisation (hereafter JA-WZO) deserve special attention for their role in establishing the racial character of the Israeli regime. According to Israeli law, they remain the “authorised agencies” of the State regarding Jewish-national affairs in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.55 Their authority is detailed in the Covenant signed on 26 July 1954 between the Government of Israel and the Zionist Executive, representing the JA- WZO.56 The Covenant provides for a coordinating board, composed half of State officials and half of JA-WZO members, which is granted broad authority to serve the Jewish people, extending to development plans for the entire country. Powers accorded to the JA-WZO by its Covenant are:

The organising of [Jewish] immigration abroad and the transfer of immigrants and their property to Israel; participation in the absorption of immigrants in Israel; youth immigration; agricultural settlement in Israel; the acquisition and amelioration of land in Israel by the institutions of the Zionist Organisation, the Keren Kayemeth Le-Israel [Jewish National Fund] and the Keren Hayesod [United Jewish Appeal]; participation in the establishment

52. ILA website. Available here.
53. For details on how this is done, see Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation.
54. Provisions of humanitarian law prohibiting the occupant from altering the infrastructure, laws and economic institutions thatexisted in occupied territory prior to its coming under belligerent occupation include articles 43 and 55 of the 1907 Hague Regulations (Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land) and article 64 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. See also Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chap. 2.

55 The World Zionist Organisation–Jewish Agency (Status) Law of 1952 was amended in 1975. Available here.

56 Read Reconstitution of the Jewish Agency, appendix I. and the expansion of development enterprises in Israel; the encouragement of private capital investments in Israel; assistance to cultural enterprises and institutions of higher learning in Israel; the mobilisation of resources for financing these functions; the coordination of the activities in Israel of Jewish institutions and organisations acting within the sphere of these functions with the aid of public funds.

A principle task of the JA-WZO is to work actively to build and maintain Israel as a Jewish State, particularly through immigration policy:

… 5. The mission of gathering in the [Jewish] exiles, which is the central task of the State of Israel and the Zionist Movement in our days, requires constant efforts by the Jewish people in the Diaspora; the State of Israel, therefore, expects the cooperation of all Jews, as individuals and groups, in building up the State and assisting the immigration to it of the masses of the [Jewish] people, and regards the unity of all sections of Jewry as necessary for this purpose (emphasis added).57

Such explicit language by the State’s authorized agencies conclusively underlines the State’s essentially racist character.

The World Zionist Organisation-Jewish Agency (Status) Law is linked to a second body of Israeli law and jurisprudence that distinguishes between citizenship (in Hebrew, ezrahut) and nationality (le’um). Other States have made this distinction: for example, in the former Soviet Union, Soviet citizens also held distinct “national” identities (Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek and so forth), but all nationalities had equal legal standing. In Israel, by contrast, only one nationality, Jewish, has legal standing and only Jewish nationality is associated with the legitimacy and mission of the State. According to the country’s Supreme Court, Israel is indeed not the State of the “Israeli nation”, which does not legally exist, but of the “Jewish nation”.58 National rights are reserved to Jewish nationality. For instance, the Law of Return serves the “in-gathering” mission cited above by allowing any Jew to immigrate to Israel and, through the Citizenship Law59, to gain immediate citizenship. No other group has a remotely comparable right and only Jews enjoy any collective rights under Israeli law.

57. World Zionist Organisation-Jewish Agency (Status) Law of 1952.
58. George Rafael Tamarin v. State of Israel (20 January 1972), Decisions of the Supreme Court of Israel (Jerusalem: Supreme

Court, 1972), vol. 25, pt. 1, 197 (in Hebrew). See also Roselle Tekiner, “On the inequality of Israeli citizens”, Without Prejudice, vol. 1, No. 1 (1988), pp. 9-48.

59 Passed by the Knesset on 1 April 1952 and amended in 1958, 1968 and 1971.

The operational platform of the JA-WZO, reformulated in 2004 as the Jerusalem Programme, further clarifies how the State of Israel will serve as a “Jewish State”. Its language is illuminating, especially in the light of the broad powers held by the JA-WZO, cited above:

Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, brought about the establishment of the State of Israel, and views a Jewish, Zionist, democratic and secure State of Israel to be the expression of the common responsibility of the Jewish people for its continuity and future. The foundations of Zionism are:

• The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation.
• Aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all [Jewish] immigrants into Israeli Society.
• Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic State and shaping it as an exemplary society with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people, rooted in the vision of the prophets, striving for peace and contributing to the betterment of the world.
• Ensuring the future and the distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education, fostering spiritual and cultural values and teaching Hebrew as the national language.
• Nurturing mutual Jewish responsibility, defending the rights of Jews as individuals and as a nation, representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people, and struggling against all manifestations of anti-Semitism.
• Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism (emphasis added, bullet points in the original).60This discussion, although incomplete, should suffice to demonstrate that Israel is designed to be a racial regime. To remain a “Jewish State,” uncontested Jewish- nationalist domination over the indigenous Palestinian people is essential — an advantage secured in the democracy of Israel by population size — and State laws, national institutions, development practices and security policies all focus on that mission. Different methods are applied to Palestinian populations depending on where they live, requiring variations in their administration. Within Israel that discriminatory feature is exhibited by the deceptive distinction between citizenship laws that treat all Israelis more or less equally, and nationality laws that are blatantly discriminatory in favour of Jews. The distinction allows Israel to continue

60 See the Jerusalem Program. Accessed 19 February 2017.

its insistence on being “a democracy”, while discriminating in fundamental ways against its non-Jewish citizens.

Most important here is that Israel uses different methods of administration to control Palestinian populations depending on where they live, generating distinctive conditions. Fragmentation of the Palestinian people is indeed the core method through which Israel enforces apartheid.

1. Apartheid through fragmentation

Different methods of administration are used to control Palestinian populations depending on where they live. The practical onus of that administrative complexity also benefits Israel, as the fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the core method through which Israel enforces apartheid.

It would be an error to assume that, although comprising one regime, apartheid is effected through a single monolithic body of laws, applied everywhere to everyone without variation. The South African case is relevant here: even within the comprehensive body of law that defined life chances for everyone in the country, apartheid included important variations: for instance, different laws for black South Africans living in townships and in the Bantustans and different privileges for Indians and Coloureds. Similarly, the apartheid regime of Israel operates by splintering the Palestinian people geographically and politically into different legal categories.

The international community has unwittingly collaborated with this manoeuvre by drawing a strict distinction between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, and treating Palestinians outside the country as “the refugee problem”. The Israeli apartheid regime is built on this geographic fragmentation, which has come to be accepted as normative. The method of fragmentation serves also to obscure this regime’s very existence. That system, thus, lies at the heart of what is to be addressed in this report.

The four domains

This report finds that Israel maintains an apartheid regime by administering Palestinians under different bodies of law, identified here as constituting four legal domains:

• Domain 1: laws curtailing the capacity of Palestinian citizens of Israel to obtain equal rights within the State’s democracy.

• Domain 2: permanent residency laws designed to maintain a highly insecure legal status for Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem.
• Domain 3: military law governing Palestinians in occupied Palestinian territory as a permanently alien population, which rejects any claim they may want to make on Israeli political representation for equal rights and conditions.
• Domain 4: policy preventing Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles from returning to their homes in Mandate Palestine (all territory under the direct control of Israel).These domains interplay so as to enfeeble Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid oppression in each of them, thereby reinforcing oppression of the Palestinian people as a whole. The following sections describe how the system works.61

Palestinian citizens of Israel

Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem)

Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem

Palestinian refugees and exiles

61 Much of the following section represents an edited version of the discussion in Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chap. 4.

Domain 1: Palestinian citizens of Israel

Approximately 1.7 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel and have homes within its internationally recognized borders. They represent those who were not expelled or did not flee in the 1948 or 1967 wars. As citizens, they purportedly enjoy equal rights along with all Israeli citizens. For the first 20 years of the country’s existence, however, they were subjected to martial law and they continue to experience domination and oppression solely because they are not Jewish. Empirically, this policy of domination is manifest by the provision of inferior social services, restrictive zoning laws, and limited budget allocations benefitting their communities, in formal and informal restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities, and in the segregated landscapes of their places of residence: Jewish and Palestinian citizens overwhelmingly live separately in their own respective cities and towns (the few mixed areas, as in some neighbourhoods in Haifa, are exceptional).62

Those problems are not only the result of discrete policies. The dilemma for Palestinian Muslim, Christian and other non-Jewish citizens is to seek equal rights in a regime that openly privileges Jews.63 Any actions to weaken or eliminate that regime are considered “national” (that is, Jewish-national) threats. Even constitutional law providing for equal treatment before the law, such as Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation (see above), allows for discrimination on those “national” grounds. Israeli constitutional law therefore, rather than providing tools for combatting oppression, makes resistance to oppression illegal.

The concern of the regime is that Palestinian citizens of Israel could eliminate its discriminatory design if they were able to revise the Basic Law and other key legislation (such as the Law of Return). Such changes require only a simple majority vote in the Knesset. However, as long as Palestinians represent only 20 per cent of the population, they will be unable to win the necessary proportion of Knesset seats. For example, even after forming an unprecedented unity list for elections to the Knesset in 2015, Palestinian parties held only 13 (10.6 per cent) of 120 seats. Because the Basic Law: Knesset disallows political parties from adopting a platform containing any challenge to the identity of Israel as a Jewish State,

62 See Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1980); Nadim Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997) and Ben White, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy (London, Pluto Press, 2011).

63 Druze citizens of Israel have fallen into a different category under Israeli policy. They serve in the military and are accorded rights and treatment superior to those of Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

Palestinian parties can campaign only for minor reforms and better municipal budgets. They are legally prohibited from challenging the racial regime itself. Thus the right to vote is circumscribed by laws regarding party platforms.64

Any study of domain 1 will involve interpreting coded language. For example, the Admissions Committee Law of 2011 authorizes the creation of private Jewish councils in small rural Jewish towns to exclude applications for residency on the basis of the applicants’ “social suitability”. This is a proxy term for Jewish identity and provides a legal mechanism for such communities to reject Palestinian applicants.65

Israeli law must be evaluated in its application in order to determine whether a racist agenda lies beneath the apparently neutral legal language. A plethora of Israeli laws reserve public benefits to those who qualify as citizens under the Citizenship Law and the Law of Return — an oblique reference to Jews — thus creating a nested system of covert racism that is invisible to the casual observer.

Effectively interchangeable under international law, the terms “citizenship” (ezrahut) as “nationality” (le’um) have distinct meanings in Israel, where citizenship rights and national rights are not the same thing. Any citizen enjoys the former, but only Jews enjoy the latter, as only Jewish nationality is recognized under Israeli law. These and other laws comprise a regime of systematic racial discrimination that imposes second-class citizenship on Palestinian citizens of Israel.66 The broad impact is confirmed even by Israeli data, which detail, for instance, inferior funding for Palestinian schools, businesses, agriculture and health care, as well as limits on access to jobs and freedom of residence.

Thus, domain 1 sustains the myth that one portion of the Palestinian people enjoys the full benefits of democracy, while at the same strengthening the apartheid

64 The Arab-Israeli party Balad has uniquely adopted an openly anti-Zionist platform and calls for Israel to become a State of all its citizens. The arrests, attacks, investigations and Supreme Court cases involving Balad illustrate the determination of the Israeli authorities not to let this stand spread.

65 Human Rights Watch, “Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens”, 30 March 2011: “The “admissions committee” law requires anyone seeking to move to any community in the Negev and Galilee regions with fewer than 400 families to obtain approval from committees consisting of town residents, a member of the Jewish Agency or World Zionist Organization, and several others. The law empowers these committees to reject candidates who, among other things, “are ill- suited to the community’s way of life” or “might harm the community’s fabric”. Available here.

66 A particularly valuable source on this discrimination is the database of discriminatory laws maintained by Adalah: Centre for Legal Rights of the Arab Minority in Israel, which in 2016 listed more than 50 discriminatory laws of Israel, and reports on related legal challenges. Available here.

regime that serves to preserve Israel as a Jewish State. Israel uses the trappings of token universal democracy to lead many observers astray and deflect international opprobrium. The success of this approach depends on limiting Palestinian citizens to a politically ineffectual minority. However, it is impossible to fully appreciate this outcome without examining Israeli policies and practices in the other three domains. Indeed, the success of domain 1 depends on the workings of the other three.

Domain 2: Palestinians in East Jerusalem

Israeli policies towards the some 300,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem can be addressed more concisely.67 The discrimination evident in domain 1 is reproduced: Palestinians in East Jerusalem experience discrimination in areas such as education, health care, employment, residency and building rights, experience expulsion from their homes and house demolitions consistent with a project of ethnic engineering of Greater Jerusalem, and suffer harsher treatment at the hands of the security forces.68

The central question here, however, is not whether Israel discriminates against Palestinians — amply confirmed by the data — but how the domain for Palestinians in East Jerusalem operates as an integral element of the apartheid regime. In brief, domain 2 situates Jerusalem Palestinians in a separate category designed to prevent them from adding to the demographic, political and electoral weight of Palestinians inside Israel. Specific policies regarding their communities and rights are designed to pressure them to emigrate and to quell, or at least minimize, resistance to that pressure. The “grand apartheid”69 dimension of this domain can be appreciated by observing how the Israeli Jerusalem municipality has openly pursued a policy of “demographic balance” in East Jerusalem. For instance, the Jerusalem 2000 master plan seeks to achieve a 60/40 demographic balance in favour of Jewish residents.70 As long ago as the 1980s, the municipality had drafted master plans to fragment Palestinian neighbourhoods

67. The figure of 300,000 was provided by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in March 2015.
68. For more details, see A/HRC/31/73; B’Tselem, “Statistics on Palestinians in custody of the Israeli security forces” (January 2017, available here); Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Humanitarian Bulletin (16 November 2015, available here); Alternative Information Center (AIC), “OCHA: One in two Palestinians to need humanitarian assistance in 2017” (26 January 2017, available here).

69. See Tilley, “A Palestinian declaration of independence”.
70. A/HRC/22/63, para. 25.

with intervening Jewish ones, stifling the natural growth of the Palestinian population and pressuring Palestinians to leave.71 Describing Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem as “neighbourhoods” is part of the wider tactic of disguising violations of international humanitarian law through the use of non-committal language.

Such policies have a significant impact because Jerusalem has such importance for the collective identity of Palestinians as a people. For them, the city is the administrative, cultural, business and political capital of Palestine, home to the Palestinian elite, and site of hallowed places of worship and remembrance. Although many Palestinians in East Jerusalem maintain networks of family and business connections with Palestinian citizens in Israel, the West Bank and (now to a lesser extent) the Gaza Strip, their primary interest is to go about their lives and pursue their interests in the city where they have homes, businesses, a vigorous urban society, strong cultural resonances, and, in some cases, ancestral roots going back millennia.

Israel pursues efforts to weaken the Palestinians politically and contain their demographic weight in several ways. One is to grant Palestinians in East Jerusalem the status of permanent residents: that is, as foreigners for whom residency in the land of their birth is a privilege rather than a right, subject to revocation. That status is then made conditional on what Israeli law terms their “centre of life”, evaluated by documented criteria such as home and business ownership, attendance at local schools and involvement in local organizations. If the centre of life of an individual or family appears to have shifted elsewhere, such as across the Green Line, their residency in Jerusalem may be revoked.

A Palestinian resident of Jerusalem who has spent time abroad may also find that Israel has revoked his or her residency in Jerusalem.

Proving that Jerusalem is one’s “centre of life” is burdensome: it requires submitting numerous documents, “including such items as home ownership papers or a rent contract, various bills (water, electricity, municipal taxes), salary slips, proof of receiving medical care in the city, certification of children’s school registration”.72 The difficulty in meeting the criteria is suggested

71 For further discussion of the Jerusalem master plans, see Francesco Chiodelli, “The Jerusalem Master Plan: planning into the conflict”, Journal of Palestine Studies, No. 51 (2012). Available here. For related maps, see Bimkom, Trapped by Planning: Israeli Policy, Planning and Development in the Palestinian Neighborhoods of East Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 2014). Available here.

72 B’tselem, “Revocation of residency in East Jerusalem”, 18 August 2013. Available here.

by the consequences of failure to do so: between 1996 (a year after the “centre of life” legislation was passed) and 2014, Jerusalem residency was revoked for more than 11,000 Palestinians.73 To avoid that risk, a growing, albeit relatively low, number of Palestinians are seeking Israeli citizenship. Israel has granted only about half of those requests.74

Their fragile status as permanent residents leaves Palestinians in East Jerusalem with no legal standing to contest the laws of the State or to join Palestinian citizens of Israel in any legislative challenge to the discrimination imposed on them. Openly identifying with Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory politically carries with it the risk of Israel expelling them, for violating security provisions, to the West Bank and removing their right even to visit Jerusalem. Thus, the urban epicentre of Palestinian nationalism and political life is caught inside a legal bubble that neutralizes Palestinians’ capacity to oppose the apartheid regime.75

Domain 3: Palestinians in occupied Palestinian territory

The roughly 4.6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestinian territory (2.7 million in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip) are governed not by Israeli civil law, but by military law, codified as orders issued by the commander of the territories and administered by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and other designated arms of the occupying power.76 Since the Israeli “disengagement” and withdrawal of settlers in 2005, the Gaza Strip has been internally governed by the Hamas Government (elected in 2006 to head the Palestinian Authority but later deposed). Still, Israeli military law continues to apply for Gaza regarding exclusive Israeli control over Palestinian movement and trade in and out of the territory, the unilaterally imposed “security zone” along the perimeter fence, and Palestinian

73 Data from B’tselem, Statistics on Revocation of Residency in East Jerusalem. Available here.

74 Maayan Lubell, “Breaking taboo, East Jerusalem Palestinians seek Israeli citizenship in East Jerusalem”, Haaretz, 5 August 2015. Available here. According to the article, the number of Jerusalem Palestinians applying for Israeli citizenship has grown to between 800 and 1,000 annually, although in 2012 and 2013 only 189 out of 1,434 applications were approved.

75 Nonetheless, Palestinians in Jerusalem have made formidable contributions to critiques of Israeli policies, the more impressive for their having done so under such conditions.

76 Until the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, governance of the occupied Palestinian territory was assigned to a “civil administration” operating within the IDF. In 1994, much of its authority was transferred to the Palestinian Authority (also known as the Palestinian National Authority), an interim self-government body.

access to fishing areas and sea routes. Gaza remains, therefore, under military occupation in the eyes of the United Nations.77

In 2009, a comprehensive report by the Human Rights Research Council of South Africa found that Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territory were overwhelmingly consistent with apartheid (see annex I). Israel has not accepted those findings, however, on several grounds. Those who claim that Israel does not govern Palestinians in an apartheid regime invariably cite conditions and rights for Palestinians in domain 1 (citizens of Israel). Leaving aside the issue of domain 2, they say that the situation of Palestinians in the occupied territory is irrelevant to the question. That approach can be persuasive at first glance. Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are not citizens of Israel and, under the laws of war (cf. the Fourth Geneva Convention), are not supposed to be. The differential treatment by Israel of citizens and non-citizens in the occupied Palestinian territory could therefore seem admissible or, at least, irrelevant. In this common view, Israel would be practicing apartheid only if it annexed the territory, declared one State in all of Mandate Palestine and, thereafter, continued to deny equal rights to Palestinians. Influential voices such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former United States President Jimmy Carter, former United States Secretary of State John Kerry, and a host of Israeli, American and other critics and pundits have warned that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank precisely to avoid that scenario.

However, those warnings rest on flawed assumptions. First, Israel already administers the occupied Palestinian territory in ways consistent with apartheid, given that the territory has not one population but two: (a) Palestinian civilians, governed by military law; and (b) some 350,000 Jewish settlers, governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is evidenced by the fact that all West Bank settlers are administered by Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not.78 Thus, Israel administers the West Bank

77 The authors of this report concur with those scholars who have concluded that Gaza remains under military occupation. Although governed entirely by Palestinians, key elements of apartheid as defined by the Apartheid Convention remain. In particular, Israel has exclusive control of the borders of Gaza and, since 2007, has imposed a blockade, which translates into draconian restrictions on Palestinian movement that affect trade, work, education and access to health care (article II (c)), and repression of any resistance to those conditions (article II (f)). The Palestinian Authority has suffered from de facto separation, particularly since the 2006 legislative election victory of Hamas and the clashes that led to its taking effective control over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Between then and 2014, there were two de facto Palestinian Governments, one in Gaza and the other in Ramallah, controlled by Hamas and the Fatah movement respectively. In 2014, they formed a national unity Government, although Hamas retained effective control of the Gaza Strip.

78 Limor Yehuda and others, One Rule Two Legal Systems: Israel’s Regime of Laws in the West Bank (Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), October 2014), p. 108. Available here.

through a dual legal system, based on race, which has led to expressions of concern by, among many others, former special rapporteurs Mr. Dugard and Mr. Falk.

Secondly, the character of this dual legal system, problematic in itself, is aggravated by how the State of Israel manages land and development on the basis of race. By denying Palestinians essential zoning, building and business permits, Israeli military rule has crippled the Palestinian economy and society, leaving Palestinian cities and towns (outside the Ramallah enclave) increasingly under- resourced and suffocating their growth and the welfare of their inhabitants. The Israeli blockade of Gaza has resulted in even worse living conditions for the entrapped Palestinian population there.

In contrast, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are flourishing. All State ministries provide support for their planning, funding, building and servicing; some, such as the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, have been entirely committed to doing so. They also offer financial incentives for Jews to move to the settlements, including interest-free loans, school grants, special recreational facilities, new office blocks, agricultural subsidies, job training and employment guarantees. State complicity is further demonstrated by measures to integrate the economy, society and politics of Jewish settlements into those of Israel, generating seamless travel and electricity networks, a unified banking and finance system for Jews, Jewish business investment, and, in particular, a customs union.79

This vast State involvement belies any claim that the settlements are the work of maverick religious zealots, and challenges the plausibility of claims that Israel will leave the West Bank as soon as a negotiated settlement is achieved.80 The scale, complexity and cost of the settlement grid, estimated by some researchers at hundreds of billions of United States dollars, further underline the intensity of the Israeli commitment to the settlements. The potential cost of (and political resistance to) withdrawal far exceed the political will or capacity of any Israeli Government.

The dual legal system applied by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory justifies two brief digressions from the report’s method: of eschewing a check-list method (comparing a State’s behaviour with the Apartheid Convention’s sample “inhuman acts”) and avoiding comparisons with southern Africa. A check-list

79. Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 135.
80. In July 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced: “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.” See David Horovitz, “Netanyahu finally speaks his mind”, The Times of Israel, 13 July 2014.

approach helps to clarify how Israel imposes apartheid on one racial group in order to ensure the domination of another. Such an item-by-item comparison of Israeli practices with the “inhuman acts” listed in the Apartheid Convention was undertaken for the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) report issued in 2009. The findings of that study, summarized in annex I, were conclusive: except for the provision on genocide (which was not practiced in southern Africa either), every “inhuman act” listed in the Apartheid Convention is practiced by Israel in the West Bank.

The architects of South African apartheid adopted a strategy of “grand apartheid” to secure white supremacy in the long term through the country’s geographic partition into white areas (most of the country) and disarticulated black areas. That policy inspired the clause in the Apartheid Convention denouncing as a crime the creation of “separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups” (article II (d)). “Bantu” or “black” reserves were controlled by black South Africans appointed as leaders by the State. In the rhetoric of “grand apartheid”, those reserves or “homelands” were slated to become independent States that would provide self-determination to black South African peoples (language groups). Black South African governors were authorized (and armed) to suppress resistance by their African inhabitants, many of whom had been forcibly transferred into them, and to govern their territories in ways compatible with white development interests. That model so closely resembles current premises supporting a two-State solution in Palestine that it calls for sober reflection, not least because of the violent and destabilizing effects it had throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

The question arises as to whether Israel has deliberately pursued fragmentation of the West Bank into an archipelago of Palestinian cantons, divided by intervening Jewish-only areas (the Bantustan model). Certainly, this geography will permanently enfeeble any putative Palestinian sovereignty, preserving the prerogative of Israel to administer intervening land for the Jewish people. Oslo II, paradoxically, facilitated this “grand” strategy by establishing borders for the Palestinian autonomy enclaves. The comparison with South Africa helps to clarify an essential observation: with Israeli Jewish-national domination over an area dotted with Palestinian autonomy zones, apartheid is expressed as fully in a partition strategy as it is in a unified State.

In sum, domain 3 has been configured to exclude indefinitely the 4.6 million Palestinians living under Israeli military law from mounting any claim against the State of Israel for rights under Israeli civil law. International law and diplomacy, with its commitment to reject the acquisition of territory by force, has led to the population of the occupied Palestinian territory being projected as a permanently separate and distinct Palestinian-national entity. Well intentioned and based on international law, this approach has had the effect of splitting Palestinians in the occupied territory from the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel and those in East Jerusalem. In that way, the demographic balance in Israel can be maintained as Jewish and a united Palestinian challenge to its apartheid regime can be avoided.

Domain 4: Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles

In early 2016, 3,162,602 Palestinians living outside Mandate Palestine were officially registered as refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).81 Estimates of the entire refugee population, including those not registered with UNRWA and people who left Palestine under other circumstances and are not allowed to return (referred to as “involuntary exiles” in this report), range from six to eight million people. Although an exact count is difficult given the global diaspora of Palestinians now in their fourth and fifth generations, by any responsible estimate more Palestinians live outside Mandate Palestine than in it.82

Palestinian refugees are widely distributed. Approximately two million live in the occupied Palestinian territory: 792,000 in camps in the West Bank and 1.3 million in the Gaza Strip. Living under Israeli occupation, these people fall under domain 3, although they benefit from some protections and special services from UNRWA. The rest live mostly in the frontline States of Jordan (around 2.1 million), Lebanon (around 458,000) and the Syrian Arab Republic (around 560,000).83 Only about 5 per cent live outside the Middle East. Lacking any citizenship, they are subject, without recourse, to the laws of their host State (not always comfortably, as some States — notably Lebanon — impose special restrictions on Palestinian refugees).84 Those conditions have contributed to sustaining a strong nationalist nostalgia and sentiment among the great majority of Palestinian refugees regarding their origins in Palestine and a potent sense of enduring injustice resulting from Israeli policies. Their inability to return to their country thus remains a central grievance and a key

81 UNRWA lists of total of 5,266,603 refugees, the difference being accounted for by those living in the occupied Palestinian territory. See here. Accessed 8 February 2017.

82 The figure is a middle estimate, as the number of Palestinians who fled in the 1948 war has not been firmly established. Some scholars suggest 700,000 and 750,000 left; the Israelis provide a figure of 520,000; and Palestinian authorities estimate the number at between 900,000 and 1 million.

83 UNRWA, UNRWA in figures as of 1 Jan 2016. Available here.

84 For a short summary of the conditions in which Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, see Meghan Monahan, Treatment of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Human Rights Brief (2 February 2015). Available here.

issue in peace talks. Politically, no Palestinian leadership can acquiesce to a peace agreement that ignores the refugees.

In 1948, General Assembly resolution 194(III) resolved that “the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so” and that compensation should be provided to the rest. Israel has rejected the application of that resolution on security grounds and on the basis of the “demographic threat” of a Palestinian majority: in the unlikely event that the entire Palestinian population of refugees and involuntary exiles returned to Palestine en masse, the Palestinian population under Israeli rule would total some 12 million, electorally overwhelming the 6.5 million Jews in Israel. Even if that refugee population returned in numbers sufficient only to generate a Palestinian majority (as is far more likely), Israel would be forced into either adopting an explicitly apartheid policy in order to exclude them, and abandoning democracy altogether, or enfranchising them and abandoning the vision of Israel as a Jewish State. As expressed in an article posted on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website:

According to Palestinian sources, there are about 3.5 million Palestinian refugees nowadays registered with UNRWA. If Israel were to allow all of them to return to her territory, this would be an act of suicide on her part, and no State can be expected to destroy itself (emphasis added).85

Thus, domain 4 plays an essential role in the apartheid regime of Israel. Its refusal to allow refugees and involuntary exiles to return ensures that the Palestinian population never gains the demographic weight that would either threaten Israeli military control of the occupied Palestinian territory, or provide the demographic leverage within Israel to allow them to insist on full democratic rights, which would supersede the Jewish character of the State of Israel. In short, domain 4 ensures that Palestinians will never be able to change the system in ways that would lead to political equality between the two peoples.

1. Counter-arguments

Several arguments can be and have been made to deny that the Apartheid Convention is even applicable to the case of Israel-Palestine. Some of them, such

85 Ruth Lapidoth, “Do Palestinian refugees have a right to return to Israel?”, posted on Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 15 January 2001. Available here.

as the contention that Jews and Palestinians are not “races” and that, because Palestinian citizens of Israel enjoy the right to vote, the treatment of them by the Israeli State cannot constitute apartheid, are addressed and rejected above. Other arguments include:

1. Consistency with international practice: The Israeli doctrine of maintaining a Jewish majority, enabling the Jewish people to have its own nation-State, is consistent with the behaviour of States around the world, such as France, which express the self-determination of their respective ethnic nations. It is therefore unfair and exceptional treatment — and implicitly anti-Semitic — to target Israel as an apartheid State when it is only doing the same.

This common argument derives from miscasting how national identities function in modern nation States. In France, for example, anyone holding French citizenship, regardless of whether they are indigenous or of immigrant origin, are equal members of the French nation and enjoy equal rights. According to the Supreme Court, Israel is not the State of the “Israeli nation” but of the “Jewish nation”.86 Collective rights in Israeli law are explicitly conferred on Jews as a people and on no other collective identity: national rights for Jews, embedded in such laws as the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law (discussed above) do not extend to any other group under Israeli rule. Hence, racial-nationalist privileges are embedded in the legal and doctrinal foundations of the State. That is exceptional and would meet with opprobrium in any other country (as it did in apartheid South Africa).

2. The standing of Palestinians as foreigners: Palestinian residents of the occupied Palestinian territory are not citizens of the State and so the State does not owe them rights and treatment equal to that accorded to Israeli Jewish citizens and settlers.

The similarities between the legal situation in Palestinian territory under Israeli occupation and in Namibia under South African occupation have already been noted. Israel has denied Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory Israeli citizenship because they are not Jews. As the “in-gathering” of Jews is a central mission of Israeli State institutions and the State promotes naturalisation of Jews from other parts of the world, it is fair to assume that the Palestinians, born in territory under the State’s exclusive control, would have been granted Israeli citizenship had they been Jewish (and had they wanted it). In its General Recommendation No. 30 on discrimination against non-citizens, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial

86 George Rafael Tamarin v. State of Israel (1972) C.A.630/70.

Discrimination recommends that States parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination should:

Recognize that deprivation of citizenship on the basis of race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin is a breach of States parties’ obligations to ensure non-discriminatory enjoyment of the right to nationality.87

The Apartheid Convention cites as crimes of apartheid “measures calculated to deny members of a racial group or groups” basic human rights, including “the right to a nationality” (article II (c)). Thus, the argument that Israel cannot be responsible for Palestinians who are non-citizens reinforces a finding of apartheid when one asks why they are not citizens. At the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed the exclusion of the Palestinians, as non-Jews, from citizenship in the State that governs their country. (The liminal condition of living in a “State of Palestine” recently recognized by the General Assembly yet lacking all attributes of sovereignty has not provided Palestinians with a “citizenship” that has concrete application.)

3. The purpose clause. Israeli policies that oppress Palestinians are motivated by security concerns, and not the intention or desire to impose racial domination.

The Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute define crimes of apartheid as acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group over another. It could be argued that Israeli practices are only temporary measures, the purpose of which is not racial domination, but only to maintain order until a peace agreement removes the need for such measures. However, the security issues related to Israeli measures relevant to this study are usually cited only in relation to the occupied Palestinian territory, while the apartheid regime is applied to the Palestinian people as a whole. Moreover, apartheid is prohibited under international law irrespective of its duration.88 The Apartheid Convention makes no distinction in terms of the period of time apartheid is carried out or the State’s ultimate vision for the future.89

87. CERD/C/64/Misc.11/rev.3, para. 14.
88. The uniquely extended character of the Israeli occupation has generated a new body of literature on the legal implications of “prolonged occupation”. For more on this, see Tilley (ed.), Beyond Occupation, chap. 2.

89 The Government of apartheid South Africa also argued that racial domination was not a goal in itself but a defensive measure designed to preserve the way of life of the white population. Apartheid was presented as merely a stage on the path to a mutually beneficial end, in which all “peoples” of South Africa would enjoy self-determination and peaceful coexistence. In practice, the “homelands” system was geared towards stabilizing the low-cost workforce and white land tenure.

3. Conclusions and Recommendations A. Conclusions

This report establishes, on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. However, only a ruling by an international tribunal in that sense would make such an assessment truly authoritative. The authors therefore urge the United Nations to implement this finding by fulfilling its international responsibilities in relation to international law and the rights of the Palestinian people as a matter of urgency, for two reasons. First, the situation addressed in the report is ongoing. Many investigations of crimes against humanity have concerned past behaviour or events, such as civil wars involving genocides, which have formally concluded. In such cases, the international community faces no particular pressure to act in a timely way to terminate an ongoing crime prior to investigating the legal facts of culpability. In the case of Israel-Palestine, any delay compounds the crime by prolonging the subjugation of Palestinians to the active practice of apartheid by Israel. Prompt action is accordingly imperative to avert further human suffering and end a crime against humanity that is being committed now.

Secondly, the extreme gravity of the charge requires prompt action. Since the 1970s, when the international campaign to oppose apartheid in southern Africa gathered momentum, apartheid has been considered in the annals of the United Nations and world public opinion to be second only to genocide in the hierarchy of criminality.90 This report accordingly recommends that the international community act immediately, without waiting for a more formal pronouncement regarding the culpability of the State of Israel, its Government and its officials for the commission of the crime of apartheid.

While urging swift action to oppose and end this apartheid regime, the authors of this report urge as a matter of highest priority that authoritative bodies be requested to review its findings. Opinions of the General Assembly, ICJ and ICC are especially crucial, although assessments by national courts would also be relevant to interpreting international criminal law and appraising its

90 Genocide and apartheid are the only two international crimes, the commission of which States have a duty to prevent.

implementation by Member States. On the basis of such findings, States and United Nations bodies could deliberate on a firm foundation of international law how best to discharge their responsibility to address and bring to an end the crime of apartheid and domination of the Palestinian people. In any event, pending that longer deliberative process, the authors of this report conclude that the weight of the evidence supports beyond a reasonable doubt the contention that Israel is guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people.

The prohibition of apartheid is considered jus cogens in international customary law. States have a separate and collective duty (a) not to recognize an apartheid regime as lawful; (b) not to aid or assist a State in maintaining an apartheid regime; and (c) to cooperate with the United Nations and other States in bringing apartheid regimes to an end. A State that fails to fulfil those duties could itself be held legally responsible for engaging in wrongful acts involving complicity with maintaining an apartheid regime. The United Nations and its agencies, and all Member States, have a legal obligation to act within their capabilities to prevent and punish instances of apartheid that are responsibly brought to their attention.

Civil society institutions and individuals also have a moral duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise, and to exert pressure on Israel to dismantle apartheid structures and negotiate in good faith for a lasting peace that acknowledges the rights of Palestinians under international law and makes it possible for the two peoples to live together on the basis of real equality.

Apartheid in southern Africa was brought to an end, in part, by the cumulative impact of a variety of measures, including economic sanctions and sports boycotts, undertaken with the blessing of United Nations bodies and many Member States, and with grassroots support in States with strong strategic and economic ties with South Africa. The effectiveness of the anti-apartheid campaign was in large part due to the transnational activism of civil society, which reinforced the intergovernmental consensus that took shape in the United Nations.

1. Recommendations

The following recommendations cover general responsibilities and those of specific institutional actors. Their purpose is, first of all, to focus attention on the principal finding of this report, that Israel has imposed a regime of apartheid on the Palestinian people as a whole, thereby challenging the United Nations and other international, national and civil society actors (including private citizens) to act in response. They are also designed to encourage the implementation of practical measures in accordance with international law to exert pressure on Israel to dismantle its apartheid regime and end the unlawful status quo by engaging in a peace process that seeks a just solution.

General Recommendations

1. United Nations bodies, national Governments and civil society actors, including religious organizations, should formally endorse the principal finding of this report that the treatment by Israel of the Palestinians is consistent with the crime of apartheid.
2. On that basis, those actors should examine what measures can be taken in accordance with their legal obligations, as set forth under the Apartheid Convention. As the crime of apartheid qualifies as a peremptory or jus cogens norm of international law, States are bound by the Convention even if they are not parties to it, and would have similar legal obligations even in the absence of the convention, because the crime of apartheid is prohibited under customary international law.

Recommendations for the United Nations

1. Each United Nations body should promptly consider what action to take in view of the finding that Israel maintains a racist regime of apartheid in its exercise of control over the Palestinian people, taking due account of the fragmentation of that people by Israel, which is itself an aspect of the control arrangements that rely on “inhuman acts” for the purpose of systematic racial domination.
2. ESCWA should take a central role in advocating international cooperation to end the apartheid regime. Its special role in this respect derives not only from the Commission’s geographic position but also its mandate.
3. United Nations entities should cooperate with one another, and in particular with ESCWA, to discuss and disseminate this report. They should consider, possibly in cooperation with the Palestinian Government and other Palestinian institutions, convening a special meeting to assess how to follow up on and implement the recommendations of the report.
4. The General Assembly should, taking inspiration from resolution 1761(XVII) of 6 November 1962, revive the Special Committee against Apartheid, and the United Nations Centre against Apartheid (1976-1991), which would report authoritatively on Israeli practices and policies relating to the crime of apartheid, including the legal and administrative instrumentalities used to carry out the underlying criminal enterprise. Those bodies gathered and disseminated vital legal analysis and information with respect to South African apartheid. Those resources benefited not only jurists and scholars, but also civil society activists around the world, helping them to shape media presentations and public opinion, legitimating calls for boycotts, divestments and sanctions, and contributing overall to the formation of a transnational movement against apartheid in South Africa.

5. The Human Rights Council should be vested with particular responsibility for examining the findings of this report and reinforcing its recommendations. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 should be instructed to report annually to the Council and the Third Committee of the General Assembly on steps taken to comply with the terms of the Apartheid Convention and to encourage member States of the Council to take appropriate action.
6. The competent bodies of the United Nations should consider seeking an advisory opinion from the ICJ as to whether the means used by Israel to maintain control over the Palestinian people amount to the crime of apartheid and, if so, what steps should be taken to end that situation promptly.
7. Pursuant to article 7 (1) (j) of the Rome Statute, the ICC should be formally encouraged to investigate, as a matter of urgency, whether the State of Israel, its Governments and individuals, in implementing policies and practices with respect to the Palestinian people, are guilty of the crime of apartheid and, if so, to act accordingly.
8. On the basis of this report, the Secretary-General should be respectfully urged to recommend to the General Assembly and the Security Council that a global conference be convened at an early date in order to consider what action should be taken by the United Nations and what might be recommended to civil society and private sector actors.

Recommendations for national Governments of Member States

1. National Governments should be reminded of their legal duty under international law to take appropriate action to prevent the crime of apartheid and punish its perpetrators, taking cognizance of the findings of this report and any parallel findings by competent bodies.
2. National Governments should, within the limits of their legislative, executive and judicial institutions, take appropriate action, including allowing criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials demonstrably connected with the practices of apartheid against the Palestinian people.
3. National Governments, especially of member States of ECSWA, should explore ways of cooperating in the discharge of their duty to oppose and overcome the regime of apartheid.
4. National Governments should support boycott, divestment and sanctions activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives.

Recommendations for civil society and private sector actors

1. Civil society actors should be invited to submit to the Human Rights Council reactions to this report. A special meeting should be convened to consider those reactions and to plan appropriate next steps, including recommendations to the Human Rights Council and to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
2. Efforts should be made to broaden support for boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives among civil society actors.
3. Private sector actors should be made aware of the findings of this report and requested to act accordingly, including by informing the public about the criminality of the apartheid regime, and urging Governments to fulfil their obligations under the Apartheid Convention and to propose initiatives that could be undertaken by civil society. Private sector actors should also be reminded of their legal, moral and political responsibility to sever ties with commercial ventures and projects that directly or indirectly aid and abet the apartheid regime imposed.

Annex I

Findings of the 2009 HSRC Report

Legal analysis cited here from Beyond Occupation draws from work by contributors to a study conducted between 2007 and 2009, under the auspices of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) and at the request of the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Coordinated, co-authored and edited by Virginia Tilley, that study was issued in 2009 under the title Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A Reassessment of Israel’s Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories under International Law. Principal contributors included Iain Scobbie, Professor and Chair of International Law, University of Manchester (Great Britain); Max du Plessis, Associate Professor of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) and Senior Research Associate, Institute for Security Studies; Rina Rosenberg, Esq., International Advocacy Director of Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Haifa); John Reynolds, formerly researcher at Al-Haq (Ramallah) and now lecturer in international law and critical legal studies, National University of Ireland-Maynooth; Victor Kattan, Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute and an Associate Fellow at the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore; and Michael Kearney, now Senior Lecturer in Law at Sussex University (Great Britain).

The method was to review Israeli practices in accordance with the list of “inhuman acts” described in the Apartheid Convention. The team determined that Israel was practicing every act listed in the Convention except genocide and the ban on mixed marriages. Subsequently, Israel passed a law banning mixed marriages by people registered as having different religious identities. The revised version of the report published in 2012 was amended accordingly.

The list provided here is a summary of findings regarding those acts. Detailed empirical evidence, data and citations on each category are available in Beyond Occupation (chapter 4).

Apartheid Convention, article II

(a) denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:

(i)  by murder of members of a racial group or groups;

(ii)  by the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups ofserious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;

(iii)  by arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

Article II (a) is satisfied by Israeli measures serving to repress Palestinian dissent against the occupation and its system of domination. Israeli policies and practices include murder, in the form of targeted extrajudicial killings; torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees; a military court system that falls far short of international standards of due process, including fair trial; and arbitrary arrest and detention of Palestinians, including administrative detention imposed, often for extended periods, without charge or trial and lacking adequate judicial review. All of those practices are discriminatory, in that Palestinians are subject to different legal systems and different courts, which apply different standards of evidence and procedure that result in far more severe penalties than those applied to Jewish Israelis.

(b) deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

Article II (b) takes its language from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide and is interpreted here as signifying a policy of genocide. Israeli policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory are not found to have the intent of causing the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in this sense. Israel pursues policies that are inimical to human health and life and so are serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law: they include policies that cause human suffering, such as closures imposed on the Gaza Strip, thereby depriving Palestinians of access to essential health care, medicine, fuel and adequate nutrition. However, those policies do not meet the threshold of a deliberate policy of mass physical extermination.

(c) any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

Article II (c) is satisfied on all counts:

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(i)

Restrictions on the Palestinians’ right to freedom of movement are endemic, stemming from Israeli control of the occupied Palestinian territory border crossings, the wall in the West Bank, a matrix of checkpoints and separate roads, and obstructive and all-encompassing permit and ID systems.

The right of Palestinians to choose their own place of residence within their territory is severely curtailed by systematic administrative restrictions on residency and building in East Jerusalem, by discriminatory legislation that operates to prevent Palestinian spouses from living together on the basis of which part of the occupied Palestinian territory they originate from, and by the strictures of the permit and ID systems.

Palestinians are denied the right to leave and return to their country. Palestinian refugees living in the occupied Palestinian territory are not allowed to return to their homes inside Israel, while Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles outside Israel and the territory are not allowed to return to their homes in either the territory or Israel. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 have been prevented from returning. Many Palestinian residents of the occupied territory must obtain Israeli permission (often denied) to leave it; political activists and human rights defenders are often subject to arbitrary and undefined “travel bans”, and many Palestinians who travelled abroad for business or personal reasons have had their residence IDs revoked and been prohibited from returning.

Israel denies Palestinian refugees living in the occupied Palestinian territory the right to a nationality, denying them citizenship of the State (Israel) that governs the land of their birth, and also obstructing the exercise by the Palestinians of the right to self-determination and preventing the formation of a Palestinian State in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip.

(v)  Palestinians are denied the right to freedom and residence through the cantonization of the West Bank, which confines them to designated areas on the basis of race; through bans on their returning to homes in the occupied Palestinian territory from which they were displaced by fighting and terror; and through restrictions on building permits that prevent them from establishing homes where they wish to live.

(vi)  Palestinians are restricted in their right to work through Israeli policies that severely curtail Palestinian agriculture and industry in the occupied Palestinian territory, restrict exports and imports, and impose pervasive obstacles to internal movement that impair access to agricultural land and travel for employment and business. Since the second intifada, access for Palestinians to work inside Israel, once significant, has been dramatically curtailed and is now negligible. The unemployment rate in the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole has reached almost 50 per cent.

(vii)  Palestinian trade unions exist but are not recognized by the Israeli Government or by the Histadrut (the largest Israeli trade union) and cannot effectively represent Palestinians working for Israeli employers and businesses in the occupied Palestinian territory. Palestinian unions are not permitted to function at all in Israeli settlements. Although they are required to pay dues to the Histadrut, the interests and concerns of Palestinian workers are not represented by the Histadrut; nor do they have a voice in its policies.

(viii)  Israel does not operate the school system in the occupied Palestinian territory, but severely impedes Palestinian access to education on a routine basis through extensive school closures; direct attacks on schools; severe restrictions on movement, including travel to schools; and the arrest and detention of teachers and students. The denial by Israel of exit permits, particularly for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, has prevented thousands of students from pursuing higher education abroad. Discrimination in education is further underlined by the parallel and greatly superior Jewish Israeli school system in Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank, to which Palestinians have no access.

(ix)  Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are denied the right to freedom of opinion and expression through censorship laws enforced by the military authorities and endorsed by the Supreme Court. Palestinian newspapers must have a military permit and articles must be pre-approved by the military censor. Since 2001, the Israeli Government Press Office has drastically limited press accreditation for Palestinian journalists, who are also subjected to systematic harassment, detention and confiscation of materials, and in some cases assassination. The accreditation of foreign journalists working in the occupied territory may be revoked at the discretion of the Government Press Office Director on security grounds, which include writing stories that are deemed to “delegitimize” the State.1 Foreign journalists are regularly barred from entering the Gaza Strip.

(x)  The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is impeded through military orders. Military legislation bans public gatherings of 10 or more persons without a permit from the Israeli military commander. Non- violent demonstrations are regularly suppressed by the Israeli army with live ammunition, tear gas and arrests. Most Palestinian political parties have been declared illegal and institutions associated with those parties, such as charities and cultural organisations, are regularly subjected to closure and attack.

(xi)  The prevention of full development in the occupied Palestinian territory and participation of Palestinians in political, economic, social and cultural life is most starkly demonstrated by the effects of the ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

(d) any measures, including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

Article II (d) is satisfied in the following ways:

(i) Israeli policies have divided the occupied Palestinian territory into a series of non-contiguous enclaves (Areas A and B in the West Bank, as a whole separated from the Gaza Strip) in which Palestinians are allowed to live and maintain a degree of local autonomy. Land between those enclaves is reserved exclusively for Jewish and State use: the Jewish settlement grid, nature reserves, agro-industry, military zones and so forth. Land not already used is considered “State land” and administered by State institutions for the benefit of the Jewish people. Segregation of the populations is ensured by pass laws that restrict Palestinians from visiting Jewish areas without a permit and ban Jewish-Israeli travel into Palestinian zones. The wall and its infrastructure of gates and permanent and “floating” checkpoints enforce those restrictions.

1 “Cards will not be given under these rules to any applicant if the Director is of the opinion, after consultation with security authorities, that providing the Cards may endanger the State security”, article 3 (f), Rules regarding cards for foreign media journalists, press technicians and media assistants. Available from http://gpoeng.gov.il/media/54705/gpo-rules.pdf.

(ii)  Inter-faith marriages between Muslims or Christians with Jews are prohibited by law.2 No civil marriage exists in Israel except for the tiny minority whose faith is not declared. Mixed-faith couples must leave the State to marry. Mixed marriages conducted outside of Israel are recognized by the State, provided that marriages among Jews accord with Orthodox Jewish law.

(iii)  Israel has extensively appropriated Palestinian land in the occupied Palestinian territory for exclusively Jewish use. Private Palestinian land comprises about 30 per cent of the land unlawfully appropriated for Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Approximately 40 per cent of the West Bank is completely closed to use by the Palestinians, and significant restrictions are placed on access by them to much of the rest.

(e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups , in particular by submitting them to forced labour;

Article II (e) is today not significantly satisfied, as Israel has raised barriers to Palestinian employment inside Israel since the 1990s and Palestinian labour is now used extensively only in the construction and services sectors of Jewish-Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. Otherwise, exploitation of labour has been replaced by practices that fall under article II (c), regarding the denial of the right to work.

(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.

Arrest, imprisonment, travel bans and the targeting of Palestinian parliamentarians, national political leaders and human rights defenders, as well as the closing down of related organisations by Israel, represent persecution for opposition to the system of Israeli domination in the occupied Palestinian territory, within the meaning of article II (f). Article II (f) is especially important in the occupied Palestinian territory, where “security” measures are focused on resistance to occupation.

2 The Israeli prohibition of mixed marriages is mainly concerned with marriages involving Jews. This is effected by requiring that all marriages be conducted by religious authorities. Since Muslim law permits mixed marriages, marriage between Muslims and Christians is not prohibited. The aim of this arrangement is clear: to avoid blurring the social divisions between Jews and non-Jews. Similarly, under apartheid in South Africa, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 banned marriages between “Europeans and non-Europeans” but not between non-Europeans and other non-Europeans.

Annex II

Which Country?

Israeli policies confuse the issue in relation to the categorization under the Apartheid Convention of all acts fitting the purpose clause and preventing “participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country” (article II (c)) as crimes of apartheid. The question is, from which “country” are Palestinians being denied equal rights and full participation? This question engages larger questions about the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself.

1. The “country” from which Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory are excluded could arguably be Mandate Palestine as established by the League of Nations. The League’s intention was for it to gain independence as a State representing the shared patrimony of the entire multi-sectarian population of Palestine. That model, overtaken by events, was confused from the start by language about a “Jewish national home” and in any case was rendered moot by war, expulsion and other events on the ground. However, exclusive Israeli control since 1967 over all of Mandate Palestine has preserved the original geographical unit of Palestine. Hence the “country” in which Palestinians are being deprived of rights could be the Palestine that was never allowed to form, and arguably should form. The remedy in that case is to restore the standing of the original Mandate, which holds that the region is properly one country that has wrongfully been divided by racial agendas.
2. The country from which Palestinians are excluded could be the “Arab State” recommended by resolution 181(II), which also never formed. This view accepts as authoritative the findings of the Special Committee on Palestine in 1947 and as irreversible the events of the 1948 war, in which a “Jewish State” was formed in part of Mandate territory. What in more recent times has been declared the State of Palestine and sought recognition by the United Nations is a much reduced version of that “Arab State”. Israeli policies remain aimed at depriving such a State of the essential attributes of sovereignty; those policies would have to be reversed for this approach to generate a true State. Since Israel shows no indication of changing its position, the alternative is that a Palestinian State be granted some political rights as “reserves” enjoying local autonomy, comparable to the Bantustans of southern Africa or Native American reservations in the United States. Such an arrangement is unlikely to satisfy Palestinian aspirations for self-determination, however. It is more likely to lead ultimately to violence and insurrection by a terminally frustrated Palestinian population.

3. The “country” from which Palestinians are wrongfully deprived of equal rights may be the State of Israel. Accepting as irreversible the annexation measures of Israel in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, this approach would see Israel incorporating the occupied Palestinian territory fully into its governing institutions but dismantling the policies of racial oppression and domination that make Israel an apartheid State. Jews and Palestinians may, however, fear the consequences: enduring security perils for the former and enduring discrimination against the latter.

This report examines, based on key instruments of international law, whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Having established that
the crime of apartheid has universal application, that the question of the status of the Palestinians as a people is settled in law, and that the crime of apartheid should be considered at the level of the State, the report sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others.

A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles,

living beyond.This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime.They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence.This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).

This article was originally published by Global Research in November 2017.

Only a relatively few historians acknowledge just how close Britain came to losing the First World War.

Although heavy loss of young lives in the stalemated land war on French territory dissipated national strength and morale, Britain’s fate, ominous for a certain period of time, was dependent on the development of the war on the high seas. This was not related to a diminution in the formidable power of Britain’s navy which had imperiously ruled the waves since the time of Lord Nelson’s victory.

A defeat at the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile in November 1914 had been swiftly revenged the following month in the Battle of the Falklands. And while the German High Seas Fleet inflicted heavy losses on the Royal Navy in the epic Battle of Jutland in 1916, the result was essentially a draw, after which the German Navy did not venture out of its ports on the Baltic Sea to confront the British. The problem at sea related to German U-Boat warfare which was inflicting colossal losses on British cargo. An Island nation could only sustain so much before capitulating.

This was the warning delivered in 1917 by the British Admiralty to its political overlords.

America’s resources of manpower and martial machinery was needed to tip the balance. But just as would be the prelude to US intervention in the Second World War, the Americans, for long heeding of the advice given by their Founding Fathers, were wary of getting into “foreign entanglements”.

This is where the leaders of world Zionism came in.

It was a simple bargain: If Jewish leaders such as Chaim Weizmann could call on the Jewish Diaspora in America to use their influence to bring the United States into the war to rescue a desperate situation, then Britain would do what it could to help bring to fruition the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The ‘Balfour Declaration’ was part of this bargain.

Winston Churchill acknowledged this in a statement he made to the House of Commons in July 1937:

It is a delusion to suppose this was a mere act of crusading enthusiasm or quixotic philanthropy. On the contrary, it was a measure taken. . .in due need of the war with the object of promoting the general victory of the Allies, for which we expected and received valued and important assistance.

Other evidence of the bargain comes from correspondence between Churchill and Chaim Weizmann, a prominent leader of world Zionism. In a letter to Churchill which was dated September 10th 1941, Weizmann while pleading for Churchill to establish a “Jewish fighting force” that would have “our name and flag arrayed against [Adolf Hitler]”, wrote the following:

It has been repeatedly acknowledged by British Statesmen that it was the Jews who, in the last war, effectively helped to tip the scales in America in favour of Great Britain. They are keen to do it – and may do it – again.

The Balfour Declaration was one of several bargains entered into by Zionists en route to the eventual declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. Another would be the controversial Haavara Agreement [or ‘Transfer Agreement’] with Nazi Germany entered into by German Zionists in the 1930s.

Before Israel was born would be the struggle of the Palestine-based Jewish Agency to get Britain, the holders of the Mandate, to allow unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, the bombings and assassinations conducted by Irgun and Lehi against British and Arab targets, the United Nations Partition Plan and a war against Arab armies.

Today the Armenians bemoan the ‘betrayal’ of the Western powers for not enabling the creation of an Armenian nation spanning much of its historical territory, and the Kurds similarly feel ‘betrayed’ by the unfulfilled promise of a homeland made by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. But few are aware that a Jewish homeland -the Jewish Autonomous Oblast- was created in the USSR under the watch of Joseph Stalin in 1934 with Birobidzhan as its administrative capital. It still exists, albeit with a rather minute Jewish population.

Meanwhile, Israel is approaching its seventieth year of statehood. The Balfour Declaration put into the public imagination the idea of a Jewish state which twenty years earlier, Theodor Herzl, wary of ridicule, was content to write of in his diary after the Basel Congress.

“If I said this out loud today,” Herzl wrote on September 3rd 1897, “I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.”

Lord Arthur Balfour’s declaration to Lord Walter Rothschild was problematic at the time for the reason that Britain had yet to obtain custodianship of Palestine in succession to its Ottoman rulers. But most problematic of all was the caveat that such promise would “not prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.”

That the Arabs of Palestine, tied for centuries to the hamlets, towns and cities on the land Zionists refer to as Eretz Yisrael, have been subjected to dispossession and occupation while been continually denied a state of their own is surely evidence that Balfour’s condition has not been met.

The Jews created a nation in Palestine, but that created an inevitable injustice against its Arab Muslim and Christian inhabitants.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Featured image is from the author.

Relevant article selected from the GR archive, first published on GR in October 2013.

In a cycle of habit borne out repeatedly in the mainstream western media, demonization and fear mongering against Iran is picking up pace again in the face of attempts by the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to rebuild relations with the west and work toward international cooperation. The techniques and methodologies used by the west in perpetuating the geopolitically-motivated, neo-imperialist, agenda against Iran often come across in the media as clumsy and awkward in their reasoning. Before delving into the hard geopolitical reality, a much needed word on the disingenuous leveraging of human-rights against countries such as Iran is critical.

Iran and the Western “Human Rights Card”

In a recent Fox News report, Iran’s human rights record is criticized by Benjamin Weinthal, a Berlin-based fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). His arguments are employed to argue against the feasibility of pragmatic negotiations with Iran as according to his logic, Iran is not a regime “worthy” of practical negotiation with. To use the reported human right violations against religious minorities and Christians and particular as geopolitical leverage to argue against diplomacy and negotiation with Iran wreaks of compromised, corporate-financier motivation, especially when juxtaposed with the intimate collaboration of the United States and its allies with one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East (and the world), Saudi Arabia.

While Iran is often berated for its short-comings, these short-comings pale in comparison to the atrocities perpetuated by the Saudis. In Saudi Arabia, no Jewish or Christian worship is allowed and possession of a Bible could warrant you various brutal punishments. Saudi Arabia has been notorious for rigid campaigns against Bible possession and religious symbols, especially in airport customs searches including the shredding of any Bibles found and in one case, harassing a nun who was passing through Jeddah on a transit flight.

Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the United States, is currently promoting a sectarian-extremist-driven destabilization campaign in Syria whose byproduct has resulted in nightmarish lives for people across religious lines which can be described as nothing less than premeditated genocide with former CIA official Robert Baer predicting campaigns against Christians in Syria and Lebanon during an interview with Seymour Hersh for his excellent 2007 article, “The Redirection.”

What is rather ironic in light of western focus on Iran is that Baer stated that joint US-Saudi-Israeli machinations in Lebanon, which were generating radical Islamist groups, would necessitate the protection of Christians which would be done by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and the Shiites as opposed to the US and France. Iran is predominantly Shiite and while conservative Islam is the norm, this conservatism is distinct from the twisted inventions and atrocities of radical Wahabism in Saudi Arabia which serve as the hotbed of global Al Qaeda activity.

Let it not be forgotten that Saudi Arabia is the primary underwriter of Al Qaeda’s proliferation throughout Eurasia, done admittedly and particularly in line with western imperialist designs of isolating Iran and serving as geopolitical pawns. It is noted that the Taliban and the Wahabi fundamentalists that constitute its ranks and the ranks of extremists from Nigeria to the Philippines would not exist without Saudi financing done purposefully to create a twisted brand of Islam and produce a “Swiss-Army knife” to be used against the targets of western foreign policy such as Syria today and previously against Afghanistan during the 1980s; it has since formed the cornerstone of the fake “war on terror” driven by western neo-imperialist interests. The largest arms sale in U.S. history has been to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia regularly conducts brutal executions through the means of hooded swordsmen including on religious charges of being accused of “sorcery and witchcraft” in the grimly-dubbed “Chop-Chop Square.” Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia and foreign women cannot visit the country without being accompanied by a male guardian.  In addition to toeing the line of western corporate-financier geopolitical agendas in cooperation with Israel such as in Syria, the Saudi establishment interlocks with these interests as noted in points “6” and “7” in the article “Introducing the Gulf State Despots” by Tony Cartalucci.

Iran, which may have its shortcoming, has an unprecedented standard when compared to Saudi Arabia. Iranian Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are guaranteed their own seats on the Iranian parliament in proportion to their population. Iranian Jews, roughly 30,000 in population, enjoy relatively peaceful lives in Iran with a Jewish hospital, two kosher restaurants in Tehran, 11 synagogues, many with Hebrew schools, and a Jewish library including 20,000 titles. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued edits in the 1980s stating that Iran’s Jewish and Christian populations be “protected.” Many of these points are noted by Benjamin Schett’s article “Debunking Anti-Iran Propaganda” which conflict with the gravely austere picture painted by western media. This short documentary by Journeyman Pictures gives a candid picture of Jewish life in Iran.

It is often claimed that Iran promotes institutionalized anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial but Benjamin Schett explains why this is not true. Ahmadinejad has made accusations against the reliability of the Holocaust but this does NOT represent the position of the Iranian state or people whose state-media even broadcasted a popular, Hollywood-quality film commemorating the suffering of the Jews and featuring the story of Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who helped save Jews from the Holocaust by giving them false passports to flee Nazi-occupied France. Iran’s former Jewish Member of Parliament, Moris Motamed, has criticized Ahmadinejad for his statements on the Holocaust and even held a press conference to denounce those statements. However, such sentiments must not be seen as reflecting the entirety of the Iranian society as clearly is not the case.

Criticism against Israel is mainstream and expected but not because of any religious animosity towards the Jews, as Ahmadinejad himself stated in a speech in Esfahan cited by Schett, but rather because of the complicated political issues surrounding the Palestinian plight.

Benjamin Schett notes that it is impossible to give 100% insight of life as a religious minority in a religiously conservative country without being in that position oneself but unlike in Saudi Arabia, at least such minorities openly exist. Of course, such minorities must not settle for the bare minimum and as a westerner, I’m in the tradition of the equality for all. If and where any cases of rights violations exist, such as those noted in the original Fox News article by Benjamin Weinthal, they must be openly addressed but done so in a manner unlike the western media’s purpose which is to highlight certain facts, at the expense of others, and use any incident they can as propaganda fodder for the sake of western geopolitical objectives aimed at stifling peace and diplomacy, substituting it with war-mongering, and covering up the west and its assets’ own serial crimes against humanity.

 Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD): Is it Really About Democracy?

Of particular interest in the Fox News article is that the author, Benjamin Weinthal, is listed as a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an organization with a vested interest in promoting western corporate- financier objectives around the world with human rights simply employed as an easily-leveraged cloak for naked imperialism. I will assume good faith on the part of Benjamin Wienthal as many people drawn into organizations and NGOs that served western subversion are drawn it by honest intentions which is something that imperialist systems exploit as they have in history. Nevertheless, the overall bulk and existence of the FDD cannot be casually excused when one gets an insight into the interests and networks propping it up. Tony Cartalucci in his excellent article, “The War on Terror is a Fraud”, explains the FDD:

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a corporate and US State Department-funded policy institute that claims to be dedicated to promoting “pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.” It is decidedly “Neo-Conservative” and focuses almost exclusively on starting and maintaining wars at America’s expense.

FDD’s “executive team” includes James Woolsey and Clifford May, while its “leadership council” includes Bill Kristol – all signatories of a recent Foreign Policy Initiative letter addressed to House Republicans asking them to discard the UN mandate for NATO’s Libyan intervention and commit more support specifically for regime change. Acting Senator Joseph Lieberman also can be found on FDD’s “leadership council” and has been a chief proponent of war with Libya, as well as Syria and Iran, alongside John McCain. FDD has a myriad of publications expressing the elation of the “Neo-Conservative” establishment over current operations against Libya and the possible springboard the Libyan war serves toward US intervention in Syria and Iran. FDD’s only criticism of Obama is that more should be done, faster, and at a greater expense to America. Michael Ledeen, a “freedom scholar,” expresses this well in his article titled, “Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran),” where he throws in his organization’s collective desire to intervene in both Syria and Iran, for good measure.

The Atlantic article, “Al-Qaeda Is Winning,” written by FDD “senior fellow” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, expresses the true contempt these individuals have toward their audience. In this piece reflecting on the last 10 years of the “War on Terror,” Gartenstein-Ross claims that Al Qaeda’s ability to use cheap means to provoke the United States into a multi-billion dollar defense is rendering an Al Qaeda victory through a “strategy of a thousand cuts.” Of course, the x-ray machines and other security apparatuses being installed across the United States and the tremendous amount of money being used to sustain combat operations around the world “hunting terrorists,” doesn’t go into a black hole. Instead, it goes into the pockets of the very people funding the work of Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his peers throughout his and other US and British think-tanks.

Those who have read my recent article on Libya will note the entirely illegitimate nature of the NATO campaign against Libya and the intellectually bankrupt mentality of those who shamefully perpetuate its talking-points. The FDD, at the top of the organization, is not merely concerned with human rights themselves but rather leveraging such concerns for their own sake, something the US government and the corporate-financier interests it represents have clearly done before with regards to China. It should be noted that the FDD is just one element in the neo-imperialist racket. Other corporate-financier, “globalist” think-tanks, who are the true underwriters of western policy, includes the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, the International Crisis Group, and the Brookings Institute. In “Naming Names: Your Real Government”, Tony Cartalucci points out who truly controls the United States/NATO and lists the prominent individuals and corporations financing and directing them.

 Iran and the Western Geopolitical Struggle

The Brookings Institution is of particular concern among these think-tanks as it has been the primary facilitator in the drive for war against Iran founded on distortion and geopolitically-motivated propaganda. Contrary to media reports portraying Iran as an immediate, existential threat to US and Israeli security, the Brookings Institute released a policy report that was basically a handbook for overthrowing nations titled Which Path to Persia? (.PDF). It was written by six prominent analysts within establishment circles, including Kenneth Pollack, admitting that Iran poses not a threat to the survival of the United States and Israel’s security but their collective regional and geopolitical hegemony and interests across the region. It was noted that Iran was playing a strategy of firmness and even aggressiveness but not recklessness in combating western hegemony and imperialism as can be seen in its recent economic endeavors in the pipeline and gas politics of the region. It was also noted that Iran was deliberately avoiding a conflagration with the west and that any possible nuclear weapons capability for Iran (which is noted as unconfirmed and nonexistent in other reports) would be used as a deterrence for attack and protecting regional ambitions Iran has for the region (pg. 24-25).

 This is reconfirmed by the recent 2013 RAND Corporation report Iran After the Bomb which while noting that no evidence exists that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons according to the US intelligence community, envisions a post-nuclear scenario of Iran. RAND is another “globalist” think-tank that hosts compromised interests but manages to give an honest synopsis of the Iranian reality. It is also noted that Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei has issued religious decrees labeling nuclear weapons as “against Islamic principles.” Contrary to recent reports circulation by MEMRI TV and mainstream media, these fatwas are not fake and actually do exist. And contrary to some critics, they are not an example of taqiyya (deception) as Juan Cole notes. One thing that is very revealing is the following statement by RAND which sums up their insightful report:

The Islamic Republic [of Iran] is a revisionist state that seeks to undermine what it perceives to be the American-dominated order in the Middle East. However, it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations. Its chief military aim is to deter a U.S. and/or Israeli military attack while it undermines American allies in the Middle East [which includes the economic interests of the totalitarian kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar whose atrocities in human rights dwarfs anything Iran is guilty of]… Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons will lead to greater tension between the Shi’a theocracy and the conservative Sunni monarchies [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.] However, Iran is unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries…The Islamic Republic views Israel in ideological terms. However, it is very unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, given the latter’s overwhelming conventional and nuclear military superiority. (pg. vii)

The Brookings Institution not only enumerates transparently the similar points that Iran is not an existential threat but goes further to enumerate a list of strategies for US provocations against Iran to initiate a war that, according to the report, Iran does not want. It is even noted that an Iranian retaliation in the case of American airstrikes would not be inevitable and that Iran may deliberately refrain from retaliation in order to strategically “play the victim” (pg. 84-85, 95) Let it not be forgotten how the US and Britain staged the CIA “Operation Ajax” in 1953 to oust the democratically-elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh, who nationalized the country’s oil, in favor of the pro-American Shah who ruled as a brutal dictator. Similar plans for regime change are enumerated in the Brookings Institute report where it is admitted that the opposition “Green Movement” in 2009 was orchestrated by the US government through “civil society and NGOs” in order to provoke Iranian belligerence through regime change operations, capitalizing on internal dissent. This is not to deny any legitimate aspirations and calls for reform in Iran which are prevalent among student groups but merely to point out how such ambitions are co-opted and used by western interests for their own agenda (103-105, 109-110). See this excellent summary of all these critical points.

Other means proposed included playing upon sectarian and ethnic divisions inside Iran to destabilize the country and even funding radical Sunni militant groups, specifically the MEK, which has killed Americans in the past and is labeled by the U.S. state department as a “foreign terrorist organization”. Its ideology is described by analysts as radical “left-wing” Islamic-Marxism which makes it interesting to consider the US plans to fully employ this group as political assets. MEK has also collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s forces in guerilla warfare against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (113, 117-118). The group is against the dominant Iranian establishment and it is noted that the US has worked covertly with them in the past and that in order to work overtly with them, the group had to be removed from the terrorist list (118).  Regarding the MEK on pages 117-118, Brookings states:

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

 Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

 The compounded criminality of western and Israeli collaboration with MEK is emphasized here. It should be noted that the MEK has recently been removed from the US list of terrorist organizations as part of the next phase of using them as a proxy. MEK claims to have killed 40,000 Iranians in the past and has been trained on U.S. soil in a secret base in Nevada, published on the Huffington Post and cited here by Kurt Nimmo in an excellent and well-sourced article emphasizing the coordinated western agenda against Iran.

In culminating these abhorrent proposals, Brookings further notes the option of a military invasion and conventional war against Iran if the above proposals failed to accomplish western interests. This is the most alarming option especially in context to the following admission:

If the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely. ..However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all (65)… it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes [as a catalyst for an invasion] before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it (85).

In all this certified criminality, which has obviously been at play even as the report was being published in 2009, it must not be forgotten that the Brookings Institution is of, for, and by big business and their collective agenda of integrating Iran into their international consensus and exploiting its 76 million population for their unipolar order. This is opposed to Iran’s attempts to foster national self-sufficiency and develop ties with nations strategic to western interests including India, Thailand, China, and Russia. Brookings Institution is funded by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and the Carlyle Group among others; their report even includes a special acknowledgement of financial support from the Smith Richardson Foundation upon which Zbigniew Brzezinski sits as an active governor as pointed out by Tony Cartalucci and easily verifiable in the report’s preface.

Such international criminality is magnified when Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in his article “Preparing the Battlefield” that the U.S. is cooperating with their anti-Iranian terrorist asset, Saudi Arabia, in order to fund radical, Al Qaeda-linked, Sunni-groups like the Jundallah to destabilize and destroy Iran as a viable geopolitical opponent. Al Qaeda, directed by the Saudis in cooperation with western geopolitical objectives, has been leveraged as a “Swiss army knife of destabilization” across the Middle East in the fake “war on terror” as Seymour Hersh exposed in another report  titled “The Redirection”  published in 2007. In that report, Hersh reveals that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been working since 2007 to destabilize Syria and Lebanon with a wave of sectarian-extremists currently being marketed in the media as a “political uprising” and a “revolution”. This is different from the legitimate internal political opposition in Syria that has collaborated with the Syrian government in a reform initiative and maintains distinctiveness from the extremist and terrorist elements that clearly constitute the bulk of the “Syrian rebels” supported by the west. In his report, Seymour Hersh states:

 To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda…[Saudi Arabia’s Prince] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis [Al Qaeda] to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.

 There is no doubt that there is an anti-Iranian proxy conflict being waged in Syria by a joint US-Saudi-Israeli effort to further the Wall Street-London geopolitical consensus. Undermining and destabilizing Syria would further isolate Iran and perpetuate the united geopolitical front against Iran that has been the objective of western politicians and think-tanks. Iran would ultimately serve as a vital door into central Asia and a springboard against Russia and China who are the ultimate target for absorption within the western design of a unipolar world order. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is an active agent in the networks of these machinations, makes it no secret in his book The Grand Chessboard that U.S. “global pre-eminence” (a euphemism for Wall Street/London geopolitical domination and a unipolar world order) is the agenda along with American influence in central Asia to which Iran is a doorway. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also spoken of hegemonic ambitions on the part of the west to establish a unipolar order at a 2007 Munich conference.

 In addition to this evidence of open subversion, it must be noted that Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has sent an open letter to President Obama in December 2011 claiming that there is no nuclear weapons threat from Iran, stating the following on Iran’s nuclear weapons program:

 The ultimate product of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using  dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives.

As warmongering against Iran is expected to drastically pick up pace as western designs for domination across the Middle East show increasing signs of faltering, it is absolutely critical to be educated on these matters in order to undermine and extinguish the effects of the media propaganda echo-chamber. This is not to deny any human rights accusations against Iran altogether but one must guard themselves from being misguided and swayed by disingenuous corporate-financier, globalist interests seeking to expand their empire. It is imperative for people around the world to recognize the corporations and institutions perpetuating systematic atrocities and genocide across the planet and realize that once they eliminate the sovereignty of other countries, they will then turn their attention fully to the people within their own borders in the west.

A real revolution will come by boycotting the degenerate corporations and financier interests seeking to enslave humanity and building up our own communities to create a world order in our own image and not in the image of Wall Street and London.

Sam Muhho is a student of history and an advocate for anti-imperialism and anti-globalism. He can be reached at [email protected] and runs the Facebook page “Globalist Watch” at facebook.com/gwatch1776 in order to explain the reality at play in global affairs.

President Putin’s decision to military involve his country in the anti-terrorist struggle in Syria saved the Arab Republic from its assured destruction irrespective of the criticisms that can be levelled against it throughout the course of this campaign, but sincere appreciation for the Russian leader’s decision (especially from foreigners) shouldn’t ever go overboard into the realm of cultish “worship” and the cultivation of unrealistically high hopes that are bound to always end with disappointment.

The Alt-Media Civil War

Last week’s Putin-Netanyahu Summit in Moscow during Victory Day and Russia’s subsequent announcement that it won’t be dispatching S-300 anti-air defense systems to Syria (a decision that it claims was made independently before these high-level talks) have caused a major rift in the Alt-Media Community, with many people – especially those from the Mideast and the West – hysterically alleging that Russia “sold out” and was never in Syria for the “right reasons” to begin with. This demagogic narrative attempts to capitalize on the disappointment that a lot of people felt after hearing this news and following the unrealistically high hopes that they had come to have for the Russian leader, particularly in terms of their assumption that he would always be on the polar opposite side of the US and its allies.

The reality is that Russia has morphed its decisive anti-terrorist military intervention into a game-changing diplomatic “balancing” act that’s forever transformed Mideast geopolitics, but the many nuances of this strategy hadn’t been effectively enough conveyed to the regional masses and therefore partially led to the false expectations and widespread uncertainty that people are experiencing right now. Regrettably, the virtual pitchfork-wielding denizens of Alt-Media, in a state of veritable shock after their community’s dogma was defied by the very figure that so many of them “worship” (which is one of their key dogmas in and of itself), have proven the age-old adage that “there’s a thin line between love and hate” by turning on the same country and its leader that they had previously “deified”. Baseless accusations are now swirling around that Russia, and President Putin specifically, have “betrayed” Syria, which is totally untrue.

Debunking The Doubts

Far from “betraying” the country, he literally saved it by agreeing to the request that was made by Syria’s democratically elected and legitimate government to involve the Russian Aerospace Forces in the world’s most effective anti-terrorist operation. Since then, there’s been an unceasing effort to call this fact into doubt, with “revisionists” now insisting that Syria would have survived Daesh’s onslaught without Russian support, and that Moscow’s assistance came “too little, too late” to make a difference anyhow. This latter claim is a popular one among these same cynical circles, but regardless of how “convincing” this particular point of criticism might seem, it doesn’t negate the country-saving outcome of Russia’s anti-terrorist intervention when it “finally” occurred in September 2015. That’s not all though, because there are some widespread “follow-up” narratives that are associated with this debunked one as well.

Another seed of doubt that some forces have tried to plant about Russia is that its outreaches to the “opposition” – which refers to armed groups that have agreed to enter into the ceasefire regime and adhere to the so-called “de-escalation zones” – is unbecoming of an “ally”, but this attempt overlooks that Damascus itself has cut many deals with most of these very same forces, even if they were only short-term tactical ones related to the immediate battle at hand or dealt with a general amnesty. Unlike Syria’s Iranian partner, Russia has no intentions to invest the amount of money and on-the-ground personnel that it would take to help Damascus achieve a “total victory”, settling instead on the more “pragmatic solution” (from Moscow’s perspective) of a multisided “political compromise” for bringing about an end to the war, which is the essence of its “balancing” strategy.

From Man To “God”

This realpolitik approach to the Hyper-Realist “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” on which contemporary geopolitics is being decided might be “sobering” for some who saw in President Putin all their hopes and desires for a “perfect world” free from everything that they dislike, but the resultant disappointment that accompanies this real-life realization speaks to the “political immaturity” of those who never held any serious foundational understanding of International Relations and instead succumbed to the “cult of the savior”. Just because President Putin saved Syria from destruction doesn’t mean that he deserves to be “deified”, as he’s only a human being just like everyone else, albeit a powerful one. That said, it’s understandable why the desperate masses all across the world would yearn so bad for someone to save them from their misery that they’d end up seeing their “savior” in President Putin.

There’s no shame in having high expectations about any person or country, but it becomes ridiculous when the aforesaid are all but “worshipped” as “infallible”, “selfless” entities when nothing in the world is like that. Somehow that’s exactly what happened over the years with President Putin, though, with countless people (mostly non-Russians) imaging him to be a modern-day “god” when he’s really just an effective delegator of important tasks with a solid understanding of challenging situations, That’s not at all to take away from the profound respect that he rightly deserves for his many accomplishments in Russia and around the world, but just to say that President Putin isn’t anything like the “second Jesus” that his “worshippers’” many memes deceptively portray him as being. “Putin Worship” isn’t only an annoyance, but it’s actually turning into a serious soft power danger for Russia, too.

Turning Love Into Hate

Like it was written earlier, “there’s a thin line between love and hate”, and many of the same people who just last week were prostrating before their computers by sharing countless memes of their “god” are now loudly denouncing him as a “false prophet” and veering into veritably “anti-Russian” territory with their remarks. Yes, it’s “politically inconvenient” that the man responsible for saving the anti-Zionist government in Syria is also on exceptionally friendly terms with Damascus’ “Israeli” enemies, but such is the complicated nature of geopolitics, especially when it comes to Russia’s “balancing” strategy. That does not mean, however, that Russia is “anti-Syrian” or “never was sincere in its desire to save Syria”. To the contrary, precisely because of President Putin’s understanding of this challenging situation, he knew that the only way to ensure Syria’s survival would be in getting “Israel” to begrudgingly accept President Assad’s continued leadership, which he did.

That wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for this very same “balancing” strategy that’s now being presented as “evidence” of Russia’s “betrayal”, but the ideologues need to accept that “it takes two to tango” and there’s no such thing as a “one-sided compromise”. As a quid-pro-quo for getting “Israel” to uncharacteristically back down from its seven-year-long regime change operation, it’s expected that Syria will work to provide Iran and its Hezbollah allies with a “dignified” pretext to begin their “phased withdrawal” from the Arab Republic, or at the very least remain outside of the Tel Aviv’s de-facto “sphere of influence” in the south of the country beyond the occupied Golan Heights. President Putin doesn’t believe in “maximalist” outcomes, hence why both “Israel” and Syria need to enact their own “compromises” as part of this Russian-mediated “balancing” strategy.

Concluding Thoughts

It shouldn’t be forgotten that the present Syrian government wouldn’t even still be in office had it not been for Russia’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention that accomplished what the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its Iranian & Hezbollah allies couldn’t do on their own for four years up until that point, which is defeat terrorism in the country and prevent it from being used as a regime change instrument by foreign powers. The three aforesaid Mideast allies fought bravely and to the best of their ability, but they lacked the technological prowess that Russia brought to the equation by unleashing its world-class Aerospace Forces on Daesh and suddenly changing the entire state of affairs. Had it not been for President Putin’s decision to agree to his Syrian counterpart’s request, Syria would have been destroyed because the US and its allies (which at that time included Turkey) were preparing to “go in for the kill” by providing maximum support to their proxy forces.

Irrespective of how one feels about the most popular criticisms coming from the Alt-Media Community concerning the specifics of Russia’s anti-terrorist campaign and its subsequent “balancing” strategy to advance a “political solution” to the crisis, none of that takes away from the indisputable reality that President Putin is the country’s savior, but paying profound respect to him for this shouldn’t ever get to the point of cultishly “worshipping” him as the “world’s savior”. The elevation of President Putin to a modern-day “deity” in the eyes of Alt-Media dogma is highly dangerous in the soft power sense because it inevitably leads to the cultivation of unrealistically high hopes that this human being can’t ever expect to satisfy, prompting some degree of deep disappointment with time that could transform love into hate and be exploited by a third party’s infowar operations in order to turn “Russophiles” into actual Russophobes.

Unfortunately, the dynamic events of the past week week – “Israel’s” two bombings of Syria, the Putin-Netanyahu Summit, and Moscow’s decision to not provide S-300s to Syria – triggered many in the Alt-Media Community to react with uncontrollable emotions after some of their most “sacred beliefs” were proven to be false, but instead of questioning why their “thought leaders” misled them into believing something that was ultimately untrue (and to which they were never publicly held to account for afterwards), the masses took the “easy route” of attributing all the blame for this solely on President Putin, flipping in an instant from “proselytizing” the “Putin Worship” “faith” to angrily denouncing their one-time “god” as a “false prophet” and urging others to do the same. When it comes down to it, this entire debacle is largely attributable to the tendency (key word) for “ideological extremism” that’s associated with Alt-Media’s “activist” origins blinding many of its followers to the amoral reality of International Relations that a surprising number of people have yet to accept.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Tero Varjoranta (Source: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA))

The head of the Department of Safeguards Tero Varjoranta at the Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resigned unexpectedly on May 11, 2018, three days after Trump announced that the US was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. 

One suspects that this resignation is related to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear weapons agreement which is subject to IAEA verification. 

According to Reuters:

The departure of Tero Varjoranta comes at a sensitive time, three days after the United States announced it was quitting world powers’ nuclear accord with Iran, raising questions as to whether Tehran will continue to comply with it.

Varjoranta, a Finn, had been a deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of its Department of Safeguards, which verifies countries’ compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, since October 2013. He will be replaced in an acting capacity by the head of the department’s Iran team, the Vienna-based IAEA said (Reuters, May 12, 2018, emphasis added).

Was Tero Varjoranta pressured into resigning pending the appointment of a US sponsored replacement?

Will the new head of the Department of Safeguards be pressured into upholding the Trump-Netanyhu assertions regarding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

The IAEA director general has appointed Mr Massimo Aparo, acting director, Office for Verification in Iran, as acting deputy director general and head of the Department of Safeguards. When asked what were the reasons for Varjorana’s resignation, the IAEA spokesman responded: “The agency cannot comment on personnel matters, which are confidential. IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano plans to appoint a permanent replacement as soon as possible“(Reuters, May 12, 2018, emphasis added).

The Israeli occupation authorities on Sunday decided to prevent a Palestinian medical delegation from entering the Gaza Strip.

Ministry of Health said in a statement that the Israeli authorities refused to issue the necessary entry permits for the members of the medical delegation formed by the Palestinian Minister of Health in Ramallah Jawad Awwad to assist medical staff in Gaza.

The Ministry stressed that this ban is a further crime committed against the Gazan people who are also prevented from travelling abroad for treatment.

The Ministry called on international organizations to pressure Israel to allow medical teams to visit Gaza and help the staff working there.

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Featured image is from The Palestinian Information Center.

In Part One, we discussed the threats social media technology poses to a healthy and educated populace, the scientist cult of Skepticism and its extremist medical wing, and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a leading promulgator for Skepticism’s agenda. In Part Two, we go deeper into the Science-Based Medical faction and its advancing an unfounded and authoritarian interpretation about science.

Science-Based Medicine (SBM) is a recent splinter faction, a break-away group, from Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). EBM is often recognized as one of the great advances in modern medicine to emerge during the 20th century. Although SBM endorses EBM’s premises and principles, it also regards it as incomplete. Consequently SBM blatantly hails itself as the future paradigm for evaluating medical science and recommending best practices and treatments.

First posited as a new and precise methodology for evaluating medical research in 1993, EBM has rapidly become the dominant statistical and clinical model for developing healthcare strategies in clinical settings. It is also the most prevalent theory in use today for determining the accuracy of peer-reviewed journal articles, clinical trials and medical claims to improve healthcare decisions. According to the British Medical Journal, EBM is now the “new paradigm for teaching and practicing clinical medicine.”[1]

The renowned Cochrane Database Collaboration, a network of 37,000 professors, doctors and researchers from over 130 countries, is one of EBM’s more successful contributions. Cochrane performs meta-analysis on existing scientific literature for pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines and supplemental products alike to determine the credibility of their health claims.  Medical journals increasingly fail to maintain high standards for the research published. Prestigious journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine have even criticized their own publications for publishing scientifically invalid research funded by drug companies and professional associations biased towards the pharmaceutical products they develop and promote.[2]  Medical journals are also riddled with authorship violations of ghostwriting, which are threatening the integrity of reliable medical literature.[3] SBM physicians would seem to fully endorse these practices.

For example, SBM proponents give their full weight in support of biased studies promoting  selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs for treating anxiety and depression against the large body of research indicating their ineffectiveness and serious adverse effects.  The research for drugs treating clinical depression were so poor, that the Journal of the American Medical Association launched a policy to refuse any industry sponsored submissions unless all the trials’ original data could be reviewed by independent, non-pharmaceutical industry editors.[4]  Consequently, by identifying such problems and falsehoods, Cochrane is today’s important watchdog for targeting bogus pharmaceutical research and for separating reliable clinical science from junk science.

However, EBM also has its detractors within the conventional medical community. Most EBM studies rely exclusively on data collection, epidemiological research and statistical analysis. It may be noted that EBM’s ascendancy parallels the rise of the information age and Internet, and follows the idea that gathering and possessing huge amounts of data can be a weapon, regardless whether it is to leverage a political party or to find the best strategy to treat a life-threatening disease. For example, Paul Offit habitually references fourteen EBM studies that have become the CDC’s and pro-vaccine lobby’s gospel to discredit an association between vaccines and autism.[5]  Each study is limited to epidemiological and population data analysis. None meet the gold standard criteria of a double-blind, authentic placebo controlled trial, which is the most reliable criteria for decisive evidence about a vaccine’s efficacy and safety.[6]   And this is another one of EBM’s failures: inflating epidemiological results and assigning it with an equal level certainty as gold standard and biological clinical trials.

Another crucial criticism is that EBM has been misappropriated by private commercial interests, in particular the drug companies and their cohorts in the CDC and FDA that regulate research agendas. Dr. Trisha Greehalgh at the London School of Medicine wrote an essay for the British Medical Journal, “Evidence Based Medicine: A Movement in Crisis,” noting that EBM was unable to adequately detect the biases in pharmaceutical industry sponsored studies.  Overall, Greenhalgh felt that after twenty years EBM has only made marginal gains.[7]  This is a subject requiring greater investigation because it is our observation that there may be a strong correlation between healthcare’s over-reliance upon EBM guidelines for treating disease and the continual increase in cases of iatrogenic injuries and deaths due to medical intervention. Iatrogeneic medical error is now the third leading cause of mortality in the US. Is there a direct correlation?  Well, if we follow SBM’s scientific reasoning, it is plausible. In our opinion, EBM suffers from a mistaken uniformity, a cacophony of conflicting research data and false conclusions. Furthermore, it too often fails in its attempts to advance efficient and safe medical interventions, including alternative medical findings, into actual clinical practice within the medical community.

Due to EBM’s shortcomings, an group who earlier advocated for EBM emerged. The Society for Science Based Medicine, founded by Yale neuroscientist Steven Novella, was launched to advocate for a reductionist scientific rationality, founded upon Skepticism’s principles and strategies. In 2009, the Society launched its Institute for Science in Medicine, a non-profit organization with a mission to influence public health policies and establish standards based upon its medical determinism at the exclusion of other medical options that the Institute criticizes.  High on both the Society’s and Institute’s priority list is the condemnation of Complementary-Alternative Medicine (CAM), which is today offered in most university medical schools. It also accuses naturopathy, homeopathy, massage, chiropractic medicine, nutritional medicine including supplements, and all faith-based and Mind-Body healing modalities of quackery.[8]   Practitioners of these non-drug based therapies are categorically labeled as irrational, charlatans, conspiracy theorists or quacks. Followers of SBM operate solely in the state of its absolute authority, hyper-diligence and ultra-orthodoxy. Medical research favoring conventional medicine is framed as unwavering facts, which leave no room for open discussion and debate.

SBM can also be understood as a symptom of our society’s addiction to technology.  Noted earlier, SBM operates primarily in the cyber spheres rather than laboratories and professional clinical settings.  Richard Stivers, a distinguished sociology professor at Illinois State University documents the pathologies of a technological society.  According to Stivers, our modern “technological civilization” makes no effort to promote or encourage a “moral community.”  In fact, he believes the entire social media environment built upon modern technology and social platforms is mentally debilitating and contributing to our culture’s disease or sociosis.[9]  After reading SBM articles, and its litany of diatribes and condemnations about everything SBM abhors, one readily observes the depth of this movement’s intolerance.

The Skeptic organizations are remarkably efficient in the dissemination of their worldview and wherever one finds criticisms about alternative health natural medicine, SBM articles and its predecessor Quackwatch website are cited.  During our own interaction with MediaWiki’s legal department, Wikipedia administrators acknowledge QuackWatch as a reliable reference for editing pages. As an aside, Quackwatch’s founder and Skeptic Dr. Stephen Barret has been slapped with many lawsuits.[10]   In one California trial, it was revealed that Barrett had failed his board certification exams but was still hanging up a shingle for his psychiatric practice.[11]   None of this will be found on his Wikipedia page although many attempts have been made.  Barrett’s Wikipedia personality is completely safeguarded by Skepticism’s individuals.

SBM is strictly a community of university professors and medical doctors. Very few have the luxury to spend hours day and night to survey the internet for people and groups to endlessly attack on blogs or monitor Wikipedia edits they disapprove of. Nor do most of them have the technological computer skills. To succeed in promulgating its ideology, they have recruited their admirers in the Skeptic organizations listed in our earlier segment to this series.

The MediaWiki Foundation has few professional paid editors on staff, although its employees function as administrators to handle the more vicious “wiki wars”. Instead it seeks and welcomes outside organizations and groups to recruit contributors “to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia.”  These groups are known as WikiProjects and receive the full endorsement of Jimmy Wales and the Foundation. Among these WikiProjects is the Skepticism group. If you visit the WikiProject: Skeptism page, the group’s complete agenda and targets for editorial discord are outlined with calls for editorial action. The list of alternative health practices that the Project indicts is thorough, including Chinese and Indian Ayurveda medicine, meditation, chiropractic and homeopathy, naturopathy, energy and massage therapies, nutritional healing, nutritional therapy, supplements, health food and much more. Other Skeptic targets for cyber agitation fall under separate headings such as paranormal,  psychology, religion and spirituality with their own WikiProjects.

One group that has received Wikipedia’s full support and swallowed Dawkin’s “militant atheism” whole with steroids is Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW), founded by Susan Gerbic. GSoW actively seeks out and trains recruits to serve as an army of a Skeptic editors to wage wiki wars against those who research or advocate alternative medical treatment modalities. These are the most active of Wikipedia’s independent advocates editing alternative medicine content and pages critical of conventional drugs.

Gerbic speaks about her organization’s guerrilla tactics on Wikipedia openly.  On the Skeptic website Skeptoid, she writes in her article “Helping Build a Skeptical, Scientific Wikipedia,” that

Wikipedia’s Skepticism is “one of the most amazing powerful projects that exists today in the world of scientific skepticism. That project is Wikipedia…. The information inside Wikipedia is so influential and powerful that we, as skeptics, need to make sure that the reader is getting correct information and leaving notable citations that they can follow if they want more information.”[12]

On her personal Wikipedia biographical entry, Gerbic is quoted as saying,

“We rewrite Wikipedia, and proof the pages, we remove citations that are not noteworthy, we add citations, we do just about everything in Wikipedia to improve content.”[13]

Of course, the majority of their “notable citations” reference back to Skeptic and SBM sources, such as Gorski’s ScienceBasedMedicine blog.  “Improvements” are solely aligned with Skepticism’s doctrine. Gerbic’s other organization Skeptic Action is another stealth guerilla operation to  disseminate cyber tasks for Skeptic trolls on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to rapidly rate pages such as books listed on Amazon that question vaccination, homeopathy, and natural cancer treatments. Skeptic Action also utilizes a community drive system, which enables members to receive rapid alerts to rebut content posted on the internet.

In April 2017, Wales launched his new WikiTribune. This new “wiki” is supposed to combat fake news.  Wales stated that the project,

“will be the first time that professional journalists and citizen journalists will work side-by-side as equals writing stories as they happen.”[14]

Although his motivation is praiseworthy, in light of how fake news brought Trump into power according to Wales, we can expect the results to be equally dubious based upon Wikipedia’s past. He doesn’t explain or provide information about who qualifies as a reliable “professional” journalist. Will it be more uninformed writers promoting drug-based medicine? More Skeptical laypersons covering up for the sins of big agricultural companies? And the term “citizen” journalist is utterly meaningless and will invite more of the same confusion and chaos that plagues the encyclopedia.  Consequently in our opinion, WikiTribune is already on the path to being another news source of prejudice, intolerance and unfairness.

Is the encyclopedia’s chaos and unmanageability, under the ruse of democratic principles and opposition to internet censorship, intentional so the doors are left wide open for Skepticism to indoctrinate Wikipedia’s users to its cause? Or has Wikipedia intentionally enabled the Skeptics to be the final judges on alternative health, medical controversies and many other subjects that Skeptics despise?

Some examples provide clues. The Wikipedia page for Science-Based Medicine is empty of criticism and controversy, of which there are many from highly factual sources. Edits on the SBM page are seemingly locked. In addition to adulating SBM’s founders, Steven Novella and David Gorski, the entry only praises the movement for being “noted as an influential and respected source of information about medical controversies and alternative medicine.” Likewise practically all of Skepticisms’ leading voices have squeaky clean biographies.  Contrary evaluations with confirmatory evidence, which should be entered on these pages for encyclopedic accuracy, are systematically censored.[15]

In 2014, Change.org posted a petition for Wikipedia users to stop donating to the site because of the preferential treatment given to Skeptics to ridicule and viciously condemn Energy Medicine and Psychology. The petition gained over 11,200 signatures.[16] In response, Wales wrote:

“No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back and check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual and truthful. Wikipedia’s policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable journals, that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is equivalent of ‘true scientific discourse.’ It isn’t.”[17]

“Lunatic charlatans?” A word taken directly from Skepticisms’ lexicon.

In this particular case, Debby Vajda, President for the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP), provided 51 peer-reviewed articles and studies, 18 which were randomized controlled studies, appearing in professional journals, including the American Psychological Association, the Journal of Clinical Psychology, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Psychotherapy Theory Research and Practice and others showing positive statistical results outside the range of chance.  She commented on Change.org,

“Every edit to the energy psychology Wikipedia page that attempts to reference findings from these well-respected, scientific journals is summarily deleted… The American Psychological Association does not think we are ‘lunatic charlatans.’ Neither does the Association of Social Work Boards, the National Board of Certified Counselors, or the National Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselors, all of which approve ACEP to provide continuing education to their professional members for the study of energy psychology. The Wikipedia page is out of step with existing peer-reviewed research on this topic, and opinionated, self-described “skeptic” editors are resisting any change.”[18]

Apparently the scientific evidence was insufficient to pass Wikipedia’s administration review.  The page still defines Energy Medicine as a “pseudo-scientific belief.”[19]

Other petitions against Wikipedia posted on Change.org add further light about these prejudices and preferential treatment towards Skepticism.  Wikipedia earlier disabled editing on its Homeopathy page in order to retain the Skeptic’s edits to debunk it and editors have been put on probation.[20] Wikipedia’s opening paragraph, states “Homeopathy is a pseudoscience – a belief that is incorrectly presented as scientific. Homeopathic preparations are not effective for treating any condition.”[21]

Homeopathy is an excellent example of Skepticism’s unsound and frequently unsubstantiated criticisms. Simply because SBM physicians may not understand biophysics, quantum energy, and physical properties of water should not close the door on homeopathy as mere quackery. Surely Skeptics will embrace the value of nanotechnology without understanding the physics of spatial quantum confinement behind it. Nanomedinceis rapidly becoming part of conventional medicine’s drug arsenals. Safety studies for nano-drugs are weak at best. Yet there are analogous features to nanotechnology and homeopathic theory in terms of spatial physics and force.  Furthermore, in Europe, homeopathy is a preferred alternative treatment modality among doctors. In India, where it is most popular, 62% of homeopathic users have never tried conventional drugs, and 82% of those in an AC Nielsen survey said they would not switch to allopathic treatments.   In France, 94% of surveyed pharmacists acknowledged they recommend pregnant women to use homeopathic remedies instead of pharmaceutical drugs. Homeopathy is also taught in 21 of 24 French pharmacology schools. Seventy percent of French physicians approve of the discipline.[22]

Unfortunately, if you wish to include this information into Wikipedia’s homeopathy page, you will fail dismally. Once you make your edits, anonymous Skeptic editors will have been tipped off about the change, descend like delirious banshees, and change the text back to its original. If you are fortunate, they will forget to advocate for your banishment from editing Wikipedia pages in the future.

Another petition charged that Wikipedia’s acupuncture page was in direct violation of its “neutral point of view policy.” Again, like the other examples above, Wikipedia has assured that acupuncture will be immediately perceived as a useless therapy. The opening paragraph to Wikipedia’s acupuncture page states,

“TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine] theory and practice are not based upon scientific knowledge, and acupuncture is a pseudoscience.”[23]

The petition received an enormous number of signatures from China where acupuncture stands alongside conventional medicine in clinics throughout the country. It is hard to imagine a Chinese medical doctor, trained at Harvard Medical School, questioning acupuncture’s efficacy for many ailments and illnesses. The petition also cites the fanatical militant Guerilla Skepticism on Wikipedia as the primary editors and administrators on the acupuncture page.[24]

The good news is that Skepticism and SBM are rapidly losing touch with today’s health and social trends. Its scientific cherry-picking, inverted conspiratorial mentality, and refusal to recognize scientific facts contrary to their rigid beliefs, such as the huge body of evidence discrediting the safety claims of genetically modified foods and vaccines, are losing popular ground.  Its own bias towards that which it lacks knowledge and refuses to understand has given rise to Skepticism’s own intrinsic conspiratorial theories and misguided perceptions of humanity and the human condition. Eventually SBM will be remembered as BS-Based Medicine because real science continues to make new discoveries beyond reductionist certainties. Without its hidden funders and Wikipedia supporters, it might deservingly collapse into the dustbin of history sooner.

Although the Skeptics currently rule the flow of information over Wikipedia, and have made considerable gains on Facebook and other online sites, they are failing in the university medical departments where future generations of physicians and health practitioners will graduate and enter the healthcare workforce.   In 2011, US News and World Report reported that 40% of American adults swore by some form of alternative and natural, non-drug based medicine, and 46 medical schools had CAM departments.[25]  Steven Novella was characteristically swift to denounce the report with his customary nonsense.[26]  Four years later, the Association of American Medical Colleges reported that 126 of 132 medical schools across the nation offered required courses in alternative medicine. That same year, a survey and analysis published in the Journal of Advanced Medical Education Practice, among the 127 different CAM course listings gathered in the study, the most frequent were traditional natural medicine, acupuncture, spirituality and herbology. Twenty-five percent of courses were associated with personal growth and self-care practiced alongside CAM and conventional medical protocols.[27]

In the largest national survey of its kind, researchers from UCLA and the University of California, San Diego, measured medical students’ attitudes and beliefs about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).  The survey found that 84% of medical students believe that conventional medicine would benefit from natural integrative and complementary beliefs, ideas and treatment modalities. Seventy-seven percent felt conventional physicians who learned other complementary medical disciplines would benefit their patients.[28]

Furthermore, today’s younger generations also make up the largest percentage of vegetarians and vegans in the national population. They are better aware of the adverse effects of the standard American diet and the risks of consuming genetically modified foods and pesticide-tainted produce. This may be largely due to their experiences after having watched parents, grandparents, siblings and loved ones whither away from over prescribed medications with no alternative offered.  Many have witnessed the degeneration and death of loved ones due to poor diet, nutritional deficiencies, lack of access to and refusal of the medical establishment to offer treatments such as acupuncture, nutritional supplementation, and energy medicine.  And they have seen the human cost of drugs’ adverse effects themselves. At the same time, many younger students have also observed improvements and healings when their elders adopt integrative and alternative treatments. Noted above, “death by medicine,”according to the British Medical Journal, is the third leading cause of mortality.[29]  Fundamentalist physicians such as oncologist David Gorski only possesses chemotherapy and surgery in their medical toolboxes.  Truth be told, SBM are harbingers of mortality and are contributing greatly to the suffering patients face from conventional medical practices alone, and the dangers and health risks peddled by physicians who buy into SBM’s propaganda. And Wikipedia has become their major mouthpiece publishing disinformation about alternative therapies that are nothing less than negligent and perhaps even criminal.

In more recent years, the American Medical Students Association has sponsored an Integrative Medicine Day. SBM leaders Novella and Gorski have damned this effort as “quackademic medicine” and have published articles excoriating the study of natural health treatments as a threat to science.[30]  CAM science writer David Freedman called the medical Skeptics “prickly anti-alternative medicine warriors.”[31]

With over 137,000 volunteer editors, Wikipedia opens its gates to everyone to infuse the encyclopedia’s pages with personal biases, opinions and misinformation. Surely the vast majority are sincere and hold a deep desire to share their professional expertise on a given subject and make it available to the world. An Oxford professor who has taught and written about Shakespeare or a geologist writing about the physical properties of volcanic ash, would certainly have a more genuine motivation to contribute to Wikipedia’s mission than a troll hired by PR firm to edit out the health risks of Monstanto’s Roundup herbicide, or Gerbic’s followers who want to convert the world population to scientific Skepticism.

In our opinion, there are many other online encyclopedias with far more integrity and objectivity than Wikipedia to donate to. Among them are Encyclopedia Britannica Online (requires an annual fee), Citizendium (started by the originator of Wikipedia Larry Sanger), Encyclopedia.com, and Bartleby that include the Columbia encyclopedia.  Scholarpedia is similar to Wikipedia and far more reliable and recognized by more universities as a legitimate resource for research.

Second, communicate and encourage others on your social media platforms to donate to other causes rather than fund Wikipedia’s ideological collaborators. Popular grassroots efforts to encourage divestment from corporations engaged in destructive and inhumane activities has had some remarkable successes. Organizations promoting Palestinian rights led a divestment campaign and boycott of the Israeli cosmetic company Ahava.  There have been successful efforts to force foreign companies in the France, Kuwait, Netherlands, Sweden, UK and US to drop their business relationships with Israeli firms known to support the apartheid of Palestine.[32]  A New York Times article in 2015 noted the success in divestment efforts to stigmatize and inflict financial injury to the fossil fuel industry. Investors controlling over $5 trillion in assets are now forcing stocks to drop.[33]  These successes have contributed to building a stronger movement to challenge the leading culprits of global warming. Students from over 300 campuses, deeply worried about their institutions’ financial interests in major corporate polluters have launched divestment campaigns with moderate success.[34]

Wikipedia claims it survives solely upon users’ donations to continue its annual growth.  However, we hold suspicions to this claim.

With the loss of a free internet and blocking, censoring and banning websites, including many legitimate, reliable alternative news sites hosting honest, seasoned and respectable journalists and scholars, it is incumbent upon people to act upon their conscience to boycott and withhold donations and fees from sites that are adversaries to free speech and curtail the dissemination of information.   The Deep State is hypothetically more than federal intelligence agencies and corporate interests. It need not be perceived as conspiratorial; rather it is a mindset that misinforms and presents itself to the public as something other than what it truly is. The most effective way to confront it is simply to expose it, bring it out of the shadows into the public light so people can discern for themselves Wikipedia’s moral compass and act accordingly.

Unfortunately there is only a small fraction of Americans who truly care.

Where is the desire for Congressional hearings into the abuse of Google, YouTube and Wikipedia?

Where is the #MeToo movement to protest these blatant invasions into our lives?

At the moment, there is no movement. The Executive, Senate, House and mainstream media, notably the New York Times and Washington Post, are not concerned. Everything we know today about the dangers of the third rail, everything we were told about the adverse consequences of surrendering our freedoms to our mobile phones, is ignored. We are adrift in a utopian stupor that the latest electronic gadgets and technologies will only improve our lives and more. What  thought is given to its downside and how it will infect us? Fortunately there are brilliant advocates, messengers of warning, such as the late Robert Parry, Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Glen Ford and others; but they too and their media outlets are also being censored. Important alternative news sites such as Consortium News, Truthdig, Counterpunch, Naked Capitalism, Oped News and others have been targeted to limit our access to read the stories on the other side of the fence.

Wikipedia is embedded skeptic groups that attack those who would tell us the truth, the guardians of the social media galaxy. We are brainwashed 24-7 without warning. No trepidation. No open debate. We are solely passive consumers in the wiki matrix.  Objectivists, as The Economist article notes, functions best when social conditions reinforce a bee-hive mentality. This is what enables Skeptic leaders to cling to their perceptions of intellectual superiority. In the meantime we have a compliant nation, a population obedient and only buying.

*

This article was originally published on Progressive Radio Network.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Poverty Inc and Deadly Deception.

Notes

1  TrishaGreenhalgh.  “Evidence Based Medicine: A Movement in Crisis,”  British Medical Journal. June 13, 2014.  https://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g3725

2   Carolyn Thomas.  “NEJM editor: “No longer possible to believe much of clinical research published”  The Ethical Nag. November 9, 2009.  https://ethicalnag.org/2009/11/09/nejm-editor/

3  A Khan and WA Brown. “Antidepressants versus placebo in major depression: an overview,” World Psychiatry. 2015 Oct. 14(3): 294-300. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592645/

3  Virginia Barbour.  “How ghost-writing threatens the credibility of medical knowledge and medical journals.” Haematologica. 2010 Jan; 95(1): 1–2.

4  “Paul Offit On The Anti-Vaccine Movement”  NPR’s Talk of the Nation. January 7, 2011.  https://www.npr.org/2011/01/07/132740175/paul-offit-on-the-anti-vaccine-movement

5  https://www.fourteenstudies.org/

6  TrishaGreenhalgh.  op. cit.

7  David Gorski.  “The difference between science-based medicine and CAM”  July 29, 2013  https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-difference-between-science-based-medicine-and-cam/

8  RichardStivers.  Shades of Loneliness: Pathologies of Technological Society.  August 15, 2004.  http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=bookHYPERLINK “http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=2290&cn=394″&HYPERLINK “http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=2290&cn=394″id=2290HYPERLINK “http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=2290&cn=394″&HYPERLINK “http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=2290&cn=394″cn=394

9  Tim Bolen. “Stephen Barrett, et al, Fear RICO…”  http://bolenreport.com/stephen-barrett-et-al-fear-rico/

10  “QuackWatch–Stephen Barrett Is a BIG Quack,”  http://www.encognitive.com/node/1213

11  SusanGerbic, “Helping Build a Skeptical, Scientific Wikipedia”  Skeptoid. August 7, 2015. https://skeptoid.com/blog/2015/08/07/guerrilla-skepticism-wikipedia/

12  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Gerbic

13   Alex Hern.  “Wikipedia founder to fight fake news with new Wikitribune site” The Guardian. April 24, 2017   https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-to-fight-fake-news-with-new-wikitribune-site

14  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine

15  https://www.change.org/p/jimmy-wales-founder-of-wikipedia-create-and-enforce-new-policies-that-allow-for-true-scientific-discourse-about-holistic-approaches-to-healing

16  Lily Hay Newman.  “Jimmy Wales Gets Real, and Sassy, About Wikipedia’s Holistic Healing Coverage”  Slate. March 27, 2014  http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/27/jimmy_wales_denies_petition_from_advocates_of_holistic_healing_about_wikipedia.html

17 Wikipedia entry for Energy Medicine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_medicine

18  https://www.change.org/p/1385347/responses/11054/c/36782388

19  Wikipedia entry for Homeopathy.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy

20  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHomeopathy%2FArticle_probation%2FIncidents

21  Wikipedia entry for Acupuncture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture

22  Dana Ullman.  “Homeopathic Medicine: Europe’s #1 Alternative for Doctors” Huffington Post. November 17, 2011  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/homeopathic-medicine-euro_b_402490.html

23   https://www.change.org/p/jimmy-wales-clean-up-the-wikipedia-acupuncture-page-to-reflect-medical-and-scientific-consensus

24  Steven Novella. “Teaching Pseudoscience in Univesities.  Science-Based Medicine, February 8, 2012. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/teaching-pseudoscience-in-universities/

25   Meryl Landau.  “Medical Schools Embrace Alternative Medicine” US News and World Report.  April 12, 2011. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/2011/04/12/medical-schools-embrace-alternative-medicine

26  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK83809/

27  UCLA News. “Med students say conventional medicine would benefit by integrating alternative therapies,”  http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/medical-students-say-western-medicine-150587

28  MartinMakary. “Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US,” British Medical Journal. May 3, 2016.  https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139

29  https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/tag/quackademic-medicine/

30  http://everything.explained.today/David_Gorski/

31  AmyChozick.  “Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire,” New York Times.  June 27, 2018.  https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/magazine/jimmy-wales-is-not-an-internet-billionaire.html

32  https://www.kairosresponse.org/divestmentandboycottwork_examples_jan2016.html

33  John Schwartz,  “Investment Funds Worth Trillions Are Dropping Fossil Fuel Stocks”  New York Times, December 12, 2016.  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/science/investment-funds-worth-trillions-are-dropping-fossil-fuel-stocks.html

34  Patrick Gallagher. “Divestment Now.”Boston Globe. July 14, 2013.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/07/13/colleges-must-divest-from-fossil-fuel-companies/W2jPQTHoFE38TNHNnXfaGI/story.html

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

In August 2012, Ecuador granted WikiLeaks founder, director and editor-in-chief Julian Assange asylum in its London embassy – granting him citizenship in December 2017. He’s been there since June 2012.

If he steps out of the embassy, Washington wants him arrested and extradited to America.

Whistleblowers exposing government wrongdoing are endangered in the US. Anyone exposing its high crimes and/or other dirty secrets is vulnerable.

Challenging the nation’s policies, no matter how heinous, risks severe punishment.

As CIA director, neocon extremist Mike Pompeo falsely accused Assange of causing “great harm to our nation’s national security.”

He lied calling WikiLeaks “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

In 2012, a secret grand jury convened. A sealed indictment followed, allegedly accusing Assange of spying under the long ago outdated 1917 Espionage Act, enacted shortly after America’s entry into WW I – used to prosecute, convict and imprison Chelsea Manning.

Neocon Attorney General Jeff Sessions prioritizes arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning Assange, earlier saying:

“(I)t is a priority. We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail” like Assange for whistleblowing.

In late March, his Internet access was cut off. New restrictions limit his outside communications – his phone privileges and visits from colleagues and others banned, according to WikiLeaks.

Last Wednesday, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Fernanda Espinosa (image on the right) said talks between her government and Britain are ongoing to decide Assange’s fate, adding:

“There is a dialogue. There is a will and an interest to move forward in the solution of that matter.”

Britain refused to grant Assange diplomatic status or legal immunity as an Ecuadorean citizen, allowing him to leave the embassy without fear of arrest and extradition to America.

If expelled from the embassy, it’s virtually certain. Washington wants him arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned and silenced.

WikiLeaks publishes countless volumes of leaked US documents and other damning material, exposing imperial lawlessness by America and its rogue allies, along with other information everyone has a right to know.

According to UK-based lawyer Jennifer Robinson, Assange’s

“health situation is terrible. He’s had a problem with his shoulder for a very long time. It requires an MRI, which cannot be done within the embassy.”

“He’s got dental issues. And then there’s the long-term impact of not being outside, his visual impairment. He wouldn’t be able to see further than from here to the end of this hallway.”

WikiLeaks is involved in whistleblowing investigative journalism, publishing material supplied by sources, unidentified for their protection.

It’s not an intelligence operation – nor it it connected to Russia or any other country.

Earlier Assange said WikiLeaks has the right “to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true…”

Media freedom in America and other Western societies is threatened. If Assange and WikiLeaks are silenced, it’ll be another blow to truth-telling on vital issues at a time it’s vitally needed.

Independent journalism is essential to protect and preserve. Doing the right thing has risks. The rewards are priceless.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Russia’s predominant position in Syria & Iraqi Kurdistan places Moscow right in the middle of the misleadingly characterized “Shiite Crescent” and allows the Kremlin to “balance” Iranian influence in the Mideast better than any other country ever possibly could.

It’s impossible to ignore the geopolitical reality that the “progressive” faction of Russia’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) has been wildly successful in positioning their country as the supreme “balancing” force in 21^st-century Eurasian geopolitics, especially in the Mideast, and this has become visibly obvious after the Putin-Netanyahu Summit in Moscow during last week’s Victory Day celebration. It’s evident that President Putin “gave the greenlight” to “Israel” to carry out its largest bombing in Syria since the 1973 war because this dramatic attack occurred just hours after Netanyahu left the Russian capital, and the only reason why Russia would “passively allow” this to happen is because it endeavors to restore “balance” to the region following the surge of Iranian influence there over the past couple of years. Ironically, Russia itself helped make this a reality, but that may have been one of the intended geopolitical consequences of its anti-terrorist intervention in Syria, one which would then enable it to “balance” that subsequent development through a newly strengthened alliance with “Israel”.

The Basics Of “Balancing”

To explain, the essence of Russia’s “balancing” strategy is that Moscow will generally assist the weakest party in any dispute in order to reestablish “parity” prior to proposing a “diplomatic solution” that it intends to mediate. At the time that it commenced its anti-terrorist mission, Iran was relatively weaker than “Israel”, but the two and half years that have passed since then have seen the regional “balance” decisively shift in Tehran’s favor to the point where the Islamic Republic now wields more asymmetrical power than the self-proclaimed “Jewish State”. This outcome was predicted by many analysts at the start of Russia’s intervention in Syria, but it’s now been skillfully used by the country’s “deep state” “progressives” in order to clinch their sought-after alliance with “Israel” and therefore solidify Moscow’s role as the regional “balancer” through an interconnected series of partnerships with all relevant Mideast actors. This is precisely what President Putin himself has been meticulously planning for years now as revealed by what he said in September 2001 near the beginning of his first term in office:

“And we understand that all the positive experience accumulated over the years in the relations between Russia and the Arab countries and what has recently emerged between Russia and Israel, all that positive experience can be used to resolve this complicated situation. We are ready to put it at the disposal of the negotiating parties.” – Interview with the German Magazine Focus, 19 September, 2001

Over half a year later he elaborated on this grand strategy by adding in April 2002 that:

“[Israelis] must see that Russia takes an even-handed position and pursues a policy aimed at settling the conflict and ensuring the interests of all the people who live in that region, including the interests of Israel.” – Excerpts from a Talk with German and Russian Media, 7 April, 2002

Put another way, the long-term geopolitical intentions of Russia’s 2015 anti-terrorist intervention in Syria were to fulfill President Putin’s plans of positioning his country as the ultimate “balancing” force in the Mideast, one which indirectly “lends a helping hand” to the presumably weaker party and then leverages the changed status quo that it helped bring into being in order to mediate a formal or “cold peace” between the two or more conflicting actors. Now that Iran has suddenly grown so strong in such a short period of time, Russia’s “balancing” efforts are now directed towards helping the newly and relatively weakened political entity – which in this case is “Israel”, a “politically inconvenient” fact to Western audiences that Iranian media nevertheless accurately reported on – reestablish “parity”, which is already happening through Moscow’s “passive acceptance” of “Israel’s” massive attacks against the stronger party’s (Iran’s) suspected military sites in Syria. That’s not all, though, since Russia is also poised to play a crucial “balancing” role through its predominant position in Iraqi Kurdistan that gives its presence in Syria an entirely new meaning.

Controlling The “Shiite Crescent”

It’s uncontestable that Russia is the most powerful force in Syria today, not only by virtue of its military controlling the Arab Republic’s airspace (and therefore indirectly facilitating “Israel’s” raids via the “deconfliction mechanism” coordination between the two) but also through the preferential energy deals that it was able to conclude with a thankful government that owes its very survival to Moscow’s decisive anti-terrorist intervention, but what most of the global public hasn’t noticed is that Russia holds similarly powerful sway in Iraqi Kurdistan as well, albeit not expressed through the headline-grabbing military form that it is in Syria. To its credit, Reuters reported in September 2017 that Russia became the top investor in this region through a $4 billion energy deal that it sealed with the autonomous government there, and it published a follow-up analysis about the political implications of this development in April. The author also wrote about this in depth in an August 2017 piece about the “Kurdish Kaleidoscope” and a February one asking whether it’s even possible to “betray” the Kurds.

The main point being elaborated upon in both analyses is that Russia strategically conceives of Iraqi Kurdistan as being a “fifth force” right in the middle of the quadri-national heart of the Mideast, thereby making it an irresistibly tempting partner to co-opt in its “progressives’” grand ambition to “balance” the region. Taken together, Russia’s unparalleled military influence in Syria pairs perfectly with its equally unparalleled energy counterpart in Iraqi Kurdistan to establish powerful “facts on the ground” that make Moscow the most important player along the so-called and misleadingly characterized “Shiite Crescent”, which is the transnational corridor that Iran’s enemies fear monger that it’s trying to build in connecting the Islamic Republic with Lebanon. Russia has no intention to play a disruptive role in this regard, but its “gatekeeper” presence right in the middle of Iran’s regularly denied but de-facto existing geopolitical project is obviously a key factor that its leadership must incorporate into all of its regional strategies going forward, especially after it became obvious that Russia is indirectly “balancing” its influence through an alliance with “Israel”.

The Necessary Niche

Russia has successfully carved out a necessary niche for itself in Mideast geopolitics by making itself the ultimate go-to broker for regional affairs, with all manner of political entities seeking its “balancing” “services” at one time or another in the past two and a half years. At first, Iran needed Russia to do what it could not, which is conduct a conventional anti-terrorist military intervention against Daesh in order to save Tehran’s only Arab ally. Throughout the course of this campaign and following the failed pro-American coup attempt against President Erdogan (which President Putin supposedly tipped him off about at the very last minute and saved his life), Turkey sought to have Russia safeguard its unstated “sphere of influence” in Syria as an informal quid-pro-quo for Ankara’s Eurasian pivot. Once Turkey accomplished its goal of crushing Kurdish separatism, Russia threw its weight behind this demographic’s weakened community in Northern Iraq in order to reestablish a degree of “balance”, after which Saudi Arabia took note of Moscow’s masterful multifaceted diplomacy and entered into a fast-moving rapprochement with it.

“Israel”, cramped in its occupied corner of the Mideast and watching this unprecedented “balancing” act unfold from a position of utter powerlessness after playing no part in it whatsoever, realized that it could also make strategic use of Russia’s “services” and correctly wagered that Moscow might take premier soft power pride in doing something worthwhile for America’s top ally that Washington itself isn’t even able to do. Accordingly, the Russian-“Israeli” alliance – originally formalized through the establishment of their “deconfliction mechanism” in September 2015 shortly before the commencement of Moscow’s anti-terrorist military intervention in Syria – was activated to full effect and with astounding impact in seeing the Eurasian Great Power passively facilitate the “Jewish State’s” “surgical strikes” against what Tel Aviv alleged were the Islamic Republic’s military sites in Syria, which unavoidably drew the instant attention of American strategists who realized that Russia could be counted on to “contain” Iran for their own reasons, mostly having to do with wanting to make it even more strategically dependent on Moscow than it already is.

Altogether, Russia’s “balancing” act has come full circle in the sense that it was originally enacted to improve Iran’s regional position but is now being used to indirectly counteract it, having filled a necessary niche for all relevant Mideast actors at one time or another in the brief span of only two and a half years thus far. The US is undoubtedly dangling the carrot of a “New Détente” before Russia in leading it to believe that playing a more robust “balancing” role might reap the “reward” of less multidimensional international pressure against it that could in turn enable President Putin to concentrate more fully on fixing his country’s many domestic problems and delivering on the promises that he made to his citizens. It’s unclear whether Russia will go as far as to actively “contain” Iran in the Mideast, but it nevertheless has the strategic capabilities in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan to do so if it ever decided that this gamble would be worth the risk, though in all actuality it’ll probably continue to pursue this outcome indirectly.

Concluding Thoughts

For “right” or for “wrong”, and disregarding “moral”/”ethical” arguments that are irrelevant in determining the behavior of states in the Hyper-Realist “19^th-Century Great Power Chessboard” paradigm through which they’re currently operating, Russia has come to fill the necessary geopolitical niche in becoming the ultimate “balancing” force in the Mideast. President Putin fulfilled his 2002 pledge to “Israel” in proving to the world that his country takes an “even-handed position” in all regional conflicts, with this being seen nowhere more obviously than the tricky “balancing” act that Russia is currently conducting in multi-managing the various rival forces participating in the Syrian proxy war. For the moment at least, Russia is working with “Israel” in order to indirectly mitigate the post-Daesh military influence of Iran and its Hezbollah allies in the Arab Republic, though it has the potential to take this even further into the Iraqi zone of competition by involving Tel Aviv’s historic Kurdish allies as well, though that has yet to happen and remains in the realm of scenario forecasting for now.

In any case, Russia’s present “balancing” efforts vis-à-vis Iran shouldn’t be interpreted as anything maliciously “personal” against the Islamic Republic since this strategy is really motivated by nothing more than geopolitics, which correspondingly means that it could theoretically change in Tehran’s favor provided that it’s once again considered to be the relatively weaker actor in the larger regional arrangement. As difficult as it may be for some observers to accept, Russia is only “balancing” Iran because the latter is so strong right now, but it could flexibly revert to “balancing” “Israel” or any of Iran’s other regional rivals in the future if they end up becoming too powerful by the time that everything is said and done, just like Iran ended up being as a result of Russia’s original “balancing” effort in 2015 which led to the current predicament. That won’t happen right away though just because Iranian influence really is on the rise right now, which is why the reality of Russia “balancing” Iran will probably remain a mainstay of Mideast geopolitics.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

For many in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond, Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is anything but diplomatic.

It risks alienating important partners in the region and disqualifying Washington as a neutral broker to negotiate peace in the region. Already, it has contributed to Palestinian anger, as seen in the current protests on the border between Gaza and Israel, with deadly results.

Yet if history has taught anything, it is that Trump, a self-styled expert dealmaker, may end up getting more than he bargained for.

American diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa, as the representatives of the country in the region, can become lightning rods for anti-US sentiment, sometimes resulting in death and destruction.

And when disaster does strike, the reverberations can be felt worldwide, with American prestige and policy suffering and high-flying political careers dashed.

Tehran 1924: Lynching heralds martial law

Any discussion of US diplomacy and Iran triggers recollections of the 1979 crisis and the Islamic Revolution. Yet US diplomats had fallen victim to events in the region long before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power.

In 1924, Robert Whitney Imbrie, a major in the US army, was the American vice consul in Tehran. A spy-adventurer, his pre-foreign service exploits included successfully bringing a live gorilla from the Congo to New York and volunteering for the French army’s ambulance service during World War One.

Before taking his position at the US embassy in Iran, Imbrie gained a reputation as a hot-headed, fearless and vehemently anti-Bolshevik American agent, once using his walking stick to beat the head of the Soviet secret police department in Petrograd.

Ironically, Imbrie spent much of his working life undermining what he regarded as godless Soviets – but it was religious fanatics who were to determine his fate.

In July of that year he took a carriage to inspect an angry crowd of anti-Bahai protesters in the centre of Tehran. The protesters were gathered around a well that was rumoured to have miraculous healing powers. But now the Bahais, a religious minority, had been accused of poisoning the font.

Imbrie approached, carrying a camera to take photographs for the National Geographic Society and accompanied by his bodyguard, a burly oilfield worker.

But soon he drew attention from the crowd, some of who accused him of being a Bahai.

He was attacked, badly beaten and rushed to a nearby hospital, where the mob then forced their way into the operating theatre and killed him.

Understandably, Imbrie’s death was a source of tension between Tehran and Washington, which demanded justice. Eventually a soldier and two teenagers were found, accused and executed.

The incident also cast doubt on the safety of foreigners in Iran, as US newspapers fretted about security and religious fanaticism in the region.

The New York Times wrote that Iranian authorities should “cease to resort to appeals to the fanatical instincts which permeate not only the mob but also a large proportion of the intelligentsia” and urged Tehran to better protect foreigners in future.

This it did, when Iranian Prime Minister Reza Khan declared marital law, using the crisis to consolidate his power before eventually assuming the Iranian throne.

WAK Fraser, British military attache at the time, noted how “the event gave him … the excuse for declaring marital law and a censorship of the press… Numerous arrests have been made, chiefly political opponents of the prime minister.”

Imbrie was buried with full honours in Arlington National Cemetery. But his death had opened a new chapter in Iranian politics.

Tehran 1979: Hostages and revolution

Fifty-five years later, a second crisis involving American diplomats heralded another significant shift in US-Iranian relations.

In early 1979, the US embassy in Tehran was a long, two-storey redbrick building standing on an avenue in central Tehran, the scene of intense US-Iranian cooperation which neither government expected to be broken.

The US embassy is stormed by Iranian students in Tehran in 1979 (Wiki)

Popularly likened to an American high school in appearance, the mission was known as “Henderson High”, a reference to Loy Henderson, its first US ambassador.

“It was like any other embassy, except the relationship of the United States and Iran was very close,” says Iranian-American historian Shaul Bakhash at George Mason University in Virginia.

“The shah worked closely with the Americans on diplomatic issues, on regional security, on the sharing of intelligence.”

But all that changed in February 1979, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran and son of Reza Khan, was deposed by the Islamic Revolution.

At first Washington managed to uphold an uneasy relationship with the new Iranian government, despite the revolutionary fervour in Tehran.

But when the US granted Reza Shah asylum in May of that year, the hardliners had all the reason they needed to target the embassy.

A group of students stormed the building on 4 November, taking 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage and parading them blindfolded and bound in front of television cameras.

“I was in Iran at the time and I must say the images were electrifying,” Bakhash said. “It was a precise, planned political move that was designed to drive a wedge between the Iranian and American governments.”

The hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, was the death of President Jimmy Carter’s administration. His downfall was fuelled by the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980, which resulted in the deaths of eight US service personnel in the desert southeast of Tehran.

The release of the hostages in January 1981 was regarded as an early victory for Carter’s successor Ronald Reagan, who was sworn in as president just minutes before they were freed.

But the crisis was catastrophic for US-Iranian relations, which have never recovered and are currently at a new low following the rejection by US President Donald Trump of the Iran nuclear deal.

Today the Tehran embassy – popularly known as the “den of espionage” in Iran – is a museum, standing as a monument to a shattered relationship.

Murals and posters criticising American and Israeli “arrogance” cover the walls, while various encryption devices and communication equipment are displayed behind glass screens, proof the Iranians say of Washington’s meddling overseas.

“For the Iranians it showed that the United States could be beaten,” says Bakhash.

Beirut 1983: Bombed into retrenchment

In early 1983, the US embassy in Lebanon was nothing if not picturesque, nestled as it was next to the American University of Beirut’s leafy campus and boasting vistas of the Mediterranean.

Journalist Kai Bird, who lived in the mission as a child, says:

“The Beirut embassy was right on the corniche, a lovely venue. Any Lebanese, any American could just walk right into the embassy, say hello to the marine guards, state their business and get an appointment to see somebody.”

Such openness in 2018 is unimaginable, as a visit to any US mission across the world will prove, in part due to the devastating suicide bombing in Beirut that took 63 lives and changed the American diplomacy forever.

In April 1983, Lebanon was eight years into a bloody civil war, which would eventually leave an estimated 150,000 dead and not end till 1990.

On the 18th of that month, a truck loaded with explosives drove into the US embassy and detonated.

Packing more that 900 kg of explosives, the truck bomb tore apart the embassy’s entire facade, as the explosion shattered windows across west Beirut.

Seventeen Americans, 32 Lebanese employees of the embassy and 14 passersby and visitors were killed, including some of the CIA’s top agents.

It was to be the opening salvo in a new type of warfare with which the United States still battles today. Likely directed by Iranian intelligence, the attack was carried out by Islamic Jihad, a militant group that later grew into Hezbollah.

It was also the first of several attacks on the US in the city. In October 1983, two truck bombs targeted at an international peacekeeping force killed more than 300 people, including 241 US peacekeepers. And in September 1984, 24 people were killed by a car bomb attack on the US embassy annex in east Beirut.

The attacks drew strong rhetoric and promises to see the mission through from then-US President Reagan. But by February 1984 the American military presence in Lebanon began to be drawn down, with the British, French and Italian forces following suit.

Bird, whose book The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames profiles a CIA operative who was killed in the 1983 attack, says the assault on the US embassy was a turning point.

“There’d never been a military-scale attack on a US embassy before and I think it inaugurated a new form of warfare. It changed the whole landscape of US diplomacy – literally the architecture changed.”

In an attempt to avoid a repetition of such a disaster, US embassies and missions worldwide now sit behind layer upon layer of security.

Many invariably resemble fortresses, set in isolated locations and sat behind thick walls, high fences and dozens of cameras. The former US embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square, for example, was constructed during the 1950s. Security increased over the decades, until the area on one side of the residential square was cordoned off. The new embassy, in Vauxhall, opened in December 2017, is on open ground and surrounded by a semi-moat.

But such security has its disadvantages.

“Since 1983, the average diplomat is extremely isolated, and it’s very hard for them to develop friendships and contacts with local journalists,” says Bird

“So that’s had a very real impact on the daily routine and life of the average American diplomat. It’s terrible and it sends completely the wrong message. It sends a message to the average person in Lebanon or Egypt or Nepal or India that you can’t approach America, that we Americans are fearful.”

Benghazi 2012: The lingering legacy

Missions in Tripoli, Kuwait City, Jeddah, Damascus, Sanaa, Istanbul, Cairo and Tunis have all witnessed bombs, assaults or riots. A suicide bombing in Ankara in 2013, which killed one person, is just one of the more recent examples.

But none has had quite the political reverberations in recent years as the attack on the US temporary mission facility in Benghazi on 11 September 2012, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

In 2012, Libya was emerging as splintered and unstable country after the uprising and NATO operation that toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi the previous year.

Benghazi had been the cradle of the revolution against Gaddafi’s regime. Stevens was in the city promoting democracy and American friendship, as the US considered making its presence in the eastern Libyan city permanent. It was to cost him his life.

On the 11^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the militant group Ansar al-Sharia staged an assault on the US mission.

Coming at the compound from all angles, the militants broke through the security using heavy weapons, RPGs and grenades. Once inside, the assailants started a fire, filling the Americans’ hiding place with smoke. Stevens managed to escape the building and was taken to a nearby hospital, but eventually died of smoke inhalation.

The unexpected attack and the diplomat’s death shocked America: according to David Des Roches at the National Defense University, it was also a wakeup call for US policy in Libya.

“It showed that the country had descended into something that was sub-national,” says Des Roches.

“Right now, when people look at Libya, it’s basically divided along the lines the Emperor Constantine divided it at the time of the Roman Empire.”

But Benghazi’s more enduring legacy was, perhaps, seen not in Libya but 8,000km away in the White House.

The attack sparked a lengthy inquiry, and exposed then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of an external email server – a scandal that plagued her 2016 run for the presidency.

“In her memoirs secretary Clinton attributes her defeat to the fact that additional emails were unearthed just five days before the election,” says Des Roches. “Well, we only found out that those emails existed because of the inquiries into Benghazi.

“So if you take Secretary Clinton’s analysis, if not for Benghazi [then] she would be president today.”

Going by the same logic, Donald Trump would not be sat behind a desk in the Oval Office – and Washington would not have decided to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

With Donald Trump’s decision to shred the Iran nuclear agreement, announced last Tuesday, it’s time for the rest of us to start thinking about what a Third Gulf War would mean. The answer, based on the last 16 years of American experience in the Greater Middle East, is that it won’t be pretty.

The New York Times recently reported that U.S. Army Special Forces were secretly aiding the Saudi Arabian military against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. It was only the latest sign preceding President Trump’s Iran announcement that Washington was gearing up for the possibility of another interstate war in the Persian Gulf region. The first two Gulf wars — Operation Desert Storm (the 1990 campaign to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait) and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq — ended in American “victories” that unleashed virulent strains of terrorism like ISIS, uprooted millions, and unsettled the Greater Middle East in disastrous ways. The Third Gulf War — not against Iraq but Iran and its allies — will undoubtedly result in another American “victory” that could loose even more horrific forces of chaos and bloodshed.

Like the first two Gulf wars, the third could involve high-intensity clashes between an array of American forces and those of Iran, another well-armed state. While the United States has been fighting ISIS and other terrorist entities in the Middle East and elsewhere in recent years, such warfare bears little relation to engaging a modern state determined to defend its sovereign territory with professional armed forces that have the will, if not necessarily the wherewithal, to counter major U.S. weapons systems.

A Third Gulf War would distinguish itself from recent Middle Eastern conflicts by the geographic span of the fighting and the number of major actors that might become involved. In all likelihood, the field of battle would stretch from the shores of the Mediterranean, where Lebanon abuts Israel, to the Strait of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf empties into the Indian Ocean. Participants could include, on one side, Iran, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and assorted Shia militias in Iraq and Yemen; and, on the other, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  If the fighting in Syria were to get out of hand, Russian forces could even become involved.

All of these forces have been equipping themselves with massive arrays of modern weaponry in recent years, ensuring that any fighting will be intense, bloody, and horrifically destructive. Iran has been acquiring an assortment of modern weapons from Russia and possesses its own substantial arms industry. It, in turn, has been supplying the Assad regime with modern arms and is suspected of shipping an array of missiles and other munitions to Hezbollah. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have long been major recipients of tens of billions of dollars of sophisticated American weaponry and President Trump has promised to supply them with so much more.

This means that, once ignited, a Third Gulf War could quickly escalate and would undoubtedly generate large numbers of civilian and military casualties, and new flows of refugees. The United States and its allies would try to quickly cripple Iran’s war-making capabilities, a task that would require multiple waves of air and missile strikes, some surely directed at facilities in densely populated areas. Iran and its allies would seek to respond by attacking high-value targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia, including cities and oil facilities. Iran’s Shia allies in Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere could be expected to launch attacks of their own on the U.S.-led alliance. Where all this would lead, once such fighting began, is of course impossible to predict, but the history of the twenty-first century suggests that, whatever happens, it won’t follow the carefully laid plans of commanding generals (or their civilian overseers) and won’t end either expectably or well.

Precisely what kind of incident or series of events would ignite a war of this sort is similarly unpredictable.  Nonetheless, it seems obvious that the world is moving ever closer to a moment when the right (or perhaps the better word is wrong) spark could set off a chain of events leading to full-scale hostilities in the Middle East in the wake of President Trump’s recent rejection of the nuclear deal. It’s possible, for instance, to imagine a clash between Israeli and Iranian military contingents in Syria sparking such a conflict. The Iranians, it is claimed, have set up bases there both to support the Assad regime and to funnel arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon. On May 10th, Israeli jets struck several such sites, following a missile barrage on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights said to have been launched by Iranian soldiers in Syria. More Israeli strikes certainly lie in our future as Iran presses its drive to establish and control a so-called land bridge through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Another possible spark could involve collisions or other incidents between American and Iranian naval vessels in the Persian Gulf, where the two navies frequently approach each other in an aggressive manner. Whatever the nature of the initial clash, rapid escalation to full-scale hostilities could occur with very little warning.

All of this begs a question: Why are the United States and its allies in the region moving ever closer to another major war in the Persian Gulf? Why now?

The Geopolitical Impulse

The first two Gulf Wars were driven, to a large extent, by the geopolitics of oil. After World War II, as the United States became increasingly dependent on imported sources of petroleum, it drew ever closer to Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading oil producer. Under the Carter Doctrine of January 1980, the U.S. pledged for the first time to use force, if necessary, to prevent any interruption in the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to this country and its allies. Ronald Reagan, the first president to implement that doctrine, authorized the “reflagging” of Saudi and Kuwaiti oil tankers with the stars and stripes during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War that began in 1980 and their protection by the U.S. Navy. When Iranian gunboats menaced such tankers, American vessels drove them off in incidents that represented the first actual military clashes between the U.S. and Iran. At the time, President Reagan put the matter in no uncertain terms:

“The use of the sea lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians.”

Oil geopolitics also figured prominently in the U.S. decision to intervene in the First Gulf War. When Iraqi forces occupied Kuwait in August 1990 and appeared poised to invade Saudi Arabia, President George H.W. Bush announced that the U.S. would send forces to defend the kingdom and so played out the Carter Doctrine in real time.

“Our country now imports nearly half the oil it consumes and could face a major threat to its economic independence,” he declared, adding that “the sovereign independence of Saudi Arabia is of vital interest to the United States.”

Although the oil dimension of U.S. strategy was less obvious in President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, it was still there. Members of his inner circle, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the safety of Persian Gulf oil lanes and needed to be eliminated. Others in the administration were eager to pursue the prospect of privatizing Iraq’s state-owned oil fields and turning them over to American oil companies (a notion that evidently stuck in Donald Trump’s mind, as he repeatedly asserted during the 2016 election campaign that “we should have kept the oil”).

Today, oil has receded, if not entirely disappeared, as a major factor in Persian Gulf geopolitics, while other issues have moved to the fore. Of greatest significance in animating the current military standoff is an escalating struggle for regional dominance between Iran and Saudi Arabia (with a nuclear-armed Israel lurking in the wings). Both countries view themselves as the hub of a network of like-minded states and societies — Iran as the leader of the region’s Shia populations, Saudi Arabia of its Sunnis — and both resent any gains by the other. To complicate matters, President Trump, clearly harboring deep antipathy toward the Iranians, has chosen to side with the Saudis big league (as he might say), while Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, fearing Iranian advances in the region, has opted to weigh in on the Saudi side of the equation in a major way as well. The result, as suggested by military historian Andrew Bacevich, is the “inauguration of a Saudi-American-Israeli axis” and a “major realignment of U.S. strategic relationships.”

Several key factors explain this transition from an oil-centric strategy emphasizing military power to a more conventional struggle among regional rivals that has already deeply embroiled the planet’s last superpower. To begin with, America’s reliance on imported oil has diminished rapidly in recent years, thanks to an oil drilling revolution in the U.S. that has allowed the massive exploitation of domestic shale reserves through the process of fracking. As a result, access to Persian Gulf supplies matters far less in Washington than it did in previous decades. In 2001, according to oil giant BP, the United States relied on imports for 61% of its net oil consumption; by 2016, that share had dropped to 37% and was still falling — and yet the U.S. remains deeply involved in the region as a decade and a half of unending war, counterinsurgency, drone strikes, and other kinds of strife sadly indicate.

By invading and occupying Iraq in 2003, Washington also eliminated a major bulwark of Sunni power, a country led by Saddam Hussein who, two decades earlier, had been siding with the U.S. in opposing Iran. That invasion, ironically enough, had the effect of expanding Shiite influence and making Iran the major — possibly the only — winner in the years of war that followed. Some Western analysts believe that the greatest tragedy of the invasion, from a geopolitical point of view, was the ascension of Shiite politicians with close ties to Tehran in post-Hussein Iraq. Although that country’s current leaders appear intent on pursuing a path of their own in the post-ISIS moment, many powerful Iraqi Shiite militias — including some that played key roles in driving Islamic State militants out of Mosul and other major cities — retain close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

While disasters in themselves, the wars in Syria and Yemen have only added additional complexity to the geopolitical chessboard on which Washington found itself after that invasion and from which it has never extricated itself. In Syria, Iran has chosen to ally with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to preserve the brutal Assad regime, providing it with arms, funds, and an unknown number of advisers from the Revolutionary Guards. Hezbollah, a Shiite political group in Lebanon with a significant military wing, has sent large numbers of its own fighters to Syria to help Assad’s forces. In Yemen, the Iranians are believed to be providing arms and missile technology to the Houthis, a homegrown Shiite rebel group that now controls the northern half of the country, including the capital, Sana’a.

The Saudis, in turn, have been playing an ever more active role in bolstering their military power and protecting embattled Sunni communities throughout the region. Seeking to resist and reverse what they view as Iranian advances, they have helped arm militias of an extreme sort and evidently even al-Qaeda-associated groups under attack from Iranian-backed Shiite forces in Iraq and Syria. In 2015, in the case of Yemen, they organized a coalition of Sunni Arab states to crush the Houthi rebels in a brutal war that has included a blockade of the country, helping to produce mass famine and a relentless American-backed air campaign, which often hits civilian targets including markets, schools, and weddings. This combination has helped produce an estimated 10,000 civilian deaths and a singular humanitarian crisis in that already impoverished country.

In response to these developments, the Obama administration sought to calm the situation by negotiating a nuclear deal with the Iranians and by holding out the promise of increased economic ties with the West in return for reduced assertiveness outside its borders. Such a strategy never, however, won the support of Israel or Saudi Arabia. And in the Obama years, Washington continued to support both of those countries in a major way, including supplying massive amounts of military equipment, refueling Saudi planes in midair so they could strike deeper into Yemen, and providing the Saudis with targeting intelligence for their disastrous war.

The Anti-Iranian Triumvirate

All of these regional developments, in play before Donald Trump was elected, have only gained added momentum since then, thanks in no small degree to the pivotal personalities involved.

The first of them, of course, is President Trump. Throughout his election campaign, he regularly denounced the nuclear deal that Iran, the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union all signed onto in July 2015. Officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement forced Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program in return for the lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions. It was a plan that Iran scrupulously adhered to. Although President Obama, many senior American policymakers, and most European leaders had argued that the JCPOA — whatever its flaws — provided a valuable constraint on Iran’s nuclear (and so other) ambitions, Trump consistently denounced it as a “terrible deal” because it failed to eliminate every last vestige of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure or ban that country’s missile program.

“This deal was a disaster,” he told David Sanger of the New York Times in March 2016.

While Trump, who has filled his administration with Iranophobes, including his new secretary of state and new national security adviser, seems to harbor a primeval animosity toward the Iranians, perhaps because they don’t treat him with the adoration he feels he deserves, he has a soft spot for the Saudi royals, who do. In May 2017, on his first trip abroad as president, he traveled to Riyadh, where he performed a sword dance with Saudi princes and immersed himself in the sort of ostentatious displays of wealth only oil potentates can provide.

While in Riyadh, he conferred at length with then-Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 31-year-old son of King Salman and a key architect of Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical contest with the Iranians. Prince Mohammed, who serves as the Saudi defense minister and was named crown prince in June 2017, is the prime mover behind the kingdom’s (so far unsuccessful) drive to crush the Houthi rebels in Yemen and is known to harbor fierce anti-Iranian views.

At an earlier White House luncheon in March 2017, bin Salman, or MBS as he’s sometimes known, and President Trump seemed to reach an implicit agreement on a common strategy for branding Iran a regional threat, tearing up the nuclear agreement, and so setting the stage for an eventual war to vanquish that country or at least to fell the regime that runs it. While in Riyadh, President Trump told a conference of Sunni Arab leaders that, “from Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region. It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death of America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this very room.”

While no doubt gratifying to the Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and other Sunni rulers listening, those words echoed the views of the third key player in the strategic triumvirate that may soon drive the region into all-out war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also known as “Bibi.” For years, he has railed against Iranian ambitions in the region and threatened military action against any Iranian move that would, as he saw it, impinge on Israeli security. Now, in Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince, he has the allies of his dreams. In the Obama years, Netanyahu was a fierce opponent of the Iranian nuclear deal and used a rare appearance before a joint session of Congress in March 2015 to denounce it in no uncertain terms. He has never — right up to the days before Trump withdrew from the accord — stopped working to persuade the president that the agreement should be junked and Iran targeted.

In that 2015 speech to Congress, Netanyahu laid out a vision of Iran as a systemic danger that would later be appropriated by Trump and his Saudi confederates in Riyadh.

“Iran’s regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the entire world,” he asserted in a typically hyperbolic statement. “Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Backed by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Backed by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world’s oil supply.”

Now, Netanyahu is playing a major role in driving the already crippled region into a war that could further destroy it, produce yet more terror groups (and terrorized civilians), and create havoc on a potentially global scale, given that both Russia and China back the Iranians.

Girding for War

Pay attention to the words of Netanyahu in Washington and Donald Trump in Riyadh. Think of them not as political rhetoric, but as prophesies of a grim kind. You’re going to be hearing a lot more such prophesies in the months ahead as the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia move closer to war with Iran and its allies. While ideology and religion will play a part in what follows, the underlying impetus is a geopolitical struggle for control of the greater Persian Gulf region, with all its riches, between two sets of countries, each determined to prevail.

No one can say with certainty when, or even if, these powerful forces will produce a devastating new war or set of wars in the Middle East. Other considerations — an unexpected flare-up on the Korean Peninsula if President Trump’s talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un end in failure, a fresh crisis with Russia, a global economic meltdown — could turn attention elsewhere, lessening the importance of the geopolitical contest in the Persian Gulf. New leadership in any of the key countries could similarly lead to a change of course. Netanyahu, for example, is now at risk of losing power because of an ongoing Israeli police investigation into allegedly corrupt acts of his, and Trump, well, who can say? Without such a development or developments, however, the way to war, which will surely prove to be the road to hell, seems open with a Third Gulf War looming on humanity’s horizon.

*

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza—where trapped Palestinians for the past seven weeks have held nonviolent protests along the border fence with Israel, resulting in more than 50 killed and 700 wounded by Israeli troops—is one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. Yet the horror that is Gaza, where 2 million people live under an Israeli siege without adequate food, housing, work, water and electricity, where the Israeli military routinely uses indiscriminate and disproportionate violence to wound and murder, and where almost no one can escape, is rarely documented. Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen’s powerful new film, “Killing Gaza,” offers an unflinching and moving portrait of a people largely abandoned by the outside world, struggling to endure.

“Killing Gaza” will be released Tuesday, to coincide with what Palestinians call Nakba Day—“nakba” means catastrophe in Arabic—commemorating the 70th anniversary of the forced removal of some 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by the Haganah, Jewish paramilitary forces, from their homes in modern-day Israel. The release of the documentary also coincides with the Trump administration’s opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Starting Tuesday, May 15, “Killing Gaza” can be seen at Vimeo On Demand.

Because of Nakba Day and the anger over the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem, this week is expected to be one of the bloodiest of the seven-week-long protest that Palestinians call the “Great Return March.” “Killing Gaza” illustrates why Palestinians, with little left to lose, are rising up by the thousands and risking their lives to return to their ancestral homes—70 percent of those in Gaza are refugees or the descendants of refugees—and be treated like human beings.

Cohen and Blumenthal, who is the author of the book “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,” one of the best accounts of modern Israel, began filming the documentary Aug. 15, 2014. Palestinian militias, armed with little more than light weapons, had just faced Israeli tanks, artillery, fighter jets, infantry units and missiles in a 51-day Israeli assault that left 2,314 Palestinians dead and 17,125 injured. Some 500,000 Palestinians were displaced and about 100,000 homes were destroyed. The 2014 assault, perhaps better described as a massacre, was one of eight massacres that Israel has carried out since 2004 against the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, over half of whom are children. Israel, which refers to these periodic military assaults as “mowing the lawn,” seeks to make existence in Gaza so difficult that mere survival consumes most of the average Palestinian’s time, resources and energy.

The film begins in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, reduced to mounds of rubble by the Israelis. The wanton destruction of whole neighborhoods was, as documented by the film, accompanied by the shooting of unarmed civilians by Israeli snipers and other soldiers of that nation.

“Much of the destruction took place in the course of a few hours on July 23,” Blumenthal, who narrates the film, says as destroyed buildings appear on the screen, block after block. “The invading Israeli forces found themselves under ferocious fire from local resistance forces, enduring unexpectedly high casualties. As the Israeli infantry fled in full retreat, they called in an artillery and air assault, killing at least 120 Palestinian civilians and obliterated thousands of homes.”

The film includes a brief clip of young Israelis in Tel Aviv celebrating the assault on Gaza, a reminder that toxic racism and militarism infect Israeli society.

“Die! Die! Bye!” laughing teenage girls shout at the celebration in Tel Aviv. “Bye, Palestine!”

“Fucking Arabs! Fuck Muhammad!” a young man yells.

“Gaza is a graveyard! Gaza is a graveyard! Ole, ole, ole, ole,” the crowd in Tel Aviv sings as it dances in jubilation. “There is no school tomorrow! There are no children left in Gaza!”

Terrified Palestinian families huddled inside their homes during the relentless shelling. Those who tried to escape in the face of the advancing Israelis often were gunned down with their hands in the air, and the bodies were left to rot in the scorching heat for days.

“I was inside when they started bulldozing my house,” Nasser Shamaly, a Shuja’iyya resident, says in the film. “They took down the wall and started shooting into the house. So I put my hands on my head and surrendered myself to the officer. This wasn’t just any soldier. He was the officer of the group! He didn’t say a word. He just shot me. I fell down and started crawling to get away from them.”

Shamaly, who hid wounded in his house for four days, was fortunate. His 23-year-old cousin, Salem Shamaly, who led a group of volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement to dig bodies out of the ruins in Shuja’iyya, was not.

“On the offensive’s 14th day, July 20th, 2014, four other activists and I went to the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, which Israel had bombed for days, to accompany rescue teams in the rubble during the two-hour cease-fire,” Joe Catron, one of the members of the International Solidarity Movement rescue team, says in the film. “A young Palestinian, whose name we later learned was Salem Shamaly, asked us to go with him to his house, where he hoped to find his family. It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time we thought the cease-fire would make it safe.”

“As we crossed an alley with a clear line of sight to Israeli positions by the separation barrier, a gunshot from their direction struck the ground between us. We scattered into two groups, sheltered behind buildings on either side. After a pause, Salem stepped into the alley, hoping to lead his group to our side, but was struck by another bullet. He fell to the ground.”

Trailer of Killing Gaza from Dan Cohen on Vimeo.

The film shows Shamaly wounded on the ground, barely able to move and crying out in pain.

“As he lay on his back, two more rounds hit him,” Catron continued. “He stopped moving. The gunfire kept us from reaching him. The Israeli artillery began flying overhead and striking the buildings behind us. We were forced to retreat, leaving him. We only learned his name two days later, when his mother, father, sister and cousin recognized him in a video I had tweeted.”

“We couldn’t retrieve his body for seven days,” Um Salem, the mother, says in the film. “His body was in the sun for seven days.”

Waseem Shamaly, Salem’s brother, who appears to be about 8 years old, is shown with his eyes swollen from crying.

“He would take care of us, like our father,” the boy says. “Even at night, he would get us whatever we wanted. He used to buy us everything. Whatever we wished for, he would buy it. There was nothing he wouldn’t buy for us. He used to take us to hang out. He’d take us out with him just to kill our boredom a little.”

Waseem wipes his eyes.

“Now he is gone,” he continues weakly. “There is nobody to take us out and buy us treats.”

“This boy hasn’t been able to handle losing his brother,” says the father, Khalil Shamaly. “He couldn’t handle the news, seeing the way his brother died. He is in shock. It gets to the point where he goes lifeless. He collapses. When I pick him up he tells me his dying wishes. His dying wishes! As if he is leaving us. He is so young. But he gives us his dying wishes. If it weren’t for God’s mercy, I would have lost him too.”

“Destroyed cities and shattered homes can be rebuilt if the resources are there,” Blumenthal says. “But what about the survivors? How can they heal the scars imposed on their psyches? The youth of Gaza has grown up through three wars, each more devastating than the last. At least 90 percent of adolescents in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. With mental health services pushed to the brink, these unseen scars may never heal.”

The film turns to the town of Khuza’a, a farming community with 20,000 people, which was systematically blown up by Israel after three Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting with the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas government in Gaza. The film shows a video from inside an Israeli tank as soldiers wait for explosives to bring down buildings in the town, including the mosque. When the explosions occur, the Israeli soldiers cheer and shout, “Long live the state of Israel!”

“We were shocked to see so many bodies in the streets,” Ahmed Awwad, a volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent, says in the film about Khuza’a. “Many were decomposing. We wanted to deal with it, but we didn’t know how. Once, when the Israelis let us in with our ambulance, we found about 10 corpses from different areas, scattered. As you approached a body, of course there is the odor, and there are worms. Hold it like this, and flesh comes off. Lift an arm and it pulls right off. We didn’t know what to do. There was nothing we could do. We had to stop. It would have been easier just to bury them. But we figured families would want the bodies. Bulldozers eventually loaded the bodies in trucks. We couldn’t pick up these bodies on our own. Most were executions, like an old lady at her front door. There was a young man, another man, and a little kid. The scenes, to be honest, were very ugly.”

The Rjeila family, including 16-year-old Ghadeer, who was physically disabled, attempts to escape the shelling. As a brother frantically pushes Ghadeer in her wheelchair (the scene, like several others in the film, is reconstructed through animation), the Israelis open fire. The brother is wounded. Ghadeer is killed.

The camera pans slowly through demolished houses containing blackened human remains. Walls and floors are smeared with blood.

Ahmed Awwad, a Palestinian Red Crescent volunteer, describes what happened after he and other volunteers finally receive permission from Israeli forces to retrieve bodies from Khuza’a. They find a man tied to a tree and shot in both legs. One of the volunteers, Mohammed al-Abadla, gets out of a vehicle and approaches the tree. When he switches on his flashlight, which the Israelis had instructed him to do, he is shot in heart and killed.

“For 51 days, Israel bombarded Gaza with the full might of its artillery,” Blumenthal says. “According to the Israeli military’s estimates, 23,410 artillery shells and 2.9 million bullets were fired into Gaza during the war.”

That’s one and a half bullets for every man, woman and child in the Gaza Strip.

There is footage of Israeli soldiers in an artillery unit writing messages, including “Happy Birthday to Me,” on shells being lobbed into Gaza. The soldiers laugh and eat sushi as they pound Palestinian neighborhoods with explosives.

Rafah is a city in Gaza on the border of Egypt. The film makes it clear that Egypt, through its sealing of Gaza’s southern border, is complicit in the blockade. Rafah was one of the first cities targeted by the Israelis. When Israeli troops took over buildings, they also kidnapped Palestinians and used them as human shields there and elsewhere, forcing them to stand at windows as the soldiers fired from behind.

“They blindfolded and handcuffed me and took me inside,” Mahmoud Abu Said says in the film. “They told me to come with them and put a M16 to my back. There were maybe six of them. They dropped their equipment and began searching. They started hitting me against the wall. And then sicced their dogs on me while I was handcuffed.”

“They put me here,” he says, standing in front of a window, “and stood behind me. Israeli soldiers placed me here while they stood behind me shooting. They took me to that window and that window too. Then they hit me against the wall and pushed me down. They put a mattress here,” he says, showing holes punched through the wall at floor level, “and sat down to shoot through these holes.”

“You see that car?” asks Suleiman Zghreibv, referring to a hunk of twisted metal that lies next to the ruins of his house. “He drove it,” he says of his 22-year-old son, who was executed by the Israelis. “This is the car we used to make our living. It wasn’t for personal use. It was a taxi. I can’t describe the suffering. What can I say? Words can’t express the pain. We have suffered and resisted for so long. We’ve been suffering our whole lives. We’ve suffered for the past 60 years because of Israel. War after war after war. Bombing after bombing after bombing. You build a house. They destroy it. You raise a child. They kill him. Whatever they do—the United States, Israel, the whole world, we’ll keep resisting until the last one of us dies.”

Israel intentionally targeted power plants, schools, medical clinics, apartment complexes, whole villages. Robert Piper, the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities, said in 2017 that Gaza had “a long time ago” passed the “unlivability threshold.” Youth unemployment is at 60 percent. Suicide is epidemic. Traditional social structures and mores are fracturing, with divorce rising from 2 percent to 40 percent and girls and women increasingly being prostituted, something once seen only rarely in Gaza. Seventy percent of the 2 million Gazans survive on humanitarian aid packages of sugar, rice, milk and cooking oil. The U.N. estimates that 97 percent of Gaza’s water is contaminated. Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s sewage treatment plant means raw sewage is pumped into the sea, contaminating the beach, one of the very few respites for a trapped population. The Israelis did not even spare Gaza’s little zoo, slaughtering some 45 animals in the 2014 assault.

“I liked the monkeys best,” says a forlorn Ali Qasem, who worked at the zoo. “We laughed with them the most. We would laugh and play with them. They would take food right from your hand. They’d respond the most. There is a heavy feeling of sorrow. I used to spend 18 hours a day here. I was here all the time. I’d go home for five or six hours, then come back. I worked here as a volunteer. A few volunteers built this place little by little. We were excited to finish and invite visitors for free. To me, it was like humans were killed. It’s not OK because they were animals. It’s as if they were human beings, people we know. We used to bring them food from our homes.”

The film shows Palestinians, who have received little reconstruction aid despite pledges by international donors, camping out amid the ruins of homes, gathered around small fires for heat and light. Moeen Abu Kheysi, 54, gives a tour of the smashed house he had spent his life constructing for his family. He stops when he comes upon his 3-month-old grandson, Wadie. His face lights up in delight.

“Months passed and the cold rains of winter gave way to baking heat of spring,” Blumenthal says. “In Shuja’iyya, the Abu Kheysi family was still living in remnants of their home, but without their newest member. Born during the war, little Wadie did not make it through the harsh winter.”

“He was born during the war and he died during the war, well after the war,” a female member of the family explains. “He lived in a room without a wall. We covered the wall with tin sheets. We moved, but then we got kicked out. We couldn’t make rent. [We] had to come back, cover the wall and live here. Then the baby froze to death. It was very cold.”

“One day it suddenly became very cold,” Wadie’s mother says. “Wadie woke up at 9 in the morning. I started playing with him, gave him a bottle. Suddenly, he was shivering from the cold. I tried to warm him up but it wasn’t working.”

She begins to weep.

“There wasn’t even time to get to the hospital,” she says. “He stopped breathing before they left the house. His heart stopped beating instantly. His father started running in the street with him. He fainted when they yelled, “The baby is dead!” The baby’s uncle took over and carried him. He looked everywhere for a taxi but couldn’t find one. We couldn’t give him first aid ourselves. They finally found a car. They did all they could at the hospital, but he never woke up. He was dead. What can I say? We remember him all the time. I can’t get him off my mind. It’s as if I lost a piece of my heart. His sisters want to sleep in his cradle and wear his clothes. This one always asks to wear her brother’s clothes. We can’t forget him.”

“Grandpa!” Wadie’s small sister cries out. “Mama is crying again.”

*

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 11 books, including the New York Times best-seller “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), which he co-authored with the cartoonist Joe Sacco.

Featured image is from Mr. Fish/Truthdig.

Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.

Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

*     *     *

Israel at Seventy: Symbol of War, Racism, Reaction

By Joyce Chediac, May 14, 2018

The settler state of Israel turns 70 on May 14. In imperialist capitals, especially Israel and the U.S., this state built on the bones of the Palestinian people will be praised and celebrated. The U.S. will open its embassy in Jerusalem the same day.

70th Anniversary of Apartheid Israel: History of Violent Invasion. Chronology of Palestinian Genocide

By Gideon Polya, May 12, 2018

14 May 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence by Zionist terrorist David Ben Gurion, the foundation of an invasion-,   violence-, racism- , genocide- and theft-based Apartheid Israel, and commencement of the large-scale, Rohingya Genocide-scale  ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians from Palestine.

Defending Palestinian Rights: The Gaza Slaughter of Palestinians Supported by the U.S. Congress and Major Jewish American Organizations

By Prof. James Petras, April 08, 2018

Because of the US veto power, the United Nations Security Council refused to condemn or even discuss Israel’s wanton slaughter in Gaza. The Secretary General of the UN meekly mentioned ‘violence’ and the need for an ‘investigation’ into the killings. The United States Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, prevented any investigation into the ongoing Israeli war crimes. She characterized Israel’s mass murder of unarmed Palestinians as ‘defensive action against terrorists’.

Jewish Identity Politics and the Struggle to Liberate Palestine

By Rima Najjar, January 03, 2018

Zionism is not run-of-the-mill settler-colonialism. Had this been the case, Palestine would by now have liberated itself, as so many colonial states already have (Interestingly, as of 2012, 16 territories are deemed still to be under colonial rule and are labeled by the United Nations as “non-self-governing territories  — NSGTs) — the Palestinian territory is not on the list). It is certainly not for lack of courage, steadfastness or resolve that Palestinians continue to have a boot over their necks almost 70 years after the Nakba.

Palestine: Apartheid, Stolen Lives and Land, History Erased, United Nations Deaf Mute

By Felicity Arbuthnot, December 20, 2017

So much for the “rights” of the Palestinians. Between November 1947 and November 1948 five hundred and thirty one Palestinian towns and villages had been “ethnically cleansed.” (1) By 1952 it was six hundred and fifteen. (2) 

This “Nakba” (“catastrophe”) seventy years after Israel’s final founding, is ongoing.

Balfour Declaration: Britain Broke Its Feeble Promise to the Palestinians

By Jonathan Cook, November 02, 2017

One can understand the reluctance of Israelis today to concede the pivotal role provided by Britain. The Balfour Declaration is an embarrassing reminder that a Jewish state was the fruit of a transparently colonial project.

Propaganda 101: This fine illustration by Edward Kinsella accompanies a classic demonization piece in the current Wall Street Journal.

This sort of political marketing is designed to create a public enemy of the state as a pretext to a military action against a foreign power.

The illustration is a parody of a Hitler campaign poster and is obviously meant to compare Putin to the literal poster boy of evil. The irony is that this article itself is using Nazi tactics to stir public emotions. 

Anthony Freda is a frequent contributor to Global Research

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All images in this article are from the author.

Dear Canada: Your government supports al Qaeda and al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. It supports all of the terrorists in Syria.

Some of these terrorists are coming home to Canada. As a Canadian you can do little about this since you have supported these terrorists yourselves with your silence and your support for your government’s terrorist-supporting foreign policy.

.

.

According to Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi, and confirmed by “multiple intelligence agencies”, Abu Huzaifa “al-Kanadi” has been a member of ISIS in Syria. Reportedly, he fought for ISIS in Manbj Syria.

Now, he has returned home to Canada, and Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale refuses to provide details on his status.[1]

None of this is surprising to informed Canadians.  The case of Bherlin Gildo in the UK foretold that this would happen. Gildo’s terror trial collapsed in the U.K. when, as Stuart Hooper reports,

“the suspect’s defence argued that British intelligence service MI6 was supporting the same groups that the suspect was supposedly fighting for, including the not-so-moderate ‘Free Syrian Army’ by providing them with both weapons and ‘non-lethal aid.’ ”[2]

When any government, including Canada’s, supports terrorists, it is unreasonable to expect that such terrorists, on returning home,will be subject to public criminal trials, since such trials would necessarily reveal the government’s criminality.

*

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

[1] John Lancaster, Kathleen Harris. “Conservatives grill Goodale about Canadian ISIS fighter shortly before he recants murder claim|Former jihadi retracts his detailed account of killings in New York Times podcast.” CBC News. 11 May, 2018. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/isis-canadian-fighter-execution-1.4658607) Accessed 13 May, 2018.

[2] Stuart J. Hooper, “Terror Trial Collapses: Suspect Accused of Supporting Syria Fighting Groups Backed by British Intelligence MI6.” Global Research, 6 June, 2015. 21^st Century Wire 4 June, 2015. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/terror-trial-collapses-suspect-accused-of-supporting-syria-fighting-groups-backed-by-british-intelligence-mi6/5453694) Accessed 13 May, 2018.

---

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

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Featured image: May 12 vigil in South Africa supporting the Great March of Return in Gaza. (Source: BDS South Africa)

The settler state of Israel turns 70 on May 14. In imperialist capitals, especially Israel and the U.S., this state built on the bones of the Palestinian people will be praised and celebrated. The U.S. will open its embassy in Jerusalem the same day.

It is a state built on lies.

The people of the world have a different assessment of Israel at 70. It is a pariah state and international outlaw; a dog of war armed and unleashed by the Pentagon; a symbol of war, of racism and apartheid, and of reaction. It is a danger to all people of the region, including Israelis.

The continued struggle of the Palestinian people is most responsible for shattering the colonizer’s illusions.

A dog of war unleashed by the U.S.

More than anything, Israel is an agent of war, since its formation.

Just a day after the Trump administration exited the Nuclear Accord with Iran, in a coordinated move, Israel violated the sovereign borders of Syria and bombed what it called “Iranian positions” there. The provocative nature of these attacks, and bombings days later, were to draw Syria and its allies into an escalating conflict. Israel’s internal name for its strikes—“Chess.”

Israel has attacked all bordering countries, some, like Lebanon, repeatedly and for decades. It occupied or annexed all of historic Palestine and territory from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. This not because it had to do so to survive. It is because imperialism backed the formation of Israel on stolen Palestinian land, not as a homeland for Jewish people but as an agent of war against Arab independence. The Holocaust survivors who populated it were meant to fight and die for imperialism. To this end, the U.S. has given this country of 8.5 million people $254 billions (2016 dollars) since its formation. Most of this is in sophisticated offensive weapons and spy equipment. Israel has been constantly at war with its neighbors for the benefit of U.S. imperialism.

War ‘games’ with US prepare for more aggression

More aggression appears to be in the works. In mid-March, the U.S. and Israel participated in joint training war games called “Juniper Cobra.” Thousands of U.S. and Israeli soldiers prepared for the simultaneous launch of thousands of rockets against Israel from Lebanon, Syria, Iran and even Gaza. U.S. Army’s European Command said that if there is a need for them U.S. soldiers would arrive in Israel within two or three days.”

In September, Israel  simulated an invasion of Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. This was Israel’s largest military drill in 20 years, involving all branches of the Israeli military.

The secret war on Syria

For six years, Israel has waged a secret war on Syria. In August, Israeli Air Force Commander Maj. General Amir Eshel said Israel had launched nearly 100 strikes in Syria since 2012.  Many of these gave air cover for Al Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate fighting to dismember Syria. Israel also gives them medical support. The Israeli military acknowledges giving medical treatment to 1,000 al Nusra fighters since 2011.

An apartheid state

Israel has issued murderous assaults twice on Gaza and blockaded it for 11 years. It it steadily annexing the West Bank, and regularly arrests and jails activists for indeterminate periods. Israel has declared Israel itself to be an exclusively Jewish state, when 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinian. It prevents Palestinian refugees from returning to their lands and homes simply because they are not Jewish. Members of the African National Congress have described what they saw in occupied Palestine as worse than South African apartheid.

Racism is not only directed against Palestinians. The Israeli government is taking steps to expel to Africa, tens of thousands of migrants, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan. Known as Israel’s “Dreamers,” many are children who have known no other home and grew up speaking Hebrew.

No democracy, no Jewish ‘homeland’

Israel claims to be a democracy and a Jewish homeland. This “democracy” published in  January a list of 20 human rights organizations whose members would be banned from the country. This included Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that support some form of Palestinian rights.

A state that claims to be a refuge from anti-Semitism has twisted the definition of the term to include those who oppose the policies of the Netanyahu regime, many of them war crimes. It has launched an international campaign to get other governments to accept this patently false definition and make it legally binding. This is aimed at the movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel, which calls for an end to the occupation of Palestine, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees to their homes.

In the U.S., both Democratic and Republican legislatures have happily complied. Such a bill is currently pending before the U.S. Congress, and 23 states have pass laws outlawing BDS as “anti-Semitic.”

There are other indications of the cynicism and opportunism of the Israeli government. Of all the segments within the U.S. elite, the Netanyahu regime is most closely aligned with the religious ultra-right and the neo-cons, known for their virulent racism and anti-Semitism,

Class character of Israeli state exposed

It is also aligned with the most reactionary, repressive and anti-democratic forces in the Arab world—the Saudi Arabian regime and the Gulf states.

Steadfastness and struggle become objective factors

After the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, said,

“The old will die and the young will forget.”

This was an illusion.

Seventy years after the indigenous population was driven from Palestinian and Israel proclaimed in its place, the Palestinian struggle for human and national rights has been passed down for three generations. It is viable, vibrant and growing.

The justice of the Palestinian cause is clearer than ever on the international arena. The steadfastness of the Palestinian people, seen now in the “Great March of Return” on the Gaza border, inspires the whole world.

The Syrian people, too, after seven years of war, remain determined to defend their country and way of life. After the U.S. bombed Syria on April 13, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in defiance.

The U.S. and Israel may be planning more attacks, but that does not mean they will have the final say. The determination and resilience of the oppressed make their struggle an objective force. And it will not be defeated by missiles, snipers or bombs.

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This article was originally published on Liberation News.

Adolf Hitler is indeed one of the most hated individuals in world history, whose genocidal policies were responsible for killing tens of millions of people. Yet there is a little known irony regarding the Fascist dictator. As the atomic scientists who set the Doomsday Clock have long recognized, the greatest threat facing the human species is nuclear weapons, even more so than unchecked climate change.

In the post-World War II period, there has been a list of near-fatal accidents and provocative incidents with nuclear weapons – as US General Lee Butler noted in 1999, a “combination of skill, luck and divine intervention” have repeatedly come to the earth’s rescue. During the Second World War, had Hitler achieved his step-by-step goals of complete global domination, nuclear weapons may not have come into existence, or continued their unremitting development.

Providing much of the insights is Albert Speer (image on the right), who was at the core of Hitler’s inner circle from 1934 until war’s end. He was Hitler’s most prized architect and known as his “only true friend”, as Speer himself recognized. On more than one occasion, the dictator concluded telephone conversations with him by saying “Heil Speer”, in response to Speer’s “Heil Hitler”. Speer was appointed as armaments minister by Hitler in person during early February 1942.

The veteran English author and academic, John Cornwell, wrote that Speer had outlined Hitler’s belief atomic research was a “spawn of Jewish pseudo-science”. During a conference on 23 June 1942, while the war continued to rage across the Eastern Front, Speer personally discussed the atomic bomb with Hitler. His new war minister was left discouraged, however. Speer felt afterwards that Hitler “was unable to grasp the revolutionary nature of nuclear physics”.

Though the Nazi leader was highly interested in conventional weapons, and quick to learn how equipment worked, Speer wrote that he was “anti-modern in decisions on armaments”. Hitler was against jet propulsion, as he thought its high speeds would thwart traditional aerial combat. Hitler even opposed the machine gun because he felt “it made soldiers cowardly and made close combat impossible”. One can imagine Hitler’s views regarding the methods behind today’s drone warfare.

His perverted racial theories were clearly an obstacle to the Nazis developing a nuclear bomb. Months after Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933, hundreds of venerable Jewish physicists, chemists and biologists were dismissed from their posts in the civil service. In March 1933, Albert Einstein left Germany before he was pushed. Appalled, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Planck, a member of the Lutheran Church, pleaded with Hitler that he should retain Germany’s Jewish scientists.

Unbowed, Hitler replied

“If science cannot do without Jews, then we will have to do without science for a few years”.

Later, it should be noted that Hitler foresaw the possible destruction of the planet by nuclear weapons. Speer wrote that he was “plainly not delighted that the earth under his rule might be transformed into a glowing star”. Speer further observed that Hitler would joke about the various scientists “in their unworldly urge to lay bare all the secrets under heaven, might some day set the globe on fire”.

The theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, head of the Nazis’ nuclear research program, was unable to confirm that a chain reaction could be controlled “with absolute certainty”. There were concerns among scientists that a release of enormous energy in fissile material, as a result of splitting the atom, could spread through the material of the entire earth. Such worries were conveyed to Hitler.

The English author and Third Reich specialist, Geoffrey Michael Brooks, writes that Hitler had a “deeply entrenched” reservation that “the atomic explosion might proceed to ignite the hydrogen in the atmosphere”. Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe, comprising three quarters of all matter. These concerns also disturbed American scientists developing the atomic bomb.

As late as 15 July 1945, the distinguished Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi (image on the left), operating at Los Alamos, New Mexico, had “wondered aloud whether the test bomb he was about to ignite might trigger the heavens, destroying every living thing on earth. Nobody really knew…” Yet Fermi was ordered to proceed and, less than a month later, two of these bombs would obliterate Japanese cities. Fermi was the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor and is regarded as “the architect of the atomic bomb”.

Meanwhile, Speer confirmed that an atomic bomb test was “a major source of concern to Hitler, who saw no advantage in destroying the world” – instead, simply destroying certain races like Jewish and Slavic people. Speer found that his attempts to promote atomic research were met by a “rubber wall”. During Speer’s over 2000 recorded points of reference in his time under Hitler, there was only one occasion when the subject of nuclear research appeared on the agenda.

Even then, the topic was passed over “with laconic brevity”, that is, brief and to the point. Speer noted the dictator’s “strengthening resolve not to pursue the matter [atomic research]”. On certain aspects regarding the possible earth-defining issue of nuclear weapons, Hitler ironically displayed more sense than the long-lauded Franklin D. Roosevelt. On 19 January 1942, the US president formally authorized the atomic bomb project. By December 1942, Roosevelt had given “final approval” to build the atomic bomb, setting the wheels irrevocably in motion to present.

This critical decision came despite Imperial Japan being, by then, in retreat after the catastrophic Battle of Midway loss in June 1942 – the defeat had “doomed Japan” as even Japanese militarists admitted, such as Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who fought in the battle. Elsewhere, the German war machine had by late 1942 clearly become derailed at Stalingrad and in north Africa.

Militarily-speaking, there was no need for the Americans to pursue the atomic bomb, particularly as the war advanced further. Regarding Allied fears the Nazis themselves could build an atomic bomb, by 1944 it had become clear to scientists under Roosevelt, like the esteemed Samuel Goudsmit, that the Nazis “had no atom bomb”. Furthermore, that their nuclear program was “stillborn”.

Even earlier, in 1943, the British were aware largely thanks to Paul Rosbaud, their spy operating in Germany, that “the German [nuclear] program was not going anywhere”. Such crucial information was relayed to the Americans. Yet the US’s atomic research program was relentlessly pursued. The US, by the early 1940s, had existed as a nation for almost 170 years – and were at war for practically all that time. US military planners could simply not resist gaining possession of the ultimate weapon, despite the unprecedented risks and consequences.

Roosevelt’s successor Harry Truman said he knew about “the tragic significance of the atom bomb”, after he gave orders to set Japan ablaze, killing tens of thousands. This was a clear demonstration to the world that the human species had finally developed the capacity to annihilate itself. Thereafter followed the inevitable nuclear proliferation. The USSR was forced to follow America’s lead, successfully testing their first nuclear bomb in late summer 1949. Further “progress” was made so that the nuclear weapons produced became dozens of times more powerful than the original atomic bombs.

Image on the right: Ion Antonescu and Adolf Hitler

Previously, on 5 August 1944, Hitler greeted Romania’s Fascist dictator Ion Antonescu at the Wolf’s Lair headquarters, in East Prussia. During a long meeting, nuclear weapons were discussed whose use at that point had reached “the experimental stage” in America, as the dictators were aware due to recent German news reports. Antonescu remarked that he “personally hoped not to be alive when this new substance [uranium] came into use, which might perhaps bring about the end of the world”. Uranium is one of the key components in nuclear weapons production.

Hitler responded to Antonescu by recalling the words of a German writer [unnamed] who predicted precisely that [the world ending], leading “to a point where matter as such would disintegrate, bringing about the final catastrophe”. Instead, Hitler boasted to Antonescu about his new, non-nuclear “wonder weapons”: the V-I flying bomb, the long-range V-2 rocket, and the massive V-3 cannon – the latter of which was then in experiment mode.

One of the driving forces behind the secret weapons’ creation, was Hitler’s fury at the firestorms unleashed by Allied planes across German cities, from early 1942 until war’s end. These British and American war crimes are seldom mentioned in Western mainstream historical analysis. For example, during the Allies’ ten day raid over Hamburg in July 1943, deliberately targeting German civilians, over 40,000 people were killed. In the Luftwaffe’s eight month Blitz of Britain, from September 1940 to May 1941, virtually the same number of civilians were killed.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Introduction

For some time, critics of President Trump’s policies have attributed them to a mental disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other pathologies.

The question of Trump’s mental health raises a deeper question: why does his pathologies take a specific political direction?

Moreover, Trump’s decisions have a political history and background, and follow from a logic and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.

We will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which have world-historic consequences, namely: Trump’s reneging the nuclear accord with Iran; Trump’s declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump’s meeting with North Korea.

In brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects to gain; and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome and his adversaries take reprisals.

Trump’s Strategic Framework

The underlying assumption of Trump’s strategic thinking is that ‘power works’: the more intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity or concessions is ‘weak’ and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In other words, Trump’s politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump’s policies will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives would undermine US imperial rule.

Reasons Why Trump Broke the Peace Accord with Iran

Trump broke the accord with Iran because the original agreement was based on retaining US sanctions against Iran; the total dismantling of its nuclear program and calling into question Iran’s limited role on behalf of possible allies in the Middle East.

Iran’s one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities encouraged Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its markets.

Trump views President Rouhani (image on the right) as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes that an economic squeeze will lead President Rouhani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense strategy.

Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change, reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the Shah.

The second reason for Trump’s policy is to strengthen Israel’s military power in the Middle East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US, dubbed ‘the Lobby’.

Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC’s power to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the executive branch.

Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street. Trump’s submission to Zionist power reinforces and even dictates his decision to break the peace accord with Iran and his willingness to pressure. France, Germany, the UK and Russia to sacrifice billion-dollar trade agreements with Iran and to pursue a policy of pressuring Teheran to accept part of Trump’s agenda of unilateral disarmament and isolation. Trump believes he can force the EU multi-nationals to disobey their governments and abide by sanctions.

Reasons for Trump’s Trade War with China

Prior to Trump’s presidency, especially under President Obama, the US launched a trade war and ‘military pivot’ to China. Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Pact to exclude China and directed an air and naval armada to the South China Sea. Obama established a high-powered surveillance system in South Korea and supported war exercises on North Korea’s border. Trump’s policy deepened and radicalized Obama’s policies.

Trump extended Obama’s bellicose policy toward North Korea, demanding the de-nuclearization of its defense program. President Kim of North Korea and President Moon of South Korea reached an agreement to open negotiations toward a peace accord ending nearly 60 years of hostility.

However, President Trump joined the conversation on the presumption that North Korea’s peace overtures were due to his threats of war and intimidation. He insisted that any peace settlement and end of economic sanctions would only be achieved by unilateral nuclear disarmament, the maintenance of US forces on the peninsula and supervision by US approved inspectors.

Trump’s unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that military threats led to North Korea’s “capitulation” – its promise to end its nuclear program.

Trump slapped a trade tariff on over $100 billion dollars of Chinese exports in order to reduce its trade imbalance by $200 billion over two years. He demanded China unilaterally end industrial ‘espionage’, technological ‘theft’ (all phony accusations) and China’s compliance monitored quarterly by the US.

Trump demanded that China not retaliate with tariffs or restrictions or face bigger sanctions.

Trump threatened to respond to any reciprocal tariff by Beijing, with greater tariffs, and restrictions on Chinese goods and services.

Trump’s goals seek to convert North Korea into a military satellite encroaching on China’s northern border; and a trade war that drives China into an economic crisis.

Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and dominate the Asian and world economy.

Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump believes that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the ‘dynamic’ US market, will enhance Washington’s quest for uncontested world domination.

Trump’s Ten Erroneous Thesis

Trump’s political agenda is deeply flawed!

Breaking the nuclear agreement and imposing harsh sanctions has isolated Trump from his European and Asian allies.

His military intervention will inflame a regional war that would destroy the Saudi oil fields. He will force Iran to pursue a nuclear shield against US-Israeli aggression and lead to a prolonged, costly and ultimately losing war.

Trump’s policies will unify all Iranians, liberals and nationalist, and undermine US collaborators.

The entire Muslim world will unify forces and carry the conflict throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Tel Aviv’s bombing will lead to counter-attacks in Israel.

Oil prices will skyrocket, financial markets will collapse, industries will go bankrupt.

Trump’s sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic destruction.

Trump’s trade war with China will lead to the disruption of the supply chain which sustains the US economy and especially the 500 US multi-nationals who depend on the Chinese economy for exports to the US.

China will increase domestic consumption, diversify its markets and trading partners and reinforce its military alliance with Russia.

China has greater resilience and capacity to overcome short-term disruption and regain its dominant role as a global economic power house.

Wall Street will suffer a catastrophic financial collapse and send the US into a world depression.

Trump’s negotiations with North Korea will go nowhere as long as he demands unilateral nuclear disarmament, US military control over the peninsula and political isolation from China.

Kim will insist on the end of sanctions, and a mutual defense treaty with China.

Kim will offer to end nuclear testing but not nuclear weapons. After Trump’s reneged on the Iran deal, Kim will recognize that agreements with the US are not trustworthy.

Conclusion

Trump’s loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its companies to be frozen out of the Iran market.

Trump’s trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production sites for US multi-nationals.

He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have links with five continents.

Trump cannot dominate North Korea and force it to sacrifice its sovereignty on the basis of empty economic promises to lift sanctions.

Trump is heading for defeats on all counts. But he may take the American people into the nuclear abyss in the process.

Epilogue

Are Trump’s threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to intimidate, in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger ‘madman’ tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his ‘reasonable’ demands or face the worst from the President? I don’t think so.

Nixon unlike Trump was not led by the nose by Israel. Nixon unlike Trump was not led by pro-nuclear war advisers. Nixon in contrast to Trump opened the US to trade with China and signed nuclear reduction agreements with Russia.

Nixon successfully promoted peaceful co-existence.

Trump is a master of defeats.

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Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: Protest against US war in the Middle East in Los Angeles from DreamsTime.com.

There will be a confluence of trigger events this week that could lead to an escalation of conflict. At the same time that the US has reneged on the nuclear agreement and Israeli missiles are attacking Iranians in Syria, the US embassy will be moved to Jerusalem and Palestinians will protest the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, capping six weeks of actions.

United States moves embassy to controversial site

On Monday, May 14, the United States will move its embassy to Jerusalem, even though the new US embassy is not yet built. Jerusalem is considered by both Israelis and Palestinians as their capital. This action is part of a 100-year history of Zionist colonization of Jerusalem.

When the announcement of the move was made, there was widespread anger. In Gaza, protesters took to the streets bearing Palestinian flags and denouncing the decision. Students held demonstrations in the West Bank. Bernard Smith of Al-Jazeera reported from Gaza,

“People here compared the protests to a small ball of fire that would roll and turn into a much larger ball later on.”

The decision unified Palestinians, putting aside their divisions to focus on Trump and Israel.

Arab governments issued statements of condemnation and emergency meetings of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation were held while the UN voted 128-9 to reject the Trump administration’s decision and approve a resolution urging countries to not move their embassies to Jerusalem. Reuters reported that Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque, one of Islam’s most important institutions, said the decision incites “anger among all Muslims and threatens world peace.” Sheikh added,

“The gates of hell will be opened in the West before the East.”

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya described it as a

“flagrant aggression…that will know no limit to the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim reaction.”

Thousands of people rallied in Turkey and Jordan on Friday to protest against the decision to move the US embassy. Tens of thousands of Muslims gathered in Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday to protest the United States. Israelis in Jerusalem are also protesting the move.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Palestinians have called for a day of rage and that mass protests are being mobilized for the opening of the US embassy. Choosing to move on the day before the Nakba is a provocation by Israel and the United States.

Israel is illegitimate

The Great March of Return held its seventh Friday of protests last week. At least 49 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli snipers since the protest began on March 30, and 8,500 have been wounded (see e.g. 9 killed 780 wounded and violence continues 16 killed 1,500 wounded). The protests will culminate May 15 on the Nakba, or Catastrophe when Palestinians memorialize being forced from their homes, their villages being destroyed, hundreds of thousands becoming refugees and scores being killed during the founding of Israel 70 years ago. Land theft and ethnic cleansing have continued, often legalized by property law. Palestinian protesters are demanding the right to return to their homes and marching after decades of Israeli violence and injustice. They proclaim they will not wait another 70 years.

The reality is clear, as Miko Peled, whose grandfather signed the Declaration of Independence of Israel 70 years ago and whose father was an Israeli general, says — that Israel has no legitimacy. Peled emphasizes that people in the US have a responsibility to take action to end the occupation of Palestine and outlines ways to do so, including an aggressive BDS campaign. Peled says “Israel” is an illegitimate state and “the area should be called Palestine.”

Peled is correct to focus on the responsibility of the people of the United States. No other country has been more supportive of Israel. The US gave “more than 250 billion dollars in direct government aid to Israel, [and] the USA has used its veto more than 70 times in the Security Council to prevent passage of resolutions condemning Israeli policies.” Alexander Haig, the former Secretary of State who served as chief of staff to Presidents Nixon and Ford and was a four-star general who served as the supreme commander of NATO, told the truth, saying, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.”

Protests against Israel and AIPAC, the DC-based Israeli lobby, consistently occur in the US, even though the media hides the truth about the Israeli lobby. Even YouTube censors information about Israel but people still see the reality of Israeli violence. Israel works to inject pro-Israel propaganda in the media while US universities censor speech about Palestinian justice. The massacre of nonviolent Palestinians is leading to calls for an arms embargo against Israel, a BDS that includes a military embargo.

The combination of current events reveal the true costs of the creation of Israel. Israel is a fortress-like apartheid state that practices ethnic cleansing and whose government applauds snipers using Palestinians as targets. Some of its citizens watch the slaughter and cheer the death of Palestinians. Israel has created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza with a decade-long embargo with intermittent mass destructive bombings. Even people of Jewish faith who criticize the barbarism of Israel are characterized as traitors and threatened by the government.

Press TV reports the Israeli military will be doubling the number of forces around the Gaza Strip and in occupied West Bank territories ahead of the controversial opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are expected to hold massive protests along the Gaza fence.

Widespread attacks on Palestinians are expected. In preparation for the massacre, people are urged to donate to help the wounded in Palestine.

May 9, 2018 from Syrian news agency SANA, flames rising after an attack by Israel in Syria in Kisweh, south of Damascus, Syria

Israel is provoking Iran in Syria

On May 4, military and intelligence analyst, the Saker, described how Israel was attacking Iranian bases in Syria in an attempt to get Iran to respond and pull the United States into a war with Iran.

On May 10, Voice of America reported that Israel launched an assault on more than 50 Iranian targets in Syria. Israel hit weapons depots, logistics sites and intelligence centers used by Iranian forces, many near Damascus.

In between these reports, Israel claimed that Iran fired rockets into the Golan Heights (Israeli occupied territory, part of Syria). Iran described the Israeli claims as “fabricated” and “baseless.” Holly Dagres, an Iran analyst for the Iranist questions why Iran would conduct such an attack “right after Trump’s decision and while Tehran is looking for European support to stay in the [nuclear deal]?” Other analysts also doubt the Israeli claim, and Iran says Syria fired into the Golan Heights, quoting a Syrian official. Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah describes Syria responding to multiple Israeli attacks in Syria to set new rules of engagement and plans to retake the Golan Heights from Israeli occupation.

Dr Roham Alvandi, a professor at the London School of Economics suggests this is the United States and Israel

“working hand in glove to escalate the military confrontation.” He adds, they seek to “provoke the Iranian leadership into taking action that will isolate and ultimately weaken the Islamic Republic.”

Israel is concerned about Iranian soldiers amassing in Syria close to its border. As Peled reports, the Israeli media and political leadership are banging the drums for Israel’s own war with Syria and Iran.

The Independent describes the situation as “bringing two of the region’s major powers closer to the brink of direct confrontation than ever before.” While Russia and European countries urged de-escalation, the United States repeated their refrain, “Israel’s right to act in self-defense.”

Protest in support of nuclear deal and for peace with Iran. Source CODE PINK.

US withdraws without cause from the Iran Agreement

All of this comes when Trump has decided to renege on The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement between France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, the United States and Iran. In a belligerent speech filled with lies, Trump provided no evidence that Iran had violated the agreement and leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Russia, and China tried to convince the US to live up to the agreement.

Israel urged Trump to leave the agreement, presenting an intelligence dossier that claimed Iran had violated it. However, the dossier contained information weapons inspectors had already found to be false. Netanyahu made a big public relations presentation to urge Trump to get out of the agreement. Telesur summarizes the reaction, writing,

“After Netanyahu’s speech the International Atomic Energy Agency said it has ‘no credible’ evidence Iran was developing nuclear arms since 2009.”

US activists published an open letter apologizing to Iran. The letter described Trump’s decision as “reckless, baseless, and dangerous” and expressed that we are “ashamed that our government has broken a deal that was working.” The signers promised,

“We will do everything in our power to stop Donald Trump from strangling your economy and taking us to war with you.”

People in Iran took to the streets to protest the US’ decision.

The decision is part of the long history of the US trying to dominate Iran going back to the 1953 coup, continuing in recent years, during which the US has spent tens of millions of dollars annually to build opposition inside Iran, and to the US’ involvement in recent protests. Activities today are consistent with a 2009 Brookings Institution report, “Which Path To Persia? Options For A New American Strategy For Iran,” which put forward various paths to regime change, including Israel taking the lead and the US and Israel falsely claiming that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

Richard Johnson, a top US nuclear expert, handed in his resignation after Trump’s unilateral withdrawal. And the chief inspector of the UN nuclear agency stepped down unexpectedly, a few days after the US withdrew from the nuclear agreement.

The decision may hurt the United States in many ways. The sanctions Trump will reintroduce do not just limit U.S. dealings with Iran, but will also penalize other countries, causing a riff with US allies. John Bolton threatened to enforce the sanctions against European corporations and countries, while Europe punched back supporting the Iran agreement and planning legislation to protect European companies. Iran is entering agreements with Russia and China, who are its protectors. Iran will seek to build its relationship with European and Latin American countries as well. The US may be left out, its credibility damaged. Given the failure of US military power in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, traditional allies recognize the limitations of the US as a super power.

2007 anti-war protest. Photo: Thiago Santos/cc/flickr.

There are many reasons a war with Iran would be a disaster for the US and Israel. Moon of Alabama describes that the Bush administration considered it but war games ended badly for the US. This remains true. So, if the US is rational, war can be averted.

No war on Iran

While escalation makes no sense, the leaders of Israel and the US may see a political benefit.  Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing charges of corruption. Prosecutors recently questioned him and his wife for five hours at the same time but at different locations, both as suspects. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had his home and office searched and documents and tapes were seized by prosecutors. Trump’s legal team is a mess. Rudy Guiliani recently resigned from his law firm after making counterproductive comments in the media. Israeli and US leaders may seek to change the subject and play to their conservative political base; a military conflict could aid both.

The 2018 election, which currently looks like a potential Democratic sweep, is also a factor. Sheldon Adelson, a top donor to Trump and Republicans in 2016 who gave $83 million to the campaigns and $5 million to Trump’s inauguration, pushed for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, even offering to finance the move, and for quitting the Iran nuclear pact. Adelson also urges a US nuclear attack on Iran.

The day after Trump left the pact, Adelson had lunch with him in the White House. Not long after, Paul Ryan went with former senator, Norm Coleman, who chairs the Republican Jewish Committee, and others from a Republican PAC, to meet Adelson and his wife at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. They urged support for keeping Republican control of the House. Ryan left the room (since he is not legally allowed to ask for seven-figure donations) and Coleman made the ask, with the Adelsons donating $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, doubling their cash on hand. Adelson’s company recorded a $670 million income tax windfall from the GOP tax law in the first quarter.

The forces are aligning right now in a disastrous way. We must not allow the administration to lie us into another prolonged and costly war. We must oppose the slaughter of more Palestinians. We must be clear that we do not support war and that we do support the rights of Palestinians. Protests are being planned across the US. Join them or organize your own. And spread the truth to your neighbors and your community. You can also support the 2018 Freedom Flotilla, which has left Norway, to bring supplies to Gaza.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image: empty Jordan – Syrian border post

Do you think it is that simple to travel around the Middle East? Think twice!

Ask Palestinians, about trying to get from a point A to a point B in their own nation.

Some time ago, sitting in an old Ottoman hotel in Bethlehem, I asked a waiter what it takes to travel from there to Gaza, where he said, several of his relatives were living. He looked at me as if I had fallen from the Moon:

“There is no way I could travel there. If my relatives get very sick or die, then, in theory, I could apply for an Israeli travel permit to go there, but there is absolutely no guarantee that they would approve, or that I could get to Gaza on time…”

I tried to appear naïve:

“And what if someone from an Arab country which does not recognize Israel, wants to come here, to Bethlehem? Like, a Lebanese pilgrim or just a tourist? Could he or she enter from Jordan?”

The waiter weighed for a while whether to reply at all, but then had mercy on me:

“West Bank… You know, it only appears on the maps as some sort of autonomous or independent territory. In reality, the borders and movement of the people have been fully controlled by the Israelis.”

My friend, a legendary left-wing Israeli human rights lawyer and a staunch Palestinian independence supporter, Linda Brayer, downed another cup of coffee and made several cynical remarks. She was actually illegally ‘smuggled’ by me into Bethlehem. As an Israeli citizen, she was not allowed to enter the West Bank at all, but since I was driving and she was with me, a foreigner, and on top of it she wore a headscarf (she converted to Islam several years earlier), the Israeli soldiers just let us pass without asking too many uncomfortable questions.

Bizarre, disgusting, and even mind-blowing? Not for us who live or operate in this part of the world! All this is by now considered as “business as usual”.

During the last Intifada, I hired a taxi in Jerusalem to the border with Gaza driven by a Russian-Israeli Jew, a student, who literally clashed with a border guard, demanding to be allowed to enter Gaza, in order to “see what my fxxxxing government is doing to the Palestinian people.”

They did not let him into Gaza. They detained him. As a foreigner, I entered. During my work in Gaza, an Israeli helicopter gunship fired at my hired car. It missed… But at least I was allowed to enter and work in Gaza. It is like Russian roulette: sometimes you get in, sometimes you don’t, and no explanations are given.

That was the time when the new Gaza International Airport had just opened. After few days of fighting, the runway was bombed by the Israelis, all flights cancelled, and I had to, eventually make my way out through Egyptian Sinai.

Later, I also witnessed how brutal the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights has been; how it has divided countless families and communities. People are forced to shout at each other through the Israeli barbed-wire electric fences. The only way for the families to reunite, at least for a day or two, was to somehow get to Jordan.

Israeli tank being moved towards Golan Heights

The Syrian Golan Heights used to be famous for its delicious apples and ancient Druze community. It used to attract travelers from all over the world. Now it is occupied by Israel, and it is de-populated and monstrously militarized.

You want to travel there? You cannot; not anymore. It is off limits.

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For years and decades, this insanity of travel bans and restrictions, as well as barbed wire and watch towers, has been applying mainly (although not exclusively) to the territories occupied by Israel. However, now almost the entire Middle East is divided by conflicts, insane regulations and travel prohibitions.

Unless you are a war correspondent, a Western ‘advisor’, an intelligence agent or a ‘development worker’, don’t even think about going to Iraq. Almost like Afghanistan and Libya, Iraq had been thoroughly wrecked by the Western coalition and its allies. On top of it, to get visa there is now close to impossible. In the recent past, the Westerners flooded Erbil and its surroundings; the main city of what was called, unofficially, ‘Iraqi Kurdistan’. The place used to be governed by the independence-seeking and shamelessly pro-Western ‘elites’, and it used to have its own visa regime. Now even this area is more or less off limits to foreigners.

Syria is still a war zone, although its government, which is supported by the majority of the Syrian people, is clearly winning the brutal conflict ignited and fueled by the West and its‘client’ states.

Syria used to be one of the safest, the most educated and advanced countries in the region, built on solid socialist principles. It used to have an impressive scientific base, as well as dozens of world-class tourist attractions. Therefore, applying Western imperialist logic, it had to be first smeared, and then attacked and destroyed.

Logically, Syria is not issuing tourist visas to the citizens of the countries that are trying to destroy it.

Next door, Lebanon is still suffering from the flood of refugees, from geographical isolation and from the various dormant and semi-active terrorist cells.

Travelling from Lebanon to Syria is now almost impossible, or at least very dangerous and difficult. Lebanese citizens can still enter, but ‘at their own risk’.

In the not so distant past, people used to drive from Beirut to Europe and vice-versa, via Turkey and Syria. Now this option is just a sweet memory. But then again, in the very distant past, I am often reminded, it was not unusual for the Lebanese middle class to spend a weekend in Haifa, driving their own cars. Now the border between Lebanon and Israel is hermetically sealed. Both countries are technically at war. The U.N. patrols the so-called Blue Line.Apart from drones and Israeli war planes en-route to bombing Syria, nothing can cross.

All along the Turkish-Syrian border, both sides are suffering. Of course, the Syrian people are suffering much more, being victims of the direct Turkish military adventures. But also Turks are now paying a very high price for the war: they are suffering from terrorist attacks, as well as from the total collapse of trade between the two countries. Many villages around Hatay and Gaziantep are quickly turning into ghost towns.

Turkey building new huge wall on Syrian border

For instance, cities like Adana in Turkey and Aleppo in Syria used to be connected by motorways, enjoying constant flows of people from both ends. There was bustling trade, as well as tourism, and social visits. Now, Ankara has been building an enormous concrete wall between the two countries. No traffic can pass through the border, except Turkish military convoys.

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For years and decades, it has been impossible to enter Saudi Arabia as a tourist. This fundamentalist Wahabbi ‘client’ state of the West simply does not recognize the existence of tourism, or leisure travel. To enter the KSA, it has to be either for business or religious pilgrimage.

With its huge territory, the KSA effectively divides the entire Gulf region, when it comes to transportation and the movement of people. There are some loopholes, and ‘transit visas’ can be obtained (with some luck, difficulties and expense), for instance, for those people driving their own vehicles or taking a bus from Jordan to Bahrain, or to Oman.

Traveling to culturally the most exciting country in the Gulf – Yemen – is now absolutely impossible. Yemen used to be one of the jewels of historic architecture and civilization, counting such cities as Sanaa, Zabid and Shiban. Now the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is occupying the city of Aden and the coast, while Saudi forces are brutally bombing the rest of the country, which is controlled by the rebels.

Then, there is a bizarre conflict which brewing between Qatar (the richest country in the Gulf with the substantial U.S. military presence as well as huge local business-controlled media conglomerate Al-Jazeera), and several other Arab allies of the West, including Saudi Arabia. Borders are presently closed and insults are flying. There is the growing possibility of a military confrontation. Qatar is being accused, cynically, of ‘supporting terrorism’, as if the KSA was not doing precisely the same.

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Flying around the region has become a Kafkaesque experience.

All Middle Eastern and Gulf airlines are avoiding Israel. Some fly over Syria but most of them, don’t. The once mighty and now deteriorating Qatar Airways is clearly forbidden to enter the airspace of Saudi Arabia as well as of the United Arab Emirates.

Recently I travelled with Qatar from Beirut to Nairobi, Kenya. It used to be a simple, comfortable commute, which has recently turned into a terrible nightmare. Unable to fly over Syrian and Saudi airspace, a plane has to first fly in totally the opposite direction, northwest, over Turkish airspace, then over Iran, making a huge, almost 90 minutes detour. On the second leg, a trip of less than 4 hours now takes more than 5 hours and 30 minutes! The plane flies directly away from Africa, towards Iran, and then makes a huge loop, avoiding both the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Lebanese MEA (Middle Eastern Airlines) is one of the few airlines that ignores all this, flying directly over Syria, and towards the Gulf states. Most of the others don’t dare. But MEA has to avoid Israeli airspace, making often interesting final approaches to Rafik Hariri Int’l Airport.

The exception is Turkish Airlines which basically flies over everything and into everywhere, including Israel itself.

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This essay is not only about the politics and what has led to the present situation, although it is clear that we are talking here, above all, about the neo-colonialist arrangement of the world.

Political nightmare unleashed by the ‘traditional’ Western colonialist powers and their ‘client states’, has led to the geographical divisions; to a perverse state of affairs in this part of the world. Increasingly, the people are losing control over their own nations and the entire region. They have already lost the ability to move about freely through it.

Of course, something similar exists in many other places, including the South Pacific. There, I described the situation in my book Oceania. An entire huge part of the world has been literally cut to pieces by the neo-colonialist powers and their geo-political interests and designs: the U.S., France, Australia and New Zealand have plainly overrun and shackled Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. A once proud and unique part of the world has been fragmented internally: people are brutally separated and forced to depend almost exclusively on the West.

In the Middle East, divisions, walls and barbed wire, are now everywhere; they are visible to the naked eye, but they are also ‘inside’ peoples’ minds, damaging the human psyche, making dreams of unity and a common future look very unlikely, and sometimes even impossible.

This used to be one of the cradles of our civilization – a deep, sane and stunningly beautiful part of the world. Now everything is fragmented. The West rules, mainly through its ‘client’ states, such as Israel, the KSA and Turkey. It controls everything. It governs almost the entire Middle East; nothing moves without its knowledge and permission.

Yes, nothing and no one moves here, unless it suits the West. We don’t read about it often. It is not discussed. But that is how it is. This bizarre concept of ‘freedom’ implanted from the outside. The rulers who were injected into the Gulf and various other occupied nations. The result is horrid: the electric wires, walls and travel restrictions everywhere; the old pathological British ‘divide and rule’ concept.

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As I am working on this essay, my plane which is supposed to be flying south-west, is actually hovering north-east, in order to avoid the air spaces of the various so-called hostile states.

Local people may be getting used to the fact that their part of the world has already been‘re-arranged’. Or perhaps they have already stopped noticing.

The computer, however, keeps showing the absurd flying path of the airliner. Computers can be programmed and re-programmed, but they cannot be indoctrinated. Without judging, they are simply demonstrating the absurdity that is unrolling around them, on their screens.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: Jackson Free Press

The National Rifle Association has always been clear about drugs: They’re terrifying.

Last year, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre darkly warned that members of drug gangs “are infiltrating law enforcement and even the military.” In 2013, LaPierre proclaimed that “Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States,” and are a key part of the “hellish world” that awaits us in the future. When Charlton Heston was president of the NRA in the 1990s, he declared that regular Americans would soon be besieged by 10,000 drug dealers freed from prison by the Clinton administration.

It seems odd, then, that the next president of the NRA will soon be Oliver North, who spent years in the 1980s working together with large-scale cocaine traffickers and protecting a notorious narco-terrorist from the rest of the U.S. government.

This reality about North has been largely covered up, first by North himself and then by Fox News and the passage of time. Thirty years later, it’s been almost totally forgotten. But the facts remain genuinely appalling.

North was an active-duty Marine when he joined the Reagan administration’s National Security Council in 1981. One of Reagan’s top priorities was organizing and funding the Contras, a guerrilla military force, to overthrow the revolutionary socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. But the Contras engaged in extensive, gruesome terrorism against Nicaraguan civilians. Congress gradually reduced and then eliminated appropriations supporting them, leading the Reagan administration to secretly search for money elsewhere.

According to the report from a later congressional investigation, North was put in charge of this operation, which participants dubbed “The Enterprise.”

“Report of the congressional committees investigating the Iran-Contra Affair,” U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran; U.S. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, 1987

North enthusiastically looked for cash wherever he could find it, and led many of the clandestine schemes that later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. The Sultan of Brunei donated $10 million (which North’s secretary Fawn Hall accidentally wired to the wrong Swiss bank account), and Saudi Arabia ponied up as well. North also pushed what he called “a neat idea”: selling U.S. military equipment to Iran, with the proceeds passed along to the Contras.

Meanwhile, the Contras had a neat idea of their own: facilitating cocaine trafficking through Central America into the U.S., with a cut going toward supporting their war against the Sandinistas. Some Contras were themselves cocaine traffickers, and others were simply happy to make alliances of convenience with drug cartels.

There’s no evidence North actively wanted cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. It was simply that he had other priorities. But was he aware of the Contras’ drug trafficking? Yes. Did he try to shield one of “his” cocaine traffickers from consequences from the other branches of the U.S. government? Yes. Did he work together with a known drug lord? Yes.

All in all, North’s connections to drug trafficking were so egregious that in 1989 he was banned from entering Nicaragua’s neighbor Costa Rica by Oscar Arias, the country’s president and 1987 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

This may seem shocking to the easily shocked. But it’s all been documented in various government investigations. All you need in order to learn about it is curiosity and an internet connection. For instance, here’s a screenshot from the CIA’s website about the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance, or ADREN by its Spanish acronym, which was later folded into the Contras:

“Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States,” CIA, 1998

The full extent of North’s complicity in cocaine trafficking will never be known. When the Iran-Contra scandal story broke in November 1986, he ordered Hall to destroy so many documents that the shredder malfunctioned, and she had to ask White House maintenance to come and fix it. Moreover, when North was removed from his National Security Council job, he took with him 2,848 pages of daily notes — which legally belonged to the federal government. By the time a congressional investigation was finally able to examine the notes, North and his lawyers had redacted huge amounts of information. Nonetheless, 543 of the pages mentioned drugs or drug trafficking, with the probe finding that “in many of these cases, material in the Notebooks adjacent to the narcotics references has been deleted.”

It’s called “Vollgeld Initiative” – in German, meaning more or less “Referendum for Sovereign Money”. What is “Sovereign Money”? – Its money produced only by the Central Bank, by the “Sovereign”, the government, represented by its central bank. Money created in accordance with the needs of the economy, as contrasted to the profit and greed motives of the banking oligarchy – what it is today; money creation at will, by private banking.

The people of Switzerland are called to vote on 10 June 2018 whether they want to stop the unlimited, unrestrained money-making by the Swiss private banking system, and to return to the “olden days”, when money was made and controlled only by the Central Bank; and this not just in Switzerland, but in most countries around the globe. Switzerland is one of the few sovereign countries within the OECD, and possibly worldwide, that has the Right of Referendum written into her Constitution. With 100,000 valid signatures anybody can raise a referendum to amend or abolish a law, or to create a new one. – This is a huge privilege to Right a Wrong.

Most Swiss and probably most westerners in general don’t even know that the loan or mortgage they get from their bank is no longer backed by the bank’s capital and deposits. How could they? Instead of being told the truth, they are being lied to, even by their own party and politicians. And that in the case of Switzerland, by nobody less than the CEO of the UBS, the largest Swiss bank. Just watch this short video (in German and Italian – 2 min).

Lying is a felony, hence Mr. Sergio Ermotti, CEO of UBS, should be prosecuted. Unlikely to happen, though. What Mr. Ermotti in essence says in this interview is that loans are backed by deposits. This is directly contradicted by the Swiss National Bank and the German Bundesbank (Central Bank). They say that “today about 90% of all the money is accounting money, created by loans the banks make to enterprises and private citizens. Pretending that banks use deposits to make loans, is not true.” The latter part was specifically expressed by the German Bundesbank. – So, how come Mr. Ermotti, CEO of UBS, wouldn’t know that?

Switzerland, fully embedded in the globalized western banking system, absorbed by it, has a chance to tell the world that the only way to control and get on top of the cycle of financial and economic crises is to reign-in the bottom-less money production – the debt-interest-profit driven banking system, a Ponzi scheme that cannot survive (financing debt with more debt); the abhorrent uncontrollable debt-profit cycle that has brought misery to humanity – just look at Greece. With money production controlled by the respective central banks, for example, in France and in Germany, the senseless indebting of Greece by German and French banks would not have been possible, in which case the troika’s (ECB, European Commission and IMF) so-called bail-outs, or ‘rescue packages’, would not have been possible either. Hence no doubling of Greece’s debt – and Greece would be well on her way to recovery.

The point is that these too-big-to-fail banks have become also too big to control, and of course they do not want to be controlled. They have the (political) power to shed off any control. They want to continue creating debt, lending money not for economic development, but for profit of their shareholders. Banking for development has stopped a long time ago. The only banking for development is public banking, and that is almost non-existent – so far – in the west; except for North Dakota and soon New Jersey – and a number of other US States are considering public banking as a means of bringing back the true sense of banking – i.e. for economic development. But with the current FED-Wall Street bulldozer’s onslaught on the world, they are fighting against windmills – but even windmills are fallible.

By and large, in the west it’s corporate banking for profit. And thanks to the public’s ignorance and disinterest, deregulation took place behind our backs.

Did you know for example, that to become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a nation has to deregulate its banks – to put them on a platter at disposal of the globalized banking sharks? – Probably you didn’t. Such decisions are never publicized.

Again, the Swiss with a Yes vote on 10 June could change this for themselves and send a signal to the rest of the world – suggesting to take back their financial, economic and monetary sovereignty – cutting the link to globalized usury banking that enslaves the poor in favor of the rich. Literally.

Will Switzerland seize this unique opportunity to broadcast this powerful message to the (western) world? Saying in the clearest voice possible – enough is enough, we are going back to regulating our banking system, through ‘new-old’ legislation and through the only institution that really has the Constitutional power to create money – the Swiss National Bank?

The Swiss, an enormous influence in international banking – good or bad – could become a trail blazer for a new economic model, to demonstrate how well an economy can run without following the global trend of unlimited money supply – which serves only the banks by indebting the nations and the people. They could put a halt to the seemingly out-of-control economic rollercoaster that brings only misery to people, unemployment, broken homes and businesses, decimated social safety nets, pensions health plans — they, the Swiss could put an end to it and become an economically and financially independent nation with a healthy economy for the well-being of the people – not of the banks.

Will they? Will they grasp this once in a lifetime opportunity to break loose from the banking stranglehold?

The Swiss people are the most indebted of the G20, with 127.5% of private debt as compared to GDP in September 2017. The trend is on the rise. The United States, where deregulation started in the 1990s under President Clinton before it became ‘globalized’, was number seven with 78.5% in September 2017. – According to an OECD 2015 report, mortgages account for 120% of GDP, by far the largest proportion of all OECD countries.  – Do the Swiss know that? – Some probably do, but the majority most likely does not. Ever-so-often the Swiss National Bank (Central Bank) issues a routine warning about private and particular mortgage debt – as it is an ever-raising risk for highly indebted families. An economic crisis, loss of a job – and a family fails to meet mortgage payments – bingo, foreclosure. The same as in 2008, 2009 and going on.

Well, do you know that in Switzerland first mortgages do not have to be amortized? In fact, banks encourage you not to repay your mortgage, but just keep paying interest. Many mortgages are passed on with the related real estate from generation to generation. So, you never really own your house. The bank does. And the bank earns the money on your house, as well as calls the final shots on what is to happen with your real property, in case it is being sold.

“Free money” – as it could also be called, is money made indiscriminately without backing. It has many negative effects – the risk factor, as mentioned before – and the bubble effect on the housing market which in turn increases the risk for house owners, because sooner or later bubbles burst. The only winners are the banks.

Why can the banks just make mortgage loans without requesting amortization? – Because they are afloat with money. Because, of course, they just make money with loans – the 90% which are not central bank made money. And the more loans they have outstanding, the more interest they earn. They earn money for doing absolutely nothing. For a mouse-click. Interest accumulates on its own. And debt is today’s foremost tool to enslave people, nations, entire continents.

This is what the Swiss could change by accepting this referendum, by Voting YES to Vollgeld. It would refrain banks from creating money and return the responsibility to the central bank, where it is to be located according to the Swiss Constitution. It would force banks to be more prudent in issuing mortgages and personal debt – it would provide for a more stable economy and for a financially less vulnerable personal life. It would gradually take some air out of the real estate bubble – a healthy feature for any society.

Again, are the Swiss going to vote for what is best for them? – Probably not. – But why not? – Because they are subjected to an enormous anti “Sovereign Money” campaign by the banking and finance sector, by the ‘built-in’ lobby. Yes, built-in, because in Switzerland Parliamentarians have the right to represent as many corporations, banking and otherwise, in their Boards of Directors, as they please. Yes – this is another special feature of Switzerland, also unique among OECD countries. – How many Swiss are aware of this?

Is it therefore a surprise that the Swiss are being utterly brainwashed to vote against their own interest? – As they have done so often in the past – and frequently to the utter surprise of neighboring countries.

In addition – and this is where another feature of the Swiss Un-Democracy enters: The Swiss Federal Council, the Swiss Executive, takes for itself the privilege and right – I have no clue from where, it is nowhere written in the Constitution – to issue sort of an edict before every national vote or referendum – “advising” the people how they should vote. With a public that oozes of comfort, where consistently less than 50% go to the polls, largely because of disinterest, such a proclamation has a huge impact.

In this case, the Swiss Government, its Executive, has already and already for a while repeatedly “advised” its populace to vote ‘no’ to the Vollgeld Initiative. And surprisingly every major party goes along with it, including the socialists and other left-leaning parties. Either they are brainwashed to the core by propaganda repeated ad nauseam, indoctrinating the people how bad accepting the “Vollgeld Initiative” would be. How bad can be owning your “Sovereign Money”? – Can you imagine? – How much lie must go into such fake marketing?

Or could it be that the Swiss are no longer ruled by Bern, nor has the Swiss Central Bank much to say about Swiss monetary policy, but they may be ruled by an international and globalized banking cartel that puts so much pressure on the Swiss government, that it could almost be interpreted as blackmail? – Why otherwise, would intelligent people advise and vote against their own and proper interests?

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My dear Swiss fellow compatriots, this is the chance of your lifetime. Do yourself a favor by voting YES to the “Vollgeld Initiative”. Not only will you do yourself and the Swiss economy a favor, by bringing the latter back to sovereign control, you would most certainly make world-headlines and, who knows, inspire the peoples of other countries, who are sick and tired of their enslavement by banks, to request that their Central Banks alone can make money – in the amount that corresponds to the needs of their economies – no longer according to the profit-and-greed requirements of the globalized banking oligarchy.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

The following briefing note is developed by academics researching the use of chemical and biological weapons during the 2011-present war in Syria. The note reflects work in progress. However, the substantive questions raised need answering, especially given the seriousness of the political situation in the Middle East and UK-Russian relations. The authors welcome comments and corrections.

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What was the agent used?

An early report that the hospital was dealing with poisoning caused by an opiate such as fentanyl was most likely based on the initial working diagnosis. Signs of organophosphate poisoning – constricted pupils, vomiting, reduced consciousness and reduced breathing – could easily be mistaken for opiate overdose, usually a more likely diagnosis.   OPCW has stated that the BZ detected by the Swiss Federal Institute for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection in one of the samples sent by OPCW was not from Salisbury but was in a control sample.

The Russian ambassador reported that on 12 March the Foreign Secretary had told him that the nerve agent used against Mr and Ms Skripal had been identified as A-234.   The OPCW report issued on 12 April did not identify the agent but stated that they had confirmed the identification made by the UK and that this identification had been included in the confidential report provided to “States parties”. On 14 April the Russian Foreign Minister stated that A-234 had been reported by the Swiss Federal Institute for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection that was one of the four accredited labs used by OPCW to analyse the Salisbury samples.

Based on public reports, a ChemSpider record for A-234 has been created which assigns it the IUPAC name ethyl [(1E)-1-(diethylamino)ethylidene] phosphoramidofluoridate. Its predicted vapour pressure is very low indicating that it is predicted to be non-volatile. No information on its stability is available.   The OPCW director Uzumcu stated in a newspaper interview that the agent “seems to be very persistent,” and “not affected by weather conditions”. This was confirmed the next day by an OPCW press statement that: “the chemical substance found was of high purity, persistent and resistant to weather conditions”. Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was reported to have stated:

“The chemical does not degrade quickly. You can assume it is not much different now from the day it was distributed”.

No experimental studies of the stability of A-234 have been reported.

Who could have produced A-234 in bench-scale quantities?

It is no longer seriously disputed that, as noted in our earlier briefing, any well equipped university lab can synthesize and purify such chemicals at bench scale. OPCW reported that the agent (presumably A-234) was of high purity with “almost complete absence of impurities”.   This suggests that it was from a batch that had been synthesized for research, rather than for assassination purposes where it would be unnecessary to purify the agent.

Uzumcu stated in an interview with the New York Times that he had been told by UK officials that 50-100 grams of the agent was used.

“For research activities or protection you would need, for instance, five to 10 grams or so, but even in Salisbury it looks like they may have used more than that. Without knowing the exact quantity, I am told it may be 50, 100 grams or so, which goes beyond research activities for protection”

OPCW quickly contradicted this in a statement that

“OPCW would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent that was used in Salisbury on 4 March 2018. The quantity should probably be characterized in milligrams”.

Who has studied A-234 or similar compounds?

Bench-scale research on the toxicity of agents that might be used in chemical warfare is entirely legitimate under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and does not have to be declared to OPCW.

Russia

Since our last briefing note, more material from the investigation of the Kivelidi poisoning has been published by Novaya Gazeta, updating the earlier article published on 22 March. The second article includes an image of the mass spectrometry profile of the sample recovered from the telephone handset, which matches that submitted by Edgewood to the NIST98 mass spectrometry database. The Russian experts who commented on the original result appear not to have had access to the mass spectrometry profile of A-234, and to have incorrectly reconstructed the structure from a best guess, based on the mass-charge ratios of the fragments, as something like the GV agent (both agents have molecular mass 224 daltons, and a 58-dalton fragment).   This establishes that Russia had synthesized this compound at bench scale by the mid 1990s, but does not confirm that it was ever developed for military use as alleged by Mirzayanov.

US

A 1997 newspaper article refers to a secret US army intelligence report referring to Russian development of A-232 and its “ethyl analog” A-234, indicating that the designation of these compounds and their structures was known to the US by this time. As noted in our last briefing note, the Edgewood lab submitted a mass spectrometry profile for A-234 to the public database NIST98, which was current from 1998 to 2001.

A patent application submitted by a US government lab in 2008 mentions “Novichoks”, but examination shows that the structures given for these compounds were the dihaloformaldoxime structures previously published as supposed “Novichoks”, not the phosphoramidofluoridates published by Mirzayanov later in 2008.   This does not indicate that the applicants were studying these compounds – most likely they included them to make their patent as broad as possible.

Iran and Czechia

A study from Iran published in 2016 reported synthesis for research purposes of a compound similar to A-234, differing from it only by the presence of methyl instead of ethyl groups. In an interview with Czech television, President Zeman stated that in November 2017 the related compound designated A-230 was studied at the Brno Military Research Institute.

Other labs

The director of Porton Down has declined to comment on whether Porton Down has stocks of A-234 for research purposes. The OPCW labs that identified A-234 in the specimens from Salisbury were most likely matching it against a mass spectrometry profile in OPCW’s Central Analytical Database.

What is known of the toxicity of A-234?

No data on the toxicity of A-234 are available in the public domain. The printout of the entry in the NIST 98 database appears to cross-reference an entry in the database RTECS (Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances) but no entry for this compound now exists in RTECS.

Why was the structure of A-234 revealed?

The structure of A-234 was revealed in a book by Vil S Mirzayanov in 2008, some 13 years after he had emigrated to the US with the story of a secret programme to develop chemical weapons of a class named “Novichoks”. During 2008-2009 the US government, with an active part for the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was encouraging the development of a separatist movement in Tatarstan. As part of this, Mirzayanov was declared head of a Tatar government-in-exile in December 2008.   The publication of his book may thus have been part of an effort to build up Mirzayanov’s status as a dissident. His role in this operation may explain why subsequent discussion of his book by OPCW delegates was closely monitored (and discouraged) by the US State Department. Mirzayanov’s involvement in this operation undermines his credibility as an independent whistleblower.

When and where were the Skripals exposed to A-234?

A summary of the different versions on which journalists were apparently briefed by security sources was given by the Russian embassy:

• The Skripals could be sprayed with poison by attackers in the street (Daily Mail, 6 March, source: “Anti-terror police”).
• The nerve agent could be planted in one of the personal items in Yulia Skripal’s suitcase before she left Moscow for London. According to this theory the toxin was impregnated in an item of clothing or cosmetics or else in a gift that was opened in the house of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, meaning Yulia Skripal was deliberately targeted to get at her father (The Telegraph, 15 March, source: “Senior sources in the intelligence agencies”).
• The nerve agent could be planted in the air conditioner of the car of Skripals (Daily Mail, 19 March, source: “Security expert Philip Ingram”).
• The Skripals could be poisoned through buckwheat that Yulia Skripal had asked her friend to buy and bring for her father, because she had forgotten to pick up the grocery gifts herself (The Sun, 1 April, source: “British investigators”).

On 28 March the police announced that “at this point in our investigation, we believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door”.

Although it is possible that a nerve agent could be prepared in a formulation that would be absorbed only slowly through the skin, it is implausible that two individuals exposed through contact with the front door would have received doses that caused them to collapse suddenly and so nearly simultaneously that neither had time to call for help, at least three hours later.   It is more likely that they were attacked shortly before they were found collapsed on the park bench.

Sergei Skripal’s link with Orbis: possible motive for murder

In the first few days after the poisoning there were media reports that Sergei Skripal had been in regular contact with his MI6 handler, whose Linked-In profile had stated that he was a consultant for Orbis Business Intelligence. On 7 March this profile was deleted and a Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice was issued to caution journalists against disclosing the identity of this consultant. However at Skripal’s trial in 2007 his MI6 handler had been identified as Pablo Miller, and the link between Skripal and Miller had been described in detail by Russian opposition media on 6 March.

This link between Skripal and Orbis may be relevant to the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the founder of Orbis, containing derogatory information on Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. This dossier had been used by the FBI to apply for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order authorizing surveillance of Trump’s campaign. By early 2018 the unravelling of this story was creating serious difficulties for Steele and for those he had worked with. These difficulties included a referral for criminal investigation by two US Senators, a libel case in the US against the publisher of the dossier which had led to a court ruling that Steele should be questioned in an English court, and a libel case in England against Orbis and Steele.   It is not difficult to postulate a situation in which the potential for damage to US-UK relations could have provided a motive for actors on both sides of the Atlantic to ensure that Sergei Skripal would not be available to give evidence.

The UK government’s position

This was summarized in a letter from the National Security Adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill to the NATO Secretary-General on 13 April 2018. Sedwill’s letter made several assertions that were substantiated only by “intelligence”:

• By 1993, when Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, it is likely that some Novichoks had passed acceptance testing, allowing their use by the Russian military
• Russia further developed some Novichoks after ratifying the convention
• During the 2000s, Russia commenced a programme to test means of delivering chemical warfare agents and to train personnel from special units in the use of these weapons. This programme subsequently included investigation of ways of delivering nerve agents, including by application to door handles.
• In the mid-2000s, President Putin was closely involved in the Russian chemical weapons programme
• Within the last decade Russia has produced and stockpiled small quantities of Novichoks

Appearing before the House of Commons Defence Committee on 1 May, Sedwill (11:39) extolled the government’s reaction to the Salisbury incident as “an example of the Fusion Doctrine in practice”. The Fusion Doctrine brings other government departments under the National Security Council with “the introduction of senior officials as senior responsible owners to deliver each of the NSC’s priorities”.

Sedwill’s involvement in the preparation of the now widely discredited dossier ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction’, released in September 2002, calls into question his credibility in making these uncorroborated assertions.   The UK government’s case as set out by Sedwill is based on asserting that “only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals”. Each of these points is open to serious criticism:-

• Technical means: it is not seriously disputed that A-234 can be produced at bench scale in any organic chemistry lab.
• Operational experience: it is alleged that Russia has a track record of state-sponsored assassination, but this does not support the assertion that only Russia has the operational experience for such an assassination. On the contrary, the failure of the assassination attempt, against two unprotected individuals, suggests that the perpetrators lacked the operational experience and competence that one would expect of state-directed assassins.
• Motive: no other attempted assassinations of defectors from Russian intelligence services have been recorded. If the Russian state had decided to begin assassinating these defectors, it is unlikely that they would have chosen to start in March 2018, just before the presidential election and three months before the FIFA World Cup.   However, as noted above, it is possible to identify motives for other actors to silence Sergei Skripal at this time.

Acknowledgements

We thank Professor Rudy Richardson of the University of Michigan for advice on the toxicology of nerve agents.

*

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Today will go down in history as the day the US encouraged Israel to cross the line towards what numerous US and international leaders have been warning from, a full-fledged apartheid. The reality has evolved into a system of privileging one group and continuing to deny the human and national rights, all granted by international law, of over 12 million Palestinians.

This move marks the end of an era when the United States led international efforts to supposedly achieve the two-state solution, ending Israel’s occupation that began in 1967 including East Jerusalem. Since 1991, millions of Palestinian people held hope that the US was committed to peace, particularly as seen in the written assurances of the United States to implement international resolutions and respect the issue of Jerusalem as a final status issue.

Instead, the US administration has acted in a divisive manner, removing itself from the role of peacemaker, and putting its full weight behind the minority anti-peace forces who believe in a zero sum game, while deepening the already profound uncertainty and anxiety in Palestine and beyond.

This act not only negates history and the lived reality of an entire nation, as we commemorate this week 70 years of Nakba, or Catastrophe, it also dismisses the centrality of Jerusalem in the lives of millions of Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

Tragically, the US administration has chosen to side with Israel’s exclusivist claims over a city that has for centuries been sacred to all faiths. Today’s move of the US embassy gives life to a religious conflict instead of a dignified peace.

We shall not give up our belief that peace can be achieved.  We will defend our internationally endorsed rights, including the right to self-determination in an independent sovereign state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, and will not deviate from our decades-long work with our international partners to realize a better future for all peoples in the region.

In January, Russia hosted the Congress of Syrian National Dialogue in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. It has been the most representative forum thus far to discuss the conflict in Syria. Moscow invited Beijing to take part in the event as an observer. The Russian government believes that China is too important to be denied a role in the process of bringing peace to that war-torn country.

Post-war Syria is a scene of devastation. The creation of de-escalation zones has worked well to establish a cease-fire and a pause to catch one’s breath before the work of reconstruction begins. The Western powers are very unlikely to help rebuild Syria as long as Assad’s government, which is backed by Russia and Iran, remains in power. Legislation that has been dubbed the “No Assistance for Assad Act” has passed the US House of Representatives and has been read twice in the Senate. The bill seeks to channel US aid exclusively to the parts of Syria outside the control of the government.

The West’s reluctance to help rebuild Syria makes China a viable alternative. It is ready to contribute, which is a very welcome development. Chinese businessmen are already in Syria, exploring the opportunities for investment. Beijing has announced a plan to build a $2 billion industrial park for 150 Chinese companies. It has launched the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multi-billion, massive, intercontinental infrastructure development project, which includes Syria as a transit partner. China is for future investments around the world and Syria could be the beneficiary of much of that. It could also be used to assist Russia, Iran, and Turkey, the Astana process guarantor states.

China provides military and other forms of assistance to Syria. It has a vested interest in the settlement of the conflict, because stability in Syria reduces the risk that mercenaries from Xinjiang will return home to mount terrorist attacks. Last year, about 5,000 ethnic Uyghurs from that province traveled to Syria to train and fight for various militant groups. The normalization of the situation would prevent the country from becoming a haven and training ground for China’s Muslim extremists. But no stability is achievable in Syria without improved living standards.

Beijing has been playing a low-key yet active role in the peace process, without military involvement. It has joined Russia to veto several UN proposals put forward by the West that would sanction the Syrian government.

If China became the fourth full-fledged guarantor state for the Astana process, the peace effort could expand to bring in other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), including India and Pakistan. These states have never taken sides in Syria’s conflict, and thus could be trusted to act as impartial mediators. Iran is an observer and Turkey is a partner in the dialog. Egypt and Syria have also submitted applications to be granted observer status. Cairo is considering the possibility of sending its forces to Syria. With so many members involved in the conflict, the SCO could launch a comprehensive, international peace initiative based on the Astana process.

If some progress were made, Syria could obtain a status in the group that would be a stepping stone to full-fledged membership. The SCO could speak with one voice at the UN-brokered Geneva talks. The Shanghai Organization could solve the Syrian conflict without the West imposing its own rules of the game. Such a political breakthrough would greatly facilitate the implementation of China’s BRI, with all the major actors participating in the project. The SCO’s clout would grow immensely. Europe would benefit as well, if an SCO-brokered peace halted the flow of refugees.

China and Russia are also members of BRICS, another powerful group with growing prominence on the world stage. Three out of the five BRICS states – Russia, India, and China – are members of the Shanghai group. Brazil and South Africa would boost their global clout by joining in an SCO-BRICS peace effort in Syria. It’s important that the Syrian government view the BRICS coalition as a legitimate player. The participation of BRICS and SCO in the settlement process would transform the international system into a more multilateral configuration. This would also be in line with the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which was adopted by the UN in 2005. Syria is the right place to demonstrate that R2P is more than an empty phrase.

In theory, there may be reservations about bringing China in to act as the fourth guarantor state in the Astana process, but the advantages clearly outweigh any doubts. It would be a good thing for Beijing to play a greater role in the political efforts.

No peace will come if Syria is not rebuilt. The post-war reconstruction is too much for anyone to take on alone. It needs to be a comprehensive, international endeavor. This is a good opportunity for the SCO and BRICS to transform themselves into real international actors tackling urgent problems. Expanding the effort to bring peace to Syria is kind of a chain reaction that could be set in motion by bringing in China. This would be a step in the right direction toward resolving the conflict.

*

Peter Korzun is an expert on wars and conflicts.

Julian Assange is in immense danger. Remarks made this week by Ecuador’s foreign minister suggest that her government may be preparing to renege on the political asylum it granted to the WikiLeaks editor in 2012 and hand him over to British and then American authorities.

On March 28, under immense pressure from the governments in the US, Britain and other powers, Ecuador imposed a complete ban on Assange having any Internet or phone contact with the outside world, and blocked his friends and supporters from physically visiting him. For 45 days, he has not been heard from.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa stated in a Spanish-language interview on Wednesday that her government and Britain “have the intention and the interest that this be resolved.” Moves were underway, she said, to reach a “definite agreement” on Assange.

If Assange falls into the hands of the British state, he faces being turned over to the US. Last year, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that putting Assange on trial for espionage was a “priority.” CIA director Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state, asserted that WikiLeaks was a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

In 2010, WikiLeaks courageously published information leaked by then Private Bradley [now Chelsea] Manning that exposed war crimes committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. WikiLeaks also published, in partnership with some of the world’s major newspapers, tens of thousands of secret diplomatic cables, exposing the daily anti-democratic intrigues of US imperialism and numerous other governments.

For that, Assange was relentlessly persecuted by the Obama administration. By November 2010, it had convened a secret grand jury and had a warrant issued for his arrest on charges of espionage—charges that can carry the death sentence. The then Labor Party government in Australia headed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard threw Assange, an Australian citizen, to the wolves. It refused to provide him any defence and declared it would work with the US to have him detained and put on trial.

On June 19, 2012, under conditions in which he faced extradition to Sweden to answer questions over fabricated allegations of sexual assault, and the prospect of rendition to the United States, Assange sought asylum in the Ecuador’s embassy in London.

Since that time, for nearly six years, he has been largely confined to a small room with no direct sunlight. He has been prevented from leaving, even to obtain medical treatment, by the British government’s insistence it will arrest him for breaching bail as soon as he sets foot outside the embassy.

Now, for six weeks and three days, he has been denied even the right to communicate.

Jennifer Robinson, the British-based Australian lawyer who has represented Assange since 2010, told the London Times in an interview this month:

“His health situation is terrible. He’s had a problem with his shoulder for a very long time. It requires an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging scan], which cannot be done within the embassy. He’s got dental issues. And then there’s the long-term impact of not being outside, his visual impairment. He wouldn’t be able to see further than from here to the end of this hallway.”

The effort to haul Assange before a US court is inseparable from the broader campaign underway by the American state and allied governments to impose sweeping censorship on the Internet. Lurid allegations of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 US election and denunciations of “fake news” have been used to demand that Google, Facebook and other conglomerates block users from accessing websites that publish critical commentary and exposures of the ruling class and its agencies—including WikiLeaks and the World Socialist Web Site.

WikiLeaks has been absurdly denounced as “pro-Russia” because it published leaks from the US Democratic Party National Committee that revealed the anti-democratic intrigues the party’s leaders carried out to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary elections. It also published leaked speeches of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that further exposed her intimate relations with Wall Street banks and companies.

As part of the justification for Internet censorship, US intelligence agencies allege, without any evidence, that the information was hacked by Russian operatives and supplied to WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton and assist Trump—whom Moscow purportedly considered the “lesser evil.”

In response to the hysterical allegations, WikiLeaks broke its own tradition of not commenting on its sources. It publicly denied that Russia was the source of the leaks. That has not prevented the campaign from continuing, with Assange even being labelled “the Kremlin’s useful idiot” in pro-Democratic Party circles. WikiLeaks is blamed for Clinton’s defeat, not the reality, that tens of millions of American workers were repulsed by her right-wing, pro-war campaign and refused to vote for her.

Under conditions in which the Ecuadorian government has capitulated to great power pressure and is collaborating with British and US agencies to break Julian Assange, there is an almost universal and reprehensible silence on the part of dozens of organisations and hundreds of individuals who once claimed to defend him and WikiLeaks.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which in February 2016 condemned Assange’s persecution as “a form of arbitrary detention” and called for his release, has issued no statement on his current situation.

In Britain, the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn have said nothing on the actions by Ecuador. Nor have they opposed the determination of the Conservative government to arrest Assange if he leaves the embassy.

In Australia, the current Liberal-National government and Labor leadership are just as complicit. The Greens, which claimed to oppose the persecution of Assange, have not made any statement in parliament or issued a press release, let alone called for public protests. Hundreds of editors, journalists, academics, artists and lawyers across the country who publicly defended WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011 are now mute.

A parallel situation prevails across Europe and in the US. The so-called parties of the “left” and the trade unions are all tacitly endorsing the vicious drive against Assange.

Around the world, the Stalinist and Pabloite pseudo-left organisations, anxious not to disrupt their sordid relations with the parties of the political establishment and the trade union apparatuses, are likewise silent.

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International unconditionally defend Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. If the ruling elite can haul him before a court, it will hold him up as an example of what happens to those who speak out against social inequality, militarism, war and police-state measures. His prosecution would be used to try to intimidate and silence all dissent.

If Assange is imprisoned or worse, and WikiLeaks shut down, it will be a serious blow to the democratic rights of the entire international working class.

Workers and young people should join with the WSWS and ICFI in demanding and fighting for the immediate freedom of Julian Assange.

As recently confirmed in a debate at the Brookings Institute by the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, General Robert Neller, “there are military areas in which the United States maintains a technological advantage [over Russia and China], others in which there is substantial parity, and others in which the United States is lagging behind, revealing a technological gap with its peer competitors”.

The last point applies to weapons systems designed to operate at hypersonic speed. Let us start with the simple and pragmatic definition offered by The National Interest of hypersonic vehicles and weapons:

A hypersonic vehicle is one that moves through the atmosphere at a minimum speed of five times that of sound, or Mach 5. A hypersonic cruise missile travels continuously through the air employing a special high-powered engine. A hypersonic glide vehicle [HGV] is launched into space atop a ballistic missile, after which it maneuvers through the upper reaches of the atmosphere until it dives towards its target. Both vehicle types can carry either conventional or nuclear weapons.

As we can see, we are speaking here about technological developments that require money and scientific structures of the highest level to achieve such significant and complex results. The difficulty of implementing systems of such complexity is very well explained by Defense Review:

One of DR’s primary questions about the Russian and Chinese HAA/HGV [Hypersonic Attack Aircraft/Hypersonic Glide Vehicle] tech is whether or not the vehicles generate a plasma field/shield around it that can effectively camouflage the vehicle and/or disrupt an incoming high-powered laser beam, and thus avoid both detection and destruction during its flight. Russian scientists and military aircraft designers/developers have been experimenting with plasma field generation tech since the late 1970’s, so one would think they’re pretty far along by now. Oh, and let’s not forget China’s recent development of a new ultra-thin, lightweight “tunable” UHF microwave radar-absorbing stealth/cloaking material for both manned and unmanned combat aircraft and warships. The hits just seem to keep on coming. Its enough to drive a military defense analyst to drink.

Another area of complexity concerns the communication between the hypersonic flight carrier and and its land-based components, especially if the re-entry vehicle is to be maneuvered remotely.

The fundamental component in performing a hypersonic flight naturally lies in the engines, used to reach speeds higher than Mach 7. There are ongoing studies by all of these countries concerning scramjet engines, essential for the purposes of producing hypersonic weapons. By employing a scramjet engine, and mixing it with other technologies (jet engine or ramjet), one would enable the aircraft and missiles to reach hypersonic speeds, as Beijing’s Power Machinery Research Institute explains:

The turbo-aided rocket-augmented ram/scramjet engine (TRRE), which uses rocket augmentation to aid the transition into the supersonic and hypersonic flight regimes, could be the world’s first combined cycle engine to fly in 2025, paving the way for hypersonic -space planes and single-stage space launchers.

DARPA also explains the US point of view on this particular area of research:

Advanced Full Range Engine program (AFRE) which is intended as a reusable hypersonic engine that combines an off-the-shelf jet engine with a dual mode ramjet engine.

War Is Boring definitively clarifies the concept using simpler words:

Turbojet? Ramjet? Scramjet? A turbojet spins a lot of blades to compress and heat incoming air. A ramjet moves so fast that the engine is already hot and compressed enough to ignite the fuel. A scramjet – short for “supersonic combustion ramjet” – is just that, a ramjet where the incoming air is moving at supersonic speeds.

The world of hypersonic weapons is divided into four types: hypersonic cruise missiles, which are surface- or air-launched; hypersonic glide vehicles, brought to high altitude by missiles or jets, re-entering the atmosphere at very high speeds while maneuvering, and able to hit targets with conventional or nuclear bombs; hypersonic attack aircraft, which are vehicles that fly at hypersonic speeds and are capable of taking off and landing, and are therefore useful for surveillance purposes but potentially also for attack; and finally, hypersonic anti-ship missiles.

Let’s examine them one by one, listing the current respective stages of research, development and testing of the countries in question.

The first type of hypersonic weapons are the easiest to understand. Simply put, these are cruise missiles with scramjet engines that are capable of accelerating to hypersonic speeds.

Hypersonic cruise Missiles (excluding anti-ship weapons available below) United States (testing phase)

• High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW), based on the Boeing X-51

Russia/India (testing phase)

• BrahMos-II is a hypersonic missile currently under development in India and Russia

The most discussed weapon is the hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). What exactly a HGV is can be explained as follows:

HGVs are unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable aircraft that glide and “skip” through the earth’s atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds. Compared to conventional ballistic systems, HGV warheads can be much higher, lower altitudes and less-trackable trajectories. The defense systems approach leaves less time to intercept the warhead before it drops its payload.

Glide Weapon/Hypersonic Glide Vehicle:

United States (experimental phase)

• For years, the US has worked on missiles that can be used as a Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) weapon, which is a rocket glider that can reach speeds of 20,921 kilometers per hour, or Mach 20, and then uses a scramjet/ramjet engine to perform maneuvers. Currently, the United States is in the research and development phase of experimenting with an Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) known as the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2)

Russia (entering into service in 2019)

• KH-47M 2 Kinzhal (Dagger). An air-launched, modified Zircon missile launched from a MiG-31.

• Avangard /YU-74.

China (test phase)

• DF-17/DF-ZF/WU-14 – Hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) medium-range system, with a range of between 1,800 and 2,500 kilometers.

As we can see, Russia is almost ready to start mass production of their HGVs, while the US is still in the early phase of experimentation, and China is already undertaking numerous tests.

The most complicated factor with hypersonic technology concerns the Hypersonic Attack Aircraft (HAA), equipped with scramjet engines and able to attain hypersonic speeds, but with the added benefit of being able to take off and land. They are to be unmanned and can be used for surveillance or attack purposes.

Hypersonic Attack Aircraft

United States (unknown phase)

• No known projects, much speculation about tests and scientific research. For example, the US military created in 1996 a program called SHAAFT. Now the US Military is working on a number of prototypes:

• X-51 WaveRide

• NASA’s X-43A

• SR-72

Russia (testing phase)

• YU-71 Russia

China (testing phase)

• TENGYUN is a hypersonic aircraft powered during the first stage by a turbine rocket combined cycle (TRCC) engine, which then launches a reusable second-stage rocket to reach the stratosphere.

Because scramjet technology, on which HAA systems rely, is still in its early phases of development, this weapon system is unlikely to see the light of day any time soon.

Anti-ship missiles accelerate to hypersonic speed, allowing them to hit naval groups. As described below, this is because of a scramjet motor that gives such missiles their power:

Anti Ship Missiles are believed to be a maneuvering, winged hypersonic cruise missile with a lift-generating center body. A booster stage with solid-fuel engines accelerates it to supersonic speeds, after which a scramjet motor in the second stage accelerates it to hypersonic speeds.

Anti Ship Hypersonic Missiles:

United States (Currently only possesses sub-sonic missiles)

• AGM-158C LRASM (sub-sonic)

Russia (operational)

• 3M22 Zircon

China (testing phase)

• Modified Dong Feng 21

In the next article I will explain how Russia and China Gained a Strategic Advantage in Hypersonic Technology and why this could be a game changer in future war scenarios.

*

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

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Chemical Attack Accusations ‘Fake’: Bashar Al-Assad Interview

By Bashar al Assad and Alexis Papachelas, May 13, 2018

I think maybe the only mission accomplished was when they helped ISIS escape from Raqqa, when they helped them, and it was proven by video, and under their cover. The leaders of ISIS escaped Raqqa, going toward Deir ez-Zor just to fight the Syrian Army. The other mission accomplished was when they attacked the Syrian Army at the end of 2016 in the area of Deir ez-Zor when ISIS was surrounding Deir ez-Zor, and the only force was the Syrian Army.

Putin-Netanyahu Summit in Moscow. Russia Is “Urging” Syria to “Compromise”, Now!

By Andrew Korybko, May 13, 2018

The Putin-Netanyahu Summit on Victory Day really did change everything, and Russia is no longer shy about showing the world its desire to “balance” “Israel” and Iran in Syria.

Israel Baits the Hook. Will Syria Bite?

By Tony Cartalucci, May 13, 2018

Israel has repeatedly struck Syria with missiles and rockets – the most recent exchange taking place after Israel claims “Iranian rockets” struck positions the Israeli military is illegally occupying in Syria’s Golan Heights.

The Summer of War and Chaos: US-Israel Plan to Balkanize the Middle East

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, May 12, 2018

Israel used a false-flag tactic to justify a military strike in Syria claiming that it was the Iranians who fired the missiles at the Golan Heights  in the first place. Israel clearly wants a war with Syria and their biggest obstacle to hegemonic power in the Middle East, Iran with Washington’s help of course. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held the “Iran Lied” presentation in Tel-Aviv on Iran’s alleged secret nuclear weapons activity.

Iran Breaks the Rules of Engagement: Israel Takes Its Revenge, and Syria and Iran Impose the Golan Equation

By Elijah J. Magnier, May 12, 2018

Israel hits Syrian and Iranian objectives and weapons warehouses again (evacuated weeks before) for the fourth time in a month. 28 Israeli jets participated in the biggest attack since 1974. Tel Aviv informed the Russian leadership of its intentions without succeeding in stopping the Syrian leadership from responding. Actually, what is new is the location where Damascus decided to hit back: the occupied Golan Heights (20 rockets were fired at Israeli military positions).

Iran – Trump’s Broken Deal – Maneuver to War?

By Peter Koenig, May 12, 2018

From the very beginning, way into Trump’s Presidential Campaign, he was against the deal. It was a bad deal, “the worst Obama could have made” – he always repeated himself, without ever saying what was bad about it, nor did he reveal who was the “bad-deal whisperer”, who for once didn’t get across to Obama with his unreasonable requests.

Featured image: An animation shows how carbon dioxide moves around the planet. (Photo: NASA/YouTube)

As the Trump administration charges forward with its war on science by canceling a “crucial” carbon monitoring system at NASA, scientists and climate experts are sounding alarms over atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) that just surpassed a “troubling” threshold for the first time in human history.

“The reading from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii finds that concentrations of the climate-warming gas averaged above 410 parts per million [ppm] throughout April,” Chris Mooneywrote for the Washington Post. “The first time readings crossed 410 at all occurred on April 18, 2017, or just about a year ago.”

Atmospheric CO2 set a new record last month: 410PPM pic.twitter.com/eZCakkHnEP

— Climate Central (@ClimateCentral) May 4, 2018

While the planet’s concentrations of carbon dioxide fluctuated between roughly 200 ppm and 280 ppm for hundreds of thousands of centuries, as the NASA chart below details, CO2 concentrations have soared since the start industrial revolution—and, without urgent global efforts to significantly alter human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions, show no sign of letting up.

“As a scientist, what concerns me the most is not that we have passed yet another round-number threshold but what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, told Mooney.

While CO2 levels have passed 400 ppm in the Earth’s history, “it has been a long time. And scientists are concerned that the rate of change now is far faster than what Earth has previously been used to,” as Mooney explained:

In the mid-Pliocene warm period more than 3 million years ago, they were also around 400 parts per million—but Earth’s sea level is known to have been 66 feet or more higher, and the planet was still warmer than now.

As a recent federal climate science report (coauthored by Hayhoe) noted, the 400 parts per million carbon dioxide level in the Pliocene “was sustained over long periods of time, whereas today the global CO2 concentration is increasing rapidly.” In other words, Earth’s movement toward Pliocene-like conditions may play out in the decades and centuries ahead of us.

As climate scientists continue to warn about the global consequences of rising levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases—such as more intense and frequent extreme weather events—the Trump administration has pursued a multi-pronged anti-science agenda that includes rolling back regulations that aim to limit emissions and blocking future research.

On the eve the planet crossed the highest measured CO2 levels, 410 ppm, NASA quietly cancels carbon monitoring research programhttps://t.co/SK24fBzge2

— Peter de Menocal (@PdeMenocal) May 10, 2018

News of the record-high levels of atmospheric carbon came as Science reported that the Trump administration “quietly killed” NASA’s $10-million-a-year Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), which “has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet’s flows of carbon”—because, as 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben remarked sarcastically, “what you can’t see can’t cook you.”

Trump kills crucial NASA work to measure carbon and methane. Because what you can't see can't cook you. https://t.co/aZedBKmRFI

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) May 10, 2018

Citing a NASA spokesman, Science explained:

“The White House has mounted a broad attack on climate science, repeatedly proposing cuts to NASA’s earth science budget, including the CMS, and cancellations of climate missions such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3). Although Congress fended off the budget and mission cuts, a spending deal signed in March made no mention of the CMS. That allowed the administration’s move to take effect.”

Canceling CMS likely has global ramifications, Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, pointed out, because the system monitors the Earth’s CO2 levels as nations that have signed on to the Paris climate agreement—from which Trump plans to withdraw—pursue policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” Gallagher said, calling the decision to kill the system “a grave mistake.”

*

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

In Charles Dickens’s novel “A Tale of Two Cities”, set during the French revolution of 1789, he draws the character of Madame Defarge. She, along with other members of the Tricoteuse, the knitting women, perch every day next to the guillotine, knitting into hats and socks the names of those to be executed, while watching the upper aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie being dispatched to their death one by one. They were regarded as respected sisters of the revolution.

I cannot help being reminded of her when I read the CV of the woman nominated by President Donald Trump to be the new head of the CIA, Gina Haspel. She is a career officer who ran a CIA “black site” in Thailand. She implemented the torture policies of president George W. Bush. She also, according to The Economist, transmitted her boss’s orders to destroy video evidence of brutal interrogations.

She ignored the UN Convention Against Torture, which the conservative president, Ronald Reagan, had successfully fought to be ratified. James Comey, the FBI director, another Republican, who was fired by Trump, wrote in his recent memoirs:

“I could not get away from the mental pictures of naked men chained to the ceiling in a cold, blazingly lit, cell for endless days.”

When the allies captured high-ranking members of the Nazi government and German generals, they wanted all the information they could get. They got most of it but they never used torture. What Bush, with the connivance of Haspel and her like, did would never have been allowed, yet the stakes then were much higher.

Immediately on attaining office, president Barack Obama banned torture. In sharp contrast during his campaign, Trump said he favoured bringing it back and a “hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”. Contradicting him, his secretary of defence, General James Mattis, says he does not believe in torture. He argues that he could extract from a prisoner the information needed with two chairs, a packet of cigarettes and a couple of bottles of beer.

The Mattis line follows the arguments of the 2014 report of the US Senate that examined, among others, the torture of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh. He was waterboarded, which gives the sensation of drowning, 183 times. The report concluded that the information extracted from him could have been learnt without torture.

Primitive man, like other animals, followed his instincts and killed his enemy as swiftly as the job could be done. Archaeologists, examining skeletons, have found no evidence of torture.

For several hundred thousand years, torture did not exist. Only in the last few thousand has it become a weapon of state.

Rome tortured the early Christians. The Christian church repelled by this Roman practice, for a thousand years used its great strength to abolish torture. Until the time of Pope Innocent IV in the thirteenth century, it was practically unknown in the Western world.

The Inquisition brought it back. Heretics were forced to undergo a very systematic use of torture, while a magistrate sat close by logging carefully the instruments used.

In the 17th century, torture began to die out. In 1640, it was abolished in England by law. After the 1789 Revolution, France made the use of torture a capital offence. Most German states and Russia abolished it in the nineteenth century. Moreover, the European imperial powers did much to dampen its use in the many parts of the world where they had their empires.

During the twentieth century, torture returned with a vengeance. It reached such a scale that it dwarfed even the darkest Middle Ages. It was Mussolini’s fascists that were the first government to make torture an official policy. The blackshirts invented their own particular brand of torture; pumping a prisoner full of castor oil “to purge him of the will to exist”.

The German Nazis not only developed the concentration camps for mass extermination of the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, they regularly used torture. Spain, under Franco, used torture until the 1970s. As late as 1981, Spanish police were found to have used torture against Basque nationalists.

In the United Kingdom during the civil war in Northern Ireland, torture was used in the 1960s and early 1970s mainly against the IRA. Hooding, loud, high-pitched noise, sleep and food deprivation were the main tools. It was uncovered by Irish newspapers and triggered a great row in Britain. Eventually it was banned.

In 1972, Amnesty International launched a campaign, supported by the Scandinavian countries and Holland, to abolish torture. But it took until 1984 to win a UN legally binding treaty. Bush and Trump have ignored it. So did the British government of Tony Blair.

With people like Gina Haspel in charge of the CIA, we can assume the worst. The Senate must not confirm her in office.

For decades, Kenya and Ethiopia have endured extreme droughts[1] that precipitated severe food shortages[2], whereby millions of people were forced to reduce their food consumption to just one meal per day and lacked access to adequate water supplies[3]. Ethiopia and Kenya have experienced below-average rainfall since the beginning of 2018, which has created food insecurity and led to the onset of a famine in some regions.[4] According to Kenya’s Minister of Environment, more than 10 million[5] people in the country are currently hungry and an estimated 4 million are at risk of emergency levels of hunger, or even famine, by as early as August.

The lack of potable water has forced millions of Kenyans and Ethiopians to depend on trucks for the delivery of drinkable water every few days. However, despite the fact that children are starving, cattle are dying from dehydration and starvation, and lakes are drying up, both Kenya and Ethiopia continue to produce flowers for the European market, which draws upon scarce water resources and exacerbates shortages[6]. Even in the midst of a severe food security crisis, Dutch farmers manage to transport 100s of tons of flowers from Kenya and Ethiopia to Europe each and every day without exception. Moreover, the production and transport of flowers is intensified each year during the few weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in order to meet higher demands.

As of 2018, more than 220,000 hectares of land are allocated for flower production worldwide. The global flowers industry is valued at over US$100 billion, and it is estimated that consumers spend in excess of US$30 billion on flowers each year. The majority of the market is distributed throughout European Union countries from the town of Aalsmeer in the Netherlands, meaning that most of the flowers produced in South American and East African countries are transported to the Netherlands via air cargo and traded at Aalsmeer. This explains why the Netherlands is ranked as the largest exporter of flowers in world, accounting for almost 60% of global exports of flowers, even though the country itself only produces enough flowers to satisfy about 10% of total exports. The remainder of the flowers that are exported by the Netherlands are mostly produced by equatorial countries like Colombia[7], Ecuador[8], Ethiopia, and Kenya[9], where the flower industry has become a significant component of agricultural sector, as well as one of the most important foreign exchange earner industries. These countries make over 30% of their annual flower sales during the period that includes both Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

The U.S. and Germany are the largest importers of flowers in the world. Kenya and Ethiopia[10] are the largest suppliers of flowers to Europe, while Ecuador and Colombia are the main suppliers to North America. These four countries have comparative advantages in flower production, because they possess ideal climates throughout the entire year and low production costs compared to their trade partners.

While the flower industry has created many jobs and has generated income for both importer and exporter nations, most of the workers employed in producing the flowers are underpaid, work long hours, and experience health issues due to repetitive actions and exposure to highly toxic pesticides and fertilizers.In addition to these hardships, female workers, who constitute the majority of the workforce in the flower industry, also face physical and sexual abuse.

Flowers are actually one of the most pesticide-intensive crops available. Since they are not edible, the amount of pesticide use permitted exceeds that of the food industry by approximately 50 times. Many of these pesticides are carcinogenic and toxic and, in addition to their negative health impacts on workers, they also do irreversible damage to the environment, including the air, soil, and particularly the water supply, as many of the chemicals used to grow flowers often end up in lakes and rivers.

Furthermore, despite the fact that equatorial countries possess ideal climates for flower production all year round, thousands of acres of climate-controlled greenhouses are employed because the flowers require artificial light, heating and cooling during their growing cycle. This process generates significant carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, particularly when considering that some of these greenhouses are as large as multiple football fields. Subsequently, additional CO₂ emissions are generated when the packaged flowers are stored in warehouses and transported over thousands of miles in airplanes and trucks, all of which must be refrigerated. As such, it should come as no surprise that flower consumption is responsible for the release of tens of thousands of metric tons of CO₂ during the weeks preceding Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day each year, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of CO₂ produced during the rest of the year.

Flower farming also substantially reduces the amount of land available for traditional farming,while expending resources that could be better-allocated for the production of edible crops, which would serve to mitigate risks of food insecurity and malnutrition. This is evident in African nations like Kenya and Ethiopia, where the production of flowers expends scarce water supplies that could have been used to grow crops for local food consumption. Despite the fact that one hectare of land on a flower farm consumes an average of over 900 cubic meters of water per month,many farmers have abandoned traditional farming in these countries in favour of the more lucrative venture of supplying the flower industry. This has resulted in high food prices, making it difficult for the poor and low income workers to obtain sufficient food and water for their families, which has contributed to the onset of malnutrition for millions of people.[11]

The aggressive implementation of structural adjustment programs in underdeveloped countries during the 1980s and 1990s, which was overseen by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), played a decisive role in determining what kinds of goods the loan recipients would produce for exportation; in most African nations, support was generally provided to the agricultural sector. In the case of Kenya, the IMF and World Bank pressured its government to allocate land that was typically used for traditional agriculture and food production for the cultivation of flowers and other products for export in the 1990s. This was done in spite of the fact that Kenyans in some regions of the country had already been experiencing some level of food insecurity and malnutrition for decades. Today, flower exports generate $150 million for Kenya each year, making it the country’s third largest earner of foreign exchange after tea and tourism. Kenya is also Africa’s primary supplier of flowers to Europe, which are primarily destined for the Netherlands (69%), the UK (18%), and Germany (7%).

Kenya’s flower industry controls the majority of the land around Lake Naivasha, which boasts fresh water reserves. “Many of the large horticultural and floricultural farms surrounding the lake were once farms owned by European settlers, but are now owned by their descendants, wealthy Africans and/or international interests”[12] who often forbid the public from accessing the lake. Lake Naivasha provides an abundance of water for flower farms, which mostly produce flowers that are not indigenous to Kenya and typically require higher levels of water consumption,as well as excessive applications of stronger pesticides and fertilizers, relative to native species. Meanwhile, over 40% of Kenya’s population does not have access to a reliable source of potable water[13] and many people are forced to travel significant distances to obtain water for their families. To be more precise,

“with a population of 46 million, 41 percent of Kenyans still rely on unimproved water sources, such as ponds, shallow wells and rivers, while 59 percent of Kenyans use unimproved sanitation solutions… Only 9 out of 55 public water service providers in Kenya provide continuous water supply, leaving people to find their own ways of searching for appropriate solutions to these basic needs.”[14]

In addition to exacerbating water shortages,the flower industry also contributes to a number of significant ecological problems in the surrounding region, as it is a persistent emitter of CO₂ that relies on excessive applications of toxic pesticides and fertilizers, which has caused irreversible damage to the environment and society. Specific to Kenya, a report published by Food and Water Watch[15] and the Council of Canadians[16] states that,

“The pesticides applied on the farms and in the greenhouses eventually end up in Lake Naivasha and in the groundwater, endangering the area’s people and wildlife.”

Flower production in Kenya

The flower industry has been praised as an economic success story in East African countries for creating jobs and generating income. However, most of the flower industry profits are accrued to multinational corporations, which are generally headquartered outside of the countries where the actual production takes place. In reality, the flower industry creates very low paid jobs for local workers, involving very heavy workloads. That is to say, citizens of the flower producing countries in South America and Africa receive very few benefits from the flower industry, even though it depletes their much-needed natural resources, particularly the scarce water supplies in Africa.

In the case of Kenya, locals who were already facing difficulty in terms of obtaining their basic needs and providing for their families also have to contend with their country’s resources being exploited to produce ephemeral consumption products for the citizens of Western countries.As the situation is currently constituted, Europe is essentially transferring the intensive water usage required to produce the flowers demanded by its citizens to the African nations that actually grow them. By depleting the water resources in Africa, the continent that can least afford to spare its scarce water supplies, Europeans can save their own fresh water reserves and allocate them to less wasteful endeavours, while still obtaining their flowers.

Flowers might be regarded as symbols of love. The truth, however, is that the current system of producing and consuming flowers is responsible for the destruction and depletion of water reserves, worsening food shortages, saturating the surrounding environment with toxic chemicals and fertilizers, and threatening humans, animals and plant life in the regions where they are grown. In essence, everyone who purchases flowers that were grown in Kenya is exploiting Naivasha water at the expense of the locals who are preventing from accessing it, and contributing to the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, soil degradation, and many other destructive impacts that the flower industry has had on the inhabitants of the region. When one learns of all these destructive outcomes generated by the flower industry, flowers start to lose their external beauty and no longer seem to represent a symbol of love.

*

Global Research contributor Dr. Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

Notes

[1] Somalia and South Sudan are also experiencing chronic drought, which has generated severe hunger crises requiring humanitarian assistance. Some have predicted that these countries might be affected by famine as early as 2018.

[2] Many African countries have been experiencing similar and worse cases of food insecurity and severe malnutrition for decades.

[3] https://www.caritas.org/2018/04/hunger-spreads-in-east-and-horn-of-africa/

[4] https://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/famine-and-hunger-crisis

[5] Currently, significant food assistance is needed to prevent hunger and famine in a number of East African nations, including Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, and Somalia, where almost 25 million people are impacted, including 15 million children. Inadequate rainfall and food insecurity are also devastating parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria.

[6] The current crisis facing a number of African countries is the outcome of many factors including centuries of exploitation, colonization, imperialism, climate change, conflict, overpopulation, corruption, the mismanagement of natural resources, and unsustainable resource use resulting in environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and deforestation. Allocating water supplies for the production of flowers exacerbates this situation.

[7] Colombia is the second-largest exporter of flowers in the world.

[8] Ecuador is the world’s third-largest exporter of flowers. Ecuador’s floriculture industry began to develop in 1991, with support from the Andean Trade Preference Act.

[9] Kenya is the fourth-largest exporter of flowers in the world.

[10] In 1990s, less than 100 hectares of land was allocated to flower farmers in Ethiopia. Today, 3,000 hectares of land are dedicated for flower production in Ethiopia, transforming the country into the second-largest exporter of flowers in Africa, behind only Kenya.

[11] Many African countries have been experiencing below-average seasonal rainfall, contributing to large numbers of animal deaths, poor harvests that result in insufficient supplies of low quantity food at a higher prices, and severe food insecurity for millions of people.

[12] ftp://ftp.itc.nl/pub/naivasha/PolicyNGO/FWW2008.pdf

[13] The problem of accessing potable or reliable water sources is not limited to Kenya, as millions of people in a number of African countries are unable to obtain sufficient water for their daily needs or traditional farming. In Ethiopia, for example, in 2018, a devastating drought that has dried up water resources and destroyed livelihoods, as “61 million people lack access to Safe Water.” https://water.org/search/?query=ethiopia

[14] https://water.org/our-impact/kenya/

[15] “Food & Water Watch is a non-profit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food.” ftp://ftp.itc.nl/pub/naivasha/PolicyNGO/FWW2008.pdf

[16] “The Council of Canadians is Canada’s largest citizens’ advocacy organization working to safeguard social security, promote economic justice, renew democracy, advocate alternatives to corporate-style free trade, and preserve our environment.” ftp://ftp.itc.nl/pub/naivasha/PolicyNGO/FWW2008.pdf

The debate in the New York Times and Washington Post over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran deal, revolves around which tactics America should use to dominate Iran.

At one end of the spectrum of acceptable opinion is the view that President Trump was correct to withdraw from the deal because it supposedly failed to handcuff Iran to a sufficient degree. At the other is the far more common perspective, which is that Trump should have remained in the deal because it is an effective tool for controlling Iran.

In the New York Times, Bret Stephens (5/8/18) argued that the agreement did not achieve what he thinks should be the goal of US policy towards Iran, namely:

to put Iran’s rulers to a fundamental choice. They can opt to have a functioning economy, free of sanctions and open to investment, at the price of permanently, verifiably and irreversibly forgoing a nuclear option and abandoning their support for terrorists. Or they can pursue their nuclear ambitions at the cost of economic ruin and possible war.

The New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (5/8/18) is glad Trump canceled the Iran deal because that allows the US to threaten Iran with “economic ruin and possible war.”

Ending American participation in the deal makes sense, according to Stephens, because doing so puts Washington in a better position to threaten to violently destroy Iran in order to make it do want the US government wants. What he means by “support for terrorists” is unclear and evidence-free.

The Washington Post (5/9/18) ran an incoherent piece by US national security advisor John Bolton saying that Trump needed to take the US out of the Iran deal because, since its implementation, Iran has not “focus[ed] on behaving responsibly.” In other words, he opposes the nuclear accord because Iran has proven itself too immature for the freedom from US control that Bolton wrongly suggests it is offered under the JCPOA.

Commentators who differed on Trump’s decision nevertheless shared the premise of those in favor of taking the US out of the deal, which is that Iran belongs under imperial stewardship.

John Bolton (Washington Post, 5/9/18), one of the foremost advocates of the Iraq invasion and for regime change in Libya and Syria, accused Iran of “spreading an arc of death and destruction across the Middle East.”

Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security advisor, defended the Iran nuclear deal in the Times  (5/8/18) on the grounds that it “has served American interests.”

“By withdrawing from the deal,” she writes, “we have weakened our ability to address [America’s] concerns” with Iranian policy.

Roger Cohen of the Times (5/8/18) took the same position, saying,

“The question has always been: Do you change Iran by isolating it or by engaging it step by step? The nuclear deal was a possible starting point in engagement.”

Trump, Cohen continues, “has done a grave disservice to American interests.”

In the Post (5/10/18), furthermore, David Ignatius criticized Trump for transforming Iran from “a manageable problem into a freewheeling, uncontrolled one.”

Iran and Global Empire

While analysts at the Times and the Post sit at different points within the parameters of permissible thinking, they have in common the view that Iran should be a ward of empire because otherwise it will interfere with the US’s global ambitions. Proponents and opponents of the Iran deal therefore debate it on the basis of whether it helps US ruling class efforts to secure global hegemony.

Stephens backed Trump’s move because he says that the agreement eased sanctions on Iran, thereby enabling the country to have more money with which to support its allies in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. He says that “any [US] effort to counter Iran on the ground in these places would mean fighting the very forces we are effectively feeding. Why not just stop the feeding?” His position is that Trump is right to pull out of the deal because it enabled Iran to hinder US goals in the Middle East.

Bolton complained that “Tehran has poured billions of dollars into military adventures abroad, spreading an arc of death and destruction across the Middle East from Yemen to Syria,” ludicrously absolving the US/Saudi/UK coalition of its aggression against Yemen, and incorrectly assigning Iran sole responsibility for the bloodshed in Syria. That he was complaining about Iran’s support for forces that function as barriers to US domination in Syria and Yemen—support that is rather overblown in the Yemeni case—can hardly be seen as a coincidence.

At the other boundary of tolerable debate, Rice criticized Trump’s withdrawal because, she claimed, it meant that “Russia and China’s position in [the Middle East] will be bolstered at our expense.” In her view, Iran should be under US management for the purposes of imperial grand strategy.

The Nonexistent Iranian Nuclear Threat

Advocates of the agreement with Iran also debate detractors in terms of whether the arrangement is effective protection against the Iranian nuclear weapons program, a curious exercise given that no such program exists.

Yet Stephens implied that one does, or that there is reason to suspect that one might, writing that under the JCPOA,

Iran is under looser nuclear strictures than South Korea, and would have been allowed to enrich as much material as it liked once the deal expired. That’s nuts.

Bolton obscurely suggested that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons by saying that the JCPOA is based on the theory that Iran would “trade its nuclear ambitions for economic incentives,” while also writing that the deal has an “abysmal record” and “undermines the security of the American people.” Later he refers to Israeli revelations of a “trove of documentation of Iran’s past nuclear weapons program,” which he then says demonstrates that the US and Israel “are safer together than we are individually.”

A New York Times illustration (5/8/18) depicts Trump erasing the restraints around an imaginary Iranian warhead.

Yet other writers argue that the US should have remained in the deal because it kept in check the nuclear weapons program that Iran does not have. A New York Times editorial (5/8/18) said:

When it comes to the danger of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, there is no sign Iran or any of the other major powers in the existing and so far successful pact will simply fall in line with Mr. Trump’s notional new plan. More likely, his decision, announced on Tuesday, will allow Iran to resume a robust nuclear program.

The first sentence in this passage implied that Iran is involved in “a nuclear arms race,” or that there is reason to believe it likely will be part of one, even though there isn’t. Saying that Trump pulling out of the deal “will allow Iran to resume a robust nuclear program,” since it follows the phrase “nuclear arms race,” can easily be understood to refer to Iran’s  “robust” nuclear weapons program, which it does not have.

In the Post, likewise, Jennifer Rubin (5/8/18) argued that Iran “now can do what it pleases with its nuclear program—either choose to remain in the deal with the Europeans or proceed again with its nuclear weapons program.”

Inadmissible Thinking

Rarely allowed into the debate is the notion that Iranians have the right to chart their own course free of US interference, or any accounting of the harm US sanctions inflict on the people of Iran–views that exist on the far fringes of respectable analysis, appearing in limited ways just once in each paper amid the deluge of opinion pieces written about the nuclear deal in recent days, and drowned out by the chorus calling for Iran to be held beneath the American boot.

That the US and its Israeli partner should cease their efforts to dominate the Middle East, or that America and Israel’s nonfictional nuclear weapons need to be abolished, are evidently inadmissible into public discourse.

*

Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

Featured image is from the author.

In an exclusive interview with Kathimerini, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that the Syrian Army used chemical weapons against civilians, while taking aim at both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump.

Saying that Syria gave up its chemical arsenal in 2013, Assad said the

“Western narrative started after the victory of the Syrian Army, not before.”

He accused Erdogan of being “affiliated” with the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement and called Turkish troops “terrorists” over their intervention in Afrin.

As for Trump, who has called Assad an “animal,” the Syrian leader said it did not bother him “because I deal with the situation as a politician, as a president.”

Alexis Papachelas: There have been accusations from the US and the Europeans about the use of chemical weapons, and there was an attack after that. What is your response to that? Was there a chemical attack? Were you responsible for it?

President Bashar al-Assad: First of all, we don’t have a chemical arsenal since we gave it up in 2013, and the international agency for chemical weapons conducted investigations about this, and it’s clear or documented that we don’t have any. Second, even if we did have, we wouldn’t use them, for many different reasons. But let’s put these two points aside, let’s presume that this army has chemical weapons and it’s in the middle of the war; where should it be used? At the end of the battle? They should use it somewhere in the middle, or where the terrorists made an advancement, not where the army finished the battle and the terrorists gave up and said, “We are ready to leave the area,” and the army is fully in control of that area. So the Western narrative started after the victory of the Syrian Army, not before. When we finished the war, they said, “They used chemical weapons.”

Second, the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in a crammed area with a population like Douma – the supposed area, it’s called Douma and they talk about 45 victims – when you use WMD in such an area, you should have hundreds or maybe thousands of victims. Third, why do all the chemical weapons – the presumed or supposed chemical weapons – only kill children and women? They don’t kill militants. If you look at the videos, it’s completely fake. I mean, when you have chemical weapons, how could the doctors and nurses be safe, dealing with the chemical atmosphere without any protective clothes, without anything, just throwing water at the victims, and the victims become OK just because you washed them with water. So, it’s a farce, it’s a play, it’s a very primitive play, just to attack the Syrian Army, because… Why? That’s the most important part: When the terrorists lost, the US, France, the UK and their other allies who want to destabilize Syria lost one of their main cards, and that’s why they had to attack the Syrian Army, just to raise the morale of the terrorists and to prevent the Syrian Army from liberating more areas in Syria.

AP: Are you saying that there was a chemical attack and someone else is responsible, or that there was nothing there?

PBA: That’s the question, because the side who said – allegedly – that there was a chemical attack, had to prove that there was an attack. We have two scenarios: Either the terrorists had chemical weapons and they used them intentionally, or maybe there were explosions or something, or there was no attack at all, because in all the investigations in Douma, people said, “We didn’t have any chemical attack, we didn’t see any chemical gas or smell any,” and so on. So, we don’t have any indications about what happened. The Western narrative is about that, so that question should be directed at the Western officials who said there was an attack. We should ask them: Where is your concrete evidence about what happened? They only talk about reports. Reports could be allegations. Videos by the White Helmets – the White Helmets are funded by the British Foreign Office – and so on.

AP: In a tweet, US President Donald Trump described you as “animal Assad.” What is your response?

PBA: Actually, when you are president of a country, you have first of all to represent the morals of your people before representing your own morals. You are representing your country. Does this language represent the American culture? That is the question. This is very bad, and I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s a community in the world that has such language. Second, the good thing about Trump is that he expresses himself in a very transparent way, which is very good in that regard. Personally, I don’t care, because I deal with the situation as a politician, as a president. It doesn’t matter for me personally; what matters is whether something would affect me, would affect my country, our war, the terrorists, and the atmosphere that we are living in.

AP: He said “mission accomplished in Syria.” How do you feel about that?

PBA: I think maybe the only mission accomplished was when they helped ISIS escape from Raqqa, when they helped them, and it was proven by video, and under their cover. The leaders of ISIS escaped Raqqa, going toward Deir ez-Zor just to fight the Syrian Army. The other mission accomplished was when they attacked the Syrian Army at the end of 2016 in the area of Deir ez-Zor when ISIS was surrounding Deir ez-Zor, and the only force was the Syrian Army. The only force to defend that city from ISIS was the Syrian Army, and because of the Americans’ – and of course their allies’ – attack, Deir ez-Zor was on the brink of falling into the hands of ISIS. So, this is the only mission that was accomplished. If he’s talking about destroying Syria, of course that’s another mission accomplished. While if you talk about fighting terrorism, we all know very clearly that the only mission the United States has been carrying out in Syria is supporting the terrorists, regardless of their names, or the names of their factions.

AP: He also used such language with the North Korean leader, and now they’re going to meet. Could you potentially see yourself meeting with Trump? What would you tell him if you saw him face to face?

PBA: The first question you should ask is: What can you achieve? The other: What can we achieve with someone who says something before the campaign, and does the opposite after the campaign, who says something today, and does the opposite tomorrow, or maybe in the same day? So, it’s about consistency. Do they have the same frequency every day, or the same algorithm? So, I don’t think that in the meantime we can achieve anything with such an administration. A further reason is that we don’t think the president of that regime is in control. We all believe that the deep state, the real state, is in control, or is in control of every president, and that is nothing new. It has always been so in the United States, at least during the last 40 years, at least since Nixon, maybe before, but it’s becoming starker and starker, and the starkest case is Trump.

AP: When will you accomplish your mission, given the situation here in Syria now?

PBA: I have always said, without any interference, it will take less than a year to regain stability in Syria; I have no doubt about that. The other factor is how much support the terrorists receive, which is something I cannot tell you, because I cannot predict the future. But as long as it continues, time is not the main factor. The main factor is that someday, we’re going to end this conflict and we’re going to reunify Syria under the control of the government. When? I cannot say. I hope it’s going to be soon.

AP: There has been some criticism lately, because you apparently have a law that says that anybody who doesn’t claim their property within a month cannot come back. Is that a way to exclude some of the people who disagree with you?

PBA: No, we cannot dispossess anyone of their property by any law, because the constitution is very clear about the ownership of any Syrian citizen. This could be about the procedure. It’s not the first time we have had such a law just to replan the destroyed and the illegal areas, because you’re dealing with a mixture of destroyed and illegal suburbs in different parts of Syria. So, this law is not about dispossessing anyone. You cannot, I mean even if he’s a terrorist. Let’s say, if you want to dispossess someone, you need a verdict by the judicial system – you cannot make it happen by law. So, there’s either misinterpretation of that law, or an intention, let’s say, to create a new narrative about the Syrian government in order to rekindle the fire of public opinion in the West against the Syrian government. But about the law, even if you want a procedure, it’s about the local administration, it’s about the elected body in different areas, to implement that law, not the government.

AP: It is clear that your biggest allies in this fight are Russia and Iran. Are you worried they might play too important a role in the future of the country after this war is over?

PBA: If you talk about my allies as a president, they are the Syrian people. If you talk about Syria’s allies, of course they’re the Iranians and the Russians. They are our strongest allies, and of course China that supported us politically in the Security Council. As for them playing an important role in the future of the country, these countries respect Syria’s sovereignty and national decision making and provide support to insure them. Iran and Russia are the countries which respect Syria’s sovereignty the most.

AP: It’s been a few years since you visited Greece. Your father had a very close relation with some of the Greek political leaders. How have the relations been between Greece and Syria these days, and what kind of message would you like to send to the Greek people?

PBA: At the moment, there are no formal relations between Syria and Greece; the embassies are closed, so there are no relations. At the same time, Greece wasn’t aggressive towards what happened in Syria. It always supported a political solution, it never supported war or attacks against Syria. You didn’t play any role to support the terrorists, but at the same time, as a member – and an important member – of the EU, you couldn’t play any role, let’s say, in refraining the other countries from supporting the terrorists, violating the international law by attacking and besieging a sovereign country without any reason, without any mandate by the Security Council. So, we appreciate that Greece wasn’t aggressive, but at the same time, I think Greece has to play that role, because it’s part of our region. It is part of the EU geographically, but it’s a bridge between our region and the rest of Europe, and it’s going to be affected, and it has been affected by the refugee situation, and terrorism now has been affecting Europe for the last few years, and Greece is part of that continent. So, I think it’s normal for Greece to start to play its role in the EU in order to solve the problem in Syria and protect the international law.

AP: How about Turkey? Turkey invaded part of your country. You used to have a pretty good relationship with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. How is that relationship now after the Turkish invasion?

PBA: First of all, this is an aggression, this is an occupation. Any single Turkish soldier on Syrian soil represents occupation. That doesn’t mean the Turkish people are our enemies. Only a few days ago, a political delegation visited from Turkey. We have to distinguish between the Turks in general and Erdogan. Erdogan is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Maybe he’s not organized, but his affiliation is toward that ideology, I call it this dark ideology. And for him, because, like the West, when the terrorists lost control of different areas, and actually they couldn’t implement the agenda of Turkey or the West or Qatar or Saudi Arabia, somebody had to interfere. This is where the West interfered through the recent attacks on Syria, and this is where Erdogan was assigned by the West, mainly the United States, to interfere, to make the situation complicated, again because without this interference, the situation would have been resolved much faster. So, it’s not about personal relations. The core issue of the Muslim Brotherhood anywhere in the world is to use Islam in order to take control of the government in your country, and to create multiple governments with this kind of relationship, like a network of Muslim Brotherhoods, around the world.

AP: At an election campaign rally this week, he said that he’s going to order another incursion into Syria. How are you going to respond to that if it happens?

PBA: Actually, Erdogan has supported the terrorists since the very beginning of the war, but at that time, he could hide behind words like “protecting the Syrian people,” “supporting the Syrian people,” “supporting the refugees,” “we are against the killing,” and so on. He was able to appear as a humanitarian president, let’s say. Now, because of these circumstances, he has to take off the mask and show himself as the aggressor, and this is the good thing. So, there is no big difference between the head of the Turkish regime sending his troops to Syria and supporting the terrorists; this is his proxy. So, we’ve been fighting his army for seven years. The difference between now and then is the appearance; the core is the same. At that time, we couldn’t talk about occupation – we could talk about supporting terrorists – but this time we can talk about occupation, which is the announcement of Erdogan that he’s now violating the international law, and this could be the good part of him announcing this.

AP: But how can you respond to that?

PBA: First of all, we are fighting the terrorists, and as I said, the terrorists for us are his army, they are the American army, the Saudi army. Forget about the different factions and who is going to finance those factions; at the end of the day, they work for one agenda, and those different players obey one master: the American master. Erdogan is not implementing his own agenda; he’s only implementing the American agenda, and the same goes for the other countries in this war. So, first of all, you have to fight the terrorists. Second, when you take control of more areas, you have to fight any aggressor, any army. The Turkish, French, whoever, they are all enemies; as long as they came to Syria illegally, they are our enemies.

AP: Are you worried about a third world war starting here in Syria? I mean, you have the Israelis hitting the Iranians here in your own country. You have the Russians, you have the Americans. Are you concerned about that possibility?

PBA: No, for one reason: Because fortunately, you have a wise leadership in Russia, and they know that the agenda of the deep state in the United States is to create a conflict. Since Trump’s campaign, the main agenda was against Russia, create a conflict with Russia, humiliate Russia, undermine Russia, and so on. And we’re still in the same process under different titles or by different means. Because of the wisdom of the Russians, we can avoid this. Maybe it’s not a full-blown third world war, but it is a world war, maybe in a different way, not like the second and the first, maybe it’s not nuclear, but it’s definitely not a cold war; it’s something more than a cold war, less than a full-blown war. And I hope we don’t see any direct conflict between these superpowers, because that is where things are going to get out of control for the rest of the world.

AP: Now, there’s a very important question about whether Syria can be a unified, fully sovereign country again. Is that really possible after all that has happened?

PBA: It depends on what the criteria of being unified or not is. The main factor to have a unified country is to have unification in the minds of the people, and vice versa. When those people look at each other as foreigners, they cannot live with each other, and that is where you’re going to have division. Now, let’s talk about facts and reality – not my opinion, I can tell you no, it’s not going to be divided, and of course we’re not going to accept that, but it’s not about my will or about my rhetoric, to say we’re going to be unified; it’s about the reality.

The reality, now, if you look at Syria during the crisis, not only today, since the very beginning, you see all the different spectrums of the Syrian society living with each other, and better than before. These relationships are better than before, maybe because of the effect of the war. If you look at the areas under the control of the terrorists, this is where you can see one color of the Syrian society, which is a very, very, very narrow color. If you want to talk about division, you have to see the line, the separation line between either ethnicities or sects or religions, something you don’t see. So, in reality, there’s no division till this moment; you only have areas under the control of the terrorists. But what led to that speculation? Because the United States is doing its utmost to give that control, especially now in the eastern part of Syria, to those terrorists in order to give the impression that Syria cannot be unified again. But it’s going to be unified; I don’t have any doubt about that.

AP: But why would the US do that if you’re fighting the same enemy: Islamic terrorism?

PBA: Because the US usually has an agenda and it has goals. If it cannot achieve its goals, it resorts to something different, which is to create chaos. Create chaos until the whole atmosphere changes, maybe because the different parties will give up, and they will give in to their goals, and this is where they can implement their goals again, or maybe they change their goals, but if they cannot achieve it, it’s better to weaken every party and create conflict, and this is not unique to Syria. This has been their policy for decades now in every area of this world.

AP: Looking back, do you feel you’ve made any mistakes in dealing with this crisis and the civil war, when it started?

PBA: If I don’t make mistakes, I’m not human; maybe on a daily basis sometimes. The more you work, the more complicate the situation, the more mistakes you are likely to make. But how do you protect yourself as much as possible from committing mistakes? First of all, you consult the largest proportion of the people, not only the institutions, including the parliament, syndicates, and so on, but also the largest number of people, or the largest part of society, to participate in every decision.

While if you talk about the way I behaved toward, or the way I led, let’s say, the government or the state during the war, the main pillars of the state’s policy were to fight terrorism – and I don’t think that fighting terrorism was wrong, to respond to the political initiatives from different parties externally and internally regardless of their intentions, to make a dialogue with everyone – including the militants, and finally to make reconciliation. So, about the pillars of our policy, I think the reality has proven that we were right. As for the details, of course, you always have mistakes.

AP: How much is it going to cost to reconstruct this country, and who is going to pay for that?

PBA: Hundreds of billions, the minimum is 200 billion, and according to some estimates it’s about 400 billion dollars. Why is it not precise? Because some areas are still under the control of the terrorists, so we couldn’t estimate precisely what the figure is. So, this is plus or minus, let’s say.

AP: There has been a lot of speculation. For example, people say in order for a political solution to be viable, you might have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the country. Is that something that has crossed your mind?

PBA: The main part of my future, as a politician, is two things: my will and the will of the Syrian people. Of course, the will of the Syrian people is more important than my will, my desire to be in that position or to help my country or to play a political role, because if I have that desire and will and I don’t have the public support, I can do nothing. After seven years of me being in that position, if I don’t have the majority of the Syrian people’s support, how could I hold it for more than seven years now, with all this animosity from the strongest and the richest countries? Who supports me? If the Syrian people are against me, how can I stay? So, when I feel that the Syrian people do not want me to stay anymore, of course I have to leave without any hesitation.

AP: A lot of blood has been spilt. Can you see yourself sitting across from the opposition and sharing power in some way?

PBA: When you talk about blood, you have to talk about who spilt that blood. I was president before the war for 10 years. Had I been killing the Syrian people for 10 years? No, definitely not. So, the conflict started because somebody, first of all part of the West, supported those terrorists, and they bear the responsibility for this war. So first of all the West, who provided military and financial support and political cover, and who stood against the Syrian people, who impoverished the Syrian people and created a better atmosphere for the terrorists to kill more Syrian people. So, part of the West, mainly France, UK, and US, and also Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Turkey are responsible for this part. Of course blood has been spilt – it’s a war – but who’s responsible? Those who are responsible should be held accountable.

---

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It couldn’t get any clearer – Russia is without a doubt “urging” Syria to “compromise” on a so-called “political solution” to its long-running crisis, and to do so as soon as possible in order to avoid a larger Mideast war. The groundbreaking Putin-Netanyahu Summit that took place a couple of days ago in Moscow on Victory Day was bookended by two back-to-back “Israeli” bombings of Syria within a 24 hour period, all of which was followed by Russia reportedly declining to sell S-300s to Syria.

There’s no other way to analyze this than to see it for what it truly is, which is Russia utilizing various means to “urge” Syria to “compromise” on its hitherto recalcitrant position in refusing to make tangible progress in adapting the 2017 Russian-written “draft constitution” for “decentralization” (and possibly even “federalization”) and “complying” with Moscow and others’ “request” that it initiate the “phased withdrawal” of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their Hezbollah allies from the Arab Republic.

Sudden Flip-Flopping Or Scenario Fulfillment?

The suddenness with which Russia moved may have caught many Alt-Media observers by surprise, but that’s only because many of them were brainwashed by the community’s dogma that Russia is “against” “Israel” and supposedly on some kind of “anti-Zionist crusade”, which it definitely isn’t. Instead, Russia and “Israel” are veritably allies and the events of the past couple of days prove it. That said, just because Russian foreign policy seems (key word) to be “pro-‘Israeli’” doesn’t in and of itself make it “anti-Iranian”, at least not how Moscow conceives of it. Rather, Moscow believes that it’s fulfilling its grand geostrategic ambition to become the supreme “balancing” force in 21^st-century Eurasia, to which end it’s playing the globally irreplaceable role of preventing the current “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war in Syria from evolving into a full-fledged conventional one all throughout the Mideast. This concept is a lot for some people to digest, so it’s requested that they reference the following background texts in order to catch up to the present state of affairs:

• “Russia’s Foreign Policy Progressives Have Trumped The Traditionalists”
• “Russia’s Grand Strategy In Afro-Eurasia (And What Could Go Wrong)”
• “Does Anyone Still Seriously Think That Russia And Israel Aren’t Allies?”
• “What “Moral Obligation” Did Russia Have To Not Sell S-300s To Syria?”
• “President Putin On Israel: Quotes From The Kremlin Website”
• “Victory Day 2018 Forever Changed How Alt-Media Views Russia And Israel”
• “The Syrian Show Must Go On”

The gist of all of this is that Russia’s excellent relations with “Israel” are part of its envisioned hemispheric “balancing” act in deterring its many diverse and in some cases rivalling partners (such as “Israel” and Iran) from resorting to military means to settle their disputes and to instead rely on Russian-mediated diplomatic efforts to broker a “political solution”, whether openly or clandestinely through “gentlemen’s agreements”. In the Syrian context – whether one thinks it’s “morally/ethically” right, wrong, or feels indifferent towards it – Russia has determined that the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war will continue to escalate so long as Damascus allows the IRGC and Hezbollah to retain their military presence in the Arab Republic after the defeat of Daesh, the latter event of which should have served as the trigger for allowing those two a “dignified” and “phased” withdrawal from the country but ultimately didn’t because of Damascus’ desire to play off Tehran and Moscow in a bid to reap strategic benefits from both.

Walking The Tightrope Between Tel Aviv And Tehran

In addition, there are also very serious matters of national pride when it comes to Syria’s relationship with its Iranian and Hezbollah Resistance allies, both of whom proved themselves as the country’s most loyal partners in the military and ideological senses. It’s all but politically impossible for President Assad to “comply” with what is quickly becoming the “international community’s” informal “request” for him to ‘compromise” on his country’s ties with these two because his domestic base might be tempted to perceive this (whether rightly or wrongly) as “selling out” and having fought this war “for nothing” since these terms were present from the very beginning of the conflict. The Syrian government refused to remove both of them from the country over seven years ago as a “compromise” for preempting what has since turned out to be one of the worst wars of this century so far, so it’s unlikely that it will do so now no matter how much “pressure” is put upon it, including from its Russian partners.

The contradiction between Syria’s “maximalist” approach in wanting to liberate “every inch” of its territory (which is its sovereign and legal right) and Russia’s “pragmatic” one in recognizing the impossibility of this reality and declining to get militarily involved in advancing these plans (which would correspondingly include forcibly removing NATO members Turkey and the US from the Arab Republic) have led to a “strategic dilemma” between the two partners whereby Damascus is intent on dragging its feet and procrastinating in order to avoid the political (“new constitution”)and military (“phased withdrawal” of the IRGC and Hezbollah) “compromises” that Moscow’s “solution” entails. Russia respects that Syria has informally made the choice to avoid committing to either of these two interlinked prospective means for resolving the crisis, but it nevertheless won’t stop trying to “convince” Damascus that the options presented before it are what Moscow believes to be the “best” ones that will ever be offered from this point forward.

In pursuit of its peacemaking objective to get Syria to “compromise” on the terms that Russia has presumably presented it with in order to avoid escalating the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war inside the country to the point where it becomes a conventional one all throughout the region, Moscow has apparently decided to send very strong symbolic messages to Damascus to let it know just how serious it is about this. The most powerful signals that sent shockwaves through the Alt-Media and likely also the global diplomatic communities came from the Putin-Netanyahu Summit and Russia’s passive “acceptance” of “Israel’s” latest bombing run against what Tel Aviv claimed were Iranian units in southern Syria. Furthermore, Russia’s reported reconsideration of possible S-300 sales to Syria also stands out in the starkest terms as an informal statement declaring Moscow’s unwillingness to contribute to anything that would “compromise” “Israel’s” ability to bomb suspected Iranian and Hezbollah targets at will.

Concluding Thoughts

Referring back to the title of this analysis, it couldn’t be any clearer that Russia is “urging” Syria to “compromise” as soon as possible, though it’s uncertain whether Moscow’s latest messages will get Damascus to “comply” or if it will continue digging in its heels to resist all international “pressure” to do so. Time is running out, however, because “Israel” has signaled that it’s run out of patience with this “game” and will utilize all means at its disposal to remove Iran and Hezbollah from Syria once and for all, counting as it will on open US and Gulf backing alongside Russia’s implicit support. Moscow’s passive involvement in these “containment” measures is a real game-changer and dramatically alters the strategic dynamics of the “Israeli”-Iranian proxy war in Syria, making it more likely than not that the odds will decisively shift in Tel Aviv’s favor with time unless Damascus “cuts a deal” and freezes the state of affairs before it gets any worse than it already is.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The nomination of CIA operative Gina Haspel to be CIA director has, fortunately, given rise to powerful arguments against the U.S. government’s participation in torture, a practice that is common to tyrannical regimes. The critics of Haspel’s nomination are right: The United States should never be engaged in evil conduct, and the torture of a human being is without any doubt whatsoever evil conduct. That’s why torture is inevitably associated with such regimes as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. It has no place in a country whose very own founding document, the Constitution, expressly prohibits the federal government from inflicting “cruel and unusual punishments” on people.

Unfortunately, though, hardly anyone is talking about assassination, which is another core program of Haspel’s CIA, one that involves murdering people. One might be tempted to say that assassination is “legalized murder” but actually that wouldn’t be correct. It’s not that assassination is legal, it’s that there is no one who is willing to prosecute anyone for it, especially given the overwhelming power that both the CIA and the Pentagon have long wielded within America’s federal governmental structure.

Keep in mind that when the Constitution called the federal government into existence, it enumerated the powers that the federal government could lawfully wield. The idea was that if a power wasn’t enumerated, it couldn’t lawfully be exercised.

When one closely examines the powers that the Constitution delegated to the federal government, one thing is clear: Assassination, like torture, wasn’t among them. The Framers had decided not to give federal officials the power to assassinate or the power to torture people.

Even that wasn’t good enough for the American people, however. They remained convinced of the danger that federal officials would begin torturing and murdering people because that’s what the British government, which had been their government only a few years before, had done when it owned and controlled its New World colonies.

That’s what caused the American people to demand the passage of the Bill of Rights as a condition for agreeing to approve the Constitution. They wanted to make certain that federal officials got the message: No cruel and unusual punishments and no murder. They were concerned that without the express prohibitions found in the Bill of Rights, federal officials would inevitably start torturing and killing people.

Here is how our American ancestors phrased the restriction on murder committed by federal officials: “No person shall be … deprived of life … without due process of law.”

Proponents of assassination assert that since the CIA and the Pentagon are assassinating foreigners, that particular restriction doesn’t apply. They say that the Constitution applies only here in the continental United States.

But that’s not what the restriction itself states. The restriction states “No person.” The framers of the Fifth Amendment obviously had a mastery over the English language. If they had wanted the restriction on murder to apply only to American citizens, they would have written, “No person except foreign citizens shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” Their intent clearly was to prohibit the federal government from murdering anyone.

What is “due process of law”? No, it’s not a room full of CIA officials, Pentagon officials, and members of the National Security Agency getting together, reviewing the evidence, and voting on who is going to be assassinated. Instead, due process of law means a formal accusation, such as a grand-jury indictment, and a judicial trial before an independent judge and the right of trial by jury, where evidence has to be produced showing that the person to be killed has, in fact, committed a crime and, if  convicted, is deserving of the death penalty.

There is no due process of law when it comes to the CIA’s and Pentagon’s assassination program. They decide among themselves who is going to be assassinated. No indictment. No judge. No jury. No testimony. No due process of law.

What is the justification for these state-sponsored murders? The CIA and the Pentagon say that the victims are evil or that they are involved in “terrorism” or both. But who made the CIA and the Pentagon the arbiters of evil? Moreover, what the CIA and Pentagon describe as “terrorism” is oftentimes nothing more than resistance to U.S. imperialist and interventionist activities in foreign lands, much like people under the yoke of the Soviet and British empires resisted them (and were labeled as “terrorists” as well). Or the victim is simply aligned with a group that is acting contrary to a foreign regime that is being run as a loyal puppet regime of the U.S. Empire, much like Eastern European countries were governed under the Soviet Empire.

It’s probably worth noting that the Pentagon’s and CIA’s power to assassinate people now also extends to Americans, notwithstanding the restriction on assassination in the Fifth Amendment. That’s what the Anwar al-Awlaki case was all about. Following their long-time deference to the supreme authority of the national-security branch of the federal government, the federal judiciary confirmed that it would not step in and interfere with the assassination of any American at the hands of the national-security establishment. For that matter, they held the same thing with respect to the CIA’s and Pentagon’s power to torture Americans, which was what the Jose Padilla case was all about.

One thing is indisputable: If our American ancestors had known that they were calling into existence a federal government with the power to torture and murder people, they would never in a million years have approved the Constitution, the document that called the federal government into existence in the first place.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics.

Israel has repeatedly struck Syria with missiles and rockets – the most recent exchange taking place after Israel claims “Iranian rockets” struck positions the Israeli military is illegally occupying in Syria’s Golan Heights.

Headlines like the UK’s Independent’s, “Israel and Iran on brink of war after unprecedented Syria bombardment in response to alleged Golan Heights attack,” attempt to portray the Israeli aggression as self-defense. The Independent, however, failed to produce any evidence confirming Israeli claims.

At face value, for Iran to inexplicably launch missiles at Israel, unprovoked and achieving no conceivable tactical, strategic, or political gain strains the credibility of Israel’s narrative even further.

But it is perhaps published US policy designating Israel as a hostile provocateur tasked with expanding Washington’s proxy war against Damascus that fully reveals the deadly and deceptive game Israel and the Western media are now playing.

For years, US policymakers admitted in their papers that the US desired regime change in Iran and sought to provoke a war to achieve it.

Israel Baits the Hook 

The corporate-funded Brookings Institution – whose sponsors include weapon manufacturers, oil corporations, banks, and defense contractors – published a 2009 paper titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran,” and would not only spell out the US desire for regime change in Iran but devise a number of options to achieve it.

These included sponsoring street protests in tandem with known terrorist organizations to wage a proxy war against Iran as was done to Libya and Syria. It also included provoking Iran to war – a war Brookings policymakers repeatedly admitted Iran seeks to avoid.

In regards to provoking a war with Iran based on a number of contrived cases, the paper would admit (emphasis added):

The truth is that these all would be challenging cases to make. For that reason, it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

The Brookings paper even admits that Iran may not retaliate even to the most overt provocations, including US or Israeli air raids and missiles attacks. The papers notes:

…because many Iranian leaders would likely be looking to emerge from the fighting in as advantageous a strategic position as possible, and because they would likely calculate that playing the victim would be their best route to that goal, they might well refrain from such retaliatory missiles attacks.

Brookings also admits that even massive airstrikes on Iran would not achieve US objectives, including regime change and that airstrikes would have to be part of a wider strategy including either a proxy war or a full-scale war led by the US.

More recent Brookings papers, like the 2012 “Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution,” would admit that Israel’s role – particularly from its occupation of the Golan Heights – is to provide constant pressure on Syria to aid in regime change there.

The paper notes (emphasis added): 

Israel’s intelligence services have a strong knowledge of Syria, as well as assets within the Syrian regime that could be used to subvert the regime’s power base and press for Asad’s removal. Israel could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Asad regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training. Such a mobilization could perhaps persuade Syria’s military leadership to oust Asad in order to preserve itself. Advocates argue this additional pressure could tip the balance against Asad inside Syria, if other forces were aligned properly.

We can assume that the 2012 objective of taking pressure off “the opposition” has failed – since US-NATO-Gulf sponsored terrorists have been all but defeated everywhere inside Syria, save for border regions and territory occupied by US forces to the east.

Instead, Israel’s role now has switched – both from pressuring Syria, and from attempting to provoke Iran with attacks on Iranian territory – to provoking a wider war with Syria and its allies – including Iran – by launching provocations against Syria as described in the 2009 Brookings paper, “Which Path to Persia?” 

Despite Israel’s serial provocations going unanswered for years by Syria, each attack is depicted by the Western media as defensive in nature. At the beginning of May when Syrian forces finally did retaliate, the Western media attempted to depict it as an unprovoked attack, citing Israeli military officials who claimed “Iranian missiles” were fired at the Golan Heights – rather than on-the-ground sources – both Israeli and Syrian who said otherwise.

Syria Isn’t Biting 

Retaliation by Syria, however, has been proportional and reluctant.

A cynical reality remains as to why. Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006, conducted with extensive airpower – failed to achieve any of Israel’s objectives. An abortive ground invasion into southern Lebanon resulted in a humiliating defeat for Israeli forces. While extensive damage was delivered to Lebanon’s infrastructure, the nation and in particular, Hezbollah, has rebounded stronger than ever.

Likewise in Syria, Israeli airstrikes and missile attacks will do nothing on their own to defeat Syria or change the West’s failing fortunes toward achieving regime change. They serve only as a means of provoking a retaliation sufficient enough for the the West to cite as casus belli for a much wider operation that might effect regime change.

Attempts to place wedges among the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance have been ongoing. Claims that Russia’s refusal to retaliate after US-Israeli attacks or its refusal to provide Syria with more modern air defenses attempt to depict Russia as weak and disinterested in Syria’s well-being.

The fact remains that a Russian retaliation would open the door to a possibly catastrophic conflict Russia may not be able to win. The delivery of more modern air defense systems to Syria will not change the fact that US-Israeli attacks will fail to achieve any tangible objectives with or without such defenses. Their delivery will – however – help further increase tensions in the region, not manage or eliminate them.

Because Syria Already Won 

Syria and its allies have eliminated the extensive proxy forces the US and its allies armed and funded to overthrow the Syrian government beginning in 2011. The remnants of this proxy force cling to Syria’s borders and in regions the US and its allies are tentatively occupying.

Should the conflict’s status quo be maintained and Russia’s presence maintained in the region, these proxy forces will be unable to regroup or regain the territory they have lost. In essence, Syria has won the conflict.

Indeed, sections of Syria are now under the control of occupying foreign armies. Turkey controls sections in northern Syria and the United States is occupying territory east of the Euphrates River. While Syria’s territorial integrity is essential – Syria will be better positioned to retake this territory years from now, than it is at the moment. Maintaining the status quo and preventing the conflict from escalating is the primary concern.

Over the next several years – within this status quo – the global balance of power will only further shift further away from America’s favor. As that happens, Syria will have a much better opportunity to reclaim its occupied territory.

While it is only human for people to become infuriated by unprovoked attacks – these attacks by the US and Israel are designed specifically to provoke a response. Long-term patience is just as important to winning a war as immediate fury.

Sun Tzu stated in the timeless strategic treatise, “The Art of War,” that:

A government should not mobilize an army out of anger, military leaders should not provoke war out of wrath. Act when it is beneficial, desist if it is not. Anger can revert to joy, wrath can revert to delight, but a nation destroyed cannot be restored to existence, and the dead cannot be restored to life.

The US and its allies seek to provoke Syria and its allies into a war now while the US believes it still hold military primacy. Avoiding this until a time when US military primacy no longer exists is the true key to finally and completely winning the Syrian war.

The most perfect of all “retaliations” will be winning the Syrian war – confounding and defeating the US, NATO, the Persian Gulf states, and Israel finally and completely – not launching symbolic missile attacks the US eagerly seeks to use to provoke a wider war they may be able to win while the current global balance of power still favors them.

*

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Trump crossed the Rubicon and the world is reacting. He decided to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) signed in 2015 by Iran, the United States, Germany and all permanent members of the Security Council (P5+1), the fruit of more than a decade of planning. He then lit another match handed him by John Bolton and the “war parties” in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh to widen sanctions by including any nation doing business with Iran (“secondary sanctions”).

In short, unless JCPOA is perpetuated in defiance of Trump by treaty signatories minus the U.S., the agreement will be void. The Iran treaty withdrawal, together with the imposition of sanctions against Iran and any nation violating the Trump mandate has forcibly quickened the turn of the global wheel that already was heading away from American diktats to forge alternatives in global cooperative governance and more trustworthy alliances.

Trump’s latest shove of the wheel could now enlist the strongest EU nations (Germany, and France) to assist this momentum away from America, which in the real world will further isolate America from ninety-five percent of the world’s population. But in Trump’s world he aims to control it in the style of world autocrat, iconoclast and renegade through bullying, insults, sanctions, Tomahawk missiles and, if necessary, threatening to use “The Bomb”.

The headline at Brussel’s EurActiv after the Trump announcement read: “Trump becomes number one threat to European economy” (May 9). “Trump’s action has inflamed a transatlantic relationship already strained by his threat to impose tariffs on European products, along with his 2017 withdrawal from the Paris climate accord” (Politico, May 9). Germany, with France and Britain, has said it remains committed to the nuclear deal and has no intention of breaking off business ties with Iran as long as the Islamic Republic upholds its side of the agreement (Deutsche Welle, May 11). Some 120 German companies run operations with their own staff in Iran and some 10,000 German businesses trade with the country.

Der Spiegel (May 12) wrote “Clever resistance is necessary, as sad and absurd as that may sound. Resistance against America.”

At the time of Trump’s announcement, former Fox News staffer and US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell tweeted:

“As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”

That dictatorial command might seem good international diplomacy to Fox News fans, but was taken correctly by Chancellor Angela Merkel and most Germans as an insult to their leaders, industry, sovereignty and nation.

Whether or not Mrs. Merkel’s meeting with Vladimir Putin results in an agreement to work together to uphold the Iran accord, it presently remains the desire of Russia, France, Britain and Germany to defend their respective “interests” against American threats that have no basis in international law, let alone morality. Quite possibly it now has become all too clear to Europe that it needs the protection of another superpower (like Russia) to defend itself against Donald J. Trump.

Furthermore, as the largest buyer of Iran oil, China certainly isn’t going to passively watch their lifeblood interrupted without a strong response.

Trump is resolving for Europeans one nagging question: “Can Trump be trusted?” As it stands the answer is NO, Trump cannot be trusted. And since Donald J. Trump is president of the United States and represents it, it translates to the United States cannot be trusted.

Since crossing the Rubicon, the future is uncertain but scenarios should be examined and one is this:

A sort of “mini-Axis” could evolve based, for now, solely on the sanction issues, but having the potential to enlarge into a full-Axis as more destructive maneuvers by Trump catapults most of the developed world (West and East) to form stronger ties and alliances with each other despite their preexisting differences (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). One Axis foreseeable is: EU-Russia-China vs. US-Israel-Saudi Arabia.

Trump is a president that was elected by less than one-half of voters. He will not be held entirely responsible for whatever will happen to the United States in the future. The Trump voters must share in that responsibility.

May 9 might be looked upon by future historians as the “official” beginning of the end of the American Empire.

If Donald J. Trump isn’t evicted from office by Americans, the world will evict America from the global community.

*

Michael T. Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey currently residing in New England.

Theresa May is set to roll out the red carpet for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this weekend, as new figures reveal that Britain has sold more than $1bn of weapons to Ankara since the failed 2016 coup and subsequent crackdown under emergency powers, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Turkey remains a “priority market” for British weapons, despite concerns from human rights groups and EU officials over the erosion of the country’s rule of law.

Turkey is a fellow member of NATO and has cooperated with the EU in tackling the refugee crisis, but critics say that Erdogan’s government has arrested or sacked more than 100,000 state workers and members of the military in the wake of the coup attempt.

Unlike many other Western allies, London spoke out quickly after the coup, in which fighter jets bombed the Turkish parliament and troops opened fire on civilians.

But the UK has remained largely silent as Turkey targeted not only the alleged plotters but also political dissidents, journalists and members of pro-Kurdish parties for “supporting terrorism”.

Brexit push

Erdogan will meet the Queen and the prime minister during his three-day visit to the UK, starting on Sunday. It comes as the UK is making a Brexit push to boost trade with Ankara, but also in the middle of a snap Turkish parliamentary and presidential campaigns conducted under a state of emergency.

UK weapons sales since the attempted coup include a $667m deal for military electronic data, armoured vehicles, small arms, ammunition, missiles, drones, aircraft and helicopters.

It also includes a $135m deal for BAE Systems to fulfil Erdogan’s plan to build a Turkish-made fighter jet.

The jet deal was signed by May in January 2017 under an “open licence” to ease the transfer of military technology, and UK officials now reportedly wish to expand the deal by pushing for Rolls-Royce to win the engine contract.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a Labour MP who recently travelled to northern Syria, where Turkey is involved in operations against the Kurdish YPG militia, told MEE:

“The government has been increasing arms sales to Turkey as it has fallen into authoritarianism at home and warmongering abroad.

“The government should be finding ways to protect our allies from Erdogan’s aggression but it instead rewards Turkey with new arms contracts. The government is putting private profit over both human rights and global security.

He added:

“10 Downing Street under Theresa May has become a revolving door for the world’s biggest tyrants, who are also our biggest arms customers.”

Turkey says the aim of its intervention in Afrin, a Kurdish canton in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, is to counter the YPG, which it considers a terrorist group and an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for more than 30 years.

Russell-Moyle claimed there was evidence that UK-made arms had been used by Turkey in northern Syria. The British government has said it cannot categorically state that UK weapons are not in use in Turkish military operations in Afrin.

Erdogan as a global statesman?

Andrew Smith, a director of Campaign Against Arms Trade, which compiled the figures on weapons sales, added that Erdogan is using the visit to London to “project an image of himself as a global statesman, rather than the tyrant he is”.

Smith told MEE:

“By arming and supporting Turkish forces, the government is making itself complicit in the abuses that are being carried out.

“The last thing Theresa May and the Queen should be doing is giving him the legitimacy and endorsement of such a high-profile visit.”

UK diplomats say they regularly raise human rights issues with Turkey, and that Ankara is a key partner in countering terrorism, as well as on refugee issues, given its strategic border with Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, called for a more forceful approach on Turkey’s policies.

“This visit is an opportunity for Theresa May to show the president that human rights and a thriving civil society in Turkey are a priority of the UK,” she said.

According to Amnesty’s latest report, a nationwide crackdown in Turkey has resulted in mass arrests and the “near-destruction” of Turkey’s legal system.

It also noted that the post-coup attempt state of emergency had been renewed on seven occasions, and that more than 100,000 public sector workers have been arbitrarily dismissed.

The report noted that journalists, academics, human rights activists and others have been arrested, prosecuted and handed prison sentences.

The European Commission, meanwhile, has recommended that Turkish accession to the EU should remain on hold because of concerns about human rights abuses.

May’s close relationship with Erdogan is at sharp odds with the tone of the Brexit campaign, when prominent anti-EU campaigners accused Brussels of “appeasement” towards Turkey, and warned that “democratic development had been put into reverse under Erdogan”.

In 2016, her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, won a free speech competition in the Spectator for a poem which derided the Turkish leader for his efforts to prosecute a German comedian for an offensive poem.

Kurdish groups are expected to plan protests throughout Erdogan’s visit to London.

A spokesman for the Department for International Trade, the government department which oversees arms exports, told MEE:

“The UK government takes its export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust export control regimes in the world. We rigorously examine every application on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, with risks around human rights abuses being a key part of that process.

“A licence will not be issued if to do so would be inconsistent with any provision of the mandatory Licensing Criteria, including where we assess there is a clear risk that it might be used in the commission of a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law.”

“Why do people continue to believe that NGOs such as 350.org/1Sky that are initiated and funded by Rockefeller Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Ford, Gates, etc. would exist to serve the people rather than the entities that create and fund them? Since when do these powerful entities invest in ventures that will negatively impact their ability to maintain power, privilege and wealth? Indeed, the oligarchs play the “environmental movement” and its mostly well-meaning citizens like a game of cards.” – Cory Morningstar [1]

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Planet Earth is beset with multiple crises, including environmental degradation, growing inequality, military and paramilitary violence, and exploitation of the most vulnerable.

We typically see masses of people mobilizing to confront government or corporate actions that foster environmental and social injustices. Front-line battles may include a march for women, a pipeline protest, a petition drive, or some act of non-violent civil disobedience.

Far from such actions being direction-less and spontaneous, major Non Governmental Organizations funded by philanthropic foundations typically play a pivotal role in the promotion of campaigns, the training and hiring of organizers, and the securing of resources that can make activism viable.

For example, the environmental NGO 350.org/1SKY which was one of the driving forces behind the opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and the 2014 People’s Climate March was initiated and funded by the Rockefeller and Clinton Foundations, among others. [2]

The Pacifica network of non-commercial alternative radio and news stations, including its daily news broadcast Democracy Now! has received millions in grants from the Ford, Open Society Institute, Carnegie, MacArthur, and J.M Kaplan Fund Foundations. [3]

Then there is AVAAZ. The celebrated online activist platform, which has helped raise awareness and drive petitions behind causes related to human rights, climate change and international conflict, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and has publicly cited the Open Society Institute as a founding partner. [4]

AVAAZ has partnered with the TckTckTck campaign, launched by one of the world’s largest global advertising and communications firms. Other partners include corporations like EDF Nuclear, Lloyds Bank, MTV, and other multi-nationals with a track record of despoiling our shared environment.[5]

It seems unlikely that wealthy investors and venture capitalists thriving on the status quo would sponsor a movement that might threaten their grip on power. Still, does the acceptance of these philanthropic donations necessarily constitute an unacceptable compromise, even when they come with no obvious strings attached?

This is the critical question to be explored in this week’s edition of the Global Research News Hour. Our guides for the hour will be Cory Morningstar and Bob Feldman.

Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Political Context, Counterpunch, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents.

Bob Feldman is an investigative journalist who has studied for more than a decade the role of philanthropic foundation funding in compromising the perspectives of the alternative print and broadcast media they sponsor. Based out of Boston, his blog site is wherechangeobama.blogspot.ca

This week’s program gratefully acknowledges the recording and production assistance of Campus Community radio station RadioWestern, CHRW 94.9FM out of the University of Western Ontario in London Ontario, on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapeewak and Attawandaron peoples.

 

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Transcript- Interview with Cory Morningstar and Bob Feldman, May 9, 2018

Part One

Introduction

Global Research: Many listeners are by now familiar with the role of corporate advertising in shaping the content and focus of mainstream media broadcasts. Along with the manufacture of consent of the body politic goes the manufacture of dissent, where social, labour, environmental, anti-war movements get co-opted in sophisticated ways. One of the principle mechanisms by which this process is orchestrated is through what is called the Non Profit Industrial complex. A web of NGOs interconnected with State and corporate entities which channel activist energies in directions that ultimately don’t undermine, and more often than not, further the ambitions of the elite of the elite.

Cory Morningstar is all too familiar with this dynamic. She has written about the NPIC for close to a decade now.

Cory Morningstar is an independent investigative journalist, writer and environmental activist. Her recent writings can be found on Wrong Kind of Green, The Art of Annihilation, Political Context, Counterpunch, Canadians for Action on Climate Change and Countercurrents. She joins us here at the studios of Radiowestern. It’s great to chat with you again Cory.

Cory Morningstar: Thank you for having me, Michael!

GR: And joining us by phone from Boston Massachusetts is Bob Feldman. And Bob is – he’s also an investigative journalist and he is – for more than a decade he has been researching the role of philanthropic foundation funding in compromising the perspectives of the alternative print and broadcast media that depend on such funding for their operations. So thank you for joining us Bob!

Bob Feldman: Thank you for having me.

GR: For the sake of those who might be skeptical-minded, what would you say to those people who say well there’s no quid pro quo. I mean it’s great that the Rockefellers or the Du Ponts or whoever donate this money, I mean we need that money if we’re going to stop this pipeline or we’re going to get the messaging out or set up this website.

CM: But all you have to do is look at what progress have we made? We’ve made no progress. I mean, emissions are through the roof – what are we at now? 410 parts per million. You know countries are being… all over you’ve got, you ask native states all over the whole globe conquering, invading, occupying, we’ve really made no progress.

BF: Yeah, the thing is…the thing about is..it’s since the early 1970s that the foundation money has been pouring in trying to convert the environmentalist movement into sustainable development. Joan Roelofs, in her book, Foundations and Public Policy, mentions this fact. Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club Legal Defense, all these groups have gotten this foundation money and yet it’s 50 years later and it hasn’t achieved reversal. So we have to ask ourselves why? Why has the movement … why do we end up with Trump in 2017? 2018? A lot of the information there’s a new book out by David Callahan – Inside Philanthropy, he’s the editor – and it’s called The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age.

And he has sense I’d like to read because it kind of summarizes what’s happened. You know, he says like progressives always talks about the right-wing being funded by the right-wing foundations and he correctly criticizes that. But he has this quote, that ‘progressives have been largely silent about how “charitable” dollars are influencing politics and policy often with deeper impact than the campaign spending the left so fervently wants to restrict. You can see why progressives keep mum on this issue. Its advocates are especially dependent on philanthropy.’

And… Growing up I thought, well, foundations they are helping the people. And then, I read C. Wright Mills’s book, The Power Elite, in which he mentioned, well, foundations are a tax dodge, and I thought, well, yeah, but maybe they’re still helping fund good things.

But then, 50 years ago, in ‘68, at Columbia, the radical students’ SGS in alliance with Harlem and the Afro-American Society took over and we made some demands, and then this police bust, and then everyone was radicalized, everyone was talking revolution on the campus, and then what happened is that they split the students, the moderates from the revolutionary students. The Ford Foundation came in with a $40,000 grant for students to fund students for a restructured university, and the idea was that SGS was saying, well, we want a revolution in society, a society free of militarism, free of racism.

But the Students to Restructure Society, funded by the Ford Foundation, they said no, let’s just focus on changing the university, limiting the demands. At that point — it was a $40,000 grant, which is equivalent to $300,000 in 2018 money — at that point, I realized that this is what the foundations are about: manipulating movements, insurgent movements. And then, today, of course, you have not only the example of the – with Wrong Kind of Green articles that Cory has written, explained, but you also have…in terms of Black Lives Matter…The Color of Change, for instance, got in 2017, 7.5 million dollars. So it’s an attempt to limit and manipulate what kind of issues the activists are going to prioritize and what their tactics are going to be. Because if they get too out of the parameters of what the agenda of those controlled foundations are, and the foundations themselves are directed by corporate directors, then the funding ends.

GR:  What you’re saying there is quite interesting. You’re speaking of that split, the split between the kind of resistance they can live with and the kind that we want to try to eclipse. Cory, I just want to turn to you, if you could maybe help us visualize the difference that you see this foundation money making as it’s playing out, like what the environmental movement could be without the foundation monies’ intrusion versus what we’re seeing coming out now.

CM: Yeah, well, I think, you look back, and I know, I wasn’t there, but you read about even the Black Panthers and their breakfast programs and actually tangible things in the community, and now today it’s like, well, I’m going to give 50 bucks to Greenpeace this year, I’ve done my part. I mean we don’t have, we’ve lost that sense of community, and working with each other as adults, as parents, as humans, we need to take responsibility for our own issues. We’ve basically, I think, been happy to get these problems onto the NGOs – that’s part of it.

And like Bob was saying too, with the money, there’s a lot of conditions, and so you get people, you don’t even have to censor, and, you know, the people involved, the journalists, the NGOs, they become adept at self-censorship, and a lot of these millions of dollars given happen over five years, you get a certain amount every year, so you know, if you bite the hand that feeds you, that money, that cheque will not be there the following year.

GR: I know that there was a report that came out a few years ago by MacDonald Stainsby and Dru Oja Jay that commented on foundation funding and how its distorted tar sands activism. And so, we don’t see the level of opposition to tar sands as a result.

CM: I mean, the tar sands, one way or another that oil will make it to the market where there’s a demand. That oil, like water through a pipe, will find its way one way or another to escape eventually it finds the route to get out. What we don’t talk about is if we don’t want oil, what are we going to give up? Well, in fact, we’re willing to give up nothing because that would put a damper on economic growth and you need economic growth to keep this economic system going. Capitalism, if it stalls, it collapses, so we can’t have that, so this whole focus on the pipelines… you’ve got thousands of pipelines all over the whole planet, and we put all the focus on North America on a single pipeline.

Well then, the oil, quietly in the background, all switches to rail, and then you’ve got Warren Buffet ends up making billions, tons and tons of billions of dollars on rebuilding a rail dynasty in North America while everyone’s focused on a single pipeline. Right? No one notices this. It’s all being done in the background and there’s absolutely no dissent to that. And then that horrible, horrible accident in Montreal that killed almost 50 people from the oil, you know, the rail accident with the oil. Now we have the same thing happening in BC with oil being diverted to Portland and being put on to ships to Asia. I mean oil is going to get to the market. So, to not look at, you know, what is the purpose? Do we want to stop this pipeline, or do we want to stop oil? If you want to stop oil, what are we willing to give up? What are we willing or wanting to discontinue?

And the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, the NGOs that basically take up all the breathing room, all the space, they don’t want you to give up anything. I mean, there’s no talk really of changing the way we live in the West. You know, the fact of the matter is, here 1% of the population is creating almost all the emissions on the planet. There’s a tiny percentage of people doing all the damage. We don’t talk about that. So we’re not talking about systemic change, we’re talking about how can we have everything we already have plus have a lot more and do it in a clean, environmentally, ecologically, sound way. Well there is no way, right?

GR: Yeah, and I know Bob you… It seems to me… I mean you’ve got a series out right now on your blog wherechangeobama.blogspot.ca, and I know that one of the…it’s part of a 14-part series, I think there are more coming, but I think you did mention that there was some awareness way back when about the dangers of this kind of funding, and I don’t know if the awareness just went away, or if people became indifferent. I mean, what have been the changes or when did you see this, I don’t know, acceptance of foundation funding as perhaps a necessary evil or a vehicle for this, for pursuing whether it’s media or activism?

BF: It started to a certain degree in terms of the Black liberation movement in the late sixties. They posed a systemic threat. And then, the Ford Foundation came in and started, the Rockefeller Foundation, started funding black capitalism, and poured in lots of money to the Urban League, NAACP, and then within the anti-war movement, the peace movement. I think it started in terms of the ’80s nuclear freeze, and so you had the sad thing that at that point in the early ’80s, 800,000 people marched against nuclear war in June of 1982, and then it was a contingent saying well, the Israeli military is bombing Beirut, is invading Lebanon. We’re anti-war, we’re peace, that should be a priority also for this march. There was a contingent saying that, but then the organizers said no, you can’t talk about opposing Israel and militarism. Then the late ’80s and early ’90s, that’s when groups like Pacifica started seeking the foundation funding and then alternative media groups started to seek it and get it.

CM: I mean, look at Democracy Now, beating the drums for war on Libya. and I mean I don’t listen to Democracy Now, but I’m pretty sure on Syria as well. Look at the so-called Left beating drums for war, you know, like that’s unbelievable in this day and age, like how can we fall for the same stories? Rinse, recycle, repeat, basically the same old stories over and over, where so-called humanitarian intervention and we have the liberal left journalists and liberal left media completely, again, like echoing through the chambers, these pro-war, this pro-war propaganda.

BF: Yeah, I think that’s the thing that on Libya, Syria, and also in 1999 the “humanitarian military intervention” in Serbia, Yugoslavia. It didn’t echo Michael Parenti’s opposition, it took a different stand, Democracy Now, which demonized Milosevic, which echoed, I mean it was opposed to the war, but it echoed aspects of what the Democratic Party and the State Department were saying, and in part it was because in situations like Libya and Syria and 9/11 and in the 1999 war, if you get too, if you appear too anti-war, and you’re not willing to concede certain points about, that the media is pushing about the illegitimacy of the regime that the U.S government wants to change, whether it’s Syria, Libya, or Serbia, then the funding goes.

It’s self-censorship, really. Isn’t that like Bill Moyers who has given 1.1 million since 2013 to fund Democracy Now, his Schumann media center. Isn’t that he’s going to say – tell you not to do a lot of investigative reporting segments after 2013, 50 years after the Kennedy assassination, to have a whole series on Democracy Now, but the reality is that since he’s funding Democracy Now, since Bill Moyers was LBJ’s aide for three years after Kennedy was assassinated, he maybe doesn’t want that emphasized, and then since Bill Moyers redefined himself since that time, they just won’t get into that, and then anybody who thinks, oh, we should explore these particular historical events in greater detail, they’re either called conspiracy theorists, or the other thing is Johnny one-notes. Listeners aren’t interested, you know.

But I think the thing about the foundations is that, early in the 20th century, there was a lot of criticism on the left for foundations. It was seen as undemocratic. It was seen as well, Rockefeller, Carnegie, they got their money by exploiting workers in vicious ways, exploiting consumers in vicious ways, unethical business practices, making weapons of death in some cases, and these plutocrats shouldn’t then be able to redefine themselves and fund groups, that it was undemocratic, that their power should be taken away. But you got a situation now where they make their money in immoral means, and they continue to… and those foundations also invest in those corporations that are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, and for systemic racism and for militarism… the foundations still have investments in those corporations.

And at the same time, they use some of the profits, the dividends they get through those investments to fund the groups which purportedly are either reporting on the harm done by the corporations, or fighting against the policies, the results of the policies of these corporations, and what’s left off the hook is the foundations themselves are tied in with the systemic problems that people want to see eradicated. It’s a way that the foundations become the means of the 1% to block these structural systemic changes.

CM: Yeah, I think our movements represent very much a part of that same 1%. I mean the staff at AVAAZ make around 200 k a year. I mean, we’re talking elite status, and you can look straight across the board, Sierra Club, all the big ones, they’re making huge six-figure salaries. You know, some of them 4 or $500,000 a year, and then they’re asking seniors to send in their cheques for $5 a month.  I mean it’s –

BF:  Oh yeah, Democracy Now, it’s a good example. Like I was just, I glanced at it today before the sh- you know, early morning, and I noticed they say ‘well if you send in our money, a supporter will match it three times’, but they don’t name their supporter. At the same time, they don’t disclose on their website the amount of money that they’ve received in recent years from various foundations like the former vice president of Microsoft for 10 years, Rob Glaser, he has a foundation, the Glaser Progress Foundation, they were given 15… since 2001 $1.2 million to fund Democracy Now, and Democracy Now doesn’t probably… I don’t think it’s done that many segments on exposing the negative role historically and even currently of Microsoft, its work for the military. Microsoft, for instance, just got a $27 million contract to work for the Pentagon to provide software to help the Pentagon do its thing around the world. Part of why they might not do this is because, at one point, one of the chief funders was involved with Microsoft for 10 years helped build it up.

But part of why…oh, the other thing, it’s also the economic thing, is that Amy Goodman she gets a hundred and sixty thousand a year total compensation. Most people don’t know that. The salaries, I mean, you had to get the salaries, you have to go look on the form 990 that all these NGOs file. It’s often hard, not easy to find, a lot of people either aren’t going to look on it…often the forms aren’t completely filled out, or not filled out until later. But like Cory says there’s a lot of money within this NGO or this Non-Profit Industrial Complex. It matches, it enables people to, without working the 9 to 5 world, you get an alternative job and live quite well, not live on the average salary of most movement activists who are grassroots, or most working people and you know in the world not even the United States, you know.

Intermission

Part Two

GR: That cuts you off from the broader grassroots community because you’re sort of in a separate world where you’re more inclined to mingle with some of those elites than with the …your…feel that same sense of solidarity.

BF: Yeah, you become a grant hustler. And also, the other thing is, let’s say we’re in a movement group, if we all sit in the room and somebody, and we’re all, we’re doing it. The people are like working 9 to 5 and then they go in the evening, then somebody else is….that one person in the room, if you talk about then what are we going to do, about finding what this corporation’s doing on this issue. The person in the room who’s backed as part of the NGO, he has the economic basis to have more influence, and has… over what’s going to happen.

And, I mean, there’s a group called Ploughshares, for instance, the Ploughshares Fund, and they focus on stopping nuclear war. And they’ve gotten, since 2015, they’ve gotten $2.7 million from the Rockefeller Brothers fund, and then what they do, is then they distribute to a lot of grantees. You go to the website, you can see all their grantees that they distribute. Like, twenty of them within the peace movement, and most of those grantees just focus on the nuclear war issue and don’t focus on the wars that are being waged now, that aren’t, that don’t involve nuclear weapons.

CM: Yeah, because you’re, you can’t talk about imperialism, right?

BF: Yeah, exactly. Right, And that’s the common thing that…instead of doing anti-imperialist revolutionary movement, that would you know, now, that would go against the system, you have the foundations, you use the NGOs, you know thousands of NGOs, that end up fragmenting the movement. And the funny part is that when Bernie Sanders ran in 2016… he talked about political revolution, he didn’t talk about economic revolution, he didn’t talk about all the other kinds of revolutions that we need… but he used the word ‘revolution’, and I was thinking when he ran, that all these, if you listen to Democracy Now, or a lot of these other medias…. there’s rarely any talk of allowing people who are calling for revolution now, against the 1%, using that word day-in and day-out, calling for economic, political revolution, and instead you have a mindset which is what I call the thirty-year gradualism, you know?

It…the thing is, you know, we need immediate change, the Poor People’s Movement is talking about, well they’re going to have their demonstrations Monday beginning, trying to continue what Martin Luther King did in ’68. It’s gotten some publicity in the alternative media world, and to an extent, it has some foundation funding, but it talks about the four things that people could be focusing on. Which again would… fighting systemic racism, fighting environmental destruction, fighting poverty, and fighting the war economy.

Those four things could be, people could unite on, but yet because we have all these thousands of NGOs, and it’s fragmented movement, foundation-subsidized movement, people are…don’t unite in the way that they did in the Sixties around fighting a imperialist society that’s trying to keep the empire…and is responsible for so many deaths in the last thirty years and, of course, even before. So you don’t have the kind of reaction that there should have been when they attacked Libya, and in terms of the covert war in Syria, that is…instead, people are in these NGOs, in their NGO offices, in a fragmented way and then calling demonstrations about this issue, that issue, this issue, that issue, and yet if you look at the [interference] starvation, and the costs, the economic costs of imperialism around the globe, yet there isn’t this sense of urgency.

And I attribute part of it is because if each year the grant comes through to the NGO, and then the NGO, you know, holds its protests and it gets some people out, there’s no, it’s a different form of activism then what we…and it’s undemocratic because what’s driving it is still the same plutocrats who control the corporations.

GR: You’re listening to the Global Research News Hour. This week’s show is dedicated to the Non-Profit Industrial Complex and the Parallel Left and it’s being recorded out of the studios at Radiowestern CHRW 94.9 FM at the University of Western Ontario. And our show of course airs on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg and on partner radio stations across Canada and the United States. I am your host Michael Welch and I’m joined by London-based Cory Morningstar and from Boston Bob Feldman. And of course, just following up on your last comments there Bob, I wanted to draw attention to some of the work that – a couple of essays that Cory had written last year. And I’m just going to pull up a quote because it speaks to not only propagandizing but social engineering.

Here’s the quote:

“Today’s so-called environmental leaders and human rights activists are not (yet) genetically engineered, rather they are socially engineered experiments decanted from Harvard, Yale, Rockwood Leadership Institute and other institutions of indoctrination that serve and expand the global hegemony. One could theorize that today’s 21st century activism is a new process of mimesis – the millennial having assimilated into spectacle – far removed from both nature and reality.”

So, I’m just wondering maybe – get your thoughts about this idea that – we’re not just talking propaganda lines where – ‘Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction! We’ve got to go to war’, we’re talking about shaping people’s behaviour. So, could I maybe get you to address that. How you see this…

BF: Yes, it’s like redefining – I mean what’s been redefined is what fighting the power is about. You know? What creating meaningful change is and what’s been thrown into the – what’s been forgotten is the whole history of institutional resistance just as what’s been forgotten is how the funders and foundations have gotten – got that money. It’s ahistorical. I mean part of like – I’ve write about foundations for – since 1996, you know, I wrote for Downtown which wasn’t funded by foundations. And this time around what I kind of realized in terms of writing In the Pay of Foundations is it’s not – I couldn’t just mention well it gets foundation funding and therefore, hey, it’s a synthetic kind of – and a kind of morally contradictory, you know? That people wouldn’t necessarily understand – because a lot of people – they don’t understand on a gut level that well why foundations – what’s so bad about foundations?

So, I kind of included more research as to how did Henry Ford get his money, what did he – what was he, what did he do? How was the Ford Foundation funded? What’s its history? Or something like the Public Welfare Foundation. What – what was it – where did that money come from? What did they do? How did Charles Marsh, who was LBJ’s backer in Texas – into oil. How did he get his money? And to try to get that. But I think – that’s part of the thing is that people grew up in my time, ’50s and 1960s were socialized a little differently than people who were socialized later and then went to – like you say this whole thing of whole prep schools and the elite.

Most people don’t know that Bill Gates for instance, his grandfather on his mother’s side, Maxwell, was a big banker. Actually, the great-great-great-great grandfather. And the grandfather (inaudible) versus a safe bank and left him a Trust Fund. This whole Silicon Valley thing, and the whole computer millionaires. Part of the thing is that they’ve used – it’s funny ’cause they’ve used the rhetoric of the ’60s about changing the world to perpetuate a vicious imperialist system, you know, and they get away with it because of the thing you mention in terms of the elite students, and all these elite universities, being socialized in a certain way. You know, and then also coming from a different generation than the 50s and 60s. They – and not having…

CM: I think they – I think people today think that history doesn’t matter. That it’s in the past. It’s irrelevant. Things aren’t…

BF: Right.

CM: …like that anymore, right? But the truth is these foundations are invisible. You know? The NGOs are at the forefront, and they play an invisible role and today they’re more powerful than they have ever been in the past. There’s trillions, literally trillions of dollars pumped into the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, which at this point, I mean I was speaking to um my um peer, my comrade Forrest Palmer a couple weeks ago and I said you know I feel like we need to start calling this the Non-Profit Industrial Spectacle. I mean it’s just become absolutely ridiculous.

There’s a new NGO of late I’ve just started watching called Global Citizen. They actually – if you can imagine – they have rewards now for activism. Like, think of air-miles, um all those points, rewards that you use to shop. So activism has been completely commodified to the point now the partners and sponsors involved with Global Citizen will reward you for doing an action with rewards, whether it’s concert tickets, it’s all tied into celebrity which is a huge part of activism, not to mention aside this really is – the Non Profit Industrial Complex is an actual army, right? This is an arm of empire, this is an army that’s funded and paid for by the elites that um fund this complex to perpetuate and protect and further their power, to extend it even further. And I think that’s um really important to understand, um that’s what it’s for, that’s why the trillions of dollars and they can mobilize their army.

Um, I mean if you look at the numbers it’s actually staggering how many people are employed by NGOs and non-profits um all which make up the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. It’s a massive part of the economy, just like militarism, and so they’re able to really, really shape and mold entire agendas and actually whole society by mobilizing their employees, their staff. I mean you picture, think of millions of people all um basically echoing the same message through the media – and um all the different media vices and all of a sudden you’ve created this huge, what feels like momentum but it’s all engineered. Hence – how we continue to devolve and how our movements continue to lose um importance.

GR: Cory, I just wanted to draw – just ’cause I’ve read – like, last year you did an update on your research on AVAAZ and PURPOSE, which – PURPOSE is uh– they’re linked. They’re very notable because it links environmentalism with the imperialist agendas in Syria. That is it seems to me it’s taking that social engineering to – or that – to a new level.

CM: If you look back there’s an old photograph I found. It’s Bob Hunter, one of the original co-founders of Greenpeace in Canada. He has a T-Shirt on and on the T-Shirt he has written across in black marker ‘F—k you’ and he’s at a meeting. Right? Sitting in on a meeting. He’s all scruffy. It looks like he just came in from the garden or from work. That was the real deal back then. About real things, you know? Protecting nature.

Now, today, Greenpeace is at the forefront right up there with AVAAZ, OXFAM, there’s basically a top twenty that works hand in hand with the UN, and um you know basically run the social movements across the world. Mold them. Shape them. Social engineering, TckTckTck, like basically, Greenpeace, 350, and OXFAM, which are the three biggest created, TckTckTck, they took this type of social engineering to a whole new level. In 200 – when was that – 2009 at COP21 you saw them basically undermine all the most vulnerable states on the planet. That climate conference when you look back at documents – Greenpeace documents from around 1990 where they cited one degree as the temperature that the planet could not exceed. Well, in 2009 they demanded a full two degrees, what the corporations wanted, so we continue to grow the economy at the expense of all life on the planet, so you can see that huge, you know – It’s not even the same thing anymore. These NGOs are an arm of the elite. They’re an apparatus of the establishment and empire.

So AVAAZ and PURPOSE. AVAAZ, um, Purpose is there for profit – P.R. Firm. Basically the sister org of AVAAZ. I would say they’re the most powerful NGO in the world aside from 350 which was incubated by the Rockefeller Foundation and started um with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Clinton Foundation and again that’s hand in hand with AVAAZ, one of the most powerful NGOs in the world right now as well. Anyway, I mean what they do now, we’ve been engineered to such an extent that we don’t even notice. We no longer fight to protect nature – to protect trees. We’re fighting for windmills. We’re fighting for solar panels. We’re fighting to continue a very rich way of life for a small number of people. That’s what the environmental movement is today. And that’s what I call, not environmentalism but anthro – anthro- like basically…

GR: Anthropocentrism. .

CM: Anthropocentrism. Yeh, it’s completely – it’s pragmatism. It’s full. This is business. This is big business. Now you’ve got AVAAZ, PURPOSE. The main, overall arching campaign of all of them now is this huge push for renewable energies which is actually a huge push for further imperialism. You know you can call it green imperialism, eco-imperialism. It’s just as dirty. It’s just another growth industry. Today they want to basically steal from the treasuries and how we’re going to dump trillions and trillions about 60 trillion, 90 trillion dollars into creating you know a brand new, basically global infrastructure, renewable energy which is – what is that based on? That’s based on further exploitation, further of brothers and sisters all over the planet. Mining, all dirty industry. Further, further industry for a very few, you know, people.

GR: Beyond the part – the fact that lithium mining is not necessarily without its toxic concerns, and of course and other rare earth minerals which is mining, um, this call for electrification of the grid. It’s not likely going to do anything. I mean I think there was…

CM: No, you’ve got Bill McKibben right now in Africa report – you know flying to Africa. What do they need Bill McKibben in Africa for, I don’t know, but they’ve got him – What was the article? I don’t know Rolling Stone? New York Times? What have you, saying how amazing it was that he was in Africa, and (inaudible) village with their few solar panels or whatever they have now – they all have a TV. Well what the hell do they need a TV for? Right? Like that’s progress? I mean, it’s just upside down now with technology and our values, what we see as progress. And um yeah…

BF: And I think that – that whole rap that Cory gave, it’s like that’s the kind of thing that should be talked about on the foundation subsidized shows there on daily. Like Democracy Now. I mean that’s – and the thing is yet if you start talking about the NGOs and the foundations that doesn’t happen as much and so you get a situation where people don’t necessarily know what’s going on – that undercuts the whole original mission of what an alternative left media was supposed to be about, you know? When you not allowing a lot of dissident grass-roots movement people on there. That’s what’s holding back, what has held back especially the last twenty years. Held back the growth of a movement that’s really effective, you know….

Intermission

Part Three

GR: I think we’re running pretty much close to the end of our time. I was wondering if each of you might want to have a few suggestions about if we wish to hold on or foster the movements and media that are not to be captured by these elite interests with their hegemonic agendas. What advice would you make in terms of being able to do that – to maintain that sovereign and make sure that we do make room for these dissenting voices?

CM: I’ll go first because I’m probably far less optimistic than Bob.

I don’t really have a lot of hope for that. I don’t think anything’s going to change a lot until it has to change. Some sort of catastrophic event or some sort of collapse which will eventually happen because this can’t go on forever. But I feel like, you know I often wonder if we’ve been socially engineered to be so incredibly passive. Perhaps we’re not even, you know – we just – we don’t even have the capacity anymore to really fight the fight. We’re just so incredibly passive and polite. And that’s all a part of social engineering.

Even that aspect in the – the whole um – Oh God – direct action thing versus – you can’t even talk about tactics. It can only be non-violent direct action, non-violent direct action. Well, you know, and basically if you have anything else to say but that, you’re ostracized and basically outcast. You’re isolated completely. I mean you can’t ask – what is the Assata Shakur quote? I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but basically you’re begging your oppressor for – to do what you want, like I mean it’s just never going to happen.

And so I think we’re really, really comfortable here. I don’t see things changing. We’re being trained to devolve where we’re not educating ourself. We’re not seeking out information. We’re becoming mentally lazy. It’s too much work to research. It’s too much work to learn. You want all your information in a hundred and forty characters. You know. And without the history. Without understanding the history of where we’ve been. Of where the environmental movement has been – the history, the critical importance of the foundations and the interlocking victory. Unless we understand how power functions and how it can use us to advance it’s own desires, I think we’re really just spinning our wheels.

GR: Bob, do you have any thoughts about preserving truly independent media and grassroots activism going forward?

BF: Yeh, well I think the thing is that things can change very rapidly. I mean, you had the Occupy Wall Street thing which initially came from a lot of people from below. And then it pushed the idea of the One Percent. Now, media has – the alternate media, if people press them, and at the same time engage in what I call institutional resistance, some of the systems in crisis worldwide. It’s in crisis here. And the way I look at it is that the exclusion of grassroots dissident, radical left, environmentalists and others is a sign of the weakness and the fear of those – of the one percent those who hold power because if they weren’t afraid that if they gave us access there’d be a response. To prove how liberal and tolerant they were they would allow these kinds of discussions within their alternative media world, and within the mainstream media world. But I think the fact there is this high level censorship…

The fact that you’ve interviewed Global – Global Research News – all those people who are on there who get posted there but you never hear them on Democracy Now and the other shows, I think that’s – that’s because there’d be a response and things can change very rapidly. We could be in a big war. And at that point there will be an attempt to co-opt the movement. But often that doesn’t work. The lessons of ’68 show that they couldn’t co-opt, at least for the two years ’68-’70. They had to then repress. So I think that history can change fast and the level of crisis in terms of the Earth is so dire that people might be forced to press for more media change. So I guess I’m not…

CM: Maybe when they have to change….

BF: Yeh, I guess I’m not as pessimistic as you are Cory – The key thing as I see it is using the mass media power, and that alternative media, to pressing those who have the daily access of 1400 stations to let it on – a whole range of people who have been excluded.

GR: I guess, and on that note, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that for those listeners who’ve listened to this program, they probably get by now that philanthropic donations is probably not the answer. So that would be, probably an invitation to open up your wallets and support independent community radio stations like CHRW like CKUW as well as independent sites like Global Research.

And so, with that I think it’s time for us to say good-bye now. So thank you very much Bob Feldman, investigative journalist from Boston.

BF: Yeh thanks for having….

GR: ..And your website is wherechangeobama.blogspot.ca. And Cory Morningstar. Thank you for joining us!

CM: Thank you Michael.

GR: You can find a lot of her essays at theartofannihilation.com.

*
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Notes:

1. http://www.theartofannihilation.com/keystone-xl-the-art-of-ngo-discourse-part-i/
2. ibid
3. Bob Feldman (2018), ‘In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers’, Where’s The Change?; http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.ca/search/label/in%20pay%20of
4. http://www.theartofannihilation.com/imperialist-pimps-of-militarism-protectors-of-the-oligarchy-trusted-facilitators-of-war-part-ii-section-i/
5. ibid

It is quite true that “Macedonian national identity is one of the most complex in the Balkans”.[1] The present-day Macedonians are having a century and a half identity disputes with their neighbors, especially with the Greeks and the Bulgarians but as well as and self-identity problems within the territory of the state of Macedonia which was proclaimed as an independent in November 1991 on the foundation of ex-Yugoslav socialist republic (1945−1991) under the same name.

Today, only about 64% of Macedonia’s citizens claim to be the Macedonians in ethnolinguistic terms while the rest of population reject this name even from the national-political point of view – i.e., to be called Macedonians just as the citizens of the state of Macedonia. Bulgaria does not recognize the existence of ethnolinguistic Macedonians under the claim that all the Slavs of Macedonia are of the Bulgarian ethnolinguistic origin while Greece rejects to recognize any ethnolinguistic Macedonians on its own state’s territory using the term Slavophone Greeks for those Greece’s inhabitants who are claimed by Skopje to be Macedonian diaspora in neighboring Greece. Even the world is divided in regard to the official name of the state of Macedonia as some countries recognized it as the Republic of Macedonia but other states prefer rather the term the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Therefore, this country is the only state in the world to be officially recognized by other states or international organizations as the Former…[2]

This article is dealing with the conflicting claims to Macedonian identity primarily asserted by both Greeks and Slavo-Macedonians. The long-time conflict between Greeks and Slavo-Macedonians over the question which ethnic group has the right to identify itself as being Macedonian is, in fact, a political dispute over the name, flag, history, and territory but, in essence, it is a dispute over the question who has the right to use the terms Macedonia and Macedonians.[3]

Terminology

Macedonia is a geographical and historical area which name originates from the antique time and which is mentioned as a land at several points in the Bible. Writing on the problem of who the contemporary Macedonians are and/or who they are not is quite a controversial issue from both academic and political sides. From a very practical point of view, there are three standpoints of identifying those people who are today either calling themselves as Macedonians or living within the territory of some Macedonia:

1. Macedonians are those who are living within a multiethnic geographic area of Macedonia[4] that is bounded to the north by Skopska Crna Gora Mts. and Shara Mts.; to the east by the Rila Mts. and Rhodope Mts.; to the south by the coast of the Aegean Sea around the city of Thessaloniki, Olympus Mts. and Pindus Mts.; and to the west by the lakes of Ohrid and Prespa. This territory is today politically divided between FYROM, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece (as a consequence of the Balkan Wars in 1912−1913) while geographically it is composed by Lower (south) and Upper (north) Macedonias.
2. Macedonians are those who are today living in FYROM as the citizens of this political entity called as such by a temporary name as a result of Macedonian-Greek diplomatic negotiations from 1991 to 1993.
3. Macedonians are all those who are calling themselves by such ethnonational name no matter they are living in FYROM or in geographic-historical Macedonia.[5]

The Antique Macedonians

To deal with the identity issue of the modern-day Macedonians requires firstly to draw attention to the difference between the ancient Macedonians and the contemporary Macedonian nation. In one word, these two ethnic groups have nothing in common except the same ethnic name due to the very fact that the modern Macedonians accidentally live on the part of the territory once populated by the ancient Macedonians of Philip the Macedon and Alexander the Great. It means that three thousand years ago a people called the Macedonians lived at the Balkan peninsula among whom Alexander the Great (336−323 BC) is, for sure, the best well-known representative of these ancient Macedonians, who created in the 4^th century BC the first global empire by connecting the provinces of three continents[6] – the empire in which the ancient Greek language became the first global lingua franca with the Greek culture as the first universal culture of civilized world.[7]  The ancient Macedonians originally lived north of the ancient Greeks (north of Olympus Mts.) up to the southern parts of the central Balkans and had their own language and traditions.[8] However, the upper class (aristocracy) was fairly Hellenized and used the ancient Greek language for official purposes followed by worshiping of the ancient Greek gods.[9]

Alexander the Great mosaic

It is of quite a fake assumption that southernmost ex-Yugoslav republic was named as Macedonia because it covered the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Macedon and, therefore, the so-called Macedonians of Yugoslavia had historical rights for cultural and identity legacy of Macedonia and Macedonians from the time of Antique. To be clear, the present-day state of Macedonia is located not on the territory of ancient Kingdom of Macedon but rather on the territory of the Roman Province of Macedonia which was composed by vast territory including present-day Albania, Greek Thessaly, FYROM, and parts of Bulgaria up to Rhodope Mts.[10] The archaeological sites on the territory of FYROM (for instance, Stobi or in Bitola) of the Antique time belong to the Roman but not to the Macedon period. These facts suggest that FYROM Macedonians have nothing to do either with the territory of the ancient Kingdom of Macedon or with its historical and cultural legacy. In other words, the name of a present-day state of Macedonia is, in fact, empty of the real ancient Macedon inheritance. The Greek historiographers are basically right with their claim that the Yugoslav historiography for the very political purpose simply extended Antique Macedon state “…much further towards the north than the borders of historical Macedon, in such a way as to include actual Slavic regions that have never been parts of Macedonia in antiquity, but were actually districts of ancient Dardania”.[11]

A real ethnolinguistic origin of the ancient Macedonians is not clearly fixed. There are many unproven theories on their origin: Greek, Illyrian, Thracian or mixture of all of them. However, in the course of time, the ancient Macedonians became enough different from the Greeks, especially from the matter of their spoken language, that even majority of the Greek intellectuals of the time considered Macedonians as barbarians – not the Greeks by blood, i.e., those who did not speak Greek language as a native one. The most prominent figures of those well-known Greeks who perceived Macedonians as not Greeks, and therefore being barbarians, are Thucydides (the author of famous “Poloponnese Wars”), Demosthenes (384−322 BC)[12] and (pro-Philip) Isocrates (436−338 BC). However, as a matter of fact, there were thousand years of continuous presence of Hellenic culture and civilization on the territory of the Kingdom of Macedon that many Greeks considered, like today, ancient Macedonians as one of many Greek tribes.[13] According to Prof. M. Rostovtzeff, Greeks hardly understood Macedon language but, anyway, it was a dialect of Greek with many foreign words.[14]

The Slavo-Macedonians

If the ancient Macedonians were not the ethnolinguistic Greeks, they have not been as well as the ethnolinguistic Slavs like the modern Macedonians are. In other words, self-called Macedonians who today inhabit the Balkan peninsula, are the Slavic people, having nothing in common with the ancient Macedonians of Philip II (Philip of Macedon) and his son Alexander the Great.[15] From the late Antique onward there were several different ethnic groups who became settled at the Balkan peninsula as, for instance, Celts, Huns, Bulgars, Germanic tribes, Slavic tribes, Mongols or Ottoman Turks. Surely, they either drove away or assimilated the autochthonous population, or even became assimilated (like the Asiatic Bulgars who became ethnolinguistic Slavs).[16] The Slavs, divided into many tribes, were settled in the Balkan peninsula from the end of 6^th century AD (from around 580 up to 624) and the autochtonous people living in the land of Roman Province of Macedonia (at that time under Byzantine administration) became soon assimilated by these Slavic tribes who became settled even on the Peloponnesus peninsula (today in South Greece). However, no single historical source of the time recorded any Slavic tribe under the name of “Macedonians” or “Bosnians” (well- known were the “Serbs” and “Croats”). Therefore, modern Macedonia’s people, whom we know under the national name of “Macedonians”, differ in ethnic point of view from the ancient Macedonians, with a different language and culture.[17] Subsequently, FYROM’s Macedonians should be called as Slavo-Macedonians for the matter of difference with the Antique Macedonians.

In essence, the present-day Macedonians are the Slavs who to a certain degree assimilated pre-Slavic population of Macedonia but borrowed the ancient name of the settled land (of Roman Province of Macedonia and Byzantine Theme of Macedonia) as their new national one.[18] However, the problem of political-national nature arose when after the WWII Yugoslav Macedonians started to claim a national, historical and cultural legacy of the ancient Macedonians and their state with whom they, in fact, had nothing in common. However, one can say that something similar goes about the Greeks as well. The ethnic nature of contemporary Greece is in no close match to the ethnic nature of the area at the time of Alexander the Great. New peoples in the Middle Ages entered Greek territories and merged with the existing peoples. Whereas in FYROM there is a majority of people of mixed ethnic stock who speak a Slavic language and have a predominantly Slavic culture (about 2/3 out of total population), in Greece, there is a majority of people of mixed ethnic stock who speak Greek language and sharing Greek culture. Therefore, as both FYROM and Greece have changed dramatically in the ethnic mixture over the past 1500 years, like all other Balkan regions, it cannot be claimed that there is a pure and not interrupted the ethnonational continuity of any Balkan modern nation with the ethnic groups from the past. Moreover, the Balkans “…is one of the most ethnically, linguistically and religiously complex areas of the world. Its geographic position has historically resulted in it being disrupted by invaders moving from Asia Minor to Europe or vice-versa”.[19]

*

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is Founder & Editor of POLICRATICUS-Electronic Magazine on Global Politics (www.global-politics.eu). Contact: [email protected]

Notes

[1] Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael (eds.), Language and Nationalism in Europe, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 229.

[2] James Pettifer (ed.), The New Macedonian Question, New York: Palgrave, 2001, 3−59.

[3] Loring M. Danforth, Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997, 6.

[4] About Ottoman Macedonia’s ethnolinguistic and multiconfessional composition, see [Henry N. Brailsford, Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future, London: Methuen & Co., 1906].

[5] Hough Poulton, Who are the Macedonians?, Hong Kong: Hurst & Company London, 1995, 1−2.

[6] Hans-Erich Stier et al (eds.), Westermann Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte, Braunschweig: Westermann Schulbuchverlag GmbH, 1985, 22−23.

[7] On this issue, see in [Philip Freeman, Alexander the Great, New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2011; Thomas R. Martin, Christopher W. Blackwell, Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012].

[8] In the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC, biggest portion of the present-day state of Macedonia was not part of the ancient Kingdom of Macedon and it was covered by the territory known as Paeonia that was populated by the ancient Illyrians but not by the Macedonians [Giuseppe Motta (ed.), Atlante Storico, Novara: Istituto Geografico de Agostini S.p.A., 1979, 13].

[9] On ancient Macedonians, see in [Eugene N. Borza, In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992; Joseph Roisman, Ian Worthington (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010].

[10] Hans-Erich Stier et al (eds.), Westermann Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte, Braunschweig: Westermann Schulbuchverlag GmbH, 1985, 38−39.

[11] Nicolas K. Martis, The Falsification of Macedonian History, Athens: Graphic Arts, 1984, 13.

[12] “Demosthenes viewed the peoples of Macedonia as barbarous riffraff led by a king (Philip II) who not only did not belong and was unrelated to the Greeks but could not even boast a respectable foreign heritage” [John Crossland, Diana Constance, Macedonian Greece, London: Batsford Ltd, 1982, 9,15].

[13] Michael B. Sakellariou (ed.), Macedonia. 4,000 Years of Greek History and Civilization, Athens: Aristide d Caratzas Publ., 1988, 63.

[14] Михаил Ростовцев, Историја старога света: Грчка, Рим, Нови Сад: Матица српска, 1990, 155.

[15] This was recently recognized by a mayor of Skopje who sincerely gave a statement that today’s Slavo-Macedonians have nothing in common with Macedonians of Philip the Macedon and Alexander the Great.

[16] The modern Bulgarians are of Turkic origin who migrated to the Balkans from their homeland found north of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. They crossed the Danube in the late 7^th century (679−681) and inhabited the territory of present-day North Bulgaria, which was at that time already settled by seven Slavic tribes. By the early 10^th century Turkic Bulgars became assimilated by the local Slavs but their ethnic name was given to such amalgam of Bulgar-Slavic people. From the 10^thcentury onward the Bulgarians (mixture of Bulgars and Slavs) are considered as a Slavic people who were speaking Slavonic language [John V. A. Fine, JR., The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994, 305].

[17] Here it has to be noted that the fundamental dogma of the FYROM historiography about the origin of the modern Macedonians clearly confirms that they are the Slavs and even the oldest Slavic nation [James Pettifer (ed.), The New Macedonian Question, New York: Palgrave, 2001, 55].

[18] The modern ethnonym Macedonian is derived from the ancient toponym Macedon. Similar it happens with today ethnonym Bosniak that is derived from a toponym Bosnia (a name of the land Bosnia comes from Bosnia [Bosna] river). Therefore, modern ethnonyms Macedonian and Bosniak are not grounded on the ethnic foundations but rather on the territorial.

[19] Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994, 1.

All images, except the featured, in this article are from the author.

Trump has handed over to polluters oil and mineral rights in US National Monuments.  Mining will now deface what was before Trump protected national monuments, and oil drilling will destroy the Arctic National Refuge.  He has appointed polluters to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he has waived rules in order to comply with the polluting industries’ wish list. 

Trump wants to cut EPA funding by 23 percent and to cut funding for restoration programs for the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay by 90 percent.  He wants to pay for the upkeep of national parks by expanding oil and gas exploration on public lands. But he doesn’t hesitate to send the equivalent of the annual environmental budget in war criminal missile attacks on Syria and plans for attacking Iran.

To be quite clear, Trump is privatizing national property and allowing a small handful of polluting corporations to plunder public assets while he builds a case for war against Iran. 

The assault on the environment started with VP Dick Cheney, but Trump has unleashed private plunder of public assets to an extreme degree.

No one has ever explained how assets owned by the American people can be turned over to a few friends and supporters of the ruling elite in Washington.  In what law does the power exist for a president or federal agency chairman to expropriate public assets for plunder by politically connected friends?

The way America works, thanks to the Republican Supreme Court that legalized it, polluters bid with their campaign donations to be given permission to loot and despoil national monuments and refuges.  The Supreme Court called the corporate purchase of the US government a constitutionally permitted exercise of free speech.

Existing law prevents the environmental looting, but law means nothing to Washington.  We have experienced the entirety of the 21st century so far with Washington being in total noncompliance with international law, instead behaving consistently as a war criminal as defined by existing international law.

Trump has now escalated Washington’s war criminal behavior. He has unilaterally pulled out of a multi-nation agreement that ensures Iran’s nuclear non-proliferation, and he has imposed more illegal unilateral economic sanctions on Iran that punish US companies such as Boeing and corporations in numerous European countries. Trump’s foreign policy is under the control of Israel. Trump is unable to act in America’s interest or in the interest of Washington’s European, Canadian, and Australian vassals. 

Trump’s stupid decision has caused rebellion among Washington’s usual compliant and well paid vassals—UK, France, and Germany.  Europeans are saying that it is long past time that Europe represented its own interests instead of Washington’s.  (See this)   

The silver lining in Trump’s stupid decision is that it might cause Europe to become independent and to cease being a chorus praising Washington’s war crimes.  Will we see a rebellion of European political figures, essentially Washington’s whores, that will break up the Empire and lead to an independent Europe?

Such a development would justify all of Putin’s hesitation to put his foot down.

As matters stand, “the coalition of the willing” is reduced to Washington and Israel.  Not even a majority of Americans support Trump pulling out of the multi-nation Iran agreement, nor do they support his appointment of a war criminal, Haspel, as director of the CIA, nor do they support Trump’s permission to Israel to continue the war against Syria and to attack Iran.

But the people everywhere in the western “democracies” are powerless. They are never allowed to elect anyone who would do the right things.  Invariably their votes put in office those who exploit them and peoples of other countries.  This is why the other part of the world views the West as a plague upon all mankind, including the western peoples themselves.

Trump was expected to be a disaster for the environment.  The hope was that the liberal/progressive/left would rally to his intent to withdraw from Syria and to normalize relations with Russia. By supporting Trump against the neoconservatives and the military/security complex, the liberal/progressive/left, it would have gained some chips that could be used to moderate Trump’s assault on the environment.

Unfortunately, the liberal/progressive/left aligned with Brennan’s CIA, Comey’s FBI, and Hillary’s DNC and committed to the orchestrated “Russiagate” allegations that were intended to discredit Trump and to force him out of office.  I was very disappointed to see the environmental movement join in with the orchestrated “Russiagate” conspiracy against Trump.

As a result, Trump owes environmentalists and the liberal/progressive/left nothing. The consequence is that the environment, civil liberty and peace have been lost.

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Tensions are at an all-time high in the Middle East as Israel launched more than sixty missiles at Syria because Israel claimed that Iranian forces fired rockets into the Golan Heights, an Israel-occupied territory since the 1967 Six-Day War. A report by Reuters said that

 “Israel said it attacked nearly all of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria on Thursday after Iranian forces fired rockets at Israeli-held territory for the first time in the most extensive military exchange ever between the two adversaries.” 

The report went on to mention that 

“it was the heaviest Israeli barrage in Syria since the start in 2011 of its war, in which Iranians, allied Shi’ite Muslim militias and Russian troops have deployed in support of President Bashar al-Assad.” 

What was interesting about the report was that Israel claimed that 20 Iranian Grad and Fajr rockets were launched from Syria. Reuters’ said that the Trump administration “portrayed its rejection of that agreement as a response, in part, to Iran’s military interventions in the Middle East, underpinning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tough line towards Tehran.” Now here is what Israel claims what happened according to Reuters:

Israel said 20 Iranian Grad and Fajr rockets were shot down by its Iron Dome air defense system or did not reach targets in the occupied Golan Heights, territory captured from Syria in a 1967 war

Iran responded to the Israeli claims in a Zero Hedge report:

In the aftermath of one of the most severe Israeli attacks on Syria “in decades,” Iranian lawmakers said Thursday that Iran had no role in the attack, and that Shia nation doesn’t operate any bases in Syria.   

Mohammad Javad Jamali Nobandegani, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said Israel’s claim that Iran had provoked Israel by firing first was “a lie,” adding that

“Israel’s history of carrying out unprovoked attacks in Syria has been well-documented.” “Iran does not have military base in Syria,” Nobandegani added 

RT News interviewed Leonid Ivashov, the president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems and a retired colonel-general of the Russian military intelligence (GRU) said that

 “every time one resorts to arms, one seeks to hit some particular targets and has to analyze the potential consequences [of the attack],” and that “It would be just egregiously silly to launch a missile targeting the region of Golan Heights [which is heavily guarded by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)] as it would certainly prompt military response” Ivashov said.

Iran has “absolutely no reasons” to launch a missile strike against Israel, he added.”

In other words, Israel used a false-flag tactic to justify a military strike in Syria claiming that it was the Iranians who fired the missiles at the Golan Heights  in the first place. Israel clearly wants a war with Syria and their biggest obstacle to hegemonic power in the Middle East, Iran with Washington’s help of course. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held the “Iran Lied” presentation in Tel-Aviv on Iran’s alleged secret nuclear weapons activity. Netanyahu claimed that

“After signing the nuclear deal in 2015, Iran intensified its efforts to hide its secret files…In 2017 Iran moved its nuclear weapons files to a highly secret location in Tehran.”

Screenshot from Jerusalem Post

So the first question is how did the Israelis obtain the secret files? Well, according to a Jerusalem Post article ‘Mossad Smuggled Half a Ton of Nuclear Documents Out of Iran-In One Night: How Did They Do It?’ Good question:

Israel’s Mossad intelligence service broke into the anonymous Tehran building that housed Iran’s secret nuclear files and smuggled half a ton of documents and compact discs back to Israel the same night. The New York Times in an article posted on its website Monday night quoted a senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity as saying that the Mossad discovered the warehouse in February 2016 and kept the building under surveillance since then.   

Mossad operatives broke into the building in January, took the original documents, and returned to Israel the same night, the official told the Times

So Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency broke into a building in Tehran and managed to smuggle a half a ton of nuclear documents out of Tehran and into the Israeli government’s hand, all in one night? It was also right before Trump was about to make a crucial decision on the Iranian deal. That story seems incredibly hard to believe. The Associated Press (AP) published the response of the U.N. nuclear agency in regards to Netanyahu’s presentation:

The U.N. nuclear agency says it believes that Iran had a “coordinated” nuclear weapons program in place before 2003, but found “no credible indications” of such work after 2009. The agency issued its assessment on Tuesday, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released what he said was a “half ton” of seized documents proving that Iran has lied about its nuclear intentions. 

The documents focused on Iranian activities before 2003 and did not provide any explicit evidence that Iran has violated its 2015 nuclear deal with the international community

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) website published what the organization’s Director General, Yukiya Amano had told the Agency’s 35-member Board of Governors back in March:

“As of today, I can state that Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments,” he said in his introductory statement to the Board. “The JCPOA represents a significant gain for verification. It is essential that Iran continues to fully implement those commitments. If the JCPOA were to fail, it would be a great loss for nuclear verification and for multilateralism” 

For the upcoming months of the summer season, the Middle East will experience chaos and a possible major war between Israel and Iran. Since Trump cancelled the Iran Nuclear Deal which is also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; plus Germany) and Iran because at least according to Netanyahu and Trump, it was a “bad deal” which Trump had repeatedly claimed when he was a Presidential candidate in 2016. Now Trump is imposing economic sanctions on Iran adding its support of opposition groups and terrorist organizations in hopes of regime change.  New economic sanctions will also lead to more protests by the Iranian people angered at their current economic situation in hopes of regime change.

However, there is another crisis that will take place under the Trump Administration and that is the decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem on May 14th in recognition of Jerusalem as being Israel’s capital is sure to intensify the growing danger of a Third Intifada. Washington and Tel-Aviv have a long term strategy to destroy the fabric of Muslim society as Israel becomes the dominant force (with Washington’s full-support) for democracy in the Middle East.

Trump, Netanyahu and the “Bad” Iranian Nuclear Deal

One thing is clear, Trump and in all fairness, most of Washington since 1948 has supported Israel’s actions in the past way before Netanyahu became Prime Minister. Netanyahu’s televised theatrics was to convince the Trump Administration that Iran had a clandestine program to develop nuclear weapons. The White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders (image on the right) released a statement:

The United States is aware of the information just released by Israel and continues to examine it carefully. This information provides new and compelling details about Iran’s efforts to develop missile-deliverable nuclear weapons. These facts are consistent with what the United States has long known: Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world and from its own people. The Iranian regime has shown it will use destructive weapons against its neighbors and others. Iran must never have nuclear weapons

What the Trump Administration indicated here is that Iran is guilty because Netanyahu provided compelling evidence although they claimed that they are continuing to examine the evidence. However, no evidence is required for the Trump team, Iran is guilty as charged.

On April 26, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman had a high-level meeting with US officials in Washington, one of them was with the neocon psychopath, John Bolton.  According to The Jerusalem Post, Liberman had nothing but kind words for the Trump Administration including its recent hire of John Bolton as National Security Adviser:

John Bolton is a loyal friend of Israel, who is very knowledgeable about the Iranian threat. We discussed this as well as the complex and sensitive situation in Syria, “Liberman said after the meeting. “I am pleased that the Americans see eye-to-eye with us in regards to the situation in the Middle East and thank the administration for its support of Israel

Liberman says “Americans see eye-to-eye with us” meaning that Israel and the U.S. have an agenda and that is to protect Israel and to destroy Syria, Hezbollah and Iran at all costs. Liberman gave Bolton “a caricature of him tearing up a UN resolution equating Zionism with Racism, a resolution Bolton was a major opponent of when he was US ambassador to the UN.” The purpose of the meeting between Israeli and American officials was to discuss “tensions between Israel and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s military entrenchment in Syria and Israel’s advocating to rip up the P5+1 nuclear deal” The Jerusalem Post reported. The caricature of Bolton tearing up the UN Resolution was a symbolic gesture in hopes that Trump will do the same with the Iran Nuclear Deal and he did. Trump did keep a campaign promise he made to the Israelis. Liberman has called for world powers (basically the U.S.) to enforce a policy of economic measures or sanctions along with the strict demands of the UN resolution that includes halting Iran’s use of ballistic missiles. Last month, The Jerusalem Post published another article ‘Liberman: ‘There will Not be a Nuclear Iran’ where Liberman said that

“The State of Israel is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This is not just a slogan, not just words,” Liberman said. “There will be no Iranian military presence in Syria, and there will be no nuclear Iran. We are not just saying this; we mean what we’re saying.”

In regards to the Iran Nuclear Deal, Trump has repeatedly reminded the world that the deal was bad just like his partner-in-crime Netanyahu has been saying since the deal was signed. One of Trump’s complaints about the deal is that he claims that the U.S. government under the Obama administration gave away money to Iran. Trump even tweeted earlier this year that

“Never gotten over the fact that Obama was able to send $1.7 Billion Dollars in CASH to Iran and nobody in Congress, the FBI or Justice called for an investigation!”

Trump is either playing stupid or just plain ignorant of the facts in regards to the Obama Administration sending 1.7 billion in cash to Iran. Well the facts are clear. The money was owed to Iran since 1979 since the U.S. froze all Iranian funds in American banks as retaliation for the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah of Iran, a U.S. puppet. The Iran hostage crisis went on for more than a year but ended with the Algeria Declaration that involved a number of agreements between the United States and Iran that resolved the hostage crisis. It was brokered by the Algerian government which was signed in Algiers on January 19, 1981. The agreement included an exchange for the release of 52 American diplomats and citizens.

The U.S. government and Iran agreed to resolve the money issue through ‘international arbitration’ meaning that both sides since 1979, have made payments to each other. It has been estimated that by 1983, Iran returned more than $896 million to U.S. banking institutions and in return, the U.S. transferred hundreds of millions in frozen funds to Iran. Today, private claims from the U.S. side have been resolved to the tune of $2.1 billion while Iran received more than $3 billion of its estimated $12 billion in frozen assets since 1981. So Trump’s personal assessment of the Obama Administration as just giving money to Iran deserves an investigation is absurd. Trump’s ignorance on the facts is clear.

The number one question the world had asked in regards to the Iran Nuclear Deal was what will Trump do? Nobody knew what will Trump do except those in the halls of Washington where members of congress and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) rub elbows on a daily basis. But during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, Trump did promise to rip up the agreement. So when Trump became President he cancelled the Iran Nuclear Deal despite pressure from members of the European Union, the IAEA and the international community including Russia and China not to withdraw from the deal.

Cancelling the deal will allow Trump to impose new sanctions on Iran. On September 13, 2017, The Arms Control Association released a press statement calling for “Trump and the U.S. Congress to continue to fulfill Washington’s commitments under the multilateral accord.” The press release stated the following:

More than 80 of the world’s leading nuclear nonproliferation specialists issued a joint statement Wednesday on why the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between six world powers and Iran “has proven to be an effective and verifiable arrangement that is a net plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.”

“Since the nuclear deal was implemented in January 2016, the JCPOA has dramatically reduced the risk posed by Iran’s nuclear program and mandated unprecedented monitoring and transparency measures that make it very likely that any possible future effort by Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, even a clandestine program, would be detected promptly,” the statement notes

It has been reported that Iran will remain the JCPOA agreement along with the European Union, Russia and China further isolating the U.S. One important question remains, Can the U.S. and Israel attempt a false flag in Syria and blame it on Iran? Yes. Israel will continue to launch attacks on Syria until Netanyahu comes up with another presentation titled ‘Iran has Secretly Developed Nukes in Syria’ then a joint US-Israel military strike on Iran is most likely.

Trump, North Korea and the Nobel Peace Prize

‘Nobel’, ‘Nobel’ the crowd chanted for U.S. president Donald J. Trump at a rally in Michigan last Saturday to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (which has lost credibility a long time ago for giving war criminals Henry Kissinger and the former U.S. President Barack Obama the peace prize). Yes, North and South Korea has a real possibility of reuniting is a welcoming attempt at peace by the entire world, but I doubt Trump’s “fire and fury” threats and calling the North Korean leader Kim-Jong-Un “Rocket Man” led to a North and South Korea peace process was simply not the case. RT News published what the Chair of the Russian Upper House Committee for International Relations, Senator Konstantin Kosachev had said about awarding Trump the Nobel Peace Prize:

Screenshot from RT News

A Russian senator has described calls to award Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Korean peace deal as an attempt by the US to take credit for the resolution of a conflict that it had been stoking for decades.

“I see this as an attempt to make the United States an exceptional and only contributor to the ‘Korean turnaround.’ Of course this is not true. If the US has ever played any exceptional role it was their role in provoking tensions on the Korean peninsula and constant provocations aimed against DPRK,” the Chair of the Russian Upper House Committee for International Relations Senator Konstantin Kosachev told TASS on Saturday

However, while Trump is taking the credit for the peace process that is currently taking place on the Korean Peninsula, he has pulled out of the JCPOA with possibility of the U.S. and Israel launching strikes, possibly even nuclear strikes against Iran. Israel has a majority of zealots in the Knesset willing to take that chance and risk a nuclear war to once and for all, defeat one of their major enemies for the survival of the Jewish State. Indeed, very dangerous times ahead.

Jerusalem, a Holy City in Chaos

The U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem scheduled for May 14th will increase tensions in an already fragile situation between the Israelis and Palestinians, possibly igniting a third intifada? Since Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a Sputnik News report indicated that Hamas has called for the Third Intifada:

According to the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization, which governs the Gaza Strip, it expects the “day of rage” protests against the US move, which claimed two lives and left over 1,000 injured on Friday, to continue.

“Protests will continue in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.Because we protest against the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as we consider it the capital of Palestine. We hope that the protests will develop further and further,” the movement’s press secretary told RIA Novosti

A day after Trump’s announcement, which has been condemned by Muslim states and countries backing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the leader of the political bureau of Hamas called for a third “intifada” uprising “against the US and Zionist plans to Judaize Jerusalem.” Amid tense clashes between Palestinians and police over the US decision on Jerusalem, the Israeli army has intensified its operations against Hamas, particularly, targeting its tunnels in the Gaza Strip

The first Palestinian intifada between 1987-1991 was a resistance against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories that Israel gained during the 1967 Six-Day War. The start of the second intifada was when Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon and a group of his supporters visited the Temple Mount in September of 2000. The second intifada lasted until 2005.

One of the long-term goals of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to seize control of Jerusalem and turn it into the capital of the Jewish people. Most people around the world rejected Israel’s proposal to convert Jerusalem into an ethnically cleansed capital of Israel. Trumps decision to move the U.S. embassy in Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem was also influenced by one of the main Zionist billionaires, Sidney G. Adelson who reportedly donated more than $20 million to the Trump Campaign in 2016. Back in February, a New York Times article titled ‘Hard-Line Supporter of Israel Offers to Pay for U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem’ made it clear on why Mr. Adelson donated to the Trump campaign:

Sheldon G. Adelson, one of the most hawkish supporters of Israel among American Jews, has offered to help fund the construction of a new American Embassy in Jerusalem, according to the State Department, which on Friday said it was reviewing whether it could legally accept the donation

The article also mentions that Mr. Adelson has been advocating Washington to move its embassy to Jerusalem for a long time. Trump has kept another promise:

For years, Mr. Adelson, a Las Vegas casino mogul, has pushed the United States government to move its embassy to Jerusalem, the disputed capital that both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their own. With an estimated net worth of $40 billion, Mr. Adelson donated heavily to Mr. Trump’s campaign and gave $5 million to the committee organizing the president’s inauguration festivities, the largest such contribution ever.

Mr. Trump vowed during his campaign that, if elected, he would “fairly quickly” move the embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. In December, he announced that he would formally and officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy there

Not only was Adelson an influence in Trump’s insane decision to move the U.S. embassy, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s Middle-East Advisor and whose family runs the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundationwhich has donated to Israeli “land-grabbers” or settlers in Palestinian territories in the past. Back in 2016, an interesting report by Haaretz, one of Israel’s main newspapers ‘Kushner Foundation Donated to West Bank Settlement Projects’ tells us who and what the Kushner’s was funding:

On average, the family donates a few million dollars a year to charitable causes through the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation, tax forms for the years 2010 through 2014 show. The average donation is typically in the range of $5,000 to $10,000. Jared Kushner – as well as his brother and two sisters – sits on the board of his parents’ family foundation, which was created in 1997.

Among organizations and institutions in the West Bank that receive funding from the Kushner family, the leading beneficiary is American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva. Located in one of the more hard-line, ideological settlements, Beit El Yeshiva received $20,000 from the Kushner family in 2013

Not only did the Kushner Foundation donated to Beit El Yeshiva, the foundation also donated to the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar where the radical Od Yosef Chai led attacks on Palestinian villages along with Israeli security forces.

 “This particular yeshiva has served as a base for launching violent attacks against nearby Palestinians villages and Israeli security forces, as well; as a result, it no longer receives funding from the Israeli government” according to Haaretz.

Last year, Reuters’ reported that the Israeli settlement of Bet El also supported Trump’s choice of nominating Jared Kushner as Senior Advisor on the Middle East.

“For many in the Israeli settlement of Bet El, deep in the occupied West Bank, Donald Trump’s choice of Jared Kushner as his senior adviser on the Middle East is a sign of politics shifting in their favor”

The report said that the Kushner family’s charitable foundation has donated” tens of thousands of dollars to their settlement” and that it is “part of a diplomatic rebalancing after what they view as eight years of anti-Israel bias under the U.S. administration of Barack Obama.” According to Haaretz:

“He will stand up for our interests. I suppose he will lean in our favor,” said Avi Lavi, 46, who has lived in Bet El for more than 40 years. “He’ll be fair, as opposed to Obama, whose policy leaned always towards the Arabs.”

New U.S. President Trump says his son-in-law Kushner, 36, is capable of brokering the “ultimate deal” to deliver peace between Israelis and Palestinians

As long as there is the continued expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories, there will never be a peaceful solution between both sides. On August 17, 2017, United Press International (UPI) reported that the

“U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said Israel’s settlement activities in Palestinian lands was a “major obstacle” to achieving a peaceful two-state solution.” On September 25th, 2017, www.un.org published the ‘meetings coverage’ of U.N. Security Council over Israel’s illegal settlement activity:

Israel had moved forward with illegal settlement activity at a high rate since late June further dashing hopes for a two-State solution, the United Nations top envoy for the Middle East peace process told the Security Council today.

“Continuing settlement expansion, most notably during this period in occupied East Jerusalem, is making the two-State solution increasingly unattainable and undermining Palestinian belief in international peace efforts,” Special Coordinator Nickolay Mladenov told Council members

Jared Kushner reportedly also pressured Trump’s National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn to intervene with Russia’s decision (who did not to support Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital) on behalf of Israel. In 2017, Consortium News article ‘The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate’ reported on what special prosecutor Robert Mueller discovered:

In investigating Russia’s alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump transition team to undermine President Obama’s plans to permit the United Nations to censure Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery referenced in the plea deal with President Trump’s first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

At Netanyahu’s behest, Flynn and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn’s appeal to block the resolution)

The New York Times report ‘Hard-Line Supporter of Israel Offers to Pay for U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem’ on what the Palestinian leadership had said regarding the embassy move which falls on Israel’s 70th anniversary of its war of independence. For the Palestinians , the anniversary of the ‘Nakba’ known as the ‘catastrophe.’ The Nakba was when the Zionists began the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians which numbered between 750,000 to one million and turning them into refugees:

“The decision of the U.S. administration to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to choose the anniversary of the Nakba of the Palestinian people for carrying out this step expresses a flagrant violation of the law,” Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a veteran Palestinian negotiator, said in a statement on Friday 

On December, 2017, Reuters’ also reported what the reaction was from the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the Trump Administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital when he said it was the “greatest crime”and that it was a “flagrant violation of international law”:

“Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Palestine,” he told an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Turkey. He said the United States was giving away Jerusalem as if it were an American city. “It crosses all the red lines,” he said

With more than seven-hundred thousand Israeli settlers in occupied Palestinian lands, there will never be a two-state solution between Palestinians and the Israelis.

Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy has influenced other governments including two in Latin America including Guatemala and now, Paraguay who happen to be U.S. puppet states. However, the historic decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was rejected by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) with 128 nations voting ‘No’ or “null and void” to recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with 9 voting in favor with 25 nations abstaining and 21 nations absent. Trump’s decision has isolated Muslims, Christians, Jews and the entire world over this reckless act of belligerence in accordance to international law. The Trump Administration even threatened to take names of those who voted against their decision.

The Balkanization of Syria for Israel

Syria is in the middle of an extreme situation where they have to deal with the remaining elements of ISIS, Al-Nusra and every other future terrorist organization with new made-up names along with American forces slowly creeping up in numbers. Syria also has to deal with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and their actions in recent months is a troubling sign that Israel is gearing up for a long war against its neighbors including Hezbollah and possibly Lebanon.

An important note to consider, and as I had written before, a U.S.-Israeli led attack on Iran cannot happen until Syria and Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon is neutralized. A war on Iran alone will be difficult for the Western alliance in a war against a united front with Syria, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iran, Russia and even China on Iran’s side. If the balkanization project for Syria under the Yinon plan succeeds, remnants from ISIS, al-Nusra and al-Qaeda in and around Syria and from neighboring warzones will be able to create a new army of jihadists destined to wage a war with Iran on its borders with help from the Saudis and other Gulf states.

In the summer of 1947, Rabbi Fischmann told the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry that

“The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”

In The Zionist Plan for the Middle East, Oded Yinon said that

 “Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track” later he added:

Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan

Israel’s recent strikes in Syria aiming at Iranian military personal suggests that Israel will certainly continue to strike targets within Syria that serves multiple purposes and that is to further destroy Syria by targeting military or civilian areas. Yinon wrote that

 “every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.”

Create conflict between various nations and groups , you create a manufactured crisis. Israel never planned for peace in the Middle East, they planned to tear it apart since Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism declared that

“the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”

World War III is in the Final Stages, So How Can the World Stop It?

Trump’s cancellation of the JCPOA and the U.S. embassy move scheduled for May 14th will be adding gas to the fire in the Middle East. There is a looming war between US-backed Israeli forces and Iran. Israel is risking a heavy price if they followed through with a nuclear strike on Iran because it is most likely that their undeclared nuclear weapons would finally be put to use in such a risky confrontation. Israel will surely be hit with rockets from almost all directions including Syria, Hezbollah in the South of Lebanon and from Palestine due to the decision to move the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of the holiest cities in the world for Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. All of the US-Israeli actions since Trump became President will lead to more wars and chaos. Chaos is good for Israel’s long-term agenda. World War III is getting closer. So what can the world do to stop it?

Russia and China have to stand together militarily and more importantly diplomatically through peace. Every sovereign nation can benefit in a new economic era with China’s New Silk-Road and other regions where they can solidify their relationships and work towards the good of their nations is a good start.

All nations that are on the U.S. hit list need to unite and resist. For example, in South America, who to Washington it is still known as their backyard, the US Vice President and Judeo-Christian crusader Mike Pence recently had suggested that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are ripe for regime change. Telesur reported on what Pence had said at a ceremony for the new U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), for the Trump Administration, Carlos Trujillo:

During his speech the U.S. vice president singled out Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Of Cuba he said the island continued to live “under tyrannical legacy,” using terminology and rhetoric used by right-wing Cuban Americans against the communist government of Cuba.

Later it was Nicaragua’s turn. Pence accused Daniel Ortega’s government of “brutally repressing” peaceful protesters, a common allegation used by successive U.S. governments and their western allies to justify interference despite lacking proper evidence to back their claims.

The he attacked the Venezuelan government calling President Nicolas Maduro a “dictator” and charged him with turning “one of South America’s most prosperous countries into one of the poorests”

This is just one example of how the U.S. Empire continues to operate. Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela united can push back any attempt by Washington to destabilize their governments. One way is to prevent regime change is to ban any US-funded Non-Government Organization such as USAID and the NED for starters. Bolivia and Ecuador has wisely banned U.S. NGO’s from creating a counter-revolutions run by the opposition who has close ties to Washington. One positive note in my opinion is the joint Venezuela-Palestine Bi-National Bank for Venezuela’s crypto currency, the ‘petros’ is definitely a step in the right direction, let’s see how far it can go to help each other in the long run minus US-Israel interference in the process.

As for the war in Syria, it is a wake-up call to the world that the US-Israel alliance must be stopped or we all will face the threat of a nuclear war launched by either Israel or the U.S. against Iran. What would could possibly go wrong? A new world war with the real possibility of going nuclear with Russia and China backing Iran.

In a the U.S. mainstream media, news magazine Newsweek reported last month that

“an angered Kremlin may reconsider that position and provide Assad with the weapons systems he has been pushing for, especially after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the BBC Moscow would do what was needed to help Syria “deter aggression.”

The report also mentioned what Ex-Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin had said about the idea that Russia had deploying S-300s to Syria and that it would be targeted by Israel’s air force. Yadlin said

 “If I know the air force well, we have already made proper plans to deal with this threat. After you remove the threat, which is basically what will be done, we’re back to square one,” he told Bloomberg.”

Russia has the military capabilities to deal with the US-Israel threat in Syria. Iran and China also have the military capability to strike U.S. and Israeli forces at a moment’s whim. Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Russia and China can stop World War III as they stand united against the actions taken by the U.S. and Israel as it continues to target Syria. Not only the nations I just mentioned can stop World War III, the international community can form peaceful protests in every region of the world to stop the U.S. and Israel’s path to war.

Another important element to stop World War III is the alternative media by spreading important and vital information to the international community. Truth is the medicine needed to treat the sickness of war propaganda. Western-led wars at least since the Spanish-American War of 1898 has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in human history. We as a people have a real chance of stopping the next major war. One of the solutions against the wicked powers of the West and Israel is to stand united and spread the truth on what the real agenda is. Peace can still be possible so let’s all take a stand and try to stop this war, because in the end, it is up to all of us and let’s not waste any time doing so.

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This article was originally published on Silent Crow News.

Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Featured image: Defendant Adolf Eichmann takes notes during his trial in Jerusalem. The glass booth in which Eichmann sat was erected to protect him from assassination. (Photo credit: Israeli Government)

On May 9, Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s choice for head of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified at her Senate confirmation hearing in Washington, DC. Some senators questioned her about her tenure, in 2002, as CIA station chief in Thailand. There, the agency ran one of the “black sites” where suspected al-Qaida extremists were interrogated using procedures that included waterboarding. She was also asked about her role in the destruction of videotapes in 2005 that documented the torture of illegally detained suspects.  Her evasive answers to these questions, disconcerting and unsatisfying, are also hauntingly familiar.

In 1960, Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli spies in Argentina and brought to trial in Jerusalem for his part in the extermination of millions of European Jews during Germany’s Third Reich. In his interrogation with Israeli police, published as Eichmann Interrogated, DeCopo Books, NY, 1999, Eichmann stated that in the intervening years since the acts in question his own view of them had evolved and before the Senate on May 9, Haspel expressed herself similarly.

Haspel testified that while she can’t say what exactly might constitute an immoral order in the past, her “moral compass” would not allow her to obey one today, given the “stricter moral standard” she says “we have chosen to hold ourselves to.” She does not judge the actions that she and her colleagues took in the years after 9-11, “in that tumultuous time” of decidedly looser moral standards: “I’m not going to sit here, with the benefit of hindsight, and judge the very good people who made hard decisions.” She testified that she supports laws that prohibit torture, but insists that such laws were not in place at the time and that such “harsh interrogations” were allowable under the legal guidance the CIA had at the time and “that the highest legal authority in the United States had approved it, and that the president of the United States had approved it.”

Likewise Eichmann was probed about his obedience when “ordered to do something blatantly illegal.” In a response that augured Haspel’s Senate testimony a half century later, Eichmann told his interrogators:

“You say illegal. Today I have a very different view of things…But then?  I wouldn’t have considered any of those actions illegal…  If anyone had asked me about it up until May 8, 1945, the end of the war, I’d have said: This government was elected by a majority of the German people…every civilized country on earth had its diplomatic mission. Who is a little man like me to trouble his head about it?  I get orders from my superior and I look neither right nor left.  That’s not my job.  My job is to obey and comply.”

Not to compare the evil of the holocaust with the CIA rendition and torture (as if evil could be measured by quantity) but the evasions and obfuscations of these two willing technicians of state terror are chillingly similar. Eichmann’s cowardly protestations that he could not have known that facilitating torture and murder was illegal ring hollow. It was only after Eichmann’s atrocities, though, that such crimes as torture were formally codified into law. By 2002, however, along the precedents of the war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg, the United States was legally bound along with most nations in the world to the Geneva Conventions, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention against Torture. Even the U.S. Army Field Manual, cited by Haspel in her hearing, labels waterboarding as torture and a war crime.

“We all believed in our work. We were all committed,” Haspel proudly boasted to the Senate, describing the morale and esprit de corps of her CIA comrades overseeing illegal detention, torture and murder in the years after 9-11. Eichmann similarly praised the work ethic of his team. Inspired by Eichmann’s trial, Thomas Merton, in his poem, “Chant to be Used in Processions Around a Site with Furnaces,” put these words in the mouth of a condemned concentration camp commander:

“In my day we worked hard we saw what we did our self-sacrifice was conscientious and complete our work was faultless and detailed.”

An Israeli court did not buy Adolf Eichmann’s defense that he was following orders and obeying the law as he understood it and he was hung on June 1, 1962. We will soon know if the U.S. Senate will accept Gina Haspel’s appropriation of Eichmann’s alibi and confirm her as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Featured image: On May 9, 2018 Vladimir Putin had talks with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu in the Kremlin (Source: author)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attendance at Victory Day 2018 as President Putin’s guest of honor, the day-long meeting that they had, and then Israel’s bombing of Iranian positions in Syria later that same night forever changed how the Alt-Media Community views the Russian-Israeli relationship.

Up until this Wednesday’s 2018 Victory Day event in Moscow, most of the Alt-Media Community was still brainwashed by the dogma that Russia is somehow “against” Israel despite years of evidence to the contrary, including multiple quotes from President Putin on this topic published on the Kremlin’s official website. That all changed earlier in the week when President Putin invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the celebration as one of his two guests of honor, the other being Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this happened because, after all, Russia and Israel are allies, like the author explained in September 2017.

The gist of this assertion comes down to the ethno-religious ties that bind the two parties together and lay the basis for a comprehensive partnership with one another, one which Russia has skillfully sought to use as a fundamental component of its “balancing” strategy. How this works in practice is that Russia, whose military mandate in Syria is strictly about fighting terrorism and not protecting the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), passively allows Israel to bomb what it says are suspected Iranian positions in the Arab Republic because it believes that the “phased withdrawal” of Tehran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their Hezbollah allies after the defeat of Daesh is a “necessary compromise” for “ensuring regional peace”.

This “politically incorrect” observation shouldn’t be taken as the author’s personal endorsement of this policy, but simply as a reflection of reality as it objectively exists. Moreover, in case the dozens of Israeli bombings that have occurred without Russian interference since the beginning of Moscow’s anti-terrorist operation in September 2015 weren’t enough evidence to convince the reader that the two parties coordinate these activities, the Russian Ambassador to Israel openly acknowledged this himself when he said late last month that “We are mutually coordinating and updating about Syria … So far, there have been no incidents between us, nor even hints at incidents, and I hope there will not be.”

All of this sets the backdrop for the action-packed 24 hours of 8-9 May, 2018.

Israeli forces carried out air strikes at targets in Syria (Source: author)

Israel launched another surprise attack against Syria on the night of 8 May, just an hour or so after Trump withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, reportedly killing several Iranians in the process. This daring raid was made all the more sensitive because it occurred just hours before Netanyahu arrived in Moscow as one of President Putin’s two guests of honor for the Victory Day events. While in the Russian capital, the Israeli premier was feted with the honor of standing two positions away from his host and was seen amicably chatting with him the entire time.

After watching the parade, the two leaders marched to the Alexander Garden to pay homage to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, during which time Netanyahu proudly held up a picture of a Soviet Jewish World War II veteran as he participated in Russia’s Immortal Regiment, a relatively new tradition that is regarded as almost sacred and in which Russians walk through the streets carrying photos of their family members who served and sacrificed during the war. This entire time, Netanyahu was proudly wearing the St. George Ribbon to commemorate the over 26 million Soviet citizens who died in the war against fascism.

Clearly, Israel’s bombing of Syria the night before had no impact on how warmly President Putin treated his guest of honor, nor on Netanyahu’s commitment to observing the Victory Day events.

During the Putin-Netanyahu press conference, the latter revealed that the war veteran that was between him and President Putin was actually one of the men who liberated Auschwitz, which obviously wasn’t a coincidence and was clearly part of the Kremlin’s meticulous planning of this event. That observation served as the lead-in for the Israeli premier to compare Iran to Nazi Germany and imply that it’s plotting a ‘second holocaust’, ergo the need to ‘contain’ it in Syria. It can only be speculated what the two men discussed behind closed doors prior to that point, but Netanyahu did say before his trip that it would be precisely about Iran and Syria.

Hours after Netanyahu left Moscow and within 24 hours of the last Israeli bombing of Syria, yet another one occurred, albeit this time apparently more large-scale than the last.

At this point, there’s no longer any use in Alt-Media denying it, Russia and Israel are indeed allies, and what took place in the 24 hours of 8 and 9 May was a display of choreographed “military diplomacy” that represents one of the high points of the “Syrian show”.  Sometimes events really are as simple as they appear, which in this case means that – whether one supports it, is against it, or feels indifferent towards it – Russia and Israel were coordinating Tel Aviv’s latest moves in Syria at the highest level of their leaderships, and that what took place after Netanyahu’s departure from Moscow was apparently greenlit by President Putin.

The actual conspiracy theories of the much-ridiculed “5-D chess” explanation or the superficial slogan of “keeping your enemies closer” that Alt-Media demagogues continue to rely on in order to maintain their weaponized disinformation campaign that Russia is somehow “against” Israel are losing their luster as it’s becoming increasingly impossible to continue suppressing the facts about the true relationship between these two. President Putin invited Netanyahu to Moscow to celebrate Victory Day as one of his two guests of honor in order to show the world that Israel is just as much of an ally to Russia as Serbia is, whose president was also personally invited to attend as well.

A turning point might therefore have finally been reached after Victory Day 2018 sobered up the minds of many in the Alt-Media Community and revealed to them that the dogma that some outlets and figures had indoctrinated them with for years about Russia and Israel turned out to be a complete lie.

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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Richard Grenell, the new U.S. ambassador to Germany, formally took up his post in Berlin on Tuesday and immediately got to work as Donald Trump’s representative by offending the German people with a tweet.

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As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 8, 2018

There have been major developments this week, all of them bad, including Putin re-nominating Medvedev as his Prime Minister, and Bibi Netanyahu invited to Moscow to the Victory Day Parade in spite of him bombing Syria, a Russian ally, just on the eve of his visit. Once in Moscow, Netanyahu compared Iran to, what else, Nazi Germany. How original and profound indeed! Then he proceeded to order the bombing of Syria for a second time, while still in Moscow. But then, what can we expect from a self-worshiping narcissist who finds it appropriate to serve food to the Japanese Prime Minister in a specially made shoe? The man is clearly batshit crazy (which in no way makes him less evil or dangerous). But it is the Russian reaction which is so totally disgusting: nothing, absolutely nothing. Unlike others, I have clearly said that it is not the Russian responsibility to “protect” Syria (or Iran) from the Israelis. But there is no doubt in my mind that Netanyahu has just publicly thumbed his nose at Putin and that Putin took it. For all my respect for Putin, this time he allowed Netanyahu to treat him just like Trump treated Macron. Except that in the case of Putin, he was so treated in his own capital. That makes it even worse.

[Interestingly, while whining about “Nazi Iran” Netanyahu did say something truly profound and true. He said “an important history lesson: when a murderous ideology emerges, one has to push back against it before it is too late”.That is indeed exactly what most people across the world feel about Israel and its Zionist ideology but, alas, their voice is completely ignored by those who rule over them. So yes, it sure looks to me like it is becoming “too late” and that the consequences for our collective cowardice – most of us are absolutely terrified from speaking the plain truth about our Zionist overlords – will cost us all a terrible price.]

Then, of course, there is Donald Trump pulling out of the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in spite of Iran’s full compliance and in spite of the fact that the USA does not have the authority to unilaterally withdraw from this multilateral agreement. But being the megalomaniac that he is, and not to mention the spineless lackey of the Israel Lobby, Trump ignored all that and thereby created further tensions between the USA and the rest of the world whom the US will now blackmail and bully to try to force it to support the USA in its rabid subservience to Israel. As for the Israelis, their “sophisticated” “strategy” is primitive to the extreme: first get Trump to create maximal tensions with Iran, then attack the Iranians in Syria as visibly and arrogantly as possible, bait the Iranians into a retaliation, then bellow “OI VEY!!!” with your loudest voice, mention the Holocaust once or twice, toss in a “6 million people” figure, and get the USA to attack Syria.

How anybody can respect, nevermind admire, the Israelis is simply beyond comprehension. I sure can’t think of a more contemptible, nasty, psychopathic gang of megalomanical thugs (and cowards) than the Israelis. Can you?

Nonetheless, it appears undeniable that the Zionists have enough power to simultaneously force not one, but two (supposed) superpowers to cave into their demands. Not only that, they have the power to do that while also putting these two superpowers on a collision course against each other. At the very least, this shows two things: the United States have now completely lost sovereignty and are now an Israeli protectorate. As for Russia, well, she is doing comparatively better, but the full re-sovereignization the Russian people have voted for when they gave their overwhelming support to Putin will not happen. A comment I read on a Russian chat put it: “Путин кинул народ – мы не за Медведева голосовали” or “Putin betrayed the people – we did not vote for Medvedev”. I am not sure that “betrayed the people” is fair, but the fact that he has disappointed a lot of people is, I think, simply undeniable.

It is still way too early to reach any conclusions at this point, and there are still way too many unknown variables, but I will admit that I am very worried and that for the first time in 4 years I am having major doubts about a fundamental policy decision by Putin. I sure hope that I am wrong. We will find out relatively soon. I just hope that this will not be in the form of a major war.

In the meantime, I want to refocus on the Skripal case. There is one outright bizarre thing which I initially dismissed, but which really is becoming disturbing: the fact that the Brits are apparently holding Sergei and Iulia Skripal incommunicado. In other words, they have been kidnapped.

There was this one single telephone call between Iulia Skripal and her sister, Victoria, in which Iulia said that she was okay (she was clearly trying to reassure Victoria) but it was clear that she could not speak freely. Furthermore, when Victoria mentioned that she would want to visit Iulia, the latter reply ‘nobody will give you a visa’. After that – full silence. The Russian consulate has been making countless requests to have a visit, but all that the Brits have done since is have Scotland Yard post a letter which was evidently not written by Iulia and which said

“I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them”.

What friends?! What family?! Nonsense!

Her sister tried to contact her many times through various channels, including official ones, and then in total despair, she posted the following message on Facebook:

“My darling sister, Yulia! You are not communicating with us, and we don’t know anything about you and Sergey Victorivich. I know that I have no right to interfere in your affairs without asking your permission, but I worry too much. I worry about you and your dad. I also worry about Nuar. [Nuar is Yulia Skrial’s dog, whom she left to stay at a kennel center, while she was traveling to the UK.] He is now at the dog hotel, and they want to get paid. We have to decide something what to do with him. I am ready to take him and to take care of him until you come back home. Besides Nuar, I am concerned about your apartment and your car. Nothing has been decided about their safety and maintenance. We can help with all that, but I need your power of attorney in my or my sister Lena’s name. If you think that all of these is important, draw up a power of attorney form in a Russian consulate in any country. If you won’t do that, we will understand and won’t interfere in your affairs.
Vika“

No reply ever came.

I just entered the following query into Google: “Skripal”. April 10^th has an entry saying that she was released from the hospital. That is the most recent one I have found. I looked on Wikipedia, the same thing, there is nothing at all.

I have to admit that when I first heard the Russian complaints I figured that this was no big deal. I thought “the Brits told the Skripals that Putin tried to poison them, they are probably afraid, and possibly still sick from whatever it is which made them sick, but the Brits would never outright kidnap two foreign citizens, and most definitely not in such a public way”.

I am not so sure anymore.

First, let’s get the obvious one out of the way: the fear for the security of the Skripals. That is utter nonsense. The Brits can organize a meeting between а Russian diplomat in the UK at a highly protected UK facility, with tanks, SAS Teams on the standby, helicopters in the air, bombers, etc. That Russian diplomat could speak to them through bullet-proof glass and a phone. And, since the Russians are all so dangerous, he can be searched for weapons. All which the Skripals need to do is to tell him/her “thank you, your services are not needed”. Conversation over. But the Brits refuse even that.

But let’s say that the Skripals are so totally terrified of the evil Russians, that they categorically refuse. Even by video-conference. It would be traumatic for them, right? Okay.

What about a press conference then?

Even more disturbing is that, at least to my knowledge, nobody in the western corporate media is asking for an interview with them. Snowden can safely speak from Russia and address even large conferences, but the Skripals can’t speak to anybody at all?

But here is the worst part of this: it has been two months already since the Skripals are held in total secrecy by the UK authorities. Two months, that is 60 days. Ask any specialist on interrogation or any psychologist what kind of effect 60 days of “specialized treatment” can do to a person.

I am not dismissing the Russian statements about “kidnapping” anymore. What I see is this: on substance, the Skripal false flag has crashed and burned, just like MH17 or the Douma chemical attack, but unlike MH17 or Douma, the Skripals are two witnesses whose testimony has the potential to result in a gigantic scandal, not just for the May government, but for all those spineless Europeans who showed “solidarity” with Britain. In other words, the Skripals will probably never be allowed to speak freely: they must either be killed or totally brainwashed or disappeared. Any other option would result in a scandal of planetary magnitude.

I can’t pretend like my heart goes out to Sergei Skripal: the man was an officer who gave an oath and who then betrayed his country to the British (he was a British agent, not a Russian one as the press writes). Those holding him today are his former bosses. But Iulia? She is completely innocent and as of April 5^th (when she called her sister Victoria), she was clearly in good health and with a clear mind. Now she has been disappeared and I don’t know which is worse, the fact that she might never reappear or that she might one day reappear following months of British “counseling”. As for her father, he paid for his betrayal and he too deserves a better fate than being poisoned, used and then disappeared.

In the big scheme of things (the Zionists war against our entire planet), two individuals like Sergei and Iulia Skripal might not matter. But I think that the least we can do is to remember them and their plight.

This also begs the question of what kind of society we live in. I am not shocked by the fact that the British state would resort to such methods (they have always used them). I am shocked that in a so-called western “democracy” with freedom, pluralism and “European values” (whatever that means) the Brits could get away with this.

How about some “solidarity” with the Skripals – you, Europeans?!

*

This column was written for the Unz Review.

British government official agencies are the patrons, managers and funders of the White Helmets, who have been the go-to source for the mainstream Western media reporting on the ongoing Syrian war.  For good measure, the U.S. State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID) has kicked in $23 million to finance Mayday Rescue, the cutout between the White Helmets and the British Ministry of Defense, the Home Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and 10 Downing Street.  This is all a matter of public record, yet no Western major media outlet has bothered to include these “data points” in their lavish coverage of the White Helmets.

Mayday Rescue was founded by James le Mesurier, who founded both Mayday Rescue and the White Helmets after “retiring” from the British Army and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  Mayday Rescue has its headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, where it runs a training program for the White Helmet recruits.  Mayday Rescue’s annual budget is $35 million, with the funds coming from USAID, the UK Conflict Security and Stability Fund, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  To date, an estimated 3,000 recruits have been through the Mayday Rescue training programs and deployed into 120 different locations in rebel held parts of Syria.

Another element of the British government flowchart backing the White Helmets is the communications and media firm Incostrat, founded by Paul Tilley, another British Army veteran, who ran the Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Communications for the Middle East and North Africa. Tilley ran British government communications during the Libya invasion, working directly out of 10 Downing Street.  In November 2014, soon after le Mesurier was founding Mayday Rescue and the White Helmets, Tilley “retired” from the British service to found the strategic communications firm.  Incostrat provides the social media and other communications services for Mayday and the White Helmets.

All very neat.

In January 2015, the British Ministry of Defence renamed its Security Assistance Group (SAG) the 77th Brigade.  The name change was in honor of the legendary World War II era British special warfare operator Orde Wingate, who as a Major General in the British Army founded the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, which conducted “long-range penetration” operations in the CBI theater.  The renamed current 77th Brigade, according to its own website, conducts “non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviors of opposing forces and adversaries,” including information activities and outreach.  By its own public description, the 77th Brigade is “an agent of change.”  They are nowadays referred to as “Twitter Troops” and “Facebook Warriors.”

Colonel Walter Patrick Lang, Jr.

The Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported that only 30 out of 86 foreign envoys serving in Israel had accepted Tel Aviv’s invitation to the Sunday reception. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had invited the entire foreign diplomatic corps to the event.

Israel’s Hadashot TV news said many European envoys, including those from the United Kingdom, France and Germany, boycotted the May 14 event.

“It is a little strange to invite us to celebrate an event that we opposed and condemned. The Americans were more clever and knew in advance not to invite us to save themselves from embarrassment,” the network quoted a diplomatic source as saying.

The event, which will take place a day before the official relocation ceremony, will be attended by US President Donald Trump‘s daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and other US officials.

Haaretz reported this week that the Israeli foreign ministry did not invite most of the Israeli opposition lawmakers to the reception.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat on Monday called on foreign dignitaries in Israel and around the world to “boycott the inauguration ceremony… lest they lend legitimacy to an illegal decision and to continued Israeli policies of occupation, colonization and annexation.”

“Those who attend the ceremony will thus be sending an ominous message, a message that they encourage flagrant violations of international law and the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” said Erekat.

Last December, Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s so-called capital and relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds, breaking with decades of American policy.

His decision infuriated the Palestinians, who declared that Washington could no longer play a role as a mediator in the so-called Middle East peace process. It also sparked outrage across the Muslim world and even among Washington’s Arab allies.

On December 21, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the US to withdraw its controversial recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli “capital.”

Palestinians to storm Israel-Gaza fence

Yahya Sinwar, the political chief of the Palestinian resistance movement  Hamas, said Thursday he hopes to see hundreds of thousands of Palestinians storm the fence between the Gaza Strip and the occupied territories during protests next week that will coincide with the US embassy move to Jerusalem al-Quds.

“What’s the problem with hundreds of thousands breaking through a fence that is not a border?”asked Sinwar, who hoped Israel forces would not shoot at “peaceful” protests.

However, he warned that the protests risked spiraling out of control, saying

“the Gaza Strip is like a hungry tiger that has been starved and left in a cage for 11 years.”

The coastal enclave is under Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007. Sinwar said now the tiger is on the loose, and nobody knows what it will do.

On Wednesday, Sinwar said the mass anti-occupation rallies will be “decisive,” vowing that he and other top officials were “ready to die” in a campaign to end Israel’s decade-old siege of the territory.

Senior Palestinian official Ahmad Majdalani said Tuesday that May 14 “will be a huge, popular day of rage everywhere.”

“Our people will express their rejection of relocating the embassy to occupied al-Quds,” he was quoted by the Voice of Palestine, the official Palestinian Authority radio station.

Monday’s demonstration will cap six weeks of protests along the Gaza fence and coincide with the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe), when Israel was created in 1948.

At least 52 unarmed Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli live fire since protests began on March 30.

The Israeli military regime has faced international criticism over its use of live fire, with the United Nations and European Union calling for an independent investigation. Tel Aviv has rejected the call.

14 May 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence by Zionist terrorist David Ben Gurion, the foundation of an invasion-,   violence-, racism- , genocide- and theft-based Apartheid Israel, and commencement of the large-scale, Rohingya Genocide-scale  ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinians from Palestine. US Alliance backers of Apartheid Israel will mark the occasion with lying praise for this evil rogue state, but decent Humanity will tell the truth and demand “Free Palestine”, an end to Israeli Apartheid, return of all refugees and a democratic, multi-ethnic Unitary State in Palestine.

To mark this occasion, I have set out below (A) the chronology of the violent invasion and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, (B) a summary of the appalling conditions of the Indigenous Palestinians, (C) the impact of Apartheid Israel on the world,  and (D) a humane outcome for a democratic post-Apartheid Palestine.

(A). Chronology of the violent invasion and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

1880. In 1880 there were about 500,000 Arab Palestinians and about 25,000 Jews (half of the latter being immigrants) living in Palestine. Genocidally racist  Zionists have been responsible  for a Palestinian Genocide involving successive mass expulsions (800,000 in 1948 and 400,00 in 1967) , ethnic cleansing of 90% of the land of Palestine, and in the century since the British invasion of Palestine about 2.3  million Palestinian deaths from violence (0.1 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation  (2.2 million). Presently there are now 8 million Palestinian refugees, and of 14 million Palestinians about 50% (7 million) are forbidden to even step foot in their own country on pain of death, only 1.8 million  Palestinian Israelis  (13%) are permitted to vote for the government ruling all of the former  Mandated Palestine, and 5.0 million Palestinians  have zero human rights as Occupied Palestinians in West Bank Bantustans (3.0 million) or in the Gaza Concentration Camp (2.0 million) [1-6].
1881. True Orthodox Judaism is opposed to Zionism (a) because Zionism is genocidal racism , and (b) because the  traditional Orthodox Jewish position for 2,000 years was  that Jews can only return to Zion (Jerusalem) when the Messiah arrives to reveal the glory of the Lord to the whole world. Orthodox Judaism fostered the beautiful idea of a Kingdom of the Mind that has transmuted in the secular world into the wonderful international communities of scientists, scholars, musicians, artists and writers. However in response to Russian pogroms and discrimination against both religious and secular Jews, Zionist activists (many being secular socialists) argued for a Jewish State.  Nathan Birnbaum, who coined the term Zionism, later rejected the evil Zionist ideology and reverted to the humanity of Orthodox Judaism. Racist Zionism substantially originated  with  racist psychopath Theodor Herzl, a Jewish Hungarian writer and activist. In his book “Der Judenstaat” (“The Jewish State”) Herzl declares (1896): “Shall we choose Palestine or Argentine? We shall take what is given us…  For Europe we shall constitute there [in Palestine] a sector of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as the vanguard of culture against barbarism” [7-9]. Over 20 other territories have been proposed for a Jewish colony, including Australia (in a scheme by the anti-Zionist Jewish Freeland League that was finally vetoed in 1944 by the war-time Curtin Labor Government) but  the racist Zionists and successive  racist British Governments decided to colonize and thence ethnically cleanse Palestine. Indeed genocidally racist psychopath Theodor Herzl notoriously stated (1895): “We shall try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly” [8, 9]
1882. The British Sinai and Palestine Campaign of WW1 began with repulse of a Turkish advance in the Sinai from Palestine in 1915.
1883.  The British and French divided up the formerly Ottoman Empire-ruled Middle East via the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 [6]. British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers were critically  involved in the conquest of Palestine and Syria in WW1 [10] that led to a famine in which 100,000 Palestinians died, this marking the beginning of the Palestinian Genocide that would involve 2.3 million premature Palestinian deaths from violence or deprivation over the next century [1, 11, 12].
1884.  2 days after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) victory at Beersheba (31 October 1917), on 2 November 1917  racist British warmonger and UK Foreign Secretary,  Lord Balfour, offered Palestine as a Jewish Homeland to the Zionists  in a letter to  the degenerate Zionist Lord Rothschild that included the caveat (subsequently  grossly violated by the genocidally racist Zionists) that there should be no detriment to the Indigenous inhabitants or indeed to Jewish people around the world: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country” [13-16]. According to genocide-ignoring,  holocaust-ignoring  and racist Zionist  historian, the late Professor Sir Martin Gilbert, the Balfour Declaration was issued in an ultimately  unsuccessful attempt to get traitorous  Russian Zionists to keep Russia in WW1 [17, 18]. There were 20 schemes for Jewish colonies around the world, including in Australia [19-21]
1885. Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers were responsible for the Surafend Massacre on 10 December 1918 in which about 100 Palestinian villagers were killed in retaliation for the death of a New Zealand soldier [23-24].

1918-1939. Between WW1 and WW2 there was massive, British-permitted Jewish immigration to Palestine resulting in massive and deadly displacement of Palestinian workers and tenant farmers from agricultural land. Resultant Palestinian opposition lead to armed conflict between Indigenous Palestinians and increasingly violent and racist Zionist invaders. In 1939 the British Government, concerned to maintain the loyalty of its scores of millions of Muslim subjects in the coming war, issued a White Paper constraining further Jewish entry to Palestine. Indeed the first WW2 casualties in the British Empire were Jewish illegal immigrants shot while attempting to land in Palestine [6].

1939. The 1939 British White Paper stopped Jewish immigration to Palestine in a move designed to increase global Muslim support for Britain in the looming war with Nazi Germany.

1939-1945. Zionist terrorist groups, notably Irgun, collaborated  with the Nazis, and  killed Allied servicemen before, during and after WW2 [25-29]. The neo-Nazi Zionist terrorist organization Irgun was  heavily involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and spawned the current rightwing Israeli leadership, but was removed from the pro-Zionist Australian Government’s list of terrorist organizations in the 21st century. Zionists opposed sanctuary in non-Palestine venues for Jews fleeing Nazi Europe and hence contributed to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed) that was part of a much wider but Zionist-ignored WW2 Holocaust (30 million Slaves, Jews and Gypsies killed by the Nazis) [6].

1944.  Some Jews recognized the great wrong being done to the Indigenous Palestinians. Thus  the anti-Zionist Freeland League under Dr Isaac Steinberg proposed to make the Kimberley region of North West  Australia a region of  exclusive Jewish settlement. This proposal won widespread political support in White Australia (Indigenous Australians were not even counted as Australians until after a 1967 Referendum) but was eventually vetoed by PM John Curtin in 1944 on Intelligence advice that quite possibly related to the 1944 British War Cabinet decision to Partition Palestine [19-21]. The “forgotten”  Joel Brand scheme to “buy” 800,000 Jewish Hungarians from the Nazis and transport them to Turkey was vetoed by Zionist mass murderer Churchill and 400,000  Jewish Hungarians subsequently perished [25-27] (also “forgotten” has been    Churchill’s responsibility for the 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons) [30-33].
1945. Sir Isaac Isaacs, a staunch anti-Zionist and Australia’s most famous Jewish citizen as the first Australian-born Australian Governor-General, stated in 1946: “The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism” and “the Zionist movement as a whole…now places its own unwarranted interpretation on the Balfour Declaration, and makes demands that are arousing the antagonism of the Moslem world of nearly 400 millions, thereby menacing the safety of our Empire, endangering world peace and imperilling some of the most sacred associations of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem faiths. Besides their inherent injustice to others these demands would, I believe, seriously and detrimentally affect the general position of Jews throughout the world” [25, 34].

1945-1947. After WW2 a greatly weakened Britain faced the reality of being unable to hold on to its vast Empire. Racist Britain had already decided on a Partition of India (perhaps for anti-Soviet strategic reasons) and enabled India to be partitioned on Independence  in 1947 in a catastrophic  process that generated 20 million refugees and killed 1 million people. Similarly, in 1944 the British had decided on withdrawal from Palestine and the Partition of  Palestine. In 1947 the UN approved a Partition Plan.  In 1948 the last British left the day after genocidal racist Ben Gurion declared Israeli independence, and the UN recognized the State of  Israel [6].

1948.  Well-armed Israeli forces committed atrocities against Palestinians (e.g.  the horrendous Deir Yassin massacre that distressed anti-racist Jews like Albert Einstein [25, 35]) that encouraged 800,000 Palestinians to flee cities, towns and hundreds of villages in the 1948 Nakba (Disaster).  The incipient Apartheid Israel seized a substantially ethnically cleansed 78% of the former British Mandated Palestine after defeating Arab forces from UK- or France-dominated neighbouring countries. The Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948. Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention defined genocide as “defines “genocide” thus: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”[36]. Genocidal “intent”  is established sustained ethnic cleansing action and more rarely by confession.  However the genocidal Zionists established “intent” by a remorseless,  100 year and continuing Palestinian Genocide and numerous statements of genocidal  intent from the Zionist leadership from Theodor Herzl to Benjamin Netanyahu [8, 9].
1949. Israel waged an illegal war of aggression against Egypt in collusion with the UK and France who wanted to re-take the Suez Canal in a move opposed by the US. Many of the Egyptian soldiers were vitamin A deficient and were essentially blind “sitting ducks” at night [6].
1950.  In 1967 Israel, now armed with nuclear weapons (with US and French help) [37, 38], invaded all its neighbours in the Six Day War, conquered all of Palestine, the Sinai Peninsular  of Egypt and the Golan Heights of Syria.  A further 400,000 Indigenous Palestinians fled their homes, their  communities and their country in the 1967 Naksa (Setback). The Israeli war machine did not confine itself to killing Arabs but also attacked an unarmed US spy ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters, killing 34 and wounding 171, a crime that the Zionist-subverted US responded to in the most craven and secretive fashion. A massive increase in Zionist power in the US dates from about this time, most likely connected with the new nuclear weapons status of a genocidal Apartheid Israel [38-41]. Apartheid Israel has justified its war criminal attacks in  the Six-Day War with holocaust-threatened  Israel David versus a genocidal Arab Goliath propaganda (hasbara)  but a succession of top Israeli officials have confessed otherwise. Thus General Matituahu Peled, chief of logistical command during the war: “The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war”.   Mordechai Bentov, a member of the wartime government, stated in 1971: “This whole story about the threat of extermination was totally contrived, and then elaborated upon, a posteriori, to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.” War criminal Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, stated in  1982 that “In June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him” . According  to the late Itzhak Yaakov, a retired Brigadier General responsible for the development of Israeli nuclear weapons, Apartheid Israel planned to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Egypt if the war it launched in June 1967 turned against it (in 2001 Yaakov was given a two-year suspended sentence in Israel for attempting to reveal this) [8, 9].
1951.  In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt unsuccessfully sought to recover the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsular but the Sinai was returned in a  US-brokered 1979  peace agreement between  a now US lackey Egypt and a nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel.

1982-2000. Between1982 and 2000 there was  Israeli occupation of much of  Lebanon. The war criminal Israeli invasion of Lebanon was associated with the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres in which 3,000 unarmed Palestinians were murdered in Israeli-occupied Beirut by Christian  Falangist forces.

1987. The first Palestinian Intifada began in 1987 and was violently suppressed.
1988. In 1988 the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yassir Arafat recognized Israel.
1989. The Oslo 1993 Agreement permitted constrained Occupied Palestinian self-government.  However the continued seizure of Arab lands led to a renewed Intifada in 2000.
1990. In response to Israeli Occupation, ethnic cleansing and illegal settlements, the second Palestinian Intifada commenced in 2000 with disproportionate Israeli responses to Palestinian resistance. Israeli withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.

2000 – present. In the 21st century, US-backed Israeli Occupation, illegal Settlements and violence continued with limited violent responses from Palestinians yielding disproportionate responses from the Israelis. In 2005 Israel pulled out from the Gaza Strip leaving a densely populated Gaza Concentration Camp violently guarded by land, air and sea and subject to crippling blockade by the neo-Nazi Israelis. Rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza killed 34 Israelis in the period 2004-2017 [42] but the disproportionate Israeli responses involved high explosive bombardment from land, air and sea in repeated Gaza Massacres inflicted on one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world and with about 10,000 Palestinians being violently killed and tens of thousands wounded [43].  Israeli deaths from Palestinian violence or “terrorism deaths” in the period January 2000 – February 2017 totalled 1,347 as compared to 9,505 Palestinians killed by Israelis in this same period. If one considers total 21st century Israeli deaths from terrorism, the Palestinian/Israeli death ratio for this period is 9,505/1,347 = 7.1. If one considers total 20th century plus 21st century violent deaths, the Palestinian/Israeli death ratio is about 110,000/ 3,847 = 29. By way of comparison, blood-soaked German Nazi leader and war criminal Adolph Hitler recommended an enemy partisan/German military reprisal death ratio of 10 [43] . Nazi is as Nazi does.

2006. In democratic elections held under Occupier Israeli guns, the Occupied Palestinians overwhelmingly supported Hamas which gained a majority of representatives. However the US-backed Israelis did not recognize the results and Hamas MPs were variously killed, imprisoned or exiled to the Gaza Concentration Camp. Apartheid Israel and Egypt commenced blockade of the Gaza Concentration Camp [44].
2007. The Israeli-backed Fatah attempted a coup in Gaza that was suppressed by Hamas. Hamas officials were sacked in the West Bank. [44]

2008-2009. In the 2008-2009 Gaza War (called Operation Cast Lead by the Israelis) about 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 5,300 were wounded. 13 Israelis were killed, this including  10 from friendly fire and 3 civilians [45].

2012. In the 1-week Israeli Operation Pillar of Defense (220 Palestinians killed, half civilians, and 1,000 wounded, as compared to 2 Israeli soldiers killed and 20 wounded) [46]. In 2012 the UN formally recognized the  State of Palestine with official observer status at the UN [47, 48].
2013. In the 2014 Gaza Massacre (called Operation Protective Edge by the Israelis) 2,300 Palestinians were killed (including about 1,500 civilians)  and 10,600 were wounded.  73 Israelis (66 of them soldiers) were killed [49].
2014. The 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning illegal Israeli settlements and other Israeli war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was passed unanimously (except for an Obama America abstention rather than veto). Trump America and US lackey Australia subsequently vehemently opposed the resolution, this making them #1 and #2, respectively, as supporters of Apartheid Israel and hence  of Apartheid [50-52].  
2015. This year has been appallingly marked by the cold-blooded killing by Israeli soldiers of nearly 50 Palestinians  and the wounding of about 6,800 more  out of thousands of unarmed Occupied Palestinians protesting  70 years of exile and highly  abusive confinement in the Gaza Concentration Camp. Comparisons with the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in Apartheid South Africa (involving 69 unarmed demonstrators  killed and 220 wounded)  demand  global  Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters that were successfully applied by the World against Apartheid South Africa[53-55].

 (B). Summary of the appalling conditions of the Indigenous Palestinians.

(1). The Palestinian  Genocide commenced with the famine deaths of 100,000 Palestinians associated with  conquest of Palestine  in WW1 by the British and the Australian  and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) [1, 10].

(2). The violent killing of Indigenous Palestinians commenced with the 1918 Surafend Massacre by ANZAC soldiers in which about 100 Palestinian villagers were massacred [22-24].

(3). Since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1 there have been 2.3 million Palestinian deaths from Zionist violence (0.1 million) or from imposed deprivation (2.2 million ) [1].

(4). There are 8 million Palestinian refugees and all of the 14 million Palestinians are excluded from all or part of Palestine [1].

(5). Of about 14 million Palestinians (half of them children, three quarters women and children), 7 million are forbidden to even step foot in their own country, 5 million are held hostage with zero human rights under Israeli  guns in the Gaza Concentration Camp (2.0 million) or in ever-dwindling West Bank Bantustan ghettoes  (3.0 million),  and 1.8 million live as Third Class citizens as Israeli Palestinians under Nazi-style Apartheid Israeli race laws [1].

(6). 90% of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed of Indigenous Palestinian  inhabitants in an ongoing war criminal ethnic cleansing that has been repeatedly condemned by the UN and most recently by UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that was unanimously supported (with a remarkable Obama US abstention rather than a veto) [50-52].

(7). GDP per capita is US$2,800 for Occupied Palestinians as compared to US$39,000 for Apartheid Israel [56].

(8). Through  imposed deprivation, each year Apartheid Israel passively  murders about 2,700 under-5 year old Palestinian  infants and passively murders 4,200 Occupied Palestinians in general who die avoidably under Israeli Apartheid each year. There is an  approximately 10 year life expectancy gap between Occupied Palestinians ands Israelis [1, 6], this grossly violating Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that demand that an Occupier must provide life-sustaining food and medical services to the Occupied “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” ) [57].

(9). Apartheid Israel violently kills an average of about 550 Occupied Palestinians each year [43].

(10). Occupied Palestinians are deprived of essentially all human rights and civil rights by Apartheid Israel (e.g. Apartheid Israeli  home invasions, beatings, executions, killings, exilings, mass imprisonments,  seizures of land and homes, and population transfer in violation of the UN Genocide Convention and the Geneva Convention) [5, 36, 57].

(11). Nuclear terrorist, serial war criminal, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel determines that 74% of its now 50% Indigenous Palestinian subjects who are Occupied  Palestinians  cannot vote for the government  ruling them i.e. egregious Apartheid [1, 58]. The UN regards Apartheid as one of the worst of human rights violations [58, 59].

(12). In its genocidal treatment of the Palestinians, US-, UK-, Canada-, France- and Australia-backed Apartheid Israel ignores numerous UN General Assembly Resolutions and UN Security Council Resolutions, the  UN Genocide Convention, the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Rights of the Child Convention, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and many other aspects of International Law [36, 57, 59-64].

(13). Apartheid Israel has attacked 12 countries and  occupied 5 with 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries  neighbouring  and variously occupied by Apartheid Israel totalling 24 million [6].

(14). 5 million Occupied Palestinians  (half of them children) are routinely blackmailed through torture or denial of life-saving medical care to spy on fellow Palestinians for Apartheid Israel [65].

(15). 5 million Occupied Palestinians (half of them children) are excluded by armed military check points from Jews-only areas and Jews-only roads.

(16). 50% of Israeli children are physically, psychologically or sexually abused each year [66-68] but 100% of Occupied Palestinian children are subject to traumatizing human rights abuse by the serial war criminal Israel Defence Force (IDF) through actual or threatened deadly violence [65].

(17). With continuing blockade and after repeated, large-scale  destruction of homes, schools, hospitals ands infrastructure, conditions in the Gaza Concentration Camp are appalling [69], with the UN stating that Gaza may become unliveable within several years [69, 70].

(18). In March-May 2018 the IDF killed about 50 Palestinians  and wounded about 6,800 more  out of thousands of unarmed Occupied Palestinians protesting  70 years of exile and highly  abusive confinement in the Gaza Concentration Camp. By way of comparisons, in  the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in Apartheid South Africa some 5,000-7,000 unarmed African protestors held a demonstration against the racist pass laws outside the police station in Sharpeville, Transvaal, South Africa when the  police opened fire, killing 69 demonstrators  and causing a total of 289 casualties including  29 children [53-55].

(19). Apartheid Israel has been stealing water from West Bank aquifers but water allocations to Occupied Palestinians violate WHO standards for potable water [73] .

(20). US-backed Apartheid Israel has attacked 12 countries including all its immediate neighbours [6], has up to 400 nuclear weapons and possess missile delivery systems including  those based on Germany-supplied submarines [37].  This dangerous, war-exacerbating conduct acutely threatens   all 13.9 million Israeli subjects, these   comprising 6.6 million Jewish,  6.9 million Indigenous Palestinian and 0.4 million non-Jewish and non-Arab  subjects.

(C). Impact of Apartheid Israel on the world.

(1). Presently there are 16 million avoidable deaths from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease each year globally and there have been 1,500 million such deaths since 1950 (this including  600 million Muslims) [6], this carnage being significantly linked to continuing Zionist perversion of US aid and foreign policy [6].

(2).  There have been 32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or from deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the pro-Zionist US Alliance in the US War on Terror (US War on Muslims) since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity in which Apartheid Israel is very likely to have been complicit [72, 73].

(3). There have been  millions of refugees generated and millions of Indigenous deaths from violence or imposed deprivation in countries subject to Apartheid Israeli-backed, genocidal civil wars, notably Guatemala, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Syria, Sudan  and South Sudan [74].

(4). There have been  28 million American preventable deaths since 9-11 (1.7 million annually) that are inescapably linked to Zionist-beholden US Governments committing to a $40 trillion long-term accrual cost of supporting Apartheid Israel, this including a $7 trillion long-term accrual cost for the  killing  of millions of Muslims abroad in the Zionist-promoted War on Terror instead of keeping millions of Americans alive at home. Australia has similarly committed to $11 billion per year long-term to the War on Terror ($176 billion since 9-11) with this fiscal perversion linked to 1.4 million preventable Australian deaths since 9-11 (85,000 annually). Canada has similarly committed hugely to the War  on Terror with this inescapably linked to 0.1 million Canadian  preventable deaths annually or  1.7 million preventable deaths in Canada since 9-11. The UK has similarly committed hugely to the War  on Terror with this linked in terms of fiscal deprivation to 0.15 million UK  preventable deaths annually or  2.5 million preventable deaths in the UK since the 9-11 atrocity that killed 3,000 people [75-81].

(5). Zionists are notoriously involved in perversion of Western democracies, governments, media and other  institutions , most notably in pro-Apartheid US and pro-Apartheid Australia that are the 2 strongest supporters of Apartheid Israel and hence of the obscene ideology of Apartheid.  Thus in September 2015 the  US, Australia, Canada, Apartheid Israel  and  4 US lackey Pacific Island States voted “No” to  a UN General Assembly motion to permit  the flying of the  State of Palestine flag at the UN while  119 other nations decently voted “Yes”. Trump America and US lackey Trumpist Australia fervently oppose UN Security  Council Resolution 2334 that condemned  genocidal Israeli war crimes [50-52].  Racist Zionism is a huge threat to Australia in 50 areas but the threat is publicly ignored by the US lackey, pro-Apartheid, Zionist-beholden major parties (the Liberal Party and National Party Coalition Government and the Labor Party Opposition) even after Australian PM Kevin Rudd was removed in a US approved, mining company-backed, and pro-Zionist-led coup [82-87].  Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon (the “butcher of Beirut”) notoriously stated: “Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it” [8, 9, 38].

(6). The world is existentially  threatened by (a)  nuclear weapons, (b) poverty and (c) climate change   but (a)  Apartheid Israel reportedly has up to 400 nuclear warheads and indeed proposed to use them against Egypt in 1967 [37],  (b) 16 million people die avoidably each year in the Developing  World minus China [6], this being linked to Zionist-backed US wars, notably the US War on Muslims, and the horrendous  perversion of the US aid budget for arms, notably for Apartheid Israel; and (c) an entrenched Western culture of lying,  emplaced by a dominant, homicidally greedy, neoliberal,   Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) One Percenter Establishment,  has now made a catastrophic global  plus 2C temperature  rise unavoidable – it is predicted that 10 billion people will die this century in a near-terminal Climate Genocide if climate change from remorselessly increasing GHG pollution is not requisitely addressed [88].

(7). The racist Zionists have a deadly record of mendacity. Indeed e-LIARS is an appropriate anagram for ISRAEL. There is massive Zionist presence on the boards of the top American media companies that represent 2/3 of the top 30 global Mainstream media corporations. While numerous anti-racist  Jewish intellectuals are resolutely  critical  of Apartheid Israel and  the  ongoing Palestinian Genocide [25], Western Mainstream Media variously  censor  or white-wash  the nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, and grossly human rights-abusing conduct of Apartheid Israel.  A part  explanation for this massive lying is that the American 60% of the world’s 30 biggest media companies have a disproportionately high  Jewish Board membership. Jews and females represent 2% and 51%, respectively,  of the US population but average 33% and 19%, respectively, of Board members of the top 18 US media companies [89]. Zionist-perverted Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission and lying by commission [89-97] threaten rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety and successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis, and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk. However mendacity and spin pervert this science-based protocol to a lying- and spin-based protocol successively involving (a) lying, censorship, self-censorship, intimidation, (b) anti-science spin-based analysis, and (c) counterproductive blame and shame that cripples mandatory reportage and can ultimately lead to irrational acts, violence and war [98].

(8). Racist Zionism is deadly anti-Arab anti-Semitism through the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and the ongoing Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust. However racist Zionism is also anti-Jewish anti-Semitic through  (a) falsely conflating  the activities of genocidally  racist  Apartheid Israel with all Jews,  and (b) by endlessly and falsely defaming the large body of anti-racist Jews who, together with numerous anti-racist non-Jews,  are utterly opposed to the human rights  abuses and genocidal crimes of Apartheid Israel [99, 100] and resolutely speak out about these crimes against Humanity [1, 25, 37, 101-106].

(9). Zionism,  Israeli Apartheid and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide  are an awful blot on Jewry, Judaism and Humanity, and as such contribute  to repugnant anti-Jewish anti-Semitism, this leading to the crie de coeur of anti-racist Jews: “Not in our name”.

(10).  For anti-racist Jews and indeed all anti-racist humanitarians the core moral messages from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and from the more general WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Gypsy dead) are “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone”, “bear witness” and “zero tolerance for lying”. However these sacred injunctions are grossly violated by the anti-Arab anti-Semitic , Islamophobic and  indeed anti-Jewish anti-Semitic   racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and their Western backers

(D). A humane outcome of a democratic post-Apartheid Palestine.

The Humanity-threatening awfulness outlined above has been utterly avoidable. The  2-State Solution for Palestine has been a Western excuse for inaction and  is now dead because of the ethnic cleansing of 90% of the land of Palestine. However, a peaceful , humane solution informed by the post-Apartheid South African experience is for a Unitary State in Palestine with return of all refugees, zero tolerance for racism, equal rights for all, all human rights for all, one-person-one-vote, justice, goodwill, reconciliation, airport-level security, nuclear weapons removal, internationally-guaranteed national security initially based on the present armed forces, and untrammelled access for all citizens to all of the Holy Land. It can and should happen tomorrow. In the face of  continuing Occupation, continuing Exile, continuing Apartheid and ongoing Palestinian Genocide, the world must act against Apartheid Israel with Boycotts and Sanctions as it successfully did to Apartheid South Africa. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. All decent Humanity must (a) inform everyone they can, and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid  Israel and all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries supporting this genocidally racist,  nuclear terrorist rogue state.

*

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). 

Notes

[1]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal  Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/  .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli-Palestinian & Middle East conflict – from oil to climate genocide”, Countercurrents, 21 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/21/israeli-palestinian-middle-east-conflict-from-oil-to-climate-genocide/ .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “End 50 Years Of Genocidal Occupation & Human Rights Abuse By US-Backed Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents,  9 June  2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/06/09/end-50-years-of-genocidal-occupation-human-rights-abuse-by-us-backed-apartheid-israel/ .

[5]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians 

[6]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a succinct history  of every country and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/  .

[7]. Theodor Herzl, “Der Judenstaat” (“The Jewish State”), 1896.

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist quotes reveal genocidal racism”, MWC News, 12 January 2018: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/69955-zionist-quotes-reveal-genocidal-racism.html .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”, Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .

[10]. “Battle of Beersheba (1917) “, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_(1917) .

[11]. Justin McCarty, “Palestine population: during the Ottoman and British mandate period”, Palestine Remembered: 8 September  2001: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story559.html .

[12]. “Historic population of  Israel/Palestine”: http://palestineisraelpopulation.blogspot.com.au/ .

[13]. “Balfour Declaration”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration .

[14]. Arthur Balfour, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Balfour .

[15]. William Gerhardie,  “God’s Fifth Column. A biography of the Age 1890-1940” (Hodder & Stoughton, 1981; The Hogarth Press, 1990,  with editing and an Introduction by Michael Holroyd and Robert Skidelsky).

[16]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “God’s Fifth Column” By William Gerhardie”,  Countercurrents, 6 May, 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya060514.htm .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm

[18].  Martin Gilbert (1994), “The First World War”, Holt, London, 1994.

[19]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1969.

[20]. Leon Gettler , “An Unpromised Land” ( Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, Western Australia, 1993.

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Book review: “An Unpromised Land” by Leon Gettler” – How Australia escaped becoming Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/bookreviewsbydrgideonpolya/gettler-leon .

[22]. “Surafend Affair”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surafend_affair .

[23]. Paul Daley, “Beersheba: A journey through Australia’s forgotten war ”, Melbourne University Publishing, 2012.

[24]. Tim Elliott, “Massacre that stained the Light Horse”, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 July 2004: http://www.smh.com.au/national/massacre-that-stained-the-light-horse-20090723-dux9.html .

[25]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[26]. “Joel Brand”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Brand .

[27]. Alex Weissberg, “Advocate for the Dead. The story of Joel Brand”, Andre Deutsch, London, 1958.

[28]. Lenni Brenner, “51 documents: Zionist collaboration with the Nazis”, CounterPunch, 23 December 2002: http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner1223.html .

[29]. “Lenni Brenner”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenni_Brenner .

[30]. Gideon Polya (2011), “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm  .

[31]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008 that  is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  .

[32]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[33]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna,   Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire Indian Poverty”,  Countercurrents, 20 November, 2011: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[34]. Sir Isaac Isaacs, quoted by Wikipedia, ”Isaac Isaacs”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Isaacs .

[35]. Albert Einstein’s letter about the Deir Yassin Massacre (1948)  : http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ter-einstein.html .

[36]. “UN Genocide Convention”:  http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[37]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban  and https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[38]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel buries serial war criminal, genocidal racist and nuclear terrorist Shimon Peres”, Countercurrents, 1 October 2016: https://countercurrents.org/2016/10/01/apartheid-israel-buries-serial-war-criminal-genocidal-racist-and-nuclear-terrorist-shimon-peres/ .

[39]. Gideon Polya, “Dual Israeli citizenship & Zionist perversion of America, Australia, India & Humanity”,  Countercurrents, 30 July 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/30/dual-israeli-citizenship-zionist-perversion-of-america-australia-india-humanity/ .

[40]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”,  Countercurrents, 27 August, 2013: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .

[41]. “USS Liberty incident”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident .

[42]. “Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel .

[43]. Gideon Polya, “Israelis kill 10 times more Israelis in Apartheid Israel than do terrorists”, Countercurrents, 1 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/01/israelis-kill-ten-times-more-israelis-in-apartheid-israel-than-do-terrorists/ .

[44]. “Hamas”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas  .

[45]. “Gaza War (2008-2009)”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War_(2008%E2%80%9309) .

[46]. “Operation Pillar of Defense”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pillar_of_Defense .

[47]. “State of Palestine”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine .

[48]. “Palestine”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_(region) .

[49]. “2014 Israel-Gaza conflict”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_conflict .

[50]. United Nations, “Israel’s settlements have no legal validity, constitute flagrant violations of international law, Security Council reaffirms.   14 delegations in favour of Resolution 2334 as United States abstains”, 23 December 2016: https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm .

[51]. Gideon Polya, “Is UN Security Council Resolution 2334 the beginning of the end for Apartheid Israel?””, Countercurrents, 28 December 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/12/28/is-un-security-council-resolution-2334-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-apartheid-israel/ .

[52]. Gideon Polya, “Anti-racist Jewish humanitarians oppose Apartheid Israel & support UN Security Council resolution 2334”, Countercurrents, 13 January 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/13/anti-racist-jewish-humanitarians-oppose-apartheid-israel-support-un-security-council-resolution-2334/ .

[53]. “Sharpeville Massacre”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre .

[54]. Robert Inlakesh, “Gaza death toll reaches 47: Palestinians prepare for Friday demonstrations”, AMN, 3 May 2018: https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/gaza-death-toll-reaches-47-palestinians-prepare-for-friday-demonstrations/ .

[55]. Gideon Polya, “Sharpeville Massacre & Gaza Massacres compared – Boycott Apartheid Israel & all its supporters”, Countercurrents, 6 May 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/06/sharpeville-massacre-gaza-massacres-compared-boycott-apartheid-israel-all-its-supporters/ .

[56]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[57]. “Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/y4gcpcp.htm  .

[58]. “Boycott Apartheid  Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[59]. John Dugard, “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid”, Audiovisual Library of International Law: http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html .

[60]. “Convention on the Rights of the Child”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child .

[61]. “UN Charter (full text)”, UN: http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full-text/ .

[62]. “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People”, UN: https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html .

[63]. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, UN: http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ .

[64]. “Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees”, Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees .

[65]. John Lyons, Janine Cohen and Sylvie Le Clezio , “Stone cold justice”, ABC TV Four Corners, 24 February 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2014/02/10/3939266.htm .

[66]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Pro-Zionist, Zionist And Apartheid Israeli Child Abuse Exposed”,  Countercurrents, 21 April, 2014: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya210414.htm .

[67].  Yarden Skop, “Nearly half of Israel ‘s children suffer physical, sexual or emotional abuse, study finds”, Haaretz, 13 November 2013: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.557668 .

[68]. Danielle Ziri, “Child abuse more prevalent than ever, report shows”, The Jerusalem Post, 11 December 2013: http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Child-abuse-more-prevalent-than-ever-report-shows-331434 .

[69]. Michael Brull, “The siege on Gaza: a brief guide (Part 1)”, New Matilda, 5 May 2018: https://newmatilda.com/2018/05/05/siege-gaza-brief-guide-part-1/ .

[70]. Diaa Hadid, “Gaza: U.N. issues warning about living conditions”, New York Times, 2 September 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/world/middleeast/gaza-un-issues-warning-about-living-conditions.html .

[71]. Adel Fathi, “Palestine’s water crisis: 50 years of injustice”, AA, 11 August 2017: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestine-s-water-crisis-50-years-of-injustice/882105 .

[72]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable  Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[73]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[74]. Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Genocide-imposing Apartheid Israel complicit in Rohingya Genocide, other genocides, & US, UK & Australian state terrorism”, Countercurrents, 30 November 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/11/30/palestinian-genocide-imposing-apartheid-israel-complicit-in-rohingya-genocide-other-genocides-us-uk-australian-state-terrorism/ .

[75]. Gideon Polya, “Australian State Terrorism –  Zero Australian Terrorism Deaths, 1 Million Preventable Australian Deaths & 10 Million Muslims Killed By US Alliance Since 9-11”,  Countercurrents, 23 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230914.htm .

[76]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist, Pro-war, Pro-Opium, War Criminal  Canadian Government Defames Iran & Cuts Diplomatic Links”,  Countercurrents, 10 September, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100912.htm .

[77]. Gideon Polya, “UK Terror Hysteria exposed – Empirical Annual Probability of UK Terrorism Death 1 in 16 million”,  Countercurrents, 16 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya160914.htm .

[78]. Gideon Polya, “West Ignores 11 Million Muslim War Deaths & 23 Million Preventable American Deaths Since US Government’s False-flag 9-11 Atrocity”, Countercurrents, 9 September, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090915.htm

[79]. Gideon Polya, “Corporate terrorism is state sanctioned, kills  over 30 million people annually and dooms humanity by lying”, State crime and non-state terrorism: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/corporate-terrorism .

[80]. Gideon Polya, “Save Humanity And The Biosphere Through Zero Tolerance  For Deadly Neoliberalism And Remorseless Neoliberals”, Countercurrents, 13 May, 2016: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya130516.htm .

[81]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”,  Countercurrents, 27 August, 2013: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .

[82].  Antony Loewenstein, “Does the Zionist Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-blood-on-its-hands-in-australia/ .

[83]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd”, MWC News, 29 June 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/3488-pro-zionist-led-coup.html .

[84]. Gideon Polya, “Dual Australian citizenship & Zionist perversion of America, Australia, India & Humanity”, Countercurrents,  30 July 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/30/dual-israeli-citizenship-zionist-perversion-of-america-australia-india-humanity/ .

[85]. Phillip Dorling, “ US shares raw intelligence on Australians with Israel ”, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2013: http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-shares-raw-intelligence-on-australians-with-israel-20130912-2tllm.html .

[86]. Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence Spies On Australia And The World For UK , Israeli And US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: https://countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm .

[87]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .

[88]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[89]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist subversion, Mainstream media censorship”, Countercurrents, 9 March 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/03/09/zionist-subversion-mainstream-media-censorship-disproportionate-jewish-board-membership-of-us-media-companies/ .

[90]. Gideon Polya, “Google censorship & Zionist constraint on effective free speech threaten the Planet”, Countercurrents, 9 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/09/google-censorship-zionist-constraint-on-effective-free-speech-threaten-planet/ .

[91]. WSWS, “Google’s new search protocol is restricting access to 13 leading socialist, progressive and anti-war sites”, WSWS, 2 August 2017: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/02/pers-a02.html .

[92]. “Who controls America? Who controls Google?”, The Zog: https://thezog.wordpress.com/who-controls-google/  .

[93]. Kenneth E. Bauzon, “Media bias and the Israel Lobby in the United States”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/10/media-bias-and-the-israel-lobby-in-the-united-states/ .

[94]. Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission”, Global Research, 1 April 2017: http://www.globalresearch.ca/mainstream-media-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission/5582944 .

[95]. “Lying by omission is worse than lying by commission because at least the latter permits refutation and public debate”, Mainstream media lying: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/lying-by-omission .

[96]. “Mainstream media censorship”; https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .

[97]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[98]. “Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home .

[99]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal  Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/ .

[100]. Gideon Polya, “Palestinian Me Too: 140 alphabetically-listed Zionist crimes expose Western complicity & hypocrisy”, Countercurrents, 7 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/07/palestinian-140-alphabetically-listed-zionist-crimes-expose-appalling-western-complicity-hypocrisy/  .

[101]. “Boycott Apartheid  Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[102]. “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration  .

[103].  “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[104]. “Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) Individuals  exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism & (B) Countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .

[105]. “Stop state terrorism” : https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/  .

[106]. “State crime and non-state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/  .

Featured image is from the author.

Israel hits Syrian and Iranian objectives and weapons warehouses again (evacuated weeks before) for the fourth time in a month. 28 Israeli jets participated in the biggest attack since 1974. Tel Aviv informed the Russian leadership of its intentions without succeeding in stopping the Syrian leadership from responding. Actually, what is new is the location where Damascus decided to hit back: the occupied Golan Heights (20 rockets were fired at Israeli military positions).

Syria, in coordination with its Iranian allies (without taking into consideration Russian wishes) took a very audacious decision to fire back against Israeli targets in the Golan. This indicates that Damascus and its allies are ready to widen the battle, in response to continual Israeli provocations.

But what is the reason why new Rules of Engagement (ROE) were imposed in Syria recently?

For decades there was a non-declared ROE between Hezbollah and Israel, where both sides were aware of the consequences. Usually, Israel prepares a bank of target objectives with Hezbollah offices, military objectives and warehouses and also specific commanders with key positions within the organisation. Israel hits these targets (updated) in every war. However, the Israelis react immediately against Hezbollah commanders , who have the task of supporting, instructing and financing Palestinians in Palestine, and above all the Palestinians of 1948 living in Israel. This has happened on many occasions where Hezbollah commanders related to the Palestinian dossier were assassinated in Lebanon.

Last month, Israel discovered that Iran was sending advanced low observable drones dropping electronic and special warfare equipment to Palestinians. The Israeli radars didn’t see these drones going backward and forward with their traditional radars, but were finally able to identify one drone using thermal detection and acoustic deterrence, to down it on its last journey.

In response to this, Israel targeted the Syrian military airport T-4 used by Iran as a base for these drones. But Israel was not satisfied and wanted more revenge, hitting several Iranian and Syrian targets during the following weeks.

Tel Aviv believes it can get away with repetitively hitting Iranian objectives without triggering a military response. Perhaps Israel really believed that Iran was afraid of becoming engaged in a war with Israel, with the US ready to take part in any war against the Islamic Republic from its military bases spread around Syria, in close vicinity to the Iranian forces deployed in Syria. Obviously, Iran has a different view from the Israelis, the Americans and even the Russians, who like to avoid any contact at all cost.

Regardless of how many Israeli jets took part in the latest attack against Iranian and Syrian objectives and how many missiles were launched or intercepted, a serious development has occurred: the Syrian high command broke all rules and found no obstacle to bombing Israel in the occupied Golan Heights.

Again, the type of missiles or rockets fired by Syria against Israeli military objectives it is not important and if these fell into an open space or hit their targets. What is important is the fact that a new ROE is now in place in Syria, similar to the one established by Hezbollah over Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border, when militants fired anti-aircraft cannons every time Israel violated Lebanese airspace in the 2000.

Basically Israel wanted to hit objectives in Syria but claims not to be looking for confrontation. Israel would have liked to continue provoking Syria and Iran in the Levant, but claims to be unwilling to head towards war or a battle. Israel would like to continue hitting any target it chooses in Syria without suffering retaliation. With its latest attack, Israel’s “unintended consequences” or provocation has forced the Syrian government to consider the occupied Golan Heights as the next battlefield. If Israel continues and hits beyond the border area, Syria will think of sending its missiles or rockets way beyond the Golan Heights- to reach Israeli territory.

Actually, Hezbollah’s secretary general Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said a few years back:

“Leave Lebanon outside the conflict. Come to Syria where we can settle our differences”.

Syria, logically, has become the battlefield for all countries and parties to settle their differences, the platform where the silent war between Israel and Iran and its allies is finding its voice.

In Damascus, sources close to the leadership believe Israel will continue to attacking targets. However, Israel knows now where Syria’s response will be. This is what Israel has triggered but didn’t expect. Now it has become a rule.

The Israeli Iron Dome is inefficient and unable to protect Israel from rockets and missiles launched simultaneously. Now the battle has moved into Syrian territory occupied by Israel to the dislike of Tel Aviv, and Russia. Iran and Syria are not taking into consideration Russia’s concern to keep the level of tension low if Israel is not controlling itself. Syria recognises the importance of Russia and its efficient role in stopping the war in Syria and all the military and political support Moscow is offering. However, Damascus and Tehran have other considerations and for the purpose of containing Israel. They have trained over 16 local Syrian groups ready to liberate the Golan Heights or to clash with any possible Israeli advance into Syrian territory.

Israel triggered what it has always feared and has managed to get a new battlefield, the Golan heights. It is true that Israel limited itself to bombing weapons warehouses never hit before. It has bombed bases where Iranian advisors are based along with Syrian officers (Russia cleared most positions to avoid the embarrassment of being hit by Israel). It is also true that Israel didn’t regularly bomb Iranian military and transport aircraft carrying weapons to Syria, or the main Iranian centre of control and command at Damascus airport. This means that not all parties are pushing for a wider escalation, so far.

Can the situation get out of control? Of course it can, the question is when!

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All images in this article are from the author.

This weekend the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) celebrates its 60th anniversary. On May 12, 1958, Canada and the US officially signed their most significant bilateral military accord.

The Cold War agreement was supposed to defend the two countries from an invasion by Soviet bombers coming from the north. But, the Berlin Wall fell three decades ago and NORAD continues. In fact, the agreement was renewed indefinitely in 2006.

Initially NORAD focused on radar and fighter jets. As technologies advanced, the Command took up intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and space-based satellites.

Thousands of Canadian military personnel support NORAD’s operations. One hundred and fifty Canadians are stationed at NORAD’s central collection and coordination facility near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hundreds more work at regional NORAD outposts across the US and Canada and many pilots are devoted to the Command. A Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) general is deputy commander of NORAD and its commander-in-chief is a US Air Force general.

In the lead-up to its establishment newly elected Prime Minister John Diefenbaker faced “heavy pressure from the military” to back the agreement. Then chairman of the chiefs of defence staff, Charles Foulkes, later admitted to a House of Commons defence committee that

“we stampeded the incoming Conservative government with the NORAD agreement.”

Before NORAD’s creation the RCAF had been expanding ties to the US command in Colorado Springs and misled the politicians about the scope of these efforts. In Dilemmas in Defence Decision-Making: constructing Canada’s role in NORAD, 1958 – 96 Ann Crosby points out that the RCAF pursued NORAD discussions secretly “in order to address the politically sensitive issues without the involvement of Canadian political representatives.”

While the Canadian Forces frame the alliance as an exclusively military matter, NORAD’s political implications are vast. The accord impinges on Canadian sovereignty, influences weapons procurement and ties Canada to US belligerence.

External Affairs officials immediately understood that NORAD would curtail sovereignty. An internal memo explained,

“the establishment of NORAD is a decision for which there is no precedent in Canadian history in that it grants in peace time to a foreign representative operational control of an element of Canadian Forces in Canada.”

Under the accord the Colorado-based commander of NORAD could deploy Canadian fighter jets based in this country without any express Canadian endorsement.

For over a decade the US commander of NORAD effectively controlled nuclear tipped Bomarc missiles based near North Bay, Ontario, and La Macaza, Québec. According to the agreement, the Canadian battle staff officer on duty in North Bay would receive authorization from the Colorado Springs commander, “allow[ing] for the release and firing of nuclear armed Bomarc missiles without specific Canadian government authorization.”

NORAD also deepened the US military footprint in Canada. As part of the accord, the US set up the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line across the Arctic in the late 1950s. NORAD also drove Ottawa to formally accept US Bomarc missiles in 1963. According to Crosby, the agreement that laid the basis for NORAD effectively – unbeknownst to Prime Minister Diefenbaker – committed Canada to acquiring US nuclear weapons for air defence.

NORAD has pushed the CF towards US arms systems. It’s also heightened pressure to add and upgrade radar, satellite, jets, vessels, etc. In the late 1950s the RCAF pushed for interceptor jets so Canada could be “a full partner in NORAD”. Air Marshal Hugh Campbell explained that

“if Canada was not providing any effective weapons in the air defence system… Canada could no longer be a full partner in NORAD.”

More recently, CBC reported that Canada may be “compelled to invest in technology that can shoot down cruise missiles as part of the upcoming overhaul of the North American Aerospace Defence Command.”

NORAD is presented as a defensive arrangement, but that can’t be taken seriously when its lead actor has 1,000 international bases and special forces deployed in 149 countries. Rather than protect Canada and the US, NORAD supports violent missions led by other US commands. In 1965 NORAD’s mandate was expanded to include surveillance and assessment sharing for US commands stationed worldwide (United States European Command, United States Pacific Command, United States Africa Command, etc.).

NORAD has drawn Canada into US belligerence. During the July 1958 US invasion of Lebanon NORAD was placed on “increased readiness” while US troops checked secular Arab nationalism after Iraqis toppled a Western-backed King (at the same time British troops invaded Jordan to prop up the monarchy there).

In a higher profile incident, Canadian NORAD personnel were put on high alert when the US illegally blockaded Cuba in October 1962. This transpired even though Prime Minister Diefenbaker hesitated in supporting US actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

During the 1973 Ramadan/Yom Kippur/Arab–Israeli War NORAD was placed on heightened alert. Washington wanted to deter the USSR from intervening on Egypt’s behalf.

NORAD systems offered surveillance and communications support to the 1991 war on Iraq. They also supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The same can be said for US bombing in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, etc.

Unfortunately, public opposition to NORAD has largely dried up. While anti-war activists won the NDP over to an ‘out of NORAD’ position in the 1960s, the party’s current defence critic recently complained that the Trudeau government hasn’t done more to strengthen the bilateral military accord. In November Randall Garrison criticized the Liberals for failing to follow its defence policy review’s recommendation to upgrade a multi-billion dollar early-warning radar system used by NORAD. In a story headlined “Conservatives, NDP call on Liberal government to match rhetoric with action on NORAD” Garrison told the Hill Times, “so they put in that they are going to replace it, and that’s certainly the biggest thing we need to do in terms of our cooperation with NORAD, [but] I don’t see the follow through down the road on it, in terms of planning, implementation, or budgeting.”

As NORAD turns 60, it’s time to rekindle opposition to this odious accord.

Kim Petersen is a former Original Peoples editor of The Dominion grassroots newspaper and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Featured image: George W. Bush with Ellen Degeneres, backstage after the former President appeared on “Ellen” and was hailed by her as a good friend (Source: @theellenshow/Instagram)

How many lies and how many innocent lives have been sent out into the ethers by men like Junior Bush and his Bush/Cheney Cabal? Too many is the answer. Yet, as with the case with the Irish singing star (and humanitarian) Bono, Junior Bush has been ‘Born Again Philanthropist’. Well, good for him, but… that should not and DOES not absolve him from his war crimes.

Screenshot AVC News, May 27, 2017

The real shame of all of this is just how short a memory do Ms. Ellen Degeneres and Mr. Bono have?

I mean, come on you two Media stars, have you both forgotten what transpired beginning in October of 2001? Does this writer need to once again review the horrific damage we, and our NATO led coalition did to the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Bono, you the humanitarian, have you seen the photos of the myriad of little children with no limbs or eyes or birth defects from our depleted uranium shells?

Ellen, you who call yourself such a ‘liberated feminist’, how many women in those two countries are either dead or widowed or parentless/childless due to those actions signed off by Junior Bush?

Let us not forget Mr. Obama, who has his dirty hands in all of this ‘Empire on Steroids’. It was he, influenced stringently by Mrs. Clinton and the other Neo Cons surrounding him, that ‘signed off’ on the illegal and immoral carpet bombing of  Libya in 2011.

What that accomplished was to open up that nation to the chaos it still is engulfed in. Another Middle Eastern nation that, for all of Gaddafi’s flaws, had the greatest standard of living and a better safety net that we have here. All destroyed for the sake of empire. You see, Gaddafi was going to take Libya OFF of the petrodollar and onto a new African currency. And , he would not participate in our empire’s Africa Command or better known as Africom.

For Junior Bush and his Bush/Cheney Cabal, Saddam Hussein, for decades our gangster running Iraq, was conned by Bush Sr. in 1990-91 into our infamous Desert Storm. Years later he decided to begin selling his oil away from the petrodollar and via the Euro, so…. Bye Bye Saddam. The sad joke many of us in the Anti War community share is that if Iraq had Coconut Oil under the ground instead of Crude Oil… no more ‘ Saddam the Hitler’ and no War on Iraq 1 or 2.

Ms. Degeneres and Mr. Bono: no doubt you care about all these facts. Do you?

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

If you’ve been following the Skripal/Novichok/Chemical weapons/Syria drama unfold through TruePublica you’ll be up to date on most, if not all, the relevant information there is to know.

On several occasions, we have published news relating to the D-Notices sent out by the state to censor the mainstream media in both print and broadcast to ensure that their version of the story, one filled full of holes, didn’t go, well, mainstream.

One question raised a few times by our readers was, who is it actually decides when to issue a D-Notice and who sits on its committee.

Here is the explainer and an interesting one it is too.

A DSMA-Notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) — formerly a DA-Notice (Defence Advisory Notice), and before that called a Defence Notice (D-Notice) until 1993—is an official request to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects for “reasons of national security.”

In the UK the original D-Notice system was introduced in 1912 and run as a voluntary system by a joint committee headed by an Assistant Secretary of the War Office and a representative of the Press Association. Any D-Notices or DA-notices were only advisory requests, and so are not legally enforceable; hence, news editors can choose not to abide by them. However, they are today slavishly complied with by the media.

In 1971, all existing D-Notices were cancelled and replaced by standing D-Notices, which gave general guidance on what might be published and what was discouraged; and what would require further advice from the secretary of the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC). In 1993, the notices were renamed DA-Notices (Defence Advisory Notices).

One of the recommendations resulting from the 2015 review of the DA-notice system, included the renaming of the system to the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee.  In 2017, the notices were reworded and then reorganized into the following categories:

• DSMA-Notice 01: Military Operations, Plans & Capabilities
• DSMA-Notice 02: Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapon Systems and Equipment
• DSMA-Notice 03: Military Counter-Terrorist Forces, Special Forces and Intelligence Agency Operations, Activities and Communication Methods and Techniques
• DSMA-Notice 04: Physical Property and Assets
• DSMA-Notice 05: Personnel and their Families who work in Sensitive Positions

From here, it gets interesting because in 2015 the ‘committee’ from all accounts seemed to change shape, which beforehand had been made up of state officials, and some elements of the press, particularly in times of real national security such as the world wars. Nowadays it is made up of a few state officials and mostly – the mainstream media.

There are 15 senior media people who sit on this censorship committee. As well as the BBC, ITV, ITN and Murdoch’s Sky News, representing broadcasters, there are a variety of representatives from the broadsheet and tabloid press, regional and Scottish newspapers and magazines and publishing – including two News UK and Harper Collins, (both owned by Murdoch) as well as Trinity Mirror, the Daily Mail and the Guardian.

On the government side of the committee are the chair from the MoD and four intelligence connected representatives from the MoD (Director General Security Policy), Foreign Office (Director for National Security), Home Office (unspecified post) and Cabinet Office (Deputy National Security Adviser for Security, Intelligence, and Resilience).

The DSMA committee itself obviously likes to project the view that it is a rather dull and uninteresting meeting of minds and that there’s nothing going on to report. But these meetings are to discuss and agree what can and cannot be printed or broadcast in the mainstream media. Then, instead of going back to their respective places of work and simply passing on the message – the state then issues notices to the same people who just agreed not to print the scandals the government just asked them not to print in the first place.

SpinWatch makes an interesting point by highlighting exactly how much the mainstream media collude directly with government on controlling the output.

“as a former vice chair of the committee (a journalist) put it, ‘is emphatically not censorship… but voluntary, responsible media restraint’. Then working at Sky News, that vice chair, Simon Bucks, is now CEO at the Services Sound and Vision Corporation, the broadcasting service which says it is ‘championing the Armed Forces’. Bucks also wrote that the DSMA committee is ‘the most mythologised and misunderstood institution in British media… “Slapping a D-notice” on something the establishment wanted suppressed has been the stuff of thrillers, spy stories and conspiracy theories for more than a century”.

The reader should have gathered from that statement alone, that indeed, slapping a D-Notice on the media is not the stuff of conspiracy theories otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. The conspiracy is that that the mainstream media stand accused of colluding in important cover-ups with and for the state. That is not a theory – that is a fact.

The Labour party is currently attacking freedom of speech and the free press, if there was indeed one to speak of, with a Bill tabled by deputy Labour leader Tom Watson (known as Labour’s ‘bully boy’) this week. This Bill was described by the Financial Times thus:

“it would force our hand and chill freedom of expression in this country. Investigative journalism – such as the FT’s expose of The Presidents Club this year – could well become too risky given the potential costs.” It would be handing rich individuals a licence to harass the press, free of charge.”

Thankfully this draconian measure failed.

No doubt being caught up in the expenses scandal that the Telegraph printed didn’t exactly help with Mr Watson’s general view that Britain should benefit from a free press. His proposal came a couple of days after the World Press Freedom report showing Britain is now languishing nicely in 40th place in a group of other countries who also despise free speech – by those who try to hold power to account.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

An Israeli security cabinet minister ominously wrote on Twitter that “Hezbollah=Lebanon” and promised that “The State of Israel will not differentiate between the sovereign State of Lebanon and Hezbollah, and will view Lebanon as responsible for any action from within its territory”.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett was responding to Hezbollah’s impressive gains in the first Lebanese elections in nearly a decade, which proved that many of its citizens are solidly standing with the Resistance organization and embrace its anti-Zionist ideology. This understandably scares Israel but can also be seen as a perfect example of confirmation bias by it in fear mongering that Iran has taken over Lebanon via proxy, disregarding the fact that Hezbollah is its own independent organization despite being closely allied with the Islamic Republic and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in neighboring Syria.

The conflating of all Lebanese civilians with Hezbollah and then in turn drawing no distinction between them and Israel’s Iranian state enemies is alarming because it suggests that Tel Aviv is preconditioning the global public to accept its military’s indiscriminate targeting of civilians in any forthcoming war with Hezbollah and/or Iran on the basis that the democratic expression of a foreign population’s support for a group that Israel regards as “terrorists” makes them “legitimate” wartime targets. The support that many Lebanese have for Hezbollah isn’t entirely ideologically driven either but is also rooted in the organization’s socio-economic activities on the local level, which many observers tend to ignore.

It needs to be accepted that Hezbollah is an independent organization separate from, but closely allied with, Iran, and that its civil society outreaches and not just its ideological platform have earned it the trustful support of many Lebanese. Still, there are people in the country who strongly disagree with the group and would vehemently decry any association between them and their political foes, let alone if the latest democratic elections were used as the basis for targeting them and their families in any upcoming conflict. What this basically amounts to is blackmailing the entire civilian population of a country and is therefore the textbook definition of interfering in another country’s domestic political process.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun meets with Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, 2018 (Source: author)

That said, Israel obviously had an interest in the outcome of this election for the very reason that it regards Hezbollah as one of its top enemies and an existential threat to the self-proclaimed “Jewish State”, but its high-level security representatives likely refrained from making such inflammatory remarks before the vote out of fear that they might actually lead to a landslide victory for the party, though the point is now moot because the patriotic sentiments of all Lebanese citizens have now been resolutely directed against Israel as a result. This was entirely predictable, and the fact that Israel went ahead with this warning anyways is very telling.

By all indications, this threat was issued from a position of weakness after Israel’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (or “deep state”) accepted their strategic defeat in Lebanon and its resultant long-term implications. The dramatic intervention of allied Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman into Lebanese domestic politics late last year during the scandalous Hariri affair totally backfired against Israel’s interests, and not even the powerful Mossad could fix the mess that he made and redirect it to their favor. As reluctant as they’ve been to admit it, this stunning statement reads as an unofficial declaration that Israel accepts the loss of Lebanon to Iran.

As conventional wisdom goes, “desperate people do desperate things”, and this is more apt than ever when it comes to Israel after it’s convinced itself that last weekend’s democratic elections in Lebanon were hijacked by an Iranian “terrorist” proxy, as it’s difficult to think of why else it would imply that civilians might be punished for voting an anti-Israeli political party into power. That said, Israel’s fear might also manifest itself in different, more unpredictable ways, than dangerously risking a repeat of its epic 2006 military fail, so Lebanese but also Syrians must remain alert at all times because the strategic situation is more volatile than ever.

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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Americans pay twice as much or more for prescription drugs as consumers in other developed countries.

Republicans and undemocratic Dems bear full responsibility, letting Big Pharma ripoff consumers for maximum profits – Trump like his predecessors.

Candidate Trump pledged to let Medicare negotiate discounts for prescription drugs. Straightaway in office, he yielded to Pharma lobbyists, abandoning his promise, falsely claiming “smaller, younger companies” would be harmed.

Instead of lowering extortionist drug prices, he cut taxes for corporate predators and high-net-worth individuals like himself.

According to Americans for Tax Fairness, the 10 largest US drug companies were “among the biggest winners from the Trump-GOP tax cuts but they are sharing few of the benefits with their employees and are offering no pricing relief to their customers.”

“Instead, they are mostly rewarding their CEOs and other wealthy shareholders with fat stock buybacks and dividend hikes, recent public announcements and analysis reveal.”

They’ll save $6.3 billion in taxes this year – $76 billion in taxes on offshore profits. In 2017, they had $506 billion in untaxed offshore profits.

Under pre-Trump US law, they owed around $134 billion in untaxed profits. Under GOP-enacted law, their untaxed liability dropped to about $57 billion.

Most nations negotiate lower prices with drug companies. In America, they can charge what the market will bear, as much as they can get away with, keeping prices for many drugs extraordinarily high, including expensive chemo drugs used to treat cancer.

Harvard Medical School Professor of Medicine Dr. Jerry Avron debunked the Big Pharma myth about drug prices, falsely claiming high prices are needed to finance “research and development to discover the new drugs of tomorrow.”

Not so! Much R&D is federally funded, paid for by US taxpayers, Pharma benefitting hugely – along with from university research.

Under Republicans and undemocratic Dems, America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) operates as arm of corporate interests, not protecting and promoting public health as claimed – most of its budget funded by Big Pharma.

Industry-run, it notoriously approves inadequately tested, potentially dangerous vaccines and other drugs – later discovered to be hazardous to human health, because of harmful, at times lethal, side effects.

Last May, Trump appointed physician/resident neocon American Enterprise Institute fellow Scott Gottlieb as FDA commissioner.

Earlier he was involved in agency decisions affecting about 20 healthcare companies, his allegiance to them, not public health, safety and welfare.

US drug pricing is unregulated, companies charging whatever they wish. Gottlieb supports the industry goal of maximum profit-making.

So does Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar – former president of Lilly USA LLC, Eli Lilly’s largest affiliate company, earlier serving as Bush/Cheney’s deputy HHS secretary.

Trump reneged on his campaign pledge to lower drug prices. SocialSecurityWorks tweeted:

“Big pharma’s stocks are soaring because they know the Trump Administration will do nothing to rein in their greed.”

On Friday, Trump lied, again vowing to “bring soaring drug prices back down to earth” – what he’s done nothing to achieve so far in office, catering to Pharma, not challenging its price-gouging policies.

According to Public Citizen president Robert Weissman,

“(w)hat Trump laid out (on Friday) is policy that Big Pharma can love – and no wonder, because Big Pharma wrote it.”

“Trump abandoned his campaign commitment to Medicare Part D negotiation – which would save $16 billion a year or more – and shamefully aims to beat up on other countries to make them pay more, doing nothing for American consumers but forcing more rationing overseas.”

“Those are the top lines. That’s what matters, and everything else is noise around the margins.”

“Trump’s few tough words for pharma are a cover-up for the sweetheart deal he really is offering the megacorporations that raise prices on Americans by the day.”

His scheme does nothing to make prescription drugs more affordable, everything to assure continued high prices – yielding to Pharma lobbyists, betraying US consumers.

Protect Our Care’s Brad Woodhouse said:

“Don’t be fooled: President Trump and his administration are bought and paid for by Big Pharma” – along with other corporate predators, benefitting at the expense of the public welfare.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.