Why are London’s Police travelling to Israel?

Source: medium.com

In the six month period from 1st March 2014 to 31st August 2014, Eighty of London’s Metropolitan Police staff travelled to Israel. This period coincides with Operation Protective Edge, the recent bombardment and massacre of of over 2000 Palestinians in Gaza.

British armed response unit

Recently it was revealed that the Israeli army is systematically training US police forced in tactics and strategy developed as an occupying army. Has the same or similar service been provided to European police forces?

The Metropolitan Police will not reveal the purpose of the trips to Israel or the rank of the staff that travelled. A reason given for withholding the information is that it would “have the effect of compromising law enforcement tactics and strategies ”. However, If the Metropolitan Police are learning inappropriate tactics and strategy to use on London civilians then, it is for that very reason, that this information should be released into the public domain.

If it’s the reverse and the police are teaching tactics and strategy to Israel in the context of its illegal occupation then it shows a level of involvement in the occupation that was hitherto hidden and may imply criminal behaviour according to international law.

“when your police come back, you become their enemy”

The US Militarised police force

The recent events in Ferguson demonstrate the danger of an over militarised police. Do we want to see this in Europe? Eran Efrati warned that Israel’s training of American police is dangerous. Their methods are developed in a context, where the “citizens” are seen and treated as an enemy to be crushed. As he explains, “when your police come back, you become their enemy”.

US Commitment to Terror, Expansionism, Maintains Israel’s Illegal Wall

Source: blacklistednews

As seen in the above graphic from the Washington Post, essentially every country recognizes the State of Palestine, except for Western Europe and some of the places it has conquered, such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as some US “partners” that “wouldn’t want to ruffle Washington’s feathers”, including “South Pacific island nations like Kiribati and Nauru” (WaPo).

The US has for decades used terrorism to singularly prevent Palestine from becoming a full UN member state.  Likewise, without the US providing the muscle and money, Israel would not be able to continue, in defiance of the world, to occupy, colonize, ethnically cleanse, and commit terrorism and massacres against Palestine.

Without US muscle backing its terror and expansionism, Israel, despite being the strongest force in the Mid East and in possession of the “world’s best” air force and a large, rogue nuclear arsenal, would have no choice but to decolonize Palestine and remain within its own universally recognized borders, which are those that existed before June, 1967, when Israel illegally invaded and began colonizing and ethnically cleansing areas beyond those lines.

For approximately 40 years, the US has vetoed, generally alone (aside from Israel), every UN resolution demanding that Israel comply with this worldwide legal, democratic consensus.  The vote is typically 165 countries against the US and Israel, and sometimes five or six other countries (European-conquered lands and some tiny islands such as Micronesia).

Obama has continued the reign of terror and expansion, specifically rejecting, at the UN, the demand for Israel to cease even future settlement activities, let alone abandon its current illegal settlements, all war crimes.  This particular resolution was brought at the 15 member Security Council, and received 100% approval aside from Obama’s isolated vote of rejection, which is enforceable only due to the US dedication to terrorism and democracy-prevention.

On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Palestinians have tried to call attention to the wall that still exists, the illegal US-backed wall that Israel is building and using as one of its means of illegally annexing Palestinian territory.  Dr. Noam Chomsky, for one, has pointed out that if the wall were about security and not illegal expansionism, it could simply be made gigantic and utterly impenetrable, and be put on Israel’s legal border, which countries are allowed to do.

Palestinians Break Through Illegal Israeli Annexation Wall. Photo from RT.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein has suggested that Palestinians physically break down the wall en masse, as a non-violent solution, since the highest court in the world ruled that the wall is illegal and must be deconstructed, but the USA is preventing UN member states from carrying out the legally required and universally supported task.

Since the recent US/Israeli massacre against Palestine, Israel has continued its ongoing cease-fire violations, and has also announced or built thousands of new illegal settlement units in Palestine, and has illegally stolen over 4,000 more acres of Palestine (see here and here).

…

Note that although the Washington Post published the above map, a chief reason that the US is able to continue to illegally back Israel, and even increase illegal support for Israel as Obama has done (in defiance of the US population), is that US media never provides the full context of the situation, as Professor Edward Said pointed out (as noted by Jews for Justice in the Middle East):

It is simply extraordinary and without precedent that Israel’s history, its record — from the fact that it..is a state built on conquest, that it has invaded surrounding countries, bombed and destroyed at will, to the fact that it currently occupies Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian territory against international law — is simply never cited, never subjected to scrutiny in the U.S. media or in official discourse…

Edward Said in “The Progressive.” May 30, 1996

Given the full and accurate picture of how Israel has come into existence and what it does, already dwindling US public support for Israel (much of which, however, is based on religious fundamentalism) would certainly decrease, as public support for US atrocities generally decreases as information about them increases.

Better A Hundred Palestinians Killed Than One Israeli Soldier

Source: informationclearinghouse

October 21, 2014 "ICH" -  If the British parliament had adopted a resolution in favor of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the reaction of our media would have been like this:

"In an atmosphere of great enthusiasm, the British parliament adopted with a huge majority (274 for, a mere 12 against) a pro-Israeli motion…Over half the seats were occupied, more than usual…the opponents of Israel were in hiding and did not dare to vote against…"

Unfortunately, the British parliament voted this week on a pro-Palestinian resolution, and our media reacted almost unanimously like this:

"The hall was half empty…there was no enthusiasm…a meaningless exercise…Only 274 Members voted for the resolution, which is not binding…Many Members stayed away altogether…"

Yet all our media reported on the proceedings at length, many related articles appeared in the newspapers. Quite a feat for such a negligible, unimportant, insignificant, inconsequential, trivial, petty act.

A day before, 363 Jewish Israeli citizens called upon the British Parliament to adopt the resolution, which calls for the British government to recognize the State of Palestine. The signatories included a Nobel Prize laureate, several winners of the highest Israeli civilian award, two former cabinet ministers and four former members of the Knesset (including myself), diplomats and a general.

The official propaganda machine did not go into action. Knowing that the resolution would be adopted anyhow, it tried to downplay the event as far as possible. The Israeli ambassador in London could not be reached.

Was it a negligible event? In a strictly procedural sense it was. In a broader sense, far from it. For the Israeli leadership, it is the harbinger of very bad news.

A few days before, a similar news item came from Sweden. The newly elected leftist prime minister announced that his government was considering the recognition of the State of Palestine in the near future.

Sweden, like Britain, was always considered a "pro-Israeli" country, loyally voting against "anti-Israel" resolutions in the UN. If such important Western nations are reconsidering their attitudes towards the policy of Israel, what does it mean?

Another unexpected blow came from the South. The Egyptian dictator, Muhammad Abd-al-Fatah al-Sisi, disabused the Israeli leadership of the notion that the "moderate" Arab states would fill the ranks of our allies against the Palestinians. In a sharp speech, he warned his new-found soul-mate, Binyamin Netanyahu, that the Arab states would not cooperate with Israel before we make peace with a Palestinian state.

Thus he punctured the newly inflated balloon floated by Netanyahu – that pro-American Arab states, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar, would become open allies of Israel.

In South America, public opinion has already shifted markedly against Israel. The recognition of Palestine is gaining ground in official circles, too. Even in the US, unconditional support for the Israeli government seems to be wavering.
What the hell is going on?

What is going on is a profound, perhaps tectonic change in the public attitude towards Israel.

For years now, Israel has been appearing in world media mainly as a country that occupies the Palestinian lands. Press photos of Israelis almost always show heavily armed and armored soldiers confronting protesting Palestinians, often children. Few of these pictures have had an immediate dramatic impact, but the cumulative, incremental effect should not have been underestimated.

A truly alert diplomatic service would have alerted its government long ago. But our foreign service is thoroughly demoralized. Headed by Avigdor Lieberman, a brutal heavyweight bully considered by many of his colleagues around the world as a semi-fascist, the diplomatic corps is terrorized. They prefer to keep quiet.

This ongoing process reached a higher pitch with the recent Gaza war. It was not basically different from the two Gaza wars that preceded it not so long ago, but for some unfathomable reason it had a much stronger impact.

For a month and a half, day after day, people around the world were bombarded with pictures of killed human beings, maimed children, crying mothers, destroyed apartment buildings, damaged hospitals and schools, masses of homeless refugees. Thanks to Iron Dome, no destroyed Israeli buildings could be seen, nor hardly any dead Israeli civilians.

An ordinary decent person, whether in Stockholm or Seattle or Singapore, cannot be exposed to such a steady stream of horrible images without being affected – first unconsciously, then consciously. The picture of "The Israeli" in the mind’s eye changes slowly, almost imperceptibly. The brave pioneer standing up to the savages around him mutates into an ugly bully terrorizing a helpless population.

Why do Israelis not realize this? Because We Are Always Right.

It has often been said before: the main danger of propaganda, any propaganda, is that its first victim is the propagandist himself. It convinces him, rather than his audience. If you twist a fact and repeat it a hundred times, you are bound to believe it.

Take the assertion that we were compelled to bomb UN installations in the Gaza Strip because Hamas was using them to launch rockets at our towns and villages. Kindergartens, schools, hospitals and mosques were targeted by our artillery, planes, drones and warships. 99% of Israelis believe that this was necessary. They were shocked when the UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon, who visited Gaza this week, claimed that this was totally inadmissible.

Doesn’t the General Secretary know that ours is the Most Moral Army in the World?

Another assertion is that these buildings were used by Hamas to hide their arms. A person of my age reminded us this week in Haaretz that we did exactly the same during our fight against the British government of Palestine and Arab attackers: our arms were hidden in kindergartens, schools, hospitals and synagogues. In many places there are now proud memorial plaques as a reminder.

In the eyes of the average Israeli, the extensive killing and destruction during the recent campaign was completely justified. He is quite incapable of understanding the worldwide outrage. For lack of another reason, he attributes it to anti-Semitism.

After one of the Lebanon wars (I forget which) I received an unusual message: an army general invited me to give a lecture to his assembled officer corps about the impact of the war on the world media. (He probably wanted to impress his officers with his enlightened attitude.)

I told the officers that the modern battlefield has changed, that modern wars are fought in the full glare of the world media, that today’s soldiers have to take this into account while planning and fighting. They listened respectfully and asked relevant questions, but I wondered if they were really absorbing the lesson.

Soldiering is a profession like any other. Any professional person, be he (or she) a lawyer or a street-cleaner, adopts a set of attitudes suitable to it.

A general thinks in real terms: how many troops for the job, how many cannons. What is necessary to break the enemy’s resistance? How to reduce his own casualties?

He does not think about photos in the New York Times.

In the Gaza campaign, children were not killed nor houses destroyed arbitrarily. Everything had a military reason. People had to be killed in order to reduce the risk to the lives of our soldiers. (Better a hundred Palestinians killed than one Israeli soldier.) People had to be terrorized to make them turn against Hamas. Neighborhoods had to be destroyed to allow our troops to advance, and also to teach the population a lesson they will remember for years, thus postponing the next war.

All this makes military sense to a general. He is fighting a war, for God’s sake, and cannot be bothered with nonmilitary considerations. Such as the impact on world public opinion. And anyway, after the Holocaust…

What the general thinks, Israel thinks.

Israel is not a military dictatorship. General al-Sisi may be Netanyahu’s best friend, but Netanyahu is not a general. Israel likes doing business, especially arms business, with military dictators all around the world, but in Israel itself the military obeys the elected civilian government.

True, but…

But the State of Israel was born in the middle of a hard-fought war, the outcome of which was by no means assured at that moment. The army was then, and is now, the center of Israel’s national life. It may be said that the army is the only truly unifying element in Israeli society. It is where males and females, Ashkenazi and Oriental, secular and religious (except the orthodox), wealthy and poor, old-timer and new immigrant meet and are indoctrinated in the same spirit.

Most Jewish Israelis are former soldiers. Most officers, who leave the army in their mid-40s, spread out in the administrative, economic, political and academic elite. The result is that the military mindset is dominant in Israel.

This being so, Israelis are quite unable to comprehend the turn of world public opinion. What do they want from us, these Swedes and Britons and Japanese? Do they believe that we enjoy killing children, destroying homes? (As Golda Meir memorably once declared: "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we shall never forgive them for compelling us to kill their children!")

The founders of Israel were very conscious of world public opinion. True, David Ben-Gurion once declared that "it is not important what the goyim are saying, what is important is what the Jews are doing!" but in real life Ben-Gurion was very conscious of the need to win over world opinion. So was his adversary, the right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, who once told Menachem Begin that if he despairs of the conscience of the world, he should "jump into the Vistula".

World public opinion is important. More than that, it is vital. The British Parliament’s resolution may be non-binding, but it expresses public opinion, which will sooner or later decide government action on arms sales, Security Council resolutions, European Union decisions and what not. As Thomas Jefferson said: "If the people lead, then eventually the leaders will follow."
The same Jefferson recommended "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind."

The Ringworm Scandal: When Israeli Doctors Killed Tens of Thousands of Arab Children

SOURCE: RICHARD SILVERSTEIN

NOTE: There are a number of readers who are either confused or reading this post sloppily, including the headline.  To clarify: there is a link to a Jonathan Cook piece at the end of this post which notes that the State of Israel irradiated both Arab Jewish and Palestinian children for ringworm.  Hence the title of this post which uses the inclusive term, “Arab,” by which I include both Jewish and Palestinian children.

There are also those who claim that radiation was a standard treatment for ringworm inside and outside Israel in the 1950s.  This too misconstrues the argument put forward in the film and here.  While radiation may’ve been considered suitable for ringworm in that era, no one killed children with radiation outside of Israel.  The dosage set by Dr. Sheba was far too high and the X-ray machines he used were outmoded and hence the dosage administered could not be calibrated accurately or administered suitably.

*   *

By the early 1950s, Israel had absorbed most of the Holocaust survivors and other immigrants from western countries.  These were generally the preferred Ashkenazi Jews, who were the nation’s elite.  It was then that Jews from Arab lands began arriving in great numbers.  David Ben Gurion knew he needed great numbers of Jews to come to Israel in order to counter the demographic threat posed by Israel’s Palestinian population (those who hadn’t been expelled during the Nakba).  That’s why he accepted and encouraged the Arab immigration, despite the fact that the newcomers’ Sephardi heritage was considered defective.

The 2004 documentary, The Ringworm Children, presents the historical context of this immigration and is dedicated to the greatest national medical scandal in the state’s history.  During this early period, Israel looked with deep suspicion on the Arab olim.  They were viewed not only as culturally inferior, but as reservoirs of disease.  To be fair, these same views had been prominent in the U.S. during the heights of immigration to this country.

But unlike here, Israel allowed one senior health official, Dr. Chaim Sheba, to conduct a massive program of unnecessary medical treatments, at enormous expense, which actually killed many of the victims.  At that time, many children developed ringworm, a non-lethal condition of fungal origin which affected the scalp.  Unlike in other countries, 100,000 Jewish (and Palestinian) Arab children were irradiated in order to treat the condition.  While medical protocol of the day directed that no technician receive a dose higher than .5 Roentgens, those treated could receive a higher dose.  A lethal dose was considered 200 Roentgens (R).  The children treated received individual doses of 350R.  Sometimes they received two doses (for a total of 600R).  6,000 of the victims died within the first year or so after treatment.  To this day, many of the remaining victims suffer cancers, epilepsy, infertility and other brain disorders.  Even their children have been impacted through genetic abnormalities passed on from one generation to the next.

When the scandal was first exposed in 1994, the government reacted by circling the wagons and refusing to admit fault or liability.  Then activists pressured the government to pass a law demanding that the State take responsibility.  It did so.  But the law was not understood by the victims at the time, who didn’t realize that it was a Trojan Horse.  It persuaded them that the State had finally accepted fault and that it would compensate for their suffering.  But in reality, the law set hurdles so high, that very few survivors have been approved and received any compensation.  They were forced to prove they were victims, and their treatment by the medical evaluation committees victimized them a second time.  Those who agreed to accept the government’s conditions, could not appeal or sue once they had been denied.  So almost no survivors chose to apply for compensation under the law.

Further, a senior health ministry official at the time of the passing of the Ringworm law, had secreted all of the Ringworm files in his personal archives.  Thus he prevented anyone from gaining access to them: victims, their lawyers, doctors, even other government officials.  When he died, the files were transferred to government archives.  Current health ministry officials deliberately have not examined them because they don’t want to know what’s in them.  Neither the victims nor their attorneys can gain access to them either.

This is a massive coverup, but one that is completely legal.  The Supreme Court itself has refused to rule on the case, arguing that the Knesset law absolves the victims of any right to claim negligence on the part of the government’s medical officers.  Meanwhile, Dr. Sheba has one of Israel’s major medical centers named for him and is considered one of the founding father’s of Israeli medicine.  He founded the Tel Aviv University medical center and helped found those in Jerusalem and Haifa.

There is one further claim the film makes that brings it all back home to the U.S.  The X-ray treatments provided by Israel were extremely expensive.  The final cost was in the  range of 400-million Israeli pounds, which at the time were equivalent to British pounds.  That would put the cost at least $800-million and possibly even higher (in 1952 dollars).  That means the project cost far more than the entire national budget.  Israel obviously couldn’t afford such a massive expenditure.  The filmmakers offer one possible explanation: that the U.S. government, which had just bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, needed an outlet to do radiation testing.  We couldn’t or wouldn’t do such experiments here because American medical standards would not permit it.  So American officials “farmed” the operation out to Dr. Sheba and the Israelis, who had no such ethical problems with it.

The Arab Jewish children were viewed as defective and undesirable to begin with by the Ashkenazi elite like Sheba.  Here is a passage from an Israeli academic monograph on early scientific and medical approaches from the Mandate period that bore the marks of eugenics and reflected an attitude that Ashkenzai Jews were of superior racial stock to Sephardim:

In fact, medical discourse was an important mediator of Orientalist ideas to the Jews of Palestine. Public medicine was one of the main fields of regular interaction between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews during the Mandate period, and this was reflected in the presence of Mizrahi Jews in this discourse. It often depicted members of various Mizrahi communities as variations on a single type – they were described as primitive, superstitious, ignorant, neglectful of their children, passive,lacking drive and the will to change – in general, as an essentially different type, physically and mentally, from the immigrants from Europe

So these Mizrahi children were suitable as fodder for the greater good of medicine.  Though Nazi medicine operated in a context of a plan to exterminate the Jewish race in Europe, the experiments performed in Israel were not dissimilar in nature.  Sheba knew his radiation dosage would harm children, even kill them.  It turns out it did so on a far larger scale than he may’ve imagined.  But the subjects were deemed expendable, just as Jewish subjects of Nazi doctors were.  And tens of thousands were killed, just as the Nazis did.

The film suggests another possible explanation–that Sheba, who came to the U.S. both to collect the X-ray machines that administered the treatment, also fundraised among American Jews for treating the Ringworm children.  Though I doubt he raised anywhere near the sum mentioned above, it’s possible American Jews donated generously to this cause.  This should be a warning to such donors today to examine carefully whatever projects they’re asked to fund.

To be fair to Israel, it wasn’t the only nation which performed what were essentially eugenics experiments.  The Nazis did so and even the U.S., in the Tuskegee experiments, deliberately allowed syphilis victims to die untreated.  The difference, as I noted above, is that the U.S. never engaged in such ghoulish medical experimentation on a national level and never with victims in such numbers.  Further, when there were victims, they could come forward and demand justice.

Israel has essentially sealed off access to justice, thus creating a monstrous stain on its medical and moral legacy.

I want to raise a strong note of caution.  There are those who view the Ringworm project as proof that Israel’s treatment of the children testified to its embrace of Nazi values.  That is one bridge too far for me.  It’s far better to note the sheer evil of the experiment and the suffering it induced without having to claim that it turned Israel into a Nazi state or that Zionism itself was a Nazi ideology.

Israel’s Occupation is More Complex Than a Genocide

Source: informationclearinghouse

October 09, 2014 "ICH" -  Israeli officials were caught in a revealing lie late last month as the country celebrated the Jewish New Year. Shortly after declaring the most popular boy’s name in Israel to be “Yosef”, the interior ministry was forced to concede that the top slot was actually filled by “Mohammed”.

That small deceit coincided with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations. He outraged Israelis by referring to Israel’s slaughter of more than 2,100 Palestinians – most of them civilians – in Gaza over the summer as “genocide”.

Both incidents served as a reminder of the tremendous power of a single word.
Most Israelis are barely able to contemplate the possibility that their Jewish state could be producing more Mohammeds than Moshes. At the same time, and paradoxically, Israel can point to the sheer number of “Mohammeds” to demonstrate that at worst it is eradicating the visibility of a Muslim name, certainly not its bearers.

As distressing as it is, hundreds of dead in Gaza is far from the industrial-scale murder of the Nazi Holocaust.

But the idea that Israel is committing genocide may not be quite as hyperbolic as is assumed. Last month a “jury” featuring international law experts at a people’s court, known as the Russell Tribunal, into Israel’s recent attack on Gaza concluded that Israel was guilty of “incitement to genocide”. The panel argued that Israel’s long-term collective punishment of Palestinians was designed to “inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group”.

The tribunal’s language intentionally echoed that of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew and a lawyer who, after fleeing Nazi Europe succeeded in introducing the term “genocide” into international law.

Lemkin and the UN convention’s drafters understood that genocide did not require death camps; it could also be achieved gradually through intentional and systematic abuse and neglect. Their definition raises troubling questions about Israel’s treatment of Gaza, aside from military attacks. Does, for example, forcing the enclave’s two million inhabitants to depend on aquifers polluted with seawater constitute genocide?

The real problem with Mr Abbas’s use of the term – given that it conflicts with popular notions of genocide – is that it made him an easy target for critics. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the Palestinian leader of “incitement”. The Israeli left, meanwhile, decried his wild and unhelpful exaggeration.

But the critics themselves have contributed more heat than light.

Not only do experts like Richard Falk and John Dugard view Israel’s actions in genocide-like terms, but notable Israeli scholars have done so too. The late Baruch Kimmerling invented a word, “politicide”, to convey more safely the idea of an Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Israel has nonetheless successfully ring-fenced itself from the critical lexicon applied to comparable situations around the globe.

In conflicts where a mass expulsion of an ethnic or national group occurs, it is rightly identified as ethnic cleansing. In Israel’s case, however, respectable historians still equivocate over the events of 1948, even though more than 80 percent of Palestinians were forced out by Israel as it established a Jewish state on their homeland.

Similarly with “apartheid”. For decades anyone who used the word about Israel was dismissed as an extremist or anti-Semite. Only in the last few years – and chiefly because of former US president Jimmy Carter – has the word gained a tentative foothold.

Even then, its main use is as a warning rather than a description of Israel’s behaviour: diehard adherents of two states aver that Israel is in danger of becoming an apartheid state at some indefinable moment if it does not separate from the Palestinians.

Instead, we are told to suffice with the label “occupation”. But that implies a temporary state of affairs, a transition before normality is restored – precisely the opposite of what is happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, where the occupation is entrenching, morphing and metastasising.

Those guarding the critical lexicon strip us of a terminology to convey the appalling reality faced by Palestinians, not just as individuals but as a national group. In truth, Israel’s strategy incorporates variants of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.

Observers, including the European Union, concede that Israel continues with incremental ethnic cleansing – though they prefer the more obscure “forcible transfer” – of Palestinians from so-called Area C, nearly two-thirds of the West Bank.

Israel has mastered, too, a sophisticated apartheid – partly veiled by its avoidance of the more visual aspects of segregation associated with South Africa – that grabs resources, just like its famous cousin, for one ethnic-national group, Jews, at the expense of another, Palestinians.

But unlike South African apartheid, whose fixed legal and institutional systems of separation gradually became torpid and unwieldy, Israel’s remains dynamic and responsive. Few observers know, for example, that almost all residential land in Israel is off-limits to Palestinian citizens, enforced through vetting committees recently given sanction by the Israeli courts.

And what to make of a plan just disclosed by the Israeli media indicating that Mr Netanyahu and his allies have been secretly plotting to force many Palestinians into Sinai, with the US arm-twisting the Egyptians into agreement? If true, the bombing campaigns of the past six years may be better understood as softening-up operations before a mass expulsion from Gaza.

Such a policy would certainly satisfy Lemkin’s definition of genocide.
One day, doubtless, a historian will coin a word to describe Israel’s unique strategy of incrementally destroying the Palestinian people. Sadly, by then it may be too late to help the Palestinians.

Nuclear Inspection of Israel by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rejected

Source: David Icke

‘A resolution calling for nuclear inspections in Israel has been defeated by 13 votes at the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Thursday’s vote saw 45 member states, including Turkey, Russia, China and Iran, back the proposal from 18 Arab countries.

The US, Britain, France and Germany were among the 58 members to vote against the measure at the agency’s General Assembly in Vienna while 27 countries abstained.’

Read more: Nuclear Inspection of Israel by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rejected

Israel bars Palestinian men under 50 from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque

Source: David Icke

‘Israeli forces have barred men under the age of 50 from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), in a new move to further restrict Palestinians’ access to the religious site.

“Police prevent men under 50 and West Bankers from entering the Al-Aqsa compound or Friday prayers,” said Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, director general of the Organization for Muslim Endowments and Al-Aqsa Affairs.

The Israeli police claimed that the restrictions were imposed upon reports of possible planned demonstrations after Friday prayers.’

Read more: Israel bars Palestinian men under 50 from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque

Imperial Crusade #989: ‘As Bad as a Crime, a Blunder'

Source: LewRockwell.com

Having nearly provoked war over Ukraine with nuclear-armed Russia, the Obama administration has now launched a full-scale crusade in Iraq and Syria against the evil Saracens of ISIS.

America’s aerial might, including B-1 heavy bombers, is plastering ISIS miscreants. Washington’s Arab allies and  rightwing governments in Canada and Australia have joined the fray. The British will be next.

ISIS reserved particular venom for the French, referring to them as “dirty, spiteful” French (the Brits will love this one) whose warplanes joined the bombing crusade.

The new plan seems to be: “Kill’em all and let God sort them out,” a Vietnam-era slogan echoing the original from the Middle Ages.

The real problem is that the White House’s strategy looks like it’s being run by two angry women, Susan Rice and UN ambassador Samantha Power. Neither they nor President Barack Obama seems to have any grasp of military or geopolitical strategy. It’s amateur hour driven by a frenzy of alarmist hysteria from politicians and the media.

Iran’s president put it perfectly when he called America’s new Syria-Iraq a “blunder,” adding “certain intelligence agencies have put blades in the hands of madmen, who now spare no one.”

While the US is cooking up a new, bigger mess in the Levant, the old mess in Afghanistan only gets worse. Last week, Washington’s colonial bureau finally managed to cobble together a political deal in Afghanistan between two rivals for the presidency, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah.

Ashraf Ghani is Washington’s choice for president; Abdullah will act as ‘chief executive,’ a newly created role of prime minister sure to break down. To no surprise, they are expected to quickly sign an agreement to keep 25,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan for years to come.

Outgoing Afghan president Hamid Karzai, installed in office by the CIA soon after the 2001 US invasion, loosed a Parthian shaft at his former American allies, asserting they did not want peace in Afghanistan, rather ongoing occupation.

Karzai, who has emerged as a genuine nationalist, has stated that the only thing the US and its allies accomplished in Afghanistan was to kill large numbers of civilians.

Over in Iraq, former prime minister Nouri Maliki, another CIA-installed “asset,” also refused to sign a pact allowing long-term garrisoning by US troops. So out he went. Now Karazi joins Maliki, recalling Henry Kissinger’s quip that it’s more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy.

The US may shuffle the deck in Afghanistan, but its basic problems remain. Ghani, a former academic and banker, is a decent person, but he is far too westernized, has little support among majority Pashtuns, and is widely seen as a willing American collaborator and sock puppet.

His erstwhile rival, Abdullah Abdullah, is the front-man for the Northern Alliance, a Tajik gang from the Panjshir Valley that was a Soviet ally when Moscow occupied Afghanistan.

The Uzbek warlord, Rashid Dostam, a major war criminal and Soviet collaborator, joined the Northern Alliance and became its strongman.  

The Northern Alliance collaborated with the US after its invasion, just as Tajiks and Uzbeks had done with the Soviets.  Afghanistan’s communists gained control of the brutal national intelligence service, interior ministry, police, and foreign affairs.  But their main business remained narcotics.

Taliban virtually eliminated Afghanistan’s drug trade save in the region controlled by the Northern Alliance.  Today, Afghanistan’s drug production and exports have reached what the UN calls “record highs.”

The US remains the proud owner of the world’s leading producer of heroin. The drug lords that kept Karzai in power are all close US allies. But no one in Washington cares to talk about the dirty underside of Afghan politics or how its government runs on drug money. Foreign aid is the only other source of government income.

Most Pashtuns detest the suave Abdullah Abdullah and his fellow Tajiks. For their part, Tajiks look down on Pashtun as backwards mountaineers. Everyone mistrusts the minority Uzbek and Hazara, both of whom also collaborated with the US occupation or Iran.

Taliban, Afghanistan’s most popular and authentic political movement, is predominantly Pashtun. Washington’s refusal to talk directly to the demonized Taliban ensures that there will be no real political compromise in wretched Afghanistan, which has been at war for the past 35 years.

The half-forgotten Afghan War has cost the US close to 2,500 dead, 17,000 wounded and over $1 trillion.  The “reconstructed” Afghan army will be as likely to collapse without direct US support as was Iraq’s army, three divisions of which ran away at first contact with ISIS fighters.

So why does Washington keep pumping billions into Afghanistan, which has no oil? Because, in keeping with imperial logic and strategy, it remains the best pipeline route to export the oil riches of the Caspian Basin south to Karachi on the Arabian Sea. And because Afghanistan overwatches Central Asia, where China is increasingly active.

Lastly, because the mighty US military industrial complex cannot accept being defeated by Pashtun tribesmen. Nor can the American, Canadian, British, and French politicians who sent their soldiers to fight and die in this useless war.

The double standard of Israel's 47-year-old nuclear elephant in the room

Source: StopWar

The pretense of ignorance about Israeli bombs does not wash anymore. The double standard undermines efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.

ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR weapons program began in the 1950s, and the country is widely believed to have assembled its first three weapons during the crisis leading to the Six-Day War in 1967, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group in Washington that tracks nuclear weapons developments.

For decades, however, Israel itself has wrapped its nuclear program in a policy it calls “amimut,” meaning opacity or ambiguity. By hinting at but not confirming that it has these weapons, Israel has sought to deter its enemies from a major attack without provoking a concerted effort by others to develop a matching arsenal.

Israeli-American historian Avner Cohen has written that US adherence to this policy evidently grew out of a September 1969 meeting between President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. No transcript of the meeting has surfaced, but Cohen said it is clear the two leaders struck a deal: Israel would not test its nuclear weapons or announce it possessed them, while the United States wouldn’t press Israel to give them up or to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and would halt its annual inspections of Dimona, the site of Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center.

As an outgrowth of the deal, Washington, moreover, would adopt Israel’s secret as its own, eventually acquiescing to a public formulation of Israeli policy that was initially strenuously opposed by top US officials.

“Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East,” the boilerplate Israeli account has long stated. “Israel supports a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction following the attainment of peace.” When Nixon’s aides sought assurances this pledge meant Israel would not actually build any bombs, Israeli officials said the word “introduce” would have a different meaning: It meant the country would not publicly test bombs or admit to possessing them, leaving ample room for its unacknowledged arsenal.

“While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession,” then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger wrote in a July 1969 memo to Nixon that summarized Washington’s enduring policy, “what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”

Even when Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at Dimona, provided the first detasiled, public account of the program in 1986 and released photos he had snapped there of nuclear weapons components, both countries refused to shift gears. After being snatched from Italy, Vanunu was imprisoned by Israel for 18 years, mostly in solitary confinement, and subsequently forbidden to travel abroad or deal substantively with foreign journalists. In an email exchange with the Center for Public Integrity, Vanunu indicated that he still faces restrictions but did not elaborate. “You can write me again when I am free, out of Israel,” he said.

The avoidance of candor has sometimes extended to private government channels. A former US intelligence official said he recalled being flabbergasted in the 1990’s by the absence of any mention of Israel in a particular highly-classified document purporting to describe all foreign nuclear weapons programs. He said he complained to colleagues at the time that “we’ve really got a problem if we can’t acknowledge the truth even in classified documents,” and finally won a grudging but spare mention of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Gary Samore, who was President Obama’s top advisor on nuclear nonproliferation from 2009 to 2013, said the United States has long preferred that Israel hold to its policy of amimut, out of concern that other Middle Eastern nations would feel threatened by Israel’s coming out of the nuclear closet.

“For the Israelis to acknowledge and declare it, that would be seen as provocative,” he said. “It could spur some of the Arab states and Iran to produce weapons. So we like calculated ambiguity.” But when asked point-blank if the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons is classified, Samore — who is now at Harvard University — answered: “It doesn’t sound very classified to me — that Israel has nuclear weapons?”

 The US government’s official silence was broken only by accident, when in 1979, the CIA released a four-page summary of an intelligence memorandum titled “Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group.

“We believe that Israel already has produced nuclear weapons,” the 1974 report said, citing Israel’s stockpiling of large quantities of uranium, its uranium enrichment program, and its investment in a costly missile system capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Release of the report triggered a spate of headlines. “CIA said in 1974 Israel had A-Bombs,” a New York Times headline declared. “Israel a Nuclear Club Member Since 1974, CIA Study Indicates,” announced The Washington Star.

But it stemmed from a goof.

John Despres, who was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for nuclear proliferation at the time, said he was in charge of censoring or “redacting” the secret material from the report prior to its release. But portions he wanted withheld were released, he said in an interview, while sections that were supposed to be released were withheld.

“This was a sort of classic case of a bureaucratic screw-up,” said Despres, now retired. “People misinterpreted my instructions.” He said that as far as he knows, no one was disciplined for the mix-up. Moreover, in 2008, when the National Security Archive obtained a copy of the document under the Freedom of Information Act, that judgment remained unexcised.

But Washington’s refusal to confirm the obvious in any other way has produced some weird trips down the rabbit hole for those seeking official data about the Israeli arsenal. Bryan Siebert, who was the most senior career executive in charge of guarding DOE’s nuclear weapons secrets from 1992 to 2002, said he recalls seeing a two-cubic-foot stack at one point of CIA, FBI, Justice and Energy department documents about Israel’s nuclear program.

But when Siebert filed a FOIA request to DOE for information about the program after his retirement in April 2004, DOE’s official reply — written by David Osias, a former CIA official who was then deputy director for intelligence and analysis at DOE — was that the department “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of information on the requested subject. Such confirmation or denial of the records at issue, would pose a threat to national security.”

John Fitzpatrick, who since 2011 has served as director of the federal Information Security Oversight Office, confirmed that “aspects” of Israel’s nuclear status are considered secret by the United States. “We know this from classifying authorities at agencies who handle that material,” said Fitzpatrick, who declined to provide more details.

Kerry Brodie, director of communications for the Israeli embassy in Washington, similarly said no one there would discuss the subject of the country’s nuclear status. “Unfortunately, we do not have any comment we can share at this point,” she wrote in an email. A former speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Avraham Burg, was less discrete during a December 2013 conference in Haifa, where he said “Israel has nuclear and chemical weapons” and called the policy of ambiguity “outdated and childish.”

Through a spokesman, Robert Gates declined to discuss the issue. But a growing number of US experts agree with Burg.

Pillar, for example, wrote in his article this month that the 45-year old US policy of shielding Israel’s program is seen around the world “as not just a double standard but living a lie. Whatever the United States says about nuclear weapons will always be taken with a grain of salt or with some measure of disdain as long as the United States says nothing about kumquats.”

Victor Gilinsky, a physicist and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who has written about the history of the Israeli program, complained in a recent book that “the pretense of ignorance about Israeli bombs does not wash anymore. … The evident double standard undermines efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.”

J. William Leonard, who ran a government-wide declassification effort as President George W. Bush’s director of the Information Security Oversight Office from 2002 to 2008, commented that “in some regards, it undermines the integrity of the classification system when you’re using classification to officially protect a known secret. It can get exceedingly awkward, obviously.”

Aftergood said the secrecy surrounding Israel’s nuclear weapons is “obsolete and fraying around the edges. … It takes an effort to preserve the fiction that this is a secret,” he said. Meanwhile, he added, it can still be abused as an instrument for punishing federal employees such as Doyle for unrelated or politically-inspired reasons. “Managers have broad discretion to overlook or forgive a particular infraction,” Aftergood said. “The problem is that discretion can be abused. And some employees get punished severely while others do not.”

Dana H. Allin, the editor of Doyle’s article in Survival magazine, said in a recent commentary published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London that “anyone with a passing knowledge of international affairs knows about these weapons.” He called the government’s claim that the article contained secrets “ludicrous” and said Doyle’s ordeal at the hands of the classification authorities was nothing short of Kafkaesque.