Tag: MEMO

Iran deal a defeat for the Israel lobby

On the meaning of the Iran deal to the power of the Israel lobby:

On HuffPost Live, journalist Glenn Greenwald thinks this is a defeat for the Israel lobby: “I don’t think that they’re going to win this fight. And when they don’t, when they actually lose it I think that this kind of aura of invincibility that has surrounded the Israel lobby for so long will be severely compromised and weakened in a way that will be very positive”

With the slight danger of speaking too soon, I have to say I agree. Although the Israel lobby is obviously still rich, powerful and influential, this is a major defeat.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

The definitive account of the 2014 war on Gaza

Here is my review of Max Blumenthal’s latest book, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza:

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And he covers every aspect. Through his eyes, and the eyes of his colleagues, contacts and friends in Gaza, we see the ruins, the rubble, the pain, death and destruction inflicted on the people of Gaza by Israel and its allies. We see hope and despair, but most of all we see the Palestinians people themselves.

In The 51 Day War, Max has an important section covering the military aspects of the war. But where the corporate media covering this would probably focus on the might and majesty of Israel’s overwhelming military force and its praise-worthy ability to kill Palestinian children, Max documents a most under covered aspect of the war: the defensive liberation struggle of the Palestinian resistance factions, led by Hamas, Palestine’s Islamic resistance movement.

Max lays out a short and readable history of the al-Qassam Bridages, Hamas’s military wing. He shows how the suicide bombings of the 1990s and 2000s were a reaction to Israel’s systematic killings of Palestinians civilians, and a desire to strike back at the oppressor. The first Palestinian suicide bombing in 1994 was a direct reaction to the infamous Hebron massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslims as they worshipped in a Mosque.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

Syriza-led government learns to “love Israel”

Greek foreign policy:

The party’s 2012 “40-point programme” called for the “abolition of military cooperation with Israel” as part of a wider anti-militarist stance. But what a U-turn now.

In a joint press conference in Jerusalem with the Israeli prime minister, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias seemed determined to continue the path of the former conservative government, which from 2010 started the country on a new path towards joint military cooperation and training exercises with Israel, despite its regular massacres of the civilian population of Gaza.

“We have to learn to love Israel,” gushed Kotzias, in a short statement last week, which seemed deliberately truncated in order to allow Netanyahu to dominate the press conference with his usual propaganda themes (mostly agitating against the deal to ease sanctions against Iran).

Read the whole article over at MEMO.

Israeli spy admits: we encouraged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

#ZionistAntiSemitism:

Of some of the anti-democratic regimes in the region he was seeking to forge ties with he states: “we knew that the issue of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plays a very important role for them. To a certain degree even, we played that card, so they’d think we have immense influence over the world, and could manipulate US policy in their favour in particular. The Moroccans, the Iranians, the Turks, Idi Amin – they were all sure that one word from us would change Washington’s position towards them.”

In other words, Israeli spies and diplomats (despite propaganda claims to be the protectors of the Jews of the world) actively encouraged the dissemination of a notorious anti-Semitic forgery for their own cynical power-political reasons.

Read the whole article over at MEMO.

Syrians in occupied Golan furious about Israel’s alliance with al-Qaeda

On the Druze rebellion against Israel’s alliance with al-Qaida in Syria:

This week, the highest level confirmation to date of Israeli aid to al-Qaeda-allied rebels came from none other than Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon. “Israel conditions its assistance to the Syrian rebels on its border on their commitment not to hurt the Druze minority in Syria,” Israeli media source i24 reported Yaalon as stating.

Perhaps inadvertently confirming what many already know, Yaalon was under pressure from Israel’s own Druze minority who have been up in arms about both Nusra’s massacres of their co-religionists in Syria, and Israel’s aid to those very same violent fanatics.

Read the whole article over at MEMO.

Israel punishes Palestinian teens to deter protest

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On young Palestinian political prisoners:

According to Israel’s own figures, 99.7 percent of Palestinians brought before Israel’s ridiculous military courts system are convicted. Hence Khattab was sent down and spent months in jail.

It is well worth noting the reason the military judge gave for refusing to release this brave teen, whose only “crime” was protesting Israeli injustice against her people.

According Miriam Barghouti, another young Palestinian activist unjustly imprisoned by Israel, the judge refused to even consider releasing her to house arrest, stating: “looking at her, I can see the characteristics of a leader”.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

Israel’s new war against BDS

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On the new phase in Israel’s campaign to sabotage BDS:

As Israel ramps-up its fight against BDS, the increasingly shrill nature of the warnings coming from Jerusalem raise serious concerns about potentially fatal actions Israel could may begin to take against BDS activists (especially Palestinians). If that sounds alarmist, consider the words of new Likud member of parliament Anat Berko. She is a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, and this week formed a lobby in the Knesset specifically to target BDS. In an interview she said that the “BDS movement against Israel is also a weapon. It is a form of terrorism and it should be fought against just like we fight against terrorism.”

Implicit in that ludicrous description of the purely non-violent BDS movement as “terrorism” is a threat to assassinate and kidnap leaders of the BDS movement. After all, that is how Israel treats Palestinian resistance fighters – those it terms “terrorists”. This designation of BDS as “terrorism” is another proof that when Israel terms Palestinian resistance as terrorism, it is not a serious description, but an opposition to any form of basic Palestinian human rights or existence.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

Egypt in the hands of a death-sentence regime

On the Egyptian military regime’s spree of death sentences:

Since then, the coup regime has only felt itself more empowered to entrench its control, imprisoning dissidents and critics on the flimsiest of pretexts. These have included many Muslim Brotherhood leaders, but also secular and leftist critics like Alaa Abd El Fattah, who an Egyptian court outrageously sentenced to five years in jail earlier this year for the crime of organizing protests.

More recently, feeling more and more emboldened by tacit support from its American sponsors, the coup regime has been on a grotesque spree of handing out death sentences to many of its imprisoned critics. Egypt is now in danger of becoming a death sentence regime.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

Why is the media ignoring Israel’s alliance with al-Qaeda?

Summarizing all we have learned so far about Israel’s alliance with al-Qaida in Syria, along with the latest revelations:

In the video, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Itzik Malka claims of the 1,600 wounded he said have arrived in Israel from Syria, “the majority are women, children and elderly people” (my emphasis). That’s another implicit acknowledgement that Israel is treating wounded militants from Syria (the majority of whom in that area are al-Qaeda). And Ben Yishai himself in the article accompanying the footage states that “wounded Syrians have been arriving almost daily to the security fence, seeking medical help. It is likely that most if not all of these nationals are rebels from the rival jihadist Islamic State and al-Nusra Front groups”.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

The new annual conference for Israeli warmongers

On the Shurat HaDin conference:

The Jerusalem conference, focused on “lawfare”, was titled “Towards a new law of war” and was organized by Shurat HaDin, the so-called “Israel Law Centre”. As documents leaked by whistle-blower Chelsea Manning revealed, and as I reported in 2013, Shurat HaDin is in fact a proxy group for the Mossad, Israel’s deadly global spy agency.

The Mossad, and other Israeli intelligence and military agencies, utilise Shurat HaDin to pursue cases in global courts that it may be politically inconvenient to do so directly.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

Saudi Arabia is helping al-Qaeda invade Syria

On recent events in Syria:

A March offensive led to the armed opposition capturing the city of Idlib, a north-western provincial capital. Although only a small city, this victory, and the subsequent occupation of Jisr al-Shughour on Saturday are significant, since they bring al-Qaeda closer to Lataqia, the coastal heartland of support for the regime.

Although supporters of the Syrian opposition have lauded this as a “liberation” of Idlib, it is clear that the assault was spearheaded by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. To say the least, this is a group in no way interested in democracy and human rights.

Read the rest over at MEMO.

Britain’s deep state breaks cover at Southampton University

On our very own deep state:

There are powerful institutions in this country that work behind the scenes in a highly undemocratic manner, especially the spy agencies like MI5 and MI6. We often know very little about how they operate, and that’s why it’s so fascinating when we get a fleeting glimpse of them, peering over the parapets.

This week, organisers of a conference about Israel at Southampton University went to the High Court to challenge a university decision to cancel their event. I was in court, and reported the day’s events for The Electronic Intifada. The organisers failed. The judge, in rather Orwellian language, ruled that the applicants could exercise their academic freedom “elsewhere”.

Read the rest over at MEMO.