Tag: MEMO

Israel moves to cover-up its alliance with al-Qaeda in Syria

As totally sceptical as I am about the propaganda system that is the mainstream media, it still surprises me that this story is getting almost zero media attention. Israel has admitted being in active military alliance with a group considered one of the Western world’s greatest terrorist threats. And all purely to make sure Syria bleeds for as long as possible:

Al-Maqet was detained without access to a lawyer for ten days, and the military court eventually ruled that he must use a lawyer with a high-level security clearance (in other words he has to use a former Israeli military officer as a lawyer … as his defender in a military court).

The amount of trouble that Israel’s Deep State is going to in order to shut this man up is deeply emblematic of the state’s fundamentally anti-democractic nature. It also shows that, the more press coverage there is of Israel’s alliance with al-Qaeda in Syria (it has been pretty much ignored by mainstream media to date) the more Israel is sensitive to the facts being exposed.

After all, by aiding al-Qaeda in Syria, Israel is by providing material support to a group that it itself defines as a terrorist organization, as do the US and British governments.

Read the whole column over at MEMO.

The persistence of the Palestinian Authority

On some of the reasons the PA has not yet been overthrown:

As the first two intifadas were largely unpredicted, it has since become a fairly regular occurrence for pundits to predict a “third intifada”. Usually alongside this prediction comes another: that its first target will be the Palestinian Authority. This makes a certain logical sense, as the PA is – as Edward Said said it would be – little more than a Palestinian subcontractor for the Israeli occupation regime.

And yet, years later, the Palestinian Authority endures. Despite occasional murmurous of discontent and even demonstrations against the PA (such as 2012’s brief surge of protest against the neoliberal policies of unelected former Prime Minister Salim Fayyad), the West Bank seems largely under the control of the PA – and hence of Israel. What accounts for this?

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

 

Saudi aggression in Yemen will fail

On the Saudi war against Yemen:

Saudi Arabia is an absolutist monarchy which does not even have the pretence of fixed elections. The two regimes are very different in many ways, but similar in some key respects. Both are systematic human rights abusers. Although in rather different ways, both have religious fundamentalism at the heart of their state institutions. Both did their level best to destroy and hijack the democratic uprisings that broke out in the Arab world in 2011.

Both are fêted in Western capitals. And both invade surrounding countries and start wars of aggression – although Israel does this far more.

And so to Yemen, which Saudi Arabia, backed by other regional despots has just launched a murderous war against.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

Netanyahu’s lies

On Netanyahu’s Sorry-not-sorry:

But in fact Netanyahu did not even apologise for his comments as claimed in the headlines. If you check the actual quote, it’s clear that what he said was that he was sorry that Israel’s Palestinian Arab citizens took offence at his racism: “I know that my comments last week offended some Israeli citizens and offended the Arabs of Israel … I’m sorry about that”.

Read the whole thing here.

Israel’s elections: a festival of all-party racism

On the racism of all Zionist political parties:

A brilliant and incisive post-election analysis published this week by Adalah, a civil rights group run for Palestinian citizens of Israel, shows that such racist views went right across the political spectrum in this election, with the exception of the non- and anti-Zionist Joint List of mostly-Arab political parties (which came in third place).

Read the whole piece here.

Cameron buries Muslim Brotherhood report to please Gulf tyrants

Yet another delay, probably for good this time:

Reports in the British press suggest that Sir John has cleared the Brotherhood of any violent extremist tendencies. It is “not a terrorist organisation but should be more open about its dealings,” is how The Independent summarised the findings on Monday, when the report failed to materialise.

Read the full story here.

Israeli army admits aiding al-Qaeda in Syria

On the Israel/al-Qaida alliance in Syria:

“We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening,” the unnamed Israeli military official told the paper of the hospital treatment of al-Qaeda fighters. “Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border [sic – ceasefire line] and they go on their way [in Syria],” he said.

An unnamed military official also said there is an “understanding” between Israeli forces and al-Qaeda fighters there and that “there is a familiarity of the [al-Qaeda] forces on the ground”.

Read the full article at MEMO.

Israel an ‘apartheid state’, says South African Muslim MP they tried to woo

On Israel’s disastrous PR operation in South Africa:

Even someone their officials perceive as a “good Muslim” like Cassim, is treated in a racist manner at the airport. This apparently happened to Cassim too.

“I believe I was targeted and it was clear racial profiling that was taking place, being stopped even before going into the airport and being interrogated and searched and having my bags turned inside and out,” Cassim told Radio Islam.

Full article over at MEMO.

Peter Oborne: HSBC closures of pro-Palestinian accounts part of US ‘attack on democracy’

My interview with Peter Oborne, who recently quit The Telegraph in protest:

Tamimi says they all have one thing in common: “We participate in pro Palestine or pro-democracy rallies. That’s what we do and that’s common amongst all of us. So probably someone has been monitoring.”

But the piece was published on the website openDemocracy. What few realised at the time was the reason it had not seen the light of day in The Telegraph.

The truth only became clear last month, when Oborne sensationally used the openDemocracy platform to announce his resignation from the paper. The coverage of HSBC in the Telegraph is “a fraud on its readers,” he wrote. The paper, he said, had allowed the giant bank’s advertising contracts to significantly and fatally influence its news coverage

South Africa must expel all Israeli spies

A more comprehensive 55-page report into the Mossad and its history and modus operandi includes a section detailing the day-to-day operations of an Israeli spy in South Africa, as noted by counter-intelligence agents. They followed him, and noted that he kept close contacts with the Jewish Board of Deputies, a major pro-Israel lobbying organisation in the country. He also maintained a network of informants in the South African police – who had not disclosed such ties to the intelligence services.

Read the full article over at MEMO.

Spy Cables show America’s hypocrisy on Hamas

If the South African spy’s account is accurate, it only goes to show the hypocritical nature of American policy on Hamas. Although in public the US states its refusal to negotiate with Hamas, the reality on the ground may force them to do so in secret. Hamas is a part of Palestinian society, runs many charitable and social programmes and was voted into power in landslide PA elections in 2006.

Read the full article over at MEMO.

Hiatus

I’ve managed to lapse out of the habit of updating this site with my newest articles, but I’m going to get back into it now. You can also look back on the MEMO website for the last few months of my columns.

Over the summer I did two features for Al-Akhbar too, about the response to the war in the West.

And, as always, my stories for The Electronic Intifada are syndicated in the RSS feed you see on the right (or click here).