Tag: Palestine

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.

Why is Israel aiding al-Qaida in Syria?

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At the risk of becoming a broken record, here is another article I wrote on the Israeli-al-Qaeda alliance in Syria:

Why are they doing this? Has Israeli suddenly converted to Wahhabism? Have they suddenly developed an affinity for the theories of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri? Do they seriously consider credible the promises last week from Nusra Front leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani not to use Syria as a base from which to attack the West?

Of course not. Indeed, it is precisely in Israel’s self-interest for civil war in Syria to continue for as long as possible.

Divide and rule is the classic imperial strategy, one that the British and French empires ruthlessly pursued in the region for decades, and America has continued as the current imperial hegemon (particularly during its direct occupation of Iraq). And despite occasional important differences with the United States, Israel is, in many respects, the spear tip of imperial interests in the region.

Read the rest over at Jacobin magazine.

I talk to Antiwar Radio about Israel’s alliance with al-Qaida

I talked to Scott Horton, the host of Antiwar Radio in the US. I can’t seem to embed the audio play, but you can just follow this link to stream or download the segment. The main article I wrote about the topic, which I refer to in the interview, is here.

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.

Hamas is keeping ISIS at bay in Gaza

On the lie of Israeli “Hamas = ISIS = al-Qaida” propaganda:

ISIS (which began as a branch of al-Qaeda before going off on its own tangent) by way of contrast envisions an “Islamic” supra-state which would stretch over the whole Levant, or Greater Syria region, as well as Iraq.

Al-Qaeda, despite the historic rhetoric from Osama bin Laden about the plight of the Palestinians, has long condemned Hamas as apostate movement for its nationalism, and for participation in democratic elections. ISIS seems to be following along the same path, and is now stretching these rhetorical attacks into armed attacks,

Since 2007, Hamas, elected to power in 2006, has had a firm grip on the coastal strip in terms of security. It has met and bested several security challenges over the years from different sources.

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

My review of The Racket

An important new book which blows the whistle on the global system of capitalist control:

With this, his second book, Matt Kennard has announced his presence on the scene as the next generation’s John Pilger.

A former Financial Times investigative reporter, Kennard has spent years interviewing those intimately involved in running what he terms the racket, the corporations and their political servants that really run our world in their own interests, and that of their global hegemony. But he also talks to its victims. As he mentioned at his book launch earlier this month, The Racket has essentially been ten years in the making.

 

Read the whole thing over at MEMO.

My RT appearance talking about Southampton University’s Israel lobby scandal

I appeared on RT Friday talking about the High Court’s ruling backing the University of Southampton’s decision to censor an academic conference that included speakers critical of Israel. I had reported the story from court for The Electronic Intifada.

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.

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.