Archives: Articles

How does a South African and former anti-apartheid activist feel about visiting Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories? Classification of the population, freedom of choice of residence and movement, importance of security: based on the three central drivers of separation, Na’eem Jeenah considers Israeli apartheid to be worse than South Africa’s.

By Naeem Jenah

For a South African, a visit to Palestine (including its Israeli part) can be a traumatic experience; the reminder of a past characterised by discrimination, ‘separate development’, land theft, and extreme state violence and control. Yet, even knowing that there are similarities between the South African past and the Palestinian present is insufficient preparation for the experience that assaults one from arrival until departure. Because while Israel is a lot of apartheid South Africa, it is also much, much worse.

To be fair, though, our beaches never boasted soldiers routinely walking around with rifles slung over their shoulders as one would find on a walk on a ‘peaceful’ Tel Aviv beach.

It is not difficult to understand the angst and anger of Denis Goldberg, tried with Nelson Mandela and others in the Rivonia Treason Trial, who was released by South Africa’s apartheid government into exile to Israel in 1985. After arriving there, he said Israel was the Middle East’s equivalent of apartheid South Africa. Then left Israel to live in Britain because he could not tolerate Israel’s oppressive policies. Until his death in 2020, he also supported the BDS campaign against Israel.

What Goldberg immediately understood when he arrived in Israel has been repeated by numerous Black South Africans over the decades, such as South Africa’s former president, Kgalema Motlanthe, or Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘I have been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.’ (29 April 2002, The Guardian).

Israel’s practices – both in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and within Israel itself – constitute apartheid according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and numerous Palestinian organisations. But for South Africans Israel apartheid is much more personal, more emotional, more relatable than international law might suggest. We, after all, created the word ‘apartheid’ and saw it become one of our most famous exports.

For us, apartheid was (and is) a systematic, institutionalised way in which people are discriminated against on the basis of their ‘race’ or ethnicity, and where rights and privileges accrue to people on the basis of their ‘race’ or ethnicity. In South Africa, that meant that whites were privileged over blacks; in the Palestinian and Israeli context, it means that Jews are privileged over non-Jews. Israel’s policies constitute apartheid both in the OPT and within Israel itself.

Jews privileged over non-Jews

In South Africa, apartheid was constructed on three pillars. The first of these pillars was the formal demarcation of the population into racial groups through the Population Registration Act (1950). Because of my ancestry, I, for example, was classified ‘Indian,’ second in racial hierarchy of ‘Whites’ (or, sometimes, ‘Europeans’), ‘Indians,’ ‘Coloureds’ and ‘Africans.’

My 12 years of school were spent in an ‘Indian’ school; ‘Indian’ education was not as good as White education, but was superior to African education. I am not sure what I was supposed to be educated for; it was clear what African students were being trained for. In a speech in June 1954, Hendrik Verwoerd, widely regarded as the architect of apartheid, said there was ‘no space’ for an African person ‘above certain forms of labour… What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?’

Freedom of residence and movement

The second pillar forced the different designated groups to reside in different geographic areas within each city, town or rural area, and then restricted the movement of people between these areas. This separation was the basis for ‘grand apartheid’ by its South African architects, which sought to establish ‘homelands’ (what later came, unofficially, to be known as ‘bantustans’) for ‘African’ South Africans, each ‘homeland’ identified with a particular African linguistic group. The scheme was for the African population to then be deprived of citizenship and nationality in the ‘Republic of South Africa,’ and for their nationality to be transferred to the bantustans – even if they did not, or never did, reside there.

One obstacle for this plan was the ‘Indian’ and ‘Coloured’ populations, who could not be assigned to a bantustan. The apartheid government then decided to co-opt us into the ‘White South Africa,’ as junior partners, even holding parliamentary elections for these groups to represent these constituencies in a tricameral parliament. Most of us classified ‘Coloured’ and ‘Indian’ boycotted these elections in protest, often resulting in voter turnouts of around two percent.

The central issue of security

All of this were buttressed by a third pillar: a repressive ‘security’ matrix. The repressive instruments included administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and extrajudicial assassinations – both inside and outside South Africa. But the repressive machinery did not target only activists or those opposed to apartheid. It was illegal for me to marry an African woman, or for me to be in the Orange Free State province for more than 24 hours; or for me to live in the Transvaal Province. My family lived for three years in Johannesburg, until I turned six. We then had to move back to Durban because no school in Johannesburg would enrol me, because my parents were ‘Indians’ from Natal.

Israeli Apartheid – both within the state of Israel itself and in the OPT – the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem – is, more or less, also based on the same three pillars.

The first pillar demarcates people into different groups – Jews and non-Jews. This is done through the Law of Return of 1950 (the same year that South Africa passed the Population Registration Act, for the same purpose). It defines who is a Jew and grants Jews all over the world the right to immigrate to Israel (or the OPT). In the occupied territories, unlike apartheid South Africa which transferred the citizenship of ’Africans’ to new fictitious political entities, Palestinians are deprived of any status.

The ‘Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People’ declares Israel to be a ‘Jewish state’ – despite more than 20 percent of its population not being Jewish. It also entrenches the idea, contrary to the understanding of all democracies, that there is a difference between citizenship and nationality. We cannot imagine a situation in which South Africa would have declared that White people from around the world had nationality in South Africa, while Black people (including those classified ‘Coloured’ and “Indian”) could be citizens but not nationals.

Discrimination in everyday life

In Israel, the discrimination includes a denial of full-welfare benefits, restrictions on what might be taught and learnt in schools, restriction on certain types of jobs being held by Palestinians. The 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law banning Palestinian family unification is another example of discriminatory legislation. In the OPT, Palestinians are denied the right to leave and return to their country, freedom of movement and residence, and access to land. This also applies to Palestinians of East Jerusalem, who have a separate status. The disparity in the treatment of the two groups is highlighted through the application of harsher laws and different courts for OPT Palestinians than for Jewish settlers, and through restrictions imposed by the permit and ID systems. The discrimination is also illustrated by the access to water in the OPT for Palestinians and Jewish settlers, with settlers being allocated the bulk of West Bank water, at a fraction of the price that Palestinians are charged.

The second pillar, in Israel, is bolstered by the Absentee Property Law, which ensured land theft on a grand scale. Today, land in Israel is divided into national lands – 93 percent of the land, and private lands – seven percent. National lands are comprised of state lands and JNF (Jewish National Fund) lands, and are for the exclusive use of Jews. Palestinians may only own land in the private land category. So, 20 percent of the population may only use seven percent of the land – and in that too, they compete with Jews for access.

And while Israel does not have a law similar to the South African Group Areas Act which forced different “racial” groups to live in their own areas, a number of Israeli court judgments have had the same effect, by preventing Palestinian families living in Jewish areas. Since there is no civil marriage in Israel (all marriages are religious), it is impossible for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. Israel’s Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law even prevent the spouses of its Palestinian citizens from being naturalised, forcing many Palestinian families to leave.

Fragmentation of the occupied territories

The second pillar in the OPT is reflected by Israel having fragmented the OPT for the purposes of segregation and domination. It includes Israel’s extensive theft of Palestinian land in various ways – including through the Apartheid Wall, thus shrinking the space available to Palestinians and forcing them into specific geographic fragments; the hermetic closure and isolation of Gaza; the severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and appropriation and construction policies that have created a settlement infrastructure that carved up the West Bank into a network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and besieged, non-contiguous Palestinian enclaves.

Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those bantustans (as Whites were forbidden from entering African townships in South Africa), but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. South Africans find the idea of separate roads quite shocking; we never had roads for exclusive White use, and where blacks were excluded by force.

The third pillar on which Israel’s apartheid rests is its repressive “security” laws and machinery which bear little resemblance to South Africa. Sure, the extrajudicial killing (including on foreign territory), torture, administrative detention, etc. are similar to what we faced in South Africa. These policies are state-sanctioned, often approved by the Israeli judiciary, and supported by oppressive military laws and military courts. “Security” is effectively used to justify restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association, and movement, and to suppress dissent and to control Palestinians. However, the deployment of Israel’s repressive machinery in the OPT is quite unfamiliar to South Africans. We never experienced, even in the worst days of apartheid, helicopter gunships and fighter jets flying over, or tanks patrolling, Black residential areas, bombing our homes and firing shells and missiles into our schools.

The religious issue, another common point

There are some commentators who suggest that another difference is that religion plays a big role in the Palestinian context while it played no role in South African apartheid. This is a fallacy. South African apartheid was justified on the basis of the Bible, much like Israeli apartheid is. My “Indian” education, my friends’ “Bantu education” and Verwoerd’s grandchildren’s “White” education were all part of what was called “Christian National Education.” Religion was as crucial an instrument of oppression in South Africa as it is in Palestine.

South Africans also remember that during the worst days of apartheid, and in the period when sanctions against South Africa had become most effective, Israel was one of the few countries that not only did not implement sanctions, but actively helped to break the isolation of South Africa. Israel had effective military and intelligence relations with South Africa, and partnered with South Africa in the development of nuclear weapons.

While the parallels between apartheid South Africa and Israel remain stark, for many South Africans, especially Black South Africans, the policies, laws and actions of Israel that we witness go way beyond the apartheid that we suffered under in South Africa.

Naeem Jenah

Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre based in South Africa, member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Africa-China…

2 February 2023

Source: orientxxi.info

By Dr Gideon Polya

Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) provides excellent globally-oriented TV and radio services to Australia, and particularly to exceptionally multicultural Australia. However SBS has succumbed to foreign and local  Zionist pressure and suspended renowned Arab journalist Essam Al Ghalid for unexceptional tweets made 10 years ago which offended local Zionists and a foreign,  pro-Israel,  Israel-promoting and Zionist media monitoring website called HonestReporting.

I first became aware of this particular foreign and local Zionist attack on free speech and journalism in Australia via a press release from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) that said in part: “The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network is deeply concerned at the biased and flawed process by SBS Management that saw renowned journalist Essam Al Ghalib suspended, pending investigation. APAN unequivocally supports Essam, and all journalists who pursue truth with integrity on Palestine in the face of targeted campaigns and harassment from lobby groups. We call on SBS Management to dismiss its investigation. “At a time when Israeli forces and settlers have killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in one month than at any other time in the past few decades, worrying about a journalist’s tweet from 10 years ago is a callous distraction,” APAN President Nasser Mashni said. “As Palestinians, we rely on journalists to hold Israel to account because our governments certainly don’t. It is not for any Zionist group to determine what is proper journalism; this is the role of regulators, media unions, and networks themselves” [1].

As set out below, the Orwellian suspension of Essam Al Ghalib for truth-telling is just one more example of Zionist subversion and perversion of US lackey Australia.

(A). Repugnantly Zionist Australia’s Mainstream presstitutes lie by commission and omission over Apartheid Israel’s ongoing Palestinian Genocide.

The  comments by APAN in defence of “proper journalism” were timely and correct, especially in the context of a Zionist-subverted, Zionist-perverted and US lackey Australia  in which the fervently pro-Zionist and mendacious US Murdoch media empire dominates the Mainstream media with  70% of daily city newspaper readership [2, 3]. Australia has become a Corporatocracy, Lobbyocracy and Murdochracy in which  Big Money purchases public perception of reality, votes, political power and hence more private profit [4]. As a consequence Australia is second only to Zionist-beholden America as a supporter of Apartheid Israel and hence of the vile crime of Apartheid that is condemned by the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid [5-8].

There is massive censorship in Australia and the West in general of the appalling realities of Apartheid Israel and its continuing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the UK invasion of the Middle East in 1914 for oil and imperial hegemony) [8-10]. 90% of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed, and a former US Ambassador to the UN and to Apartheid Israel, Tom Pickering, has observed that Apartheid Israel would concede no more that 4.4% of Palestine for a  Palestinian State in a “2-state solution”, and predicted an eventual expulsion of all Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (“a no-state solution”) [11, 12]. The ABC (the Australian Broadcasting  Corporation, Australia’s taxpayer-funded equivalent of the UK BBC) is the Big Sister of the SBS (the 2022-2023 ABC funding is $1,062 million, SBS funding $318 million). However an ABC Search for the term “Palestinian Genocide” yields zero (0) results – a shocking indictment of mendacious Australian Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes.

Australian Mainstream presstitutes also largely ignore the appalling realities of ongoing Israeli Apartheid and its ongoing Palestinian Genocide. Of about 15.5 million mostly impoverished Indigenous Palestinians, 8.0 million are Exiled Palestinians violently excluded from the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3 millennia; 5.5 million are Occupied Palestinians highly abusively confined without human rights under Apartheid Israeli military rule to ever-dwindling to West Bank ghettoes (3.3 million) and to the blockaded and bombed  Gaza Concentration Camp (2.2 million); and  2.0 million are Israeli  Palestinians, able to vote for the government ruling them but only as Third Class citizens under 60 Nazi-style race-based discriminatory laws [8, 13, 14]. Despite the century-long and ongoing Palestinian Genocide and successive mass population expulsions (800,000 or 54% of the Indigenous Palestinian population in the 1948 Naksa or Catastrophe and a further 400,000 in the 1967 Naksa or Setback) [9, 15], today the 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinians represent 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel (Jewish Israelis 47%) but 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians (73% of the Indigenous Palestinian Subjects) cannot vote for the government ruling them – egregious Apartheid as recognized by humane leaders and writers around the world (notably in post-Apartheid South Africa), world human rights groups (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) and Israeli human rights organizations (Yesh Din and B’Tselem) [16]. However the Zionist-subverted and Zionist-perverted Australian Labor Government and Coalition Opposition both falsely reject the descriptive, and the  Zionist-subverted ABC ordered its journalists not to use the word Apartheid in relation to the State of Israel [17].

Of course Australian Mainstream presstitutes also largely ignore the appalling realities that poverty kills and that presently 7.4 million people die avoidably from imposed deprivation each year in the impoverished Global South (see my huge books Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” [18 ], Gideon Polya,“ “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” [19] and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British history. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability ” [20]).The GDP (nominal) per capita is a deadly $3,500 for Occupied Palestinians  as compared to $55,400 for Israelis. This means that each year  4,000 Occupied Palestinians (mostly children) die avoidably from deprivation under Israeli guns, in addition to an average of about 500 violently killed each year by the Zionist murderers [8]. In the last 2 decades about 10,000 Palestinians have been violently  killed by the Zionists and a further 90,000 have died from imposed deprivation [8]. On a  per capita basis for the Occupied Palestinian population, Apartheid Israel leads the world in killing journalists  [21], and is among world leaders for killing children [22], noting that about 50% of Occupied Palestinians are children and 75% are women and children. Indeed expert surveying has revealed that 50% of Israeli children are subject to physical, psychological and sexual abuse (17% for the latter) [23]. Occupied Palestinian children are variously subject to bare-survival  poverty and horrendous Occupier violence. An awfully high proportion of  Jewish and Palestinian child Subjects of Apartheid Israel are subjected to appalling abuse [22-28]. Apartheid Israel variously excludes Occupied Palestinians from the provisions of all the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [24].

(B). What did renowned, humanitarian and truth-telling journalist Essam Al Ghalib actually say?

Apart from the APAN press release [1], the only other media reportage of this matter has been in the Zionist press. The Australian Jewish News reported: “An SBS world news reporter with a track record of posting anti-Israel comments and false claims about the Jewish State on Twitter – including using the hashtag #F**kIsrael – was suspended earlier this week. On Monday, an SBS spokesperson confirmed to The AJN that Essam Al-Ghalib is a cross-platform journalist employed on a casual basis with SBS, and action has now been taken in regard to this matter.  “In light of some tweets published between 2014 and 2015, which we’ve become aware of, he [Al Ghalib] has been stood down from all duties, pending an internal investigation,” the SBS spokesperson said. Earlier, on February 1, media monitoring website Honest Reporting exposed a series of Al-Ghalib’s tweets he made between 2014 and 2015, including one which said, “A f**king Israeli soldier choking a Palestinian boy”. Other tweets by Al-Ghalib in that period claimed that Israel put Palestinians in “concentration camps”, that Israeli soldiers are “bloody murderers”, and that Israel is “the biggest terrorist in the world” [29].

My comments on this paragraph are given below and demonstrate the sheer falsity of the Zionist complaints:

(1). “using the hashtag #F**kIsrael”: Given present popular public language standards,  as indeed exhibited by the SBS and the ABC (albeit not the sort of language I would use in public), it is a quite reasonable declaration in relation to the appalling crimes of nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, serial ethnic cleanser, serial war criminal, grossly human rights abusing, child abusing [22-28], mother-abusing,  women -abusing, democracy-by-genocide, and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel. Zionism is Nazism without gas chambers but with high technology subjugation and killing, and with 100 nuclear weapons. Words fail to adequately convey the evil of Nazi-style and genocidally racist  Apartheid Israel. Indeed careful analysis reveals a shocking and detailed list of 52 Zionist- and  Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany comparisons [30].

(2). “A f**king Israeli soldier choking a Palestinian boy”: There would have been an angry private reaction such as this from all decent people, noting that Apartheid Israel is among world leaders in killing children [22].  There are numerous indignant reports of Israeli abuse of Israeli and Palestinian children [22-28] . SBS should not be punishing the angry messenger but reporting egregious Israeli child abuse.  Indeed the wonderful Palestinian humanitarian Jesus was rendered extremely angry about the abuse of children, declaring (Matthew 18.6): “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” [31, 32].  I remember as a young teenager hearing Archbishop Sir Guilford Young  quoting this passage in St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart, Tasmania, to an audience of school children. When he got to the part about being “drowned in the depth of the sea” he took off his red archbishop’s hat and slammed it into the pulpit in great rage. Fortunately I did not know then to what he was referring, and my loving parents kept me innocent when I told them (mimicking the Archbishop’s  performance) of the Archbishop’s incandescent rage in quoting that passage.

(3). “Israel put Palestinians in “concentration camps””: numerous anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarians from outstanding  anti-racist  Jewish American scholar Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT)  to Cardinal Renato Martino (former  head of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace and a former Holy See envoy to the United Nations) variously refer to sealed off, blockaded and bombed Gaza as the world’s largest “concentration camp” and the world’s largest “open prison” (for an extensive, alphabetically-organized list of such expert opinions see [33]). Half the inmates are children surviving in bare survival conditions.

(4). “Israeli soldiers are “bloody murderers””: This is the awful reality of Apartheid Israel today. In the last 2 decades about 10,000 Palestinians have been violently killed by the Zionists, scores of thousands have been wounded with life-changing injuries, and a further 90,000 Occupied Palestinians have died from imposed deprivation [8]. I have decent, anti-racist Jewish Israeli friends who stopped serving  in the Israel Defence Force (IDF) because of this, and the ongoing, war criminal and grossly human rights-violating Occupation.

(5). “Israel is “the biggest terrorist in the world””: This is certainly true on a per capita basis but on the basis of  absolute numbers of people killed the US is the world’s biggest terrorist state. Israeli state terrorism , US state terrorism, UK state terrorism and French state terrorism  are vastly more deadly than jihadi non-state terrorism. Indeed the worst crime of  jihadi non-state terrorism is that it provides an excuse for vastly disproportionate deadly responses from the US Alliance state terrorists [34-37]. Thus 4,000 Zionists  have been violently killed since 1920  as compared to the Palestinian Genocide involving 2.2 million deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million, since the UK invasion of the Middle East in 1914 [9]. The British and UK-trained and UK-armed Zionist forces killed about 10% of the adult male Palestinian population in the 1930s Arab Revolt. In 2015 it was estimated that  32 million Muslims died from violence, 5 million, and from imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Governments  9/11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 innocent Americans and very likely involved Israeli state terrorism [38, 39].  US-backed Apartheid Israel has invaded 13 countries, occupied territory of all its 5 neighbours, still  occupies the territory of 4 countries (Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) including the third holiest city for 2 billion Muslims (Jerusalem or Al Quds), and is presently grossly violating International Law by regularly bombing targets in Syria and Iraq, in addition to occasional  bombing atrocities in Iran [19]. The US has invaded 72 countries (52 since WW2), has committed 469 invasions from 1798 onwards, committed 251 invasions since 1991,  and has 800 military bases in over 70 countries [40]. One notes that as a major global arms supplier and as a dirty tricks surrogate for the US, Apartheid Israel was covertly involved in 3 coups in the South Pacific (Fiji in 1987 and 2000, and Australia in 2010) and  in various genocidal atrocities around the world, specifically the Guatemalan Mayan Indian Genocide, the Rohingya Genocide and the Nicaragua and Sudan civil wars  [41]. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries variously occupied post-WW2 by Apartheid Israel, the UK, France, and the US total 24 million, 727 million, 142 million, and 82 million, respectively [19] – state terrorism indeed.

Finally, one must consider the “Jewish State” assertion of The Australian Jewish News report quoted above. It is blatantly false and racist. 50% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel are Indigenous Palestinians as compared to 47% being Jewish Israelis. The only way Apartheid Israel is a “Jewish State” is if, Nazi-style, we regard its 50% majority of 7.5 million of Indigenous Palestinian Subjects as “non-persons”. Indeed the 5.5 million Occupied Palestinians (73% of the 7.5 million Indigenous Palestinian Subjects) cannot vote for the government ruling them – vicious, racist,  anti-democratic and criminal Apartheid by neo-Nazi, Zionist-run Apartheid Israel [8]. The ethnic descendants in Palestine today of the Jewish Palestinians at the time of Jesus are actually  the sorely oppressed Semitic Indigenous Palestinians – the ruling Jewish Israelis mostly descend from Yemeni, Berber and Khazar converts to Judaism in the first millennium CE [42]. The Ashkenazi Jews  who are politically dominant in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Apartheid Israel descend from non-Semitic Turkic Khazar converts to Judaism [15, 42]. Like so many other false claims of the remorselessly and outrageously  mendacious Zionists [43], the claim of Jewish ethnicity to justify  genocidal colonization if Palestine is utterly false. Indeed DNA analysis shows that I am mainly Ashkenazi Jewish but with zero Middle Eastern (i.e. Semitic) contribution. For the expert opinions of decent, anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, writers and leaders see [44-46].

(C). Foreign and local Zionist attacks on decent, anti-racist, humanitarian, and truth-telling Australian journalists and academics.

The Zionist complaint to SBS was made by a US- and Apartheid Israel-based, Zionist and pro-Israel organization called HonestReporting that states (without any mention of the 50% majority Indigenous Palestinian Subjects of Apartheid Israel): “The mission of HonestReporting is to ensure truth, integrity and fairness, and to combat ideological prejudice in journalism and the media, as it impacts Israel… Since 2004, HonestReporting has been organizing trips to the Jewish state, providing you with the opportunity to observe the real facts on the ground” [47]. The management group of HonestReporting is variously based in Zionist-subverted America and neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel [48]. It has found fertile ground in Zionist-subverted, Zionist-perverted and US lackey Australia.

Indeed this present episode reminds one of the Apartheid Israeli “lawfare” against an eminent anti-racist and pro-peace Australian academic Dr Jake Lynch (Associate Professor within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sydney University,  formerly Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University, Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the university, and Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association). According to Wikipedia: “In 2013, Shurat HaDin, an Israeli NGO, commenced legal action in the Federal Court of Australia against Lynch, alleging a breach of Australia’s anti-racism laws over Lynch’s active support for the BDS campaign. The case, however, was subsequently dismissed by His Honour Justice Alan Robertson, with costs in favour of Lynch” [49].

Given the fervent support for Apartheid Israel by Zionists, Australian and overseas  Zionist attempts  to censor anti-racist Australian pro-human rights  journalists and academics violate the spirit of Section 44 of the Australian Constitution that seeks to minimize malignant foreign interference in Australian public life: “Section 44 of the Constitution states: 44. Any person who (i.) Is under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen of a foreign power… shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.” [50].

War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate (e.g. the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by genocidally racist Apartheid Israel). Numerous anti-racist Jews, non-Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are highly condemnatory  of war and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by genocidally racist Apartheid Israel but presumably could be censored, suspended or sacked by SBS for saying so, even as private citizens exercising free speech in Australia. A Zionist-subverted SBS  has evidently joined the anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, holocaust- ignoring, genocide-ignoring, and  Zionist-subverted Australian Mainstream media.

If SBS were to act to censor, suspend or sack journalists with the outcome benefiting the interests of  a  nuclear weapons-armed foreign state other than Apartheid Israel, specifically peace-loving China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, then I daresay it would be rapidly defunded, investigated, and all its people put on an Australian Intelligence watch list for traitors and terrorists. During the rule of Queen Elizabeth I people acting against the realm  in the interests of a foreign state were tortured, hung, drawn and quartered, and their heads stuck on a pike as a public warning. In 1946 William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw), an American-born fascist who became a German citizen in 1940, was hanged by the UK for his broadcasts from Nazi Germany. Fortunately we live in gentler times in the West, and decent anti-racist people with a sole allegiance to Australia simply want public exposure of mendacious and traitorous  Mainstream media boss, journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat  presstitutes  deceiving Australia in the interests of criminal foreign powers such as the US, UK and Apartheid Israel.

This is not  the first egregious attack on a truth-telling journalist  by Australia’s SBS media organization. Thus free speech was trashed in jingoistic, pro-war , US lackey Australia when  Scott McIntyre, a courageous young sports journalist with SBS was sacked in 2015 after he tweeted a succession of truthful anti-war comments on Anzac Day (Australia’s war dead remembrance day). Only a few, notably Australia’s famed expatriate journalist  John Pilger and “invisible” me, came to his defence, and the rest was silence or strong condemnation of McIntyre. To better understand this latest trashing of free speech in Australia you need to appreciate some Australian history and the high level of ignorance, jingoism, racism, politically correct racism (PC racism), political cowardice and censorship  in Australia. Yet what the truthful, decent and courageous Scott McIntyre tweeted is unexceptional to decent people: “Innocent children, on the way to school, murdered. Their shadows seared into the concrete of Hiroshima”, “Not forgetting that the largest single-day terrorist attacks in history were committed by this nation & their allies in Hiroshima & Nagasaki”, “Remembering the summary execution, widespread rape and theft committed by these ‘brave’ Anzacs in Egypt, Palestine and Japan”, “Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered”, and “The cultification of an imperialist invasion of a foreign nation that Australia had no quarrel with is against all ideals of modern society”[51].

The same intolerance of free speech by decent people  was exhibited when on Australia’s Anzac Day,  Muslim, feminist  social advocate and  humanitarian  journalist  Yassmin Abdel-Magied (who worked for the ABC) merely posted the following 7 words on her Facebook page: “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)”. Savaged by public outcry, Ms Abdel-Magied rapidly deleted the post, apologized, and left for London (the ABC apologized and stopped her ABC program). The post was correct and her silencing by rabid jingoists is a stain on Australia and an attack on free speech [52]. Similarly,  one of Australia ‘s top journalists, Mike Carlton, was effectively driven from his job with the Sydney Melbourne Herald after he forcefully criticized the latest Israeli Gaza Massacre in 2014 [53].

In 2015 Dr Sandra Nasr, lecturer in Middle East politics at  Notre Dame University, Western Australia, published an article on the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)  website uncontroversially linking Old Testament Biblical imperatives of violent occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the first millennium BC  to Zionist colonialism  and gross human rights abuse in Palestine today. Dr Nasr  was immediately attacked and falsely defamed by Zionists and the pro-Zionist WA Today as “racist” and “anti-semitic”  and the article was removed from the LSE website. To its shame, rather than defend Dr Nasr, Notre Dame said it “apologizes” for her article which it is  now “addressing” [54]. For your convenience horrifying genocide-related quotes from the Old Testament of The Holy Bible are recorded in the website  “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide” [11].

In the US the racist Zionists have also been fiercely attacking academic free speech as well as the “free speech” First Amendment to the Constitution of the  United States of America  as illustrated by the persecution of famed anti-racist Jewish American academic  Dr Norman Finkelstein (son of Jewish survivors of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and  author of “The Holocaust Industry”, he was denied tenure and pressured to leave by a by Zionist-pressured De Paul University) [55, 56]. Outstanding anti-racist humanitarian Anul  Gandhi (the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi) was pushed out by Zionist pressure from the University  of Rochester and the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence  he had founded and moved to [57].   In 2016  Oberlin College, one of the first US colleges to have admitted Blacks, Women, Jews and Catholics, gave in to pressure from the genocidally racist  Zionist Lobby and suspended female African-American academic Dr Joy Karega, assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition, who had been falsely defamed as an  anti-Semite and vilified for opposing corporate control of government, Israeli Gaza massacres, opposing war, and for expressing support for Palestinian human rights, and for scepticism over official US claims about  9-11 and terrorism [58].

In 2022 the racist Zionists scored major successes by persuading Melbourne University and Sydney University (formerly Australia’s  2 top universities but now unfit for students by endorsing racist Zionist  falsehood) to falsely defame student and academic critics of Israeli Apartheid as anti-Semitic [59, 60]. Melbourne  University gone one step further and has now adopted the false, racist and defamatory International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of anti-Semitism that is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish critics of Israeli Apartheid), anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Palestinian, Arab and Muslim critics of Israeli Apartheid), and near-comprehensively  genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring (by falsely ignoring all WW2 holocausts and genocides other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany), and indeed ignoring some 70 genocides and holocausts, notably the WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed by the Nazis), the WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million Poles killed by Nazi Germany), the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35-40 million Chinese killed under the Japanese in 1937-1945), and the WW2  Bengali Holocaust (the 1942-1945 WW2 Indian Holocaust, and WW2 Bengal Famine;  6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam, and Odisha by the British with food-denying Australian complicity) [61, 62].

Australia belongs to the set of  35 countries that are members of the IHRA: (1) all are European; (2) the 5 located outside Europe (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Apartheid Israel, and the US) were all created based on the genocide of the Indigenous People; (3) 9 members were part of the genocidal WW2 Nazi Germany Alliance; (4) 4 (the US, UK, France and Apartheid Israel) are nuclear terrorist states; (5) 28 belong to the 30-member nuclear-armed NATO that accepts  mass incineration of billions of men, women and children as an acceptable military strategy; (6) 14 were notably involved in the brutal conquest and genocide of Indigenous non-European people over 5 centuries; (7) only 2 (Austria and Ireland) have had the moral decency to sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW); and (8) all but 3 shockingly voted No to the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022 that condemns Nazism, neo-Nazism and related racist obscenities.

The IHRA Definition of “antisemitism” lists 11 false examples of assertions that could be regarded as anti-Jewish anti-Semitic. Space does not permit detailed exposition here, but all 11 examples can be shown to be utterly false assertions  designed to damage and defame anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of genocidally racist Zionism and of nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run, genocidally racist, serial war criminal, grossly human rights-abusing,  child-abusing, mother -abusing, women-abusing, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel and its ongoing Palestinian Genocide [61]. Not surprisingly, the racist and mendacious IHRA Definition has been condemned by scholars around the world and by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations [63]. However the IHRA has made great strides in Zionist-subverted Australia. The Australian Labor Government,  the Coalition Opposition, the Labor Government of South Australia, and the Labor Government  of Victoria have adopted the racist and anti-Semitic IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism.

Australia’s 43 universities should lead the country in rational debate but have become pliant, money-obsessed, profit-driven corporations led by grossly-overpaid managers (“refugees from scholarship” in the opinion of my late father Dr John Polya). No doubt more Australian universities  will adopt the egregiously false, anti-Semitic and holocaust-ignoring  IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism because it is profitable to do so, and the Zionists and Zionists-subverted Australian, US, UK and Apartheid Israeli Governments have deep pockets. Indeed they will back such venal, racist and egregiously dishonest decisions made in violation of the core academic ethos of Kindness and Truth  with censorship and intimidation of academic staff and students. 2 decades ago I concluded a detailed analysis entitled  “Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities” with 8 concrete suggestions, the last of which stated: “viii. Finally, we should publicly insist that universities that constrain free speech are not fit for our children.” [64]. Friends, graduates, staff and students of Melbourne University,  of all Australian universities, and indeed of all universities in the world, must take action to save this formerly great institution of learning from this egregious, genocidally racist Zionist attack on the core human and academic ethos of  Kindness and Truth.

Final comments and conclusions.

The racist Zionist attack on renowned Arab journalist Essam Al Ghalid is a further example of  the attack on humanitarian and truth-telling journalists, academics, and anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish  writers and activists opposed to the genocidal crimes of nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel. The Zionists have a successful formula involving egregious falsehood, falsely weaponizing the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, and falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish  critics of genocidal Israeli Apartheid  as “anti-Semites”.  The horrible reality is that Zionism is genocidal racism and Nazism without gas chambers but with high technology violence and subjugation, and 100 nuclear weapons. Anti-racist Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman has stated that: “The Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis” [44].  Indeed the horrible Zionist maltreatment of 15.5 million sorely oppressed  Palestinians aside,  Zionism represents a fanatical and mendacious attack on the core values of academia and Humanity, namely Kindness and Truth.

The noble ideals of Kindness and Truth will not prevail on their own as Humanity speeds towards climate catastrophe. Decent people around the world must defend all humanitarian  truth-tellers from Australian SBS’s Essam Al Ghalid to Australian and world hero Julian Assange now in his 10th year of abusive incarceration in Britain for telling the truth about American atrocities in the Muslim world. Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can, (b) resolutely support humanitarian truth tellers, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against genocidally racist  Apartheid Israel and all its Zionist supporters.

References.

[1]. “Journalist suspended in biased and flawed process by SBS Management”, APAN, 14 February 2023: https://apan.org.au/media_release/journalist-suspended-in-biased-and-flawed-process-by-sbs-management/ .

[2]. “Boycott Murdoch media”; https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/ .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Boycott Murdoch Media To Save Planet”, Countercurrents, 18 July, 2011 : https://countercurrents.org/polya180711A.htm .

[4]. Peter Hartcher, “Give us $52 million and we will decide who runs the country”, Sydney Morning Herald, National Times, 2 February 2011: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/give-us-52m-and-we-will-decide-who-runs-the-country-20110201-1aceo.html ).

[5]. “Crime of Apartheid”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_apartheid .

[6]. “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, UN, 1976: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf .

[7]. John Dugard, “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”, Audiovisual Library on International Law, 30 November 1973: https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .

[9]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[10]. “Palestinian Genocide essays”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/ .

[11]. “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes .

[12]. “One-state solution, unitary state, bi-national state for a democratic, equal rights, post-apartheid Palestine: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/one-state-solution .

[13]. Susan Abulhawa, “Israel’s “nation-state law” parallels the Nazi Nuremburg Laws”, Al Jazeera, 27 July 2018: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/israel-nation-state-law-parallels-nazi-nuremberg-laws-180725084739536.html .

[14]. “Discriminatory laws in Israel:, Adalah, https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index?page=4 .

[15]. “2023: 75th Nakba Anniversary: 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide .

[16]. “Boycott Apartheid Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[17]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-Subverted Australian ABC Bans Use Of Term “Apartheid” To Describe Israel”, Countercurrents, 3 June 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/06/zionist-subverted-australian-abc-bans-use-of-term-apartheid-to-describe-israel/ .

[18]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[19]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021.

[20]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British history. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability ”, 3rd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2023.

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Remember Shireen Abu Akleh: Apartheid Israel Leads The World For Killing Journalists”, Countercurrents, 6 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/remember-shireen-abu-akleh-apartheid-israel-leads-the-world-for-killing-journalists/ .

[22]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Among World Leaders For Killing Children”, Countercurrents, 15 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/apartheid-israel-among-world-leaders-for-killing-children/ .

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Pro-Zionist, Zionist And Apartheid Israeli Child Abuse Exposed”, Countercurrents, 21 April 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya210414.htm .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel excludes Occupied Palestinians from all provisions of  the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ”, Countercurrents, 20 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya200512.htm .

[25]. Phoebe Greenwood, “ Israel furious at UN report detailing torture of Palestinian children”, The Telegraph, 21 June 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10135157/Israel-furious-at-UN-report-detailing-torture-of-Palestinian-children.html?fb .

[26].   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 .

[27]. 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 .

[28]. 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 .

[29]. Shane Desiatnik, “SBS world news reporter suspended. SBS world news reporter Essam Al-Ghalib has a track record of posting anti-Israel comments”, The Australian Jewish News, 9 February 2023: https://www.australianjewishnews.com/sbs-world-news-reporter-suspended/ .

[30]. Gideon Polya, “A Shocking List of 52 Zionist- & Apartheid Israeli-Nazi Germany Comparisons”, Countercurrents, 7 August 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/a-shocking-list-of-52-zionist-apartheid-israeli-nazi-germany-comparisons/ .

[31]. The Holy Bible, King James version, Matthew 18.6.

[32]. Gideon Polya, “Jesus, Christmas And Palestinian Genocide: Wonderful Humanitarian Jesus Was A Palestinian”,  Countercurrents, 21 December 2012: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya211212.htm .

[33]. “Gaza Concentration Camp – the most horribly abused and largest concentration camp in the world today”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration .

[34]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”:  https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[35].  “Report genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/ .

[36]. “State crime and non-state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/ .

[37]. “Stop state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ .

[38]. 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 .

[39]. “Experts: US did 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[40]. Gideon Polya, “Why Australia Should Quit  Military Links With Serial War Criminal America”, Countercurrents, 28 January 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/01/why-australia-should-quit-military-links-with-serial-war-criminal-america/ .

[41]. Apartheid Israeli state terrorism: (A) individuals exposing Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, and (B) countries subject to Apartheid Israeli state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/apartheid-israeli-state-terrorism .

[42]. “Palestine Maps: Jews of Khazaria, brief history and other resources”, PalestineRemembered: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story800.html .

[44]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[45]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[46]. “One-state solution, unitary state, bi-national state for a democratic, equal rights, post-apartheid Palestine: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/one-state-solution .

[47]. “About us”, HonestReporting: https://honestreporting.com/about/ .

[48]. “Meet the team”, HonestReporting: https://honestreporting.com/meet-the-team/ .

[49]. “Jake Lynch”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Lynch .

[50]. “Section 44 of the Constitution of Australia”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_44_of_the_Constitution_of_Australia .

[51]. Gideon Polya, “ Australia Trashes Free Speech – SBS Sacks Journalist Scott McIntyre Over Anti-War Tweets”, Countercurrents, 4 April 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya040515.htm  .

[52]. Gideon Polya, “Yassmin Abdel-Magied Censored On Anzac Day – Jingoists Trash Australian Free Speech”, Countercurrents, 28 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/04/yassmin-abdel-magied-censored-on-anzac-day-jingoists-trash-australian-free-speech/ .

[53]. Gideon Polya , “Mike Carlton, Top Australian Columnist, Forced From Job For Criticizing Apartheid Israeli Gaza Massacre”, Countercurrents,  8 August 2014: https://countercurrents.org/polya080814.htm .

[54]. Gideon Polya “Academic Free Speech Under Zionist Attack At Notre Dame Australia And LSE, UK”, Countercurrents, 16 December, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya161215.htm .

[55]. Norman Finkelstein, “The Holocaust Industry”, Verso, 2003.

[56]. “Norman Finkelstein” : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein .

[57]. “Anul Manilal Gandhi”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arun_Manilal_Gandhi .

[58]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-Subverted Oberlin College Trashes Academic Free Speech And Suspends Professor Joy Karega”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2016: https://countercurrents.org/2016/08/zionist-subverted-oberlin-college-trashes-academic-free-speech-and-suspends-professor-joy-karega/.

[59]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-subverted University of Melbourne Falsely Defames Anti-racist Jews & Non-Jews”, Countercurrents, 26 June 2022: https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/zionist-subverted-university-of-melbourne-falsely-defames-anti-racist-jews-non-jews/ .

[60]. Gideon Polya, “Uni of Melbourne falsely defames anti-racist Jews, non-Jews critical of apartheid Israel”, Green Left, 28 June 2022: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/uni-melbourne-falsely-defames-anti-racist-jews-non-jews-critical-apartheid-israel .

[61]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/?swcfpc=1 .

[62]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University backs racist and anti-Semitic IHRA”, Dissident Voice, 7 February 2023: https://dissidentvoice.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-backs-racist-and-anti-semitic-ihra/ .

[63]. Jewish Voices for Peace, “First ever: 40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel”, 17 July 2018: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english .

[64]. Gideon Polya, “Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities”, Free University Education: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/academic-censorship .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades.

19 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Matthew Hoh

Perhaps the greatest crime that Julian Assange committed in the eyes of both Democratic and Republican governments was this: he dared to tell the American people some of the terrible things their government had done.

The first time I was asked to comment publicly on Julian Assange and Wikileaks was on MSNBC in April 2010. Wikileaks had just released the Collateral Murder video. The video, leaked by Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, was taken from the gunsight of a US Apache helicopter as the helicopter’s crew killed 12 unarmed Iraqi civilians on a Baghdad street in 2007. Two Reuters journalists were killed and two small children were severely wounded (the Apache’s crew killed the children’s father as he attempted to assist wounded civilians). For three years, until Wikileaks released the video, the U.S. military claimed a battle had taken place and that aside from the two journalists, all the dead were insurgents.

The Army declared the journalists killed in the crossfire. The wounded children were ignored, even though the Apache’s crew had recognized at the time they had shot children. “Well, it’s their fault [for] bringing their kids to a battle.” the helicopter pilots said on the video minutes after shooting them. There had been no battle.

In the studio, the MSNBC host asked another veteran and me for our thoughts on the video. Her question was about the apparent shock American audiences were experiencing watching the brutal reality of the Iraq War. We were both incredulous that more than seven years into the war, such a video would be shocking. What did you think we were doing over there?

I went to war three times. I have seen mothers with their dead children and have heard their cries in Arabic, Pashto, and English. Those cries were all the same. The hell of war that has consumed men, women, and children for decades and continues in unending forms is unimaginable to many of us. Even harder to swallow is knowing these acts of organized murder and mass suffering, perpetrated in our names, were not cruel accidents of war but the result of planned and deliberate policies.

The millions of victims of the US wars throughout the Muslim World are familiar with the violence of these wars. For Americans at home, such familiarity with the wars, their violence, and the consequences, did not exist. Julian Assange and Wikileaks helped to change that.

For publishing the victims of the wars and war crimes caused by the U.S. and the West, Julian Assange is being held in Britain’s notorious Belmarsh prison, awaiting extradition to the United States. Assange’s harrowing captivity began more than 12 years ago when a US rendition forced him to seek sanctuary in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I had the privilege of meeting him there in 2014. That visit allowed me to thank him for his witness through Wikileaks for the millions of war victims ignored, unnamed, and rendered voiceless. Over a decade on, his mental and physical health is failing, and Biden, despite his commitment to press freedom, has yet to budge on a pardon.

New York Times Vietnam war correspondent Neil Sheehan said the Pentagon Papers taught him that secrets were not kept by a government to protect its people from adversaries but rather to protect the government’s actions from the knowledge of its people. Perhaps this is the greatest crime that Julian Assange committed in the eyes of both Democratic and Republican governments: he dared to tell the American people what their government had done.

The effects on the First Amendment and press freedom will be severe if Julian Assange is extradited and successfully prosecuted. His persecution and torture already serve as a warning to journalists worldwide. And morally, Julian Assange’s imprisonment obstructs any reckoning we in the U.S. must do to contend with our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and their victims.

Matthew Hoh is a Senior Fellow with the Center for International Policy and a member of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN).

19 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Saturday that his latest exposure report that suggests the CIA was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September, was not a hard story to find. It was obvious that there was more to the issue than was being reported by most media outlets, Hersh said.

In his first interview, (Radio War Nerd EP #366 — Seymour Hersh on US Bombing Nord Stream Pipelines, https://www.patreon.com/posts/radio-war-nerd-78596220), since he published the story on Substack last Wednesday, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist was asked by Radio War Nerd to comment on his source for the story, who still remains anonymous.

Hersh refused to expose any details about who he spoke to and noted that it was his job to protect his sources and take the heat when a story went live. But those within the media who criticize him for using anonymous sources should “understand the business a little better,” the journalist suggested.

“The problem is, it has all been cheapened. Because now the New York Times and the Washington Post think an unnamed source can be a press guy, a press secretary, that whispers something to them on the side. I do not know, they do not seem to have anyone inside,” Hersh said.

He also noted that major news outlets are failing to report a lot of things about the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “The war I know about is not the war you are reading about,” Hersh observed.

“It is amazing to me how they feel in line, my colleagues,” he added, lamenting that many outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSN have become a front for the White House and the Biden administration.

As for the Nord Stream expose, Hersh insisted it was “not a hard story to find” and that it was obvious that some NATO country was involved, especially after top US officials, including President Joe Biden, issued clear threats that the Russian-German project would be stopped “one way or another” if Moscow chose to send troops to Ukraine back in February 2022.

Hersh also pointed out that the entire international pipeline industry knew “who did what” and that this was a reality that “nobody thinks about.”

He concluded, “But I did, so there you are.”

The White House, as well as officials from the CIA and State Department, have all vehemently dismissed Hersh’s report since it was published. Moscow, meanwhile, has called for an open international investigation into the attack, saying it was “impossible to leave this without finding the perpetrators and punish them.”

Seymour Hersh’s Report: How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Following is Seymour Hersh’s report in Substack (https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream, Feb 8):

The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center can be found in a location as obscure as its name — down what was once a country lane in rural Panama City, a now-booming resort city in the southwestern panhandle of Florida, 70 miles south of the Alabama border. The center’s complex is as nondescript as its location — a drab concrete post-World War II structure that has the look of a vocational high school on the west side of Chicago. A coin-operated laundromat and a dance school are across what is now a four-lane road.

The center has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to American military units worldwide, are capable of technical diving to do the good — using C4 explosives to clear harbors and beaches of debris and unexploded ordinance — as well as the bad, like blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals. The Panama City center, which boasts the second largest indoor pool in America, was the perfect place to recruit the best, and most taciturn, graduates of the diving school who successfully did last summer what they had been authorized to do 260 feet under the surface of the Baltic Sea.

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.

There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.

President Biden and his foreign policy team — National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy — had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in northeastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.

The direct route, which bypassed any need to transit Ukraine, had been a boon for the German economy, which enjoyed an abundance of cheap Russian natural gas — enough to run its factories and heat its homes while enabling German distributors to sell excess gas, at a profit, throughout Western Europe. Action that could be traced to the administration would violate US promises to minimize direct conflict with Russia. Secrecy was essential.

From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms — one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany — sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.

America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia — while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s famed Ostpolitik theory, which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in World War II by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.

Nord Stream 1 was dangerous enough, in the view of NATO and Washington, but Nord Stream 2, whose construction was completed in September of 2021, would, if approved by German regulators, double the amount of cheap gas that would be available to Germany and Western Europe. The second pipeline also would provide enough gas for more than 50 percent of Germany’s annual consumption. Tensions were constantly escalating between Russia and NATO, backed by the aggressive foreign policy of the Biden Administration.

Opposition to Nord Stream 2 flared on the eve of the Biden inauguration in January 2021, when Senate Republicans, led by Ted Cruz of Texas, repeatedly raised the political threat of cheap Russian natural gas during the confirmation hearing of Blinken as Secretary of State. By then a unified Senate had successfully passed a law that, as Cruz told Blinken, “halted [the pipeline] in its tracks.” There would be enormous political and economic pressure from the German government, then headed by Angela Merkel, to get the second pipeline online.

Would Biden stand up to the Germans? Blinken said yes, but added that he had not discussed the specifics of the incoming President’s views. “I know his strong conviction that this is a bad idea, the Nord Stream 2,” he said. “I know that he would have us use every persuasive tool that we have to convince our friends and partners, including Germany, not to move forward with it.”

A few months later, as the construction of the second pipeline neared completion, Biden blinked. That May, in a stunning turnaround, the administration waived sanctions against Nord Stream AG, with a State Department official conceding that trying to stop the pipeline through sanctions and diplomacy had “always been a long shot.” Behind the scenes, administration officials reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, by then facing a threat of Russian invasion, not to criticize the move.

There were immediate consequences. Senate Republicans, led by Cruz, announced an immediate blockade of all of Biden’s foreign policy nominees and delayed passage of the annual defense bill for months, deep into the fall. Politico later depicted Biden’s turnabout on the second Russian pipeline as “the one decision, arguably more than the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, that has imperiled Biden’s agenda.”

The administration was floundering, despite getting a reprieve on the crisis in mid-November, when Germany’s energy regulators suspended approval of the second Nord Stream pipeline. Natural gas prices surged 8% within days, amid growing fears in Germany and Europe that the pipeline suspension and the growing possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine would lead to a very much unwanted cold winter. It was not clear to Washington just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s newly appointed chancellor, stood. Months earlier, after the fall of Afghanistan, Scholtz had publicly endorsed French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a more autonomous European foreign policy in a speech in Prague—clearly suggesting less reliance on Washington and its mercurial actions.

Throughout all of this, Russian troops had been steadily and ominously building up on the borders of Ukraine, and by the end of December more than 100,000 soldiers were in position to strike from Belarus and Crimea. Alarm was growing in Washington, including an assessment from Blinken that those troop numbers could be “doubled in short order.”

The administration’s attention once again was focused on Nord Stream. As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.

It was at this unsettled moment that Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.

All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge.

PLANNING

In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force — men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments — and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.

It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to the President be reversible — such as another layer of sanctions and currency restrictions — or irreversible — that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?

What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines — and that he was delivering on the desires of the President.

THE PLAYERS Left to right: Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan.

Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”

At the time, the CIA was directed by William Burns, a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included — by chance — someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City. Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline.

Something like this had been done before. In 1971, the American intelligence community learned from still undisclosed sources that two important units of the Russian Navy were communicating via an undersea cable buried in the Sea of Okhotsk, on Russia’s Far East Coast. The cable linked a regional Navy command to the mainland headquarters at Vladivostok.

A hand-picked team of Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency operatives was assembled somewhere in the Washington area, under deep cover, and worked out a plan, using Navy divers, modified submarines and a deep-submarine rescue vehicle, that succeeded, after much trial and error, in locating the Russian cable. The divers planted a sophisticated listening device on the cable that successfully intercepted the Russian traffic and recorded it on a taping system.

The NSA learned that senior Russian navy officers, convinced of the security of their communication link, chatted away with their peers without encryption. The recording device and its tape had to be replaced monthly and the project rolled on merrily for a decade until it was compromised by a forty-four-year-old civilian NSA technician named Ronald Pelton who was fluent in Russian. Pelton was betrayed by a Russian defector in 1985 and sentenced to prison. He was paid just $5,000 by the Russians for his revelations about the operation, along with $35,000 for other Russian operational data he provided that was never made public.

That underwater success, codenamed Ivy Bells, was innovative and risky, and produced invaluable intelligence about the Russian Navy’s intentions and planning.

Still, the interagency group was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation. Would the divers have to go to Estonia, right across the border from Russia’s natural gas loading docks, to train for the mission? “It would be a goat fuck,” the Agency was told.

Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”

Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

Several of those involved in planning the pipeline mission were dismayed by what they viewed as indirect references to the attack.

“It was like putting an atomic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japanese that we are going to detonate it,” the source said. “The plan was for the options to be executed post invasion and not advertised publicly. Biden simply didn’t get it or ignored it.”

Biden’s and Nuland’s indiscretion, if that is what it was, might have frustrated some of the planners. But it also created an opportunity. According to the source, some of the senior officials of the CIA determined that blowing up the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.”

The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it — but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”

The Agency working group members had no direct contact with the White House, and were eager to find out if the President meant what he’d said — that is, if the mission was now a go. The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”

“The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow water a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island . . .”

THE OPERATION 

Norway was the perfect place to base the mission.

In the past few years of East-West crisis, the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway, whose western border runs 1,400 miles along the north Atlantic Ocean and merges above the Arctic Circle with Russia. The Pentagon has created high paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia and came online just as the American intelligence community lost access to a series of long-range listening sites inside China.

A newly refurbished American submarine base, which had been under construction for years, had become operational and more American submarines were now able to work closely with their Norwegian colleagues to monitor and spy on a major Russian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Peninsula. America also has vastly expanded a Norwegian air base in the north and delivered to the Norwegian air force a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes to bolster its long-range spying on all things Russia.

In return, the Norwegian government angered liberals and some moderates in its parliament last November by passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA). Under the new deal, the U.S. legal system would have jurisdiction in certain “agreed areas” in the North over American soldiers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Norwegian citizens accused or suspected of interfering with the work at the base.

Norway was one of the original signatories of the NATO Treaty in 1949, in the early days of the Cold War. Today, the supreme commander of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. He has been trusted completely since. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” the source said.

Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream — if the Americans could pull it off — would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)

Sometime in March, a few members of the team flew to Norway to meet with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy. One of the key questions was where exactly in the Baltic Sea was the best place to plant the explosives. Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were separated much of the way by little more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greifswald in the far northeast of Germany.

The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.

After a bit of research, the Americans were all in.

At this point, the Navy’s obscure deep-diving group in Panama City once again came into play. The deep-sea schools at Panama City, whose trainees participated in Ivy Bells, are seen as an unwanted backwater by the elite graduates of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, who typically seek the glory of being assigned as a Seal, fighter pilot, or submariner. If one must become a “Black Shoe”—that is, a member of the less desirable surface ship command — there is always at least duty on a destroyer, cruiser or amphibious ship. The least glamorous of all is mine warfare. Its divers never appear in Hollywood movies, or on the cover of popular magazines.

“The best divers with deep diving qualifications are a tight community, and only the very best are recruited for the operation and told to be prepared to be summoned to the CIA in Washington,” the source said.

The Norwegians and Americans had a location and the operatives, but there was another concern: any unusual underwater activity in the waters off Bornholm might draw the attention of the Swedish or Danish navies, which could report it.

Denmark had also been one of the original NATO signatories and was known in the intelligence community for its special ties to the United Kingdom. Sweden had applied for membership into NATO, and had demonstrated its great skill in managing its underwater sound and magnetic sensor systems that successfully tracked Russian submarines that would occasionally show up in remote waters of the Swedish archipelago and be forced to the surface.

The Norwegians joined the Americans in insisting that some senior officials in Denmark and Sweden had to be briefed in general terms about possible diving activity in the area. In that way, someone higher up could intervene and keep a report out of the chain of command, thus insulating the pipeline operation. “What they were told and what they knew were purposely different,” the source told me. (The Norwegian embassy, asked to comment on this story, did not respond.)

The Norwegians were key to solving other hurdles. The Russian navy was known to possess surveillance technology capable of spotting, and triggering, underwater mines. The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background — something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water. The Norwegians had a fix.

The Norwegians also had a solution to the crucial question of when the operation should take place. Every June, for the past 21 years, the American Sixth Fleet, whose flagship is based in Gaeta, Italy, south of Rome, has sponsored a major NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea involving scores of allied ships throughout the region. The current exercise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Norwegians proposed this would be the ideal cover to plant the mines.

The Americans provided one vital element: they convinced the Sixth Fleet planners to add a research and development exercise to the program. The exercise, as made public by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in collaboration with the Navy’s “research and warfare centers.” The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Bornholm Island and involve NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them.

It was both a useful exercise and ingenious cover. The Panama City boys would do their thing and the C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Americans and Norwegians would be long gone by the first explosion.

The days were counting down. “The clock was ticking, and we were nearing mission accomplished,” the source said.

And then: Washington had second thoughts. The bombs would still be planted during BALTOPS, but the White House worried that a two-day window for their detonation would be too close to the end of the exercise, and it would be obvious that America had been involved.

Instead, the White House had a new request: “Can the guys in the field come up with some way to blow the pipelines later on command?”

Some members of the planning team were angered and frustrated by the President’s seeming indecision. The Panama City divers had repeatedly practiced planting the C4 on pipelines, as they would during BALTOPS, but now the team in Norway had to come up with a way to give Biden what he wanted — the ability to issue a successful execution order at a time of his choosing.

Being tasked with an arbitrary, last-minute change was something the CIA was accustomed to managing. But it also renewed the concerns some shared over the necessity, and legality, of the entire operation.

The President’s secret orders also evoked the CIA’s dilemma in the Vietnam War days, when President Johnson, confronted by growing anti-Vietnam War sentiment, ordered the Agency to violate its charter — which specifically barred it from operating inside America — by spying on antiwar leaders to determine whether they were being controlled by Communist Russia.

The agency ultimately acquiesced, and throughout the 1970s it became clear just how far it had been willing to go. There were subsequent newspaper revelations in the aftermath of the Watergate scandals about the Agency’s spying on American citizens, its involvement in the assassination of foreign leaders and its undermining of the socialist government of Salvador Allende.

Those revelations led to a dramatic series of hearings in the mid-1970s in the Senate, led by Frank Church of Idaho, that made it clear that Richard Helms, the Agency director at the time, accepted that he had an obligation to do what the President wanted, even if it meant violating the law.

In unpublished, closed-door testimony, Helms ruefully explained that “you almost have an Immaculate Conception when you do something” under secret orders from a President. “Whether it’s right that you should have it, or wrong that you shall have it, [the CIA] works under different rules and ground rules than any other part of the government.” He was essentially telling the Senators that he, as head of the CIA, understood that he had been working for the Crown, and not the Constitution.

The Americans at work in Norway operated under the same dynamic, and dutifully began working on the new problem — how to remotely detonate the C4 explosives on Biden’s order. It was a much more demanding assignment than those in Washington understood. There was no way for the team in Norway to know when the President might push the button. Would it be in a few weeks, in many months or in half a year or longer?

The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea — from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds — much like those emitted by a flute or a piano — that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives. (“You want a signal that is robust enough so that no other signal could accidentally send a pulse that detonated the explosives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol, who has served as the science adviser to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations, said the issue facing the group in Norway because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explosives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a random signal that would launch the bombs.”)

On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.

FALLOUT

In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House — but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage, beyond simple retribution. A few months later, when it emerged that Russian authorities had been quietly getting estimates for the cost to repair the pipelines, the New York Times described the news as “complicating theories about who was behind” the attack. No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.

While it was never clear why Russia would seek to destroy its own lucrative pipeline, a more telling rationale for the President’s action came from Secretary of State Blinken.

Asked at a press conference last September about the consequences of the worsening energy crisis in Western Europe, Blinken described the moment as a potentially good one:

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come, but meanwhile we’re determined to do everything we possibly can to make sure the consequences of all of this are not borne by citizens in our countries or, for that matter, around the world.”

More recently, Victoria Nuland expressed satisfaction at the demise of the newest of the pipelines. Testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in late January she told Senator Ted Cruz, “​Like you, I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”

The source had a much more streetwise view of Biden’s decision to sabotage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as winter approached. “Well,” he said, speaking of the President, “I gotta admit the guy has a pair of balls.  He said he was going to do it, and he did.”

Asked why he thought the Russians failed to respond, he said cynically, “Maybe they want the capability to do the same things the U.S. did.

“It was a beautiful cover story,” he went on. “Behind it was a covert operation that placed experts in the field and equipment that operated on a covert signal.

“The only flaw was the decision to do it.”

By Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad

Cuba, a country of 11 million people, has been under an illegal embargo by the United States government for over six decades.

Despite this embargo, Cuba’s people have been able to transcend the indignities of hunger, ill health, and illiteracy, all three being social plagues that continue to trouble much of the world.

Due to its innovations in health care delivery, for instance, Cuba has been able to send its medical workers to other countries, including during the pandemic, to provide vital assistance. Cuba exports its medical workers, not terrorism.

In the last days of the Trump administration, the U.S. government returned Cuba to its state sponsors of terrorism list.

This was a vindictive act. Trump said it was because Cuba played host to guerrilla groups from Colombia, which was actually part of Cuba’s role as host of the peace talks.

Cuba played a key role in bringing peace in Colombia, a country that has been wracked by a terrible civil war since 1948 that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. For two years, the Biden administration has maintained Trump’s vindictive policy, one that punishes Cuba not for terrorism but for the promotion of peace.

Biden can remove Cuba from this list with a stroke of his pen. It’s as simple as that. When he was running for the presidency, Biden said he would even reverse the harsher of Trump’s sanctions. But he has not done so. He must do so now.

Noam Chomsky is a linguist, philosopher, and political activist.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist.

14 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davie

In a recent column, military analyst William Astore wrote, “[Congressman] George Santos is a symptom of a much larger disease: a lack of honor, a lack of shame, in America. Honor, truth, integrity, simply don’t seem to matter, or matter much, in America today… But how do you have a democracy where there is no truth?”

Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “U.S. military leaders appeared before Congress to testify the Iraq War was being won,” Astore wrote. “They appeared before Congress to testify the Afghan War was being won. They talked of “progress,” of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being successfully trained and ready to assume their duties as U.S. forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”

Now America is at war again, in Ukraine, and the spin continues. This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies.

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which hundreds of thousands of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of howitzer shells.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an article titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep sacrificing its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counter-offensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired U.S. tank commander, wrote on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.”

Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda. But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the United States that could escalate into nuclear war.

General Erich Vad, who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s senior military adviser for seven years, recently spoke to Emma, a German news website. He called the war in Ukraine a “war of attrition,” and compared it to the First World War, and to the Battle of Verdun in particular, in which hundreds of thousands of French and German soldiers were killed with no major gain for either side.

Vad asked the same persistent unanswered question that the New York Times editorial board asked of President Biden last May. What are the U.S. and NATO’s real war aims?

“Do you want to achieve a willingness to negotiate with the deliveries of the tanks? Do you want to reconquer Donbas or Crimea? Or do you want to defeat Russia completely?” asked General Vad.

He concluded, “There is no realistic end state definition. And without an overall political and strategic concept, arms deliveries are pure militarism. We have a militarily operational stalemate, which we cannot solve militarily. Incidentally, this is also the opinion of the American Chief of Staff Mark Milley. He said that Ukraine’s military victory is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way. Anything else is a senseless waste of human life.”

Whenever Western officials are put on the spot by these unanswered questions, they are forced to reply, as Biden did to the Times eight months ago, that they are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself and to put it in a stronger position at the negotiating table. But what would this “stronger position” look like?

When Ukrainian forces were advancing toward Kherson in November, NATO officials agreed that the fall of Kherson would give Ukraine an opportunity to reopen negotiations from a position of strength. But when Russia withdrew from Kherson, no negotiations ensued, and both sides are now planning new offensives.

The U.S. media keep repeating the narrative that Russia will never negotiate in good faith, and it has hidden from the public the fruitful negotiations that began soon after the Russian invasion but were quashed by the United States and United Kingdom. Few outlets reported the recent revelations by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about the ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey that he helped to mediate in March 2022. Bennett said explicitly that the West “blocked” or “stopped” (depending on the translation) the negotiations.

Bennett confirmed what has been reported by other sources since April 21, 2022, when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, one of the other mediators, told CNN Turk after a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, “There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue… They want Russia to become weaker.”

Advisers to Prime Minister Zelenskyy provided the details of Boris Johnson’s April 9 visit to Kyiv that were published in Ukrayinska Pravda on May 5th. They said Johnson delivered two messages. The first was that Putin and Russia “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” The second was that, even if Ukraine completed an agreement with Russia, the “collective West,” who Johnson claimed to represent, would take no part in it.

The Western corporate media has generally only weighed in on these early negotiations to cast doubt on this story or smear any who repeat it as Putin apologists, despite multiple-source confirmation by Ukrainian officials, Turkish diplomats and now the former Israeli prime minister.

The propaganda frame that Western establishment politicians and media use to explain the war in Ukraine to their own publics is a classic “white hats vs black hats” narrative, in which Russia’s guilt for the invasion doubles as proof of the West’s innocence and righteousness. The growing mountain of evidence that the U.S. and its allies share responsibility for many aspects of this crisis is swept under the proverbial carpet, which looks more and more like The Little Prince’s drawing of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.

Western media and officials were even more ridiculous when they tried to blame Russia for blowing up its own pipelines, the Nord Stream underwater natural gas pipelines that channeled Russian gas to Germany. According to NATO, the explosions that released half a million tons of methane into the atmosphere were “deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage.” The Washington Post, in what could be considered journalistic malpractice, quoted an anonymous “senior European environmental official” saying, “No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage.”

It took former New York Times investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to break the silence. He published, in a blog post on his own Substack, a spectacular whistleblower’s account of how U.S. Navy divers teamed up with the Norwegian navy to plant the explosives under cover of a NATO naval exercise, and how they were detonated by a sophisticated signal from a buoy dropped by a Norwegian surveillance plane. According to Hersh, President Biden took an active role in the plan, and amended it to include the use of the signaling buoy so that he could personally dictate the precise timing of the operation, three months after the explosives were planted.

The White House predictably dismissed Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction”, but has never offered any reasonable explanation for this historic act of environmental terrorism.

President Eisenhower famously said that only an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” can “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So what should an alert and knowledgeable American citizenry know about the role our government has played in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, a role that the corporate media has swept under the rug? That is one of the main questions we have tried to answer in our book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. The answers include:

–        The U.S. broke its promises not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. In 1997, before Americans had ever heard of Vladimir Putin, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academics wrote to President Clinton to oppose NATO expansion, calling it a policy error of “historic proportions.” Elder statesman George Kennan condemned it as “the beginning of a new cold war.”

–        NATO provoked Russia by its open-ended promise to Ukraine in 2008 that it would become a member of NATO. William Burns, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and is now the CIA Director, warned in a State Department memo, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red-lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

–        The U.S.backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014 that installed a government that only half its people recognized as legitimate, causing the disintegration of Ukraine and a civil war that killed 14,000 people.

–        The 2015 Minsk II peace accord achieved a stable ceasefire line and steady reductions in casualties, but Ukraine failed to grant autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk as agreed. Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande now admit that Western leaders only supported Minsk II to buy time for NATO to arm and train Ukraine’s military to recover Donbas by force.

–        During the week before the invasion, OSCE monitors in Donbas documented a huge escalation in explosions around the ceasefire line. Most of the 4,093 explosions in four days were in rebel-held territory, indicating incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. U.S. and U.K. officials claimed these were “false flag” attacks, as if Donetsk and Luhansk’s forces were shelling themselves, just as they later suggested that Russia blew up its own pipelines.

–        After the invasion, instead of supporting Ukraine’s efforts to make peace, the United States and the United Kingdom blocked or stopped them in their tracks. The U.K.’s Boris Johnson said they saw a chance to “press” Russia and wanted to make the most of it, and U.S. Defense Secretary Austin said their goal was to “weaken” Russia.

What would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry make of all this? We would clearly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine. But then what? Surely we would also demand that U.S. political and military leaders tell us the truth about this horrific war and our country’s role in it, and demand that the media transmit the truth to the public. An “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” would surely then demand that our government stop fueling this war and instead support immediate peace negotiations.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books.

14 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Melissa Garriga

There is reason to be alarmed by the recent China balloon. However, that reason is not the alleged China aggression but the very calculated aggression towards China by the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. This hate and the manufactured reasons for it have been layering on for years. We’ve seen this playbook. It’s the same game plan that  led us to the war on Iraq.

The U.S. is trying to contain and control China’s growth as a world power by using its military and economic powers. Just as it wanted to control the oil in the middle east.

There are 4 main reasons why the U.S. is doing this: First, it wants to prevent China from becoming an economic superpower that could rival America; Second, it wants the Asian market for itself at any cost; Third, it wants to exacerbate tensions between other countries that have disputes with China over resources in order to isolate Beijing on all sides; Fourth, it believes that such actions will increase American influence over Southeast Asia as well as its political leverage against Russia and Iran.

In other words, the U.S. wants to dominate the whole world even if that means burning it down to its core.

So how do you go to war with a country that is not an eminent threat to our nation’s safety and security? Enter the Chinese “spy” balloon. Before the words “chinese spy balloon” ever became a known phrase in every American household, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had plans to travel to China to meet with his counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. The meeting would have been a diplomatic approach to resolving issues between the two countries and could have been the beginning of working towards cooperation. It also would have been in line with Biden’s promise to Xi in November that we would “keep the lines of communication open.” That was until a high altitude balloon from China drifted into U.S airspace last week.

Suddenly a relatively harmless balloon from China became the latest small cache of weapons becoming earth-dooming weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of the fact that balloons have accidentally entered US airspace before or that it happened three times during the Trump administration, the Pentagon created mass hype and hysteria in this newest attempt to manufacture consent. In fact, just last year during the Biden administration, a balloon crashed near Hawaii without making a splash. This balloon turned into a spectacle because the U.S. is relentless in its aim to ramp up aggression towards China. Those drums don’t beat themselves.

This is evidenced by Blicken’s immediate response by canceling his diplomatic trip to Beijing; essentially closing the lines for diplomacy. Meanwhile during the State of the Union Address on Tuesday, President Biden made reference to the balloon by vowing to protect the US “sovereignty.” He called out Xi by name, “Name me one world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one!” yelling out a threat against a world leader on national television amidst the roaring drums.

Biden and Congress are using the idea of competition with China as a thinly painted veil for what they really want – war. A war they have been setting up for years.

Over the past decade, the United States has increased its military presence in the Pacific at an alarming rate. The U.S. military has acquired access to four new bases in the Philippines, and increased its presence in Southeast Asia by half-a-million troops since 2002. However, the increased military presence doesn’t just stop and end with the Philippines. On January 1, 2020, U.S. Marine Corps opened a new base in Guam to monitor and conduct military operations in the South China Sea. This new base came to much of the dismay of the locals.

Having a base there means that the United States has more power to control China’s maritime rights under international law. In addition, there are also rumors that this new military base will be used as a “military outpost” against China by the U.S., so that they can more easily attack Chinese territory.

Then on November 29, 2022, the USS Chancellorsville sailed into the South China Sea without permission of the Chinese government. The move was seen as a provocation by many experts, who believe that it may bring about a military conflict between China and the United States. Notably its last participation in a war was when the United States illegally invaded Iraq after lying and misleading the public. Today, it is one of the most advanced warships in America’s arsenal. Sailing the USS Chancellorsville into the South China Sea was a clear threat to China and an act of provocation by the United States.

If that alone is not enough to convince you of major U.S. aggression towards China, then just listen to the words of General Mike Miniha, general in the United States Air Force, who wrote in a leaked memo “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” That memo that was leaked to NBC News. There is no indication whatsoever that China wants a war with the United States or any other country. Likewise, Admiral John Aquilino, recently warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that China invading Taiwan is  “much closer to us than most think.” All of these are eerily similar to the bloodlust U.S. military leaders expressed prior to their war of deceit in Iraq.

It is clear that U.S. aggression towards China is calculated and deliberate. The United States has been trying to contain China since the end of World War II, but its efforts have intensified over the past few years as China has become more powerful on the global stage. Our government’s reckless rhetoric towards Beijing shows that Washington will not hesitate to use military force against China if they can manufacture enough consent to make it seem necessary–even though such an action would cause catastrophic consequences for both nations’ economies as well as international stability in the Asia Pacific region. We’ve heard this same drum beat before. We cannot allow murder of millions of people to happen again under the name of American imperialism.

We cannot go to war over greed. We must push for cooperation over competition. It is up to us to stop this escalation now, for the safety and security of all people and the planet.

Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war.

18 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Eric Zuesse

The cover-up by the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media of Seymour Hersh’s blockbuster self-published February 8th investigative-news report that Joe Biden himself had ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, wasn’t only the virtually total blackout of it that was engaged in by almost all ‘news’-media in The West — their failing to report that Hersh had issued any such news-report — but was ALSO the denigration of it by the very few that did mention it. Almost only non-mainstream news-media in The West DID report about it, and the four mainstream ones that did were treating it casually and briefly.

One of the four even had the nerve to describe Hersh — the world’s most celebrated and famous investigative news-reporter — under their headline “The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin”, which headline had nothing to do with his report’s truthfulness but was only a smear against Hersh, like Joseph R. McCarthy had infamously done against American progressives back in the 1950s as being ‘communists’ — as-if an investigative reporter ought to consider politics even before considering truth (if considering truth at all). That outright smear-job against Hersh cited a string of U.S.-UK-Netherlands-Government backed-and-financed sources (such as Eliot Higgins’s BellingCat) in order to charge that “In recent decades, he [Hersh] has come under criticism by those who call it [“it” referring to his articles that were published after the neoconservative New Yorker magazine effectively fired him] poorly-sourced, conspiratorial, and over-reliant on anonymous sources.” The New Yorker editor who virtually fired him as a reporter on controversial issues — after which Hersh was no longer able to get employed again as an investigative reporter on the top international matters — was David Remnick, the anti-Palestinian, anti-Russian, anti-Syrian, pro-U.S.-empire (i.e., neoconservative) liberal Editor-in-Chief of that magazine, who, for example, wrote in his magazine on 26 January 2003 headlining “MAKING A CASE” to invade Iraq (he said his purpose in the article was “furthering, and deepening, his [President George W. Bush’s] case for the use of force in Iraq.”), and citing there no facts, but only opinions, from other Democratic Party neoconservatives, such as Kenneth Pollack of the Democratic Party’s Brookings Institution (and now of the Republican Party’s American Enterprise Institute) to support invading Iraq — all of it on the basis of what were, even at that time, clear-cut lies, demonstrably false assertions of fact, whose falseness was systematically being hidden by the press from the public — but Remnick virtually forced out the world’s leading investigative jounalist. (Subsequently, at a 3 March 2009 “Seymour M. Hersh in conversation with David Remnick – The New Yorker Festival”, Remnick introduced Hersh by saying, “Sy Hersh is, quite simply, THE greatest investigative journalist of his era.” In 2001 Remnick had called him “talent at the highest level”. Even Remnick never said otherwise. People who do say otherwise aren’t even close to that level, and Hersh always has a credible (if not always quite convincing) answer to their objections. The question about Hersh’s Nord-Stream-bombings article isn’t whether it contains every truth, but whether it is entirely true — and the burden of anyone who would allege something in it to be false would be to prove the given allegation in it to be false, which no one has thus far done. And yet: the article is banned from publication or republication by all mainstream news-media in The West.

So, Hersh now is fighting back. On February 15th, Jacobin magazine headlined “Seymour Hersh: The US Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline: AN INTERVIEW WITH SEYMOUR HERSH”, and also Hersh separately posted at his blog-site, his self-defense as an investigative journalist, “The Crap on the Wall”.

In the interview, here are excerpts:

SEYMOUR HERSH

What I’ve done is simply explain the obvious. It was just a story that was begging to be told. In late September of 2022, eight bombs were supposed to go off; six went off under the water near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, in the area where it is rather shallow. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 and 2.

Nord Stream 1 has been feeding gas fuel [to Germany] for many years at very low prices. And then both pipelines were blown up, and the question was why, and who did it. On February 7, 2022, in the buildup to the war in Ukraine, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, at a press conference at the White House with German chancellor Olaf Scholz, said that we can stop Nord Stream.

FABIAN SCHEIDLER

The exact wording from Joe Biden was “If Russia invades, there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it.” And when a reporter asked how exactly he intended to do it, given that the project was within the control of Germany, Biden just said, “I promise we will be able to do it.”

SEYMOUR HERSH

His under secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, who was deeply involved in what they call the Maidan Revolution in 2014, used similar language a couple of weeks earlier.

FABIAN SCHEIDLER

You say that the decision to take out the pipeline was taken even earlier by President Biden. You lay out the story from the beginning, chronologically from December 2021, when the national security advisor Jake Sullivan convened, according to your piece, a meeting of the newly formed task force from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the State and the Treasury departments. You write, “Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines.”

SEYMOUR HERSH

This group initially was convened in December to study the problem. They brought in the CIA and so on; they were meeting in a very secret office. Right next door to the White House, there’s an office building that’s called the Executive Office Building. It is connected underground through a tunnel. And at the top of it is a meeting place for a secret group, an outside group of advisors called the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. I only reported that to let the people in the White House know that I do know something.

The meeting was convened to study the problem: What are we going to do if Russia is going to war? This is three months before the war, before Christmas of 2022. It was a high-level group; it probably had a different name, I just called it the “interagency group” — I don’t know the formal name, if there was one. It was the CIA and the National Security Agency, which monitors and intercepts communications; the State Department and the Treasury Department, which supplies money; and probably a few other groups that were involved. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had representation as well. …

FABIAN SCHEIDLER

What role did Norway play in the operation?

SEYMOUR HERSH

Well, Norway is a great seaman nation, and they have underground energy. They’re also very anxious to increase the amount of natural gas they can sell to Western Europe and Germany. And they have done that, they’ve increased their export. So, for economic reasons, why not join with the United States? They also have a residual dislike of Russia. …

To do this mission, the Norwegians had to find the right place. The divers that were being trained in Panama City could go to three hundred feet underwater without a heavy diving tank, only a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen and helium.

The Norwegians found us a place off Bornholm island in the Baltic that was only 260-feet deep so they could operate. They would have to return slowly. There was a decompression chamber, and we used the Norwegian submarine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines.

One problem was how to deal with those people who monitor the Baltic Sea. It is very thoroughly monitored, and there’s a great deal of openly available information, so we took care of this; there were three or four different people for that. And what we then did is really simple. Every summer for twenty-one years, our navy Sixth Fleet, which has control of the Mediterranean and also the Baltic Sea, has an exercise for NATO navies in the Baltic (BALTOPS). And we’d bring a navy carrier or large ships around. It was a very open thing. The Russians certainly knew about it. We did publicity. And in this one, for the first time in history, the Baltic Sea NATO operation had a new program. It was going to have an exercise in dropping mines and finding mines for ten or twelve days.

Several nations sent out mining teams, and one group would drop the mine and another mining group from their country would go hunt and blow it up. So you had a period where there are things blowing up, and in that time the Norwegians could recover deep-sea divers. The two pipelines run about a mile apart; they’re under the dirt a little but they’re not hard to get to, and they had practiced this. It didn’t take more than a few hours to plant the bombs. …

They did it around ten days into June, at the end of the exercise, but at the last minute the White House got nervous. The president said he’s afraid of doing it. He changed his mind and gave them the order that he wanted the right to bomb anytime, to set the bombs off anytime remotely by us. You do it with just a regular sonar, actually a Raytheon build. You fly over and drop a cylinder down. It sends a low-frequency signal — you can describe it as a flute sound tone, you can make different frequencies. But the worry was that one of the bombs, if left in the water too long, would not work, and two did not — they only got three of the four pipelines. So there was a panic inside the group to find the right means, and we actually had to go to other intelligence agencies that I didn’t write about. …

Joe Biden decided not to blow them up. It was in early June, five months into the war, but then, in September, he decided to do it.

I’ll tell you something. The operational people, the people who do kinetic things for the United States, they do what the president says, and they initially thought this was a useful weapon that he could use in negotiations.

But at some point, once the Russians went in, and then when the operation was done, this became increasingly odious to the people who did it. These are well-trained people; they are in the highest level of secret intelligence agencies. They turned on the project. They thought this was an insane thing to do. And within a week, or three or four days after the bombing, after they did what they were ordered to, there was a lot of anger and hostility. This is obviously reflected in the fact that I’m learning so much about it.

And I’ll tell you something else. The people in America and Europe who build pipelines know what happened. I’m telling you something important. The people who own companies that build pipelines know the story. I didn’t get the story from them but I learned quickly they know.

I think that the reason they decided to do it then was that the war wasn’t going well for the West, and they were afraid with winter coming. The Nord Stream 2 has been sanctioned by Germany, and the United States was afraid that Germany would lift the sanctions because of a bad winter. …

I don’t think they thought it through. I know this sounds strange. I don’t think that Blinken and some others in the administration are deep thinkers. There certainly are people in the American economy who like the idea of us being more competitive. We’re selling LNG, liquefied gas, at extremely big profits; we’re making a lot of money on it. I’m sure there were some people thinking, boy, this is going to be a long-time boost for the American economy. …

FABIAN SCHEIDLER

How do you think this war could end?

SEYMOUR HERSH

It doesn’t matter what I think. What I know is there’s no way this war is going to turn out the way we want, and I don’t know what we’re going to do as we go further down the line. It scares me if the president was willing to do this.

And the people who did this mission believed that the president did realize what he was doing to the people of Germany, that he was punishing them for a war that wasn’t going well. And in the long run, this is going to be very detrimental not only to his reputation as the president but politically too. It’s going to be a stigma for America. …

FABIAN SCHEIDLER

Your story was reported in Western media with some restraint and criticism. Some attacked your reputation or said that you have only one anonymous source, and that’s not reliable.

SEYMOUR HERSH

How could I possibly talk about a source? I’ve written many stories based on unnamed sources. If I named somebody, they’d be fired, or, worse, jailed. The law is so strict. I’ve never had anybody exposed, and of course when I write I say, as I did in this article, it’s a source, period. And over the years, the stories I’ve written have always been accepted. I have used for this story the same caliber of skilled fact-checkers as had worked with me at the New Yorker magazine. Of course, there are many ways to verify obscure information told to me.

And, you know, a personal attack on me doesn’t get to the point. The point is that Biden chose to keep Germany cold this winter. The president of the United States would rather see Germany cold [because of energy shortages] than Germany possibly not supportive in the Ukraine war, and that, to me, is going to be a devastating thing for this White House. For me, and I think also for the people on the mission, it was appalling. …

I can tell you that the people involved in the operation saw the president as choosing to keep Germany cold for his short-range political goals, and that horrified them. I’m talking about American people that are intensely loyal to the United States. In the CIA, it’s understood that, as I put it in my article, they work for the Crown, they don’t work for the Constitution.

The one virtue of the CIA is that a president, who can’t get his agenda through Congress and nobody listens to him, can take a walk in the backyard of the Rose Garden of the White House with the CIA director and somebody can get hurt eight thousand miles away. That’s always been the selling point of the CIA, which I have problems with. But even that community is appalled. …

Here is from Hersh’s February 15th article at his blogsite, which is paywalled and this is only the article’s opening, which isn’t paywalled:

“The Crap on the Wall”

15 February 2023

This a brief combat report from the battlefield here and abroad in the aftermath of the release last Wednesday of my story about Joe Biden’s decision to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines.

First, many thanks for your interest in what the pipeline story was all about: a very dangerous Presidential decision. You are careful readers.

I’m an old hand at dropping bombshell stories that are based on the disclosures of sources I do not, and cannot, name. There is a pattern to the response by the mainstream media. It dates back to my breakthrough story: the My Lai massacre revelation. That story was published in five installments, over five weeks in 1969, by the underground media group Dispatch News. I had tried to get the two most important magazines in America, Life and Look, to publish the story, with no success. Editors at both publications had earlier invited me to do some freelance writing for them, but they wanted nothing to do with a story about a massacre committed by American soldiers.

It was a frightening time for me, in terms of my faith in the profession I had chosen. I was allowed to read and copy by hand much of the Army’s original charge sheet accusing a sad sack 2nd Lieutenant named William L. Calley Jr. of the premeditated murder of 109 “Oriental” human beings. I also had tracked Calley, the Army’s only suspect, and interviewed him at a base in Georgia—he was tucked away—and gotten his assertion that he was merely doing what he was ordered to do. Given all this, I was more than a little rattled—make that terrified—by the failure of senior editors at prominent magazines to jump at a story that would get international attention, especially when those editors professed to deplore the war and want it to end. …

Also on February 15th, the very fine investigative journalist Alan MacLeod headlined online, “MEDIA IGNORE SEYMOUR HERSH BOMBSHELL REPORT OF US DESTROYING NORD STREAM II”, and he opened:

It has now been one week since Seymour Hersh published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden administration deliberately blew up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline without Germany’s consent or even knowledge – an operation which began planning long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Based on interviews with national security insiders, Hersh – the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai Massacre, the CIA spying program and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal – claims that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic Sea and attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. By September, President Biden himself ordered its destruction. According to Hersh, all understood the stakes and the gravity of what they were doing, acknowledging that, if caught, it would be seen as a flagrant “act of war” against their allies.

Despite this, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter’s bombshell. A MintPress News study analyzed the 20 most influential publications in the United States, according to analytics company Similar Web, and found only four mentions of the report between them.

The entirety of the corporate media’s attention given to the story consisted of:

A 166-word mini report in Bloomberg;

One five-minute segment on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Fox News);

One 600-word round up in The New York Post;

A shrill Business Insider attack article, whose headline labels Hersh a “discredited journalist” that has given a “gift to Putin”. [That headline is “The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin”.]

The 20 outlets studied are, in alphabetical order:

ABC News; Bloomberg News; Business Insider; BuzzFeed; CBS News; CNBC; CNN; Forbes; Fox News; The Huffington Post; MSNBC; NBC News; The New York Post; The New York Times; NPR; People Magazine; Politico; USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Searches for “Seymour Hersh” and “Nord Stream” were carried out on the websites of each outlet, and were then checked against precise Google searches and results from the Dow Jones Factiva news database.

This lack of interest cannot be explained due to the report’s irrelevance. If the Biden administration really did work closely with the Norwegian government to blow up Nord Stream II, causing billions of dollars worth of immediate damage and plunging an entire region of the world into a freezing winter without sufficient energy, it ranks as one of the worst terrorist attacks in history; a flagrant act of aggression against a supposed ally.

Therefore, if Biden did indeed order this attack, it is barely possible to think of a more consequential piece of news. Indeed, according to Hersh, all those involved – from Biden, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – understood that what they were doing was “an act of war.”

America now is at war not only against Russia, and not only against China, and not only against Iran, and not only against Venezuela, and not only against North Korea, and not only against Syria, and not only against Cuba, but also against Europe. America is the terrorist internationally dictatorial power that endangers peace everywhere and especially against the other two major nuclear powers (Russia and China) — thus endangering the entire world with World War Three. And the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media are its essential accomplices by hiding this reality. And that is the significance of their news-suppression against Hersh’s Nord-Stream-bombings article. It is being done in order to hide from Europeans that their enemy isn’t Russia but America (and including  all European leaders who trumpet the converse).

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires.

17 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Seymour Hersh, the famous investigative journalist, has slammed U.S.’s alleged involvement in bombing the Nord Stream gas lines as one of the “dumbest” decisions taken in years, warning that the move will have “horrific” consequences for Europeans and further undercut the already “supremely useless” NATO alliance.

Speaking to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman for an interview on Wednesday, Hersh outlined his recent report on the destruction of the pipelines last year, which found that the U.S. played a key role in planting and detonating explosives on sections of the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea.

“I think the consequences politically for us are enormous,” he said, adding that the long-term effects for Europe would be “horrific” and “cut into the notion that they can depend totally on America, even in a crisis.”

The world famous journalist said: “I think that this has probably been, in the view of some of the people who did it, one of the dumbest things the American government has done in years – and we have had four years of Trump.”

Hersh argued that U.S. officials have long seen cheap energy alternatives for Europe as a “threat,” noting that Washington has “always wanted to isolate Russia” to prevent oil and gas sales to the EU.

He said the Joe Biden administration feared Europe would “walk away” from the conflict in Ukraine and felt the need to pressure allies to stay the course.

“What Biden did is he said, ‘I am in a big war with Ukraine. It is not looking good. I want to be sure I get German and West European support,” Hersh continued.

He added that the president did not want Berlin to reverse course and reopen the Nord Stream lines, which had been under sanctions, “so he took away that option,” effectively telling his European partners “You are second rate.”

I know people that are paying five times as much now for electricity. People are paying three or four times more for gas. There is not enough of it. It is very expensive,” he said, arguing that Europe is now forced to obtain energy from other sources than Russia, including the United States itself.

He added: “And I think it is going to undercut NATO, which I always found to be supremely useless.”

While the Biden administration has vocally denied Hersh’s report, with State Department spokesperson Ned Price calling it “utter and complete nonsense,” the journalist has stuck by his unnamed source, insisting the information relayed to him was accurate.

He told Democracy Now! that he would continue to report on the issue in the future, saying there are “still things I need to write about.”

More Nord Stream ‘Bombshells’ To Come

Seymour Hersh has promised to reveal more incriminating information linking the U.S. to the demolition of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. President Joe Biden ordered the lines destroyed to prevent Germany from resuming the purchase of cheap Russian gas, he claimed.

In a post to his Substack page on February 15, 2023, Hersh slammed the mainstream media – singling out the New York Times and Washington Post – for refusing to “run a word” on the pipeline story, and for ignoring Russia and China’s calls for an international investigation.

Both papers, he said, published his exposés on the U.S. military’s war crimes in Vietnam, but are now seemingly uninterested in “national security or matters of war and peace.”

Nord Stream 1 and 2, which connected Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, were damaged in a series of underwater explosions last September. Hersh, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, released a report last week blaming the US for the attack and detailing how the Biden administration and the CIA planned the operation. The White House dismissed the allegation as “utterly false and complete fiction.”

The article backed up Moscow’s repeated assertions that the U.S. carried out the strike in order to prevent rapprochement between Russia and Germany, while making Berlin dependent on more expensive American liquefied natural gas.

Germany halted certification of Nord Stream 2 in the days before Russian troops entered Ukraine, and EU sanctions throttled the flow of gas through Nord Stream 1 since late summer by impeding vital repairs.

However, Hersh told Germany’s Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Tuesday that the Biden administration feared Berlin would lift these sanctions and resume gas transit as temperatures dropped over the winter.

He asserted: “the president of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than see Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine.”

“There may be more to learn about Joe Biden’s decision to prevent the German government from having second thoughts about the lack of cheap gas this winter,” Hersh wrote on Wednesday.

“Stay tuned,” he said. “We are only on first base …”

Russia Demands UN Probe Of Nord Stream Blasts

Other media reports said:

Lawmakers in the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, unanimously voted on Thursday to adopt an appeal to the UN demanding a probe into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September.

The Russian MPs described the incident as a “crime committed by the US.”

The move comes after a bombshell exposé was published by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh last week revealing how Washington and its NATO ally Norway cooperated to develop a plan to destroy the pipelines.

Russia’s appeal was prepared on behalf of State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who, during Thursday’s parliament meeting, called the blasts a terrorist attack.

Volodin said: Just think about it: a terrorist act aimed against Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. The USA, shamelessly, brought it into motion, with President Biden publicly endorsing it.”

He also noted how the countries involved in the incident were “working on instructions from both the CIA and the U.S.”

The appeal was initially introduced to the State Duma by the Parliament Committee for International Relations on Tuesday.

The document states that “the Biden administration, which issued unlawful order, bears full responsibility for causing multibillion-dollar damage to the owners of the most important energy infrastructure for the Eurasian Continent.”

The document insists that Washington must answer for the “long-term detrimental effect of this attack on the economic development of the countries of the region” and the “catastrophic damage to the environment.”

According to the Russian lawmakers, Washington’s “cynical desire” for geopolitical hegemony and the “physical elimination of natural competitors” puts U.S. leaders “on par with ruthless terrorist and war criminals.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded by saying that Moscow “respectfully disagrees,” and Russia has asked the UN Security Council to convene later this month to discuss the matter.

Germany Must Investigate Pipeline Sabotage, Says German MP

Berlin must not obstruct the creation of an international inquiry into the explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Sevim Dagdelen, a German MP from the Left Party (Die Linke), said on Tuesday.

Dagdelen’s appeal came after Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that the US and Norway were behind the September 2022 blasts on the Baltic Sea pipelines, which were built to transport gas from Russia to Germany.

“It appears that the federal government has neither the strength nor the will to properly investigate these terrorist acts,” Dagdelen said.

The lawmaker urged the authorities to “find the strongest possible response to a terrorist attack on German and European infrastructure.”

Dagdelen argued it was the duty of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to ensure a full investigation into the explosions on the pipelines, which were vital to the country’s energy supply.

The MP warned it has become “obvious to an increasing number of people in Germany” that foreign policy should not lead to “entering into serfdom to the U.S.”

“I call upon the federal government to at least refrain from preventing the creation of an international investigative commission, ideally under the aegis of the United Nations,” Dagdelen said.

The office of the German Public Prosecutor General, which is conducting Germany’s official probe into the incident, has yet to release any results. Peter Frank, the country’s top prosecutor, said this month that there was no evidence that Moscow was involved in the attack.

UN Secretary General

A spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated this week that the organization has no mandate to initiate the investigation. In response, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisted that Moscow would continue to seek an appropriate format for the probe.

When asked about a UN probe into the Nord Stream sabotage, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday that the world body would need to “have a mandate, which we do not, clearly.”

Partners Should Investigate Nord Stream Blasts, Says U.S.

As the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions did not take place in U.S. waters, Washington believes it is more appropriate for the countries whose territory was involved to investigate the matter, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Wednesday.

“I would leave it to our partners on whose territory – on whose soil as it were – these blasts occurred to speak to the appropriate investigative mechanism,” Price said during a daily briefing.

Price declined to comment on the news that Russia has called a session of the UN Security Council for next week, with the intent to seek an international investigation into the September 2022 explosions that damaged the Baltic Sea pipelines previously supplying Russian natural gas to Germany.

“I will repeat what we have said before: What we have heard from Moscow, what we have heard from the Kremlin, is nothing but a lie. It is pure disinformation that the U.S. was behind what transpired with Nord Stream 2, the Nord Stream blasts,” Price said. “This is the message that we have conveyed consistently in the face of these lies that have been parroted by Russian officials, and will convey them again if we need to, in any form.”

Russia has previously said that the UK and U.S. “benefited” from the destruction of the pipelines, but stopped short of accusing Washington outright.

Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, accused Price of “once again lying live on air, openly mocking journalists who asked fully justified questions.”

Denmark

Denmark, in whose waters the explosions happened, is a NATO member. Both Denmark and Sweden – which is trying to join the U.S.-led bloc – have refused to even respond to Russian requests for an investigation. NATO’s current secretary general is a former prime minister of Norway.

Countercurrents is answerable only to our readers. Support honest journalism because we have no PLANET B.

17 February 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

Palestine Update 628
Opinion

Israel’s levels of cruelties are unimaginably shocking

It is hard to imagine the levels of Israeli cruelties. The story below of a Palestinian born into, paralyzed, and killed by Israel’s colonial system is hard to digest. The struggle to dismantle it begins in the cave where he spent his final years. The cruelties are accompanied by double standards. With literally tens of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets every week in protest, in what is termed a “struggle for Israeli democracy”, a “meticulous examination of the messages coming from the spokespersons for and participants in these demonstrations, however, reveals that their true purpose is to turn the clock back far enough so that the apartheid regime in Israel can once again be marketed as a functioning democracy, allowing the international community to continue turning a blind eye to the crimes it commits.” In the West Bank, annexation is already happening. These are evident from three indicators: (1) changes made to the organizing normative framework with which a state administers a certain territory (i.e., shifting from one body of applicable law to another); (2) changes to its bureaucracy’s organizational structure; and (3) shifts with respect to the symbolic performance of power.Israeli politics has shocking elements within it. “Ben Gvir’s, “political rise is inextricably linked to the violent vigilante settler movement, and to his own rap sheet of anti-Arab provocations, which have inflamed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and won him a devoted following. His ultranationalist Jewish Power party has called for the expulsion of “disloyal” Palestinians, the annexation of the West Bank — the land Palestinians envision as part of their future state — and for “revenge” against anyone who stands in its way”.There is the resistance too. “Palestinian political prisoners in jails across Israel have begun a series of mass civil disobedience actions to protest against punitive measures imposed by the country’s new far-right government…The disobedience will culminate in a hunger strike at the start of Ramadan in late March, prisoners say….Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wasted no time delivering on his plans to create harsher conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”

Please read and disseminate in this issue of Palestine Updates widely.

On behalf of MLN Palestine Updates

Ranjan Solomon

The theft of Harun Abu Aram’s body, home, and life
Harun was born into, paralyzed, and killed by Israel’s colonial system. The struggle to dismantle it begins in the cave where he spent his final years.

“Harun Abu Aram is dead. For two years, he lay completely paralyzed in a dirty cave, without running water, plagued by pain. This was his life from the moment an Israeli soldier arrived in the South Hebron Hills, in the occupied West Bank, to confiscate an electric generator and shot Harun in the neck in January 2021. The army refused to allow his family to build a home for him, despite the fact that the family was on their privately-owned land, and so they were forced to live in the cave. This is what Israeli expulsions and ethnic cleansing look like in the region of Masafer Yatta…A minute’s walk from the cave where Harun died stands the settlement outpost of Avigail, which was built in 2001. Its homes are still standing, despite the demolition orders handed out to each and every one of them. On Tuesday, the government announced that it would formally legalize the outpost, which has long enjoyed paved roads, electricity, and running water. One hill, two laws.”
Read more in 972 Mag.com

Israel: It’s apartheid, not ‘democracy’, these protesters really want to save

“Since the installation of the new, most extreme government in Israel’s history, with a Kahanist minister of national security once convicted of supporting a terrorist organisation, tens of thousands of Israelis have been taking to the streets every week in protest, in what is termed a “struggle for Israeli democracy”. This description assumes, of course, that Israeli democracy in fact exists and that it is threatened now by fascist figures bent on destroying it. A meticulous examination of the messages coming from the spokespersons for and participants in these demonstrations, however, reveals that their true purpose is to turn the clock back far enough so that the apartheid regime in Israel can once again be marketed as a functioning democracy, allowing the international community to continue turning a blind eye to the crimes it commits.”
Read more from Middle East Eye

Israel is Annexing the West Bank. Don’t be misled by its Gas lighting

“At the same time, and with immediate effect, the [Israeli] government has decided to implement changes to its administration and organization of the West Bank which, according to our analysis, reflect annexation in all but name. According to breaking news this evening in Israel, this is also the analysis of the Unites States’ government…we argue that three indicators can show a change in the legal status of a territory, demonstrating de jure annexation, even without a formal declaration: (1) changes made to the organizing normative framework with which a state administers a certain territory (i.e., shifting from one body of applicable law to another); (2) changes to its bureaucracy’s organizational structure; and (3) shifts with respect to the symbolic performance of power…Considered in light of the recent developments in the context of Israel and Palestine, all three indicators demonstrate that annexation is already occurring, even if Israel is attempting to evade its consequences by deferring a declaration to a more opportune moment.”
Read more in Just Security

Itamar Ben Gvir: How an extremist settler became a powerful Israeli minister

“Ben Gvir, 46, now occupies a position of immense power in the same system he has spent his life defying. His political rise is inextricably linked to the violent vigilante settler movement, and to his own rap sheet of anti-Arab provocations, which have inflamed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and won him a devoted following. His ultranationalist Jewish Power party has called for the expulsion of “disloyal” Palestinians, the annexation of the West Bank — the land Palestinians envision as part of their future state — and for “revenge” against anyone who stands in its way. Until last year, it was a fringe movement, repeatedly failing to muster enough votes to enter the Knesset…Followers and critics alike acknowledge that he is among the few politicians who, with his personal charm and oratory acumen, offers a simple, if dangerous, answer to a question long deferred: As the prospect of peace negotiations recedes by the day, what should Israel do about its military occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, home to more than 3 million Palestinians? With Ben Gvir now at the helm of the security forces, many worry his penchant for “pyromania,” in the words of one former defense minister, could set the region ablaze.”
Read full article in Washington Post

Palestinian political prisoners begin mass civil disobedience in Israeli jails
Resistance grows against worsening conditions as Israel imposes new collective punishment policies on prisoners

“Palestinian political prisoners in jails across Israel have begun a series of mass civil disobedience actions to protest against punitive measures imposed by the country’s new far-right government…The disobedience will culminate in a hunger strike at the start of Ramadan in late March, prisoners say….Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wasted no time delivering on his plans to create harsher conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.”
Read more in Middle East Eye

The Jurisprudence of Death: Palestinian Corpses & the Israeli Legal Process
“Palestinians are not exempt from Israeli detention after death. The decision to withhold the body of deceased Palestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid, who died of cancer while in custody, is the most recent manifestation of the Israeli necropolitical regime that regulates the bodies of dead Palestinians. The history of withholding Palestinian bodies spans several decades. Since 1967, Israel has withheld hundreds of Palestinian corpses, which it has primarily used as “bargaining chips” in negotiations or potential prisoner swap deals. While the exact numbers are obfuscated by a lack of state transparency, between 1991 to 2008, Israel intermittently returned over 400 dead Palestinian bodies. Today, the number of Palestinian corpses Israel continues to withhold is estimated to be over 370: more than 115 bodies are withheld in morgues, in addition to 256 corpses buried in numbered graves without identification known as the “cemeteries for enemy combatants” or the “Cemetery of Numbers.”…This essay highlights and analyzes the Israeli laws and policies pertaining to Palestinian corpses, written and deliberated in a language most Palestinians do not speak.”

Read more in Jadaliyya.com

19 February 2023

Source: nakbaliberation.com