Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is reported to be planning a run for Senate in Kansas next year and quietly recruiting funders for that race. And surprise– Pompeo has already reached out to Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor around, and to other pro-Israel donors– at the very time that he was announcing that the U.S. no longer considers Israeli settlements illegal.

The report by Michael Wilner of McClatchy and Bryan Lowry of the Kansas City Star is frank about the crazy timing here.

The timing of Pompeo’s exchange with Adelson coincided with the secretary’s on-camera announcement on November 18 that the Trump administration would revoke its longstanding legal determination on the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Adelson supports the settler enterprise.

Last month, over 100 Democratic House members signed a letter that decried the Trump administration’s policy shift on West Bank settlements. The letter was initiated by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI and was sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. On November 18, Pompeo announced that the U.S. government was abandoning a 1978 State Department legal opinion which determined that settlement expansion in the occupied territories were in violation of international law. Just a day after Pompeo’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advanced a bill that would annex the Jordan Valley.

“If the U.S. unilaterally abandons international and human rights law, we can only expect a more chaotic and brutal twenty-first century for Americans and our allies, including the Israeli people,” reads Levin’s letter, “Given these serious implications, we strongly urge you to reverse this policy decision immediately.”

Israel is holding a prominent Palestinian scientist without charge or trial.

Ubai Aboudi, an American citizen, was due to travel to the United States in January for a conference on science and Palestinian rights.

Prominent scholars, including Nobel Prize winner George P. Smith and Noam Chomsky signed a petition demanding Aboudi’s release.

The petition calls on the European Union in particular to demand that Israel free Aboudi. The EU grants Israel huge amounts of money under the guise of research and science partnerships despite Israel’s constant violations of the human rights condition in its agreement with the EU.

European Union (EU) countries’ are taking steps towards boycotting the Israeli apartheid system, using its legal, legislative and parliamentary institutions to oppose the occupation, Palestine News Network reported.

The EU condemned the Trump administration’s positions and policies carried out in the Palestinian Territories, occupied by Israel since 1967, especially in Jerusalem regarding the Israeli settlements, and the two-state solution.

Within this context, the EU’s Supreme Court has approved labeling Israeli goods produced in settlements built in the Palestinian territories, and exported to the EU. It should also be noted that the EU always asserts that settlements are “illegal, and are an obstacle for achieving peace.”

On March 20th 1991, the United States Congress passed H.J Res 104, which was then signed into law by President George H. W. Bush and became Public Law No. 102-14. The language of the law asserts that the "Seven Noahide Laws" are the ethical values of civilized society and are the basis on which the American nation was founded and that without these Seven Noahide Laws society stands in peril. It is also stated that it is our nation's "responsibility" to transmit these "ethical values" to the generations of the future and that in the future the President of the United States will sign an "international scroll" pledging to return the world to the Seven Noahide Laws through education and charity. The law also celebrates the birthday of one Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, who along with this organization has been dedicated to spreading and fostering the Seven Noahide Laws in society.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met for an hour and 45 minutes on the specifics of a proposed US-Israel defense pact. The pact amounts to a more or less direct US intervention in Israeli politics, after two elections failed to end with a government formed.

The Trump Administration had made no bones about preferring Netanyahu over his primary political rival Benny Gantz, and the pact seems to be pandering to that fact, since Gantz is opposed to the deal.

Netanyahu looks to be steering heavily into this US lifeline, arguing that the deal proves he needs to stay in power, and that in the event of a rotation government with Gantz, he’d have to be first because of his “unique” ties with the US.

US and Western European officials are continuing a strategy of making dubious allegations against Iran in an effort to try to justify continued military hostility, which is expected to involve a large US military buildup in the region.

In Europe, this is centering on claims about Iran’s conventional missile systems, arguing that they are in violation of a UN ban on nuclear-capable missiles even though Iran doesn’t have any nuclear warheads. Iran has pointed out this is a lie, saying they have a right to missile systems under international law.

This allegation, pushed by Britain, France, and Germany, is likely to be a red herring that will be used in upcoming talks with Iran about their civilian nuclear program to distract from relatively straightforward matters of sanctions relief and enrichment limits.

Israel and the Czech Republic has signed a $125 million government-to-government contract for advanced radar systems from Israel Aerospace Industries subsidiary Elta Systems.

The deal, signed by Israeli Ministry of Defense officials and their Czech counterparts during a ceremony Thursday, is for eight ELM-2084 multimission radars, a technology used for Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling air defense systems as well as the Barak missile system.

The radars are for the Czech Mobile Air Defense Radar program. The program includes Czech businesses, whose work will make up for about 30 percent of the contract’s value.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met for an hour and 45 minutes on the specifics of a proposed US-Israel defense pact. The pact amounts to a more or less direct US intervention in Israeli politics, after two elections failed to end with a government formed.

The Trump Administration had made no bones about preferring Netanyahu over his primary political rival Benny Gantz, and the pact seems to be pandering to that fact, since Gantz is opposed to the deal.

Netanyahu looks to be steering heavily into this US lifeline, arguing that the deal proves he needs to stay in power, and that in the event of a rotation government with Gantz, he’d have to be first because of his “unique” ties with the US.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is keen to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, on the grounds that the US is going to let him do so. Israeli officials, particularly military officials, are warning against one of the primary targets, the Jordan Valley.

The Jordan Valley, which connects the West Bank to Jordan, is something the Israeli right has long wanted to annex, as it would mean the rest of the Palestinian West Bank would never have a border with any nation other than Israel.

Military officials are warning that the big problem would be with Jordan itself, and that this move would further damage Israel-Jordan ties, and might force the Jordanian government to take drastic steps.

Netanyahu adds that during his meeting with Secretary of State Pompeo in Lisbon, the two agreed to move forward with plans for a joint defense treaty; PM also denies reports of him agreeing to serve only 6 months as premier as part of the rotation agreement with Blue and White

The International Criminal Court prosecutor is again giving Israel a pass for its deadly raid on a flotilla to Gaza a decade ago.

Israeli soldiers fatally wounded 10 people aboard the Mavi Marmara after raiding the ship, which was part of a civilian flotilla.

On Monday, Fatou Bensouda declared she is standing by her 2015 decision not to open an investigation into the attack – despite the court’s judges telling her twice to reconsider.

In September, ICC appeals judges called Bensouda “disrespectful” and said she had treated an earlier order to reconsider the case in a “perfunctory manner.”

What do Paul Wolfowitz, Dan Kurtzer, Aaron Miller, and Prince Andrew have in common?

These four privileged older white guys have all sought (and been granted) exposure in the corporate media recently. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the prime architects and advocates of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was given this fine platform on the NYT’s opinion page in order to criticize Pres. Trump’s recent decision to withdraw (or later, reduce/redeploy) the U.S. troop presence in Syria. Dan Kurtzer and Aaron Miller, two of the leading “peace processors” guiding U.S. policy on Palestine and other Middle Eastern issues for 24 years, 1992-2016, were given this platform on the Washington Post, to comment on Trump’s policy on Israel’s illegal settlement. As for Prince Andrew, you may have heard he gave this disastrous interview to the BBC, discussing his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

A new Israeli settlement will be built in the heart of the flashpoint city of Hebron, in the southern West Bank, joining a long list of notoriously violent settlements in the area.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennet, of the ultra nationalist “New Right” party, said on Sunday that a new settlement would be built on top of Hebron’s once bustling fruit and vegetable market, now referred to by locals as a “ghost town.”

According to Bennet, the existing buildings, which belong to the Hebron municipality, will be razed to the ground to make way for new shops and buildings for the settlers.

The new settlement will create a contiguous settlement bloc in the middle of Hebron’s Old City, extending from the Ibrahimi Mosque to the Avraham Avinu settlement, and according to Bennet, will double the Jewish population of the city.

The UN General Assembly yesterday officially asked Israel to leave the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

The request was made after the resolution was adopted after 91 UN member states voted in favour, nine rejected and 65 abstained.

The resolution stipulates that Israel leaves all the Syrian Golan Heights occupied in June 1967, stating this is an implementation of the UN Security Council’s resolution.

Backed by the Democrats, the US House of Representatives is planning to vote on a resolution reaffirming the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tomorrow.

The resolution was introduced by Representatives Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

Originally, this was introduced in April and referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee advocates for a negotiated, long-term solution that ensures Israel’s security as a democratic, Jewish nation while also establishing a Palestinian state.

The Israeli government has increased discretionary spending on settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory by 50 per cent over the last two years, reported the Jerusalem Post.

According to data published by settlement watchdog Peace Now, so-called “discretionary spending” “is expenditure by various ministries outside the general budget, including from the Interior, Housing, Education, and Energy and Water ministries, as well as the National Roads Authority”.

These funds are directed towards the construction of settlement housing units, as well as for roads inside the settlements, “buildings for educational, social and religious purposes, commercial centres and industrial parks”, the report added.

France’s National Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution conflating support for Palestinian equality with hatred of Jews – an initiative supported by the country’s Israel lobby.

But most lawmakers did not take part in the vote.

Last September, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that they were working on a mutual defense pact. Such a treaty, if signed, would officially and permanently mandate an American military intervention if Israel were to ever start a conflict with its neighbors.

Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison are among 333 potential witnesses in the corruption trial of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s attorney general announced Monday.

On 1 June 2018, 21-year-old Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar was shot and killed by Israeli forces while tending to casualties during the Great March of Return - the unarmed protests that had begun two months earlier along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel and that continue to this day.

In predictable fashion, Israeli officials have cast the protesters - from children to elderly women to disabled persons - as diabolical minions sent by Hamas to lay waste to Israel via “kite and balloon terrorism” and other Scary Stuff.

As with every other manifestation of the Palestinian demand for dignity, Israel has used the Great March of Return as an opportunity to engage in mass slaughter: on a single day in May 2018, some 59 protesters were killed, including children.

Having slipped through Israel's security fence, Emad Khalil Ibrahim Shahin and his friends sneaked into an abandoned barracks and lit a fire. Anxious they were about to be discovered, they fled the scene.

“We ran until we found a sand dune to hide behind on the other side of the fence, but then noticed Emad was not with us. He ran slower because he was on crutches,” one of his companions, who wished to remain anonymous, told Middle East Eye.

“We saw him on the ground and told him to crawl. But then a military vehicle raced up and a soldier fired at him, shooting him in the right leg. Soon a helicopter came and took him away.”

It would be 355 days until Shahin returned to Gaza. He arrived on 23 October in a body bag.

The Israeli millitary has sparked outrage among the secular core of society, after a media report revealed the numbers of Ultra-Orthodox enlisted had been inflated.

Already a sensitive political subject, public radio broadcaster Kan on Wednesday claimed that the military had "doubled or even tripled" the numbers of Ultra-Orthodox drafted in recent years.

The Israeli army has since launched an investigation into how the numbers collected.

Providing additional information on the fresh tussle between the United States (US) and Iran, after the US navy spotted missile parts linked to Iran, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) came out with the story that says the Trump administration is looking to deploy around 14,000 more troops in the Middle East. The news relies on anonymous US officials.

Key quotes
The Trump administration is considering a significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East, including dozens of more ships, other military hardware and as many as 14,000 additional troops to counter Iran.

Israeli Minister of Defense, Naftali Bennett, on Tuesday, issued a written order imposing international economic sanctions on Palestinian militants abroad, The Palestinian News and Info Agency reported.

A new investigative report by Al Jazeera revealed, on Sunday, that an international humanitarian aid agency helped the Israeli army in a failed spy mission in the Gaza strip, Quds News Network reported

Humedica International Aid is a non-governmental organization based in Germany, providing humanitarian and medical aid for Palestinians in Gaza. The organization backed a failed Israeli spy operation in 2018, hiding Israeli military equipment together with medical aid, in warehouses, Al Jazeera’s “What is Hidden is Worse” revealed.

“I spoke yesterday with President Trump, a very important conversation for Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed Monday that he talked with United States President Donald Trump about the possible annexation of the Jordan Valley, suggesting that Washington was open to the move.

“Historic opportunities” must be seized Netanyahu said and called on rival Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to work together and form a government of national unity that would put the bid forward and at the same time avoid a possible third general election.

GHISLAINE Maxwell and her paedophile lover Jeffrey Epstein were both Israeli spies who took pictures of powerful men having sex with underage girls to blackmail them, their alleged Mossad handler has sensationally claimed.

The pair allegedly ran a "honey-trap" operation where they would provide young girls to politicians in order to squeeze them for information for the Israelis.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were Mossad spies according to explosive new claimsCredit: Getty - Contributor
The unsubstantiated claims have been made by Ari Ben-Menashe who claims he is a former Israeli spy.

Ben-Menashe claims that he was the “handler” of Ghislaine's dad Robert Maxwell, who was also a spy, and that it was the former newspaper baron who introduced Epstein and his daughter to the Israeli intelligence agency.

How does Chancellor Merkel intend to explain it during her first visit to Auschwitz on December 6, 2019, that she and her government – given the historical responsibility for the Holocaust and 74 years after the liberation of Auschwitz from the National Socialist concentration and extermination camp by the soldiers of the Red Army – miss any respect when it comes to the permanent break of international law in the “Jewish state”. Does not it respect the respect for international law, as a compelling doctrine from German history, to finally take back the raison d’etat for the security of the “Jewish state”? How can a German government ignore the constant violations of international law simply because they are committed by a Jewish regime, descendants of the victims of the Holocaust? The clear rules, which international law has, Merkel can not simply sweep her “Christian Zionism” under the table.

Jordanian army units have carried out military exercises during the past few days simulating the response to an Israeli invasion. They took place in the presence of King Abdullah II and the Prime Minister amid wide official interest, which suggests that the general mood in the Kingdom is to prepare for different scenarios, including those which are much worse than the “deal of the century” given what has been leaked about it so far.

In recent months, it has become clear that there is a deep crisis between Jordan and Israel. This was evident by Jordan’s refusal to renew the lease for Israel to use Baqoura and Ghumar, and instead insist on restoring its own sovereignty over the two areas. The King then visited them wearing his military uniform, viewing them as liberated. The most recent evidence of this is putting on trial an Israeli citizen who entered Jordan illegally, making him the first Israeli to be tried in the history of the Jordanian judiciary.

Military training exercise conducted by the Jordanian Armed Forces on Monday, named “Swords of Karama,” received wide attention from Israel. The training was held near the Western border region.

The training that King Abdullah II and senior Jordanian officials attended was named after the “Battle of Karama” that took place in 1968 and ended with Jordan’s victory against the occupation army. The King of Jordan has described relations with Israel as “going through its worst stage ever,” while expressing outrage at Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu since the latter announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley and the northern basin of the Dead Sea to Israel.

The training involved carrying out a defensive battle of artillery, fighter jets and helicopters, aiming to destroy enemy premises and bridges that could be used as crossing points, in addition to holding archery exercises using various weapons.

An advisory committee set up to monitor and recommend the investment policies of Brown University in Rhode Island has voted to divest from companies participating in the continued subjugation of Palestinians.

The successful passing of the resolution by the university’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies (ACCRIP) on Monday paves the way for activists to pressure the university to withdraw support for companies "facilitating the [Israeli] occupation and its human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza".

In a statement released by Brown Divest, a coalition of undergraduate students that has been at the forefront of the call to divest from companies operating in the occupied territories, the group said they were "elated that the university committee responsible for divestment has finally joined the calls for divestment from human rights violations in Palestine".

New details have emerged about a botched Israeli intelligence operation in the Gaza Strip in November 2018 that sparked deadly Israeli air strikes and Palestinian rocket fire.

Eight undercover Israeli agents - who were disguised as Palestinians and had taken the aliases of a real family in Gaza - entered the coastal enclave on November 11 last year with the objective of planting listening devices on Hamas's private communications system, an investigation by Al Jazeera Arabic's Ma Khafia Aazam (Tip of the Iceberg) programme revealed.

However, the Israelis were stopped and questioned by a Hamas patrol unit in Khan Younis for 40 minutes and became suspicious of their answers. A firefight broke out and the Israeli operatives used guns with silencers, immediately killing Hamas commander Nour Baraka and one of his aides, Mohammed al-Qarra.

Forty-seven incidents of violence toward Palestinians and their property took place over the past tree months ? Israel Police closed most cases because perpetrators were not identified

"This is going to sound insane," Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett introduces during a social media message on Iran published Saturday. He explains that Iran blocked internet access after mass anti-government and economic grievance-driven protests spread to some 100 cities over the past weeks.

"Most social media sites in Iran are still banned as we speak," he notes, while also describing a typical young Iranian's frustration at being prevented from logging in. He then calls for a all programmers and techies to unite for a “worldwide hackathon” to free the Iranians from their regime-imposed internet ban.

“So, here is a crazy idea. How about every techie in the world — Israelis, Arabs, Iranians, Americans, Europeans and everyone else unite for one purpose: to help the long-suffering Iranian people gain open access to all social media. A worldwide hackathon for freedom,” Bennet says.

But while it’s fair to say Iran is involved in the Iran protests, if not the way Pompeo presents it, and tangentially involved in Iraq, opposing the protesters, Pompeo’s attempt to tie Iran to the Lebanon protests is plainly untrue.

Lebanon’s protest of the past month has seen protesters faulting the government for its inability to handle economic struggles, and chiefly the government’s inability to reliably provide electricity across the country.

Pompeo said Lebanese protesters “want Hezbollah and Iran out of their country,” which is simply not true. Indeed, the only politician that suffered from the protest movement was Prime Minister Hariri, a long-time political rival of Hezbollah.

In all three countries, the protests have been non-sectarian in nature, and despite Pompeo’s claims to the contrary, none of them have presented their protests are at all about removing the Ayatollahs from power.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip held a funeral for 16-year-old Fahd al-Astal, who was shot dead by Israeli snipers on Friday.

During the procession? mourners roamed the streets shouting slogans against the Israeli regime. A mixture of grief and anger was the mood among Gazans over Israel’s killing of a young protester.

Fahd al-Astal was taking part in a peaceful demonstration marking International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in the east of the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younes. Fahd‘s distraught family says the teenager was an active supporter of the Palestinian cause.

Palestinians organized the Great March of Return to call for the legitimate right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic land of Palestine, as enshrined in United Nations Resolution 194, and the lifting of the illegal blockade. Their peaceful action was met with excessive and lethal of force by the Israeli regime.

The main reasons why US allies are declining the invitation to join the US-led naval coalition and are choosing to distance themselves from the super-power are because they do not want to be dragged into a military confrontation between Washington and Tehran, some such as Germany prefer diplomacy, while others such as Japan want to preserve economic and political relations with Iran. In France’s case they still hold out hope for saving the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]," says Sarah Abed, and independent journalist and analyst.
In addition, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal a year ago leaving Europe's major states, the signatories to the accords, struggling with the consequences of Washington's move.

"A concern that European nations have is that Washington will exploit the IMSC to carry out their sanctions campaign by interfering with legitimate Iranian commercial shipping vessel missions," he says.

Along with missile manufacturing, the country's Navy has also disclosed five other military projects it is currently involved in, including the sea-launched Pelikan drone, the Sadaf-2 naval mine, the Soren positioning system, the Balaban guided bomb, and the Loqman training vessel.

The Iranian Navy has initiated the mass production of submarine-launched Jask cruise missiles, the chief of the naval warfare service Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi said on Saturday.

According to Khanzadi the domestically-developed missile will be fitted onto all of Iran's submarines, adding that the current range of the projectile will be significantly improved further on, allowing it to hit targets across long distances.

t is hardly shocking that the United States government has finally decreed that illegal Jewish settlements which have been built in defiance of international law, are, somehow, "consistent" with international law.

US foreign policy has been edging closer towards this conclusion for some time. Since his advent to the White House in January 2017, President Donald Trump has unleashed a total and complete reversal of his country’s foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel.

Let us not have any illusion regarding the American approach to the so-called ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ prior to Trump’s Presidency. The US has never, not even once, stood up for Palestinians or Arabs since the establishment of the State of Israel over the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948. Moreover, Washington has bankrolled the Israeli occupation of Palestine in every possible way, including the subsidizing of the illegal Jewish settlements.

Two weeks since the air force attack in Deir el-Balah that killed nine members of the Sawarkah family, who were living in a structure that the army had defined as an Islamic Jihad “terror infrastructure,” the Israel Defense Forces are still investigating why the green light to bomb the building wasn’t based on updated information.

But an inquiry conducted by Haaretz shows that this conduct isn’t unusual. According to sources in the defense establishment, the IDF often bombs terror targets in Gaza that were included in its target bank long before the strike without checking in real time whether there are civilians at the site or whether the site has been converted into residences.

Discussions are underway with new NATO ally Bulgaria to create a Black Sea Coordination Center in Varna. The United States is considering a ten-year roadmap for defense cooperation with Bulgaria and is eager to provide Sofia broader access to its high-end military technologies. The advanced technologies would include surveillance capabilities specifically targeting Russia.
There is also a fundamental second level of stupidity in basing such an effort in Bulgaria as the Turks, also frequently at odds with Washington, control the door to the Black Sea through the Bosporus and Dardanelles. If relations really do go sour and if demands to kick Turkey out of NATO ever do bear fruit, Ankara can make it very difficult for NATO warships transiting into the Black Sea.

Children being made to endure lengthy medical treatments alone is a particularly cruel feature of Israel’s permit regime imposed on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is a shameful reality that COGAT, the Israeli military body that handles such permits, tries to obscure with liberal use of emojis on its social media pages.

I have previously written about how COGAT tries to present itself as a humanitarian body in its social media propaganda while it plays a central role in Israel’s complete and unjust system of control over Palestinian movement.

For example, COGAT describes its restrictions on the movement of millions of Palestinians, such as military checkpoints, as projects which “improve the quality of life of the region’s population.”

It even put out a video last week boasting of a “service revolution” following the launch of “an advanced call center” through which its Civil Administration “provides clear responses on all topics, to everyone”:

The head of the Palestinian Commission of Detainees' Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr, confirmed to The New Arab’s Arabic-language service that Abu Diyak died at dawn on Tuesday, in the hospital of Israel’s Ramla prison.

Abu Diyak had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2015. His condition subsequently deteriorated, which Palestinian media say is in part due to medical mistakes at the hospital in southern Israel where he had surgery to remove part of his large intestine.

"The death of Abu Diyak comes after months of warning [the Israeli authorities] about the seriousness of his condition, that he could die at any moment because of the medical negligence he was subjected to," said Abu Bakr.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, issued a searing condemnation of Abu Diyak's death, calling on Israel to take responsibility for its actions.

According to Pentagon officials, the US has begun negotiations with Saudi Arabia on the question of cost-sharing for the ever-growing US military presence in the Saudi kingdom. Talks began with the arrival of US radar and air defense systems.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley met with the Saudi crown prince this week and brought up this matter. Milley was presenting the US presence as aimed squarely at Iran, and deterring Iran from attacking the Saudis.

Gen. Milley also intended to give the impression that this was not a short-term mission, either, saying the US wants to maintain this presence in the region as part of America’s overall regional footprint.

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
The Israeli government is aiming to increase the volume of Israel’s defence exports, reported Globes, which has revealed the main points of the plan for the first time.

The project, being overseen by the Defence Ministry’s International Defence Cooperation Directorate (SIBAT) led by Brigadier General (Res.) Yair Kulas, will begin to be rolled out in early 2020.

According to Globes, the plan is based on “focused seminars for senior commanders in foreign armies”, Israeli military “assistance for promoting sales of Israeli weapons”, and “subsidising small and medium-sized defence companies seeking to sell arms around the world”.

Speaking this week, Kulas said that SIBAT favours a major expansion of agreements between countries, resulting in significant deals for the large defence companies, especially Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft won the 2019 Genesis Prize at the beginning of the year, receiving a million-dollar award given annually to Jewish individuals “who have attained excellence and international renown in their chosen professional fields.” At the award ceremony in June, the prize was presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime friend of Kraft. In his acceptance speech, Kraft told the audience that he would use the prize money to combat antisemitism and BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. He also pledged $20 million towards the creation of a foundation that would do the same.

The good thing about the Secretary of State’s declaration that the U.S. does not regard settlements as illegal is that it is a naked expression of the power of the Israel lobby in U.S. policy making. Even the Associated Press chalked the decision up to Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson.

For 20 years Sheldon Adelson has been pouring money into Republican politics to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and he has succeeded. Trump has proved to be Adelson’s “perfect little puppet” (to quote the president on Adelson’s former favorite in 2015), giving the casino mogul everything on his wish list, from recognition of Jerusalem as the capital to recognizing the Golan annexation to tearing up the Iran deal. “A huge check from Sheldon Adelson” and winning Jewish votes in Florida, is how Thomas Friedman explained Trump’s policy last summer. Adelson has more power than the secretary of State, writes Tim Egan of the Times.

Head of Yisrael Beiteinu party Avigdor Lieberman stressed on Monday that he would reject holding a Knesset committee meeting to discuss providing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immunity, Quds Press reported.

This came just one day after he said that he would support Netanyahu’s efforts to form the House Committee in the Knesset in order to discuss his claim for immunity regarding the corruption cases against him.

“The prime minister said he doesn’t need immunity,” Haaretz quoted Lieberman saying, arguing that a court decision would be “the only thing that would be accepted by all citizens”.

Israeli warplanes carried out fresh air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday following a rocket fire, according to the military, reports Anadolu Agency.

The army said fighter jets struck a number of targets belonging to Palestinian groups Hamas, which rules the seaside territory.

No injuries were reported.

The air strikes came shortly after the Israeli army attacked a number of Hamas sites in the southern Gaza Strip after two rockets were fired from the enclave into southern Israel.

I rarely have anything positive to say about Donald Trump's foreign policy, and his overall approach to the Middle East is damaging and potentially disastrous for the United States and Israel alike. America cannot turn its back on the region, as Trump would like to do, and imagine the Middle East will return the favor. And Israel will not be safe in an America First world in which allies like the Kurds are cavalierly betrayed and enemies like Iran are only haphazardly confronted.

Well then, I guess we have to stay there indefinitely!

Two days ago at the ADL conference Jewish Zionist comedian Sacha Baron Cohen criticised the internet and social media companies for allowing freedom of speech. This grotesque character who has made a career of marginalising oppressed minorities by depicting stereotypical characters and then ridiculing them is now calling on social media to adopt gag orders and to move us further into an Orwellian realm.

Galvanized by the support it received from the Jewish comedian, the ADL is now demanding that 10 social media accounts “should be removed immediately.”

For one reason or another I am included on the list. I need not mention that I have never been charged with any crime let alone a hate crime. I’ve never once been questioned by a single law enforcement body anywhere in the world. This does not stop the ADL from writing of me: “Gilad Atzmon is an anti-Semitic author and musician who describes himself as an ‘ex-Israeli’ and an ‘ex-Jew.’

The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.

There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.

Israeli commentators are already warning of the possibility of civil war if, as seems likely, Netanyahu decides to whip up his far-right supporters into a frenzy of outrage. After a decade in power, he has developed an almost cult-like status among sections of the public.

My short visit to Palestine in early November began around the time of the commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, went through the assassination by Israel of Islamic Jihad leader, Bahaa Abu Al-Atta and his wife in Gaza, and ended as Prime Minister Netanyahu, who should be indicted for his countless crimes against the Palestinian people, was indicted for low grade corruption (valued at about $200,000), pulling strings and lying. And as always, Palestinians continue to bury their dead as Israelis bury their heads in the sand.

Canadian politicians are echoing fabricated claims of anti-Semitism after students rallying for Palestinian rights were attacked by a violent anti-Palestinian group at York University in Toronto last week.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asserted that “violence and racist chants” were directed at Jewish students, and blamed “anti-Semitism.”

But available evidence, including video, paints a completely different picture: It was pro-Israel extremists who attacked students protesting the presence of Israeli soldiers on their campus.

It is only a matter of time before the next terrible massacre in Gaza or elsewhere in illegally occupied Palestine will take place. The Zionist regime needs wars both internally and externally to survive.

Sirens went off in Gaza Strip and Sderot, Israeli Defence Forces reported on their twitter page on Tuesday.

Following the sirens, two launches from Gaza Strip at Israeli territory were identified, according to the IDF. The military added the Iron Dome air defence system managed to intercept one projectile.

"2 rockets were just fired from #Gaza at Israeli civilians. 1 rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome Aerial Defense System," the IDF wrote on its Twitter page.

All external foes will be defeated if they make moves against Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander warned at a massive pro-government rally amid protests over fuel price hikes.

Major General Hossein Salami addressed people in downtown Tehran on Monday. He said that the country’s rivals are “no longer capable of anything” in their attacks against the nation.

We have shown patience towards the hostile moves of America, the Zionist regime [Israel] and Saudi Arabia against the Islamic Republic of Iran... but we will destroy them if they cross our red lines.

Thousands have marched on the streets of the country’s capital and gathered on the Enqelan Square (Revolution Square). Calling themselves the ‘Supporters of the Leadership’, the demonstrators waved national flags, carried placards and chanted slogans in support for the Supreme Leader Ali Khanemei and the current government. Some were also seen burning American flags.

Israel is set to expel a Human Rights Watch employee, its executive director Ken Roth said on Sunday, denouncing the forthcoming deportation of one of his staffers.

US citizen Omar Shakir, the New York-based rights group's director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, is to be deported from Israel on Monday over his alleged support of a boycott of the country, AFP said.

Israel accuses him of being a supporter of the banned Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for a broad-ranging boycott to pressure Israel to end its rights abuses against Palestinians.

The expulsion, upheld by Israel’s supreme court, would make Shakir the first HRW official to be expelled from the country under a controversial 2017 law allowing the deportation of foreigners who support the boycott, according to authorities.

Israel's supreme court orders expulsion of Human Rights Watch campaigner

Normalising Israel as a Jewish state absents “Palestinian experience, history and identity claims”. Yasmeen Abu Laban and Abigail Bakan, Palestinian and Jewish authors of “Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race” have constructed a detailed analysis of race and power relations which has been sustained and adopted by the international community. By dispelling the conflations associated with race, the book delves into the political implications, showing how the exclusion of Palestinians on all levels – politics, land and environment – are all sites in which Israel is able to manipulate, thus constructing the apartheid state in full view of, and with no obstruction from, the international community.

A disgraced Israeli businessman who is said to have received billions of dollars in backing from Saudi investment funds, has admitted to working with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, to draft the controversial “peace plan” commonly known as “the deal of the century”.

The surprise revelation was reported in a Vanity Fair article on the rise and catastrophic downfall of WeWork founder and former CEO Adam Neumann. The 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur raised on a kibbutz in southern Israel, not far from the Gaza Strip, is said to have assigned one of the directors of WeWork to produce a slick video for Kushner that would showcase what an economically transformed West Bank and Gaza would look like. The video was shown by Kushner during his speech at the White House’s peace conference in Bahrain during the summer.

It seems more than coincidence that as the legal noose tightens around Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israeli military have suddenly stepped up air strikes on Iranian forces based in Syria.

Playing the strongman role on national security and winning another term as prime minister would stave off prosecution over pending corruption charges.

If Netanyahu is ousted from office he will be immediately subjected to trial. A subsequent conviction on all charges could result in him facing up to 13 years in jail. A lot is at stake for Israel’s elder statesmen. At 70 years old, he is the longest-serving prime minister in the history of the Israeli state, having been elected four times already.

Therefore the longer he can hang on as premier, the longer he can postpone his day in court, as the leadership position affords a certain immunity while in office.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter Wednesday that he was meeting with Arab leaders to further the “common interest of war with Iran” — but then quickly deleted the bellicose statement.

“I am going to a meeting with 60 foreign ministers and envoys of countries from around the world against Iran,” Netanyahu wrote on Twitter from Warsaw, Poland, where a two-day, U.S.-led summit began Wednesday. The “Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East” was meant to center on what the administration considers the biggest roadblock to such a future: Iran. But under pressure from European allies, the United States broadened the focus to the entire Middle East.

Israel obviously did not get the memo.

Palestinian officials say Israeli settlers attacked five villages in the occupied West Bank overnight, torching vehicles and olive trees, and leaving graffiti on the walls of homes.

Ghassan Daghlas, a spokesman for the Nablus governorate, says the Jewish settlers set fire to five cars and spray-painted graffiti on more than 20 others. Villagers circulated photos of the damage on social media.

Israel has occupied the West Bank illegally since 1967, and commits various abuses against Palestinian civilians, human rights groups say.

More than 600,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in constructions considered illegal under international law.

Hundreds of Israeli settlers have stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after the Israeli army closed off the mosque to Palestinians.

Settlers also attacked Palestinians in Hebron, injuring at least eight people.

The settlers performed a Jewish religious ritual in the mosque to celebrate the Chayevi Sarah holiday.

Dozens of Israeli troops deployed in the alleys leading up to the mosque in order to prevent Palestinians approaching it.

According to the Palestinian News and Info Agency (WAFA), 50 Palestinian vehicles were vandalized in the latest series of Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank district of Salfit.

Mayor of Kufur Ad-Dik, Ibrahim Issa Ad-Dik stated that a group of Israeli settlers sneaked their way into the Palestinian village, slashed the tires of 50 vehicles, and scrawled anti-Palestinian hate graffiti on several vehicles and the walls of houses.

Graffiti reading “A closed military zone” was scrawled across the wall of a villager’s house, in Hebrew, according to Ad-Dik, who noted that this was the second time the village was targeted by settlers in a year.

The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.

There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.

Israeli commentators are already warning of the possibility of civil war if, as seems likely, Netanyahu decides to whip up his far-right supporters into a frenzy of outrage. After a decade in power, he has developed an almost cult-like status among sections of the public.

The honorable thing would be for Netanyahu to step down quickly, given that the two elections he fought this year ended in deadlock. Both were seen primarily as plebiscites on his continuing rule.

In 19th century Europe, following the rapid process of Jewish emancipation that resulted in vast secularisation and the decline of the hegemony of the Rabbinical authorities, assimilated Jews felt a growing need to understand their past, present and future within a historical context. As Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues, this process involved, inter alia, a lot of imagination: the Jews invented large parts of their past. This creative tendency was not practiced by Zionists alone, it is actually a crucial part of every Jewish Identitarian narrative. The Zionists invented the notion of a ‘historical right’ to other people’s land, and their so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist foes have been at least as duplicitous.

Moscow says IAF jets used Jordanian airspace for strikes on targets in and around Damascus, accuses Israel of causing 'increased tensions and the potential for conflict around Syria,' as well as 'counteracting our efforts to control the situation'

Not content with condemning its attacks in Syria as destabilizing, Russia's Foreign Ministry this week decided to embarrass Israel, revealing information about four alleged IDF attacks in the past 10 days – even saying it used Jordanian airspace to carry out one of them.

Lawmaker says PM’s irresponsible, destructive attacks on law enforcement are leading country to ‘chaos’; calls for Likud leadership contest in next two weeks, which he hopes to win.

Senior Likud lawmaker Gideon Sa’ar on Saturday castigated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for describing the charges against him as an attempted coup, demanded an immediate leadership contest in their ruling Likud party, and claimed he could “easily form a government.”

The threat from Tehran continues to increase despite U.S. military buildup, U.S. Central Command’s Gen. Kenneth McKenzie says.

MANAMA, Bahrain—Since May, the Pentagon has dispatched 14,000 additional U.S. troops, an aircraft carrier, and tens of thousands of pounds of military equipment to the Middle East to respond to what it says are alarming new threats from Iran. But despite the stepped-up U.S. military posture, the top U.S. general in the region believes the Iranian threat continues to rise—and Tehran is likely to continue lashing out.

“I think the strike on Saudi Aramco in September is pretty indicative of a nation that is behaving irresponsibly,” said Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, in a Friday interview, referring to the Sept. 14 Iran-sponsored attack on Saudi facilities that took half of Riyadh’s oil production offline.

YOSSI VERTER, HAARETZ, NOVEMBER 22, 2019

It was totally clear in his remarks Thursday: The embattled prime minister aims to accuse the legal system of launching a coup against him – and wait for the masses to follow his lead.

Not a smidgen of humility or regret did we hear from defendant Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night. Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust neither bowed his head in shame nor gave any other indication of soul-searching.

Like any garden-variety criminal, he assailed the police investigators, the prosecutors and the attorney general in crude language and with boundless chutzpah. With his back to the wall, both figuratively and literally, and facing trial, maybe even prison, he gave shape to what has been written on the wall for three years now: He has no intention of going quietly and cutting his losses.