DeSantis' Israel trip concludes after blitz of partnerships and politics

DeSantis to meet with embattled Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu

Jared Kushner’s visit to Jerusalem to promote his troubled Middle East peace plan appeared to abruptly lose its remaining energy after an overnight crisis in Israeli politics plunged the country into a months-long election campaign.

With no guarantees that Benjamin Netanyahu’s Trump-friendly government will stay in power past the summer, any progress made with Kushner – Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser – is at risk of being revoked by the next Israeli administration.

One month after Israelis voted in a national poll, Netanyahu failed to form a government by the deadline of midnight on Wednesday and chose to push parliament to disband rather than risk political foe Benny Gantz snatching the premiership from his grasp.

New elections are set for 17 September, and the next government may not take power until October or even later.

Israeli Major Arye Sharuz Shalicar was promoting his new book The New German Anti-Semite at a high school in Aurich in northwest Germany, on 17 May, when two activists, one German and one Israeli, interrupted his speech.

“As soon as we got word of the upcoming events we tried to intervene,” Christoph Glanz told The Electronic Intifada.

“Shalicar has written two more or less autobiographical books which contain a lot of slander, character assassination and at their core claim that anti-Semitism is everywhere and most prominent among leftists, Muslims and self-hating Jews.”

Israel is relying on US muscle to stop the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes perpetrated in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“The International Criminal Court in The Hague has no jurisdiction to discuss matters concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Sharon Afek, Israel’s military advocate general, stated at the annual Herzliya Conference, a high-profile gathering of Israel’s political and military elites, this week.

“Israel is a law-abiding country, with an independent and strong judicial system, and there is no reason for its actions to be scrutinized by the ICC,” Afek added.

The military advocate general’s office also recently published a report claiming that the military had conducted “lectures and workshops on the legal ramifications” of occupation forces’ actions, the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz stated.

The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached a plea deal in a corruption case filed against her, agreeing to pay a fine in exchange for avoiding prison.

Sara Netanyahu today signed a plea deal with the Israeli State Prosecutor’s Office, after months of negotiations in what has become known as the “catering affair”. Sara was accused of receiving catered meals at the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, at a cost of around 360,000 shekels ($100,000). This was allegedly done using Israeli taxpayers’ money, despite the fact that the residence employs a full-time cook.

Under today’s plea deal, Sara will admit to and be convicted of a criminal offense which, according to Haaretz, is defined as “receiving an item by intentionally exploiting another individual’s mistake but not through fraud”. She will pay a fine of 55,000 shekels ($15,000) that will be passed on to the Israeli state.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory celebrations turned out to be premature.

The Israeli prime minister sailed past a tangle of corruption scandals to win a fifth term in a closely-fought election on April 9, with his usual band of nationalist and religious allies all saying they wanted him to form the next government.

But the man famous for outmaneuvering rivals was tripped up by onetime partners who couldn’t reach a compromise on who should serve in the army, and was forced to acknowledge he couldn’t cobble together a coalition government.

Determined to keep rivals from taking his job, Netanyahu resolved to disband the parliament sworn in a month ago and call a new vote. That blocked President Reuven Rivlin from tapping another person -- and quite possibly another party -- to form a coalition. Israelis will now go back to the polls on Sept. 17 with the prime minister betting his political future on a more favorable outcome.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the independently elected Florida Cabinet met in Israel on Wednesday, waving away complaints that the session violated open-government laws because it was held outside the state. They presented a proclamation of support for Israel and heard from Israelis on several issues important to Florida.

The Republican governor then signed a bill that prohibits anti-Semitism in Florida's public schools and universities. The new law defines anti-Semitism as including "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis," ''blaming Israel for all interreligious or political tensions," or "requiring behavior of Israel that is not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation."

China and Russia will boycott an economics-focused conference next month in Bahrain that is part of the United States' Middle East peace plan.

Chinese Ambassador to Palestine Guo Wei made the announcement to Palestine's state-run WAFA news agency on Monday.

"Boycotting the Bahrain conference comes within the framework of a bilateral Russian-Chinese agreement not to participate in it," Wei said.

Jordan’s King Abdullah told U.S. President Donald Trump’s adviser Jared Kushner on Wednesday that a lasting Middle East peace can come only with the creation of a Palestinian state on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war and with East Jerusalem as its capital.

German diplomats recently visited the Gaza Strip and an Arab capital where Hamas leaders were present in an effort to broker a prisoner ?exchange deal between ?Israel and the Palestinian faction, i24news quoted Palestinian sources as saying.

According to the sources, Hamas insisted that all Palestinian prisoners previously released under the Shalit prisoners deal but who were later rearrested by Israel be released before any new talks could begin.

The same sources said Marwan Issa, commander of the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, and Hamas chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, recently visited Cairo and discussed with Egyptian officials the ceasefire between Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip and Israel and the possibility of a prisoner exchange deal.

…In 1992, the AIPAC President bragged how he “got almost a billion dollars in other goodies [for Israel] that people don’t even know about.” In 2012, Israel’s former commander-in-chief said that between 2009 and 2012 American taxpayers had paid for more of his country’s defense budget than had Israeli taxpayers….

The Mueller Report is done, and from the digest made public, its conclusion of no collusion to “fix” the last election by the Russian or “other” foreign governments does not surprise me. I agree with this conclusion. These foreign governments would, presumably, include Israel. However, in the case of Israel, I believe this may be a question of semantics.

There is, I believe, considerable evidence that non-governmental forces acting on behalf of Israel succeeded in placing an individual in charge of the U.S. who is currently redirecting the power and financial resources of the nation to almost entirely serve the interests of a foreign power. (And that entity is not Russia!)

An open-government watchdog group and several news outlets sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and members of the Cabinet on Tuesday in an effort to stop them from holding a Cabinet meeting while on a trade mission in Israel.

The lawsuit argues that the meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, violates the state's constitution and open-government laws, which require that Cabinet sessions be open to the public. Florida residents who don't happen to be in Israel won't be able to attend, and the meeting's planned location, at the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, has generated security concerns that will further restrict access.

The Israeli military wants the International Criminal Court to butt out of its affairs, its top military prosecutor has declared in response to efforts to hold it to account for its use of live fire against Palestinian protesters.

“Israel is a law-abiding country, with an independent and strong judicial system, and there is no reason for its actions to be scrutinized by the ICC,” Brig. Gen. Sharon Afek, Israel’s military advocate, declared at an international conference on warfare laws in Herzliya. “The position of Israel is that the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction to discuss the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

After the European elections, which clearly demonstrate that citizens are no longer prepared to vote for the “people’s parties”, but are protesting against the disrespect of the “people”, it is overdue to deal with this phenomenon. Right-wing parties across Europe have been given a terrible boost, not because they spread anti-Semitism, but because they know how to score with xenophobia and Islam hatred. In fact, the main problem is the right-wing radicalism and populist phrases-and-culture that have managed to get into parliaments and governments.

For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Palestinian school textbooks are once again under public scrutiny, this time after a report published by Israel’s Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) claimed that material was “more radical than previously published”. The EU has since confirmed that it will be funding an assessment to be carried out “by an independent and internationally recognised research institute.”

According to IMPACT-se, “This new curriculum deliberately omits any discussion of peace education or reference to any Jewish presence in Palestine before 1948.” EU Foreign Affairs Representative Federica Mogherini said that the study will identify “possible incitement to hatred and violence and any possible lack of compliance with UNESCO standards of peace and tolerance in education.”

One thing caught my attention during the latest Israeli escalation in the Gaza Strip, which left dozens of Palestinians dead. It was a video message, in Arabic, by Israeli parliamentarian Avi Dichter, a former head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet. Dichter spent a life time torturing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and assassinating many others, but used the video to offer “sincere” advice to the people of Gaza to rebel against Hamas rule and stop firing rockets at Israel.

In an attempt to blame the victims, he said that whatever misery the Palestinians are suffering from is the result of choosing war against Israel. According to him, in 1947, the UN offered them a partition plan, but they refused it and they chose to fight, and as a result they are now stifled in this tiny piece of land, the Gaza Strip. In his warped logic, they have only themselves to blame for their predicament; they gambled against the Zionist movement and lost.

Palestinian groups, Fatah, Hamas and others should not confine themselves to merely rejecting the Trump Administration’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century’. Instead, they should use their resistance to the new American-Israeli plot as an opportunity to unify their ranks.

Leaked details of the ‘Deal of the Century’ confirm Palestinians’ worst fears: the ‘Deal’ is but a complete American acquiescence to the right-wing mentality that has ruled Israel for over a decade.

According to the Israeli daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, a demilitarised state, ‘New Palestine’ will be established on territorial fragments of the West Bank, as all illegal Jewish settlements would permanently become part of Israel. If Palestinians refuse to accept Washington’s diktats, according to the report, they will be punished through economic and political isolation.

Last year, Palestinian citizens of Israel suffered two major set-backs in their ongoing fight for equality. The first was the Nation-State Law, which basically turned non-Jews into second class citizens. The second, which is related to the first, was a slump in Palestinian and Arab representation within the Israeli Knesset (parliament).

For the 2 million Palestinians who make up almost 22 per cent of the population of Israel, discrimination and institutional racism has been a reality since the Nakba of 1948. Even though “the right to equality is not yet enshrined in law regarding most aspects of life,” no previous decree with constitutional status has relegated non-Jewish Israeli citizens to an inferior status resembling the apartheid laws in White-ruled South Africa rather than the equal rights and democracy celebrated in the West.

Israel has carried out a rocket attack in Syria's Golan Heights region, according to Syrian state news and the Israeli military.

"An Israeli missile targeted Tel al-Shaar in Quneitra," the Syrian news agency SANA said, adding that a "military vehicle was targeted and there are wounded."

Israel's military confirmed the attack in a statement posted on social media on Monday, saying it had been in retaliation for anti-aircraft fire at an Israeli fighter jet earlier on Monday.

It said that the projectile missed a jet during a routine flight in Israel and that the plane completed its journey before the Israeli military "targeted the launcher that had fired" at the jet.

The tale of 9/11 will just not go away, largely because it is clear to anyone who reads the lengthy 9/11 Commission Report that many issues that should have been subject to inquiry were ignored for what would appear to be political reasons. The George W. Bush Administration quite obviously did not want to assume any blame for what had happened and that bias also extended to providing cover for U.S. “allies,” most particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. Those who have sought the truth about 9/11 have been persistent in their attempts to find out information that was suppressed but they have been blocked repeatedly in spite of numerous FOIA requests.

In the past, whenever I went to (or more precisely, ‘through’) Israel, it was for some antagonistic purpose: to write about the brutal suppression of the intifada in Gaza or Hebron, to comment on the insanity of the land grab around Bethlehem, or to report from the eerie and de-populated Golan Heights, which Israel occupies against all international rules and the UN resolutions. You name it and I worked there: Shifa Hospital or Rafah Camp in Gaza, ‘Golans’, border with Jordan, Bethlehem.

I used to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, sleep one night in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa, meet my contacts (my left-wing friends), hastily, and in the morning, dash towards the ‘front’, or towards one of the ‘fronts’ that the so-called ‘Jewish State’ sustains for decades at its ‘peripheries’.

But this time I decided to do exactly the opposite.

PLO and Fatah institutions have called on the Palestinian leadership to “revise” relations with Israel in wake of Israel’s policies and the US Administration’s “bias” in favor of Israel.

Israel's parliament on Monday passed a preliminary motion to dissolve itself. The move further pushed the country toward an unprecedented political impasse, less than two months after elections seemed to promise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a new mandate.

If the bill receives final passage in a vote scheduled Wednesday, Israel would be forced to hold new elections — sending the political system into disarray.

Netanyahu appeared to have a clear path to victory, and a fourth consecutive term, after the April 9 elections. His Likud party emerged tied as the largest party in the 120-seat parliament, and with his traditional allies, he appeared to control a solid 65-55 majority.

But he has struggled to form a government ahead of a looming deadline to do so. His prospective coalition has been thrown into crisis in recent days by former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an ally and sometimes rival of Netanyahu's.

After serving three decades behind bars, and more than three-and-a-half years under severe parole restrictions, Jonathan Pollard is expressing his increasing frustration with the Israeli government failure to act on his behalf.

“I feel that the betrayal that started back when I was expelled from embassy in 1985 has basically continued,” Pollard told a friend, Rabbi Avraham Y. Heschel, in a conversation on Tuesday. “ You can either simply walk away from someone like myself, leaving him to fend for himself as best as he could, or you can feign activity on the person’s behalf. The latter is what I have seen ever since I was released from prison. When the government of Israel wants to accomplish something, they know very well what they have to do to accomplish that end. In my case, they haven’t even done the bare minimum of expressing to the American government their commitment to see me repatriated, and the Americans can read between the lines.”

The Israeli military said it attacked a Syrian anti-aircraft position after an Israeli warplane came under fire. Syrian TV earlier stated that Israel had carried out a missile strike in Syria’s Quneitra province.
According to SANA, one officer was killed and two others were injured in the attack on a military site east of Khan Arnabeh in the Quneitra countryside. It added that the Syrian Air Defense attacked an unmanned aerial vehicle that entered Syrian airspace near the southern suburb.

Israeli Defense Forces claimed that it was their jet making a routine flight in northern Israel that came under fire. The Syrian anti-aircraft missile missed the warplane and it was able to complete its mission successfully.

A US governor has blamed Palestinians for Israel's ongoing occupation of their land, just weeks before the United States plans to unveil the economic portion of its "deal of the century" peace plan.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a longtime supporter of Israel and a member of Donald Trump's Republican Party, made his comments during a trade delegation visit to Israel this week.

"If you look at this whole conflict, to me, the biggest problem has been that Palestinian Arabs have not recognised Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state," DeSantis said during a news briefing at the Hilton Tel Aviv on Monday morning.

Donald Trump is currently visiting Japan, whose prime minister is said to be considering serving as a mediator in possible peace talks between Iran and the United States.

The United States is not looking to overthrow Iran's government, President Donald Trump said on Monday, as tensions between the two countries flared with Washington deploying troops to the region.

"I know so many people from Iran, these are great people. It [Iran] has a chance to be a great country, with the same leadership. We are not looking for regime change, I just wanna make that clear," Trump said at a press conference in Tokyo, adding that he thinks "we'll make a deal" with Tehran.

Austrian politics has been rocked by "Ibiza-gate" allegations that the country's vice chancellor was discussing the possibility of a foreign citizen investing into a local newspaper in exchange for favourable media coverage.

Rudolf Adam, a former diplomat and deputy head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, claims that the scandal that turned Austria's politics upside down was orchestrated by Israeli secret services.

Writing for the political magazine Cicero, Adam argues that the plan to bring down Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache with an explosive video leak was unlikely to have been hatched by the United States, which is currently "fully occupied with Korea, Iran and China".

Nor could be Russia behind the "political assassination", as Adam puts it, given that the now-former vice chancellor had been advocating closer ties with Moscow.

One of the two Jewish settlers recently caught on video starting a fire in the occupied West Bank is an Israeli soldier, it has been revealed.

According to reports in the Israeli media, “the army knows the identity of the settler”, and “two security sources confirmed the details, saying that the soldier was on leave when the arson took place”.

The military said that “the Israel Police are expected to handle the incident”, while “the police said that they have yet to arrest the soldier”.

Israeli police officers had to be extracted by soldiers after a sustained attack Saturday by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

According to Haaretz, “dozens of extreme right-wing activists assaulted police” near the notorious Yitzhar settlement, with masked men throwing stones and other objects at police and their van, and puncturing the tires of two police vehicles. “No one was arrested”, Haaretz noted.

The police said that officers had been responding to reports of violence between settlers and Palestinians around an outpost called ‘Kippah Sruga’.

“While our force was leaving”, said the police statement, “dozens of masked men from the area arrived, throwing stones and objects at the policemen and their vehicles. Using knives, they slashed the tires of two vehicles, causing quite a lot of damage before fleeing the scene”.

The Israeli government on Monday expressed openness to discussions led by the U.S. about disagreements with Lebanon over the countries' shared maritime border.

Talks could be “for the good of both countries’ interests in developing natural gas reserves and oil” the office of Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz’s office said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The statement reportedly follows Steinitz's meeting with U.S. envoy David Satterfield.

Millions of Americans and Israelis have been raised on a steady diet of pro-Israeli propaganda know just one side of Middle East history: that of oppressed-but-feisty Jews fighting violent-and-treacherous Arabs. They think only Israelis bleed and only Palestinians make them.

SOURCE: KURTNIMMO.BLOG

This isn’t exactly what Mike Pence told the graduating class of West Point on Saturday. He said it’s “a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life,” which means, of course, people will die, not simply soldiers but countless innocent others.

Pence tells West Point graduates it's "a virtual certainty" they will go to combat as Iran tensions escalate https://t.co/7V80F7KLZ9 pic.twitter.com/gWEtnuUcHS

— The Hill (@thehill) May 26, 2019

Pence’s “battlefield for America” is a brazen lie. America has but one reason to wage wars in the Middle East—and that reason is Israel.

The trillion dollar wars past, present, and future in the Middle East—in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran—do not in any way benefit the US, and instead have made America an international outlaw.

SOURCE: KURT NIMMO

Over at Reddit, somebody posted an Infowars video where a host sitting in for Alex Jones claims the corporate media in the US is making up “fake news” about Israel.

This is neocon and Likudnik propaganda. It is well-known by neutral observers that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and their ilk have consistently defended, glossed over, or ignored the manifest crimes of the Israeli state. The apartheid state of Israel excels in murdering women and children—and medics, journalists, and activists (Rachel Corrie comes to mind)—and because it is Israel, it gets a free pass.

The Infowars host, the kid talking to the camera, is a know-nothing. He is trapped in a vicious circle of hatred for Democrats and “leftists,” in response to their hatred of Republicans and “conservatives.”

Meanwhile, the crimes continue, more brazen than ever. Donald Trump has served as an over-the-top booster for Zionism.

Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied on his country for Israel in the 1980s, and is now free after spending 30 years in prison, has spoken of his frustration with the Israeli government, which it claims has forgotten about him. Pollard, a former intelligence analyst for the United States Navy, was released from an American prison in 2015, after serving a lengthy sentence for selling US government secrets to Israel. Throughout Pollard’s time in prison, the government of Israel lobbied for his release, claiming that the convicted spy did not harm American interests, but was simply trying to help Israel. But the US Intelligence Community and successive American presidents consistently rejected Israel’s claims, arguing that Pollard’s activities were severely detrimental to US interests. Pollard was eventually released after serving the entirety of his sentence. Ever since his release, Pollard has been required to wear an ankle monitor at all times.

SOURCE: BEN NORTON, GRAYZONE PROJECT

WHILE TRUMP THREATENS IRAN AND VENEZUELA WITH NEW WARS, 400 CONGRESS MEMBERS, INCLUDING LEADERS FROM BOTH PARTIES, WANT TO INTENSIFY THE EIGHT-YEAR WAR ON SYRIA, TO WEAKEN IRAN, RUSSIA, AND HEZBOLLAH.
While the Donald Trump administration is threatening two new wars on Iran and Venezuela, a substantial majority of the US Congress is clamoring for more immediate action.

Nearly 400 Congress members from both chambers — roughly 75 percent of all federal US lawmakers — have signed an open letter calling on President Trump to escalate the war in Syria, in the name of countering Iran, Russia, and Lebanese Hezbollah.

Top Democratic Party leaders have joined hawkish Republicans in a bipartisan demand that the far-right president “address threats in Syria” and “demonstrate American leadership in resolving the prolonged conflict.”

Protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv, rallying against the recently tabled immunity bill that would shield Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from mounting corruption investigations.

The ‘Defensive Shield for Democracy’ demonstration showed rare unity among nearly all parties in the Israeli opposition. The number of protesters remains unclear, with footage from the scene showing considerable crowds. Organizers say at least 80,000 people took part.

This week Palestinians marched to Germany’s diplomatic offices in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and in the besieged Gaza Strip to protest the German Bundestag’s recent resolution equating the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.

The marchers in Ramallah on Wednesday delivered a letter signed by representatives of 200 Palestinian civil society groups condemning “in the strongest terms the German parliament’s resolution, which is based on outright lies.”

Israeli avocado growers have been banned from accessing their greenhouses in Jordan Valley settlements, the Israeli government announced this week. The decision was made after settlers set fire to fields belonging to Palestinian farmers in Asira al-Qibliya village last Friday, causing damage but no injuries.

Of course nothing in the above paragraph is true – except that Israelis from the notorious Yitzhar settlement did in fact set fire to fields in Burin and Asira al-Qibliya, villages near Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank on Friday.

An ex-Israeli soldier wanted in Colombia for heading a child prostitution ring and sex trafficking offences has been arrested in Portugal.

Forty-five-year-old Assi Ben-Mosh – also known as Assi Moosh – was arrested near the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Wednesday during an operation by Spain’s Guardia Civil police force. The Guardia Civil said in a statement that Ben-Mosh is thought to have been hiding on the Spanish island of Ibiza, and then in Barcelona, before eventually being arrested in Portugal this week. It added that Ben-Mosh had been using a fake Israeli ID, the Times of Israel reported yesterday.

Ben-Mosh is wanted by Colombian authorities for running a child prostitution ring in the small fishing village of Taganga, located on the South American country’s Caribbean coast. He, along with a group of ex-Israeli soldiers, reportedly turned the luxury Benjamin Hostel into a “sex and drug den” in which more than 250 underage girls were subjected to sexual exploitation.

The US is pressuring Israel to prevent Chinese companies from entering Israeli facilities.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton addressed this issue during his visit to Israel in January, and warned against the entry of Chinese technology companies, such as Huawei and ZTE, to the Israeli market, Haaretz reported yesterday.

The US warnings come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to boost trade ties with China, but at the same time is facing US pressure. The Marker newspaper reported this week that the Cabinet abstained from setting up a special committee to monitor China’s technology and investment, despite US pressures. The report added that Israel is now seeking an approach that appeases America.

For three years after Donald Trump narrowly won 2016’s elections, much of America’s establishment corporate press was obsessed with the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory.

This was a relentless deluge of excrement flung in the faces of the viewing public by (supposedly) liberal cable news channels. The entire charade came crashing down last month with the publication of the Mueller report in full (minus some redactions).

Although there’s no doubt in my mind that Trump himself – as well as the cast of shady characters he surrounds himself with – is extraordinarily corrupt, the relentless, baseless repetition of the claim that Trump “colluded with Russia” in order to supposedly “hack” the 2016 elections was substantively disproven.

The way liberal elites relentlessly harped on about this always-tenuous narrative was worse than useless – it actively distracted from the president’s actual policies, and the many real problems with Donald Trump and his administration.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured his interviewers on Fox News that the threat from Iran is totally "real" and "credible" - though he once again refused to get into specifics. But whatever the threat might be, American troops in the region will soon be able to sleep a little easier, because the White House and Pentagon have reportedly agreed to send "roughly 2,000" additional troops to the Middle East...to help protect American forces in the region.

Other reports put the number at closer to 1,500. Trump met with Pentagon leaders Thursday evening where they decided to move ahead with the troop deployment to CENTCOM, which oversees all American troops in the Middle East.

Not long after he reportedly agreed to send another 1,500-2,000 troops to the Middle East in yet another show of strength to combat an increasingly belligerent Iran, President Trump steamrolled Congress on Friday to approve $8 billion in arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia and expedite delivery, WSJ reports.

The administration invoked a rarely used provision of American arms control laws to bypass Congress and approve the weapons sales, citing the escalating tensions with Iran as justification. WSJ's sources said the $8 billion figure encapsulates a package of 22 separate deals.

Global Research Editor’s Note

The following text by Arash Norouzi first published by the Mossadegh Project and Global Research in January 2007 confirms that the alleged “Wiped Off the Map” statement by Iran’s president was never made.

In the light of recent US threats directed Iran, we are reposting this important article.

Iran does not constitute a threat to Israel.

The rumor was fabricated by the American media with a view to discrediting Iran’s head of state and providing a justification for waging an all out war on Iran. the article provides of media manipulation and “propaganda in action”.

Iran is blamed for refusing to abide by the “reasonable demands” of “the international community”.

In recent developments, Iran is persistently described as threatening the security of Israel. And Israel is described as instrumental in determining US foreign policy.

My friend Andrew Rubin is an amputee. He’s lost his right hand, lower arm, right foot, and lower leg.

He used to be an avid runner and cyclist. He can’t do much of that anymore, although his walking is getting much better. Soon he might be able to run with his artificial leg.

Andrew is incredibly lucky.

The medical catastrophe that left his hand and foot so terribly damaged didn’t kill him. But when his limbs never healed even after a decade, he decided to undergo the amputations. It was his choice, and it was made much easier because he knew what lay ahead: the most advanced artificial limbs ever imagined. The kids call him Bionic Man now.

Andrew is lucky for another reason: He doesn’t live in Gaza.

According to the United Nations, 1,700 young Gazans are facing amputation, mainly of their legs, in the next two years. They’re among the 7,000 unarmed Palestinians in Gaza shot by Israeli snipers over the last year.

The Israeli Knesset is considering legislation that would grant government officials immunity from criminal prosecution, and just so happen to spare Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from three looming corruption indictments.
If the proposed amendment to the Immunity Law passes, elected officials could not be charged with a criminal offense unless the 120-member Knesset and the Knesset House Committee agreed to waive immunity. Should Netanyahu’s Likud Party secure a coalition and outnumber its rivals, the measure could effectively place them above the law for as long as they serve in government.

The U.S. Air Force has deployed at least 20 missiles that could zap the military electronics of North Korea or Iran with high-power microwaves, rendering their military capabilities virtually useless without causing any fatalities, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.

Known as the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missiles were built by Boeing's Phantom Works for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and tested successfully in 2012. They have not been operation until now.

The microwave weapons are fitted into an air-launched cruise missile and delivered from B-52 bombers. With a range of 700 miles, they can fly into enemy airspace at low altitude and emit sharp pulses of high power microwave (HPM) energy that fry computer chips, disabling any electronic devices targeted by the missiles with causing any collateral damage.

Unfortunately, U.S. taxpayers are funding this madness.

Every year, we send $3.8 billion directly to the Israeli military — no strings attached — and American companies make the tear gas and other weapons that Israel deploys against demonstrators. Washington makes sure that no Israeli officials, political or military, are ever held accountable at the United Nations for potential war crimes.

Crueler still, the Trump administration has cut off funding for the very UN refugee agency that staffs health clinics in Gaza, even as it funds the Israeli military that’s filling them with gunshot victims.

The protests, overwhelmingly nonviolent, continue — and the killing has continued too, week after week. Meanwhile, there are so many disabled kids in Gaza now that the beleaguered territory is setting up special sports leagues for them.

Trade unions and human rights organizations in France are celebrating as a victory the withdrawal of train manufacturer Alstom from the Jerusalem light rail.

Meanwhile it has also been confirmed that a Greek-led consortium failed to submit a bid.

France’s Alstom confirmed to media last week that it had dropped plans to bid on the extension of the Israeli railway that links settlements in the West Bank to each other and to Jerusalem.

Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a war crime.

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
The director-general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said yesterday that the Israeli army had deliberately targeted journalists in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Christophe Deloire was speaking to the Jerusalem Post, having received the Dan David Prize in Tel Aviv on behalf of the international press freedoms watchdog.

“It is a war crime to target journalists because they are journalists,” Deloire told the paper. “When Israel shot those journalists [during the Great Return March protests], it was intentional.”

“The journalists could be clearly identified as journalists, with cameras and jackets and it could not be just by chance,” he added.

Referring to the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza protests, Deloire pointed out that the report “confirmed what we already considered a fact”.

In 1958 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion designated super-lobbyist Abraham Feinberg as the North American coordinator to raise funds for Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program. Feinberg was a natural choice. He bundled Israel lobby funds for Democratic presidential campaigns from Harry S Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson. In the 1940s he led the charge to successfully beat back Justice Department attempts to prosecute a huge network of false front organizations illicitly smuggling surplus U.S. WW II weapons and equipment to Jewish fighters in Palestine for Israel’s “War of Independence.” On the atomic front, Feinberg chaperoned U.S. charities channeling hundreds of millions of tax-exempt donations into Israeli research organizations—such as the Weizmann Institute of Science—working on the bomb.

War with Iran remains a deeply unpopular prospect among the American people, but a new opinion poll conducted by Reuters and polling organization Ipsos found there's not much optimism concerning the likelihood of getting entangled in a future conflict. The poll released Tuesday found that half of all Americans see the US and Iran being at war "within the next few years".

As of early this week it appeared the White House as well as Pentagon were firmly signaling the US has climbed down the escalation ladder, with statements claiming the US military build-up near the Persian Gulf of the past two weeks had forced Iran to put its planned actions against US troops "on hold" in order to "recalculate".

Israeli permit system prevents some parents from accompanying their sick children to hospitals outside of Gaza Strip.

Gaza City - Last month, five-year-old Aisha came home from nursery vomiting and saying she had a headache.

Her condition deteriorated, so her family took her to hospital, where, after undergoing medical checks, they had every parent's worst fear confirmed.

Aisha was diagnosed with brain cancer.

"The news hit me like a thunderbolt," Mona Lulu, Aisha's mother, told Al Jazeera from her home in the al-Bureij refugee camp.

Aisha underwent urgent surgery in al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City but she needed a medical transfer to go to the Augusta Victoria Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem for further treatment.

But when it came time to decide which of her parents would go with her, the family found the decision was out of their hands.

"Her mother and I applied and we both were rejected," Aisha's father Wesam said.

The Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan drew criticism at the United Nations Wednesday, with European and UN officials saying Palestinians should not be coerced into selling off rights to run their own country.

Addressing the UN’s top body in New York, Jason Greenblatt, the United States envoy on the Middle East, talked up a meeting about boosting the Palestinian economy in Bahrain next month that marks the start of a new US-led peace initiative.

The “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop, to be held in Manama on June 25-26 and co-hosted with the US, has already been rebuffed by Palestinian officials and business leaders who want their political demands to be addressed in any solution to the decades-old conflict.

As the brutality of Israel’s systemic apartheid is being unveiled, human rights activists who speak up about Israel’s crimes against humanity become a target of political persecution. Berlin is currently witnessing a crackdown on freedom of expression as German authorities yield to Israeli government pressure to criminalize dissent. Whereas Berlin has positioned itself as the last bastion for Zionism over the past decades, activities to challenge it are of a growing concern for the authorities. Recent efforts to suppress such critical voices include the German Parliament’s anti-BDS Resolution as well as the violent arrests, deletion of video evidence and literally gagging of protesters at IsraelTag. These along with the revoking of Rasmea Odeh’s European visa and the cancellation of her public talk with poet Dareen Tatour, at the behest of the Israeli government only weeks earlier.

Palestinian officials are doubling down on their plans to boycott a US-led conference in Bahrain next month aimed at garnering regional support for President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

The White House announced Sunday that it will be co-hosting what it described as an “economic workshop” with the Gulf country, aimed at encouraging Arab economic investments in the Palestinian Territories, as part of the US strategy in the region.

The US administration will use the conference, which is set to take place June 25-26, to unveil the first part of Trump’s long-awaited “deal of the century,” which emphasizes “economic opportunities” for Palestinians over core political issues like the status of Jerusalem, control of borders, and the fate of refugees.

Several years ago, a student in my Israel-Palestine course approached me after class with a question. Why, he wanted to know, did I care so much about this subject?

The student liked my course, considered it fair-minded and had no complaints about the way I was teaching it. Though he didn’t share many of my critical views about Israel he understood and respected them. But why, he was wondering, did the subject so consume me? Why did my relationship to this history feel so intense, so visceral?

Had I been a staunch defender of Israel the student probably wouldn’t have found my emotional investment surprising. Especially since I was avowedly Jewish it would have seemed to him “normal” for me to be teaching a class extolling Zionism and Israel. But what could be driving a Jew to invest so much critical energy in the subject?

It was an honest question.

Mast is attempting to bring to a vote H.R.336, the companion bill to S.1, sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and passed by the Senate in February by a 77-23 vote. The bill, which authorizes military aid for Israel and Jordan and imposes additional sanctions on the Assad regime in Syria, also contains the controversial Combating BDS Act, a measure which failed to pass during the two previous congressional sessions.

The Combating BDS Act encourages states and local governments to pass laws prohibiting government contacts with anyone who does not sign a McCarthyite loyalty oath pledging not to boycott for Palestinian rights. Judges in Texas, Arizona, and Kansas have ruled these laws to be violations of the First Amendment and the American Civil Liberties Union called the bill “unconstitutional”.

Iran's president has told a group of clerics that he is seeking expanded, wartime executive powers to better deal with an "economic war" triggered by the Trump administration's pullout from the nuclear deal and escalating US sanctions.

The state IRNA news agency reported late Monday that President Hassan Rouhani cited the 1980s war with Iraq, when a wartime supreme council was able to bypass other branches to make decisions regarding the economy and the war.

The report didn't say what the new powers would entail but quoted Rouhani as saying that "today, we need such powers".

Congress never authorized a US war in Iran. Under the US Constitution, Congress has sole authority to do that, so that’s seemingly an important deal. With the US engaged in other unauthorized wars, however, it has been little more than a side note, and the Trump Administration has considered Congressional involvement in the process to be optional, at best.

Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tom Udall (D-NM) led an effort on Wednesday to try to reassert Congressional authority, by trying to preemptively de-fund any US war against Iran unless Congress authorized it ahead of time.

This proposal was brought forward at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and immediately failed, 13-9. Murphy said this vote would remind the administration that they don’t have authorization for the war.

Citing ongoing US-Iran tensions and the secret intelligence on Iranian “threats” officials keep mentioning, CENTCOM is requesting that the Pentagon approve substantial numbers of additional US ground troops to be deployed somewhere in the Middle East.

Though initial reports claimed that CENTCOM was only requesting “about 5,000” ground troops, subsequent reports said that the Pentagon are preparing a plan to present to President Trump seeking 10,000 troops.

It’s not clear where these troops could be stationed, though officials emphasized they would be purely defensive. It is unlikely Iraq would welcome a large influx of US troops, however, especially when it is presented as being directed against neighboring Iran.

SOURCE: DEEP STATE BLOG

The growth of intelligence agencies in the 21st century has been powered by the development of new technologies, created by start-ups, which are powered by intelligence agencies. This unvirtuous circle of money and espionage is a new and daunting challenge for civil liberties and human rights groups.

The U.S intelligence community has a venture capital organization, Inqtel, founded by the CIA in 1999. Israel’s Mossad has Libertad Ventures, founded in June 2017.

As The Times of Israel reports:

A new survey has found that Israel is the lowest policy priority for Jewish American voters.

According to a poll commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI), “a candidate’s stance on Israel ranks at the bottom of a list of 16 policy priorities of Jewish voters”.

Designed to understand what drives Jewish voters’ “engagement in politics in advance of the 2020 elections”, the poll revealed that “domestic issues dominate the policy priorities of the Jewish community as they determine which candidate to support…as opposed to issues related to Israel.”

While – unsurprisingly – the survey indicated that “the Jewish community continues to identify as strongly pro-Israel”, more than half (53 per cent) of those polled “are critical of at least some of the current Israeli government’s policies”.

Israel has embarked on a massive recruitment drive to support the country’s online propaganda campaign one day after its companies were exposed for spreading disinformation and meddling in the elections of several African, Asian and Latin American countries.

The new initiative, which would see the government funding pro-Israel groups overseas, was unveiled by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a government arm set up to combat the global rise of pro-Palestinian activism and Israel’s poor global image.

Launching the initiative, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who is also the public security minister, was quoted by the Times of Israel saying: “I’m proud to launch the first [government] program to support pro-Israel organizations and activists around the world.”

A World Health Organisation (WHO) report has described the chronic state of mental health in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), as a result of Israeli occupation and violence.

According to the WHO, mental ill health represents “one of the most significant public health challenges” in the oPt.

In the Gaza Strip in particular, “over half of conflict-affected children may be affected by post-traumatic stress disorder”, while “an estimated 210,000, or over one in 10, people suffer from severe or moderate mental health disorders in the Gaza Strip”.

Overall, the WHO stated, the oPt “has one of the highest burdens of adolescent mental disorders in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, made a very bold assertion during a debate in the Security Council recently. “Jewish rights to the land of Israel depends on four pillars,” he claimed. “This includes the Bible, history, legality and the pursuit of international peace and security.”

I don’t know what he meant by “legality and the pursuit of international peace” and, given Israel’s record of attacking its neighbours, I will refrain from giving credibility to his illusionary discourse by dissecting it. Suffice to ask if he really believes that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and regular military assaults on the civilians of the Gaza Strip are both legal and conducive to international peace?

In a symbolic move on Friday, the German parliament condemned the BDS – boycott, divest and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights as anti-Semitic.

The Bundestag passed the motion “Resisting the BDS movement decisively – fighting anti-Semitism,” brought by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the center-left Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats.

Inspired by the tactics of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the BDS movement was founded by some 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005 with the aim of pressuring Israel to respect Palestinian rights and international law.

It explicitly calls for Israel to end its occupation of Arab lands conquered during the 1967 war; abolish all discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and respect the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as outlined in UN resolution 194.

The European Union is expanding its partnership with Bank Leumi, a major financier of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

The EU claims to oppose Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied territories, a war crime.

On Monday, Emanuele Giaufret, the EU ambassador in Tel Aviv, trumpeted news that the European Investment Fund and Bank Leumi are expanding a loan program for tech companies in Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the only world leader to openly express support for the escalating U.S. campaign against Iran, but his statement is an exception to the general Israeli rule. In the two weeks that have passed since the U.S. announced it was reinforcing its military presence in the Persian Gulf, official Israel has mostly taken on a vow of silence. “Luckily, we are not involved,” naively optimistic defense officials briefed reporters.

SOURCE: THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

The more steps that we take toward a war with Iran, the more likely it becomes that somebody will do something really stupid that will actually trigger one. By cutting off Iran’s oil exports, we are threatening to completely wreck their economy, and at this point they feel backed into a corner. And the Iranians have already watched the U.S. invade two countries that they share a border with (Afghanistan and Iraq), and so it is understandable that they are a bit paranoid that it could happen to them too. President Trump keeps saying that he doesn’t want a war with Iran, but the Iranians do not believe a single word any U.S. politician says. Instead, they watch what we actually do very, very closely, and the fact that the Pentagon wants to deploy thousands of new troops to the Middle East is definitely going to freak them out. The following comes from Fox News…

Boycotting Israel is anti-Semitic.

That at least is the view of the German parliament, where a vote Friday saw lawmakers denounce – in a non-binding vote – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, because “the ‘don’t buy’ stickers of the BDS movement on Israeli products [could be associated] with the Nazi call ‘don’t buy from Jews.’”

Now, of course, one might suggest that if anyone knows anything about anti-Semitism, well then the German parliament is where you might find them.

But that would be a rather crude World War II/Nazi reference which, when invoked, means you’ve already lost the argument. So we’ll steer clear.

One might also suggest that this is hardly a very watertight argument, that pretty much anything “could be associated” with or can be seen as “reminiscent of” pretty much anything.

You don’t support whale hunting? You must hate the Japanese. Or the Norwegians.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution Thursday condemning anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim discrimination, white supremacy and other forms of hate, following a week of debate among congressional Democrats. The controversy began after some lawmakers accused Democratic Congressmember Ilhan Omar of invoking anti-Semitic tropes while questioning U.S. foreign policy on Israel. The House leadership initially drafted a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in what was seen as a direct rebuke of Omar. But many progressive Democrats said Omar, one of the first two Muslim Congresswoman in U.S. history, was unfairly being singled out. The split within the Democratic Party forced the leadership to withdraw its initial resolution and then present a much broader one.

This past Sunday the Polish Foreign Ministry announced that it had canceled an official visit from an Israeli delegation in Warsaw, since the Israelis were there to demand $300 billion in “restitution” for jewish property that they say had been stolen during WWII. Thousands of Polish patriots marched through the streets to send a clear message to the Israelis that they are sick of the BS.

The wonderful chapter that Amy Kaplan devotes to Exodus, both the novel and the 1960 Otto Preminger movie, was an eye-opening archaeology of my twelfth year, when I used to read the novel the way I was supposed to read the Bible, but didn’t–every day, and when you get to the end, start over.

Tensions are reaching critical levels as Washington continues to threaten Iran while the madmen Bolton and Pompeo are growing bolder by the day. It seems as if the White House fool Trump has given up on foreign policy altogether and allowed Bolton and Pompeo to have free reigns on pushing Washington further into the abyss.

Bolton has reportedly requested 120 000 troops to be sent to the Middle East, about the same number of troops sent for the tragic Iraq war. This would in his mind show the Iranians who’s in charge, I guess. We’re talking about a country with a population of 80 million people, thrice the size of Iraq and a military that has been preparing for a war with the Zionist Empire for decades.

President Donald Trump’s national security team has been leaking “intelligence” about Iranian threats for a week now in an attempt to justify escalating tensions, including moving American air attack assets to the Persian Gulf. But a closer look suggests that National Security Advisor John Bolton and other senior officials are trying to pull off an intelligence deception comparable to the fraudulent pretense for war in Iraq.

There’s also credible evidence that Israel could be playing a key role in this subterfuge.

Israel’s public face, sustained and propagated by a wealthy and powerful diaspora that has significant control over the media, insists that the country is the Middle East’s only true democracy, that is operates under a rule of law for all its citizens and that its army is the “most moral in the world.” All of those assertions are false. Israel’s government favors its Jewish citizens through laws and regulations that are defined by religion. It in fact now identifies itself legally as a Jewish state with Christians and Muslim citizens having second class status. Israel’s army, meanwhile, has committed numerous war crimes against largely unarmed civilian populations in the past seventy years, both in Lebanon and directed against the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza.

The miscarriage of justice in the case of Israeli settlers in the Duma arson-murders, in which an entire family was burned to death, epitomizes Israel’s Apartheid “Justice” system.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is going to Israel with a large contingent of business leaders — not surprisingly, especially as the GOP woos Jewish voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election. But DeSantis' plan to hold a meeting with his elected Cabinet while he's there has raised concerns about whether officials are violating the state's open-meeting laws.

When DeSantis first announced the trade mission, he noted that his attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner would accompany him, and that the Cabinet would hold a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem during the trip, which runs from May 25 to May 31.

Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried had previously planned a trade mission to the country, but there was no apparent reason why the other two were going, except for the Cabinet meeting.

Update 1/12/2013: CLN has received a takedown notice asking us to remove this article on the basis that “It is libelous and utterly false” from someone claiming to be a legal agent of Above Top Secret’s parent company. We are currently investigating and will post status updates as they become available. The original thread now appears to have vanished from Above Top Secret’s website.

Update 1/17/2013: We have requested clarification regarding the takedown request and have not received a response. We will provide updates on any new developments.

Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has agreed to delay Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment hearing until October, bowing to months of pressure from the latter’s legal team.

Mandelblit announced today that the hearing will now be held on 2 and 3 October, three months later than the July date previously mandated by the attorney general.

This comes after Netanyahu’s lawyers yesterday asked Mandelblit to delay the hearing for at least a year due to the fact that it will deal with three separate corruption cases and there is therefore “a large amount of material to be read”, Haaretz reported. The attorney general had given the prime minister’s legal team until Monday to set a date for the hearing, but this deadline passed with no resolution.

Germany’s decision to equate the boycott of Israel with anti-Semitism “violates international law”, “international legitimacy” and is “immoral”, the Boycott Campaign – Palestine said in a statement today.

“This immoral decision violates as well human rights, freedom of expression and the right of people to support the oppressed around the world,” the movement added.

BCP warned that this decision “will give immunity and strengthen the occupation and encourage it to continue to commit further crimes and apartheid acts against the Palestinian people.”

The Israeli government has retracted its claim that two journalists “led a riot” in Nabi Saleh in 2015, “and that their beating by soldiers was therefore justified”, reported Haaretz.

According to the article, “this is the gist of a compromise reached between the Jerusalem district attorney and the two photographers, Abbas Mumani and Haim Schwarczenberg”, who had sued the Israeli military over the assault.

While the plaintiffs have been awarded a fraction of the damages initially sought, “the significance of the compromise”, Haaretz reported, “lies in the state’s admission that its version of events, throughout the proceedings, was incorrect”.

A Canadian court is hearing a lawsuit against a decision to allow wines made and manufactured in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank to be labelled “Product of Israel”.

According to a report in Middle East Eye, David Kattenburg, a Jewish-Canadian activist based in Winnipeg, has applied to the Federal Court of Canada for an order “declaring unlawful” the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) directive.

In 2017, the CFIA “ordered liquor stores across the province of Ontario to de-shelve two Israeli settlement wines that were being sold with the label ‘Product of Israel’”, before promptly reversing its stance after “widespread public pressure from pro-Israel groups in Canada”.

“What [the CFIA’s decision] amounts to is an acknowledgement and endorsement of Israel’s de facto annexation of the settlements,” Kattenburg told Middle East Eye earlier this month.

An American-led war on Iran is still a possibility, despite the fact that US President Donald Trump has openly expressed his lack of enthusiasm for it now, in contrast to his National Security Advisor John Bolton. Israel comes to mind in this instance, despite the unlikely possibility of Israel participating directly in a military confrontation, especially after Washington explicitly asked Israel not to interfere in the event of a war. This is similar to the position during the second Gulf War in 1991.

A public reading of the first-ever alphabet story book in the English language about Palestine has caused outrage among some American library patrons who claim that its contents are anti-Semitic. Now a literary event featuring the children’s book P is for Palestine and its author has been shelved until at least next month when the library’s board of trustees will hold a public meeting to consider rescheduling the event for the book written by Golbarg Bashi.

Bashi was due to read P is for Palestine during a children’s event at the Highland Park Public Library in New Jersey, but several residents complained. They allege that the 2017 self-published book is anti-Semitic and promotes violence. One local resident complained: “I is for Intifada — encouraging children to rise up any way they see fit to resist. Far from peaceful and far from appropriate.” She added that the prospect of the book’s author visiting her community to host the reading made her “feel unsafe”.

The air was thick with anxiety as Muna Awad stepped out of the taxi at the entrance to the Erez Crossing, her five-year-old daughter Aisha in tow.

Aisha was about to embark on a journey from the besieged Gaza Strip to occupied East Jerusalem for emergency medical treatment - and Muna was handing her young daughter over to a woman the family had never seen before to help facilitate her travel.

"I felt as if my soul was leaving my body," recalled Muna about being unable to travel with Aisha that day last month.

The five year old was diagnosed with brain cancer on 10 April.

The specialist hospital in Gaza that handles cancer patients told Muna it was ill-equipped to treat her daughter, and ordered her to be transferred to the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem for urgent care.

A Palestinian boy killed by Israeli occupation forces during protests in March was fatally injured by an explosive grenade, an investigation by the human rights group Al-Haq has found.

Adham Nidal Amara, 17, was directly injured in his face, killing him, as he took part in the rallies marking the one-year anniversary of the Great March of Return protests east of Gaza City on 30 March.

Two other teens, Tamer Hisham Abu al-Khair, 19, and Bilal Mahmoud Shaban Najjar, 16, were shot and killed by Israeli forces while protesting in Gaza that day. A fourth person, Faris Yusif Faris Abu Hijris, 26, succumbed to wounds sustained during the protests two days later.

Fatal and shameful, what took place last week in the German Bundestag.Indeed, one felt reminded of Reichstag times, when Jews were discriminated and marginalized in Germany. This time, however, all “democratic” parties together voted for a ban on the BDS movement. It strongly reminded of the “Enabling Act” of March 24, 1933, the official law for the relief of the people and the Reich. Only the SPD voted against it then. So how can you compare “Enabling Act” and the anti-BDS motion, which “resolutely” opposes the BDS movement and wants to fight anti-Semitism? One can, because both decisions are deliberately not “constitutional”. Does not our constitution clearly state the right to freedom of expression?

Bundestag resolution “authorizes” to anti-Semitism and disregard of human rights

Late Friday evening, a call from Jerusalem, Israel, reported devasting news: Daystar Television Network’s studio at Mount Zion lay in ashes. Only 30 minutes prior to that moment, around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday morning in Israel, security cameras revealed that an arsonist set fire to the roof before escaping by rope and fleeing the scene on foot. Considered a total loss, Daystar is now looking to the future and turning to their partners around the world to help rebuild and restore the studio that once broadcast a message of hope across Israel.

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iraqi leaders that if they are not going to stand with the US against Iran, then they should stand aside, AP reported.

Pompeo’s message came last week as he met with Iraqi leaders to discuss the mounting tension between Washington and Tehran.

The news agency said the message was relayed to it by two Iraqi officials who refused to be named, pointing out that Pompeo’s visit to Baghdad came as intelligence had received information about Iranian threats to US interests in the Middle East.

“There are fears that Baghdad will get caught again in the conflict between Washington and Tehran after recovering from the effects of its war on the Islamic State,” the news site reported, in reference to Daesh.

Authored by Janine Jackson via Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting,

The Washington Post editorial’s headline (5/14/19) had the US “drifting” toward war with Iran—another example, as analyst Nima Shirazi quipped, of the “world’s superpower somehow having no agency over its own imperialism.”
If we can still call things “surreal,” that would describe watching corporate media do the same things they did in the run-up to the Iraq War, things they later disavowed: the credulous repetition of administration claims about the supposed threat; the reliance, for interpretation of “intelligence,” on officials with well known records for manipulating intelligence; the stenographic reporting of ‘troubling’ actions by the enemy state, that later have to be walked back.