The Show Must Go On....,

antiwar  |  President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.

US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.

“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.

In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.

Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.

But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.

While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.

Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.

Why Is The Biden Administration Abetting Genocide?

nader  |  Among the puzzling questions that the media chooses to ignore is asking high government officials why they are exercising the illegal use of power that violates the rule of law which they are required to obey.

This week, the Veterans for Peace (VFP) made it very easy for reporters to pose questions by sending an open letter (See veteransforpeace.org) to the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department and Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, invoking several U.S. statutes that require the “termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to Israel.”

Josh Paul, a former senior official in the State Department’s office charged with reviewing weapon transfers to foreign countries, said: “The Secretary and all relevant officials under his purview should take this letter from Veterans for Peace with the utmost seriousness. It is a stark reminder of the importance of abiding by the laws and policies that relate to arms transfers.”

What laws are being violated by the State Department daily as it approves ships and cargo planes full of weapons of mass destruction to be used in Israel’s war crimes and genocide against hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s civilians, mostly children and women?

These are the laws highlighted in the VFP letter:

• The Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
• Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive US military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
• The U.S. War Crimes Act, which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
• The Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
• The Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Genocide Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide

Under these laws, the State Department has a “Conventional Arms Transfer Policy” which, the letter notes, “prohibit [U.S. weapons transfers when it’s likely they] will be used by Israel to commit … genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, [including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected] or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights laws.”

The VFP letter continues, “Dozens of authoritative complaints and referrals made by hospital administrators in Gaza, as well as by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestine Authority, South Africa, Turkey, Medicins san Frontieres, UNRWA, UNICEF, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the World Food Programme have confirmed that there is an ongoing human rights and humanitarian disaster due to Israel’s cutoff of water and electricity, deliberate destruction of sewage infrastructure and delaying of aid shipments by Israeli forces.”

If you are wondering why these laws are not being enforced – the answer is that individual citizens or groups of citizens do not have any “legal standing” to sue Secretary Blinken, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. Only a Committee of Congress, backed by a Senate or House Resolution, can take the State Department to federal court. That action to enforce Congressionally passed and enacted laws is not likely to happen in this lawless, Israeli government-indentured Congress which refuses even to demand a ceasefire.

Mike Ferner, VFP National Director, observed “Just as any good soldiers can recognize when they are given an unlawful order, we believe some State Department staff are horrified at the orders they’re given and will decide to uphold the law, find the courage to speak out and demand an end to the carnage.”

There is a related serious matter, pointed out by international law practitioner, Bruce Fein who said “The United States has clearly become a co-belligerent with Israel in its war against Hamas-Gaza Palestinians by systematically supplying the IDF with weapons and intelligence without conditions. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, nationals of a co-belligerent state are not regarded as protected persons if their state has customary diplomatic relations with an allied nation [in this case, Israel].”

For decades, the State Department has had an independent Office of the Legal Adviser. The present occupant of that post, acting legal adviser Richard C. Visek has been publicly silent. I am sending the Veterans for Peace letter to him and asking him to respond to this letter and to the American people who pay his salary.

Gov. Kathy Hochul Is Extra Special....,

dailycaller  |  Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York warned colleges and universities in a letter on Saturday that she would order legal action against them if they fail to address antisemitism on campus.

Three university presidents appeared before Congress on Dec. 5 to testify about antisemitism on their campuses, after which they were heavily criticized for failing to say whether “calling for genocide against Jews” violated their institutions’ codes of conduct. Hochul wrote to all colleges and universities in New York that a failure to address antisemitism would result in legal action from the state under New York State Human Rights Law and Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“I assure you that if any school in New York State is found to be in violation, I will activate the State’s Division of Human Rights to take aggressive enforcement action and will refer possible Title VI violations to the federal government,” Hochul wrote in the letter, which was posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

UPenn’s president and chairman of the board of trustees resigned on Saturday, while Harvard’s president issued a public apology amid calls for her removal.

“The moral lapses that were evidenced by the disgraceful answers to questions posed during this week’s congressional testimony hearing cannot and will not be tolerated here in the State of New York,” Hochul wrote.

Hochul has previously dealt with fallout from an antisemitic controversy at a university in her own state. Police arrested Cornell University undergraduate student Patrick Dai on Oct. 31 for allegedly making violent threats to commit a mass shooting against Cornell’s Center for Jewish Living.

“Gov. Hochul cannot command colleges and universities to violate the First Amendment. Nor may she enforce state law to compel action against speech protected by the First Amendment,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Broad, vague bans on ‘calls for genocide,’ absent more, would result in the censorship of protected expression.”

 

The U.S. House Of Representatives Equates Anti-Zionism With Anti-Semitism

yasha  |  It might sound like I’m describing a cult or something. But actually zionism was actually pretty normal by 19th-early 20th century European standards. It’s just nationalism — Jewish nationalism. It came out of Europe and the Russian Empire and gained popularity as one solution to the Jewish Question that was being debated there at the time: Are Jews a religious group? A race? Should Jews assimilate and become part of the societies in which they live — to become Russian or German? 

Why does antisemitism exist? 

Jewish nationalism offered an answer: Jews are a race. And because the only natural and healthy way to organize society is for every race to have its own state, the Jews need also need a state of their own where they can live and flourish and control their fate— like the English, the French, the Italians, the Germans. Without this Jewish state, Jews in Europe and all over the world are doomed. They’ll remain hated minorities and suffer bouts of violence. Or even worse, the race will continue to degrade spiritually and culturally and will eventually disappear altogether. To zionists, a Jewish state is the only path to survival of the Jewish race.

This wasn’t unique to zionism. Nationalism was a popular notion in Europe at the time — and it led to some horrible results, Nazi Germany being one example. One thing that made Jewish nationalism stand out was that it wasn’t about defending land that Jews currently occupied from inferior races. It was about transporting millions of Jews from Europe to a place called Palestine — and once there purging the land of the locals and restoring what zionists believed is their rightful ancient Jewish home.

Here’s how Vladimir Jabotinsky — a journalist originally from Odessa who played a big role in setting up the militant rightwing flank of zionism that ultimately produced Israel’s Likud — wrote about about European Jews and the Land of Israel. The two were one:

…the true kernel of our national uniqueness is the pure product of the Land of Israel. We did not exist before we came to the Land of Israel. The Hebrew people was created from the fragments of other peoples on the soil of the Land of Israel. We grew up in the Land of Israel; on it we became citizens; we strengthened the belief in one God; we breathed in the winds of the land, and in our struggles for independence and sovereignty, its air enwrapped us and the grain that its land produced sustained us. In the Land of Israel the ideas of our prophets were developed and in the Land of Israel the “Song of Songs” was first heard. Everything Hebrew in our midst was given to us by the Land of Israel. Anything else in us is not Hebrew. Israel and the Land of Israel are one. There we were born as a people and there we developed.³

The zionism had all sorts of rifts and fissures. But at its core, the movement believed in the same goal and sought to speak collectively for all Jews. It wasn’t about individuals. It was about the race.

So that’s been the main obsession of the movement ever since: the creation and protection of a Jewish state in Palestine. The existence of this state is linked to the survival of the Jewish people. Get rid of one and the other will follow. A Jewish state — a government of Jews, by Jews, for Jews — is the base on which all zionism rests.

Ideologies impose structure on the way people see the world. They condition reactions and assumption and interpretations. That’s why zionist Jews are so freaked out right now. For them October 7 was a shock. The surprise Hamas attack, the killing of innocents, the hostages dragged back to Gaza, the powerlessness of Israeli military — to them this had nothing to do with violence that the zionist quest for land foisted on Palestinians, it was a reminder of the atavistic horror that always plagued Jewish people: Jews are hated for just being Jewish. Existence is never guaranteed.

And as they looked around after the attack, they saw more sympathy for Palestinian suffering than they ever have before: pro-Palestinian protests and marches, college kids on Instagram and TikTok posting about Israel’s occupation and apartheid. All over the world, people were criticizing Israel. In their minds, they saw this as people going after the Jews. This only reaffirmed their fears and deepened their convictions: The ancient hatred is still there. Israel is our only refuge, the only thing that can protect us.

Survival of the Jews. That’s what they believe Israel is fighting for in Gaza. They think they’re warding off a mortal enemy, an enemy that seeks to destroy the Jewishness of Israel. And so nothing is off limits to them — no number of babies or children killed is too high, no destruction is too great. There are no innocents in a war of survival between competing races. The innocent baby of today will grow into a fierce enemy who will want to exterminate them tomorrow. It’s a zero-sum world. They really do believe it. The survival of the race is at stake.

Chuck Schumer Laments The Global Disdain For Zionist Apartheid

epochtimes  |  Mr. Schumer warned that the rise in anti-Semitism is "a five-alarm fire that must be extinguished." This comes amid the latest conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, which started on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 in Israel, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed.

He lamented anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States ranging from protests on college campuses to coverage in the media to boycotting and vandalism of Jewish businesses. He also cited examples of Jews being persecuted throughout history, from the Crusades to pogroms to expulsions from countries including England and Spain.

In the United States, there was a 388 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Additionally, Jews are the leading target for religious-related hate crimes in the United States, according to the FBI.

Mr. Schumer emphasized that there is a difference between criticizing Israeli government policies and demonizing Israel.

"This speech is not an attempt to label most criticism of Israel and the Israeli government, generally, as anti-Semitic," he said. "I don't believe that criticism is."

Double Standard Applied to Jews

He also criticized double standards regarding Israel compared with other countries, such as people celebrating when a new country is founded but being against the formation of the Jewish state, which occurred in 1948. He even referenced the 1947 United Nations partition plan that would have created a Jewish state and an Arab state in what was the British mandate of Palestine—which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected.

 

"The double standard has been ever present and is at the root of anti-Semitism," Mr. Schumer said.

"The double standard is very simple. What is good for everybody is never good for the Jew, and when it comes time to assign blame for some problem, the Jew is always the first target. And in recent decades, this double standard has manifested itself in the way much of the world treats Israel differently than anybody else."

"The double standard has been ever present and is at the root of anti-Semitism," Mr. Schumer said.

"The double standard is very simple. What is good for everybody is never good for the Jew, and when it comes time to assign blame for some problem, the Jew is always the first target. And in recent decades, this double standard has manifested itself in the way much of the world treats Israel differently than anybody else."

"The double standard has been ever present and is at the root of anti-Semitism," Mr. Schumer said.

"The double standard is very simple. What is good for everybody is never good for the Jew, and when it comes time to assign blame for some problem, the Jew is always the first target. And in recent decades, this double standard has manifested itself in the way much of the world treats Israel differently than anybody else."                  

 

 

 

 

Antisemitism Is Special Bigotry Because Jews Are THE Special People

timesofisrael  |  Bias against homelands can hurt minorities in the Diaspora. Prejudices against Africans (‘primitives,’ ‘hotheads’) devalue Black migrants around the world. Prejudices against Asians (‘mystical people’) dehumanize Asian migrants the world over. But propaganda against Israel hurts Jews in their Diaspora like no other minority. Zionism is to Jews what feminism is to women. Men who ‘like women but not feminists’ show they don’t like women; rather, they like being served. Jews and Gentiles who ‘like Jews but not Zionists’ show they like Jews as long as they feel scared all the time so that they can be manipulated to serve and comfort the Gentile powers to be; but not when they are independent and proud of themselves. 

Judaism laid much of the foundation of all Monotheism (One G^d), Science (One Universe), and Democracy (Equality) in the world. That’s why hatred of Jews is the ultimate ungratefulness, throwing mud on Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Einstein, and Herzl. And therefore, the Holocaust doesn’t compare to any other genocide, Armenian included—though they are all horrific.

It seems that Intersectionality was designed to promote Antisemitic. It advocates comparing oppressions and seeing how they are all interwoven. Because Antisemitism is so unique, and because Jews are kept hostage by the top level of societies (and blamed for all ills), it often ends up uniting all oppressed groups against the Jews, the victims of the oldest hatred.

And so, you see there is reason not to just regard Antisemitism as one of the forms of Racism. Jews-oppression is too specific. It’s a special bigotry.

 

 

Israel Bombed Gaza, Bombed Its Exits, And Is Bombing Those Fleeing

Israel told a million Gazans that they had to flee to the south within 24 or be bombed.

Now Israel has bombed those fleeing.

Corporate media is barely reporting this, so it is up to us to get the word out. pic.twitter.com/myXfLqwWLg

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 13, 2023

IndianPunchline |  The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press conference on Thursday concluding his visit to Israel conveyed three things. One, the Biden Administration will be seen as backing Israel to the hilt by way of meeting its security needs but Washington will not be drawn into the forthcoming Gaza operations except to arrange exit routes in the south for hapless civilians fleeing the conflict zone. 

Two, Washington’s top priority at the moment is on engaging with the regional states who wield influence with Hamas to negotiate the hostage issue. Fourteen US citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for. (White House confirmed that the death toll in the fighting now includes at least 27 Americans.) 

Three, the US will coordinate with the regional states to prevent any escalation in the situation to widen the conflict on the part of Hezbollah. Although the US cannot and will not stop Israeli leadership on its tracks apropos the imminent Gaza operation, it remains unconvinced.

Blinken was non-committal about any direct US military involvement, and the chances are slim as things stand. Most important, even as  Blinken could hear the war drums, he also cast his eye on a future for Israel (and the region) where it will be at peace with itself, would integrate into the region and concentrate on creating economic prosperity — metaphorically put, beating its swords into plowshares in a Biblical Messianic intent. 

That is to say, despite the massive show of force off the waters of Israel, with the deployment of two aircraft carriers along with destroyers and other naval assets and fighter jets off the waters of Israel, the Biden Administration is profoundly uneasy about any escalation of the conflict into a wider war. If the US senses that this is a catastrophe that Israel allowed to happen, that remains a strictly private thought.

Even as Blinken was heading for Tel Aviv, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters in Washington on Wednesday following a closed-door intelligence briefing that “We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen. I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”

Shortly after McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official confirmed to the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office. 

These disclosures would embarrass the Israeli government, as Saturday’s surprise attack can be viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s intelligence services. In a brutally frank statement on Thursday, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces General Herzi Halevi admitted, “The IDF is responsible for the security of our nation and its citizens, and we failed to do so on Saturday morning. We will look into it, we will investigate, but now it is time for war.”    

This failure will impact the decision-making in Tel Aviv. Gen. Halevi described Hamas as “animals” and “merciless terrorists who have committed unimaginable acts” against men, women and children. He said that the IDF “understands the magnitude of this time, and the magnitude of the mission that lays on our shoulders.”

“Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore he and the entire system under him are dead men,” the general added, vowing to “attack them and dismantle them and their organisation” and that “Gaza will not look the same” afterward.

Jewish Extremists Give No Phuggs About Being An Openly Ethnotheocratic Apartheid State

socialistworker  |  For most of Israel’s history the state’s fundamental contradiction didn’t much trouble its governments. The claim of democracy gave them a veneer of legitimacy. It even allowed them to justify their occupation of Palestine, their obsessive military spending funded by the US, and the wars it carries out on the US’s behalf.

But as Israel’s grip on Palestinian land has tightened, it’s been faced with an existential dilemma. Accepting the Palestinians who live there as equal citizens would threaten Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. That’s something that the “liberal” and “left” parties who once dominated Israeli politics could never accept. But they have no solution to the problem of the occupation.

They’re not willing to end the occupation of east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Nor will they give up the settlements there where hundreds of thousands of their citizens now live. But neither are they willing to abandon the pretence of being a democracy. And they cling to the false promise of a two-state solution—the lie that they will one day give Palestinians a state of their own.

The Israeli right does have a solution—but it means casting off Israel’s democratic facade. The Israeli right is much better suited to maintaining Israel’s apartheid system. They’re much more open and determined in their desire to seize all Palestinian land, and in their hatred of Palestinian people.

So as the problem of the occupation grew over the years, so too has the popularity of the Israeli right. Binyamin Netanyahu has become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister by riding that tide. In 2015, he won re-election by warning of the “threat” posed by Arab voters voting “in droves”.

Having done that, he went on in 2018 to pass a new “basic law”—fundamental legislation that acts as Israel’s constitution. This said openly that only Jewish people have “an exclusive right to self determination” there. It was designed to entrench into law the apartheid system that had for decades been an unspoken reality. 

But it also meant admitting openly, for the first time, that Israel was not a democracy for Palestinians. Now, propped up by parties even further to his right, Netanyahu’s government wants to go further. What the US, Israel’s “centrists,” and the soldiers refusing to serve really fear is that in doing so, they’ll cast off the “democratic” identity. 

With it goes the cloak of legitimacy for the apartheid system. The alternative is a single, secular state in all of Palestine, with equal democratic rights for all of its citizens. But Israel’s defenders of “democracy” would rather envisage civil war before they countenance that.