CIA’s Washington Post Says “democracy” is Causing All the Problems in the Middle East – so there should be less

by Scott Creighton (archived from June 2 2018 )

How many mistakes, outright lies and convoluted perceptions about the history of our involvement in the Middle East can one writer stuff into an Op-ed for the Washington Post (where “Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight”) and what does their twisted version of “truth” reveal about their fascist agenda?

It’s a good question isn’t it? Lets ask Yoav Fromer, a man who teaches a particular version of American history at Tel Aviv University and who just wrote a piece for the Post titled (believe it or not) “The Middle East doesn’t lack democracy. It has too much.”

“From Turkey to Israel to Iran, popular opinion drives the radicalism and instability of governments in the region“ Yoav Fromer

Is Turkey a “radical” nation because they oppose the faction of their Kurdish population who are striving to bust off part of the country for the Greater Kurdistan project? Are they “radical” because they call out Israeli aggression in places like Syria, Lebanon and Gaza? Or perhaps because they rejected a pipeline deal the Saudis and Qatar wanted? What exactly makes them “radical”?

Candidate Pete Buttigieg: Israel’s Security Policy Offers “Important Lessons” for the US

by Whitney Webb, MintPress News

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, whose candidacy is currently being heavily promoted by corporate media, was one of the many 2020 contenders for the Democratic Party who declined to attend the recent annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in apparent response to calls from prominent “progressive” organizations to boycott the event and a growing shift among Democratic voters in favor of Palestinian rights. 
 
However, despite his absence from the AIPAC conference, Buttigieg’s past public statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict echo those of pro-Israel stalwarts in the Democratic Party. Indeed, Buttigieg, in a trip to Israel last year that was funded by the pro-Israel lobby, praised Israel’s security response to protests by Palestinians on the Gaza-Israel border just four days after the slaughter of Gazan protesters by Israeli military snipers — repeating many of the same one-sided talking points about the conflict that define centrists in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Last May, Buttigieg traveled to Israel as part of a trip for U.S. mayors organized by Project Interchange, an affiliate of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the oldest and most influential Israel lobby organizations in the United States. The AJC regularly conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and has even accused progressive American Jews of anti-Semitism for their critiques of Israeli government policy.

Soon after the Israel lobby-sponsored trip, which the Times of Israel referred to as a “learning experience trip,” Buttigieg appeared on AJC’s Passport podcast, hosted by Seffi Kogen. Buttigieg, during the 22-minute discussion, stated that Israel’s security policy is “on the one hand very intentional, very serious and very effective when it comes to security and on the other hand not allowing concerns about security to dominate your consciousness.” He then added that his trip to Israel showed him that Israel’s security policy offers “a very important lesson that hopefully, Americans can look to [when] we think about how to navigate a world that unfortunately has become smaller and more dangerous for all of us.”..


[read more here]

Why They Attacked Rep. Omar: It Ain't the Tropes

Question: Why are they angry Rep. Omar said AIPAC is buying influence in American politics?

Answer: They aren't. Not really. They're scared of something else.

Anti-BDS Bill Advances in Senate

The worst part about this bill (aside from it's unconstitutional structure and the fact that it legislates 3.8 billion dollars a year to Israel for the next 10 years and beyond) is the chilling effect it will have on U.S. citizens who care about things like human rights. It is really an assault on folks who aren't psychopaths and an effort to make them keep their mouths shut when they see horrors playing out in places like Gaza and the West Bank.
 

The US Senate Just Quietly Advanced A Free Speech Busting Anti-BDS Bill

by Whitney Webb, MintPress News

In an evening vote that garnered essentially no national media coverage, the U.S. Senate voted last night to advance the “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019” – sometimes called the “anti-BDS bill” for its component that would allow state and local governments to punish companies or individuals who support the non-violent Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement aimed at promoting Palestinian rights and ending Israeli apartheid and military occupation of the West Bank. The bill was, notably, numbered S.1 — the Senate’s first legislative act of its 2019-20 session.
 
Numerous rights groups, politicians and civil rights advocates have accused this measure of violating freedom of speech and setting a dangerous precedent for the private political activism of American citizens, all on behalf of a foreign country.

The bill was adopted by the Senate in a vote of 74 in favor to 19 against, with seven abstentions. The bill had previously been blocked by Senate Democrats by a 56-44 vote as part of their objection to acting on legislation during the government shutdown. However, many of those Democratic senators who had previously blocked the bill ultimately voted in support of the measure. In order to become law, the measure would still need to pass the Democrat-run House of Representatives. However, given the amount of support for the measure among Democrats and the power of the Israel lobby, the bill stands a considerable chance of passing the House.

Some commentators have paid particular attention to how Democratic senators considered to be 2020 hopefuls voted on the bill. Several confirmed and likely contenders for the upcoming Democratic nomination voted “No” – including Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). However, Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), whose private courting of the Israel lobby was the subject of a recent MintPress News report, abstained from voting. Another notable abstention was Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who had previously threatened to filibuster a key component of the bill last year, preventing its passage during the previous Congress...

[read more here]

US media biased in favor of Israel - new Canadian study

As IDF Attacks Gaza and Syria Our Congress Collaborates with Israeli Regime

On the very same day a 43-year-old Palestinian mother was shot in the head by the IDF for protesting in Gaza, our new congress members in the House voted overwhelmingly to create a new antisemitism czar to keep folks like us from talking about the stuff Israel does.

As Israel attacks the people of Gaza and Syria with impunity, our senators pass SR 1 in an effort to keep folks from boycotting Israel in hopes to stem the carnage.

Makes you wonder which country is actually occupied: Palestine or us.

St. Dept Spox Disgusted by Question About Israeli Raid of WAFA

The worse Israel behaves toward the Palestinians, the more our officials openly despise anyone who dares ask about it. Imagine if Rouhani, Putin, Maduro, Ortega, Assad or Raul Castro had done this. Imagine if their snipers had just killed a 4-year-old boy and then raided a news agency to silence reports about it. Not only would the State Department already be condemning the acts, but they would be calling for a humanitarian intervention and a NATO "no fly zone"

But Israel does it and we see only contempt for those who dare mention it in public.

Marc Lamont Hill Fired by CNN for Expressing Some REAL NEWS

 Marc Lamont Hill Learns the Helen Thomas Lesson: "You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive."



Let's see if ZioCuck Trump has the balls to call CNN "fake news" over this.

Marc Lamont Hill has been fired by CNN for exposing some  REAL NEWS from Palestine and beyond. He called for a return to June 1967 borders, global solidarity movement and support for BDS. For that, he was demonized by various groups online and with calls to CNN to fire him, which they did.

Side by Side Comparison: IDF Bus Bomb vs an Actual Kornet Anti-tank Rocket

Ryan Dawson and Adam Green caught promoting IDF propaganda about the "rocket attack' on the IDF bus.

Adam Green video w/ Ryan Dawson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIefmWZC288

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Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman resigns, slams Gaza ceasefire as ‘capitulation to terror’

(This news makes me think that the little IDF bus show was put on by Lieberman in an effort to thwart the Egyptian-brokered peace deal)

from RT

Israel Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has resigned as a protest against the ceasefire in Gaza, calling the deal a "capitulation to terror." His right-wing party, Yisrael Beiteinu, will also leave the ruling coalition.

 

In a live televised address, Liberman called yesterday’s ceasefire a “surrender to terror” that only achieves “short-term quiet” while damaging Israel’s “long-term security.” A writer for Haaretz said that the ex-defense minister “looked quite cheerful” as he announced his resignation.

Lieberman strongly opposed the Israeli government’s decision to agree a truce with Hamas, apparently arguing that Tel Aviv should take “harsh, decisive” actions against Gaza. He said that he could not reconcile his own views with the policies adopted by the Israeli government in Gaza, compelling him to resign.

“If I had remained in post, I couldn’t have looked in the eyes of our citizens in the south and the family members of the dead IDF soldiers whose bodies are held by Hamas. Any humanitarian improvement in Gaza should have been conditional on their being returned,” he was quoted as saying.

Lieberman confirmed that his resignation will be followed by the withdrawal of his right-wing nationalist party, Yisrael Beiteinu, from the ruling coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud. With Yisrael Beitenu’s departure, the coalition will be down to just 61 seats in parliament – holding a 1-seat majority. As a result, early elections are expected as soon as March 2019...

[read more here]

The "Miracle" Bus: IDF stages explosion on bus to justify deeper attacks on Gazan civilians

by Scott Creighton

This is remarkable.

It's being called a "miracle" and I guess when "God's chosen people" start talking about miracles like this one, they take that kind of thing very seriously.

The story goes something like this: a bus full of IDF soldiers got hit by a Kornet antitank missile (see here, here and here), fired from Gaza but it had unloaded all the soldiers minutes before the strike.

"The soldier who was injured was apparently standing outside the bus when the Kornet anti-tank guided missile was fired from the Gaza Strip." Times of Israel 11/13/18

"Moments later, the bus, which had no markings identifying it as military, pulled out into the open and was immediately struck by a Kornet anti-tank missile." The Yeshiva World 11/13/18

They are reporting there was only one casualty, a 19-year-old IDF solder who was taken to the hospital.

Most reports fail to mention the Arab-Israeli bus driver... who was also taken to the hospital suffering from "shock"

And, as it just so happens, they had a camera pointed right at the bus far enough away to not be in danger, just as the explosion happened.

The claim is it was Hamas who made the video. Funny, there is no fence between the camera and the bus and it zooms in quite close during the recording.

And a you had a bunch of troops standing nearby behind SUVs... luckily on the right side of the vehicles so that they were shielded from the explosion.

And... route 232, the location of the event, was closed to civilian traffic that day.

Whatever caused the explosion after everyone had gotten off the bus, it was not a Kornet anti-tank missile and in fact it looks as if something was planted on the bus itself.

IDF sends tanks to Gaza border, bracing for potential full-fledged ground offensive – reports

from RT

Tel Aviv has reportedly deployed additional ground forces, including tanks, to the Gaza Strip border after more than 300 rockets were fired at Israel, triggering airstrikes against some 70 targets across the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli military began reinforcing its positions along the Gaza border on Monday night after the army was reportedly given a green light to act against Hamas militants if the rocket fire against southern Israeli communities continues. Columns of trucks carrying armored vehicles were recorded heading to the border just as the IDF warned Hamas of an “iron fist” response to the most rigorous shelling of Israel since the 2014 Gaza war.

“Residents of Gaza, look closely at the pictures from Protective Edge in 2014: A picture is worth a thousand words,” Major General Kamil Abu Rokon, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), wrote on the Arabic-language Facebook page, stating that Hamas has “crossed a red line” with their attacks on Israel...

[read more here]

Watch the film the Israel lobby didn’t want you to see

from Electronic Intifada


The Electronic Intifada has obtained a complete copy of The Lobby – USA, a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States.

It is today publishing the first two episodes. The Paris-based Orient XXI has published the same episodes with French subtitles.

The film was made by Al Jazeera during 2016 and was completed in October 2017. But it was censored after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film. Although Al Jazeera’s director-general claimed last month that there were outstanding legal issues with the film, his assertions have been flatly contradicted by his own journalists. In March,

The Electronic Intifada was the first to report on any of the film’s specific content.

We followed this in August by publishing the first extract of the film, and shortly after Max Blumenthal at the Grayzone Project released others.

 Since then, The Electronic Intifada has released three other extracts, and several other journalists have watched the entire film and written about it – including Alain Gresh and Antony Loewenstein. Now The Electronic Intifada can reveal for the first time that it has obtained all four parts of the film. You can watch the first two parts in the video embeds above and below.


--

 To get unprecedented access to the Israel lobby’s inner workings, undercover reporter “Tony” posed as a pro-Israel volunteer in Washington.

 The resulting film exposes the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy on, smear and intimidate US citizens who support Palestinian human rights, especially BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

 It shows that Israel’s semi-covert black-ops government agency, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, is operating this effort in collusion with an extensive network of US-based organizations.

 These include the Israel on Campus Coalition, The Israel Project and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies....

[read more here]

Banksy Wall in Palestine (Adam Green video from Palestine)

The Banksy wall was always close to my heart. It was the border image I had at the top of my website for 11 years before WordPress took it all away from me.

My hat is off to Adam for going to Palestine and reporting from the ground there.

With Elections Looming and To Cover for Corrupt Netanyahu, IDF Moved Military Equipment into Place a Week Ago Before their "Reaction" to Gaza Rockets

by Scott Creighton

H/T to James York who left a comment on one of my videos yesterday which spurred me on to do some research on this subject.

"Normally you are pretty good at keeping your "eye on the ball".... Khashoggi, the caravan, and now the fake bombing shit seem like distraction ploys to me. A few days ago Israel deployed 60 battle tanks to the border of Gaza... while the head of the IDF is making much noise about how "they have no choice" but to act...." J.Y.

This morning, Israel has attacked Gaza once again launching 80 airstrikes against targets inside the world's "largest open air prison"

Details regarding civilian casualties have yet to be released.

The Israelis claim, as they always do, the strikes are retaliation for 30 homemade rockets being fired from inside Gaza toward Israel. Several of the unguided bottle-rockets landed in Gaza, several were intercepted by Iron Dome and the rest fell uselessly in unpopulated areas just on the other side of the fence.

But Israel used them as justification, as they always do, to launch a massive attack against the Palestinian people living in Gaza. The VAST majority of them having nothing to do with the bottle-rockets.

Israel always plays the victim card when they attack Gaza. They did so in 2008 with Operation Cast Lead (1,400 Palestinian civilians killed), in 2012 with Operation Pillar of Defense (175 Palestinians killed), in 2014 with Operation Protective Edge (2,205 Palestinians killed 500 of whom were children - 18,000 homes destroyed) and lastly in 2018 during the Great March of Return as Israeli snipers continue to attack protesters at the fence (210 killed so far with another 18,000 wounded)

They also tend to stage these attacks during times when people in the U.S. are focused on other things. During Cast Lead the country was focused on all that "CHANGE" they were about to get when Obama took office. During Pillar of Defense, we had a presidential election to focus on. And during Protective Edge, it was the summer of 2014 and we were having a mass casualty event taking place it seems like once a week.

And of course now we have the Mad Fake Bomber and a migrant "invasion" to focus on.

Israeli jets hit 80 targets in Gaza amid rocket fire and protests

from al Jazeera

Israeli fighter jets struck dozens of sites across the Gaza Strip early on Saturday as fighters fired about 30 rockets into Israel, in the heaviest exchange of fire in several weeks.

The fighting followed a bloody day of border protests, in which Israeli forces shot and killed five Palestinians protesting along the perimeter fence dividing Hamas-ruled Gaza and Israel.

The fighting and bloodshed complicated the mission of Egyptian mediators, who have intensified shuttle diplomacy to achieve calm and prevent a full-blown conflict between Hamas and Israel.

The Israeli military said it had struck about 80 sites across Gaza by early Saturday morning...