the dernier cri (which anglin didn’t spot yet) is CNN’s brian stelter

May 16, 2021 – 3:04 pm

Israel Bombs The AP Offices in Gaza! Building Leveled! What Now, Media???
Andrew Anglin, Daily Stormer, May 16 2021

This could possibly be the funniest thing ever. The only reason that the AP has offices in Palestine is to shill for Israel. But Israel goes ahead and bombs them, presumably because they just weren’t shilling hard enough. This is obviously intended to be a message to all journalists worldwide: shill harder! Per AP:

An Israeli airstrike on Saturday destroyed a high-rise building that housed The AP office in the Gaza Strip, despite repeated urgent calls from the news agency to the military to halt the impending attack. AP called the strike “shocking and horrifying.” Twelve AP staffers and freelancers were working and resting in the bureau on Saturday afternoon when the Israeli military telephoned a warning, giving occupants of the building one hour to evacuate. Everyone was able to get out, grabbing a few belongings, before three heavy missiles struck the 12-story building, collapsing it into a giant cloud of dust. Although no one was hurt, the airstrike demolished an office that was like a second home for AP journalists and marked a new chapter in the already rocky relationship between the Israeli military and the international media. Press-freedom groups condemned the attack. They accused the military, which claimed the building housed Hamas military intelligence, of trying to censor coverage of Israel’s relentless offensive against Hamas militants. Ahead of the demolition, the AP placed urgent calls to the Israeli military, foreign minister and prime minister’s office but were either ignored or told that there was nothing to be done.

For 15 years, the AP’s top-floor office and roof terrace were a prime location for covering Israel’s conflicts with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, including wars in 2009, 2012 and 2014. The news agency’s camera offered 24-hour live shots as militants’ rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surrounding area this week.

You can go read the full AP article on the bombing of their building. They actually shill for Israel in the article about how they themselves have just been bombed! Gary Pruitt, the AP’s president and chief executive, gave a statement. For some reason he had a bandaid on his nose when he gave the statement (as if he’s just had a nosejob).

The building also housed some Al-Jazeera offices, which might be why they targeted it. Bibi responded to international inquiry about the bombing by saying, and I quote: “It was not an innocent building.”

I guess he thought there might be terror-babies in it. Israel has a right to protect itself against terror-babies.

We all watched as the media went completely ape over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a member of the Moslem Brotherhood who had written columns in English for the WaPo. Khashoggi was killed by Saudi Prince Muhammed bin Salman, an ally of Israel and thus generally off-limits, but the media went after him anyway. That might have mainly been about attacking Donald Trump. We’ll never know. We do know that Joe Biden said he would not do anything to punish Saudi for killing this guy (chopping him up), and the media kind of complained and then gave up. What I’m certain we learned in the Khashoggi Saga is that journalists are sacred people, as long as they are not Julian Assange. I think it’s safe to say that even though no-one died, actually blowing up a press building is more extreme than assassinating a single journalist, especially given that Khashoggi, as a member (or at least de facto member) of the Moslem Brotherhood, could be framed as an enemy combatant in a larger conflict that’s bigger than his role as a journalist. Just outright blowing up an AP office is the single biggest attack on journalists by anyone in my lifetime. This is certainly much more extreme than vague claims that Vladimir Putin is “killing journalists.” The question is: is there going to be any pushback on Israel for doing this, at all? Beyond the initial complaints, the statements that “this is bad” are the journalists actually going to press the issue? Is Freedom House going to take this to the UN?

No. No, I don’t think Freedom House will be pressing the issue very far. But even if the watchdog groups aren’t interested in watch-dogging, someone is going to have to complain about this war crime, right? What about the journalists themselves? Surely, top print outlet NYT and top TV station CNN will come out really aggressively against bombing journalists?

No. No, I suppose they won’t. I don’t even expect that they will start covering the massive anti-Israel protests that are taking place in every major city.

What an incredible thing, the way these Jews have just taken over everything, then pushed this really extreme “brown people are always right and are above everyone else” agenda, then started slaughtering brown people and leveling their cities and getting away with it. The bottom line on this AP bombing is this: if they can kill brown people and get away with it, they can just pretty much do anything, and that includes using bombs to silence journalists. This modern system exalts mainstream journalists, sure. But not as much as it exalts brown people. What the bombing of this AP building, and the bombing of Palestine in general should do is show people that the entire “left vs right” dichotomy is fake. The entire story of the 21st century is actually “Jews vs Non-Jews.” Look at it:

  • The right does nothing to stop the tranny agenda. Governors in red states are vetoing bills to stop the trannies.
  • The right does nothing to stop the black agenda. Brian Kemp just abolished citizens’ arrest.
  • The left does nothing to stop the bombing of Palestine.
  • The left does nothing to defend journalists getting bombed.

We here at Tranny Watch are consistently on the right side of all of these issues. I’m not a leftist, I’m not generally pro-Moslem or pro-Brown People in general, but I’ll tell you: there is no conceivable way to justify Israel slaughtering all these children, leveling everyone’s house, and just basically genociding people who they’ve locked in an open-air prison (Gaza). I don’t care how much you hate Moslems. This kind of asymmetry in war cannot possibly be justified. The Palestinians have literally no ability to defend themselves, and they’re just getting slaughtered by these bombs.

And of course, as we know, the neither the Republican nor Democrat establishment consistently hates Moslems, given that they advocate for war with China to save the “human rights” of Moslems. Do you know what China is accused of doing? They’re accused of sending Moslem terrorists to reeducation camps and making them sing songs about Emperor Xi. Which would you rather have happen to you: have your entire city leveled by bombs and your children blown to bits, or be forced to sing a song? Meanwhile, the Uyghur Moslems in China are actually terrorists, and join ISIS in large numbers. The Hezbollah fighters Israel is bombing fight against ISIS. Furthermore: I also think journalists should be treated like Red Cross. I don’t care if that is a leftist talking point, it’s correct: journalists should always be protected in war zones. You have to have that rule, or there is no way to know what is going on in a war. But of course, it isn’t really a leftist agenda. It might be a leftist talking point, but as we see here, they won’t ever do anything to actually protect journalists, and when journalists get bombed all they do is say “this is not good.” Here are some of the latest photographs from what Joe Biden has (apparently without irony) referred to as “Israeli self-defense.” Note that you probably won’t be seeing as many of these photographs now that Israel has decided to start explicitly targeting the media.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

a useful charade from the nazi church of england

May 16, 2021 – 2:34 pm

In London, a Kangaroo Court Ambush Is Being Set for China
Stephen Karganovic, Strategic Culture, May 15 2021

Photo: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

An impudent farce vaguely shrouded in pseudo legal garb is due to be staged on Jun 4-7 2021 at Church House in London. A so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” will be convened there to deliberate on the danger of imminent extinction allegedly threatening the Uyghur Muslim minority ethnic group in China’s Xinjiang province. For the geographically challenged, Xinjiang (or Sinkiang in more common transcription) is the westernmost region of China. That is important, and relevant to this topic, because Xinjiang happens to be the most convenient land route corridor which China’s Belt and Road Initiative must inevitably employ if it is to be viable. Accordingly, make Xinjiang a sufficiently hazardous place and for all practical purposes BRI trade goes up in smoke. Chinese products cannot reach their foreign destinations, and neither can the products of foreign partners be reliably delivered to the Chinese market. Even from a superficial, layman’s point of view Xinjiang is seen, therefore, in a pivotal strategic role on the Great Chessboard. That most certainly is not because of possible human rights abuses that might be occurring there, if indeed they are, but for entirely different, hard-nosed geopolitical reasons. Indeed, Xinjiang plays a far more strategically prominent role today than could have been contemplated even by Brzezinski in 1997, when his famous book was published. The way it works was explained by Russian geopolitical analyst K Gadzhiev of the Primakov National Research Institute who cogently argues:

The revival of Russia as a strong military and political power capable to defend its national interests, the emergence of powerful new actors such as China, the weakening of geopolitical positions of the West in general and the US in particular, their defeat in aggressive wars and other failures have led to deep cracks in the conventional Grand Chessboard, which have brought about changes in both the line-up of the leading players and the rules of the game on it.

Gadziev further argues that even though combined Western power has seriously frayed, it would be unreasonable to expect it to “simply give up the protection of their interests in Eurasia as a whole, and particularly in Central Asia.” Thwarting any projection of Chinese power and influence that could be deemed threatening and retaining and enhancing the power and influence of the Western coalition, viewed as a zero-sum-game, is therefore the context in which the intensification of efforts to destabilise China should be viewed. The sudden obsession with human rights issues, specifically in the strategically positioned region of Xinjiang, is either completely coincidental or it is an important element of that very destabilisation campaign. But to return to the “Uyghur Tribunal,” which is a very important facet of the just described picture. It was set up in 2020 in the UK, on the cusp of the publicity campaign designed to enhance a public perception of the allegedly grave human rights situation in Xinjiang. The task of the “Tribunal” now is to make the transition in the public mind from routine charges of “human rights violation,” always useful for exerting diplomatic pressure on the targeted government, to the substantively new level of “genocide,” with more serious legal, political, and moral implications.

According to information available on the Tribunal website, the initial step toward Uyghur Tribunal’s formation was taken in June 2020 by Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, an organization of faux Uyghur émigrés with close ties to the Western, primarily US, political and security establishment. (See NED Grants Database site for an itemised schedule of financial support to WUC totalling $1.284m. For the many interlocking organisations which constitute the “Uyghur diaspora” under the patronage of Western agencies, and the individuals most prominently involved in it, both Uyghur and their non-Uyghur overseers, credible and thoroughly researched sources of information are available here and here.) The official account has it that Isa turned to Geoffrey Nice QC, Hague Tribunal (ICTY) prosecutor in the case of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, with a request to „establish and chair an independent people’s tribunal to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations.“ Accordingly, „The Uyghur Tribunal was launched on Sep 3 2020 with assistance from a non-governmental organisation, the Coalition for Genocide Response.“ The engagement of Geoffrey Nice to supervise this operation is of considerable symbolic significance because of his close association with the Yugoslav Tribunal in the Hague. That in turn triggers associations with that Tribunal’s principal task, which was to legally validate the alleged Srebrenica Genocide and personally inculpate the head of the Yugoslav state at the time in that and numerous other imputed serious violations of international law. It should be borne in mind that one of the specific named targets of the consortium of organisations, all masquerading as NGOs, which are advocating legal proceedings against China over the Uyghur Question, is President Xi himself, in a clear analogy to Milošević.

There are numerous oddities about the Uyghur Tribunal, of which it suffices to mention just two. First, the entity described, using deliberately misleading legal terminology, as a „Tribunal“ was in fact „constituted as a UK Private Company Limited by Guarantee – under the name ‘Uyghur Administration Ltd.’“ That means that it is a private citizens’ association without any official standing whatsoever within the judicial system of the UK. The juridical status of the „Uyghur Tribunal“ is therefore null. The conclusions it draws and „verdicts“ it issues are completely non-binding and technically unenforceable. Since it misrepresents itself as a „Tribunal,“ not being a proper court it lacks the requisite authority to make its judgements heeded, except to the extent that through manipulative political and mediatic mechanisms a perception should have been created that they ought to be. The second significant anomaly of the „Uyghur Tribunal“ is that it apparently lacks a governing document (known as the Statute in the case of the Hague Tribunal) as well as, even more importantly, Rules of procedure and evidence. These are practical roadmaps without which no actual or pretended „tribunal“ is even conceivable. The lack of procedure and evidence rules means that there are no set guidelines for the conduct of UT’s essential business. Since the conclusions the panel will ultimately draw supposedly will have been based on the “evidence” put before it, the lack of rules governing admission and assessment of evidence seriously impairs the integrity of the entire process. It is a mystery how Geoffrey Nice QC, touted on the Uyghur Tribunal website as a „prominent barrister,“ could have overlooked these obvious defects and still have agreed to head such an outfit. Regardless, it is fair to say that the “Uyghur Tribunal,” the entity over which he presides, is operating as no more than an insolent improvisation.

But to underestimate the improvisation’s potential for propaganda mischief, would be a serious mistake. This year’s G7 meeting is scheduled to take place in Cornwall, UK, from Jun 11-13. The first hearing of the “Uyghur Tribunal,” as already noted, will take place on Jun 4-7 2021 at Church House, London. That is neither a chronological nor a geographical coincidence. There is a record of similar “coincidences” in the annals of Western propaganda machinations. A pertinent example, directly relevant to our topic, can be cited in the form the Report of the Mazowiecki Commission, which was submitted to the UNSC on Sep 3 1992 about alleged atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia. The Report overwhelmingly burdened the Serbian side with charges of grave transgressions, and largely absolved other actors. Like the “Uyghur Tribunal” set to open just before G7, it was perfectly timed just before an important UNSC meeting on intensifying sanctions against Yugoslavia and the Republic of Srpska, and as intense lobbying was being conducted behind the scenes to set up an international tribunal, which ultimately turned out to be ICTY, to try war crimes suspects. By generating a human rights violation frenzy at precisely the right moment, the Mazowiecki Commission Report was hugely instrumental in successfully accomplishing both its assigned purposes. The forthcoming “Uyghur Tribunal” should be viewed in a similar light. By feeding the media and the Western political class selected disinformation about the situation in Xinjiang its mission is to set the stage for whatever restrictive or punitive measures against China are contemplated to follow.

Mainly because of China’s veto power in the UNSC, it is unlikely that the “Tribunal’s” conclusions would lead to the formation of an ad hoc court to try China and its leadership, as occurred with Serbian defendants after the establishment of ICTY. However, the “Uyghur Tribunal” verdict undoubtedly will be useful to increase political pressure on China, as well as to attempt to get Western public opinion on board in favor of exacerbating tensions and approving whatever further hostile measures are in store. Two recent examples of the use of the Uyghur issue for political profit will suffice. The Coalition for Genocide Response, one of the principal sponsors of the “Uyghur Tribunal,” announced not long ago:

On Apr 22 2021, the UK House of Commons will have the opportunity to set the record straight and recognise the China’s atrocities against the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities as genocide.

In similar vein, a news report from New Zealand dated Apr 28 2021 states:

The Act Party today plans to ask Parliament to debate a motion to declare China’s oppression of the Uighur ethnic minority an act of ‘genocide.’ Its motion would ask MPs to vote on whether human rights abuses in the Chinese region of Xinjiang amount to genocide, a move that could compel the Government to take stronger action in condemning the nation.

Significantly, the report goes on that “similar motions have passed in the UK and Canada.” These are sufficient clues to the overall political strategy behind the “Uyghur Tribunal,” in the near term at least. One wishes that Chinese representatives would boldly march into Church House (piously located at Westminster Abbey, Dean’s Yard, London) on Jun 4 to teach Geoffrey Nice and his fellow panelists who simulate judges a memorable “rule of law” lesson. Their task, not at all difficult of execution, should be to demonstrate to all present that “Uyghur Tribunal” proceedings are a sham because they do not satisfy even minimal judicial standards, whether in the UK or any other civilized country. They should vigorously challenge any and all evidence admitted by a forum operating without any evidentiary rules whatsoever. They should insist on cross-examining all witnesses and “experts” brought to testify. And they must bring along their own audio and video equipment to record the judicial buffoonery and show to the global audience how in London, the fount of a once impressive legal tradition, an illegitimate, private, and self-appointed court now sits and hands down its farcical verdict.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

this argument, that the vaccine causes the disease, is beginning to gain traction

May 16, 2021 – 1:57 pm

The Same Pattern Everywhere? Mass Vaccination triggers sharp spike in Cases and Deaths
Mike Whitney, Unz.com, May 15 2021

Covid cases have risen sharply in nearly every country that has launched a mass vaccination campaign. Please watch this short video before You Tube removes it.

Why is this happening? Mass vaccination was supposed to reduce the threat of Covid but in the short-term it appears to make it much worse. Why? And why is Covid now “surging in 4 of 5 the most vaccinated countries”? According to Forbes magazine:

Countries with the world’s highest vaccination rates, including four of the top five most vaccinated, are fighting to contain coronavirus outbreaks that are, on a per-capita basis, higher than the surge devastating India, a trend that has experts questioning the efficacy of some vaccines … and the wisdom of easing restrictions even with most of the population vaccinated.

Worse than India? How can that be? And why have 8 “fully vaccinated” members of the New York Yankees tested positive for Covid? Here’s the story, from the AP:

New York Yankees shortstop Gleyber Torres tested positive for Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated and having previously contracted the coronavirus during the offseason. Torres is among eight so-called breakthrough positives among the Yankees, people who tested positive despite being fully vaccinated.

And if that’s not confusing enough, check out what’s going on in Cambodia. Cambodia began its vaccination campaign in early February after having compiled zero fatalities. That’s right, the country had no Covid deaths until March, a few weeks after it started its vaccination program. And that’s when the deaths started piling up as you can see in the eye-popping chart below.

VaxxPatternMW-2Chart from Joel Smalley Twitter

So, let’s see if we can figure this out. There were zero fatalities before the launching of the vaccination campaign, but soon after the injections began, the fatalities started to mount. Do you think there might be a connection here? Do you think that, perhaps, the deaths are linked to the vaccines? Of course, they are. And, that’s why the media is trying to sweep this story under the rug. It doesn’t fit with the “official narrative” about the vaccines, so they’ve decided to “vanish” the story altogether. “Poof” and it’s gone! And, actually, it’s worse than a cover-up because, shortly after Biden took office, the CDC changed its testing methodology making it harder to test positive. In other words, they rigged the system so it would look like fewer “fully vaccinated” people had contracted Covid after inoculation. Dr Joseph Mercola explains what’s going on behind the scenes:

Now, the CDC has lowered the CT even further, in what appears to be a clear effort to hide COVID-19 breakthrough cases, meaning cases in which fully vaccinated individuals are being diagnosed with COVID-19.

It’s all a big shell game. They’re gaming the system to make it look like the vaccines are stopping infection when the evidence proves the opposite. And notice the deliberately-misleading moniker the media invented for the people who get Covid after being vaccinated. They call them “Breakthrough cases.” If cases surge in nearly every country that launches a mass vaccination campaign, then there’s nothing “breakthrough” about it. It’s the predictable result of a failed experiment. Here’s more from an article titled “Covid rates post-vaccination around the world”:

“The government assumed that if ‘you vaccinate lots of people and the problem goes away,’ but the questioners among us did not assume that. Especially having read the FDA Briefing Document for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for example, many of us had questions after reading it; on Page 42, it states: “Suspected COVID-19 cases that occurred within 7 days after any vaccination were 409 in the vaccination group vs 287 in the placebo group. It is possible that the imbalance in suspected COVID-19 cases occurring in the 7 days post-vaccination represents vaccine reactogenicity with symptoms that overlap with those of COVID-19. Overall though, these data do not raise a concern that protocol-specified reporting of suspected, but unconfirmed COVID-19 cases could have masked clinically significant adverse events that would not have otherwise been detected.

So, the FDA KNEW that vaccinated people were more likely to contract Covid than those in the placebo group, but they approved the vaccines anyway? Is that criminal negligence or just plain old stupidity? Please. read the above paragraph again and decide whether you would have given these sketchy injections the “green light” or not? Here’s more from the same article:

The following show data from around the world from some selected locations. It is, of course, vital to stress that correlation is not causation. And that there are countries where vaccine rollout does not precede or coincide with increased infections. However, I have been unable to find any nation where covid rates have begun to drop after vaccination started, or where a drop coincided with vaccination starting. In Indonesia, for example, the covid rate was falling when vaccination started and seems to have been unaffected in its trajectory by the vaccine being rolled out. The reader can look up these charts for him/herself on the website. Have a look at these and see what you make of them.

Okay, so the author is trying to put the most charitable spin on vaccine performance as possible. He says, “correlation is not causation,” which means ‘Don’t trust your eyes when you look at the charts, because if you do, you’ll draw the obvious conclusion that the vaccines greatly increase your chances of getting Covid in the few weeks afterwards.’ The charts will also convince you that Fauci, Biden and the media have been lying through their teeth about the effectiveness of the vaccines. (Please, check out the charts in the article and judge for yourself.) Here’s more:

What is very clear looking at data worldwide, is that vaccinations are certainly not associated with a reliable fall in covid cases in any predictable timeframe. This, alongside the observations in the trial, surely must be addressed. What is happening here? Is it just that vaccinations are coincidentally being rolled out at the same time as outbreaks are due? In very many places? Or is the vaccine not working immediately? If not, why not? … Or is the vaccine making people more susceptible to infection? If this is the case … is this a temporary effect? What causes it? … How long does it take for any increased susceptibility to diminish?”… We are told that everyone must be vaccinated (but) How can free informed consent be given under these conditions?

These are all good questions, unfortunately, Dr Fauci & Co don’t plan to answer any of them. Instead, their allies in the media are doing everything they can to disappear the story and deflect attention to the elusive ‘variants’, which is the diversion du jour. Am I being too harsh? Maybe, but maybe not harsh enough. Take a look at this clip from a piece at Conservative Woman titled “Every Reason To Doubt The Vaccine Makers’ Reassurances”:

I have reported previously on an astonishing spike in deaths that occurred alongside an intensive vaccination campaign in Gibraltar, where the small community consequently developed the highest Covid death rate in the world. We also know that thousands of deaths have been seen in the US, EU and UK in the wake of Covid vaccinations, often immediately after the jab has been administered. The manufacturers, leading medical journals and most governments insist these deaths are unrelated to the vaccine. In many instances, the deaths and serious illness have been attributed to coincidental infection with the virus. But evidence is mounting that for some, especially the weak and elderly, the vaccine itself is creating or worsening the very illness against which it is supposed to be protective … a worrying phenomenon which appears consistently in Covid vaccine studies is a spike in purported ‘infections’ which occurs precisely during that three-week period, and usually immediately following the jab … The researchers raise the possibility that the jab may trigger ‘symptoms likened to Covid-19 symptoms including fever’ in those recently exposed to the virus … He suggests the mechanism may be a depression in immunity caused by a loss of white blood cells post-jab, observed in both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca trials, making the vaccinees more vulnerable to the virus in the short term.

Okay, so the author arrives at the same conclusion as the previous author; maybe the vaccine makes people more susceptible to the virus by lowering their defenses and thus inviting infection. That’s certainly one possibility, but there are other possibilities that could be infinitely more serious. Further from the same article:

It has not been generally acknowledged that the jab is designed to protect us by provoking our cells into producing the very toxin that makes the virus more dangerous than its predecessors in the coronavirus family. This toxin, known as the spike protein, can damage not just the lungs but may also affect organs such the brain, heart and kidneys. The reasoning behind administering the jab is that temporary exposure to the toxin may provide long-term protection against becoming ill from the virus. Early indications are that this strategy is working, although it is not at all certain yet to what extent the fall-off in infection rates seen in intensely vaccinated populations is seasonal and related to the waves of infection, or if it is a lasting benefit. There is also a very real possibility, supported by animal experiments as well as by the studies cited above, that the vaccine itself may produce symptoms in vulnerable people which are then attributed to Covid-19. The damage to health may be especially severe in an individual who has been recently or is concurrently infected with the actual virus. There is therefore every reason to doubt the manufacturers’ assurances that the deaths and injuries seen to be accompanying vaccination, and that in some instances look like and are being attributed to Covid-19, are unrelated to the jabs. The situation is serious enough for some doctors and scientists to be calling for a moratorium on further Covid vaccinations until it has been properly investigated.

So, it could be, that something in the vaccine itself is killing people. That is one distinct possibility. Sure, the drug companies and public health officials dismiss the idea with a wave of the hand, but medical professionals and scientists think the danger is significant enough to demand that the mass-vaccination program be temporarily terminated. Some readers will recall that the Salk Institute released a study on Apr 30 which showed that SARS-CoV-2’s “distinctive ‘spike’ protein damages cells, confirming COVID-19 as a primarily vascular disease.” Here’s an excerpt from their study:

In the new study, the researchers created a “pseudovirus” that was surrounded by SARS-CoV-2 classic crown of spike proteins, but did not contain any actual virus. Exposure to this pseudovirus resulted in damage to the lungs and arteries of an animal model, proving that the spike protein alone was enough to cause disease. Tissue samples showed inflammation in endothelial cells lining the pulmonary artery walls. (Note– “Vascular endothelial cells line the entire circulatory system, from the heart to the smallest capillaries.”) The team then replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells (which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2. This binding disrupted ACE2’s molecular signaling to mitochondria (organelles that generate energy for cells), causing the mitochondria to become damaged and fragmented. Previous studies have shown a similar effect when cells were exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this is the first study to show that the damage occurs when cells are exposed to the spike protein on its own.

The significance of this report cannot be overstated. The Salk researchers are confirming that the main damage from Covid is caused by the spike protein not the virus. And, if that’s the case, then why are we injecting people with vaccines that teach their cells to make spike proteins? It makes no sense at all. And how does this effect our understanding of the phenomenon that we’ve seen in countries around the world, that is, the sharp rise in cases following mass vaccination? Allow me to offer a plausible, but as-yet unproven explanation: The sharp rise in cases and deaths following mass vaccination is NOT related to Covid “the respiratory illness”, but Covid “the vascular disease.” The vascular component is mainly the result of spike proteins produced by cells in the lining of the blood vessels (Endothilium) that are activating platelets that cause blood clots and bleeding. The other main factor is autoimmune reaction in which the killer lymphocytes attack one’s own body triggering widespread inflammation (and potential organ failure). In short, the post-injection fatalities are caused by the spike proteins produced by the vaccines and not by Covid. Once again, look at the chart of Cambodia. There were no deaths prior to vaccination. All the deaths came afterwards. That suggests that the fatalities are attributable to the vaccines. One final thought: 118 million Americans have now been injected with a clot-generating spike protein. At present, no one seems to know of how long these potentially-lethal proteins remain trapped in the lining of the blood vessels or what damage they might eventually do. Keeping that in mind, wouldn’t this be a good time to exercise a bit of caution? Now that cases have dropped sharply across the country, why not ease up on the vaccinations until we have a better grasp of the long-term risks? That would be the sensible approach, right? Just postpone further injections until product safety can be assured. If there was ever a time for caution, this is it.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

there is no ‘jewish identity’: only dust & money, money & dust

May 16, 2021 – 1:49 pm

The Yom Kippur Syndrome Revisited
Gilad Atzmon, May 15 2021

One of the most interesting aspects of the Yom Kippur War (1973) was that it marked a sudden switch from Israeli manic ‘hubris’ to melancholia, apathy and depression. Following their outstanding military victory in 1967, the Israelis developed an arrogant disrespectful attitude towards Arabs and their military capabilities. Israeli intelligence predicted that it would take years for Arab armies to recover. The Israeli military didn’t believe that the Arab soldier had the ability to fight, let alone score a victory. But on Oct 6 1973, the Israelis faced a devastating surprise. This time the Arab soldier was very different. Israeli military strategy, built on air superiority and fast ground manoeuvres supported by tanks, proved ineffective within hours. Egypt and Syria, helped by new Soviet antitank and ground-to air-missiles, managed to dismantle Israel’s might. In the first days of the war Israel suffered heavy casualties. It’s leadership and high military command were in a state of despair. Yet, this type of crisis wasn’t exactly a rare event in Jewish history. The Israeli military fiasco at the first stage of the war was a repetition of a tragic syndrome that is as old as the Jews themselves.

These repetitive scenarios involve Jewish collective hubris driven by a strong sense of exceptionalism (choseness), and lead to horrific consequences. I call this ‘the Yom Kippur Syndrome.’ In 1920s Berlin, the Jewish elite boasted of its power. Some rich Jews were convinced that Germany and its capital were their playground. At the time, a few German Jews dominated banking and influenced Germany’s politics and media. In addition, the Frankfurt School (as well as other Jewish school of thought) were openly dedicated to the cultural uprooting of Germans, all in the name of ‘progress,’ ‘psychoanalysis,’ eroticism,’ ’phenomenology and ‘cultural Marxism.’ Then, almost ‘from nowhere,’ a tidal wave of resentment appeared, and the rest is known. But was there really a sudden shift in German consciousness? Should 1930s German ‘anti-Semitism’ have come as a surprise? Not at all. All the necessary signs had been present for some time. In fact, early Zionists such as Herzl and Nordau correctly predicted the inevitable rise of European anti-Jewish sentiments at the end of the 19th century. It was the Yom Kippur Syndrome, that same hubris that prevented Berlin’s Jewish elite from evaluating the growing opposition around them.

What we see in Israel at the moment is obviously a tragic manifestation of the same syndrome. Once again, the Israelis have been caught unprepared. Once again mania of omnipotence is replaced by melancholia. Once again the Israelis failed to estimate Hamas’ military capabilities. They failed to recognise the growing frustration of Israeli Arabs and acknowledge the possibility that their frustrations could escalate into street fights or even civil war. The Israelis have succumbed to the delusional thought that the Palestinian cause had evaporated. They were convinced that cracking the BDS and starving Gazans had dismantled the Palestinian aspiration. Yet it is Hamas that has managed to win the most crucial victory uniting the Palestinians in Palestine, in the camps and in the Diaspora, alongside Muslims from around the world. This unity is significant especially in the light of Israel being politically divided heading towards a fifth election. Once again, Israeli arrogance is replaced by deep sadness. Israel could ask itself some necessary questions: What is it that we do wrong? Why is our history repeating itself? Is there something we could do to change our destiny? Rather than this necessary introspection, Israel is actually doing the opposite. Instead of dissecting the present crisis in the light of similar events in the past, Israel repeats the same mistakes. It refers to the current crisis as just another ’round of violence.’ It delves into the strategic and tactical possibilities that will ‘enforce a ceasefire on Hamas.’ Israel basically speculates over the level of carnage that will bring the ‘Arabs on their knees’ once again.

Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and its tragic mistakes are naturally determined by that fact. If Yom Kippur is a Jewish day of introspection, the Yom Kippur Syndrome is the direct outcome of a total incapacity to self-reflect. Yet one may wonder whether the Jew can be emancipated from the Jewish destiny and the Yom Kippur Syndrome in particular? Like early Zionist Bernard Lazare, I believe that all it takes is drifting away from exceptionalism. But once stripped of exceptionalism, not much is left of contemporary Jewish identitarianism. I guess that we are touching upon the most devastating existential aspect of the Yom Kippur Syndrome; there is no Jewish collective ideological escape for the Jew. We are basically dealing with a cultural and spiritual limbo. I tend to believe that the only escape route from the Yom Kippur Syndrome is individual: self-imposed exile. Leave the ghetto late in the night, crawl under the fence, dig a tunnel under the ‘separation wall.’ Once out on the land of the free, proceed quietly and modestly in search of the humane and the universal.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

electronic intifada

May 16, 2021 – 1:31 pm

Watch “Killing Gaza”
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, May 16 2021

As Israel again subjects Gaza to savage bombardment, targeting and killing civilians and destroying their homes, journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen have made their important film Killing Gaza freely available on YouTube for everyone to see. You can watch it above. Killing Gaza tells stories of Palestinians in the aftermath of Israel’s 2014 assault which killed 2.2k people in Gaza, among them 550 children. Here’s part of what Blumenthal wrote about the film for The Electronic Intifada when it was first released in 2018:

The opening section of Killing Gaza documents sadistic Israeli violence that makes for undeniably difficult viewing. A five-day ceasefire had just taken effect and we had unfettered access to a stunned population returning to the border areas that had been blanketed with Israeli artillery and missiles. In the town of Khuzaa, in southeastern Gaza, we met Hani al-Najjar, who returned to his home after the Israeli military pulled back, only to find six corpses in his bathroom, all charred, bound and gagged, and blown to bits by an Israeli grenade. Outside the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, we met 19-year-old Mahmoud Abu Said, who had been taken as a human shield by Israeli soldiers and held in front of a window in his own home while those soldiers sniped at his neighbors from over his shoulders. And in Gaza City, we encountered residents of Zafir 4 and the Italian Compound, residential towers that had been blasted to pieces by Israeli jets in the final days of the war for no other purpose than to teach Gaza’s educated middle class a lesson. Standing by the rubble of what was once his home outside Rafah, and next to a destroyed taxi that used to belong to his son who was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper, Suleiman al-Zugheibi delivered a testimony of trauma and defiance that was all too common among those we met. “We’ve suffered for the past 60 years because of Israel,” al-Zugheibi told us. “War after war after war. Bombing after bombing after bombing. You build a house, they destroy it. You raise a child, they kill him,” he said. “Whatever they do, the US, Israel, the whole world, we’ll keep resisting until the last one of us dies. Even if they turn all of Gaza into rubble like this, even if the rocks are all that’s left, we won’t surrender.”

Israel kills Gaza families in their homes on Nakba Day
Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada, May 16 2021

Muhammad al-Hadidi comforts his infant child Omar, who survived the overnight Israeli attack that killed several members of his extended family,
most of them children, at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital on 15 May. Photo: Atia Darwish/APA

More than 17k Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing yet another episode of displacement as Israel escalated its attack on civilian infrastructure on Saturday, the 73rd annual commemoration of Nakba Day. At least 145 Palestinians in Gaza, including 41 children, have been killed since Israel began bombing it on Monday. Around 1,000 more have been injured.

As entire families were laid to rest on Saturday, Palestinians stressed that the Nakba had never ended and 1948 was only the beginning, as the human rights group Al-Haq observed. At least 70 massacres were carried out against Palestinians between 1947 and 1949, according to Al-Haq. More than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated and destroyed by Zionist forces around the time that the state of Israel was declared in 1948. Palestinians refer to those series of traumas as the Nakba or catastrophe. Not only have those wounds not yet healed, as Al-Haq says, but Israel is inflicting injury and death on Palestinians anew as Gaza’s population of 2m, two-thirds of whom are refugees, endure yet another terrifying full-scale Israeli military offensive. That is on top of the devastating air, land and sea blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza since 2007. The goal of the pre-state militias that initiated the Nakba in 1948 and that of the contemporary state of Israel are the same. As Al-Haq states:

The Zionist dogma upon which the Nakba has been operating until today is that of the forcible transfer of the Palestinian people through the entrenchment of Israeli-Jewish domination, and their erasure and replacement with a foreign settler community.

During the first years of the Nakba, 750k to 900k Palestinians “became refugees or internally displaced persons after having been forcibly transferred from their homes and lands,” according to Al-Haq. Of the more than 13 million Palestinians scattered around the world today, some 5 million live in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, 1.5m live in the area of Palestine on which the state of Israel was declared in 1948, and another 6.5m “live in exile and diaspora,” Al-Haq said on Saturday. For 73 years, Israel has denied Palestinians their right to return to the lands and properties from which they were expelled on the basis that they are not Jews.

All Palestinians living under Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid rule, imposed throughout historic Palestine, are “at risk of forcible transfer,” Al-Haq added. This includes Palestinians in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where an Israeli court has approved the eviction of Palestinian families from the homes in which they’ve lived for decades to make way for Jewish settlers. The Sheikh Jarrah families facing forcible eviction have already experienced at least one episode of displacement.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Lydd, many of whom are internally displaced, came under emergency rule this week for the first time since the two decades following Israel’s founding. Today they are being “violently repressed and arrested by Israel’s police during demonstrations” and have become the target of “racist incitement of violence and hate crimes,” as Al-Haq states.

Lydd, a city near Tel Aviv, is currently an epicenter of that racist incitement and violence. It was also the site of two massacres waged by the nascent Israeli army in 1948. On Jul 11 that year, a battalion led by Moshe Dayan stormed Lydd, killing dozens of Palestinians, “women, children and old people,” according to the Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, who wrote:

Within hours, the soldiers held key positions in the city center and had confined thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Great Mosque.

The following day, some 250 Palestinians were killed when an Israeli soldier fired an anti-tank shell at the mosque. Hours later, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, ordered the deportation of Palestinians in Lydd, a command delivered by Yitzhak Rabin to the brigade that carried out the expulsion of 35k people from the city. In what has become known as the Lydd Death March, residents of the city and nearby Ramle were forced to make their way over the mountains in the summer heat, risking Israeli gunfire if they strayed from the path. Ali Abunimah recalls:

Over three days without food, water and in the heat, many would die until finally trucks came to transport the survivors to Ramallah.

The process of colonization is ongoing in present-day Lydd and mobs of Jewish Israelis chanting “death to the Arabs” isn’t a new phenomenon, though no less dangerous as Netanyahu has given them his implicit backing. Netanyahu described the upheaval in Palestinian communities in Israel, in addition to the offensive in Gaza, as “a campaign on two fronts” on Friday. The following day, Gantz warned against escalation in the West Bank as Palestinians throughout their homeland and beyond began to rise up against Israel’s settler-colony rule. The Israeli army and Jewish settlers have killed at least 14 Palestinians in the West Bank this week, 11 of them on Friday, including one child, as protests were held throughout the territory. B’Tselem said that it was the deadliest day in the West Bank since Israel’s military incursion into multiple cities in 2002. While Israel was bombing Gaza this week, its parliament “preliminarily approved a bill to legalize some 70 colonial settlement outposts in the West Bank,” according to Al-Haq, which added:

Israel’s blatant violations of international law and its suppression of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination are the most conspicuous illustration that the Zionist project is a failed colonial enterprise.

Israel is unable and will never be able to obliterate Palestinians’ national identity and their will to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression. The latest escalation was triggered when Israeli police stormed Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, a holy site that galvanizes Palestinian and Arab and Muslim identity – while it was filled with Ramadan worshippers, injuring hundreds. And with the capacity of the armed resistance only strengthened after each military offensive, Israel’s current campaign targeting residential buildings, media towers and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza can only be viewed as one of revenge and punishment.

Al-Mezan, a human rights group based in Gaza, said on Saturday that the “unwarranted shelling of civilian homes without prior warning at night … indicates a conscious decision to inflict the greatest number of casualties amongst civilians.” Nine people, two women and seven children aged 12 and younger, were killed when Israel fired three missiles at the home of Alaa Abu Hatab in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp without warning early Saturday. Palestinian civil defense rescue crews were still working to recover the bodies of additional victims that remained under the rubble later that day.

Palestinians mourn members of the Abu Hatab family during their funeral in Gaza City on 15 May. Photo: Ashraf AmraAPA

Palestinians in Gaza, “notably children, have not recovered from the devastating ramifications of previous military escalations, including Operation Protective Edge in 2014,” Al-Mezan said. “Yet, they continue to be Israel’s regular target.” Israel has targeted more than 50 buildings and four residential towers, destroying some 220 residential units.

“In addition, seven schools, four mosques and hundreds of private properties and governmental sites have been significantly damaged since the escalation began,” according to Al-Mezan. “Airstrikes also led to the large-scale destruction of power and water networks, as well as thousands of square meters of paved roads.”

Israel bombed a tower housing the offices of Al Jazeera and the AP news agency on Saturday, saying that Hamas military intelligence were using the building, a claim for which Israel presented no evidence when pressed by international media.

Gary Pruitt, the head of AP, said the organization was “shocked and horrified” that the military would target and destroy the tower housing its offices. “We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time,” Pruitt added. Israel bombed and destroyed two other buildings housing media outlets earlier in the week.

Joel Simon, director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, suggested that Israel may be “deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza.”

Smoke billows after Israel bombs a tower that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and AP news agency, Gaza City, 15 May. Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA

Meanwhile, emergency fuel imported from Egypt will push back the expected shutdown of Gaza’s sole power plant until at least Tuesday, the UN OCHA said. “Power supply across Gaza has been reduced to six to eight hours per day on average,” OCHA added, “and to less than four in some areas, disrupting the provision of basic services, including water, sanitation and healthcare.” Palestinian resistance groups have fired more than 2,300 rockets from Gaza since Monday, killing 10 people in Israel, including one on-duty soldier and two children. Netanyahu said that a “few days” of fighting remained ahead while a military spokesperson warned of “an intense night” in Gaza before fresh terror was unleashed on the entirety of its population.

Netanyahu thanked Biden for his “clear and unequivocal support” after the two spoke earlier in the day. The White House stated that during their conversation, Biden “reaffirmed his strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza, and condemned these indiscriminate attacks against Israel,” making no mention of the killing of dozens of civilians and the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. With Israel enjoying the full backing of its principal allies, the Nakba continues, as does Palestinian resistance to a regime that relentlessly and violently seeks their removal and replacement.

Labour’s Lisa Nandy is an enemy of Palestinian rights
Asa Winstanley, Electronic Intifada, May 16 2021

Lisa Nandy claims to be a “friend of Palestine” but also says she’s a Zionist. Photo: Pete Doherty/Retna

Britain’s Labour Party was condemned for its hypocrisy on Israel’s violent onslaught against Palestinians this week. As of Sunday morning, more than 170 Palestinians had been killed since Israel started bombing Gaza last Monday, including nearly 50 children. The massive escalation in violence began with Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem and its raids on the al-Aqsa mosque. But Labour’s shadow foreign affairs spokesperson Lisa Nandy is condemning “both sides.” She said she was “gravely concerned” by “violent scenes in Jerusalem.” Nandy has stated that she is a Zionist, a supporter of Israel’s racist official ideology. Nandy’s statements this week did not specify that Israel itself, and not merely settler extremists, is violently expelling Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem, solely and exclusively because they are not Jewish. As usual from British politicians, even Nandy’s timid, qualified and artificially balanced condemnation of some Israeli actions was toothless. Nandy urged Israel to take unspecified “steps” to “defuse the growing tensions” in Jerusalem, as if the state were some sort of neutral arbiter between extremists on “both sides” instead of the violent oppressor that it is.

On Saturday evening Nandy released a new letter to government, after hundreds of thousands of people marched in London and cities all over the UK against Israeli violence. But the letter only called for the government to “assess” the use of “exported arms and equipment in this conflict” and for a report to Parliament to examine arms licenses. There was no concrete demand to end the arms trade with Israel. In 2010, a review by the then Labour foreign minister David Miliband found that UK-made arms had “almost certainly” been used in Israel’s 2008-2009 “Cast Lead” bombing campaign against Gaza. But British military ties to Israel have only increased since then.

Nandy may also be feeling pressure as more than 275k people have in recent days signed a petition at the UK Parliament website calling for sanctions against Israel. In fact what has been happening in Jerusalem is nothing less than state-led ethnic cleansing to remove one community, Palestinians, while replacing them with another, Jewish Israelis. While it is true that the Israeli settlers taking over Palestinian homes in this manner can accurately be described as Jewish extremists, the more salient point is that their actions are supported by the Israeli government, courts, police and military. Neither Nandy nor her Wigan constituency office responded to The Electronic Intifada’s requests for comment.

Speaking to The Electronic Intifada on Friday, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal responded to Nandy’s comments. He said:

You cannot be an honest broker between those practicing apartheid and their victims.

Last month in an interview with anti-Palestinian newspaper the Jewish News, Nandy claimed that “a future Labour government” could be an “honest broker role in the Middle East.” Jamal countered:

The moral responsibility is not to be complicit with apartheid. The Labour Party needs to commit itself clearly to ending the two-way arms trade.

Huda Ammori of Palestine Action told The Electronic Intifada:

Nandy’s statement was extremely misleading and it only serves to support Israel’s apartheid regime and not to support the Palestinian people. There has to be an immediate arms embargo. Israel has to be sanctioned.

Unlike when Lisa Nandy has condemned other states, her statements this week about Israeli crimes made no concrete demands on Israel and called for no consequences. The UK already sanctions the Palestinian “side.” It is already illegal for British citizens to arm or fund Palestinian or Lebanese resistance organizations. British law is so draconian that even to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization” can be a criminal offense. Even waving the Hizballah flag, the political party which is also the leader of Lebanon’s armed resistance to Israel, is now illegal in Britain.

Since becoming Labour’s shadow foreign minister under right-wing leader Keir Starmer last year, Nandy has vocally attacked countries considered official enemies by British and American political elites, especially China and Russia. Nandy has criticized Chinese government actions against separatist protesters in Hong Kong. She has echoed hardline anti-China positions promoted by US-backed propaganda organizations that are pushing for a new Cold War, including dubious and debunked claims regarding the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. She has promoted widely disseminated but unproven allegations that one million Uyghurs are incarcerated in re-education camps, or that many are subjected to forced sterilization. Nandy also spread disinformation about supposed Russian interference in British elections while she was trying to suppress criticism of the well-documented interference by Israel and its proxies in the British democratic process.

Israel and its lobby groups have played a leading role in the “Labour anti-Semitism” smear campaign which successfully targeted former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. She has called for sanctions on China over both Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Yet the Labour “opposition” still cannot bring itself to demand even the mildest sanctions against Israel. Nandy’s posturing about alleged crimes on “both sides” is just the latest example of that. Nandy’s position represents a step backwards from Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, under which the Labour Party’s 2019 election manifesto, despite incessant smears about “anti-Semitism,” finally promised to suspend arms sales to Israel. Most of the responses on Twitter to Nandy’s embarrassingly equivocal posts were highly critical. They called her out for suggesting an equivalence between the oppressed and the oppressor, between the Palestinians resisting expulsion and destruction on one hand, and on the other, the Israeli state demanding the “right” to expel people for being the “wrong” religion or ethnicity. And several commentators also accused her of hypocrisy, reposting a clip of her talking to a BBC news program early last year when she was running in the contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader. In the clip she stated that it is “anti-Semitic” to call on Israel lobby group the Board of Deputies of British Jews to “condemn all Israeli military atrocities in the West Bank.” By her own standards, her critics say, she is therefore guilty of “anti-Semitism,” even for her equivocal condemnation of “both sides.” Nandy’s BBC questioner in the clip was attacking Rachel Cousins, the pro-Jeremy Corbyn activist behind the popular @Rachel_Swindon Twitter account. Cousins told The Electronic Intifada that Nandy’s smear targeting her on national television had led to a sustained harassment campaign against her online last year, forcing her to mute her Twitter mentions for two days. Cousins said:

Nandy has proven to be an utter hypocrite. She went on television and declared it was anti-Semitic to criticize Israeli atrocities, yet did exactly the same thing herself, although let’s be honest, it was hardly a blistering criticism.

Nandy did not reply to requests for comment. Nandy is the former leader of a seemingly moribund group called Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, or LFPME. Yet she was one of former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s most ardent critics, and enthusiastically took part in the “Labour anti-Semitism” smear campaign targeting him. Speaking to The Electronic Intifada soon after the group appointed Nandy as chair, LFPME spokesperson Shazia Arshad defended the Labour lawmaker, claiming she was “a long standing champion of Palestinian rights and campaigns.” This is despite how Nandy has vocally opposed BDS. Arshad said:

We want to focus on the Palestinian conversation and voices and that’s what we will continue to do.

Nandy is not Palestinian. BDS is a minimal ask, which demands that governments and institutions end their involvement with Israeli occupation, apartheid and war crimes. Yet speaking at an event organized last year by Israel lobby group the Jewish Labour Movement, Nandy said she had “never” been a supporter of BDS as it “pushes people away instead of bringing people together.” During the leadership election campaign to replace Corbyn last year, Nandy told an event jointly organized by Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement that Corbyn had made an “anti-Semitic” statement by defending Palestinians. In 2018, Corbyn had stated that it should not be “regarded as anti-Semitic to describe Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact” on Palestinians.

Labour’s leadership candidates were grilled by the Israel lobby. Photo: Vickie Flores/ London News Pictures

All four leadership candidates at the Feb 2020 Israel lobby event agreed that the blandly factual statement was anti-Semitic, but Nandy had appeared most eager to smear Corbyn. After she was appointed shadow foreign secretary under Keir Starmer’s new right-wing Labour leadership, Labour Friends of Palestine quietly dropped her as its chair, replacing her with Julie Elliott, an obscure Labour MP. During Nandy’s tenure, the group withered. Aside from the announcement of Elliott’s appointment and a single blog post arguing for the recognition of the Israeli-backed PA as the “state of Palestine,” its website appears not to have been updated since 2018, when Nandy was first appointed. Arshad defended the group’s record, claiming:

We continue to work with MPs, attempting to raise awareness of the situation on the ground in Palestine. We’re run entirely by volunteers.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn, now exiled from the Labour benches in Parliament by Starmer, returned to the role he had before he became Labour leader: spearheading protests against Israeli war crimes.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

colonel cassad

May 16, 2021 – 12:09 pm

“Five principles of communication with Russia”
Colonel Cassad, May 16 2021

You can estimate the perspectives of “Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok” with such applications. Of course, relations between the Russian Federation will continue and happily degrade further. At the same time, relations with European frondeurs will develop bypassing all-European structures, which now lie tightly under the US and follow in the wake of the Washington course.

The European Parliament formulated five principles for dealing with Russia
RIA Novosti, May 15 2021

The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament presented a draft report which sets out the basic principles of building relations with Russia. RT.com got acquainted with the document. Thus, the principle of “support for democracy” presupposes, in particular, opposition to “Russian-language propaganda.” For this, the EU is proposed to create a TV channel with round-the-clock broadcasting. In addition, the EU leadership is advised to consider the option of not recognizing the legitimacy of the new composition of the State Duma if the September elections are recognized as rigged. At the same time, the authors of the report emphasize, Russia should be educated about the benefits it can get if it embarks on a democratic transition. These include visa facilitation, free trade investment programs and strategic partnerships. And to further stimulate the desire of Russians for democratic transformations, it is proposed to adopt for Russia the development strategy “Eastern Partnership,” which Brussels once launched to strengthen cooperation with the countries of the former USSR. To “protect democracy around the world,” according to the authors of the document, the EU should unite with the US and develop common measures in terms of sanctions, financial assistance, and support for activists. The principle of “democracy first” presupposes that in any dialogue with Moscow, first of all, the issue of observance of human rights and the holding of free elections must be taken into account. At the same time, the authors of the document recommend starting with the suspension of Nord Stream 2. A separate item is devoted to “containing Russian aggression.” Here the EU, together with NATO and international partners, is invited to continue pressure on Moscow in order to force it to stop “interfering” in the affairs of the Eastern Partnership region and return “the occupied territories of the eastern neighboring states of the EU.” If Moscow continues “aggressive actions,” then, the authors of the document advise, the EU will have to consider disconnecting it from the SWIFT payment system. In addition, the EU leadership is invited to draw up a plan to reduce dependence on Russian gas and oil supplies, at least as long as the current leadership is in the Kremlin.

“Democratic” principles: the European Parliament made recommendations on relations with Russia
Yulia Gureeva, Polina Poletaeva, RT (Russian), May 15 2021

The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament has formulated five principles according to which the EU is recommended to build relations with Russia. The document of the agency, which RT has read, proposes to support the Russian “pro-democratic society” and oppose Moscow’s “interference” in EU affairs. According to political scientists, this approach testifies to the intentions of some government representatives in the EU to continue anti-Russian policy. The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament published a draft report with recommendations to the EU leadership on building relations with Russia. The document contains five principles on the basis of which, in the opinion of the committee, the EU should interact with Moscow. Thus, the Ministry proposed to combat “Russian interference” in EU affairs, counteract a security threat, impose sanctions, financial control and organize international investigations. In addition, Brussels was recommended to support a “pro-democracy society” in Russia and use the success of the Eastern Partnership program as a source of inspiration for Russians. As the report implies, the principle of “support for democracy” implies opposition to “Russian-speaking propaganda.” For this purpose, in particular, the EU is recommended to promote the creation of a TV channel with round-the-clock broadcasting. In addition, the committee believes that Brussels should consider not recognizing the legitimacy of the new composition of the Russian State Duma after the elections scheduled for September. The document read by RT reads:

The EU should be ready to refuse to recognize the Parliament of the Russian Federation and demand the removal of Russia from international organizations with parliamentary assemblies in case the Russian parliamentary elections in 2021 are found to be falsified.

The authors of the report also advised to talk about the benefits that Russia can get in the event of democratic transformation. The politicians write:

The EU should adopt and announce a strategic vision of its future relations with democratic Russia, including a wide range of conditions and incentives, such as visa facilitation, free trade and modernization investment programs, and strategic partnership; it should also indicate a willingness to offer potential advantages in exchange for democratic transformation in Russia.

And in order to further stimulate Russians to “democratic changes,” the committee proposed to adopt a strategy to promote the successful development of the Eastern Partnership countries. We would like to remind you that the Eastern Partnership program was launched by the EU to develop closer cooperation with the countries of the former USSR. It includes Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Belarus and Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, in order to “protect democracy around the world,” according to the authors, the EU should unite with the US and develop common measures (joint actions related to sanctions, uniform conditions for the submission of financial assistance, support for human rights activists). The document also emphasizes that in accordance with the principle of “democracy first of all,” the EU should take into account the issue of respect for human rights and free elections in any dialogue or agreement with Moscow. At the same time, the committee recommended starting with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. It said:

The EU and its participating countries should revise their investment support and economic cooperation projects, starting with the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 project

European politicians also draw attention to the containment of “Russian aggression.” In this paragraph, they proposed, together with NATO and international partners, to put pressure on Moscow not to interfere in the affairs of the Eastern Partnership region and return the “occupied territories of the eastern EU neighboring states.” If Russia continues to “aggressive threats and military actions,” the committee said, the EU should be ready to call for the country’s disconnection from the international SWIFT payment system. The EU was also advised to prepare a clear plan to reduce dependence on Russian gas and oil, at least as long as the current leadership in the Russian Federation is in power, the politicians added. It is worth noting that at the end of April, the EP adopted a resolution proposing to stop imports of hydrocarbons from Russia and disconnect Moscow from SWIFT in case of “Russian invasion of Ukraine.” According to Maria Zakharova of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the scenario of disconnecting the country from the international payment system is still only hypothetical, but Moscow is already working on options to minimize risks and damage. The recommendations of the committee testify to the intentions of a number of European leaders to continue anti-Russian policy, said Vladimir Bruther, an expert at the International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies, in a conversation with RT. Bruther said:

The Committee on International Affairs is an advanced detachment of the European bureaucracy, which is trying, including on its own behalf, to fight against Russia. It represents everyone, and at the same time doesn’t represent anyone. From there, provocative statements launched to verify the reaction are often heard.

The main principle of international law is non-interference in the affairs of other states, political scientist Alexander Domrin remarked. The recommendations of the European Ministry clearly do not correspond to this, he believes. Among other things, Domrin was outraged by the proposal not to recognize the results of the parliamentary vote in Russia. He asked:

Where are the legal facts on the basis of which they already assume that elections in Russia can be falsified? In fact, the EP speaks in advance about the non-recognition of the results simply because they may not like them.

Meanwhile, the Dean of the Faculty of Sociology and Political Science of the Financial University under the Government of Russia, political scientist Alexander Shatilov noted that the EP committee decided to once again use the topic of human rights to pressure Moscow. However, it is noteworthy that the accusations against Russia sound against the background of flagrant violations in this area in the European countries themselves. He commented:

The double standards are obvious. Our Western partners often just turn a blind eye to their own problems. This is the usual accusation that the West has been making since the Soviet Union. It is absolutely unfounded, legally unreinforced and designed to form a certain mood of public opinion through the media.

Representatives of the Russian authorities have repeatedly spoken about the unfriendly policy of the EU. On May 6, during a press conference in Yerevan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Brussels had destroyed the entire architecture of relations with Russia after the events of 2014. He said:

The aggressive Russophobic lobby in the EU is doing its job. And so far, the common forces in the EU can’t do anything about it and are swimming with the current. It’s sad. It’s not our choice.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

rick rozoff

May 16, 2021 – 10:24 am

NATO conducts Europe’s largest air, missile exercise off Scotland
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, May 15 2021

What NATO bills as the largest and most complex air and missile defense exercises in Europe started on May 15 at and near the Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland and will continue until Jun 3. Some of the drills are also occurring at a military training site in Norway. NATO Deputy Spox Piers Cazalet said:

Formidable Shield 2021 shows how Allies are working together to defend NATO forces and populations from the very real threat of missiles.

Though what they are also practicing for it neutralizing missiles (Russian missiles, to be exact) that might be fired in retaliation for a NATO attack against that nation and its assets. This year’s iteration of the exercise, held biannually, includes guided-missile warships tracking a missile flying over 12k mph and practicing destroying anti-ship, submarine-launched and supersonic missiles “using NATO procedures.” The exercise is held under the aegis of US Sixth Fleet, but is being conducted by Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO. It includes 3,300 military personnel from ten NATO nations (the US, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain), with fifteen ships and dozens of aircraft. To emphasize the Euroatlantic nature of NATO (if not by intent), the flagship this year is the Spanish Navy’s frigate ESPS Cristobal Colon. Raytheon Missiles & Defense boasted of the progress made since the 2019 Formidable Shield, with its president, Wes Kremer stating:

Formidable Shield 2021 represents an opportunity to demonstrate the interoperability we have built with our NATO allies over decades.

Raytheon and other American weapons manufacturers are dedicated supporters of NATO and its Euroatlantic values as well as the rules-based international order. Raytheon provided an inventory of the equipment being employed in the exercise to defend freedom, peace, gender equality in the workplace, carbon emission monitoring and other missions NATO has appropriated to itself (this is meant to be ironic), including but not limited to sensors, effectors, radars and interceptors “to strengthen collective defense and exhibit the interoperability and integration of allied missile defense systems.” The arms manufacturer is proud of its role in promoting Euroatlantic core values by providing the following to the exercise, at market rates of course, paid for by NATO nations’ taxpayers:

  • Standard Missile-3 (SM-3): an interceptor that destroys incoming ballistic missile targets.
  • Standard Missile-2 (SM-2): an interceptor that destroys incoming cruise missile and air targets.
  • Standard Missile-6 (SM-6): an interceptor that destroys incoming ballistic missile targets in the terminal phase, air targets and naval surface targets.
  • Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR): a radar that provides early warning and detects and tracks incoming ballistic missile targets.

SM-3s have been deployed in Romania by NATO for the past decade; directly across the Black Sea from Russia. Increasingly more advanced versions of the ABM are used in the Aegis Combat System developed by the US and its allies. The Pentagon has 66 guided-missile destroyers and 22 guided-missile cruisers capable of being equipped with it. Since 2015 four US destroyers have been rotated at the Rota Naval Station in Spain for deployment in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea, where they’re sent to taunt Russia by parading the SM-3s, which are capable of shooting down Russian missiles. It’s recently been announced that the US destroyers deployed to Spain under a NATO arrangement are to be increased to six. For all the pablum of “cruise and ballistic missiles often the weapon of choice, both for state and non-state actors,” according to NATO’s Cazalet, the current exercise and Raytheon interceptor missiles are designed to intimidate Russia.

NATO pontiff cites Scripture for holy war against Russia and China
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, May 15 2021

Today the NATO website posted a speech delivered by its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the 3rd German Ecumenical Church Days which reveals more about the military bloc he heads up than he probably realized it did. He began his pontifications by saying in his line of work he meets people from all walks of life: from students to soldiers and from parliamentarians to the Pope. No doubt he meets far more soldiers than popes. One is reminded of the bumper sticker one could see during the Vietnam War years: Join the Army; travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them. Stoltenberg, the people person, the all kinds of people person, was introduced by former German defense minister Thomas de Maizière, who has also not likely met many popes. The North Atlantic prelate alluded to the story of Jesus’ multiplication of the fish and loaves in the four Gospels that is referred to as the Feeding of the 5,000, stating, with a quote from it, “The theme of this year’s conference is ‘schaut hin‘ (go and see). NATO didn’t record whether anyone in the audience invited him to go and see select bomb and missile craters in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya. He seemed quite pleased with himself, saying:

As the Latin saying goes, if you want peace, prepare for war.” He didn’t cite it in Latin, though, in which case it’s a Roman saying.

While pounding his chest in triumphalist exultation (figuratively of course) he felt compelled to add:

Our Alliance started with 12 members. And today we stand 30 nations strong.

And forty partners. To preserve peace. Of course no self-celebratory orgy of the sort would be complete without reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall. And his wasn’t. The Fall of the Wall, which he mercifully refrained from comparing to the collapse of the Tower of Babel and the sonic attack on the walls of Jericho, brought about a new dispensation, a new and everlasting Covenant if you will, to “allow a divided Germany, and a divided continent, to reunite.” Unite under the boot of history’s only global military bloc. Maybe walls aren’t so bad. Then he switched gears from “and then they lived happily ever after” to a Pandora’s box of threats and horrors. In his sequence they are:

  • A more assertive Russia.
  • Sophisticated cyber-attacks.
  • Brutal terrorism. [As opposed to gentle terrorism?]
  • Nuclear proliferation.
  • Climate change.
  • The rise of China.

With the first, it appears that the reunification Germany and reunification of Europe (?) didn’t accomplish anything but bring NATO right up against Russia’s border. Or according to NATO logic, brought Russia to NATO’s Eastern Flank. How dare the devious, demonic, dastardly villains? Get thee behind me, Satan! Now the Euroatlantic pontiff pulled out bell, book and candle to exorcise the malign influence and recited this anathema:

Russia continues its aggressive and destabilising behaviour at home and abroad. With cyber-attacks against NATO Allies, including the German Bundestag. Its violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine. And its violent oppression of political dissent in Russia, with the attacks on Alexei Navalny and his supporters.

During the question and answer phase of the program, and whether or not fully recalling he was addressing religious figures, Stoltenberg stumbled through this:

I don’t know how to say this, but I think that I understand that there is a difficult ethical dilemma to decide when is it necessary to use violence or right to use violence, when can you excuse the use of violence. But I think that if, again, look at the history of most of our nations, there are moments where we all feel at least the vast majority of people feel, that we don’t have any other alternative than to also use military tools to protect our core values.

Wouldn’t it be convenient to dispense altogether with troublesome ethical dilemmas and continue bombing nations out of existence in furtherance of NATO’s core values? The question only needs to be posed. Later the Devil quoted Scripture thusly:

I think, religion has, you know, very often a message about peace, tolerance, love, which we really need to mobilise in the work for peace, conflict resolution – and maybe NATO should be more aware of that.

However, lest his audience think he was taking too seriously the teachings of the Jesus of the Feeding of the 5,000 (Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. They that take the sword shall perish with the sword), he hastened to add:

But at the same time, we all know that religion is often misused as different political ideologies are misused…

The High Priest of Euroatlantica alone can make the distinction between good religion and bad medicine. Then to condescend to the level of mortals, to demonstrate that even he, Pontifex Maximus of global militarism, is capable of episodes of humility, he shared this:

When we use military power, we also see that there are big problems and dilemmas connected to that. We see how difficult it has been to be in Afghanistan for now 20 years. We see the use of military power in Iraq. We see Libya. So these are three examples, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, where we see that, well, we used military powers…and we achieved something, but it’s not…it’s not a clean-cut success.

Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.

Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. That is a Latin expression. It means:

Kill them all; the Lord will know His own.

Are US, NATO, EU planning final mopping-up operation in former Soviet Union?
Rick Rozoff, AntiBellum, May 15 2021

In recent days the American embassy in Georgia has acknowledged recruiting students from what it calls the “occupied territories” of that nation, and not a day goes by without the US, NATO and the EU demanding the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass and Crimea be returned to Ukraine. Those three regions, like the now independent nations referred to as Georgian land occupied by a foreign invader, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, are among as many as ten disputed territories in the former Soviet Union any one of which, if not all at the same time, could trigger a war. (As four already have: South Ossetia in 2008, Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014 and Nagorno-Karabakh last year.) Last year Azerbaijan and Turkey, the second most powerful NATO member, invaded the minuscule state of Nagorno-Karabakh, ethnically Armenian but claimed by Azerbaijan because of a map drawn up during the Stalin years. The small enclave, with a population of 145k, held out for 44 days but was ultimately defeated by the overwhelming firepower Azerbaijan and Turkey (with a combined population of 95m people) could command. Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia represent three-quarters of what have been termed frozen conflicts in former Soviet space. The other is Transdniester (or Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic), squeezed between Moldova and Ukraine, with a population of under half a million. The four states jointly formed the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations in 2006 to contend with common threats from NATO partner states. Russia and some of its allies (such as they are) recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008 after the US- and NATO-backed government of Georgia invaded South Ossetia in 2008 and in doing so triggered a war with Russia.

Since the US-engineered coup in Ukraine in 2014 which also resulted in war, in the Donbass, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as well as Crimea, which reaffiliated with Russia, have been added to the list of what the US, NATO and the EU, unanimously and uncompromisingly, consider occupied directly or otherwise by Russia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdnistria) or otherwise belonging to a NATO partner state. Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized as being territory of Azerbaijan, in its entirely. Transdniester is considered to be part of Moldova. In every case the claims by the West and its partners are based solely on the status of the disputed territories within the framework of the former Soviet Union. Not to be too detailed, or too arcane, but as an example Crimea was a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic until 1954, when it was administratively transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It had never been part of an independent Ukraine, for the simple reason that there had never been an independent Ukraine until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Abkhazia and South Ossetia had the same relation to the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and Nagorno-Karabakh with the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Transdniester had never been part of an independent Moldova for the same reason as the other states had not been part of any independent nation other than the Soviet Union and pre-Soviet Russia (except for the very brief period of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918 and Romania’s control of what is now Transdniester from 1918-1940): Moldova became a nation for the first time in 1991 as well.

The other parts of the former Soviet Union (and former pre-Soviet Russia) that have recently come into play as pieces on the chessboard, grand or otherwise, the West is challenging Russia on are the western part of Belarus, in the Grodno area where ethnic Poles are concentrated, and the former German, now Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In Belarus Polish-backed separatists are agitating for independence from Minsk, with the Belarusian government warning for several months of a build-up of NATO forces in Poland and Lithuania on its western border. The two latter countries both enclose Kaliningrad on the land side as well. On May 17 Aureliu Ciocoi, both acting prime minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Moldova, and David Zalkaliani, deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Georgia, will arrive in Kiev to meet with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba. According to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry:

On May 17, the heads of Ukrainian, Georgian and Moldovan diplomacy will hold talks, the key topics of which will be the European integration of the three states, the priorities for the development of the EU’s Eastern Partnership and preparations for its summit this year, joint efforts to strengthen regional security.

European integration means joining NATO first and the EU second, as has been the case of the Eastern European nations that have joined both since the end of the Cold War: Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The Eastern Partnership was established by the EU’s General Affairs and External Relations Council in 2008 to expedite the Euroatlantic integration of all former Soviet republics in Europe and the Caucasus except Russia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Although the EU is the bait, NATO is the trap. The intent has been to wrest those states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had already joined NATO and the EU) from post-Soviet formations like the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as well the Belarus-Russia Union State, thus leaving Russia a sectioned-off island in an ocean of NATO and EU territory. (Over the same period of time the EU has been pursuing an analogous program with the remaining former Soviet republics in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.) It was under Eastern Partnership auspices that the EU Association Agreement was offered to Ukraine in late 2013. President Viktor Yanukovych’s demurral in signing it led to the violent uprising that overthrew his government early the following year. The post-coup junta immediately signed it.

So the meeting of the Ukrainian, Georgian and Moldovan officials in two days is significant for two interrelated reasons: The three nations, all on or near the Black Sea, are organizing their EU and NATO accessions in unison. They all have “frozen conflicts” on what they claim is their territory that need to be “resolved” before joining those two blocs. In other words, all three have “occupied territories” that will require “liberation.” With the assistance of the US, NATO and the EU. That complementarity is recognized by the so-called occupied territories as well. This week, South Ossetian President Anatoly Bibilov visited the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic in a show of solidarity. While in the second, he said:

In the world order, where Russia is there is development, where America is there is war, there is death. By and large, Russia is the force that wants to help, not take away, wants life to be continued. Without a doubt, if Ukraine had implemented the Minsk agreements, there would have been no deaths. After all, in fact, the most important meaning of the Minsk agreements is to stop the killing.

Transdniester has also demonstrated support to South Ossetia and Abkhazia since they declared their independence thirteen years ago. As did Gagauzia, an autonomous region of Moldova, which may prove to be the tenth conflict zone in the FSU. Like Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transdniester, it declared its independence as the USSR was breaking up (1990) or immediately afterward, later being absorbed into independent Moldova in 1994. The majority of Gagauzians are Turkic-speaking, as the people of Transdnistria are primarily Slavic-speaking. Both feared an independent Moldova being incorporated into Romania, which maintains a “one nation, two states” policy with Romania, comparable to that of Turkey and Azerbaijan. The majority of Moldovans are Romanian-speaking. The memories of the carnage wreaked by Romanian soldiers in 1941 when they invaded with their Nazi allies are still alive in Transdnistria, and motivated its secession in 1992. Emboldened by the Azerbaijani-Turkish “victory” over Karabakh last year, aggression that has been renewed in recent days, groups like the Bucharest Nine and other pro-NATO/EU forces appear to be planning a final mopping-up operation in the former Soviet, one which would complete Russia’s encirclement and may well seal its doom.

Liberating occupied territories: Turkey, Azerbaijan – one nation, two states
Rick Rozzoff, AntiBellum, May 15 2021

AzerTag news announces today: “One nation, two states!” will hold a video conference on philosophy. The event will be held on May 17. Excerpts:

On the 103rd anniversary of our state independence in Ankara, on the occasion of the Azerbaijani-Turkish relations and the 98th anniversary of the birth of national leader Heydar Aliyev, “One nation, two states!” will hold a video conference on philosophy. Chairman of the State Committee for Work with the Diaspora Fuad Muradov, Turkish Ambassador to Baku Cahit Bagci and Turkish Ambassador to Turkey Khazar Ibrahim, member of the Security and Foreign Policy Council under the President of Turkey, Chairman of the Turkish-Azerbaijani Friendship, Cooperation and Solidarity Foundation, Professor Aygun Attar. Abdullah Eren, Chief of the General Directorate of Turks and Related Communities Living Abroad, will deliver speeches.

Azerbaijan’s Trend News Agency reports that Allahshukur Pashazade, chairman of the Caucasian Muslims Office, asserted “for the first time Azerbaijan celebrates the Ramadan holiday as a winner country.” That sure sounds like a crusading sentiment.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

middle east eye

May 16, 2021 – 9:24 am

Live: Gaza media building flattened, Palestinian killed in West Bank
Middle East Eye, May 16 2021

The death toll from Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip has risen to 174, according to the enclave’s health ministry. 47 children and 29 women were among those killed, while there were around 1200 injuries. The ministry said overnight 26 people were killed including 8 children and 10 women. The new figures come after Israel’s army said it had bombed the home of the political leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar. The UNSC is set to meet to discuss the fighting as outrage continues to grow across the globe. The health authorities in Gaza said that five Palestinians were killed and 40 others wounded in the recent wave of attacks by Israel, according to local media outlets. Israel bombed the home of Hamas’s chief in Gaza early on Sunday, according to reports by Reuters and Haaretz, while Israeli air strikes continued to pummel the besieged strip as hostilities stretched into a seventh day with no sign of abating. At least two Palestinians were killed and 25 injured in heavy Israeli bombing of Gaza on Saturday night, health authorities in the besieged territory said. Many villages in the West Bank declared a state of mourning on Saturday, following the killing of at least 11 Palestinian by Israeli forces in the occupied territory a day earlier. In mosques across various Palestinian cities, loudspeakers sounded sirens for 73 seconds to mark the number of years since the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, the mass displacement of Palestinians leading to the establishment of Israel in 1984. Large crowds of Palestinians also held funerals for the Palestinians who were killed on Friday in the West Bank in an intense crackdown from Israeli forces. Later on Saturday, the Israeli military fatally shot a Palestinian near al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said. Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, told MEE that Israel’s use of force and evictions in the region is part of an “ethnic cleansing” effort. Barghouti said:

What we’re witnessing today is an Israeli attempt to repeat the Nakba, but what surprises Israel is the will of the Palestinian resistance and its ability to confront both by armed resistance in the Gaza Strip and popular resistance in the West Bank.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza noted that the death toll is likely to increase amid the bombing of many buildings in central Gaza. The two dead had arrived at al-Shifa hospital. The health ministry said:

The injured were mostly women and children. Five children were recovered alive from under the rubble of a building. Rescue teams are still looking through the rubble.

No injuries were reported from the strike on Yahya Sinwar’s home. Earlier, at least two Palestinians were killed and 25 injured in the heavy Israeli bombing of Gaza, health authorities said. Israel engaged in heavy bombing of Gaza on Saturday night and early Sunday, as Netanyahu said earlier on Saturday that the operation will continue “as long as necessary.” Israel intensified its bombardment of Gaza on Saturday night, targeting towns across the besieged Palestinian territory with heavy air raids. Al Jazeera reported that at least three Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, including women and children, in the bombing. Casualties continued to arrive at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital throughout the night. Palestinian groups continued to fire rockets towards Israel, including the Tel Aviv area. Footage shared on social media showed Israel’s missile defences intercepting dozens of rockets over Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has shared a video showing the bombing of a building in Gaza known to house international news outlets, lauding the air raid as a successful attack on “terrorist organisations.” He wrote in the caption that accompanied the tweet:

I say to the leaders of terrorism: you cannot hide. Not above ground and not below ground. No one is immune. We are collapsing the terrorist towers. These are towers that serve as headquarters and offices for terrorist organisations. This operation will continue as long as it takes until we achieve our goals and bring peace and security to all Israeli citizens.

Journalists said they were given only a one-hour notice by the Israeli army to evacuate the al-Jalaa tower in Gaza City, before it was destroyed in an air strike. The Israeli military fatally shot a Palestinian near al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said. Several Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since Friday amid ongoing protests. Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the victim as Wajdy Walid Jaarfa, saying that his vehicle had come under heavy Israeli fire from a nearby military tower. According to WAFA, IOF blocked medics from reaching Jaarfa after he was hit, and he subsequently died on the scene. More than 360 Palestinians were injured in the West Bank on Saturday, including 63 by live ammunition, as Israel cracked down on protesters, Arab48 news website reported, citing health authorities.

Netanyahu said that Israel’s war on Gaza will “take time” and continue “as long as necessary,” Israeli media outlets reported. During a press conference on Saturday, Netanyahu delivered remarks in Hebrew and English, justifying Israel’s attacks on civilian infrastructure in Gaza. He referred to Saturday’s bombing of a building in Gaza known for housing international media organisations, saying:

Israel is doing everything possible (to avoid killing civilians). We demonstrated this yet again today when we warned civilians to vacate the building used by the Hamas terror intelligence. They vacated the premises before the target was destroyed. And that’s why you don’t hear of casualties from these collapsing terror towers.

Israel has not provided any evidence to back its claim that the building was being used by Hamas. Israeli bombs have killed at least 139 Palestinians, including dozens of children and in some instances entire families. On Saturday, Netanyahu also thanked Biden for his “clear and unequivocal support.”

In his first conversation with PA President Mahmoud Abbas since taking office, Biden on Saturday expressed what he called Washington’s commitment to strengthening the US-Palestinian partnership and asked for Hamas to stop the firing rockets towards Israel. A White House statement said:

President Biden updated President Abbas on US diplomatic engagement on the ongoing conflict and stressed the need for Hamas to cease firing rockets into Israel. They expressed their shared concern that innocent civilians, including children, have tragically lost their lives amidst the ongoing violence.

The call for Hamas to end rocket attacks comes amid refusal from the US administration to explicitly call for an immediate ceasefire from both sides. Biden has also failed to criticise Israel’s heaving bombardment of Gaza, including the targeting of building housing media offices on Saturday. Biden highlighted the recent US decision to resume economic and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, voicing support for steps to “enable the Palestinian people to enjoy the dignity, security, freedom and economy opportunity that they deserve.” Abbas spox Nabil Abu Rudeina confirmed the conversation had taken place, telling AFP that it was “important” without elaborating on the details of the exchange. The White House issued another statement of uncritical support for Israel on Saturday after a call between Biden and Netanyahu. the White House said in a statement describing the call:

The president reaffirmed his strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks from Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. He condemned these indiscriminate attacks against towns and cities across Israel.

It was the second time Biden had spoken to Netanyahu since the crisis began. The call came hours after Israel bombed a building housing the offices of several media outlets in Gaza, including the AP and Middle East Eye. Biden, who had vowed to pursue a foreign policy centring human rights, failed to condemn the attack. Instead, he merely expressed “concern” for the safety of journalists. The administration has been using the word “concern” when it comes to Israel’s action in an apparent effort to avoid explicitly criticising the Israeli government. the statement said:

The President noted that this current period of conflict has tragically claimed the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, including children. He raised concerns about the safety and security of journalists and reinforced the need to ensure their protection.

Thousands of Palestinians have come out in the city of Sakhnin this afternoon, in order to mark the anniversary of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, the expulsion of more 800k Palestinians from their homes to make way for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Demonstrators gathered in front of the al-Nour Mosque in central Sakhnin, and marched through the city. In Jaffa, hundreds of people also protested against the wave of attacks from settlers in recent days, where groups of Israeli nationalists marched through the city and caused damage to Arab-owned businesses. Protesters waved Palestinian flags and chanted songs about Palestinian resistance, condemning Israeli aggression.

Tanslation – Sakhnin: A large march against against the aggression of the occupation [Israeli forces] and settlers, and to mark the anniversary of Nakba.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been left in a state of shock and devastation after Israeli air strikes claimed the lives of 11 people, including eight children, in the early hours of Saturday. 10-year-old Nadine Abd’el-Taif is one of the many Palestinians who lost their homes to the overnight Israeli raid. Breaking down, she questions why her, her family, and others in Gaza are being targeted.

On Saturday afternoon, IOF entered the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, assaulted residents and forcibly broke up groups of protesters. Police forces were seen beating women with batons and storming property in an attempt to get people to leave their homes.

Translation: Occupation forces break into the home of Al-Kurd family in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem.

Residents of Sheikh Jarrah have been protesting for over a week against an Israeli court’s decision to imminently evacuate a number of families. According to Palestinian news agency WAFA, police forces attacked demonstraters who gathered to show support for the families facing forced expulsion. The neighbourhood has been a flashpoint of violence in recent days, where Israeli forces came in on horseback, heavily armed, to disperse people.

Israel on Saturday launched air strikes on the Al-Jalaa Tower in Gaza, a 12-storey residential building also used by Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera, the AP and other international and local media. The IOF had given the media outlets one hour ultimatum to evacuate the building in the besieged Gaza Strip ahead of a possible air strike, MEE correspondent said. Al Jazeera has condemned an Israeli air strike that destroyed a building housing their offices in Gaza, promising to “pursue every available route to hold the Israeli government responsible for its actions.” In a statement released on the Al Jazeera English website, the Qatar-owned media company said the attack was an attempt to silence journalism. Mostefa Souag, acting director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, said the bombing of al-Jalaa building was a “heinous crime.” He said:

We call on the international community to condemn such barbaric actions and targeting of journalists and we demand an immediate international action to hold Israel accountable for its deliberate targeting of journalists and the media institutions. The destruction of Al Jazeera offices and that of other media organizations in al-Jalaa tower in Gaza is a blatant violation of human rights and is internationally considered a war crime. We call on all media and human rights institutions in denouncing this heinous crime, and to stand with Al Jazeera and other media organisations targeted by the Israeli army, despite knowing their use of the building as their headquarters for many years.

Al Jazeera correspondent said the offices have been used by the channel for the past 15 years, and that the staff has not been able to empty the offices of important archives and equipment. Al Jazeera aired a phone call between the building’s owner and an Israeli intelligence officer, asking to be given more time to evacuate equipment from the offices, but the officer declined the request.

Several journalists are posting live tweets expressing outrage at the Israeli bombardment and the short notice.

Middle East Eye’s photojournalist Muhammed Hajjar has also been forced to evacuate the building.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

demonstrations in london, paris, berlin, new york, toronto

May 16, 2021 – 8:54 am

London March Over Israel-Gaza Violence Results in 9 Police Officers Injured, Police Say
Sputnik News, May 15 2021

LONDON) – Several police officers were injured at the demonstration held in support of Palestinians in London, the Metropolitan Police said. “Nine officers were injured as they worked to disperse crowds outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington this evening (Saturday, 15 May),” the police said. A total of thirteen people were arrested in London on Saturday, according to Scotland Yard. The police said on Saturday:

Nine people were arrested on suspicion of violent disorder and a further four people were arrested on suspicion of breaching the Health Protection Regulations. They remain in custody.

According to the Metropolitan Police, protesters were encouraged to disperse first, but were met with hostility and had to take action to end the protest.

According to local media reports, participants in the London march were throwing bottles and eggs at police. Earlier on Saturday, a Sputnik correspondent reported that thousands of people marched in support of Palestinians in central London. The march was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). The protest started off as a peaceful demonstration, and the majority of people were wearing masks. Marches in support of Palestinians have been held across the UK, as well as in a number of other countries, amid the recent escalation at the Gaza Strip border that has resulted in over 140 deaths among the Palestinians, including more than 40 among children. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been injured amid tensions with Israel.

Police use water cannon to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters in Paris
RT.com, May 15 2021

French police deployed a water cannon to disperse a crowd of pro-Palestine supporters in Paris’ Barbes-Rochechouart neighborhood. The illegal rally took place amid Israel-Gaza escalation. The rally was banned by authorities amid concerns of “risks of disturbances to public order.” The organizers said they will march anyway to show solidarity with the Palestinians during the most recent armed confrontation between Israel and Hamas.

The Association of the Palestinians in Ile-de-France said:

We refuse to silence our solidarity with the Palestinians, and we will not be prevented from demonstrating.

Around 4,200 police officers were deployed to manage the rally. Hamas began firing rockets at Israeli cities on Monday, to which the IDF responded by bombing multiple targets in Gaza. The cross-border attacks led to civilian casualties on both sides. The escalation was preceded by clashes between the Palestinians and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in East Jerusalem.

French police crack down on pro-Palestine protesters in Paris
Middle East Eye, May 16 2021

Middle East Eye’s live stream from Paris as police forces violently disperse protesters who defied the government’s ban on demonstrations showing solidarity with Palestinians.

Violent clashes in Berlin as police break up pro-Palestinian demonstration
RT.com, May 15 2021

Clashes broke out on the streets of the German capital as police sought to disperse a thousands-strong demonstration in support of the Palestinians amid the ongoing violent standoff between Israel and Gaza.
Chaotic scenes unfolded in Berlin’s district of Neukolln as police officers attempted to break up a massive demonstration in support of the Palestinians. Some 3,500 people joined the rally to condemn what they called “barbaric aggression” by the “occupying power.”

The protesters were moving in a large crowd while waving the flags of the State of Palestine and carrying placards that read: “Zionism is terrorism” and “Child Killer Israel.” Some Turkish flags were also seen in the crowd that chanted “Free Palestine.”

The police repeatedly urged the protesters to comply with the Covid-19 rules, involving social distancing and a requirement to wear face masks in public but the demands were “unsuccessful,” law enforcement said in a Twitter post, adding that even the rally organizers admitted that they were “unable to exert influence on the participants.”

The rally at Neukolln’s Hermannplatz square was organized by the German branch of the Samidoun group under the slogan ‘Day of Political Prisoners of Palestine’. The rally organizers have links to the PFLP, according to German media.

Around a half an hour after the protest started, the police sought to break up the rally and disperse the crowd. While some protesters left the scene, between 800 and 1,200 demonstrators stayed and started pelting the officers with bottles and paving stones. They also fired flares and smoke pellets.

Videos published on social media show the crowd chanting “Allahu Akbar.” A video published by Ruptly news agency shows the protesters throwing various projectiles at the police as well as even attacking the officers at one point. The police responded by using tear gas. The footage also shows the officers brutally detaining some of the demonstrators.

The clashes in Neukolln continued until the early evening. Police confirmed that the scuffles ended up with “numerous police officers injured” and some demonstrators arrested but did not provide any specific details on the number of those injured or detained.

A reporter from the German daily Die Welt, Martin Heller, who was covering the protest, was hit by a bottle thrown by one of the protesters, the journalist said in a Twitter post. Elsewhere, the chief Europe correspondent of the Israeli broadcaster Kann, Antonia Yamin, had a firecracker thrown at her apparently because someone heard she was reporting in Hebrew.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations were also held in several other German cities, including Hamburg, Colonge, Stuttgart and Hanover. They were attended by hundreds of protesters but went off peacefully, according to the police. In Leipzig, a pro-Palestinian rally faced a rival “pro-Israel” demonstration. Even though tensions between the two groups of protesters ran high, they did not result in violence, the local police said.

Hundreds rally for Palestine solidarity in New York
Middle East Eye, May 16 2021

In New York, hundreds have come out to protest in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Demonstrators marched through the city streets chanting “Hey hey. Ho, ho. The occupation’s got to go!”

Clashes break out at massive pro-Palestinian rally in Toronto
RT.com, May 16 2021

Police separate Palestine supporters from Israel supporters, Toronto, May 15, 2021.
Photo: Chris Helgren/Reuters

A large pro-Palestine rally has been held in Toronto, Canada amid the escalation between Israel and Gaza. The gathering was met by a small pro-Israel group, and the two sides engaged in scuffles despite a massive police presence. The rally, organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), was held in central Toronto on Saturday. The organizers urged the participants to show their support towards the Palestinian cause, condemning the past and ongoing “ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

The protesters carried a large Palestinian flag and chanted “Free free Palestine, occupation is a crime.”

The rally encountered a small-scale counter-protest, with some activists displaying insignias of the JDL. While the opposing rallies were separated from one another by a massive police barrier, this did not prevent sporadic clashes.

At least one pro-Palestinian protester was detained by the police for assaulting pro-Israeli protesters. The arrest further angered the crowd, with some protesters accusing the officers of being “Zionist” as well. Anti-police slogans were heard during the altercation.

At least one pro-Israeli activist was assaulted by rowdy pro-Palestinian protesters, who attacked the elderly man with sticks and pant belts. The protester sustained injuries to his head, footage from the scene shows.

The pro-Palestinian gathering was blasted by B’nai Brith Canada, which condemned it for “brutal assaults” on the pro-Israeli activists. The groups invoked the Covid-19 card as well, branding the rally a “super-spreader” event.

By niqnaq | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

some reflections on the effectiveness of israel’s missile defense systems (principally iron dome)

May 16, 2021 – 7:35 am

Iranian Media Reveals How Some Hamas Rockets Have Been Defeating Israel’s Iron Dome
Ilya Tsukanov, Sputnik News, May 15 2021

The Israeli military has long touted its cutting-edge air defences, with the Iron Dome, Arrow 3, Barak 8, and David’s Sling designed to protect the country from threats ranging from small rockets to long-range ballistic and cruise missiles. However, the ongoing firefight with Hamas in Gaza has shown that no air defence system is perfect. The technical limitations of the Iron Dome, combined with the improving range and speed characteristics of Hamas’ rockets, are making it increasingly difficult for Israel’s advanced air defences to counter the militant group’s attacks, Iranian defence journalist Seyed Mohammad Taheri suggests. Taheri wrote in a piece for Tasnim (below – RB):

Several days have passed since the start of a new round of clashes between the Zionist army and Palestinian resistance groups, and in the spotlight more than anything is the power of resistance groups’ rockets, their ability to fire large volumes of these rockets into the depths of the occupied territories, and Israeli air defence systems’ battle with them.

The observer believes the Israeli military first discovered the growing missile power of its adversaries during the 2006 Lebanon War, when Hezbollah militants fired thousands of rockets into Israel, bombarding cities, towns, and villages in retaliation to a similar Israeli Air Force campaign against its northern neighbour. The Iron Dome was set up in 2011, becoming a central component of Israel’s multilayered air and missile defence system, with an aerospace defence system divided by region replaced with an integrated system covering the whole of the country. The Iron Dome itself is perhaps tasked with the most important role among Israel’s air defence systems when it comes to battling non-state entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah, given its responsibility for dealing with unsophisticated, low-speed, low-altitude rockets like those launched by non-state actors. More advanced systems such as the Arrow 3 are meant to counter threats including ballistic and cruise missiles. However, Taheri suggests that while the Iron Dome has seen plenty of real-life “testing,” the other air defence systems of the regime’s military, except in a few cases, have not yet entered into a serious conflict, and therefore their performance is disputed. Each Iron Dome system is equipped with radar and command and control modules and three launchers, the latter armed with 20 Tamir interceptor missiles apiece. Israel has a total of 12 Iron Dome systems in its arsenal. The Iron Dome has several weaknesses, according to Taheri:

First, the number of available systems is not enough to cover the country and therefore, in the event of a multi-front war, the system will not be able to respond to all rocket and missile attacks, and Israel’s low-altitude air defences will be extremely vulnerable.

Second, he notes, the system is not able to intercept missiles or rockets fired from less than 4 km away, meaning that the placement of enemy launchers at distances closer than this poses a “serious threat to the system.” Additionally, the Iron Dome cannot track targets flying at high speeds and with a flight time of less than 28 seconds.

Furthermore, the warheads of the missiles used in this system are equipped with a proximity fuse, with the optimal distance for destroying the target being one meter; otherwise the possibility of its fragments penetrating the target and destroying it are reduced.

An inability to deal with high volumes of fire simultaneously, and resistance groups’ recognition of this fact, is another major problem, he believes. Additionally, the high price of the Iron Dome’s interceptor missiles versus the low cost of the rockets used by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah makes shoot downs a costly effort, notwithstanding multi-billion dollar US subsidies to the Israeli military. Taheri writes:

According to openly available information, each Iron Dome missile costs between $40k and $100k, whereas the price of each rocket fired by the Palestinian groups is between $1k and $5k.

Finally, Taheri suggests that the improved speed, accuracy, range, and potency of rockets now used by the militants are another problem for Israeli air defence systems. He indicates:

The increased power of resistance rockets has caused the scope of the war, once limited to the borders of the Gaza Strip, to extend to the depths of the occupied territory. In addition to endangering the security of the regime’s sensitive areas and facilities, they have disrupted the daily lives of citizens and increased dissatisfaction with the government and the army.

Taheri stresses that the gradual improvement of Hamas’s missiles, and the careful study of the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli air defences as a whole and the Iron Dome in particular, have enabled the militants to establish a previously unseen level of power vis-à-vis Israel. He warns:

If this continues, it will lead resistance groups to acquire more advanced weapons than those they have today, and to inflict even heavier blows against the Zionist regime.

Israeli defence giant Rafael boasts that its Iron Dome has an interception rate of 90%, and says that over 2.5k Hamas and Hezbollah missiles had been intercepted successfully between 2011 and Jan 2021. However, the Israeli military has a slightly lower estimation of the system’s accuracy, saying it varies from 85% and 90%. Furthermore, even before the recent flare-up of fighting, Israeli intelligence and national security officials reportedly warned the government of militants’ ability to launch as many as 1k rockets into Israel in one day, an eventuality which would pierce the Iron Dome shield. On Friday, The Jerusalem Post intelligence and terrorism editor Yonah Jeremy Bob wrote that even Hamas, which is considerably weaker than Hezbollah or any state actor Israel may encounter, may have found a way to partially undermine the Iron Dome by firing massed volleys of rockets simultaneously, overwhelming the air defence system. Bob stressed:

Does this mean the Iron Dome is no longer effective? No. It still intercepts the majority of rockets fired at Israeli population centers, although some are getting through. The bigger question is whether Israeli intelligence estimates are correct that Hamas has only a few hundred missiles which can reach Tel Aviv. If those estimates are accurate, then Hamas may have used up a large chunk of that arsenal, “even if it has thousands more which can hit Beersheba, Ashdod and other communities near the Gaza border. But if Hamas has more of those longer-range rockets, this could impact Israel’s plans for this round of violence and especially the question of how long it wants it to last.

How does Tasnim report on the impact of resistance missile power on the Israeli defense structure / Hamas rockets passing through the Iron Dome?
Seyed Mohammad Taheri, Tasnim, May 25 (2021)

A few days have passed since the beginning of a new round of clashes between the Zionist regime army and Palestinian resistance groups, and what is in the center of attention more than anything else is the high rocket power of resistance groups and firing large volumes of these rockets. The depths of the occupied territories and the confrontation of the Israeli army’s air defense systems with them. Since the beginning of the conflict, there have been various comments about the capability of the Israeli army’s defense systems, to the point that some have assessed their capability as positive and some as lacking the ability to counter Palestinian rockets. To take a closer look at the Israeli army’s air defense capabilities, we must first become familiar with the regime’s air defense structure, organization, and equipment, and then look at their strengths and weaknesses.

Since 2006, after the 33-day war, as well as three subsequent wars with Palestinian factions, the Israeli army has realized that it will now face far-reaching threats aimed at threatening the depths of the occupied territories. Therefore, the commanders of the regime’s army had to make fundamental changes in the structure and organization of the regime’s air defense. With the introduction of the Iron Dome defense system into the air defense structure of the Israeli army in 2011, the theory of multi-layered air defense was introduced, and this theory became operational in the second half of 2016. In this regard, the name of “Anti-Aircraft Organization” was changed to “Air Defense Organization” and “Missile Defense Organization” was merged in its heart. According to this theory, the regional defense (northern, central, southern front) of the airspace of the occupied territories was also eliminated and gave way to an integrated defense system.

In the new theory, a center called the “National Center for Ballistic Image Management” was created, which is responsible for issuing national warnings and managing operations to detect, intercept and destroy all types of air targets. The center is based in Tel Aviv and is responsible for centralized conflict management with all types of air threats, taking over all reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, radar and defense systems throughout the Occupied Territories. Other changes in the defense structure of the Israeli army, based on the theory of multi-layered defense, are the dissolution of defense regiments and the creation of battalions of defense systems. has it.

The defense systems of the Zionist Army are organized in such a way that the Iron Dome systems, which are organized in the form of the 137th and 947th Battalions, are responsible for dealing with low-altitude targets. After that, the 138th and 139th Battalions of the Patriot System and the 66th Battalion of the David’s Sling System are tasked with engaging medium-altitude targets, and the 136th “Defensive Sword” Battalion, consisting of the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems, has been deployed to counter high-altitude threats and ballistic missiles. Among the IDF defense systems, the Iron Dome is the only one that changes positions according to the geographical scope of the threats, and the regime’s other defense systems are permanently stationed at their bases.

The Iron Dome system was designed in 2011 with the aim of countering threats at low altitudes with a range of 4 to 70 km and with the aim of protecting the towns and sensitive areas of the regime. Each Iron Dome system includes an EL / M2084 radar, a command and control center, and three launchers, each capable of carrying and firing 20 Tamir missiles. A total of 12 iron dome systems are used to defend the skies of the occupied territories.

Launcher launch of standard missiles of David’s Sling Defense System

The David’s Sling system, which entered service in 2016, is responsible for countering threats from a range of 70 km to 300 km. David’s Sling also uses an EL / M2084 radar, and each of its firearms has six firing platforms for 12 missiles, which use the Stunner defense missile. At present, 3 batteries of David’s Sling are deployed in the occupied territories in the form of a defense battalion.

Arrow 2 and 3 missile defense systems

The Arrow System, which consists of three Arrow 2 batteries and one Arrow 3 battery, also has the task of engaging with targets at high altitude and range by having a GreenPine radar. In fact, these two systems are designed to deal with Iranian ballistic missiles. So far, we have a brief overview of the Israeli army’s air defense structure, as well as its defense systems. It is important to note that, contrary to popular belief, the Iron Dome refers to the entire structure of Israel’s defense. It is one of the defense systems of the Zionist regime’s army, which has fallen on deaf ears due to its many uses.

In view of the above, and despite the fact that the Zionist regime has made serious changes in the structure of its air defense since the 2006 war, we still see that its air defense organization is not able to fully protect itself against rocket attacks by resistance groups. More recently, a missile strike near the Dimona nuclear power plant has cast serious doubt on the organization’s ability to defend the skies over the occupied territories. On the other hand, the only Israeli defense system that has been active in recent years is the Iron Dome system, and other defense systems of the regime army, except for a few cases, have not yet entered into a serious conflict, and therefore the correctness of their operation is questionable.

Rocket Launchers Repair Iron Dome Defense System

The Iron Dome system also has several weaknesses. First, the number of available systems is not able to cover all the occupied territories, and therefore in the event of a multi-front war, this system will not be able to respond to rocket and missile attacks, and the air defense of the Israeli low altitude will be extremely vulnerable.

How the Iron Dome defense system works

The system is also unable to intercept missiles and rockets fired from a distance of less than 4 km due to lack of time to detect and intercept targets, and the proliferation of resistance rocket launchers at this distance is a serious threat to the system. On the other hand, the Iron Dome system can not track targets that have high speed and flight time of less than 28 seconds.

Iron Dome Defense System Missile

Also, the warheads of the missiles used in this system are equipped with a proximity fuse, which is the best condition for destroying the target when it is targeted at a distance of one meter, otherwise the possibility of its fragments penetrating the target body and destroying it is reduced.

Image of the confrontation of the Iron Dome system with resistance rockets

On the other hand, one of the weaknesses of this system is its inability to cope with large volumes of fire; This is an issue that the resistance groups have also realized, and this is one of the reasons why these groups fired rockets at high volumes. The high price of missiles for the Iron Dome system versus the low price of missiles of resistance groups is something that will greatly increase the cost of the battle for the Zionists. According to published information, each Iron Dome missile costs between $40k and $100 k. This is if the price of each rocket fired by Palestinian groups is between $1k and $5k. On the other hand, the type of rockets used by resistance groups in previous years had a lower speed, accuracy and volume of destruction than the rockets used by these groups in recent wars.

An example of the rockets of the battalions of Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the military branch of Hamas

Palestinian groups in the recent war used rockets that, in addition to better range and volume of destruction, also have higher speed and accuracy, which has made the Iron Dome system much more difficult than in the past. The increasing power of the resistance rockets has caused the scope of the war, which was once limited to the borders of the Gaza Strip, to extend to the depths of the occupied territories; In addition to endangering the security of the regime’s sensitive and security centers, this has disrupted the daily lives of the inhabitants of the occupied territories and has increased dissatisfaction with the government and the army of this regime.

Fighters of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades load rockets into launchers to fire on occupied territories

This shows that the resistance groups have gradually increased the quality of their rockets and missiles by carefully studying the strengths and weaknesses of the Zionist Army Air Defense Organization and especially its Iron Dome system, and so far they have been able to balance the acceptable power with the Zionist regime. If this continues, it will lead the resistance groups to acquire much more advanced weapons than today and to inflict heavier blows on the Zionist regime.

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