Las fuerzas del Pentágono estadounidense desplegadas ilegalmente en tres enclaves en el este y nordeste de Siria fueron atacadas hoy con cohetes y drones, informaron medios de prensa aquí.
Según las fuentes, las tropas norteamericanas ubicadas en Tanef y en las inmediaciones del campamento de Rukban, en el este del país cerca de la frontera con Iraq y Jordania, fueron blancos de arremetidas con vehículos aéreos no tripulados.
La denominada Resistencia en Iraq asumió la autoría de la acción e informó por medio de un comunicado que los drones impactaron directamente contra sus blancos.
Aclaró que los ataques, como los anteriores realizadas contra los enclaves de Washington, fueron en respuesta a los crímenes cometidos por Israel contra los palestinos en Gaza.
Asimismo, activistas locales indicaron que la base de Estados Unidos ubicada en el campo petrolero de Konico, en la provincia nororintal de Deir Ezzor, fue atacada hoy con cohetes en dos ocasiones.
Según reconocieron funcionarios del Pentágono, se reportaron más de 80 bombardeos contra los objetivos de Estados Unidos en Siria desde el 7 de octubre pasado, cuando comenzó la embestida israelí en la Franja de Gaza, lo que significa un aumento del 45 por ciento.
Washington mantiene una quincena de bases en territorio sirio sin el consentimiento del Gobierno de Damasco ni la aprobación de las Naciones Unidas.
Irán se unió a las múltiples denuncias de que existe un mercado negro de armas occidentales que Ucrania vende a terceros. Como resultado, estas se dirigen hacia otras regiones. Las investigaciones periodísticas indican que una parte considerable de las armas destinadas al régimen de Kiev pasan por manos de intermediarios privados, lo cual dificulta significativamente rastrear el destino de los envíos.
Dies ist der Newsletter von Sahra Wagenknecht, MdB. Darin informiere ich über meine Aktivitäten und aktuelle politische Themen.
Keine höheren Steuern? Respekt für Beschäftigte? Ein Klimageld für mehr sozialen Ausgleich? All diese Versprechen haben FDP, SPD und GRÜNE bei ihrer Einigung auf einen Haushalt mal eben über den Haufen geworfen. Ich finde es einfach nur schäbig, wie die Ampel die selbstverschuldeten Haushaltslöcher nun stopfen will, indem sie der Bevölkerung noch tiefer in die Taschen greift. Von derzeit 30 auf 45 Euro pro Tonne will die Regierung die CO2-Steuer im nächsten Jahr anheben. Damit wird das Tanken und Heizen für viele noch unbezahlbarer als es jetzt schon ist — zumal auch die Mehrwertsteuer auf Gas und Wärme im nächsten Jahr wieder drastisch steigt. Auch Plastikverpackungen, Strom oder Restaurantbesuche werden im nächsten Jahr teurer – vom einst versprochenen „Klimageld“ dagegen keine Spur! Statt das Leben von Millionen Beschäftigten, Familien und Rentnern, die schon lange nicht mehr wissen, wie sie bei den hohen Preisen noch über die Runden kommen sollen, weiter zu verteuern, sollte die Ampel endlich die Ursachen der Haushaltsnotlage beseitigen: spinnerte Ideen aus dem Hause Habeck, absurde Aufrüstung, sinnloser Wirtschaftskrieg… Auch dass die Bundesregierung der Ukraine weiter Blankoschecks für Waffen ausstellen will, während sich die USA aus der Ukraine-Unterstützung mehr und mehr zurückziehen, zeigt, dass vor allem die Ampel selbst die Notlage für den Bundeshaushalt darstellt.
Zu Gast beim Jahresrückblick von Lanz Beim Jahresrückblick von Markus Lanz spreche ich über meinen Abschied von der Linken und die Notwendigkeit einer neuen Partei, die Druck für eine bessere Politik macht und die Sorgen der Menschen ernst nimmt, statt sich wie die Ampel in einer abgehobenen Blase zu bewegen:
Außerdem versuche ich, eine Aktivistin der Letzten Generation davon zu überzeugen, dass man keinen Beitrag zur Bewältigung der Klimakrise leistet, wenn man sich auf Straßen festklebt und damit nur normalen Bürgern das Leben schwer macht. Sie sollten ihren Protest besser gegen die Verursacher der Probleme richten und sich z.B. vor dem Kanzleramt oder vor Habecks Ministerium festkleben.
Gruppe «BSW — Für Frieden und Gerechtigkeit» im Bundestag konstituiert
Es geht los: Wir haben uns mit zehn Abgeordneten als neue Gruppe im Bundestag konstituiert und werden die Ampel gemeinsam unter Druck setzen. Denn eines ist klar: Diese Regierung, die unser Land immer tiefer in die Krise führt, braucht eine starke Opposition mit seriösen Konzepten für unsere Zukunft — keinen Friedrich Merz, der die ohnehin schmalen Renten weiter kürzen und uns noch tiefer in den Ukraine-Konflikt hineinziehen würde. In unserer ersten Pressekonferenz spreche ich über die anstehenden Aufgaben und beantworte Fragen der Journalisten zum Verein „Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht — Für Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit“ zur bevorstehenden Parteigründung und der weiteren Arbeit der Gruppe im Parlament:
Milliardäre besteuern statt Ärmere belasten Wir haben seit vielen Jahren einen Mangel an öffentlichen Investitionen in Deutschland. Inzwischen fährt kaum noch ein Zug pünktlich, 3.000 Autobahnbrücken sind marode, es fehlen zigtausende Lehrer, Kita-Plätze und bezahlbare Wohnungen. Wo sollen wir denn in zehn Jahren stehen, wenn die Regierung das nicht ändert und endlich in unsere Zukunft investiert? Was mich in der aktuellen Debatte auch stört: Wir reden immer nur über Belastungen, die Otto Normalverbraucher treffen würden, über Kürzungen bei armen Kindern, Rentnern und Arbeitslosen. Dabei leben wir in einer Gesellschaft, in der sich immer mehr Reichtum am oberen Ende konzentriert. Die 500 Reichsten verfügen inzwischen über ein Vermögen von 1.100 Milliarden Euro — vielleicht sogar noch mehr, wie eine aktuelle Studie der Hans Böckler-Stiftung recherchiert hat. Mit einer Solidaritätsabgabe von nur 5 Prozent auf dieses Vermögen ließen sich Einnahmen von mindestens 55 Milliarden Euro erzielen. Bei Maybrit Illner im ZDF habe ich letzte Woche u.a. mit dem CDU-Generalsekretär Linnemann und dem SPD-Generalsekretär Kühnert über die aktuelle Haushaltskrise diskutiert, hier ein Ausschnitt aus der Sendung:
Keine Millionenboni für miserable Leistung Die Deutsche Bahn ist in einem miserablen Zustand. Jeder zweite Fernzug kommt zu spät. „Deutsche Bummelbahn“ lautet die Leistungsbilanz der Führungsetage. Dass sich die Konzernchefs in dieser Situation auch noch Boni zuschustern wollen, ist unverschämte Selbstbedienung. Ganze 5 Millionen Euro wollen sich die Bahnchefs zusätzlich nachzahlen – als Ausgleich für die nicht ausgezahlten Boni während der Zeit, in der der Konzern die staatliche Strompreisbremse in Anspruch genommen hat. Das ist ein Hohn für die Mitarbeiter der Deutschen Bahn, die für anständige Löhne kämpfen, um die Reallohnverluste durch die hohe Inflation auszugleichen, ein Hohn für alle Kunden der Bahn, die mehr Pünktlichkeit und Qualität für ihr Geld erwarten können, und ein Hohn für die Steuerzahler, die das Unternehmen immer wieder mit Milliarden stützen müssen. Die Bundesregierung sollte als Eigentümer den Vorstand auswechseln, Boni streichen und Verhandlungen mit der GDL aufnehmen, um weitere Streiks im neuen Jahr zu verhindern.
On Friday, December 8, the UN Security Council met under Article 99 for only the fourth time in the UN’s history. Article 99 is an emergency provision that allows the Secretary General to summon the Council to respond to a crisis that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security.” The previous occasions were the Belgian invasion of the Congo in 1960, the hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and Lebanon’s Civil War in 1989.
Secretary General Antonio Guterrestold the Security Council that he invoked Article 99 to demand an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza because “we are at a breaking point,” with a “high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza.” The United Arab Emirates drafted a ceasefire resolution that quickly garnered 97 cosponsors.
The World Food Program has reported that Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation, with 9 out of 10 people spending entire days with no food. In the two days before Guterres invoked Article 99, Rafah was the only one of Gaza’s five districts to which the UN could deliver any aid at all.
The Secretary General stressed that
“The brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity.”
Mr. Guterres concluded,
“The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss… The eyes of the world – and the eyes of history – are watching. It’s time to act.”
UN members delivered eloquent, persuasive pleas for the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that the resolution called for, and the Council voted thirteen to one, with the U.K. abstaining, to approve the resolution. But the one vote against by the United States, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, killed the resolution, leaving the Council impotent to act as the Secretary General warned that it must.
This was the sixteenth U.S. Security Council veto since 2000 – and fourteen of those vetoes have been to shield Israel and/or U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine from international action or accountability. While Russia and China have vetoed resolutions on a variety of issues around the world, from Myanmar to Venezuela, there is no parallel for the U.S.’s extraordinary use of its veto primarily to provide exceptional impunity under international law for one other country.
The consequences of this veto could hardly be more serious. As Brazil’s UN Ambassador Sérgio França Danese told the Council, if the U.S. hadn’t vetoed a previous resolution that Brazil drafted on October 18, “thousands of lives would have been saved.”
And as the Indonesian representative asked, “How many more must die before this relentless assault is halted? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?”
Following the previous U.S. veto of a ceasefire at the Security Council, the UN General Assembly took up the global call for a ceasefire, and the resolution, sponsored by Jordan, passed by 120 votes to 14, with 45 abstentions. The 12 small countries who voted with the United States and Israel represented less than 1% of the world’s population.
The isolated diplomatic position in which the United States found itself should have been a wake-up call, especially coming a week after a Data For Progress poll found that 66% of Americans supported a ceasefire, while a Mariiv poll found that only 29% of Israelis supported an imminent ground invasion of Gaza.
After the United States again slammed the Security Council door in Palestine’s face on December 8, the desperate need to end the massacre in Gaza returned to the UN General Assembly on December 12.
An identical resolution to the one the U.S. vetoed in the Security Council was approved by a vote of 153 to 10, with 33 more yes votes than the one in October. While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they do carry political weight, and this one sends a clear message that the international community is disgusted by the carnage in Gaza.
Another powerful instrument the world can use to try to compel an end to this massacre is the Genocide Convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified. It only takes one country to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the Convention, and, while cases can drag on for years, the ICJ can take preliminary measures to protect the victims in the meantime.
On January 23, 2020, the Court did exactly that in a case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar, alleging genocide against its Rohingya minority. In a brutal military campaign in late 2017, Myanmar massacred tens of thousands of Rohingya and burnt down dozens of villages. 740,000 Rohingyas fled into Bangladesh, and a UN-backed fact-finding mission found that the 600,000 who remained in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever.”
China vetoed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Security Council, so The Gambia, itself recovering from 20 years of repression under a brutal dictatorship, submitted a case to the ICJ under the Genocide Convention.
That opened the door for a unanimous ruling by 17 judges at the ICJ that Myanmar must prevent genocide against the Rohingya, as the Genocide Convention required. The ICJ issued that ruling as a preventive measure, the equivalent of a preliminary injunction in a domestic court, even though its final ruling on the merits of the case might be many years away. It also ordered Myanmar to file a report with the Court every six months to detail how it is protecting the Rohingya, signaling serious ongoing scrutiny of Myanmar’s conduct.
So which country will step up to bring an ICJ case against Israel under the Genocide Convention? Activists are already discussing that with a number of countries. Roots Action and World Beyond War have created an action alert that you can use to send messages to 10 of the most likely candidates (South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Ireland, Belize, Turkïye, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil).
There has also been increasing pressure on the International Criminal Court to take up the case against Israel.
The ICC has been quick to investigate Hamas for war crimes, but has been dragging its feet on investigating Israel.
After a recent visit to the region, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was not allowed by Israel to enter Gaza, and he was criticized by Palestinians for visiting areas attacked by Hamas on October 7, but not visiting the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
However, as long as the world is faced with the United States’ tragic and debilitating abuse of institutions the rest of the world depends on to enforce international law, the economic and diplomatic actions of individual countries may have more impact than their speeches in New York.
While historically there have been about two dozen countries that have not recognized Israel, in the past two months, Belize and Bolivia have severed ties with Israel, while others–Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan and Turkey–have withdrawn their ambassadors.
Other countries are trying to have it both ways–condemning Israel publicly but maintaining their economic interests. At the UN Security Council, Egypt explicitly accused Israel of genocide and the U.S. of obstructing a ceasefire.
And yet Egypt’s long-standing partnership with Israel in the blockade of Gaza and its continuing role, even today, in restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through its own border crossings, make it complicit in the genocide it condemns. If it means what it says, it must open its border crossings to all the humanitarian aid that is needed, end its cooperation with the Israeli blockade and reevaluate its obsequious and compromised relationships with Israel and the United States.
Qatar, which has worked hard to negotiate an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, was eloquent in its denunciation of Israeli genocide in the Security Council. But Qatar was speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Under the so-called Abraham accords, the sheikhs of Bahrain and the UAE have turned their backs on Palestine to sign on to a toxic brew of self-serving commercial relations and hundred million dollar arms deals with Israel.
In New York, the UAE sponsored the latest failed Security Council resolution, and its representative declared, “The international system is teetering on the brink. For this war signals that might makes right, that compliance with international humanitarian law depends on the identity of the victim and the perpetrator.”
And yet neither the UAE nor Bahrain has renounced their Abraham deals with Israel, nor their roles in U.S. “might makes right” policies that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East for decades. Over a thousand US Air Force personnel and dozens of U.S. warplanes are still based at the Al-Dhafra Airbase in Abu Dhabi, while Manama in Bahrain, which the U.S. Navy has used as a base since 1941, remains the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. Speeches at the UN may have helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it.
The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalize, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is not that it is illegitimate or anti-semitic. It is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.
U.S. Alternate Representative to the U.N. Robert Woodtold the Security Council that there is a “fundamental disconnect between the discussions that we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground” in Gaza, implying that only Israeli and U.S. views of the conflict deserve to be taken seriously.
But the real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of U.S. and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians.
While Israel, with U.S. bombs and howitzer shells, is killing and maiming thousands of innocent people, the rest of the world is appalled by these crimes against humanity. The grassroots clamor to end the massacre keeps building, but global leaders must move beyond non-binding votes and investigations to boycotting Israeli products, putting an embargo on weapons sales, breaking diplomatic relations and other measures that will make Israel a pariah state on the world stage.
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It is quite possible that the early thinkers and leaders of the Zionist movement, back in late 19th century Europe, imagined, or at least hoped, that Palestine was an empty land and if there were people there, they were rootless nomadic tribes that, in essence, did not inhabit the land.
If this had been the case, quite possibly the Jewish refugees making their way to that empty land would have built a prosperous society and, maybe, would have found a way to prevent polarizing themselves from the Arab World.
What we do know, as a matter of fact, is that quite a few of the early architects of Zionism were perfectly aware of the fact that Palestine was not an empty land.
These architects of Zionism were too racist and orientalist, like the rest of Europe, to realize how progressive Palestinian society was in relation to that period, with an educated and politicized urban elite and a rural community living at peace within a genuine system of co-existence and solidarity.
Palestinian society was on the threshold of modernity – like so many other societies in the region; a blend of traditional heritage and new ideas. This would have been the basis for a national identity and a vision of freedom and independence on that very land they had inhabited for centuries.
Zionists certainly knew in advance that Palestine was the land of the Palestinians, but they perceived the native population as a demographic obstacle, which had to be removed in order for the Zionist project of building a Jewish state in Palestine to succeed.
This is how the Zionist phrase “The Palestine Question” or “The Palestine Problem” entered the political lexicon of world politics.
In the eyes of the Zionist leadership, this “problem” could only be solved by displacing the Palestinians and replacing them with Jewish immigrants.
Moreover, Palestine had to be torn out of the Arab world and built as a front post, serving the aspirations of Western imperialism and colonialism to take over the Middle East as a whole.
It all began with Homa and Migdal – literally, a wall and a watchtower.
‘Wall and Watchtower’
These two elements were seen as the most important landmarks in the Jewish “return” to the supposedly empty land, and they are still present in every Zionist settlement until today.
At the time, Palestinian villages had no walls or watchtowers, and they still do not have them today.
People moved freely in and out, enjoying the view of villages along the road, as well as the food and water available for every passerby.
Zionist settlements, on the contrary, religiously guarded their orchards and fields and perceived anyone touching them as robbers and terrorists. This is why, from the very beginning, they did not build normal human habitats, but bastions with walls and watchtowers – blurring the difference between civilians and soldiers in the settler community.
For a short moment, the Zionist settlements won the accolade of the socialist and communist movements around the world, simply because they were places where communism was unsuccessfully and fanatically experimented with. The nature of these settlements, however, tells us, from the very beginning, what Zionism meant to the land and its people.
Whoever came as a Zionist, whether hoping to find an empty land, or determined to make it an empty land, was drafted into a settler military society that could only implement the dream of the empty land by sheer force.
The native population declined the offer to, in the words of Theodore Herzl, be “spirited away” to other countries.
Despite the huge disappointment by the British retraction from its early promises to respect the right of self-determination for all the Arab peoples, the Palestinians still hoped that the Empire would protect them from the Zionist project of replacement and displacement.
By the 1930s, the leaders of the Palestinian community understood that this would not be the case. Therefore, they rebelled, only to be brutally crushed by the Empire that was meant to protect them, according to the ‘Mandate’ it received from the League of Nations.
The Empire also stood by when the settler movement perpetrated a huge ethnic cleansing operation in 1948, resulting in the expulsion of half of the native population during the Nakba.
After the Catastrophe, however, Palestine was still full of Palestinians, and those expelled refused to accept any other identity and fought for their return, as they do to this day.
Keeping the ‘Dream’ Alive
Those who remained in historical Palestine continued to prove that the land was not empty and that the settlers needed to use force to achieve their goal of turning an Arab, Muslim and Christian Palestine into a European Jewish one.
With every passing year, more force needed to be used to achieve this European dream at the expense of the Palestinian people.
By 2020, we have already marked one hundred years of an ongoing attempt to implement, by force, the vision of turning an ‘empty land’ into a Jewish entity. Moreover, for some democratic as well as some theocratic reasons, it seems that there is no Jewish consensus on this part of the ‘vision’
Billions and billions of American taxpayers’ money was, and is still needed to maintain the dream of the empty land of Palestine – and the relentless Zionist quest to realize it.
An unprecedented repertoire of violent and ruthless means had to be employed on a daily basis against Palestinians, their villages and cities, or the whole Gaza Strip, in order to maintain the dream.
The human cost paid by the Palestinians for this failed project has been enormous – and is around 100,000 to date.
The number of wounded, traumatized Palestinians is so high that probably every Palestinian family has at least one member, whether a child, a woman or a man, who can be included in this list.
The nation of Palestine – whose human capital was able to move economies and cultures around the Arab world – has been fragmented and prevented from exhausting this incredible potential for their own benefit.
This is the background for the genocidal policy that Israel is now enacting in Gaza and for the unprecedented killing campaign in the West Bank.
Only Democracy?
These tragic events raise, once more, the conundrum: How can the West and the Global North claim that this violent project of maintaining millions of Palestinians under oppression, is carried out by the only democracy in the Middle East?
Maybe even more importantly, why do so many supporters of Israel and the Israeli Jews themselves believe that this is a sustainable project in the 21st century?
The truth is, it is not sustainable.
The problem is that its disintegration could be a long process and a very bloody one, whose principal victims would be the Palestinians.
It is also not clear if the Palestinians are ready to take over, as a united liberation movement, following the final stages of the disintegration of the Zionist project.
Will they be able to shake off the sense of defeat and rebuild their homeland as a free country for all in the future?
Personally, I have great faith in the young Palestinian generation, who will be able to do so.
This last phase could be less violent; it could be more constructive and productive for both societies, that of the settlers and that of the colonized people, if only the region and the world intervened now.
If some nations stopped enraging millions of people by claiming that a century-old project – aimed to empty a land from its indigenous people by force – is a project that reflects an enlightened democracy and a civilized society.
If this happened, Americans could stop asking “Why do they hate us?”.
And Jews around the world would not be forced to defend Jewish racism by weaponizing antisemitism and holocaust denial.
Hopefully, even Christian Zionists would return to the basic human precepts Christianity stands for and would join at the forefront of the coalition determined to stop the destruction of Palestine and its people.
Multinational corporations, security companies and military industries, of course, would not join a new coalition that opposes the project of emptying the land. However, they could be challenged.
The only necessary prerequisite is that we, a naive people who still believe in morality and justice, who serve as lighthouses in this age of darkness, truly understand that stopping the attempt to empty Palestine is the beginning of a new era, of a much better world for everyone.
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Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. He is the co-editor, with Ramzy Baroud of ‘Our Vision for Liberation.’ Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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Is the First Amendment becoming a historic relic? On July 4, 2023, federal judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” That verdict was ratified by a federal appeals court decision in September 2023 that concluded that Biden administration “officials have engaged in a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social-media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government.”
In earlier times in America, such policies would have faced sweeping condemnation from across the political spectrum. But major media outlets like the Washington Post have rushed to the barricades to defend the Biden war on “misinformation.” Almost half of Democrats surveyed in September 2023 affirmed that free speech should be legal “only under certain circumstances.” Fifty-five percent of American adults support government suppression of “false information” — even though only 20 percent trust the government.
Biden’s War on Free Speech
The broad support for federal censorship is perplexing considering that courts have vividly laid out the government’s First Amendment violations. Doughty delivered 155 pages of damning details of federal browbeating, jawboning, and coercion of social-media companies. Doughty ruled that federal agencies and the White House “engaged in coercion of social media companies” to delete Americans’ comments on Afghanistan, Ukraine, election procedures, and other subjects. He issued an injunction blocking the feds from “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
Censors reigned from the start of the Biden era. Barely two weeks after Biden’s inauguration, White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty demanded that Twitter “immediately” remove a parody account of Biden’s relatives. Twitter officials suspended the account within 45 minutes but complained they were already “bombarded” by White House censorship requests at that point.
Biden White House officials ordered Facebook to delete humorous memes, including a parody of a future television ad: “Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled….” The White House continually denounced Facebook for failing to suppress more posts and videos that could inspire “vaccine hesitancy” — even if the posts were true. Facebook decided that the word “liberty” was too hazardous in the Biden era; to placate the White House, the company suppressed posts “discussing the choice to vaccinate in terms of personal or civil liberties.”
Flaherty was still unsatisfied and raged at Facebook officials in a July 15, 2021, email: “Are you guys f–king serious?” The following day, President Biden accused social-media companies of “killing people” by failing to suppress all criticism of COVID vaccines.
Federal Censorship
Censorship multiplied thanks to an epic bureaucratic bait-and-switch. After allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act was created to protect against foreign meddling. Prior to Biden taking office, CISA had a “Countering Foreign Influence Task Force.” In 2021, that was renamed the “Mis-, Dis- and Mal-information Team (‘MDM Team’).”
But almost all the targets of federal censorship during the Biden era have been Americans. Federal censorship tainted the 2020 and 2022 elections, spurring the suppression of millions of social-media posts (almost all from conservatives). During the 2020 election, CISA targeted for suppression assertions such as “mail-in voting is insecure” — despite the long history of absentee ballot fraud.
CISA aims to control Americans’ minds: A CISA advisory committee last year issued a report that “broadened” what it targeted to include “the spread of false and misleading information because it poses a significant risk to critical function, like elections, public health, financial services and emergency responses.” Thus, any idea that government officials label as “misleading” is a “significant risk” that can be suppressed.
Where did CISA find the absolute truths it used to censor American citizens? CISA simply asked government officials and “apparently always assumed the government official was a reliable source,” the court decision noted. Any assertion by officialdom was close enough to a Delphic oracle to use to “debunk postings” by private citizens. Judge Doughty observed that the free-speech clause was enacted to prohibit agencies like CISA from picking “what is true and what is false.”
COVID-inspired Censorship
“Government = truth” is the premise for the Biden censorship regime. In June 2022, Flaherty declared that he “wanted to monitor Facebook’s suppression of COVID-19 misinformation ‘as we start to ramp up [vaccines for children under the age of 5].’” The FDA had almost zero safety data on COVID vaccines for infants and toddlers. But Biden announced the vaccines were safe for those target groups, so any assertion to the contrary automatically became false or misleading.
Biden policymakers presumed that Americans are idiots who believe whatever they see on Facebook. In an April 5, 2021, phone call with Facebook staffers, White House Strategy Communication chief Courtney Rowe said, “If someone in rural Arkansas sees something on FB [Facebook], it’s the truth.”
In the same call, a Facebook official mentioned nose bleeds as an example of a feared COVID vaccine side effect. Flaherty wanted Facebook to intervene in purportedly private conversations on vaccines and “Direct them to CDC.” A Facebook employee told Flaherty that “an immediate generated message about nose bleeds might give users ‘the Big Brother feel.’” At least the Biden White House didn’t compel Facebook to send form notices every 90 seconds to any private discussion on COVID: “The Department of Homeland Security wishes to remind you that there is no surveillance. Have a nice day.” Flaherty also called for Facebook to crackdown on WhatsApp exchanges (private messages) between individuals.
Federal agencies responded to legal challenges by portraying themselves as the same “pitiful, helpless giants” that President Richard Nixon invoked to describe the U.S. government when he started bombing Cambodia. Judge Doughty wrote that federal agencies “blame the Russians, COVID-19 and capitalism for any suppression of free speech by social-media companies.” But that defense fails the laugh test.
Federal agencies pirouetted as a “Ministry of Truth,” according to the court rulings, strong-arming Twitter to arbitrarily suspend 400,000 accounts, including journalists and diplomats.
The Biden administration rushed to sway the appeals court to postpone enforcement of the injunction and then sought to redefine all its closed-door shenanigans as public service. In its briefs to the court, the Justice Department declared, “There is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion,” and castigated Judge Doughty for having “equated legitimate efforts at persuasion with illicit efforts to coerce.”
Biden’s Justice Department denied that federal agencies bullied social-media companies to suppress any information. Instead, there were simply requests for “content moderation,” especially regarding COVID. Actually, there were tens of thousands of “requests” that resulted in the suppression of millions of posts and comments by Americans.
Team Biden champions a “no corpse, no delicta” definition of censorship. Since federal SWAT teams did not assail the headquarters of social-media firms, the feds are blameless. Or, as Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tenny told the judges, “There was a back and forth. Sometimes it was more friendly, sometimes people got more testy. There were circumstances in which everyone saw eye to eye, there were circumstances in which they disagreed.”
It’s irrelevant that President Joe Biden publicly accused social-media companies of murder for not censoring far more material and that Biden appointees publicly threatened to destroy the companies via legislation or prosecution. Nope: It was just neighborly discussions between good folks.
The Courts Strike Back
At the appeals court hearing, Judge Don Willett, one of the most principled and penetrating judges in the nation, had no problem with federal agencies publicly criticizing what they judged false or dangerous ideas. But that wasn’t how Team Biden compelled submission: “Here you have government in secret, in private, out of the public eye, relying on … subtle strong-arming and veiled or not-so-veiled threats.” Willett vivified how the feds played the game: “That’s a really nice social-media platform you’ve got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Judge Jennifer Elrod compared the Biden censorship regime to the Mafia: “We see with the mob … they have these ongoing relationships. They never actually say, ‘Go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence.’ But everybody just knows.”
Yet the Biden administration was supposedly innocent because the feds never explicitly spelled out “or else,” according to the Justice Department lawyer. This is on par with redefining armed robbery as a consensual activity unless the robber specifically points his gun at the victim’s head. As economist Joseph Schumpeter aptly observed, “Power wins, not by being used, but by being there.”
In its September decision, the appeals court concluded that the White House, FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Surgeon General’s office trampled the First Amendment by coercing social media companies and likely “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.”
The court unanimously declared that federal
officials made express threats…. But, beyond express threats, there was always [italic in original] an “unspoken or else.” The officials made clear that the platforms would [italic in original] suffer adverse consequences if they failed to comply, through express or implied threats, and thus the requests were not optional.
The appeals court also took a “real world” view of the nation’s most feared law enforcement agency: “Although the FBI’s communications did not plainly reference adverse consequences, an actor need not express a threat aloud so long as, given the circumstances, the message intimates that some form of punishment will follow noncompliance.” The federal appeals court upheld part of the injunction while excluding some federal agencies from anticensorship restrictions. The Biden administration quickly appealed the partial injunction to the Supreme Court, telling the court: “Of course, the government cannot punish people for expressing different views…. But there is a fundamental distinction between persuasion and coercion. And courts must take care to maintain that distinction because of the drastic consequences resulting from a finding of coercion.”
The Biden brief bewailed that the appeals court found that “officials from the White House, the Surgeon General’s office and the FBI coerced social-media platforms to remove content despite the absence of even a single instance in which an official paired a request to remove content with a threat of adverse action.” But both the federal district court and the appeals court decisions offered plenty of examples of federal threats.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance, one of the plaintiffs, scoffed: “The Government argues that the injunction interferes with the government’s ability to speak. The Government has a wide latitude to speak on matters of public concern, but it cannot stifle the protected speech of ordinary Americans.” And the injunction impedes federal officials from secretly coercing private companies to satisfy White House demands.
As the Biden administration pressured the Supreme Court, the anticensorship lawyers on September 25 secured an en banc rehearing of their case, which consists of a panel of all 17 active Fifth Circuit judges. The plaintiffs were especially concerned that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Act was excluded from the injunction. CISA and its array of federal censorship contractors have sowed far too much mischief in recent years. The appeals court modified the injunction to put a leash on CISA.
Censorship could cast the deciding vote in the 2024 presidential election. Judge Doughty issued his injunction in part because federal agencies “could use their power over millions of people to suppress alternative views or moderate content they do not agree with in the upcoming 2024 national election.”
Much of the mainstream media is horrified at the prospect of reduced federal censorship. The Washington Post article on Doughty’s decision fretted, “For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism.” The Post did not mention the Biden crusade to banish cynicism from the Internet. Journalist Glenn Greenwald scoffed, “The most surreal fact of U.S. political life is that the leading advocates for unified state/corporate censorship are large media corporations.”
Fifty years ago, philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote of the “most essential political freedom, the right to unmanipulated factual information without which all freedom of opinion becomes a cruel hoax.” The battle over federal censorship will determine whether Americans can have more than a passing whiff of that political freedom. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined the lawsuit against censorship and commented in September: “The federal government doesn’t get to play referee on the field of public discourse. If you let them decide what speech is OK, one day yours might not be.”
On October 20, the Supreme Court announced that it would rule on this case, with a decision expected within a few months. Stay tuned for plenty of legal fireworks and maybe even good news for freedom.
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James Bovard is a policy adviser to The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is a USA Today columnist and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, Playboy, American Spectator, Investors Business Daily, and many other publications. Read his blog. Send him email.
If he had lived and won a second term, the Israeli Palestinian conflict would have evolved differently. Possibly the path toward Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza could have been avoided.
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President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 60 years ago. If he had lived and won a second term, the Israeli Palestinian conflict would have evolved differently. Possibly the path toward Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza could have been avoided.
In his short time in office, Kennedy changed US foreign policy in significant ways. As documented in the book “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it still matters”, JFK resisted the CIA and military industrial complex in the policies he set regarding the Third World and Soviet Union. The Vietnam War, assassination of Indonesia’s President Sukarno, and continued hostility to Cuba and the Soviet Union would not have happened had Kennedy lived and won a second term.
Less well known, Kennedy’s policies also challenged and opposed the military and political ambitions of Zionist Israel. At the time, Israel had only existed for thirteen years. It was still evolving and the course was not totally set. There was significant international resolve to find a compromise solution regarding Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Nakba. When Israel attacked Egypt and seized the Sinai peninsula in 1956, the Eisenhower administration demanded Israel withdraw from the captured territory. They complied.
At this time, in the early 1960’s, prominent Jewish voices criticized the racism and discrimination of the Israeli government. Israelis like Martin Buber assailed Ben-Gurion and noted that “At the inception of the state, complete equality with the Jewish citizens was promised to the Arab population.” Many influential Israelis realized their long term security and well-being depended on finding a just settlement with the indigenous Palestinian population.
In the United States, the Jewish community was divided and many were anti-Zionist. The American Council for Judaism was influential and anti-nationalist. The racist and militaristic character of Israel was not yet set in stone. Nor was American Jewish support for Israel. When Menachim Begin came to the United States in 1948 he was denounced by prominent Jewish leaders including Albert Einstein. They said Begin, who later became Israeli Prime Minister, was a “terrorist” who preached “an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority.” Many American Jews had mixed feelings and did not identify with Israel. Others supported Israel but on the basis of there being peace with the indigenous Palestinians.
There are four key areas where the Kennedy policy was substantially different from what followed after his death.
Kennedy Was Not Biased in Favor of Israel
The Kennedy administration sought good relations with both Israel and the Arab nations. Kennedy aimed to extend US influence throughout the Middle East, including with nations friendly with the Soviet Union and at odds with NATO partners.
JFK personally supported Arab and African nationalism. As a senator in 1957, he criticized the Eisenhower administration for supporting and sending weapons to France in their war against the Algerian independence movement. In a 9,000 word presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he criticized “western imperialism” and called for the US to support Algerian independence. Algerian President Ben Bella, who France had tried to assassinate and considered far too radical by many in NATO, was given a huge and impressive welcome to the White House.
Kennedy changed the previous frosty relations with the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria) led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. For the first time, the US approved loans to them. Kennedy wrote respectful letters to the Arab presidents before he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion to Washington. The Arab leaders could see the difference and responded with appreciation. Those who claim there was no difference with Kennedy ignore the fact that Egypt’s Nasser, Algeria’s Ben Bella and other nationalist leaders saw a big difference.
In 1960, when Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency, he spoke at the Zionists of America Convention. He made complimentary remarks about Israel but also expressed the need for friendship with all the people of the Middle East. He said the US should “act promptly and decisively against any nation in the Middle East which attacks its neighbor” and “The Middle East needs water, not war; tractors, not tanks; bread, not bombs.”
Kennedy frankly told the Zionists, “I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.” By maintaining objectivity and neutrality on the Israeli Arab conflict, Kennedy wanted to steer the Jewish Zionists away from the racist, militaristic and ultra-nationalistic impulses which have led to where we are today.
Kennedy Wanted the Zionist Lobby to Follow the Rules
The second difference in Kennedy’s policy is regarding Zionist lobbying on behalf of Israel. Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), organizations that promote or lobby on behalf of a foreign government are required to register and account for their finances and activities. Under Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the Department of Justice (DOJ) instructed the American Zionist Council (AZC) to register as agents of a foreign country. AZC is the parent organization of the American Israel Public Affairs Council (AIPAC).
As documented in detail here, on 21 November 1962, the Assistant Attorney General wrote to them “the receipt of such funds from the American sections of the Jewish Agency for Israel constitutes the (American Zionist) Council an agent of a foreign principal…. the Council’s registration is requested.”
The emergence of Israeli political influence was also scrutinized in the Senate. UnderSenator William Fulbright, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings in May and August 1963. They revealed that tax free donations to the United Jewish Appeal, supposedly for humanitarian relief in Israel, were being channeled back to the US where the money was used for lobbying and Israeli public relations.
Attorneys for AZC stalled for time. On August 16, 1963, a DOJ analyst reviewed the case and concluded, “Department should insist on the immediate registration of the American Zionist Council under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
On October 11 the DOJ demanded that AZC register and “Department expects a response from you within 72 hours.”
On October 17, a DOJ memorandum reports that attorneys for AZC pleaded for not being required to register as foreign agents. They offered to provide the required financial disclosures but that registering as a foreign agent “would be so publicized by the American Council on Judaism that it would eventually destroy the Zionist movement.” As indicated in this discussion, political zionism was not yet dominant in the American Jewish community and was actively opposed by the American Council on Judaism and other Jewish groups.
Kennedy Supported Palestinian Rights
A third difference is regarding Palestinian rights. Although he was only 44 when he became president, Kennedy had more international experience than most US presidents. In 1939 he spent two weeks in Palestine. In a lengthy letter to his father, he described the situation and difficulties. He wrote,
“The sympathy of the people on the spot seems to be with the Arabs. This is not only because the Jews have had, at least some of their leaders, an unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude, but they feel that after all, the country has been Arabic for the last few hundred years …. Palestine was hardly Britain’s to give away.”
In comments that are still true, Kennedy remarks how the Jewish residents are divided between “strongly Orthodox Jewish group, unwilling to make any compromise” and a “liberal Jewish element composed of the younger group who fear these reactionaries”. His analysis is sympathetic to both Jewish and Arab peoples and addresses the difficulty but necessity to find a compromise solution.
In the early 1960’s, the US State Department was not locked in to a biased acceptance or approval of Israeli policies. The US supported UN Resolution 194 resolving (in paragraph 11) that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” This has become known as the “right of return”.
On November 21, 1963, the day before Kennedy’s assassination, the NY Times has two news stories which exemplify the discord between Washington and Tel Aviv. A report from the United Nations is titled “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees”. It begins,
“A United States resolution calling for continued efforts to resolve the predicament of the Palestinian Arab refugees was approved tonight 83 to 1… Israel cast the single negative vote….The issue centers on a 1948 resolution whose key section, paragraph 11, concerns the future of the Arabs who were displaced from their homes by the Palestine conflict. They have been living in the lands bordering Israel …. The revised United States text calls on the Palestine Conciliation Commission to ‘continue its efforts for the implementation of Paragraph 11’.”
The second NYT story is titled “U.S. Stand Angers Israel”. It reports from Jerusalem that “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestine refugee debate….Israel’s anger was conveyed ‘in the strongest terms’ to the US Ambassador …. The Israeli Government is upset about the American resolution before the UN Political Committee and by American maneuvers over the issue.” Israel was angered and objecting because the Kennedy administration was trying to resolve the Palestinian refugee situation including the right of return.
Kennedy Tried to Stop the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program
The fourth and biggest contention between Kennedy and the Israeli leadership was regarding their developing nuclear weapons. This issue was kept so secret that crucial documents and letters have only been released in recent years.
President Kennedy was a strong advocate for stopping nuclear proliferation. After the 1962 Cuba missile crisis, he realized how easy it would be to intentionally or accidentally trigger a catastrophic nuclear war. If nuclear weapons were allowed to spread to more countries, the risks of global catastrophe would be all the greater. It was also predicted that if Israel acquired nuclear weapons capability, they would become more aggressive and less likely to reach a compromise agreement regarding Palestinian refugees.
When intelligence indicated that Israel might be trying to build a nuclear weapon at Dimona in 1962, Kennedy was determined to find out if this was true, and if so to stop it. This caused an intense diplomatic confrontation between JFK and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The proof of this has recently been revealed in the exchange of letters between President Kennedy and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and his successor Levy Eshkol. They are all labeled “Top Secret” or “Eyes Only”.
It is important to see the sequence and some details to understand how intense this showdown was. These communications are all from 1963. (Note to reader: skip ahead to the next section if you become tired of the detail in the following exchanges.)
In March the US State Department instructed the US Ambassador to inform the government of Israel (GOI) that for “compelling reasons” the “USG seeks GOI assent to semi-annual repeat semi-annual visits to Dimona, perhaps May and November, with full access to all parts and instruments in the facility, by qualified US scientists.”
On April 19 the State Department instructed the US Ambassador to Israel to “press” for an “affirmative reply” to the earlier request for semi-annual inspections of Dimona.
On April 26, Israeli PM Ben Gurion replied to President Kennedy. He evaded the issue of nuclear facility inspections and instead expressed his concern regarding a recent proclamation from Egypt, Syria and Iraq. He compared Egyptian President Nasser to Germany’s Hitler.
On May 4 JFK responded to Ben Gurion’s concerns and underscored the US commitment to Israel and peace in the Middle East. He told the Israeli leader he is much less worried about an “early Arab attack” than the “successful development of advanced offensive systems”.
On May 8, a Special National Intelligence Estimate concluded, “Israel intends at least to put itself in a position to be able to produce a limited number of weapons” and that “unless deterred by outside pressure [the Israelis] will attempt to produce a weapon sometime in the next several years.” The analysis predicted that if Israelis had the bomb it would “encourage them to be bolder in their use of the conventional resources both diplomatic and military in their confrontation with the Arabs.”
On May 10, US State Department sent an “Eyes Only Ambassador” telegram . The ambassador was instructed to remind the Israeli leadership that they have previously agreed to the bi-annual inspections. The telegram also says Israeli concerns about Arab development of a nuclear bomb “are not valid” because there is nothing comparable to the “advanced Israeli program.”
The tensions between the Kennedy administration and Tel Aviv caused the Israel lobby to escalate pressure on the White House. This is revealed in a May 11 TOP SECRET State Department memo regarding “White House Concern with Arab-Israeli Matters”. It begins,
“In recent weeks, as you are aware, it has become increasingly clear that the White House is under steadily mounting domestic political pressure to adopt a foreign policy in the Near East more consonant with Israeli desires. The Israelis are determined to use the period between now and the 1964 Presidential election to secure a closer, more public security relationship with the Unites States, notably through a public security guarantee and a cooler, more antagonistic relationship beween the United States and the UAR [United Arab Repubic].”
This is a highly interesting memo showing Israeli influence in US foreign policy and electoral politics. It further shows Kennedy’s effort to mitigate this influence while standing firm on the goal to stop nuclear proliferation.
On May 12, 1963 Ben Gurion wrote another long letter to President Kennedy. Again evading the US request, Ben Gurion gives a distorted history including the claim that Palestinian refugees left Palestine “at the demand of Arab leaders”. He again compares Nasser to Hitler and suggests the danger of a new Holocaust.
He says, “Mr, President, my people have the right to exist … and this existence is in danger.”
On May 19, Kennedy responded to Ben Gurion emphasizing the importance he placed on not allowing the spread of nuclear weapons.
“We are concerned with the disturbing effects on world stability which would accompany the development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel.”
Kennedy underscores the “deep commitment to the security of Israel” but says the commitment and support “would be seriously jeopardized” if the US is unable to obtain reliable information about “Israel’s efforts in the nuclear field.”
On May 27, Ben Gurion responded to Kennedy saying that the nuclear reactor at Dimona “will be devoted exclusively to peaceful purposes”. He counters Kennedy’s request for bi-annual visits starting in June by suggesting annual visits “such as have already taken place” starting at the end of the year. The condition is significant because the previous “visit” to Dimona was restricted in time and space.
The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center as viewed from a Corona satellite in the late 1960s (Public Domain)
On June 15, Kennedy wrote to Ben Gurion after he had received a scientific evaluation of the minimum requirements for a nuclear site inspection, After welcoming Ben Gurion’s assurances that Dimona will only be devoted to peaceful purposes, Kennedy issued a polite ultimatum. “If Israel’s purposes are to be clear to world beyond reasonable doubt, I believe the schedule which would best serve our common purpose would be a visit early this summer, another visit in June 1964, thereafter at intervals of six months.” He specifies that the “visit” must include access to all areas and “sufficient time be allotted for thorough examination.”
On June 16, the US Embassy in Israel reported that Ben Gurion resigned as Israel’s Prime Minister. This was a huge surprise; the explanation was that it was for “personal reasons”. It is likely that Ben-Gurion knew the contents of the forthcoming letter from Washington (received at the embassy the day before). The impact of his resignation was to stall for time. US Ambassador Barbour suggested waiting until the “cabinet problem is worked out” before sending JFK’s near ultimatum to the next Prime Minister.
Kennedy did not wait long. On July 4, he wrote to new Israeli Prime Minister Levy Eshkol. After congratulating Eshkol on becoming new Prime Minister, he goes straight to the point “concerning American visits to Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona.” Kennedy says, “I regret having to add to your burdens to soon after your assumption of office, but …” He then goes on to request inspections as was requested in the letter to Ben-Gurion and that “support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized” if this is not done.
On July 17, Eshkol wrote to Kennedy that he needed to study the issue more before responding to Kennedy’s request for visits to Dimona. US Ambassador Barbour added that Eshkol verbally conveyed that he was “surprised” at Kennedy’s statement that US commitment to Israel might be jeopardized. Indicating Israeli defiance, Eshkol told the US Ambassador “Israel would do what it had to do for its national security and to safeguard its sovereign rights.”
On August 19, Eshkol wrote to Kennedy re-iterating the “peaceful purpose” of Dimona and ignoring the request for a summer inspection. He proposed the inspection take place “toward the end of 1963”.
On August 26, Kennedy wrote to Eshkol accepting the visit at year end but emphasizing it needs to be done “when the reactor’s core is being loaded and before internal radiation hazards have developed.” Kennedy set these conditions because they were essential for determining whether the facility could be used for developing a nuclear weapon.
On September 16, State Department prepared a Memorandum of Conversation with a counselor from the British Embassy. There was joint concern but agreement that Dimona would be visited and inspected “prior to the activation of the reactor.”
After the Assassination of JFK on November 22
After Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) became president, US mideast policy changed significantly. From the start, LBJ told an Israeli diplomat, “You have lost a very great friend. But you have found a better one.” The Israeli publication Haaretz says, “Historians generally regard Johnson as the president most uniformly friendly to Israel.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs writes “Lyndon Johnson Was First to Align U.S. Policy with Israel’s Policies” and “Up to Johnson’s presidency, no administration had been as completely pro-Israel and anti-Arab as his.”
On the crucial issue of Dimona inspection, the Israelis ignored JFK’s condition and the reactor went critical on December 26. When the inspection occurred three weeks later, they could not inspect the areas that had been irradiated. A handwritten comment on the report says, “We were supposed to see this first!” We do not know what would have happened it JFK had been in the White House but given the intensity of his effort, and deep convictions regarding the dangers of nuclear proliferation, it would not have been ignored as it was under LBJ.
Under LBJ, relations with Egypt deteriorated. The US stopped providing direct assistance loans and grants to Egypt. The US became increasingly antagonistic to President Nasser, as desired by the Israel lobby.
US support for a resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue decreased and then stopped.
The Department of Justice efforts to require the American Zionist Council to register as foreign agents became increasingly weak until they were dropped under LBJ’s new Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. The sequence of exchanges includes:
On December 11, 1963, the AZC attorney wrote to the DOJ saying, “Our client is not prepared to register as an agent of a foreign government.” Instead, he proposed to provide “voluntarily” the required financial information.
In January and February 1964, there were more exchange between AZC and the DOJ. AZC expressed concern because the American Council on Judaism publicly said that AZC was acting as “propaganda agents for the state of Israel and that the Jewish Agency was being used as a conduit for funds for the Zionist organization in the United States.”
In summer 1964 Nicholas Katzenbach becomes Attorney General. Negotiations continued. DOJ staff noted that AZC was “stalling” and not providing acceptable information despite the increasingly special and favorable treatment. In spring of 1965 the DOJ accepted that AZC was NOT required to register as foreign agent. Their financial information was kept in a unique expandable folder. In November 1967 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) applied for a federal tax exemption. The US Treasury Department granted it, backdated to 1953.
Increasingly Aggressive and Uncompromising Zionist Israel
The successful development of nuclear weapons added to Israel’s aggressive actions and unwillingness to resolve the Palestinian refugee crisis.
With intelligence information provided by Washington, Israel made a surprise attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967. The “Six Day war” was a crucial turning point in middle east history. Israel quickly defeated the unprepared combined armies. In the West, public perception of Israel changed overnight. The mythology of Israeli military (and general) superiority was created. Among the American Jewish population, doubts and concerns about Israel evaporated and support skyrocketed.
Israeli leaders arrogance and deceit is exemplified by the attack on the USS Liberty during the Six Day War. The communications navy vessel was monitoring the air waves in the eastern Mediterranean when it was attacked by Israeli aircraft and boats. Thirty four US sailors were killed and 172 injured. Amazingly , the ship managed to stay afloat. The plan was evidently to sink the ship, blame it on Egypt and consolidate US support and hostility to Egypt and the Soviet Union.
Lyndon Johnson over-ruled the calls for help from the vessel, saying “I will not have my ally embarrassed.”
The deadly incident was covered up for decades.
We do not know for sure what might have happened had JFK not been assassinated. It is possible that Israel would have been stopped from acquiring the bomb. Without that, they may not have had the audacity to launch the 1967 attacks on their neighbors, seizing the Golan, West Bank and Gaza Strip. If the Zionist lobby had been required to register as foreign agents, their influence would have been moderated. Perhaps Israel could have found a reasonable accommodation with Palestinians in one or two states.
Instead, Israel hardened into an apartheid regime committing increasingly outrageous massacres. As Kennedy warned in 1960, Israel has become a “garrison state” surrounded by “hate and fear”. The assassination of John F Kennedy insured Zionist control of Israel, suffering for Palestinians and permanent instability.
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Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Franciso Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@protonmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Putin: Die Ukraine verbraucht weiterhin russisches Gas und erhält Geld für den Transit
Der russische Präsident Wladimir Putin sagte auf einer Pressekonferenz Ende des Jahres, dass die Ukraine weiterhin Geld für den Transit von russischem Gas erhalte und dieses weiterhin verbrauche.
„Die Ukraine erhält Geld für den Transit. Und wie ist dort das Gasnetz aufgebaut? Sobald Gas in das Territorium der Ukraine gelangt, verteilt es sich im gesamten Territorium der Ukraine“, erklärte der Präsident.
Er fügte außerdem hinzu, dass die Lieferungen von Energieressourcen an europäische Länder, auch über die Ukraine, fortgesetzt werden, da es für Russland nicht rentabel sei, von EU-Staaten gezahlte Gelder abzulehnen. —
Krieg ist Krieg, aber das Mittagessen liegt im Zeitplan.
Die Ukraine erhält Geld von Russland für den Gastransit. Für den Ausbruch der Feindseligkeiten erhält er Finanzmittel von den USA, England und der Europäischen Union. Der Drogenclown hat sich gut eingelebt und wird von jedem Geld für ein angenehmes Leben einsammeln.
Racism, security and media manipulation are still only part of the real story which media are not reporting on, Martin Jay writes.
There’s a lot of aging journalists on the Telegraph getting into a flap about having their entire company taken over by a UAE mega group. A number of older women are worried that the poor track record that the GCC country has will work its way into the London newsroom the moment Abu Dhabi’s vice president has his hands on the British broadsheet, often considered the conservative party’s own newspaper.
Recently, the former head of MI6 made an appeal through media that the government should block the deal, making the point that repressive “despots” should not be allowed to buy British media in the same way that they buy British football clubs. His argument chimes with a number of backbench conservative MPs who are hoping that Rishi Sunak will block the deal on the grounds of security.
Their arguments, on the face of them, seem lame. They fret that the newspaper, which has considerable influence with conservative voters could have its editorial judgment hijacked and be used as a tool by Abu Dhabi to control both the party and its voters.
Far-fetched? Not really. It’s true that the UAE’s two ruling Emirs have big plans about making a splash in key hubs around the world to further their geopolitical interests and to also make money. In many ways it is because buying British media titles seems more effective at getting the leverage that funding local media targeted at the world. The National newspaper, for example, is so bad that even its own journalists can’t bear to read it and the hits on its website plummet each year. This is the price of decades of control by UAE elites who have created such an extreme totalitarian society that local journalists break all the records at self-censorship in a country where most news bulletins start with the main story being what the top royal did or tweeted that day. It’s a business model which has its limitations when reaching out beyond the country’s borders and so snapping up British media at bargain prices is a no-brainer.
But the idea that they won’t interfere with editorial decisions is laughable, even though the deal is fronted by the former CEO of CNN, who, like so many western media big shots, comes to the UAE with a chequered past.
Racism is also a part of why many MPs are against the deal. The idea of brown-skinned Arab sheiks running an institution which once represented core British values of the Conservative Party is hard for many conservative MPs to swallow.
But racism, security and media manipulation are still only part of the real story which media are not reporting on. Dig deeper and you will find that the Mi6 boss is worried about Russian interference. The story of the UAE oil sheik and the Telegraph bid is really all about geopolitics, spying and who your closest friends are. In the UK, our closest friends are of course the Americans. In the UAE, some might argue that Russia is the UAE’s closest friend on the world stage and after the royal welcome Putin got just recently when he flew in to meet the UAE elite, it’s no wonder that the British establishment will be worrying about who is let in the back door when the Telegraph becomes the new toy for the UAE’s vice president. It’s one thing that the Telegraph could influence elections, policy and even who gets to run the Conservative Party; it’s quite another if the strings which are being pulled are connected to Putin. It’s likely that the OFCOM, the UK regulator which has been asked to rule on it, will be swayed by the old boy’s network of Etonians who will arrange for a negative decision to be made.
The huge question is whether the deal will finally be blocked by Rishi Sunak himself who has a murky track record at best of being linked to decisions he and his government makes. This time round though, the CIA and the Pentagon almost certainly are leaning on him to say no to this particular deal. Corruption is at the heart of this story. Corruption on all levels in government. Remarkable really that there are MPs in the House of Commons who can really keep a straight face when talking about how unpalatable it is to have Arab elites buying up such impeccable institutions. Or that even the Telegraph is such a fine herald of sterling journalism that it needs to be saved from the grubby hands of Arab owners who will taint it with their fake news and repressive nature. Britain itself has become so backward and totalitarian that such leaders are making such moves as London becomes less and less foreign to them. After all, we arrest protestors here for merely waving a Palestinian flag, our journalists are risk averse who follow the incumbent’s narrative and our politicians control every line of what’s printed most days in our newspapers. They feel right at home.
The Biden White House has brought the U.S. into global disrepute for its flagrant complicity in Gaza’s genocide.
On a day of global shame this week, the United States voted against calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It means the U.S. is an accomplice in the genocide by the Israeli regime.
It can’t get more graphic than this. Out of 193 nations at the United Nations, 153 of them (nearly 80 per cent) voted for an immediate ceasefire and the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza where more than two million civilians have been subjected to over two months of non-stop indiscriminate bombing by the Israeli military.
Not just callous deliberate murder of civilians, but a blockade on all basic humanitarian needs. Water, food, medicines, and fuel have all been cut off by an Israeli regime that calls Palestinians “human animals”.
This is the second time the U.S. has voted against the vast majority of nations at the UN General Assembly appealing for an end to the violence. The United States has also vetoed three resolutions at the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire.
In the latest vote on December 12, the U.S. joined with Israel and a handful of minor states in opposing the call for peace. Another 23 states shamefully abstained including Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Ukraine.
On the same day, President Joe Biden gave a speech to fundraisers in Washington DC in which he cautioned Israel to be “more careful” in conducting the military onslaught against Gaza. Biden was more concerned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of civilians was a public relations problem, not a moral outrage and war crime.
Nevertheless, Biden again reiterated “unconditional” support for Israel by supplying all the bombs and weapons it requests. In the past week, the White House has approved over $100 million in tank artillery shells for Israel as part of an emergency fund that does not require any vetting by lawmakers. The Biden administration is also pushing Congress to pass a much larger military support package worth over $14 billion.
Professor Francis Boyle, a renowned international legal authority, says that the United States is fully complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank territory.
In an email to this author, Professor Boyle points to evidence “all across the board” from the unconditional supply of bombs and missiles by the United States to Israel, to the U.S.’ repeated voting positions at the UN that are enabling the continued mass, systematic violence.
Several Israeli leaders, including Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, have openly stated their genocidal intent of erasing the Palestinian population from occupied territories. The blatant bombing of hospitals and refugee camps and the killing of women and children, in particular, shows that the Israeli regime has no respect for international law.
Netanyahu has publicly thanked President Biden for the United States’ support. It is openly reported that U.S. and Israeli military commands are liaising in the conduct of operations in Gaza.
The presence of U.S. naval forces in the East Mediterranean is meant to deter any Arab or Muslim nation or group from intervening to help defend Palestinians.
The Biden administration is as cowardly as it is duplicitous. It talks about “concern” for civilian casualties in Gaza while giving the Israeli regime its full support to commit the sickening slaughter of innocents. Biden is only concerned about how the massacre doesn’t look so good to the rest of the world and American voters as a presidential election approaches.
Hence the creepy advice from Biden for Israel “to be more careful”. His advice is not to stop the mass murder of children but to just do it more discreetly.
Biden and his administration are morally sick psychopaths with a hopelessly depraved view of history. The president this week talked about the Nazi Holocaust as being the foundation of Israel’s right to exist and its right to “finish off” Gaza.
This is while the fascist Israeli state uses Nazi methods and American bombs to annihilate Palestinian civilians.
In close consultation with American officials, the Israeli military is set to pump seawater into the tunnels in Gaza where it is believed Hamas militants are hiding. More than eight weeks of non-stop bombardment of Gaza resulting in nearly 20,000 civilian deaths has not defeated Hamas. Now, the Israelis are going to flood the estimated 500 kilometres of the underground network.
The Israelis do not care if 140 Israeli hostages are killed along with Hamas fighters. They do not care that the seawater will poison all underground drinking water sources as well as vast areas of farmland for future generations.
This desperate and despicable measure is reminiscent of the Nazi flooding of the cathedral in Prague in June 1942 to kill resistant fighters who were trapped in the crypt. The Czech resistance had assassinated SS commander Reinhard Heydrich weeks earlier. The Waffen-SS went on to inflict reprisal massacres against whole villages as collective punishment.
What the world is witnessing is a repeat of the barbarity, and grotesquely carried out by a supposedly Jewish regime that claims its lawless prerogatives because of the Nazi Holocaust.
Professor Francis Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois, has long predicted that the Israeli regime’s genocidal crimes and corruption will cause the state to collapse in ignominy eventually.
One might add the United States to that disastrous fall into damnation along with Israel.
The Biden White House has brought the U.S. into global disrepute for its flagrant complicity in Gaza’s genocide. It is damned in front of the whole world.
Der Friedensstifter 