Tag: israel

Epstein list reignites suspicion the pedo financier was working for Mossad and blackmailing the elite with help of ‘useful idiot’ Prince Andrew – after meeting Israeli PM Ehud Barak at least THIRTY SIX times

The Jeffrey Epstein list of associates unsealed by a US judge has reignited suspicions the pedophile financier was an asset for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Barak was identified in the bombshell dossiers Wednesday night. He served as PM from 1991 to 2001 after serving in the IDF for 35 years, rising to Chief of the General Staff.

While he is mentioned only fleetingly in the new files – an Epstein victim asked whether she’d ever given Barak a massage – there has long been speculation surrounding his relationship with the financier. 

Barak met with Epstein some 36 times and was pictured entering his Manhattan townhouse with a scarf around his face in 2016. Young women were seen coming in and out of the residence that same day.

Former Israeli spies have gone on record stating that Epstein’s international sex trafficking was a honeypot entrapment operation – gaining valuable ‘kompromat’ material to blackmail political and business elites.

Prince Andrew, also named in the new list, was Epstein’s ‘useful idiot’, according to an ex-intelligence agent, and described by the financier as his ‘Super Bowl trophy’ for his powerful connections.

During the pair’s friendship, Andrew invited Ghislaine Maxwell and the financier to high society events in London – even allowing them to stay at the Queen’s Balmoral estate. At the time, Andrew served as the UK’s international trade envoy, helping the government to promote business abroad.

Maxwell – who acted as Epstein’s madam – is also closely intertwined in the alleged honeytrap operation. Her father Robert Maxwell, a British newspaper magnate, is alleged to have been a Mossad agent and may have provided the link between Epstein and Jerusalem’s intelligence agency.

Like Epstein’s alleged hanging while awaiting trial, Maxwell’s death on his yacht – The Lady Ghislaine – off the coast of Spain in 1991 has attracted suspicions of assassination.

Keep reading

Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust

Israel’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza, borrowed from the Nazi’s depopulation of Jewish ghettos, is clear.

Destroy infrastructure, medical facilities and sanitation, including access to clean water. Block shipments of food and fuel. Unleash indiscriminate industrial violence to kill and wound hundreds a day. 

Let starvation — the U.N. estimates that more than half a million people are already starving — and epidemics of infectious diseases, along with the daily massacres and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes, turn Gaza into a mortuary.

The Palestinians are being forced to choose between death from bombs, disease, exposure or starvation or being driven from their homeland.

There will soon reach a point where death will be so ubiquitous that deportation — for those who want to live — will be the only option.

Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.N. and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan Bet radio that he has been contacted by “countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip.”

“We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries,” he said. “I’m talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave.” 

Keep reading

October 7: A Turning Point for Free Speech?

Two hundred and forty-seven years ago last week, General George Washington rallied his beleaguered troops at Valley Forge with a public reading of Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, which reminded them, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.” Where is Paine now when we need him?

Freedom of speech on American college campuses is now facing great challenges in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. According to some, the outpouring of ugly, inexplicable, and vituperative speech unleashed by these events means that now is the time to abandon the concept of free speech at our universities. Apparently, to these “sunshine constitutional scholars,” speech can only be free if it is polite and unchallenging.

Without a doubt, the past two and a half months have been a complete shitshow: clueless students excusing butchery and war crimes; feckless university presidents whose past records exhibit little concern for First Amendment limits now invoking the need to protect free expression; and opportunistic politicians who seemingly lack any understanding of constitutional constraints grandstanding their way through the misery and trying to impose plainly unconstitutional restrictions on student speech.

The campus reactions were kicked off with an October open letter from the Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which began: “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” That opening salvo presaged a tsunami of impassioned rhetoric from all sides of the conflict, with some pro-Palestinian groups praising the October 7 invaders as “martyrs” and chanting slogans like “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” and “by any means necessary.” Others, justifiably horrified at the hostage taking and the atrocities committed in the October attack, responded with harsh rhetoric of their own, sometimes blurring the distinction between condemning the terrorist organization Hamas and attacking all Palestinians. 

In this toxic atmosphere, clashes on campus and in the streets have brought to the surface many repulsive ideas, and some actions that go beyond the “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate which “may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks” that the First Amendment protects. For example, police arrested a Cornell University student for allegedly authoring online posts threatening Jewish students that included the claim he would “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.” Some pro-Palestinian activists ripped down posters with pictures of hostages held by Hamas. In November, three young Palestinian men were shot and injured near the University of Vermont, an incident federal authorities are investigating as a possible hate crime.

Keep reading

How Joe Biden Became America’s Top Israel Hawk

Last month, a reporter asked President Joe Biden about the chances for a ceasefire in Gaza. More than 10,000 people had already been killed there, most of them women and children. Food, water, and medical supplies were scarce. Still, the president did not hesitate in assessing the odds of a ceasefire that he had more power than almost anyone in the world to help bring about.

“None,” Biden replied. “No possibility.” Biden’s unconditional support for Israel as it waged one of the most devastating bombing campaigns in modern history was already at odds with most of the world and significant parts of his own political base. The president showed no sign of backing down.

It would take another month and nearly 8,000 more Palestinian deaths for Biden to criticize Israel in any meaningful way. At a closed-door fundraiser last week, he warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” was costing the country international support. But Biden’s own support for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained largely intact. After saying he favored the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, he reiterated his unwavering backing for the Jewish nation. “We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel,” Biden said. “Not a single thing.”

Much of Biden’s deference to Israel is deeply personal. As his supporters have put it, he identifies with the nation in his kishkes—his guts. That can be seen in the highly emotional and graphic way in which he has talked about victims of the Hamas attack being massacred, sexually assaulted, and taken hostage.

Both before and after October 7, the empathy Biden is known for has rarely extended to Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, said such statements are missing “to the degree that I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all.” In contrast, Khalidi added, Biden sees Israelis “as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus.”

A former Biden administration official shared a similar perspective with me. “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict,” this person said. “He has described Israeli suffering in great detail, while Palestinian suffering is left vague if mentioned at all.”

This article is based on conversations with former members of the Obama and Biden administrations, interviews with leading experts on Israel and Palestine, and a review of hundreds of mostly forgotten congressional hearings, speeches, and articles in which the president has explained how he sees the conflict. Together, they reveal instinctive sympathy for Israel contrasted by incuriosity about Palestinians; an increasingly outdated view of the domestic politics on the issue; and a deep commitment to a repeatedly disproven belief that peace will only come from there being “no daylight” between Israel and the United States. (The National Security Council did not make any officials available for an interview for this story.)

The result is that Biden has prioritized providing Israel largely unconditional support and the space to continue fighting in the face of intense international opposition. This approach is predictable in some respects. Israel has gotten almost whatever it wants from the United States for decades, and any American president would have supported Israel in the wake of a Hamas attack that took the lives of 1,200 people. 

Keep reading

The Biden administration once again bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel

For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.

The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said.

Keep reading

Israel’s Long History of Ethnic Cleansing

Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.

Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.” Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.

Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-19nth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that, to them, a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy.

Keep reading

For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism

For eighteen years I had the great privilege of working as Executive Director of Harvard Hillel.

As a leader of Jewish communities on campus, in New England, and around the nation, I have helped cultivate a new generation of Jewish leaders and citizens. I navigated moments of tension and war: the tumultuous 1990s, as the Oslo Accords began to crumble; the Second Intifada; 9/11 and its fallout; the Iraq War; Israel’s Second Lebanon War and its war on Gaza in late 2008.

During my long career as a Jewish educator and leader — including thirteen years living in Jerusalem — I have seen and lived through my community’s struggles. Now, as an elder leader, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel compelled to speak to what I see as a disturbing trend gripping our campus, and many others: The cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel.

In most cases, it takes the form of bullying pro-Palestine organizers. In others, these campaigns persecute anyone who simply doesn’t show due deference to the bullies.

The recent effort to smear our new University President, Claudine Gay, is a case in point. I applaud the decision by the Harvard Corporation to stand by Dr. Gay amid the ludicrous charges that she somehow supports genocide against Jews, and I hope Harvard will continue to take a clear and strong stance against any further efforts by these powerful parties to meddle in university affairs, especially over personnel decisions.

The toppling of the president of the University of Pennsylvania is a sobering example of what can happen when we empower these unscrupulous forces to dictate our path as university leaders. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been. Our vigilance must be up to the task.

As a leader in the Jewish community, I am particularly alarmed by today’s McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel’s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine. (A recent poll found that 66 percent of all U.S. voters and 80 percent of Democratic voters desire an end to Israel’s current war, for instance.)

What makes this trend particularly disturbing is the power differential: Billionaire donors and the politically-connected, non-Jews and Jews alike on one side, targeting disproportionately people of vulnerable populations on the other, including students, untenured faculty, persons of color, Muslims, and, especially, Palestinian activists.

Keep reading

Over 100 Journalists Killed in Less Than Three Months

Nearly 100 journalists have been killed in less than three months in Palestine. And that’s not by accident. They aren’t collateral damage. They weren’t human shields. Most were targeted deliberately. Their offense: exposing the deceit behind the propaganda flushed out by the Israeli government, and our own government, our president, and the mainstream media, many of whom don’t function as journalists. Instead, they act like stenographers for the state, for the military-industrial complex. Which is profiting massively off of this slaughter, banking on people being uninformed and indifferent to it.

Well, real journalists are preventing that, because the real journalists are standing in defiance of power, standing in the face of the war machine, and are bravely documenting its crimes. Documenting the daily horror raining down on millions of civilians trapped on a small slice of land.

So the powerful want these journalists silenced, by any means necessary, because they are proving to be very powerful themselves. I’ve gone to many rallies for Palestine over the years, and I’ve never seen the groundswell like we are witnessing now.

Keep reading

In Gaza, the next generation of radicalization begins

“The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently made headlines by warning.

“You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population,” he said. “And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Austin’s remarks, made at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December, should be sobering for the sizable cohort of Israeli and Western officials and commentators who insist that a “military solution” to Hamas is the only way for Israel to ensure its long-term security. While the horrendous civilian death toll of Israel’s military campaign is regrettable, this line of thinking goes, the threat from Hamas means Israel has no choice but to prosecute the war until the group is eliminated, as long as it takes, and no matter the cost.

If it’s allowed to survive, it will simply choose another moment in the future to attack, and Israeli citizens will never know peace.

Yet Austin is only one prominent voice in recent months that has pointed out the faultiness of this logic, and reminded the world that when a state battling terrorism leaves a trail of human carnage in its wake, the resulting rage, bitterness and despair fuel the very problem it’s fighting, and many times over.

When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. was asked directly if he feared that high civilian casualty numbers would create future Hamas members, he replied, “Yes, very much so.” “We’ll be fighting their sons in four or five years,” former Shin Bet chief Ya’akov Peri told the New York Times.

“Israel Is Fostering the Next Generation of Hatred Against Itself,” read the headline of a recent column by Haaretz’s Gideon Levy, as he warned readers to “look what hatred was sown in the hearts of almost all Israelis by one barbaric attack,” and consider what an even worse, prolonged slaughter might do to the Palestinian population. “These children will never forgive the soldiers. You’re raising another generation of resistance,” one Palestinian father, his young son killed by Israeli soldiers, told Levy.

Former UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace recently warned, with reference to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, “that radicalisation follows oppression” and that “a disproportionate response by the state can serve as a terrorist organisation’s best recruiting sergeant.”

Security services in the United States and around the world have already backed up these warnings. FBI Director Chris Wray cautioned last month that U.S. support for Israel’s war had led multiple terrorist organizations to call for attacks against Americans and the West, and had significantly “raised the threat of an attack” inside the United States.

That’s on top of advisories and intelligence findings by various U.S. government agencies warning of credible threats by groups like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah over U.S. support for the war. Both the German and British spy agencies have likewise sounded the alarm over the war potentially fueling militant radicalization, citing specific threats being made by jihadist groups and those sympathetic to them.

Keep reading

Israeli Evidence of Hamas Command Center in al-Shifa Hospital Falls Short: Report

LAST MONTH, THE world watched as a spectacle rarely seen in modern warfare unfolded in Gaza. The Israeli military tore through al-Shifa Hospital, the Gaza Strip’s main hospital, forcing the evacuation of patients and refugees as part of a siege on the medical complex that resulted in dozens of patient deaths and an untold number of additional casualties. 

Israel’s months-long assault on Gaza has already resulted in more than 20,000 Palestinian deaths since Oct. 7, many of them civilians and children. Even in a conflict as brutal as the one currently unfolding in Gaza, an organized military operation against a hospital is virtually unheard of. Israel for weeks had made public its preemptive justification for an incursion into a medical establishment that is typically protected under humanitarian law — asserting that al-Shifa contained a Hamas command center within a network of tunnels and secret rooms that used patients and doctors as human shields against Israeli military action. 

The Biden administration continues to back Israel’s position on the matter, and earlier this week reasserted their own claims of possessing “evidence that Hamas was operating underneath al-Shifa Hospital before Israel attacked.” On Monday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters in a press briefing that the U.S. remains “confident” that “Hamas was using al-Shifa as a command and control post, as it uses other civilian sites to hide terrorist infrastructure, to hide weapons, to hide fighters and ultimately to use civilians as human shields.” 

Keep reading