Month: August 2018

Posted on

Al Jazeera names Adam Milstein as Canary Mission’s funder

Pro-Israel philanthropist Adam Milstein (far right) with Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and Milstein’s wife, Gila. (photo: Adam Milstein / Facebook)
Al Jazeera’s investigative documentary into the US Israel lobby was censored by Qatar over “national security” fears.

By Asa Winstanley and Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | Aug 27, 2018

[Such activities] raise questions about whether the Israel on Campus Coalition and individuals associated with the work he describes are acting as agents of a foreign state without registering, as required by US law, with the counterintelligence division of the Department of Justice.

Israel lobby financier Adam Milstein has been identified as the funder of Canary Mission, the anonymous website that aims to tarnish the reputations of US supporters of Palestinian rights.

Milstein is named as the financier of Canary Mission by Eric Gallagher, a former employee of The Israel Project, in Al Jazeera’s censored investigative film, The Lobby – USA.

The Electronic Intifada is releasing segments it has obtained of the film: one shows Gallagher telling an undercover Al Jazeera reporter about Milstein’s role and the other shows Milstein talking about the need to “investigate” and “expose” critics of Israel, who Milstein believes are not only anti-Semites, but also “anti-Christian” and “anti-freedom” activists who “terrorize us.”

The film also reveals that Israel lobby operatives who rely on information provided by Canary Mission “coordinate” their activities with the Israeli government.

Continue reading “Al Jazeera names Adam Milstein as Canary Mission’s funder”

Posted on

“We don’t shoot women”

Kristin Foss, after she was shot in the foot with a rubber covered bullet in occupied Kfar Qaddum, Aug 24, 2018. (photo: Mondoweiss)
Norwegian peace activist is shot twice in one week in Palestine.

By Jonathan Ofir | Mondoweiss | Aug 25, 2018

“When in Palestine, you get shot, it fuxking [sic] hurts, but you get up again . . . everyone has been shot at some point. . . . And 9 people got shot today. Including an 8 year old. And a man to his head. They are ok too. Hope they are also with friends!”
— Kristin Foss, Norwegian peace activist after being shot for the second time in a week

“We don’t shoot women,” a Lieutenant in the Israeli army said yesterday, when asked why they shot a Norwegian activist in Kafr Qaddum Saturday last week, shortly before shooting her again. Israeli activist Matan Cohen posted this exchange and occurrence yesterday on his Facebook with photos from the scene.

This time Kristin was not shot in the abdomen, but in the foot, by a rubber-coated steel bullet. I was alerted to Kristin’s injury by her Facebook update from the clinic:

“Went back to Kufur Quaddum to show that solidarity, is stronger than fear! Very nervous though, so kept right at the back, up against the wall. Thought I was safe-ish. But they shot me again!! The protest has been on for 2 minutes. Israeli activists at the front talking to the soldiers earlier . . . so yeah . . . I just go shot twice in a week.”

Continue reading ““We don’t shoot women””

Posted on

BDS targets may differ, but the goal is the same

A protester holds a sign promoting BDS on Jun 9, 2018 in Berlin. (photo: AFP)
In the global quest to attain justice for Palestinians, we must coordinate and celebrate each other’s success, from Beirut to the US.

By Nada Elia | Middle East Eye | Aug 26, 2018

As a movement that exposes, challenges and organizes to dismantle racism, BDS can take many forms, so long as these steer clear of racism itself. . . . In the US, anti-Zionist Israelis play a critical role in the struggle against state-sanctioned disenfranchisement of Palestinians. This flexibility allows us to optimize our organizing, guided by a vision of justice and unshackled by rigid criteria that do not work in all contexts.

With Israel officially enshrining apartheid with its newly passed nation-state law, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement was boosted once again as the most viable grassroots strategy to end Israel’s violation of international law. As Professor Richard Falk put it, “If BDS continues to gain momentum around the world, and especially in the West, it will strengthen the will of governments to do the right thing, and gain sufficient momentum to shake the foundations of the Zionist insistence on a Jewish state in what is still essentially a non-Jewish society.”

Meanwhile, there is renewed discussion in the West around whether it is still relevant to boycott only products from the settlements or all Israeli products. After all, the new law affirms that “the state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

Continue reading “BDS targets may differ, but the goal is the same”

Posted on

Palestinians blast Trump’s aid cut as political blackmail

Aid being given out at a United Nations food distribution center in a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip this month. (photo: Mahmud Hams / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images)
This is the second cut in humanitarian aid this year, now totalling almost $300 million for food, medicine, and schools.

By Isabel Kershner | The New York Times | Aug 25, 2018

“This administration is dismantling decades of US vision and engagement in Palestine. This is another confirmation of abandoning the two-state solution and fully embracing Netanyahu’s anti-peace agenda. Weaponizing humanitarian and developmental aid as political blackmail does not work.”
— Husam Zomlot, the head of the PLO’s general delegation to the United States

“This decision represents a terrible decision by Trump’s team, which seems to think it will put pressure on the Palestinians to come to the table (it won’t).”
— Daniel Shapiro, former US ambassador to Israel

Palestinian officials denounced the Trump administration’s cancellation of more than $200 million in aid, accusing Washington of “weaponizing” humanitarian assistance by using it as a tool to coerce political concessions.

The aid cut, announced Friday, was the latest in a series of measures apparently aimed at forcing the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table with Israel while American officials work on a long-awaited peace proposal, the details of which remain opaque.

Continue reading “Palestinians blast Trump’s aid cut as political blackmail”

Posted on

Meet the owner of Canary Mission’s anonymous anti-Palestinian blacklisting website

Students and supporters protest Fordham University’s ban on Students for Justice in Palestine, a student group which advocates the rights of Palestinians. (photo: Joe Catron / MintPress)
Canary Mission has exploited its anonymity to smear college students and faculty with impunity.

By Hamzah Raza and Max Blumenthal | Grayzone Project | Aug 22, 2018

The Sterling-owned website contains profiles of nearly 2000 students and over 500 college professors considered enemies of Israel.

Since it first registered its website in February 2015, Canary Mission has been a source of mystery and menace. Dedicated to blacklisting students involved in Palestine solidarity activism, intimidating them and denigrating their public reputations, Canary Mission’s administrators have gone to great lengths to conceal their identities. The secrecy has enabled them to target legally defenseless students – who are mostly members of minority and immigrant groups — with total impunity.

Now, the Grayzone can identify a key figure behind the malicious blacklisting operation. He is the owner of Canary Mission’s domain name and a wealthy lawyer who is a fervent supporter of Israel. According to documents provided to the Grayzone, his name is Howard David Sterling.

Continue reading “Meet the owner of Canary Mission’s anonymous anti-Palestinian blacklisting website”

Posted on

“Silence Is health” — How totalitarianism arrives

A woman trying to prevent the detention of a young man arrested by police at a protest rally against Argentina’s military dictatorship, Buenos Aires, Mar 30, 1982. (photo: Horacio Villalobos / Corbis via Getty Images)
As a journalist, I witnessed first the erosion and then the total collapse of democratic norms, and how a ruthless autocracy can mobilize popular fears and resentments to crush its opponents.

By Uki Goñi | The New York Review of Books | Aug 20, 2018

A society that separates children from their parents, for whatever reason, is a society that is already on the path to totalitarianism.

The white supremacists chanting “blood and soil” as they marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, last year were probably unaware that the leading Nazi ideologue who used the original slogan of Blut und Boden to promote the creation of a German master race was not himself a native German. Richard Walther Darré, who proclaimed the existence of a mystic bond between the German homeland and “racially pure” Germans, was actually born “Ricardo” on the other side of the Atlantic, in Argentina’s prosperous capital, Buenos Aires.

Sent by his German immigrant family to the Heimat for schooling at the age of nine, Darré later specialized in agriculture, the logical choice for someone with an Argentine background at a time when the succulent beef and abundant wheat of Argentina’s pampas made the country renowned as the “breadbasket of the world.” For a while, during the 1920’s, he contemplated returning to Buenos Aires to pursue a career in farming, but that was before his writing caught the attention of Adolf Hitler’s rising Nazi Party. His 1930 book A New Nobility of Blood and Soil, in which he proposed applying selective cattle-breeding methods for the procreation of perfect Aryan humans, dazzled the Führer.

Continue reading ““Silence Is health” — How totalitarianism arrives”

Posted on

UN Secretary General proposes armed peacekeeping force to protect Palestinians in Gaza

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a press conference , Jun 21, 2018. (photo: Yuri Kadobnov / AFP)

Armed international mission among options floated by Guterres in response to General Assembly request for report on Gaza border clashes.

By Staff | The Times of Israel | Aug 18, 2018

 

“The targeting of civilians, particularly children, is unacceptable,” Guterres said in the report, adding that “those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law must be held accountable.”
— UN Secretary General Antonia Guterres

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday presented four options aimed at boosting the protection of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, from sending UN rights monitors and unarmed observers to deploying a military or police force under UN mandate.

The proposals were contained in a report requested by the General Assembly in response to a surge of violence in Gaza, where 171 Palestinians have been killed during Hamas-led clashes with Israeli troops since late March. Dozens of the dead were members of Hamas and other terror groups, Hamas has acknowledged.

The UN chief stressed that for each of the options, cooperation by Israel and the Palestinians would be necessary. It remained unlikely however that Israel would agree to the proposals . . . .

Continue reading “UN Secretary General proposes armed peacekeeping force to protect Palestinians in Gaza”

Posted on

Trump to Jordanian king: Israel will have a PM named “Mohammed” in one-state solution

Jordan’s King Abdullah II and US First Lady Melania Trump listen while President Donald Trump makes a statement for the press before a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Jun 25, 2018. (photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

Israel’s Channel 10 claims the US president made the prediction half-jokingly after Abdullah warned that many young Palestinians now want “one state with equal rights.”

By Staff | The Times of Israel | Aug 19, 2018

“I want to advance a peace agreement in the Middle East, because if my administration cannot achieve a deal, no administration will be able to.”
— US President Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump reportedly told Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House a few weeks ago that, in the absence of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel will have a prime minister named Mohammed in a few years time.

Trump’s reported remark was detailed on Sunday night by Israel’s Channel 10 news, which described it as “sarcastic” and “semi-jocular,” but also as containing a grain of truth. The TV channel said its report had been confirmed by an Israeli and a former US official who had both been briefed on the White House meeting, but that the White House and the Jordanian Embassy in Washington, DC, have refused to comment on it.

Continue reading “Trump to Jordanian king: Israel will have a PM named “Mohammed” in one-state solution”

Posted on

Uri Avnery: A prophet in his own city

Uri Avnery in his home. (photo: Daniel Bar-On / Haaretz)

Like the biblical prophets of Israel, Avnery saw beyond the immediate; like them, he was persecuted and like them, few listened to him.

By Editorial Board | Haaretz | Aug 21, 2018

“Life goes on. The struggle continues. Tomorrow is a new day.”
— Uri Avnery

It’s customary to claim that the cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people. But the body of Uri Avnery, who died Monday at the age of 94, will not be buried in a cemetery, as per his request, and he is indeed an irreplaceable personality. No substitute has yet emerged for this man, whose life was long and full of struggles and achievements. The Israeli left, which is at a low point in its history, is now even more orphaned than before.

It’s hard to think of an Israeli biography richer and more complex than his: The child of German immigrants who joined the Irgun and in 1948 fought in the Shimshon Foxes elite unit. The legendary editor of Haolam Hazeh, which was a pioneer in aggressive investigative journalism in Israel, a mentor to generations of journalists who has left his mark to this day. The journalist, MK and citizen who fought corruption, religious coercion, ethnic discrimination and crony capitalism long before others did. And of course, the eternal warrior for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people, one of the pioneering visionaries of the two-state solution, an Israeli and Zionist patriot, optimistic and hopeful until his final days.

Continue reading “Uri Avnery: A prophet in his own city”

Posted on

Uri Avnery, Israeli journalist and peace activist, is dead at 94

Uri Avnery, fourth from the left, in 2003 alongside Yasir Arafat and others at Mr. Arafat’s compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. (photo: Jamal Aruri / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images)

Avnery was one of the first Israelis to actively seek a Palestinian state as a peaceful solution to the conflict.

By Isabel Kershner | The New York Times | Aug 20, 2018

“What in my eyes is the great success is that I and my friends raised for the first time the principle that there is a Palestinian people with whom we have to make peace at the end of the 1948 war. I don’t think there were 10 people in the world that believed in this. Today it is a world consensus.”
— Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery, a firebrand Israeli journalist, politician and peace activist who riled the establishment by exposing national scandals and conferring with Yasir Arafat, the father of the Palestinian cause, long before that was legal or fashionable for Israelis, died on Monday in Tel Aviv. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, his hometown, where he was admitted two weeks earlier after suffering a stroke.

An unwavering and acerbic critic of the government and a disrupter of the reigning national consensus, Mr. Avnery wrote regular opinion pieces for the liberal newspaper Haaretz up until he was hospitalized.

Continue reading “Uri Avnery, Israeli journalist and peace activist, is dead at 94”