UK MP and Israel Critic David Ward is Suspended From Party

Israel lobby draws the ‘red lines’ and dictates ‘precise terms’ for future Liberal Democrat debate, apparently.

by Stuart Littlewood

Back in January the Liberal Democrat leadership threw a mighty wobbly when MP David Ward made this remark on his website: “I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Goaded by the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who complained that Ward’s remarks “deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust” and were “sickening” and “offensive”, the party’s Chief Whip, Alistair Carmichael, agreed they were “wholly inappropriate” and that singling out ‘the Jews’ in that way crossed a red line.

Ward was treated like a delinquent. According to the Jewish Chronicle http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/102865/clegg-response-david-ward-%EF%AC%81g-leaf party leader Nick Clegg ordered him to work alongside Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel “to identify and agree language that will be proportionate and precise” in future debate. Disciplinary steps would then be reviewed.

The story went quiet for a few months. Then this week, just as Parliament broke up for the long summer holiday, Ward received a letter from Carmichael ‘withdrawing the whip’ (suspending him from the parliamentary party), until 13 September. This is hardly a severe punishment considering MPs are away until 2 September.

As reported by Sky News http://news.sky.com/story/1117439/david-ward-in-row-after-zionist-tweet Carmichael wrote: “As we have sought to impress upon you repeatedly, we are having to decide on whether language you chose to use in January and February, and now this month, is language which brings the party into disrepute or harms the interests of the Party.

“We put it to you that your most recent statement – which specifically questions the continuing existence of the State of Israel – is neither proportionate nor precise. Unfortunately, we considered your explanation to be unconvincing and it did not satisfy us that you understood the importance of conducting the debate on this issue at all times and in all places in terms that are proportionate and precise.

“You will know that Nick [Clegg], Simon [Hughes] and I have a consistent track record of being outspoken about illegal settlement activities of Israeli governments and the threat this poses to the two-state solution for which the party has long argued.

“It is also immensely frustrating for us to find ourselves constantly responding to questions about disproportionate and imprecise language from you. These interventions cause considerable offence rather than addressing questions of political substance about the plight of the Palestinian people and the right of Israel’s citizens to live a life free of violence. It is extraordinarily difficult to gain traction in that debate at an effective political level if the expression of our concerns is undermined by the way your language misrepresents the view of our party.

“Whilst we understand you have your own views about this process, which has been long and complicated, we also hope you recognise that we have given you every opportunity to reconcile the expression of your views with the party’s policy on a two-state solution. Unfortunately, you have not been able to do that.

He won’t apologise for calling Israel an apartheid state

Only a couple of days earlier David Ward had tweeted: “Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the Zionists are losing the battle – how long can the apartheid State of Israel last?”

As the punishment, Ward condemned it as “disproportionate” saying his views were widely shared http://uk.news.yahoo.com/israel-tweet-lib-dem-mp-suspended-135700994.html#IXktdLc. “I will not apologise for describing the state of Israel as an apartheid state. I don’t know how you can describe it as anything else,” he said. “I am genuinely quite shocked at the reaction to the kind of thing many people say.”

The Israel lobby, no doubt hoping to see much more blood on the carpet, was disappointed with the ruling. Holocaust Educational Trust chief executive Karen Pollock said: “David Ward has never fully apologised for his comments… It is about time the whip was withdrawn but the timing allows Mr Ward to repeat his unacceptable views when Parliament returns in the autumn.”

Board of Deputies vice-president Jonathan Arkush said the suspension was too little, too late and an empty gesture.

In one sense the LibDem action blows a raspberry at the outside meddlers. But this show of defiance is overshadowed by the general gutlessness that’s evident in the way the party caves in to Pro-Israel pressure.

Some of the remarks in the Carmichael letter are really quite silly…

• “We have given you every opportunity to reconcile the expression of your views with the party’s policy on a two-state solution… the two-state solution for which the party has long argued.”

The party is sadly out of date. I strongly advise Clegg and Co to watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOaxAckFCuQ . Miko Peled is an Israeli Jew, the son of an Israeli general and a former soldier in the Israeli army. You couldn’t find a more authentic insider source. He confirms in the bluntest words what many have known and been saying for years. Here is a flavour.

“The name of the game: erasing Palestine, getting rid of the people and de-Arabizing the country…

“When people talk about the possibility of Israel soArticle – mehow giving up the West Bank for a Palestinian state, if it wasn’t so sad it would be funny. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the objective of Zionism and the Zionist state.

“By 1993 the Israelis had achieved their mission to make the conquest of the West Bank irreversible. By 1993 the Israeli government knew for certain that a Palestinian state could not be established in the West Bank – the settlements were there, $billions were invested, the entire Jordan River valley was settled… there was no place any more for a Palestinian state to be established. That is when Israel said, OK, we’ll begin negotiations…”

Peled also describes the Israeli army, in which he served, as “one of the best trained and best equipped and best fed terrorist organisations in the world.”

• “It is immensely frustrating for us to constantly respond to questions about disproportionate and imprecise language from you. These interventions cause considerable offence rather than addressing questions of political substance about the plight of the Palestinian people.”

I can’t recall the LibDem leadership ever confronting the plight of the Palestinians in a robust way. Anyone who tries to – Baroness Jenny Tonge for example – gets slapped down and sacked. The political substance is Israel’s lawless and hideous conduct and the international community’s lack of backbone to deal with it.

• “We are not satisfied that you understand the importance of conducting the debate on this issue at all times and in all places in terms that are proportionate and precise.”

Anyone who attempts to debate any matter relating to Israel’s criminality is howled down by the Israel lobby while party bosses put the boot in. Nothing, it now seems, can be said unless it is “proportionate and precise” in Tel Aviv’s terms.

• “Nick, Simon and I have a consistent track record of being outspoken about illegal settlement activities of Israeli governments.”

Israel’s settlements are so illegal – a war crime, in fact – that our tremulous trio can hardly escape speaking up. The settlement building programme began with the Allon Plan in 1967 and still goes on. What effect has their so-called outspokenness had all these years? Words are plainly not enough. What real hard-edged action have the LibDems taken?

Clegg did himself and his party no favours when he came out with this lopsided statement http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/41015/nick-clegg-we-got-it-wrong-israel : “Israel’s right to thrive in peace and security is non-negotiable for Liberal Democrats. No other country so continually has its right to exist called into question as does Israel, and that is intolerable. There can be no solution to the problems of the Middle East that does not include a full and proper recognition of Israel by all parties to the conflict.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking it was written by Mark Regev’s hasbara office. Why on earth would anyone recognise a state founded on terror, grand theft and ethnic cleansing at gunpoint?

Why would anyone recognise a state that is contemptuous of international and humanitarian law?

Why would anyone recognise a state that’s bristling with nukes and other WMDs but refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty or place them under international inspection and safeguards, then foams at the mouth at the thought of a neighbouring country having a nuclear weapons programme?

Why would anyone recognise a state that itself does not recognise the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and still prevents refugees from returning home in defiance of UN Resolution 194 (re-affirmed every year since 1949)… a state that applies a brutal, illegal yet seemingly permanent military occupation and severely restricts movement of people, essential supplies and normal trade goods in the Palestinian homeland?

And why would anyone recognise a state that refuses to declare its borders so that it can continue to pursue its expansionist plans? In any case, which Israel does Clegg suggest we recognise – Israel within the 1947 UN Partition borders? Israel within the 1949 Armistice borders? Or Israel as now, in full occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Old City, and part of Syria, and not forgetting its vicious blockade on Gaza and repeated violation of Lebanese borders?

Why aren’t Clegg, Carmichael and Hughes saying, loudly and clearly, “No recognition until the occupation ends, international law is fully respected and implemented, and the Palestinians’ self-determination, security and freedoms are guaranteed.”?

Quite simply, there can be no peace until all that happens.

“You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive”
Helen Thomas

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Israel lobby tries (and fails) to intimidate another UK MP

Here we go again

by Stuart Littlewood

On 8 July British MP ‘Battling’ Bob Russell was speaking during a House of Commons debate on the national curriculum in schools

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm130708/debtext/130708-0002.htm ….

Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (Liberal Democrat): 

“The Secretary of State referred to more coverage of world history. On the assumption that the 20th century will include the holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?”

Michael Gove, Education Secretary [and fervent Friend of Israel]: 

“These are delicate waters, into which I fear to tread too definitively. One thing I would say is that there has been near universal welcome and support for the centrality of the holocaust and the unique evil inherent in the holocaust being in the national curriculum. Once one gets on to the position of the state of Israel after 1948, it is probably better if I step back. I have strong views on the matter and I would not wish to impose them on the curriculum.”

Sir Bob’s question was a “shoah slur”, screamed the Jewish Chronicle, and he immediately came under attack as reported here in Jewish News http://jewishnews.co.uk/lib-dem-mp-sir-bob-russell-condemned-for-shoah-comments/ .

Jeremy Newmark, of Britain’s Jewish Leadership Council said, “These remarks are a shocking piece of Holocaust denigration. There is simply no comparison between the two situations. It is worrying that so soon after the David Ward affair another MP thinks it is acceptable to play fast and loose with the language of the Holocaust in this context.”

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, added: “To try to equate the events of the Holocaust – the systematized mass murder of 6 million Jews – with the conflict in the Middle East is simply inaccurate as well as inappropriate.”

“Bob Russell is a fringe, marginal voice in the community. All parties have them sadly”, said Gavin Stollar, chairman of Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel.

Nobody is claiming equivalence in the numbers. But Palestinians, and indeed the wider world community, are entitled to feel there is nonetheless a disturbing comparison.

The word ‘holocaust’ is centuries old and has several meanings, one being “any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life”. For those interested in the figures, Israel’s B’Tselem shows that between year 2000 and the start of Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ assault on Gaza in 2008 the Israelis’ vast standing army, equipped with the most advanced American-funded weaponry, killed 4,790 Palestinian civilians in their homeland. Of these, 952 were children. Yes, 952 young Palestinian lives horribly snuffed out and their parents left desolated.

The Palestinian resistance, with their primitive weapons, killed 490 Israeli civilians, including 84 children. That’s a slaughter rate of 11 to 1 by the Israelis – reckless in anyone’s language. Since then Israel’s ‘destruction of life’ score has soared thanks to Operation Cast Lead (an act of infamy which slaughtered 1,400 Gazans, including 320 children and 109 women, horribly maimed thousands more, and is regarded by many as a holocaust in its own right) and the more recent Pillar of Cloud Operation as well as the countless air strikes in-between.

Although the Holocaust Education Trust and Zionists generally would like exclusive use of the H-word for Jewish victims, they must understand that there have been other holocausts besides the ‘Big One’ of World War 2. If there is such a thing as a Palestinian holocaust it is a slow motion one. The extermination may be on a smaller scale but is nevertheless of towering significance because it has been carried out in the Holy Land – of all places – and against Christians and Muslims.

There are at least three more reasons why it should be included in the British schools curriculum. Britain as the military power and subsequently the mandated power in the Holy Land was instrumental in creating the situation. The slaughter, deprivation and illegal occupation resulting from British duplicity is still going on after 65 years. And the intolerable mess we allowed to develop but took no action to resolve is a matter of deep national shame and a major cause of world unrest.

When researching for the book ‘Radio Free Palestine‘ I asked my local education authority (Cambridgeshire, a leader in the UK) if the Arab-Israeli conflict and its causes were taught in school. The answer was no, unless you picked the Middle East option at A-level, and even then teaching only “scratched the surface”. So the book contains this passage:

“The truth about Palestine doesn’t sit well with Britain’s now crumbling reputation for fair play. Its name has been airbrushed from maps and purged, like a dirty word, from diplomatic lexicons. Even today the subject is only haphazardly taught in our schools. For older generations like mine it was never on the curriculum.”

In contrast, the Nazi holocaust against Jews is a compulsory subject in the history curriculum at all state secondary schools in England and the government has created a UK Envoy for post-Holocaust Issues. In 2008 the government and the Pears Foundation jointly funded a £1.5 million three-year national project to improve teaching and learning about the Holocaust.

Refusal to give the long-running crisis in the Holy Land proper emphasis in world history teaching is a denial of the Palestinian holocaust and the nakba (the ‘catastrophe’ of 1947-49 when nearly 750,000 Arabs were dispossessed of their homes, villages, towns and cities and driven into exile by Jewish terrorists and Israeli militia. Many died or were massacred in the process. Those who survived have not been allowed to return). Israel’s illegal military occupation is the longest in modern times with no prospect of ending while corrupt politicians rule the international scene.

British children must be given an opportunity to understand that Britain’s complicity in such a cruel state of affairs can never be tolerated again, just as they are already learning that Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz and elsewhere must never happen again. Bob Russell is surely right to call for the curriculum to give equal attention to the causes and effect of the Palestinians’ suffering and he should be applauded for seeking a balanced approach in these matters.

The big stink over David Ward

Complainer Jeremy Newmark (above) mentions the David Ward affair, referring to another Liberal Democrat MP who earlier made this remark on his website: “Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Chiefs of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Board of Deputies of British Jews kicked up a huge fuss, loudly complaining that Ward “deliberately abused the memory of the Holocaust” and his remarks were “sickening” and “offensive”.

The Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, Alistair Carmichael, agreed that Ward’s remarks were “wholly inappropriate” and that singling out ‘the Jews’ in that way crossed a red line.

For speaking out on the Israeli regime’s crimes Ward was treated like a delinquent and comprehensively humiliated. The Jewish Chronicle reported http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/102865/clegg-response-david-ward-%EF%AC%81g-leaf that party leader Nick Clegg told Ward he must work alongside Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFoI) “to identify and agree language that will be proportionate and precise” in future debate. He should attend meetings with LDFoI representatives in order to achieve a better understanding of “the legitimate concern” that his comments caused within the wider Jewish community. Disciplinary steps would then be reviewed.

Gavin Stollar said: “LDFoI has essentially been appointed as probation officers for David Ward. If we are not convinced that he is salvageable then we’ll be in the position to report back to the leader and the chief whip and express our views. Rather than making him a martyr, LDFoI welcomes the opportunity to educate one of our MPs.”

There are no reports to show that Ward complied with any of this arrant nonsense.

And who is this upstart Stollar, who thinks it’s his place to re-educate elected members of the British Parliament? Here he is http://ldfi.org.uk/2011/10/11/chair-gavin-stollar-meets-tzipi-livni-after-lib-dems-secure-changes-to-universal-jurisdiction-law/ warmly shaking the bloody hand of Tzipi Livni, who is on several wanted lists for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, was largely responsible for the holocaust inflicted on innocent Palestinians, trapped in their tiny enclave with the borders sealed, over Christmas and New Year 2008/9. Her office afterwards issued a statement saying she was proud of her decisions in Operation Cast Lead, the murderous blitz she unleashed.

No-one, least of all ‘Battling’ Bob Russell or David Ward, need lectures or re-education from the likes of Stollar and his fellow stooges.

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How Much does Israel Cost the Average American?

By Alcibiades Bilzerian

While so many Americans are subsisting on food stamps, losing their homes, and accumulating credit card debt they will never be able to pay off, the US is giving Israel $3 billion in direct foreign aid every year and, according to Congressman James Traficant, another $12-17 billion in indirect aid such as valuable military equipment deemed “scrapped,” loan guarantees, and preferential contracts. Israel is an affluent country with more than 10,000 millionaires and, according to the International Monetary Fund, was one of the few economies that weathered the 2008 financial storm nearly unscathed.

It’s hard to calculate the exact amount of foreign aid America gives Israel every year because the Israeli lobby in America secretly campaigns to give the tiny desert nation as much under-the-table aid as they can secure. In 1992, AIPAC President David Steiner was caught on tape bragging about his organization’s incredible power in America. Steiner first admitted to manipulating the US Secretary of State into giving Israel more foreign aid. Steiner said he, ”met with [Secretary of State] Jim Baker and I cut a deal with him. I got, besides the $3 billion, you know they’re looking for the Jewish votes, and I’ll tell him whatever he wants to hear … Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which was a fabulous thing, $3 billion in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion dollars in other goodies that people don’t even know about.”

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), Israel operates the largest spying operation on America of any of our allies, and they use some of their intelligence gathering to steal American business secrets, which costs the US jobs and money. The two largest and most powerful Israeli lobbies in America, AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League, have both been caught red-handed spying for Israel (see the 2005 AIPAC Scandal and 1993 ADL Spying scandal). Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI rounded up more than a hundred Israeli spies who were caught infiltrating dozens of federal agencies. It was one of the largest spy rings in American history.

If the American government took the $15-$20 billion it gives Israel every year and put it into a savings account for the 4.5 million babies born p/yr, every American would receive $8,000-$10,500 upon turning 18 years old. In another option, the US government could give the money away in a lottery and make 15k-20k Americans millionaires every year. Either of these options would provide an incredible boost to the US economy. But the truth is that $15-$20 billion per year is probably just scratching the surface when we look at the cost of America’s relationship with Israel.

Dr. Thomas R. Stauffer, a world renowned economist who taught economics and Middle East studies at Harvard as well as serving twice in the Executive Office of the President on a task force for oil imports and controls, estimated that as of 2002 (in 2002 dollars) Israel has cost the US $3 trillion. His estimate took into account direct military aid, political support, oil price increases as a result of conflicts, and peripheral/hidden foreign aid. It should be noted that this figure would be a gross understatement today because much of the cost of supporting Israel has been accrued since 2002 in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the Iran war mongering, which has led to a dramatic increase in oil costs. In addition, inflation has increased considerably since 2002 and would therefore make the figure significantly larger today.

In Stauffer’s estimation, US aid to Israel costs 275,000 American jobs per year due to unfair trade imbalances and sanctions on Israel’s enemies. In one example of under the table aid, Stauffer pointed out that the US actually gave Russia and Romania billions of dollars in undeclared aid to facilitate Jews moving to Israel. The US has also spent hundreds of billions in the region to secure friendly relationships with Israel. John McCain admitted in an interview that US aid to Egypt is really just a bribe so the Egyptians will maintain friendly relations with Israel. The US has also given Turkey and Greece billions for the same purpose. The cost of America’s relationship to Israel today adjusted for inflation and including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to be in excess of $5 trillion, or $16k per American.

A summary of Stauffer’s breakdown can be found here. 
First, we have to identify what Israel brings to the relationship, which as former CIA Chief Michael Scheuer points out in the video below–amounts to absolutely nothing. Not only is Israel a terrible ally, attacking America in at least two separate false flag attacks (See the lavon affair and the USS Liberty) and actively spying on America, but it it isn’t really the “only democracy in the Middle East” as the Israelis like to claim. Many Arabs in Israel can’t vote or even live with their spouses. Israel is a racist apartheid state that separates Arabs and Jews in separate and totally unequal schools and facilities, as the following article Jewish Israelis are the worst Anti-Semites On The Planet details: http://thebilzerianreport.com/?p=537. As such, America’s support of Israel causes great damage to America’s relations with oil producing states in the region.

Most Americans view Israel as an ally on the front lines fighting terrorists so Americans don’t have to, but nothing could be further from the truth. The few Islamic terrorist attacks on America in the last 50 years were all a result of America’s support for the Israeli apartheid regime. After September 11, 2001, the media claimed the terrorists attacked because they: “hated our freedom.” The terrorists however stated on record that they attacked America because of its support for Israel. After all, if terrorists were going to attack a country because of its freedom they would have attacked the Netherlands or Switzerland.

The only people arrested on 9-11 were Israeli Mossad agents who were seen filming the attacks and then celebrating afterwards. The Dancing Israelis, as they were late known, were arrested in a van that had contained explosives and a box cutter, which was identical to the ones used in the terrorist attacks. They all failed lie detector tests about their role in the attacks. Before the US government classified all information on Israel’s involvement in 9-11, the FBI officially concluded that Israel had to have known of the attack before 9-11-2001 and didn’t warn the US. After the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We are benefitting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” He also said, “these events have swung American public opinion in our favor.”

America has spent countless treasure and lives invading Afghanistan and Iraq for Israel’s security. It’s amazing that this factual statement is still in debate today, but to clarify, Iraq had no capacity to threaten America’s security. Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction or any connection to Al-Qaeda. Many Americans think their government invaded Iraq for oil, but that is completely false. America gets the vast majority of its oil from Mexico, Canada, Nigeria, and Venezuela rather than the Middle East. If America’s goal was truly to secure further energy resources it would have built a pipeline from Canada or invested in its plentiful natural gas reserves rather than spending a trillion dollars bombing and destroying Iraq’s oil production capacity and then taking no oil for its efforts.

The architects of the Iraq war, Pearl and Wolfowitz, were both closely tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which mercilessly campaigned for the war. The book The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy puts the primary blame of the Iraq invasion on AIPAC’s merciless lobbying for war. In January 2003, AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr stated, “quietly lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq” was one of “AIPAC’s successes over the past year.” Jeffrey Goldberg reported during a profile piece of AIPAC’s policy director Steven J. Rosen that, “AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraq war.”  The American media, which happens to have a disproportionate representation of zionist executives (see the video below or this article for proof), censored all those who disagreed with the war and labeled them unsupportive of the troops and traitors.

The Israeli lobby and the Israel-supporting mainstream media are now campaigning for a war in Iran. If Israel and the US strike Iran, gas prices will likely reach $6-7 a gallon, which will have a dramatic impact on the average American. In fact, just the warmongering alone by Israel and the zionist controlled American media has caused nearly a $1 price hike. This costs the average American an extra $123 per month or $1,476 per year. With the current gas prices near $4 a barrel, the average American will spend 9% of their total income on gas. If America or Israel attack Iran, most experts estimate that it will cost the average American an additional $2952-$4428 per year.

Even though Israel takes a great deal of money from US in direct aid and even charitable donations from Jews and Christians, according to Official Direct Assistance (ODA) Israel is one of the stingiest developed countries in the world. Israel is one of the richest countries on the planet, but gives nearly 10 times less than the world average and gives the 4th least of any developed nation per capita, only barely beating out much poorer countries like Poland, Hungary, and Turkey. So while Israel took in $3 billion from America in direct aid and $12-17 billion in the other aid measures mentioned above, they only gave $141 million in foreign aid to nations in need of assistance in 2010.

NOTE: This article first appeared on The Bilzerian Report on 18 April 2012.

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U.S. Bans Media That Exposes Lies To American Citizens

Government Denies Americans Access To Free Media.

Complete Control Agenda Trumps Americans Right to Have Free and Open Debate on the Issues

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Several international satellite providers, including Eutelsat and Intelsat, have stopped the broadcast of a number of Iranian channels.

On June 19, Intelsat said it would no longer provide services to Iranian channels, including Press TV, as of July 1. The decision has been made under the pretext that the company should be “abiding by” the sanctions against the president of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Ezatollah Zarghami.

Press TV has learned that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) – an agency of the US Treasury Department – is behind the pressure on Intelsat.

Press TV and other Iranian channels have come under an unprecedented wave of attacks by European governments and satellite companies since January 2012. They have been taken off the air in several Western countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Spain.

European satellite companies say they are complying with the anti-Iran sanctions. However, Michael Mann, a spokesman for the EU foreign policy chief, has told Press TV that the sanctions do not apply to Iranian media.

The French-Israeli CEO of Europe’s satellite giant, Eutelsat, has written letters to several satellite companies, asking them to stop cooperating with Iranian channels.

The Israeli lobby in the United States has publicly supported European attempts to shut down Press TV.

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Israel’s new political face on Palestinian refugees: ‘we have been waiting… for more and more of them to die’

An announcement for Adi Koll's J Street event in Philadelphia. (Image: J Street)

On Tuesday, June 25th Israeli Knesset member Adi Koll spoke at the Jewish Community Services Building at an event hosted by the Philadelphia chapter of J Street. Koll is a member of Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party and perhaps best known for a recent Facebook post where she wrote, “There is nothing normal about life in Ramallah, and there is nothing normal about us letting this happen," following a trip to the occupied territories.

Logic and prior experience could have suggested that there is very little new or unexpected to be gained from going to such an event. But finally having the luxury of time in the summer, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear from the MK who stirred up controversy over Facebook, and I’m glad I didn’t.

The newly-elected MK Koll started by telling us to lean in closer because the members of her party Yesh Atid “have a spark in the eye.” She proceeded to give the audience a short history of her new party and imparted some juicy gossip about the founder, Yair Lapid, and his daily beauty regimen. She talked about her involvement in the social “justice” movements sweeping Israel, concerned with everything from education to the cost of apartments in Tel Aviv, but strangely never their neighbors, the Palestinian people, living under Israel’s system of apartheid. She did reiterate that Israelis now just “ignore the Palestinian issue,” even as she claimed that 80% of them support the two-state solution.

As she finally moved to what we had all had come to hear her talk about, I could not help but begin to wonder what exactly that "spark" she mentioned actually was. As she described her recent trip to Ramallah, she told us that the Palestinians she saw in refugee camps around Ramallah do not want to go back to their homes. They would just be happy with a new apartment, she claimed, an escape from the desolation that she was so struck by.

In regards to the right of return-- which she apparently thinks her Ph.D. in law from Columbia University gives her a right to adjudicate on behalf of the Palestinians to whom it is owed-- she had this to say about the fact that Palestinian refugees in Ramallah now have children and grandchildren: “This is what we have been waiting for, for more and more of them to die.” My jaw almost hit the ground as I furiously recorded this statement in my notebook. I know that Israelis do not now even make an attempt to hide this kind of thinking, revealing Israel’s real intention to rid Palestine/Israel of Palestinians. I was not, however, expecting to hear something like this from someone who claims to be on the Left, even as distorted and farcical of a label we know that is in Israel. Looking around, it appeared that no one else was even perturbed by this statement.

In response to my question/comment (as an increasingly frequent moderator of Q & A sessions myself, I will admit that I skirted that edge) of how exactly this whole negotiation thing is supposed to work, given the fact that the Palestinian Authority is Israel’s puppet and Palestinians view it as an institution of their oppression, she didn’t have much to say.

I brought up the Nelson Mandela quote that you can probably find in many places along Israel’s Apartheid Wall: “Only free men can negotiate.” To that she responded with a rhetorical question of whether any of us are really free. She asked why the Palestinians don’t have something like Yesh Atid, why they aren’t doing anything to change their system. And this is where I had to detach myself.

For me, the event was yet another confirmation that a just peace will not come from inside Israel. The small minority of Jewish Israelis who stand in true solidarity with the Palestinian people will be crucial allies in helping this change come about, to be sure. But it will not come from inside Israel, no matter how many testimonies Breaking the Silence can collect. Koll is supposedly touring the U.S. as a representative of a new generation of Israeli leaders focused on the two-state solution, but Koll's own comments make clear that there is no room in the Israeli political class for acknowledging and honoring Palestinian human rights. In addition, listening to Koll talk it is clear that Israel will continue to have zero accountability for anything that they do to Palestinians, even from the majority of the Israeli left. That’s the reality. That’s why Palestinian society is calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel. That’s why we need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians on BDS.

Before I went to Palestine/Israel with 33 other Americans with Interfaith Peace-Builders a few weeks ago, I would have been intimidated in that audience and probably would have lost my nerve to ask my question in the first place and call her out, rather than to raise my hand and keep it raised as soon as she finished her talk. I would have assumed that this would be a hostile audience and that I wouldn’t be prepared or able to back myself up. I would have left somehow feeling-- however irrationally-- single-handedly responsible for my fellow audience members leaving with their opinions and views on this unchanged. But that night, I left feeling pretty secure in knowing that the world is awakening to the fact that Palestinians are doing what they need to be doing by living, by existing and by asking the world to join them in solidarity in boycotting, divesting and sanctioning Israel.

Palestinians have been doing this for a pretty long time, too. And the world is finally beginning to listen. After the Israeli consulate official whisked MK Koll away, I stayed to give a young man working with a program that takes college students to the South to learn about Jewish solidarity with the Civil Rights movement info on how he could look up what the Dorothy Cotton Institute is doing.  He asked about black solidarity with Palestinians.

In the middle of that, a J Streeter came up to me to ask for my email address to meet up when I’m in Ramallah in the fall and he on a visit to Israel. He said he didn’t want to take a J Street tour of the South Hebron Hills but rather to meet and hear from Palestinians (He certainly shouldn’t have to visit me to do this, but it’s better than not meeting any Palestinians at all, I suppose.). If this was my experience at a random J Street event, allies in the struggle for justice and peace for Palestinians might be in the making all around us, in pretty unexpected places.

About Clarissa O'Conor

Clarissa O'Conor grew up in Lititz, Pennsylvania. She is now an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, where she focuses on Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies and Modern Middle East Studies and recently started working as a birth and abortion doula. She will be traveling in Palestine/Israel in the fall, where she hopes to continue working in solidarity with Palestinians.

View all posts by Clarissa O'Conor →

 

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Former French Foreign Minister: The War against Syria was Planned Two years before “The Arab Spring”

In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said:

‘’ I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.

This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.

Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.’’

Dumas went on give the audience a quick lesson on the real reason for the war that has now claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.

‘’This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance.

Consequently, everything that moves in the region- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister who told me ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours but those who don’t agree with us will be destroyed.

It’s a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should know about it.’’

Dumas is a retired French foreign minister who is obliged to use discretion when revealing secrets which could affect French foreign policy. That is why he made the statement ‘I am French, that doesn’t interest me’.  He could not reveal France’s role in the British plan as he would be exposing himself to prosecution for revealing state secrets.

There have been many disinformation agents in the British and French press, many of them well known ‘leftist’ war correspondents and commentators, who have tried to pretend that Israel secretly supports Assad.  Those who make such arguments are either stupid, ignorant or deliberate disinformation agents of NATO and Israel.

Israel’s support for Al Qaeda militants in Syria has even been admitted by the mainstream press. For example, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published a report on June 12^th on Israel’s medical treatment of the Al Qaeda fighters.

Israel planned this war of annihilation years ago in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates balkanization of all states that pose a threat to Israel. The Zionist entity is using Britain and France to goad the reluctant Obama administration into sending more American troops to their death in Syria on behalf of Tel Aviv.

Of all the aggressor states against Syria, Israel has been the quietest from the start. That is because Laurent Fabius, Francois Holland, William Hague and David Cameron are doing their bidding by attempting to drag Israel’s American Leviathan into another ruinous war so that Israel can get control of the Middle East’s energy reserves, eventually replacing the United States as the ruling state in the world. It has also been necessary for Tel Aviv to remain silent so as not to expose their role in the ‘revolutions’, given the fact that the Jihadist fanatics don’t realize they are fighting for Israel.

This is the ideology of Zionism which cares no more for Jews than it does for its perceived enemies.   The Jewish colony is determined to become a ruling state in the Middle East in the insane delusion that this will enable it to replace the United States as a global hegemon, once the US collapses fighting Israel’s wars.

Israeli Prime Minister once told American talk show host Bill Maher that the reason why Israel always wins short conflicts, while the United States gets bogged down in endless wars. ‘’ The secret is that we have America’’, he said.

But Israel is itself slowly collapsing. If one excludes the enslaved Palestinian population, the Jewish state still has the highest level of poverty in the developed world with more and more Jews choosing to leave the ‘promised’ land, a garrison state led by mad men, an anti-Semitic entity threatening to engulf the world in war and destruction. Israel cares no more about its own working class Jews than any other ethnic community.

In fact, if the Likudnik crooks running the Israeli colony get their way, working class Israelis will be among the first to pay as they are conscripted to fight terrorists created by their own government. With orthodox Jews protesting in the streets of New York against Israel and Haredi Jewish minority opposing Israel’s rampant militarism, Zionism is coming under increased attack from Jewish religious authorities and non-Zionist Jews both inside and outside of the occupied territories.

This is not the first time that Roland Dumas has spoken out against wars of aggression waged by successive French regimes. In 2011 he revealed that he had been asked by the United States when he was foreign minister in the Mitterrand administration to organize the bombing of Libya. On that occasion the French refused to cooperate.  Dumas, a lawyer by profession, offered to defend Colonel Gaddafi, at the International Criminal Court in the event of his arrest by Nato.

Dumas was also vocal in condemning France’s brutal neo-colonial bombing of the Ivory Coast earlier in 2011, were death squads and terrorists similar to those later deployed in Libya and Syria were unleashed upon the Ivoirian population in order to install a IMF puppet dictator Alassane Quattara in power. Gbagbo was described as one of the greatest African leaders of the past 20 years by Jean Ziegler, sociologist and former member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council.

Gbagbo had plans to nationalize banks and wrest control of the country’s currency from the colonial finance institutions in Paris. He also wanted to roll back many of the worst effects of IMF restructuring by nationalizing industries and creating a functioning, universal free health service. All of this threatened the interests of French corporations in the former French colony. So, the Parisian oligarchy went to work to find a suitable replacement as caretaker of their Ivoirian colony.

They sent in armed terrorist gangs, or ‘rebel’s in the doublespeak of imperialism, who murdered all before them while the French media blamed president Gbagbo for the violence that ensued. Gbagbo and Gaddafi had opposed Africom, the Pentagon’s plan to recolonize Africa. That was another reason for the  2011 bombing of their two African countries.

The formula is always the same. Imperialism backs ‘rebels’, whenever its interests are threatened by regimes that love their country more than foreign corporations.  One should not forgot that during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, General Franco and his cronies were also ‘rebels’ and they, like their counterparts in Libya in 2011, were bombed to power by foreign powers, replacing a progressive, republican administration with fascism.

There are pro-Israeli fanatics in France who have used the analogy of the Spanish Civil War as justification for intervention in Libya and Syria. The pseudo-philosopher Henry Bernard Levy is one of them.  Of course, the ignoramus Levy doesn’t realize that the reason France, England and the USA did not officially intervene in the Spanish Civil War is because they were covertly helping the ‘rebels’ from the start. They enabled arms shipments to the Francoist ‘rebels’ while preventing arms deliveries to the Spanish government, who, like Syria today, were helped by Moscow. Anyone who has studied the Spanish Civil War knows that all the imperialist countries wanted Franco as a bulwark against communism.

There is nothing imperialism loves more than a rebel without a cause. What imperialism hates, however, are revolutionaries. That is why the ‘rebels’ which imperialism sends into other countries to colonize them on behalf of foreign banks and corporations, have to be marketed as ‘revolutionaries’ in order to assure the support of the Monty Python brigade of petty-bourgeois, ‘ leftist’ dupes such as Democracy Now! and their ilk.

Dumas is not the only top French official to denounce the New World Order.  Former French ambassador to Syria Michel Raimbaud wrote a book in 2012  entitled ‘Le Soudan dans tous les états’, where he revealed how Israel planned and instigated a civil war in South Sudan in order to balkanize a country led by a pro-Palestinian government. He also exposed the pro-Israeli media groups and ‘human rights’ NGOS who created the ‘humanitarian’ narrative calling for military intervention by the United States in the conflict.

The subject was covered extensively by African investigative journalist Charles Onana in his 2009 book, Al-Bashir & Darfour LA CONTRE ENQUÊTE.

There are many more retired French officials who are speaking out about the ruinous policies of this French government, including the former head of French domestic intelligence Yves Bonnet. There have also been reports of dissent in the French armed forces and intelligence apparatus.

After the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011, the former French ambassador to Libya Christian Graeff told French radio station France Culture that it was responsible for the diffusion of lies and war propaganda on behalf of Nato throughout the war.  Graeff also warned the broadcasters that such disinformation could only work on the minds of serfs but not in a country of free minds.

The power of the Israeli lobby in France is a subject rarely discussed in polite circles. In France there is a law against questioning or denial of the holocaust. However, denial of the Korean holocaust, Guatemalan holocaust, Palestinian holocaust, Indonesian holocaust and the dozens of other US/Israeli supported genocides is not only perfectly legal but is the respectable norm.

The same lobby which introduced the Loi Gayssot in 1990, effectively ending freedom of expression in France, would also like to ban any independent investigations of genocides whose narratives they have written, such as the Rwanda genocide, where Israel played a key role in supporting the ‘rebels’ led by Paul Kagame, who invaded Rwanda from Uganda from 1991 to 1994, leading to the genocide of both Tutus and Tutsis. Many serious scholars have written about the Rwandan genocide, which the Israel lobby repeatedly uses as a case study to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by Western powers.  The Zionist thought police would like to see such authors prosecuted for ‘negating’ imperialism’s disgusting lies on African conflicts.

Now, the Israeli Lobby is forcing the (their) French government to prosecute twitter messages which the lobby deems ‘anti-Semitic’. This is one further step towards the creation of a totalitarian state where any criticism of imperialism, foreign wars, racism, oppression, perhaps eventually capitalism itself could fall under the rubric of ‘anti-Semitism’.

These people are sick, and those who cow down to them are sicker. Perhaps the etymology of sickness, a word cognate with the German Sicherheit (security) according to dictionary.com, is not a coincidence. For what is particularly sick about our society is the cult of security,  endless surveillance, ubiquitous cameras, the cult of the all seeing eye, the prurient gaze as part of the incessant discourse on terrorism by those who specialize in the training of the very terrorists they claim to be protecting us from.  Whether or not the words security and sickness are linguistically related, they are certainly cognate in a philosophical sense.

Roland Dumas and others like him should be highly commended for having to guts to say what so many others are too morally corrupt, too weak and cowardly to admit.

As the French government and its media agencies drum up hysteria for war on Syria, Roland Dumas, now in the twilight of his years, is warning people of the consequences of not understanding where Israel is leading  the world. Will enough people heed the warning?

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Israeli Spying: The Mother of all Scandals

Once again, Israel has been caught with spies at the highest levels of the US Government.

At the heart of the investigation are two people who work at The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington. The FBI investigation, headed up by Dave Szady, has involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that CBS News was told document the passing of classified information from the mole, to the men at AIPAC, and on to the Israelis.

CBS sources say that last year the suspected spy, described as a trusted analyst at the Pentagon, turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was, "in the draft phase when U.S. policy-makers were still debating the policy." This put the Israelis, according to one source, "inside the decision-making loop" so they could "try to influence the outcome." [CBS News]

Once again Israel denies wrongdoing, or faced with incontrovertible evidence (in this case one of the spies has reportedly cooperated with the FBI) dismisses the spying with the claim that such spying is harmless, because Israel and the United States are such good friends.

Well, let us take a closer look at that idea of “harmless espionage” by recalling Israel’s most famous failed spy, Jonathan Pollard.

Jonathan Pollard is an American of Jewish descent, born in Galveston Texas, who established a career as an intelligence analyst for the US Navy. There have been many theories offered as to why Pollard decided to betray his country of birth to the Jewish state, but that Pollard did betray his country of birth to Israel is beyond all doubt. Pollard’s defense was that he did not spy so much against the United States, only that he spied for Israel, sending them documents that in his opinion the US should have shared with Israel anyway.

That it was never Pollards job to decide what documents Israel should have was apparently irrelevant. Pollard arrogated that authority to himself. From his position of trust within the US Navy, Pollard delivered over 1000 classified documents to Israel for which he was well paid. Included in those documents were the names of over 150 US agents in the Mideast, who were eventually “turned” into agents for Israel.

But by far the most egregious damage done by Pollard was to steal classified documents relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR and send them to Israel. According to sources in the US State Department, Israel then turned around and traded those stolen nuclear secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas from the USSR to Israel. Other information that found its way from the US to Israel to the USSR resulted in the loss of American agents operating inside the USSR. Casper Weinberger, in his affidavit opposing a reduced sentence for Pollard, described the damage done to the United States thus, "[It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by... Pollard's treasonous behavior."

This should end the suggestion that Israel’s spies are harmless. They are not. The United States’ nuclear deterrent cost an estimated five trillion taxpayer dollars during the 50s and 60s to build and maintain, and less than $100,000 for Pollard to undermine. Israel waited 13 years to admit Pollard had been spying for them, and now lobbies for his release, having granted him Israeli citizenship.

Pollard is hardly the only Israeli spy operating in the United States. He just had the misfortune to get caught. Here are just a few examples of the Israeli spy operations that have been detected.

1947. Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as “hearsay."

1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.

1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attach� in Tel Aviv.

1954 "The Lavon Affair". Israeli agents recruit Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

1965 Israel apparently illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.")

1967 Israel attacks the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See "Assault on the Liberty," by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House). In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, Senior Legal Counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack swears under oath that President Lyndon Johnson ordered the investigation to conclude accident, even though the evidence indicates the attack was deliberate. Given the use by Israel of unmarked boats and planes, and the machine-gunning of USS Liberty’s lifeboats, the most likely explanation is that USS Liberty was to be sunk with all hands, with evidence left to frame Egypt for the sinking. This would have dragged the US into the war on Israel’s side.

1970 While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979 Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, is indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).

1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won't be Explored in Detail by Panels"

1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

1992 Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant -- with security clearance -- on exports of sensitive US technology.

1992 "The Samson Option," by Seymour M. Hersh reports, “Illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts."

1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forces the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995 The Defense Investigative Service circulates a memo warning US military contractors that "Israel aggressively collects [US] military and industrial technology." The report stated that Israel obtains information using "ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties" of US citizens.

1996 A General Accounting Office report "Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors" found that according to intelligence sources "Country A" (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 2/22/96) "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." The Jerusalem Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, "Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country." The report described "An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was "a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information."

The GAO report also noted that "Several citizens of [Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes."

1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare" reported that "US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology." Jane's Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that "until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China." The report noted that this "represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation." (Flight International, 3/13/96)

1997 An Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, "inadvertently" gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

1997 The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis, identified only as “Dov”, had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega”, the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

1997 US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for “Mega” is called off.

2001 It is discovered that US drug agents’ communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, receives an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provides the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, but the FBI does not follow up.

2001 The FBI is investigating 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

2001 JDL’s Irv Rubin arrested for planning to bomb a US Congressman. He dies before he can be brought to trial.

2002 The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, have been trying to penetrate US Government offices.

2002 police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to "deliver furniture." The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were “false positived” by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003 The Police Chief of Cloudcroft stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes. The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public.

2003 Israel deploys assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not protest.

2004 Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake Ids. The FBI refuses to investigate and the Israelis are released.

2004 Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. The truck tests positive for explosives.

This brings us to the present scandal. Two years into an investigation of AIPAC’s possible role as a spy front for Israel, Larry Franklin, a mid-level Pentagon Analyst is observed by the FBI giving classified information to two officials of AIPAC suspected of being Israeli spies. AIPAC hires lawyer Nathan Lewin to handle their legal defense, the same lawyer who defended suspected Israeli spy Stephen Bryen in 1978.

Larry Franklin worked in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans, run by Richard Perle, at the time Perle (who was caught giving classified information to Israel back in 1970) was insisting that Iraq was crawling with weapons of mass destruction requiring the United States to invade and conquer Iraq. There were no WMDs, of course, and Perle has dumped the blame for the “bad intelligence” on George Tenet. But what is known is that the Pentagon Office of Special Plans was coordinating with a similar group in Israel, in Ariel Sharon’s office.

With two suspected Israeli spies (at least) inside the office from which the lies that launched the war in Iraq originated, it appears that the people of the United States are the victims of a deadly hoax, a hoax that started a war.

The leaking of the investigation of AIPAC to the media on August 28th, 2004 gave advance warning to other spies working with Franklin. The damage to the FBI’s investigation was completed when United States Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the FBI to stop all arrests in the case. Like the Stephen Bryen case and the hunt for “Mega”, this latest spy scandal seems destined to be buried by officials who have their own secret allegiances to protect, barring a massive public outcry.

The organization at the heart of the latest spy investigation, AIPAC, wields tremendous influence over the US Congress. Through its members and affiliated PACs, AIPAC directs a huge flow of campaign cash in favor of, and occasionally against, Senators and Representatives solely on the basis of their willingness to support Israel. As an example, in 2002, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham received so much help from pro-Israeli pacs that 76% of his campaign budget came from OUTSIDE the state of Alabama, mostly from New York.

Let me repeat that. A Congressman AIPAC wanted elected received more money from pro-Israel groups outside his state than from his own constituents inside his state. Who is that Congressman going to be thinking of when he votes in Congress?

So here is the mother of all scandals.

For two years, the FBI has suspected AIPAC of spying for a foreign country, and for those two years (and for decades before) that group suspected of spying for Israel has been reshaping the US Congress for the benefit of a foreign government.

And THAT is the mother of all scandals.

Think about that as billions of your tax dollars flow to Israel while your roads and schools crumble and decay and services are cut.

Think about that as the coffins come home with your loved ones inside.

Think about that when you and a million of your fellow citizens march down the streets of America opposing wars built on lies and deceptions and wonder why the government just doesn’t want to listen to you any more.