The Multi-Million Dollar War on Islam | Focal Point with Imam Tom Facchine

 

Who profits from making people fear Muslims? In this Focal Point episode, Imam Tom exposes the multi-million dollar network fueling Islamophobia—fake experts, front organizations, and political actors who weaponize misinformation for profit and power.

This isn’t ignorance, it’s strategy. Who funds the fear? Who benefits? And how do we counter it?

Lowkey EXPOSES Piers Morgan & Ben Shapiro

 

The Video Piers Morgan & Ben Shapiro Don’t Want You To See

Norman Finkelstein RESPONDS to Bernie Sanders statement OPPOSING GAZA CEASEFIRE

 

Dr Finkelstein responds to Bernie Sanders' recent statement opposing a ceasefire. 

Do American Muslims Still Care About Palestine?

 

In July 2014, I wrote about the quasi-clandestine program called the ‘Muslim Leadership Initiative’, run by the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute (which now also has an office in New York). In the piece — and subsequent pieces that followed, written by myself and others — ample evidence and connections were shown to make it more than apparent that the purpose of the program was to deputize Muslim American “leaders” in various fields to undermine the growing tide and strength of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. MLI wasn’t a lone endeavor on this front, but it seemed to be the one to stick and show some success. The program targeted people in close proximity to students: writers, (aspiring) media personalities, Muslim chaplains; professors.
I genuinely didn’t see the 2014 expose having the impact that it did. I had hoped that the piece would spark a productive communal conversation on the sort of politic we needed to unify around. I had hoped it would be a corrective, reconciliatory moment. Instead, a deep-rooted fissure was not only revealed but has since deepened and widened, illustrating a blueprint of what the future of Muslims in the United States can and likely will look like.
And a lot of this hinges on Palestine.

For the first time, Palestine has become a negotiable issue in the American Muslim public community. When our communities disagreed on everything else, we could agree on Palestine. There were always individual exceptions, but generally, at the level we were able to have public conversations as a community, Palestine was long integral to and front and center of the American Muslim politic. The freedom of Palestine was Sacred — and convincing people to not work with those whose ideology explicitly relies on the violent erasure of Palestinians wasn’t controversial ..or in need of mass debate.
Not so much anymore.
In recent years, the centrality of Palestine to the American Muslim politic has been chiseled away — through both design and inevitability.
You don’t need to go full Netanyahu, but undermining the single most powerful and effective protest tool supported by Palestinians under direct occupation and in the diaspora — BDS — seems to be pretty okay.
And it’s especially okay if you’re doing it in the name of building relationships, inter-communal strategies and fighting Islamophobia — the same Islamophobia that is largely upheld by narratives about Muslims as pathologically and inherently violent, savage; incapable of self-governance and thus in need of control.
The same narratives that are used to justify the continued occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid against Palestinians. The same narratives that are used to justify a foreign policy that is the greatest expression of systemic anti-Muslim violence this country has to offer.
And we’ve come to a point where if you disagree with strategies, groups and individuals who undermine an international political protest of ethnic cleansing and apartheid, you stand accused, by many in our community, of sowing discord, fitna — of dividing our power. Maybe even of voter suppression and enabling President Donald J. Trump’s fascism.
This is a strange (and not new) point that doesn’t see how powerful, money-injected institutions and individuals claiming to work for Muslims, under the opportune guise of a ‘Muslim American’ identity, betray the very principles and safety of the affected communities. Our institutions, that claim to represent us and gladly will take our money, are held to a far lower standard than those they claim to be working on behalf of. And our spiritual leaders, who we have long trusted as guiding lights, have embraced regimes that spill our kin’s blood and shake hands with oppressors.
How did we get here?
Pretty easily.

We Shall Return by Imad Abu Shtayyah
At some point, our conviction to principles causes us to hit a glass ceiling in pursuit of not just community power but personal career growth. How far can a Muslim working in the American empire, sustained on myths about itself in opposition to ‘the Others’, get by holding onto the very principles and beliefs that make her/him the ‘Other’?
And how far can any Muslim organization go, in achieving its stated goals and pushing back against rampant anti-Muslim hate, without having to make some concessions along the way in order to ‘play the game’?

In the last six years, it has become apparent that there are four major political categories in the American Muslim public: Professionals, Expedients, Principlists and Determinants.
And here’s what I mean by those terms:
The Professionals are those for whom the identity of ‘Muslim’ and the community that buttresses this identity serve as a means to an end. Religion, in and of itself, is irrelevant as is the material betterment of the community. The Professional Muslim class has zero interest in the creation and empowerment of a Muslim politic, instead its interest is only in exploiting superficial representational politics which allow them space in white institutions, space they use to stomp around on ‘their own’. This in turn functions as a sort of native informancy, signaled through how they speak to their communities of origin and happily echo the accusations of those who suppress those communities. Steven Salaita, who has come to embody what cost Palestinian Americans in particular have had to incur for their commitment to their existence, comments a bit on a related phenomenon quite well here.
The Expedients are those who seize opportunity for political expediency. In their view, in order to have political power in a country such as the United States, as a community or as an individual, it is necessary to participate in some (maybe all) systems of power and politics: including those which may be antithetical to one’s personal or communal interests and principles. The stated goal, usually, is that to build power we need to build relationships with those who are “on our side”, even if we have some disagreements. For this group, political expediency and opportunity trump principles for sake of political representation and power. Political power is best (but not only) exercised within established systems of power: media and party-centric politics. Think your typical ‘seat at the table’ politic.
The Principlists are those for whom principles are non-negotiable. Political power for this group isn’t built on short-term opportunities but long-term strategic building. The greatest political power, in this group’s mind, is one that is built through community and that remains unwavering on principle and demands concessions from the Establishment (media, party-centric politics). In other words: people power over establishment power, resistance over representation. Any representation that comes at the cost of principles that are seen to define the power and moral anatomy of the community — principles for the betterment of the Ummah, for example, versus just simply the US-centric community — is not representation worth having. Think your standard ‘turn the table over, we’re on the menu’ politic.
Finally, The Determinants. Generally speaking, this group is interested in Muslim American civic, creative and grassroots engagement at every level but isn’t committed to access to power at any cost and also isn’t committed entirely to making all principles non-negotiable. The organizations that fall under this group will have a mix of individuals who fall into either the Expedient or Principlist camps. Those of which are more rooted in Islamic practice and ethos, explicitly so, tend to fall in the Principlist camp on many, but not all, critical issues. I think this group, which admittedly isn’t yet as well defined as the others, makes up a large cross-section of the American Muslim community. There is a process of learning happening that has been accelerated in the last four years, and it finds itself torn between expediency and principlism. The benefits of expediency are palpable, but it’s hard to argue why some principles can be negotiable and others can’t be. This group, in my opinion, are critical in determining the route the American Muslim politic will take and look like over the next few years. Think a ‘we can’t turn down all the invites but the food on the table does look kinda poisonous. Risk it?’ type of politic.

Think of these labels as classifying emerging, sometimes porous, trends versus solely (and strictly) certain individuals and organizations. I want these to be open to debate, discussion and evolution because we need to, collectively, start critically engaging with what the public face and politic of our community is.
Because, everything is at risk right now.

When we make the one non-negotiable position negotiable — what else is up for the taking, the bending, the “we can talk about this later”? Where is the line? And I want to be clear: we’re not talking about a political position- we’re talking about a moral, ethical, spiritual position that speaks to our role in defending human life, sacred ground and resisting colonization.
Here I want to take a moment to dispel not a myth but an ahistorical, anti-decolonial perspective that has emerged in recent years. The myopic view laments that the preponderance of Palestine as an issue for Muslims is in large part due to ‘Arab supremacy’ both in American Muslim communities and the Ummah. This perspective ignores the following:
Jerusalem is the third holiest site for Muslims, in Islam. It was the site of the first direction of prayer and destination for pilgrimage. Would we argue that the importance of Mecca/Medina in Islam is also …Arab Supremacy?
The centrality of Palestine in anti/de-colonial resistance. Palestine is one of the last colonial fronts of the 20th century — while countries across the world, including what’s referred to as the Middle East, were gaining ‘independence’ from European colonial reign, Palestine‘s colonization, also a violent European erasure, was just beginning. Anti-colonial figures and groups have long not only shown solidarity with Palestinian liberation but recognized it as central to international decolonizing efforts — especially today.

‘Islamophobia’ (a term we need to revisit) in the United States is largely rooted and sustained by efforts by pro-Israel groups and is sustained through pro-Israel narratives that dehumanize ‘The Arab’ and ‘The Muslim’. Even the vocabulary and discourse surrounding “Muslim terrorism”, that pathologizes violence by Muslims as especially noteworthy, dangerous and apart from other forms, is rooted in the same industry that exists to build the case for Israel’s violent dominance over Palestinians. This, however, benefits the United States more so than Israel because…
Israel is of geo-strategic importance to the United States and thus to American taxpayers and citizens. Its central location in the so-called Middle East makes it integral to the American project in the direct region and the neighbouring regions. There’s this (anti-Semitic) misnomer that Israel controls the United States. This line of thinking makes the world’s most powerful, cunning and violent country and military somehow suddenly meek and naive to the whims of..uhhh…‘The Jews’? Israel — like KSA, UAE, Bahrain, etc — is a client state of the United States. The survival and legitimacy of Israel is sacrosanct for American dominance in the region — why else does ‘normalization of relations’ between Arabs states and Israel matter?s
This needs to be said here: none of what I’ve said above is to undermine or ignore how our communities inflict and deal in anti-Blackness at a mass scale — because Black issues are Muslim issues and it’s taken too long for us, here, to move away from respectability politics and towards solidarity with our brothers and sisters, who make up one-fifth of our population in the US. Instead, for decades, we have been separated and there is a problem when all “our” issues are only abroad in solidarity with Muslims and never where we’ve settled and grown at the systemic expense of a population of people, many of whom comprise of our community. This is ironic given how Black/African movements for liberation have stood in solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians for decades, and still today.
That was long, but I wanted to list these out to really underscore that the presence of Palestine as a political priority in our communities can’t just be chalked up to ‘Arab supremacy’ — it is a systemic priority that stems from a long history and the heavy residue of geopolitical realities for many in our communities “back home”.

This frustration — that I’ve heard a lot in recent years — has also been used to undermine BDS.
That because of the centrality of ‘Arab politics’, we can’t create strategic relationships with certain temples or organizations that lean slightly or entirely Zionist; that strict and rigid adherence to Palestine is getting in the way of building an American Muslim politic.
But what good is any power and politic built at the expense of people in our community? What good is any power and politic that is built by standing on the wrong side of justice? One of the most basic ethical premises in our faith, for day to day and greater political conduct, is to enjoin the good and forbid the evil — so why are we negotiating with the boundaries of evil?
Because this is an issue of faith.
And here I want to dispel another ahistorical talking point: that Palestine is not a “Muslim issue”. Yes, being Muslim does not make you the authority on Palestine, to decide what is best for millions of people. Being Muslim isn’t a card for you to use to barter Palestine and Palestinian humanity for the sake of your career.
But given the sacredness of Jerusalem in Islam, given that members of our communities are directly impacted by a multi-state supported occupation and system of apartheid and given how decolonization and anti-imperialism are (/should be) paramount to Muslim societies and their histories, Palestine and its liberation are a ‘Muslim issue’. And it is that connection that creates one major form of solidarity — across sect, ethnicity and region — with Palestine (though, forget our criminal governments). And that solidarity, when utilized and empowered, can wield influence.
So, do American Muslims still care about Palestine?
I think everyday people, those who are disconnected from the spheres of influence and power, do.
But this is not a battle we can or will win in our institutions, in our organizations; perhaps even in our representations. Because the fight for liberation must be absolute, otherwise it isn’t liberation — it’s politics.

And for the future of this community’s survival, for the growth of its power — however fickle such a hope maybe whilst living in an Empire built to tear it away from you — I hope we can see what is at stake.

You must come to understand things as they should be understood. I know that one day you’ll realize these things and that you’ll realize that the greatest crime any human being can commit, whoever he [sic] may be, is to believe for one moment that the weakness and mistakes of others give him [sic] the right to exist at their expense and justify his [sic] own mistakes and crimes.” — Ghassan Kanafani, Returning to Haifa.

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HOW BRITAIN DRESSES UP CRIMES IN ISRAEL AS ‘CHARITABLE ACTS’

When is a war crime not a war crime? When, according to British officials, that war crime has been given a makeover as a “charitable act”.

The British state is being asked to account for its financial and moral support for a UK organisation accused of complicity in the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. So far, it appears determined to evade answering those questions.

The target of the campaign is the Jewish National Fund UK (JNF UK), which describes itself as “Britain’s oldest Israel charity”. Noting its role in “building Israel for over a century”, the organisation boasts: “Every penny raised by JNF UK is sent to a project in Israel.”

In fact, donations to JNF UK were used to buy some of the 250 million trees planted across Israel since 1948, the year when 750,000 Palestinians were forced out at gunpoint from their homes by the new Israeli army. Those expulsions were an event Palestinians call their Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

Afterwards, the Israeli army laid waste to many hundreds of Palestinian villages, turning them into rubble. Forests planted over the villages were then promoted as efforts to “make the desert bloom”.

Subsidised by taxpayers

In fact, the trees were intended primarily to block Palestinian refugees from ever being able to return to their villages and rebuild their homes. As a result, millions of Palestinians today languish in refugee camps across the Middle East, evicted from their homeland with the help of the forests.

JNF UK raised the funds for a parent organisation in Israel, the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), which enforced the expulsions by using the donations to plant the forests. The Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population was effectively disguised as a form of environmentalism.

Britain and other Western states appear to have accepted that barely concealed deception. They have long treated their local JNF fundraising arms as charities. JNF UK received charitable status in 1939, nearly a decade before Israel was created as a Jewish state on the ruins of Palestinians’ homeland.

The forests are still managed with money raised through tax-deductible donations in Britain and elsewhere. Since 1990, donations to JNF UK have been eligible for Gift Aid, meaning that the British government tops up donations by adding its own 25 percent contribution.

In effect, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages has been subsidised by the British public.

Backing from MPs

Britain’s continuing sanction of these crimes – and others – is being belatedly given scrutiny by human rights activists in Britain.

A campaign launched in 2010 called Stop the JNF – backed by various Palestinian solidarity organisations – has aimed to shame British officials into ending JNF UK’s charitable status.

The campaign gained parliamentary support a year later, when 68 MPs signed an early-day motion condemning the JNF’s activities and calling for its charitable status to be revoked. The motion was sponsored by Jeremy Corbyn, then a backbencher but now leader of the Labour Party, and attracted cross-party support, though no Conservative MPs backed it.

Nonetheless, the campaign has faced institutional resistance every step of the way. Over the past six years, appeals to the Charity Commission, a department of the British government, to intervene and remove JNF UK from its list of registered charities have been repeatedly rebuffed.

Rather than seeking explanations from JNF UK, British officials have largely ignored the evidence they have been presented with.

Trees ‘a weapon of war’

The campaign has highlighted one specific and egregious example of JNF UK’s work. The organisation raised donations to create a large recreation area west of Jerusalem called British Park, which includes forests, over three Palestinian villages that were destroyed by the Israeli army after 1948. A sign at the entrance reads: “Gift of the Jewish National Fund in Great Britain.”

Many of those who donated to the project, often British Jews encouraged to drop pennies into the JNF’s iconic fundraising “blue boxes”, had no idea how their money was being used.

The Stop the JNF campaign included testimony from Kholoud al-Ajarma, whose family was expelled from the village of Ajjur during the Nakba. Today, the family lives in the overcrowded Aida refugee camp, next to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

KKL-JNF planted trees at British Park on land to which Ajarma’s family, and many others, still have the title deeds. In doing so, the group violated the protected status of such lands in international law.

In her submission, Ajarma wrote: “It was British pounds that helped destroy my village. The Jewish National Fund is not merely planting trees. These trees have been used as a weapon of war, a weapon of colonisation.”

Israeli scholar Uri Davis has observed that the establishment of British Park “ought to be classified as an act, and as a policy, of complicity with war crimes”.

4,000 protest letters

The Charity Commission’s barrister, Iain Steele, conceded in a submission that it was possible the JNF had violated the Ajarma family’s rights by creating British Park on their land. Nonetheless, the Charity Commission has on two occasions refused to consider revoking JNF UK’s charitable status. Rather than addressing the merits of Stop the JNF’s arguments, the Charity Commission has evasively claimed that the campaigners, even the Ajarma family, are not affected by whether the JNF is registered as a charity.

In June, a commission official even wrote to the campaign with an astounding defence that appears to strip the term “charitable” of all meaning. He wrote: “In simple terms the test for charitable status is a test of what an organisation was set up to do, not what it does in practice.”

The commission’s apparent reasoning is that, so long as the JNF includes fine-sounding words in its mission statement, what it does in practice as a “charity” does not matter.

In April, Stop the JNF appealed the commission’s decision not to revoke JNF UK’s charitable status to the First-tier Tribunal. The judge, however, told them that neither Ajarma nor the campaign itself had a legal right to be heard. He concluded instead that only the attorney-general could overrule the Charity Commission’s decision. In October, the attorney-general rejected the campaigners’ claims without investigating them.

In an attempt to revive the case, Stop the JNF has submitted more than 4,000 letters of protest to the attorney-general, calling on him to reassess the organisation’s continuing charitable status.

A parallel call was made to the advocate-general of Scotland, which has a separate legal system.

‘Intense political controversy’

The JNF did not respond to questions sent by Middle East Eye about its role in planting the forests, its charitable status and other criticisms of its involvement with Israel.

The establishment’s apparent unwillingness to confront JNF UK’s historical record is perhaps not surprising. The JNF was one of the key organisations that helped to realise a British government promise made in the 1917 Balfour Declaration to help create a “Jewish home” in what was then Palestine.

Two years later, Lord Balfour declared that the colonisation of Palestine by Zionist Jews from Europe was “of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”. Little, it seems, has changed in official British attitudes since.

Steele, the Charity Commission’s barrister, successfully urged the First-tier Tribunal not to get involved, arguing that it would be “drawn into matters of intense political controversy, for no obvious benefit to anyone”.

Surely, Ajarma and many millions more Palestinians would strenuously dispute that assessment. They would have much to gain should Britain finally demonstrate a willingness to confront its continuing role in aiding and comforting groups such as the JNF, accused of complicity in crimes against international law in historic Palestine.

As Stop the JNF organisers wrote in their own letter to the attorney-general: “These people [Palestinian refugees such as the Ajarma family] are not defined by the JNF as recipients of their charity, but they have human and legal rights which the actions of this charity unacceptably violate.”

Reminiscent of dark regimes

The campaign has not only focused on JNF UK’s historic role in dispossessing Palestinians. It points out that the JNF is still actively contributing to Israel’s own grossly discriminatory and racist policies – another reason it should be barred from being considered a charity.

JNF UK’s accounts from 2016 show that it has funded the OR Movement, an Israeli organisation that assists in the development of Jewish-only communities in Israel and the occupied territories.

One such Jewish community, Hiran, is being established on the ruins of homes that belonged to Bedouin familes. They were recently forced out of their village of Umm al-Hiran – a move the legal rights group Adalah has described as “reminiscent of the darkest of regimes such as apartheid-era South Africa”.

On its website, JNF-KKL congratulates “Friends of JNF UK” for supporting the establishment of nearby Hiran Forest. The JNF claims the forest will “help mitigate climate change” – once again disguising ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a form of environmentalism.

Funding the Israeli army

JNF UK’s annual accounts in 2015 also revealed that it contributed money to the Israeli army under the title “Tzuk Eitan 9 Gaza war effort” – a reference to Israel’s attack on Gaza in late 2014, whose death toll included some 550 Palestinian children.

A United Nations commission of inquiry found evidence that Israel had committed war crimes by indiscriminately targeting civilians – a conclusion confirmed by the testimonies of Israeli soldiers to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli whistle-blowing group.

Equally troubling, an investigation last month by Haaretz reported that, under Israeli government pressure, the KKL-JNF has been secretly directing vast sums of money into buying and developing land in the occupied West Bank to aid Jewish settlers, again in violation of international law.

The funds were allegedly channeled to Himnuta Jerusalem, effectively the JNF’s subsidiary in the occupied territories, disguised as funds for projects in Jerusalem.

Veteran Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker observed that KKL-JNF was rapidly converting itself into a banking fund for the settlers. He added that its “coffers are bursting with billions of shekels [and] the settlers’ appetite for land is at a peak”.

Given the lack of transparency in KKL-JNF’s accounts, it is difficult to know precisely where the funds have come from. But as more than $70m has been spent by KKL-JNF over the past two years in the occupied West Bank, according to Haaretz, the funds likely include money raised by JNF UK.

In any case, research by Stop the JNF suggests JNF UK has no objections to making “charitable” donations to settlements in the West Bank. Its accounts record contributions to Sansana, a community of religious settlers close to Hebron.

Settlements are considered a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

No ‘duty’ towards equality

KKL-JNF is a major landowner in Israel. Under a special arrangement with the Israeli government, it owns 13 percent of Israel’s territory – often lands seized from Palestinian refugees. The arrangement includes a provision from 1961 that the primary aim of the JNF in Israel is to acquire property “for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties”.

In 2004, KKL-JNF explained its role. It was “not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.”

In marketing and allocating lands only to Jews, the legal group Adalah has noted, the JNF in Israel intentionally rides roughshod over the rights of a fifth of the country’s population who are Palestinian by heritage.

In other words, the JNF is integral to an Israeli system that enforces an apartheid-style regime that prevents Israel’s Palestinian minority from accessing and benefiting from a substantial part of Israel’s territory.

Violating British law

This institutionalised discrimination has been made even more explicit since Israel last year passed the nation-state law, which declares: “The State views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening.”

As the Stop the JNF campaign notes, British charities should abide by legal responsibilities enshrined in UK legislation, such as the 2010 Equality Act, which makes it illegal to discriminate based on “colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin”.

The JNF UK is clearly failing to abide by this core legal principle. It is operating in a foreign state where it has helped, over many decades, to fund activities that grossly violate both British law and international law. The evidence compiled by Stop the JNF indicates that JNF UK has itself been complicit in aiding the commission of war crimes, both in Israel and the occupied territories.

It has also given financial and moral succour to its parent organisation, which has crafted a system of apartheid that confers superior land rights on Jews over Israel’s Palestinian minority.

British taxpayers should not be subsidising institutionalised discrimination and crimes abroad – even more so when they are being dressed up as “charitable acts”.

Source

‘It was definitely about the Benjamins’ — former campaign staffer details AIPAC’s far-reaching financial power

Ady Barkan, a Democratic progressive activist who is dying of ALS, just put up this thread on Twitter in response to Ilhan Omar’s powerful tweet of last night about AIPAC. He tells the story of how AIPAC reached out to a candidate he was working for, and the candidate’s compliance was “definitely about the Benjamins.” He describes the importance of Omar’s intervention in calling out AIPAC, a “pillar of the occupation,” and the refusal to discuss the lobby’s financially-driven power to do “terrible things.”

Barkan wrote:

A thread on @IlhanMN, anti-semitism, and my personal experience with @AIPAC’s money.

In 2006, I was the first real staffer on a long-shot Democratic Congressional race in deep red Ohio. My boss was a hippie doctor with a lefty perspective on international affairs. . . .very skeptical of military force, opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, etc.

A month after winning the Dem primary, we were struggling to gain attention or money. Nobody gave us a snowball’s chance to win. But one political action org proactively reached out to us.
It wasn’t Emily’s List, although we were fiercely prochoice. Wasn’t a doctor’s lobby or an enviro or labor org. It was AIPAC.

A local Dem volunteer leader of the Cincinnati AIPAC group came over and said they would like to donate the PAC max (I believe $5000) and would also like to see Vic take a public stance on two issues that, I thought, were relatively obscure: an Iran sanctions bill and something else I can’t recall, perhaps about continuing arms sales to Israel. Suffice to say, these were not hot button issues in the race.

Vic and I both thought of ourselves as pro-peace, not pro-Israel. (Note: I am an Israeli citizen, have many family there, have lived there & visited perhaps 20 times). We both felt a bit icky about doing it, because it was too hawkish and too quid pro quo but we were desperate for cash and so we put online a statement about how Vic supported a two-state peace agreement and AIPAC’s two pet issues of the cycle.

It was definitely about the Benjamins. Never would have done it otherwise. AIPAC’s power is also about great organizing (they sent a local Dem volunteer emissary) and about diligence (they paid attention to us before anyone else and were happy to donate to both us and the pro-Likud incumbent). But money is the lubricant that makes the whole machine run.

@IlhanMN is right to point this out. AIPAC is a central pillar of the occupation. Without Congressional support, the Likud/anti-Palestine/pro-occupation project would be radically undermined. AIPAC is the anchor of that support, and its money and Sheldon Adelson’s money are indispensable to the work.

We have a growing anti-semitism problem in America. @IlhanMN is not part of it. @lindasrsour is not part of it. They are allies of mine and of Jews across this country who are fighting for peace, racial justice, immigrants’ rights, and the defeat of fascism. I am deeply disappointed in @SpeakerPelosi for her failure today.

When AIPAC and its army try to silence criticism of the immoral, illegal, inhumane occupation by screaming about anti-semitism and claiming that nobody may ever talk about how the Israel lobby uses money to build power, don’t fall for their bullshit. They are doing terrible things in the name of Jews and of Israel, and it behooves the American Jewish community to resist them, resist their agenda, stand up for Free Speech, and stand up for justice.

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Why Jew Hating Trump Supporters Love Israel.

Their open fondness is built on two premises:“If Trump is pro-Israel, then he can’t be an anti-Semitic, white nationalist” is the logic that underpins this new right-wing orchestrated talking point, but anyone who follows the machinations of the Israel Lobby and its cadre of Zionist organizations and individuals knows only too well that far-right, white nationalist, and even avowed neo-Nazis have long been courted as allies in their fight to permanently erase Palestinians from the ever expanding Israeli controlled territory.

In fact, Israel not only weaponizes anti-Semitism to provide cover for its brutal security state apparatus, but also it was European anti-Semitism that created the Israeli state in the first place. When Theodor Herzi, the founding architect of the “Jewish state,” brought forward his idea for creating a state in Palestine for exiled European Jews in 1896, prominent Jewish intellectuals dismissed his idea, claiming it undermined Jews who had assimilated successfully in European societies.

Dejected but not defeated, Herzi enlisted the help of the Chaim Weizmann, a prominent British Jewish figure, who, in turn, won support for Herzi’s proposed white European settler colonial project by recruiting the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, an avowed white supremacist.

“We have to face the facts,” Balfour said. “Men are not born equal, the white and black races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different capacities which education cannot and will not change.”

Balfour also enacted anti-immigration laws that were designed to restrict and prevent Jews migrating to Britain. In many ways, Balfour’s ban on Jews was the 100 year precedent to Trump’s ban on Muslims.

In November 1917, the Balfour Declaration laid the groundwork for the future state of Israel, stating that, “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

Balfour thus became a hero among Zionist Jews, who were only to happy to ignore his demonstrable record of avowed white supremacy and anti-Semitism, which brings us to where we are with Trump and white supremacists today.

During the past year, Trump has deployed anti-Semitic tropes, retweeted anti-Semitic posts, and has given cover to anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi agitators, going so far to label thousands of Nazi flag waving, “Sieg Heil” saluting thugs as “very fine people.”

In return, America’s Jew haters have praised Trump for his “honesty” and his defence of white America. What is telling, however, is the same anti-Semitic hate groups and individuals also support Trump’s decision to validate Israel’s war crime, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

You see, while Nazis and white supremacists might still hate Jews, they simultaneously also love the apartheid Israeli state.

Their open fondness is built on two premises:

Muslims have replaced Jews as the number one target for European white supremacists, and Israel’s abusive mistreatment of a majority Muslim population inspires them greatly, and
They love that Israel is everything they dream of: a fascist ethnocratic brute that suppresses a non-white indigenous population.
Across Europe and the US, Israeli flags now wave comfortably alongside Nazi and white supremacist banners. When 60,000 ultranationalists marched on Poland’s capital last month, Israeli flags were there. When neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, Israeli flags were neatly nestled among flags of the Confederacy. Paradoxically, however, anti-Semitism remains at the heart of the platforms of all white supremacy groups that turned up to either.

Zionism and white supremacy are not strange bedfellows, but natural allies, according to Nada Elia, adding that, “Both represent a desire to establish and maintain a homogeneous society that posits itself as superior, more advanced, more civilised than the “others” who are, unfortunately, within its midst, a “demographic threat” to be contained through border walls and stricter immigration law. American fascism, then, is holding up a mirror to Zionism.”

The intersectionality between anti-Semitism and pro-Israel fervour is no accident. It was a strategy hatched and formulated by far-right, white nationalists in Britain in the late 90s before gaining traction in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

When Nick Griffin, a Holocaust denier, took the helm of the far right, ultranationalist British National Party (BNP) in 1999, he shelved his public anti-Semitism, replacing it with open hostility towards Muslim.

Having never made a public statement about Islam or Muslims previously, Griffin suddenly attacked Islam as a “vicious, wicked faith,” while also claiming the “Islamification” of his country had taken place via “rape.”

From this moment forth, anti-Semitic political entrepreneurs on the far right began adopting pro-Israel talking points to mask their naked anti-Muslim bigotry, and Griffin admitted as much when he penned a 2007 essay that stated the motives behind substituting the far-right party’s anti-Semitism with Islamophobia: “It stands to reason that adopting an ‘Islamophobic’ position that appeals to large numbers of ordinary people?—?including un-nudged journalists?—?is going to produce on average much better media coverage than siding with Iran and banging on about ‘Jewish power’, which is guaranteed to raise hackles of virtually every single journalist in the western world.”

Zionists of all stripes teamed up and leveraged the political mobilizing power of anti-Semitic far right groups. NYU adjunct professor Arun Kundnani noted that by 2008, “a group of well-funded Islamophobic activists had coalesced” in order to demonize Muslims and Islam for the purpose of gaining support for Israeli policies of occupation, segregation and discrimination from far-right voters, white supremacists, and anti-Semites.

These pro-Israel individuals began positioning themselves as “counter-jihadists,” and, in turn, became darlings of the far right media landscape, with some even making their way into Trump’s foreign policy circle. Frank Gafney, for instance, who warned the US government had been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to have Trump’s ear.

So, no?—?Trump’s move on Jerusalem does nothing to assuage his prior expressed sympathies with anti-Semitic white supremacists. It only reminds us how deeply Zionism and white supremacy are woven into the DNA of two respective white settler colonial states: Israel and the United States.

Link

Dispatches: Israeli influence in British politics

Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby P1: Young Friends of Israel

Dr Cornel West can we just say Occupation?

Much love and respect!

Israeli Miko Peled: I was taught to believe Palestinians are my enemy - They're not

Alhamdulilah for this brother. So much love and respect for him.

Video: CAIR-FL Rep Joins U.S. Teen Beaten by Israelis on CNN’s ‘The Lead with Jake Tapper’

How Germany is Using ‘Anti-Semitism’ to Shut Down Israel Criticism | Interview with Max Blumenthal

When Media Coverage Of Gaza And Israel Becomes The Story

How to make the case for Israel and win

To the benefit of the many not-very-bright zionist wannabe apologists who read this blog assiduously, I decided to offer a clear and simple method of arguing the case for Israel. This clear and simple method has been distilled from a life spent listening to and reading Zionist propaganda. It is easy to follow and results are guaranteed or your money back.

So don't hesitate! Take advantage NOW of this revolutionary rhetorical system that will make YOU a great apologist for Israel in less time than it takes to shoot a Palestinian toddler in the eye.

Ready? 1..2..3..GO!

You need to understand just one principle:

The case for Israel is made of four propositions that should always be presented in the correct escalating order.

1. We rock
2. They suck
3. You suck
4. Everything sucks

That's it. Now you know everything that it took me a lifetime to learn. The rest is details; filling in the dotted lines.

You begin by saying how great Israel is. Israel want peace; Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East; the desert blooms; kibutz; Israelis invented antibiotics, the wheel, the E minor scale; thanks to the occupation Palestinians no longer live in caves; Israel liberates Arab women; Israel has the most moral army in the world, etc.

This will win over 50% of your listeners immediately. Don't worry about the factual content. This is about brand identity, not writing a PhD. Do you really think BP is 'beyond petroleum'?

Then you go into the second point: They suck. Here you talk about the legal system of Saudi Arabia, gay rights in Iran, slave trade in the Sudan, Mohammad Atta, the burqa, Palestinians dancing after 9/11, Arafat's facial hair, etc.

There is only one additional principle you need to understand here. It will separate you from the amateurs. You need to know your audience. If you've got a crowd already disposed to racist logic, go for it with everything you have. But if you get a liberal crowd, you need to sugar coat the racism a bit. Focus on women rights, human rights, religious tolerance, "clash of civilizations", terrorism, they teach their children to hate, etc. Deep down your audience WANTS to enjoy racism and feel superior. They just need the proper encouragement so they can keep their sophisticated self-image. Give them what they crave and they'll adore you! But be careful not to 'mix n match,' because it will cost you credibility.

When you're done, there will always be dead-enders insisting that abuse of gays in Iran does not justify ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Take a deep breath, and pull the doomsday weapon: You suck!

You're a Jew-hater, Arab-lover, anti-Semite, you're a pinko, a commie, a dreamer, a naive, a self-hater, you have issues, your mother worked for the Nazis, Prince Bandar buys you cookies, you forgot you were responsible for the holocaust, etc. The more the merrier. By the time you end this barrage, only a handful would be left standing. For mopping them up, you use the ultimate postmodern wisdom: Everything sucks.

War, genocide, racism, oppression are everywhere. From the Roma in Italy to the Native-Americans in the U.S., the weak are victimized. Why pick on Israel? It's the way of the world. Look! Right is only in question between equals in power; the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Ethics, schmethics. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Eat, drink! Carpe diem! The Palestinians would throw us into the sea if they could. Ha ha!

Trust me, that's as far as words can go. If you followed this method faithfully, you've done your work. You should leave the few who are still unconvinced to the forces of order.

Congratulations!
You are now ready to 
apologize for Israel like a pro.

 

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Interview: Ali Abunimah on the situation in Gaza

Ali Abunimah on form as always.

Respect!!

Latuff, spot on as always

US House passes anti-Palestine bill

At last the United States is responding to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's refusal to freeze settlements and re-start negotiations with the Palestinians.

Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, rushed to the House floor with a resolution drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] condemning the Palestinians for publicly suggesting that, in the wake of Netanyahu's refusal to freeze settlements and negotiate, they will consider a unilateral declaration of statehood.

Congress passed the Berman bill, drafted only this week, on Wednesday. When it comes to pleasing AIPAC, there are simply no limits.

This remains true even though AIPAC is embroiled in an espionage/sex scandal that has it scrambling to find $20m to pay off a former top employee who is threatening to produce documents exposing the lobby.

Washington lobbying

The Berman bill passed overwhelmingly because that is how things work in a city where policy is driven by campaign contributions — and not just on this issue.

The only difference between how AIPAC lobbyists dictate US Middle East policy and pretty much every other major lobby is that AIPAC works to advance the interests of a foreign country.

In other words, comparisons to the National Rifle Association [NRA] would only be applicable if the gun owners that the NRA claims to represent lived in, say, Greece. Oh, and NRA-backed bills usually take longer than a day to get to the House floor.

And here you have the root of the problem. And it is not just an American problem. It is just as much an Israeli problem, a Palestinian problem, and an international problem.

There is only one reason that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed. It is the power of the "pro-Israel lobby" (led by AIPAC) which prevents the United States from saying publicly what it says privately: that resolution of a conflict which is so damaging to US interests is consistently being blocked by the intransigence of the Netanyahu government and its determination to maintain the occupation.

Unequal power

This is not a situation where responsibility attaches equally to both sides. The Israelis hold all of the disputed territories. Yes, the Palestinians have administrative control of some parts of the West Bank but its authority — and it is very small — derives from the Israelis.

Gaza is controlled by Hamas but it is a reservation or ghetto, not a free entity. Its borders are entirely blocked by the Israelis (and the Egyptians who do whatever Israel demands on their border with Gaza).

It remains under Israeli blockade, lightened only a bit since Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted that the blockade was not necessary for Israel's security. And then there is Arab East Jerusalem, where the Netanyahu government has expanded efforts to push Palestinians out of their homes and replace them with settlers.

The Palestinians have no power at all although they have done everything that Israel and the United States demanded.

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) fully recognised Israel and pledged itself to fighting terrorism and resorting exclusively to negotiations to achieve a state. They agreed that their state would be limited to the 22 per cent of historic Palestine that is the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — recognising that Israel would have the other 78 per cent.

Even Hamas, which still insists that Israel has no right to be there, says that if the Palestinian Authority negotiates a deal with Israel that is accepted by the Palestinian people, it too will join in and end its war with Israel.

And what has Israel offered in exchange for these historic concessions? Absolutely nothing.

Yes, it has played at negotiations.

Losing Palestine

Israel's advocates argue that, at Camp David in 2000, it offered the Palestinians 94 per cent of the 22 per cent or 98 per cent or whatever.

Netanyahu's current offer is 60 per cent of the 22 per cent. But the supposed offer came with the standard conditions and caveats when there should be only one condition. In exchange for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians must agree to absolute security for Israel with ironclad guarantees backed up with surveillance systems to ensure that there are no violations.

In fact, the Palestinians agreed to those terms as far back as the Yasser Arafat era, when, in the late nineties, Israelis and Palestinians adopted a security plan brokered by the CIA to combat terrorism.

President Arafat's efforts were so thorough, fighting a virtual civil war with Hamas, that Prime Minister Netanyahu told Arafat both in person and by telephone how much he appreciated Arafat's help.

But neither Arafat nor his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, got anything in return.

That nothing is easily defined. During the entire 17-year period since the historic Rabin-Arafat agreement — and the famed handshake on the White House lawn — the Israelis never ceased confiscating land and building settlements in the areas that are supposed to constitute the Palestinian state.

That was and is the clearest measure of Israel's intentions. The Israeli government does not intend to give up territory it wants; it gave up Gaza because it decided that it better served Israeli interests to just blockade it.

Why would Palestinians believe that Israel is negotiating seriously when it keeps building inside the future Palestinian state?

All this is obvious to anyone paying attention — especially since Prime Minister Netanyahu absolutely refused to freeze settlements for even 90 days in exchange for the United States doubling the aid package. Really, if he won't freeze for 90 days for $3.5bn, only a fool would believe that he would ever actually give up any land permanently.

Marching to Israel's tune

And yet the United States government keeps playing this game. No matter what Israel does, it is fine by America.

It does not have to be that way. If the administration and Congress put US interests (and Israel's too) over the craving for campaign contributions, the United States could tell the Israeli government that, from now on, our aid package comes with strings.

Like a loan from the International Monetary Fund (although aid to Israel is a gift, not a loan), the US could say that in exchange for our billions, our UN vetoes of resolutions criticising Israel, and our silence in the face of war crimes like Gaza, we want Israel to end the occupation within, say, 24 months. And Israel would have to comply because our military assistance is, as AIPAC likes to call it, "Israel's lifeline".

If we did that, many Israelis would be very angry (just as many would appreciate America forcing an end to the occupation).

But the lobby would be furious because, above all else, it needs to feel that it controls US policy in the Middle East. Not for America's sake. Not for Israel's. But for its own. As with most Washington lobbies, it is not in business to make the world a better place. It is not pro-Israel; it is pro-AIPAC.

When will all this change? Who knows?

The AIPAC scandals are weakening the group, although not enough to prevent Congress from passing its latest bill condemning Palestinians. And younger American Jews, especially progressives (which is most of them), simply don't buy the AIPAC line. American Jews are, after all, Americans.

But, for now, the bottom line is money. The US government dances to Israel's tune because it is afraid to risk campaign contributions from a few dozen fat cats. That is the whole story.

Meanwhile, as General David Petraeus has said, US interests — including the lives of our men and women in uniform — are threatened by the belief in the Middle East that United States is Israel's puppet. Petraeus' view is common throughout the military which, unaffected by politics, manages to actually see the obvious. When will the rest of our government allow itself to do the same?

MJ Rosenberg is a senior foreign policy fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

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EDL burn Qur'an at London demonstration

EDL morons burn Qur'an, please note number of Israeli flags in the background.