CARTOON CONTROVERSY episode#2 (2024)
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[TOP SECRET Tech to Defend yourself against BOGUS charges of criticism for your genuine support of Pro-America Human Rights]
When Zio-Cons throw down the 'Anti-Semitism" card to put you on the defensive for standing up for PRO-AMERICA values such as The Bill of Rights, the American's Creed...in short, our values as Americans that we are ALL EQUAL IN THE EYES OF OUR CREATOR AND UNDER THE RULE OF LAW. We have NO Caste system; No Aristocracy!!! Zio-Cons do NOT share our American values. They believe they are SUPERIOR and deserve Special Treatment and are ABOVE the LAW! Learn more about our American Creed Here.
... HOW DARE YOU TRIVIALIZE THE DEATH OF SIX MILLION JEWS DURING THE HOLOCAUST AND THE 150 MILLION PEOPLE KILLED BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS.
...How Dare you Show Contempt for the survivors and the murdered by using the naked slur of anti-semitism as a cheap rhetorical device in your feeble attempt to push your pathetic self-serving partisan position.
... You are a DISGRACE to Jews and your tactics are Anti-American, Jew-Hating, and Fascist.
...and if you they are super annoying, throw in, "You are a malignant narcissist sociopath" ghetto-ass gangster.
....and "People like you are the Bernie Madoff of Holocaust racketeering--you prey on the anxieties of Jews for your personal gain...You are a threat to the Jewish People and to the national security of the United States.".
...and "You are the velociraptor of Zionism-the most extremist, violent, deplorable barbaric genocidal maniac cut from the same cloth as Stalin--Clearly you got programmed by the Russians while you were a serf in the Pale of Settlement."
CARTOON CONTROVERSY episode#2 (2024)
Is it Prohibited to use Official Emblems and Symbols for Israel?
Official Posts on Israeli Consulate website
OVERVIEW: Picture Gallery: Harvard's Cowardice & Censorship akin to Saudi Sharia?
Highlights I Excerpts from my Interview with ChatGPT
Is this cartoon deploying an anti-semitic trope?
Harvard Cartoon Controversy | In Depth-Press Clippings
Worldwide Press Clippings: Original Documents, Media Reports, Political Machinations
Israeli "Hasbara" Soviet-Style Mobilization of People to Parrot State-sponsored Propaganda
Misrepresenting Ideas and Beliefs, Creating a Scapegoat, Demonizing to Deflect
Zionist Playbook: Demonize Scapegoats to Deflect Attention from Israeli Atrocities
the fictional "extremist-radical" (LEFT / Islamic Terrorist / WOKE / DEI)
HARVARD's Cartoon Controversy - Discussion with ChatGPT
Memos to the President | Secretary of State ChatGPT advised Prez Blinden
CARTOON CONTROVERSY episode#1 (1967)
Killing Civilians Seeking Food | 1956 and again in 2024
Condemnation about '67 SNCC Newsletter (Press Clippings)
The Big Lie | Denying Reality of Israeli Massacres since Occupation (1947)
Israel's Occupation of Gaza during 1956 and 1957
Massacres during the 1956-1957 Israeli Occupation of Gaza
Joe Sacco, Journalist and Artist, Massacres in Rafah & Khan Younis in 1956, Footnotes in Gaza
Shilling for Payola, Pandering to Power (by Denying Truth about Fraudulent claims of Anti-Semitism)
By B.C.Gobin, TULPPP Chief Instigator
Harvard's Ethical Quagmire & Fundraising from Fuhrers Dictating Campus & Academic Policy
“Perpetuating vile and hateful antisemitic tropes, or otherwise engaging in inflammatory rhetoric [as in the Truth?] or sharing images that demean people on the basis of their identity [as in Zionist Apartheid-genocidal maniacs?]], is precisely the opposite of what this moment demands of us,”
--Alan Garber, Interim President Harvard University (of Jewish ‘identity’ & Zionist ideology)
Harvard Crimson 21 Feb 2024-While the two groups that posted the original image deleted it and issued an apology, many affiliates, including President Garber and Dean Khurana, said it was too little, too late.
In Tuesday evening statements to The Crimson, members of the PSC and AFRO reiterated their regret for including the image on the original post.
“We deeply regret the harm we caused our campus community and take accountability for our oversight by continuing to learn from our peers and stand in solidarity as we fight all forms of discrimination — antisemitism, anti-Black racism, and anti-Palestinian discrimination,” the groups wrote.
Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana condemned an antisemitic image posted by two pro-Palestine student groups during an interview on Tuesday, calling the post “unmistakably antisemitic and racist.”
“It’s become clear that some members of our community are intent on testing the limits of how low discourse can go — and it now appears that we are hitting rock bottom,” Khurana said.
“Finding words to express my disgust at what I saw is hard,” Khurana said. “I’m aware that after public condemnation, the offensive images have been taken down, but this bell cannot be unrung.”
Official Posts on Israeli Consulate website
The Shield of David (Magen David) is an official symbol for the State of Israel and recognized worldwide as a representation of the nation-state of Israel just as "Union Jack" flag is recognized as a symbol of the United Kingdom
However, The 6-pointed Hexagram is Not Exclusively used by Jewish Organizations--In fact non-Jewish organizations and multiple religions use the 6-pointed hexagram in their logos or cosmologies.
aljazeera.com by Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian writer. 13 Jun 2016
I watched and listened, often with tears, as Muhammad Ali was eulogised. I cried when the service opened with a reading from the Quran, because it was the first time in the history of the United States that a recitation of the Quran was read and heard in reverence on major national American television networks. I thought, even in death, he is a revolutionary.
Although some spoke of his life as a radical revolutionary, it seemed almost tangential to the overarching message that Ali was a beloved champion boxer, the greatest there was. Of course, he was that. Yet, I couldn’t help but recall the words of Cornel West, who has spoken of the “Santa Clausification” of Dr Martin Luther King. With the exception of two or three speakers, it felt as if Muhammad Ali’s legacy was undergoing a similar softening and rounding of the edges of his life, the Santa Clausification of Muhammad Ali.
VIDEO: 2MIN 20SEC Childhood neighbours bid farewell to Muhammad Ali
So much of Muhammad Ali was left unsaid and untouched at his funeral service. A critical part of him, mostly ignored, is that he was an organic and public intellectual. He spoke truth to power. His words, ideas, actions and positions changed the world.
He is one of the few intellectuals whose production of knowledge was accessible to the masses in such a way that it provoked immediate thought. He was instrumental in spurring moral evolution and moral advancement among whole generations, worldwide.
His refusal to be drafted, saying “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” became an anthem of critical thought and introspection, especially among black men facing the draft.
Thousands of miles away, the Vietnamese heard him, too, and, as a result, often refused to fight or kill black US soldiers during the Vietnam War. Ali was an instigator of brotherhood and the political establishment, as well as mainstream media, tried to destroy him for it.
Ali was an instigator of brotherhood and the political establishment, as well as mainstream media, tried to destroy him for it.
So, it seemed incongruous with his legacy to witness moments in the funeral service that seemed like campaigns for Hillary Clinton.
Ali was one of the few and first notable Americans to voice unqualified support for Palestinians in ourstruggle against Zionism’s settler-colonial project in Palestine.
Many of those who got up to praise and eulogise him would be among the first to persecute a contemporary athlete if he/she would dare to embark on the moral path Ali walked decades ago when he went to a Palestinian refugee camp and saidopenly,“I declare support for the Palestinian liberation struggle”.
In fact, the current political establishment is doing exactly that with unfolding anti-BDS (the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign) legislation.
Were an athlete today to criticise Israel as Ali did, he or she may well find his or her name on an emerging anti-BDS blacklist.
No one at his funeral mentioned this, with the exception, perhaps, of Rabbi Lerner in his general statement about injustice to Palestinians.
Image: A hearse carrying the body of the late Muhammad Ali enters Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky [Reuters]
In fact, Billy Crystal’s eulogy probably made people believe that Ali was a supporter of Israel because they apparently raised money for some programme at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Had he wanted to give an honest reflection of Ali, that would be the point where Billy Crystal should have noted that Muhammad Ali was an unabashed supporter of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli colonialism, including the annexation of Jerusalem. But he didn’t, and I believe it was an intentional omission.
Ali’s insistence on morality, however unpopular; his defence of justice, however obscure; his defiance of power, whatever the personal cost; and his ability to communicate his positions clearly and convincingly in a language grounded in integrity, honour and principle, are all among the hallmarks of a transforming public intellectual. He was all that.
READ MORE: Why we mourn Ali by Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi
He touched us all in different ways, but touched us nonetheless.
His influence on my life was profound. I never met or spoke to him, but his presence in my thoughts feels personal, almost intimate.
Incredibly, there are millions who feel as I do. He performed that miracle of taking residence in the hearts of people he had never met, millions of us.
And though he was indeed “The People’s Champ” who gave of himself to all peoples, especially the oppressed, Muhammad Ali was a black man, produced by blackness, in all that entails of 400 years of raw and human struggle.
As a public intellectual, athlete and revolutionary, he belongs to the legacy of the people from whence he came. The Prettiest and the Greatest, was in fact, a proud, principled and defiant black man in America.
Susan Abulhawa is an international bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist. Her latest novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (2015), is translated into 26 languages.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
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World History Archive 2018Feb17
Muhammad Ali made a visit to Egypt when the Arab Boxing Federation invited him to the country. This was more than just simple visit, but reaching out to other Muslims and African peoples. President Gamal Abdel Nasser was a major anti-colonial pan-Africanist and pan-arab nationalist. He was one of the founders of the Non-aligned Movement and the Organization for African Unity. Nasser had forged a close alliance with Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and other states devoted to the anti-imperial cause. Muhammad Ali was gaining international notoriety not only because of his boxing, but his activism. Muhammad Ali had converted to Islam a few months earlier. Ali joined the Nation of Islam and proceeded to fight racial injustice in the United States. When Ali saw the Aswan Dam he stated “now I can say that is no easy project and it is obvious proof of the greatness of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.” Both men were fighting racial injustice and imperialism. Muhammad Ali criticized America’s war in Vietnam, while Nasser actively fought Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. Egypt under Nasser had to resist the French, British, and the United States. Although the conflict during the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 was a military failure, Nasser demonstrated that the former colonial powers could be resisted. Ali’s visit was a representation of the internationalist nature of black liberation struggle.
From <https://worldhistoryarchive.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/muhammad-ali-meets-gamal-abdel-nasser-1964/>
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Ahmed Abd El Rasoul , Monday 6 Jun 2016
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“I remember him walking into the store where I worked and singling out me, the darkest-skinned and only Arab employee.”
By Ray Hanania | www.aljazeera.com 10 Jun 2016
From <https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/6/10/for-arab-americans-muhammad-ali-was-our-champion>
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5 June 2016 samidoun.net
Statement in Turkish via BDS Turkiye:
On the occasion of the passing of legendary athlete and struggler for justice, Muhammad Ali, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network joins millions around the world in remembering Ali’s historic legacy of commitment to the liberation of oppressed peoples and his willingness to sacrifice in order to adhere to those principles.
In 1985, Ali traveled to Israel in an attempt to secure the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in occupied Southern Lebanon. This followed on his visits to Palestinian refugee camps in 1974, when he declared in Beirut that “the United States is the stronghold of Zionism and imperialism.” While visiting Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon, he declared “In my name and the name of all Muslims in America, I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders.”
Ali championed the Black liberation struggle on multiple fronts; within the United States, and as a force against US imperialism worldwide. He wrote poetry in tribute to the Black leaders of the Attica prison uprising. At the height of his career, Muhammad Ali refused to fight in the Vietnam War in 1967, was sentenced to five years in prison and stripped of his title. When asked about his refusal while participating in a Louisville housing justice struggle, Ali said:
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end.
I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.
If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”
Dave Zirin writes, “Ali’s refusal to fight in Vietnam was front-page news all over the world. In Guyana there was a picket of support in front of the US embassy. In Karachi, young Pakistanis fasted. And there was a mass demonstration in Cairo.” While Ali’s later depoliticization and cooperation with the US government speak to a more complex legacy, the national and international resonance of his resistance to imperialism in the 1960s and 1970s at the height of his athletic greatness echoed around the world.
Ali’s history of struggle illustrates the lengthy and deep history of joint struggle and mutual solidarity among oppressed peoples and national liberation movements, and that Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon – and the Black Liberation Movement – were centers and incubators not only for the Palestinian revolution and Black struggle, but revolutionary movements the world over. We recall Ali’s role in representing a deep and collective legacy of resistance to imperialism, to anti-Black racism, and to Zionism, and of the struggle to free prisoners – and peoples – from the jails these systems of oppression create.
Join the @samidounnetwork channel on Telegram
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Heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali (left) shakes hands with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918 - 1970, right), watched by Ali's manager Jabir Herbert Muhammad (1929 - 2008, centre), circa 1964. Jabir Herbert Muhammad is the son of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam (Getty Images)
Link Statement in Turkish via BDS Turkiye:
By Marcy Oster June 5, 2016 | JTA
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who died Friday at 74, railed against Jewish promoters and slammed Zionist control of the world, but he also attended his grandson’s bar mitzvah and appealed to Muslim extremists to release Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.
Ali’s grandson became a bar mitzvah at a Philadelphia synagogue in 2012.
Jacob Wertheimer, the son of Khaliah Ali-Wertheimer and Spencer Werheimer, was called to the Torah at the historic Congregation Rodeph Shalom in front of 150 people, including the former heavyweight champion.
Continue reading.. JTA
Adopting Arab causes after his retirement from the ring, 'The Greatest' frequently clashed with the Jewish people, accusing 'Zionists' of world domination, even as some notable members of the U.S. Jewish community were his fervent admirers.
Rabbi Michael Lerner | Haaretz | 10 Jun 2016
In this vein, the U.S. must halt drone warfare, bring the troops home, stop sending arms to the Saudis, tell the Turks to stop bombing their Kurdish minority, and tell Netanyahu to end the occupation.
When he defied the draft on the ground that he was a Muslim minister, he alienated another segment of the public.
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/03/07/archives/muhammad-ali-man-of-controversy.html
Stripped of his title in 1967 by the New York State Athletic Commission and the World Boxing Association, he became a boxer without a ring. Because of that he soon developed into a martyr of the black revolution. Suddenly, last year, he returned to boxing
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https://forward.com/tag/muhammad-ali/
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See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
Muhammad Ali, who says he is retiring from the ring to spread the faith of Islam, is losing no time throwing right hooks at Zionism. He told a press conference in Beirut, at the start of a tour of the Middle East, that “the United States is the stronghold of Zionism and imperialism.” On a visit later to two Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon, the former heavy-weight boxing champion was quoted by a guerrilla news agency as saying: “In my name and the name of all Muslims in America, I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders.” Ali told newsmen that after retiring from the ring he will devote his life to preaching the Moslem faith, beginning by establishing a mosque in Las Vegas. Uncharacteristically modest, he added: “I am no longer the greatest. Allah is.”
From <Ali Belts Zionism - Jewish Telegraphic Agency>
Is this cartoon deploying an anti-semitic trope?
ChatGPT::ls: Use symbols and imagery that are culturally significant to Israel, such as the Star of David, the menorah, olive trees, or historical landmarks like the Western Wall or Masada. These symbols reflect the diverse cultural and religious heritage of Israel without perpetuating stereotypes.
[EXCERPT OF RESPONSE] ChatGPT: When depicting the State of Israel in a negative manner regarding its policies of occupation, it's crucial to avoid using symbols or imagery that perpetuate harmful stereotypes or incite hatred. Instead, focus on symbols that represent the realities of occupation, human rights abuses, and violations of international law. Here are some specific symbols that can be used to depict the negative aspects of Israel's occupation policies:
...Barbed Wire and Checkpoints: Symbolize the barriers and restrictions imposed on Palestinians' freedom of movement within the occupied territories through imagery of barbed wire fences, military checkpoints, and concrete barriers.
...Broken Chains: Represent the denial of Palestinians' basic human rights and freedoms under occupation by depicting chains broken or shackles being removed, symbolizing liberation and the struggle for freedom...
..Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets: Illustrate the use of excessive force and violence against Palestinian civilians by depicting tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and other weapons used by Israeli security forces to suppress protests and demonstrations.
...Eviction Notices and Demolition Orders: Highlight the displacement and dispossession of Palestinian families ...
...Colonialist Imagery: Depict Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as symbols of colonization and expansionism, showing imagery of bulldozers, construction equipment, and Israeli flags planted on Palestinian land....
...Olive Trees Uprooted: Symbolize the destruction of Palestinian livelihoods and agricultural land ...
...Separation Wall: Illustrate the impact of the separation barrier on Palestinian communities ...
...Children in Detention: Highlight the plight of Palestinian children detained by Israeli authorities by depicting imagery of children behind bars or in handcuffs, emphasizing the impact of occupation on the most vulnerable members of society.
...Key Symbol: Use the symbol of a key to represent the Palestinian right of return and the displacement of refugees...
Contents of Google Docs Listed Below for your Convenience
⏩FLASHBACK (2015) Charlie Hebdo Shooting - Anti-Sharia? Anti-Semitism? So Zionists Can't Handle Cartoons either?
*** Cartoon Controversy ***
⏩2023feb21 WSJ Harvard Condemns Antisemitic Image Circulated by Student and Faculty Groups
⏩2024Feb20 NYT At Harvard, Some Wonder What It Will Take to Stop the Spiral
⏩2024feb15 HarvardMag- The Interim President’s Agenda
⏩2024feb01 Harvard President Garber Slams ‘Pernicious’ Campus Antisemitism
⏩2023Jan31 Kenneth Roth: The One that (Almost) Got Away
⏩2024jan03 - Who is Alan Garber? Meet Harvard’s New Interim President.
⏩2023oct30 Harvard President Gay Forms Advisory Group to Combat Antisemitism on Campus
LINK TO MY CARTOON PAGE (TOO HOT FOR SNOWFLAKE HARVARD!)
How the Soviet-Style Zionist “Hasbara” Propaganda Machine Converts Counterfeit Claims of ‘Anti-Semitism on Campus OR Israel’s latest War Crimes into 'legitimate claims' for literal land & power grabs.
Rule#1: Zionists are ALWAYS Victims. Rule 2. When Israelis are Aggressors, Refer to Rule#1
Pro-Apartheid Zionist lobbying against American values of Equality, Self-Determination, Free Speech and Assembly, Pursuit of Happiness (Knowledge & Truth) for the Purpose of Suppressing any Support for Palestinians’ Right NOT be Denied Citizenship, and
For the Purpose of Undermining U.S. and worldwide support for honoring our moral and legal responsibilities to protect and abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international law, and
For the Purpose of Censoring any Negative ideas, thinking, speech about the Truth about the scourge of colonialism and imperialism, including Israel’s Apartheid Occupation and tyranny against Palestinian people and the wider Arab world
For keeping college campuses a "Zionist Safe Zone" in order to retain and recruit the next generation of young Jews who are destined to be blindly subservient to pro-fascist Zionist agenda and continues to lobby unlimited U.S. support for all things "Israel" at the expense of American values and national security interests.
under the pretense of combating anti-semitism
ISGAP is front-group for the Israeli government that is attempting to co-op academia into providing legitimacy for Haspura--Israeli Zionist propaganda. What's funny about this presentation is that what they claim are "anti-semitic" conspiracies about the Out-Sized role the pro-Zionist-lobby has in DC are in fact TRUE MATTERS of SERIOUS POLICY CONCERN. Truth or serious inquiry or criticism is AUTOMATICALLY deemed anti-Zionist, Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes! This Presentation (with my supplemental slides) purports to show how "Soviet" propaganda against Israel is the basic ingredient of ALL subsequent criticism of Israel, which by Definition is Anti-Zionist = Anti-Semitic. The trajectory is from a truly nonsense Jew-hating book published in Russia in 1903 called the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to German/Russian Jew-Hating, to Soviet Anti-Zionism (although Stalin was in fact a Zionist & a Jew-Hater like many non-Jew Zionists), to blame the black & brown people seeking to be free of Colonialism, to this phantom "new left" of supposed Anti-Semites today.
Misrepresenting Ideas and Beliefs, Creating a Scapegoat, Demonizing to Deflect
the fictional "extremist-radical" (LEFT / Islamic Terrorist / WOKE / DEI)
WNYCSTUDIOS - Meet Meghan Megan, Christian spokesperson for Zionist Jew
Cartoonist Eli Valley hammers the on the problem of the abuse of the "Anti-Semitism" Bludgeon used the bogeyman of Arthur Finkelstein's manufactured "radical anti-semitic leftists" whose embodiment is Meghan McCain and her Crusade against House Representative Ilhan Omar (the refugee).
Valley mocks the extreme semantic and historical gymnastics used by Zionists to find some "anti-semitism" in anything said by those not endorsing their right-wing fascist agenda designed to scapegoat the minority to take away rights from the majority as we see happening in Israel today through demolition of the already weak judiciary.
I AM DOING RESEARCH ON ANTI-SEMITISM FOR A HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT. PLEASE LIST COMMON ANTI-SEMITIC TROPES.
ChatGPT
Certainly, here are some common anti-Semitic tropes that have unfortunately persisted over time:
Blood Libel: This trope accuses Jews of murdering non-Jewish individuals, typically children, to use their blood in religious rituals. This false accusation has been historically used to fuel anti-Semitic violence.
Money and Greed Stereotypes: Jews have often been unfairly associated with wealth, financial control, and greed. This stereotype perpetuates harmful beliefs about Jews exploiting others for financial gain.
Conspiracy Theories: Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories allege that Jews control global institutions such as governments, banks, and media. These unfounded beliefs contribute to prejudice and discrimination against Jewish individuals and communities.
Deicide: This trope accuses Jews as a collective of being responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It has been used to justify persecution and violence against Jews throughout history.
Dual Loyalty: This trope suggests that Jews are more loyal to Israel or Jewish interests than to the countries in which they reside. It undermines the loyalty and citizenship of Jewish people and perpetuates suspicions and discrimination against them.
Scapegoating: Jews have often been unfairly blamed for societal problems or crises, such as economic downturns, political unrest, or public health issues. This scapegoating deflects attention from the real causes of these problems and fuels anti-Semitic sentiments.
Media Control: Anti-Semitic tropes often depict Jews as having disproportionate control over media outlets, using this control to shape public opinion and promote Jewish interests at the expense of others.
Physical and Racial Stereotypes: Historically, Jews have been depicted using derogatory stereotypes related to physical appearance or racial characteristics, such as large hooked noses or insidious facial features.
These tropes have been used to justify discrimination, violence, and systemic oppression against Jewish individuals and communities throughout history. It's essential to recognize and combat these harmful stereotypes to promote equality, tolerance, and human rights for all people.
ChatGPT
Certainly, here are a few more common anti-Semitic tropes:
Holocaust Denial: This trope involves the denial or distortion of the Holocaust, the systematic genocide of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. Holocaust denial seeks to minimize or erase the suffering of Jewish victims and is often used to propagate anti-Semitic propaganda.
Global Domination: Some anti-Semitic tropes depict Jews as seeking global domination or world domination through secretive and manipulative means. This trope plays into fears of Jewish power and control and has been used to justify discriminatory policies and violence against Jewish communities.
Cultural Stereotypes: Anti-Semitic tropes sometimes involve stereotyping Jewish culture or traditions in a negative or derogatory manner, portraying them as strange, backward, or inherently suspicious.
Usury and Financial Exploitation: This trope falsely portrays Jews as being particularly involved in usury or predatory lending practices, exploiting others for financial gain. It contributes to the perception of Jews as untrustworthy or dishonest in financial matters.
Demonization of Jewish Leaders: Anti-Semitic propaganda may target prominent Jewish leaders, such as politicians, activists, or intellectuals, with demonizing stereotypes or accusations. This tactic aims to undermine Jewish influence and leadership roles in society.
Desecration of Jewish Symbols: Anti-Semitic individuals or groups may desecrate Jewish religious symbols, such as synagogues, cemeteries, or religious texts, as a form of intimidation, harassment, or expression of hatred.
Selective Historical Revisionism: Some anti-Semitic tropes involve selectively revising or distorting historical events to blame Jews for perceived wrongs or to deny their contributions to society. This revisionism reinforces negative stereotypes and undermines the understanding of Jewish history and culture.
These tropes, along with others, have been used to perpetuate discrimination, violence, and marginalization against Jewish individuals and communities. It's essential to recognize and challenge these stereotypes to promote understanding, tolerance, and respect for all people.
ChatGPT
Yes, there are indeed tropes specific to the State of Israel that are often used in anti-Semitic rhetoric or propaganda. These tropes often involve portraying Israel and its policies in a negative light, sometimes drawing on historical anti-Semitic themes or stereotypes. Here are a few examples:
Israel as the Aggressor: This trope portrays Israel as the aggressor in conflicts with its neighbors, ignoring historical context or portraying Israel's defensive actions as unjustified aggression. It often downplays or ignores threats to Israel's security and sovereignty.
Israel as a Colonial Power: Some anti-Semitic tropes frame Israel's establishment and expansion as a colonial enterprise, equating Zionism with imperialism and portraying Israelis as colonizers who displace and oppress indigenous peoples.
Israel as a Racist State: This trope accuses Israel of systemic racism or apartheid-like policies against Palestinians or other non-Jewish minorities. It often employs comparisons to South African apartheid and seeks to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
Israel as a Violator of Human Rights: This trope exaggerates or misrepresents Israel's actions in conflict situations, painting the Israeli government and military as systematic violators of human rights. It often ignores the complex security challenges faced by Israel and the efforts made to minimize civilian casualties.
Israel as a Manipulator of World Affairs: Some anti-Semitic tropes depict Israel as wielding disproportionate influence over global politics, media, and financial institutions, often using this alleged influence to promote Jewish interests at the expense of others.
Israel as a Source of Global Problems: This trope blames Israel for a wide range of global problems, from terrorism to economic instability, often without credible evidence or rational basis. It relies on conspiracy theories and scapegoating to demonize Israel and its supporters.
Denial of Israel's Right to Exist: Extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric may involve outright denial of Israel's right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state, advocating for its destruction or dissolution. This trope is often associated with extremist ideologies and hate groups.
It's important to recognize that criticism of Israeli government policies or actions is not inherently anti-Semitic, and legitimate criticism should be distinguished from the use of anti-Semitic tropes or rhetoric. However, these tropes are often employed to delegitimize Israel and its supporters, perpetuate prejudice against Jews, and undermine efforts toward peace and reconciliation in the region.
ARE THERE ANY STATE OF "ISRAEL" SPECIFIC TROPES?
ChatGPT
Yes, there are indeed tropes specific to the State of Israel that are often used in anti-Semitic rhetoric or propaganda. These tropes often involve portraying Israel and its policies in a negative light, sometimes drawing on historical anti-Semitic themes or stereotypes. Here are a few examples:
Israel as the Aggressor: This trope portrays Israel as the aggressor in conflicts with its neighbors, ignoring historical context or portraying Israel's defensive actions as unjustified aggression. It often downplays or ignores threats to Israel's security and sovereignty.
Israel as a Colonial Power: Some anti-Semitic tropes frame Israel's establishment and expansion as a colonial enterprise, equating Zionism with imperialism and portraying Israelis as colonizers who displace and oppress indigenous peoples.
Israel as a Racist State: This trope accuses Israel of systemic racism or apartheid-like policies against Palestinians or other non-Jewish minorities. It often employs comparisons to South African apartheid and seeks to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
Israel as a Violator of Human Rights: This trope exaggerates or misrepresents Israel's actions in conflict situations, painting the Israeli government and military as systematic violators of human rights. It often ignores the complex security challenges faced by Israel and the efforts made to minimize civilian casualties.
Israel as a Manipulator of World Affairs: Some anti-Semitic tropes depict Israel as wielding disproportionate influence over global politics, media, and financial institutions, often using this alleged influence to promote Jewish interests at the expense of others.
Israel as a Source of Global Problems: This trope blames Israel for a wide range of global problems, from terrorism to economic instability, often without credible evidence or rational basis. It relies on conspiracy theories and scapegoating to demonize Israel and its supporters.
Denial of Israel's Right to Exist: Extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric may involve outright denial of Israel's right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state, advocating for its destruction or dissolution. This trope is often associated with extremist ideologies and hate groups.
It's important to recognize that criticism of Israeli government policies or actions is not inherently anti-Semitic, and legitimate criticism should be distinguished from the use of anti-Semitic tropes or rhetoric. However, these tropes are often employed to delegitimize Israel and its supporters, perpetuate prejudice against Jews, and undermine efforts toward peace and reconciliation in the region.
ARE THERE ANY OTHER NATION-STATES DEFINED OR CREATED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF A RELIGION?
ChatGPT
Yes, there are other nation-states that have been defined or created with a strong emphasis on a particular religion or religious identity. Here are a few examples:
Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Pakistan was established in 1947 as a homeland for Muslims in the Indian subcontinent following the partition of British India. Its creation was based on the idea of providing a separate nation-state for Muslims, distinct from the predominantly Hindu India.
The Islamic Republic of Iran: Iran, also known as Persia, underwent an Islamic revolution in 1979, leading to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The government derives its legitimacy from Shia Islam, and the legal system is based on Islamic principles.
The Vatican City: While not a traditional nation-state in the conventional sense, the Vatican City is an independent city-state governed by the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church. It serves as the spiritual and administrative center of the Catholic faith and has a unique status as the smallest internationally recognized independent state in the world.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia is founded on the principles of Islam and is governed according to a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam. The legal system is based on Islamic law (Sharia), and the country's political and social structures are deeply intertwined with Islamic traditions.
The Jewish State of Israel: Israel, established in 1948, defines itself as a Jewish state, aiming to provide a homeland for the Jewish people. While it is a democratic state with a diverse population, its national identity and many of its laws and symbols are rooted in Jewish history, culture, and religion.
While these examples highlight nation-states with strong religious identities, it's important to note that the degree to which religion influences governance, law, and social structures can vary significantly among these countries. Additionally, many countries have official state religions or incorporate religious principles into their legal systems without being defined solely on the basis of religion.
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Yes, here are a few more examples of nation-states with a significant emphasis on religion:
The Kingdom of Bhutan: Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy in South Asia, and Buddhism plays a central role in its cultural and political identity. The majority of Bhutanese people adhere to Vajrayana Buddhism, and the government promotes the concept of Gross National Happiness, which incorporates Buddhist values into national development policies.
The Kingdom of Thailand: While Thailand is officially a constitutional monarchy, Theravada Buddhism is the dominant religion and plays a significant role in Thai culture, society, and governance. The Thai king traditionally holds the title of "Protector of Buddhism," and the Sangha (Buddhist monastic community) wields influence in various aspects of Thai life.
The Kingdom of Cambodia: Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia, where Theravada Buddhism is the official religion and holds a central place in Cambodian society. Buddhist monasteries (wats) are prominent cultural and religious institutions, and the king traditionally has close ties to the Buddhist clergy.
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Afghanistan's government structure and legal system are heavily influenced by Islam, particularly Sunni Islam, which is practiced by the majority of the population. Islamic law (Sharia) has historically played a significant role in governing personal, family, and criminal matters in Afghanistan.
The Kingdom of Morocco: Morocco is a constitutional monarchy in North Africa, where Islam is the state religion and a fundamental component of Moroccan identity and culture. The king holds the title of "Commander of the Faithful" and is considered the spiritual leader of the Moroccan people.
These examples highlight countries where religion, particularly Buddhism or Islam, holds significant cultural, social, and political influence, though they may not be defined solely on the basis of religion as explicitly as some of the previous examples.
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Certainly, here are a couple more examples:
The Republic of Ireland: While Ireland is a secular state with a diverse population, the Catholic Church has historically exerted significant influence on Irish society and politics. Catholicism has been the predominant religion in Ireland for centuries, and it has played a central role in shaping the country's culture, education system, and laws. Though Ireland has become more secular in recent decades, Catholicism still holds considerable cultural and symbolic importance.
The Kingdom of Denmark: Denmark is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe with a predominantly Lutheran population. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark is the state church, and the Danish monarch is required to be a member of this church. While Denmark is a secular state, Lutheranism has historically played a significant role in shaping Danish society, culture, and institutions.
These examples illustrate how religion can influence the cultural, social, and political landscape of a nation-state, even if it does not define the state's identity solely on the basis of religion.
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You are correct. I apologize for any confusion. The examples provided in the first list are indeed the nation-states that most prominently reject a secular state model and define themselves primarily based on religion. The subsequent examples included nations where religion plays a significant role in society but does not necessarily define the state's identity exclusively. Thank you for the clarification. If you have any further questions or need additional information, feel free to ask.
DO NON-JEWISH CITIZENS OR NON-MUSLIM PEOPLE IN SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, AND PAKISTAN HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS AS CITIZENS?
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In Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan, non-Muslim citizens or non-Muslim people may face various legal and social challenges that can impact their rights and freedoms compared to Muslim citizens. Here's a brief overview of the situation in each country:
1. **Saudi Arabia**: Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, and the legal system is based on Islamic law (Sharia). Non-Muslims, including Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others, may face discrimination and restrictions on their religious practices. For example, non-Muslim worship is generally not permitted in public, and religious texts other than the Quran are prohibited. Non-Muslims may also encounter limitations in areas such as employment, education, and social interactions.
2. **Iran**: Iran is an Islamic Republic with a predominantly Shia Muslim population. While the constitution recognizes religious minorities, including Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, as protected religious communities, non-Muslims may face discrimination and legal restrictions. For instance, non-Muslims are not eligible to hold certain high-ranking government positions, and their testimony in court may carry less weight than that of Muslims. Additionally, non-Muslims may encounter limitations on religious practices and expression.
3. **Pakistan**: Pakistan was established as a homeland for Muslims, and Islam is the state religion. While the constitution guarantees religious freedom and equal rights for religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and others, non-Muslims may face discrimination and violence, particularly in areas such as blasphemy laws, forced conversions, and discrimination in education and employment. Religious minorities in Pakistan often report challenges in accessing justice and facing societal pressure to conform to Islamic norms.
Overall, while these countries may formally recognize the rights of non-Muslim citizens or non-Muslim people, the reality on the ground may involve various forms of discrimination, unequal treatment, and limitations on religious freedom and other rights. It's essential to consider the complex socio-political dynamics and legal frameworks in each country when assessing the situation of religious minorities.
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In Israel, the legal framework provides for equality and nondiscrimination regardless of religion or ethnicity. The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel states that the state "will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture."
Israeli citizens, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, have equal rights under the law, including the right to vote, run for office, access education, and participate in the legal system. Israel has Arab citizens who are Muslim, Christian, Druze, and other religions, and they enjoy the same legal rights as Jewish citizens.
However, it's important to acknowledge that there are complexities and challenges within Israeli society, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation of Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Palestinians in these areas face various restrictions on their movement, access to resources, and civil liberties, which are governed by Israeli military law in the occupied territories. Additionally, there have been criticisms of discrimination and unequal treatment faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel in areas such as land ownership, housing, and allocation of resources.
Overall, while Israel's legal system emphasizes equality and nondiscrimination, the reality on the ground is shaped by complex political and historical factors that continue to impact the rights and freedoms of different communities within Israeli society.
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You are correct in stating that Israel has a policy known as the Law of Return, which grants Jews the right to immigrate to Israel and gain Israeli citizenship automatically. This law was enacted in 1950 to address the historical persecution of Jews and provide a safe haven for Jewish refugees and immigrants.
The Law of Return allows Jews from anywhere in the world, regardless of their nationality or current citizenship, to immigrate to Israel and become citizens. It also extends to the spouses, children, and grandchildren of Jews, as well as their non-Jewish spouses, in some cases.
This policy has been a fundamental aspect of Israel's identity as a Jewish state, designed to ensure a Jewish majority population. However, it has been a subject of controversy and criticism, particularly from Palestinian and human rights advocates, who argue that it discriminates against non-Jews and perpetuates inequalities.
While Israel's Law of Return is specific to Jews, non-Jews can still immigrate to Israel through other means, such as family reunification, employment-based immigration, or seeking asylum. However, the process for non-Jews to gain citizenship in Israel is generally more complex and may involve different criteria and procedures compared to the Law of Return for Jews.
RETURNING TO THE SUBJECT OF TROPES, PLEASE DESCRIBE COMMON SYMBOLS OR IMAGERY OR CARTOONS ASSOCIATED WITH THESE TROPES RE: Financial Control/Usury/Greed
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Certainly, here are some common symbols, imagery, or cartoons associated with the tropes of usury and financial exploitation, as well as money and greed stereotypes:
Usury and Financial Exploitation:
Caricatures of Jewish Moneylenders: Throughout history, anti-Semitic propaganda has often depicted Jews as moneylenders or bankers, emphasizing stereotypical physical features such as hooked noses or sinister expressions. These caricatures portray Jews as exploiting others through usurious lending practices, reinforcing negative stereotypes about Jewish involvement in finance.
Images of Jews with Bags of Money: Anti-Semitic imagery may depict Jews holding bags of money or sitting on piles of coins, symbolizing their supposed greed and financial manipulation. These images play into the trope of Jews profiting at the expense of others through exploitative financial practices.
Money and Greed Stereotypes:
Greed Symbols: Cartoons or illustrations may depict Jews with exaggerated features associated with greed, such as oversized hands clutching money bags or gold coins. These images reinforce the stereotype of Jews as being obsessed with wealth and material gain.
Images of Jewish Control: Anti-Semitic propaganda may include images of Jews controlling financial institutions, governments, or media organizations, often depicted as puppet masters pulling the strings behind the scenes. These images convey the idea of Jewish power and influence in shaping economic and political systems for their own gain.
Stereotypical Symbols of Wealth: Anti-Semitic imagery may incorporate symbols of wealth and opulence, such as mansions, luxury cars, or expensive jewelry, to portray Jews as living extravagantly at the expense of others. These symbols reinforce the stereotype of Jews as inherently greedy and materialistic.
It's important to note that these symbols and imagery are deeply offensive and rooted in centuries of anti-Semitic prejudice. They perpetuate harmful stereotypes and contribute to discrimination and hatred toward Jewish individuals and communities. Recognizing and challenging these stereotypes is essential in combating anti-Semitism and promoting tolerance and understanding.
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Criticism of Israel, like criticism of any country or government, should be based on specific policies, actions, and behaviors rather than relying on stereotypes or prejudices against Jewish people. Here are some ways to criticize Israel without resorting to anti-Semitic tropes:
Focus on Specific Policies and Actions: Criticize specific policies, actions, or decisions of the Israeli government, such as settlement expansion, military actions, human rights abuses, or restrictions on freedom of movement for Palestinians. Base criticism on factual evidence and international law rather than generalizations or stereotypes.
Use Respectful Language: Frame criticism in a respectful and constructive manner, avoiding inflammatory language or rhetoric that demonizes or vilifies Israelis or Jewish people as a whole. Recognize the diversity of opinions within Israeli society and engage in dialogue with nuance and empathy.
Differentiate Between Government and People: Distinguish between criticism of the Israeli government and its policies and criticism of the Israeli people or Jewish individuals. Acknowledge that individuals may hold a range of views on Israeli politics and policies, and avoid attributing the actions of the government to all Israelis or Jews.
Support Human Rights and International Law: Base criticism on principles of human rights, international law, and humanitarian values. Highlight violations of human rights and international law, such as illegal settlements, excessive use of force, or discriminatory practices, while advocating for justice, equality, and accountability for all parties involved.
Promote Dialogue and Understanding: Foster constructive dialogue and engagement with Israelis, Palestinians, and other stakeholders to promote mutual understanding, empathy, and reconciliation. Encourage efforts toward peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through diplomacy, negotiation, and respect for the rights and aspirations of both peoples.
Combat Anti-Semitism: Be vigilant in recognizing and condemning anti-Semitic language, stereotypes, and tropes, whether they come from individuals or groups critical of Israel or from other sources. Reject conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, and other forms of anti-Jewish bigotry, and stand in solidarity with Jewish communities in the fight against all forms of discrimination and prejudice.
By adhering to these principles, it is possible to engage in meaningful and respectful criticism of Israel's policies and actions without resorting to anti-Semitic tropes or stereotypes. Effective criticism should be rooted in principles of justice, equality, and human rights, promoting constructive dialogue and understanding among all parties involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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To depict the State of Israel in cartoons, symbols, or imagery without relying on harmful tropes or stereotypes, it's important to focus on representing the country in a respectful and accurate manner. Here are some general guidelines:
Focus on Cultural Symbols: Use symbols and imagery that are culturally significant to Israel, such as the Star of David, the menorah, olive trees, or historical landmarks like the Western Wall or Masada. These symbols reflect the diverse cultural and religious heritage of Israel without perpetuating stereotypes.
Highlight Diversity: Depict the diverse population of Israel, including Jews, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and other ethnic and religious groups. Show scenes of people from different backgrounds living and working together in harmony, celebrating their shared heritage and traditions.
Emphasize Achievements and Innovation: Showcase Israel's contributions to technology, science, art, and culture. Highlight achievements in fields such as agriculture, medicine, cybersecurity, and environmental sustainability, emphasizing Israel's reputation as a hub of innovation and creativity.
Depict Landscapes and Landmarks: Illustrate the natural beauty and diverse landscapes of Israel, including beaches, mountains, deserts, and historical sites. Showcase iconic landmarks such as the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, and the ancient city of Jerusalem, celebrating Israel's rich history and natural wonders.
Promote Peace and Coexistence: Illustrate scenes that promote peace, reconciliation, and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Show imagery of people from both communities working together for mutual understanding, dialogue, and peace-building initiatives.
Avoid Negative Stereotypes: Refrain from using imagery or symbols that perpetuate negative stereotypes or biases about Israel or its people. Avoid caricatures or exaggerated depictions that may evoke harmful tropes related to religion, ethnicity, or nationality.
By following these guidelines and focusing on positive and accurate representations of Israel, cartoons, symbols, and imagery can contribute to promoting understanding, dialogue, and appreciation for the diversity and complexity of the country and its people.
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When depicting the State of Israel in a negative manner regarding its policies of occupation, it's crucial to avoid using symbols or imagery that perpetuate harmful stereotypes or incite hatred. Instead, focus on symbols that represent the realities of occupation, human rights abuses, and violations of international law. Here are some specific symbols that can be used to depict the negative aspects of Israel's occupation policies:
Barbed Wire and Checkpoints: Symbolize the barriers and restrictions imposed on Palestinians' freedom of movement within the occupied territories through imagery of barbed wire fences, military checkpoints, and concrete barriers.
Broken Chains: Represent the denial of Palestinians' basic human rights and freedoms under occupation by depicting chains broken or shackles being removed, symbolizing liberation and the struggle for freedom.
Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets: Illustrate the use of excessive force and violence against Palestinian civilians by depicting tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and other weapons used by Israeli security forces to suppress protests and demonstrations.
Eviction Notices and Demolition Orders: Highlight the displacement and dispossession of Palestinian families from their homes and land through imagery of eviction notices, demolition orders, and bulldozers demolishing Palestinian homes.
Colonialist Imagery: Depict Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as symbols of colonization and expansionism, showing imagery of bulldozers, construction equipment, and Israeli flags planted on Palestinian land.
Olive Trees Uprooted: Symbolize the destruction of Palestinian livelihoods and agricultural land by depicting imagery of olive trees being uprooted, a common practice in the occupied territories.
Separation Wall: Illustrate the impact of the separation barrier on Palestinian communities by depicting imagery of the concrete wall snaking through Palestinian land, dividing families and communities and restricting movement.
Children in Detention: Highlight the plight of Palestinian children detained by Israeli authorities by depicting imagery of children behind bars or in handcuffs, emphasizing the impact of occupation on the most vulnerable members of society.
Key Symbol: Use the symbol of a key to represent the Palestinian right of return and the displacement of Palestinian refugees from their homes during the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, emphasizing the ongoing injustice and dispossession faced by Palestinians under occupation.
When using these symbols, it's important to do so in a responsible and respectful manner, avoiding exaggeration or sensationalism and ensuring that the imagery accurately reflects the lived experiences of Palestinians living under occupation. Additionally, accompanying context or explanations can help viewers understand the symbolism and the broader political and humanitarian issues at play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The most widely recognized secular symbol for the State of Israel is the Menorah. The menorah is a seven-branched candelabra that has been a symbol of Judaism for centuries and holds significant cultural and historical importance. It is often used as a symbol of the Jewish people and their religious heritage.
However, if we are specifically looking for a non-religious symbol associated with the State of Israel, one prominent example is the Star of David. While the Star of David has religious significance as a symbol of Judaism, it is also widely used as a secular national symbol of Israel. It appears on the flag of Israel, as well as on official government documents, military insignia, and various national emblems.
The Star of David represents the Jewish identity of the State of Israel and its connection to the Jewish people worldwide. It is recognized internationally as a symbol of Israel and is commonly associated with the country's cultural, historical, and political identity.
ChatGPT
You are correct that the menorah, while a significant symbol in Judaism, may not be inclusive of all citizens of Israel, including the Arab population. However, it's important to note that the menorah does have historical and cultural significance in Israel and is sometimes used in official capacities by the Israeli government.
In official government contexts, the Menorah is often used in a historical or cultural context rather than a religious one. For example:
The Emblem of the State of Israel: The official emblem of the State of Israel features a menorah flanked by olive branches on both sides. The menorah in this context represents the historical and cultural heritage of the Jewish people, as well as the biblical references to Israel as a "light unto the nations."
Government Seals and Insignia: The menorah may also appear on official government seals, insignia, and documents, representing the state's connection to Jewish history and heritage. These uses are generally symbolic rather than religious, reflecting Israel's status as a Jewish-majority state.
While the menorah has official usage in Israel, it's important to consider the sensitivities and diversity of the population when using symbols in official capacities. Inclusive symbols that reflect the multicultural nature of Israeli society can help promote unity and cohesion among all citizens, regardless of their religious or ethnic background.
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Indeed, the use of the menorah in the emblem of the State of Israel has been a subject of debate and criticism, particularly regarding its inclusivity in representing all citizens of Israel, including the Arab population. While the menorah holds significant cultural and historical importance in Jewish tradition, its exclusive association with Judaism may not fully reflect the diverse population and multicultural nature of Israeli society.
The emblem's inclusion of the menorah has been interpreted as emphasizing the Jewish character of the state, potentially marginalizing non-Jewish citizens. This has led to discussions about the need for symbols and emblems that better reflect the pluralistic identity of Israel and promote inclusivity and equality for all citizens, regardless of their religious or ethnic background.
Efforts to promote symbols and imagery that are more inclusive and representative of Israel's diverse population are important for fostering unity, understanding, and mutual respect among all citizens. This may involve reimagining or updating official emblems and symbols to better reflect the principles of democracy, equality, and multiculturalism upon which Israel aspires to be founded.
POLICY BRIEFING FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EXPLAINING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE RIGHTS OF ISRAELI JEWS VERSUS THE RIGHTS OF RESIDENTS IN THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
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[CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET]
Policy Briefing for the President of the United States
Subject: Rights of Israeli Jews vs. Residents in the Occupied Territories
Executive Summary:
The issue of human rights and legal status within Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) remains a complex and sensitive matter with significant implications for regional stability and U.S. foreign policy interests. This briefing outlines the key differences between the rights afforded to Israeli Jews and residents of the Occupied Territories, highlighting the disparities in legal frameworks and the realities on the ground.
Background:
Rights of Israeli Jews:
Israeli Jews, as citizens of the State of Israel, enjoy full legal rights and protections under Israeli law. These rights include the right to vote, freedom of movement, access to education and healthcare, and equal treatment before the law.
Israeli Jews also benefit from policies such as the Law of Return, which grants them the right to immigrate to Israel and gain citizenship automatically, as well as various affirmative action programs designed to promote Jewish settlement and development in certain areas.
Residents in the Occupied Territories:
Residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), including Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, face a different legal and administrative framework governed by Israeli military law.
While some Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem hold Israeli residency status, they do not have full citizenship rights and face restrictions on their rights and freedoms, including limitations on building permits, residency rights, and access to services.
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are subject to Israeli military control and face a range of restrictions on their movement, access to resources, and civil liberties. These restrictions include checkpoints, barriers, and the separation barrier in the West Bank, as well as the blockade of Gaza, which severely limits the movement of goods and people.
Key Differences:
Legal Status:
Israeli Jews are citizens of the State of Israel and enjoy full citizenship rights, while residents of the Occupied Territories are subject to a different legal status under Israeli military occupation.
Access to Resources:
Israeli Jews generally have better access to resources such as water, land, and infrastructure compared to residents of the Occupied Territories, who face restrictions and inequalities in resource allocation.
Freedom of Movement:
Israeli Jews have greater freedom of movement within Israel and internationally, while residents of the Occupied Territories face significant restrictions on their movement, including checkpoints, roadblocks, and barriers.
Security and Justice:
Israeli Jews have access to Israeli civil courts and legal protections, while residents of the Occupied Territories are subject to Israeli military law and military courts, which often lack due process and fair trial guarantees.
Recommendations:
Support Diplomatic Efforts: The United States should continue to support diplomatic efforts aimed at achieving a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Promote Human Rights: The United States should advocate for the protection of human rights and equal treatment for all residents of Israel and the Occupied Territories, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Endorse Two-State Solution: The United States should reaffirm its commitment to a two-state solution based on the principles of international law, United Nations resolutions, and mutual recognition and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Conclusion:
Addressing the disparities in rights and legal status between Israeli Jews and residents of the Occupied Territories is essential for achieving peace, stability, and justice in the region. The United States has a crucial role to play in promoting human rights, supporting diplomatic efforts, and advancing a just and sustainable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[END OF BRIEFING]
PLEASE EXPAND ON THE TYPES OF RESTRICTIONS AND VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS FACED BY PALESTINIANS UNDER OCCUPATION, AND EXPAND WITH DETAILS SPECIFIC TO RESIDENTS OF THE GAZA STRIP.
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Policy Briefing for the President of the United States
Executive Summary:
The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), particularly in the Gaza Strip, presents numerous challenges regarding human rights violations and restrictions on fundamental freedoms. This briefing provides an overview of the types of restrictions and violations faced by Palestinians under occupation, with a specific focus on residents of the Gaza Strip.
Occupation of Palestinian Territories:
The Gaza Strip, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Despite disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel maintains significant control over its borders, airspace, and coastal waters, effectively rendering it under occupation.
Blockade of the Gaza Strip:
Since 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas takeover of the territory. This blockade severely restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, exacerbating humanitarian conditions and impeding economic development.
Freedom of Movement:
Residents of the Gaza Strip face severe restrictions on their freedom of movement, both within the territory and in traveling to the West Bank or Israel. Israeli-imposed restrictions on the movement of people and goods, including a land and sea blockade, have led to a humanitarian crisis, affecting access to healthcare, education, and employment opportunities.
Access to Essential Services:
The blockade of the Gaza Strip has led to shortages of essential goods and services, including food, medicine, fuel, and clean water. Infrastructure, including electricity and sanitation facilities, has been severely impacted, contributing to dire living conditions for the population.
Economic Development:
Restrictions on the import and export of goods, as well as limitations on fishing and agricultural activities, have hindered economic development in the Gaza Strip. High unemployment rates and poverty levels persist, further exacerbating social and economic disparities.
Healthcare and Education:
The healthcare and education sectors in the Gaza Strip face significant challenges due to limited resources, infrastructure damage, and restrictions on the movement of people and goods. Access to medical treatment, specialized care, and educational opportunities is severely constrained.
Violence and Conflict:
The Gaza Strip has experienced recurrent cycles of violence and armed conflict, resulting in civilian casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and displacement of populations. Palestinian civilians, including women and children, bear the brunt of the violence and suffer from trauma and psychological distress.
End the Blockade:
The United States should support efforts to lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip, allowing for the free movement of people and goods and alleviating humanitarian suffering.
Humanitarian Assistance:
The United States should increase humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip to address immediate needs, including food aid, medical supplies, and infrastructure rehabilitation.
Promote Dialogue and Negotiation:
The United States should actively promote dialogue and negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians to achieve a comprehensive and just resolution to the conflict, based on the principles of international law, human rights, and mutual recognition.
Conclusion:
The situation in the Gaza Strip underscores the urgent need for concerted international efforts to address humanitarian concerns, promote respect for human rights, and advance a sustainable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States has a crucial role to play in facilitating dialogue, providing humanitarian assistance, and advocating for the rights and dignity of all Palestinians living under occupation.
[END OF BRIEFING]
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You're welcome! If you have any more questions or need further assistance in the future, feel free to reach out. Have a great day!
"In Washington, Rep. Edna Kelly, New York Democrat, told the House today that there was no evidence to support the SNCC charges that Israel massacred Arab civilians. As amember of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she said she was disturbed by the SNCC charges, and had determined that the State Department found no indication of truth in them." –Jewish Telegraphic Agency – 17 Aug 1967 [download newsletter]
The Allegation of Massacres of Palestinians appears to be the CAUSE of the "Outrage" about the article
⏩Link to SNCC Issue 1967June-July Issue [FEATURING THE ORIGINAL CARTOON IN ITS CONTEXT]
This issue contains the alleged ‘anti-semitic’ Cartoon in a section entitled “Test Your Knowledge” on “The Palestine Problem.” It is a truly remarkable issue covering topics of police brutality, American Apartheid, repressive university administration, complicity of the press in upholding Apartheid through factors such as self-censorship, contempt for some American communities, and sheer incompetence.
⏩Link to Jewish Telegraph Agency 1967Aug17 [featuring blowback about the cartoon feature in SNCC's newsletter]
In this issue, there is the obligatory condemnation made by some “Negro” leaders against any questioning of the Apartheid regime in Israel when some factions in the Jewish community make the charge of “anti-semitism” against verifiable reality due to the unequal power between “Negros” and American Jews who have outsized influence over unions–particulary public unions such as teacher unions. The righteous cause must give way to political expediency of maintaining hard-fought inroads into the labor market. Note, MLK is quoted as Condemning Anti-semitism as a matter of principle--but MLK is NOT quoted as saying he believed the SNCC cartoon to be Anti-semitic as do quotes from some other leaders.
Click Here to View Document Statement, "The Middle-East Crisis," August 15, 1967, crmvet.org
Khan Yunis Massacre (1956) Click Here to View Article - Source: palestinechronicle.com
15 August 1967 (in response to controversy)
Source: Digital SNCC Gateway LINK
What is considered SNCC’s Palestine Statement is actually an article published in the June-July 1967 SNCC Newsletter, shortly after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, under the title, “Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge.” It was written by Ethel Minor, who was communications director at the time, and her primary source was a pamphlet published by the Palestine Research Center, called “Do You Know? Twenty Basic Facts about the Palestine Problem.” The article included illustrations by artist, Kofi Bailey.
Historian Clayborne Carson writes about the release of the statement:
“Although the press portrayed this article as an official SNCC policy statement, it was actually written to provoke discussion of the Middle East conflict by SNCC’s staff and was distributed outside of the organization without the approval of many of SNCC’s leaders.”
James Forman, who had become the director of SNCC’s newly-formed International Affairs Commission in June 1967, had apparently urged against taking a formal stand until SNCC could call a special staff meeting where staff could be educated about the issue. He was abroad when the article was published. After its release, John Wilson, who was then administrator of SNCC’s National Office, called a press conference to announce that the article did not represent SNCC’s official position. Soon after, other staffers called a press conference in Atlanta to release the article.
SNCC released a more formal statement in response on August 15, 1967, entitled “The Middle-East Crisis.” It incorporates many of the points that were made in the June-July article, but within an added context that acknowledged the horrors of the Holocaust, the suppression of American Jewish voices that protested Zionism, and the critical support given to Zionism by the United States.
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 266-269.
Source Click Here to View Document "Third World Round-Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge," SNCC Newsletter, June-July 1967, 4-5, crmvet.org
"In Washington, Rep. Edna Kelly, New York Democrat, told the House today that there was no evidence to support the SNCC charges that Israel massacred Arab civilians. As amember of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she said she was disturbed by the SNCC charges, and had determined that the State Department found no indication of truth in them." –Jewish Telegraphic Agency – 17 Aug 1967
Were the Zionist Upset about a Cartoon or engaged in Deflecting Attention from the Allegations of a Massacre that a House Representative ALLEGED did NOT Happen in the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee?
Denial of Reality by Rep. Edna Kelley in her remarks quoted by JTA in 1967.
Rep. Edna Kelley DENIED the FACT that the STATE Department did in FACT know about Israeli massacres of civilians a DECADE earlier when she stated in 1967 that State had no information about massacres. Reports from the U.N. about casualties were reported at least as early as 15 December 1957 by the UNRWA Director in a Special Report.
Click Here to View Document - Source: UN
U.N. AlDE·SAYS RIOT IN RAFAH KILLED 50
Published: November 18, 1956 | special to the new York times PDF
TEl' AVIV, Israel, Nov. 17- Fifty Egyptians were killed in riots at Rafah earlier this week, a spokesman for a United Nations agency said today.
The Israeli 'Military Governor of the Gaza Strip, Lieut. Col. Haim Gaon, had said that the riots resulted in the death of at least eleven Egyptians and thewounding of at least twenty-five.
The military authorities did not explain why reports on the rioting had been withheld from the press for four days. Information was released by the Israelis after news of the riots had leaked out from sources in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
A United Nations spokesman put the number of dead as high as fifty.
According to the Israeli version the riots, broke out last Monday after Israeli guards had been withdrawn from a United Nations food warehouse in Rafah. The refugees, believing the Israelis had withdrawn, became panicky and about 5,000 rushed the warehouse. According to the Israelis, the looting was stopped when a new detail of troops arrived to take over guarding the food stores.
Colonel Gaon said today the shooting had resulted when a number of Egyptian soldiers tried to escape.
The United Nations agency's version of the shooting was that the troops tried to stop the looters by firing over their heads and then fired into the throng.
Hiba Yazbek, Aaron Boxerman, Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Adam Rasgon, The New York Times, Victoria Kim, Anushka Patil, Adam Sella, Patrick Kingsley
Published Feb. 29, 2024 Updated March 4, 2024 yNyTimes.com
From <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/29/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news>
Gazan authorities say that more than 100 people were killed and hundreds injured.
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The Palestinian News Agency reported that Israeli forces had fired at thousands waiting for aid in Gaza City, while Israeli officials said Gazans were trampled and ran over by aid trucks, and that soldiers fired warning shots in the air.CreditCredit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli forces opened fire while a crowd was gathered on Thursday near a convoy of trucks carrying desperately needed aid to Gaza City, part of a chaotic scene in which scores of people were killed and injured, according to Gazan health officials and the Israeli military.
The details of what happened were unclear, with officials from both sides offering starkly different accounts. The Gazan health ministry said in a statement that more than 100 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a “massacre.” Israeli military officials said most of the casualties were from a stampede of Gazans as they crushed around the aid trucks and that soldiers had fired only after a crowd separately approached them in a threatening way.
Around 100 people with gunshot wounds were brought to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, according to its director, Husam Abu Safiya, and injured people were being brought to other hospitals in the north. Mr. Abu Safiya said that the hospital had also received 12 bodies of people killed by gunfire.
According to an Israeli military official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, some 30 trucks ferrying humanitarian aid traveled from the Kerem Shalom crossing between southern Israel and Gaza along the coastal road into northern Gaza.
As the trucks neared Gaza City early Thursday morning, thousands of people surrounded the trucks in an attempt to take supplies, leading to a crush in which dozens were injured and killed, in some cases run over by aid trucks seeking to extricate themselves, according to the official.
The official said that several hundred meters farther south — at the tail end of the convoy — dozens of civilians who had crowded the trucks there then approached Israeli troops and a tank securing the road.
Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a televised briefing that the soldiers opened fire “only in face of danger when the mob moved in a manner which endangered them.”
“We did not fire on those seeking aid, despite the accusations,” he said. “We did not fire on the humanitarian convoy, either from the air or the land. We secured it so it could reach northern Gaza.”
Admiral Hagari did not elaborate on whether any people were killed or injured in the shooting and declined to provide a precise timeline, except that the trucks neared Gaza City around 4:45 a.m.
Neither the Palestinian account nor the Israeli account could be confirmed. A witness at the scene, Yehia Al Masri, a doctor, said that he had seen dozens of dead and injured people with gunshot wounds, as well as bodies in the street of people who appeared to have died in a stampede or to have been hit by aid trucks.
Gazans, especially in the north of the territory, have become increasingly desperate for food. The United Nations and other relief groups are struggling to deliver supplies amid Israel’s nearly five-month military offensive, as law and order breaks down and Israel imposes restrictions on deliveries.
The Israeli military released a drone video, which it also edited, that showed hundreds of people crowding around trucks along Al-Rashid Road in southwestern Gaza City. At one point in the footage, people start running, with some crawling behind walls and appearing to take cover.
After a cut in the video, at least a dozen bodies are visible on the ground; it is not clear whether the people are injured or dead. During the panic, a few people appear to be struck by the aid trucks. Two Israeli military vehicles are also visible at the scene.
Satellite image by Planet Labs, captured Feb. 14.
By Lazaro Gamio and Haley Willis
It was unclear who was overseeing the convoy on Thursday. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. aid group that serves Palestinians, said on social media that neither his agency, UNRWA, nor any other U.N. bodies “were involved in this distribution.”
Palestinian leaders, Arab officials and international aid groups condemned the bloodshed, and a Hamas official warned that the killings could derail talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire.
President Biden said he was still learning details of what happened, but believed the deaths could jeopardize the diplomatic talks. “I know it will,” he told reporters.
Olivia Dalton, a White House spokeswoman, called the deaths “deeply tragic,” and said that “too many civilian lives have been lost as a result of military operations in Gaza.” She added, “We think that this latest event needs to be thoroughly investigated.”
Gaza has been under an almost complete siege since the war began on Oct. 7 with an attack on Israel led by Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that had long controlled Gaza. Aid became absolutely critical for Gaza’s more than two million residents as Israel began a bombardment and then invaded the territory.
The United Nations recently warned that at least a quarter of Gaza’s population is “one step away from famine,” and the Gazan health ministry said on Wednesday that at least six children had died in the territory from dehydration and malnutrition.
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A body of a Palestinian in Gaza City on Thursday, after Israeli soldiers opened fire near a convoy of aid trucks in which dozens were killed and injured.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The ministry said that the death toll from the convoy site on Thursday was expected to rise as wounded Palestinians arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital, where medical staff were “unable to deal with the volume and type of injuries” amid a lack of medical supplies and staff.
The World Food Program said last week that it had paused food deliveries to isolated northern Gaza because of the challenges of safely delivering aid there. Mr. Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, said on Sunday that the agency was last able to deliver aid to northern Gaza over a month ago.
Lawlessness is rampant in many parts of northern and southern Gaza, residents and aid officials say, with no authority emerging to take charge of public order after Israel’s ouster of Hamas forces in those areas. Israeli leaders have said they do not want to administer civilian life in Gaza, although they intend to retain security control there indefinitely.
In recent weeks, large crowds of desperate Gazans have repeatedly rushed aid convoys, stripping them of their contents, occasionally while armed.
The Israeli military has said it is working to ensure that humanitarian convoys can reach the many Gazans who depend on them. Some Gazan policemen are now refusing to protect convoys because they fear they will be targeted by Israeli soldiers, Western officials say.
In late January, a strike hit a crowd of people waiting for aid trucks in Gaza City, killing multiple people and injuring scores of others, Gazan health authorities said.
Haley Willis, Aric Toler and Robin Stein contributed reporting.
A witness said he saw people with gunshot wounds and sacks of flour covered in blood.
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Mourning outside Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where the injured and dead were taken after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd near an aid convoy.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A Gazan doctor said he saw dozens of dead and injured with gunshot wounds, including to the head, neck and groin, lying in the street on Thursday after Israeli forces opened fire while a crowd was gathered near aid trucks before dawn in Gaza City.
The doctor, Yehia Al Masri, said that he and his family were staying with relatives when they heard shelling and gunfire nearby at around 4 a.m. When the shooting subsided, he ventured outside to an intersection near the coast and encountered a gruesome and desperate scene, with bodies in the street and sacks of flour soaked in blood.
Some of the dead appeared to have died in a stampede, while others appeared to have been hit by the aid trucks that had fled the scene, Dr. Al Masri said.
Driven by hunger, some people had left wounded relatives and friends on the ground to rush to the aid trucks, he added. Others loaded injured people into cars or on carts and then tried to get some flour before heading to the hospital.
“The soul is exchanged for a flour sack,” Dr. Al Masri said. He added, “We have reached famine and the situation is beyond description.”
Dr. Al Masri, who works at Al-Shifa Hospital, said he had provided rudimentary first aid using ropes, string, pieces of wood and cloth torn from the clothes of the injured people themselves because he had no appropriate medical tools. He said he stayed at the scene for several hours before heading to the emergency department at Al-Shifa, the largest medical facility in Gaza, where he helped as the dead and injured continued to arrive.
Gaza’s health ministry has said Al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza have effectively ceased functioning, saying on Thursday that generators were no longer running and the facilities could not provide lifesaving care.
Dr. Hani Bseso, who works at Al-Shifa, said in a brief voice message that the situation there was “very difficult today,” adding: “With very few medical staff, many injuries and no operating rooms, the doctors were not even sure where to start.”
Around 100 people with gunshot wounds were brought to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, according to its director, Husam Abu Safiya. The hospital had also received 12 bodies, he said. Another witness at the hospital, Hussam Shabat, 22, a journalist, said all the casualties he had seen had bullet wounds, including to the chest, jaw and shoulder.
Hiba Yazbek contributed reporting.
Growing lawlessness has kept northern Gaza increasingly cut off from aid.
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Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid Sunday on a beachfront in Gaza City.Credit...Mahmoud Essa/Associated Press
Since the start of the war, few aid trucks carrying food have reached the Gaza Strip’s devastated north, setting off a widespread hunger crisis.
The crisis came to a head last week after the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, joined UNRWA, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, in halting its aid shipments to the north, citing the overwhelming lawlessness that has taken hold in the area.
Scott Anderson, UNRWA’s deputy director for Gaza, said the chaos in the north has made it impossible for the agency to ensure its aid reaches the proper beneficiaries without causing harm to people in need.
“How in the world can you tell who got that flour? It’s simply not possible,” he said, referring to incidents in which hundreds swarmed trucks in the north. “What we don’t want is that only the people who are younger and stronger get food.”
UNRWA, short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, Mr. Anderson said, was concerned that its aid could end up in the hands of militants or people looking to profit at the expense of their fellow residents.
The last time UNRWA tried to bring trucks to the north was Feb. 5, but one of them came under fire, according to the agency. The most recent delivery to reach the area was Jan. 23. Before that, only 93 trucks entered in January.
As humanitarian groups have warned in recent days that many Palestinians in the north were facing starvation, Israel has permitted airdrops of aid in the area and the entry of some trucks unaffiliated with the United Nations.
Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion has devastated the north, but it has also collapsed Hamas’s governing structure, unleashing anarchy. A small number of police officers from the Hamas-run security forces have shown up to work in Gaza City in recent weeks, but they have largely failed to restore law and order, residents said.
Footage posted on social media in recent months showed scores of Palestinians surrounding trucks along the beach in Gaza City, grabbing bags of flour and running with them back toward the residential parts of the city. The trucks usually come from the south, entering the north via the north-south coastal road.
Desperate Palestinians in northern Gaza have turned to raiding the pantries of people who fled and grinding animal feed for flour. While makeshift markets offer some food, prices have risen astronomically. A 25-kilogram bag of flour goes for $560, more than what many people in Gaza brought home as monthly income before the war, according to Mr. Anderson.
He said one solution to the current crisis was for Israel to allow trucks to enter northern Gaza from the border region in the north, instead of making them come from the south on the coastal road.
If trucks were brought into Gaza from a new entry point without tipping off the public, he said, it would be possible to deliver the aid to warehouses and distribute it widely. He added that delivering aid consistently thereafter would encourage the public to stop emptying trucks in the middle of the road.
“If we can get 100 trucks of flour in, that would be enough to flood the market,” he said.
Palestinian leaders condemn the deaths of civilians gathered for food aid.
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Carrying the bodies of people killed near Gaza City where people had gathered to collect food aid, on Thursday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Palestinian leaders, Arab officials and international aid groups issued condemnations on Thursday after dozens of civilians were killed as Israeli forces opened fire in northern Gaza where people had gathered to collect food aid.
The Palestinian Authority, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, called the deaths a “heinous act” by Israeli forces and demanded that the international community, especially Israel’s chief ally the United States, intervene to stop Israel’s military offensive.
“The killing of this large number of innocent civilian victims who risked their livelihood is considered an integral part of the genocidal war committed by the occupation government against our people,” the Palestinian Authority’s presidency said in a statement.
The circumstances of what happened on Thursday morning remained unclear. Gazan officials said that Israeli tanks had opened fire with machine guns at a crowd of thousands who were waiting for food that has been increasingly scarce amid Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. An Israeli official acknowledged that troops had opened fire, but said most of the people had been killed or injured in a stampede several hundred yards away.
An official with Hamas, the armed group at war with Israel in Gaza, accused Israel of targeting “masses of citizens” who were desperately seeking food “to suppress the hunger of their children,” and warned that the killings could derail talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire.
“We will not allow the path of negotiations, through which we seek to end the human suffering of our people that was created by the occupation, to be a cover for the enemy’s continued crimes against our people in the Gaza Strip,” the official, Izzat Al-Rishq, said in a statement on social media.
A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Matthew Miller, said that “we are urgently seeking additional information on exactly what took place,” and that the United States would be monitoring an Israeli investigation closely “and pressing for answers.”
“If there’s anything that the aerial footage of today’s incident makes clear, it is just how desperate the situation on the ground is,” Mr. Miller said. “People need more food. They need more water. They need medicine and other humanitarian goods, and they need it now.”
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry denounced Israel for “the targeting of defenseless civilians” and urged the international community to “take a firm stance by obligating Israel to respect international humanitarian law.”
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, condemned the deaths and reiterated his call for a cease-fire and unconditional release of hostages, he said in a statement.
“The desperate civilians in Gaza need urgent help, including those in the besieged north where the United Nations has not been able to deliver aid in more than a week,” Mr. Guterres said.
Oxfam, the international charity, said it was “appalled” by the reports. “Israel deliberately targeting civilians after starving them is a gross violation of international humanitarian laws and our humanity,” the group said.
B’tselem, an Israeli human rights advocacy group, said that Palestinians in Gaza were suffering because of “the humanitarian crisis Israel has intentionally created,” and that the large crowd had gathered because of desperation.
“Whether they were shot or trampled to death, intentionally opening fire at civilians is a severe violation of international law and constitutes a war crime,” the group said in a statement. “This is especially grave given a crowd of thousands begging for aid.”
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel, Michael Crowley from Washington and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.
— Hiba Yazbekreporting from Amman, Jordan
Biden says the shooting will complicate cease-fire talks.
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President Biden at Air Base Andrews, in Maryland, before departing to Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
President Biden said on Thursday that while he was still learning details of the shooting that killed or wounded hundreds in northern Gaza, he thought the deaths could jeopardize efforts to reach a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
Asked whether the shooting would complicate negotiations, Mr. Biden said, “I know it will.”
After saying earlier this week that he hoped a cease-fire deal could be reached by next Monday, the president signaled that was unlikely, though he was trying to remain optimistic.
“Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful,” he told reporters before traveling to Brownsville, Texas, to make a rare visit to the country’s southern border.
The death toll in Gaza surpasses 30,000, the local health ministry says.
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Rubble around Al-Farouk Mosque after an airstrike in Rafah in southern Gaza last week.Credit...Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The death toll in Gaza passed a somber milestone on Thursday as the local health ministry reported that more than 30,000 people had been killed in the war since Oct. 7.
The number of deaths since Israel launched its military offensive against Hamas in Gaza had already surpassed the tolls of any previous Arab conflict with Israel when it rose above 20,000 in December. Many experts say the official toll is very likely an undercount, given the difficulty of accurately tallying deaths amid unrelenting fighting, communications disruptions, a collapsing medical system and people still believed to be under rubble.
Still, the reported figure is staggering — roughly one person killed for every 73 Palestinians in Gaza, whose population is about 2.2 million.
The figures provided by the Gazan health ministry do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Many international observers have said they believe that the ministry’s overall toll is reliable, while the proportion of Hamas-affiliated fighters among those killed remains unclear.
An article published in November in the British medical journal The Lancet said that an analysis of the first weeks of mortality reports from the health ministry “suggested reasonable data quality” and that the deaths were “among Gazan population groups that are likely to be largely civilian.”
Israel has come under growing international pressure to stop its offensive, and even President Biden, its strongest ally, has expressed growing frustration with the rising death toll and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But Israeli leaders have insisted that they will continue fighting in order to eliminate Hamas, the armed group that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which officials say at least 1,200 people were killed and 240 others taken hostage, setting off the war.
U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators are working to broker a cease-fire and the release of hostages, but the prospects of that remain murky.
On Wednesday, Hamas’s political leader said in a televised speech that while the group was open to making a deal with Israel, it was also ready to continue fighting. He called on Palestinians to march to the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem in March, raising the prospect of fresh clashes with Israeli security forces around a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.
In addition to bearing the risk of being killed in strikes or fighting, Palestinians are living with the growing specter of famine and disease.
The health ministry has said infants have died from dehydration and malnutrition in recent days. A physician who was in Gaza in late January told CBS’s “60 Minutes” this week that people were dying “in a fully treatable situation” because of the lack of basic medical supplies.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said on Thursday in a social media post marking the 30,000 deaths that most of those killed in Gaza were women and children.
“This horrific violence and suffering must end,” he wrote. “Cease-fire.”
U.S. views on Israel are far more divided than a poll cited by Netanyahu suggests.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel issued a brief statement defending what he called his country’s “considerable success.”Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock
Responding to recent comments from President Biden that Israel could “lose support from around the world” if it continued on its “incredibly conservative” path, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed this week to a U.S. poll showing that an overwhelming majority of the American public backs Israel over Hamas, citing it as evidence of strong support for his country’s war in Gaza.
But Americans’ views of the issue are in fact far more divided, results from industry-leading pollsters show.
In a brief statement defending what he called Israel’s “considerable success,” Mr. Netanyahu cited a poll, conducted by Harvard-CAPS Harris over Feb. 21 and Feb. 22, that asked registered voters in the United States, as part of a series of other questions about Israel, “In this conflict do you support more Israel or more Hamas?”
Some 82 percent of the respondents, the equivalent of more than four out of five U.S. voters, said they supported Israel more than Hamas. “This will help us continue the campaign until total victory,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
But more expansive questions asked by top polling firms since the war began have consistently shown complexity in Americans’ views on Israel and its conduct in Gaza.
When asked whether the United States should “support Israel, support Hamas or not take a position” in the war, just 45 percent of registered voters chose Israel, according to a poll conducted by the Marquette University Law School between Feb. 5 and Feb. 15.
More voters — 48 percent — said the United States should not take a position, and 7 percent said it should support Hamas.
The Marquette University Law School is one of the most respected pollsters in the United States when it comes to questions of accuracy and methodological transparency, and it holds the maximum rating — three stars — given by the analytical website FiveThirtyEight in its pollster ratings.
Harris Insights & Analytics, the organization behind the Harvard-CAPS Harris poll, holds a 1.6-star rating from FiveThirtyEight and a far lower transparency score, which attempts to quantify how transparent a pollster is with how it conducts polls. The methodology of the Harvard-CAPS Harris poll has been questioned by some other polling firms, particularly in light of media attention received by its “dramatic” but sometimes “bizarrely inconsistent” findings on Americans’ views of Israel, Semafor reported in December.
Another well-regarded pollster, AP-NORC, found in late January that half of U.S. adults felt Israel’s military response in Gaza had “gone too far.” Just 31 percent said it had “been about right,” and 15 percent said it had “not gone far enough.”
The very different picture painted by the Harvard-CAPS Harris poll can be attributed, at least in part, to nuances of polling methodology, including the fact that its respondents could only indicate support for either Israel or Hamas.
There is no polling industry consensus on whether such “forced choice” questions are best practice, according to Carl Bialik, the U.S. politics editor at YouGov. Giving respondents the option of a more neutral or mixed answer can give them “an out,” but can also clarify whether they hold a truly middle-ground stance on the subject, are conflicted or don’t know or care enough about it to hold a strong view, he said.
Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School poll, added that even what may seem to be minor variations in question framing can produce results pointing to “substantively different conclusions.”
He offered an example unrelated to the war: In 2022, Marquette conducted two randomized experiments in which half the respondents of a sample were asked whether they thought that “Supreme Court justices’ decisions” were mainly motivated by politics or by the law. The other half were asked whether they thought that “the Supreme Court” was mainly motivated by politics or by the law.
“I would not have told you ahead of time that that difference in wording would matter much at all,” Mr. Franklin said. But the results indicated — both times, by some 10 percentage points — that people viewed the decisions of the Court, as an institution, to be more politically motivated than those of the justices.
Ultimately, one should look to a variety of questions asked by a variety of pollsters for an accurate understanding of public opinion on a given subject, Mr. Franklin said. While Mr. Netanyahu was mostly accurate in how he cited the finding of the Harvard-CAPS Harris poll, “there are plenty of other polls that show different results, and he omitted those,” Mr. Franklin said.
“Virtually any politician citing a poll does it for their own purposes — does it because it serves their rhetorical needs at the time,” he added.
Israeli officials say a ‘terrorist’ attack in the West Bank has left two dead.
A shooting at a gas station outside a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Thursday afternoon left two Israeli men dead, according to Israeli officials, who said the gunman was also killed.
Avraham Applebaum, a medic for Israel’s emergency medical services, said that when he arrived at the gas station outside the Israeli settlement of Eli, he saw “one injured person with many bullet wounds in a car and another lying” on the ground.
“We did what we could,” Mr. Applebaum said, but the wounds were too serious. Shortly thereafter, the two men, aged 20 and 40, were declared dead by the emergency service.
Israel’s military called the attacker a “terrorist,” adding that after he opened fire on the gas station, he was killed. Israeli media reports said he was killed by a civilian who had returned from reserve duty in Gaza.
Four civilians were killed at the same gas station in Eli last June in a shooting attack claimed by Hamas.
Last week, a shooting attack near a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank killed one and injured several others.
Since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 and the start of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, violence and Israeli military raids have escalated in the West Bank, as have unauthorized moves by Jewish settlers in the occupied territory. Palestinian militias have carried out shooting attacks against Israelis; frequent Israeli military raids have arrested thousands and have often turned deadly; and extremist Jewish settlers have rampaged through Palestinian villages, setting fire to property.
A far-right Israeli minister will no longer oversee security at a major mosque, officials say.
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The Aqsa Mosque compound, in Jerusalem’s Old City, is sacred both to Muslims and to Jews.Credit...Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press
The Israeli war cabinet has decided to relieve the far-right national security minister of responsibility for an important mosque in Jerusalem during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to an Israeli official, in an apparent attempt to defuse tensions around the holy site.
The minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, promoted a plan last week to impose more restrictions on Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during Ramadan, which begins in early March. The Aqsa compound is sacred both to Muslims and to Jews.
Mr. Ben-Gvir wanted to restrict access to Al Aqsa for Israel’s Arab minority, according to two Israeli officials briefed on the talks. For years, Israel has put limits on access to the compound for Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and since the start of the war in Gaza, the military has instituted additional restrictions on Israeli Arabs.
According to an Israeli official briefed on the recent decision, the war cabinet has assumed authority over the plan for Al Aqsa during Ramadan, relieving Mr. Ben-Gvir, who is not in the war cabinet, of that responsibility. A final decision regarding security measures for the mosque will be made tonight, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Mr. Ben-Gvir said on social media Wednesday night that he expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deny the reports that his responsibility for security at Al Aqsa was being revoked. The national security minister has long been a proponent of increasing Jewish control over Al Aqsa. The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a televised speech on Wednesday, Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, called on West Bank Palestinians to march to Al Aqsa for prayers during Ramadan, in defiance of Israel’s restrictions.
Analysts say that the situation puts Mr. Netanyahu in a bind. Upsetting Mr. Ben-Gvir could put his governing coalition in peril, but allowing the far-right minister to police access to the mosque could exacerbate an already tense situation.
In Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from the site of Al Aqsa, and tens of thousands of Muslims visit the mosque every day during Ramadan. For Jews, the area is revered as the Temple Mount because it was the site of two Jewish temples in antiquity that remain central to Jewish identity.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/29/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news
“I saw people falling to the ground after being shot,” said one witness, “and others simply took the food items that were with them and continued running for their lives.”
By Raja Abdulrahim, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Adam Rasgonand Michael Levenson
March 1, 2024
They went out by the thousands, camping overnight along a coastal road in the cold Gaza night, huddled together by small fires, waiting for supplies to come so they could feed their families.
What they encountered was death and injury by the hundreds, according to witnesses and a doctor who treated the wounded, as Israeli forces opened fire toward desperate Palestinians who surged forward when aid trucks finally arrived before dawn on Thursday.
“I saw things I never, ever thought I would see,” said Mohammed Al-Sholi, who had camped out overnight for a chance to get food for his family. “I saw people falling to the ground after being shot, and others simply took the food items that were with them and continued running for their lives.”
Amid the chaos and bloodshed, some people were run over by the aid trucks, he said.
On Friday, President Biden said the United States would begin airdropping aid to Gaza to help relieve the suffering there, as European leaders condemned Israel for the deaths of scores of hungry Palestinians who were killed as they surrounded the aid convoy.
The Gazan health authorities have said that Israeli troops killed more than 100 people and wounded 700 others in a “massacre” as the convoy rolled along a dark road, a version of events that Israel disputed.
An Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Thursday that Israeli soldiers had been trying to secure the convoy and fired “when the mob moved in a manner that endangered them.” But he said the soldiers had not fired on people seeking aid. The military has said that most of the people died in a stampede and that some were run over by the trucks in Gaza City.
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Smoke billowed on Friday over Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Friday after an Israeli airstrike.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock
Around 150 wounded people and 12 of those killed were taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said Dr. Eid Sabbah, the head of nursing there. He said that about 95 percent of the injuries were from gunshots to the chest and abdomen.
The deaths touched off global outrage and intensified pressure on Israel to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas that would allow more aid into Gaza.
France’s foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné, called for an independent investigation and said the violence around the convoy was the result of a humanitarian catastrophe that had left people “fighting for food.”
“What is happening is indefensible and unjustifiable,” Mr. Séjourné told France Inter radio on Friday. “Israel must be able to hear it, and it must stop.”
Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, called on the Israeli military to “fully explain” the killings and joined calls for a cease-fire.
“People in Gaza are closer to death than to life,” Ms. Baerbock said in a statement. “More humanitarian aid must come in. Immediately.”
Mr. Biden said that the United States would work with Jordan to airdrop aid into Gaza in the coming days.
“Innocent people got caught in a terrible war, unable to feed their families, and you saw the response when they tried to get aid,” Mr. Biden said at the White House, before meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. “But we need to do more, and the United States will do more.”
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People gathered for Friday Prayer near a destroyed mosque in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit...Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that regardless of how people near the convoy died, it was clear that they were trying to get food.
“That cannot happen,” she said. “Desperate civilians trying to feed their starving families should not be shot at.”
The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, said that Israel has an obligation to ensure that significantly more humanitarian aid reaches civilians in Gaza.
“A sustained pause in the fighting is the only way to get lifesaving aid in at the scale needed and free the hostages cruelly held by Hamas,” he said in a statement.
Palestinians, particularly in the north, have been fighting starvation and are regularly converging on the relatively few aid trucks that have entered the territory. Aid groups and the United Nations have accused Israel of blocking aid to north Gaza, which Israel has denied. Aid groups have also reported rampant looting of aid trucks in the area.
A small number of police officers from the Hamas-run security forces have shown up to work in Gaza City in recent weeks, but they have largely failed to restore basic security, residents said. Last week, the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, joined UNRWA, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, in stopping aid shipments to the north, citing lawlessness in the area.
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Humanitarian aid being airdropped into Gaza City on Friday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
On Friday, the European Union said that it planned to increase funding substantially this year for UNRWA and would give it 50 million euros, or about $54 million, next week.
The announcement was a lifeline for the agency, which has been fighting for its survival after some donor nations suspended their funding, citing Israeli allegations that a dozen of the agency’s 13,000 workers were involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.
The number of aid trucks entering Gaza dropped significantly in February, data shows, even as humanitarian leaders warned of famine and said that some people had resorted to eating bird seed and leaves.
An average of 96 trucks a day entered Gaza through Feb. 27, a 30 percent drop from the January average and the lowest monthly average since before a cease-fire in late November, according to UNRWA. Before the war, around 500 aid trucks entered Gaza each day.
The decline reflects, in part, Israel’s insistence on inspecting every truck at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, which has acted as the main gateway since it was reopened in December. Aid also passes into Gaza from Egypt through a crossing at the city of Rafah after Israeli officials inspect the cargo for weapons and other contraband.
Aid officials said that, while necessary, the inspection system had caused significant delays that resulted in less overall aid.
On Thursday, Israeli soldiers were providing security for the convoy that was entering Gaza City, with private vehicles distributing food from international donors, an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, told Britain’s Channel 4.
I.D.F. Videos Add to Confusion Over Gazans Killed at Aid Site
Edited drone video footage released by the Israeli military, along with social media videos of the scene analyzed by The New York Times, does not fully explain the sequence of events. The videos show hundreds of people surrounding and climbing on trucks and people crawling and ducking for cover.
Mr. Al-Sholi, a 34-year-old taxi driver, said that he went to meet the convoy because he and his family, including three young children, had been surviving on little more than the spices, minced wheat and wild greens that they can find.
On Wednesday, he had heard that people had received bags of flour from aid trucks, and there were rumors that another convoy was coming. So he went to a traffic circle with friends to wait. He said he had never seen so many people gathered in one place.
“Right before the trucks arrived, a tank started to move toward us — it was around 3:30 a.m. — and fired a few shots in the air,” Mr. Al-Sholi said in a telephone interview, referring to Israeli tanks. “That tank fired at least one shell. It was dark, and I ran back toward a destroyed building and took shelter there.”
When the trucks arrived soon after, “people ran toward them to get food and drink and whatever else they could get,” said Mohammad Hamoudeh, a photographer in Gaza City. But when people reached the trucks, he said, “the tanks started firing directly at the people.”
He added, “I saw them firing direct machine gun fire.”
Image
Mourning the deaths in Gaza City on Thursday.Credit...-/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The witnesses said that Israeli tanks fired toward people even as they began to run away. Israeli forces continued to fire regularly toward Gazans from between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., when they first arrived, until around 7 a.m., the witnesses said.
On Thursday, Admiral Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said that troops “did not fire on those seeking aid, despite the accusations.”
“We did not fire on the humanitarian convoy, either from the air or the land,” he said. “We secured it so it could reach northern Gaza.”
Mr. Hamoudeh said that, despite the panic at the scene, many still rushed for the supplies. “People were terrified, but not everyone,” he said. “There were those who risked death just so they could get food. They just want to live.”
Reporting was contributed by Victoria Kim, Shashank Bengali, Abu Bakr Bashir, Nader Ibrahim, Julian E. Barnes, Lauren Leatherby, Gaya Gupta, Monika Pronczuk, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Adam Sella.
Raja Abdulrahimis a Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem covering the Levant. More about Raja Abdulrahim
Matthew Mpoke Biggis a correspondent covering international news. He previously worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief for Reuters and did postings in Nairobi, Abidjan, Atlanta, Jakarta and Accra. More about Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Adam Rasgonreports from Israel for The Times's Jerusalem bureau. More about Adam Rasgon
Michael Levensonjoined The Times in December 2019. He was previously a reporter at The Boston Globe, where he covered local, state and national politics and news. More about Michael Levenson
A version of this article appears in print on March 2, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wait For Food Ended In Chaos, Panic And Death. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Condemnation about '67 SNCC Newsletter
Israel's Occupation of Gaza during 1956 and 1957
Deir Yassin Massacre (April 1948)
Abu Shusha Massacre (May 1948)
Tantura Massacre (May 1948)
Lydda & Ramleh Massacres (July 1948)
Saliha Massacre (October 1948)
Al-Dawayima Massacre (October, 1948)
Qibya Massacre (October 1953)
Kafr Qasim Massacre | Gaza (October 1956)
Khan Yunis Massacre | Gaza (November 1956)
Kafr Qusim Massacre | Gaza (1956)
Invasion into Lebanon
Sabra and Shatila Massacres | Lebanon (September 1982)
Not safe to Worship
Al-Aqsa [Temple Mount] Massacre (October 1990)
The Ibrahimi Mosque (Hebron) Massacre (February 1994)
Displaced and Exterminated
Jenin Refugee Camp (April 2002)
…and the list continues….
Click Here to View Document - Source: United Nations
UNRWA reports on massacres in Rafah & Khan Yunis.
Khan Yunis Massacre (1956) Click Here to View Article - Source: palestinechronicle.com
Documents about Kufr Qasem Released due to Israeli Human Rights watchdog. Suppressing History is Zionist Israeli Policy
Kafr Qasim-Massacre part of Forcible Transfer, Revelations Result in No Shame for Israel
Source: 972mag Revelations on 1956 massacre won’t dent Israeli consciousness; Source: Massacre, Forcible Transfer Middle East Monitor
Footnotes in Gaza
Footnoes in Gaza | Massacres in 1956 Occupation
By Patrick Cockburn | Dec. 24, 2009 | newyorktimes book review
Joe Sacco’s gripping, important book about two long-forgotten mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza stands out as one of the few contemporary works on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle likely to outlive the era in which they were written.
Sacco will find readers for “Footnotes in Gaza” far into the future because of the unique format and style of his comic-book narrative. He stands alone as a reporter-cartoonist because his ability to tell a story through his art is combined with investigative reporting of the highest quality.
His subject in this case is two massacres that happened more than half a century ago, stirred up little international attention and were forgotten outside the immediate circle of the victims. The killings took place during the Suez crisis of 1956, when the Israeli Army swept into the Gaza Strip, the great majority of whose inhabitants were Palestinian refugees. According to figures from the United Nations, 275 Palestinians were killed in the town of Khan Younis at the southern end of the strip on Nov. 3, and 111 died in Rafah, a few miles away on the Egyptian border, during a Nov. 12 operation by Israeli troops. Israel insisted that the Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces were still facing armed resistance. The Palestinians said all resistance had ceased by then. ....continue reading newyorktimes book review
ISRAEL Human Rights Group AKEVOT seeks Release of archival documents RE Gaza massacres 1956.
INTERVIEW with JOE SACCO (podcast)
ECONlib Review with Robust Reader Feedback
4 June 2015 | ItsNiceThat.com by Maisie Skidmore |
On Joe Sacco, Drawing War Through The Eyes Of Joe Sacco: The unorthodox illustrator tells us why was is better hand-drawn
Presentation by Joe Sacco
Jan 19, 2024 The Real News Network Podcasts
Joe Sacco, author of 'Footnotes in Gaza,' on journalism and Palestine | The Chris Hedges Report | Jan 19, 2024 The Real News Network Podcasts
Few journalists can be credited with as innovative and impactful a career as Joe Sacco, whose graphic novel-style reportage from his coverage of Palestine and Bosnia broke down barriers of genre to expand our concepts of what journalism could look like. Sacco appears on The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his work, the intricacies of ethics in journalism, and Israel's current genocide in Gaza.
August 21, 1995, Section A,Page 5 | Source: nytimes.com | The Israeli Government decided today that it would not pursue a retired general's admission that he killed unarmed Egyptian prisoners during the 1956 war, a revelation made this month that provoked new soul-searching among Israelis about the corrupting force of the violence that has characterized so much of their history.
Shilling for Payola, Pandering to Power (by Denying Truth about Fraudulent claims of Anti-Semitism)
By B.C.Gobin, TULPPP Chief Instigator
"There was No Such Thing as a Palestinian People. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist."
--Former Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir in her statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June 1969 (note 2/).
Human Rights activists at Harvard distributed the attached 'infographic' poster via social network "Instagram" that sought to emphasize historic African-American and Palestinian solidarity against Israeli's Apartheid regime. In the poster, you can see a collage of text and sketches.
What allegedly caused an uproar about "anti-semitism" is the sketch (which I call a cartoon) that was extremely offensive, racist, and anti-semitic according to Harvard's interim President Garber (of Jewish identiy) and Dean's Rakesh Khurana. However, Anti-semitism contrary to Zionist is in not whatever they claim based on their self-proclaimed prerogative as scientific experts on all things Anti-semitic.
The cartoon in question apparently offends Dean Khurana because it shows two prominent advocates of Palestinian civil rights--Egypt's former President Gamal Abdel Nasser and American boxer Muhammad Ali--being lynched by a hand holding the rope. The top of the hand has two symbols--"$" dollar sign inscribed in a "Star of David" which is the symbol of American currency and the dominate feature of the national flag of the State of Israel, respectively. In short, we see the hand of Israel backed by America--or alternatively perhaps the hand of America and Israel--engaged in lynching two prominent opponents of Israel's apartheid regime and efforts by former colonial powers to reassert their "sphere of influence."
CARTOON CONTAGION
It seems at Harvard all it takes is a cartoon to excite the prickly personalities of Zionists whose reflexive action is screaming "Anti-Semitism."
The word is devoid of any meaning and disrespectful of the memory of the Holocaust, especially given the word is being invoked to justify another catostrophe--Shoah being the Hebrew word for Holocaust and Nakba being the word used by Palestinians to mark the explusion of nearly one million Palestians from their homes when the European colonial settler Zionists declared independence just as Ian Smith did for Apartheid Rhodesia did almost twenty years later.
Since when is the Star of David on the national flag of Israel deemed "Anti-Semitic?" The term "Anti-Semitism" is thrown around by Zionist chauvinists like expired Halloween candy peddled from "Dollar" discount stores. Anti-Semitism is their "Trump" card to Cancel criticism; Censor embarrassing facts; Commit crimes but claim they are the victim.
The ubiquitous display of the "Star of David" reflects its status as an official symbol for the State of Israel! The Star is therefore found on letterhead, military insignia, tanks, military combat jets, etc. The Star is the appropriate symbol to illustrate "the hand of the Israeli government," which is a proud sponsor of Apartheid in its own country and for decades in violations of U.N. resolutions, a sponsor of Apartheid South Africa as well!
SNCC's explanation is plausible and the facts cited regarding the persecution of both Nasser and Ali are historically accurate. But Harvard's administration must have superior knowledge of so-called anti-semitic 'tropes.' Quoting the Harvard Crimson:
Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana condemned an antisemitic image posted by two pro-Palestine student groups during an interview on Tuesday, calling the post “unmistakably antisemitic and racist.”
“It’s become clear that some members of our community are intent on testing the limits of how low discourse can go — and it now appears that we are hitting rock bottom,”
“Finding words to express my disgust at what I saw is hard,” Khurana said. “I’m aware that after public condemnation, the offensive images have been taken down, but this bell cannot be unrung.”
Is this just a case of Dean Khurana not biting the hand that feeds himself and Harvard's coffers?
Is the Dean and President of Harvard demonizing students? YES!
Why are these leaders insinuating that to be against genocide is somehow "pro-terrorism" or "anti-Jewish?" Is any criticism of Israeli policy permitted or does the Dean defer to demands that all-things-Israel be treated as the holiest of holies--infalliable and perfect and incapble of sins or crimes?
Indeed this cartoon had caused a controversy when originally published by a civil rights organization in their June/July 1967 issue newsletter. The publisher was the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). According to the LA Times, the sketch was created by Black artist Herman "Kofi" Bailey.
Unlike other national media, the LA Times deserves credit for taking a day to reseach the history of the offending cartoon and providng more context and SNCC's reasoning for the symbols used in the sketch. Quoting the LA Times:
Drawn by Black artist Herman “Kofi” Bailey, it first appeared in a SNCC newsletter alongside an article fiercely critical of Zionism, leading to charges of antisemitism and furious condemnation of the SNCC from Jewish community leaders.
In the article headlined “The Palestine Problem,” SNCC called Israel an “illegal” state.
“Do you know that Zionism, which is a world-wide nationalistic Jewish movement, organized, planned and created the ‘State of Israel’ by sending Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine (the heart of the Arab world) to take over land and homes belonging to the Arabs?” the SNCC wrote.
In Bailey’s cartoon, the hand marked with the Star of David holds the ropes around the necks of the American boxer Muhammad Ali and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. In the background, an arm holding a curved machete — labeled “third world liberation movement” — prepared to cut the rope and free the men.
SNCC defended the cartoon. The dollar sign and the Star of David were not a statement about Jews, SNCC claimed in a subsequent newsletter, but symbols of Zionism strangling Arabs and the United States strangling Muhammad Ali as well as Arabs.
“Both signs were placed on the hand to indicate the close relationship of the United States with ZIONISM and U.S. support of the Zionist State — Israel,” SNCC said.
Perhaps Harvard's Administration does NOT know much about Israel. Otherwise they would be sware of the ubiquitous display of the "Star of David" as the official symbol of Israel. They would know Zionists had adopted the Magen David (Star of David) , and had feature the Star just as prominently as Israeli officials do today on all of their official State of Israel property-including letterhead, military insignia, tanks, military combat jets, etc., ChatGPT responded that the Star is in fact an appropriate non-Trope symbol for representing the State of Israel.
So what do elistist Harvard administrators expect to be used to represent Israel other than the most widely recognized NON anti-semitic trope symbol for the Israeli government,? "
SNCC's explanation is plausible and the facts cited regarding the persecution of both Nasser and Ali are historically accurate. But Harvard's administration must have superior knowledge of so-called anti-semitic 'tropes.' Quoting the Harvard Crimson:
Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana condemned an antisemitic image posted by two pro-Palestine student groups during an interview on Tuesday, calling the post “unmistakably antisemitic and racist.”
“It’s become clear that some members of our community are intent on testing the limits of how low discourse can go — and it now appears that we are hitting rock bottom,”
“Finding words to express my disgust at what I saw is hard,” Khurana said. “I’m aware that after public condemnation, the offensive images have been taken down, but this bell cannot be unrung.”
Demonize Students as Pro-Terror, Dangerous, Far-Left Extremisits
Delegitimize their Pro-America values and their Demands for Leaders to Stand Up Against Genocide and Stand Up for American Rights
Double-Standards--In Short, Harvards cozy relationship with Serial Human Rights Abusers but its outrage about a Cartoon shows Harvards Stands for the Almighty Dollar and Nothing else Matters.
Is this just a case of Dean Khurana not biting the hand that feeds himself and Harvard's coffers?
Is the Dean and President of Harvard demonizing students?
Why are these Harvard leaders insinuating? Is to be against genocide is somehow "pro-terrorism" or "anti-Jewish?" Is any criticism of Israeli policy permitted or does the Dean defer to demands that all-things negative regarding Israeli policy be treated as infalliable? Is the State of Israel and its leaders incapable of sins or crimes?
Or is Dean Khurana, who completed his engineering university degree in India, simply more focused on panhandling to plutocrats?
Or is he simply ignorant of American history and values?
Boston fetes Usurper/Psychopath
Missing in Action
Reputation Money Laundering
What difference does it make whether that hand is Saudi prince MBS who assassinated Washington Post reporter Jamal Khasoggi? Or the hand of Jewish-American billionaire Mark Zuckerberg whose donation to Harvard was followed by the widely reported termination of Joan Donavan, a misinformation researcher whose work Zuckerberg found objectionable to his business interests?
Yet we should comply and accept the authoritative edict on "anti-semitism" promulugated by an Indian-educated engineer, Dean Rakesh Khurana, who is also an apparent scholar on symbols of Jew-hating, Holocaust history, American history, Africana studies, and Post-colonial international politics.
Returning to the evidence at hand, namely the SNCC newsletter June/July issue containing the alleged ‘anti-semitic’ Cartoon in a section entitled “Test Your Knowledge” on “The Palestine Problem,” I found myself humbled and impressed by the quality of SNCC's publication. This issue could have been clipped from today's papers. Their work resonated with me--the issue covered topics of police brutality, American Apartheid, repressive university administrations, and complicity of the press in upholding Apartheid through factors such as self-censorship, contempt for some American communities, and sheer incompetence.
Dean Khuran should bear in mind that just as Israelis are solving for a perceived demographic problem posed by Palestinian presence, the United States and California in particular not long ago barred South Asians from immigration in fear of a "Hindu Invasion" unleashing "Turban Tide" of a "dusky peril" upon the 'native' Pacific coast population whose society would be corrupted by a vile race of “enslaved, effeminate, caste-ridden and degraded” non-whites who could not possibly assimilate but who would instead degenerate American culture (note 1/)
Is Dean Khuran merely abusing his power and seeking to curry favor (pun intended) with wealthy donors?
When we see apparent double standards applied to human rights activists versus those sloganeering about the need for Israel to commit genocide in self-defense in flagrant violation of Geneva Conventions, we see a double standard: Rule of Law does NOT apply to popular & powerful factional interests, but the Dean will slam the hammer down on those deemed less than superior master race & allies.
It seems if a Pariah State has 7-digit Pocket Change to Fill Harvard's Coffers, then every courtesy will be extended to the donor including meeting in absolute secret with the usurper of the throne of Saudi Arabia. ! Perhaps Harvard is unaware about Israel being a proud sponsor of Apartheid in its own country and for decades Israel violated U.N. resolutions against having relations with Apartheid South Africa as well. Contrary to international and in defiance of years of resolutions against Israel's illicit relationship, Israel nonetheless engaged Apartheid South Africa in secret security pacts, arms sales, security forces 'training,' and illegal a sponsor of as well! Given Saudia Arabia's abysmmal human rights record, I doubt Harvard gives a damn about helping launder the psychopath Sheik's reputation for a cheap dollar that sells out American values and diminishes Harvard's independence and credibility given so many conflicts of interest create by such nefarious financial relationships and dependencies.
As reported in Israel's Colbo News, A group of 25 lecturers at the University of Haifa signed a petition [link] in protest of suspensions of six students without due process and apparently in kneejerk response to some complaints--but university Rector Professor Gur Elroy did so without following university regulations which require among other things--an investigation, which the rector stated would be conducted at a later date. Shoot first, Ask questions later is apparently the rector's IDF model.
Prof. Yuval Yunai, one of the signatories of the letter, wrote:
"there is no justification for infringing on the rights of a student without giving him the opportunity to defend himself. It is also clear that the rector does not have the authority to suspend students.
There are mandatory regulations that provide an answer to cases of the need for expulsion due to immediate harm. A post that someone writes is not a 'ticking bomb'. Jewish students write terrible things about Arabs and call for the killing of all residents of Gaza, and some also threaten Palestinians, citizens of Israel...
It seems to me that we are drifting very quickly in unwanted directions, and in the process demonizing Arab students and harming the good name of the university with our own hands."
Prof. Asad A'Nam, another lecturer who signed the letter obversed the rector's glaring double standard in the treatment of Arab students:
"Every sentence condemning Israeli attacks in Gaza is perceived by the Israeli side as support for terrorism...
I may not agree with them either, but attacking anyone in order to show that he is loyal and a righteous person is not acceptable...
This is evidence that there is an administration here that applies a double-standard to Arab students, who are treated as less than equal.. When there were attacks on Palestinians in Hawara, I did not see that the university make an inquiry as to whether there were Jewish students participating in it. This means that when it comes to a weak population whose rights the rector can trample on with a rough foot, he does so without batting an eyelid.”
Do you know what they call the Chinese? "The Jews of Europe."
Do you know what they call Indians? "Customer Service Support."
Perhaps Dean Khurana should take a lesson from Priscilla Chan--If you can beat them, Join them!
"Anti-Semitism" is more aptly defined as a utterance akin to the Yiddish word "oy veh," which European Jews once shouted as an expression of dismay or exasperation. Formerly a 19th-century twist on "Jew-hating," the word Anti-Semitism is more aplty defined as "Jews hating on you!" for whatever spoken words or expressed ideas are offensive to Zionist sensibilities. Think of "Anti-semitism" as a cheap last-resort effort to win an argument by throwing down "the race card" or the "woman card" with the hope the "Anti-Semitism" accusation will pass as a "Trump" card. Think of "Anti-semitism" as Zionist "Cancel Culture."
Notes
1/ Shreya Bhandari, A history of South Asians in the United States (retrieved PDF link)
2/ Wikipedia "There was No Such thing as Palestinians." Interview entitled "Who can blame Israel" published in The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969
3/ LA Times 23 Feb 2024, "The antisemitic cartoon roiling Harvard? It’s not the first time it caused a firestorm" Jennie Jarvie
Links to SNCC digital archives sources: a) SNCC archives b) SNCC links c) Duke Civil Rights Archive
Zionism, The Forgotten Apartheid (15 page Explainer) from the Freedom Archive
Provost Garber meets with MBS, March 24, 2018, Harvard Crimson,
Journalist-Dissident Jamal Khashoggi murdered by Saudi Prince MBS on 2 October 2018, Wikipedia.
Education Dept. Investigates Claims of Discrimination Against Palestinian Students at Harvard
The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Education Department is looking into the allegations after a complaint from a Muslim advocacy group.
From <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/harvard-palestinian-discrimination-complaint.html>
By Vimal Patel
Vimal Patel writes about higher education.
Feb. 7, 2024
Sign up for the Israel-Hamas War Briefing. The latest news about the conflict. Get it sent to your inbox.
The U.S. Education Department said on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into Harvard over whether it failed to protect Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their supporters from harassment, threats and intimidation.
Harvard has been in turmoil for months over its response to the attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, which played a part in the eventual departure of the school’s president, Claudine Gay. The Education Department has already opened a separate investigation into Harvard over complaints of antisemitism.
The Muslim Legal Fund of America, which filed a civil-rights complaint that led to the new investigation, said more than a dozen students had faced harassment. Students were “threatened or called terrorists,” sometimes by fellow students, for wearing keffiyehs, a Palestinian scarf, said Christina A. Jump, a lawyer for the group. Others were doxxed and intimidated, yet Harvard administrators dismissed the concerns, she said.
School administrators instead met with donors and alumni who “encouraged the harassment,” said Chelsea Glover, another lawyer on the case. The complaint, which lawyers for the group did not provide, does not name any donors or alumni, Ms. Jump said.
Continue reading….
From <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/harvard-palestinian-discrimination-complaint.html>
erica.green@nytimes.com
(Is it Anti-Semitic to say Harvard is all about the Money?)
News Clips on Harvard-Trump Relations to Pedophiles, Russians, Israelis, and Corruption
Amid outcry over controversial gifts to the University, Harvard has kept its donation acceptance policies under wraps.
By Aidan F. Ryan and Cindy H. Zhang
May 28, 2019 The Crimson
In November, the Miami Herald reported that though he faced a potential life sentence for running a sex ring of underage girls out of his Palm Beach, Fla. home for years, Epstein’s legal team negotiated a plea deal that ended an FBI investigation into his conduct and sentenced him to 13 months in county jail.
When the Epstein allegations first came to light in 2oo6, a Harvard spokesperson said the University would not return the gift.
“Mr. Epstein’s gift is funding important research using mathematics to study areas such as evolutionary theory, viruses, and cancers,” a Harvard spokesperson said at the time. “The University is not considering returning this gift.”
Former University President Derek C. Bok — who was serving as interim president in 2006 — stood by a 1979 open letter he wrote on the ethics of accepting controversial gifts. He wrote that in extreme cases the University should return donations from those who earned their money immorally, but generally, the University should not consider the “symbolic” value of returning a gift.
“[O]n the whole, I would be inclined to accept such donations on the ground that the tangible benefits of using the money … should overcome the more abstract, symbolic considerations that might lead us to turn down such benefactions,” Bok wrote.
In light of the Miami Herald investigation, The Crimson reported on Epstein’s long-standing connections to Harvard. This time, the University stayed silent on the matter, with a University spokesperson declining to comment on the donation.
Earlier this month, Bacow said he was not aware of Epstein’s donation or his connection to Harvard.
“I don't know the specifics of the Jeffrey Epstein donation or his relationship to the University, actually,” Bacow said. “I'm not going to speculate.”
Epstein’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Cambridge residents and Harvard students have also questioned the University’s ties to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited both Harvard and MIT in March 2018. The University offered no public events or press releases about Prince Mohammad’s meetings with Harvard administrators, while the Saudi government touted “strong ties” between them and Harvard.
After a group of Saudi citizens affiliated with the crown prince killed Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, many American businesses, politicians, and universities re-examined their affiliations with the kingdom.
The Crimson also reported on ‘secretive, dubious partnerships’ between the University and the Saudi royal family through donations for programs and professorships across Harvard’s schools.
A foundation with ties to Prince Mohammed — called MiSK — sponsors a summer leadership development course hosted at Harvard. A press release in March 2016 stated that the “MiSK Foundation has an agreement with Harvard University to allocate 12.5% of the 800 seats for MiSK students.”
In an interview, Lee said the Corporation has not considered cutting ties with Saudi Arabia.
“No, no,” Lee said.
“I would say if you think about it, cutting ties for the country's sort of a blunt instrument,” Lee added. “We did divest from Sudanese investments. But that was for really radically different reasons.”
….
Sackler [Purdue Pharma aka oxycontin dope dealer], Saudi Arabia [serial human rights violator & 9/11 hijacking sponsor], and Epstein [preying, pimping, posturing, abusing]
CONTINUE READING…The Crimson
By Amy Goodman , DemocracyNow!
Published October 26, 2018 | Truthout.org
M.I.T. STUDENT: We’re here because we want to urge President Reif to reconsider the meeting with Mohammed bin Salman. We are aware that this meeting is going to happen, but we feel that accepting resources from somebody in sort of a blanket way, without acknowledging that there is a substantial famine being caused by Mohammed bin Salman in Yemen, goes against the principles of M.I.T., which is wanting to maintain human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: Both Harvard Provost Alan Garber and the M.I.T. President Rafael Reif met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi officials later publicized the meetings on social media in a move critics say was used to give the crown prince legitimacy. Meanwhile, Yale University Law School’s Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law is reportedly funded by a Saudi potentate, and the University of New Haven in Connecticut has formally partnered with King Fahd Security College in Riyadh since 2016.
When the partnership was first announced, University of New Haven President Steven Kaplan said “We are excited to put the University of New Haven’s world-renowned programs in criminal justice, national security, and forensic studies at the service of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s next generation of security professionals.”
….
In Boston, Massachusetts, Yarden Katz is with us, department fellow in systems biology at Harvard Medical School. He wrote an article for The Guardian on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s visit to Harvard and M.I.T. His piece, focusing on the kingdom’s close ties to US universities, is headlined Elite universities are selling themselves — and look who’s buying.
YARDEN KATZ:
And even after lobbying, Cambridge City Council passed a resolution condemning the visit and condemning the way that M.I.T. and Harvard handled bin Salman’s visit and greeted him as a kind of reformer as opposed to the war criminal that he is. So the Khashoggi affair obviously has reignited interest in that, but it has been going on since March.
AMY GOODMAN: And you suggest that not only didn’t they publicize the visit; you’re saying they tried to cover it up, Yarden.
CONTINUE READING…Truthout.org
=================
September 9, 2019, The Tufts Daily,
In total, Tufts, Babson, Boston University and MIT have received, or have been pledged, at least $122.3 million in financing from the Saudi government, Saudi state-owned industries and Saudi public universities since 2012, according to a review of federal data by the Daily as well as reporting by the Associated Press and the Boston Globe. Harvard does not report the identitiesof its Saudi donors to the federal gov- ernment but has received $30.6 million from sources in the kingdom since 2012, according to federal data. Northeastern is the only school rep- resented at the March 2018 meeting that has reported no Saudi donations since 2012.
A Tufts Daily investigation in May revealed that the university has received over $59.5 million in Saudi financing since 2009, primarily through government-sponsored tuition payments for Saudi students at the Tufts University School of Medicine
Tufts University President Anthony Monaco
Babson College President Kerry Healey,
Boston University President Robert A. Brown,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President L. Rafael Reif
Northeastern University, President Joseph E. Aoun.
Harvard was represented by Provost Alan Garber,
]
....continue reading The Tufts Daily,
=====================f
By David D. Kirkpatrick
Nov. 4, 2017 | The New York Times
Prince Alwaleed was giving interviews to the Western news media as recently as late last month about subjects like so-called crypto currencies and Saudi Arabia’s plans for a public offering of shares in its state oil company, Aramco.
He has also recently sparred publicly with President Donald J. Trump. The prince was part of a group of investors who bought control of the Plaza Hotel in New York from Mr. Trump, and he also bought an expensive yacht from him as well. But in a twitter message in 2015 the prince called Mr. Trump “a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.”
Before sparring with Mr. Trump, Prince Alwaleed was publicly rebuffed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who rejected his $10 million donation for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York because the prince had also criticized American foreign policy.
CONTINUE READING…The New York Times
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was released on Saturday after having been held since November as part of an anti-corruption sweep launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. France24
Issued on: 27/01/2018
By: NEWS WIRES
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was released on Saturday from the luxury hotel where he has been held since November, according to three of his associates, marking the end of a chapter in a wide-reaching anti-corruption probe that has been shrouded in secrecy and intrigue.
The prince, 62, had been the most well-known and prominent detainee held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, since Nov. 4, when his much younger cousin, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the surprise raids against prominent princes, businessmen, ministers and military officers. Sending elite forces to arrest them in their homes, they were subjected to weeks of questioning that would result in many turning over significant financial assets.
Prince Alwaleed was among at least 11 princes detained in the probe, including two sons of the late King Abdullah. The government, however, has not named those detained nor discussed the specific allegations against them
CONTINUE READING…France24
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George Nader pleaded guilty to bringing a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to engage in sexual activity.
26 Jun 2020 Al Jazeera
Nader’s name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report. It details Nader’s efforts to serve as liaison between Russians and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.
CONTINUE READING…Al Jazeera
=================
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO | POLITICO
04/22/2021 CONVICTED MUELLER WITNESS DROPPED $4M ON CLEMENCY LOBBYING: One filing that caught PI’s eye this week was the reported $4 million that Robert Stryk’s Stryk Global Diplomacy (formerly known as Sonoran Policy Group) brought in from a consulting firm called ZAMZAM on behalf of George Nader. — Nader did not receive a commutation, despite Stryk not being the only lobbyist pushing to get him one, according to The New York Times, which reported that Alan Dershowitz was also lobbying the then-president on Nader’s behalf.Nader, a wealthy Lebanese-American businessman with ties to former President Donald Trump’s inner circle, served as a witness for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference, and last summer was sentenced to 10 years in prison on child pornography charges. He was also indicted in 2019 for steering illegal campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton.
CONTINUE READING…POLITICO
Wikipedia Nader's sexual abuse crimes - George Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to sexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.[6] He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.[7][8][9]
Politico - ….A Middle East expert and analyst who consulted with the Trump administration and was questioned by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller pleaded guilty to a federal child pornography charge in 1991, court records released on Friday show.
George Nader, 58, was involved in several foreign policy meetings during the Trump transition and at the White House last year.
Nader received a six-month sentence from a federal court in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce, according to the newly released records and to prison records POLITICO obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
...continue reading Wikipedia Nader's sexual abuse crimes
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Opinion: AT HOME WITH THE AYATOLLAH AND HIS MEN
By George A. Nader, May 3, 1987 Washington Post
================
Middle East specialist who served as president's informal foreign policy adviser admits to possessing child pornography
By Chris Riotta
14 January 2020 independent.co.uk
An ex-adviser to Donald Trump's presidential transition team and key witness in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes involving minors.
George Nader, a 60-year-old Middle East specialist with close ties to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, admit to possessing child pornography and bringing an underage boy to the US for “commercial sex” during a court hearing on Monday.
CONTINUE READING…independent.co.uk
=================
Robert Mueller said to be looking at Elliot Broidy, who gave George Nader ‘detailed report’ on meeting with president
By JTA 4 March 2018, via Times of Israel
…Nader reportedly visited the White House frequently during the early months of the Trump administration, meeting with Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner to discuss American policy toward the Persian Gulf states ahead of the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017.
In the late 1990s, Nader reportedly worked secretly with current World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder to broker a peace deal between Israel and Syria, shuttling between Damascus and Jerusalem..
CONTINUE READING…Times of Israel
From <https://www.timesofisrael.com/major-jewish-gop-donor-moves-into-sights-of-trump-probe/>
Elliott Broidy, deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee, paid by adviser to Emirates government amid Qatar row
22 March 2018 | By JTA via Times of Israel
…
Broidy, a California-based investor with a strong interest in the Middle East, in a statement to The Times said his actions were consistent with outlooks he has long held.
“I have always believed strongly in countering both Iran and Islamic extremism, and in working closely with our friends in the Arab world in order to do so,” he said.
Broidy and Nader also pressed Trump to take a more aggressive posture against Iran, seen by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a deadly enemy. Qatar also maintains ties with Iran. Trump is considering scrapping the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Saudi Arabia and UAE, along with Israel, believe the deal, which swaps sanctions relief for a rollback in Iran’s nuclear program, to be profoundly flawed.
Continue reading...From <https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-republican-donor-took-2-7m-from-uae-lobbyist-to-influence-trump-report/>
Elliott Broidy’s effort to punish Qatar offers inside look at Washington’s foreign lobbying industry
By Aruna Viswanatha and C. Ryan Barber
Sept. 25, 2023
Elliott Broidy has spent five years trying to punish Qatar, the tiny but wealthy Gulf state he believed hacked into his emails and leaked them during the Trump administration, when he was a prominent Republican fundraiser.
He might have just gotten a break.
The California businessman became well known in Washington after, as a vice chairman for the Trump 2016 campaign’s joint fund with the Republican Party, he helped former President Donald Trump raise more than $108 million. Then his emails started leaking, leading to embarrassing revelations about his contacts with Trump officials and his work overseas.
In 2018, Broidy sued Qatar and its lobbyists, accusing them of orchestrating the hack on him because of his public criticism of the country. After years of grinding through the legal process with little momentum, Broidy last month found a potential toehold: One of the lobbyists he sued, Joey Allaham, settled the case and admitted that he had known about the hack—and handed over to Broidy his own set of emails Broidy never expected to get.
continue reading...From <https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/a-trump-era-lawsuit-over-a-hack-was-going-nowhere-then-a-lobbyist-switched-sides-10627ecc>
================
Apr 20, 2022
read article From <https://vickyward.substack.com/p/text-messages-show-the-critical-role>
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Tue 29 Nov 2022, Last modified 28 Jun 2023
Not long ago, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, was all set to assume power. But his ambitious young cousin had a ruthless plan to seize control for himself
by Anuj Chopra
….
The previous night, 20 June 2017, Nayef, the king’s nephew, had been forced to step down as heir to the Saudi throne in an episode that one royal insider described to me as “Godfather, Saudi-style”. Nayef, who oversaw domestic security, was the CIA’s closest Saudi ally. Earlier that year, the then-CIA director Mike Pompeo had awarded him a medal in recognition of his counter-terrorism efforts that saved American lives. Two years before, after King Salman commenced his reign, Nayef had been made crown prince at the age of 55, putting him next in line to the throne. But simmering behind the scenes was a vicious rivalry between Nayef and his upstart cousin, the king’s son, Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he is known, who rose from obscurity to become deputy crown prince.
Shortly before the palace coup, on 5 June 2017, tensions between the princes reached boiling point after MBS and other regional autocrats imposed a punishing blockade on neighbouring Qatar.
….
Key among those sources is a man named Saad Aljabri, Nayef’s closest adviser and intelligence chief. It was Aljabri whom Nayef texted immediately after he was released from the king’s palace, after the coup. Aljabri, 63, had long operated in the shadows and many who worked with him considered him the most powerful non-royal in Saudi Arabia. One former American official who worked with Aljabri for years described him to me as the “deep state liaison” between Saudi Arabia and western powers. In the years after 9/11, Aljabri had been promoted through the ranks of the interior ministry, eventually becoming head of counter-terrorism operations. Together, Aljabri and his patron, Nayef, modernised the kingdom’s security and surveillance apparatus. They have also been accused of targeting peaceful activists under the pretext of counter-terrorism and laying the foundations of the police state that MBS would later turn against them.
The text messages between Nayef and Aljabri first came to light through legal filings in North America and an Interpol ruling that rejected a Saudi request to have Aljabri arrested overseas. The messages in those documents were authenticated by a digital forensics expert hired by Norton Rose Fulbright, the international law firm representing Aljabri, which is in possession of his iPhone, according to court affidavits. Aljabri’s team separately shared with me a handful of messages that have never previously been published.
….
To the Americans who had worked with Aljabri, it was obvious that MBS saw him as a threat. Aljabri fleeing the kingdom was “like J Edgar Hoover’s deputy leaving DC and showing up in Moscow”, said the former US official who had worked with him. “Here’s a man liked by deep state organisations around the planet. He knows every foible, every misstep that Saudi royals have made.”
CONTINUE READING…From <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/29/mbs-v-mbn-the-bitter-power-struggle-between-rival-saudi-princes>
Matt NahamJun 26th, 2020 Law & Crime
Nader is believed to have orchestrated a 2016 meeting between former national security advisor Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-strategist Steven Bannon and United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
A high-profile hanger-on and Trump ally, Nader is additionally believed to have organized a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles during which Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince and others–including Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund–met with bin Zayed. Nader also offered his services to Donald Trump Jr. at an infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016.
From <https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/george-nader-sentenced-to-10-years/>
=================
By Jo Shelley, CNN October 27, 2021
article link - https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/middleeast/mbs-saad-aljabri-60-minutes-intl/index.html
Saad Aljabri was number two in Saudi intelligence until, he says, Mohammed bin Salman forced him out. Now, MBS is Saudi Arabia's crown prince, and Aljabri is in exile. Aljabri believes the crown prince wants him dead because of what he knows. Scott Pelley reports.
Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBVuvhqAhio
The former Saudi intelligence officer Saad Al Jabri is doing everything he can to have his two children released by the Saudi authorities. He has hired a company experienced in dealing with Saudi cases to urge the US to call for their repatriation.
Published 20.02.2023 -
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Kazakhstan, United States
Israeli-Kazakh oligarch Alexander Machkevich, who part-owns a stake in the Kazakh stated-controlled mining conglomerate Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), has been [...]
Published 10.03.2021 at 04:30 GMT
Fuhrer Donor Class Dictating Campus & Academic Policy
Israel Hayom is the "Voice of Bibi" Netanyahu and the largest circulating (and free) daily newspaper founded by anti-democratic gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson who helped Bibi achieve his goal of having a "voice" in the media. Professor Avi Barali is a regular columnist--and virulently anti-American values--he caused a shitstorm recently by publishing an anti-pluralism, pro-Jewish purification of society column, which is included below "The Evil in American Academia."
Our social sciences and the humanities must be freed from their provincial servitude to America • Our ability to observe our problems in a controlled and sober manner is the main casualty
by Prof. Avi Barali, historian at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev
10/22/2023 Israel Hayom (Israel's largest daily, owned by pro-Bibi Adelson)
"Israeli and Jewish American faculty members there find themselves in an American academy that is morally degenerate and crooked in its perceptions of reality. They feel more and more haunted"
The west of Gaza that the jihadist evil has emerged. Even in the centers of the American Academy it resonates and receives blatant support or tacit support. Prof. Esnat Akirav, the president of the Israeli Political Science Association, wrote to the members of the association that even after two weeks, her appeal to parallel professional associations to condemn the Gaza atrocity was met with denial or disregard, with the exception of one association. American society has been deeply shaken by Muslim Nazism, but at elite universities the situation is different.
Israeli and American Jewish faculty members there find themselves in an American academy that is morally degenerate and crooked in its perceptions of reality. They feel more and more haunted. Thus, for example, Nihar Shai Davidei, an Israeli professor at Columbia University's School of Business Administration, called out in a hoarse voice during a demonstration on the university's lawns, that every parent who sends their children to study at New York, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and Columbia universities must know that they have no protection from harassment by student organizations Supporters of terrorism, who see them as a legitimate target for "resistance." The presidents of these universities were not in a hurry to stand up against lecturers and student organizations that support war crimes against Israel and Jews.
They even allowed them mass demonstrations and marches in favor of terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state, because in their opinion they are covered under "freedom of speech". Intense horror was condemned in their mouths in a weak language. The situation is not fundamentally different at other universities, such as Cornell, Brown or Pennsylvania. Against this background, the Israeli donor Idan Ofer resigned from the executive committee of the Kennedy School at Harvard University, the same school that the Wexner Foundation sent Israel's top security and government officials to pay, and has now announced the severance of relations with him. It is not difficult to describe the nature of the "training" of the IDF commanders and senior Israeli public service officials at Harvard.
Civil society in the US, including the business community there, responded with sporadic punishment for expressions of support for Palestinian war crimes. It is possible that the punishment will increase and be systematic, and it is possible that the attention will be captured by the damage that will inevitably be done to the non-combatants in Gaza after the IDF's ground invasion, if we do not succeed push them south.
The opening course of the war opened an observation slit into the depth of the moral decay in the humanities and social sciences in the entire world under the nihilistic and corrupt leadership of the American Academy.
The pursuit of truth has been replaced by "political correctness", multiculturalism and moral relativism. What happened to academia in Stalinist Russia happened to academia in post-colonial America: political doctrine trumped truth and trampled morality. The two are related, of course: when undermining the ability to find out social and political truths, or distinguish between an approximation of the truth and a wild lie, the result is not healthy skepticism. The moral result, and not only the scientific one, is a wild skepticism taking over the discourse to the point of losing the ability to distinguish between good and bad. From the elimination of the concept of truth at the hands of postmodernism, the road to moral destruction is short.
Israeli and American Jewish faculty members there find themselves in an American academy that is morally degenerate and crooked in its perceptions of reality. They feel more and more haunted
This is a serious problem. The social sciences and the humanities in Israel are enslaved to the American academy, which is at the bottom of the ladder. All the publication, appointment and promotion procedures in these professions with us, even in Israel studies and Jewish studies, are devoted to the practical control of "peer judgment", in which the American academy is dominant. We import here the moral and scientific diseases that characterize the academy there.
Prof. Avi Barali is a historian at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev
Historical collectives such as the Arab society in Israel bear responsibility for their actions and the phenomena they cultivate • They must not be exempted, and with them their people, from moral responsibility
By Avi Barali, Translated by Google 2023 Oct 15, Israeli Hayom
Prof. Avi Barali is a historian at Ben-Gurion University in the Nege
The separation that is sometimes made between Hamas and the Arab population in Israel is doubly misleading - from the point of view of the simple truth and from a moral point of view.
Hamas and its Islamic ideas about "Judgment Day", centered on an aspiration for the war crime of exterminating the Jewish people, is a product of the closeness of Arab society between the Jordan and the sea [google translated link]
This violent vision is one of the main political, religious and cultural currents in this society. It is woven into her identity and prominent in her upbringing and spiritual life.
Hamas is just one of the products of a society that worships death and exalts the miracle of murder. The theologians of this current cultivate death passions in the service of Islam, and this violent worldview has not been revealed to us for the first time just now.
There is only a quantitative and organizational difference between what happened on October 7 and the pogrom in Hebron and Mochas in 1929.
We have known similar manifestations of barbarism in the actions of Fatah and terrorist organizations from the Palestinian "left", and also in the actions of the "gangs" from the people of Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini,an admirer of Adolf Hitler and the founder of the Palestinian national movement.
This "national" movement was characterized from its inception by destructive violence and lack of Ability to channel social power into the channel of nation building.
These tendencies are revealed not only in the political arena. Extreme violence, amounting to murder, is not uncommon in family relationships in a society that orders fathers and sons to kill spouses, daughters and sisters who violate the "honor" of the family. It stands out in clan conflicts when Arab tribalism has no fear of royalty. Such phenomena are repeated among Arab Muslim societies. Political violence simmers in them close to the surface even in times of peace
A once-glorious culture has sunk into delusions of violent "redemption", degenerating society into indolence and failure.
The "hopes" for genocide that characterize radical Islam, and the passions for death that have now erupted into our consciousness in the attack on the northwestern Negev, are therefore at the heart of the identity of the society we call "Palestinian." A separation between violent and murderous rule and the society that fostered this violence in education, theology and spiritual life - like the separation between Nazism and the German society of the first half of the 20th century. Factually, this is a false separation, or the result of self-deception, and morally, it is an unfounded separation.
Historical collectives such as the Arab society in Israel bear responsibility for their actions and the phenomena they cultivate. They must not be exempted, and with them their people, from moral responsibility. It is true that individual human beings bear moral responsibility. But there is no escaping the fact that individuals will suffer, if they happen to be members of a society that cultivates evil like the German society of the last century, then their suffering will be the result of doing justice. This is what happened to the Germans then and this is what happened to the Arabs in 1948..
The "hopes" for genocide that characterize radical Islam, and the passions for death that have now erupted into our consciousness in the attack on the northwestern Negev, are therefore at the heart of the identity of the society we call "Palestinian”
Morally, it is impossible for IDF soldiers to be harmed in order not to harm the "non-involved", behind whom the spiritual descendants of the Nazis in our time hide. One should try not to harm the non-involved only to the extent that it does not endanger the IDF soldiers. People should be called to flee. You have to open corridors for them to escape.
But if the murderers who grew out of them prevent them from escaping, the responsibility for their death or suffering does not fall on us. It falls on Hamas and its partners and the members of the society that raised them.
For many years, perhaps since 1967, our relative strength made such a discussion almost theoretical. We didn't actually need such distinctions, but the intensification of the Hamas evil has reached such a point that its eradication will involve a serious injury to the society that perpetrated it.
Its eradication is essential not only for security reasons, but because of a moral imperative - to defend ourselves and to deter future disturbances. We do not harm the Gazans to punish them, but because unbearable evil is coming from among them. And at every end of the war, it is our duty to create a situation that will deny them any possibility of returning to evil.
Amid outcry over controversial gifts to the University, Harvard has kept its donation acceptance policies under wraps.
By Aidan F. Ryan and Cindy H. Zhang
May 28, 2019 The Crimson
In November, the Miami Herald reported that though he faced a potential life sentence for running a sex ring of underage girls out of his Palm Beach, Fla. home for years, Epstein’s legal team negotiated a plea deal that ended an FBI investigation into his conduct and sentenced him to 13 months in county jail.
When the Epstein allegations first came to light in 2oo6, a Harvard spokesperson said the University would not return the gift.
“Mr. Epstein’s gift is funding important research using mathematics to study areas such as evolutionary theory, viruses, and cancers,” a Harvard spokesperson said at the time. “The University is not considering returning this gift.”
Former University President Derek C. Bok — who was serving as interim president in 2006 — stood by a 1979 open letter he wrote on the ethics of accepting controversial gifts. He wrote that in extreme cases the University should return donations from those who earned their money immorally, but generally, the University should not consider the “symbolic” value of returning a gift.
“[O]n the whole, I would be inclined to accept such donations on the ground that the tangible benefits of using the money … should overcome the more abstract, symbolic considerations that might lead us to turn down such benefactions,” Bok wrote.
In light of the Miami Herald investigation, The Crimson reported on Epstein’s long-standing connections to Harvard. This time, the University stayed silent on the matter, with a University spokesperson declining to comment on the donation.
Earlier this month, Bacow said he was not aware of Epstein’s donation or his connection to Harvard.
“I don't know the specifics of the Jeffrey Epstein donation or his relationship to the University, actually,” Bacow said. “I'm not going to speculate.”
Epstein’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Cambridge residents and Harvard students have also questioned the University’s ties to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited both Harvard and MIT in March 2018. The University offered no public events or press releases about Prince Mohammad’s meetings with Harvard administrators, while the Saudi government touted “strong ties” between them and Harvard.
After a group of Saudi citizens affiliated with the crown prince killed Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, many American businesses, politicians, and universities re-examined their affiliations with the kingdom.
The Crimson also reported on ‘secretive, dubious partnerships’ between the University and the Saudi royal family through donations for programs and professorships across Harvard’s schools.
A foundation with ties to Prince Mohammed — called MiSK — sponsors a summer leadership development course hosted at Harvard. A press release in March 2016 stated that the “MiSK Foundation has an agreement with Harvard University to allocate 12.5% of the 800 seats for MiSK students.”
In an interview, Lee said the Corporation has not considered cutting ties with Saudi Arabia.
“No, no,” Lee said.
“I would say if you think about it, cutting ties for the country's sort of a blunt instrument,” Lee added. “We did divest from Sudanese investments. But that was for really radically different reasons.”
….
Sackler [Purdue Pharma aka oxycontin dope dealer], Saudi Arabia [serial human rights violator & 9/11 hijacking sponsor], and Epstein [preying, pimping, posturing, abusing]
CONTINUE READING…The Crimson
By Amy Goodman , DemocracyNow!
Published October 26, 2018 | Truthout.org
M.I.T. STUDENT: We’re here because we want to urge President Reif to reconsider the meeting with Mohammed bin Salman. We are aware that this meeting is going to happen, but we feel that accepting resources from somebody in sort of a blanket way, without acknowledging that there is a substantial famine being caused by Mohammed bin Salman in Yemen, goes against the principles of M.I.T., which is wanting to maintain human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: Both Harvard Provost Alan Garber and the M.I.T. President Rafael Reif met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi officials later publicized the meetings on social media in a move critics say was used to give the crown prince legitimacy. Meanwhile, Yale University Law School’s Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law is reportedly funded by a Saudi potentate, and the University of New Haven in Connecticut has formally partnered with King Fahd Security College in Riyadh since 2016.
When the partnership was first announced, University of New Haven President Steven Kaplan said “We are excited to put the University of New Haven’s world-renowned programs in criminal justice, national security, and forensic studies at the service of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s next generation of security professionals.”
….
In Boston, Massachusetts, Yarden Katz is with us, department fellow in systems biology at Harvard Medical School. He wrote an article for The Guardian on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s visit to Harvard and M.I.T. His piece, focusing on the kingdom’s close ties to US universities, is headlined Elite universities are selling themselves — and look who’s buying.
YARDEN KATZ:
And even after lobbying, Cambridge City Council passed a resolution condemning the visit and condemning the way that M.I.T. and Harvard handled bin Salman’s visit and greeted him as a kind of reformer as opposed to the war criminal that he is. So the Khashoggi affair obviously has reignited interest in that, but it has been going on since March.
AMY GOODMAN: And you suggest that not only didn’t they publicize the visit; you’re saying they tried to cover it up, Yarden.
CONTINUE READING…Truthout.org
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September 9, 2019, The Tufts Daily,
In total, Tufts, Babson, Boston University and MIT have received, or have been pledged, at least $122.3 million in financing from the Saudi government, Saudi state-owned industries and Saudi public universities since 2012, according to a review of federal data by the Daily as well as reporting by the Associated Press and the Boston Globe. Harvard does not report the identitiesof its Saudi donors to the federal gov- ernment but has received $30.6 million from sources in the kingdom since 2012, according to federal data. Northeastern is the only school rep- resented at the March 2018 meeting that has reported no Saudi donations since 2012.
A Tufts Daily investigation in May revealed that the university has received over $59.5 million in Saudi financing since 2009, primarily through government-sponsored tuition payments for Saudi students at the Tufts University School of Medicine
Tufts University President Anthony Monaco
Babson College President Kerry Healey,
Boston University President Robert A. Brown,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President L. Rafael Reif
Northeastern University, President Joseph E. Aoun.
Harvard was represented by Provost Alan Garber,
=====================f
By David D. Kirkpatrick
Nov. 4, 2017 | The New York Times
Prince Alwaleed was giving interviews to the Western news media as recently as late last month about subjects like so-called crypto currencies and Saudi Arabia’s plans for a public offering of shares in its state oil company, Aramco.
He has also recently sparred publicly with President Donald J. Trump. The prince was part of a group of investors who bought control of the Plaza Hotel in New York from Mr. Trump, and he also bought an expensive yacht from him as well. But in a twitter message in 2015 the prince called Mr. Trump “a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America.”
Before sparring with Mr. Trump, Prince Alwaleed was publicly rebuffed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who rejected his $10 million donation for the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York because the prince had also criticized American foreign policy.
CONTINUE READING…The New York Times
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was released on Saturday after having been held since November as part of an anti-corruption sweep launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. France24
Issued on: 27/01/2018
By: NEWS WIRES
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was released on Saturday from the luxury hotel where he has been held since November, according to three of his associates, marking the end of a chapter in a wide-reaching anti-corruption probe that has been shrouded in secrecy and intrigue.
The prince, 62, had been the most well-known and prominent detainee held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, since Nov. 4, when his much younger cousin, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the surprise raids against prominent princes, businessmen, ministers and military officers. Sending elite forces to arrest them in their homes, they were subjected to weeks of questioning that would result in many turning over significant financial assets.
Prince Alwaleed was among at least 11 princes detained in the probe, including two sons of the late King Abdullah. The government, however, has not named those detained nor discussed the specific allegations against them
CONTINUE READING…France24
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George Nader pleaded guilty to bringing a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to engage in sexual activity.
26 Jun 2020 Al Jazeera
Nader’s name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report. It details Nader’s efforts to serve as liaison between Russians and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.
CONTINUE READING…Al Jazeera
=================
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO | POLITICO
04/22/2021 CONVICTED MUELLER WITNESS DROPPED $4M ON CLEMENCY LOBBYING: One filing that caught PI’s eye this week was the reported $4 million that Robert Stryk’s Stryk Global Diplomacy (formerly known as Sonoran Policy Group) brought in from a consulting firm called ZAMZAM on behalf of George Nader. — Nader did not receive a commutation, despite Stryk not being the only lobbyist pushing to get him one, according to The New York Times, which reported that Alan Dershowitz was also lobbying the then-president on Nader’s behalf.Nader, a wealthy Lebanese-American businessman with ties to former President Donald Trump’s inner circle, served as a witness for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference, and last summer was sentenced to 10 years in prison on child pornography charges. He was also indicted in 2019 for steering illegal campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton.
CONTINUE READING…POLITICO
Wikipedia Nader's sexual abuse crimes - George Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to sexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.[6] He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.[7][8][9]
Politico - ….A Middle East expert and analyst who consulted with the Trump administration and was questioned by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller pleaded guilty to a federal child pornography charge in 1991, court records released on Friday show.
George Nader, 58, was involved in several foreign policy meetings during the Trump transition and at the White House last year.
Nader received a six-month sentence from a federal court in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce, according to the newly released records and to prison records POLITICO obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
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Opinion: AT HOME WITH THE AYATOLLAH AND HIS MEN
By George A. Nader, May 3, 1987 Washington Post
================
Middle East specialist who served as president's informal foreign policy adviser admits to possessing child pornography
By Chris Riotta
14 January 2020 independent.co.uk
An ex-adviser to Donald Trump's presidential transition team and key witness in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes involving minors.
George Nader, a 60-year-old Middle East specialist with close ties to the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, admit to possessing child pornography and bringing an underage boy to the US for “commercial sex” during a court hearing on Monday.
CONTINUE READING…independent.co.uk
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Robert Mueller said to be looking at Elliot Broidy, who gave George Nader ‘detailed report’ on meeting with president
By JTA 4 March 2018, via Times of Israel
…Nader reportedly visited the White House frequently during the early months of the Trump administration, meeting with Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner to discuss American policy toward the Persian Gulf states ahead of the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017.
In the late 1990s, Nader reportedly worked secretly with current World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder to broker a peace deal between Israel and Syria, shuttling between Damascus and Jerusalem..
CONTINUE READING…Times of Israel
From <https://www.timesofisrael.com/major-jewish-gop-donor-moves-into-sights-of-trump-probe/>
Elliott Broidy, deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee, paid by adviser to Emirates government amid Qatar row
22 March 2018 | By JTA via Times of Israel
…
Broidy, a California-based investor with a strong interest in the Middle East, in a statement to The Times said his actions were consistent with outlooks he has long held.
“I have always believed strongly in countering both Iran and Islamic extremism, and in working closely with our friends in the Arab world in order to do so,” he said.
Broidy and Nader also pressed Trump to take a more aggressive posture against Iran, seen by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a deadly enemy. Qatar also maintains ties with Iran. Trump is considering scrapping the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Saudi Arabia and UAE, along with Israel, believe the deal, which swaps sanctions relief for a rollback in Iran’s nuclear program, to be profoundly flawed.
Elliott Broidy’s effort to punish Qatar offers inside look at Washington’s foreign lobbying industry
By Aruna Viswanatha and C. Ryan Barber
Sept. 25, 2023
Elliott Broidy has spent five years trying to punish Qatar, the tiny but wealthy Gulf state he believed hacked into his emails and leaked them during the Trump administration, when he was a prominent Republican fundraiser.
He might have just gotten a break.
The California businessman became well known in Washington after, as a vice chairman for the Trump 2016 campaign’s joint fund with the Republican Party, he helped former President Donald Trump raise more than $108 million. Then his emails started leaking, leading to embarrassing revelations about his contacts with Trump officials and his work overseas.
In 2018, Broidy sued Qatar and its lobbyists, accusing them of orchestrating the hack on him because of his public criticism of the country. After years of grinding through the legal process with little momentum, Broidy last month found a potential toehold: One of the lobbyists he sued, Joey Allaham, settled the case and admitted that he had known about the hack—and handed over to Broidy his own set of emails Broidy never expected to get.
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Apr 20, 2022
From <https://vickyward.substack.com/p/text-messages-show-the-critical-role>
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Tue 29 Nov 2022, Last modified 28 Jun 2023
Not long ago, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, was all set to assume power. But his ambitious young cousin had a ruthless plan to seize control for himself
by Anuj Chopra
….
The previous night, 20 June 2017, Nayef, the king’s nephew, had been forced to step down as heir to the Saudi throne in an episode that one royal insider described to me as “Godfather, Saudi-style”. Nayef, who oversaw domestic security, was the CIA’s closest Saudi ally. Earlier that year, the then-CIA director Mike Pompeo had awarded him a medal in recognition of his counter-terrorism efforts that saved American lives. Two years before, after King Salman commenced his reign, Nayef had been made crown prince at the age of 55, putting him next in line to the throne. But simmering behind the scenes was a vicious rivalry between Nayef and his upstart cousin, the king’s son, Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he is known, who rose from obscurity to become deputy crown prince.
Shortly before the palace coup, on 5 June 2017, tensions between the princes reached boiling point after MBS and other regional autocrats imposed a punishing blockade on neighbouring Qatar.
….
Key among those sources is a man named Saad Aljabri, Nayef’s closest adviser and intelligence chief. It was Aljabri whom Nayef texted immediately after he was released from the king’s palace, after the coup. Aljabri, 63, had long operated in the shadows and many who worked with him considered him the most powerful non-royal in Saudi Arabia. One former American official who worked with Aljabri for years described him to me as the “deep state liaison” between Saudi Arabia and western powers. In the years after 9/11, Aljabri had been promoted through the ranks of the interior ministry, eventually becoming head of counter-terrorism operations. Together, Aljabri and his patron, Nayef, modernised the kingdom’s security and surveillance apparatus. They have also been accused of targeting peaceful activists under the pretext of counter-terrorism and laying the foundations of the police state that MBS would later turn against them.
The text messages between Nayef and Aljabri first came to light through legal filings in North America and an Interpol ruling that rejected a Saudi request to have Aljabri arrested overseas. The messages in those documents were authenticated by a digital forensics expert hired by Norton Rose Fulbright, the international law firm representing Aljabri, which is in possession of his iPhone, according to court affidavits. Aljabri’s team separately shared with me a handful of messages that have never previously been published.
….
To the Americans who had worked with Aljabri, it was obvious that MBS saw him as a threat. Aljabri fleeing the kingdom was “like J Edgar Hoover’s deputy leaving DC and showing up in Moscow”, said the former US official who had worked with him. “Here’s a man liked by deep state organisations around the planet. He knows every foible, every misstep that Saudi royals have made.”
CONTINUE READING…
Matt NahamJun 26th, 2020 Law & Crime
Nader is believed to have orchestrated a 2016 meeting between former national security advisor Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-strategist Steven Bannon and United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
A high-profile hanger-on and Trump ally, Nader is additionally believed to have organized a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles during which Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince and others–including Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund–met with bin Zayed. Nader also offered his services to Donald Trump Jr. at an infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016.
From <https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/george-nader-sentenced-to-10-years/>
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By Jo Shelley, CNN October 27, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/middleeast/mbs-saad-aljabri-60-minutes-intl/index.html
Saad Aljabri was number two in Saudi intelligence until, he says, Mohammed bin Salman forced him out. Now, MBS is Saudi Arabia's crown prince, and Aljabri is in exile. Aljabri believes the crown prince wants him dead because of what he knows. Scott Pelley reports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBVuvhqAhio
The former Saudi intelligence officer Saad Al Jabri is doing everything he can to have his two children released by the Saudi authorities. He has hired a company experienced in dealing with Saudi cases to urge the US to call for their repatriation.
Published 20.02.2023
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Kazakhstan, United States
ENRC's Mashkevich engages DC-based Stryk
Israeli-Kazakh oligarch Alexander Machkevich, who part-owns a stake in the Kazakh stated-controlled mining conglomerate Eurasian Resources Group (ERG), has been [...]
Published 10.03.2021 at 04:30 GMT
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is a leading independent research institute, serving as Israel’s global embassy for national security and applied diplomacy. Founded in 1976, the Center has produced hundreds of studies and initiatives by leading experts on a wide range of strategic topics.
In 2016, the Jerusalem Center launched a pathbreaking research initiative documenting the Palestinian Authority’s official payments to terrorists and their families. This led to legislation both in Israel and the U.S. Congress (the Taylor Force Act) that conditioned aid to the Palestinian Authority on the cessation of these terror-incentivization payments. The Jerusalem Center is expanding the anti-“Pay for Slay” initiative to hold the Palestinian Authority to account for its widespread corruption, “apartheid” propaganda, and international lawfare against the State of Israel. The Center intends to mobilize international donor states to:
Force the PA to moderate its violent incitement against Israel and Jews.
Cease the Palestinian Authority’s subversion of Israel’s existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people on the world stage.
Expose the PA’s antisemitic rhetoric and political warfare in international institutions.
Develop and deepen Western critical discourse on the PA narrative.
Upgrade Israel’s peace profile in the West.
Promote a moderate Palestinian Authority that will advance a free and democratic society that truly represents the interests of Palestinians.
The Initiative to Expose “Apartheid Antisemitism”
Jew-hatred has been mainstreamed into Western culture, politics, media, and higher education. Jews and the Jewish state have become “racialized” issues, as the American Jewish community is depicted as privileged “whites,” and Israel, likewise, as a “white supremacist colonialist entity” – an “apartheid state.” “Apartheid antisemitism” has coopted the U.S. public discourse, has divided the Jewish community, and has isolated Israel in international fora, particularly at the UN and associated agencies.
In 2016, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs launched an international initiative to combat “apartheid antisemitism.” Dan Diker traveled to South Africa and engaged government, business and academic leaders in a joint research initiative to refute the BDS “apartheid” campaign against Israel. In 2020, the Jerusalem Center partnered with Black American leaders, Arab and Ethiopian Israeli researchers to expose BDS political warfare with the publication of Dan Diker’s compendium, Israelophobia and the West, which Professor Alan Dershowitz called “the bible for understanding the new antisemitism.” The Jerusalem Center and its partners will transform our research findings into actionable applied diplomacy.
Black American-Israel Leadership Initiative
The Jerusalem Center’s joint diplomatic-educational PEACE-Promise project with the U.S.-based Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI) engages young Black American and African leaders and influencers by educating and empowering them with political facts and historical context to combat antisemitism in the Black community and enhance understanding and cooperation between Blacks, Jews, and the Jewish state.
The IBSI-Jerusalem Center “Promise” project, which includes diplomatic missions to Africa and Israel, emphasizes the history and importance of Israel-Africa and Black-Jewish relationships. IBSI vets its “ambassadors,” identifying key players in the community, including Black pastors and leaders. IBSI’s holistic educational approach teaches authentic Black history, including the deep identification of Black churches with Israel and spiritual Zionism. In addition, IBSI’s frontal and direct approach to important controversial issues, including discussions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Black-Jewish relations, and continuing education and advocacy in the United States, distinguishes this program from all other advocacy organizations, which merely bring young people on Israel tours, with no further engagement.
During IBSI’s mission to South Africa and Zimbabwe and Israel, ambassadors will learn firsthand of Israel’s cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity, its technological achievements and its long-standing partnership with African states.
Arab-Israel-India National Security Partnership
The intensifying threat posed by the Iranian regime to the security and stability of the Middle East and Western Asia has transformed former adversaries into new allies. The signing of the historic Abraham Peace and Normalization Accords in 2020 has created unprecedented cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors in the fields of national security and applied diplomacy as well as trade, high-tech, intelligence, infrastructure, and sustainability. The Jerusalem Center has partnered with Bahrain’s Derasat policy institute, the United Arab Emirates’ Emirates Policy Center, and Morocco’s Policy Center for the New South. These partnerships promise to completely reframe Israel’s profile as a fully integrated and normalized member of the Arab-majority Middle East. The Jerusalem Center, together with its regional partners, will continue to document and expose Iran’s race for hegemony under a rising nuclear umbrella via policy studies and recommendations for decision-makers across the region.
Africa-Israel National Security Partnership
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is leveraging and extending its Abraham Accords partnerships into the African continent. African nations are turning to Israel as an anchor for security, stability, and prosperity, viewing Israel’s technological capabilities as a solution for food security, water desalinization, and infrastructure development for future generations.
For the first time in Israel’s history, a leading Israeli policy and diplomacy institute – the Jerusalem Center – is partnering with Ethiopia’s leading policy and applied diplomacy institutes. Ethiopia, the second-largest African nation, with a population of 125 million, shares similar national security challenges with Israel, including combating terrorism and radicalization, and seeking to maintain political and social cohesion in a multiethnic society. The Jerusalem Center has also been approached by leading policy institutes in Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and the Red Sea states of Djibouti and Somaliland.
The Jerusalem Center is collaborating with Ethiopia’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (IFA) and Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) to create a shared agenda using the following modalities:
Exchange of Jerusalem Center, IFA, and IPSS-led governmental, parliamentary and diplomatic delegations.
Zoom consultations, workshops, roundtables, podcasts and videocasts.
Annual major conference on Israel-Africa national security challenges to be held in Africa, Israel, and the United States.
Policy recommendations on strategic intelligence, military and national security, and infrastructure, food and water security.
Impact assessment of Israel’s profile in the West including polling of African, Israeli and Jewish American public opinion on bilateral and multilateral relations.
Extension of the Jerusalem Center’s policy and applied diplomacy activities through research centers and universities, media and opinion influencers, and selected civil society stakeholders across the African continent.
Defensible Borders for Israel – A major security and public diplomacy initiative that analyzes current terror threats and Israel’s corresponding territorial requirements, particularly in the strategically vital West Bank.
Jerusalem in International Diplomacy – Dore Gold analyzes the legal and historic rights of Israel in Jerusalem in The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City. Jerusalem expert Nadav Shragai documents nearly a century of extremist violence in “The Al-Aksa is in Danger” Libel: The History of a Lie.
Combating Delegitimization and BDS – A public diplomacy program exposing those forces that oppose Israel’s legitimacy. Publications include BDS Unmasked: Radical Roots, Extremist Ends (2016), Defeating Denormalization: Shared Palestinian and Israeli Perspectives on a New Path to Peace (2018), Students for Justice in Palestine Unmasked (2018), and Israelophobia and the West (2020).
Global Law Forum – An initiative led by Amb. Alan Baker, former legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, undertakes studies and advances policy initiatives to protect Israel’s legal rights in its conflict with the Palestinians and radical Islam.
Institute for Diplomatic Affairs (IDA) – A program that presents Israel’s rights and security-based diplomacy to the foreign diplomatic corps and foreign press in Israel.
Jerusalem Center Serial Publications:
Jerusalem Issue Brief/Jerusalem Viewpoints – Insider briefings by top-level Israeli government officials, military experts, and academics, as part of the Center’s Institute for Contemporary Affairs.
Daily Alert – A digest of hyperlinked news and commentary on Israel and the Middle East from the world and Israeli press since 2002.
Jewish Political Studies Review – A scholarly journal founded in 1989.
From <https://jcpa.org/about/>
Education Dept. Investigates Claims of Discrimination Against Palestinian Students at Harvard
The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Education Department is looking into the allegations after a complaint from a Muslim advocacy group.
From <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/harvard-palestinian-discrimination-complaint.html>
By Vimal Patel
Vimal Patel writes about higher education.
Feb. 7, 2024
Sign up for the Israel-Hamas War Briefing. The latest news about the conflict. Get it sent to your inbox.
The U.S. Education Department said on Tuesday that it had opened an investigation into Harvard over whether it failed to protect Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their supporters from harassment, threats and intimidation.
Harvard has been in turmoil for months over its response to the attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, which played a part in the eventual departure of the school’s president, Claudine Gay. The Education Department has already opened a separate investigation into Harvard over complaints of antisemitism.
The Muslim Legal Fund of America, which filed a civil-rights complaint that led to the new investigation, said more than a dozen students had faced harassment. Students were “threatened or called terrorists,” sometimes by fellow students, for wearing keffiyehs, a Palestinian scarf, said Christina A. Jump, a lawyer for the group. Others were doxxed and intimidated, yet Harvard administrators dismissed the concerns, she said.
School administrators instead met with donors and alumni who “encouraged the harassment,” said Chelsea Glover, another lawyer on the case. The complaint, which lawyers for the group did not provide, does not name any donors or alumni, Ms. Jump said.
Continue reading….
From <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/harvard-palestinian-discrimination-complaint.html>
erica.green@nytimes.com
7 January 2015
Two French Muslim terrorists and brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Armed with rifles and other weapons, they murdered 12 people and injured 11 others.
XXX October 2023
