July 2019, Week 3
Life in Southeast Alaska vs. Life in occupied Palestine:
Southeast: huge forest fires burning in Interior Alaska, and British Columbia causing haze over Southeast. The soot darkens the ice on glaciers like the Mendenhall in Juneau, causing them to absorb more heat and increase melting.
Occupied Palestine: Fires burning all over Israel during a heat wave that’s pushing temperatures up to 120 F. Blackened landscape and soot settling out darkens the ground there as well, causing it to heat up like an asphalt parking lot.
Monday
07.15.2019 Pro-Israel groups promoted anti-BDS resolution in German parliament, Der Spiegel reports Haaretz by Noa Landau. Reports are coming out that Zionist front groups worked with the Israeli government’s Strategic Affairs Ministry to prompt the Bundestag’s vote calling BDS anti-Semitic. Investigative German weekly Der Spiegel, the largest publication of its kind in Europe reports that tactics include “donations to politicians” and “organizing trips to Israel.” Pro-Zionist tabloid Bild is accusing Der Spiegel of –wait for it—anti-Semitism.
07.15.2019 UK: Activists urged to ride through London, Manchester for Palestine Middle East Monitor Annual ‘Big Ride for Palestine’ will be July 27 in London, August 03 in Manchester.
07.15.2019 What I saw at Palestine Expo proves it is possible to criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic Middle East Monitor By Gideon Levy. Article quotes Chief Zwelivelile Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela, and member of South Africa’s parliament, who said.
“Some people still argue vainly over whether Israel is an apartheid state or not. To us, the South Africans, it is clear. Israel is an apartheid state… We, all of us, who have experienced the brutality of South African apartheid—this [in Israel] is the worst form of apartheid we have witnessed…We have a moral duty to boycott Israel because of its apartheid regime against the Palestinians.”
07.15.2019 Netanyahu: Israel will ‘crush’ Lebanon if Hezbollah attacks Jerusalem Post. Remember last month when Israeli press was gushing about a decade of American diplomatic effort beginning to bear fruit between Lebanon and Israel? They used terms like, ‘historic,’ and ‘breakthrough’ in the titles. Well, Netanyahu threw all that under the bus because—it’s political season—and it’s long been noted that sitting Israeli politicians, especially Netanyahu, run on war. As Dahlia Scheindlin put it in Foreign Policy article in May of 2018, “Netanyahu needs conflict to survive.”
07.15.2019 Trump denounced for ‘incitement to violence’ against Ilhan Omar after latest attack on congresswoman Common Dreams by Julia Conley. Trump tells reporters that Congresswoman Omar hates Jews, Israel, America. [Most people paying attention see Trump’s invective as an attempt to distract America from massive publicity of Trump being friend and running mate with pimping-pedophile, Zionist Jeffery Epstein. Several women, who were underage girls when they were groomed and recruited to have sex with Epstein and his wealthy, powerful contacts, have named Trump in the scandal.]
Tuesday
07.16.2019 Trump answers racism accusation with a charge of his own: Anti-Semitism Washington Post by Isaac Stanley-Becher. Israel-first President Donald Trump is being called a racist for slinging mud at Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and three other congresswomen of color (Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Alexandria Occasio-Cortez collectively known as ‘the Squad) by saying Omar sympathized with Al-Qaeda, and the congresswomen should go back to their own countries if they don’t like America. [Unlike Trump’s wife, three of the women were born in the United States, Ilhan Omar came to America as a child, is a citizen here, and is a member of—Ah—Congress.]
Apparently unable to make a case that he’s not a racist, the Trumpster, with little success tries to switch the charge of racism to Omar, claiming she, “says horrible things about Israel, hates Israel, hates Jews. It’s very simple.” Article notes that a lot of American Jews don’t support Trump and are uncomfortable with him hitching his wagon to their star of David.
07.16.2019 Health ministry issues safety precautions ahead of searing heat wave. Times of Israel. Israeli health ministry recommends Israelis remain in air conditioned areas and drink as much water as possible. [Article doesn’t mention that, because of Israel, over 4.5 million Palestinians don’t have either of those options and will have to tough it out or die.]
07.16.2019 Still no indictment in gang rape of 11-year-old girl from months ago Haaretz by Josh Breiner. Four months ago four to six Israeli boys gang raped and sodomized an 11-year-old. Apparently they filmed themselves in the attack and shared the video with others. The little girl has been hospitalized several times and is under psychiatric care. Her family’s lawyer says the police have been negligent in prosecuting the case because the girl’s family is from a low socio-economic class.
From IMEMC
07.16.2019 Army abducts eleven Palestinians in West Bank Night and fog raids.
07.16.2019 Seven Year old Palestinian child killed by Israeli hit and run settler. (West of Hebron) Little Tariq Zebania was riding his bicycle when a car ran him down, then drove into a nearby Jewish colony. Eyewitnesses called Israeli occupation troopers who sent an ambulance that took the boy to an Israeli hospital where he was pronounced dead. Colonist driver was not arrested.
07.16.2019 Video: Gazans deprived of seaside recreation by pollution Gaza is one of the world’s most crowded places. About two million people in an area the size of Bakersfield, California. It’s over 100 degrees, F there now. Because of Israel’s siege of Gaza there’s not consistent electricity to run air conditioning so people go to the beach for relief. But because of the Israeli power cuts and bombing of sewage treatment plant without letting the people rebuild it, raw sewage from those two million people has fouled beaches and ocean. Video is sewage pipe pouring into the sea.
Wednesday
07.17.2019 Palestinian prisoner dies in solitary confinement in Israeli jail Al Jazeera. Last month, June 19, as part of the nightly night and fog raids, Israel black-bagged a 31-year-old, a healthy stone quarryman named Nassar Taqata, and took him to prison for torture and interrogation. He’s dead now. Interrogated/tortured for weeks at ‘notorious Jalemeh interrogation centre,’ then thrown into solitary confinement at Nitzan prison. This morning his family was notified their young man is dead.
Article notes he was never charged with anything, and he was not allowed to speak to a lawyer, his family, or anyone else. Pretty much no one on the planet believes the Jewish state’s story that the Nassar just happened to up and die from a stroke. Fearing prisoner unrest because of the killing Israel has shut down all prisons, cancelled all court sessions, lawyer visits, and transfers. Article notes there are 5,250 Palestinian prisoners in Jewish state prisons. 205 are children, 44 are women. 220 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons since the 1967 occupation began.
07.17.2019 Mother of Nasser Taqata speaks to PNN IMEMC Incredibly sad. Mother who has just today learned her son was tortured to death in Israeli prison speaks through her tears, that she wishes she could have died instead of him.
07.17.2019 Barak plans to sue the Daily Mail for implying he socialized with young women at Epstein’s home Haaretz by Jonathan Lis. Pedophile/pimp/procurer Jeffery Epstein is one of the most hated men in the world since his crimes have come back into the news. The British Tabloid published a 2016 photo of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak going into Epstein’s Manhattan mansion with a neck gator pulled over his face almost to his eyes as if, as a commenter pointed out, he was about to rob a bank. Barak claims he wasn’t trying to hide his identity, January is cold in New York. Unfortunately for him. There are pictures of his security guard with coat wide open and no hat.
07.17.2019 Israel has almost as many religious restrictions as Iran, Pew Report finds Haaretz/JTA. The Jewish state is on the short list (top 20) of most religiously restricted countries. After spending most of the article talking about how people pick on Jews in other countries, article finds the topic in next to the last paragraph. In Israel, “haredi, Orthodox controls all recognized marriages, divorces, burials and Jewish conversions. State doesn’t recognize marriage between Jews and non-Jews that take place in Israel.
07.17.2019 12 Israelis arrested in Cyprus on suspicion of gang raping tourist Haaretz. Victim is a 19-year-old British woman.
07.17.2019 Homes burn, families flee as brush fires rage throughout the country Times of Israel. Jewish colonist homes burn up and Israel can’t blame the Palestinians for these.
From IMEMC
07.17.2019 Irrigation pool demolished by Israeli forces in southern West Bank With daytime temperatures over 100 F. occupation troops destroy a Palestinian farmer’s pool of caught rainwater. The pond was 4,500 cubic meters, less than two swimming pools in volume, it was all he had to water his crops which will now wither and die, as Israel intended.
07.17.2019 Army demolishes four stores in Silwan, abducts one child. Two videos with the story. One of occupation troops beating up local people. The other is occupation troops destroying shops.
07.17.2019 Soldiers injure many Palestinians in Ramallah Jewish occupation troops attacked and brutally suppressed a non-violent march against Jewish occupation brutality. The marchers were students from Bir Zeit university protesting Israel’s murder of Nassar Taaqata in a Jewish state prison this week. Occupiers fired gas bombs and beat people up.
Thursday
From IMEMC
07.18.2019 Israeli colonist rams Palestinian with car, flees the scene another hit and run by the occupation. 19-year-old Adnan Mojahed, was taken to hospital with broken bones and lacerations after a Jewish colonist ran him down after he got out to try and restart it.
07.18.2019 Report: ‘Taqatqa died due to abuse, lack of medical treatment 31-year-old stone quarry worker Nassar Taqatqa, died in a Jewish state prison two days ago. His autopsy shows he was tortured for long periods and died because the Israelis didn’t give him the medical treatment that might have saved him. Other prisoners who saw the man affirmed that he was brutalized.
07.18.2019 Israeli soldiers abduct seven Palestinians in Qalqilia, Jenin, and Salfit.
07.18.2019 Army abducts two Palestinians, injures one in Deheishe refugee camp south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
07.18.2019 UN officials call on Israeli authorities to halt plans for demolitions in Sur Bahir. UN responds to Jewish state plan for demolishing ten apartment buildings because Israel’s apartheid wall is too close to them.
07.18.2019 B’Tslem: “contrary to military statement: ‘Abda-Rhaman a-Shteiwi, 9, was shot in the head with live ammunition” In defense of the Jewish state Israeli occupation troops shot a little 9-year-old boy in the head last week. He’s on a ventilator in critical condition. Israel claims it shot him with a rubber coated steel bullet-as if that’s okay. But MRIs have shown it was live ammunition. The boy lives in a village near Nablus. He was shot while villagers were on the weekly march against Israel closing their main road years ago. The Israeli human right’s NGO B’Tslem describes what happened, and even put up a picture of a hillside where a man is standing to show where the occupation trooper who shot the boy fired from. It was a distance of about 200 meters.
07.18.2019 Army abducts a Palestinian near Nablus Home invasion.
07.18.2019 Army abducts a Palestinian near Hebron
07.18.2019 Israeli soldiers abduct a Palestinian in northern Gaza.
07.18.2019 Army abducts 15 Palestinians celebrating high-school graduation in Jerusalem. The kids were celebrating their graduation by shooting off fire works. Jewish colonists called occupation troops claiming the kids were shooting guns at Jewish colonist houses. Occupation troops arrested 15 high school kids and began ransacking houses in several neighborhoods looking for more.
07.18.2019 Netanyahu to decide whether Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib can enter Israel, West Bank for tour Haaretz by Noa Landau. [What’s left unstated in the article is that the reason the two congress women have to go to Israel at all is that Israel controls all travel to the West Bank and Gaza, and wiped out their airports twenty years ago and never let the people rebuild them to this day. No one flies in or out.]
‘In 2011 Israel passed a law prohibiting people who support BDS from entering Israel [and, by extension, from the occupied West Bank, Gaza, occupied East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.] Two regular people who support BDS would be turned back at the airport. But two American Congress women, Muslims, and one a Palestinian/American, are another matter, and an very public embarrassment to Israel if they get in or if they don’t. So, Netanyahu gets to decide if they can go on their visit.
07.29.2019 U.S. Senate allows arms sales to Saudi Arabia, sustaining Trump vetos Defense News by Joe Gould. Senate needed 67 votes to over-ride Trump’s vetos “of 3 congressional resolutions meant to block his administration from passing Congress to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.” Sales are 8.1 billion in precision guided bombs.
Friday
07.19.2019 Iran stokes Gulf tensions by seizing two British linked tankers The Guardian by Julia Borger. Well, Iran has called Britain’s bluff. Two weeks ago, on July 04, 2019, Britain, at US urging, committed an act of international piracy by seizing an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar under the pretext that the 2.1 million barrels of oil it carried was bound for Syria. (You might ask, as many people around the world are asking, “So it was bound for Syria-So What?)
Tit for tat. Now Iran has seized British flagged tanker Stena Impero and ordered it to dock at the port of Bandar Abbas. Iran also boarded another tanker, questioned the crew, then let it go two hours later. The British are not amused. Threaten consequences.
Whole thing an embarrassment to a Britannia that no longer rules the waves.
07.19.2019 Gulf crisis: story began with UK’s seizure of Iranian-flagged ship in Gibraltar The Guardian by Patrick Wintour. Two weeks after Britain seized the Grace 1, an Iranian oil tanker with 2.1 million barrels of oil on board, and wouldn’t give it back, Iran has seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Spain says the Americans told the British to seize the Iranian tanker.
next up: a long, fascinating, disturbing one.
07.19.2019 Sprouting weapons of war OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) by Sam Mednick. $150 million-ish, Israeli weapons racket in South Sudan, selling weapons to both sides of the civil war, laundering money by masquerading as an agricultural project. 1.8 million people face starvation. Millions more hungry. [Background: in July, 2011, South Sudan gains independence from the north. In December, 2013 civil war breaks out between two former leaders of the independence revolt. 400,000 have been killed—many in brutal massacres—rape of women and children is a tool of conquest. 4 million displaced.]
In 2015 the South Sudan government announced massive agricultural effort to feed the country, starting with $45 million in seed money. Project given to former Israeli Army officer, Israel Ziv, who had no bona fides in agriculture but played up Israel’s [false] narrative of the Jewish state being agricultural wizards. Named ‘Green Horizon’ the project was used to cover $150 million in Israeli weapons, mostly small arms.
Article says the US government blacklisted Ziv and his Israeli security company ‘Global GST’ for selling arms to both sides of the conflict.
OCCRT has learned that an oil trading company Trafigura Pte Ltd. –a subsidiary of Trafigura Group Pte Ltd, one of the world’s largest commodity traders—is a probable collaborator with Ziv’s company. Trafigura transferred at least $140 million to South Sudan’s central bank, supposedly for oil pre-payments. The South Sudan government transferred about the same amount to Global CST. “The total amount transferred nearly matches the $150 million worth of arms the [US] Treasury Department said Global CST’s owner sold to the [South Sudan} government.” “The money paid to the Green Horizon farming project never showed up in the government’s budget…”
Quote by J.R. Mailey, investigations director at The Sentry, “When multi-million dollar deals are kept off the books and oversight institutions are sidestepped, the money’s either being used to line the pockets of politicians or support military operations.”
Evidently, 1) Trafigura paid South Sudan millions in 2015/16 as pre-payment for future oil deliveries. A March 18, 2019 press release from the International Monetary Fund mission to South Sudan urged the government “…to immediately stop contracting oil advances that are expensive and non-transparent. 2) Money went to South Sudan Central Bank 3) Bank transferred money ($45 million) to Global. 4) Another $8.4 million went to bank in May, 2016, followed by $81.7 million the next month. 5) the bank transferred about the same amount to Global. 6) From 2015 to 2018 South Sudan’s agriculture budget says it spent less than $10 on agriculture and forestry.
Article says ‘According to the US government, “While Ziv maintained loyalty senior Government of South Sudan officials through bribery and promises of security support, he also reportedly planned to organize attacks by mercenaries on South Sudanese oil fields and infrastructure, in an effort to create a problem only his company and affiliates could solve.”
From IMEMC
07.19.2019 PCHR Weekly report on human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory (11-17 July, 2019)
07.19.2019 MOH: Gaza facing unprecedented shortage of medical supplies As Israelis strangle two million people, they are cutting off even the meager amounts of medical supplies into Gaza.
Saturday
07.20.2019 The protest dispersed. Then an Israeli sniper shot a 9-year-old boy in the head Haaretz by Gideon Levy. The great Jewish humanitarian, Gideon Levy gives the details of a heartbroken family whose little boy was standing in a friends yard when an Israeli occupation sniper targeted his head and shot him.
Half an hour earlier the 9-year-old was shopping for treats at a local store. Video camera footage from the store, included with the article, shows him picking out a chocolate banana popsicle, and a piece of watermelon on a toothpick. He brought them home and put them in the freezer for later, then went to play with his friends.
The Israeli sniper shot him from a hillside 100 meters away (length of a football field). Contrary to Israeli claims, Israel shot him with live ammunition using a fragmentation round that doctors haven’t seen before—and they’ve seen a lot of bullet wounds. This bullet exploded in the boys skull leaving a comet trail of 70 to 100 metal shards in his brain. The boy, Abdel Shatawi, is in an induced coma, in critical condition. His parents are keeping the treats in the freezer, hoping for a miracle that will let him come home to enjoy them.
06.20.2019 An invitation you can’t refuse: how Rep. Steny Hoyer makes sure AIPAC’s Israel junket is well attended The Intercept by Akela Lacy and Ryan Grim. Steny Hoyer (D-Md) uses his position as House Majority Leader to strong-arm democratic lawmakers, especially freshman, to go on an all expenses paid, propaganda trip to Israel bankrolled by an AIPAC polyp called, ‘The American Israel Education Foundation’ which AIPAC created after a 2007 rule prohibited lobbying groups from paying for extended Congressional travel.
The pressure on lawmakers starts even before they’re elected. During a challengers first campaign Hoyer and his fellow Zionist supporters repeatedly ask candidates if they will make the trip to Israel if elected. The Intercept interviewed a number of current and former congress people who asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation by Hoyer and AIPAC. An exception was Mary Jo Kilroy who described getting calls from Hoyer’s team, AIPAC and from her home district pressuring her to go.
Hoyer and AIPAC have been an item for nearly 40 years. He can use his position to reward lawmakers who get in line by greasing the skids for laws they want to pass for their districts, and to punish those who don’t by stalling their legislation.
07.20.2019 When Jews praised Mussolini and supported Nazis: Meet Israel’s first fascists Haaretz by Dan Tamir.
Sunday
07.21.2019 Israel is the only country in the world killing Iranians, senior Israeli Minister boasts Haaretz and Reuters. Unbelievable provocation even for the Jewish state, Israeli Minister of Regional Cooperation, Tzachi Hane—read that again—Minister of Regional Cooperation! which is a high level cabinet post in Israel’s government, proclaimed today that “Israel is the only country in the world that has been killing Iranians for two years now.” He’s clearly trying to bait Iran to retaliate which will inevitably drag the United States into a war with Iran. Comments section in Haaretz roundly condemns the statement calling Tzachi a Nazi, asking ‘what if someone switched ‘Jews’ for ‘Iranians’. ect.
From IMEMC
07.21.2019 Nearly 100 protesters wounded by Israeli forces Jewish snipers, firing as always from the safety and comfort of military embankments and vehicles, injured another 98 unarmed Palestinian protesters along the Gaza segregation fence today. 49 of the injured shot with live ammunition. Four of the injured were paramedics trying to help others. No Israelis injured—again.
07.21.2019 Journalist injured as soldiers attack Bethlehem
Our Christian American version of Bethlehem, at Christmas we sing: Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie, above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by…
Year-round reality of occupied Bethlehem, it’s not much like that: Today Israel attacked unarmed Protesters in the occupied Bethlehem district. Gassed them, shot a woman journalist in the pelvis with one of the gas bombs. (Israel occupation troops notoriously aim for the crotch of both males and females.)
