Israeli Government Video Erases Palestinians from History

"A new public relations video by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs erases Palestinians from the narrative of the Holy Land, promoting an ahistorical version of the past that endorses claims to exclusive Jewish ownership of the land." (thanks Fred)

Diaa Hadid of the Times goes to Jordan

Here what she is not telling in her article.  Leftists and progressives in Jordan also protested and complained about the changes especially because they were arranged in meetings with Zionists of the US Congress, and based on a speech by Queen youtube.  It is not only Islamists who objected, and it is not only about the substance of the changes.  Many complained that the regime basically plays with the curricula to further its interests and depending on its domestic alliances.  No regime has promoted Islamist kooks more than the Jordanian regime.  Read this critique by comrade Shakir Jarrar. 

How the US ignited the Lebanese Civil War

My weekly article in Al-Akhbar: "How the US Ignited the Lebanese Civil War (7): What was Col. Morgan doing in Beirut in the Summer of 1975?"

Civilian casualties in Yemen

Western media keep citing UN sources for the claim that only 60% of civilian casualties in Yemen are by the "coalition".  It has to be more than 90%.

Qatari regime and Syria

Probably of all the outside parties, the Qatari regime bears most responsibility for the bloodshed in Syria.  

Saudi regime admission of a war crime in Yemen

So Saudi regime first claimed that it made no raids or flights on that day of the bombing of the funeral.  Then the Saudi regime media blamed ISIS and Huthis and Salih for the crime. Today, the Saudi regime admitted that it committed the crime. And now Western media will be busy forgiving Saudi regime with more arms sales.   But make no mistake about it: US is a full partner in all Saudi regime crimes in Yemen.

This is the irony of the Western media coverage of Saudi regime

"and prominent Saudi editors and journalists who have accompanied him on foreign trips have been given up to $100,000 in cash, according to two people who have traveled with the prince’s delegation." And then the Western media interview those same "prominent Saudi editors and journalists" and cite them as objective and neutral observers of Saudi affairs.  The article should have said "Saudi and other Arab editors and journalists who have accompanied him on foreign trips..."

Talking about Syria

"It must be interesting for you to watch the debates, when you hear the candidates talk about Syria.

They don’t know a thing about Syria. Neither do the journalists, by the way. They’re doing their best, but they don’t know. They’re guessing. They speak with great authority but they really know very little. I don’t criticize them for being incompetent, but I criticize them for not having the up-close knowledge. They’re speaking of a planet they’ve never visited but they speak as though they do know and it’s a little confusing for me." (thanks Mick)

The long article in the Times about Muhammad Bin Salman

Notice as usual in all articles in the Times and the Post about Saudi royals: no critics of the regime are ever interviewed and that only apologists and advocates are interviewed and cited.  It is enough that the article concludes by this: "“I am persuaded as someone who focuses on this topic that the ruling family of Saudi Arabia above all else puts the interest of the family first and foremost,” said Mr. Kechichian, the analyst [at the King Faisal Center] who knows many royals.“Not a single member of the family will do anything to hurt the family.”

The vision of Prince Muhammad bin Salman: austerity and budget cuts

"While vacationing in the south of France, Prince bin Salman spotted a 440-foot yacht floating off the coast. He dispatched an aide to buy the ship, the Serene, which was owned by Yuri Shefler, a Russian vodka tycoon. The deal was done within hours, at a price of approximately 500 million euros (roughly $550 million today), according to an associate of Mr. Shefler and a Saudi close to the royal family. The Russian moved off the yacht the same day."

Bob Dylan talks about his admiration for Um Kulthum

""I listen to foreign music, too. I like Middle Eastern music a whole lot.
Playboy: Such as?
Dylan: Om Kalthoum.
Playboy: Who is that?
Dylan: She was a great Egyptian singer. I first heard of her when I was in Jerusalem.
Playboy: She was an Egyptian singer who was popular in Jerusalem?
Dylan: I think she's popular all over the Middle East. In Israel, too. She does mostly love and prayer-type songs, with violin and accompaniment. Her father chanted those prayers and I guess she was so good when she tried singing behind his back that he allowed her to sing professionally, and she's dead now but not forgotten. She's great. She really is. Really great.""

Here, the New York Times mentions the influence of Um Kulthum on him.

Remember my theory? There can never be a negative review of an Israeli book or movie or play or dance or potato in the US press

It is obviously a lousy movie but the LA Times can't get to say it: "Israeli film 'Is That You?' overcomes rough start before finding its footing".

How terrorism created Israel

"The story he tells is of a Zionist elite determined from the beginning to turn all of Palestine into a Jewish state in which the local non-Jewish Arab population would be either subjugated or expelled. The Zionists were quite willing to use violence and terrorism to achieve this aim, and the book traces the resulting unhappy history in detail, to the extent that, in places, it reads like a catalog of Zionist terror attacks."

Leaked emails show Israel-Clinton plot to smear BDS

"In an August 2015 email labeled “NOT FOR CIRCULATION,” Eizenstat passed along advice to Hillary Clinton from Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador in Washington. A US-born right-winger who has been called “Bibi’s brain,” Dermer told Eizenstat that the Israeli government was plotting to smear Palestine solidarity activism on college campuses as terrorism. “They will shortly expose the funding base for the main BDS group on campus, Students for Justice in Palestine, which tie it with terrorist funding,” Eizenstat wrote. “The key is to expose BDS as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.” "

Democrats are now pretending that Joe Biden is a feminist?

Remember what the late Alexander Cockburn had written about Biden in the US senate?

"Massacre of civilians": Saudi bombing of Yemeni funeral with U.S. weapons was a war crime

"The 19-month war in Yemen has received little coverage in the U.S. media, although it has been a constant onslaught of atrocities. Last Saturday the Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition carried out one of its worst massacres yet in bombing a funeral in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. At least 140 Yemenis were killed and more than 600 were wounded in the attack, the Associated Press reported. Children were killed, as was the mayor of Sanaa." “This was a massacre of civilians,” said Scott Paul, Oxfam America senior humanitarian policy adviser." (thanks Amir)

The real story of human rights buffoon, Jordan royal, Zeid Raed Al-Hussein--who was endorsed by Ken Roth of HRW

"Human Rights Watch’s executive director Kenneth Roth tweeted that Zeid had "a strong rights record."...But there are grounds for concern about how Ambassador Zeid will treat what is arguably the most consequential human right: the right to freedom of expression. Jordan’s voting record on the highly divisive attempt to force U.N. states to criminalize the "defamation of religion" leaves a huge question mark about how aggressively Ambassador Zeid will defend free speech in the sphere of religion, where this right is constantly under attack at both the national and international level.  From 1999-2010, member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) successfully tabled resolutions on "combating defamation of religion" as part of their campaign to implement a global blasphemy ban under human rights law, in the Human Rights Council (known as the U.N. Commission on Human Rights until 2006) and the General Assembly. During both of Ambassador Zeid’s periods as Jordan’s ambassador to the U.N., Jordan voted in favor of these resolutions when they were introduced at the General Assembly. Both of the resolutions passed. The 2010 resolution commended"the recent steps taken by Member States to protect freedom of religion through the enactment or strengthening of domestic frameworks and legislation to prevent the vilification of religions and the negative stereotyping of religious groups" and urged the international community to follow suit.  Jordan’s voting record in the U.N. is consistent with the country’s domestic record on blasphemy. In 2006, two newspaper editors who reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad previously published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten were sentenced to two months of imprisonment. In 2011, Jordan initiated a trial in absentia against Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the creator of the offending cartoon, as well as 19 Danish journalists and editors who had published the cartoon in various news outlets. In 2009, Jordanian poet Eslam Samhan was sentenced to imprisonment and a fine for blasphemy after having included Quranic verses in his poetry. It was developments such as these that the 2010 resolution on defamation of religion hailed and sought to enact at the international level, turning human rights into a weapon against religious dissent and nonconformism rather than principles protecting the freedom of conscience and pluralism."

Syrian regime is not too busy to roll out propaganda portraits of its potentate

The US in Yemen

So to show its disapproval of the Saudi war in Yemen, the US bombed Yemen days after the funeral massacre.

US Can't Say Who Launched Missiles from Yemen at Navy Ships

"The U.S. has yet to determine who was responsible for the launch of missiles at Navy warships in the Red Sea from areas in Yemen in the control of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday."

My article on Bob Dylan

My article on Bob Dylan in Al-Akhbar: "Bob Dylan carrying a Nobel*".

*This was my original title.  Al-Akhbar gave this title: "A test for us: Can we admire a Zionist?"

chief of Saudi lobby in DC

You remember I posted the piece by chief of Saudi lobby in DC in which he called for a Saudi-Israeli alliance? I noticed that although he is very active on Twitter he for some reason did not tweet his own article in this regard.

PS I watched an interview with the guy.  Man, why can't Arab normalizers ever be smart?

After JASTA: Saudi regime has just discovered that Israel is a sponsor of terrorism

"Iran and Israel have been the main sponsors of state terrorism in the region and the world at large, Saudi Arabia's Permanent Representative at the United Nations Abdallah Al-Mouallimi told Arab News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday."

Suddenly, after JASTA, Saudi propagandists are bothered by US support for Israel

Jamal Khashuqji, propaganda adviser for Prince Al-Walid, says: "UNESCO issued a ruling that Al-Aqsa and its sanctuary are pure right for Muslims; US and UK voted against.  This is a hostile act requires anger and protests".

"The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere"

"In the late 1940s, the newly-established CIA cut its teeth in Western Europe, pushing back against some of the continent's most influential leftist parties and labor unions. In 1948, the U.S. propped up Italy's centrist Christian Democrats and helped ensure their electoral victory against a leftist coalition, anchored by one of the most powerful communist parties in Europe. CIA operatives gave millions of dollars to their Italian allies and helped orchestrate what was then an unprecedented, clandestine propaganda campaign: This included forging documents to besmirch communist leaders in fabricated sex scandals, starting a mass letter-writing campaign from Italian-Americans to their compatriots, and spreading hysteria about a Russian takeover and the undermining of the Catholic Church. "We had bags of money that we delivered to selected politicians, to defray their political expenses, their campaign expenses, for posters, for pamphlets," recounted F. Mark Wyatt, the CIA officer who handled the mission and later participated in more than two-and-a-half decades of direct support to Italy's Christian Democrats. This template spread everywhere: CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese government, is said to have run the successful 1953 campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan's center-right Liberal Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and 60s. The U.S. government and American oil corporations helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash.  In Chile, the U.S. successfully prevented Allende from winning an election in 1964. “A total of nearly four million dollars was spent on some fifteen covert action projects, ranging from organizing slum dwellers to passing funds to political parties," detailed a Senate inquiry in the mid-1970s that started to expose the role of the CIA in overseas elections. When they couldn't defeat Allende at the ballot box in 1970, Washington decided to remove him anyway.  "I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," Kissinger is said to have quipped. Pinochet's regime presided over years of torture, disappearances and targeted assassinations. (In a recent op-ed, Chilean-American novelist Ariel Dorfman called on Hillary Clinton to repudiate Kissinger if she wins the presidential election.)"

The sectarian Shi`ite militias of Iraq

The video of Qays Al-Khaz`ali, of `Asa'ib Ahl-Haqq, says it all.  He spoke in blatant sectarian terms about the battle of Mosul and talked about the enemy as "descendants of Yezid", and talk about avenging Husayn.  Those grotesque sectarian militias (of Sunnis and Shi`ites) were all midwived by the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. 

The new book, "IKE's Gamble"

The whole premise of this new book is flawed.  It is predicated on the assumption that Eisenhower intervened in Suez in order to appease or help Nasser while in reality he wanted to project US imperialist power and to limit the ambition of the British in the Middle East.  And he so exaggerated IKE's approaches to Nasser, when Kennedy was the one who did make more approaches to Nasser before being restrained by 1) US imperialism; 2) Zionist pressures; 3) American reactionary alliances in the region.

Israeli demolition of homes

I was thinking about that yesterday: is it not amazing that in the 21st century there is a terrorist state called Israel which still demolishes the homes of families of suspects (who have not been tried in a court) and even the homes of their associates?

The last issue of the Economist basically regurgitate Saudi regime propaganda about Sunnis under attack everywhere

Here is the proof presented by the Economist: "Of the Middle East’s 26m refugees and displaced, over 85% are Sunni." Well, Economist.  Sunnis constitute 85% of all Muslims, and most of the residents of the areas under study are Muslims, so the 85% is not that out of whack.  

I don't understand this: how are the Sunnis of Beirut under occupation? The Economist goes nuts

"the Christians and Shias in Beirut". Shi`ites and Christians always lived in Beirut, does the Economist wants them to leave town?

Finally, an article in the New York Times soberly explains to us the underlying cause of the Syrian war

"Mr. Assad’s blood lust".  I now feel I understand the situation better.

The boils on Karl Marx's butt

I never read biographies of Karl Marx or even long articles about him without having to read about the boils on his butt: "and grew fist-size boils, which Sperber thinks were caused by an autoimmune disorder but which may have been a symptom of his liver disease." What is the story there? That Marxism should be discredited because Marx had boils on his butt? Western (especially American) hostility to Marxism and Marx remains as insane as it was during the Cold War.

Liberal San Francisco

"Wealthy San Francisco tech investors bankroll bid to ban homeless camps"

An Egyptian man is arrested for "promoting Shi`ism"

The Egyptian regime of Sisi arrested an Egyptian citizen for "promoting Shi`ism".  If this man arrested was Christian or Jewish, the story would be a front page story in US papers, and Western human rights organizations would be releasing statements of condemnation.

Hilarious. WINEP brags that it sponsored an unprecedented meeting between Jewish and Muslim leaders

So who is this Muslim "Leader" who accepted WINEP invitation? Well, he is the world-famous "Palestinian President Abbas' Islamic Affairs Advisor Sheikh Mahmoud Habbash".  I give ten dollars if 0.00001 % of all Muslims (or of Palestinian Muslims) know who this guy is. 

Potatoes without Borders, again

Has Physicians without Borders ever spoken on behalf of victims of Syrian rebel bombing? Who will speak on behalf of all Syrian victims, those who are victims of Russian, Syrian regime bombing and those who are victims of Syrian rebel and US bombing? Who?

What is happening to Democracy Now? The show today cited a Jordanian regime official as an authority on human rights

Democracy Now is now reduced to cite the authority of a Jordanian royal buffoon who was appointed as a Human Rights UN council by none other than his friend, the Israeli ambassador at the UN?

This is classic: Foreign minister of the Qatari potentate speaks on behalf of the Syrian people calling for US bombing

And he seems to speak on behalf of the Syrian people--by virtue of his gas wealth, I guess.  

US-Al Qaeda alliance?

Michael B Dougherty (Senior Correspondent, The Week): "What if I told you in 2001 that in 15 years the US would be really angry about Russia bombing our allies, Al Qaeda."

Sodomized Guantanamo captive to undergo rectal surgery

"An alleged accomplice in the Sept. 11 terror attacks is to undergo surgery this week for decade-old damage from his “sodomy” in CIA custody, his attorney says." “Mr. Hawsawi was tortured in the black sites. He was sodomized,” Ruiz told reporters Monday evening, advising them to “shy away from terms like rectal penetration or rectal rehydration because the reality is it was sodomy,” he said. Since then, he said, he has had “to manually reinsert parts of his anal cavity” to defecate. “When he has a bowel movement, he has to reinsert parts of his anus back into his anal cavity,” Ruiz said, which “causes him to bleed, causes him excruciating pain.” "

U.S. bombs Yemen, after supporting Saudi-led war for months

"The U.S. strikes marked the first shots fired directly by the U.S. against the Houthis in Yemen’s ongoing war. They come after the U.S. has supported a destructive Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, for 19 months. At least 10,000 Yemenis have been killed in the war, according to the U.N." "Yemen is the seventh Muslim-majority country with ongoing U.S. airstrikes."

This shows you that Israeli soldiers can grow up to be mayors of Chicago and WH chiefs of staff and...editors of the Atlantic

"Today’s breathtaking announcement by Atlantic media’s owner David Bradley that Jeffrey Goldberg will become editor-in-chief is curious not for the accolades it showers on the star writer —  “no greater journalist writing in the country today” — but for the laundering it does of his resume. There is no mention of his one book about Israel, Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror. No mention of the fact that Goldberg emigrated to Israel and served in its armed forces as a corporal. No mention of his Iraq war resume, giving America grounds for invasion with bad reports on Saddam’s connections to Al Qaeda and his manufacture of chemical weapons. No mention of Goldberg’s substantial Israel portfolio. The word Israel appears only once in the announcement, in the delectable phrase, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel." (thanks Amir)

Shimon Peres and Nobel

It is a shame that Israeli war criminal, Shimon Peres, died before being able to win the Nobel Prize for literature for his famous poem, "Omelette", which goes: You can make an omelette out of eggs, but you can't make hot dogs out of potatoes".  

If you want to learn Arabic, please learn it from the correspondents of the Washington Post

Ashura, which means “Day of Remembrance,” (thanks Basim)  And Batata means tomato.

Human Rights Watch is worried about the credibility of the US as an imperialist power in the Middle East

"That juxtaposition—criticism for Russia and Syria, relative silence for Saudi Arabia—offered fodder for critics who say American support for the Saudis undermines U.S. credibility elsewhere in the region. “You can’t be trying to negotiate a resolution at the U.N. Security Council on Saturday to condemn Russia and sanction Russia for airstrikes in Syria when your ally and partner, Saudi, is doing the exact same thing,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights watch."