JENIN, OCCUPIED PALESTINE – Israel’s announcement that it will not pursue an investigation into the killing of famed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was not surprising. The specific reasons it gave to justify the decision make little difference. However, one thing is certain: It is highly unlikely that the killing of a journalist like Shireen Abu Akleh was the decision of a lone soldier or a commander on the ground.
This particular targeted killing of a journalist – not the first and sadly, probably not the last – touched us all. And the response of the Zionist establishment in occupied Jerusalem, as well as in Washington, is cold and full of excuses.Caitlin Johnstone
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Israel’s mounting PR crisis boils down to the fact that its violence and oppression isn’t happening in some far off land as in the case with US wars, it’s happening right at home surrounded by video cameras and enforced by police and soldiers who are not adept PR spinmeisters.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is in a spat with Israel over its support for Nazis militia in the Ukraine.
The immediate cause is a passage in an interview Lavrov had with the Italian TV network Mediaset:
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Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield (File photo)For more than one reason, the US President Joe Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday is hugely consequential. This has been Biden’s second phone conversation with Bennett in four weeks. On March 30 Biden called to express his “deepest condolences” following the terrorist attacks that killed 11 people in three Israeli cities.
In copying an Israeli scheme to ship refugees to Rwanda, Boris Johnson’s government has turned to the world leader in keeping out ‘undesirables’
Middle East Eye – 20 April 2022
There is nothing innovative or humanitarian about Britain’s new policy of shipping asylum seekers, “on a one-way ticket“, thousands of miles to central Africa. Nor is there anything surprising about the choice of destination: Rwanda. Boris Johnson’s government has simply copied wholesale a programme established by Israel eight years ago.
SOPA Images / ZUMA Press WireIsraeli spyware firm NSO Group faces a number of lawsuits from tech giants and others targeted with its malware.
Salah Hammouri, an acclaimed Palestinian-French human rights defender, and two human rights groups have filed a criminal complaint against the notorious Israeli spyware company NSO Group.
Israel’’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (R) welcomes UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan at the Negev Summit, March 27, 2022.The summit of Arab diplomats on March 27-28 hosted by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in the southern Negev Desert is doubtless a landmark event. The UAE’s Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Bahrain’s Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Morocco’s Nasser Bourita, and Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry are the Arab participants, while the visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken becomes the sole “extra-regional” participant.
The state-organized presence of neo-Nazis within the Ukrainian army is not anecdotal, even if it is not possible to quantify it in a certain way. On the other hand, it is easy to count their victims. In general indifference, they have killed 14,000 Ukrainians in eight years. This situation is one of the causes of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Israel is confronted for the first time with what it could never have imagined: the support of its US protector to its historical enemy, Nazism.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed Ukraine developments on phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, February 27, 2022The world community is aghast over the acute tensions between the United States and its NATO allies on one side and Russia on the other, which is poised critically on the brink of a military confrontation, the like of which the world didn’t see in the entire Cold War era.
On January 13, campaigners announced that, after years of popular pressure and direct action, Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems had decided to bite the bullet and sell its factory located in Oldham in the northwest of England.
Washington’s ban on NSO Group is not about safeguarding human rights. It’s about curbing Israel’s dominance of ‘espionage diplomacy’
Middle East Eye – 31 January 2022
The Israeli spy software firm NSO Group has rarely been out of the headlines over the past year.
Its spyware tool Pegasus worms its way into phones, accessing data and turning on the microphone and camera to act as round-the-clock surveillance equipment. Authoritarian states have reportedly bought the cyber weapon from NSO and put it to nefarious political uses, targeting journalists, human rights workers, civil rights lawyers and opposition parties.
In the occupied Golan Heights, the population of Settlers and Syrians is approximately equal, but experts fear that a new Israeli project will turn Syrians into a demographic minority on their own land.
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Jessica Buxbaum
This, from Israel, is somewhat weird:
Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Mossad chief David Barnea will push during their meetings this week in Washington with senior Biden administration officials for the United States to carry out a military strike on Iranian targets, Israel’s three main TV news broadcasts reported Sunday night.
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Along with calling for tougher sanctions, the Israelis will reportedly ask the US to take military action against Iran.Channel 12 news said the target of a US potential attack would be not a nuclear facility in Iran, but rather a site like an Iranian base in Yemen. The aim of such a strike would be to convince the Iranians to soften their positions at the negotiating table.
Middle East Eye – 6 October 2021
Battles in the US Congress that erupted again this week, holding up an extra $1bn in military funding for Israel, underscored just how divorced from reality the conversation about US financial aid to Israel has become, even among many critics.
Recent weeks have seen a significant military escalation on the border between Azerbaijan and Iran. With belligerent statements made by both sides, Iranian troops are being transferred to the border with their northern neighbor. Explaining the move, Brigadier-General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Ground Forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), said: “We will not tolerate the presence of Israel in our back yard.”
Zodiac Maritime, the Mercer Street’s operator, has a long history of working closely with both the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and Israeli intelligence unit Mossad, using its ships to ferry arms and operatives around the region for covert operations, including assassinations.
Just a few months ago, the mainstream media praised Israel for its “pandemic-ending” vaccination campaign. With over 40 percent of the population “fully vaccinated” in the first quarter of 2021, Israel was well on its way to stopping community spread and clearing out its hospitals.
By Jonathan Cook – Jonathan-Cook.net
The Jewish Chronicle, a weekly newspaper that was saved from liquidation last year by a consortium led by a former senior adviser to Theresa May, the former U.K. prime minister, has been exposed as having a quite astonishing record of journalistic failings.
The New Dark Age 