Al-Jazeera Report into Israel Lobby in America and Qatar

‘Michelle’, another of the great commenters on this blog, sent me the link below to a report by Asa Winstanley in the Electronic Intifada on a forthcoming Al-Jazeera documentary exposing the activities of the Israel lobby in spying on anti-Israel activists in America, and their attempts to bring the United Arab Emirates into line with Israeli and American foreign policy. And, of course, suppress Al-Jazeera.

This is being done through the Neocon organisation, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is gathering the data of pro-Palestinian activists and the BDS movement in the US. The top civil servant at the Israeli Ministry of Strategy Affairs is Sima Vaknin-Gil, an Israeli army officer, whose boss is an ally of Netanyahu. The Ministry is in charge of propaganda against the BDS movement. Vaknin-Gil has said that she wants to create an army of pro-Israeli trolls to flood the internet, while being formally separate from the Israeli state.

The Foundation also receives funding from Sheldon Adelson, the American casion magnate, who makes it very clear that he stands for ‘Israel first’.

The documentary also shows pro-Israel lobbyist Max Adelstein, who works for AIPAC, the big pro-Israel lobby group in the US, boasting of how he is also working to bring the UAE into closer alignment with America and Israel.

The film also shows Jonathan Schanzer, the Senior Vice-President at the Foundation, telling his minions how they are to smear pro-Palestinian activists. And he reveals how the smears increasingly aren’t work. This part of the report says

According to the source, Schanzer admits to the undercover reporter that “BDS has taken everybody by surprise.”

He calls the response by Israel lobby groups “a complete mess,” adding, “I don’t think that anybody’s doing a good job. We’re not even doing a good job.”

According to the source, Schanzer laments that attempts to smear Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine as linked to extremist Islamic terrorism have failed to gain traction.

He is also said to regret that the Israel lobby’s habitual tactic of falsely alleging Palestine solidarity activists are motivated by anti-Jewish hatred is losing its impact.

“Personally I think anti-Semitism as a smear is not what it used to be,” he is said to tell the undercover reporter.

Schanzer’s views echo a secret report endorsed by the Israeli government and distributed to Israel lobby leaders last year. That report, a leaked copy of which was published by The Electronic Intifada, concludes that Israel’s efforts to stem the growth of the Palestine solidarity movement have largely failed.

And the Emirates’ links to the Trump administration are also being investigate by Robert Mueller, who is moving away from the supposed Russian influence to include them through their connections to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

It also discusses Al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, which showed Shai Masot conspiring with members of the Conservative and Labour parties. This new documentary was supposed to be shown five months ago, but has not yet come out.

The Israel lobby has also been active travelling to Qatar to get the film suppressed, and supposedly received assurances that it won’t, though the Qataris deny this. Al-Jazeera’s investigation has been decried by Noah Pollak, another Neocon, as a foreign espionage investigation on American soil. The Israel lobby is pressuring the US government to force Al-Jazeera to register as an arm of the Qatari government.

https://electronicintifada.net/content/whats-al-jazeeras-undercover-film-us-israel-lobby/23496

I am frankly completely unsurprised that the Neocons were up to their neck in this. The Neocon project always was a Zionist outfit. It all started with an article in the late ’60s by their chief ideologue, William Kristol, about ways to get the American public to back Israel. Which included the vast majority of Jewish Americans at the time, who were completely indifferent in Israel, a foreign country they had never seen and had no desire to emigrate to.

As for AIPAC, there’s more than a whiff of double standards here. One of the left-wing American news channels pointed out that FARA, the piece of American legislation dating from World War II, which demands that foreign lobbyists register with the US authorities, should cover them. But it doesn’t. Because of their very powerful influence since the 1950s.

What is encouraging, however, is Schanzer’s admission that the lies and smears he and his scummy friends have been directing against pro-Palestinian activists, that they’re all connected to Islamist terror groups, or anti-Semites, increasingly aren’t working.

And when they fail completely, how is this going to make McNichol and the kangaroo courts persecuting decent, anti-racists and campaigners against anti-Semitism, who’ve been libelled by the Israel lobby because of their anti-Israel activism, going to look?

Tony Greenstein Interviewed by George Galloway

The very anti-racist, anti-Fascist Jewish critic of Israel, Tony Greenstein, put up a piece on his blog on Sunday about his interview on RT’s ‘Sputnik’ programme with George Galloway and his cohost, Gayatri. Greenstein is another, who has been expelled from the Labour party and smeared as an anti-Semite, because he has dared to step out of line and criticise Israel for its maltreatment of the Palestinians.

In the interview, Galloway asks how it is that Greenstein, who is not only Jewish, but the son of a rabbi, could ever be accused of anti-Semitism. Greenstein replies by telling him how he first became aware of the Palestinians’ conditions, and that they, not the Israelis, were right. It was while he was at school in Liverpool. He went to the King David Jewish school, and one day the school decided it was going to stage a debate on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. No-one else wanted to argue the Palestinians’ case, so Greenstein decided to do it to play devil’s advocate. It was while he was researching it that he came to conclude that the Palestinians were entirely justified in their cause.

As for being smeared as an anti-Semite, Greenstein makes the point that those making these smears – the CAA and the Jewish Labour Movement – aren’t interested in genuine anti-Semitism. They are people completely without any morals, cynically using the accusation to silence decent people and their criticism of Israeli racism and apartheid. This is the only way they can defend Israel, as the facts themselves demonstrate how the Palestinians are oppressed and being ethnically cleansed from the ancestral lands.

Mr Greenstein’s article is at http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/did-you-hear-one-about-jewish-man-who.html
The piece doesn’t just contain his own account and remarks about the interview, but also a video of the interview itself.

This piece also demonstrates why I’m very happy to get much of my news from YouTube. Mike posted up a piece last week asking his readers if they were happy getting their news from YouTube instead of the mainstream broadcasters, because of the issue of bias on the latter. I do watch the mainstream news, but I prefer to get my information from the various alternative news networks on YouTube and the Net, because I heartily dislike the pro-Tory bias of the Beeb and the rest of the mainstream media. And also because the programmes on these alternative channels, like RT, have more interesting things to say than the mainstream. They have a different, deeper analysis into free market capitalism as the cause of poverty, criticise the imperialism which is now being disguised as humanitarianism in the ‘War on Terror’. And in the case of Greenstein, actually allow somebody onto TV to refute the smears against him by Ian McNicol’s corrupt apparatchiks and the Israel lobby.

Somehow I doubt Mike or anyone else libelled as an anti-Semite is going to enjoy the same courtesy from Andrew Marr, just as they will very definitely not be invited to appear in the pages of the Sunday Times, Torygraph, Heil or Scum to argue their cases.

I realise that Galloway is not everyone’s favourite politico, but his interview with Greenstein shows very clearly why we need alternative media sources like RT, while the mainstream media do nothing but pump out right-wing lies and smears.

Chunky Mark on the Ex-MI6 Chief Richard Dearlove and the Resignation of Ian McNicol

Here’s another great piece from Chunky Mark the Artist Taxi Driver, which he posted yesterday. He comments on the remarks in the Torygraph from the former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove. Dearlove was speaking about Jeremy Corbyn’s meeting with a Czech spy, and declared that the Labour leader ‘has questions to answer’. This is part of the continuing attempt to create a ‘Red Scare’ about the Labour party and its leader, comparable to the ‘Zinoviev Letter’ that lost Labour an election in the 1920. The Zinoviev letter was an MI5 forgery, and this is a complete non-story and Tory libel.

Mike’s pointed out that the spy in question was a diplomat. Corbyn met him, just as he met other diplomats and no secrets were passed on. The Czechs, and the academic in charge of their Secret Services library has said they have categorically no evidence that Corbyn ever worked for them, or passed on any secrets at all. And in the week Andrew Neill, who is the former editor of the Sunday Times and the Economist, told his viewers precisely what a load of rubbish it this story is on the Daily Politics.

Corbyn is threatening to sue for libel. Gavin Williamson, the Tory apparatchik who repeated in a Tweet, is trying to backtrack without giving Corbyn the apology or money to charity that he demanded.

But the bug-eyed slander-merchants of the Torygraph are still carrying on with it.

Chunky Mark makes the point that Dearlove himself is hardly reliable, because he was involved in the concoction of the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ that served to bring us into Blair’s illegal and murderous war in Iraq. And he’s repeating the libel that Corbyn handed secrets over to a Commie spy, simply because he hates and fears him.

He also comments on the resignation of Ian McNicol, the Labour Party chief, who presided over the massively unjust suspension and expulsion of tens of thousands of Labour members, because they had the audacity to vote for Corbyn rather than endorse the preferred Blairite Thatcherite entryists. Chunky Mark says that we shouldn’t celebrate his departure, because this is a man who poured his life and blood into the Labour party. Before going on to say precisely why we should. One of those he expelled was a trade unionist. She committed the terrible offence of saying that she ‘f***ing loved Dave Grohl’ in a post she put up about the Foo Fighters. This apparently brought her union and the Labour party into disrespect. Actually, considering the fruity language on the internet, I’m surprised anyone even noticed, let along took offence.

So McNicol’s walked, and hopefully we’ll get a better, fairer person in to do his job. Hopefully.

The redoubtable Tony Greenstein, anti-racist, anti-Fascist and very definitely not an anti-Semite, put up a post yesterday commenting on McNicol’s departure, with the restrained title ‘Rejoice – The Witch is Dead – Crooked McNicol Rides No More’. He gives further information on McNicol’s resignation. Apparently he was given his marching orders on Tuesday. Greenstein also points out that this is just the beginning of making the Labour party’s bureaucracy more just.

But this does give up to everyone libelled, smeared and unfairly expelled, simply for their opposition to the Blairites and their wretched neoliberalism.

See: http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/rejoice-witch-is-dead-crooked-mcnicol.html

Vox Political on the Suspension of Wallasey Constituency Labour Party

Mike over at Vox Political also put up a piece today about the suspensions of Wallasey constituency Labour party by the Labour Party’s general secretary, Ian McNicol. Apparently, there had been complaints about bullying and intimidation, though the real reason may have been that the party had voted to deselect Angela Eagle, and was planning another meeting at which the deselection would be approved. It was also planning to pass other decisions, which would be sent to the national party.

Mike wonders whether it Mr McNicol has bothered to investigate the complaint, or whether it is a case, where the authorities have used unsupported excuse of there having been a complaint to stop an event they didn’t like. In Mike’s case, this was where the local council would ban any event they didn’t want using that excuse. The accuracy of the complaint was never investigated, so there was never any proof.

He also makes the point that it does not seem that Mr McNicol issued the party with a written warning before he suspended it, as he is required to do under Chapter 6 of the party’s rule book.

If there is no proof that there was bullying and intimidation in the party, and if no written warning was issued, then Mr McNicol is liable to be investigated and suspended for his infraction of the rules.

See Mike’s article: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/07/20/angela-eagles-local-labour-party-suspended-but-the-decision-may-be-against-the-rules/

This seems to show just how desperate the parliamentary Labour party is to cull Corbyn supporters from the membership, and the complete contempt the Blairites have for the grassroots. They’ve already suspended Brighton, the biggest constituency Labour party. There were allegations of intimidation of anti-Corbynistas in the local Labour party for Bristol East, though Mike has reported that despite the local Labour MP Thangam Debonnaire giving her support to the supposed victims, other people at the meeting claimed it was no rowdier or threatening than usual.

Of course, Blair had similar intolerant attitudes to possible sources of dissent in the Labour party. He had the public schoolboy’s hatred of the trade unions, and one of the first things he did when he took over the Labour party was threaten to cut the party’s ties with them. As the Labour party was partly founded by the unions to represent working people in parliament, this was an attack on a core, founding element of the party.

This also reminds me very strongly of the actions of the Parliamentarians during the Civil War. This was ‘Pride’s Purge’, when Colonel Pride entered parliament on 6th December 1648 to arrest 45 MPs and prevent 78 more from taking their seats. Twenty more MPs refused to take their seats. As a result, the ‘Rump’ parliament was the acquiescent tool of the army. It’s presumably this piece of history which has inspired the name of Tom Pride’s blog, ‘Pride’s Purge’. The rump parliament differs from the current Labour administration in that it was actually very radical. It abolished the House of Lords, the monarchy and declared Britain a commonwealth. Blair reformed, but did not abolish the House of Lords, packing it with more of his supporters. And economically, his followers were very determined to maintain and expand the status quo in the form of capitalism and the power of private industry.

There is one other similarity between the Cromwellian interregnum and Tony Blair, however. Both began terrible invasions of other countries, which has resulted in massive bloodshed and a legacy of terrible national and social division. Cromwell invaded Ireland, an event which is notorious in Irish and British history for the terrible atrocities inflicted on the Roman Catholic population. And Blair joined Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq, which has also destroyed the country and resulted in massive bloodshed and atrocities.