Sunday, February 4, 2024


click link for video
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2023/12/15/israel-gaza-does-islamophobia-play-a-part-in-us-foreign-policy


Marc Lamont Hill speaks with scholars of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

As the war in Gaza rages on, the death toll keeps increasing and residents face starvation. Despite the heavy civilian toll, the United States keeps voicing its strong support for Israel.

Criticism has been raised of Washington’s approach to Palestinian victims. Is there a double standard when it comes to Palestine? And why do some in the US seem to conflate solidarity with Palestinians with anti-Semitism?

On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with Sahar Aziz, professor of law and Middle East legal studies scholar at Rutgers University; and Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy and co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace, about whether Islamophobia affects US foreign policy.

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Shocking insight into Israel's Apartheid | Roadmap to Apartheid

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With a comparison between apartheid South Africa and the Israel/Palestine conflict, this doc traces the future of one conflict from the past of another. Weaving the history of apartheid into the complex issues facing Israelis and Palestinians, it highlights the frighteningly similar laws and tools used by Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. It's a dark picture of the present but offers hope based on the peace that South Africa eventually found.

How the War Will End: Israel Can Kill But It Can’t Win

Monday, November 20, 2023

The Five Essential Questions About The Zionist Narrative | Shaykh Dr. Ya...

Gaza: The Betrayal of the Muslim Rulers with Sami Hamdi

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Since we last spoke to Sami Hamdi, a lot has happened in the ongoing Gaza slaughter. Israel has finally moved its ground operations into Gaza, and their Western backers have set down their intention to provide diplomatic cover to their settler offshoot and shield it from criticism. Western leaders have had to defend the indefensible as Israel's punitive and indiscriminate action continues. For example, Ursula Vonderlyen, the President of the EU Commission, just yesterday sent out a tweet at a holocaust memorial saying never again. Yet, the day before, she met with an Israeli official and gave her undying commitment to his cause, such is their barefaced duplicity. Calls for a ceasefire have been vetoed at the UN, and the West accepts no liability for the thousands murdered in cold blood. It is truly astonishing to see how liberals on both sides of the Atlantic have confirmed what most of us have known for a long time: that their so-called rules-based international order is set up to cover their brutality. It is not that they kill civilians without any recourse to humanity. It's that they openly declare their mass murder with knowledge of impunity. The West has given them diplomatic cover to engage in slaughter without red lines. This is truly an age of impunity. Sami Hamdi is the director of international interest and a regular commentator on mainstream news networks.

Monday, November 13, 2023

Anti-Hamas Media Drive

    Anti-Hamas Media Drive

  
   Billionaires are teaming up for pro-Israel, anti-Hamas media drive 
The campaign is seeking million-dollar donations from dozens of the world’s biggest names in media, finance, and tech, Semafor reported.


More than 50 individuals are being courted, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Dell CEO Michael Dell, and financier Michael Milken. They have a combined net worth of around $500bn, Semafor said.

Some of the individuals, such as investor Bill Ackman, have publicly threatened to blacklist pro-Palestine students who are critical of Israel. On October 10, Ackman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he and other business executives wanted Ivy League universities to disclose the names of students who are part of organizations that signed open letters criticizing Israeli policies in Gaza.

US billionaire Barry Sternlicht, who started the project, said the campaign would help Israel “get ahead of the narrative” as the world has reacted to the intensive Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip.

“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community”, Sternlicht wrote in an email soliciting contributions from the wealthy figures shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Semafor. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”

Israel has carried out relentless air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, killing at least 11,078 Palestinian people, including 4,500 children, displacing 1.5 million people, and wrecking much of the territory’s infrastructure, Gaza officials say.

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli territory on October 7 killed some 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials.

Sternlicht’s media drive aims to brand Hamas as a “terrorist organization” that is “not just the enemy of Israel, but of the United States”, he wrote. The goal is to draw $50m in private donations, paired with a matching contribution from a Jewish charity. Hamas is already designated as a “terrorist” organization by the US and the European Union for its armed resistance against Israeli occupation.

It is unclear which figures have donated, but the campaign has raised at least a few million dollars already, Semafor reported, citing “people familiar with the matter”.

It is being advised by Josh Vlasto, a communications strategist who previously worked for US Senator Chuck Schumer and former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, Semafor reported.

The US is Israel’s strongest global ally, providing it with billions of dollars of aid annually and staunch diplomatic backing. Despite the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the US government has continuously rebuffed global calls for a ceasefire and reiterated that Washington will not give Israel “red lines” in the war. On November 2, the US Congress passed a $14.3bn emergency military aid package for Israel.


However, public support for the US’s position appears to be ebbing, with nearly half of US Democrats disapproving of how Joe Biden has handled the conflict, according to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Social media giants such as Instagram, X, YouTube, and TikTok have been accused of censoring pro-Palestine voices by reducing their reach, a practice known as shadowbanning.

Axios reported last month that pro-Palestine posts on TikTok were being viewed four times more than pro-Israel posts. This came as people around the world have reacted with horror to the mounting death toll in Gaza where most of the killed are civilians.

Facts For Peace, the media campaign launched by Sternlicht, aims to win back public favor for Israel, posting videos on its social media pages blaming Hamas for the plight of Palestinians and denying claims of Israeli rights violations.

The most recent video posted on its Facebook page argues that “Israel is not an apartheid state”.

This contradicts findings from Palestinian, Israeli, and international rights experts, including from the United Nations, that Israel is practicing apartheid through its “deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system” in the occupied territories.

Israel occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in the 1967 war and later annexed East Jerusalem. It withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005 but continues to maintain a siege on the territory of 2.3 million people. Israel has continued to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – a step considered illegal under international law.

Settlements pose the biggest hurdles in the realization of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, experts say. The US has condemned the settlements’ expansions but has done little to stop its closest ally.