Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has retracted on his statement that the Euphrates Shield Operation is to remove Syrian President Assad, and rather it is only to remove terrorist groups such as ISIS and the Kurdistan Workers Party-affiliated YPG.
“The aim of the Euphrates Shield Operation is not against any country or person but only terror organizations. No one should doubt this issue that we have uttered over and over, and no one should comment on it in another fashion or try to derail it,” Erdogan said at his 30th gathering with village chiefs at the Presidential Palace in Ankara
Erdogan on November 29 said that the Euphrates Shield Operation was to end Assad’s rule.
Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stated on Tuesday that his army entered Syria in order to end the reign of Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, and bring justice to Syrians.
“Why did we enter? We do not have an eye on Syrian soil. The issue is to provide lands to their real owners. That is to say we are there for the establishment of justice. We entered there to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror. [We didn’t enter] for any other reason,” Erdogan stated.
Erdogan alleges nearly 1 million people have died in Syria, despite the fact no monitoring or humanitarian group has put the death toll this high.
“In my estimation, nearly 1 million people have died in Syria. These deaths are still continuing without exception for children, women and men. Where is the United Nations? What is it doing? Is it in Iraq? No. We preached patience but could not endure in the end and had to enter Syria together with the Free Syrian Army [FSA],” Erdoğan said at the first Inter-Parliamentary Jerusalem Platform Symposium in Istanbul.
The Turkish Army illegally entered Syria in August 2016, claiming that they were focused on defeating the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham” (ISIS) in northern Aleppo; this did not prove to be the case, as they have repeatedly attacked the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the border.
Acting US Administration is still trying to reach an agreement with Russia, given which siege of Aleppo would be stopped in return for division of the Syrian opposition and terror groups. As the Washington Post reported, with a reference to representatives in the State Department, namely John Kerry, the Secretary of State, is dealing with it. He keeps making every effort to reach a deal with Russia on the Syrian Aleppo, despite his soon stepping down.
Kerry realizes that Trump may reach quite another type of agreement with Moscow, he may go the length of a deal which would leave the Syrian opposition to the mercy of fate and would place Washington squarely on the side of the president Bashar al-Assad.
Among those efforts aimed at prompt achievement of an agreement with Russia on Syria phone talks between Kerry and his Russian colleague Sergey Lavrov are named, as they were carried out 2 times a week. Beside that, he has had negotiations on the issue with the US allies in Abu Dhabi this month and calls to engage Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and even Iran in negotiations.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government troops have significantly advanced for the last two days towards eastern areas of Aleppo. Most of buildings have been liberated from Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist gangsters. Thousands of civilian residents have been withdrawn from combat areas with the help of the Syrian Arab Army and its allied forces on the ground.
Kerry is in panic, as the rest of ‘cannibals’ of the Obama’s administration.
They are leaving East Aleppo by the thousands. Some estimates are putting the number of citizens now under the protection of the Syrian Army at over 3,000. Half of the number is children leaving with their parents. Of interest to all of you is the fact that 180+ rodents have taken advantage of secure corridors to depart East Aleppo for Idlib. Based on information from our sources, all the escaping rodents are Syrians. No such permission has been given to foreigners. Any foreign terrorist attempting to leave will be arrested and executed on the spot. This is especially true for Saudi Arabians, Qataris and other forms of simian trash.
Syrian soldier in Aleppo watching the last rodents departing. (Thanks, Khaled Nawaz Al-Nouri)
AL-BAAB: The Syrian Army is only 5 kms now from the frontier town of Al-Baab. This will be a watershed moment in the history of this conflict in that it will bring the Turkish Army and the Syrian Army into possible direct confrontation. At a minimum, it will pit the Turk-supported terrorists of the FSA against the SAA. If, as I suspect, the FSA is destroyed, it might bring in the Turks to save them. Once this happens, Russia will intervene on Syrian soil essentially barring NATO from any excuse to assist Ankara. As of right now, the SAA is supported by the YPG. The army is at Tal ‘Unayb and Sha’aala moving toward Irziq which overlooks Al-Baab. Another report informs us that the SAA is only 1km away from forces aligned with Turkey under the title of “Euphrates Shield”.
I am sure many of you have been reading about the pandemonium sweeping the rodent cells in what parts of Aleppo they are still holding. We have reports of intercepted communications describing raging conversations over non-secure lines expressing an absolute breakdown in morale and faith in terrorist commanders. According to Wael in Latakia, one such exchange contained a mention of ‘Abdullah Al-Muhaysini:
Voice of Commander: “Don’t trouble yourself with things that don’t concern you. Al-Shaykh ‘Abdullah is working on it with our Turk brothers.”
The response from the beleaguered terrorist field commander in Aleppo sounded:
“F&^%$#K this Saudi! What’s he going to do? Pray for us?”
This morning I received a report that the Syrian Army has faced off with the Turk-supported Turkestaani militias and the “FSA”. This is taking place at a village called Al-Azraq (northwest of Al-Baab) which is viewed by all sides as critical for the liberation of Al-Baab. The PYG is very much involved with the SAA. The PYG has wrested control of a village called Allooshaa from the FSA yesterday near Manbij. The SAA reportedly now controls the following villages, all conquered during the last 10 days: Baabinis, Tal Shu’ayr, Haleessa, Al-Shaykh Kayf, Jawba, Nayrabiyya.
Al-Shaykh Sa’eed: Another important Aleppan base for the terrorist rodents was liberated this morning by the Syrian Army. Al-Shaykh Sa’eed saw its last vermin leave last night abandoning all fortifications and arms caches.
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AL-RAQQA:
Al-Jawlaani seen smiling in this picture. He’s not smiling today.
The leader of the terrorist Alqaeda franchise in Syria, Abu Muhammad Al-Jawlaani, (real name: Usaamaa Al-‘Absi Al-Waahidi) is so terrified by the new developments in Aleppo that he is now defying Ankara’s goodwill by sending the second-ranking leader of the Nusra group to Al-Raqqa to meet with agents of ISIS. The purpose of sending Abu Maariyyaa Al-Qahtaani is quite obvious: he wants to bury the hatchet and begin a new era of cooperation with ISIS in order to preserve what he has left of his cannibal criminal group. There are no hints yet as to what the emissary has accomplished and we don’t know what position ISIS has staked out as far as leadership is concerned. What we do know is that both groups are on their way to oblivion.
It appears Al-Qahtaani traveled from Turkey by way of the village of Qasr Ibn Wardaan in Homs, a place conquered by ISIS after ejecting Jund Al-Aqsaa from it about 3 months ago. From intercepted communications between the groups, it appears ISIS gave assurances that the second-ranking leader would not be harmed by ISIS.
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HAMA/IDLIB:
With planning going on apace in Damascus, the SAAF is preparing the way for a massive assault on Hama and Idlib. As we reported months ago based on exclusive information from our sources, 10,000 Afghan and Iranian volunteers are in position to descend down into the Waadi Al-Ghaab to take back Jisr Al-Shughoor. The only impediment now is the village of Kobaani which the Turks are desperate to hold at all costs. During the last 4 days, the SAAF has struck Mork, Sukayk, North Sooraan, Khaan Shaykhoon, Al-Tamaani’a, north Abu Dhuhoor. Reports are that many Jaysh Al-Fath leaders have been killed in the aerial attacks with scores of vehicles destroyed and fortifications brought down.
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DAMASCUS: ZIONIST AIR ATTACK HITS NOTHING. This Wednesday morning, Zionist aircraft flying over helpless Lebanon, fired four rockets at the village of Sabboora causing no damage and destroying nothing. Syrian news reports speculate that the attack was meant to buttress the failing morale of Zionism’s major Islamist ally, Nusra/Alqaeda, which is now seeking an alliance with ISIS, as we wrote herein-above. The Zionist press claims the attack was on a weapons delivery to Hizbollah.
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PICTURE OF THE DAY: COMMEMORATING THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CUBA’S GIANT, EL HEFE, FIDEL CASTRO. BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT OF SYRIA, A DAY OF MOURNING FOR THE IMMORTAL LEADER OF CUBA:
(Photo courtesy of the Ba’ath Party)
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NEWS AND COMMENT:
Note the Syrian-developed thermal sight on our T-72 tanks and how it has changed the way urban warfare takes place in Syria. (Thanks to John, Esq.)
On November 28, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and its allies officially surrendered the western Ghouta towns of Khan al-Shih and Zakiyah to government forces. In total about 3,000 militants and civilians were set to be evacuated to Idlib province from these villages via green buses. Militants had handed over at least two ZSU-23-4 Shilka guns and other military equipment the Syrian army.
On November 29, the advance of Syrian government forces continued in eastern Aleppo. Following the previous gains, the Syrian army, Liwa al-Quds and other pro-government groups have further pushed to the militant held area and liberated Talat al Barakat and the Scientific Research housing area south of Jabal Badro and launched fresh operations at Tareeq al-Bab and at the Ma’saraniyah Youth Housing
The army also keeps the option to split the remaining pocket into two, launching an advance in the direction of Aleppo Citadel. The control over strategic Police Hill in Marjeh allows government forces to launch such an operation.
Government engineers are working to relaunch the water pumping station in the Suleiman al-Halabi Neighborhood that was liberated from militants yesterday. “Moderate rebels” had used the control over the station to cut off the water supplies to the local population of Aleppo, punishing people avoiding to support adherents of al-Qaeda-style democracy. When the station is relaunched, the water crisis in Aleppo will end.
Separately, the Syrian army and the Kurdish YPG jointly waved flags over the highest building in the Bustan al-Pasha Neighborhood, confirming the recent facts of cooperation between two forces in Aleppo area. Following militants runaway from northeastern Aleppo, Kurdish YPG forces had entered some areas and filled the vacuum. Now, Syrian government forces and Kurdish YPG units have a joint-control over some points in Bustan al-Basha, al-Halek and Ayn al-Tell.
At the same time, the Syrian army and the Kurdish YPG advanced against Turkey-led militant coalition east of Aleppo city and captured the village of Azraq from it, deploying roughly 5km from al-Bab. With recent reports about airstrikes on the Turkish military by the Syrian Air Force in northern Syria and ongoing heavy clashes between Turkish forces and YPG units east of al-Bab, the army-YPG advance in the area delivers a major blow to Ankara’s hopes of military expansion in the war-torn country. In other case, this could lead to further military escalation if the Erdogan regime decides to deploy more military force to achieve its goals in Syria.
In the past few days the “Israelis” faced one of the worst brushfires in the Zionist history. Nearly a thousand hectares of forests and rural areas have been destroyed in the illegal settlements of Zichron Ya’acov, Neveh Shalom, Modi’in, Neveh Ilan and Nataf. Tens of thousands were evacuated from their illegal places in the Haifa area alone.
“Israel’s” under-staffed firefighting forces were confronting day and night to stop the flames from spreading.
Meanwhile, firefighters and equipment from abroad provided important backup.
What were to happen if “Israel’s” emergency teams were forced to deal with a large-scale brush fire while facing a missile offensive launched by Hizbullah from southern Lebanon?, the Jerusalem Post wonders.
According to the paper, this is not a far-fetched scenario. Depending on the season, a barrage of rockets and missiles landing in the occupied territories could easily spark a major brushfire bigger than the one that spread across the occupied lands over the past few days. If Katyusha rockets landed in dry brush after a long period of drought at a time of high winds, they could easily ignite huge fires.
The paper further claimed that “if Hizbullah were to launch a major rocket and missile offensive against “Israel”, the “Israeli” response would likely be particularly devastating, not because “Israel” relishes destroying south Lebanon, but because the Hizbullah has purposely placed a large amount of its ballistic arsenal in civilian areas.”
Speaking last week at The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in the occupied city of al-Quds, Brig.-Gen. Ram Yavne, head of the Zionist army’s Strategic Division, warned that one-third of Hizbullah weapons are stashed in or under private homes in Shi’ite villages in southern Lebanon, the JP went on saying.
…”Israel” should prepare for a scenario in which it receives no help from the international community in extinguishing fires caused by Hizbullah rockets.
The fires of the last few days were a humbling reminder that, even under ideal diplomatic conditions, with “Israel” receiving support from abroad for its firefighting efforts, a large-scale fire can cause major damage.
“Israel” must begin preparing for a situation in which international aid is not forthcoming and firefighting efforts are being carried out in the midst of a rocket “offensive” launched by Hizbullah, the JP concluded.
ناصر قنديل – إذا كانت سورية هي الساحة الحاسمة لحروب المنطقة، فاليمن هو بارومتر اتجاه هذه الحروب، حيث القوة الدافعة الوحيدة المتبقية لكبح فرص التسويات والتشجيع على مواصلة الحروب هي السعودية، وحجم الهمة وقدرة التحمل السعوديين يظهران في اليمن، ومن يدير ساعات التوقيت هناك هم قوى المقاومة التي يكتنف سيرتها الكثير من الغموض، فقلة كانت تتوقع لها هذا المقدار من الصمود، وقلة أقل وصفت صمود اليمن بمعايير فطرية للعزة وتحمل شظف العيش وتجاهلت القيمة المضافة لذكاء استراتيجي تظهره قيادة المقاومة في جناحها اليمني، أظهرته التكتيكات العسكرية في توقيت اللجوء للصواريخ الباليستية وتحمّل شهور قاسية وضربات مؤلمة دون وضعه في التداول، كما كشفه التعامل المتدرج مع المفاوضات بسقوف تتناسب مع الهدف المحوري لبلوغ الشراكة الوطنية الذي بدونه لا تسوية ولا حل، وذكاء إدارة البعد الأمني بربط وقف النار بوقف العدوان وفك الحصار، وحسن استثمار الحالة الحدودية في خدمة هذا الهدف.
– عندما تشكل المجلس السياسي اليمني لتوحيد جهود أنصار الله والمؤتمر الشعبي في كتلة سياسية تفاوضية تحسن إدارة شؤون الدولة كان معلوماً أن تشكيل الحكومة سيكون الخطوة التالية، لكن التأخر الذي رآه الكثيرون علامة ارتباك كان كما يكشف توقيت ولادة الحكومة اليوم، ترتيباً للتوقيت، فالذهاب لاستيلاد الحكومة اليوم يأتي بالتزامن مع تقدير نضج السعودية للخروج من الحرب، وما يستلزمه ذلك من قبول بسقف مغاير للطموحات السعودية، عبر عنه قبول الرياض بمبادرة وزير الخارجية الأميركية جون كيري بداية، وتالياً القبول باتفاق مسقط، لكن مع وقف التنفيذ بانتظار نضج جماعتها اليمنية لتقبل الخسائر في صيغة الحكم من جهة، وانتظار مستقبل الحرب في حلب حيث يستخدم السعوديون التصعيد في اليمن أملاً بتخفيف الضغط عن حلب، ما يعني مع انتقال منصور هادي إلى عدن من جهة، جهوزية تفاوضية لاستقبال المبعوث الأممي، وما يعنيه من جهة أخرى انتصار الجيش السوري والمقاومة في حلب من زوال للحاجة السعودية لتصعيد مكلف بلا هدف.
– تشكيل الحكومة اليمنية في صنعاء يبطل مفعول خطوات منصور هادي حول المصرف المركزي ويعيد عالمياً فرصة التعامل مع الحكومتين بالتوازي، ويفرض بالمقابل مرجعية سياسية للجيش والأجهزة الأمنية العاملة في مناطق سيطرة الحكومة الجديدة يبطل الحديث عن إجراءات أمنية صرفة تتحدث عن تسليم سلاح وانسحاب، بل عن دمج جيش منقسم بين حكومتين، وبسط سلطة الجيش الموحد على كامل البلاد، والأصل حكماً سيكون حكومة موحّدة تأتي بحاصل حل الحكومتين واستيلاد حكومة جديدة أو يدمج الحكومتين وإعادة توزيع الحقائب في الحكومة الجديدة، وفقاً لمعادلة تقاسم السلطة بعد الاتفاق على رئيس مؤقت ورئيس حكومة جديد للمهام الانتقالية قبل الانتخابات على أساس دستور جديد تتولاه الحكومة الانتقالية.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) today asked a federal court to block pending foreign aid payments to Israel while a case examining its legality is litigated.
The motion for a preliminary injunction (PDF) seeks to immediately block $3.1 billion in foreign aid plus various other supplemental appropriations destined for Israel from leaving the U.S. Treasury Department.
According to the lawsuit, filed in August and amended in November, 2016 (PDF), U.S. aid to Israel is illegal because it violates longstanding amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. The Symington & Glenn amendments ban or subject to mandatory waivers U.S. foreign aid to countries with nuclear weapons programs that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
On September 14, the Obama administration committed to providing $3.8 billionper year to Israel over ten years. This secret “memorandum of understanding” replaces an expiring MOU signed by the Bush administration.
The lawsuit also demands that a gag order passed by the Obama administration in 2012 prohibiting federal employees and contractors from discussing or releasing government information about Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program be overturned.
U.S. government officials, most recently U.S. State Department Spokesperson John Kirby, struggle to comply with the gag order whenever reporters ask about Israel’s nuclear weapons. The plaintiff has asked to present various videos, including Kirby’s response to a reporter on September 19, in court as evidence.
The decision to enjoin is up to DC District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is handling a number of related plaintiff cases. IRmep won release of a Department of Defense report detailing Israel’s nuclear weapons infrastructure and quest for the hydrogen bomb in a 2014 lawsuit. In a separate lawsuit, IRmep’s plaintiff won release of files indicating that the CIA withheld information from an FBI investigation into the unlawful diversion of U.S. weapons-grade uranium to Israel.
The lawsuit aims to “claw back” $234 billion in foreign aid unlawfully delivered to Israel since the laws went into effect. A public opinion poll cited in the lawsuit indicates most Americans would rather spend such funds on caring for veterans, education or paying down the national debt. An IRmep economic analysis reveals that Israel foreign aid generates far fewer U.S. jobs (7,000) than would spending on U.S. infrastructure (30,000).
Originally published in Counterpunch November 25, 2016
“An Open Letter to American Jews”
by Stanley Cohen
Proud Jews are those that can look others in the face who commit or support crimes against humanity in Palestine and, with no hesitation whatsoever, shout-out “J’accuse” … the self hating ones are those that commit the crimes or simply walk away in boneless silence.
Israel and its sightless, obedient supporters have now come full circle in absolute perverse denial. For years they’ve successfully packaged and sold the fairy-tale that Zionism and Judaism were one in the same… an historic enlightened conflation of shared purpose and belief which, in reality, was born of little more than vicious political convenience (or is it connivance?) in eastern Europe.
Like Malcolm said, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. It’s finally backfired. It’s about time.
Through massacre after massacre, outrage after outage, whenever anyone dares to condemn Israel’s systematic brutality of millions of Palestinians the indictment always comes down the same… “anti-Semite”.
Challenge the illegal occupation… you’re a Jew hater. Confront Israeli apartheid… you’re a Jew hater. Battle ethnic cleansing… you’re a Jew hater. Support BDS… you’re a Jew hater. And if you’re Jewish and hold Israel accountable for the grand obscenity it’s proven to be since day one, you are worst of all…a self hater. On and on and on the crafted diversion goes and long has, fleeing the very public reality of Israel’s enduring inhumanity to millions of stateless people.
Of course, when hundreds of Holocaust survivors who live in Israel called the most recent high tech carnage in Gaza in 2014 “genocide”, it drew the line. Even the Zionist state was not so crass or politically craven as to publicly label them Jew haters because they had the principled audacity to call it to task for the slaughter of thousands of defenseless women, children and elders. No, that would be exploiting the exploitation called the Holocaust that Zionist cheerleaders have employed for 70 years as so much cover for one of Israel’s own making… as it thumbs its nose at the world and commits unspeakable mayhem against Palestinians. To Zionists, survivors who screamed out with dignity and honor… “genocide,” were pathetic… just old and feeble.
For years, with little more than sleight of hand and a large Western rubber stamp, Zionists have been able to package and vend, with brazen bully success, the message that one cannot attack deadly and criminal Israeli policies without mechanically crossing the line into the hinterland of antisemitism. Well… those days are gone… as team Israel has finally foisted itself upon its own petard.
One need not have surgical precision in their view of the political universe to observe that as the world has become increasingly educated and, thus, more sympathetic to the desperate plight of Palestinians, Zionists have raced to develop new, even more brutish, strategies to recast a narrative based on little more than pure Hollywood fiction. Sorry… Exodus is very much an obsolete illusion, today, with all of its heroic figures long since passed on to old age.
The hallway of Zionist hard-sell is today very public. In its most glaring form it includes intimidating Western countries such as the UK, Canada, France, and Netherlands who shudder at the mere thought of being called “anti-Semitic” for the audacity of permitting their citizens to speak their minds openly and freely about the malevolence that is Israel. To them, and other states that seek to silence those who support BDS as a peaceful grassroots means of expressing opposition to a tyrannical state, Israel owes a great debt of thanks. After all it’s not easy to welcome, indeed embrace, conspicuous ignorance as you draw a deep cloud of denial around the object lesson of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. No matter what your flag, war crimes are still war crimes whether carried out against or by you.
In other ways, demonstrably racist activity has moved Israel into a leading role in the effort to stage-manage 21st Century cyberspace. For example, under the autocratic shine of national honor, it has inspired, if not empowered, Zionist hackers to attack pro Palestinian web sites worldwide spewing forth Islamaphobic rage at those with the temerity to seek an alternative view about unfolding events in Palestine otherwise largely ignored or censored by Western media.
So, too, it has employed an army of social media activists skilled enough to read jejune slogans but completely at a loss when confronted with the dark, fact-based truth that is Israel. After-all, how many times can a cue card equate Muslim with Jew hater before a mindless 18 year old paid $10.00 an hour finally says enough and saunters off to the beach?
Likewise, during its last two onslaughts upon Gaza, Israel moved quickly to shut down all of its internet passage-ways in an unmistakable effort to prevent the world from learning in real-time about the nature and extent of its brutal assault upon the enclave’s two million defenseless residents.
While these are but a few of the most recent public moves by Israel to intimidate or silence political or social opposition, with alarming frequency its policy has been to break bread with some of the most hateful, supremacist groups and activists in the world.
How long ago was it that neo-Nazis sought to march in Skokie Illinois, in Nazi uniforms screaming out zeig-heil while they carried placards that read “White Free Speech” and “Free Speech for the White Man” to a community with a population of thousands of stunned Holocaust survivors? And in that same year, the KKK sought to hold, in the same town, a rally for its brand of racist ideology.
Yet, today, Zionists seem to have no problem whatsoever sitting down strategizing with proud supporters of the Klan and other white supremacist groups. Indeed, the Zionist Organization of America will fete, this weekend, noted white supremacy and antisemitism promoter, Steven Bannon, at its yearly hate fest.
This celebration of religious and racial supremacy and intolerance should come as no surprise given the organization has signed onto the Trump plan of profiling Muslims, calls Black Lives Matter a “hate group” and has warned college students against inviting such notables as Noam Chomsky and former President Jimmy Carter to speak at campus assemblies lest they spread their “dangerous messages.”
Make no mistake about it Bannon and his fellow purveyors of hate have never been shy in exploiting abhorrence of Jews and a host of other minorities based upon race, religion, sexual identity or immigrant status. Nor have they been timid at all when it comes to exalting calls for violence to sweep clean an America they perceive as being too black, too immigrant, too Jewish, too Muslim and too soft.
Indeed Bannon is a member of a Facebook page that has openly featured explicit racist and violent material replete with overtures for deadly criminal activity. Thus, for example, their posts feature an image of the president dressed as an SS officer. In other places they celebrate the Confederate flag and urge a military coup in the United States. Elsewhere, they highlight a photo shopped picture of Obama with a watermelon and praise a police officer who called the President a “Fucking Nigger”… that ought to be “executed as a traitor.” This is the message that inspires the President’s chief advisor.
Yet, today, Zionists celebrate Bannon as he and his Klan buddies have finally figured out it doesn’t take much to get a free pass for their palpable hatred of Jews… all they need do is to offer up their much in demand backing of an Israeli state driven by the same treacherous supremacist views.
It seems to Zionists a healthy dose of unabashed antisemitism… directed at Jews… is suitable today as long as it’s dressed up in obedient support for Israel… especially when it comes from the mouth of the top advisor of the President-elect and his inner circle of friends.
Bannon has long been denounced by democrats, republicans and civil and human rights organizations, alike, for having made the Breitbart website a welcome forum for neo-nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites. Nevertheless, his appointment was welcomed by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States who noted that “… we look forward to working with the Trump administration… including Steve Bannon, in making the U.S.-Israel alliance stronger than ever.”
There is nothing at all new about the selective application of the all too expedient brand “anti-Semite”. Indeed, it is the mark of Cain quickly applied to principled students and faculty who support the peaceful effort of BDS to bring about justice for Palestine, yet is completely ignored when confronted by classic anti-Semitic vitriol coming from the mouths of pro Israel patrons.
Indeed, the net balance affect has long been a significant driving force in determining when blatant sign-posts of antisemitism were to be over-looked for the broader “good” of Israel; where those who challenge Israeli policies were to be vilified and those who praise them applauded no matter how much or long their distaste for Jews.
The late “Christian Zionist”, Jerry Falwell, is one such prime example. Denounced by Jewish critics for having said that he believed the “Antichrist” would be a Jew, despite this, and other like anti-Semitic statements, Falwell was ultimately resurrected by Zionists who found greater benefit in his overall political support of Israel than his marked distaste for Jews as a whole.
There is nothing remarkable about today’s Zionist reach to build hate fueled bonds with supremacist groups both in and outside of the United States. Zionists have shown a willingness, if not an ease, throughout their 130 plus year history of working with classic anti-Semitic governments and groups to further their revisionist self-centered view of history. There is abundant precedent.
Beginning long ago in Czarist Russia, the Zionist marriage of political convenience went on to flourish with some in the Axis powers during World War II. It later found comfort with its Balfour friends in Palestine, and has reached new heights in the West through an apparently unbreakable bond with the bigoted evangelical right.
Thus, parliamentary votes throughout the member states of the EU to recognize the sovereignty of the State of Palestine have been opposed by a unique marriage of Zionist and local neo-Nazi interests. This coalition of convenience and hatred should come as no surprise however given a joint effort to target a wave of desperate Muslim refugees and a shared aversion to any semblance of Justice for Palestinians.
In Ukraine, Israel abandoned the safety of its shrinking Jewish population to the political expedience it reaped from its support of the neo-Nazi putsch that ousted its elected pro-Russian president. In France, the National Front, with proud age old roots in French fascism has once again risen to significant power. Not at all shy about its racist and anti-Semitic image, the Front has found support nonetheless from Israel which paid one of its leaders a warm welcome when he traveled to the Holy Land to curry votes from French Jews who now call it home. Sound familiar?
There is nothing remarkable or new about Israel’s recent rapport with some of the worlds most repressive … indeed totalitarian and racist regimes. It has never shied from a march down a long passage way filled with the painful screams of political prisoners, dissidents, or those perceived by virtue of their race, religion or activism to pose a threat to the autocratic rule of the state, be it in Israel or elsewhere.
Israel’s support for South African apartheid, ’til literally its very end, is well known, providing materials for the building of its nuclear weapons. Long after UN-imposed sanctions against apartheid Rhodesia, it continued to provide Uzis and helicopters. In more than a dozen other African countries Israel funded and trained military repression of anti-colonial uprisings and/or dictatorship. It sold arms and provided training to Rwandan military and Hutu militia that carried out genocide against the Tutsis.
In South America, Israel armed Guatemalan death squads, Nicaraguan Contras, Pinochet’s Chile, and the military junta in Argentina which resulted in the “disappearance” of thousands of opponents of a regime which not only openly espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric, but specifically targeted and disappeared numerous Jewish civilians.
In Southeast Asia, Israel provided aid to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia and, in the Pacific Region, funded the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. In Iran, during the rule of the Shah, the secret death squad (SAVAK) received training from Israel and purchased over 150 million dollars in arms from it. Never known for its selfless virtue, Israel was to benefit… the Shah was one of the first leaders in the region to recognize it as a state.
These are but a few glaring examples of dozens of instances where Israel has supported, if not propped up, supremacist and racist regimes… many known for their utter and extreme anti-Semitic vitriol and manifest hatred of Jews. But, with remarkable agility, if not indifference, it has become practiced… indeed expert… at balancing the self interest of its own rapacious agenda with the reality of the often anti-Semitic neo-fascist regimes and movements its supports throughout the world.
With this practiced experience it seems that Zionists are eminently equipped to handle the emerging face of antisemitism, nay, overt odium for Jews which, with Steve Bannon and company, will soon move from the inner sanctum of Trump Towers to the inner circle of the White House.
Given its history of support for anti-Semitic allies it comes as no surprise that Zionists believe they will be able to stage manage overt hatred for Jews and other minorities from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What is, however, stunning is that, for the first time in recent memory, they appear perfectly willing to abandon the false conflation of Zionism and Judaism by supporting a collective of white ethnocentric supremacists who support the Zionist agenda in Israel yet hate Jews in whose name it is claimed that agenda has been built.
Moments ago, an Israeli jet fired four longe-range ‘Popeye’ missile upon the government-held town of Al-Saboorah, west of Damascus.
The overnight explosions were so loud they could be heard by an Al-Masdar News field correspondent in downtown Damascus.
The jet did not penetrate Syrian airspace but did allegedly breach Lebanese airspace in order to come within striking range of its designated target.
Although mere speculation for now, the Israeli airstrike likely intended to assassinate a senior Hezbollah figure due to Al-Saboorah’s proximity to the Damascus-Beirut Highway, a main road often used by the Lebanese resistance movement.
On Monday, the Israeli Air Force also conducted an airstrike in the Syrian Golan Heights, targeting the ISIS-affiliated Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade.
UPDATE: The latest report (not confirmed by Al-Masdar’s military sources) suggests the missiles struck a Hezbollah workshop for vehicles. No casualties as mechanics had retired for the night.
Throughout Obama’s genocidal war on Syria, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, The Times exclusively reported administration and Pentagon propaganda, hard truths suppressed – the same way it covers all major issues, especially geopolitical ones.
Courageous Syrian and allied forces are winning the battle for Aleppo, heading toward liberating it entirely from US-supported terrorists – cutthroat killers media scoundrels like The Times call “rebels.”
They’re death squads imported from scores of countries, responsible for gruesome atrocities, including use of chemical and other banned weapons – taught their use by US and other rogue partner operatives.
As government and allied forces liberate neighborhoods, residents held hostage by terrorists as human shields are freed – grateful to their liberators, given food, medical care and other essentials denied by their captors.
The Times reinvented what’s happening, headlining “Thousands Flee Aleppo, Syria, as Government Forces Advance,” saying:
“Thousands (are) fleeing for their lives…as rebel fighters (sic) lost (ground) to government forces in (eastern) Aleppo…”
Fact: They’re joyfully escaping from captivity to freedom in government-controlled parts of the city.
The Times: “It’s like doomsday, said…an antigovernment activist in eastern Aleppo.”
Fact: The Times invented a new definition of terrorism, calling cutthroat killers “antigovernment activist(s)” – supporting these bloodthirsty monsters instead of denouncing them.
The Times: “The battle of Aleppo has followed a pattern established by the government: Encircle a rebel-held area; bombard it with airstrikes, barrel bombs and artillery; hit not only rebels but medical clinics, schools and other civilian structures; and wait for exhausted residents to run away or make a deal.”
Fact: What despicable rubbish! Syrian forces and allies, notably Russia, are battling against US-supported terrorist invaders.
Fact: Neither Assad, I, or anyone else knows what a supposed “barrel bomb” is. Conventional warfare with heavy weapons is being waged to eliminate a US-supported scourge.
Fact: Government and allied forces target terrorist positions alone, scrupulously avoiding civilian sites – unlike Washington and its rogues partners, considering them legitimate targets, massacring noncombatants by terror-bombing along with slaughter committed by their terrorist foot soldiers.
Fact: Terrorized, tormented and “exhausted residents” welcome liberating government forces on arrival.
The Times: “People in eastern Aleppo said they did not trust the government to keep them safe.”
Fact: False! Desperate to escape to government held areas, US-supported terrorists open fire on anyone trying – until liberated by advancing Syrian and allied forces.
Instead of reporting accurately on years of Obama’s war, The Times and other media scoundrels feature despicable state-sponsored misinformation and Big Lies.
Western countries are urging to impose sanctions against Russia after 80,000 civilians were liberated in Syria’s Aleppo, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said on Tuesday.
He recalled that, over the past 24 hours, the Syrian army had been able to liberate from militants almost half of eastern Aleppo where 80,000 civilians reside.
“Now it turned out that the release of over 80,000 Aleppo residents held hostage by gunmen was not part of the plans of the UK and French Foreign Ministries, the US Department of State and the German Bundestag. They even urged to impose new sanctions for that,” the spokesman said.
According to Konashenkov, there are tens of thousands of children in the liberated areas. “Many of them were provided, for the first time in a long while, with food, drinking water and medical assistance in the humanitarian centers deployed by Russia. Over the past few years, these Syrians have been used as human shield by terrorists of every stripe and color in Aleppo. It was they who were allegedly protected by all Western politicians,” he said.
Chapter 5 of our report details the technological and data sharing integration. The Snowden documents show that Britain’s GCHQ and America’s NSA work very closely together. They are integrated in a way that means it is difficult for our Parliament to hold GCHQ to account. We rely so much on US technology and data that it poses questions for our sovereignty.
GCHQ is virtually a branch office of the NSA. It hoovers up around 30% of Internet traffic from the UK and EU, and share it all with the USA. The agencies use the same shared hacking tools. They use the same core data analytics platforms, like XKEYSCORE.
Is sharing of UK citizens’ “bulk data” with a Trump government safe? Will Trump threaten the UK with the removal of key technologies, if our government steps out of line? Will he push the UK into taking ever greater risks and intrusions as the price for this close relationship?
GCHQ helped the NSA by tapping Google’s cables and harvesting vast amounts of personal data according to the Snowden documents. It would be illegal in the USA, but they got the data. GCHQ hacked into the heart of Belgian telecoms at Belgacom, with US co-operation. The NSA even paid GCHQ £100m to keep its data harvesting operations open when their budget was cut.
Will Trump be asking GCHQ to do more of the same? Is our government capable of resisting these requests, when they are made in secret, and the cost of resistance could be cutting off tools they rely on?
Oversight of this state of dependency between the UK and USA is woeful in the UK. If we want our future to be safe, this is time to rethink how surveillance is governed and overseen.
Open Rights Group is the UK’s only digital campaigning organisation working to protect the rights to privacy and free speech online.
The original source of this article is TruePublica
US: Air strikes killing dozens of Syrian troops legal
Pentagon investigation shows US-led coalition bombed Syrian army loyalists after mistaking them for ISIL fighters.
US, Australia, Denmark and Britain participated in the attacks [US Air Force handout via Reuters]
An investigation has found air strikes by the US-led coalition that reportedly killed dozens of troops fighting for the Syrian government did not violate international law, the US military said.
The targets of the strikes near the Syrian city of Deir Az Zor were misidentified as ISIL fighters on September 17, but they turned out to be loyalists of the Syrian army, the US Air Forces Central Command said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Although air strikes likely hit forces aligned with the government of Syria, the strikes were conducted under a good faith belief that the strikes were targeting Daesh, in accordance with the law of armed conflict and the applicable rules of engagement,” it said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
It added that evidence showed there wasn’t “a deliberate disregard of targeting procedures or the rules of engagement”.
Russia said 62 Syrian soldiers were killed and at least 100 more wounded. The attack was the first known direct strike by the US-led coalition on forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Brigadier General Richard Coe, the investigating officer, said a number of “human factors” contributed to the misidentification.
“In my opinion, these were a number of people all doing their best to do a good job,” Coe said. “In many ways these forces looked and acted like the Daesh forces the coalition has been targeting for the last two years.”
Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington DC, said there was no information on whether anyone was being punished for the series of human errors that led to the deadly incident.
She also noted prior to the attack the coalition tried to communicate information about the planned air raid with Russia to make sure Russian or Syrian fighter jets would not be in the area getting in their way
The Russians were not able to get back in touch with their coalition point of contact on time, she said.
“When the coalition found out that the targeted fighters were known to the Russians, the strikes stopped,” said Jordan.
The United States, Australia, Denmark and Britain participated in the attack.
Syria denounced the air strike and said it was “conclusive evidence” of US support for ISIL, calling it “dangerous and blatant aggression”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Defense and Emergency Situations ministries to send mobile hospitals to the Syrian city of Aleppo as soon as possible.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on November 29 that Putin has ordered the military to provide “medical assistance to residents of the city and nearby communities.”
Russia has been providing military support to the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as they attempt to retake the city from antigovernment rebels.
Syrian relief organizations have accused the government and Russia of targeting medical facilities in the city.
Earlier the same day, United Nations humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien warned of the “deeply alarming and chilling situation” in Aleppo.
“There are no functioning hospitals left and official food stocks are practically finished,” he said.
He said that as many as 16,000 civilians have been displaced by the fighting in the last few days, “many into uncertain and precarious situations.”
He added that about 20,000 people have been displaced by fighting in the western part of the city over the last month.
France has called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the humanitarian crisis in the city, where about 250,000 civilians remain.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on November 29 that in view of intense fighting in the area and the growing humanitarian disaster, “We need to urgently put into place the means to end the hostilities.”
Thousands of civilians have streamed out of the besieged city as Syrian government forces recaptured all of the rebel-held northern districts, dealing a major blow to insurgent fighters.
The victory, announced on November 28 on Syrian state television, effectively divided the remaining rebel-held eastern districts into two separate areas.
The capture of eastern Aleppo would be a major strategic victory for the regime and a potentially devastating blow to Syria’s rebels, who seized the area in 2012.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels have lost about one-third of the territory in eastern Aleppo they had controlled just a few days ago.
“It is the biggest defeat for the opposition in Aleppo since 2012,” observatory head Rami Abdulrahman said.
Syrian forces have pressed their offensive in Aleppo, backed by devastating air strikes from regime jets and those of its main backer, Russia.
Breakthrough in Aleppo saves 80,000 civilians – Russian military
This week has brought a breakthrough for the Russian-backed Syrian operation to retake eastern Aleppo, allowing humanitarian relief to be brought to tens of thousands of civilians living in the captured districts, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“Over the past few days, well-planned and careful action by the Syrian troops resulted in a radical breakthrough. Half of the territory previously held by the militants in eastern Aleppo has been de facto liberated,” Gen. Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the defense ministry, said.
“The most important thing is that over 80,000 Syrians, including tens of thousands of children, have been freed. Many of them at long last were able to get water, food, medical assistance at humanitarian centers deployed by Russia. Those Syrians served as human shields in Aleppo for terrorists of all flavors,” the general stressed.
He added that calls by some Western officials to subject Russia to further sanctions over the operation in Mosul indicated that those countries did not want civilians in Aleppo freed.
Earlier, head of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Norbert Röttgen, along with other MPs, called on Berlin to impose more sanctions against Russia over the offensive in Aleppo, and open an airlift to the militant-held areas similar to the historic Berlin airlift in the late 1940s. They cited damage allegedly caused to the city by Russian airstrikes. The strikes, according to the Russian military, were paused in mid-October and did not resume.
The German Foreign Ministry said Damascus and “its supporters, above all Russia and Iran, bear the biggest responsibility” for civilian suffering in Aleppo.
The Russian criticism comes as the Russian-run Syria Reconciliation Center reported that over 500 fighters in Aleppo chose to surrender to the advancing Syrian Army.
“Over the past 24 hours, 507 fighters chose to leave the city districts that remain under terrorist control to the safe areas and surrender their weapons. In accordance with the Syrian president’s offer, 484 militants, who are local residents, have been immediately pardoned,” the report said.
This week, Damascus intensified its siege of eastern Aleppo, a city that for years was split between government troops and militant forces. The Syrian Army has captured the north-eastern part of the city.
The operation also put a strain on the ability of armed groups to prevent civilians from fleeing areas under their control. Previously, some of the groups controlling eastern Aleppo, like the Al-Qaeda off-shoot Al-Nusra Front, used deadly force to stop civilians trying to escape.
The military success of Damascus in Aleppo come as US Secretary of State John Kerry is engaged in a last-ditch effort to convince Russia to stop the operation, according to a Washington Post column. The diplomat reportedly wants to keep rebels in control of part of the city before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January and withdraws Washington support from the militants.
LONDON (AP) — In Britain, Big Brother just got bigger.
After months of wrangling, Parliament has passed a contentious new snooping law that gives authorities – from police and spies to food regulators, fire officials and tax inspectors – powers to look at the internet browsing records of everyone in the country.
The law requires telecoms companies to keep records of all users’ web activity for a year, creating databases of personal information that the firms worry could be vulnerable to leaks and hackers.
Civil liberties groups say the law establishes mass surveillance of British citizens, following innocent internet users from the office to the living room and the bedroom.
Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited with inventing World Wide Web, tweeted news of the law’s passage with the words: “Dark, dark days.”
The Investigatory Powers Bill – dubbed the “snoopers’ charter” by critics – was passed by Parliament this month after more than a year of debate and amendments. It will become law when it receives the formality of royal assent next week. But big questions remain about how it will work, and the government acknowledges it could be 12 months before internet firms have to start storing the records.
“It won’t happen in a big bang next week,” Home Office official Chris Mills told a meeting of internet service providers on Thursday. “It will be a phased program of the introduction of the measures over a year or so.”
The government says the new law “ensures powers are fit for the digital age,” replacing a patchwork of often outdated rules and giving law-enforcement agencies the tools to fight terrorism and serious crime.
In a move taken by few other nations, it requires telecommunications companies to store for a year the web histories known as internet connection records – a list of websites each person has visited and the apps and messaging services they used, though not the individual pages they looked at or the messages they sent.
The government has called that information the modern equivalent of an itemized phone bill. But critics say it’s more like a personal diary.
Julian Huppert, a former Liberal Democrat lawmaker who opposed the bill, said it “creates a very intrusive database.”
“People may have been to the Depression Alliance website, or a marriage guidance website, or an abortion provider’s website, or all sorts of things which are very personal and private,” he said.
Officials won’t need a warrant to access the data, and the list of bodies that can see it includes not just the police and intelligence services, but government departments, revenue and customs officials and even the Food Standards Agency.
“My worry is partly about their access,” Huppert said. “But it’s much more deeply about the prospects for either hacking or people selling information on.”
James Blessing, chairman of the Internet Services Providers Association, said the industry has “significant questions” on how the law will work – including “how to keep the vast new data sets secure.”
He warned that if the law is not implemented in a “proportionate, considered way, there is a real danger the U.K. could lose its status as a world-leading digital economy.”
Some aspects of the new law remain clouded by secrecy. Not all internet companies will have to comply – only those that are asked to by the government. The government won’t say who is on that list, and the firms involved are forbidden from telling their customers.
Service providers are also concerned by the law’s provision that firms can be asked to remove encryption to let spies access communications. Internet companies say that could weaken the security of online shopping, banking and a host of other activities that rely on encryption.
The new law also makes official – and legal – British spies’ ability to hack into devices and harvest vast amounts of bulk online data, much of it from outside the U.K. In doing so, it both acknowledges and sets limits on the secretive mass-snooping schemes exposed by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The government says the law incorporates protections against intrusion, including an investigatory powers commissioner to oversee the system, and judges to scrutinize government-approved warrants to hack into electronic devices or look at the content of communications.
David Anderson, a lawyer who serves as Britain’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the new law “creates powerful new safeguards” and “achieves world-leading standards of transparency by putting on a detailed statutory basis all the powers which police and intelligence agencies already use.”
Privacy groups battled to stop the new legislation, and now say they will challenge it in court. But public opposition has been muted, in part because the bill’s passage through Parliament has been overshadowed by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the upheaval that has followed.
Renate Samson, chief executive of the group Big Brother Watch, said it would take time for the full implications of the law to become clear to the public.
“We now live in a digital world. We are digital citizens,” Samson said. “We have no choice about whether or not we engage online.
“This bill has fundamentally changed how we are able to privately and securely communicate with one another, communicate with business, communicate with government and live an online life. And that’s a real, profound concern.”
In what is being described as the worst defeat for US-backed forces since the outset of the war for regime-change in Syria nearly six years ago, government troops, backed by forces from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Iraqi Shia militias, have retaken over 40 percent of eastern Aleppo, the last urban stronghold of the so-called “rebels.”
According to a report from Iran, which, together with Russia, is a principal backer of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, Syrian army units have conquered 20 square kilometers out of the total of 45 square kilometers making up eastern Aleppo.
The government advance has been extremely rapid, suggesting a rout of the US-backed militias. The ground offensive follows two weeks of intense Syrian air strikes, launched after a month-long cessation of bombing by both Syrian and Russian warplanes.
Syrian government media reported that the army had captured the Sakhour area and was clearing it of mines. Government control of this part of the city would effectively split the area held by the “rebels” in two.
The government advance has led to tens of thousands of civilians fleeing the areas controlled by the Islamist militias for safety in both government-controlled western Aleppo and the Sheik Maqsoud district held by the Kurdish YPG militia.
The YPG has joined in the offensive against eastern Aleppo, further complicating the US intervention in Syria. While Washington has backed the Islamist militias fighting the Assad government, it has also sought to use the Kurdish YPG as its principal proxy force in the US military campaign against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Syria.
Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally in the region, has also sent troops into Syria, ostensibly to combat ISIS, but directed principally at preventing the Syrian Kurdish forces from consolidating control over territory near the Turkish border. As a result, on multiple fronts Washington is backing forces that are fighting against each other.
The civilians fleeing eastern Aleppo told stories of the horrors of the Russian-Syrian government bombing campaign as well as the repression and terror carried out by the Islamists controlling the neighborhoods in the east. It has been widely reported that the US-backed militias previously shot civilians trying to leave.
Before the war began in 2011, Aleppo was Syria’s second-largest city as well as its commercial capital.
Western Aleppo, where approximately 1.5 million people live–as opposed to less than 200,000 in the “rebel”-held eastern part of the city–is under the control of the Syrian government. It has come under indiscriminate mortar fire from the US-backed rebels aimed against the civilian population.
Both the Russian media and the Washington Post reported Monday that US Secretary of State John Kerry has mounted a new campaign aimed at brokering a ceasefire in Aleppo. While couched in humanitarian rhetoric, the principal aim of these efforts is to prevent the complete collapse of the US-backed militias and the consolidation of the Assad government’s control over all of Syria’s major population centers.
The media and Obama administration officials have violently denounced the Syrian government and its ally Russia for the siege of eastern Aleppo. The situation today, however, is the reverse of what prevailed a year ago when the so-called rebels were laying siege to western Aleppo, which faced an imminent humanitarian catastrophe. At that time, there were no humanitarian concerns expressed by Washington.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby on Monday denied that Kerry was engaged in “frantic or frenetic, last-ditch efforts” to salvage the US-backed regime-change operation before the fall of Aleppo and the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has expressed disagreements with current US policy.
Kirby acknowledged that the continuing sticking point in attempts to reach a new agreement with Moscow was Washington’s failure to keep its pledge to separate supposedly “moderate rebels” from the fighters of the al-Nusra Front, the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda.
“That is a difficult thing,” said the State Department spokesman. “We’ve talked about that for many months, this marbleization, if you will, of–the marbling of opposition groups with al-Nusra.”
The “difficulty” is that the only significant armed opposition forces in the regime-change operation orchestrated by Washington and its allies consist of al-Nusra and ISIS, both offshoots of Al Qaeda, which for the decade-and-a-half of the “war on terror” has been portrayed as the foremost threat to the security of people of the US and the world.
Today is the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine – an occasion to talk about the future of the Palestinian people and the state of Israel.
Palestine is a holy land where the main shrines of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam can be found. Not only political, but religious passions have burned over Palestine for thousands of years. This land was bequeathed by God to Abraham who came from Chaldean Ur to Mesopotamia. Moses and Joshua won it back upon returning from Egyptian captivity, after which the Kingdom of Israel and Judah was formed there.
Later, Palestine was incorporated into the global empires – the Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, Greek, Roman, Islamic, and Ottoman. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, these territories came under British mandate.
Today, all the more people understand that the materialist, economic, and evolutionary explanations of history are nothing more than a poor myth of Modernity. The factors of religion and ethnos are once again beginning to be taken seriously and are becoming an important key to understanding world events. Therefore, the Palestinian question should be seen through this lens.
The population of Palestine is mixed. Hundreds of peoples have inhabited, passed through, and fused with each other on these lands. Jews left en masse after the failed uprising of the pseudo-Messiah Simon bar Kokhba in 135 A.D. This signified the fourth period of exile, the Galut. The Talmud forbid the Jews from returning to these lands until the arrival of the Messiah. This is one of the three main Talmudic commandments, which are: Israel is not to be returned to, the peoples among whom the Jewish Diaspora live are not to be harmed, and the construction of the Third Temple is not to be begun until the coming of the Messiah.
During the period of the spread of Islam, Palestine was conquered from the Byzantine Romans by the Arabs, followed by profound Arabization and Islamization. Before this, the majority of the population was Christian. In the epoch of the Crusades, Western crusaders won back Jerusalem from the Saracens for some time only to lose it again. Later, in the early 16th century, Palestine was conquered by the Ottoman Turks.
Starting with the late 19th century, under the influence of the nationalist and racist ideology of Zionism, a Jewish nationalism which copied European nationalism, European Jews began to arrive in Palestine en masse, thereby violating the Talmudic commandments.
The Zionists decided: if the Messiah is in no hurry to come, then we will take the initiative into our own hands and hasten his coming. Not all Jews agreed with this, so the anti-Zionist Jewish movement known as Neturei Karta arose which believed Zionism to be a diabolical heresy.
In 1947, following the end of the Second World War, the State of Israel was founded under the influence of the Zionists. Insofar as the Jewish religion in its Zionist version represents a fairly strict, racist doctrine, the local Palestinian population – largely Arab and Muslim, although also including many Christians among Palestinian Arabs – was subjected to real genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. The Jews, having just been subjected to unprecedented persecution by the Nazis in the Third Reich, appeared to be trying to push their pain and wrath onto the Palestinians who were, by the way, not guilty of anything. Millions of Palestinians were deported from the lands they had lived on for centuries.
This didn’t happen under the Arab conquests nor under the Crusaders. The Zionists did not recognize any resolution on the establishment of a Palestinian state nor the international status of Jerusalem. Constantly citing their suffering at the hands of the Nazis, the Jews used this as a pretext to refuse to pay attention to the protests of the Arabs and the calls of the UN and international community. After all, by violating the Talmudic commandments, the Zionist leaders essentially identified themselves with the Messiah. All that remained was to proceed to construct the Third Temple. To do so, the Arabs have to be expelled from the Temple Mount and the Islamic shrine, the al-Aqsa Mosque, has to be destroyed. The completion of the genocide of Palestinians is part of these Zionist plans. Then, in their opinion, the period of Jewish rule on a global scale will arrive – the Fifth Monarchy, under which the nations of the earth, the Gentiles, will recognize the supremacy of the Jews and submit to them. This is the creed by which the State of Israel lives.
In this situation, the Day of Solidarity with the peoples of Palestine is celebrated by those who do not share this kind of mystical-political and racist eschatological ideology of Zionism.
For an Orthodox person, this is too clearly reminiscent of the Antichrist. We equally cannot be delighted by the Islamic conquest of Palestine. After all, this was our Orthodox land, a part of our Empire.
Perhaps the most just of all would be to return Palestine to us Christians. We are not racists or fanatics and we do not claim exclusivity. We guarantee the rights of both Muslims and Jews on our holy land. Thus, let us meet in Orthodox Jerusalem.
Israel targets a UN-run school in Beit Lahiya with white phosphorous munitions during ‘Operation Cast Lead’, January 17, 2009 (Iyad El-Baba/UNRWA)
Here are ten popular arguments Zionists use to defend Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and how to answer them effectively.
If you’re active in the struggle for peace and justice in the Middle East, you’ve no doubt frequently encountered Zionists who defend Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. You’re familiar with many of their talking points, and maybe you know how to answer many or most of them. Here are ten you’ve likely encountered, but perhaps didn’t know quite how to debate effectively–until now!
1. The Palestinian refugee problem is an unfortunate result of the Arab states launching a war of aggression in 1948 to wipe Israel off the map.
There are two principle fallacies in this argument:
One, it was not simply that Palestinians fled war. Many did flee, but this was encouraged by the Zionist forces, which also directly expelled many civilians from their homes and destroyed their villages so they could never return. It was the intent of the Zionists to ethnically cleanse Palestine of most of its Arab population in order for the demographically “Jewish state” of Israel to be established. Indeed, cleansing Palestine of Arabs was a prerequisite for this state to be created. This is why Israel refused to allow those refugees to return.
Two, this argument assumes that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the existence of Israel on May 14, 1948, was legitimate. It wasn’t. The Zionists had neither any legal nor moral authority to declare sovereignty over a land in which they were a minority and of which they owned only about 7 percent. While they cited UN Resolution 181 (the “partition plan” resolution) as granting such authority, in fact, this resolution neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration.
Fully arm yourself with the knowledge to defeat this Zionist hasbara (i.e., propaganda) by reading:
Chapter 1, Subchapter “UN General Assembly Resolution 181”
Chapter 2, Subchapter “Resolution 194”
Chapter 9, Subchapter “The Bias of the New York Times”
2. Israel has a right to exist.
No state has a “right to exist”. This concept is a propaganda device invented by the US and Israel for a reason that will become clear momentarily.
One might be tempted to answer this argument with: “Well, Palestine has a right to exist, too!” But this is not the proper response!
Political entities defined by lines on maps do not have rights, individuals do. The proper framework for discussion is the right to self-determination. And it is manifestly Israel that has denied that right to the Palestinians since its founding (and indeed, by the Zionists even before Israel’s founding), and not vice versa.
The necessity of redefining the framework for discussion thus becomes obvious. To say that Israel has a “right to exist” is effectively to assert that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence and the ethnic cleansing by which Israel actually came into being were legitimate. Needless to say, these were not legitimate actions on the part of the Zionists.
For further discussion and specific examples of how this Zionist hasbara has been used to deny the equal rights of the Palestinians, see the index entry “Israel: ‘right to exist’” in Obstacle to Peace.
3. In 1967, Israel acted in self-defense by launching a preemptive attack on Egypt.
Israel’s attack on Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967 — the event that started the “Six Day War” — was not preemptive.
Zionists will argue that Nasser’s threats, Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran and Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, its movement of troops into the Sinai Peninsula, and its expelling of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) all essentially amounted to acts of war.
However, none of these actions constituted aggression under international law.
Egypt’s perspective was that the straits and Suez Canal were its territorial waterways so it had a right to deny passage to an enemy state that had already attacked it once, in 1956 (when Israel conspired with Britain and France to launch a war of aggression against Egypt). While legal scholars may debate the legitimacy of that point of view, the fact is that Israel had peaceful means available to it to seek redress for this grievance against Egypt. It did not, under international law, constitute a casus belli (justification for war).
Nasser wanted the UN peacekeeping force gone because he was being accused by Syria and Jordan of hiding behind it. His bellicose rhetoric was about saving face but was just that: rhetoric. The proposal was made to restation UNEF on Israel’s side of the border, but, instructively, Israel rejected this proposal.
Furthermore, the CIA observed that Egypt’s troops took up defensive positions in the Sinai, and Israel’s own intelligence assessed that Israel was under no threat of attack from Egypt.
In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledged, “In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Under international law, Israel’s attack on Egypt constituted aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime”.
For more information about Israel’s aggression in 1967, see:
Chapter 9, Subchapter “‘Defensible Borders’”, from Obstacle to Peace
4. UN Resolution 242 did not require Israel to fully withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967.
This is a lie. Unfortunately, it is very effective Zionist hasbara and is widely believed even by supporters of Palestinians’ rights.
There are three main components of the Zionist argument:
The absence of the article “the” before the words “territories occupied” in sub-paragraph (i) of the first operative paragraph of this Security Council resolution means only a partial withdrawal was required.
Sub-paragraph (ii) requires that “secure and recognized borders” be established before Israel is required to withdraw.
Officials responsible for creating and passing Resolution 242, like Lord Caradon (UK) and Arthur Goldberg (US) have said it did not require a full withdrawal.
Briefly, here are the flaws in these arguments:
First of all, this is nonsense even on its face: the resolution does not say Israel must withdraw from “the territories occupied” so we must understand it to mean Israel must withdraw from only “some territories occupied”? This self-defeating Zionist logic is prima facie nonsense.
In truth, the absence of the article has no effect on the meaning of the resolution inasmuch as the extent of withdraw is concerned. It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces “from territories occupied”, plural. The Syrian Golan Heights, the Egyptian Sinai, and the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank are all “territories occupied” during the 1967 war and thus territories from which Israel was required to withdraw under the clear and unambiguous wording of Resolution 242.
In fact, the preambulatory section of the resolution emphasized the principle of international law that the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible — and it is in the context of that emphasized principle that the resolution’s call for Israeli withdrawal must be understood.
As for sub-paragraph (ii), while it does call for the establishment of “secure and recognized borders”, it does not establish this as a precondition for the withdraw of Israeli forces. It says “both” Israeli withdrawal and establishment of such borders are required, conditioning neither one upon the other. It was not the Security Council’s intent that a people whose land was occupied be required to negotiate with the occupier over where to draw the border.
Zionists claim otherwise, but to do so, they quote Caradon and Goldberg from years after the resolution’s passage. But, first, UN resolutions are not open to unilateral interpretation, but must be understand according to the will of the Security Council as a whole; and, second, the relevant documentary record for understanding the will of the Council is from prior to and up until the resolution’s adoption.
And turning to that documentary record, it is absolutely clear that the Security Council was explicit and unanimous that Resolution 242 required Israel to return to the lines it held prior to June 5, 1967.
For a fuller discussion of the factual and logical errors of this Zionist hasbara, see Chapter 3, Subchapter “Resolution 242” in Obstacle to Peace.
5. The Palestinians have rejected every generous offer from Israel to have a state of their own.
This argument assumes that Israel accepts the two-state solution and had made generous concessions in each of those “offers”, such as that made at Camp David in 2000. Those assumptions are absolutely false.
In fact, every single concession made during each of the “offers” in question — throughout the entire so-called “peace process” — was demanded or made by the Palestinians.
This Zionist hasbara, frequently propagated by US government officials and media commentators, simply frames the discussion in terms of what Israel wants rather than what it has a right to under international law.
Zionists say things like, “Israel offered the Palestinians a state in 95 percent of the West Bank at Camp David”. First of all, this is false. Israel started out demanding to annex 12 percent of the West Bank, and by the end of the talks was still demanding 9 percent. Second, none of this land was Israel’s to give. Under international law, every inch of it is recognized as “occupied Palestinian territory”. So translated into meaningful terms, we see arguments like the above equate that Israel “offered” to take only 5 percent (really 9 percent) of the Palestinians’ land.
Furthermore, these demands to annex Palestinian territory were accompanied with other unreasonable demands, such as dividing the West Bank into Bantustan-like enclaves with Jewish-only highways connecting illegally constructed Israeli settlements and Israeli military control over Palestine’s borders and airspace. In other words, Israel demanded that the Palestinians surrender more of their land, rights, and sovereignty.
If a thief steals a $100 from you and then says he will give you back $91 if you agree to certain other demands requiring you to surrender your rights, would you describe it as a “generous offer” or a “concession”?
The truth is that while the Palestinian leadership has accepted the two-state solution since the late 1980s, Israel has always rejected it. In fact, the US-led so-called “peace process” is in reality the process by which Israel and its superpower benefactor have long blocked implementation of the two-state solution.
To arm yourself with the knowledge to defeat this Zionist hasbara, see especially Chapter 2, “The ‘Peace Process’”, from Obstacle to Peace.
6. Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal — the UN has said so.
Actually, the UN has repeatedly affirmed the illegality of Israel’s blockade, which amounts to a policy of collective punishment in violation of international law. This criminal policy has been condemned by numerous UN bodies; the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); and numerous international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Gisha. This blockade continues in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1860, which called on Israel to end it.
So what are Zionists talking about when they claim the UN has said Israel’s blockade is legal?
They are talking about a report commissioned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon known as the “Palmer Report”. It’s true that this report expressed the opinion of its two chairmembers that Israel’s naval blockade was legal. But what Zionists don’t tell you is that they also noted in their report itself that this conclusion of theirs went beyond their mandate and that they had no authority to offer their legal opinion.
Furthermore, the arguments they employed to arrive at their conclusion were riddled with factual and logical errors. Essentially, they employed circular reasoning by adopting the conclusion as their premise: in short, they argued that the naval blockade was legal because it was not a policy of collective punishment. In fact, they went to great lengths to avoid inquiring whether the blockade constituted collective punishment under international law, and they resorted to demonstrable misrepresentations of what international law actually has to say in an effort to sustain their expressed opinion.
So why would they do that? Well, they stated the reason in their report: their mandate was not to inquire into the legality of the blockade, but the political objective of allowing Israel and Turkey to put the Mavi Marmara incident behind them.
That was the incident in May 2010 in which Israeli forces attacked the humanitarian “Freedom Flotilla” — which was seeking to break Israel’s illegal blockade and draw the world’s attention to it — in international waters and murdered nine Turkish activists on board.
Ban Ki-moon charged them with helping these two states to reconcile. Had they affirmed the international consensus that Israel’s blockade was illegal, it would have undermined their political objective. So they expressed the opinion it was not as a predetermined conclusion and then proceeded to manipulate the facts and employ fallacious reasoning to support it.
For more on Ban Ki-moon’s duplicitous role as UN Secretary-General, see “Ban Ki-moon’s Complicity in Israel’s Occupation and War Crimes“.For a thorough debunking of the Palmer Report, see Chapter 9, Subchapter “The Palmer Report” in Obstacle to Peace. For more about Israel’s criminal assault on the Mavi Marmara and how to answer the arguments of those who try to defend it, see Chapter 7, “Murder on the High Seas”.
7. Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead” only after thousands of rockets had been fired at Israeli towns from Gaza.
This Zionist hasbara — frequently parroted by the US government and mainstream media — is deceit by omission. It’s true that in the years prior to Israel’s 2008-09 “Operation Cast Lead” thousands of rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza — and indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli population centers are certainly war crimes. However, what the Zionists don’t tell you is that on June 19, Israel and Hamas entered into a ceasefire agreement that was repeatedly violated not by Hamas, but Israel.
The New York Times actually reported on the most serious of those Israeli violations on the day it occurred (November 4, 2008), but thereafter tossed this fact down the memory hole. Subsequently, when it referred to the ceasefire, it merely said that it “broke down” without stating the reason why: because it was violated by Israel. More frequently, that there had even been a ceasefire — much less that it was not Hamas but Israel who violated it — was completely omitted, replaced by a false narrative in which Israel was acting in self defense against Hamas rocket attacks.
As illustrated by Operation Cast Lead, it is a modus operandi of Israel’s to take actions to attempt to provoke a violent response from Palestinian militants in order to create pretexts for its own resorts to its own violence, which occurs on an incomparably greater scale.
8. Palestinian civilians were only killed during operations like “Cast Lead” because they were being used by Hamas as human shields.
This is a lie. The truth is that Israel engaged in deliberately disproportionate use of force during its 2008-09 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defense), and 2014 (Operation Protective Edge) assaults on Gaza. In fact, it openly declared its intention to commit what amount to war crimes with its so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” — a reference to the flattening of the Dahiya district of Beirut in 2006 to punish the civilian population.
To take the example of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s war crimes are well documented and incontrovertible. It deliberately targeted the civilian infrastructure for destruction as part of a policy of punishing the people of Gaza, and the IDF routinely used indiscriminate force, such as attacks on UN schools being used as shelters, hospitals, and residential homes.
In fact, there is not a single documented case of a Palestinian civilian killed during Operation Cast Lead who was being used by Hamas at the time as a human shield.
This might seem like a shocking truth, given the US mainstream media’s mindless repetition of the IDF’s own propaganda about civilians dying only because Hamas was using them as human shields, but this operation has been extensively investigated by human rights organizations and the UN, all of which investigations have concluded that there is no evidence to support Israel’s claimed justifications for killing civilians.
On the other hand, these investigations did conclude that Israeli forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead, such as forcing children to walk in front of them as they cleared homes.
For the full details of what really happened before and during Operation Cast Lead, see Obstacle to Peace, especially:
Chapter 1, Subchapter “The Collapse of the Ceasefire”
Chapter 2, “‘Operation Cast Lead’”
Chapter 4, Subchapter “‘The Most Moral Army in the World’”
Chapter 7, Subchapter “Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ Self-Exoneration: Second Update”
9. The finding of the UN “Goldstone Report” that Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead has been debunked.
This is a lie. What Zionist apologists for Israeli war crimes are referring to, specifically, when they make this claim is an op-ed by one of the four chairs of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Justice Richard Goldstone.
The so-called Goldstone Report did indeed conclude that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes — and these conclusions still stand.
For his part in that report, Goldstone came under intense pressure and heavy criticism from Zionists, including threats to protest outside of and bar him from attending his grandon’s bar mitzvah. His op-ed was a transparent attempt to appease his Zionist detractors. But further than that, it was a disgraceful betrayal of truth and justice, as Goldstone outright lied about the UN report’s findings in his attempt at appeasement.
The occasion for Goldstone’s betrayal was the report of a follow-up UN committee charged with inquiring into the credibility of Hamas’s and Israel’s self-investigations into the allegations of war crimes. In this context, Goldstone wrote that had the UN Fact-Finding Mission known then what was now known, it would not have arrived at the conclusions it did.
Goldstone, however, was lying about the contents of the both the Goldstone Report and the follow-up committee’s report. He claimed the Fact-Finding Mission had not examined any evidence presented by Israel. That was false. In fact, the Mission fully took into account Israel’s own reports of its self-investigations that had occurred.
Goldstone also set up his op-ed on the premise of a strawman argument: the claim was ostensibly now retracting was that Israel had a policy of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians for death. In fact, this was not a finding of the Fact-Finding Mission’s report. Rather, the Mission concluded that Israel’s policy was to punish the civilian population through the deliberate use of disproportionate force. By setting up this strawman argument, Goldstone avoided having to “retract” the Mission’s actual findings.
Further, he quoted the follow-up committee’s finding that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza”, but he withheld from readers the fact that the committee found that these investigations lacked credibility.
After Goldstone’s disgraceful betrayal of justice, his three co-authors publicly criticized his op-ed and pointed out that information that had since come to light — including the findings of the follow-up committee Goldstone was deceptively relying on to support his own argument — did not change the Mission’s conclusions, but bolstered them.
For a complete debunking of this Zionist hasbara talking point, see Chapter 7, Subchapter “Goldstone’s Betrayal” in Obstacle to Peace.
10. Hamas was responsible for initiating the round of violence that culminated in Israel’s launching of “Operation Pillar of Defense” in 2012.
As with Operation Cast Lead, the truth is dramatically different.
Israeli apologists — including US government officials and US mainstream media commentators — cited as the initiating event a Hamas attack on an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) jeep just days before Israel launched its operation. What was withheld from readers in this Zionist hasbara was the fact that this was an attack on IDF forces that had invaded Gaza and was in part retaliation for the IDF’s murder of a thirteen-year-old Palestinian boy shortly prior.
Furthermore, just the day before Israel launched its operation, once again Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire that was then violated by Israel. In fact, Israel took advantage of the opportunity created by Hamas’s acceptance of the ceasefire to draw out and assassinate a senior Hamas official, Ahmed al-Jabari one of the initiating events of its “Operation Pillar of Defense”. Israel’s Orwellian justification for this operation was that it was intended to re-establish calm — the very calm that was shattered by its launch of the operation and assassination of Jabari.
For a complete timeline of events leading up to “Operation Pillar of Defense” and details of events occurring during that assault on Gaza, including Israel’s commission of further war crimes, see Chapter 10, Subchapter “‘Operation Pillar of Defense’” in Obstacle to Peace.
Conclusion
For peace and justice to be realized, the lies have to be exposed and the true nature of the conflict must come to light. There needs to be a paradigm shift in which it is no longer feasible for mainstream media outlets — which effectively serve the role of manufacturing consent for the US policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians — to mindlessly parrot US and Israeli government claims and peddle deceitful propaganda.
Zionist apologists for Israel’s behavior employ numerous hasbara talking points to try to justify its crimes. Knowing how to effectively counter the propaganda is key to effecting the necessary paradigm shift for peace to be achieved.
You as an individual can play an important role in helping to effect that paradigm shift.
Empower yourself with the knowledge you need to become an effective voice for peace.
Educate yourself and gain the confidence you need to speak up and correct those around you who have been misinformed about the true nature of the conflict.
Challenge the Zionist apologists when you encounter them on Facebook or Twitter and know how to destroy their propagandistic talking points with the truth.
If we want peace, government isn’t going to get the job done. It’s up to us. Go to it!
My book Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict systematically deconstructs mainstream narratives about the conflict, revealing its true causes, the real reasons for its persistence, and what needs to happen for peace and justice to be realized. Here is what a few others have had to say about it:“carefully documented and highly informative” — Noam Chomsky
Last weekend, Syrian government forces delivered a devastating blow to the al-Nusra led militant coalition, known as Jaish al-Fatah, inside the Aleppo city. The Syrian army’s Republican Guard, the Syrian army’s Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade, Liwa al-Quds and other pro-government groups liberated the neighborhoods of Hanano, Jabal Badro and Inzarat. They also took control of the Haidariyah Youth Housing, the Ba’ideen Roundabout and the Ba’ideen Square and Ard Hamra and seized a significant part of Al-Sakhur neighborhood.
Kurdish YPG units seized positions in Bustan Basha which had been under control of Sultan Murad militant group.
On November 28, government forces liberated Handariyah and al-Shakhur neighborhoods, encircling Sheikh Khizir.
Local sources say that militants are fleeing their defenses in northeastern Aleppo.
Government forces also attacked Nusra-linked militants in the Sheikh Lufti Neighborhood and in the Marjeh Neighborhood. The most notable gain of Syrian troops in the area is the so-called “Police Hill” (420 m) in the Marjeh Neighborhood. The Police Hill is a key hilltop in Marjeh. Controlling it, the army and its allies will be able to secure the Sheikh Lufti – Marjeh axis.
From Sheikh Lufti government forces are able to pose another threat to Jaish al-Fatah militants – to reach the Aleppo Citadel, splitting the eastern Aleppo pocket into several separated parts.
Mohamad Rafe’, military operations commander of Liwa al-Quds has been killed today during operations to liberate eastern Aleppo.
The government advance allowed thousands of civilians have fled militant-held areas of Aleppo city.
About 1,700 civilians had fled to government-held parts of western Aleppo and about 2,500 to the Kurdish-controlled area of Sheikh Maksoud since the start of the operation, according to the so-called “Syrian Observatory of Human Rights”, a pro-militant ‘non-government’ organization aimed to cover the Syrian conflict.
Syrian news sources broadcasted images of a crowd of civilians including women and children gathered around green buses that are set to pick them up in Masaken Hanano and entering western Aleppo. According to them, up to 10,000 civilians have fled from eastern Aleppo so far. Most of them took refuge in government-controlled areas.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 