A Palestinian man inspects the damage caused by Israeli soldiers after a raid to his house in Hebron. (Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA)
By Olivia Becker
Israel’s massive crackdown in the West Bank, which was sparked by the disappearance of three Israeli students on June 12, has now entered its 13th day and shows no sign of letting up.
The incursion, dubbed “Operation Brother’s Keeper,” has killed five Palestinians, arrested at least 361, raided some 1,600 locations, and put the entire southern region of the West Bank, and most major Palestinian cities under total lockdown. Of the hundreds of Palestinians arrested, very few have been formally charged, but rather are being held on “administrative detention.”
Israel has said that Operation Brother’s Keeper is intended to find and arrest those responsible for the kidnappings, which it insists is Hamas, despite offering no public proof of this allegation. But the reality of the situation — demonstrated by powerful images and the facts above — hints that the core of this crackdown is rooted in something other than the hunt for the missing teenagers.
“The response we’re seeing really suggests it is not about the crime,” Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center and The Jerusalem Fund, told VICE News. “It has provided an opportunity for Israel to impose a sweeping attack on Hamas, which imposes a severe cost on Palestinian society.”
Israel does not deny this. Speaking to reporters on June 17, Israeli Major General Nitzan Alon said: “We are fighting Hamas, a cruel terror organization. The operation against it is complicated and protracted. It didn’t start today and it’s not going to end anytime soon.” Alon added that the heads of Hamas are “feeling the hits and understand the message.”
General Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former leader of the Baath Party in Iraq (Jassim Mohammed/Associated Press)
By William Engdahl
For days now, since their dramatic June 10 taking of Mosul, Western mainstream media have been filled with horror stories of the military conquests in Iraq of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, with the curious acronym ISIS.
ISIS, as in the ancient Egyptian cult of the goddess of fertility and magic. The media picture being presented adds up less and less.
Details leaking out suggest that ISIS and the major military ‘surge’ in Iraq – and less so in neighboring Syria – is being shaped and controlled out of Langley, Virginia, and other CIA and Pentagon outposts as the next stage in spreading chaos in the world’s second-largest oil state, Iraq, as well as weakening the recent Syrian stabilization efforts.
The very details of the ISIS military success in the key Iraqi oil center, Mosul, are suspect. According to well-informed Iraqi journalists, ISIS overran the strategic Mosul region, site of some of the world’s most prolific oilfields, with barely a shot fired in resistance. According to one report, residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of “soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot.”
We are told that ISIS masked psychopaths captured “arms and ammunition from the fleeing security forces” – arms and ammunition supplied by the American government. The offensive coincides with a successful campaign by ISIS in eastern Syria. According to Iraqi journalists, Sunni tribal chiefs in the region had been convinced to side with ISIS against the Shiite Al-Maliki government in Baghdad. They were promised a better deal under ISIS Sunni Sharia than with Baghdad anti-Sunni rule.
According to the New York Times, the mastermind behind the ISIS military success is former Baath Party head and Saddam Hussein successor, General Ibrahim al-Douri. Douri is reportedly the head of the Iraqi rebel group Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order as well as the Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation based on his longstanding positions of leadership in the Naqshbandi sect in Iraq.
In 2009, US ‘Iraqi surge’ General David Petraeus, at the time heading the US Central Command, claimed to reporters that Douri was in Syria. Iraqi parliamentarians claimed he was in Qatar. The curious fact is that despite being on the US most wanted list since 2003, Douri has miraculously managed to avoid capture and now to return with a vengeance to retake huge parts of Sunni Iraq. Luck or well-placed friends in Washington?
The financial backing for ISIS jihadists reportedly also comes from three of the closest US allies in the Sunni world—Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Iraq Militant Leader: Why We are Fighting with ISIS
A top commander in the Sunni insurgency in Iraq has told The Telegraph how his men are fighting alongside Isis to take Baghdad, even if it means pushing the country to civil war.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Dabash, 47, a founder of the Islamic Army of Iraq, who fought the allied invasion in 2003, has told The Telegraph how thousands of his men are participating in the Isis-led insurgency that swept across northern Iraq, and which now threatens the gates of the capital.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Mr Dabbash explained why his army has teamed up with Isis: “We brought them in to defend our religion, our money, our land and our people.”
The Islamic Army, however, does not share the same extremist ideology of Isis, Mr Dabash said, and raised the prospect of his faction one day turning its guns on their jihadist comrades.
“Isis are an important part of what we are doing, but I can’t say I can 100 per cent bring them under our wing,” said Mr Dabash.
Israeli soldiers detaining Palestinian children in Hebron.
Abduction possibly a ‘childish Israeli ploy’ to deflect negative attention, or just a criminal act, Riyad al-Maliki claims
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki claimed on Sunday that Israel may have staged the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers 10 days ago to deflect international criticism from it, arguing that the Jewish state had no proof that Hamas was behind the abduction
“They [the Israelis] have no proof that Hamas is behind this operation, as they have failed to provide any proof indicating this,” Maliki told Saudi daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat from Jedda, where he, with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was visiting last week.
“In the absence of proof, there are three possible scenarios for the issue: The kidnapping could be a childish game on the part of Israel to draw attention to it, it could be part of a larger game to turn the Israelis from aggressors to victims, or maybe they were really kidnapped,” Maliki said.
Even if the three teenagers were indeed abducted, the foreign minister continued, they could have been victims of “Jewish criminals, Palestinian criminals or Palestinian-Jewish criminals” who carried out the kidnapping “for their own personal goals.” The abduction could have also been carried out by “various Palestinian factions,” he said.
150 Palestinians Arrested in Search for Missing Teens
Israel has arrested scores of Palestinians, including the parliamentary speaker, in its hunt for the abductors of three teenagers. PM Benjamin Netanyahu demanded cooperation from the Palestinian Authority in returning the captives.
Israeli government accused the Palestinian movement Hamas of being behind the abductions on Thursday last week, but Hamas denied the allegations.
The IDF conducted mass arrests of Palestinians in the days of the hunt, with as many as 150 people taken into custody by Monday. Among them is Palestinian parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik, who is a member of Hamas, who was arrested overnight, and six other Palestinian MPs.
The army also conducted house-to-house searches, round-ups and interrogations in the West Bank, where the three Israelis vanished while apparently hitchhiking. Palestinian witnesses said in once instance the soldiers used explosives to force their way into a home in the city of Hebron belonging to a Hamas-linked family after occupants would not let them in.
Ramallah Raid on RT’s Office: Why the IDF Story Doesn’t Add Up
After staging a violent raid on RT’s office and other media organizations in Ramallah, the Israeli Defense Forces have been asked to provide an explanation. But their vague and inconsistent response has raised more questions than it answers.
In the early hours of Saturday, the IDF raided the Palmedia broadcast service provider’s building in the West Bank city of Ramallah, breaking down doors, destroying equipment and confiscating records. The materials and archives of RT’s Arabic service were seized.
Removal of Maliki from office, ending Iranian meddling and the establishment of a temporary nationalist, democratic and non-sectarian government, is the sole solution to the crisis in Iraq that is endorsed by significant sections of Iraqi society. The popular uprising in Iraq and the liberation of its cities one after the other, together with the collapse of Maliki’s forces and their mass desertion and retreat in face of the tribes, is continuing on a rapid basis. A number of facts on this development are as follows:
1. The propaganda by Maliki and his masters in Tehran, generously repeated by the Western media, that these regions have fallen into the hands of extremist terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (ISIL), is ludicrous and baseless. Liberating around 100,000 square kilometers of Iraqi territory with a population of several million by an isolated and extremist group of several hundred or even several thousand members is preposterous. It is the tribes and ordinary Iraqi citizens who have risen up in anger against Maliki.
2. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, Maliki and the Iranian regime on the one hand try to justify the interference of the Iranian terrorist Qods Force and the invasion of Iraq by the revolutionary guards and on the other hand attempt to encourage the United States to militarily interfere in favour of Maliki to repeat its past blunder in Iraq, on an even more dangerous scale. We in the West have to acknowledge that this is a popular revolution against Maliki and the suppressive and criminal regime, organized with the assistance of the United States and of course under the guidance and leadership of the religious fascists ruling Iran with the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars of the assets and oil wealth of Iraq.
3. The Iranian regime is now poised to save Maliki. In a telephone conversation, President Rouhani has promised Maliki every kind of cooperation. Fox News wrote on June 13: “Some 150 fighters from the Revolutionary Guards elite Quds force have already been dispatched by Tehran, and the division’s powerful commander, Qassem Suleimani, met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday and pledged to send two notorious Iranian brigades to aid in the defence of Baghdad.” And The Wall Street Journal of June 12 wrote: “At least three battalions of the Quds Forces, the elite overseas branch of the Guards, were dispatched to aid in the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda rapidly gaining territory across Iraq, they said: “One Guards unit that was already in Iraq fought alongside the Iraqi army, offering guerrilla warfare advice and tactics and helped reclaim most of the city of Tikrit on Thursday; two Guards’ units, dispatched from Iran’s western border provinces on Wednesday, were tasked with protecting Baghdad and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf.” These reports only reveal part of the reality and support our constant warnings about the meddling of Iran.
4. Reports on Nineveh and Salahaddin provinces filed by journalists from CNN, al-Jazeera and BBC among others, support our previous intelligence that no violence or aggression has been carried out against the indigenous population. The residents of these areas are happy that Maliki’s forces have fled and public and private properties now enjoy relative security. The mass exodus of refugees from these cities is due to the bombardment by Maliki’s forces, although 48 hours after the liberation of Nineveh, the wave of refugees has markedly ebbed and some have already begun to return.
Iraqi Sunni scholars: Iraqi rebels, not ISIS, who face the Iraqi army
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) said on Friday that describing the rebels who drove the Iraqi army from several cities as operatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is incorrect. They decried the designations as an attempt to abort the uprising in the country.
About the routing of the Iraqi army, the statement said: “This is an achievement that will infuriate many parties inside and outside Iraq, including those with external agendas that harmed the country for years.”
Despite claims that it was the ISIS which took over the cities and towns, several Iraqi sources have pointed out that tribal rebels as well as other Iraqi fighters constitute the main force currently fighting the Iraqi army, in addition to some affiliated to ISIS.
As Brazil hosts the world’s top football tournament, Juice Rap News’ Robert Foster investigates why many Brazilians are protesting against THIEFA’s World Coup, and why governments’ real interest in the sport should really be called “The World Game.”
Abby Martin speaks with Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi-American peace activist who gives her perspective on the announcement of the US deploying 275 troops to Iraq as the country continues to spiral into civil war.
Dahlia Wasfi: Keep Calm and Trust Iraqis with Iraq
The Iraqi resistance brought an end to the formal military occupation of their country; the resistance is NOW seeking to rid itself of the occupation-installed government and its bloody sectarianism. It is this resistance that is taking control of northern Iraqi cities. Witnesses on the ground in Iraq say that multiple groups with significant political differences have set those divisions aside to unite against the sectarian government of Nouri Al-Maliki. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is one of those groups, but they are playing a smaller role. Mosul and Tal Afar are in the hands of the General Military Council of the Iraqi Revolutionaries, liberated from Maliki’s brutal sectarian rule. Only a strong, coordinated military organization — not 1000 or even several thousand undisciplined extremists — could take and hold a city the size of Mosul (1.4 million) and continue to advance.
Understanding the horrors that we have continued to bring to Iraqis since 1991 helps us see that what is happening in Iraq is a legitimate rebellion against a brutal dictator (a theocratic one instead of a secular one). US President Barack Obama is sending more troops to Iraq to defend the sectarian government from the Iraqi people. Instead of sending more forces in, Mr. President, fly as many planes as you need to Baghdad, load up every last American and the bloody US-installed government, and leave. If you can find it, pick up your dignity on your way out.
On January 27, 1945 the Soviet Army entered the Auschwitz camp complex and liberated 7,000 prisoners, including children (Russian archive photo).
By Paul Craig Roberts
In my June 6 column, “The Lies Grow More Audacious,” I mentioned that Obama and the British prime minister, who Obama has as a lap dog, just as George Bush had Tony Blair as lap dog, had managed to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany at the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion without mentioning the Russians.
I pointed out the fact, well known to historians and educated people, that the Red Army defeated Nazi Germany long before the US was able to get geared up to participate in the war. The Normandy invasion most certainly did not defeat Nazi Germany. What the Normandy invasion did was to prevent the Red Army from overrunning all of Europe.
It occurred to me that World War II was so long ago that few are alive who remember it, and by now even these few probably remember the propaganda version that they have heard at every Memorial Day and July 4th occasion since 1945. Little wonder that neither Obama nor Cameron or their pitiful speech writers knew nothing about the war that they were commemorating.
Propaganda has always been with us. The difference is that in the 21st century Americans have nothing but propaganda. Nothing else at all. Just lies. Lies are the American experience. The actual world as it exists is foreign to most Americans.
Boris Malagurski’s award-winning Canadian film “The Weight of Chains”, dealing with the breakup of Yugoslavia from a different angle.
If you thought you knew why Yugoslavia broke up, get ready for 2 hours of shocking facts that will shed a different light on Western intervention in the Balkans. Nicknamed the “Serbian Michael Moore” by the oldest daily newspaper in the Balkans, Malagurski will expose the root causes of the Yugoslav wars and explain that the goal was for the West to create economic and geopolitical colonies in that part of the world.
Slavyansk under fire, without water and power as Kiev troops resume shelling
Death and destruction is reported in eastern Ukraine as Kiev’s artillery has resumed shelling the rebellious city of Slavyansk. Despite President Poroshenko intention to bring about a ceasefire, Kiev’s relentless military operation in the country’s east is intensifying.
On 2 June 2014 an air strike of the Ukrainian Air force on city of Lugansk resulted in 8 deaths and 28 wounded. Inna Vladimirovna Kukurudza (Кукурудза Инна Владимировна), an employee credit union was one the number of the innocent civilian victims murdered that day. She died in the ambulance after the horrific injuries that we see at the end of this video. This video was made as a tribute to her memory.
Is that video tough to watch? Yes. Therefore – PLEASE CIRCULATE IT!
Chinese residents check a burning armoured personnel carrier which was put on fire by rioters on June 4, 1989 near Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
By Brian Becker
Twenty-five years ago today, every U.S. media outlet, along with then President Bush and the U.S. Congress were whipping up a full scale frenzied hysteria and attack against the Chinese government for what was described as the cold-blooded massacre of many thousands of non-violent “pro-democracy” students who had occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks.
The hysteria generated about the Tiananmen Square “massacre” was based on a fictitious narrative about what actually happened when the Chinese government finally cleared the square of protestors on June 4, 1989.
The demonization of China was highly effective. Nearly all sectors of U.S. society, including most of the “left,” accepted the imperialist presentation of what happened.
At the time the Chinese government’s official account of the events was immediately dismissed out of hand as false propaganda. China reported that about 300 people had died in clashes on June 4 and that many of the dead were soldiers of the Peoples Liberation Army. China insisted that there was no massacre of students in Tiananmen Square and in fact the soldiers cleared Tiananmen Square of demonstrators without any shooting.
The Chinese government also asserted that unarmed soldiers who had entered Tiananmen Square in the two days prior to June 4 were set on fire and lynched with their corpses hung from buses. Other soldiers were incinerated when army vehicles were torched with soldiers unable to evacuate and many others were badly beaten by violent mob attacks.
These accounts were true and well documented. It would not be difficult to imagine how violently the Pentagon and U.S. law enforcement agencies would have reacted if the Occupy movement, for instance, had similarly set soldiers and police on fire, taken their weapons and lynched them when the government was attempting to clear them from public spaces.
In an article on June 5, 1989, the Washington Post described how anti-government fighters had been organized into formations of 100-150 people. They were armed with Molotov cocktails and iron clubs, to meet the PLA who were still unarmed in the days prior to June 4.
What happened in China, what took the lives of government opponents and of soldiers on June 4, was not a massacre of peaceful students but a battle between PLA soldiers and armed detachments from the so-called pro-democracy movement.
On one avenue in western Beijing, demonstrators torched an entire military convoy of more than 100 trucks and armored vehicles. Aerial pictures of conflagration and columns of smoke have powerfully bolstered the [Chinese] government’s arguments that the troops were victims, not executioners. Other scenes show soldiers’ corpses and demonstrators stripping automatic rifles off unresisting soldiers,” admitted the Washington Post in a story that was favorable to anti-government opposition on June 12, 1989.
The Wall Street Journal, the leading voice of anti-communism, served as a vociferous cheerleader for the “pro-democracy” movement. Yet, their coverage right after June 4 acknowledged that many “radicalized protesters, some now armed with guns and vehicles commandeered in clashes with the military” were preparing for larger armed struggles. The Wall Street Journal report on the events of June 4 portrays a vivid picture:
As columns of tanks and tens of thousands soldiers approached Tiananmen many troops were set on by angry mobs … [D]ozens of soldiers were pulled from trucks, severely beaten and left for dead. At an intersection west of the square, the body of a young soldier, who had beaten to death, was stripped naked and hung from the side of a bus [view image, very graphic]. Another soldier’s corpse was strung at an intersection east of the square.
Against the Grain 