In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies.
EU
Israel should consider ousting Norwegian monitors from Hebron due to Oslo’s “hostility” toward Israel, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the cabinet Thursday.
IOA Editor: Israel is preparing to remove the Norwegian threat to its colonial program. The Baruch Goldstein massacre is nearly forgotten, overshadowed by mass killings on a far grander scale. And, Norway has been showing too much independence from the US-Israeli Occupation-as-usual view.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman should have sent a big bouquet to Donald Bostrom, the Swedish photographer and journalist who wrote the article claiming that the Israel Defense Forces harvested organs from dead Palestinians… It has been a long time since such a propaganda asset has fallen into the hands of the friends of the occupation. It has been a long time since such damage has been caused to people seriously attempting to document its horrors.
“They are breaking their silence about the only democracy in the Middle East that has an independent legal system and an investigative press that does not cease dealing with these issues,” Netanyahu told reporters…
IOA Editor: Again, the “Only-Democracy-in-the-Middle-East” cannot deal substantively with challenges to its violent Occupation and Gaza war crimes, such as those coming from the UN, HRW, and other international human-rights organizations. Instead, it tries to silence critical organizations and choke their international NGO funding.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman summoned… Israel’s ambassador to Washington, to tell him that the United States views Sunday’s eviction of two Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a “provocative” and “unacceptable” act that violates Israel’s obligations under the road map peace plan.
Human rights groups in the European Union are reportedly preparing to launch a public campaign lobbying EU governments as well as the European Commission to stop funding Israeli non-governmental organizations.
Breaking the Silence added: “The attempts to silence voices from Israeli civil society are dangerous. As opposed to reports, the IDF has never denied the [validity of the] testimonies and it and the foreign ministry’s virulent reaction… only strengthens the position of the testifying soldiers, who are not willing to be exposed.”
British diplomats touring the Shepherd Hotel recently in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah expressed concern about Israeli construction plans there, particularly in light of the site’s close proximity to the British consulate in East Jerusalem. The tour, which also included American diplomats, was led by Jerusalem city councilman Meir Margalit of Meretz, who is also active in the Committee Against House Demolitions. During the visit, Margalit said, the British diplomats asked their American colleagues to pressure Israel on the issue and take the lead in applying international pressure to stop settlement building. “The British said explicitly – the Israelis don’t pay attention to us, but if you apply pressure, there is a chance,” Margalit recounted.
Ever since the Gaza operation, British MPs and nongovernmental organizations have been trying to persuade London to impose a complete arms embargo on Israel. However, the British government has rejected this demand…
“Future decisions will take into account what has happened in the recent conflict. We do not grant export licenses where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external aggression or internal repression… We do not believe that the current situation in the Middle East would be improved by imposing an arms embargo on Israel. Israel has the right to defend itself and faces real security threats.”
IOA Editor: Indeed, the British government continues to view Israel as having the right to carry out massive campaigns of destruction against civilian populations, as it did in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Such twisted and morally reprehensible positions, along with the very limited nature of the actual steps taken, when evaluated in terms of their impacts, indicate that the “partial embargo” is merely an act of political lip service in the face of growing popular opposition at home to the government’s military support of Israel.
Rydberg slammed the settlements as creating a new reality on the ground in the occupied territories and spawning obstacles… He said the ideology that guides most settlers is based on utter denial of the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Officials in Jerusalem told Israel Radio on Saturday that there is no alternative but to ultimately agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state… [T]he quicker Israel adopts the road map for peace as the preferred diplomatic initiative, the more likely it will ward off American pressure to concede to a Palestinian state within the framework of an alternative plan that is less agreeable to Israel.
But in creating this nightmare for the people of Gaza, Israel didn’t act alone.
It had the support of Egypt, which kept the Rafah crossing closed. It had the support of the European Union, which joined in the shunning of the elected representatives of the Palestinian people.
And most importantly, Israel had the decisive support of the U.S. government. Many of the weapons used by the Israelis in their ferocious assault were provided by the United States: the aircraft, the helicopters, the bunker-buster missiles. But the United States provided as well crucial diplomatic backing, making sure that no resolution would emerge from the Security Council that could interfere with Israel’s agenda.
An internal [Israeli] Foreign Ministry document last week stated that following Operation Cast Lead, diplomatic bodies in a number of European countries have called for a freeze on the upgrade, citing the pressure of domestic public opinion. Four European states have already said that if Israel did not agree to a two-state solution, they would oppose upgrading relations.
For decades now, the world has been buying the Zionist narrative almost in full. The occupation and settlements have been going on for more than 40 years with no serious impediment. Except for some international grumblings and resolutions no one has any serious intention of implementing, Israel continues to belong to the camp of the “good guys”; the Arabs are the “bad guys.” The new atmosphere in the West against Islam is reinforcing this trend and Israel is benefiting yet again. Criticism of the media in the West from Israel’s supporters is also quite excessive.
A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem.
The $900 million pledged to the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh should be seen as part of the regular American aid to Israel. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated to assure the well-being of the population under its control. But Israel is harming it instead, after which the United States (like other countries) rushes to compensate for the damage.
