Palestinian-American Mahmoud
Shaalan was shot five times by Israeli soldiers at a West Bank checkpoint.
ED Noor: This article by the esteemed Mr. Giraldi is a good round-up of atrocities in Israel, albeit very short considering the amount of material he obviously has to work from. I have taken the liberty of adding links from my own previous work on many of these issues when they originally took place.
February 15, 2020
By Philip Giraldi
SOURCE
One of the principal
functions of a United States Embassy overseas is to provide citizen services,
which includes coming to the assistance of Americans who are treated badly by
the local government. It is a responsibility that most embassies take seriously,
with the exception of the facility currently located in Jerusalem.
One has to understand
that that is so because the United States Embassy in Israel is like no other.
In other countries, the
American Embassy exists to support American travelers, businesses and a broad
range of national interests. In Jerusalem the Embassy exists to support Israeli interests and to
serve as an apologist every time the government of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu goes on a killing spree or does something else that is similarly
outrageous, to include bombing neighboring Syria every other day.
America’s current
ambassador, former Trump bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, has funded Israel’s
illegal settlements, which did not in any way complicate his confirmation as
nearly everyone in Congress and the White House does not believe that the Palestinians actually are human beings. Since
taking up his position, Friedman has defended Israel when
its army sharpshooters have shot down scores of unarmed Gazans, including
children, and has both praised and endorsed out-and-out theft by the Israeli
government in Jerusalem, on the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
What the U.S. Embassy
under Friedman will not do is put any real pressure on the Israeli government
if its security forces or rampaging settlers kill, beat, maim or torture an
American citizen, especially if said citizen happens to be of Palestinian
descent.
Indeed, Friedman is only
the latest manifestation of Israel-first-itis among U.S. Ambassadors, the rot
having started inevitably with Bill Clinton, who appointed Australian citizen
Martin Indyk as the first Jewish ambassador to Tel Aviv. The two most recent
ambassadors, Friedman and Daniel Shapiro, both political appointees, have also
been Jewish. Shapiro so enjoyed being an Israeli that he decided to remain in the country after
his appointment as ambassador was completed. He now works for an Israeli
government funded think
tank.
The Israeli army and
police have in fact killed a number of American citizens without any real
pushback from the Department of State or White House. The unwillingness to
confront Israel on any level stems from the formidable Jewish power in the United States, which uses money and
media control to corrupt the political system at national, state and local
levels.
.
The media and the
chattering political class worry about Russian interference while ignoring the
implications of a Haaretz article that
appeared on February 12th entitled “AIPAC Must Stop Bernie
Sanders ~ At All Costs!” AIPAC is, of course, the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, widely regarded as the chief U.S. lobbying arm of the Jewish state.
.
And witness the fate of
Congresswoman Betty McCollum from Minnesota, who fell afoul of the Israel Lobby
when she introduced H.R.2407, legislation that prohibits American taxpayer money from being
used by Israel to arrest and detain Palestinian children. She stated that
“Israel’s system of
military juvenile detention is state-sponsored child abuse designed to
intimidate and terrorize Palestinian children and their families. It must be
condemned, but it is equally outrageous that U.S. tax dollars in the form of
military aid to Israel are permitted to sustain what is clearly a gross human
rights violation against children.”
She might have added that
the estimated 10,000 Arab children who have been detained since 2000 are frequently tortured by the
Israeli authorities. The bill currently has 23 cosponsors and is unlikely to
attract more due to fear of the Lobby. It will never reach the House floor for
a vote and will never become law.
McCollum’s courage was on
display when she was viciously attacked by AIPAC, which posted Facebook ads
that referenced “radicals in the Democratic party,” including a photo of
McCollum, with the text stating that
“It’s critical that we
protect our Israeli allies especially as they face threats from Iran, Hamas,
Hezbollah ISIS and ~ maybe more sinister ~ right here in the U.S. Congress.”
McCollum stood her ground
against being called “more sinister” than ISIS and released a statement that describes AIPAC as a “hate group,” which of course it is,
but she will find few in the Democratic Party brave enough to defend her.
ED Noor: Please read:
Israel’s willingness to
kill Americans in support of what it perceives as its own interests goes back
nearly to the founding of the state in 1948. The Lavon Affair of 1954 was an
Israeli plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy Information Agency libraries in
Alexandria and Cairo Egypt, blaming the attacks on the Egyptians to draw the
United States closer to Israel. The bombs were placed by Egyptian Jews acting
for Israeli intelligence. They exploded, but fortunately no one was killed.
In June 1967 Israel was
at it again, attacking the intelligence gathering U.S. naval vessel the U.S.S. Liberty in
international waters, killing thirty-four American sailors, Marines and
civilians in a deliberate air and sea onslaught that sought to sink the
intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. It was the worst attack ever
carried out on a U.S. Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death
toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault. The Israelis,
whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be
blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with gunboats from the
sea. When one Israeli pilot hesitated, refusing to attack what was clearly an
American ship, he was instructed to proceed anyway.
The most disgusting part
of the tale relates to how U.S. warplanes sent to the Liberty’s aid from
an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean were called back by Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara acting under orders from President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who
declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea than
embarrass his good friend Israel. Ironically, the first ship to reach the Liberty
and offer assistance was from the Soviet Union, an offer that was declined.
ED Noor: To add insult to
injury, the survivors of the Liberty were gagged from ever discussing the
experience. The gentleman who saved the
liberty by his swift bravery did not receive a medal until just a few years ago
and it arrived in the mail.
.
ANNIVERSARY: THE USS LIBERTY FALSE FLAG EVENT
RELEVANT READS: FOCUS: USS LIBERTY: JUNE 8, 2013
Rebhi Barakat Kaid, 67,
of Columbus, Ohio, was on the West Bank visiting relatives. He died of a heart
attack after three Israeli soldiers ordered him and his 14-year-old
Chicago-born grandson at gunpoint to climb the 22 steep steps that led from the
house to the street above without his being allowed to take his heart medicine
first.
March 16, 2003. The anniversary of her murder is honoured around the world. Well, almost.
A month later there was an incident in which Brian Avery, a
24-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was shot in the face in the occupied West Bank
city of Jenin by Israeli soldiers in an armored personnel carrier firing
machine guns at protesters.
.
ED Noor:
In March 2009 Tristan Anderson, a 37-year-old from Oakland, California,
suffered permanent brain damage when Israeli soldiers shot him in the face with a tear gas canister
as he watched a protest in the West Bank village of Nilin.
.
Another American citizen, Furkan
Doğan, an
18-year-old born in Troy, New York, was killed aboard the Turkish flagged Mavi Marmara in the Mediterranean Sea
in May 2010 as a flotilla of international activists attempted to break
Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian supplies. The United Nations’ General Assembly Human Rights Council determined that
Doğan had been killed by Israeli naval commandos through an “extra-legal,
arbitrary and summary execution.” He was shot five times, including once in the
face from “point blank range.”
The same day that
Israel murdered Furkan Doğan, 21-year-old Emily Henochowicz of Potomac,
Maryland, was protesting the attack on the flotilla at the Qalandiya checkpoint
near Jerusalem, when an Israeli soldier shot her in the face with a teargas cannister, resulting in the loss of an eye.
ED Noor: Refresh your
memory on Palestine:
And then there was
in October 2014 the shooting by Israeli soldiers of Orwa
Hammad, a 14-year-old
Palestinian-American from Louisiana. The Israeli army claimed that Hammad was
throwing a Molotov cocktail at the time of his death, but witnesses stated that
he was among a group of children throwing rocks at the heavily armed and
armored soldiers.
.
In another reported case of torture, nineteen-year-old
Mahmoud Zakarner’s testicles were smashed by soldiers in front of his uncle to
force the man to provide the names of Palestinian resistance members. Mahmoud
is now paralyzed and unable to speak as a result.
Israeli expertise
in torture is in demand from authoritarian regimes worldwide, creating a growth
industry for the specialized “advisers and technicians.” Many are currently
working with right wing regimes in South and Central America. Several even
showed up at Abu Ghraib as trainers for U.S. interrogators and were able to suggest refinements like the “Palestinian chair.”
Inside Israel
torture of Palestinians is routine on the grounds of “necessity” and absurd
“ticking-bomb” scenarios. The courts and the medical profession aid and abet
the practice. Over 1200 complaints regarding the torture of
Palestinians in Israeli prisons have not resulted in even
a single indictment of the torturers.
FEMALE IDF SPEAK OUT OF VIOLATIONS AGAINST PALESTINIANS
So, killing Americans as
well as many others and torturing prisoners are all in a day’s work for the
Jewish state. What is disgraceful, of course, is the fact that the United
States government, which has the power to do something about it, instead
chooses to do nothing to stop the bleeding or even to demand inquiries to find
out who is to blame. Instead, Washington lavishes money and praise on Israel,
reportedly America’s best friend and closest ally, while it also avoids looking
at the horrors that are evident to most of the rest of the world.
Philip M. Giraldi is a former
CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served
nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA
Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first
Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of
the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that
seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is
consistent with American values and interests.
