News
Israeli Suffering Is Not Comparable To Palestinian Suffering
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/05c3e54558797824e207979e1b3580e3/href
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The mass media are once again pushing the narrative that Israel is “scaling back” its operations in Gaza, which as journalist Sana Saeed noted on Twitter is a claim they’ve been falsely making for months. To promote such stories even as Israel publicly declares that it’s preparing for an invasion of Rafah is absurd and irresponsible.
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A member of the Israeli Knesset named Limor Son Har-Melech says there are secret Israeli plans to establish settlements in the Gaza Strip. It sure is a crazy coincidence how every single part of Israel’s response to October 7 has looked exactly the same as what it would look like if Israel just started doing all the things that it has wanted to do to the Palestinians for generations.
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Biden has declared “ironclad” support for Israel as fears mount that Iran will soon retaliate for the Israeli strike on its consulate building in Syria which killed multiple Iranian military officers, despite the fact that Iran has made it clear to the White House that if the US comes to Israel’s defense it will make the US a target as well. We could be near the precipice of the worst-case nightmare scenario of all possible middle eastern conflicts because of this president’s unwavering support for the genocidal Zionist state.
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In the early weeks of Israel’s assault Palestinian journalists were filling social media with footage of Israeli atrocities in Gaza. We’re seeing far less footage now because the journalists have been killed and access to the internet made far more difficult and Palestinian access to much of Gaza has been restricted, but it’s important to remember that those atrocities have continued to happen this entire time.
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I’m sick of hearing October 7 mentioned in the same breath as Israel’s incineration of Gaza as though they’re equal or even comparable. A thousand Israelis dying (probably hundreds by indiscriminate IDF fire) is not comparable to tens of thousands of Palestinians (probably more) being deliberately exterminated by high tech war machinery, even if before you account for the fact that Israel was the aggressor and that the violence of the oppressed is not comparable to the violence of the oppressor in the first place.
But that’s what you’ll hear all the time from polite western liberals trying to walk a center line on the Israel-Palestine issue. They’ll talk about how “sad” and “tragic” and “heartbreaking” BOTH the butchery in Gaza AND October 7 are, giving equal weight to two exponentially unequal acts of violence.
This is the same as lying. It actively misrepresents what’s actually going on, leading to widespread misunderstanding like the fact that half of Americans have no idea whether more Palestinians or Israelis are being killed in the current “war”. Trying to balance out two wildly unbalanced events gives people a wildly unbalanced understanding of what’s really happening, leading to a wildly unbalanced worldview. But you see this constantly, and the western political-media class do everything they can to feed into it.
Israeli suffering is not equal to Palestinian suffering. It’s not even in the same ballpark. Pretending otherwise is deceitful and manipulative.
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Normal person: It’s bad to murder children
Crazy person: Aha I see you hate the Jewish faith
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“It’s so sad and tragic that children are being fed to the Child Incineration Machine,” said the liberal while loading the children onto the conveyor belt. “It’s heartbreaking!”
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Is there a word for the tactic where a government does something evil and then throws out a bunch of flimsy lies right off the bat to mute the initial backlash, so when the truth comes out public attention has moved on and it has no impact? Whatever that is, Israel excels at it.
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Funny how people get so emotionally invested in US presidential elections when the whole system’s stacked to ensure that each party wins half the time. It’s like putting 10 blue marbles and 10 red ones in a hat and crying when you pull out a red one and celebrating when it’s blue.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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CNN Finally Tells The Truth About The Flour Massacre After Previously Shilling For Israel
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/0fe0fedb2287670f15f4a396da977730/href
CNN has a new report out showing that (surprise!) Israel lied about the Flour Massacre in which IDF troops fired machine guns into a crowd of starving Gazans waiting for food this past February, killing over a hundred people. CNN found that Israel’s timeline and version of events doesn’t line up with video footage, witness testimony, and forensic evidence.
Which of course was obvious from the beginning to anyone who isn’t deeply invested in pretending Israel ever tells the truth about these things. Within hours of the massacre Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor had a preliminary report up saying that video, audio and material evidence shows that the IDF had been firing into the crowd in contradiction of Israel’s claims that the injuries and deaths sustained on the scene were mostly due to Gazans trampling on each other in a mad rush upon the convoy of aid trucks. Now here’s CNN, a month and a half later, telling us essentially the same thing.
This is the same CNN who at the time reported on the Flour Massacre in ways that advanced Israel’s information interests with headlines completely exonerating Israel of any wrongdoing like “At least 100 killed and 700 injured in chaotic incident” and “Carnage at Gaza food aid site amid Israeli gunfire”. CNN also repeatedly refers to the killings as “food aid deaths”, as though it’s the food aid that killed them and not the military of a very specific state power.
Mehdi Hasan on Twitter: "The Flour Massacre was indeed a flour massacre.As I told @abbydphillip on CNN that night, we shouldn't trust the Israeli military's initial and kneejerk denials. They lie. They're good at lying.And, now, CNN's own latest and important investigation proves me right: https://t.co/dsuzoAgOM2 / Twitter"
The Flour Massacre was indeed a flour massacre.As I told @abbydphillip on CNN that night, we shouldn't trust the Israeli military's initial and kneejerk denials. They lie. They're good at lying.And, now, CNN's own latest and important investigation proves me right: https://t.co/dsuzoAgOM2
I don’t know if there’s a word for when a government does something evil and then churns out a bunch of easily disprovable lies with the understanding that by the time those lies are debunked public attention will have moved on from the controversy, but there should be. Over and over again we’ve seen the Israeli regime do just enough lying to dampen the initial burst of attention and outrage and get people doubting themselves, only to discover far too late that it was all a bunch of crap after the initial crime has been forgotten.
This is exactly what happened with Israel’s initial assault on al-Shifa Hospital back in November, when Israel was cranking out propaganda claiming the hospital was being used as a command center for Hamas. Not until the end of December did The Washington Post show up to acknowledge the abundantly obvious fact that there was no evidence for Israel’s claims, which independent outlets like Consortium News had been reporting since mid-November. Now al-Shifa Hospital — the largest hospital in Gaza — has been completely destroyed.
Back in October Israel and its apologists were shrieking with outrage that anyone would dare suggest that Israel would ever attack a hospital at all, saturating the media with bogus evidence that it falsely claimed proved its innocence. Since that time Israel has launched hundreds of attacks on Gaza’s healthcare services and has destroyed most of its healthcare system.
https://medium.com/media/1ee20ae306d9731abf067aa3357d093e/href
It’s a weaponization of the adage “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth even puts its boots on.” They know all they have to do is lie really hard for a week or two, and then when the truth inevitably surfaces it won’t matter, because the truth will never be able to have the impact their lies had when it mattered.
It’s so obnoxious how even after all this time Israel is still given the benefit of the doubt on such claims by the western political-media class until they’re debunked weeks or months later, long after the outcry over the incident has been muted and neutered by Israeli lies. If a state power is preventing journalists and human rights groups from investigating the facts on the ground in a given area, then it is not legitimate to give their claims about what happens in that area weighted consideration when their track record and all the facts in evidence say they’re probably lying.
The fact that the western press keep giving Israel the benefit of the doubt whenever reports like this emerge after they’ve been caught in so very many lies means the western press are just as culpable for the circulation of Israeli lies as Israel itself. In journalism you’re taught that if someone says it’s raining and someone else says it’s dry, your job isn’t to quote them both and treat both claims as equal, your job is to go look out the window and see which is true. The fact that the imperial media take so long to drag their asses to the window serves nobody but Israel and the globe-spanning empire of which it is a part.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
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Guy Standing talk in China: Rentier Capitalism, the Precariat and Basic Income
Photo: Ye Jiabin and Guy Standing Throughout history, capitalism has evolved, changing character and changing the class structure defining each era. The changes in the 20th century can be understood by reference to what Karl Polanyi called the Great Transformation.[i] Briefly, in his formulation, in the 19th century, mainly in Britain, there was an initial […]
Guy Standing talk in China: Rentier Capitalism, the Precariat and Basic Income
Australian Military Refuses To Disclose Arms Deal With Israel To Protect Its ‘Reputation’
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/2b644031098aeba4fec3cda07e5dba80/href
Australia’s Defence Department has refused a Freedom of Information request about the details of an arms deal with Israel on the grounds that such information “could harm Australia’s international standing and reputation,” which suggests the details must be pretty damning. Equally as scandalous, this refusal was reportedly made in consultation with the Israeli government.
In an article titled “Details of defence deal with Israel kept under wraps to protect Australia’s ‘reputation’,” the ABC’s Andrew Greene details how the Australian military snubbed a Freedom of Information request by the Australian Greens regarding a “Memorandum of Understanding” between Australia and Israel that was signed in 2017.
“The document within the scope of this request contains information which, if released, could reasonably be expected to damage the international relations of the Commonwealth,” the Defence Department said in a letter explaining its rejection.
AWPR on Twitter: "Details of defence deal with Israel kept under wraps to protect Australia's 'reputation'"There is no place for secret arms treaties and secret arms deals between countries,"#auspol https://t.co/AcW9SkRDT7 / Twitter"
Details of defence deal with Israel kept under wraps to protect Australia's 'reputation'"There is no place for secret arms treaties and secret arms deals between countries,"#auspol https://t.co/AcW9SkRDT7
“A summary provided by the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to the Greens reveals that the Israeli government was also consulted about releasing the document before Defence ultimately rejected the FOI request,” the ABC reports.
“The document contains information communicated to Australia by a foreign government and its officials under the expectation that it would not be disclosed,” a Defence official wrote in justification of its decision.
Greens senator David Shoebridge objected, saying “There is no place for secret arms treaties and secret arms deals between countries, and there is certainly no place for giving other countries veto power over what the Australian government tells the public about our government’s defence and arms deals.”
“Over 30,000 people have been killed by the State of Israel in Gaza in the past six months. In this context, the Australian public has a right to know about the military trade relationship with the State of Israel,” added Shoebridge.
David Shoebridge on Twitter: "Australia has a secret defence industry cooperation deal with Israel and you're not allowed to know what's in it because apparently Israel has a veto on Australian FOI!? Why, and what, are they hiding? pic.twitter.com/Sjc28vYdMO / Twitter"
Australia has a secret defence industry cooperation deal with Israel and you're not allowed to know what's in it because apparently Israel has a veto on Australian FOI!? Why, and what, are they hiding? pic.twitter.com/Sjc28vYdMO
It’s wild to think about the fact that the Australian warmakers determined this admission, that the truth would harm Australia’s reputation, to be the option that was least destructive to Australia’s reputation. When someone tells you “I can’t tell you the truth about that because the truth will make everyone dislike me,” it means they’ve ruled out every other option before coming to that position because the truth really is that ugly.
It’s like coming home to find your husband frantically burning clothes and mopping up blood and asking him what’s going on, and he says “I can’t tell you because the truth would harm your opinion of me.” Your very first thought after that is going to be that he must have done something very, very bad if that’s the best answer he could give you.
Back in November lawyer and researcher Kelly Trantner published an article with Declassified Australia titled “Australia’s role in the bombing of Gaza” about Israel’s use of Australian equipment to conduct its F-35 bombing campaigns, writing that “no bombs could be dropped on Gaza by an F-35 without parts manufactured for the F-35s by Melbourne company, Rosebank Engineering.”
Trantner notes that more than 70 Australian companies have been awarded “over $4.13 billion in global production and sustainment contracts through the F-35 program to date.” Since the writing of Trantner’s piece, during Israel’s active genocide in Gaza, the Australian Army has drawn controversy by awarding a billion-dollar contract to Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.
KellieTranter on Twitter: "'Australia's complete integration into the F-35 global supply chain means that every jet that flies has many Australian parts. And countries using them,like Israel, depend on the replenishment of those parts as needed'#Gaza #CeasefireNowInGaza #auspol https://t.co/5vflkL7FHK / Twitter"
'Australia's complete integration into the F-35 global supply chain means that every jet that flies has many Australian parts. And countries using them,like Israel, depend on the replenishment of those parts as needed'#Gaza #CeasefireNowInGaza #auspol https://t.co/5vflkL7FHK
As we’ve discussed many times, Australia is functionally a military and intelligence asset of the same US-centralized empire as Israel. We’re currently falling all over ourselves helping the US prepare for a future war with China, and we’ve been providing logistical support for the US and UK bombing campaign against Ansarallah in Yemen. If all the violence and chaos we’re seeing in the middle east leads to the US committing to a direct full-scale war in the region, we may be absolutely certain that Canberra will march us into that one as well. All while the empire cages an Australian journalist in a maximum security prison for exposing its war crimes.
Australia, like Israel, is not a real country. Like Israel, Australia is nothing other than a settler-colonialist outpost of western imperialism built on genocide, ethnic cleansing and theft, and now operates in a way that is inseparable from the US war machine. This land will never know peace or justice until we have extricated ourselves from the talons of the empire.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
APA-led Class Action Lawsuit Prevails
In February, a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit known as American Philosophical Association et al. v. District of Columbia.
The lawsuit was started in 2017 by the American Philosophical Association and the American Anthropological Association.
It concerned a provision of District law that gave “semipublic institutions”—such as nonprofit academic, educational, and charitable organizations—that have offices in Washington, DC a hotel and sales tax exemption, but did not give the same exemption to semipublic institutions without offices in DC.
The Superior Court of the District of Columbia ruled that the law violates the U.S Constitution’s Commerce Clause. According to a press release from attorneys involved in the case,
that Clause prohibits a state, including the District, from discriminating against out-of-state entities when they participate in its economy. Thus, the District, in favoring its own resident organizations, was found to have discriminated un-Constitutionally against such entities from other states. Not a single other state imposes a residency requirement on semipublic institutions in order to obtain a tax exemption when engaging in commerce in it.
The case will now move to determining how much in damages DC must pay, and to whom.
Further details here.
The post APA-led Class Action Lawsuit Prevails first appeared on Daily Nous.
Israel Lets Some Aid Into Gaza So The US Will Keep Giving It Weapons To Kill People In Gaza
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/296b28eef2d42cb45abfa945fbba4093/href
Israel has generously and compassionately reopened the Erez crossing to allow aid into Gaza, as it is the only way to ensure that the US will keep sending them weapons to kill the people in Gaza.
Biden sent Netanyahu one warning about a failure to protect civilians possibly costing Israel its US support and the crossing opened immediately, which proves (A) that Israel has been intentionally starving Gazans by closing entrances off from aid and (B) that Biden could have ordered this to stop at any time.
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The Biden administration approved another weapons package for Israel on the same day Israel killed a bunch of international aid workers in Gaza and bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. But please, tell me more about how frustrated and angry and outraged and upset Biden’s feelings are feeling toward Israel.
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The huge amount of western outrage and sympathy we’re seeing over the IDF assassination of an international aid convoy compared to the systematic extermination of Palestinians we’ve seen over the last six months confirms the west only regards white people as full human beings, which is a point we’d already seen driven home by the disproportionate amount of outrage and sympathy we saw over Ukraine.
But you know what? We’ll take it. Things are that desperate that if you can only support an end to the Gaza genocide if you see six westerners get killed, I say welcome aboard anyway. Hopefully this is the beginning of the formation of an actual conscience that’s worth a damn.
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The mass media are reporting that the preliminary IDF debrief into the killing of several World Central Kitchen employees in Gaza has found that the multiple strikes were not carried out with the intention of killing those workers, a report which if you ask me has big “CIA Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade” energy.
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https://medium.com/media/1537a8e28d0693d5c30159861abf206d/href
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Haaretz has a new article out titled “At Singapore Airshow, the Gaza War Was a Selling Point for Israeli Weapon Manufacturers,” which is exactly what it sounds like. One of the ugliest things about this dystopia is that acts of mass military slaughter are always immensely profitable for a specific industry. They’re profitable in and of themselves, even before you add in things like land and resource grabs, just by helping to market and sell more weapons.
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Stop calling this a “war”. A war doesn’t involve conversations about whether or not a walled-in population should be allowed to have food, medicine and electricity. If you have that much control over a population, you can’t be at war with it. You’re just killing a bunch of prisoners.
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Biden and his cohorts aren’t mad at Netanyahu for committing a genocide, they’re mad at Netanyahu for not hiding a genocide.
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I’ve fucking had it with people who blindly regurgitate empire propaganda about Gaza. Fuck right off with your weaponized gullibility.
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The thing that’s so pathetic about the push to blame this whole mass atrocity on Netanyahu is that the people doing this aren’t even really going after Netanyahu. They’re not pushing to send him to The Hague and have him imprisoned for war crimes or bring about any meaningful consequences at all — they’re just saying we should feel negative feelings toward him for a bit like we did with Bush.
It’s always about feelings with the imperial spin campaign over Gaza. Biden’s feelings toward Netanyahu, Israeli feelings about October 7, the feelings of western Jews about pro-Palestine protests. The whole thing’s been one nonstop appeal to emotion fallacy.
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MAGA Republicans claim to be a bold anti-war, anti-establishment faction, which is squarely refuted by their support for the Gaza genocide.
Democrats claim to support human rights and to oppose tyranny and racism, which is squarely refuted by their support for the Gaza genocide.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Israel’s Celebrity Charm Offensive: The Truth Behind the Glamorous Trips
Since Israel launched a war on Gaza in October, it’s been accused of genocide, been on trial for war crimes, and seen allies stop approving weapons shipments. Yet amid the storm of negative press and genocidal war, some organizations are attempting to shift the narrative in Israel’s favor by taking celebrities and social media influencers on propaganda-fueled trips to Israel.
According to the Israeli newspaper Globes, the Maccabee Task Force (MTF) and Rova Media are the organizations working to send celebrities to Israel. Israeli television production company Eight Productions helps document the trips for media purposes.
“We’re in contact with the IDF [Israeli military] and the hostage families, and also with the president of Israel and former prime minister Naftali Bennett. We simply produce the content together with the visiting celebrities, the whole goal being for them to come here and be our ambassadors to the world,” Eight Productions’ owner, Dafna Danenberg, told Globes.
Eight Productions confirmed to MintPress News that MTF and Rova Media fund the trips.
It turns out the organization that has been bringing celebrities such as Noah Schnapp, Nikita Dragun, Michael Rapaport, Scooter Braun, Tiffany Haddish, and Debra Messing on propaganda trips to Israel is the Maccabee Task Force, a right-wing Israel advocacy group.
— Josh Kadish (@kadish_josh) March 18, 2024
Who is going on these trips?
The list of celebrities who’ve toured with MTF includes Nathaniel Buzolic, Michael Rapaport, Debra Messing, Scooter Braun, James Maslow, Montana Tucker, Guy Nattiv, Eve Barlow, Lee Kern, Kosha Dillz and Matisyahu.
Even before the war, MTF was sending celebrities to Israel, but according to one of MTF’s media directors, Uriel Dison, these trips were less politically charged.
“But now we don’t bring people to travel around,” Dison told Globes. “They have to come and see with their own eyes the results of the war and become sort of wartime ambassadors.”
Dison added that it was challenging to convince high-profile individuals to come to Israel, but after a few trips, his “phone is bursting with requests from people. Influencers connect us to other influencers and celebrities to other celebrities, so it’s self-perpetuating.”
Rova Media hasn’t disclosed who it’s sending to Israel, only mentioning to Globes that “there are journalists, social media influencers, artists, and more.”
However, according to their social media accounts, they’ve partnered with social media influencer Caroline D’Amore to produce content in Israel and hosted Aboriginal Australian athlete and former politician Nova Peris and social media influencer Brooke Bello in Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post, the agency documented American singer Tucker’s trip.
.instagram-media {
margin: 0 auto !important;
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.instagram-media {
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MTF and Rova Media didn’t respond to requests for comment on these tours.
Who is behind the campaign?
Rova Media was founded in October 2023 by Dan Luxenberg and actor Buzolic with support from BZ Media to shape Israel’s image as the war began. The organization’s Facebook page was created on October 27, 2023.
Buzolic, who is a born-again Christian, has frequently traveled to Israel throughout the years and explained to the Times of Israel his mission with Rova Media:
My next-door neighbors, who are Lebanese and Palestinian, tell me how deluded I am. I speak to the people in the middle, I’m trying to shift them,” Buzolic said. “One thing I’ve learned about the pro-Palestinian narrative is they just have content, no context. We want to provide context for the content we’re providing.”
The company has partnered with entertainment firm Roc Nation, founded by rapper Jay-Z, and the Hostage and Missing Families Forum (“Bring Them Home”), the Israeli movement to free hostages taken by Hamas during its attack on October 7, 2023.
Rabbi Ari Lamm and Justin Hayet run the New York-based BZ Media and produce pro-Israel content targeting a Gen Z audience. Lamm founded SoulShop, a faith-focused entertainment company, where Rova’s Luxenberg is CEO. Hayet was a university campus fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog often targeting journalists for perceived anti-Israel coverage and paying students to write articles smearing pro-Palestine activists. He also worked for Danny Danon, a lawmaker with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, during his term as the ambassador to the United Nations.
MTF was founded by the late pro-Israel billionaire donor, Sheldon Adelson, in 2015 to combat the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses, harassing activist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and leading smear campaigns against pro-Palestine students and faculty.
A DEI program coordinator at the @UofMaryland DEFENDED Hamas terrorists and justified October 7. How are Jewish students supposed to lodge antisemitism complaints to the DEI office when the program coordinator is a hateful antisemite? pic.twitter.com/nIcIp2lmZk
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 18, 2024
Former Manhattan College professor Shellyne Rodriguez has made vile and dehumanizing propaganda targeting Jews and Zionists. And yet @Columbia invited her for a panel. https://t.co/G9eVIbUXyc
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 18, 2024
Instead of taking accountability for creating a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus, pro-Palestine, anti-Israel student groups at @Columbia have chosen to gaslight Jewish students, claiming that the university is “silencing” pro-Palestine voices. pic.twitter.com/ALvzKEbdhE
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 11, 2024
@Columbia supposedly one of the best Universities on the planet, allows a professor to falsely paint Israel as a “Settler Colonial State.”
Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, and rhetoric like this increases antisemitism on campus. pic.twitter.com/cLaOMjQBna
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) March 5, 2024
Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson’s wife, currently serves as MTF’s president, while infamous pro-Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the organization’s directors. Miriam Adelson’s son-in-law and new owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, Patrick Dumont, serves as treasurer. David Brog, former head of Christians United for Israel, an evangelistic Israel lobby group, is the current executive director. The Adelson family primarily funds the organization, pumping over $10 million into MTF in 2022. Joseph Fisch, founder of United States Beverage, has also contributed to the organization.
MTF funds Hillels, Jewish student groups, and other Jewish life institutions on college campuses to find students for its tours. According to its most recent tax filings, it funds Jewish campus life groups at the following universities in the U.S. and Canada: American University, Arizona State University, Binghamton University, Boston University, Brandeis University, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, Florida International University, Florida State University, George Mason University, George Washington University, Hunter College, Indiana University, Kent State University, Michigan State University, Northeastern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Syracuse University, Temple University, University of Arizona, University of British Columbia, University of California Los Angeles, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Florida, University of Maryland, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Michigan, University of Missouri, University of Southern California, University of Vermont, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech, Washington University, Wayne State University and Yale.
Its largest contribution in 2022 was to Chabad on Campus International, the campus educational arm of the Chabad Lubovitch movement. This movement consists of ultra-Orthodox radicals who often carry out revenge attacks on Palestinians. It also supports Jewish student unions in Australia, New Zealand, France, Austria, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. In 2022, it spent over $5 million on Jewish student groups and other related organizations.
While touting itself as a campus educational program, behind the scenes, MTF is financing several Israeli propaganda campaigns. The organization was one of the primary funders of Act.il, the now-defunct app set on creating an anti-BDS, pro-Israel troll army. MTF currently supports Students Supporting Israel, a pro-Israel movement working to pass university initiatives favoring Israel, like investment resolutions and stopping Israel divestment acts. MTF also funds Prager University, a billionaire-bankrolled media empire attempting to turn today’s youth into right-wing extremists.
The organization is notorious for taking non-Jewish university students on trips to Israel and returning them as brand ambassadors for Israel at their schools. MTF specifically targets student “influencers,” which often translates to individuals of color and those involved in Black and Asian student unions.
“They say they’re targeting ‘student leaders’ who they hope to convince to vote no on potential divestment resolutions,” University of Minnesota student Josh Spencer-Resnik told Jewish Currents in 2019. “[And it’s], especially leaders of minority student groups.”
According to MTF’s donation page, it sends 25 students to Israel yearly and has boosted its efforts amid the war, saying they’ve reached thousands of students since October 7, 2023. These trips are generously subsidized.
“[W]e are working to make sure campus anti-Israel groups face consequences for openly endorsing Hamas’ terror, and we are arranging a special Wartime Fact-Finding mission to Israel for some of our most influential non-Jewish MTF trip alumni,” MTF wrote on its website.
In January, the Times of Israel profiled a recent MTF student trip. According to the publication, the trip consisted of meeting with Israelis — but not Palestinians — on the current situation. The group visited bomb shelters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot and toured Kfar Aza, a kibbutz (Jewish commune) Hamas militants attacked in October. They met with Miri Eisin, a retired colonel and former political adviser, Jonathan Elkhoury, who uses his Lebanese-Israeli nationality to advocate for Israel on U.S. college campuses, survivors of the Hamas attacks at the Nova Music Festival, and a volunteer medic about sexual assault allegedly committed by Hamas militants during the October attacks.
“Campuses have become battlegrounds. We wanted students who document what life in Israel has been like since October 7 and who could make a difference on campus when they return,” MTF national director Ben Sweetwood told the Times of Israel.
MTF appears to be succeeding in its campaign — churning out Israeli propaganda puppets at universities while genocide rages in Gaza. Many of its recent wartime alums are now acting as Israeli state mouthpieces on social media.
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Following his MTF trip, USC student Logan Barth wrote on Instagram, “[E]very IDF soldier I spoke to emphasized that the last thing they want are innocent Palestinians dead – they want peace. But that is difficult when the people who killed his family members are hiding behind Palestinian civilians.”
“This is NOT genocide,” Barth added.
Feature photo | Colombian singer Shakira visits the the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Oded Balilty | AP
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.
The post Israel’s Celebrity Charm Offensive: The Truth Behind the Glamorous Trips appeared first on MintPress News.
Presidential Candidate Jill Stein On Gaza, The Two-Party System and US Militarism
Gaza is the “key issue of our era,” Green Party presidential hopeful Jill Stein told the MintCast today. “Every international law in the books is being broken,” she said, “This is not something that began on October 7. This is the continuation of ethnic cleansing and displacement that began in 1947 and 1948 with the displacement of 750,000 people.”
While Stein condemned Israel for its actions, she placed ultimate responsibility for much of the violence on Washington, telling MintCast host Mnar Adley that:
Quite simply, Joe Biden needs to pick up the phone and tell Israel to cease and desist from this war being conducted on Gaza, the blockade, the use of starvation as a weapon, the total violation of international law and the conduct of a genocide, which is going on. There is enormous agency that the United States has here: we are paying for this. We are supplying 80% of the weapons [to Israel]!”
Stein, a physician by trade, has been involved in the Green movement for decades. She first ran for office in 2002, attempting to become the governor of her native Massachusetts. In 2012 and 2016, she was selected as the Green Party’s presidential candidate. Running against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016, she received over 1% of the national vote. She is the overwhelming favorite to represent the Green Party in the 2024 presidential election.
Congress, Stein noted, has just approved $3.8 billion in aid to Israel, with another $17 billion pending for “not only continu[ing] its genocide but to expand its wars in the Middle East.”
Global public opinion is increasingly turning against the U.S., Stein warned, turning both Washington and Israel into “pariahs.” Even inside the United States, recent polling shows that a majority of Democratic voters consider Israeli actions to constitute genocide. And President Biden continues to offer unconditional support.
It seems this is pushing millions of voters to consider the Green Party as an alternative. Stein described the Democratic establishment as in a state of “panic” over the “widespread revolt” among its voter base, which could destroy the party’s chances of winning elections. She said they are fielding “an army of corporate lawyers to try to dirty trick us, to find little technicalities to throw us off the ballot.”
This is not a new phenomenon, as the Green Party has long dealt with the Democrats’ attempts to suppress them. However, what has changed, Stein said, is the party’s willingness to announce their intentions to limit democracy openly. As she told Adley:
There is such a heavy hand of censorship and political repression in this country that it is a struggle to simply participate in our democracy. Voters a clamoring for more voices and more choices. People revile the two zombie candidates that are being rammed down our throats and are very hungry for other options on the ballot.”
Watch or Listen to the full interview, in which the pair discuss Gaza, the military-industrial complex, and what a Jill Stein presidency would mean for the United States.
MintPress News is a fiercely independent media company. You can support us by becoming a member of Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and subscribing to our social media channels, including YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
Subscribe to MintCast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud.
Also, check out rapper Lowkey’s video interview/podcast series, The Watchdog.
Mnar Adley is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.
The post Presidential Candidate Jill Stein On Gaza, The Two-Party System and US Militarism appeared first on MintPress News.
British farmers call for a “UBI” for farmers
Note: What the farmers are asking for does not meet the BIEN definition of a Basic Income since it is restricted to farmers. “ Farmers are calling for the government to grant them a universal basic income, saying the post-Brexit agriculture subsidy scheme has left many poorer. Delays to the sustainable farming schemes put in […]
The ‘Human Shields’ Lie Has Been Conclusively, Irrefutably Debunked
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/b88eeb83b9e50f900e94d4f88e2992cf/href
One aspect of the recent revelations about the IDF’s Lavender AI system that’s not getting enough consideration is the fact that it is completely devastating to the narrative that Israel has been killing so many civilians in Gaza because Hamas uses “human shields”.
If you missed this story, a major report from +972 revealed that Israel has been using an AI system called Lavender to compile kill lists of suspected members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad which have been carried out with hardly any human verification. One automated system, psychopathically named “Where’s Daddy?”, tracks suspects to their homes so that they can be killed along with their entire families. The IDF has been knowingly killing 15 to 20 civilians at a time to kill one junior Hamas operative, and up to 100 civilians at a time to take out a senior official.
+972’s Yuval Abraham writes the following:
“Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called ‘Where’s Daddy?’ also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.”
(Another +972 report by Abraham back in November revealed that IDF AI systems ensure that the Israeli military is fully aware of every child it’s going to be killing in each airstrike, and that it deliberately targets civilian infrastructure as a matter of policy.)
https://medium.com/media/6fa21d3b2bff65a477b86af76b161392/href
When questioned about these systems by +972, the IDF Spokesperson responded that “Hamas places its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian population, systematically uses the civilian population as human shields, and conducts fighting from within civilian structures, including sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools and UN facilities. The IDF is bound by and acts according to international law, directing its attacks only at military targets and military operatives.”
The “human shields” narrative that’s become so popular in Israel apologia insists that the reason the IDF kills so many civilians in its attacks on Gaza is because Hamas intentionally surrounds itself with noncombatants as a strategy to make the innocent Israelis reluctant to drop bombs on them. But as The Intercept’s Ryan Grim recently observed on Twitter, this is soundly refuted by the revelation that Israel has been intentionally waiting to target suspected Hamas members when it knows they’ll be surrounded by civilians.
“Israel’s argument that they kill so many civilians because Hamas uses ‘human shields’ is torn apart by the revelation that the IDF prefers to attack its ‘targets’ when they are at home with their families,” tweeted Grim. “It is not Hamas using human shields, it is Israel deliberately hunting families.”
“A human shield is only a shield if your enemy values human life and seeks to minimize civilian deaths,” Grim adds. “Israel deliberately maximizes the number of civilians it can kill by waiting until a target is with his entire family. Palestinians are not shields to Israel, they are all targets.”
https://medium.com/media/8ba4585e7602afb35d1cc8fb31515b4c/href
This is such an important point. Advocates for Palestine like Abby Martin have for years been presenting compelling arguments against Israel’s “human shields” claims, and common sense shows that the presence of civilians is clearly not a deterrent to Israeli airstrikes, but because of these +972 revelations the lie has now been thoroughly, irrefutably debunked. Civilians aren’t getting killed because Hamas hides behind them, civilians are getting killed because the IDF waits until suspected Hamas members are around civilians to target them with high-powered military explosives.
A popular quote attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir says “Someday we may be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but we will never forgive them for making us kill their children.” You see this quote pop up all the time in varying iterations, shared approvingly by Israel apologists around the world as though it’s something wise and brilliant instead of a horrific defense of murdering children. But it turns out this morally depraved quote isn’t even true by the most generous of interpretations: Israel isn’t being “forced” to kill Palestinian children, it is knowingly choosing to.
The “human shields” narrative is just one more instance in which Israel pretends to be the victim while actually being the victimizer. They lied about beheaded babies so that they could get away with murdering babies. They lied about mass rapes so that they could get away with committing rape. They lied about Hamas using civilians as human shields so that they could kill civilians. They lie about being victims so that they can victimize.
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