Dear Friend,
It seems to have reached a point of near exhaustion. What will the President of the United States do next? The money was on some diplomatic mayhem, a series of insults, and a trashing of various aspects of the organisation some Americans regard as a world government. But Donald Trump surprised those at the United Nations with a modest tone, and not one the current UN Secretary General disagrees with
The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
A Synopsis of the Presentation made by Niloufer Bhagwat , before a United Nations Panel in Geneva, made by Ms Niloufer Bhagwat on 18th September, 2017
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Donald Trump At The UN
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
It seems to have reached a point of near exhaustion. What will the President of the United States do next? The money was on some diplomatic mayhem, a series of insults, and a trashing of various aspects of the organisation some Americans regard as a world government. But Donald Trump surprised those at the United Nations with a modest tone, and not one the current UN Secretary General disagrees with
MUST READ!
How Netanyahu’s Son Became The Poster Boy For White Supremacists
by Jonathan Cook
The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
Nazareth: The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
Last week these cheerleaders for Jew hatred described 27-year-old Yair Netanyahu as “awesome” and “a total bro” for posting a grossly anti-semitic image on social media.
It depicts an Illuminati-like figure and a reptilian creature controlling the world through money and dark arts. Alongside them are a cabal of conspirators, their faces altered to show Netanyahu’s main opponents. They include George Soros, a Holocaust survivor who has invested billions in pro-democracy movements, and Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister turned government critic.
This is not Yair’s first troubling outburst. Last month he emulated US President Donald Trump in decrying demonstrators who opposed a rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left a woman dead.
These might be dismissed as the immature rantings of a wayward son, had Yair not been groomed by his father as Israel’s “crown prince”. Netanyahu Jnr was supposedly behind an online media strategy that steered Netanyahu to electoral victory in 2015. He can be seen at his father’s side at meetings with world leaders.
The Israeli media were shocked not only by the post but Netanyahu’s determined refusal to criticise his son. An editorial in the Haaretz daily concluded that the prime minister’s silence signalled his “consent to the ongoing demonization of anyone who doesn’t get in line with the Israeli right”.
Yair’s choice of targets was revealing, particularly the image’s “Grand Jew” – George Soros.
In July, Netanyahu met his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban, an ultra-nationalist who has led a xenophobic campaign against immigrants. In a bid to crush opposition, the Orban government has vilified Soros, an American-Hungarian who promotes progressive causes. A billboard campaign against the billionaire unleashed a wave of anti-semitism across the country.
As leader of a Jewish state professing to be the world’s only refuge against anti-Semitism, Netanyahu ought to have rushed to Soros’s defence. Instead he echoed Orban’s incitement. Soros, he said, had “undermined” and “defamed” Israel too – by funding human rights groups opposed to the occupation.
Sympathy with the European and US far-right is not restricted to the Netanyahu camp. It is moving into the Israeli mainstream. Last week the Herzliya conference – an annual jamboree for Israel’s security establishment – invited Sebastian Gorka as a keynote speaker.
Gorka, another American-Hungarian and Trump’s former terrorism adviser, is a figurehead of the alt-right, a term for US white supremacist groups. Gorka told the conference that Israel and the US were “founding members of the Judeo-Christian civilization” and would defeat their “common enemies”.
Meanwhile, another US alt-right leader, Richard Spencer, appeared on Israeli TV last month to call himself a “white Zionist”.
The affinity between Netanyahu’s Israel and the west’s far-right is understandable. Both detest a human rights discourse they have yet to crush. Both mobilise their supporters with dog-whistle Islamophobia. Both prefer militarised, fear-based societies. And both share an obsession with Jew hatred.
Israel is so esteemed by white supremacists because it offers a double whammy of anti-semitism. For decades Israel has sought to persuade the west that it faces an endless war against Arab and Muslim “terror”; while Israel also declares itself the only true home for Jews.
For an alt-right bristling with hatred for all semites, Jews and Muslims alike, this is manna from heaven. It too wants an apocalyptic battle against Islam, and it too is happy to see the west cleared of Jews by herding them into the Middle East.
At first sight, that has created an ideological inconsistency on the Israeli right that Yair Netanyahu’s meme highlights.
The Israeli prime minister has repeatedly called on all Jews to come to Israel, claiming it as the only safe haven from an immutable global anti-semitism. And yet Netanyahu is also introducing a political test before he opens the door.
Jews supporting a boycott of Israel are already barred. Now liberal Jews and critics of the occupation like Soros are increasingly not welcome either. Israel is rapidly redefining the extent of the sanctuary it offers – for Jewish supremacists only.
The paradox may turn out to be more apparent than real, however. For Netanyahu may believe he has much to gain by abandoning liberal Jews to their fate, as the alt-right asserts its power in western capitals.
The “white Zionists” are committed to making life ever harder for minorities in the west, in a bid to be rid of them. Sooner or later, on Netanyahu’s logic, liberal Jews will face a reckoning. They will have to concede that Israel’s ultra-nationalists were right all along, and that Israel is their only sanctuary.
Guided by this cynical convergence of interests, Jewish and white supremacists are counting on a revival of anti-semitism that will benefit them both.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
Chemical Attacks In The Syrian Arab Republic
by Niloufer Bhagwat
A Synopsis of the Presentation, before a United Nations Panel in Geneva, made by Ms Niloufer Bhagwat on 18th September, 2017
Winners Take Nothing
by Edward Curtin
And so did we.
We didn’t listen then
and aren’t listening still.
Perhaps we never will.
Who do you think will win
the Doomsday Bowl?
Message To Aung San Suu Kyi
by Walt Gelles
Aung San Suu Kyi,
take the flowers out of your hair
and place them on a Rohingya mass grave
to show you care.
An Open Letter To Mr. Kiren Riiju On Rohingyas
by Dr Ashok Gladston Xavier
This is a letter from an ordinary citizen of India who has been working with the refugees for over two decades. I am deeply disturbed and in a way appalled to see your arguments before the parliament of India about the Rohingyas. This has definitely set the cat among the pigeons by calling them illegal immigrants and thereby asking them to be deported from India
Open Doors For Rohingya Refugees
Indians Abroad for Plural India (IAPI) and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) condemn the Government of India’s endorsement of the Myanmar government’s treatment of the Rohingya minority that has been described by the UN as “ethnic cleansing” and the Hindu nationalist BJP government’s determination to expel the Rohigya refugees already in India as illegal immigrants.
The History And Evolution Of The Commons
by Michael Bauwens
Is it possible to historicize the commons, to describe the evolution of the commons over time? This is our first draft and preliminary attempt to do so.
Somebody Hates YOU!
by Sally Dugman
It makes no difference as to your skin color, your religion, your ethnic background, your moral standings, your country of origin, your political views, your anything else. Someone, all the same, is out to “get you.”
Of Martyrdom – And Education
by Ramnik Mohan
A Facebook friend’s post set me thinking the other day. Her son, while memorizing an essay on the Independence Day, and reading the names of Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, the Rani of Jhansi and Mahatma Gandhi listed as martyrs, raised the query – “Gandhi died after Independence. Why, then, has he been characterized as a martyr?” The essay being memorized was ostensibly introduced to the students by a teacher.
Triple Talaq Judgement: Gender, ‘Othering’ And A Medieval Paradigm
by Rakesh Shukla
Whatever may have been conceptually the progressive origins of marriage as a contract in Muslim personal law, as compared to a sacrament in other religious paradigms; the lived realities of women speak for themselves. Shayara Bano, one of the petitioners, speaks of being tortured and beaten for cash and a car as dowry. Regardless of postulated imagined utopias, Ram-rajya or communism or marriage as a contract in Islamic Law, the concrete practices constitute the reality and cannot be disassociated from the conceptions and ideologies.
A Country Of Small Sacrifices
by Debjanee Ganguly
Yesterday PM Narendra Modi unveiled the second largest dam in the world- the Sardar Sarovar dam. This construction has been mired in controversy ever since its inception, 1961. For several years now the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has been protesting against the release of water into the dam as it will inundate the surrounding areas as it has already done so in Nisarpur and Rajghat and might include Dhar district to the list.
“Mouji Triesh!: A Tale Of 4 Kashmiri Martyrs”
by Basharat Shameem
As I recounted the horrors of the event in the hospital, many days later, after I regained my consciousness, I tried to unknow myself. It was all unprovoked! It was all beyond senses of comprehension! It was grotesque! It was horror! It was gory!
An Appeal For Support To The Terminated Dalit Judge Prabhakar Gwal
by Dr Goldy M. George
This comes as an urgent appeal to you seeking support and solidarity for Mr. Prabhakar Gwal. Gwal has been a well known people’s judge from Chhattisgarh. Gwal a Chief Judicial Magistrate who was known for his integrity was dismissed in April 2016. He was last posted as Chief Judicial Magistrate in Sukma where from he was dismissed from his services by state government.
The Economic And Political Weekly Is Dying
by P Radhakrishnan
As the Reddy-propelled debate on the EPW, though not vibrant or widespread, has been going on, I would like to dwell on seven issue
Goondas Case Quashed, Thirumurugan Gandhi And Others Released
by Arun Kali Raja
Today when the high court took up case after hearing the arguments from both the sides the High court quashed the detention of activists Thirumurgan Gandhi, Daison, Ilamaran and Arun Kumar under Goondas Act. The activists are expected to be released tomorrow.
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