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Tag: Israel

Why The United Nations Protects Empires While Failing To Protect Human Rights

Posted in Act Out!, Creative Commons, Journalism, and Video

So, you might be surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia recently gained a seat on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

That’s right — a country where male guardianship requires that women get permission to do everything from receive an education to travel, a country where women can not drive or leave the house without proper head-to-toe covering – and when they do everything is gender segregated — that Saudi Arabia was given a three year term as a member of the U.N. agency whose sole mission is to promote gender equality and women’s rights. Take a moment with that.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a nonprofit that tries to keep the international body accountable called the move “absurd — and morally reprehensible.”

Absurd as it may be — and it is fucking ridiculous — what’s even more absurd is that the appointment isn’t a sign that something is wrong at the U.N.

Israel Denies Entry To Impoverished Venezuelan Jews

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Despite frequent assertions that it is a homeland for all Jews, Israel has rejected a group of would-be immigrants from Venezuela despite years of devotion to their religion.

Under the policy known as aliyah, a Hebrew word meaning “ascending,” any Jewish person may emigrate to Israel, regardless of their nation of origin. Once in Israel, new arrivals are provided with stipends and benefits to help them get on their feet. When Europe was struck by deadly anti-Semitic violence two years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged all Jews to move to Israel.

“I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew,” Netanyahu said after an attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen in January of 2015.

However, this policy has been selectively enforced in cases involving poor or non-white Jews.

Despite Pervasive Anti-Semitism, Alex Jones’ Infowars Backs Israel Over Obama

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Infowars, an alternative multimedia outlet notorious for peddling hoaxes and anti-Semitic ideas, is now toeing a far-right, extremist line on U.S.-Israel relations.

The site’s shifting political viewpoint is another sign of the transformation that Alex Jones, the site’s founder, has undergone as he’s transitioned from an offbeat talk show host on public access TV to a Washington insider with intimate access to President-elect Donald Trump.

Despite his modest beginnings, Jones has built an expansive and profitable media empire that includes multiple websites, TV and radio programs, documentaries, and lucrative advertising deals that promote products ranging from Infowars-branded male “vitality” supplements to doomsday preparation supplies.

DEA Threatens Legal CBD Oil, Trump’s Anti-Peace Ambassador To Israel (Black Tower Radio Interview)

Posted in Audio, Journalism, and MintPress News

Despite widespread misinformation, the Drug Enforcement Agency hasn’t made CBD oil illegal, yet. And, thanks to multiple protections passed by Congress, it’s unlikely that they can simply make CBD products disappear. Even so, the misinformation created by a recent administrative move by the agency to reclassify CBD created a lot of needless fear. At the very least, the DEA can expect to face serious legal action if they attempt to ban CBD.

I also recently covered Donald Trump’s decision to appoint his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman is openly supportive of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, which underwent record growth in 2016. While the president-elect often surrounds himself with anti-Semites, he’s also selected numerous cabinet members and advisers who supports a far-right, anti-peace view on Israel and Palestine.

Trump Selects His Anti-Peace Bankruptcy Lawyer As Ambassador To Israel

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

President-elect Donald Trump has selected David Friedman, a notorious opponent of the peace process in Israel and Palestine and a financial supporter of illegal Israeli settlements, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Trump, who officially nominated Friedman on Dec. 15, is unlikely to quell the accusations of corruption and nepotism that have dogged the incoming administration with this controversial pick. Friedman is a long-time friend of the president-elect and a lawyer who helped Trump file for bankruptcy in 2004 and 2009.

Friedman fervently supports the ongoing expansion of apartheid Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and many political analysts have noted that Friedman’s political views actually put him to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s far-right prime minister.

An Orthodox Jew, Friedman maintains residences in both the United States and Jerusalem. In the formal announcement for his post released by Trump’s transition team, Friedman suggested that the U.S. embassy be moved from its current location in Tel Aviv to “Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

BDS Activists Plan Black Friday Protests Against HP’s Support For Israeli Apartheid

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Though best known for their computers and computer peripherals like printers, companies under the Hewlett-Packard umbrella are engaged in another profitable, and far more nefarious business: enabling apartheid Israel to track the movement of occupied Palestinians.

Activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are calling for a week of action against HP beginning on Black Friday, the high-volume shopping day that occurs after Thanksgiving. Organized by the HP Boycott Campaign and the Palestinian BDS National Committee, a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups, 99 actions were scheduled in 18 countries around the world, including the United States, as of Monday afternoon.

The Israeli military operates checkpoints throughout the occupied West Bank. In order to pass through them, Palestinians must submit to facial and and hand recognition scanners. This biometric identification system, called the “Basel System,” is maintained by HP Enterprise Services, a company previously known as EDS Israel.

“The biometric data of nearly every Palestinian over the age of 16 is held by the Israeli authorities as part of Israel’s system of control and repression,” the Palestine Solidarity Campaign noted in an Aug. 13, 2014 post.