Exposed: what links Israel to UK far-right riots?

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TOMMY ROBINSON AND THE ZIONIST AGENDA: THE HIDDEN FORCES BEHIND THE UK RACE RIOTS

Original article by KIT KLARENBERG republished from MPN under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Ever since July 29, Britain has been plunged into crisis, with incendiary far-riot rights sending towns and cities across the country spiraling into states of emergency. Vast mobs of armed, angry thugs, motivated by racist, Islamophobic animus, have vandalized homes, property and places of worship, violently clashed with police, and targeted hotels housing refugees with arson attacks in apparent stabs at mass murder. Hundreds of arrests have been made, and counter-protesters have taken to the streets in profusion to counter the upsurge of hatred.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged those responsible will face the “full force of the law” for their actions, and several perpetrators have already been sentenced to years in prison. Still, the situation remains gravely tense. Furthermore, in keeping with so many prior explosive, unanticipated episodes in modern British history, a vicious mainstream blame game has erupted, with ultimate responsibility for the upheaval being apportioned to a wide range of domestic and foreign actors and causes.

The unrest’s actual, and perhaps most apparent, sources have been mysteriously overlooked. For one, average Britons remain gripped by an ever-worsening economic cataclysm, in which the cost of essentials ever rises while living standards precipitously decline. The newly-elected Labour government has not only practically pledged to do nothing to alleviate the misery – by maintaining if not intensifying self-destructive austerity policies – but already exacerbated the dire situation significantly by slashing winter fuel payments, leaving millions facing life-threateningly freezing cold, without state support.

History shows that this milieu is invariably a fertile breeding ground for fascism to take root. With no mainstream alternative to the neoliberal status quo, desperate, disillusioned and dispossessed working-class Britons look to “outsiders” and extremists like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson for salvation in ever-greater numbers. And their remedy, as always, is to blame migrants, refugees and “the other” for all of society’s ills and their own personal deprivation rather than ruling elites.

Even more ominously, though, there are unambiguous indications the anti-Muslim fervor that has torn through Britain in August is being stirred up by unseen spectral actors in service of the Zionist entity’s ideological, political, and military interests.

‘GET THEM GONE’

For all the flurry of claims and counter-claims about how and why the riots started, there is no dispute they ignited on July 29 following a savage knife attack at a children’s yoga and dance workshop. Three children were killed and eight others injured, with five still in critical condition. Two adults present were also severely harmed. News of the shocking event rapidly spread far and wide, promptly followed by wildly incorrect conjecture and disinformation about the suspect’s identity.

Within mere hours, a popular anti-lockdown account posted on ‘X’ that the attacker was named “Ali al Shakati” – “an asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year…on an MI6 watch list.” While this false information was deleted within an hour, the damage was thoroughly done. Multiple far-right influencers instantly leaped upon these claims, adding further groundless, incriminating details of their own to the mix. Among them was Robinson – aka Stephen Yaxley Lennon – a notorious fascist activist of some standing.

He declared the Southport knife attacker was an “alleged Muslim,” adding, “They always target women.” The next day, an aggressive crowd gathered outside Southport Mosque, chanting Robinson’s name, along with the offensive Islamophobic slogan, “Who the fuck is Allah?” – a common fixture at far-right demonstrations. Attendant law enforcement officers were attacked, objects were hurled at the mosque, and police vehicles were set on fire. This malign spark produced copycat events and incidents across Britain, leading us to where we are now.

Protesters attack a Holiday Inn Express beillived to be housing asylum-seekers in South Yorkshire, August 4, 2024. Photo | AP

In almost every instance, police were quick to identify the rioters as members of the English Defence League (EDL), a now-defunct far-right organization comprised of hardcore anti-Islam agitators and football hooligans. Robinson, the League’s former leader, rubbished these allegations via X on the grounds that “there’s has [sic] been no EDL for over a decade.” Nonetheless, in a video published while the Southport riot was ongoing, he seemingly traced the violence back to the group he once headed and the streetfighting dogma it espoused:

Before people…condemn the ‘angry men’, that anger is justified. I’m surprised it’s took [sic] this long…you’ve actually encouraged the scenes you see tonight. You’ve done this, your government has done this, the police have done this…You care more for Afghanis, Somalis, Eritreans, Syrians, Pakistanis. They’re a danger to us. Stop the f***ing boats! Get them out of them [sic] hotels! Get them gone! Send them back! They shouldn’t be here ! Men will rise up, they were always going to rise up, they have to rise up, to defend their families!”

On August 8, intelligence-adjacent “independent” outlet Byline Times published a lengthy probe into “the real UK race riot instigators,” mapping “the key players and Transatlantic network” around Robinson. It argued he may have instigated the recent British upheaval at the behest of a sinister nexus of wealthy far-right figures in Europe and North America, including wealthy Donald Trump supporter Patrick Michael Byrne. Markedly, not once were Israel or Zionists mentioned – far more plausible candidates for directing Robinson’s incitation to Islamophobic violence.

‘FOREIGN PRESSURE’

The EDL burst onto British streets in June 2009. Describing itself as a “human rights organization”  and touting the slogan “not racist, not violent, just no longer silent,” Robinson and his confederates consistently claimed to be simply standing up for white working-class citizens and raising legitimate concerns about extremist Islam. However, the behavior and chants of its members on regular EDL marches through British towns and cities told a very different story.

Still, the League was ever-keen to flaunt its non-racist, diverse credentials. From its inception, the EDL had dedicated divisions for its Cypriot, Greek, Hindu, Jewish, LGBT and Pakistani Christian supporters and other minority groups present on marches besides. The League’s “Jewish” wing was always the movement’s most visible, even if barely acknowledged by the mainstream media. The profusion of Israel flags routinely found in EDL protests also went largely unremarked upon during the group’s five-year existence.

Yet, indications that the EDL’s activities served quite another nation’s interests were always unambiguously hidden in plain sight. The League never operated as a charity or political party in Britain, but two separate commercial entities were registered under its name. In June 2011, Robinson’s compatriots launched a company, the English Defence League. A month later, this was updated to the English and Jewish Defence League. Meanwhile, a firm known as EDL English Defence League LTD was registered in December 2010.

Two years later, the company’s name became the Jewish Defence League and one of its directors, Roberta Moore, a belligerent Zionist, established links with Jewish Task Force, a far-right U.S. organization. Founded by Victor Vancier, it espouses a hardcore, fundamentalist Zionism. Despite raising money for illegal settlements in the West Bank and avowedly seeking to “save” Israel, Vancier was banned from entering Tel Aviv for his involvement in 18 bombings in New York and Washington, protesting Soviet treatment of Jews during the 1980s.

This connection was reportedly too “extreme” for EDL higherups, who subsequently distanced themselves from Moore and their “Jewish” wing. However, this is difficult to rationalize with Robinson’s own views. In February 2019, a leaked video depicted the former League chief declaring his love for Israel and discussing how, on some occasions, he is forced to “get [his] Zionist card out, which says that [he is] a Zionist.” The clip ended with him proudly declaring:

Palestine?! F*** Palestine. Why would you support Palestine? If there was a war tomorrow, which probably there would be, I would be there on the front line fighting for Israel”.

Five months later, Robinson was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court after he exposed the protected identities of accused sexual groomers while they were on trial in May the previous year. Once imprisoned, notorious hardline Zionist lobby think tank Middle East Forum announced it had not only helped fund his legal expenses but financed and organized 25,000-strong solidarity protests in his honor. An accompanying statement revealed:

MEF is helping Mr. Robinson in his moment of danger…[MEF] is aiding Mr. Robinson…diplomatically, by bringing foreign pressure on the UK government to ensure [his] safety and eventual release.

The statement was signed by MEF Director Gregg Roman, who previously worked in the Zionist entity’s Defence and foreign ministries. There are no prizes for guessing from which country the “foreign pressure” to release Robinson emanated.

‘GOING UNDERCOVER’

In the EDL, Robinson and Moore were not alone in having deep and cohering ties to Israel and a pronounced affinity for Zionism. One of the group’s key founders, “Paul Ray,” whose blogging on race was cited in the manifesto of Norwegian Islamophobic mass murderer Anders Breivik, had a highly dubious history indeed as an infiltrator of Palestine solidarity movements in Britain. Whether he was a volunteer or state agent remains unclear today, but he evidently inflicted enormous damage on his targets.

In September 2006, Islamophobic U.S. website FrontPageMag published an “exposeé” on how one of its British “volunteers” had infiltrated the International Solidarity Movement’s London wing a year prior. ISM is a pro-Palestinian campaign group dedicated to nonviolent protests, with chapters around the world. It trains and dispatches volunteers to the Occupied Territories to assist with nonviolent protest activities. Despite this, in 2003, two ISM activists – Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall – were killed by Israeli Occupation Forces.

Investigative journalist Asa Winstanley, a veteran Palestine solidarity activist, has revealed that British intelligence has long penetrated ISM. Ray—real name Paul Cinato—was among the spies who infiltrated the Movement. As the FrontPageMag article reported, he “had prior experience going undercover for the police in the UK” before targeting ISM. The outlet added, “Photos and intelligence [Cinato] brought back are proving invaluable to intelligence agencies watching ISM and [are] in official hands.”

Again, there are few prizes for guessing the location of the “intelligence agencies watching ISM” that benefited from Cinato’s activities. Other British spies who infiltrated the Movement very clearly passed what they learned on to Zionist entity authorities. By 2008, Tel Aviv had obtained such precise intelligence on the group that its volunteers were either deported after entering Israel or blocked from entering altogether. As ISM’s primary raison d’etre was to get people into the Occupied Territories, its value and impact were significantly curtailed.

Tommy Robinson poses with IDF troops during a visit to Israel. Photo | Twitter

It must not be forgotten either that the deranged “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was a core precept of the EDL during its five-year-long lifespan and remains promulgated by Robinson and Britain’s fascist rioters in the present day. This narrative posits that Western elites are covertly engaged in a dastardly connivance to flood Europe with Muslims and destroy local culture in service of creating “Eurabia,” an Islamized mega-continent and caliphate.

The originator of this profoundly racist, fantastical drivel was “Bat Ye’or” – the nom de plume of former Mossad operative Gisèle Littman. In 1961, she and her British husband David led Operation Mural, a sickening Zionist operation to kidnap Jewish children from Morocco to become settler colonists in Israel. She spent three months in Rabat posing as a Christian aid worker, gaining the trust of young targets to assist with their unwilling extraction.

The pair went on to be involved in a variety of Zionist organizations and leading lights in the Islamophobic Counterjihad movement. Despite their sordid personal and professional history being well-documented, Gisèle Littman’s obscenely hypocritical “Great Replacement” theory quickly became popular with right-wingers in Europe and North America. As a 2019 Guardian long-read put it:

Once an obscure idea confined to the darker corners of the internet, the anti-Islam ideology is now visible in the everyday politics of the West.”

Littman’s “theory” is just one way in which the Zionist entity has over decades normalized and legitimized everyday discrimination and xenophobia towards Muslims while dehumanizing and demonizing them in pursuit of its putrid, genocidal settler colonial project. Having insidiously poisoned Western information spaces with surging Islamophobic hatred via assets such as Tommy Robinson, it appears the pot is finally boiling over in Britain.

That there is a mainstream omerta on these fundamental truths indicates Europe and North America’s media and political class are determined to let the Zionist entity get away with it.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

Original article by KIT KLARENBERG republished from MPN under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

dizzy: Britain’s Fascist rioters promote the theory of ‘Two-tier Policing’. There is obviously a two-tier justice system in UK as anyone who has experienced it will have undoubtedly learned but not in the way that the fascist rioters’ propose. I’ve suffered enough abuse from police – although not too much recently – and tried to get them to investigate former Met Police boss Ian Blair. There was absolutely no chance of that. I’ve been before enough judges – mostly but not all magistrates and civil ones two or three times – to recognise that they are prejudged and biased.

Ridiculously harsh sentences for non-violent Just Stop Oil protesters v. fascist rioters? Will Zionist Tommy Robinson be tried for his inflammatory social media posts? I somehow doubt that under UK’s Zionist establishment.

Continue ReadingExposed: what links Israel to UK far-right riots?

GOP Budget Plans Spotlight Party’s Top Priority: Handouts for the Rich

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on July 23, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

“Republicans would rather protect their billionaire friends at the expense of everyone else,” said the chair of the Joint Economic Committee.

Budget proposals released by congressional Republicans in recent months lay bare the party’s desire to slash taxes for wealthy Americans and large corporations at the expense of key government programs and services, including nutrition assistance, environmental protection, and Medicaid.

That’s according to an analysis released Wednesday by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee (JEC), which examined budget plans the GOP has released as Congress works to craft and pass government funding bills for the coming fiscal year.

The JEC specifically cites a Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal published in March by the Republican Study Committee, a panel comprised of three-quarters of the House GOP caucus.

The plan, the JEC Democrats noted Wednesday, “claims to balance the budget by cutting Medicare spending, raising the retirement age for Social Security, capping funding for Medicaid and CHIP, and cutting the rest of non-defense discretionary spending by 31% across the board.”

“This would drive up health costs for American families by increasing premiums for [Affordable Care Act] healthcare plans and getting rid of protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” the new analysis says. “It would also prohibit Medicare from negotiating down prescription drug costs.”

A separate proposal from Republicans on the House Budget Committee claims it would finance “large tax cuts for the wealthy by both slashing key services and assuming that their tax giveaways lead to unrealistic levels of economic growth,” the Democratic report says.

“Analyzing this budget with more reasonable economic assumptions instead shows that budget would likely require the government to eliminate most federal services within a decade,” the report adds.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the chair of the JEC, said in a statement Wednesday that “Republicans’ extreme proposals are dangerous for America.”

“While Democrats are fighting to invest in families, Republicans would rather protect their billionaire friends at the expense of everyone else,” said Heinrich. “Kicking 42 million kids off of health insurance, gutting federal investments in public safety, denying veterans hospital care, and getting rid of [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits that help people afford groceries is unconscionable. Americans deserve better.”

The analysis from JEC Democrats comes as Republican nominee Donald Trump attempts to posture as an ally of the working class despite his history of assailing labor protections and backing tax cuts for the rich.

Trump has called for an extension of the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017—changes that overwhelmingly benefited wealthy Americans. An extension of the tax cuts would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit of the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The former president’s advisers have also reportedly discussed reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, a change that would give the largest 100 U.S. companies a tax cut of $48 billion per year.

Trump has floated proposals that are ostensibly geared toward helping working-class Americans, including exempting tips from taxation—a proposal specifically aimed at hospitality workers—and eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits.

But earlier this week, UNITE HERE—a union that represents hospitality workers—endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over the Republican candidate, warning that “another Trump presidency would mean four chaotic years of defending against his attacks on unions, working people, immigrants, women, and others.”

As for Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, an analysis by the Tax Policy Center’s Howard Gleckman found that the move would reduce “Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance (HI) revenues by $1.5 trillion over the next decade,” harming the programs’ finances while providing “little or no benefit” to lower-income households in 2025.

“Less than 1% of the lowest-income households (those making about $33,000 or less, would get any tax cut at all,” Gleckman observed. “But about 28% of middle-income households would get a tax cut. Among the top 0.1 percent, about 20 percent of households would get a tax cut.”

Gleckman found that “in dollar terms, the biggest winners would be those in the top 0.1% of income, who make nearly $5 million or more.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingGOP Budget Plans Spotlight Party’s Top Priority: Handouts for the Rich

Western Media, Leaders Slammed for ‘Deafening’ Silence Over Israeli Torture Revelations

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A leaked photograph obtained by CNN shows a blindfolded man with his arms over his head at the Sde Teiman detention facility. (Photo: CNN)

“Can you imagine the response if Palestinians were holding Israelis in mass rape camps and torturing them to death?” asked one critic.

Human rights defenders are calling out Western news outlets and political leaders for their conspicuous lack of coverage and vocalized condemnation after leaked video footage appeared to show Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian detainee in the notorious Sde Teiman prison and the release of a new report documenting systematic torture of prisoners held by Israel.

Earlier this week, Israel’s Channel 12 aired a video showing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists assaulting a Palestinian man at Sde Teiman, which is often called “Israel’s Guantánamo.” The victim was reportedly hospitalized with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage. In addition to torture, former Sde Teiman detainees have described rampant rape and sexual abuse, allegedly often committed by female soldiers.

Instead of avoiding the Sde Teiman rape story, Israeli media have aired an interview with one of the IDF suspects—who are being hailed as “heroes” by far-right Israelis including multiple Cabinet ministers—and panel discussions including one in which a journalist called for “institutionalized” rape of Palestinian prisoners. This, as Israeli leaders demanded an investigation of the rape video to find and punish whoever leaked the footage, and as Israeli lawmakers argue that it’s permissible to rape Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile, there has been very little coverage of Sde Teiman on U.S. broadcast media, which have come under fire for allowing Israeli officials to censor their coverage of the Gaza onslaught. This stands in stark contrast to the myriad—and sometimes outright falsereports of Hamas militants raping Israeli women during the October 7 attack, which have prompted embarrassing corrections.

“Can you imagine the response if Palestinians were holding Israelis in mass rape camps and torturing them to death? Every U.S. politician would condemn it, there would be congressional resolutions, countless CNN segments, and celebrity outrage,” Palestinian American poet Remi Kanazi said Thursday on social media. “But the victims are just Palestinians.”

Dazed politics editor James Greig said on social media Wednesday that “it feels redundant to complain about double standards at this point but still, the contrast between the silence about Sde Teiman and the months of lurid, detailed, and at best factually dubious reporting published when Hamas was accused of sexual violence is extremely stark.”

Syrian British journalist Richard Medhurst wrote Thursday on social media that “the silence by mainstream media on the IDF’s rape culture is deafening.”

“These journalists are literally covering for the most violent form of rape, recorded on camera, and documented by doctors,” he added.

When there is coverage of alleged Israeli crimes in the U.S. media, it is often presented in a manner that casts doubt upon the veracity of Palestinian claims—which are increasingly beyond doubt amid an avalanche of evidence.

On Monday, asCommon Dreamsreported, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released a detailed report, ominously titled “Welcome to Hell,” which documented widespread torture and abuse of Palestinians across Israeli’s detention apparatus. The report found that “there is no room to doubt” that Israel’s torture methods are a systematic, organized policy of its prison authorities.

Israeli whistleblowers have described having to frequently amputate Sde Teiman detainees’ limbs due to damage from constant shackling. IDF officers have admitted that dozens of Palestinians have died at the prison. IDF soldiers allegedly murdered one detainee by shoving an electric baton in his anus. United Nations experts and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have confirmed what the latter described as the “systematic” torture of detainees “that amounts to a war crime and even a crime against humanity.”

Meanwhile, Israeli protesters have rallied for the right to rape Palestinians, and a far-right mob whose members included a Cabinet minister and multiple Knesset lawmakers stormed two military bases last month in an attempt to free the alleged IDF rapists after nine suspects were arrested.

Yet “there is still no international outcry,” journalists Lubna Masarwa and Peter Osborne wrote in a Middle East Eyeopinion piece published Friday. “This collective omerta from politicians and the media about Israel’s monstrous conduct is hard to comprehend, given that we are talking about systematic war crimes committed on a horrifying scale by a country already under investigation at the International Court of Justice for potential genocide.”

“Their silence amounts to complicity,” the authors continued. “As for Israel, the majority of the political and media classes do not appear to think there is much wrong in the torture and abuse of prisoners, with some ministers actively defending the abusers.”

“These are the signs of a very sick society indeed—one that has passed through an invisible barrier into savagery,” they added. “There are no red lines, no respect for international law, and no accountability. The silence of the West shows that we, too, have entered the same nightmare universe.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingWestern Media, Leaders Slammed for ‘Deafening’ Silence Over Israeli Torture Revelations

US Rights Group Urges Media to Condemn Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A funeral ceremony is held for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab, who was killed, along with his family members, in an airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 3, 2023. (Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The only thing that can explain the shocking silence of American and international media professionals about the mass killing of their Palestinian colleagues is the decadeslong and systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people.”

The largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Friday implored American and international media outlets to speak out against Israel’s killing of more than 100 journalists, almost all of them Palestinians, during the ongoing assault on Gaza.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) renewed its plea following Israeli airstrikes on the homes of Palestine TV journalist Tamim Ma’mmar and Al-Aqsa TV‘s Abdullah Al-Sousi. Ma’mmar was killed along with his wife and two of their children, while the other attack killed Al-Sousi and two of his nephews, according to Quds News Network.

“The only thing that can explain the shocking silence of American and international media professionals about the mass killing of their Palestinian colleagues is the decadeslong and systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people, in which the lives of Palestinians have lesser or no value,” CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Cooper said in a statement.

“Journalists worldwide must begin to speak out about these killings and about the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he added.

https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1821932693400981588?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1821932693400981588%7Ctwgr%5Eb50525bcbd64fb1a441b5d53fd2d2b071768fd5b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fisrael-killing-journalists

Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Its 308-day assault on Gaza has left more than 142,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to local and international officials.

Preliminary investigations by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists found that at least 113 media professionals—including 108 Palestinians, three Lebanese, and two Israelis—have been killed during the war, “making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.”

CPJ has condemned what it called an “apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families,” noting cases in which media workers were killed while wearing press insignia and after being threatened by Israeli officials.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said this week that Israeli forces have killed 166 journalists since October.

In May, the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) filed a third complaint at the International Criminal Court alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

RSF said it had “reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians” and accused Israel of “an eradication of the Palestinian media.”

The following month, the Gaza Project—led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Storiespublished a report detailing a “chilling pattern” of Israeli forces apparently targeting journalists during the war.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called for official investigations into Israeli killing of journalists including an October 13 attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.

Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, was wounded while administering first aid to Christina Assi, an Agence-France Presse journalist who was seriously wounded in the attack. Assi-one of whose legs was amputated—recently carried the Olympic torch in Paris.

CPJ president Jodie Ginsburg recently told Al Jazeera that the killing of journalists by Israeli forces “appears to be part of a broader strategy that aims to stifle the information coming out of Gaza.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingUS Rights Group Urges Media to Condemn Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza

Corbyn in talks to form new parliamentary group with four pro-Palestine independents

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/corbyn-talks-form-new-parliamentary-group-four-pro-palestine-independents

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

JEREMY CORBYN and four other pro-Palestine independent MPs could form a new parliamentary group.

The former Labour leader, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed have been exploring options on how they can affect policy more effectively.

Mr Adam, who unseated Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth to become MP for Leicester South, told the BBC that the group was “looking at options that would give us more access to the levers of power.”

The potential grouping of five independents would equal the number of Reform UK MPs and outnumber the Greens.

Last month they vowed to work with seven Labour MPs who had their party whip suspended for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap to offer a “real alternative.”

It is thought there has so far been no formal co-ordination between independent MPs and suspended Labour MPs.

Becoming an official group in Parliament would increase the independents’ chances of taking part in debates and committees, which are usually decided proportional to party size.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/corbyn-talks-form-new-parliamentary-group-four-pro-palestine-independents

Continue ReadingCorbyn in talks to form new parliamentary group with four pro-Palestine independents