North America

NOVANEWS One of the great surprises of my recent visit to Israel and Palestine was the morning I stood on a hillside south of Gilo in the Palestinian village of Wallajeh and gazed over at the settlement with its fancy red tile roofs. We were in a rural area 10 or 15 minutes south of Jerusalem. Palestinians were being forced off their land to make way for more settlers. And this was East Jerusalem??? But Jeffrey Goldberg had lately written, "Everyone knows" that Gilo is part of Jerusalem and will be an Israeli neighborhood after the two state solution comes into being (in his grandchild’s lifetime). Standing there, I realized that this was pure Israeli propaganda to justify an ongoing landgrab. And the same holds for the rural suburb of Ramat Shlomo, where Netanyahu has announced more settl...

NOVANEWS Dear Friends, Please distribute Ralph Nader’s piece below as widely as possible. It’s time to get Americans thinking, and this piece is likely to hit home. by Ralph Nader On July 10, 1996, at a Joint Session of the United States Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation for these words: “With America’s help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. …But I believe there can be no greater tribute to America’s long-standing economic aid to Israel than for us to be able to say: we are going to achieve economic independence. We are going to do it. In the next four years, we will begin the long-term process of gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance to Israel.” Since 1996, the American taxpayers are still sending I...

NOVANEWS Glenn Greenwald shows just how much of a weasel Paul Krugman is in his Christiane Amanpour defense by going after Amanpour’s attacker, Tom Shales, hammer and tongs for Shales’s pro-Israel agenda. Greenwald points out that what seems to bother Shales most of all is Christiane Amanpour’s Iranian background. Then he goes down the list: Wolf Blitzer is Jewish, a former AIPAC official, and — to use Shales’ smear-campaign formulation — has frequently "been accused" of pro-Israel bias; should CNN bar him from covering those issues? David Gregory is Jewish, "studies Jewish texts with a top Jewish educator in Washington," and has conducted extremely sycophantic interviews with Israel officials. Should his background be cited as evidence of his pro-Israel bias? The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Gold...

NOVANEWS Before we go any further, no. AIPAC doesn't rule America. Nor does AIPAC determine US foreign policy. Capital rules the US, the world, and hence also US policy towards the world, which is all about extraction and domination, and is hostile, not just to the Palestinian people, but to people in general, everywhere and anywhere, but especially if they fail to meet the appropriate standards of docility. Capital hates all people, but it also welcomes people hating each other: it color codes people so that different people can be consumed differently, and some can be the slaves of others. AIPAC, however, is part of the way capital rules the world, and the fact that it doesn't rule the world by itself is not a get-out-of-jail card. AIPAC is a criminal organization. That the people of the...

NOVANEWS Mohammed Omer, the Gazan journalist and photographer, is scheduled for a U.S. speaking tour together with Ali Abunimah. The U.S. consulate in the Netherlands, where Omer now resides, has put an extended hold on his visa application, effectively cancelling the tour. Omer has lived in the Netherlands since 2008, after he was detained and severely beaten by the Shin Bet when he returned to Gaza from London, where he had been awarded the prestigious Gellhorn Award for Journalism. A similar silencing happened earlier this month in the Bay Area where I live, when the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem never responded to the visa application of Mohammed Khatib, founder and leader of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall. He was scheduled to speak at the Sabeel Conference and at...

GORDON DUFF: U.S. TELLS ISRAEL: “YOU ARE UNDERMINING AMERICA, ENDANGERING TROOPS” NOVANEWS By Gordon Duff Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and Joint Chief’s Chairman Mike Mullen have all recently visited Israel on two issues, reliable information that Israel was planning an attack on Iran, a plan designed to push America into a war our leaders believe is both wrong and likely to risk a global nuclear confrontation with Russia and the building of a massive housing project on the Arab side of Jerusalem in violation of numerous agreements, a project that is likely to cause a spike in world terrorism and send thousands of new fighters to Afghanistan to face American forces there. This is the worst point in the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel since th...

NOVANEWS By Khalid Amayreh, Palestine-Info.co.uk　 Some reluctant voices in Washington D.C. have finally admitted that the persistence of the Palestinian plight, namely the continued Israeli efforts to liquidate the Palestinian cause by way of building more Jewish settlements and narrowing the Palestinian horizons, is undermining American strategic interests in the Muslim world. A few weeks ago, Gen. David Petraeus, head of the United States Central Command in Afghanistan and Iraq, voiced anxiety at the lack of progress in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that Arabs were losing faith in American promises and that Israeli intransigence was jeopardizing U.S. stan...

NOVANEWS U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is keeping up the pressure on Iran, consulting with close U.S. ally Saudi Arabia about how to respond to Tehran's disputed nuclear program. Saudi support is seen as key to any effective approach in putting pressure on Tehran. Saudi government TV showed Secretary Gates conversing with Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud and emphasized "regional issues" were at the top of the agenda. Other key Saudi officials, including Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled bin Sultan and intelligence chief Prince Muqrin also took part in the discussions. Secretary Gates is visiting Saudi Arabia as the tug-of-war between Iran and the West over its nuclear program intensifies. Saudi Arabia is the cornerstone of the U.S. network of strategic alliances...

NOVANEWS IF WE DON’T MAKE DENYING THE USS LIBERTY ‘HOLOCAUST’ A CRIME IT MAY HAPPEN AGAIN By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor In 1967, an American ship was attacked in daylight in the Eastern Mediterranean. It flew a huge flag, was easily identified but was subjected to bombings, strafings, torpedo attacks and the survivors were machine gunned in the water. There is no question about what happened, none whatsoever. Because this was done by Israel, there was a preliminary attempt to cover it up but the facts are there and no sane person can deny them. Israeli pilots admit taking part, including officers describe the attack in great detail and there nobody can say it was a mistake. We may be late, maybe very late, perhaps even too late, but the lessons we learned from how Israel h...