Politics

NOVANEWS Britain has expelled Mossad’s most senior official in London after concluding there was compelling evidence that UK passports used by a hit squad in Dubai were cloned by Israel. The Independent has learnt that the documents were cloned at Ben Gurion airport, and officials then made follow-up calls to check surreptitiously that the travel plans of those whose identities had been stolen would not interfere with the assassination. “Such misuse of British passports is intolerable,” the Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Parliament. “The fact that this was done by a country which is a friend, with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK, only adds insult to injury.” In an unusual move last night, the Foreign Office also updated its travel advice for Is...

NOVANEWS Whenever Frank Anderson speaks the way he did at a recent public forum in Washington, D.C. about “essential state functions performed by businesses,” people better listen. Mr. Anderson is the president of the Middle East Policy Council, but previously he was the chief of the Near East and South Asia Division of the CIA. A discussion—relayed over C-Span—featuring Mr. Anderson, was among established scholars and policy wonks focused on national security in that tumultuous area of the world. Mr. Anderson was asked about Blackwater, the controversial corporation whose profits come from Pentagon and State Department contracts to provide security to U.S. government personnel in west and central Asia and to perform such secret operations that it could have an identity crisis with the CIA...

NOVANEWS How many other countries will be interested in this new weapon against supposed terrorists? The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world’s hottest chilli. After conducting tests, the military has decided to use the thumb-sized “bhut jolokia”, or “ghost chilli”, to make tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilise suspects, defence officials said on Tuesday. The bhut jolokia was accepted by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world’s spiciest chilli. It is grown and eaten in India’s northeast for its taste, as a cure for stomach troubles and a way to fight the crippling summer heat. It has more than 1,000,000 Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chilli’s spiciness. Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2500 to 5000 Scoville units, while jalapeno peppers m...

NOVANEWS UN Secy’ General Ban Ki-moon is straightforward: "Let us be clear: all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory, and this must stop." Related posts: 1. American Arab organization joins battle against tax-deductible-status of ‘charities’ helping illegal settlements 2. Obama initiative on 2SS is dead in the cradle till he says ’settlements are illegal’ 3. An Israeli Reporter Prods Condoleezza Rice to Do Something About Illegal Settlements

NOVANEWS by Ben White On March 17, the following note appeared on the Promised Land blog: And this also happened this week: the office of the minister of education forbade distributing a booklet for kids about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because it didn’t like two articles in the declaration, as well as some of the illustration in the booklet. The relevant link was to an article in Hebrew. I asked Noam which two articles had been specified, and he replied that the nrg.co.il article implied Article 14 and Article 18. These two articles are as follows: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." (Article 14) "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion o...

NOVANEWS The same document that we critiqued in our previous post presents a very common Zionist argument regarding the national symbols of the State of Israel: The crux of the accusation against Israel is encapsulated in the often-repeated charge that the racism of Israel “is symbolized most clearly in Israel’s Jewish flag, anthem and state holidays.” The accusers have not a word of criticism against the tens of liberal democratic states that have Christian crosses incorporated in their flags, nor against the Muslim states with the half crescent symbol of Islam. For a Western state, with Jewish and Muslim minorities, to have Christmas as a national holiday is permissible, but for Israel to celebrate Passover as a national holiday is somehow racist. For various Arab states to denote themse...

NOVANEWS Haaretz : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157501.html By Haaretz Editorial  The Knesset yesterday put Israeli democracy to shame when it passed the "Nakba Law" at first reading with a majority of 15 against eight. If the law is passed at second and third readings it will be able to deprive bodies of state support and fine them if they mark Independence Day as a day of mourning, or if they hold memorial events for the Palestinians' "catastrophe" in 1948. The proposal adopted at the end of the Knesset's winter session was "moderate" compared to the original one initiated by MK Alex Miller of Yisrael Beiteinu. It stipulates fining public institutions that hold activity "denying Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state," and activity supporting armed struggle or terror...

NOVANEWS Jerusalem Post  http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171360 see also Ynet  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3865087,00.html and Haaretz By ASSOCIATED PRESS  UN, EU, US and Russian leaders' joint statement also condemns rocket attack.   Top international diplomats on Friday called on Israel and the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations with a goal of reaching a final settlement that would create an independent Palestinian state within 24 months. The statement further condemned "the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in east Jerusalem." Last week, during US Vice President Joe Biden's tour of the region, an Israeli building an planning committee had announced that 6,000 additional housing units would be built in Ramat...

NOVANEWS I've just been sent this interview with Gilbert Achcar in the International Institute for Research and Education website:   In the introduction to your book, you declare that you wrote it in order to "fight the symmetrical caricatures" often heard about Arab attitudes to the Holocaust? What are these caricatures?Gilbert Achcar: These caricatures flourish in the ongoing propaganda war between supporters of the Israeli side and supporters of the Palestinian or Arab sides. The caricature spread by Israel's supporters presents a majority of Arabs as having been pro-Nazi, using the all too famous figure of mufti Amin Al-Husseni, referred to as the "mufti of Jerusalem". Al-Husseini took refuge in 1941 with the Axis powers and spent the rest of the Second World War between Berlin and Rom...

NOVANEWS This article shows how a professor in the Zionist state of 'Israel' says that if Israel went down in fighting with their neighbors in the Mideast they should purposely destroy Europe and the the world as well. The fact that the professor has received little criticism in Israel is one more example of the incredible evil that constitutes the Israeli State and the Jewish supremacist mindset. For even if Europe had nothing to do with Israel’s loss of a war with the Arab nations some Jewish academics entertain the idea of exacting a nuclear holocaust against hundreds of millions of innocent people. It once again shows the misanthropic Jewish attitude and the idea that Jews are the only life of any value on the Earth. It reminds one of Chabad Lubavtich, the powerful worldwide Jewish ext...