Matt and Daniel are joined by historian and journalist Samira Mohyeddin to discuss “crisis vultures,” whether the Obama oratory can sell a Kamala Harris pro-Israel candidacy, and to decide whether Ta-Nehisi Coates or Elica Le Bon has a better grasp of the Palestinian plight.
Highlights from our exclusive interview with former UK Foreign Minister Sir Alan Duncan recorded on 17th October published 24th October.
Alan Duncan is a former Conservative government minister in the International Development Office (2010 to 2014) and also served as UK Foreign Minister (2016-19) for Europe and the Americas under Prime Minister Theresa May.
Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories is scheduled to come to the University of Toronto on November 7, 2024 and that has ruffled the feathers of some, including some Canadian lawmakers. The attacks on Francesca Albanese come right as she published her report on the genocide of Gaza and the continued occupation of the West Bank. Her report is titled: Genocide as Colonial Erasure.
Israel’s claims about its attacks on journalists have been debunked or disputed by international experts.
The pro-Israel group “HonestReporting Canada” (HRC) is regularly pressuring Canadian journalists to regurgitate Israel’s excuses for killing their Palestinian colleagues in Gaza.
Over the past year, HRC has repeatedly quoted the Israeli military’s claims that it does not deliberately target journalists, and has suggested that “certain journalists” in Gaza are working as “terror operatives.”
In “alerts” published by HRC between November 2023 and October 2024, the pro-Israel group has quoted the Israeli military stating that it will “never deliberately target journalists,” and has dismissed arguments to the contrary as “simply false.”
“That journalists have been killed in Gaza covering the war between Hamas and Israel is not in dispute; what is in dispute is the contention that Israel is purposely targeting them, an accusation that Israel strenuously denies,” a HRC alert stated in December 2023.
In a March 4 alert targeting a Hill Times columnist, HRC conceded that “every innocent casualty is a tragedy,” before repeating claims that some journalists in Gaza “have ties to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations.” This claim, HRC said, means it is dishonest to portray such individuals as “uninvolved journalists or civilians.”
HRC also stated that “some of the ‘journalists’ in question are actually official Hamas propagandists, rather than objective reporters trying to nobly share the facts with the world.” (more...)
Pro-Israel Group Wants Media To Excuse Israel’s Killing Of Journalists
From October 30-31, 2024, the governments of Canada, Norway and Ukraine co-hosted an international conference in Montreal about Ukraine’s ‘peace plan’.
Dimitri Lascaris went to the conference and applied for media accreditation. Despite being a card-carrying member of the press, Lascaris’s application for accreditation was refused without explanation.
After beng refused admission, Lascaris stood at the the entrance to conference and asked delegates whether Palestinian lives are as valuable as Ukrainian lives.
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Prof. Jean Bricmont, Author of ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War’, and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He discusses how ‘humanitarian imperialism’ which he wrote about has descended into ongoing genocide in Gaza and nuclear brinkmanship, the ‘astonishing’ lack of any effect of mass protests across the West on the policies of US, UK, and EU governments’ policies towards Israel, France’s posturing as a defender of Christians while doing nothing to defend the Christians of Lebanon, Palestine or Syria from Israeli attacks, the failure of the West to isolate Russia and cripple its economy via sanctions, the West’s bullying through sanctions resulting in the BRICS Summit in Kazan, why the US must accept a multipolar world in which there is no place for the Israeli Zionist project, and why Vladimir Putin’s defeat of the West’s attempts to isolate him has made him appear to be a political genius. In the second half, he discusses how NGOs such as Amnesty International have gone on to support ‘humanitarian imperialism’ and ended up backing Washington’s imperial policies, the pro-Israel lobby’s purchasing of both Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and Democrats and Republicans in Congress, how Israel’s genocidal actions have increased anti-Semitism around the world, and much more.
Chris Hedges and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, discuss her new report for the UN which details the context behind October 7, the increasing hostility in the West Bank and the urgent need for the international community to halt Israel's genocide.
More than 5,000 authors and publishers—including many of the most prominent names in the publishing world— are boycotting Israeli publishing institutions complicit in the unfolding genocide of Palestinians.
In less than 48 hours more than 5,000 authors, book workers, and publishers—including many of the most prominent names in the publishing world—signed on to our collective campaign to commit to an anti-apartheid boycott of complicit Israeli publishing institutions that uphold and whitewash the unfolding genocide of Palestinians.
Alongside our collaborators—Books Against Genocide, Bookworkers for a Free Palestine, Fossil Free Books, Palestine Festival of Literature, and Writers Against the War on Gaza—we have been blown over by the overwhelmingly positive response and moved by a volume of signatories that we can hardly keep up with. Translations of the letter of commitment have been offered up by publishers from around the world, who have been sharing it through their own networks. The workers of the publishing world say no to genocide and are ready to wield their collective power.
As the campaign picks up steam, publishers have a critical role to play in joining this call to refuse collaboration with Israeli publishing institutions that are complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime.
This powerful uptake of the Palestinian cause among cultural workers and institutions has strong historical precedent in the South African anti-apartheid movement, when authors, artists, and cultural institutions took up the struggle against South African apartheid and became an integral part of its fall. Publishers withheld their books from shipment to the apartheid state. Library boards implemented limitations on what they would add to their collections based on publisher complicity. Publishing institutions around the world should be proud to take a similar stand today, and be part of this moment of reckoning. (more...)
Related:
A new ‘seven-point plan’ from B’nai Brith outlines a disturbing co-ordinated effort to punish advocacy for Palestine.
B’nai Brith Canada (BB) recently introduced a “Seven-Point Plan to Combat Antisemitism.” This roadmap for politicians, police and others should disturb anyone who cares about stopping Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
If that sounds like you, then there’s a good chance BB and the broader Israel lobby wants you suspended from your school, fired from your place of employment, cut off from any funding you enjoy or even imprisoned. This sounds dramatic, but a close review of the plan reveals that it’s true, and worse, that much of what the group wants to happen is already in motion.
The lobby isn’t solely or even necessarily primarily responsible for the pro-Israel actions that governments and others end up taking. Still, the groups that make up the lobby — such as BB, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) — typically have been the first in Canada to call for these things to happen. Politicians follow the lobby’s lead, not the other way around, in part because the lobby uses its vast resources to take MPs on trips to “Israel” and lobby them incessantly.
With this in mind, BB’s plan shouldn’t be written off or ignored. To make things worse, the next party likely to be in charge federally, with a strong majority — the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservatives, boasting Canada’s most unhinged Zionist MP as its deputy leader — is promising to do even more for Israel. (more...)
The Israel Lobby Wants You Suspended, Fired Or In Prison
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history
Rashid Khalidi is the author of Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage, among others. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other journals. He is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies
Laith Marouf & Dimitri Lascaris tag team on RT International about the Zionist Colony ban of UNRWA, its intended effect to starve the Indigenous people of Palestine & deprive them of health & education, with the final aim of total genocide as the plan.
In October 2024, Trudeau government listed the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a terror entity. The move marks a major escalation in state directed efforts to suppress opposition to Canada’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and regional belligerence.
The webinar will consider how the terrorist list works and its anti-Palestinian, pro-US empire, character.
Panelists:
Moderated: Dr. Sara Farhan, 2Rivers4Palestine
As the Israeli military commits unfathomable horrors in Gaza, many Canadians are directly assisting the genocidal force in probable violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act. Lawyer Shane Martinez joined Talking Foreign Policy to discuss a case he’s pursuing against Sar El, which recruits Canadians to volunteer on Israeli military bases. Martinez also talks about the legal exceptionalism offered Canadian supporters of the Israeli military.
In response to student and faculty outrage over the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a veritable purge is taking place on college campuses in the United States. Administrations are suspending, evicting, firing and otherwise trampling on the democratic rights of faculty and students protesting the ongoing slaughter.
This repression is taking place at some of the most prestigious universities in the country, with deep ties to the Democratic Party. This past Friday, some 25 faculty members from Harvard University were suspended from entering the Widener Library for two weeks after conducting a silent “study-in” protest in solidarity with students who were suspended for conducting a similar protest the month prior.
The banning of faculty from the library for simply displaying pieces of paper that had innocuous phrases such as “Embrace diverse perspectives,” is an unprecedented act of disciplinary action. Harvard cited “library policy” to justify barring faculty members from the institution’s main library, which will severely impact their ability to conduct their own work.
In addition to over two dozen faculty members, according to The Harvard Crimson, more than 60 students who previously conducted a silent “study-in” at Widener Library against the genocide have also been banned from the main library on campus for two weeks.
Similar anti-democratic measures are underway at many other campuses: (more...)
Oppose the pro-genocide purge on US college campuses!
A group of academics are beginning to mobilize against Canada’s predatory foreign policy, with the launch of a new organisation.
Academics Kevin MacKay, Dr. Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, and Dr. Radhika Desai, along with PhD candidates Tamara Lorincz and Ghada Sasa, joined Janine Solanki, the chairperson of Mobilisation against War and Occupation Vancouver (MAWO Vancouver) on a Zoom call on October 10 to oppose Canada’s foreign policy.
Over a year into Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign, and two years into Russia’s denazification of NATO-armed Ukraine, one can hardly say the Zoom call/webinar was timely, but it at least shows some measure of courage from academics. A number of the academics speaking during this forum had already been persecuted by their respective institutions and the state for pro-Palestine and anti-NATO activism.
While conversations prioritised discussing the personal experiences of the participants, the main purpose of the webinar was the launch of the new organisation, Canadian Academics for a Just Foreign Policy (CAJFP) and to promote its website. The new organisation has two running petitions demanding that universities ensure that the principle of “universal free speech” is applied without the pro-colonial and pro-NATO bias that characterises North American academia. (more...)
Academics finally organising to oppose Canada’s predatory foreign policy
Related:
Del Bigtree and Matthew Ehret address the question on so many minds: “Who is the ‘they’ pulling the strings on world events and the direction of money and power?” We shed light on some of the key figures that have influenced the great societies of the world into what we find ourselves living in today.
Director of The Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah joins the show to discuss the UK police raid on his colleague, journalist Asa Winstanley. Earlier this month, the counterterrorism police unit entered Winstanley’s home and seized his electronics to investigate his social media posts providing commentary on Israel's genocide in Gaza. Abunimah says they are targeting journalists for exposing Israel's crimes. "If you say that Palestinians have a right to resist Israel through armed struggle that could be considered a crime under the terrorism act," explains Abunimah.
'Loss of Ukraine' blame game starts in Canada, with journalist in the crosshairs of Kyiv and Canadian politician who vowed a huge victory over Russia
On Thursday, the Canadian House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security heard from a right-wing diplomat-turned-politician and two “disinformation experts” that Ottawa needs to get “more serious” about exposing alleged Russian information operations in Canada. The politician, Chris Alexander, a former Conservative MP and minister in Stephen Harper’s government, stole the show by claiming that the KGB recruited award-winning Ottawa Citizen journalist David Pugliese at the end of the Cold War.
So far, Alexander’s “bombshell,” ostensibly based on a small collection of Ukrainian KGB documents, hasn’t made the splash that he hoped for. As Simon Miles, an assistant professor at Duke University, explained to Canada’s Global News, “Nothing in these documents clearly says that this individual was even approached, or certainly says that approach was successful. All they do is say this is something worth exploring.” Chris Alexander, however, presented the documents as proof that the KGB recruited Pugliese decades ago, with the implication that he’s been a Moscow-backed traitor to Canada ever since.
Alexander has apparently been trying to take down Pugliese for over a year, but this parliamentary witness, with immunity to say whatever he wanted in that setting, also had bigger fish to fry. He not only suggested that Pugliese is a high-level Russian agent, responsible for helping to prevent Canada from making the military commitments necessary for Ukraine to win the war, but that this veteran journalist is just the tip of an iceberg of “Russian information assets,” who apparently form the vanguard of Moscow’s fifth column in Canada. With these “revelations,” Alexander called for a rapid Canadian government mobilization to win the information war, and “end the impunity with which Russia has operated in Canada.” As he said, “Russian active measures” are an important reason why “we’ve still not committed fully to defeating this aggressor or to Ukraine’s victory.”
This hatchet job seems to have been at least partially motivated by revenge for Pugliese’s articles about Mriya Report, a pro-Ukraine charity founded by a Canadian military officer. In a recent podcast interview, David Pugliese shared that in the last year or two, several journalists from the Globe & Mail, in addition to himself, were all accused of being “paid Russian agents” by a board member of this charity. (more...)
A mainstream Israeli journalist recently blew up a house in Lebanon as part of a news report while embedded with the military. The broadcast shows how mainstream genocidal activity has become in Israeli society.
The level of militant lust for revenge in Israeli society is uncharted these days. The latest example came on Friday, when Israeli Channel 12 journalist Danny Kushmaro released a 27-minute report on Israel’s destruction in southern Lebanon. The title of the presentation was “This is not the Third Lebanon War, it is the last one.”
Channel 12 is the most-watched commercial channel, it’s considered centrist and mainstream. In the report, Kushmaro is embedded with Golani infantry soldiers riding into a village in southern Lebanon, called Ayta Al-Sha’b. The village is almost entirely razed to the ground, but there are still some buildings left. Kushmaro’s report is replete with vitriol, where he repeatedly refers to “these evil people”, whom he chides for “hating Israel”.
At the end of the story, Kushmaro is offered the task of pressing a button to denonate a building. “A moment before we leave, we have one mission left,” Kushmaro narrates. The officer is seen telling him of a house nearby, where he claims that “there is direct line of sight to Dovev and Meron – from here they shoot.” Kushmaro presses the button and the house explodes, serving as the climax of the whole report. Kushmaro signs off with a close-up where he says “Don’t mess with the Jews.” (more...)
Israeli journalists join the live-streamed genocide
The BBC is deceiving the British public and using its position to manufacture consent for Israel's genocidal assault in Palestine and Lebanon.
On Saturday, October 12, the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent, Lucy Williamson, joined the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on a tour of an unspecified village that they were occupying in southern Lebanon. Footage showed leveled civilian homes and infrastructure, a familiar image for those who have been following Israel’s trail of destruction across Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon over the past year.
Williamson gave the Israeli military, including one Colonel Yaniv Malka, who also fought in Israel’s failed 2006 invasion, free reign to make claims that provided the justification for their actions in Lebanon. They claimed to have found weapons, including mortars, anti-tank missiles, and mines, inside civilians’ homes; and a house’s garage that was used as an equipment warehouse – all for an alleged October 7-style cross-border operation that Hezbollah was planning.
In response, on Monday, seven BBC Arabic journalists suspended their work for the corporation in protest. Hezbollah also condemned the outlet for its violation of “Lebanese land, sovereignty and… law”, calling on the country’s Ministry of Information to take legal action against the BBC.
This is not the first time that the BBC has been caught up in controversy because of its coverage of the ongoing Israeli war on Palestine and Lebanon. Williamson herself went on another IOF propaganda tour last November, a day after Israel first raided al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. On that occasion, she was shown fifteen guns, a bullet-proof vest (conveniently with a Hamas logo on it), and military booklets and pamphlets that the Israelis supposedly found within the hospital. She was also presented with laptops that the IOF claimed had information about Israeli hostages held in Gaza – however, she admitted that she was not actually shown any of the content on them.
Rather than questioning any of these claims, or indeed acknowledging that the Israelis may be hiding something by not allowing her to speak to Palestinian doctors or patients, she regurgitated their propaganda unchallenged. (more...)
Generating consent for genocide: The BBC’s complicity in Israel’s crimes in Palestine and Lebanon
In today's show, we will be considering the implications of Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar's death.
Sinwar fought for the Palestinian people, to his last breath, against the Zionist occupation, and died a heroic death in the ruins of Rafah city at the hands of an Israeli drone operator sitting in a control room many miles away.
In our first report, Latifa Abouchakra looks back at Sinwar's life and death. Our second report looks at the contrasting responses to Sinwar's death.
Israel has accused six of Al Jazeera’s reporters in Gaza of being operatives for Hamas and Islamic Jihad - allegations the network condemned as fabricated. We look at Al Jazeera’s fight to report from Gaza, the dangers its journalists face, and the broader implications of Israel’s efforts to keep international media out of the Strip.
In this episode: Mohamed Moawad, Managing Editor of Al Jazeera Arabic
Increasingly, reasoned debate is being replaced by silencing and name-calling
In the past decade, a disturbing phenomenon has arisen in the Western world. One might call it the “New Red Scare.” According to many, the West is the target of a highly sophisticated, professional, and dangerous campaign of foreign subversion, coming mainly from the Russian Federation. Accusations abound against “Russian agents,” “Kremlin influencers,” “Moscow proxies,” and the like. Don’t like someone, call them “pro-Russian;” dislike what they say, call it “Russian disinformation;” want to silence them, call them a “Russian agent.” And so on. Increasingly, reasoned debate is being replaced by silencing and name-calling.
Speaking on Thursday to a parliamentary committee, former diplomat and Member of Parliament Chris Alexander painted a picture of Canada as the victim of an extraordinarily successful malign Russian operation. “Far from being marginal players, Russian information assets and active measures are often kingmakers in our elections,” he declared—a truly remarkable claim that will probably have many wondering how they had failed to notice the dominant role that Russia plays in our political life.
But that wasn’t all. According to Alexander, the leaders of “The People’s Party of Canada, the yellow vest movement, trucker protests, and Wexit [i.e. Western Canadian separatism]” were “radicalized online by Moscow’s active measures” and their funding “had all the hallmarks of Russian influence.” The convoy protests of 2022, Alexander claimed, were designed by the Russians “to distract a country with a huge Ukrainian diaspora as it launched its war of aggression [against Ukraine].” Who knew? And who knew that Russian secret services were so devastatingly efficient as to be able to manipulate a political party and a separatist movement, and to engineer the occupation of the national capital? Frankly, it beggars belief.
In my opinion, there’s a serious problem with threat inflation of this sort. It distracts from real problems and prevents a proper analysis of the causes of those problems by blaming them all on outside actors. When “Blame Russia” is the response to any difficulty, proper solutions are unlikely to be found. (more...)
Canada’s ‘New Red Scare’ is profoundly undemocratic
This episode discusses how Israel utilizes technology in their genocide in Gaza, we talk about the AI Lavender, social media censoring of Palestinian voices, media's extensive biases towards the Israel narrative, and IDF soldiers/ Israel government officials who hold positions in media organizations.
My guest is Paul Biggar from Tech4Palestine
Mount Royal University sociologist Muhannad Ayyash outlines the motivations behind Canada and the U.S. designating the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a terrorist entity.
Statement from Nicole Feriancek, Editor-in-Chief, Ottawa Citizen:
David Pugliese is a valued, trusted and esteemed member of the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia team.
Yesterday, a witness before Parliamentary committee made ridiculous and baseless accusations against David, and suggested his work was compromised by a foreign entity.
We reject that accusation and stand firmly behind David.
At no point have we ever doubted David’s work or integrity, nor have we ever been approached by any intelligence entity concerning David or his work.
David has a long and respected career as a journalist. He has been recognized for his fearless reporting, including multiple National Newspaper Awards and a lifetime achievement award by the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom in 2020.
He will continue his vital reporting on military issues for the Ottawa Citizen. (more...)
Postmedia statement in support of David Pugliese
My statement on Chris Alexander's false claims. pic.twitter.com/9PD1DTwBZk
— David Pugliese (@davidpugliese) October 25, 2024
The CAJ wholeheartedly denounces the ridiculous accusations made against @davidpugliese today.
— Canadian Association of Journalists (@caj) October 25, 2024
It's a sad irony these comments were made in a meeting examining disinformation campaigns. These claims are dangerous & designed to undermine the credibility of journalists. Period. https://t.co/SR2ENv4WI2
Journalist Asa Winstanley was raided by police counter-terrorism forces on October 17 as part of a wider crackdown by UK authorities on Palestine solidarity activism and reporting. He joins Abby Martin to discuss the raid, and his investigative reporting which proved Israel intentionally killed hundreds of their own people on Oct. 7.
Asa is associate editor at The Electronic Intifada (https://electronicintifada.net) and author of the book 'Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn'
Follow him on Twitter at https://x.com/AsaWinstanley
“The relationship with Israel is in a different league entirely”
In light of Israel’s multi-front war in the region, including Gaza, Lebanon and the escalation with Iran, how can we understand the US-Israel ‘special relationship’?
And where does the pro-Israel lobby in the US fit inside this framework?
That’s what we’re asking Harvard professor Stephen Walt, who joined us for an extended conversation on Real Talk.
Walt is considered one of the most influential US foreign policy experts. In 2007, he famously co-authored a book with John Mearsheimer titled ‘The Israel Lobby and US foreign policy’ which generated a lot of attention and controversy for challenging what has been a taboo topic in the US for decades.
Former Meta and Google employees gather to demand an end to Palestine censorship.
Since the Zionist entity’s 21st century Holocaust in Gaza began, Israeli officials, pundits, journalists, and their Western opposite numbers have endlessly invoked the sinister spectre of “terrorism” to justify the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians. It is because of “terrorism”, twice-failed US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton representatively wrote for The Atlantic in November 2023, “Hamas must be permanently erased.” Destroyed hospitals and schools and civilians killed en masse are reasonable “collateral damage.” Such is the unparalleled evil of “terrorists.”
Yet, the relentless stream of heart-rending clips documenting the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) Holocaust deluging social media feeds the world over, and the ever-ratcheting child death toll has compelled countless citizens to ask, “if Hamas are terrorists, then what are Zionists?”. Similar questions were posed during the Empire’s long-running “War on Terror”. Then, the purported global threat of “terrorism” was exploited throughout the West to savage civil liberties and demonise Muslims at home, while waging relentless criminal “interventions” abroad.
Mainstream usage of the term precipitously plummeted thereafter. It is only now regaining popular currency due to the Gaza genocide. This is no accident. As we shall see, Zionists - specifically Israel’s veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu - were fundamental to concocting mainstream conceptions of “terrorism”, explicitly to delegitimize anti-imperial struggles, while validating Western state violence directed at oppressed peoples across the Global South. The impact of this informational assault can be felt in every corner of the world today - not least Gaza.
In fact, one might reasonably conclude the specific foundations of Nakba 2.0, which continues to unfold in grisly real-time right now, were laid decades ago, as a result of the connivances of Netanyahu, the international Zionist lobby, and US Central Intelligence Agency. What follows is the little-known history of how “terrorism” came to be. A majority of the world’s population - the Palestinian people in particular - live with the monstrous consequences every day. (more...)
How Zionists Invented ‘Terrorism’
As Israel spirals further into depravity, Zionist fascism deepens. Canadians promoting Israeli violence are shuttering events, mobilizing the police and banning organizations, as the spectre of state-funded Kahanist ‘security’ groups enters the scene
Zionists are openly calling to “shut down” the upcoming Toronto talk by United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese. On October 10, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, canceled a panel discussion on “workplace mental health” that included a screening of the 1984 film Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family. The next day Concordia banned Montreal film collective Regards Palestiniens’ planned October 11 screening of “Resistance, Why?”
The Concordia and McGill administrations also convinced judges to ban protests across their universities between October 5 and 15 (McGill’s bid to extend the ban on protests within five metres of its many buildings was fortunately denied). Both universities have also effectively barred their decades-old student clubs Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). At McGill, the administration threatened the student union’s entire funding structure if it didn't suspend SPHR.
The kerfuffle whipped up by the genocide lobby over students attending a September 18 Grassy Narrows solidarity protest, which included displays of support for Palestinians, led the Toronto District School Board to cancel its participation in National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Orange Shirt Day) ceremonies. The anti-democratic, anti-Palestinian, ethos spurring that decision continues to lead to firings. Recently, a former senior manager in BC’s Northern Health Authority sued her former employer and four individuals whose complaints about her posting an anti-genocide song to Instagram led to her dismissal. (more...)
Zionist lobby organizations openly seeking fascism in Canada
Israel’s attack on its neighbors could not be sustained without support from the West. And much of that support comes from the United Kingdom. Only a few hundred kilometers from Gaza, the British military base in Akrotiri, Cyprus, serves as the “heartbeat” of the Israeli assault. Israeli warplanes fly there to be serviced and repaired, while Western supply planes fly into the base before making the final trip to Israel.
“Almost no one in this country [the United Kingdom] had heard about it before Gaza and before our work on it,” investigative journalist and returning guest Matt Kennard told Lowkey today, adding:
This is a colony that Britain retained after awarding independence to Cyprus in 1960. But it wasn’t really independent because Cyprus gave 3% of its land mass to the British, on which they built a massive air base on Akrotiri and a massive intelligence base at Dhekelia. And now, they are being used to facilitate a genocide in Gaza, through [supplying] arms, personnel and intelligence.”
Britain’s active support of Israeli actions makes them participants in the ongoing genocide. Last October, the British government issued a “D Notice” instructing media outlets not to report on any elite U.K. SAS commando operations in Gaza. This action immediately raises the question, “What are British special forces doing in Gaza?”
In addition to weapons sales, logistical aid and political support, Britain also secretly trains Israeli troops. Despite this, the Israeli government has continued to attempt to infiltrate and surveil top-level British politicians. Boris Johnson, for instance, revealed that Benjamin Netanyahu personally attempted to place a listening device in his quarters. Kennard’s investigation revealed that one-third of Johnson’s cabinet had their political careers funded either directly by Israel or by the pro-Israel lobby.
New prime minister Keir Starmer has shown himself to be just as loyal to the Israeli project as his Conservative predecessors were. Starmer has actively purged pro-Palestine politicians from his party, including, most notably, former leader Jeremy Corbyn. And so, while millions in the U.K. have marched against Israel’s genocide, the government has remained in full support of Netanyahu and his administration, even going so far as to arrest or harass notable pro-Palestine journalists, such as Richard Medhurst and Asa Winstanley.
Israel’s genocide includes the most draconian censorship and intentional murder of journalists since the creation of the modern war correspondent. The consequences will be catastrophic.
There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.
And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.
The Palestinian reporters in Gaza who fill the void often pay with their lives. They are targeted, along with their families, for assassination. At least 128 journalists and media workers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, have been killed and 69 have been imprisoned, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.
Israel bombed a building on Friday in southern Lebanon housing seven media organizations, killing three journalists from Al Mayadeen and Al Manar and injuring 15 others. Since Oct. 7, Israel has killed 11 journalists in Lebanon.
Al Jazeera cameraman Fadi al-Wahidi, who was shot in the neck in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza by an Israeli sniper earlier this month, is in a coma. Israel has refused permission for him to seek medical care outside of Gaza. Like most of the targeted journalists, including his murdered colleague Shireen Abu Akleh, he was wearing a helmet and flak jacket that identified him as press.
The Israeli military has branded as “terrorists” six Palestinian journalists in Gaza who work for Al Jazeera.
“These 6 Palestinians are among the last journalists surviving Israel's onslaught in Gaza,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said. “Declaring them ‘terrorists’ sounds like a death sentence.” (more...)
In today's show, we expose the symbiotic relationship between the UK Israel Tech Hub and the British government's penchant for healthcare privatization
US reporter and Grayzone contributor Jeremy Loffredo details the harrowing experience of being arrested, abused, and held in solitary confinement by Israeli authorities, who accused him of "supporting an enemy during wartime" for factual reporting which violated no laws or regulations.
Canada has played a significant role in nurturing pro-NATO Ukrainian nationalism. Author of the recently released Family Ties: How a Ukrainian Nazi and a living witness link Canada to Ukraine today, Peter McFarlane joined Talking Foreign Policy to discuss his new book, the Nazis commemorated on Canada's Memorial to the Victims of Communism and how this history shapes Canada's contribution to the NATO proxy war.
Let’s call it what it is - a Mediacide. The pro-Israel lobby is committing it - without any shame or regard for truth…
And so today, we’re asking you to donate however much money you’re able to the Movement Media Hub so that we can keep combatting this Mediacide and uplifting historically silenced voices.
A group of anonymous pro-Palestinian activists targeted various Siemens sites in Berlin, in protest of the company's role in arming the Zionist entity in its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Siemens Energy is a major provider in the supply chain of components used by German weapons producers, which export weapons around the world, including to Israel.
Siemens has been providing security systems for Israeli prisons, including in Gilboa prison, a detention center for Palestinian political prisoners in northern occupied Palestine. It has been confirmed that Siemens Energy is building an undersea electricity cable made for Israel to export what they drill from the gas-fields near Gaza between Israel and the EU.
While Siemens benefits from the annihilation of Gaza, Siemensstadt unveils plans for the construction of pseudo-utopian cities in Germany. Siemensstadt Square, is an urban living project set to be founded in 2035, that according to Siemens seeks to ‘connect the digital world with the real world’ and house people who plan to ‘test and produce the technologies of tomorrow.’ We reject this technofascist nightmare!
As long as Siemens profits from genocide, rendering Palestine unlivable for Palestinians, we call on all people of conscience to make the ‘sustainable city of the future’ unlivable for the wealthy technocrats who fund genocide.
We will not let the complicity of Germany and German companies in the genocide be normalized. Escalate! Organize! Attack! Until the liberation of Palestine and the fall of all colonial structures!
