The US State Department has confirmed it's ordered the closure of the Washington mission of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. A statement said that PLO leaders had failed to engage with US efforts to bring about peace with Israel, and had attempted to prompt an investigation of Israel by the International Criminal Court. A senior Palestinian official called the decision a 'dangerous escalation'.
Louise Minchin: I think people are divided on this. We're slightly divided, aren't we?
Dan Walker: I just think...
Louise Minchin: Gently divided.
Dan Walker: I'm not sure I'm saying it's a brilliant video...
Louise Minchin: No.
Dan Walker: I'm just saying it's...People seem to be taking great offence, when I think there's an element of sense of humour failure from some people who are offended by that but they're not offended by a comedian who held up a decapitated head of the President.
Louise Minchin: Well, there you go. So feel free to get in touch, tell us what you think. I personally...I don't watch a lot of wrestling, so for me, you know, I didn't know that it was all heavily scripted and all the rest of it. To me it looks quite violent.
Dan Walker: But still...exactly, and you can see there is clearly sort of violence in the video and you can see why people could look at that and think I can't believe that a President - let's not forget, a President - has actually tweeted that from his presidential account, and it was re- tweeted from the official Potus account as well.
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| Kim 'n' Hillary. 'Stronger together' |
Video: Fawning presstitute "reporters" pose for photos with Hillary as they laugh at her jokes. https://t.co/nwlRRGhBFq pic.twitter.com/yRfdAF0cVb— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 7, 2016
Video: Pathetic question by @BBCKimGhattas about 'prejudice' Hillary's faced being 'ahead' of her time #TTT16 pic.twitter.com/nJCp8P8E5o— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 7, 2016
It seems to me that over time you've been often ahead of your time, you've been sometimes misunderstood, fought off a lot of prejudice. Do you think that, today, America understands you and is ready to accept you?
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Vice-President Masoumeh Ebtekar and Kim Ghattas
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| Jon Leyne |
“In 2007 came his most difficult posting – Tehran. The Iranian government was suspicious of foreign reporters, particularly after massive street protests erupted in response to disputed presidential elections in June 2009. Despite continued threats that the BBC bureau would be shut down, Leyne refused to dilute his coverage, exhibiting much bravery. Eventually, he was expelled when the authorities accused the BBC of fomenting revolt. Shortly after his departure, a pro-government Iranian newspaper accused him of hiring thugs to kill Neda Agha-Soltan – who was shot dead during election protests – so that he could make a documentary.”
“According to the Fars news agency, 17 foreign media organisations have been granted press visas this month alone, including the Forward, France’s Arte channel, Science magazine, Le Monde and France Culture, as well as the BBC.”
“But arrangements for Ghattas’s trip reflected continuing Iranian sensitivities: she was apparently selected for the assignment because she is Dutch and not a UK national. It was also agreed that none of the material would be broadcast on the BBC Persian TV channel, which is extremely popular with ordinary Iranians but strongly disliked by the government.
The only BBC journalist to have visited Iran since 2009 was its chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, who travelled to Tehran with the party of the EU’s foreign policy chief after the nuclear agreement in Vienna.”
“My visit, coming after two years of seeking a journalist’s visa to report from Iran, represented something special: I was the first journalist from a Jewish, pro-Israel (if not always pro-Israel government) publication to be granted a journalist’s visa since the 1979 Revolution. Whether this was a reflection of increased openness by the government I cannot say. My visa came only after a former representative of Iran’s Jewish community in the country’s parliament wrote a letter on my behalf.”
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| Iranian 'man in the street' |
How the Ayatollah duped The Forward (and how the NYT plays along)
This "referendum" that they are referring to would be open to all who identify themselves as Palestinian around the world, at last count some 12 million. Jews could only vote if their ancestors had lived in Ottoman Palestine and they still live in Israel. The "referendum" would then be to decide what to do with the Jews who moved to Israel since 1948. Those millions of Jews don't have a vote. The Ayatollah knows that the results of this "referendum" would be to expel all the Jews who have lived in Israel for less than a century.
"Referendum," when used by Iranians, is a codeword for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. And they admit this freely for people who bother to read their writings.
But there may be an infinitesimal theoretical chance that these "Palestinians" would vote to allow a Jewish state on land that they claim as being stolen from them.
This is what these clerics and officials are saying, and dupes like Larry Cohler-Esses is too ignorant of the facts to understand that he has been made into a fool.
This is explicit in the Ayatollah Khamenei's writings. But the Forward journalist is too enamored of the idea of a moderate Iran that he doesn't even know the basics of how Khamenei wants to destroy Israel - something that his interviewees agree with but were not asked.
The article by Larry Cohler-Esses is interesting and worth reading, but it’s also a bit on the naïve side. Reporting from police states on a journalist visa doesn’t always take nerves of steel (such countries are generally not dangerous places for foreign visitors if permission to work there has been granted), but it does require heavy doses of skepticism.
“Though I had to work with a government fixer and translator,” he writes, “I decided which people I wanted to interview and what I would ask them.”
Perhaps, but he has no way of knowing if the translations are accurate, and meanwhile I know for a fact that both the translator and the fixer reported on him to the government. They were required by law to do so. For all he and I know, they worked for the Ministry of Intelligence.”
“Iran’s official line right now to Western audiences is that the government is increasingly moderate, reasonable, and flexible. (That’s probably the only reason a reporter from The Forward was given a journalist visa in the first place.)
Anyway, it makes no sense that Iran only objects to Israeli policy. Iranian leaders routinely scream Death to Israel. They also routinely scream Death to America.”
There are valuable passages in Cohler-Esses’s article too. He quotes people who doubt that the easing of sanctions will benefit ordinary people. The power holder will not allow it.
“So Cohler-Esses’ naiveté is balanced out to an extent with this sort of reporting. It’s also countered by an accurate analysis of who’s really in charge.
He ably dissects what he calls the Deep State—Khamenei and the instruments of power he controls directly, such as the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It’s the Deep State that executes dissidents, throws demonstrators into prison, and backs Iranian terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq. And the Iranian people, try as they might, have no leverage to stop it, not even when they “elect” a relative moderate.”
“And it is a facade. The Iranian "referendum" mentioned in the article would exclude Jews who could not prove ancestry in Israel before 1918, but no such restriction on Palestinian Arabs. No criticism from the likes of you. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is a racist apartheid regime which has a similar mantra of ethnically cleansing Jews from Jerusalem and the west bank, not unlike Hamas and Islamic Jihad who, if they were given the opportunity would extirpate the whole. No criticism from you.
The Arab nations have treated Palestinians as junkyard dogs, penning them in concentration camp like conditions and denying them the possibility of integration into their own societies. No criticism from you. And some 850,000 Jews were made refugees from Muslim countries as Arab nations turned on their Jews, many of whom had lived there since long before Mohammed was a gleam in his father Abdullah's eye. No criticism from you.
The Arabs have turned an naksa (setback) into a nakba (catastrophe). There was no good reason other than the discrimination placed on them by their fellow Arabs that they could not have recovered their social well being in the same manner as Indians, Pakistanis, Greeks, Hungarians, Jews, Croats, Vietnamese and other countless others have done in the wake of adversity. No criticism from you.
We're fed up with being your scapegoat of choice, Mr Cross. We didn't kill Jesus, we don't control the banks, the newspapers nor the governments of the world and never have. It's tiresome to listen to people like you repeat this. We've continually tried to find a mutually acceptable accommodation with the Palestinian leadership which they've rejected time and again. Neither Gaza nor the PA is set up as liberal or democratic, and after several failed attempts perhaps its best to wait and see what the next generation will bring about.
Finally Israel is a liberal and conservative multicultural pluralistic middle eastern western Jewish and democratic society. Your demagoguery and claims have been examined and considered more often than they have warranted. It's time you stopped abusing others and find yourself a new hobby.”
"This coin, which says "Freedom of Zion" in Hebrew, was used by Jews 2,000 years ago in the state of Israel, in what you call occupied. One cannot occupy his own home."
