Look at these simple facts, suckers, about Jew S A campaign donations--and u can see why Jews in Israel mass-murder Palestinians with impunity

[Apollonian]

Revealed: Congress backers of Gaza war received most from pro-Israel donors​

Guardian analysis finds top recipients of pro-Israel contributions in last elections were centrist Democrats who defeated progressives in primaries

Tom Perkins, with data reporting by Will Craft
Wed 10 Jan 2024 07.30 EST

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...member-pro-israel-donations-military-support/

Congress members who were more supportive of Israel at the start of the Gaza war received over $100,000 more on average from pro-Israel donors during their last election than those who most supported Palestine, a Guardian analysis of campaign data shows.
Those who took more money most often called for US military support and backed Israel’s response, even as Gaza’s civilian death toll mounted, the findings show. The analysis, which looks at positions taken during the war’s first six weeks, does not prove any particular member changed their position because they received pro-Israel campaign donations. However, some campaign finance experts who viewed the data argue that donor spending helped fuel Congress’s overwhelming support for Israel.

The analysis compared campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups and individuals to almost every member of the current Congress with each lawmaker’s statements on the war through mid-November.
About 82% of Congress members were more supportive of Israel, and just 9% more supportive of Palestine during this period. The remainder had “mixed” views. Legislators categorized as supportive of Israel received about $125,000 on average during their last election, while those supportive of Palestine on average took about $18,000.
The volume and breadth of the donors’ spending is considerable: over $58m went to current Congress members, and all but 33 received donations.
The findings have “profound implications for what American policy toward … Israel looks like”, said John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political scientist and co-author of the 2006 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. “If there was no lobby pushing Congress in a particular direction in a really forceful way, the position of the US Congress on the war in Gaza would be fundamentally different.”
The groups’ campaign contributions have varying goals depending on the member. Spending can be “defensive” or “shore up support” in Congress for allies who already share pro-Israel groups’ views, said Sarah Bryner, a spokesperson for Open Secrets, which tracks campaign finance spending and collected the contributions data used in the Guardian’s analysis. Spending can also be “offensive”, or intended to persuade a lawmaker to take a pro-Israel position, campaign finance observers and political strategists who reviewed the data said.
The donors’ highest profile battles have involved members of the “The Squad”, like Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are among the most critical of Israel. But statements from Representatives Don Bacon, Dan Kildee and André Carson in the wake of the 7 October attack in which 1,200 Israelis were killed help illustrate varying levels of donations and responses across Congress.
All three first strongly condemned the assault’s perpetrators and expressed deep sympathy for the victims, but their messaging quickly diverged.
Bacon, who received about $250,000, offered full-throated support for Israel: “Whatever Israel wants … we should be there to help.”
Carson, who received $3,000, took aim at Israel, denouncing its “unfair, two-tiered rule over the Palestinian people” and demanded a ceasefire.
Kildee, who received $91,000, fell somewhere in between, underscoring “Israel’s security and its right to respond” and his ”grave concern” over its airstrikes killing thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Included in the analysis are 33 pro-Israel groups and a number of individuals that work to shore up US political support, secure military assistance and steer national dialogue. Its prominent campaign finance players include the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), Democratic Majority For Israel (DMFI), and J Street.
The donors are not ideologically monolithic. J Street, which calls itself “pro-Israel and pro-peace” and is considered among the most liberal Pacs, only gave to Democrats, and in some cases backed progressive candidates targeted by more conservative Pacs, like Aipac or DMFI. While donors across the spectrum have pressured lawmakers to support Israel following 7 October, J Street has been among the only group to raise concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and express support for conditioning aid to Israel.
The groups are a powerful force in US politics that draw comparisons to the National Rifle Association (NRA) at the peak of its power, and spent more on the 2022 Congress than other special interests, such as the oil and gas industry.
The former president Barack Obama, in his 2020 memoir, detailed the threat Aipac presents to Israel’s critics, who risked “being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election”, he wrote.
In a statement to the Guardian, an Aipac spokesperson, Marshall Wittmann, said the group is “proud of our engagement in the democratic process – as is our right as Americans – to advance the relationship between the US and Israel”.
The donors’ success rate is often high: DMFI-backed candidates won over 80% of their 2022 races, the group says. Pacs such as DMFI and Aipac’s United Democracy Project, which was launched during the 2022 cycle, have focused attacks on progressive candidates.
The top six recipients of pro-Israel donor support in 2022 were centrist Democrats who defeated progressives in primaries and collectively accounted for around $25m, or about 42% of the donors’ spending.

What we found​

To determine whether lawmakers were supportive of Israel, Palestine or had a mixed response, the Guardian examined officials’ media statements, X accounts and letters to Joe Biden from 7 October through mid-November.
Quick Guide

Methodology​

Show

The unprecedented moment in US-Israeli relations has helped lay bare the extent of Congress’s support for Israel.
The analysis of Congress members’ responses in this period found:

• 93% called for US military or financial support for Israel.
• 81% supported Israel’s response.
• 17% criticized Israel or called for a ceasefire.
• 17% contextualized the war, meaning they raised issues like Israeli settlement expansion or human rights violations in Gaza that preceded the 7 October attack.

Some legislators’ positions have shifted as a humanitarian crisis deepened and Israeli attacks caused mass civilian casualties. Following Israel’s deadly strike on the Jabalia refugee camp, for example Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Maxine Waters, who had previously shown stronger support for Israel, called for a ceasefire.
Congress has been much more sympathetic to Israeli civilian victims than Palestinian, but party affiliation, not money, predicted lawmakers’ statements on civilian casualties.
The spending patterns detailed in the analysis help explain why war exploded in Gaza, said Stephen Walt, a Harvard University international affairs professor who co-authored the book with Mearsheimer. Over recent decades, Israel likely would have been unable to carry out many of its inflammatory policies, like settlement expansion, without a “pro-Israel lobby” to help secure US arms and political support, he said.
Ideas such as US sanctions, withholding military aid or the US sponsoring a critical United Nations Security Council resolution are “complete science fiction” in large part because of the groups’ influence, Walt added.
Many of the pro-Israel groups have opposed Palestinian statehood, and played a significant role in derailing peace processes, Mearsheimer said.
“If the lobby had worked with any administrations to allow presidents to pressure Israel to produce an agreement that led to a Palestinian state, then we probably would not be in this disastrous situation,” he said.
Some groups mobilized against representatives who supported Palestinian statehood. In 2022, Aipac supported the ouster of the former representative Andy Levin, a Jewish progressive and self-described Zionist, in part over his proposed bill calling for a two-state solution and “an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories”.
Ahead of Levin’s primary, Aipac’s former president sent out a fundraising pitch calling Levin’s race against centrist Representative Haley Stevens a “rare opportunity to defeat arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the US-Israel relationship”.
The race turned into a battle between conservative and liberal donor groups: donors poured nearly $5.4m into backing Stevens. She easily beat Levin, who was backed with about $700,000 in J Street support. The Guardian analysis found Stevens to be among the staunchest supporters of Israel’s response – she was one of just 12 Democrats who broke with the party to vote for a GOP Israel assistance bill that did not include humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Congress members who were more supportive of Palestinian causes or more neutral prior to being elected, like Senator John Fetterman, Representative Maxwell Frost and Senator Raphael Warnock, shifted to take more pro-Israel positions after pro-Israel groups made donations, or threatened to get involved in a race. The Guardian found Fetterman and Warnock to be more supportive of Israel following the 7 October attacks, while Frost had a mixed response and has signed onto a resolution calling for a ceasefire.
The DMFI president, Mark Mellman, said the analysis does not prove that pro-Israel donor contributions influenced Congress’s position or caused any lawmaker to change their views on Israel. Anyone who posits that is “an advocate, not an analyst”, he said.
“I’m in favor of changing how it works, but it works that way for every issue, for every progressive issue, for every conservative issue, so there is absolutely nothing unique about pro-Israel community in this respect,” he said. “Not acknowledging that would be antisemitic.”
Campaign finance experts noted that some congressional donations are given to members because they already share a position, raising a “chicken or egg” question about the role of the money in members’ views. Bacon, a former Air Force colonel, said Israel has strategic value to the US and noted he is an evangelical with a “spiritual connection” to Israel.
Dozens of evangelicals serve in Congress, and Bacon said the question of supporting Israel “is a matter of the heart” for many people like him.
“My support comes from the time I was five years old and my dad said ‘Those who bless Israel will be blessed’ which is right out of the Old Testament,” Bacon told the Guardian.

At odds with the public​

The analysis also highlights how most of Congress is in line with conservative pro-Israel positions – but not with those of the US public. While the Guardian found just 17% of Congress was critical of Israel or called for a ceasefire in the first six weeks of the war, US polls show up to 68% of Americans support a ceasefire, and around 80% of Democrats.
“There is no question” pro-Israel donor contributions spread across Congress drive the disparity, said James Zogby, a pollster and founder of the Arab American Institute. But he believes this is not a matter of more robust public debate because “if you raise the issue of money then you run the risk of being called an antisemite,” he added.
The Guardian identified 132 legislators who received less than $10,000 in backing, including 33 who received $0, but are still supportive of Israel. While that includes some Republicans who are ideologically aligned with groups like Aipac, some experts who reviewed the data believe it points to the donors’ strength.
Their vast spending instills fear across Congress, and Aipac is the “elephant in the room” in Democratic campaigns, said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist who said consultants have advised candidates to publicly take pro-Israel positions to placate pro-Israel donors.
“There aren’t that many lobbies that are willing to spend millions of dollars to unseat you in a primary,” Shahid added.
Moreover, most lawmakers represent districts with very few Jewish or Arab American constituents to pressure them on votes, and there is virtually no pro-Palestine lobby to counterweight, Mearsheimer noted. That makes it easier and safer for lawmakers to take pro-Israel positions, he added.
The 2022 primary in North Carolina’s first congressional district encapsulated those issues. Relatively few Jews or Arab Americans live in the area, and the Democratic representative Don Davis, armed with about $2.8m in donor support, defeated a more progressive candidate before winning in the general election.
Davis, fresh off a junket trip to Israel funded by Aipac in August, was one of 10 Democrats who in November broke with the party to vote to censure Tlaib and support the GOP Israel funding bill that did not include humanitarian aid for Palestinians.
Other Congress members have shifted positions or “been silenced on Palestine only because they were afraid of the wrath of Aipac,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which backs progressive candidates.
Democrats on average received more money than Republicans. Those who the Guardian found were supportive of Israel on average received about $243,000 compared with $52,000 for their GOP counterparts.
The next election promises more of the same. A pro-Israel donor has allegedly already offered $20m in backing for someone to run against Tlaib, the nation’s only Palestinian American lawmaker. Representative Jamaal Bowman, who is backed by J Street, faces a challenger who will likely receive support from more conservative pro-Israel groups.
Meanwhile, Representative Summer Lee, who, with around $38,000 in J Street support, defeated a candidate backed with millions in funding from more conservative pro-Israel groups, is again facing a challenge from a more pro-Israel candidate.
Perhaps the most vocal critic of Aipac has been Representative Mark Pocan, who received $5,500 in pro-Israel funding, and in November said he did not “give a F**k about Aipac”, labelling it a “cancer” in US politics.
The group took GOP dark money and spent it in Democratic primaries, often at levels exceeding candidate spending, and across a high number of races, Pocan said. As the strategy pays dividends on the war, he fears it will be copied by other powerful lobbies, which he said could be a “deathblow to democracy”.
“If outside groups – especially in primaries where so much less money is spent – decide to purchase elections and make them auctions, that really will change the character of Congress in a very negative way,” Pocan said.

 

[Apollonian]

Antisemitism skyrockets on social media at Harvard after Claudine Gay’s departure​

Link: https://www.timesofisrael.com/antis...s-social-media-after-claudine-gays-departure/

With former president stepping down amid controversies over antisemitism on campus and allegations of plagiarism, a new avalanche of hate speech has been unleashed​

By JORDANA HORN 10 January 2024, 5:49 pm

• 
  A truck with electronic panels calling attention to a recent controversy involving testimony to Congress by presidents of three prestigious schools drives along a street on December 12, 2023, near Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
• 
  George Stevens, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, front, hands out leaflets to passers-by near an entrance to Harvard University, December 12, 2023, while joining with anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
• 
  The Harvard campus Hillel House welcomes students into its 'safe space,' in Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 2023. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
• 
  A pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rally held at Harvard University, October 15, 2023. (Screenshot: X; used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

In the wake of Claudine Gay’s January 2 resignation from the Harvard presidency, Harvard students are reporting that the anonymous campus social media platform Sidechat has become inundated with an unprecedented level of overt antisemitism.
Sidechat requires all participants on its Harvard platform to have a Harvard email address — meaning that while all posters are anonymous, they must be current undergraduates, graduate students, continuing education students, alumni, faculty or staff.
Comments range from pure hate (“stfu pedo lover! All of you Zionists are the same. Killers and rapists of children!”) to allegations of Jewish pedophilia (“of course someone who’s on epstein [sic] list would defend Israel,”) to offensive stereotypes (“She looks just as dumb as her nose is crooked”).

Harvard Divinity School graduate student Shabbos Kestenbaum told The Times of Israel that he finds it particularly concerning that the conspiracy theories and Jew-hatred are appearing in an online community exclusively made up of Harvard students, who are supposed to represent part of the academic elite.
“On the Sidechat app, people take off their masks,” Kestenbaum said. “It’s not about ‘context’ anymore, or anti-Zionism: it’s out-and-out hatred for Jews.”
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Antisemitism was already on the rise at Harvard and other universities around the United States amid an uptick of anti-Israel activism following the October 7 massacre in which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists brutally murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted roughly 240 more to the Gaza Strip.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, right, with Claudine Gay at Gay’s inauguration as Harvard president, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, September 29, 2023. (Courtesy)
Gay, Harvard’s first Black president and shortest-tenured one, refused to say outright that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews are a violation of her school’s conduct policy during a December 5, 2023, congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. She resigned just shy of a month later at the center of multiple controversies involving her testimony, her response to campus antisemitism, and allegations of plagiarism that surfaced following her testimony.
Kestenbaum, who is an Orthodox Jew, said that Gay’s resignation letter and subsequent op-ed piece in The New York Times about the resignation — neither of which took either responsibility for any wrongdoing or any explicit position against antisemitism — were rife with ambiguity as to the cause for her resignation and thus opened the door “for all sorts of speculation and hatred.”
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who runs the Harvard Chabad House, said that many Jewish students are rightly “shaken” by the vitriol of the antisemitic comments and conspiracy theories going around on Sidechat.

[Students fear] they are living among people who wish for and call for and celebrate the death of Jews

“In my role as a rabbi to Harvard Jewish students, I’m an address they come to regularly to express their horror, and in some cases, their fear, that they are living among people who wish for and call for and celebrate the death of Jews,” Zarchi said, noting that he is regularly sent examples of Sidechat hate from Jewish members of the community.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi (left) with interim Harvard President Alan Garber in an undated photo taken in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Courtesy)
In written testimony before the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce last month, then-Harvard president Gay wrote, “We encourage the vigorous exchange of ideas but we will not, under any circumstances, permit speech that incites violence, threatens safety, or violates Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment. My administration has repeatedly made crystal clear that antisemitism and other forms of hate have no place at Harvard. Threats and intimidation have no place at Harvard.”
In an email last week responding to one student’s allegations and screenshots of antisemitic posts on Sidechat, the Harvard Office for Equity Diversity Inclusion and Belonging (OEDIB) noted that Sidechat is “not offered, managed, or endorsed by Harvard,” but that nonetheless, the OEDIB has “begun taking steps immediately to try to address the concerning content.”
The steps listed include forwarding sample Sidechat content to the Harvard University Police Department to determine if any posts constitute direct threats warranting law enforcement action, as well as reaching out to Sidechat’s leadership.
According to the email, OEDIB requested “more clarity on [Sidechat’s] sign-up process and who can post content to the Harvard community space.”

Pro-Palestine, anti-Israel supporters gather for a rally at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
Sidechat is run by and was created by Flower Ave Inc, a developer studio of mobile apps that also created YikYak, another anonymous messaging platform. Its community guidelines state that the site doesn’t “allow content that perpetuates the oppression of marginalized communities by promoting discrimination against (or hatred toward) certain groups of people,” or “allow anything that could be interpreted as bullying or harassment, both toward individuals and groups.”
That being the case, Daniel Kelley, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of strategy and operations for the Center for Tech and Society, holds the platform, rather than the institutions using it, responsible for dangerous content posted on it.

It’s not a Harvard problem, in a sense — it’s a Sidechat problem

“It’s not a Harvard problem, in a sense — it’s a Sidechat problem,” Kelley told The Times of Israel. “Ensuring the community at Harvard is inclusive and welcoming is something that Harvard should try to do, but if you’re talking about the problem of hate proliferating on a third party platform… well, there’s a role for Harvard to play to advocate with Sidechat to prioritize the safety of their students, but the ultimate responsibility for the proliferation of hate on the platform is on the platform itself.”

A truck calling Harvard a disgrace drives around Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 2023. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
“They have to create rules, abide by them and enforce them when people are experiencing hate,” Kelley said, noting that the ADL is also in discussions with Sidechat “to escalate content complaints and try to educate the platform about the nature of people’s experiences.”
Sidechat did not respond to Times of Israel requests for comment.

There should be no tolerance of antisemitic harassment at Harvard, whether online or on campus

Regardless of whether or not the platform is ultimately responsible, those on the ground want to see a more proactive approach from university officials.
“There should be no tolerance of antisemitic harassment at Harvard, whether online or on campus. We’re speaking with various members of the university administration, urging them to take action to counter this antisemitism and protect Jewish students, and are here for students who need help and support,” said Rabbi Getzel Davis, campus rabbi at Harvard Hillel.

The Harvard campus Hillel House welcomes students into its ‘safe space,’ in Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 12, 2023. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
Zarchi agreed, adding that Jewish students, faculty and staff should make efforts to actively report the antisemitic hate they see transpire on the platform to provide a fuller picture of the scope of the problem.
“I encourage people to report it to Harvard administrators because they should be aware of the mindset of members of the Harvard community and understand how students are thinking and acting and posting, so that they can understand what role they, as a university, can play in educating a student body which is clearly filled with students who have very hateful and very distorted views of the Jewish people,” Zarchi said.
For now, the online hate continues unchecked, leaving students to fear that a significant — but as of now unverifiable — number of their peers harbor a simmering hostility toward Jews that threatens to boil over at any time.
“As a Jewish student, I don’t feel safe coming back to campus two weeks from now,” Kestenbaum said.

 

[Apollonian]

TORY LOBBY GROUP SECRETLY FUNDED BY ISRAELI STATE-AFFILIATED INSTITUTE​

Link: https://www.declassifieduk.org/tory...funded-by-israeli-state-affiliated-institute/

Conservative Friends of Israel received funds from one of the most established Zionist organisations in Jerusalem.

PHIL MILLER
31 JANUARY 2024

The Jewish Agency’s headquarters in Jerusalem. (Photo: Hagai Agmon-Snir / Wikimedia)

• CFI’s own chairman felt the lobby group had become a “Likud office in London” during the 1980s

A powerful Westminster lobby group took money from an organisation with close ties to the State of Israel, it has emerged.
Around 80% of Tory MPs are members of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) – which is the largest funder of foreign trips for British politicians.
Yet CFI’s own source of income has long been shrouded in secrecy, as it does not publicly disclose its donors.
Declassified can now reveal that those have included the Jewish Agency. That’s a parastatal body in Jerusalem, which is legally required to assist new migrants to Israel.
It has been encouraging Jews to move there from abroad for almost a century – offering considerable financial incentives – and actively supports those who wish to enlist in Israel’s army.
The Jewish Agency, now led by Major General Doron Almog, is one of Israel’s four “national institutions” that pre-date the State’s creation in 1948. When the country became independent, its first prime minister was David Ben-Gurion, the then head of the Jewish Agency.
Together with its twin, the World Zionist Organisation, as well as the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod (The Foundation Fund), these groups were at the forefront of buying land and promoting (often illegal) migration to Palestine during British rule.

‘Likud office in London’​

The revelation that CFI was funded by the Jewish Agency is contained in minutes from a meeting held in 1990 between the lobby group’s then chairman, British MP Robert Rhodes-James, and UK foreign minister Douglas Hogg.
Rhodes-James is recorded as saying: “CFI had been in poor shape when he took over two years ago. It had degenerated into a virtual ‘Likud office in London’, even taking money from the Jewish agency.”
The amount of money is not mentioned. Likud is the right-wing political party led by Israel’s current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Likud’s original manifesto controversially pledged: “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
Rhodes-James went on to say: “CFI was now financially independent, and had earned respect as a group of spokesmen for HMG [the British government] sympathetic to Israel, rather than mere apologists for every Israeli action (even if some members remained uncritical Likud supporters).”
Whether CFI retained its financial independence after 1990 is unclear. The group has become a staunch defender of Netanyahu’s policies, even as the International Court of Justice warns Israel could be committing genocide in Gaza.
CFI and the Jewish Agency did not respond to requests for comment.

 

[Apollonian]

Asked About Dead Palestinian Kids, Rep. Andy Ogles Says ‘Kill Em All’​

Link: https://news.antiwar.com/2024/02/21...stinian-kids-rep-andy-ogles-says-kill-em-all/

Ogles was confronted by activists in Washington

by Dave DeCamp February 21, 2024 at 3:36 pm

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) was confronted by peace activists in Washington on Tuesday about the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and sparked an outcry for saying “kill ’em all” when asked about Palestinian children being killed with US support.
“I’ve seen the footage of shredded children’s bodies. That’s my taxpayer dollars that are going to bomb those kids,” an activist said to Ogles.
“I think we should kill ’em all, if that makes you feel better,” Ogles replied. “Everybody in Hamas.”
The comments sparked an outcry and backlash, including from within Ogles’ state of Tennessee. In response, Ogles’ office insisted he was specifically talking about Hamas, but the congressman said “kill ’em all” after the activist referenced children being killed by Israel with US support.

Ogles also justified the brutal Israeli campaign in Gaza by saying, “Hamas and the Palestinians have been attacking Israel for 20 years. It’s time to pay the piper.”
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), recently made similar comments when asked about babies being killed in Gaza. “These are not innocent Palestinian civilians across the world,” Mast said.
When asked about the Palestinians who are starving in the Gaza Strip, Mast replied, “The half a million people starving to death are people that should go out there and put a government in place that doesn’t go out there and attack Israel on a daily basis.”

 

[Apollonian]

Israel engineers “deep pockets of starvation” across Gaza​

Nora Barrows-Friedman Rights and Accountability 14 February 2024

Link: https://electronicintifada.net/blog...ngineers-deep-pockets-starvation-across-gaza/

[see numerous vids at site link, above]

Palestinian children face extreme hunger across Gaza. Deir El-Balah, 2 February.
Omar AshtawyAPA images
Israel is starving Gaza.
Children “are going without food for days, as aid convoys are increasingly denied permits to enter,” reported the BBC on 10 February.
The United Nations estimates that nearly one in every 10 Palestinian children in Gaza under 5 years old is now acutely malnourished.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters on 2 February that the agency’s partners have indicated a “sharp rise in acute malnutrition” across the population in Gaza, “with a 12-fold increase compared to the rate recorded before the hostilities.”
There are only 70-100 trucks entering Gaza per day “in the best case scenario,” with only “two of those trucks going to the northern governorates,” according to estimates by the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Before Israel’s attacks began in October, approximately 500 trucks entered Gaza each day.
“What enters the Strip does not meet the minimum level of the population’s needs in light of the severe, continuous and accumulated deprivation of food, drinking water and medicine supplies [amid its] growing need due to the ongoing siege and genocide,” stated Lima Bustami, legal department director at Euro-Med.
“The situation is getting more complicated because the people living in the Gaza Strip are under siege from all sides, making it impossible for them to produce the food they need locally or get it from other sources,” Bustami added.
Last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide. The order was among a number of provisional measures issued by the court in a case which South Africa is taking against Israel.
Israel is supposed to inform the court within one month what steps it was taking to comply with the 26 January order. A full examination of South Africa’s case by the ICJ will take place at a later stage.
Declaring a state of famine “may find its way before the International Court of Justice,” said Bustami.
Such a declaration “could either lead to the request of an amendment [to the provisional measures issued on 26 January]… or as additional evidence that the court will weigh during its consideration of the merits of the case and issuing its final ruling,” Euro-Med stated.
A recent report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) says that between 8 December and 7 February, the entire population of the Gaza Strip, approximately 2.3 million people, has been classified as in “crisis or worse.”
“This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country,” the IPC states.
Moreover, the IPC states that about half of the population is in a food emergency and “at least one in four households (more than half a million people) is facing catastrophic conditions” – characterized by an “extreme lack of food, starvation and exhaustion of coping capacities.”
According to the IPC, “even though the levels of acute malnutrition and non-trauma related mortality might not have yet crossed famine thresholds, these are typically the outcomes of prolonged and extreme food consumption gaps.”
The group notes the “increased nutritional vulnerability of children, pregnant and breastfeeding women and the elderly is a particular source of concern.”

Shipping containers left at port​

Citing financial restrictions against UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, the Israeli government is holding up more than 1,000 shipping containers of vital food items at the Ashdod port, just 20 miles north of the Gaza boundary.
The shipments, which contain rice, flour, chickpeas, sugar and cooking oil, are enough to feed more than 1 million people for one month.

Last month, Israel said it would allow flour to enter Gaza through Ashdod, a major commercial port north of the Gaza boundary after international aid agencies warned of starvation in the northern areas and urged Israel to allow the use of Ashdod.

On 19 January, the White House issued a boastful statement saying that President Joe Biden “welcomed” Israel’s decision to “permit the shipment of flour for the Palestinian people directly through Ashdod port while our teams separately work on options for more direct maritime delivery of assistance into Gaza.”
But that flour has been sitting at the port for weeks.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, has admitted that he blocked the shipments in coordination with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister.
Axios reported on Tuesday that Smotrich “blocked the transfer of the flour after he was notified that it was destined for UNRWA, the primary aid group in Gaza.”
“He ordered the Israeli customs service not to release the shipment as long as UNRWA is the recipient,” Axios added.
In response, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller referred to discussions with Israel aimed at allowing the aid to be delivered.
“We had a commitment from the government of Israel to let that flour go through, and we expect them to deliver on that commitment,” Miller said on Tuesday.

Last week, Israeli naval forces attacked a food aid convoy that was reportedly heading to northern Gaza.


Along with blocking or attacking aid trucks, Israeli forces are also shooting at fishers attempting to provide food for their hungry families.

On 8 February, the bodies of two fishers “were recovered after their boat was reportedly struck by Israeli forces in western Rafah” the day before, reported the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“The port of Gaza has been severely damaged, and most of the fishing boats have been destroyed,” the UN added.
Israel is systematically destroying farms as well.
In December, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization used satellite imaging to assess and analyze damage to Gaza’s arable land.
The agency reported that more than 27 percent of all cropland in Gaza was damaged, as was more than 20 percent of all greenhouses. Nearly 500 irrigation wells were damaged as well, the UN noted.
At the end of January, however, the UN Satellite Centre “showed damage to 34 percent of arable land,” UN OCHA reported.
“Most of the infrastructure of the agrifood sector was damaged, ranging from commercial facilities (livestock farms, stores for products and inputs, etc.) to household facilities, such as home barns and animal shelters.”

“Deep pockets of starvation”​

“Everyone in Gaza is hungry. Many are starving,” stated the World Health Organization on 8 February.
“Infectious diseases are spreading. Hunger is weakening people’s ability to fight off disease. Without enough food, more people will become sick and die,” the agency warned.

Phillippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, stated last week that half of the agency’s humanitarian aid mission requests to areas in northern Gaza “were denied” since the beginning of the year.

The UN, he said, “has identified deep pockets of starvation and hunger in northern Gaza where people are believed to be on the verge of famine. At least 300,000 people living in the area depend on our assistance for their survival.”

Israel’s accusations that a handful of UNRWA staff participated in the 7 October attacks led by Hamas has prompted 16 countries to suspend their funding of the agency.

Settlers block aid
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have allowed – or encouraged – Israeli settlers to block and disrupt humanitarian aid convoys from entering Gaza through the southern Kerem Shalom crossing over recent weeks.
The area has been designated as a closed military zone since last month. “But there are no checkpoints at night, making it easier to bring in busloads of protesters,” according to The Washington Post.
Israelis have been holding dance parties while celebrating the military’s destruction in Gaza and the starvation of Palestinians.

“The army is with us, the police is with us,” a young Israeli taking part in the blocking of humanitarian aid told The Washington Post.

“They don’t want us to be here, but they get it. They let us. We are talking with them, we are having fun with them, we are offering them everything they need,” the Israeli said.

In October, Israeli lawmaker Tally Gotliv advocated for using starvation as a weapon against Palestinians in Gaza, which is a war crime.

“Without hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not be able to recruit collaborators, we will not be able to recruit intelligence, we will not be able to bribe people, with food, drink, medicine, in order to obtain intelligence,” Gotliv said.

Palestinian human rights groups say that this kind of genocidal rhetoric by Israeli leaders is not an aberration. Rather, it is policy.

“The starvation policy pursued by the Israeli authorities is an example of the collective punishment policies that Israel has been inflicting on the civilian population of Gaza, which have intensified since 7 October 2023,” said the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al-Haq and Al Mezan in a joint statement earlier this month.
The groups added that “Israel’s use of starvation as a method of war is prohibited by international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

“The most brutal militaries in history have used deliberate starvation as a tactic; the criminalization of such a tactic is a keystone of international law,” stated the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee.

The decision by 16 countries to pause their funding of UNRWA and thereby collectively punish the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, especially after the International Court of Justice found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, “represents a shift by several countries from potential complicity in genocide to direct involvement in engineered famine,” warned the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.
The institute – named after Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” in 1944 – added that the decision by the 16 governments “is an attack on what remains of personal security, liberty, health and dignity in Palestine.”

 

[Apollonian]

The Money Machine Behind Progressive Election Efforts​

BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, FEB 24, 2024 - 01:00 PM
Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/money-machine-behind-progressive-election-efforts

Arabella Advisors is the biggest name in politics you’ve never heard.
CEO of Koch Industries Charles Koch (3rd-R) and Fontainebleau officials take part in a ribbon cutting in Las Vegas on Dec. 13, 2023. (Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

The firm is deeply involved with some of the most prominent financiers of progressive policies and Democratic Party candidates. It manages a complex network of tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations that quietly funnels money to progressive organizations, political action committees, and the campaigns of Democratic Party candidates.
In 2020 and 2022, according to federal election finance filings and nonprofit tax forms, groups linked to Arabella were active in financing Democrats and left-leaning get-out-the-vote efforts. A leader of one of the funds connected to Arabella has already promised to keep up their efforts in 2024.
Arabella Advisors is a private, Washington-based for-profit corporation. In its 2020 report, it says it provides “administrative services to nonprofits working to build a better world and [help] philanthropists on their journeys from idea to impact.”
Arabella didn’t respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.
Its website says its clients include families and individuals, foundations, nonprofits, and corporations. It doesn’t disclose financial records or details of its activities outside of so-called annual impact reports.
The latest such report, reflecting its activities in 2021 and 2022, said it worked to “deploy more than half a billion dollars in grants to more than 2,800 grantees working in more than 100 countries and almost every state in the United States.”
The report also shows evidence of Arabella’s political leanings. It lists defending democracy and elevating equity as part of “how it helps.”
In a December 2023 hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) described Arabella as “a key part of the Democrat Party’s political infrastructure in recent years.”
Mr. Smith asked about the amount of money allegedly flowing into Arabella from foreign sources. In his testimony, Capital Research Center President Scott Walter said one donor in particular, Swiss medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, is sending millions of dollars to Arabella-linked groups through his nonprofit organizations the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund.
“Our country is increasingly polarized in many ways, but we possess near-universal agreement that foreigners and foreign money should not meddle in our politics,” Mr. Walter said.
In November 2023, Arabella named Himesh Bhise, formerly a telecom executive, as its CEO. He replaced Sampriti Ganguli, who, according to her LinkedIn page, left the organization in December 2022 after she moved from CEO to become a part-time senior adviser.
In November 2021, Ms. Ganguli said in an interview with The Atlantic that Arabella is the American left’s equivalent to the conservative mega-donor Charles Koch. She is now an independent consultant in Arlington, Virginia.
Mr. Bhise, according to political donor records maintained by watchdog organization OpenSecrets, made small donations to Democrat candidates between 2008 and 2018.

The Nonprofit Funds​

According to nonprofit tax forms reviewed by The Epoch Times, Arabella is paid to provide the administrative, operations, and management services for six politically active tax-exempt funds: New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, Windward Fund, North Fund, and Impetus Fund.
In 2020, in the run-up to the general election between now-President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, those groups funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations that were intimately involved in a myriad of activities, including efforts to get out the vote, facilitate mail-in voting, explicitly oppose President Trump’s campaign, or support President Biden’s campaign.
The nonprofit organizations are required to file a Form 990 return with the IRS at the end of their fiscal year or the calendar year. However, it reflects the activities of the prior year. Americans, therefore, won’t know what the Arabella-linked funds were up to in 2024 until the end of 2025 at the earliest.

Influencing the 2020 Election​

Collectively, the Arabella-linked funds spent about $1.4 billion in fiscal 2020. The groups sent more than $48 million back to Arabella for their services.
The Epoch Times reviewed dozens of 990s and Federal Election Commission filings associated with groups that admitted they were involved in a so-called “shadow campaign” in 2020.
In February 2021, Time published an article, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” that detailed how a group of powerful people “across industries and ideologies” worked behind the scenes to “influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information.”
Time called the so-called shadow campaign a mission to fortify the 2020 election. Those who were quoted in the story said they worked to send hundreds of millions of dollars to poll workers and operatives aiming to get people to vote by mail for the first time. An Epoch Times analysis published in January showed that the campaign was focused on promoting Democratic candidates.
Voters cast their ballots at official ballot boxes in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)
In 2020, the Arabella-linked funds sent about $218 million toward groups that were directly involved in the efforts against President Trump and other Republican candidates, according to IRS records.
The organizations said they were, and are still, working to protect democracy. A financial analysis shows that when they received money from an Arabella-linked fund in 2020, it almost always went toward efforts to stop either President Trump or another Republican candidate.

Read more here... [ck site link, above, top]

MORE POLITICAL STORIES ON ZEROHEDGE​

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"Media Class Will Ignore" New Poll That Shows Black Voter Support For Trump Rising​

Koch Brothers Pull Out Of Haley After South Carolina Skewering​

​

 

[Apollonian]

Sponsor of TikTok Ban & Iran-Palestine Sanctions Gets 1,400% Bump in AIPAC Donations​

Yesterday

Link: https://sputnikglobe.com/20240422/s...1400-bump-in-aipac-donations-1118047522.html/

© AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana

Ian DeMartino
All materials

The 21st Century Peace through Strength Act passed the US House of Representatives on Saturday, as part of a package of bills that also included military aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific.
US Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who sponsored the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act that passed the US House of Representatives, saw contributions to his campaign from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) increase an incredible 1,413% during the 2024 election cycle when compared to the 2022 cycle.
The 21st Century Peace through Strength Act includes the REPO Act, which enables Biden to seize Russian assets frozen in US banks and send them to Ukraine, a provision that will essentially ban TikTok from the US, sanctions against Palestinian resistance groups.
According to a statement released by McCaul when the bill was introduced, it will be “the most comprehensive sanctions against Iran [that] Congress has passed in years.” The legislation is expected to clear the Senate and be signed into law by US President Joe Biden this week.
While it is unclear if, how, or why AIPAC would push for the theft of Russian assets, the other major provisions of the bill are directly related to issues AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobbying groups advocate for.

Analysis

US Confiscation of Russian Assets Will ‘Supercharge’ De-Dollarization
21 April, 02:02 GMT

The sanction provisions of the bill are self-evidently pro-Israel actions, designed explicitly to harm Israel’s adversaries in the region. The TikTok ban is slightly obscured, but the app has been blamed by politicians and Jewish groups alike for the rise in support among young people for the Palestinian cause.
In late October, US Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called the app a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies,” on Twitter.
Billionaire Bill Ackman, one of Israel’s most virulent supporters who gained infamy last year after publicly doxing Ivy League students who made pro-Palestinian statements, blamed the app directly for the support of Palestine among America’s youth. “TikTok is massively manipulating public opinion," he wrote.
"Compare the generational differences on support for Hamas. 51% of the TikTok generation say that Hamas' barbaric acts are justified,” Ackman wrote on Twitter/X while saying TikTok should “probably” be banned.
Ackman’s sentiments were reflected by McCaul himself in November, when he, too, blamed TikTok and China specifically for young people turning against Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“China controls the algorithms on TikTok, so if you type in Israel or Palestine you are going to get a lot of pro-Palestinian, Hamas material and videos pop up and that's primarily the source of education for our young people,” claimed McCaul.
It is not just politicians blaming TikTok for the rise in support for Palestinians, Jewish groups have as well.
In December, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt blamed TikTok for “intensifying antisemitism” and anti-Zionism.

“TikTok, if you will, is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people and it’s like Al Jazeera on steroids, amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti-Zion[ism] with no repercussions,” Greenblatt claimed on American television.
For years, McCaul was a non-entity for pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC. Elected in 2004, McCaul received no contributions from pro-Israel groups until the 2020 cycle when another group, Pro-Israel America PAC contributed $32,600 to his campaign, his largest donor that year, according to Open Secrets.
The next cycle, McCaul received $7,900 from AIPAC itself in addition to another $6,000 from other pro-Israel groups. But, it was not until this year that McCaul became the Republican darling for AIPAC in the House of Representatives.
To date, McCaul has received $119,550 from AIPAC in 2024 alone, a 1,413% increase and by far his largest contributor, dwarfing the second place Axxess Technology Solutions which donated $16,600.
Open Secrets lists the “pro-Israel industry,” including AIPAC, as having contributed $372,468 to McCaul’s campaign overall in 2024, a 681% increase from the $47,673 in contributions he received from the “pro-Israel industry” in 2022.

Americas

US Lawmaker Slams Pro-Israel Lobby: ‘I Don’t Give a F*** About AIPAC’
7 November 2023, 21:46 GMT

This cycle, McCaul is AIPAC’s top Republican recipient in the House and is the sixth overall House recipient of AIPAC funds. Only Democratic Reps. Ritchie Torres (NY), Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Kathy Manning (NC), Josh Gottheimer (NJ) and Pete Aguilar (CA) sit above McCaul on the list. All of them voted for the bill.
Of the bill’s 10 co-sponsors, all Republicans, four of them list AIPAC as their top contributor for this year: Reps. Joe Wilson (SC), Mark Green (TN), Doug Lamborn (CO), and Dan Crenshaw (TX). Another co-sponsor, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA) lists AIPAC as his second-largest contributor. Only Delegate Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen from American Samoa, who does not have voting rights in the House, and US Rep. Maria Salazar (FL) co-sponsored the bill without taking campaign contributions from AIPAC or any other pro-Israel group.
Sputnik emailed McCaul’s campaign for comment on the increase in AIPAC contributions, but did not receive a response by press time.