Category: Israel
Israel carries out fresh missile attack on Syrian sites near Damascus
worker | March 17, 2021 | 7:29 pm | Israel, Syria | Comments closed

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-17/Israel-carries-out-fresh-missile-attack-on-Syrian-sites-near-Damascus-YH8zKrwKIM/index.html

Israel carries out fresh missile attack on Syrian sites near Damascus
Updated 12:14, 17-Mar-2021
CGTN
1,468
00:36

Israel launched a fresh missile strike on positions near the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, state news agency SANA reported.

The attack was launched from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, said the report, adding that the Syrian air defenses responded to the attack, intercepting most of the missiles.

It’s the latest Israeli attack on the military positions near Damascus, where Israel suspects that pro-Iran fighters are located.

A Syrian military statement said their air defenses managed to shoot down a number of missiles.

A Syrian national flag flutters in Damascus, Syria, April 20, 2018. /Reuters

“At exactly 22:35 today, the Israeli enemy carried out an aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan against some targets in the vicinity of Damascus. Our air defenses intercepted the aggression’s missiles and downed most of them. Losses were limited to materials,” the Syrian Defense Ministry said on Twitter.

The explosions heard in the vicinity of Damascus were the sounds of air defenses responding in the southern region, Syrian state-owned Ekhbariya TV said.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out raids on Syria, mostly targeting sites housing Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces as well as Syrian government troops.

(With input from agencies)

The Coming War with Iran
worker | May 2, 2018 | 8:15 pm | Iran, Israel, John Wight | Comments closed

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201805021064083008-netanyahu-iran-obsession/

Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations in New York (September 27, 2012).

The Coming War With Iran

© AFP 2018 / Don Emmert
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Benjamin Netanyahu’s animus towards Iran has long been a driving obsession, occupying his mind before his goes to bed at night and when he wakes up in the morning.

During what can only be described as a bizarre example of coup de théâtre in Tel Aviv on April 30th — billed officially at a press conference — the Israeli Prime Minister left no stone unturned in impugning the Iran nuclear deal, signed during Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office, claiming that “Iran did not come clean about its nuclear program.”

Netanyahu’s case against the Iran nuclear deal, which he claims is now irrefutable based on a large cache of classified documents stolen from the Iranians by Mossad, is — it should be stressed — yet to gain the support of most of its signatories, specifically Russia, France, the UK, Germany and China. It is supported by the Trump administration, however, with the President coming out in support of Netanyahu’s claims during his own press conference outside the White House soon afterwards, right on cue.

Among his own remarks on Netanyahu’s claims, Trump repeated what has been one of the few consistent positions of his presidency, asserting that the Iran deal is a “horrible agreement for the United States.”

READ MORE: ‘Either a Liar or an Idiot’: Netanyahu’s Iran Claims Insult Integrity of IAEA

What we have here evinces all the hallmarks of a ruse on the part of Netanyahu and Trump, two leaders currently engaged in a bromance that would scare the pants off your average ghost, what with their shared caprice and reckless disregard for international law. It is a ruse designed to up the ante when it comes to isolating and demonizing Iran, which combined with a recent bout of Israeli airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria, describes at this point seemingly inexorable march towards a full blown regional conflict.Making these gathering storm clouds even more concerning is that currently in Riyadh sits a leader, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, whose bellicosity towards Tehran is reflected in the hell Saudi Arabia has and continues to unleash upon men, women, and children in Yemen — a proxy war whose savagery has gone almost completely unremarked in the mainstream Western media. This is despite the fact that it could well be a prelude to the much more savage and destructive conflict that will ensue between Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah on one side, and Israel and Saudi Arabia, backed by a neocon-dominated Trump administration in Washington, on the other, should it come to pass.

READ MORE: Saudi Arabia ‘May Hope Israel Will Do the Job for Them and Fight Iran’ – Analyst

Iran, a country with no extra-territorial ambitions, which has not started a war with any of its neighbours in generations, is now firmly in the crosshairs of Washington and its regional allies. Despite Tehran’s considerable role in fighting and defeating Salafi-jihadi terrorism in Iraq and in Syria, Trump alleges that Iran is a major sponsor of terrorism. The President here is, of course, referring to Tehran’s close ties to Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance and social movement born in the ashes of Israel’s invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon in the early 1980s.

One man’s terrorist, they say, is another man’s freedom fighter — and with the IDF’s penchant for shooting dead unarmed Palestinian civilians without compunction, legal or moral, where Israel and Hezbollah are concerned many will find it impossible to make the case for Israel.Significantly, the momentous and truly historic peace summit the world witnessed on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, will likely not be replicated anytime soon in the Middle East. Not when the key regional actors include Benjamin Netanyahu, Mohammad Bin Salman and Donald Trump, men for whom war and conflict would seem more desirable and feasible than diplomacy when it comes to resolving their issues with Iran and its allies.

This being said, a sober and serious analysis of the region leaves little doubt that the regional conflict between the aforementioned blocs is already underway, and has been for some time. As far back as the Obama administration, in the years leading up to the Iran Deal in 2015, Washington was doing its utmost to neuter Iran’s nuclear research program by nefarious means. US author and historian, Perry Anderson, reveals how the Obama administration “launched a massive joint US-Israeli assault on Iranian computer networks to cripple the development of its nuclear program. A blatant violation of what passes for international law, the projection of the Stuxnet virus was personally supervised by Obama.”

It is also a fact that Israel’s notorious intelligence agency, Mossad, has in the past assassinated Iranian scientists involved in the country’s nuclear program — a program that the Iranian government has always maintained is solely concerned with meeting the country’s domestic energy needs, thus freeing up more of its oil for export.

The uptick in aggressive rhetoric against Iran that we have seen, set alongside the celebratory scenes on the Korean Peninsula as peace and denuclearization beckons after many-many decades, it is entirely conceivable that if not before the Iranians now will be minded to actively embark on the pursuit of a nuclear deterrent, one that the Israelis already have in their arsenal.

Making a quick detour, the question of why certain countries are allowed their own nuclear deterrent and others not is one in whose answer we arrive at the reality of power politics as the arbiter of international affairs, rather than the UN Charter or international law.

The point is that the Iranians will be more than justified in arriving at the conclusion that the only reason peace has broken out between North and South Korea is because the DPRK managed to acquire its own nuclear missile capability.

Harsh logic maybe, but hard to refute all the same.

READ MORE: Israel Doesn’t Seek War With Iran — Netanyahu

What is abundantly clear is that something somewhere has to give. Iran is being backed into a corner for no other reason than it refuses to bow to US hegemony, along with the fact that it acts as the main bulwark of opposition to Israeli and Saudi regional ambitions.

In his bestselling book, ‘The Silk Roads’, Peter Frankopan writes, “The world is changing around us. As we move into an era where the political, military and economic dominance of the west is coming under pressure, the sense of uncertainty is unsettling.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that the old unipolar world is dying while the new multipolar world struggles to be born.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

The Canadian government must condemn Israel’s massacre in Gaza and act to enforce UN resolutions
worker | April 9, 2018 | 8:34 pm | Announcements, Communist Party Canada, Israel, Palestinian struggle for equality | Comments closed

Communist Party of Canada
Parti communiste du Canada

04/05/2018 http://communist-party.ca/statement/2771

The Canadian government must condemn Israel’s massacre in Gaza and act to enforce UN resolutions

The Communist Party of Canada condemns the massacre of 18 unarmed Palestinians and the injury of 1500 others on Friday, March 30th in Gaza. We demand the Canadian government condemn the murders and attempted murders of peaceful protesters. 773 Palestinians were shot by live ammunition by Israeli occupation forces. At least one person was shot […]
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The Communist Party of Canada condemns the massacre of 18 unarmed Palestinians and the injury of 1500 others on Friday, March 30th in Gaza. We demand the Canadian government condemn the murders and attempted murders of peaceful protesters.

773 Palestinians were shot by live ammunition by Israeli occupation forces. At least one person was shot in the back and killed. A further 49 Palestinians were injured on Saturday and another Palestinian killed on Tuesday.

The massacre of unarmed demonstrators is reminiscent of the Sharpeville massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960 and Canada’s position will be remembered.

Canada must act now to ensure that the UN and the world’s governments and peoples force Israel to stop these crimes and allow for an independent investigation, end the illegal blockade of Gaza, and honour the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

The killings were planned by the Israeli military, with 100 snipers lying in wait and the military testing tear gas dropping drones in days prior. According to the Israeli Defense Forces statements on twitter which were later deleted, “Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has praised the Israeli military’s work in the massacre.

The Trudeau government’s silence in the face of this crime is disgraceful and makes it complicit. This massacre highlights the need to redouble solidarity efforts for an end to the occupation of Palestine and to secure the self-determination for the Palestinian people. Israel, an occupying state with massive support from US and Canadian imperialism, has been permitted to ethnically cleanse a population, refuse it the right of return, and occupy and blockade it in an open air prison. Palestinian resistance has been met with bombings, torture, massacres and assassinations. These war crimes and violations of international law and human rights must be brought to an end through overwhelming international solidarity with the Palestinian people and immediate mass international pressure on Israel and the US to end the attacks.

These latest brutal crimes by apartheid Israel demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Canadian government. Only a few days ago the government was busy war-mongering against Russia by expelling Russian diplomats, now they are silent. If the government was actually concerned about peace and democracy it would join with labour unions, student union and people’s organizations in Canada and around the world and support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions measures against Israel. How can Russian diplomats be expelled over bizarre allegations, while Israel’s diplomats remain as favored allies of the Canadian government while their country flagrantly violates international law?

The US has already blocked a UN statement to call for an independent investigation into Israel’s attack on Friday. We demand that the US and Israel stand aside and allow for an independent and transparent investigation as has been supported by the European Union and the United Nations’ Secretary General.

The Communist Party of Canada stands in full solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. We call on the government of Canada to immediately condemn the massacre and take action to pressure Israel and the US to adhere to the internationally recognized framework for a peaceful political solution based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338: the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as the capital, based on the 1967 boundaries, with the guaranteed right of return to Palestinians.

We further call on the labour and democratic movements in Canada to join forces to denounce the massacre, to step up the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions demanding the end of the occupation, the dismantlement of the “security” wall, full equality for Arab Palestinian Israelis and the realization of the rights of refugees.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

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Expulsion of Russian diplomats is part of a dangerous new Cold War

The Communist Party of Canada has sharply condemned the Trudeau government’s decision to expel four Russian diplomats from Canada, in lock step with the Conservative government of Theresa May in UK, who demanded ‘solidarity’ actions from European and NATO countries, including the US, declaring she had led “the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers […]
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Military Conflict Between East and West Has Never Been Closer
worker | February 14, 2018 | 8:07 pm | Analysis, Israel, John Wight, Middle East, Russia, Syria, Turkey, USSR | Comments closed
https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201802141061656523-syria-east-west-conflict/
Israeli soldiers stand guard near the Israeli Syrian border next to the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights

Military Conflict Between East and West Has Never Been Closer

© AFP 2018/ MENAHEM KAHANA
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Recent events in Syria serve to illustrate the dire consequences of a unipolar world. They also provide further confirmation that international law now belongs to the realm of fiction when it comes to Washington and its allies, for whom exceptionalism is the natural order of things.

There is compelling evidence to speculate that what is now being attempted by the US in Syria, with its occupation of a large swathe of territory in the north west of the country, is a re-run of the Balkanisation of Yugoslavia in the 1990s — a sovereign state broken up and dismembered after the collapse of the Soviet Union in service to the unipolar world that had just come into being as a result.

The break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a state born out of the carnage of the Second World War, was stark evidence that for hawks within the US political and military establishment the Cold War had not ended it had been won – won by dint of America’s divinely chosen position as the “indispensable nation”, a credo first articulated by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during an NBC interview in 1998.

READ MORE: Syria of Discord: Iran, US Clash Over Military Presence on Ground

Thus triumphalism abounded within the corridors of power in the land of the free, which cheered on by its willing vassals — such as Tony Blair’s UK government, and various eastern European satellites harbouring unresolved anti-Russian animus — produced an intoxication with overwhelming military power and strength, encapsulated in the eastward expansion of NATO.

The unending wars and military interventions that have been embarked by the US and its allies since the 1990s, rather than push the frontiers of democracy, have produced nothing but human misery, chaos, and instability. And on a scale hitherto absent.Syria is only the latest country and society to experience the tender mercies of Washington’s self-ordained role as the world’s policeman. It does so not with the objective of maintaining the world as a safe place or democracy or human rights, as tirelessly claimed, but so that global corporations are able to function and prosper and exploit the world’s human and natural resources unimpeded. They call it free market economics. A much more accurate name is’ disruptive unfettered capitalism’, an economic model which is no respecter of borders or cultures, no respecter of even the concept of the nation state.

The presence of US military forces in Syria is illegal. This is a fact that no amount of obfuscation or dissembling can elide. It poses a threat to the security and stability not only of Syria but the entire region. The idea that the presence of US military forces in the country, or anywhere else in the Middle East for that matter, is necessary to bolster security and stability, this is an exercise in peddling fiction. Just ask the people of Iraq or Libya, two countries laid waste by Washington and its allies, if you do not believe me.

READ MORE: Drone Captures Syrian Kurdish Militants Hit by Airstrike in Afrin (VIDEO)

Adding to the pot of instability and US-inspired mayhem in the Middle East is the news that the gargantuan US military budget for 2019 is to include $300 million for the training and equipping of the SDF, Washington’s proxy ground force in Syria, in addition to $250 million to fund the ‘border security force’ in the country that’s been mooted. By way of a reminder, as with the SDF the planned border security force will largely comprise Syrian Kurds attached to the YPG. All this, it’s worth recalling, is being undertaken in clear violation of Syria’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is the very epitome of might is right, redolent of that which sustained the Roman Empire.

The seeming willingness of the Trump administration to rupture its alliance and relationship with fellow NATO member, Turkey, with its commitment to arming and training the Kurds across Ankara’s southern border is remarkable, not to mention inexplicable. President Erdogan’s government has made no bones about the fact it considers it a threat to Turkey’s security, and has pledged to act accordingly. Indeed with its Operation Olive Branch military campaign against the YPG in Afrin, northern Syria, currently underway, involving ground forces deploying across the border in the process, the Erdogan government is making good on this pledge.

The fact is that along with Israel, Turkey is now exploiting the crisis and conflict in Syria to violate its sovereignty with wilful abandon.

It requires neither an abiding love or Russia nor a burning hatred of America to understand the necessity of a world in which no one nation is able or inclined to arrogate to itself the right to exercise global hegemony. Empires are doomed by virtue of the very premise upon which they exist, which is that nations and peoples can be dominated and subjugated by other nations. They cannot. Or at least they cannot over a sustained period.

If history teaches us anything it is that those who seek to dominate only succeed in sowing dragon’s teeth, inviting blowback and backlash. The monster that is Salafi-jihadism and the ensuing spate of terrorist attacks across the world in recent years leaves no doubt of it.

The need to check the untrammelled power of Washington is self-evident. Since the Soviet Union was consigned to history in the early 1990s, the US has rampaged across the world like an out of control juggernaut of death and destruction. It has done so regardless of the administration or president occupying the White House.In Donald Trump, a man for whom subtlety is an alien concept, we have ourselves a US president who cannot seem to make up his mind whether he is a recurring character in the Sopranos or the elected leader of the world largest economy and nuclear power.

With his presidency, the sheer reckless, aggressive and capricious character of it, the time has come to pose the question: Who will save us from America?

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

US defends aid to Lebanon army, despite warnings from Israel
worker | February 2, 2018 | 6:28 pm | Israel, Middle East | Comments closed

Question of the KKE in the European Parliament about the prosecution of palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi
worker | January 10, 2018 | 7:53 pm | Communist Party Greece (KKE), Israel, Palestinian struggle for equality, Syriza | Comments closed

Thursday, January 11, 2018

Question of the KKE in the European Parliament about the prosecution of palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/question-of-kke-in-european-parliament.html
The delegation of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) at the European Parliament denounced the provocative prosecution of the 16 year-old palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi by the Israeli authorities and submitted a question to the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.
 
In his question to F.Mogherini, the KKE MEP Kostas Papadakis mentioned that Israel escalates its aggressiveness, through the recent provocative arrest of the 16 year-old palestinian Ahed Tamimi and the 12 charges filled against her by the Israeli court because she scuffled with Israel soldiers in the West Bank. Papadakis added that before the incident, the occupational israeli forces had shoot Tamimi’s 14 year-old cousin and had invaded her house.
“At the same time”, said the KKE MEP, “the raids of israeli fighter aircrafts continue at the Gaza strip, the expansion of the settlements as well as the injuries and murders against the palestinian people, in the aftermath of the unacceptable decision of the USA to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the transfer of the US embassy there”.
 
“Both the EU and the SYRIZA-ANEL government” Papadakis underlined, “are accomplices to the continuous crime against the Palestinian people, as long as they not only maintain, but also upgrade their relations with the state of Israel with agreements like the one signed for the Eastmed pipeline, in the name of “stability in the region” and for the interests of the monopolies they serve.”
 
Based on the above, the KKE MEP asks the EU’s High Representative:
 
– Whether of not she denounces the arrest of the 16 year-old palestinian girl and the escalation of the aggressiveness by the israeli state?
 
– What actions is she going to undertake in order to ask her immediate release?
 
Source: 902.gr / Translation: In Defense of Communism.
PAME denounces the persecution of palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi by the state of Israel
worker | January 2, 2018 | 7:24 pm | Israel, Palestinian struggle for equality, PAME, police terrorism, Syriza | Comments closed

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

PAME denounces the persecution of palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi by the state of Israel

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2018/01/pame-denounces-state-of-israel-for.html
Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, 16.
The Youth Secretariat of the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) denounces the murderer-state of Israel, which, once again revealed its barbarous face by arresting and imprisoning young children simply because they are defending their homes.
The arrest and charging with 12 accusations against 16-year-old Palestinian Ahed Tamimi, from an Israeli military court, is one more proof for all those who, together with the USA and Israel, talk about “Democracy and Freedom,” and imposing their “right” with military courts, imprisonment and murder of young children. 
It is a proof against the SYRIZA-ANEL government, which speaks of Peace and stability in the region, and builds relations with murderer states like Israel, which imprisons and murders young children, while the SYRIZA-ANEL Government continues to refrain from recognizing the Palestinian state.
The imprisonment of 16-year-old Palestinian is an attack against any young person struggling for his right to education, to work. It is an attack on the right of every young person to live in his country without imperialist interventions and wars.
The struggle of the Palestinian people for their children to live freely, in their own state with East Jerusalem as capital, is also a struggle for the young workers of Greece.
We express our solidarity with the Palestinian youth struggling against Israeli occupation and demand the immediate release of the 16-year-old and her family. We are strengthening our Solidarity with the Palestinian people
Youth Secretariat of PAME.Â