Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has selected as his Minister of Justice a woman who has expressed hatred against all Palestinians, and he has appointed as his negotiator with the Palestians a man who said, and who has always followed though with, “We are all against a Palestinian state, there is no question about it.”
These policies are direct rejections of the U.S.-overseen 1978 Camp David Accords, and of consistent U.S. policy since. The Camp David Accords were so bad for the Palestinians that the signatory on their behalf, Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat, was despised by virtually all Muslims and was assassinated for having done this. But Egypt abided by the Accords, while Israel for decades since has been constantly hemming and hawing about when they will some day fulfill their obligations under them; and, now, we finally have been given the answer: It’s never. They signed an agreement that was so bad for Palestinians it was rejected by them and by the U.N., but now it’s finally clear: to Israel, it’s not bad enough to Palestinians. So: Israel insists upon continued (and now upon never-ending) military occupation. Continue reading “Is Israel America’s Friend? Or America’s Enemy?”

As I 
Starting on Friday May 8th, some German news media have been reporting on the release of previously secret emails from the office of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. These emails make clear that when her underlings have said, ever since 2013, that the U.S. has promised to stop tapping the phones and other communications of Germans and even of the German Chancellor herself, no such promise had actually been received from anyone in the U.S. Administration of President Barack Obama. Instead, this claim from the Chancellor’s office was being made simply in order for her to be able to win the
Oxfam’s recent report,