Issue #2 - Pollard peddles prejudice
Pro-Israel spy smears US Jews; The legacy of the Adelsons; and talking spycops on the radio.
What a week! There’s been a truly amazing response to the launch of this newsletter a week ago. A massive welcome to all my many new subscribers.
Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up. And it’s really encouraging that so many of you have also been able to support it financially. Keep sharing and spreading the word.
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Apart from my new MEMO column, I was busy all last week working on a major new investigative piece for EI. Suffice to say for now that it is about the Israel lobby’s campaign against David Miller and those behind it.
Look for that to be published on EI later this week, or see next week’s newsletter. Meanwhile, here’s some other recent EI pieces of mine you may have missed:
British university students used as pawns by Israel
Speaking of David Miller, last month I wrote this piece about the Israeli embassy’s activities at Kent university.
Israeli diplomat Michael Freeman used two student societies as fronts for his agenda on campus. Witnesses told me that his 2017 talk at the University of Kent was “propaganda” and “a well-orchestrated fraud.”
This is a perfect illustration of Miller’s argument: that Israel and its lobby use some Jewish students on British campuses as political pawns to launder their agenda. They then cry “anti-Semitism” when this fact is pointed out.
Read much more in the full piece.
Miriam Adelson takes over an Israel lobby empire
Casino magnate multi-billionaire. One of the world’s richest men. Donald Trump’s biggest electoral backer. And major US pro-Israel lobby financier. Sheldon Adelson was all these things. But he finally passed away in January, after a long illness.
A fan of the spotlight, Adelson’s Israel lobby record was fairly well known. But that of his Israeli wife Miriam less so, despite the fact that their anti-Palestinian “philanthropy” was almost always done in both theirs names. By end of his life Sheldon had handed all his casino empire shares over to his wife — making her Israel’s richest person.
I wrote this piece in January about the poisonous legacy of the Adelsons and how Sheldon’s widow will now act to ensure the continuation of his pro-Israel empire.
Spy for Israel pushes anti-Semitism
American traitor Jonathan Pollard spent 30 years in jail after being convicted of spying for Israel, before being released by the Barack Obama administration. He has now moved to Israel, his parole conditions having expired under Trump.
But in an interview last week he made a series of mind-boggling claims.
In a long interview with the Israeli newspaper that is owned by Miriam Adelson (see the EI article above for more on her), Pollard spewed straight-up anti-Semitism. Calling for Jewish people in the US to leave and settle in Israel, Pollard said: “We're Jews, and if we're Jews, we will always have dual loyalty.”
A former analyst for US naval intelligence, in 1985 Pollard was arrested, after counter-intelligence officers discovered he had been stealing top-secret documents and selling them onto Israel.
The canard of “dual loyalty” is often falsely directed at Palestine solidarity activists or reporters to smear them as anti-Semitic. But Pollard’s anti-Semitism was pro-Israel anti-Semitism so — as usual — it will be ignored or excused. Indeed, he is considered a national hero inside Israel.
Read more in my Middle East Monitor column.
Talking spycops on Sputnik radio
Once again, I appeared on Sean Blackmon and and Jacquie Luqman’s excellent radio show, By Any means Necessary. It’s broadcast on Sputnik radio in the US, but you can listen online by clicking here (you can skip to 41:16 to listen to my segment).
The topic was the spycops and the long piece I wrote on the topic for Declassified UK.
What I’ve been reading
Louis Allday’s timely review of the classic text Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, by Fayez Sayegh. This book was written in 1965, but its relevance to today is uncanny. Only a couple of quotes: Racism “is not an acquired trait of the Zionist settler-state. Nor is it an accidental, passing feature of the Israeli scene. It is congenital, essential and permanent… inherent in the very ideology of Zionism”. The “problem of Palestine… is not the concern of Palestinians alone… it is in fact a challenge to all anti-colonial peoples”. Make sure to check out the website his review was published on, Liberated Texts. It’s a great new resource, putting the spotlight on anti-colonial and socialist works that have been forgotten, under-appreciated or suppressed.
Jonathan Cook’s latest report from Nazareth “Five lessons from Israel’s election.” Cut through all the nonsense and read about the bottom line here.
My EI colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman on an important free-speech and privacy victory for Palestine solidarity activists against the pro-Israel lobby in the US.
The Support David Miller campaign team on the “Israel Gravy Train”. Is your MP taking donations from pro-Israel lobby groups? Lots of interesting information here. Plus a really effective short video.
Tweet of the Week
The Tweet of the Week goes to my EI colleague @AliAbunimah. It’s actually a short thread, so click it to see the whole thing, which is well worth reading. There’s a lot of rubbish out there written about the Israeli elections, but Ali cuts through it concisely — and humorously.