Tensions brew between Russia and Israel
Plus: Tracy-Ann Oberman gets her just deserts; Operation Gladio in Belgium and Lula da Silva on Ukraine | Issue #51
Here’s a roundup of all my latest journalism, as well as other articles, podcasts and videos of interest. Don’t forget to share, like and subscribe:
My Stories
“BBC actor eats ‘humble pie’ over Labour anti-Semitism smear” — 27 April, The Electronic Intifada. Crap TV actor turned obsessive anti-Corbyn blue-tick Twitter troll Tracy-Ann Oberman finally got her comeuppance last week. She was sued and forced to apologise by left-wing activist and academic Philip Proudfoot. Oberman had baselessly accused Proudfoot of operating a “Jew blocklist” on Twitter and has now agreed to pay “substantial” damages plus legal costs. She seems unrepentant, though, and took to Twitter feeling sorry for herself — as did her supporters:
This Mossad-linked Israel lobby group thinks that legitimate criticism of a crap TV actor for her *admitted* libelling of a Palestine solidarity activist as anti-Semitic = "abuse". Desperate stuff.CST utterly condemns the abuse that @TracyAnnO has faced in recent days. She always been a stalwart campaigner against antisemitism, and has always been the target of antisemitism and misogyny as a result. It is appalling that this continues.
CST @CST_UK“Mercenaries in Ukraine thank Israeli government” — 29 April, The Electronic Intifada. Ex-Israeli army mercenaries have filmed themselves inside Ukraine, thanking the Israeli government for their support, it emerged last week. And this week, Russia accused Israeli mercenaries of fighting “shoulder to shoulder with the Azov militants” — Ukraine’s openly Nazi army regiment. There are also reports that Russia has invited a senior Hamas delegation to Moscow.
“How the CIA oversaw Belgium's secret Nazi army” 🔒 29 April, Palestine is Still the Issue (subscribers only). The third part of my series on Operation Gladio looks at how Belgium’s CIA-led secret state recruited outright Nazis to fight a terrorist campaign targeting not only the civilian population, but even the country’s own armed forces.
The Electronic Intifada Podcast Episode 56: Canada’s arms exports to Israel
In this episode, Nora and I talk to Michael Bueckert, who has a lot of insightful things to say about Israel’s troll armies, as well as Canadian armament of Israel. You can watch the full episode for free in the video above, listen to it on your favourite audio platform, or read the full transcript and show notes here.
From Around the Web
“How Israel uses Judaism as a settler-colonial weapon” — Read my colleague Ali Abunimah’s analysis of recent Israeli violence in Jerusalem in this excellent article accompanying his most recent interview with Rania Khalek’s Dispatches, which you can also watch in full in the video below:
Former (and hopefully next) Brazilian President Lula da Silva on Ukraine: “I sit and watch the President of Ukraine speaking on television, being applauded, getting a standing ovation by all the [European] parliamentarians. This guy is as responsible as Putin for the war … We should be having a serious conversation: ‘OK, you were a nice comedian. But let us not make war for you to show up on TV.’ And we should say to Putin: ‘You have a lot of weapons, but you don’t need to use them on Ukraine. Let’s talk!’”
John Pilger and others last week shared this old ITN News report from Mariupol — from May 2014, when the war in Eastern Ukraine was first breaking out. It’s a reminder how of the current war in that country really started eight years ago. Some 12,000 people died in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region in the east of Ukraine since the Nazi-led coup government came to power in 2014, before the February 2022 Russian invasion even began.
