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Despite Endless Aid and Help, Palestinian Authority Calls America ‘Head of the Snake’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a media conference after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at the Czernin Palace, in Prague, Czech Republic, May 31, 2024. Photo: Peter David Josek/Pool via REUTERS
The US has spent $320 million on a floating port to help Gazans, and to ease the entrance of humanitarian aid to residents during the ongoing war. It has also been the driving force curbing Israel’s military campaign, yet Palestinians are busy biting the hand that feeds them.
A political commentator, who is frequently interviewed by official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV, recently labeled the American administration “the head of the snake, the head of evil, and the axis of evil,” falsely claiming that the US-funded port was used to help Israel prepare for and carry out its rescue operation of four Israeli hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp:
Kamal Zakarneh: “The American administration is the head of the snake, the head of evil, and the axis of evil concerning the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people in general.
The [American] naval pier that was supposed to serve for bringing in [humanitarian] aid was used to commit the Nuseirat [refugee camp] massacre … From there the American Delta Force, technological equipment, and things related to the security situation and discovering the location of the [Israeli] prisoners came in … Maybe the American Delta Force are the ones who carried out the operation.”
Official PA TV host: “Washington denied this.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, June 10, 2024]
Earlier in the war, before the port was built, Fatah’s Shabiba Youth Movement likewise announced that “the American administration is the head of terror,” adding that:
The criminal Biden, [US Secretary of State] Blinken, and the heads of their oppressive government are now placing themselves alongside Hitler, Mussolini, and the rest of the war criminals and perpetrators of crimes of genocide throughout history.” [emphasis added]
[Ma’an, independent Palestinian news agency, Dec. 9, 2023]
The libel about the port being used to help Israel free the hostages adds to previous libels about the floating port. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, has claimed that the port is just an “Israeli-American plot to expel Gazans” as Palestinian Media Watch reported:
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “The floating port is an attempt to throw dust in [our] eyes. It is an attempt to keep the situation in the Gaza Strip under Israeli rule and Israeli sovereignty…
What we fear is that this floating port will constitute a prelude to carrying out the Israeli plot that strives to expel the Gaza Strip residents through different ports.
[Facebook, May 18, 2024]
Earlier on Facebook, Al-Habbash had criticized the US for supporting Israel against the terror organization Hamas, calling the entire administration “criminal”: “Behind them [Israel] is only the criminal American administration led by criminal [US] President [Joe] Biden and his criminal [US] Secretary of State [Antony Blinken], who are sponsoring this occupation and its crimes.”
A host on official PA TV stated that “the US is fighting the Palestinian people with an Israeli arm”:
Secretary-General of the International Academic Campaign against Israel Ramzi Oudeh: “America, with all of these [UN] resolutions [calling for a ceasefire] that it is neutralizing with a veto… before the entire world the US has become a partner in the act of aggression (i.e., the 2023 Gaza war). It is a partner not only in the legal and international defense of Israel, but also a partner in terms of supplying weapons, tanks, planes, and launchers…”
Official PA TV host: “The US is the one fighting the Palestinian people but with an Israeli arm…”
Ramzi Oudeh: “Israel is originally an imperialist, colonialist, settler project – imperialist in the sense that imperialism created it in this region, imperialism feeds it, and imperialism is still defending it… Do we expect that this state [the US] will defend the Palestinian civilians? Do we expect that this state would agree to any resolution for stopping the war? On the contrary, its position supports the position of Israel.”
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Feb. 21, 2024]
Al-Habbash has also blamed the US for bearing “full responsibility for the ‘holocaust’ in the Gaza Strip due to its support for the Israeli aggression.” He has described America’s vetoes at the UN in favor of Israel as “additional American aggression and a continuation of the hostility against our people by the American administration.”
In the same statement, Al-Habbash suggested that “the Arab and Islamic states change the language of discourse with the US and speak with it in the only way it understands — the language of interests,” by way of “exerting pressure” on the US “through its interests, which are spread in the states of the Islamic world” [WAFA, official PA news agency, Feb. 20, 2024].
Given the ongoing Palestinian condemnations, libels, and even open threats against America and its interests, American leaders would be well advised to rethink whether their massive economic assistance to the Palestinians indeed serves aspirations for stability and security in the region.
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post Despite Endless Aid and Help, Palestinian Authority Calls America ‘Head of the Snake’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.