Kernow Damo

An Israeli NGO has been caught discussing help for Brits moving into illegal West Bank settlements - with a UK charity and Gift Aid angle added in too... Right, so Declassified UK have been doing some of that investigative journalism type stuff again, an alien concept to mainstream media mouthpieces of course, if they haven’t got their talking points served up to them on a plate all they’re left with is passive aggressive bias and a list of things about Israel that they are not allowed to say, but Declassified have now put a particularly grubby scandal on the record seemingly completely ignored by everyone else. An Israeli organisation called Shivat Zion, which publicly presents itself as a helpful support body for Jews moving from Britain and Western Europe to Israel, Aliyah, as Israel calls it, has been filmed discussing help for a British person moving to Efrat in the occupied West Bank, and Efrat is not Israel, Efrat is an illegal Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian land. So that means the Shivat Zion sales pitch here is not simply about moving house, not just about some dodgy paperwork, and certainly has nothing at all to do with “community fit,” or anything like that, but about helping place a British citizen into a settlement that exists because Palestinian land has been taken, ringed with military protection, and the offered up to Zionists as the biblical home for Jews when its nothing less than colonialist thievery and anyone choosing to live in such sites are themselves tainted by that very same brush. But the British angle to all of this gets that much worse, because Shivat Zion was also presenting a UK donation route tied to Gift Aid through a UK registered charity called UK Toremet, a charity which provides grants via donors, providing funding for projects here in the UK or overseas.

Trump says he is reopening Hormuz, but all he has really done is put his name to the next round of global trade chaos. Right, so Donald Trump has announced that the United States Navy will blockade the Strait of Hormuz, the same guy who has attacked Iran for apparently blocking it is now going to do so himself, because if you thought he was stupid before, you were giving him too much credit. Stop the ships that have paid Iran to pass through Hormuz and attack Iranian forces if they interfere. That is the American president putting a naval move on the record after talks with Iran in Islamabad ended without a deal of course, because he sent JD Vance and his corpse-like son in law and so inept at diplomacy were they, that they apparently had the Iranian delegation on the verge of fits of laughter. The Strait of Hormuz is of course the narrow sea route between Iran and Oman through which a huge share of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas has to pass. So when Trump says he is going to “reopen” it by force, when he’s the idiot who got it restricted to begin with, what he is actually doing is threatening to turn one of the most sensitive trade arteries on earth into an American enforcement zone and basically daring Iran to turn the Strait into the world’s biggest live action example of the PC game Minesweeper. Nobody has forced him into this epic act of stupidity, he’s done all of this in his own words, in public, under his own name. Honestly, if brains were lard he couldn’t grease a pan, because that leaves him attached to the next stage of disruption now certain to come, oil prices already on the rise once more.

Netanyahu threatened Spain that they would pay a price price, then watched Spain set him fire for Easter! Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu is anything but a happy bunny right now, oh dear, how sad, never mind. Being turned into an Easter Guy Fawkes burned more than just his cheeks I fancy. He has said that Spain would pay an “immediate price” for what he called a diplomatic war against Israel, everything always boils down to war with this despotic fool doesn’t it? What does a diplomatic missile look like then just out of interest? A paper aeroplane with mean words written on it? Spit-balls from the back seats? How dare you attack our genocidal most moral army Spain! How dare you object to our ever widening warfare and ethnic cleansing and land grabbing! Who do you think you are! I throw my favourite teddy bear at you you meanies! How dare you side with those we are starting wars with and bombing the hell out of because we have decided that they are terrorists and you have to be on my side or I won’t be your friend anymore! It is full on picking up your football and shouting I’m going home stuff isn’t it? Well as far as his ‘you’ll pay for this’ tendencies have gone, he has at least make a show of starting something by removing Spain’s representatives from the coordination centre in Kiryat Gat, removing Spain from involvement in Gaza co-ordination oversight as that is, though you’d absolutely be right to question why Israel has any say over such a thing at all and in fact in doing this has only made Spain’s point regarding Israeli atrocity that bit stronger in his choice of language, paying a price is the talk of the terrorist after all, as Netanyahu casts aspersions of that same nature on those he started wars with. He started wars with each and every time. Israel is a terrorist state in my view and I’m sure in the views of many of you watching this, Spain has simply shown some spine in taking Israel to task over what they do and who they are. Something they aren’t used to, having so heavily invested in so many other foreign governments. That is why Israel has the clout it does of course.

Trump’s team finally got Iran to the table in Pakistan, then blew the talks anyway - but how much of that came from Israel leaning on the US yet again? Right, so JD Vance has walked out of Islamabad after 21 hours of talks with Iran and no deal to show for it, stood in front of the cameras, thanked Pakistan, said Washington had left its “best” and “final” proposal behind, and then tried to talk like the side that had not just failed in public. You guys were desperate for this? You were getting your backsides handed to you, and you leave your best and final offer? Iran must have felt like they were negotiating with children, but then I think its worse than that, because kids generally know what they want, the US turned up at the meeting they were desperate for and then seemed more desperate to get out of it again. Team Trump got the meeting it seemed to want, got the room it needed – Pakistan provided it, and still could not get Iran to say yes, yet arguably ended up with such a hard line its as if they wanted them to say no. Then Vance came out and sold that as bad news for Iran. Pull the other one. If you need a two-week ceasefire, a Pakistani mediation track, a locked-down capital, and a long night of talks just to get the other side in a chair, you do not then get to swagger out sounding like the sheriff unless the room actually bent, and this room did not bend, no deal. Iran had the position of power here, not the US, we all know it, so what changed after you got in that room? The US needed a deal, Trump needs to get out of this and yet now that’s all changed suddenly? I appreciate Trump’s bipolar gymnastics are what they are, but it really does smack of somebody else calling the shots surely? Pakistan has done more than lend a hotel lobby and a row of flags to this circus as well. They brokered the two-week ceasefire of course but also kept them going for as long as they did, stepping up diplomacy precisely because Israeli strikes in Lebanon didn’t stop for the ceasefire talks, despite being on of Iran’s red lines and a term the US had agreed to to get the talks started.

Israel hit an Iranian synagogue during Passover, and the people who always claim to defend Jews suddenly found other things to talk about. Right, so Israel has hit a synagogue in Tehran during Passover, and the people who are usually first out of the blocks whenever something like this happens, an attack on Jews, an antisemitic strike as it readily gets called, have not exactly been trampling over each other in the rush to denounce it. It’s not like this event has been particularly hidden either, much has been made of it in regional news outlets, it’s just the Western ones that have tucked the story away, as if it is just a footnote for policy wonks with too much free time, if they have bothered to cover it at all. And frankly when you’ve seen the devastation Israel have wrought, that silence is all the more inexcusable. Appalling scenes, but also scenes that provide inconvenient truths too, the silence from the all too often vocally mainstream platformed apparent defenders of the Jewish faith. The proof of Israel’s atrocity is sitting there in the rubble, sitting there with the rabbi on scene, the damaged Hebrew books, and the Rafi-Nia synagogue in central Tehran left smashed after an Israeli strike that Israel has itself described as collateral damage from an attack on a nearby military target. This is not one of those familiar little media games where everybody pretends the facts are too murky to handle while still somehow finding the confidence to be very certain when the accused party is one of Israel’s enemies. A synagogue was hit, during Passover, and the organisations that spend half their lives talking like they are the emergency services of Jewish moral panic have managed an impressive impression of a power cut.

The Greater Israel plan is very much alive and kicking as Bezalel Smotrich gives one of his most insane speeches to date. Right, so Israel’s unhinged far right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has now said in public that Israel will expand its borders in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Syria, and he didn’t mutter this in some Knesset corridor while pretending later that he had been misunderstood. He said it at the inauguration of yet another illegal settlement in the West Bank, because of course he did, it is the most Smotrich thing he could do. He said there would be a political leg in Gaza that would expand Israel’s borders, a political leg in Lebanon that would take those borders to the Litani, and a political leg in Syria taking at least Mount Hermon and the also completely illegal buffer zone Israel had already carved out there. But why stop there and more to the point, why should any of us believe you would stop there? A vision entirely in keeping with the Greater Israel plan naming Lebanon, Gaza and Syria really has surfaced now, and the first consequence for the people selling this whole regional operation as mere security is that the cover story has taken a very public kicking. Once a serving finance minister is talking about border growth across three fronts, any old line that all of this is just temporary, defensive, technical, regrettable, and very definitely not about grabbing more land starts sounding like something produced by a very tired liar in a very warm room. Israel does not come out of that looking restrained, careful, or misunderstood. Israel comes out of it looking like a state whose far right has said the quiet part out loud plainly enough to make everybody still pretending not to hear it look either complicit or thick.

Trump threatened a whole civilisation, Starmer hid behind the drapes, then flew out to pose beside the ceasefire once the danger had already passed. Right, so Donald Trump threatened Iran with civilisational destruction and Keir Starmer hid. That is the story of the UK response to Trump’s ultimate threat against Iran which fortunately did not come to pass isn’t it? Trump put out that if Iran did not make a deal then “a whole civilization will die tonight,” which is not hard-man bluster, though obviously he thinks otherwise, it is his way; it is not diplomatic pressure, it not some mangled phrase needing a clean-up crew from the Foreign Office, but a public threat against an entire country, an existential threat to a civilisation thousands of years old and Britain’s prime minister couldn’t find his spine. He did not step out and shut it down. He did not tell the public that this was depraved. He did not tell Washington that this was beyond the line. He disappeared while the threat was to all intents very real, while British bases were very much part of the wider machinery around this war, while US bombers took off to make good on Trump’s threats form UK airfields and while everybody else had to sit there listening to the president of the United States talk like a man issuing extermination terms that the daleks would be proud of. But then the ceasefire turned up, Trump instead agreeing with Iran’s 10 point plan that Pakistan had helped broker, Iran had put forward their terms, the temperature dropped a notch, and suddenly here came Starmer with his little statesman voice switched back on, tweeting that: ‘I welcome the ceasefire agreement reached overnight, which will bring a moment of relief to the region and the world. Together with our partners we must do all we can to support and sustain this ceasefire, turn it into a lasting agreement and re-open the Strait of Hormuz.’ Welcoming relief, supporting the ceasefire, and then he took off to the Gulf, ready to pose beside the safer part of the story, any excuse for yet another public purse funded foreign trip.

Iran's ceasefire plan gets accepted by trump, vetoed by his boss Netanyahu and Lebanon still pays the price in lives and carnage. Right, so Israel has tugged at Little Donnie’s leash and as a result he’s meekly gone from a position of accepting talks based on Iran’s 10 point plan, to now claiming the very bits Netanyahu didn’t like were never really in it at all, that that version of the Iranian 10 point plan had been put in the bin and this was a different 10 point plan now, and we’re all supposed to nod along and accept that are we? Don’t be silly. Pakistan said the ceasefire included Lebanon. Iran said the ceasefire included Lebanon. Netanyahu kicked the table over that part, Trump and the whole AIPAC bought and paid for administration jumped to that tune, their fools if they thought we’d miss that and Lebanon got hit in one of the worst strikes ever just to prove Netanyahu’s point.

A ceasefire was announced, Netanyahu tried to carve Lebanon out of it, and Trump has ended up looking weaker than ever. Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to turn a ceasefire into a public confession. A stop has been announced by both Iran and the Trump administration and as part of the terms agreed, the ceasefire on Iran covers other war fronts too, it covers Lebanon as well. Well, Netanyahu then came out in full Nutty Yahoo mode and said Lebanon does not count. Well who gave you permission to change the agreed terms? His is a lovely little peace plan if you are a liar, because what he is actually saying is yes to the ceasefire where it suits him and no where it doesn’t. Now I realise Netanyahu thinks he runs the US and arguably he does, but he can’t negotiate directly in that regard no matter how much he might like to. Israeli Arabic mouthpiece Avichay Adraee then told people south of the Zahrani River – well to the north of the Litani to get out because the fighting in Lebanon is continuing, and the Israeli military followed that with more than one hundred strikes in ten minutes. So there is your answer straight away. Trump says stop. Netanyahu says make me. Trump goes quiet and Iran gets handed the easiest argument in the world, because this is not a ceasefire being honoured, it is a ceasefire being picked apart on arrival, right not to trust the other side as Iran have made clear that they don’t and here’s the proof justification. Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, announced the ceasefire on behalf of both parties and said Lebanon was part of it. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, then slithered out and said Lebanon was excluded, because that is how this works with him. He wants the public credit for saying yes to a truce, while keeping the one bit of the war he still wants to prosecute. That is permanently on repeat dodge. The label stays nice and tidy for the cameras, then the actual content gets hacked to pieces over the bit he doesn’t like and refuses to adhere to. So ultimately as far as the mainstream media are concerned Trump gets his peace headline, Netanyahu claims a loophole, and people in southern Lebanon get the explosions.

Trump threatened to wipe out a civilisation, then ended up taking Iran’s terms to Islamabad. Not a leader just a loser. Right, so Donald Trump said a whole civilisation would die that night if Iran did not do what he wanted, and then less than two hours before his own deadline he backed off, took a two-week ceasefire, accepted talks in Islamabad in Pakistan, and called Iran’s proposal a workable basis for negotiation after having previously said it wasn’t enough. That is not the story of a man imposing terms. That is the story of a man finding out, in public, that there is a difference between saying the most extreme thing you possibly could, out loud and in public as usual and actually being able to carry it through. He did not just retreat. He did it after talking like he had reached the point where retreat was no longer available. He put total destruction on the table, he fixed a clock, he made the whole thing sound utterly final, and then the clock ran down into Pakistan-brokered diplomacy. He tried to sound like the end of the conversation and landed on what could frankly be the end of him, because Iran was never backing down. People forming human chains on a bridge there, putting their bodies on the line, daring the US to strike civilians, to commit the war crimes that would have been cut and dried if Trump had struck what the orange oaf said he was going to, instead it turned into taco Tuesday, but don’t denigrate the bravery of those people prepared to do that for their own country. It speaks volumes of what they think of their country, regardless of what you might think of the theocracy that rules it, would you chain yourself to a bridge for Keir Starmer, or for Donald Trump? Who is really the worse society? Of course some in the media are claiming these people were being forced into it but did you see any signs of that, because I didn’t. Worse for Trump of course is just how clearly he made his plans known. He did not mutter some vague lines about options remaining open. He talked about bridges, power plants, complete demolition, four hours of destruction, and then the big line about a whole civilisation dying that night.