JEWISH QUESTIONS

A senior official of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Colonel Hasan Sayyad Khodaei, was assassinated by unknown assailants at around 4 pm local time in Tehran on Sunday, May 22. As per reports, gunmen riding two motorcycles fired at Khodaei when he was entering his house. 

Khodaei had been a Colonel in IRGC’s elite Quds force responsible for international operations. He had led operations against ISIS in Syria. 

According to Iranian news reports, the alleged assailants have not yet been arrested and an investigation is on to uncover the real culprits behind the assassination. 

Activists from XR Youth, taking action under the Palestine Action banner, have shut down the London headquarters of Israel’s largest arms firm: Elbit Systems
The activists have used fire extinguishers to spray the premises in blood-red paint, and are locked-on to the entrance, preventing access or operations at the building

Israeli military forces have shot and killed a young Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, amid an escalation of violence across the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the 34 year-old victim, identified as Mohammad Hasan Assaf, succumbed to his injuries after being shot in the chest by Israeli forces during a military raid on the city of Nablus on Wednesday, Palestine’s Wafa news agency reported.

Almost 85% of rabidly imperialist Neocons are Jews. Russophobia runs deep in the Jewish community today, yet, it didn’t use to be that way. Not when progressive and left-wing Jews had a voice in the media and the civic life of the US and Western Europe. Before Zionism preempted the Jewish conversation with its obsessional mono focus on Israel, Jews were leaders in many vital struggles, some outright revolutionary. Where did they go? And now we have this. 

Many politicians, particularly from the United States, have portrayed Sharon as a “peacemaker” who gave concessions on Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory to pursue peace with the Palestinians. President Barack Obama issued a statement on Sharon’s death where he stressed the United States’ “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security” and at the same time said the U.S. would “strive for lasting peace.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Sharon “surprised many in his pursuit of peace,” and even praised Sharon’s “lifelong convictions” for a peace process. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon praised Sharon’s “political courage and determination” in his “painful and historic decision to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip.” Tony Blair claimed Sharon “didn’t think of peace as a dreamer, but did dream of peace” and “sought peace with…iron determination.”

These shibboleths cannot disguise the truth. Since the 1970s, Sharon was one of the chief architects of the Israeli settlement of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights region. He was given the moniker “father of the settlements.”