Biden (maybe) wants Israel to stop using US bulldozers for ethnic cleansing

 Al Jazeera English

On Sunday, Israeli media reported a freeze in certain bulldozer shipments from the United States to Israel. The prominent English-language website Ynet News, for example, went with the sensational headline: “D9 bulldozer shipment stalled by US embargo, leaving Israeli soldiers exposed.” To be sure, there is nothing more tragic than “exposed” soldiers belonging to a genocidal army.

According to the article, 134 bulldozers “ordered and paid for” by the Israeli military are currently “awaiting export approval from the US State Department” but their shipment has been stymied by internal US opposition and an apparent decision by President Joe Biden’s administration to freeze deliveries “for several months”. The D9 model is manufactured by the US firm Caterpillar Inc.

Some observers have taken this move to mean that the Bidenites are registering their displeasure with the Israeli war crime of ethnic cleansing. But if you’re going to be against ethnic cleansing, why not go all the way and be against genocide too? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Prepping Readers to Accept Mass Slaughter in Lebanese ‘Strongholds’

FAIR

Back in May 2015, the New York Times’ Isabel Kershner decided to moonlight as an Israeli military propagandist by penning an alleged exposé (5/12/15)—headlined “Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Lebanese at Risk”—in which she diligently conveyed all that Israel had to say about Hezbollah’s infrastructure in south Lebanon.

The minuscule hamlet of Muhaybib, for example, was said to contain no fewer than “nine arms depots, five rocket-launching sites, four infantry positions, signs of three underground tunnels, three anti-tank positions and, in the very center of the village, a Hezbollah command post.” In the village of Shaqra, home to approximately 4,000 people, the Israeli army had meanwhile identified some “400 military sites and facilities belonging to Hezbollah.”

Only after 11 full paragraphs of transmitting the Israeli line did Kershner manage to insert the disclaimer that “the Israeli claims could not be independently verified.” But by that time, of course, the damage had been done, the reader having already been persuaded that south Lebanon was one big Hezbollah military installation, where Israel could not afford to concern itself with civilian lives in any future conflict. Driving the point home was former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror, who informed Kershner that “many, many Lebanese will be killed” in the next showdown with Hezbollah. READ MORE AT FAIR.

It was anger that won Trump this election

 Al Jazeera English

Despite obviously belonging to America’s financial super-elite, the billionaire Trump has wooed a wide sector of the domestic working class into viewing him as a saviour from their economic plight in a plutocratic system of which he himself is an integral part. The indignant appeal to “Make America Great Again” deliberately ignores the fact that there was never anything great about a nation predicated on mass socioeconomic inequality, where Republicans and Democrats alike perpetuate plutocracy under the guise of democracy. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.