Headlines

Several months before Japan’s December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt secretly authorized devastating American bombing raids against Japanese cities. A top-secret document declassified in 1970 shows that in July 1941 Roosevelt and his top military advisers approved a daring plan to use American pilots and U.S. war planes – deceitfully flying under the Chinese flag – to bomb Japan’s major cities … An air strike force of 500 Lockheed Hudson bombers was to be organized as “The Second American Volunteer Group” under Chennault’s command. Its mission would be the “pre-emptive” bombing of Japan. The strategic objective of JB 355 was the “destruction of Japanese factories in order to cripple munitions and essential articles for maintenance of economic structure in Japan.”

… At times, it feels as though one would need to be a psychologist to fully dissect Donald Trump’s hyperbolic statements. His rhetoric is not just inflammatory when it comes to Palestine — it permeates nearly every topic he discusses. Trump exemplifies the dangers of elevating a person of ignorance and limited intellect to a position of immense power. His remarks frequently diverge from reality, driven by self-interest and amplified by a circle of enablers who exploit his shallow understanding of governance and global affairs.… Trump’s inner circle, predominantly Israel-first advocates, play a significant role in shaping his short-sighted declarations by feeding him biased and one-sided information.

… The [AfD] party benefits from widespread discontent about the consequences of more than a decade of uncontrolled mass migration from the Middle East and North Africa as well as voters’ worries about economic decline, deindustrialization, costly green energy policies, high cost of living, and deteriorating security in many German cities … Stopping the existential threat of continued mass immigration is increasingly understood as the pivotal issue for preserving Germany’s national identity and culture, halting the erosion of public security, and slowing down the huge financial drain of welfare payments to immigrants and their dependents … Public dismay at economic weakness and at high immigration will continue.

The Knesset [Israel’s parliament] approved the expansion of the Entry Law to prohibit the entry of those who deny the Holocaust or the October 7thMassacre, as well as those who support the international prosecution of Israelis for security activities … The new law expands the already existing ban on granting visas to supporters of boycotts on Israel to include those who deny the Holocaust or the October 7th Massacre, as well as those who support the prosecution of Israelis in the international courts for their actions in the security forces.

The Home Office has been accused of “indoctrinating” civil servants with a “distorted” history course about the British Empire. The lessons, recommended for all staff in the department, are aimed at educating officials about Britain’s colonial past and migration patterns. However, the course has been criticised by historians as being anti-British propaganda “of the crudest kind” and “full of exaggerations and misconceptions”. They also claim the lessons are “infused with critical race theory” and “assumptions about how white people are inherently racist towards ethnic minorities”. Three eminent historians from Oxford and Cambridge universities have written to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, to raise concerns about the course, which they say is “intellectually impoverished” and “full of elementary inaccuracies”.

… Trump has made good on some of his campaign rhetoric by doubling down on support for Israel … Trump floated a U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip and forced relocation of all Palestinians, a stance he has since repeated … Recent polling suggests that the idea is widely unpopular and may raise concern among Americans about the direction of Trump’s foreign policy … As for what policies Americans want to see, the YouGov/The Economist survey found that a plurality, 35 percent, supported decreasing military aid to Israel, while 27 percent supported maintaining the same amount of aid and only 15 percent supported increasing aid … And Americans are fairly united in disagreeing with Trump that the U.S. should take over Gaza.

Thousands have taken to social media this week to condemn Israel after its authorities arrested the Palestinian owners of a historic occupied East Jerusalem bookshop for “inciting terrorism” with Palestinian literature, using a children’s coloring book as proposed evidence. Educational Bookshop is a decades-old bookstore chain respected by locals and internationals alike, with both Arabic and English-language locations. The Muna family have become well-known figures in the local Palestinian community and with diplomats, academics, and writers who have visited occupied East Jerusalem.  … South African author and illustrator of the colouring book, Nathi Ngubane, told MEE that he is concerned his work is being used by the Israeli authorities to censor Palestinians.

If at any point over the past year and a half you might have thought the Israeli authorities had already crossed every possible threshold when it comes to curtailing Palestinians’ freedom of expression, you would have been mistaken. Because yesterday, Israeli police raided two branches of a world-famous Palestinian bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem, arrested the owner and his nephew, and seized a selection of books — including a children’s coloring book … Police representative Sgt. Maj. Ortal Malka said they had identified eight books in the Educational Bookshop that met the criteria for “incitement,” but did not specify which ones. She also refused to address the fact that most of the books are not even written in Arabic and that the store’s clientele is primarily international.

The last of the historians from the FDR era has died. William Leuchtenburg, called by the Associated Press “the reigning scholar on Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal,” was 102 years old when he died on Jan. 28. Leuchtenburg was heaped with accolades for his FDR worship … Leuchtenburg bequeathed to future generations the image of FDR that prevails today — that of a wartime “grand strategist” and “traitor to his class” who empathized with the “common” or “forgotten man.” In truth, FDR’s New Deal policies prolonged the Great Depression, and his ineptness and infatuation with Stalin expanded Communist tyranny across the globe.

Canadians are among the world’s calmest, most polite, and gracious people. They are also, in my experience, peaceful, honest and modest. You never see them angry – except for now. Donald Trump, with his absurd megalomaniac claims to Greenland, Canada, Panama and now Gaza, has managed to do what no one else has done. He has made the United States hated across Canada … Trump has looked at foreign affairs in the same way he viewed leasing store locations, as a simple straightforward business function, like renting property in New York City. Fury over his Mussolini-like claims to Canadian land will eventually abate but the damage has been done … Trump’s threats against Canada have outraged one of America’s most important military and trade allies. And for what purpose? To make Trump feel powerful and virile.

The wailing sound you heard last Thursday was the chorus of the Beltway warmongers shrieking in despair at President Trump’s suggestion that there was no reason for the United States to be spending one trillion dollars on “defense.” “… One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China and President Putin of Russia, and I want to say let’s cut our military budget in half. And we can do that, and I think we’ll be able to do that,” the President told reporters. With this statement, President Trump blew up one of the biggest myths of our time, particularly among Republicans, that spending more on the military is essential to keeping us safe. … I very much hope that President Trump follows through with his plan to drastically reduce our bloated military budget.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two. One of the biggest frauds of the final stage of that war was the meeting at Yalta of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and President Franklin Roosevelt. Yalta has become a synonym for the abandonment of oppressed people … The German civilians killed after the war were simply another asterisk that could safely be ignored by Good War chroniclers … U.S. government secrecy and propaganda efforts did their best to continue portraying World War Two as the triumph of good over evil. If Americans had been told in early 1945 of the barbarities that Yalta had approved regarding captured Soviet soldiers and the brutal mass transfer of German women and children, much of the nation would have been aghast.

… Between the gasps and laughs of every Starkey lecture shines a pertinent point. Britain was ruined by its elite; he thinks we need to undergo a “cultural restoration” … At his height, he was a bestselling author famous for popularising the Tudor period via documentaries such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII or Monarchy; watched by millions and being paid millions to make them … “The world of the Left is a series of complete lies,” and thus it cooked up the “noble lie” of multiculturalism – “diversity is strength” – to which we must pledge loyalty … He’s witnessed “the disintegration of everything that I valued, everything that I loved, everything that I have researched, everything that I taught”. Good education – “fundamentally, the transmission of culture” – British identity, Britain itself. “It is comparable to the fall of Rome,” a society on the verge of bankruptcy.

The US vice-president, J D Vance, has launched a brutal ideological assault on Europe, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration, and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs. In a chastising speech on Friday that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, he painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness. Arguing that the true threat to Europe stemmed not from external actors such as Russia or China, but Europe’s own internal retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”, he repeatedly questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda. “What I worry about is the threat from within,” Vance said …

The criminalization of free speech in the EU could put a “strain” on relations between Washington and its allies there, US Vice President J.D. Vance said on Monday, calling on Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic to “reject” such policies. “This is Orwellian,” the vice president wrote in a statement on X (formerly Twitter). He was referring to an interview with three German state prosecutors released by the US broadcaster CBS on Sunday. Focused on Germany’s efforts to fight offensive content on the internet, the interview included the prosecutors saying that insulting anyone in public or online is a crime in their country … According to CBS, the German laws specifically prohibit the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats and fake quotes online. Reposting false information is punished as well, the broadcaster said …

On Thursday [Feb. 13], the US Treasury Department announced it had imposed sanctions on Karim Khan, a British lawyer who is the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an action taken on behalf of Israel. The sanctions came after President Trump signed an executive order to target the court in response to the ICC issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over their role in war crimes in Gaza. Under the sanctions, any of the assets Khan may have in the US have been frozen, and he is barred from entering the country … In his executive order, Trump accused the ICC of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention from day one of his “revenge” attack on Gaza, launched 16 months ago, was either ethnic cleansing or genocide in Gaza. His ally in genocide for the next 15 months was former US President Joe Biden. His ally in ethnic cleansing is current US President Donald Trump … Trump’s team revived their own interest in the ethnic cleansing plan the moment Israel launched its genocide – long before Trump knew whether he would win the November 2024 election … We should not lose sight of the bigger picture. Israel and the US are still committed to “cleaning out” Gaza, one way or another, as they have been for the past 18 years. They are simply looking for a more propitious moment to resume. That could be this weekend, or it could be in a month or two.

This week, President Trump upended US Middle East policy by announcing that the United States would “take over” war-ravaged Gaza and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” … Senator Graham is correct that most South Carolinians are not excited about sending Americans or US tax dollars to take over Gaza. Neither are most other Americans. In fact, polls show that the majority of Americans oppose providing military aid to Israel or other countries … Even if a long-term US occupation of Gaza went 100 percent according to plan, the US government, which has an over 36 trillion dollars and growing debt, cannot afford another open-ended overseas military commitment. …  The best thing the United States can do to rebuild Gaza and promote peace in the Middle East is to stop funding Israel’s occupation and blockade of Gaza.

Global reaction came swiftly on Wednesday to U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for Gazans to be relocated out of the Strip, which he described as a “demolition site”— with most, if not all, countries panning the idea. Trump proposed that ownership of the Strip be transferred to the United States, which would rebuild it. “This was not a decision made lightly,” he said … Palestinians could be located to various locales. “It could be numerous sites or it could be one large site, but the people will be able to live in comfort and peace,” Trump said … Most countries, which have embraced a two-state solution whereby a Palestinian state would be established adjoining the Jewish state in territories liberated by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, expressed a mixture of incredulity and indignation.

Harrowing footage from World War Two showing the annihilation of the German city of Dresden by Allied forces has resurfaced on the anniversary of the bombings which killed up to 25,000 people. Video from 1945, shown as part of an American news report, shows the fearsome bomb attacks undertaken by the [British] RAF [air force] on the night of February 13 … At the start of the clip, with the American narrator describing the Allied attacks, British bombers are seen high above the Saxony city. Dresden is then seen at night, with the aerial view showing the terrifying sound and light of the explosions… The narrator said the Allied airmen were ‘linking up their attacks with Marshal Stalin’s army’.  The bombings were also intended to cause a state of alarm and panic in the civilian population and weaken the German war effort.

Mass killing and terrorism were the sole objectives of the horrific World War II air attack on Dresden, which British diplomat and author Harold Nicolson called “the single greatest holocaust by war.” On February 13-14, 1945, some 2,000 British and American bombers took part in the devastating raid on an undefended city packed with women and children fleeing ad­vancing Soviet forces. One of Europe’s great cultural and ar­chitectural treasures, this beautiful German city had no importance as a military target. Here is the full story — from the perspectives of both per­petrators and victims — of the horrific firestorm raid that took the lives of tens of thousands of civilians, who were burned alive, suffocated or succumbed to poisonous fumes. Hardcover book, with dust jacket, photos, maps, source and reference notes, and index.

The destruction of the virtually undefended German city of Dresden by bombers of the Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force, in mid-February 1945, remains one of the most controversial episodes of the Second World War … British military historian, Alexander McKee, has produced a new account of the Dresden bombing, based in part upon an examination of official records recently declassified, as well as interviews from survivors of the attack and Allied airmen who flew in the raids. McKee had doubts about the efficacy of area bombing when, as a soldier with the 1st Canadian Army, he witnessed the results of the Allied bombing of “friendly” French towns.

… In a revealing new report, the Media Research Center, the conservative news watchdog, said on Monday that Wikipedia has effectively blacklisted new sources that lean right, making it a liberal online encyclopedia based on left-wing media, including those well known for lying about Republicans and Trump and promoting conspiracy theories such as Russiagate. The blacklisting MRC found was stunning. It said no conservative news sites made the fully trustworthy grade, while just 16% of liberal sites were blocked as sources. “Wikipedia effectively blocks 100% of right-leaning media sources — the ones more likely to give fair treatment to the majority in Congress as well as to incoming officials to the Trump administration.

Wikipedia has been accused of blacklisting conservative media from being used as source material. The Media Research Center, a conservative organisation, released a report on the free online encyclopedia’s list of “reliable sources”. The report said that all the US news sites the centre categorised as right-leaning had failed to meet Wikipedia’s criteria as a trusted resource for administrators. These included the New York Post, Breitbart News, The Daily Caller and Newsmax. By contrast, the report added, Wikipedia deemed as reliable some 84 per cent of what the centre considered liberal media organisations, including Mother Jones, ProPublica, NPR, The Atlantic and The Guardian. “Wikipedia has now become the joke,” Dan Schneider, the centre’s vice-president, said in a statement.

… This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day [Jan. 27] starkly exposed the chief beneficiary of that lie: Israel. For decades, Israel has traded on its self-declared status as guardian of the Holocaust’s memory, and as the Jewish people’s supposed solitary sanctuary from global antisemitism … The message from Holocaust survivors of “never again” has been hijacked by western leaders to a quite different, cynical end. The Holocaust has been turned into a shield that, rather than protecting others from becoming victims of genocide, is used to protect those in the West who wish to perpetrate it. Over the years, the Holocaust has become the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for Israel – and for western leaders who can invoke it as cover for their support for Israeli criminality.

In a rare open attack, Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor accused leading German weekly Der Spiegel of abusing the memory of the Holocaust and spreading baseless “fairytales” demonizing Israel. Prosor referred to an interview … with Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov, who is considered an expert on Holocaust and genocide studies … In the interview, Bartov was asked if the Holocaust didn’t serve the Israelis as a lesson of humanity. Bartov, who has accused Israel in the past of “committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions,” answered: “On the contrary, it serves a lesson of inhumanity. To make it clear, the Holocaust serves the Israeli Jews to consider themselves as being beyond any moral and ethical borders.”

… Trump is comfortable with the United States helping Israel to “murder” the Gaza Strip — and is increasing the supply of weapons to do so — while pretending to be merciful and compassionate toward the remaining people of Gaza who so far have survived the Israeli onslaught but are suffering immensely. The hypocrisy only adds a further gloss to what already was morally indefensible support for ethnic cleansing … Trump’s declared doctrine may be “America First,” but on anything involving the Middle East his policy is Israel First. Or more accurately, it is a policy of deference to almost anything the government of Israel, with its right-wing extremists, wants, even if those wants run counter to the long-term peace and security of the Israeli people as much as the other people of the Middle East.

Money talks. This is a brief, graphic look at money from pro-Israel groups to American politicians, which is a major reason that the US has for decades been such a lavish, “blank check” supporter of the Jewish state. The vehemently pro-Israel politicians cited here include Donald Trump, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi. OpenSecrets.org is the source for the amounts of money given here. Runtime: 3:16mins.

During my career as a German diplomat, I had three superiors … After the [Second World] war these men were condemned as criminals by the Allied Military Tribunal at Nuremberg … I myself was an “automatic arrest” inmate in the Dachau concentration camp, then under U.S. Military Government control … Revisionism has a mission. It is to find facts. Historical fact-finding likewise has a purifying effect because it embodies the struggle for truth … Believe me: Moral values have a more enduring life than shrewd tactics! .. If we keep ourselves on a morally elevated plane, we will emerge victorious … The Middle East has been engulfed in turmoil. This conflict was fostered at Versailles in 1919 when the British and French violated numerous solemn pledges and betrayed the Arabs.

A leaked document has given us a first glimpse at Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian online newspaper Strana, U.S. officials handed the plan to European diplomats who then passed it on to Ukraine. The existence of the plan has not been verified … If the plan is real, if it is being put on the table by the Trump administration … as a starting point for negotiations, then there is hope. And there is suggestion that it is a starting point. Here is an item by item analysis of what each side may consider acceptable in the plan and what each side may insist on negotiating further.

… The emphasis on national security gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a great deal of leeway in a wartime situation, and explains the overwhelming support from the Russian people for his war … It is Russia’s firm belief that WWII was fought and won on the eastern front, and that the United States and Britain delayed opening the second front in order to increase the number of casualties for both Germany and Russia. The fact that three-quarters of the German Army and three-quarters of their fatalities were on the eastern front provides some justification for these strongly-held beliefs. Russian veterans have told me that no other nation could have stood up to the German Wehrmacht.

A new poll conducted in Israel found widespread support for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza as proposed by President Donald Trump. A poll from the Jewish People Policy Institute Israel Index released Monday found that 80% of Jewish Israelis support Trump’s proposal to clean out the Gaza Strip of Palestinians. … The Israeli Jewish population is divided on whether the plan is practical. Among Jewish Israelis, a narrow majority (52%) believe that Trump’s plan is “practical” and should be pursued. An additional 30% view cleaning out Gaza as “not practical, but desirable.” Just over one in ten Israeli Jews viewed Trump’s proposal as a “distraction.” Only 3% replied that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is “immoral.”

There are many factors — from a Trump presidency to international isolation — that show Zionism is entering its “last phase” before its collapse, says Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. Runtime: 3:19 mins.

A Trump-appointed member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council has called for the collective punishment of all Palestinians in Gaza, saying they’re “collectively guilty” and not deserving of any mercy. Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Martin Oliner praised President Trump’s suggestion to “clean out” the Palestinians in Gaza and send them to Egypt and Jordan, which would amount to ethnic cleansing … “And those like myself who do not believe Gazans are worthy of any mercy should welcome it as well,” he said. It’s estimated roughly half of Gaza’s population is made up of children, but Oliner said that all Palestinians in the enclave are responsible for Hamas’s October 7attack on southern Israel … Oliner said the people of Gaza are “fundamentally evil, and they must pay a price for their actions.”

Israel has not succeeded in destroying Hamas, says David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, an online news outlet and channel. The Palestinian resistance movement is still very much a fighting force, and is in control of Gaza, he adds. Hamas knows that it cannot defeat Israel in a short-term military clash, he explains. What it seeks to achieve is victory in a long-term, multi-generational struggle similar to that achieved by anti-colonial nationalists in Algeria and Vietnam, who made the price of continuing subjugation so difficult, bloody and costly that the oppressors finally gave up. Moreover, Israel has lost enormous international prestige and credibility in the world, including in the USA. David Hearst was a correspondent of The Guardian in Russia, Europe and Belfast. Runtime: 8:54 mins.

… Lawrence was indeed a very great man, a great thinker and a great military leader and strategist. He planned, organized and led a national rebellion of the Arab peoples and gave them the first opportunity in 400 years to become an important Middle Eastern power. But for Zionism he would have succeeded in his plan. Unfortunately his work was betrayed by Anglo-French and Zionist interests over which neither he nor the liberated Arabs were powerful enough to prevail. As Lawrence himself put it, the opponents of Arab nationalism had bigger guns, that was all … In his epic work on the Arab revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence describes his personal feelings and attitudes; especially his bitterness when his success was undone by the governments of the victorious powers.

Colleges went mad. They charge students big bucks and then make them feel guilty. My new video looks at a new documentary called The Coddling of the American Mind. It persuasively suggests that today, young people are anxious and depressed because “adults” at their schools brainwashed them. Students like Lucy Kross Wallace at Stanford. “I was anxious,” she says. “I felt guilty constantly. I couldn’t stop thinking about the white privilege thing.” … The new censorship was supposed to help minorities, but minorities, too, are often punished.

President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order on Wednesday that he said both reinstates an order combating Jew-hatred from his prior term, which the Biden administration “effectively nullified,” and “directs additional measures to advance the policy thereof in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, against the people of Israel.” … The order states that U.S. policy is “to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” Trump’s executive order gives the heads of departments and agencies 60 days to outline ways that they can better fight antisemitism.

A far-right Polish member of the European Parliament with a history of antisemitic statements disrupted a moment of silence for the victims of the Holocaust in order to decry “the Jewish genocide in Gaza.” Grzegorz Braun, chairman of the far-right Confederation of the Polish Crown party, known as KKP, interrupted the minute of silence on Wednesday, two days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day … Braun’s party website, which features his photo on the homepage, also includes a link to an 18th century encyclical by Pope Benedict XIV recommending that Poles deprive Jews of property, restrict them from holding office, and avoid doing business with them  … On Wednesday, the European Jewish Congress called Braun’s interruption “A vile display of antisemitism in the heart of European democracy.”

Dani Dayan, chair of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem [Israel] Holocaust memorial, came out against Elon Musk for comments he made to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a day earlier in which he said there is “too much focus on past guilt” in Germany. Contrary to Elon Musk’s advice, the remembrance and acknowledgment of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society,” Dayan wrote on X on Sunday, the day before the world marked the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Failing to do so is an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany,” he added.

Mark Weber explains that Holocaust remembrance is not, as its supporters claim, a noble effort motivated by sincere concern for humanity. He cites compelling evidence to show that the Holocaust remembrance campaign is, above all, an expression of Jewish-Zionist power, and is designed to further Zionist and Israeli interests. Jewish death and suffering do not deserve to be venerated more than the death and suffering of non-Jews, says Weber in this Dec. 2006 audio presentation. The Holocaust remembrance campaign – he concludes — deserves scorn, not support, because it is a one-sided effort that serves narrow Jewish and Israeli interests and bolsters Jewish-Zionist power. Runtime: 18:43 mins.

A postwar epic about a Holocaust survivor, a contemporary comedy about Holocaust tourism, and a biopic of a Jewish musical legend helped lend a formidable Jewish presence to Thursday’s Oscar nominations. Meanwhile, nominations for a documentary about the West Bank and a docudrama about the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes also kept Israel in the conversation … “The Brutalist,” a three-plus-hour historical drama starring Adrien Brody as a fictional Hungarian Jewish architect inspired by real Jewish designers, is well positioned with 10 nominations, tied for second-most of the year.