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Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz signed an order designating the Palestinian NGO Samidoun as a terrorist organization, the Ministry announced on Sunday. Gantz accused Samidoun of acting as the international branch of the far-left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PFLP has orchestrated several terror attacks globally, as well as many targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers, and has thus been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel (1986), the United States (1997), the European Union (2002), Canada (2013), and several other countries.
Meanwhile, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, founded in 2012, is active in Europe and North America, where it purportedly tries to “build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom.” As such, journalists have used Samidoun’s purported expertise in articles about incarcerated Palestinians. In reality, Israeli research has repeatedly shown that the
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Feb. 22, 2021
In 2015, Shandong Landbridge, owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, won a 99-year lease to Australia’s Port Darwin when it was privatized, after offering $400 million dollars – 25 times its annual profits. Shortly after the deal was announced, the U.S. government expressed concern that “port access could facilitate intelligence collection on U.S. and Australian military forces stationed nearby.” Indeed, the U.S. Navy uses the port. Sound familiar?
That same year, the Chinese firm SIPG won Israel’s tender to operate the private bay port adjacent to Haifa Port. Here, too the U.S. (belatedly) claimed the move was nothing but another stage of China’s imperialist “One Belt, One Road” plan, whose main goal is Chinese control of foreign infrastructure facilities as a strategic economic lever. The Americans pressured the Israelis, too, to limit Chinese holdings in its infrastructure, and, in vain, to cancel the tender. However, the similarity ends her
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US President Joe Biden’s first phone call with a Middle East leader will be with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a White House spokersperson stated on Tuesday. Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not commit to an exact date, but said the call would take place “soon.”
Biden has called the heads of other US allies, but has not spoken with any Middle Eastern countries. The lack of an official phone call with Jerusalem since Biden took office last month has raised eyebrows in Israel and the United States. Previous Presidents called the Israeli PM within days of their inaugurations.
The White House previously stated that the President is not intentionally snubbing Netanyahu. On Tuesday, Psaki confirmed that the Biden Administration is “fully engaged” and already has “constant conversations at many levels with the Israelis.”
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Silhouettes are seen in front of the logo of US social media Facebook in Brussels, February 14, 2020. (Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP)
Israeli ministers and lawmakers on Wednesday presented tech giants Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter with proposals to beef up the fight against anti-Semitism on social media.
The companies should institute policies similar to those they employ by labeling misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and the US presidential election, the ministers said.
The call came in a policy paper, called “The Hate Factor,” formulated by the Strategic Affairs Ministry and Diaspora Affairs Ministry. The paper was presented to a Knesset panel in the presence of representatives of “major social media networks,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. The statement did not mention any specific social media companies.