Posts Tagged ‘human rights abuse’
World Zionist Congress is meeting.
You might have the impression that ‘world Zionism’ is an antisemitic organization.
Or you have succumbed to the conspiracy theory…
While the World Zionist Congress is in session, with 720 delegates from over 30 countries.
by Alison Weir October 23, 2020
Menifee, CA (IAK) — I’m sometimes astounded at the fact that a major political movement over a century old is so little known among Americans – especially since it has had a momentous impact on the world in general and on the U.S. in particular, causing multiple wars, vast population displacement, and global instability.
In my travels around the US, I’ve found that most Americans know extremely little about Zionism.
I would guess that the vast majority of Americans could not define the term (that was certainly my situation for most of my life), and that a great many may Not have even heard of it.
And among those who have heard the term, many may think it refers to some antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The fact is that Zionism – according to the dictionary, “a worldwide Jewish movement that resulted in the establishment and development of the state of Israel and that now supports the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland” – is both very real and extremely significant.
Zionism succeeded in establishing the state of Israel in 1948 after decades of open and frequent covert efforts.
It promoted a successful, and extremely false, slogan – “a land without a people for a people without a land” – and succeeded in perpetrating one of the major hoaxes of the 20th century, in which victims (indigenous Palestinians) were designated aggressors while the aggressors (Zionist colonists) were portrayed as victims.
This hoax was documented by diverse authors, and perpetrated through the silencing of others.
And today this movement contains numerous powerful international entities (see the list below), while remaining largely invisible to millions of citizens of the country that gives Israel massive amounts of money, shields Israel apartheid system internationally, and has fought at many pre-emptive wars on Israel’s behalf of Israel, in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia and Yemen. (The rationale is to secure the existence of the State of Israel and its dominance on the region)
The dictionary definition captures only the simplest meaning of the word, but not its deep impact: how Israel was established and what supporting Israel today enables.
As numerous historians have documented, Israel was established through a war of ethnic cleansing, in the words of a major Israeli historian, in which approximately 750,000 men, women, and children were violently expelled. Hundreds of villages were destroyed and much of the indigenous population was displaced, their ancestral homes and land confiscated and the former owners made into penniless refugees.
Today, in its pursuit of the Jewish identity mentioned in the definition, Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian land, discriminates against the remnants of the non-Jewish population that remain in the area, and holds the four and a half million people in the remaining portion of their land (the West Bank and Gaza), in two virtual prisons, their ability to leave and to return to their homes controlled by Israel.
Palestinian villages are invaded daily, people terrorized and abducted, homes and crops are regularly destroyed, youth administratively detained to “security reasons.”.
For over a year there was a weekly mass demonstration during which Israeli forces shot with live bullets unarmed demonstrators every week. More than a thousand Palestinians were handicapped from the snipers children, women, nurses, journalists…(To see these actions go here.)
Zionist movement in the US – a century of activism
As I describe in my book, the Zionist movement in the U.S. began in the late 1800s and played a significant role in the events that led to the establishment of Israel.
Today the pro-Israel lobby is probably the most powerful and pervasive special interest group in the U.S. Its members have diverse views and sometimes sharply disagree with one another on aspects of the issue, but all share one goal: support for Israel.
Israel partisans have become extremely influential in both political parties and have obtained numerous US policies of support for Israel.
Most recently, they are promoting bills to expend $19 million per day on behalf of Israel.
Altogether, 90 bills for Israel have been introduced in the current Congress alone.
In addition, there is also considerable evidence that Israel partisans were central in pushing the US into invading Iraq, and that many are similarly active in demonizing Iran. (See this, this, this, and this.)
Conspiracy theory?
Since little of the above is known by the general American public (U.S. media rarely report any of this), some Americans are under the impression that even suggesting there is a “world zionist movement” is an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
(In fact, even discussing the Israel lobby in the U.S. can be dangerous to reputations and careers.
For example, respected professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were attacked as “antisemitic” for their scholarly work in detailing the power of the Israel lobby.)
Fact is that the World Zionist Organization has been in existence since the late 1800s, and this is just one of a number of international organizations that work on behalf of Israel.
All of these are very public – if one knows where to look.
Currently, the World Zionist Organization is holding its 38th Congress in an online format from Israel. The Congress is convened every five years.
World Zionist Organization
While US mainstream media have largely failed to even mention this organization and event, it has been big news in the Israeli and Jewish-American press, with numerous stories leading up to the event.
Below is an image from an article in the Jewish News of Northern California entitled “Your vote in Israel: Here are the Bay Area Jews running for the World Zionist Congress.”
Image featured on March 3, 2020 in the Jewish News of Northern California about candidates running for the World Zionist Congress. The caption read: “2017 event in Jerusalem commemorating the 120th anniversary of the first World Zionist Congress
The World Zionist Organization (WZO) was founded in 1897. It has an elaborate structure, including a World Zionist Congress, a Zionist General Council, a Zionist Executive, and a Zionist Supreme Court.
It also has a department devoted to “repatriation” – encouraging Jews to leave their birth countries and move to Israel – and lists numerous affiliates and partners around the world.
Currently, the WZO convened its 38th Congress, with 720 delegates and observers from over 30 countries participating in a 3-day conference.
Based in Israel as usual, this year’s event is being held online because of the pandemic, and sessions are being synchronized with time zones in Israel, North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
The World Zionist Congress allocates about a billion dollars a year to various projects and is popularly known as the “parliament of the Jewish people.”
The Israeli Jerusalem Post newspaper reports that during the Congress “elections will take place for the leadership positions of the National Institutions – the World Zionist Organization, Keren Kayemeth Le’Israel (Jewish National Fund-JNF), and Keren Hayesod [aka United Israel Appeal:
“the preeminent worldwide fundraising organization for Israel, which was established in London in 1920, to serve as the fundraising arm of the Jewish People and the Zionist Movement]. Current issues on the world Jewish agenda will be deliberated…”
Among the issues to be deliberated will be how to “allocate nearly $5 billion to Jewish organizations and programs in Israel and around the world.”
The event is being live-streamed and can be viewed here.
Additional Zionist organizations:
The WZO is far from the only organization with “Zionist” in its title.
Among the others are:
Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO): founded in 1902, it currently has 250,000 members around the world.
Mizrachi, the global Religious Zionist movement: “Mizrachi is the global Religious Zionist movement, spreading Torat Eretz Yisrael across the world and strengthening the bond between the international Jewish community and the State of Israel.”
It was founded in 1902, is based in Jerusalem and has branches across the globe. It opposes the international movement supporting Palestinian rights known as BDS. It says the Mizrachi Global Summit was held on October 18th.
Zionist Organization of America: “Founded in 1897, the Zionist Organization of America (“ZOA”) is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States.” It has 25,000 members and chapters throughout the U.S.
Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America: Over a century old, it says its vision is to “strengthen a connection to Israel.” It says it is “the largest women’s Zionist membership organization in the United States. It inspires a passion for and a commitment to its partnership with the land and the People of Israel.” (Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a lifelong member.)
American Zionist Movement: “AZM works to promote and defend Zionism in the United States; to deepen and expand the active relationship of the American Jewish Community to Zionism in a contemporary context; to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among Zionist organizations through and with the AZM; and to be the central hub for Zionist resources in America.”
(An interesting bit of history is that “Zion” was one of the names Zionist leaders considered in 1948 for the new state, before they finally settled on the name “Israel.”
(Israel means the Land of God El, the Canaan all encompassing God in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria and whom Jew considered their God too. The bedouin Jews created Jehovah as their God of war as Canaan hired them as mercenaries to fight along them. )
Still more Zionist organizations
There are also a number of other major international organizations that work for Israel. Virtually all of these organizations have large staffs, elaborate structures, and multi-million dollar budgets.
Their websites provide an abundance of information about their global reach and diverse activities. Many openly state that they work to oppose the international movement to boycott Israel, which has been organized because of Israel’s long documented human rights abuses.
Known as “BDS” (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), the movement “upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”
(BDS is demanding that countries boycott the product generated in the occupied land of West Bank by illegal settlers and settlements)
Below is a partial list:
• World Jewish Congress (WJC) is another international congress that supports Israel. According to its website, the WJC “represents Jewish communities and organizations in 100 countries around the world. It advocates on their behalf towards governments, parliaments, international organizations and other faiths.”
The WJC represents significant global wealth. Its annual gala held in New York last year was, as I wrote in a detailed article, attended by billionaires, Russian oligarchs, Ukrainian ambassadors, international financiers, the Rothschilds, and assorted other glitterati.
• World Holocaust Forum is another international entity that supports Israel. It is held in Israel and was founded and run by Russian-Israeli oligarch Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor.
Last year, at least 45 world leaders attended his fifth event. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper called it “an airlift of presidents, prime ministers and royalty from around the world.” Kantor, a billionaire known for unscrupulous business practices, is president of the European Jewish Congress and heads up a network of pro-Israel international entities.
In an interview for a Zionist publication, Kantor was asked: “Why are you so interested in Holocaust education and in creating big events to memorialize the Holocaust?” Kantor answered:
The Holocaust was an essential tool used to bring about the establishment of the State of Israel. In 2006, it is the most effective tool we have to fight against anti-Semitism and to protect Israel.”
Some of the world leaders from 49 Countries who came to Israel for Kantor’s World Holocaust Forum. Source | Israel Hayom
Source | AJC
• Jewish Agency for Israel has been in existence for 90 years, has branches around the world, and encourages people to move to Israel. It has a branch in the US where donations to it can be deducted from U.S. taxes. It states that it works to oppose BDS.
• B’nai B’rith International has been in existence for 175 years and had a connection to Israel from the state’s earliest years. Like many of the organizations, it periodically works to prevent events supporting Palestinian rights.
• Maccabi World Union, headquartered in Israel, spans five continents, is in 80 countries, has 450 clubs, and 450,000 members. Its website says it’s “a Zionist organization that utilizes sports as a means to bring Jewish people of all ages closer to Judaism and Israel.”
It has a multitude of programs focused on Israel and works to “fight BDS.”
• Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 and played a major role in transferring Palestinian land to Israel. It is holding its national conference right now (video here).
Like many of these entities, it has a presence in the U.S. and has acquired tax deductible status.
• American Jewish Committee (AJC), despite its name, is yet another international organization. It has 30 offices around the world in Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacifiic, and Israel. It also has numerous regional offices throughout the US.
Note: I posted many articles on How the State of Israel was established and which colonial powers and personalities actively worked toward that plan
Mistreatment of women is the number one human rights abuse: Jimmy Carter
Note: I think this is also true in matriarchal structure for abusing men
With his signature resolve, former US President Jimmy Carter dives into three unexpected reasons why the mistreatment of women and girls continues in so many manifestations in so many parts of the world, both developed and developing.
The final reason he gives? “In general, men don’t give a damn.”
The president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, Jimmy Carter has used his post-presidency years to work for peace, teach, write and engage in global activism. Full bio
As a matter of fact, I was trying to think about my career since I left the White House, and the best example I have is a cartoon in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. This little boy is looking up at his father, and he says, “Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a former president.”
00:26 (Laughter)
Well, I have had a great blessing as a former president, because I have had an access that very few other people in the world have ever had to get to know so many people around this whole universe.
Not only am I familiar with the 50 states in the United States, but also my wife and I have visited more than 145 countries in the world, and the Carter Center has had full-time programs in 80 nations on Earth.
And a lot of times, when we go into a country, we not only the meet the king or the president, but we also meet the villagers who live in the most remote areas of Africa.
So our overall commitment at the Carter Center is to promote human rights, and knowing the world as I do, I can tell you without any equivocation that the number one abuse of human rights on Earth is, strangely, not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls.
There are a couple of reasons for this that I’ll mention to begin with.
First of all is the misinterpretation of religious scriptures, holy scriptures, in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Quran and so forth, and these have been misinterpreted by men who are now in the ascendant positions in the synagogues and the churches and in the mosques.
And they interpret these rules to make sure that women are ordinarily relegated to a secondary position compared to men in the eyes of God.
This is a very serious problem. It’s ordinarily not addressed. A number of years ago, in the year 2000, I had been a Baptist, a Southern Baptist for 70 years — I tell you, I still teach Sunday school every Sunday; I’ll be teaching this Sunday as well — but the Southern Baptist Convention in the year 2000 decided that women should play a secondary position, a subservient position to men.
So they issued an edict, in effect, that prevents women from being priests, pastors, deacons in the church, or chaplains in the military, and if a woman teaches a classroom in a Southern Baptist seminary, they cannot teach if a boy is in the room, because you can find verses in the Bible, there’s over 30,000 verses in the Bible, that say that a woman shouldn’t teach a man, and so forth.
But the basic thing is the scriptures are misinterpreted to keep men in an ascendant position. That is an all-pervasive problem, because men can exert that power and if an abusive husband or an employer, for instance, wants to cheat women, they can say that if women are not equal in the eyes of God, why should I treat them as equals myself?
Why should I pay them equal pay for doing the same kind of work?
The other very serious blight that causes this problem is the excessive resort to violence, and that is increasing tremendously around the world.
In the United States of America, for instance, we have had an enormous increase in abuse of poor people, mostly black people and minorities, by putting them in prison.
When I was in office as governor of Georgia, one out of every 1,000 Americans were in prison. Nowadays, 7.3 people per 1,000 are in prison. That’s a sevenfold increase. And since I left the White House, there’s been an 800% increase in the number of women who are black who are in prison.
We also have [one of the only countries] on Earth that still has the death penalty that is a developed country. And we rank right alongside the countries that are most abusive in all elements of human rights in encouraging the death penalty.
We’re in California now, and I figured out the other day that California has spent four billion dollars in convicting 13 people for the death penalty.
If you add that up, that’s 307 million dollars it costs California to send a person to be executed. Nebraska this week just passed a law abolishing the death penalty, because it costs so much. (Applause)
So the resort to violence and abuse of poor people and helpless people is another cause of the increase in abuse of women.
Let me just go down a very few abuses of women that concern me most, and I’ll be fairly brief, because I have a limited amount of time, as you know.
1. One is genital mutilation. Genital mutilation is horrible and not known by American women, but in some countries, many countries, when a child is born that’s a girl, very soon in her life, her genitals are completely cut away by a so-called cutter who has a razor blade and, in a non-sterilized way, they remove the exterior parts of a woman’s genitalia.
And sometimes, in more extreme cases but not very rare cases, they sew the orifice up so the girl can just urinate or menstruate.
And then later, when she gets married, the same cutter goes in and opens the orifice up so she can have sex. This is not a rare thing, although it’s against the law in most countries.
In Egypt, for instance, 91% of all the females that live in Egypt today have been sexually mutilated in that way. In some countries, it’s more than 98 percent of the women are cut that way before they reach maturity. This is a horrible affliction on all women that live in those countries.
2. Another very serious thing is honor killings, where a family with misinterpretation, again, of a holy scripture — there’s nothing in the Quran that mandates this — will execute a girl in their family if she is raped or if she marries a man that her father does not approve, or sometimes even if she wears inappropriate clothing. And this is done by members of her own family, so the family becomes murderers when the girl brings so-called disgrace to the family.
An analysis was done in Egypt not so long ago by the United Nations and it showed that 75% of these murders of a girl are perpetrated by the father, the uncle or the brother, but 25 percent of the murders are conducted by women.
3. Another problem that we have in the world that relates to women particularly is slavery, or human trafficking it’s called nowadays.
There were about 12.5 million people sold from Africa into slavery in the New World back in the 19th century and the 18th century. There are 30 million people now living in slavery.
The United States Department of State now has a mandate from Congress to give a report every year, and the State Department reports that 800,000 people are sold across international borders every year into slavery, and that 80% of those sold are women, into sexual slavery.
In the United States right this moment, 60,000 people are living in human bondage, or slavery. Atlanta, Georgia, where the Carter Center is located and where I teach at Emory University, they have between 200 and 300 women, people sold into slavery every month.
It’s the number one place in the nation because of that. Atlanta has the busiest airport in the world, and they also have a lot of passengers that come from the Southern Hemisphere.
If a brothel owner wants to buy a girl that has brown or black skin, they can do it for 1,000 dollars. A white-skinned girl brings several times more than that, and the average brothel owner in Atlanta and in the United States now can earn about $35,000 per slave.
The sex trade in Atlanta, Georgia, exceeds the total drug trade in Atlanta, Georgia.
So this is another very serious problem, and the basic problem is prostitution, because there’s not a whorehouse in America that’s not known by the local officials, the local policemen, or the chief of police or the mayor and so forth.
And this leads to one of the worst problems, and that is that women are bought increasingly and put into sexual slavery in all countries in the world.
Sweden has got a good approach to it. About 15 to 20 years ago, Sweden decided to change the law, and women are no longer prosecuted if they are in sexual slavery, but the brothel owners and the pimps and the male customers are prosecuted, and prostitution has gone down.
In the United States, we take just the opposite position. For every male arrested for illegal sex trade, 25 women are arrested in the United States of America. Canada, Ireland, I’ve already said Sweden, France, and other countries are moving now towards this so-called Swedish model. That’s another thing that can be done.
We have two great institutions in this country that all of us admire: our military and our great university system.
In the military, they are now analyzing how many sexual assaults take place. The last report I got, there were 26,000 sexual assaults that took place in the military — 26,000. Only 3,000, not much more than 1 percent, are actually prosecuted, and the reason is that the commanding officer of any organization — a ship like my submarine, or a battalion in the Army or a company in the Marines — the commanding officer has the right under law to decide whether to prosecute a rapist or not, and of course, the last thing they want is for anybody to know that under their command, sexual assaults are taking place, so they do not do it. That law needs to be changed.
About one out of four girls who enter American universities will be sexually assaulted before she graduates, and this is now getting a lot of publicity, partially because of my book, but other things, and so 89 universities in America are now condemned by the Department of Education under Title IX because the officials of the universities are not taking care of the women to protect them from sexual assault.
The Department of Justice says that more than half of the rapes on a college campus take place by serial rapists, because outside of the university system, if they rape somebody, they’ll be prosecuted, but when they get on a university campus, they can rape with impunity. They’re not prosecuted. Those are the kinds of things that go on in our society.
4. Another thing that’s very serious about the abuse of women and girls is the lack of equal pay for equal work, as you know.
And this is sometimes misinterpreted, but for full-time employment, a woman in the United States now gets 23 percent less than a man.
When I became president, the difference was 39 percent. So we’ve made some progress, partially because I was president and so forth — (Applause) (Laughter) — but in the last 15 years, there’s been no progress made, so it’s been just about 23 or 24 percent difference for the last 15 years.
These are the kind of things that go on. If you take the Fortune 500 companies, 23 of them have women CEOs, out of 500, and those CEOs, I need not tell you, make less on an average than the other CEOs. Well, that’s what goes on in our country.
5. Another problem with the United States is we are the most warlike nation on Earth.
We have been to war with about 25 different countries since the Second World War. Sometimes, we’ve had soldiers on the ground fighting. The other times, we’ve been flying overhead dropping bombs on people. Other times, of course, now, we have drones that attack people and so forth. We’ve been at war with 25 different countries or more since the Second World War. There was four years, I won’t say which ones, where we didn’t — (Applause) — we didn’t drop a bomb, we didn’t launch a missile, we didn’t fire a bullet. But anyway, those kinds of things, the resort to violence and the misinterpretation of the holy scriptures are what causes, are the basic causes, of abuse of women and girls.
6.There’s one more basic cause that I need not mention, and that is that in general, men don’t give a damn. (Applause) That’s true.
The average man that might say, I’m against the abuse of women and girls quietly accepts the privileged position that we occupy, and this is very similar to what I knew when I was a child, when separate but equal had existed.
Racial discrimination, legally, had existed for 100 years, from 1865 at the end of the War Between the States, the Civil War, all the way up to the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson got the bills passed for equal rights.
But during that time, there were many white people that didn’t think that racial discrimination was okay, but they stayed quiet, because they enjoyed the privileges of better jobs, unique access to jury duty, better schools, and everything else, and that’s the same thing that exists today, because the average man really doesn’t care.
Even though they say, “I’m against discrimination against girls and women,” they enjoy a privileged position. And it’s very difficult to get the majority of men who control the university system, the majority of men that control the military system, the majority of men that control the governments of the world, and the majority of men that control the great religions.
what is the basic thing that we need to do today?
I would say the best thing that we could do today is for the women in the powerful nations like this one, and where you come from, Europe and so forth, who have influence and who have freedom to speak and to act, need to take the responsibility on yourselves to be more forceful in demanding an end to racial discrimination against girls and women all over the world.
The average woman in Egypt doesn’t have much to say about her daughters getting genitally mutilated and so forth.
I didn’t even go down to detail about that. But I hope that out of this conference, that every woman here will get your husbands to realize that these abuses on the college campuses and the military and so forth and in the future job market, need to protect your daughters and your granddaughters.
I have 12 grandchildren, four children, and 10 great-grandchildren, and I think often about them and about the plight that they will face in America, not only if they lived in Egypt or a foreign country, in having equal rights, and I hope that all of you will join me in being a champion for women and girls around the world and protect their human rights.
Adonis Diaries 