CIA retrieved ‘intact’ UFOs – Daily Mail

American spies have managed to recover at least nine potentially alien vehicles, two of them “completely intact,” the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday, citing three anonymous sources.

• The sources, supposedly briefed on top secret operations, told the UK outlet that the main player in the retrievals has been the Office of Global Access (OGA), a branch of the CIA Science and Technology Directorate established in 2003.

“There’s at least nine vehicles. There were different circumstances for different ones,” one of the sources said.

• “It has to do with the physical condition they’re in. If it crashes, there’s a lot of damage done. Others, two of them, are completely intact.”

The CIA has a system to detect unidentified flying objects (UFO) “while they’re still cloaked” and helps special US military units salvage the wreckage if “non-human craft” land, crash, or are brought down, the source added.

Another anonymous source described the OGA’s role as “basically a facilitator” for US operatives to access areas where they would normally not be allowed.

• “They are very clever at being able to get anywhere in the world they want to,” the second source said.
• Most of OGA’s operations involve “stray nuclear weapons, downed satellites or adversaries’ technology,” according to the Mail, but some missions have involved retrieval of UFOs – or as the US government now prefers to call them, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” (UAP).

Source: RT

Peaceful rallies versus violent riots

A fortnight ago in Washington, D.C., one of the largest gatherings of American Jews in history occurred. Nearly 300,000 people from all walks of life stood in solidarity with Israel in its war against Hamas terrorists.

The National Mall was peaceful and bipartisan, with no damage or security issues.

The March for Israel stands in stark contrast to many anti-war, anti-GOP, and anti-statue rallies in recent years. It contrasts with the anti-Netanyahu raucous protests in Israel. More than anything, however, was the difference between it and pro-Palestinian Arab demonstrations that have erupted since Hamas’s unprovoked Oct. 7 slaughter of 1,400 Israelis and others.

• Pro-Palestinian/Hamas riots around the globe frequently involve calls for genocide, assaults, hooligans harassing holiday shoppers, and desecration of historic property, including American flags. They are chaotic and venomous and often require a major response from police departments.

Contrarily, the March for Israel’s aims were to support the Jewish State’s efforts to eradicate Islamist terrorism, demand the release of hostages kidnapped from Israel, and stand against the wave of antisemitism that has swept across the West since the war erupted.

There were tears, laughter and singing. Israeli flags were proudly waved, flanked by American flags with clear chants of “USA! USA! USA!” There were no calls for genocide and no violence.

• On a perfect late autumn day, the March for Israel probably was the most orderly large-scale political rally this side of the annual March for Life.
• Even the Thanksgiving Parade was desecrated by pro-Hamas demonstrators this year.

At pro-Palestinian rallies, it is commonplace to hear demonstrators clamor for the extermination of Israel, including Nazi-like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Jihad supporters, however, who spew such hatred are triggered by the most innocuous statements.

Anti-Israel media paid particular attention to House Speaker Mike Johnson declaring, “The calls for a cease-fire are outrageous,” prompting attendees to erupt in “No cease-fire!” chants.

The pro-death cult claims Johnson seeks to kill Palestinian civilians, but this is a pathetic distortion of his remarks and the reaction. The pro-Israel crowd was cheering the refusal to surrender and abandon the hostages taken by Hamas. The crowd was cheering Israel’s resolve to defeat Hamas. A cease-fire was in place Oct. 6. Hamas broke it the next day.

The peaceful nature of the rally is likely why the odious Washington Post declined to bury the story the following day.

This was the front page of yesterday parentheses November 15) @washingtonpost. The day after a huge gathering of over 290,000 people rallying to support a nation that suffered a terrible attack, you’d think that be worthy of the front page … it made the metro section. pic.twitter.com/AOMUw5Ax3C

— The Frank Friar (@CarmeliteNick) November 16, 2023

• The Post’s Nov. 15 above-the-fold front page mentions Israeli forces overtaking a hospital in Gaza.

The front page mentions the House passing a stopgap funding measure. Below the fold is a story about erstwhile Trump allies criticizing the former President’s actions following the 2020 election. There’s even a section about a bookstore owner.

At the very bottom left-hand corner, under the “In the news” heading, a line reads, “March for Israel: Thousands gathered on the National Mall to express solidarity, condemn antisemitism, and demand the release of hostages who were taken by Hamas.”

Not eventful enough?
On cue, a pro-Palestinian Arab event held nearby the following day turned violent as hundreds of protesters clashed with law enforcement. Mobs blocked entrances and exits to the DNC headquarters, denying several congressmen ingress and egress. The zealots rebuffed directives to retreat, prompting police to intervene, and confrontations ensued. Six officers were treated for injuries suffered during the altercations, and a “protester” was arrested for assaulting a law enforcement official.

One House Democrat said the scenes were scarier than the Jan. 6 Capital assault. He assuredly couldn’t say that about the March for Israel.

Source: Ari J. Kaufman – Arutz Sheva

Why Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem

In Bethlehem, Christmas is canceled.

Palestinian Christian leaders across denominations in the West Bank city decided last week that they will forgo all festivities this year as a mark of solidarity with their brethren in Gaza. There will be no public celebrations, no twinkling Christmas lights and no decorated tree in Manger Square — not as long, they say, as a state of war reigns over the embattled Gaza Strip, and the majority of its residents cope with Israeli bombardments, the devastation of their homes and a spiraling humanitarian crisis.

“This is madness,” Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, told me. “This has become a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.”

Isaac was part of a small delegation of Palestinian Christians who came to Washington this week to lobby the Biden administration, U.S. lawmakers and religious leaders to support calls for a full-scale cease-fire. A six-day pause in hostilities between Israel and militant group Hamas is set to elapse Thursday, though negotiations with Hamas involving U.S., Israeli and Arab officials are ongoing to potentially extend the current truce. Israeli officials have vowed to continue their campaign against Hamas after hostages are released, while the Biden administration appears to be trying to restrain whatever next phase of the war Israel chooses to launch.

On Tuesday afternoon, the delegation went to the White House and delivered a letter for President Biden signed by the leaders of the Christian community in Bethlehem, including Isaac’s Protestant denomination and his Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic counterparts. They also went to the Hill to meet staff in the Senate and House of Representatives.

“God has placed political leaders in a position of power so that they can bring justice, support those who suffer, and be instruments of God’s peace,” reads the letter, which I got to see in advance of its delivery. “We want a constant and comprehensive cease-fire. Enough death. Enough destruction. This is a moral obligation. There must be other ways. This is our call and prayer this Christmas.”

Palestinian Christians belong to the world’s oldest Christian communities, rooted in the historic cradle of Christianity.

But they are diminished in number, at least in proportion to their neighbors of other faiths, and are represented in greater strength in the Palestinian diaspora around the world. Palestinian Christians comprise some 2 percent of the overall Palestinian population in the West Bank, concentrated mostly around Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and less than 1 percent of the population in Gaza.

The latter community, small but prominent, is in the midst of a potential extinction event. There are roughly fewer than 1,000 Christians in Gaza, who have lived there without much problem despite the de facto takeover of the territory in 2007 by Hamas. But Israeli airstrikes destroyed or damaged almost all the community’s homes in Gaza City while also hitting Gaza’s oldest active church, where some were sheltering. “The vast majority of the Christian community in Gaza are now homeless,” Isaac said.

That’s prompted perhaps as much as a fifth of Gaza’s Christians who also had foreign passports to abandon the territory altogether. The rest find themselves forsaken. “They are calling to us, saying, ‘Let us leave, we either die or we leave,’” said Tamar Haddad, a regional coordinator of the Lutheran World Federation who was also part of the visiting delegation.

Jack Sara, president of Bethlehem Bible College, pointed to how the plight of Palestinian Christians doesn’t seem to be heard by many U.S. evangelicals, who see in muscular Jewish supremacy over the Holy Land a pathway for their own messianic vision. Tennessee-based evangelical preacher Greg Locke, a vocal and oft-viral pro-Trump clergyman, called for Israel to reduce Gaza to a “parking lot” not long after the Oct. 7 attack. More than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in the weeks since, including thousands of children.

The ideology of Christian Zionism animated the agenda of the Trump administration and influences a vast segment of Republican lawmakers, from former vice president Mike Pence to current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Sara, a leading Palestinian evangelical theologian, told me that their creed “is not the evangelical theology and its message of love of all humans, regardless of their background and ethnicity” in which he believes and practices.

Away from Gaza, the members of the delegation described a growing climate of intimidation and hostility toward Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, fueled by the actions of Jewish extremists emboldened by Israel’s far-right government. “We feel Jewish extreme radicals want us out of Jerusalem and they’re working on it and they’re going unchecked,” Isaac said.

The delegation’s members condemned Hamas’s actions and deplored its killing of innocent civilians and abduction of hostages. But they questioned Israel’s declared intention to wipe out an organization that is part of the fabric of Palestinian society and seen as a standard-bearer of resistance to decades of Israeli military occupation and domination. “As horrifying as October 7 was, things did not start there,” Isaac said. “And you cannot just begin the story from there and as such, give a green light for Israel to do what it’s doing right now, which goes way beyond, which is a revenge campaign.”

Many leading foreign diplomats have stressed the underlying importance of reviving the long-stalled and moribund process of the two-state solution. Most Palestinians are cynical about this project, given the fecklessness of their own political leadership and the West’s inability to prevent Israel from further carving up the West Bank with settlements over the past two decades. Many Israeli politicians, including leading members of the current government, are also explicitly opposed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

But any postwar dispensation will have to reckon with the ground realities in Israel and the occupied territories.

“One thing is clear: all my interlocutors in the Arab world have accepted Israel’s existence and want to engage with it,” wrote top E.U. diplomat Josep Borrell in a Financial Times op-ed that followed a recent trip to the Middle East. “They recognize the immense opportunity that lies in a peaceful neighborhood, cross-border cooperation and Israel’s potential role as a regional economic driver. But all agree that Arab-Israeli cooperation hinges upon resolving the Palestinian question.”

In recent statements, President Biden has also invoked the need to forge a two-state solution as a priority for the region. But talk is cheap. “America needs to prove to the Palestinians that they are serious about the two state solution because any talk from the Americans about a two-state solution right now feels empty, given the lack of action,” Isaac said. “No one has held Israel accountable.”

In their letter to Biden, the Palestinian clergymen reiterated their appeal: “This land has been crying for peace and justice for 75 years. It is time justice is served. It is time everybody can live with dignity in this land. The Palestinian and Israeli children deserve to live, hope and dream.”

When Isaac returns to Bethlehem at the end of the week for the start of the Advent season, he and his colleagues intend to set up a small Nativity scene with rocks and debris piled atop it. “This is what Christmas now means to us that we see Jesus being born among those who have lost everything, who are under the rubble,” Isaac said.

Source: Washington Post

The Jews and Boris Johnson: Zelensky’s top political ally looks for scapegoats as Ukrainian elites begin to accept the war is lost

A few days ago, President Vladimir Zelensky’s most important political ally, David Arakhamia, gave a long interview to TV presenter Natalya Moseichuk. Both are heavyweights of Ukraine’s public sphere, with widespread recognition and significant influence.

Moseichuk’s main platform is the television channel 1+1. Arakhamia heads the parliamentary faction of the ‘Servant of the People’ party, which is Zelensky’s machine and, as such, controls Ukraine in a de facto authoritarian manner.

1. Bound to attract attention, the interview has done more: Due to Arakhamia’s unguarded (or deliberately revealing?) account of real yet missed opportunities to reach an early peace agreement in the full-scale war between Moscow and Kiev (and its Western sponsors and exploiters), it has caused a sensation.

Regarding the peace negotiations that took place in Belarus at the end of February and the beginning of March 2022, Arakhamia tells Moseichuk that the Russian delegation had one “key aim”: to make Ukraine accept neutrality and give up on NATO membership.

• In Arakhamia’s own words, “everything else” Russia talked about, such as demands regarding “denazification, Russian-speaking populations, and blah-blah-blah” was merely “cosmetic political seasoning.”

 A hard truth about the Russia-Ukraine conflict is finally dawning on the West
Arakhamia’s admission proves, once more, that there have always been viable alternatives to war.

Western information warriors still denying this empirically established fact simply refuse to face their own terrible responsibility for stonewalling negotiations throughout. Likewise, Arakhamia demonstrates that everyone in Ukraine and the West who insisted that Moscow’s war aims were maximalist (whether to obliterate Ukraine as a state or to march right through it to, at least, Berlin) were flat out wrong, whether by mistake or on purpose. At least, that’s if we believe Arakhamia, who had direct experience with real representatives of Russia and not the fantasy creatures populating the minds of all too many Westerners, from Yale to Berlin. And note: Arakhamia has absolutely no reason to embellish Moscow’s record.

• Or, for that matter, inclination. In the same interview, he occasionally uses the racist epithet “orcs” for Russians and displays that trademark arrogance that plays so well with Western visitors and has cost Ukraine so much. Arakhamia has made himself believe that his team had the advantage of 21st-century technology (by which he means Zoom and WhatsApp), while the Russian delegation was stuck in the 19th century (using secure landline phones to communicate with Moscow).

Of course, such technology first emerged during the 1940s, but that’s what the man said.

Recognizing that his Russian interlocutors were well prepared, unlike their Ukrainian counterparts, who improvised, he also pats himself on the back for “disrupting their schemes,” i.e. dragging the negotiations down to a level at which the designated “Banderite” (his term) in the Ukrainian delegation gave tubthumping speeches just to make the Russians “go pale.”

“But what about territory?” you may ask.

In the same interview, Arakhamia states that, at that point, the Russian negotiators were ready to “go back to where they were,” presumably to the pre-24 February borders.

• Put differently, not only would the war have ended quickly, but Ukraine would also have kept all those territories that Russian forces have taken since then and those they are now likely to take in the future.

Kiev would have had to give up on Crimea and the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, areas whose inhabitants largely do not want to be part of Ukraine. Compared to what has happened since then, that would have been an easy way out.

The West, in this scenario, would have avoided the very damaging proxy war defeat that is now hanging over it. Everyone would have been better off economically as well. Obviously, that applies most of all to Ukraine, which is a devastated shadow of its former – already poor – self, propped up by Western aid (for now) and the European Union, especially Germany.

No wonder that Moseichuk’s next question for Arakhamia was why Ukraine did not take that Russian offer, a question that – as you will agree if you watch the interview – clearly surprised him. Looking a little like a poorly prepared student caught out in an exam, Arakhamia scrambles to patch together an impromptu answer.

• Here’s what he comes up with: Striking the deal would have been unconstitutional because aiming for NATO membership has been written into the Ukrainian constitution; one can’t trust Russians anyhow, so Kiev could never have been certain that there would not be another Russian attack.
• Both points are astonishingly flimsy: Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO (and the EU) was made part of its constitution only very recently, namely in 2019, at a time when constitutional law was transparently subordinated to short-term domestic political infighting. Post-1991 independent Ukraine existed for almost 30 years without such an unusual amendment.

Clearly, what has been added so recently could also have been revoked. Zelensky, with his Servant of the People machine, would have been perfectly able to make such a change if he had wished to. Hence, this was an obstacle that was politically surmountable. It should also not have been there in the first place because constitutions should stick to the fundamentals of political order. Aiming for this or that alliance is not part of these fundamentals by any stretch of the imagination, but a specific policy that should have remained open to ordinary political competition.

Arakhamia’s second pretext for failing to make peace, namely that Moscow could not be trusted “100%,” makes no sense either. For three reasons:

1. First, he himself acknowledges in the same interview that the Russian delegation was very concerned about what Arakhamia dismissively calls “that Minsk,” i.e. Ukraine’s deliberate cheating on the Minsk agreements of and 2014 and 2015. If Russia was willing to extend enough trust for a compromise anyhow, then the least Zelensky’s Kiev could have done was reciprocate by taking a fairly ordinary risk. Because nothing is ever “100%” reliable, except perhaps the fact that when you won’t make peace, you will have more war.
2. Secondly, why would Russia attack again if its one real reason to fight (as stated by Arakhamia), namely Ukraine’s drive toward NATO, would have been removed? Or is Arakhamia inadvertently betraying his own premise here that even after a deal, Ukraine would have systematically cheated again and continued its strategy of joining NATO (if perhaps surreptitiously), thus provoking another Russian response? That is the only assumption under which his statements are at least consistent. This interpretation seems all the more likely because Arakhamia also proudly admits that his delegation saw its main task in applying delaying tactics, while constantly coordinating with the Ukrainian military to gain maximum tactical advantage from that strategy of bad faith.
3. Thirdly, Arakhamia seeks to explain one fiasco with another: At the end of a further round of negotiations in Istanbul, he reminds his viewers, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev that “we won’t sign a thing, we will just keep fighting.” So, not seizing an opportunity to end the war in early March is, in Arakhamia’s mind, somehow justified by not doing so again one month later. In essence, on orders from a Western leader, as if his word was law to the government of Ukraine, which it clearly was.

That, again, is no surprise.

What is intriguing is the wide-eyed honesty with which Arakhamia admits Western control over the Zelensky regime.

Challenged by Moseichuk about that impression, Arakhamia’s “defense” – hard as it is to believe – takes the form of denying the claim, while admitting that things were “agreed on” in constant consultation with the Western “partners.” These “partners” received information from Kiev in a “dosed” manner, while also always knowing or given access to “everything,” down to all draft documents produced inside the Zelensky regime. And, according to Arakhamia, “we of course knew that we could not leave the war on our own; therefore, we had to consult with them.” Make of that painfully inconsistent jumble what you will. One thing is clear: Kiev has chosen to see itself as literally unable to make peace without Western permission.

• Reminded of the multiple signs – in the media and politics – that the West, especially the US, is turning away from Ukraine, Arakhamia blames Israel, or to be precise, the “Jewish lobby” (his term) in the US, which, he believes, is widely represented “on all levels” and in “all decision making centers” and exerts this influence, he is sure, to prioritize the current war between Israel and the Palestinians.

Let’s set aside Arakhamia’s anti-Semitic terminology (there is a very important difference between using the terms “Israeli lobby” and “Jewish lobby”). What is striking is his complete refusal – or inability? – to assign any weight to how the war has been going in Ukraine. Yet, in reality, signs of serious Western fatigue preceded the outbreak of the latest Middle East crisis, and their real cause is, of course, the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive and, more generally, the fact that Russia is winning.

Perhaps the most depressing part of an often bizarre conversation with a man who is either not very much in control of what he says or has a very complicated agenda is Arakhamia’s odd sense of Ukraine’s current situation. He repeatedly declares that the US does not owe Kiev anything, which sits badly with his preceding admission – convoluted and yet clear – that Washington has a de facto veto on Ukraine ever making peace. Ukrainians, he announces, must rely on themselves – and keep fighting. Moseichuk asks him “with what?” and his response is an incoherent rant about “secret factories” and how “we have a lot of stuff.” Clearly, Zelensky is not the only top politician who takes flight in fantasies while Ukraine burns. Onward and downward it is.

• The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Source: Tarik Cyril Amar – RT

Nobel Prize winner Yisrael Aumann: ‘Media campaign is raising the price of our hostages’

Prof. Yisrael (Robert) Aumann, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize and Israel Prize in economics, spoke with Arutz Sheva – Israel National News about the war against Hamas.

• ”Israel has taken appropriate measures. Hamas needs to be wiped out,” he said.
• “The people of Gaza are not innocent bystanders, but a part of the circumstances that allowed Hamas to come to power. We pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and left them complete independence to do as they see fit. The high society has beautiful homes there. They could have chosen peaceful coexistence; instead, they chose to elect Hamas, shortly after we pulled out of there. Instead of peaceful coexistence, the population of Gaza chose to elevate Hamas to positions of power. We cannot ignore that, although we do not, at any time, target civilians.”

Prof. Aumann says that the war has highlighted the importance of Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria:

• ”I was very much against the expulsion from Gush Katif. In a way, it has strengthened our will to remain in Judea and Samaria, and it is very important that not only the army but the so-called settlers remain there. Legitimate Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria because without it, we could be accused of colonialism. If it were only the army, people could say that we are an ‘occupying force.’ We are not occupying; we belong in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, in the Golan Heights. We have come back after two thousand years – two thousand years during which there has been a continuous Jewish presence in all these areas. We are not colonialists, we belong there.”

“It is important that people in Tel Aviv, who call the people in Judea and Samaria ‘messianic stargazers,’ understand that the people in Judea and Samaria are protecting them, legitimizing the army’s presence there and preventing the same kind of massacre we saw in the Gaza region from happening in central Israel.”

He also noted the complexities involved in the prisoner exchange deal.

• ”I think the desire to see the hostages returned safely is understandable, and I am glad that I am not in the position of being the father or great-grandfather of any of the hostages” he said.
• “I embrace them and totally understand them. However, the noise being made in Israel on the matter is negative. Outside of Israel, it’s good, but here it says to Hamas that we care about those things, and brings up the price that we have to pay. It may actually bring the price too high for us to pay, and we will never get them back and the campaign will have backfired. indeed, it already has.”

Source: Arutz Sheva

Header: Disengagement in Netzarim