The news cycle over the past week has been dominated by reports and analysis of the Signal group chat involving top national security officials discussing aspects of the recent air strikes which have been directed against the Houthis in Yemen. There are four basic issues that are being examined by both the media and by elected and appointed government officials. First is the apparent ignorance of ordering the strike at all since the panel appeared not to know very much about the target or why the US was escalating the conflict. Second, was the possibly accidental inclusion in the list of participants of a journalist who is closely connected to Zionist Israel, having voluntarily served in the Israeli Army as a prison guard, where he may have tortured Palestinians, and who plausibly is a dual national US-Israeli citizen. Third is the security of the Signal technology itself, which was reportedly initially created to permit such sharing of confidential views online for criminal purposes, but which might be vulnerable to penetration by any professional foreign intelligence service including those of Russia, China, the United Kingdom and, of course, Israel, which would have had a serious interest in what Washington was intending to do in Yemen. Fourth, is the question whether Donald Trump knew about the meeting and approved what was being discussed.
My own experience of secure communications enabling meetings goes back nearly fifty years when nearly every national security-linked facility, including Embassies and military bases, had a so called “bubble” which was enclosed and electronically sealed to prevent outside penetration to learn what was being discussed and by whom. Since that time, there have been huge advances in protecting communications but friends who are still in the intelligence community insist that what is being protected can be made vulnerable by the cyber agencies that exist in various competitive countries that spend billions of dollars to do just that.
The participants in the Signal meeting are now scrambling to make their case that they did nothing wrong, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in particular is arguing that the discussion was not classified even though the issue related to sensitive intelligence regarding the United States plans for escalating a war against a country with which it was not technically at war. The deniers are certainly wrong in making that case, either that or they were incapable of understanding what was on the table. The presence of Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine is more difficult to comprehend as he is no friend of the Trump Administration, but it is now being argued that it was either done absentmindedly by Michael Waltz, the national security director who chaired the meeting, or it was caused by a fit of confusion due to the fact that the “Goldberg” who was supposed to be invited was someone else. In any event, Jeffrey Goldberg first surfaced the story of the Signal meeting and then followed up with a full transcript. Was it all some kind of clever ploy to push Trump into making the decision to go full throttle and attack Iran? It would not be above Netanyahu to arrange something that convoluted and flat out evil and we shall see about Iran soon enough, but certainly Goldberg could only have been there due to manipulation of a situation in which he was pursuing a pro-Israel agenda. Waltz is taking credit for the snafu at the moment but that position might change as he comes under more pressure to resign.
In any event, the Signal story will no doubt be discussed and both embellished and dismissed during the next few days, but one thing it does demonstrate is the relative lack of knowledge that comes across as incompetency on the part of the Trump national security team. And the role of Trump himself will also be hotly debated as he has personally been playing a key role in foreign policy decision making, though so far he is only speaking up to support the work of his subordinates.
Actually there are couple of other stories that surfaced last week that I much prefer. First is the ongoing battle to silence, imprison and actually deport anyone who is critical of Israel or of Jewish group behavior. This has been job number one for the Israel Lobby, which has been eminently successful under both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations, so much so that the sentiment that Israel controls America has been growing among the US public to such an extent that it surfaces regularly.
The Justice Department has reportedly acted on President Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, through the formation of a multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Task Force’s first priority will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses. It is currently on the prowl, visiting four cities (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Boston) where it will investigate ten elite universities. It has been suggested that Israeli investigators might well be part of the teams that will actually go into the classrooms, dormitories and administrative buildings on campus, all done without search warrants or probable cause. And the universities have basically surrendered over the issue of freedom of speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and regarded by many as the “right” that is most vital if the people are to enjoy fundamental liberties.
A recent arrest of a foreign student took place in Somerville Massachusetts on Tuesday March 25th when Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to meet friends at an Iftar dinner to break their Ramadan fast, but she never made it. Instead, the 30-year-old was arrested and physically restrained by six armed plainclothes immigration officers near her apartment, close to Tufts University’s campus where she was a PhD student. Surveillance cameras show how one officer wearing a hat and hoodie grabbed her arms, causing her to shriek in fear while another confiscated her cell phone. The officers reportedly only showed their badges after Ozturk was restrained with her hands cuffed behind her back. According to the University, she was enrolled in a doctorate program at Tufts University on a valid F-1 visa, which allows international students to pursue full time academic studies, in which she was in good standing. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, that relishes the killing of Americans” but didn’t specify what those alleged activities were. In fact, friends report that Ozturk has not even been active in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The DHS spokesman never the less pressed on and explained “A visa is a privilege not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.” Nevertheless, no actual charges have been filed against Ozturk but the State Department has indicated that her visa has been terminated and she has been transferred to the Central Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Basile, where other students are also being held.
It is believed that Ozturk’s actual “crime” consisted of having cowritten a March 2024 op-ed in the school’s newspaper where she criticized Tufts’ response to the pro-Palestinian movement, calling for the school to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and also urging divestment of any holdings in Israeli companies and government. Ozturk was to a certain extent a victim of vigilante justice. Her photo and details appear on a website called Canary Mission, run by a Jewish extremist group that says it is dedicated to documenting individuals and organizations “that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond.” Tufts University officials said the school had no prior knowledge of the arrest and did not cooperate with it. Several professors, speaking off the record, were shocked and described how many on campus are fearing what comes next.
One final tale comes from a place formerly known as Palestine, where armed Israeli settlers descended upon the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank and assaulted Hamdan Ballal. Ballal is the co-director of the film “No Other Land” which recently has been in the news since it won an Oscar in Hollywood for best documentary. As is always the case when Jews assault Arabs, Israeli soldiers were present at the scene and stood by as Ballal was attacked and beaten along with other local residents, only to then detain him and two other Palestinians overnight in a military base, where they endured further abuse from the “Most Moral Army in the World” before being released.
Of course, President Trump did not register a complaint at the treatment of Ballal. What happened to the Palestinian was not just a random encounter. As co-director of a film that documents the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the violent expansion of Israeli settlements in his region, he has used his platform to speak directly and unapologetically about Israeli apartheid and theft. Friends of Israel clearly see that as a threat and they have succeeded in blocking the showing of the documentary in the US, where it has been unable to obtain a distributor. Targeting Ballal is part of a broader strategy by the Israeli government and groups like the settlers of silencing Palestinian cultural figures and truth-tellers, especially those who succeed in establishing prominent narratives worldwide. The underlying message is that if even an award-winning filmmaker isn’t immune to state violence, then Palestinians should rightly walk in fear or get out. The sad part is that international media, which should have recognized something was wrong when Palestinians without global awards and credentials — students, farmers, mothers, teachers — have been arrested and beaten and tortured by Israeli forces every day, ignored their plight. Their stories do not make headlines. Their names are rarely known. In death, all they become is a number, like the tens of thousands who are buried under rubble in Gaza and who will never be commemorated.
Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.
