#Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations

[deadpresidents]

Can you recommend three history books that you couldn't put down and would be good xmas gifts for a history nut? Doesn't need to be presidents just any history.

I could spend the entire holiday season debating which books to suggest, so I'm just going with the first three books that came to my mind when I considered which books I'd choose if I could magically read them for the very first time again. Anyone would has been following me for a while will have heard me recommend these before because they are among the very best books I've ever read:

•Crucible: The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924 by Charles Emmerson (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) It's difficult to describe this book in a way that illustrates how incredibly interesting and original it is. It's a look at the world as it came out of World War I and slowly tried to repair itself in the Great War's aftermath. But during that period, various personalities start appearing in the story like characters in a gripping novel. Those people end up being many of the leading figures of World War II and that becomes apparent as you read the book, as does the fact that the tense state that the world was in at the time wasn't a time of peace and reconstruction, but an incubation period for what would become an even more horrific world war that was the deadliest military conflict in the history of our species. Those leading characters in Crucible drive the story, not so much because of how extraordinary they became but because of how ordinary they were when they started. Emmerson tells these stories in an extremely creative way, and it makes the 739-page book fly by despite the fact that you will NOT want it to end. Without hesitation, I can confidently say that Crucible (which was published in 2019) is the single best book I've read in the past ten years.

•Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) This doesn't mean that I'm giving my stamp of approval to Israel's long history of targeted assassinations and daring special operations. But this book is an excellent example of top-notch investigative reporting and war journalism by Ronen Bergman, who is still an immensely talented correspondent for the New York Times with deep connections throughout the Middle East. Some of the military and intelligence operations described in this book with shocking detail are absolutely mind-blowing and would seem too far-fetched if you saw them in a movie. Bergman's book gives the reader the perspective of being embedded with forces as they undertake these ridiculously dangerous missions.

•Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die by Garrett M. Graff (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Speaking of journalists with remarkable connections, in Raven Rock Garrett Graff reveals aspects of the blueprints for America's continuity of government planning that have never been fully detailed. Beginning in the early days of the Cold War, Graff takes us through the creation of top-secret plans to keep the government functioning in case of all sorts of Doomsday scenarios. It's incredible to learn what would be prioritized (and how anything would still function) and where surviving members of the government (or their designated alternates -- which is an even crazier revelation) would run what was left of the United States in case of massive attacks that might decapitate vast sections of federal, state, or local governments. What should seem somewhat reassuring -- the fact that the government would continue to function and serve survivors, no matter what -- is frightening when Graff reveals systems that raise far more questions than it delivers answers. It even raises questions about aspects of the shadow federal government that existed during the Cold War (just in case). In some ways and for many reasons, the book is actually pretty frightening. (You'll probably start worrying about the records the U.S. Postal Service keeps about you considering all of the potential uses the government considered using it for in case of a widespread nuclear attack with massive numbers of casualties.) But it's also incredibly interesting and full of amazing details about secrets that I guarantee you'll want to share with people after you read the book. Raven Rock is right behind Crucible when it comes to the very best books of the past decade.

[mazlizaothman]

Review of "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations" by Ronen Bergman 👉 https://youtu.be/u0K8PllvQgk

Get this book 👉 https://invol.co/clldbzx or https://bit.ly/3zxgYQZ

#acikulatbuku #ulasanbuku #bookreview #riseandkillfirst #ronenbergman #israelstargetedassassinations #ulatbuku #bookworm #bookdragon

[insideanairport]

Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations

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When you're writing a book entirety made from interviews with Mossad and IDF murderers. 

The book has good information about Mossad's collaboration with international right-wing assassins such as ex-Nazi official Otto Skorzeny in exchange for money and political immunity. The book reveals the amount of external terrorism that Israel has waged [in and out of the Middle East] in order to continue its deadly occupation of Palestine.

The writer is trying to normalize colonialism as "self-preservation". This classic move was apparently meant to justify colonisation and brutality as "defence" or "existential threat". The type of justification for state-sponsored terrorism that we hear daily from corporate media. In the end, the book is a bit self-defeating because it reveals how Israel is always the one who strike/attack/bomb FIRST and somehow always manages to present itself as the victim.

[expatimes]

What is Israel's secret weapon against Iran?

There is much reason to believe, but obviously no hard evidence to prove, that Israel is behind the most recent assassination of yet another high-ranking Iranian scientist.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was seen by United States and Israeli intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons capability, was evidently killed on November 27 in an ambush on a highway near Tehran “with remotely controlled smart devices��.

It is, of course, impossible to know what exactly happened on that highway. The Israelis have reasons to exaggerate their capabilities in conducting deadly covert operations in Iranian territory. Iranians, meanwhile, have reasons to conceal the manner in which their prominent official was killed, and engage in their own reciprocal disinformation campaign.

What we are left with is the evident fact that Israelis, perhaps in cahoots with the Americans, the Saudis or even the Emiratis, were behind yet another targeted assassination of a prominent Iranian official.

But how does Israel do it? How does this puny little settler colony get away with murder, repeatedly?

Projecting more power than they actually possess

Although Israel wants to project an image of an omnipotent and omniscient force that can kill and destroy with the flick of a finger, the fact is that it is all a bogus, cliché, and gaudy posture. There is not much mystery surrounding this cowardly operation: we have the Israeli-US intelligence, Saudi-Emirati finances, and the sleeper cells of the treacherous Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) - the ex-Iranian terrorist outfit - operatives inside Iran as the most likely combination of factors that allowed Israel to commit this murder.

Targeted assassination is a common feature of Israeli behavior. The murder of prominent Palestinian revolutionary writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut on July 8, 1972, together with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees Najim, is perhaps the most infamous and iconic of such assassinations.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was not the first and likely will not be the last Iranian scientist presumed murdered by the Israelis. At least half a dozen Iranian scientists have been murdered over the last decade, and Israel is to have been chiefly responsible for half of these murders.

To be sure, Israel is neither the first nor the only state that has eliminated its perceived enemies with assassinations outside its borders. Earlier this year, Donald Trump ordered the US military to murder Qassem Soleimani, a high-ranking Iranian military official, in Iraq. Just two years ago, Saudi Arabia chopped to pieces Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist, in Turkey.

The Iranians themselves have a long history of brutally murdering their perceived enemies around the world. They, for example, stabbed prominent opposition figure Shapour Bakhtiar to death in France in 1991. They do not hesitate to murder dissidents inside Iran either, as in the notorious case of the so-called “chain murders” of the 1980s and 1990s.

So no state can assume a holier than thou posture here. They are all guilty as sin. It is a dog eat dog world out there among these ruling regimes of terror and murder, each one worse than the other.

But still, the bald-faced incursion of a colonial settlement into a sovereign nation to murder one of their high-ranking scientists requires some examination.

What is Israel's secret weapon?

The specific question I wish to raise here is how could Israel murder Fakhrizadeh, then cowardly assume a stance of “neither denying nor confirming”, and get away with it?

The issue at hand here is not the Israeli behavior, which is systematically criminal. All you have to do is read Ronen Bergman's Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations (2018) to learn chapter and verse the sustained and systematic history of the settler colony being founded and kept in place with such targeted assassinations.

There is a link, I wish to propose, between the fact that Israelis can just move into Iran and murder anyone they want and the cowardly sellouts like the rulers of the UAE, Bahrain or Sudan “normalising” the historic theft of Palestine and entering into diplomatic relations with the settler colony.

That link spells out the scandalous incompetence of ruling states on all sides of the Gulf and beyond having no trust in their own people and degenerating the state apparatus into the instrument of tyranny against their own populations instead of learning how to protect their national sovereignty. On this score, there is no difference between the rulers of the UAE and Iran: they are both pathetically weak towards American-Israeli militarism because they are pathetically tyrannical towards their own citizens.

Let us talk specifically about Iran. The ruling state dedicates an overwhelming segment of its security and military apparatus to keeping Iranians themselves in line. It is so conscious of its own illegitimacy that its single most important function is to grab power, control the economy, and systemically subjugate Iranians to oppressive surveillance.

The ruling military, intelligence and security apparatus of the Islamic republic does not want to accept how utterly ridiculous it looks that Israel can infiltrate their country and point-blank murder one top scientist after another, while they are busy brutalising a teenage child into wearing her scarf one way and not the other. The sheer stupidity of this state just boggles the mind.

Stateless nations, illegitimate states

Israel is a garrison state - a state without a nation ruling over the Palestinians, a nation without a state. And so is precisely every single other state around it, chief among them Iran that has long since lost the trust and support of the nation over which it rules with wanton cruelty.

Imagine for a minute if people in Iran or anywhere else in the Muslim world were the masters of their own destiny. Imagine if the dungeons of the Islamic republic were not filled with political prisoners and human rights activists. Imagine if the ruling state did not waste much of its resources and abilities to surveil the Iranians and punish them for the slightest sign of life and liberty.

That is the secret weapon Israel has against Iran and all the other corrupt regimes in the region. That these illegitimate rulers do not see the strength of their countries is in their own population; that freedom, liberty, the ability to stand up proudly and claim national sovereignty is the true source of power for any country. Instead these pathetic incompetent fools who cannot even protect their most precious assets are trying in vain to keep an entire nation prisoner of their outdated, corrupt and moronic politics.

Israel is a military base created by a gang of European adventurists. They would not even dare to imagine infiltrating Iran, or Turkey, or Egypt, or any other real country, and murdering one of their citizens if they realized they had the will of an entire nation confronting them. They know the entire apparatus of the Islamic republic from top to bottom is irredeemably foreign to the defiant will of the Iranian people, that after 40 years they have miserably failed to become integral to the will of their nation, that they and their entire propaganda machinery has become parasitic to the organic integrity of an ancient but young, proud and competent nation, over which the ruling clergy has much power but little authority.

Nations against states

What can Iran do in retaliation for their top scientists being murdered by Israel? Nothing. Can they reciprocate and go and kill an Israeli nuclear scientist? Of course not, they do not have the wherewithal to do anything remotely similar to that. So they huff and they puff and ultimately shoot a few useless missiles in one direction or another and continue abusing their own population and supporting Hamas, Hezbollah or the murderous al-Assad regime for one useless act of “resistance” or another.

But at the same time, the habitual chicaneries of Israel will ultimately have to face not these feeble and pathetic states but the root of the power of resistance to its murderous deeds which is the will of the Palestinians and the Iranians alike.

What is lost to Israel and its sustained course of criminal activities is how utterly futile they are. They mobilize all their evil means and assassinate a few Iranian nuclear scientists - so what? Iran has literally thousands upon thousands of such unclear scientists, more than half of them women physicists from top Iranian universities. What is Israel going to do? Kill them all? Drop a couple of their pathetic and useless atom bombs on Iran as its American godfather Sheldon Adelson wants to do?

Is it possible to prevent Iranians from achieving nuclear knowledge or technology for peaceful or even non-peaceful purposes if that is what Iranians decide to do? Do they think a puny little settler colony can stop an entire nation that has given Maryam Mirzakhani to the world? Where do they think the late genius mathematician came from? Tel Aviv University? Israelis will fail miserably in this as they fail in everything else they touch - from stealing Palestine, to convincing anyone with an iota of decency and empathy to accept this blatant theft.

Both the ruling Islamic republic and the settler colony of Israel will ultimately fail to silencing the will of Palestinian and Iranian peoples. The repressed but defiant will of nations, Palestinians under the boots of Israeli soldiers and Iranians under the cruelties of their ruling regimes, will prevail.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=15357&feed_id=22325

[zatroshop]

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations (English Edition)Versión Kindle

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (English Edition)Versión Kindle

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[mayliang17]

Book review: Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman

Book review: Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen BergmanMy rating: 4 of 5 starsThis is a fascinating book about the history of Israeli intelligence and policies of targeted assassinations. The author is an Israeli investigative reporter, and the book is written originally in Hebrew. The translation is excellent, however, and the book is very readable and…

[popculturebrain]

Keshet & HBO Turning ‘Rise And Kill First’ Into Limited TV Series On Mossad’s Secret Assassination Missions

EXCLUSIVE: Israeli producer Keshet International has teamed with HBO to option the bestselling Ronen Bergman book Rise And Kill First: The Secret History Of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.

[mazlizaothman]

Review of "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations" by Ronen Bergman 👉 https://youtu.be/u0K8PllvQgk

Get this book 👉 https://invol.co/clldbzx or https://bit.ly/3zxgYQZ

#acikulatbuku #ulasanbuku #bookreview #riseandkillfirst #ronenbergman #israelstargetedassassinations #ulatbuku #bookworm #bookdragon

[tendance-news]

WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaida's second-highest leader, accused of being one of the masterminds of the deadly 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, was killed in Iran three months ago, intelligence officials have confirmed.Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down on the streets of Tehran by two assassins on a motorcycle on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the embassy attacks. He was killed along with his daughter, Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden's son Hamza bin Laden.The attack was carried out by Israeli operatives at the behest of the United States, according to four of the officials. It is unclear what role if any was played by the United States, which had been tracking the movements of al-Masri and other Qaida operatives in Iran for years.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesThe killing occurred in such a netherworld of geopolitical intrigue and counterterrorism spycraft that al-Masri's death had been rumored but never confirmed until now. For reasons that are still obscure, al-Qaida has not announced the death of one of its top leaders, Iranian officials covered it up, and no country has publicly claimed responsibility for it.Al-Masri, who was about 58, was one of al-Qaida's founding leaders and was thought to be first in line to lead the organization after its current leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.Long featured on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list, he had been indicted in the United States for crimes related to the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded hundreds. The FBI offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture, and as of Friday, his picture was still on the Most Wanted list.That he had been living in Iran was surprising, given that Iran and al-Qaida are bitter enemies. Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy, and al-Qaida, a Sunni Muslim jihadi group, have fought each other on the battlefields of Iraq and other places.American intelligence officials say that al-Masri had been in Iran's "custody" since 2003, but that he had been living freely in the Pasdaran district of Tehran, an upscale suburb, since at least 2015.Around 9 on a warm summer night, he was driving his white Renault L90 sedan with his daughter near his home when two gunmen on a motorcycle drew up beside him. Five shots were fired from a pistol fitted with a silencer. Four bullets entered the car through the driver's side and a fifth hit a nearby car.As news of the shooting broke, Iran's official news media identified the victims as Habib Daoud, a Lebanese history professor, and his 27-year-old daughter Maryam. The Lebanese news channel MTV and social media accounts affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard reported that Daoud was a member of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant organization in Lebanon.It seemed plausible.The killing came amid a summer of frequent explosions in Iran, mounting tensions with the United States, days after an enormous explosion in the port of Beirut and a week before the U.N. Security Council was to consider extending an arms embargo against Iran. There was speculation that the killing may have been a Western provocation intended to elicit a violent Iranian reaction in advance of the Security Council vote.And the targeted killing by two gunmen on a motorcycle fit the modus operandi of previous Israeli assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. That Israel would kill an official of Hezbollah, which is committed to fighting Israel, also seemed to make sense, except for the fact that Israel had been consciously avoiding killing Hezbollah operatives so as not to provoke a war.In fact, there was no Habib Daoud.Several Lebanese with close ties to Iran said they had not heard of him or his killing. A search of Lebanese news media found no reports of a Lebanese history professor killed in Iran last summer. And an education researcher with access to lists of all history professors in the country said there was no record of a Habib Daoud.One of the intelligence officials said that Habib Daoud was an alias Iranian officials gave al-Masri and the history teaching job was a cover story. In October, the former leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Nabil Naeem, who called al-Masri a longtime friend, told the Saudi news channel Al-Arabiya the same thing.Iran may have had good reason for wanting to hide the fact that it was harboring an avowed enemy, but it was less clear why Iranian officials would have taken in the Qaida leader to begin with.Some terrorism experts suggested that keeping Qaida officials in Tehran might provide some insurance that the group would not conduct operations inside Iran. American counterterrorism officials believe Iran may have allowed them to stay to run operations against the United States, a common adversary.It would not be the first time that Iran had joined forces with Sunni militants, having supported Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Taliban."Iran uses sectarianism as a cudgel when it suits the regime, but is also willing to overlook the Sunni-Shia divide when it suits Iranian interests," said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Center.Iran has consistently denied housing the Qaida officials. In 2018, the Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said that because of Iran's long, porous border with Afghanistan, some Qaida members had entered Iran, but they had been detained and returned to their home countries.However, Western intelligence officials said the Qaida leaders had been kept under house arrest by the Iranian government, which then made at least two deals with al-Qaida to free some of them in 2011 and 2015.Although al-Qaida has been overshadowed in recent years by the rise of the Islamic State, it remains resilient and has active affiliates around the globe, a U.N. counterterrorism report issued in July concluded.Iranian officials did not respond to a request for comment for this article. Spokesmen for the Israeli prime minister's office and the Trump administration's National Security Council declined to comment.Al-Masri was a longtime member of al-Qaida's highly secretive management council, along with Saif al-Adl, who was also held in Iran at one point. The pair, along with Hamza bin Laden, who was being groomed to take over the organization, were part of a group of senior Qaida leaders who sought refuge in Iran after the 9/11 attacks on the United States forced them to flee Afghanistan.According to a highly classified document produced by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center in 2008, al-Masri was the "most experienced and capable operational planner not in U.S. or allied custody." The document described him as the "former chief of training" who "worked closely" with al-Adl.In Iran, al-Masri mentored Hamza bin Laden, according to terrorism experts. Hamza bin Laden later married al-Masri's daughter, Miriam."The marriage of Hamza bin Ladin was not the only dynastic connection Abu Muhammad forged in captivity," Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and Qaida expert, wrote in a 2019 article for West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.Another of al-Masri's daughters married Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, no relation, a member of the management council. He was allowed to leave Iran in 2015 and was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Syria in 2017. At the time, he was the second-ranking Qaida official after Zawahri.Hamza and other members of the bin Laden family were freed by Iran in 2011 in exchange for an Iranian diplomat abducted in Pakistan. Last year, the White House said Hamza bin Laden had been killed in a counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.Abu Muhammad al-Masri was born in Al Rarbiya district of northern Egypt in 1963. In his youth, according to affidavits filed in lawsuits in the United States, he was a professional soccer player in Egypt's top league. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he joined the jihadi movement that was coalescing to assist the Afghan forces.After the Soviets withdrew 10 years later, Egypt refused to allow al-Masri to return. He remained in Afghanistan where he eventually joined bin Laden in the group that was later to become the founding nucleus of al-Qaida. He was listed by the group as the seventh of its 170 founders.In the early 1990s, he traveled with bin Laden to Khartoum, Sudan, where he began forming military cells. He also went to Somalia to help the militia loyal to Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. There he trained Somali guerrillas in the use of shoulder-borne rocket launchers against helicopters, training they used in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu to shoot down a pair of U.S. helicopters in what is now known as the Black Hawk Down attack."When al-Qaida began to carry out terrorist activities in the late 1990s, al-Masri was one of the three of bin Laden's closest associates, serving as head of the organization's operations section," said Yoram Schweitzer, head of the Terrorism Project of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. "He brought with him know-how and determination and since then was involved in a large part of the organization's operations, with an emphasis on Africa."Shortly after the Mogadishu battle, bin Laden put al-Masri in charge of planning operations against U.S. targets in Africa. Plotting a dramatic, ambitious operation that, like the 9/11 attacks, would command international attention, they decided to attack two relatively well-defended targets in separate countries simultaneously.Shortly after 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1998, two trucks packed with explosives pulled up in front of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The blasts incinerated people nearby, blew walls off buildings and shattered glass for blocks around.In 2000, al-Masri became one of the nine members of al-Qaida's governing council and headed the organization's military training.He also continued to oversee Africa operations, according to a former Israeli Intelligence official, and ordered the attack in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2002 that killed 13 Kenyans and three Israeli tourists.By 2003, al-Masri was among several Qaida leaders who fled to Iran which, although hostile to the group, seemed out of American reach."They believed the United States would find it very difficult to act against them there," Schweitzer said. "Also because they believed that the chances of the Iranian regime doing an exchange deal with the Americans that would include their heads were very slim."Al-Masri was one of the few high-ranking members of the organization to survive the American hunt for the perpetrators of 9/11 and other attacks. When he and other Qaida leaders fled to Iran, they were initially kept under house arrest.In 2015, Iran announced a deal with al-Qaida in which it released five of the organization's leaders, including al-Masri, in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been abducted in Yemen.Abdullah's footprints faded away, but according to one of the intelligence officials, he continued to live in Tehran, under the protection of the Revolutionary Guards and later the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. He was allowed to travel abroad and did, mainly to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.Some American analysts said al-Masri's death would sever connections between one of the last original Qaida leaders and the current generation of Islamist militants, who have grown up after bin Laden's 2011 death."If true, this further cuts links between old-school al-Qaida and the modern jihad," said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "It just further contributes to the fragmentation and decentralization of the al-Qaida movement."--TIMELINE1963Abu Muhammad al-Masri was born in northern Egypt, and grew up to play soccer in Egypt's top professional league. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he joined the jihad movement there.1980sAfter the Soviets withdrew, Egypt refused to allow al-Masri to return. He remained in Afghanistan, and eventually joined Osama bin Laden in a group that was later to become the nucleus of al-Qaida.EARLY 1990sAl-Masri traveled with bin Laden to Khartoum, Sudan, where he began forming military cells. He also went to Somalia, where he helped train the fighters who fought U.S. troops in a battle popularly known as the Black Hawk Down attack.1998Al-Masri was one of the masterminds of the deadly attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.2000Al-Masri became one of the nine members of al-Qaida's governing council and was put in charge of the organization's military training activities.2002While overseeing African operations, he issued orders for the attacks in Mombasa, Kenya, that killed 15 people, according to a former Israeli Intelligence official.2003After the 9/11 attacks, al-Masri was among several Qaida leaders who fled to Iran. They were initially held under house arrest.2015Iran and al-Qaida announced a deal in which Iran released five of the organization's leaders, including al-Masri, from prison in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been abducted in Yemen.2020Al-Masri was secretly assassinated in Tehran at the behest of the U.S., officials said. But no one -- Iran, al-Qaida, the U.S. or Israel -- publicly acknowledged the killing.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

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[insideanairport]

Pekka Niskanen is the Best Example of White-Privilege ‘Profiting’ From Pain of Others

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On the occasion of Pekka Niskanen’s talk at Finland’s Bioart Society (8 October 2019)

I wrote another post on Pekka Niskanen’s last work “Ajankohtainen Iran” which was an Orientalist piece given space to by Hippolyte Gallery. Alongside some few other Eastern artists residing in Finland, we raised the question of whether the Finnish art scene is humane when so much space is given to such racist representation of the non-European peoples and especially Muslims.  

Yesterday, on the internet, I came across the invite for a talk that Niskanen is part of and is hosted by Bioart Society. Niskanen is claiming to make art, and research everything from ISIS to Chechnya to Iran to environment and help the ”Finnish people to understand these phenomena” (1) He is an artist who not only doesn’t see his white privilege which allows him to freely travel the world and represent minorities but he is also ‘profiting’ from this cultural violence. His artistic career in Finland (since he is only shown and supported here) is built on ’the pains of the others’ and problems that exist somewhere else outside of Finland. “Regarding the Pain of Others” is a book by Susan Sontang published in 2001 which might be helpful for isolated white artists such as Niskanen in Finland. However, what is shocking is that art venues such as Hippolyte gallery, and Bioart Society is giving space to such artists. “Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples” is another classic work by Linda Tuhiwai Smith professor of indigenous education, which explains why the word ’research’ is one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous lexicon due to its historical violence afflicted by the white folks to their communities around the world. This includes the Sámi indigenous peoples in Finland. Surprisingly we also have heard this month that Finland agrees to return Native American remains of Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe in Arizona. These remains were among the smuggled goods that the Finnish-Swedish researcher Gustaf Nordenskiöld tried to export to Stockholm. This resulted in his arrest in 1891. He was later released, and the collection was shipped to Stockholm. (2)

When we take a look around the world today, we see the rise of right-wing racism, fascism and hate crime. In El Paso and Christchurch both of the white terrorists identified themselves as ”eco-fascists”. (3) Pentti Linkola is one of the Finnish intellectuals of Eco-fascism and ”Deep Ecology”. He is promoting racism through his environmental rhetoric. (4) We usually don’t hear about these topics in Finland, yet so many artists and researchers including Niskanen are quick in changing the subject to somewhere else in the world and ultimately bringing a nationalist argument on how Finland will be effected by migration and refugees. I recommend everyone to watch his interview. ”Finland is now struggling with SOMETHING NEW,” says Niskanen, as if being part of the international community is something similar to ’The White Man's Burden’. All of a sudden Finnish white men have to struggle to live with non-white people, That must be a very interesting topic for the art institutions to give money to.

Including another minority-artist is classic move to bypass your white-privilege

I had a phone conversation with Yassine Khaled, a local artist of Moroccan descent who is working with topics related to technology, environment, and subjectivity. He was furious after going to one of Niskanen’s artist talks. Yassine believes that by including Mohamed Sleiman Labat, Niskanen is using his white-privilege to miss-represent Morocco and shift the conversation to migration rather than the environment. This is similar to what we saw this week in America, where Trump tokenized a few black folks (probably by money) to support his racist politics. (5)

I promise you, nowhere in Niskanen’s art or talk we will hear about the colonialization of Morocco by white French people. White people who are much closer to Niskanen’s identity than Sahrawi people. Why won't he talk about Mehdi Ben Barka, a Moroccan politician, an opponent of French Imperialism and King Hassan II, who "disappeared" in Paris in 1965? Last year the details of his disappearance were established by Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman in his book Rise And Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. Based on research and interviews with Israeli intelligence operatives involved in planning the kidnapping of Barka, Bergman concluded that he was murdered by Moroccan agents and French police, who ended up disposing of his body. (6)

Niskanen’s interest and fake solidarity with the Western Sahara and dislocation of the Saharawi Nomadic community is a political move to undermine his white-privilege and ignorance. He is making a classical move to represent the Orient the same way the classical Orientalists did in the 18th and 19th centuries. As Edward Said said; the classical Orientalists moved around the Eastern world and Arabic lands to criticize Islam, and they utilized a variety of minority groups there to achieve their goal of categorizing Western culture as superior. If Niskanen is genuinely interested in minority rights, why doesn’t he start with his country, or at least himself first before moving to Islamic countries and making lame art about them?

Racism in Finland

In Finland which is currently one of the most hostile nations in Europe toward people of African descent and Muslims, we see no effort from the culture-sector to improve the unjust representation and miss-representation of Finnish ethnic minorities, and asylum-seekers. This month, the council of Europe has sharply criticized Finland over racism, trans rights, and immigrant issues. But the vast majority of the white artists in Finland still decide to go somewhere else in the world such as Morocco to talk about the people there without having any knowledge about their culture, history, and language. (7) You might be shocked to see the rhetoric of Finnish right-wing fascists and the intellectual racists such as Juhana L and Path to Impavara. But for the people of color living in this white society, this might be a simple everyday reality.

Bib.

1. Pekka Niskanen Tehran Dark Metal August 9 to September 1, 2019 Photo gallery Hippolyte. hippolyte. [Online] 09 1, 2019. https://hippolyte.fi/nayttely/pekka-niskanen/. 2. Susan Montoya Bryan, Felicia Fonseca. Finland agrees to return Native American remains to tribes. denverpost. [Online] The Associated Press, 10 3, 2019. https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/03/finland-native-american-remains/?fbclid=IwAR3VzP7kWA2EDoPTA8w4Xnj4UuFFMy-Nain4J0ZrzT_mJNY9xVFfSzM1Mxo. 3. Weissmann, Jordan. What the Christchurch Killer’s Manifesto Tells Us. Slate. [Online] March 15, 2019. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/what-the-christchurch-attackers-manifesto-tells-us.html. 4. Owen, Tess. Eco-Fascism: the Racist Theory That Inspired the El Paso and Christchurch Shooters. vice.com. [Online] August 7, 2019. https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/59nmv5/eco-fascism-the-racist-theory-that-inspired-the-el-paso-and-christchurch-shooters-and-is-gaining-followers. 5. Dawson, LJ. Inside the Summit for Trump-Loving Young Black Conservatives. politico. [Online] Oct 6, 2019. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/06/trump-black-young-conservatives-summit-229435. 6. Davies, Lizzy. France accused 44 years on over Moroccan's vanishing. The Guardian. [Online] Oct 29, 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/29/france-accused-over-moroccans-vanishing. 7. Dougall, David Mac. Finland sharply criticised over racism, trans rights and immigrant issues. NewsNowFinland. [Online] Sep 10, 2019. https://newsnowfinland.fi/finland-international/finland-sharply-criticised-over-racism-trans-rights-and-immigrant-issues

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[mazlizaothman]

Review of "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations" by Ronen Bergman 👉 https://youtu.be/u0K8PllvQgk

Get this book 👉 https://invol.co/clldbzx or https://bit.ly/3zxgYQZ

#acikulatbuku #ulasanbuku #bookreview #riseandkillfirst #ronenbergman #israelstargetedassassinations #ulatbuku #bookworm #bookdragon

[aparnesh]

"Rise & Kill First - The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations"

~ Ronen Bergman

Published by: Random House, New York, 2018

Full book in PDF format, 763 pages 10.81 MB, shared via Mega Drive link.

[bigtickhk]

Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman 

US: http://amzn.to/2nk4Xpd 

UK: https://amzn.to/2uUk6C1

[rhartdepartment]

Book jacket for Random House  |  Art Director: Carlos Beltran  |  Designer: Pete Garceau  |  Published 2018

[infosasha]

Rise And Kill First

Rise And Kill First

Rise And Kill First

John Murray Publishers

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„Rise and Kill First“ (I)

În librăriile americane a apărut cartea „Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel`s Targeted Assassinations“, semnată de Ronen Bergman, publicist specializat în servicii secrete, redactor la cel mai mare ziar din Israel, „Yediot Aharonot“.

Sursa: https://www.cotidianul.ro/rise-and-kill-first-i/

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