Excellent meeting with UK Foreign Secretary @trussliz in The Hague. We discussed weapons support for #Ukraine and coordination of sanctions against Russia. We value our strong cooperation in supporting Ukraine and we are united in our stance against Russian aggression. 🇳🇱 🇬🇧 1/2 pic.twitter.com/iFybNnICOb

— Wopke Hoekstra (@WBHoekstra) April 28, 2022

Together with @trussliz, I have laid flowers at the national MH17 memorial in remembrance of the victims.

'Sapere aude'

The President of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa, has died [_link]

— The National (@TheNationalNews) May 13, 2022

Al-Nakba: The Palestinian exodus of 1948 to the present | Al Jazeera - May 2017 |

Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or "catastrophe", referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948.

The Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland is 69 years old this year.

On that day, the State of Israel came into being. The creation of Israel was a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state, as per the aspirations of the Zionist movement.

Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.

...
Israel continues to oppress and dispossess Palestinians to this day, albeit in a less explicit way than that during the Nakba.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine| by Ilan Pappe | (2006)

Jewish atrocities in the Holy Land memorandum Arab Higher Commission for Palestine at U.N.O.

Watch: Inside Israeli Apartheid [_link]

— Mondoweiss (@Mondoweiss) May 6, 2022

Yossi Cohen: Mossad's Man in Kinshasa [_link] pic.twitter.com/M20AngZhK3

— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) May 18, 2022

🇮🇱  🇨🇩 #Mossad chief #YossiCohen kicked out of #DRC, on a mission that could jeopardize #Israel

"The visits weren't coordinated with #DRCongo's government and ended with him being deported" [_link]

— alntal (@alntal) May 19, 2022

Trump's People Pocket Saudi Billions. What About Top Israeli Officials?

The matter raised a big question for Etyan Avriel who asked: Does the deal have an `Israeli' angle - and could former Mossad head Yossi Cohen be involved?

Channel 12 television revealed that Cohen, while still chief of Mossad, helped his daughter Achinoam get a job as a director in a company controlled by Tahnoun bin Zayed, the UAE national security adviser, a counterpart to the head of Mossad in that country. One of bin Zayed's companies has opened an office in Herzliya for the company employing Cohen's daughter, but Cohen denies any improper ties.

"Kushner, Mnuchin, Friedman and Cohen may have made `peace' between `Israel' and several Arab states, but they also leveraged the `peace' into millions of dollars for each one of them personally, and in very short order," the author concluded.

Israeli tycoon Dan Gertler is evading sanctions and still making new business deals. The #DRC continues to lose out: 77% of Congolese people live under the poverty line. Tshisekedi: Freeze Gertler's assets. US: Sanction Gertler's new companies #CorruptionIsCancer #lacorruptiontue pic.twitter.com/IVFPIBQ5wM

— The Sentry (@TheSentry_Org) August 3, 2020

Interview: Dan Gertler on @Glencore "The difference between Glencore and me: Glencore has many Congos, I have one," Gertler said. "I have one country, one focus."#Congo bribery probe puts Israeli billionaire's future on hold [_link] via @business

— Tom Wilson (@thomas_m_wilson) February 23, 2018

DR Congo: The Forgotten Victims of Dan Gertler's Corruption | RAID - Sept. 2019 |

'Sapere aude'

Mossad Chief's Meddling on Behalf of Israeli Oligarch Angered US Officials, Endangered US-Israel Relations | Tikun Olam |

During his third trip, Cohen entered the meeting with Tshisekedi with an entourage including a locally-based Israeli diplomat and others. But the president dismissed them and told Cohen to enter his private office alone. When Cohen emerged, Congolese security officials escorted him directly to the airport and ordered him to leave the country. Sources told the Operation Gertler reporters that Cohen too grew angry during the meeting, and reminded Tshisekedi that he was a "friend" of US secretary of state Mike Pompeo. He threatened that he would urge the US to withdraw support for his regime. Unbeknownst to Cohen, the president had already complained to the US ambassador about the Israeli spy chief. Another reason for the rancourous meeting was the Congolese leader feared Israel's top spy and his rival, Kabila, were plotting a coup against him. Cohen's deportation ended Isreal's efforts on Gertler's behalf in Congo.

See my earlier writing @BooMan ...

Clients' Wealth and the Mossack Fonseca Scandal | Jun 27, 2018 |

'Sapere aude'

מה חיפש ראש המוסד לשעבר יוסי כהן בקונגו? זמן אמת, החלק השני של "מבצע גרטלר", אחרי חדשות הערב@asaf_lib @AviAmit26 pic.twitter.com/4afNwNWBso

— כאן (@kann) May 18, 2022

Translation:
Netanyahu trial, at the break I asked Netanyahu:
"Following the articles on Gertler, who pays the fees of your lawyer Boaz Ben Tzur?

Boaz Ben Tzur also represented witness Israeli-American billionaire Arnon Milchan in corruption Case 1000 against Benjamin Netanyahu. Milchan is best known as Mossad front man for providing nuclear triggers to Israel under Shimon Peres.

'Sapere aude'

Jews Are Warmly Embraced In War-Torn Congo of All Places -- but Why? | The Forward - Sept 18, 2016 |

Today in the capital, Kinshasa, there is also a Chabad of Central Africa, one of 13 missions the group has established in African countries, according to its website. The crowd there is never large, but among its supporters is the Israeli billionaire and diamond tycoon Dan Gertler, who has highly lucrative stakes in Congo's coveted cobalt, copper, gold and ore mines, as well as its banking, oil and agriculture industries. Critics say he made his riches through kickbacks and connections with the regime: Gertler and Kabila have been extremely close since the late 1990s, when Chabad's longtime and well connected rabbi, Shlomo Bentolila, first arranged for the two to meet, Gertler told Bloomberg News. It's a relationship that at times has angered competing Lebanese diamond dealers.

Gertler Earns Billions as Mine Deals Fail to Enrich Congo | Pan African Visions - 2011 |

'Sapere aude'

Gertler's Bling Bang Torah Gang | Dissident Voice - Feb 9, 2008 |

Maurice Tempelsman is one of the top funders of the Democratic Party who has funded Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Templesman was the unofficial ambassador to the Congo (Zaire) for years, but a new Israeli-American tycoon has replaced him. In the world of bling bling and bling bang, some things change, some stay the same. The CIA, the MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and weapons deals--all hidden by the Western media.

The holocaust in Central Africa has claimed some six to ten million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying daily. In January 2008 the International Rescue Committee, who is also discussed in this article, released its second survey of mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo, estimating that 5,400,000 people have died, or some 1500 people every day. However, IRC statistics are highly biased and politicized. But while the Africans are the victims of perpetual Holocaust, the persecutors hide behind history, complaining that they are the persecuted, or pretending they are the saviors. Who is responsible?

For Israeli-American Dan Gertler, business in blood drenched Congo is not merely business, it is a quest for the Holy Grail. Young Dan Gertler goes nowhere--does nothing--without the spiritual guidance of Brooklyn-born Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Leibovitch, a "personal friend" of Condoleezza Rice. Personal interview, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 2006. Gertler and Leibovitch are two of the principals behind a diamond mining company, Emaxon Finance Corporation, involved in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Gertler and gang won the majority rights to the diamonds from the state mining company, Société Minière de Bakwange, MIBA, found near the government-controlled town of Mbuji-Mayi, the rough diamond capital of the world.

Israel's national security advisor-designate, Yossi Cohen | Aug 21, 2013 |

In his report on this story, Melman alludes to the fact that Cohen trained in the same class of agents with Victor Ostrovsky. The latter was rejected on the last day of his Mossad training. His revenge was to write a juicy tell-all book that revealed many heretofore unknown aspects of secret training.

Though clearly Ostrovsky was a deeply disaffected figure and his candid account of life in the world of the Mossad must be treated cautiously, this passage dealing specifically with Cohen is important to read. If it's true, then it reveals that Cohen has many of the sexual predatory instincts of Israel's generals, political leaders, and security officers.

What national intelligence official has an affair and texts his mistress dick pics on an unsecured phone using Whatsapp, one of the least secure communications platforms? You guessed it, Yossi Cohen! [_link]

— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) May 23, 2022

Likud promises to introduce legislation that would deport relatives of Palestinian resistance members who hold Israeli citizenship; criminalize the flying of the Palestinian flag or burning the Israeli flag, punishable by imprisonment; and revoke the citizenship of those who protest during "times of war."