Instead of criticizing a government credibly accused of genocide, a leading Democrat applies a debunked partisan smear to pro-Palestine protesters and wants the F.B.I. to investigate them, writes Elizabeth Vos.
December 2008 demonstration in solidarity with Gaza, San Francisco. (Isabel Esterman, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium News
Just a few years ago, the Russiagate narrative dominated the news sphere: anyone who questioned the status quo was labeled a Putin puppet or a Russian bot, including American journalists.
In recent months, Israeli officials have similarly labeled anyone and any organization who opposes them as anti-Semitic or Hamas sympathizers, even going so far as to label the International Court of Justice anti-Semitic.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took both narratives a step further over the weekend, calling on the F.B.I. to investigate pro-Palestinian protests for alleged financial ties to Russia.
Her statements came in the wake of the ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which stated that there is prima facie evidence of Israel committing genocide in Gaza though the ruling stopped short of ordering a cessation of Israel’s military actions in the strip.
Instead of turning away from Israel, as one might expect if a nation is credibly accused of genocide, Pelosi attempted to deflect from Israel’s guilt and its loss of support among the U.S. public by blaming pro-Palestinian protests on Russia, and specifically Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Pelosi claimed:
“… for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message, Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message. I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”
Pelosi continued:
“Some of these protests are Russian plants, seeds or plants… I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the F.B.I. to investigate that.”
Pelosi’s statements were quickly followed up by corporate media articles echoing Pelosi’s logic, with Rolling Stone reviving the debunked Russiagate narrative, writing:
“Russia and Putin have supported a ceasefire and have used Israel’s aggression in Gaza to criticize the United States for its role in the conflict. Russia has also attempted to interfere in the last two U.S. presidential elections.”
[See: PATRICK LAWRENCE: Obituary for Russiagate]
Russia is just one of a majority of nations who have voted at the U.N. General Assembly for an immediate ceasefire. There is nothing particularly Russian about the worldwide condemnation of the continuing slaughter.
To see the old Russiagate and current pro-Israel narratives converge in Pelosi’s call for the F.B.I. to investigate pro-Palestinian protesters for being “Russian plants” is remarkable in its audacity, but true to form.
Nancy Pelosi suggested that Russia may be funding pro-Palestinian protesters who have been interrupting Democratic campaign events, saying that some calling for a ceasefire are promoting “Putin’s message.”
Watch: https://t.co/JhrPtWa2qI pic.twitter.com/A4eQSR1Z7e
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) January 28, 2024
Scrambling in the wake of the ICJ ruling, Democrats — along with Republican counterparts — have no leg to stand on morally for their complicity in Israel’s ongoing atrocities.
[See: US Congress: ‘We Stand With Genocide’
They have no answers for the voters they ignore — just as they ignored them in previous elections.
"Go back to China, where your headquarters is!"
Former Speaker of the House and Democratic Party veteran Nancy Pelosi claims pro-Palestine demonstrators are working for China. pic.twitter.com/QzBosI6fNi
— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) January 29, 2024
In 2016 the Democratic Party undercut democracy in their primary, then circulated false allegations of Russian election interference for years after establishment-favorite Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump.
Anyone who pointed out the obvious fallacies of the Russiagate narrative was labeled a purveyor of Russian talking points, including the editor of Consortium News.
Thousands of young people, many of whom were not politically engaged in the era of Russiagate, are now seeing through the pro-Israel propaganda.
U.S. President Joe Biden is suffering in the polls, particularly among young Democrats and Arab-Americans, because of his administration’s complicity in genocide, no matter what deflection former Speaker Pelosi attempts.
March on Washington for Gaza, Jan. 13, 2024. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Biden is additionally losing support among African-American voters. The New York Times reports that “a coalition of more than 1,000 Black pastors representing hundreds of thousands of congregants nationwide” issued a demand that the Biden administration push for a ceasefire.
Pelosi’s sentiments highlighted the reality of a broken political system: If Americans lived in a functioning democratic society, politicians from Pelosi to Biden and Trump would be rushing to take advantage of growing voter numbers against Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Politicians would be eagerly courting this new voter base that combines so many demographics, promising to put an end to U.S. support for Israel immediately.
Instead, the Biden administration is confirming its support for Israel despite the very real possibility of losing this year’s presidential election. Even retaining the presidency takes second place to continuing support for Israel it seems.
It’s important to underscore that Pelosi’s cartoonish characterization of pro-Palestinian protesters as water carriers for Putin followed the International Court of Justice’s ruling that there is prima facie evidence that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
February 2022: the U.S. House speaker during an official visit to Israel. (U.S. Embassy Jerusalem, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Craig Murray was the only journalist present in the courtroom during the preliminary ICJ proceedings.
He told Consortium News‘ webcast CN Live! on Friday that based on his experience in the court, he was not surprised by the order of provisional measures, but he was
“surprised by the strength of the statement before that. In ruling that there were plausible grounds for genocide, it was not necessary for the president of the court to go into so much detail as to what the plausible grounds for genocide were that they had found. It was not necessary for the president of the court to read out four different quotes from Israeli ministers including the former president of Israel detailing incitement to genocide.
It wasn’t necessary for the president of the court to read out three or four statements by senior officials of the United Nations detailing the horrific death and destruction in Gaza…
Not only is the court minded that there is a plausible case for genocide, the court is minded that it’s a pretty strong case for genocide and that surprised me… it was very, very plain from all that preceding explanation that the court believes this is a genocide.” [Emphasis added]
In the days following the IJC ruling, reports emerged that UNRWA, one of the few humanitarian organizations still operating in Gaza, was conducting an internal investigation after Israel provided information that some of their workers were members of Hamas.
Following the news and with zero hesitation, multiple Western countries including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Italy and Canada suspended their funding for UNRWA. The suspension threatens the ability of UNRWA to continue to operate in Gaza.
Israel has mounted an attack to distract attention from the ICJ verdict and discredit UNWRA which provided crucial evidence to it Follow @MoatsTV @CraigMurrayOrg #UNWRA #ICJ #Israel https://t.co/Ly1YRVv0iw
— George Galloway (@georgegalloway) January 30, 2024
As pointed out by Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, the suspension of humanitarian aid could be legally damning. Albanese wrote via social media:
“The day after ICJ concluded that Israel is plausibly committing Genocide in Gaza, some states decided to defund UNRWA, collectively punishing millions of Palestinians at the most critical time, and most likely violating their obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
In other words, Western countries are increasing their active involvement in what may be legally deemed a genocide, based on the word of Israel alone and without hesitation, rather than withdrawing support for Israel in the wake of the ICJ ruling that there is plausible evidence that Israel is committing genocide.
It seems that no legal, moral, or political repercussions are severe enough to dampen the U.S. and Western support for Israel.
It is against this appalling background that Pelosi made her statements painting pro-Palestinian protesters as Putin plants and calling for the F.B.I. to investigate them, so desperate does she appear to continue supporting Israel’s genocidal agenda.
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
The attempt to flatten any distinctions between one’s real and perceived adversaries is an unfortunate recurring pattern in US policymaking or, more cynically, disingenuous consent-manufacturing aimed at the masses (characteristic of what I have described as the tendency to conflate an “amorphous alliance of […] Arabs, Third Worldists, and Reds” in the context of the Cold War – see my research article “Reaganites and Rosa-golpistas”: muse.jhu.edu/article/840246).
In this case, Pelosi’s remarks ignore, e.g., the immense influence of the Chabad-Lubavitcher lobby in Russia, as with the Israel Lobby in the United States:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has fired a top national security official [Aleksey Pavlov] who recently drew widespread condemnation for calling the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement in Ukraine a supremacist cult, Russian media reported.”
Source:
“Putin Fires Top Official Who Described Chabad as a Supremacist Cult,” The Times of Israel, January 21, 2023
For more context, readers should consult the following:
Yasha Levine, “The Neocon, The Messiah, and Cory Booker,” NSFWCORP, August 25, 2013
Nancy, Nancy , Nancy, seriously someone of your age engaging in desperate pandering to the Zionist cause.
Typical Zionist smearing in attempts to put down some else’s freedom of speech. Seems nothing is low enough to deter the self swerving Zionist party line.
I like Max Blumenthal’s response on TwitterX:
“We don’t need an FBI investigation to prove which foreign government Pelosi is serving.” He linked a video of Pelosi speaking at AIPAC, with her saying “Even if the Capitol Building were to crumble to the ground, we would still support Israel.”
All that fearmongering Russian BS is so tiresome and very destructive. The Democrats have no credibility.
I am still wondering why the Palestinians are being called Antisemitic. They are Semites –although people like Netanyahu are actually Polish and he is the ANTI one..
Pelosi attacking witnesses to a crime, or trying to intimate and silence those who might be called to testify – isn’t that called “witness tampering”, a federal crime in and of itself.
How nauseating constantly being exposed to the bs that emanates out of Western governments – who lack the backbone to stand up even for those who are not WHITE.
My God! What a horrific image of Pelosi signing her soul away to the guy standing behind her. You can tell he’s waiting for the pen to drop before dropping her into an Inferno worthy of Dante. Look at her expression – this is a soul in torment. And yet we well know that her only torment is in failing to do exactly that which she has already led herself into doing. The lies of Empire are of no immediate consequence until they become the very stuff of consequence. Her face is the face of capitulation multiplied by riches.
Struck by look on dude’s face… Hope you’ve never been detained by authorities… & thus seen same!
Are there any politicians in this country not controlled by Israel? Me thinks not. ?
Are there any politicians in the Israeli state today not controlled by ultra-right extremist Zionists.
Ludicrous question, you think?
“… for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin’s message,”
This is called an Ad Hominem. It is a logical fallacy. We are living in a post truth dark age. Any child’s should be able to spot this and dismiss it immediately. Until basic reasoning becomes a stylish thing we will slide further into barbarism
The Pope should censure Pelosi for supporting Israel’s murder of Catholic parishioners at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza. Perhaps that will give her pause. She virtue signals about being a good Catholic.
A good Catholic – same as Biden?
It’s funny how the same words can have two meanings. When Pelosi proclaims there’s a connection between pro Palestinians and those that support a non confrontational relation with Russia she is defining and crystalizing the autonomous backers that she really represents.
It is the Neo-Con Zionists in America that love Nancy, Joe and Israel…. and hate Putin and Russia. It is the same Neo-Con Zionists that are directing American foreign policy….as supervised from Israel. Bravo Nancy! Well done! Would love to hear more of your thoughtful insights.
Senility can bring nice old buffer behaviour. In this case it’s vulgar vitriol. More and more the US legislature resembles the geriatric home that was the final days of the USSR
A protester should have asked her if she had a Shekel for his 20 Rubles.
Once again this is a case of projection. Pelosi and her Israel-first colleagues are putting American interests on the back burner — both our national self interest and the economic and physical safety interests of American people. It is not the protestors who are committing treason.
The reason Biden and the politicians supporting Israel don’t care about the polls showing the voters are not happy with this Administration’s policies in regard to the Palestinians and Israelis is because they know that it doesn’t matter how the people vote. What matters is who counts the votes. Also, the money for campaigns comes from the pro-Israel factions, not those supporting the Palestinians. “Money talks. Early money shouts.”
Nancy P. just go crawl under that rock you slithered out from…
Pelosi’s comments remind me of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Army-McCarthy anti-communist hearing, along with COINTELPRO. She is so full of crap. it’s obvious she is cared shitless that Biden could lose in November because of his total support of Israel. Clearly, as was mentioned in Vos’s article, the November election is far more important to both major parties than is the slaughter of innocent people. I wish to know where the morals of Pelosi and Biden are. I’m sure we all know that Trump never has had any morals; all he wanted was pussy galore.
One has to wonder just how scared she/they actually are, I don’t see that they even care that much if they lose this year. After all, it won’t affect them in the ways that it may affect the average citizen. Their credibility with most voters are already shot. They’ve already intentionally tuned-out any challenges or dissent, showing blatant contempt for what was once their voter-base. They’ve made it clear they are not interested in doing anything substantial for the working people of the country. All the fear-mongering and voter-blaming is a smoke-screen and part of the game, as in reality a Trump presidency doesn’t hurt them any. His plutocratic policies won’t hurt them any. Politically they’re already finished, and Pelosi herself, being old and rich, probably couldn’t care less anymore. And it shows.
I’m going to vote for Jill Stein.
One of the biggest stories of all time was the leaking of CNN debate questions by Donna Brazile to Hillary Clinton ahead of the debate, to help her beat Bernie Sanders.
Thank you wikileaks.
That should have led to a massive media attention, 100 stories a day and a revolution in the democrat party leadership.
Instead it was absolutely buried. Nobody knew, nobody remembers.
Then four years later the same party maneuvered to position biden ahead of the pack when he was like fifth or sixth in the polls. The rank and file clearly do not want to continue the move to the right so again Sanders was front runner. They had to bully all other competitors to drop out of the race and to endorse biden to eventually ram him through.
It’s shocking how obedient and apathetic democrat voters are.
The ironic thing is, Sanders is not any kind of threat to the status quo. He brags about his war crimes, e.g. in Serbia and says he can’t wait to do things like that again. He voted for every war coming down the pike including the Iraq war in 2003 where he voted against it initially but then voted Yes on a bill three months after it started commending Bush on his great war and condoning continuing it. He is big on military spending, the biggest rip off in history.
Yet less than one person in 1000 knows the hard reality about Sanders, he’s seen as far extreme radical left. In reality he’s firmly on the Right. But he’s not Right enough for the party which has been moving hard right for decades. This country moved further to the right under obama than any eight years in our history. Yet the democrat party would rather lose to trump with biden than have Sanders because he’s not perceived as properly far right wing enough.
Everything Nazi Pelosi says is a manipulative lie. She orchestrated the Jan. 6 events so that she could concoct a story about an ‘insurrection.’ She was in charge of security as House Speaker and refused Trump’s offer of National Guard troops to protect the Capitol grounds. She instructed the Capitol police to open the doors and let the people in. The FBI had numerous informants working to entrap protestors in the act of ‘parading.’ These people got 20 year prison sentences from DNC party activist Washington DC judges and Democrat partisan juries. There was ample evidence that the 2020 election was tampered with and likely stolen. The wicked witch of the West is so seething with hatred of Trump that she was willing to do anything to prevent him from being re-elected. The sheer number votes cast for Biden is highly suspicious. More votes than were ever cast before for a winning Presidential candidate. For a creepy old guy who has been nothing but a loser and corrupt thief over his entire career. Democrats are getting ready to cheat again and RNC ‘chair’ Ronna Romney McDaniel has not lifted a finger to prevent the cheating from happening again this year. They cheated Biden into the White House with mail-in ballots and vote harvesting in selected swing states. Tipping the election to the worst President in U.S. history. Just look around at the state of the world with America’s biggest loser in charge.
Behind Pelosi’s cheap, deflecting rhetoric, there are still questions of substance to be addressed.
Netanyahu’s Israel seems to believe that Palestinians who share the October 7 attitudes of Hamas and others who joined Hamas are numerous enough that for practical purposes they are all threats to Israel’s existence.
Therefore, to defend Israel, it believes it must take extreme measures against Palestinians, in a way that the World Court (and decent people everywhere) see as atrocious and prima facie genocidal.
In Israel’s eyes, then, all it is doing is trying to defend itself, and what others see as genocide is only collateral damage, not intended for its own sake.
The word “intention” can be slippery. British philosopher H.L.A. Hart expressed the view that when an act is has results that are foreseeable as inevitable, the fact that they may be unwanted does not negate intention. An obvious case is removing a healthy person’s heart to save the life of another person. You may say you don’t intend (want, in this case) the death of the healthy person, but when it happens you are still guilty of murder, intentional killing of the innocent.
The atrocious behavior Israel has inflicted on Gaza’s Palestinians cannot, in like manner, be excused on the basis that the harmful results are unintended, and that only the defence of Israel is intended.
These observations need to be supplemented by other considerations to fill out the moral landscape. How reasonable is it for Israel to believe that pulling back on its life-denying restrictions on rescue supplies entering Gaza, including food, water and medicine, will threaten its own existence?
One answer is that world opinion is so aghast at what has been happening that it is more reasonable to believe that threats to Israel’s existence are greater from continuing the atrocities than from abiding by the World Court’s judgments.
Another answer is that where the future is uncertain, one should attend to avoiding immediate harms rather than those that are less certain.
These answers may not be decisive, but they seem to me sufficient to support adherence to the World Court’s injunctions.
Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
The U.S. Congress passed a resolution stating the two words mean the same thing. And that is what is “Behind Pelosi’s cheap, deflecting rhetoric”
The answer to the “questions of substance” is Zionism.
The Israeli government and the U.S. government (ie Pelosi) are Zionists.
Palestinians pose “a threat to Israel’s (ie Zionism’s) existence” by existing.
Zionism is “prima facie” Genocidal.
Zionism is not “slippery”, and doesn’t require a slippery philosophical explanation. H.L.A. Hart’s view can better be applied to the Palestinians.
Zionism is threatened by “pulling back on it’s life-denying restrictions”
The Palestinians future is not “uncertain” in the face of Zionism. It doesn’t exist.
There is no “moral landscape”. In the context of Zionism, “moral landscape” becomes an oxymoron.
Google recognizes the word “Antisemitism”, it does not recognize the word “Anitzionism”
That should tell everyone all they need to know.
Zionism is the line in the sand the World has drawn.
I have drawn that line with my own family.
Jumping the gun as it is often called ,questions have arisen regarding the immediate firing of UNRWA employees based on Israeli say
so ,without any investigation on the veracity of the claims by the UN Secretary General .See the information below by Robert Inlakesh
from “The Times of Israel’ the article “Israel hoping to push UNRWA out of Gaza”
It took the ICJ to finally rule against Israel . Israel makes a claim and immediately dismissals are dispatched without any
investigations .
They planned it and orchestrated it .
hxxps://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/wests-defunding-unrwa-not-oct-7/
THANK YOU! See my comment and link on this website. Input welcome.
Pelosi is one, of many, walking and talking examples of the need for age limits for elected officials. It’s embarrassing and disgraceful.
If this is a “leading Democrat” what hope is there for the USA?? Age is NOT the reason-people like Ray McGovern or Chas Freeman show that age in a real decent, intelligent human can be an advantage, with memory and experience and understanding of events put in context.
Age is not Pelosi’s problem. She’s ALWAYS been corporate scumbag. Now she’s an old scumbag.
The problem is not actually age (having just read a piece about a 100-year-old Communist in the Indian state of Kerala), but the fact that these gangsters sit in Congress forever, have no contact with reality, mostly engage in enriching themselves, and are corrupt sociopaths to begin with. What we need are term limits and perhaps age limits if these people glue themselves to their seats and refuse to get up.
I like Putin.
I could only wish that he’d get more involved in helping the pro-Palestine/anti Zionist supremacist movements.
He did greatly assist Assad back in 2015 when the Washington-Zionist-militarist empire was heII bent on overthrowing him; to Putin’s everlasting shame in the eyes of the Western-Zionist imperialists.
Unfortunately today he has his hands full with the Washington-Zionist-militarist destabilization campaign on his doorstep in Donbas/Lugansk.
But I did hear that Russia was flying along the Syrian border keeping their eyes on the Israelis. I’m sure there is a great deal of talk in the Kremlin about how to respond in case this becomes WWIII. Wouldn’t I like to be a fly on the wall! (I, too, like and admire Putin who is an actual leader and not just a meat puppet like Biden, Sunak, Macron, Scholtz, etc.)
I certainly agree with you, Drew. Putin does have his hands full to engage the Gaza genocide fiasco.
Correction: Putin interceded in Syria in 2015 not 2013. My bad.
Pelosi is out there winning hearts and minds. Democrats would be wise to quietly put that decrepit battle axe out to pasture before she further drives the American Arab and youth vote directly into the arms of Putin /s.
You have to ask yourself what exactly she thinks she is accomplishing, although one might surmise that her anger and frustration at losing ground in the polls to Team Trump™, combined with the growing effects of advanced aging is behind here increasingly irrational outbursts. Not entirely unlike her boss, you might say.
She doesn’t care what she’s accomplishing, she’s making sure her insider trading information keeps flowing hubby’s way (ditto Collins of Maine and all the rest of the gangsters). They are all owned by Israel and the parasite class; I even found out who Collins’s personal banker is, one Leonard Leo, a Knight of Malta who is looking forward to returning to feudalism. He apparently thinks he will be lord of the manor and not be roasted on a spit and fed to his wife [see Al Franken]).
The stench of corruption coupled with desperation is overwhelming. And she is apparently clueless how horrible she looks.
But I’m rich! I can pay people to tell me I look good!
What more can be said at this point about how despicable the Democrats led by Pelosi, Schumer, etc. are? Can they sink any lower with their worn-out talking points? Everything is Putin’s fault now, that they don’t like. What’s worse is that some may actually buy-in to that bs.
Yes, I don’t doubt that that imbecile Pelosi actually believes the lies she’s been told over the years by the “intelligence” “community.” She’s an old gullible fool, and a right-wing warmonger to boot.
There must be something in being an imbecilic and old gullible fool for it has made her and her ‘houseband’ of thieves multi-millionaires.
What other purpose is there for being in Congress for all these years, other than self-serving research.
This enriching oneself is major part of the reward for services rendered to the Plutocracy!
If being an imbecile is a major positive credential for serving the publics interests, then what does it say of us ‘others’ who first elected her to Congress, in a special election, in 1987, purportedly before she became imbecilic?
Some decrepit old fools succumb to dementia, and do not “go gently into the good night”.
Most mere mortals suffer the lifelong indignity of existing from pay check to pay check, if they are lucky, within political internment camps called nation states.
Apparently, she and her cohort of conspirators are not of either group!
And the very next day, Pelosi claimed they were working for China. It would be an embarrassment, if it weren’t so craven, and so tragic. How have these people abandoned all principles?
At least we, the people, can do what we can to contribute to UNRWA, and make a strong statemment, that if our government won’t, we will.
Excellent idea, Joy. You can’t abandoned principles when you never had any, just the principle of grabbing all you can.