I had a discussion on Facebook recently over the Gaza conflict. I was posting about the horrific abuses of Israel, he was countering with the supposed equal abuses of Hamas. After we traded points a few times I came to see where our difference of opinion actually lay. You see, fundamentally we both see things from the same side - war is ridiculous and the atrocities of this conflict are completely inexcusable. Killing children or civilians is completely psychopathic. We both want an end to this conflict. And yet we were arguing.

Where my friend was hung up was that the article I had posted wasn't "balanced". It was calling out Israel on war crimes, human rights violations and the like, but it wasn't citing any of the equally horrific things that Hamas has done. The familiar "human shield" argument was trotted out, as could be expected.

On the one hand, this position is really indicative of someone who is not properly informed and relies on liberal media for information. In other words, it's the Zionist position, that both sides are equally at fault and that the situation is "complicated", and that Israel has a right to defend itself (against its prisoners, apparently).

On July 24th, 2014, during renewed Israeli attacks on Palestine, a pre-season friendly soccer match in Austria between Israeli team Maccabi Haifa and French team Lille had to be abandoned in the 86th minute after pro-Palestinian protesters ran onto the pitch waving Palestinian flags and shouting "Free Palestine!"

A fight ensued between some of the soccer players, the protesters, and security personnel. The event made international news, and the protesters were roundly accused of "violently attacking the players" and of "being anti-Semitic" - with Israel again cast in the role of the victim.

On closer examination of the available video footage (see video analysis below), we see a rather different picture. Four protesters ran across the field, but clearly didn't have violence in mind. All they seemed to want to do was get a message across by reminding people that Apartheid Israel is currently engaged in war crimes. Frankly, Austria should be censured for hosting an Israeli sports team in its country at this time. Whatever happened to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions?

Some say Israeli sports, music, academia and other cultural activities shouldn't be lumped together with the Israeli state's actions. Too bad. If they choose to be associated with that ZioNazi entity, they must accept pariah status and face the consequences of international opprobrium.

Contrary to what the mainstream media claimed, the first 'violent act', which started the fight, was carried out by an Israeli player, who brought one of the protesters to the ground.

This week on SOTT Talk Radio Niall and Joe discussed the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine and other major recent events in world news. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the world's longest running conflict, yet very few people know its actual history, when and why it began and why it continues to this day. Even fewer have any understanding of how, because of the conflict, the state of Israel and its 'intelligence agency' the Mossad, has wielded and wields vastly disproportionate (relative to its size and population) power on the world stage and has thereby contributed significantly to the course of our modern civilization.

Other topics discussed on this show include the recent spate of 'downed' commercial aircraft, the ongoing information war between the 'West' and Russia over Ukraine, and much more.

Running Time: 02:20:00

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When MH370 vanished into thin air on March 8th this year, an international search-and-rescue party scanned two of the world's oceans, pored over satellite images and radar readings, and consulted automated communication relays between parts of the plane and their manufacturers that monitor aircraft system performance in real-time. Despite these multiple layers of hi-tech monitoring systems, there is still no trace of the missing Boeing 777-200ER. Or so we've been told. All 239 passengers and crew are officially reported as missing, presumed dead. Planes have literally disappeared in the past, but none with so many people onboard.

As if that weren't extraordinary enough, here we are 4 months later and a second Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER and its passengers and crew have been 'taken out', although this time in a more easily discernible manner. There is as yet no direct connection between the two events, although only the most ardent scientific materialist could claim complete indifference to the fact that they're the same type of aircraft used by the same airline company, as well as the numerological synchronicity of a Boeing-777 with flight number MH17 crashing on 07/17/2014, exactly 17 years to the day since its maiden flight on 07/17/1997.

The first event seemed to be random and caught the world's media completely by surprise. But the second occurred at 'ground zero' of the 'new cold war' we find ourselves in. Shouting the loudest about the crash of MH17 is, as usual, the US government. From the get-go, it 'knew' exactly how it happened, and exactly who to blame for the deaths of 298 innocent people: the "Russian-backed terrorists" in eastern Ukraine had "shot MH17 down with an SA (surface-to-air) series missile shot from a BUK missile-launcher near where the plane came down in terrorist-controlled territory." The 'evidence' to support their claims, however, is non-existent, unless you count "social media" and the US brand of "common sense" as evidence.

Dead women, dead children, dead babies. Limbs missing, brains missing, guts spilled out on the floor. It's impossible to put a positive spin on those kinds of images, unless you're Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Two days ago, Bibi sought to explain why, in the space of a few hours, Israeli soldiers, under his orders, massacred 63 people, including 17 children, in the Shuja'iya neighborhood to the east of Gaza City. He said:

"We have to protect ourselves. We try to target the rocketeers, we do. And all civilian casualties are not intended by us but actually intended by Hamas who want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can because somebody said they use telegenically dead Palestinians for the cause. They want the more dead the better."

This week on SOTT Talk Radio we interviewed best-selling British author, ufologist and cryptozoologist, Nick Redfern.

From 1984 until 2001 Redfern worked as a freelance feature writer for numerous UK newspapers. In recent years, Redfern has made many TV appearances in the UK and overseas, sharing his research and insights into all things Fortean, and today runs the U.S. branch of the Centre for Fortean Zoology. Redfern posts regularly on his blog.

Our guest is also the author of numerous books about some of the truly weird (but totally real) topics we discussed this week, including Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind, A Covert Agenda, The FBI Files, Three Men Seeking Monsters, Body Snatchers in the Desert, On the Trail of the Saucer Spies, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter, Final Events, The NASA Conspiracies, The Real Men in Black, The Pyramids and the Pentagon, The World's Weirdest Places, and many more!

Running Time: 01:48:00

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Is everyone enjoying the show? You know...the ridiculously transparent attempt by the entire Western media and their political 'elite' masters to use the alleged shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 as part of their 'asymmetric' warfare against Russia and Vladimir Putin. Even the supposedly 'leftist' UK Guardian newspaper has been running headlines like World demands answers from Russia after Malaysia Airlines plane's destruction over Ukraine and Hilary Clinton (wasn't she fired?) wasted no time in declaring authoritatively that Russian rebels were responsible for the downing of the plane and that "Putin has gone too far". Clinton's statement clearly exposes her own and her former government's complete lack of respect for due process, truth, and the extreme prejudice with which they both view the Russian Federation. It's also clearly complete and utter BS because no one could possibly know who was responsible for the shooting down of Flight MH17 just a few hours after it fell out of the sky.

Then again, the US government never did let the facts get in the way of a good dose of propaganda, and to be fair, from the point of view of Clinton and her ilk, Putin has gone 'too far', but it has nothing to do with any Malaysian aircraft.

Israel's latest game of "kill the Palestinians" began as a result of the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teenagers. No one knows who did it. Hamas denied they had anything to do with it, Israel has no evidence that Hamas had anything to do with it, and yet Israel blamed Hamas and, on the basis of that spurious claim, began bombing Gaza's civilians.

The latest example of unfettered Israeli criminality and brutality came today when Israeli missiles targeted part of the beach in Gaza, specifically, a part of the beach where four young Palestinian boys were playing football. This comes on the heels of last week's massacre of 9 young Palestinians in a beach cafe as they watched the World Cup.

This week on SOTT Talk Radio we interviewed Israeli peace activist and author Miko Peled, discussing the latest round of atrocities in Gaza, the circumstances surrounding 'Operation Protective Edge', and Peled's insights into the horror and tragedy of the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict - for Palestinians of course, but also, ultimately, for ordinary Israelis too.

Miko Peled was born in Jerusalem into a prominent Israeli Zionist family. His father was a famous General in the IDF, in which Miko also served his time. When Miko's niece was killed in a terrorist attack in 1997, you may have expected the family to blame the Palestinians, but surprisingly, they blamed the state of Israel.

Imbued with his father's deep knowledge of Israeli war practices, Peled authored The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, a book that lays bare the myths surrounding the situation in the Middle East. Peled now travels extensively, giving talks about his experiences to audiences across the world.

Running Time: 01:24:00

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While much of the public was being distracted by news reports of the scoreline in the Germany-Brazil World Cup game, another, admittedly less important, high-scoring 'game' was playing out in Israel/Palestine. While Brazil lost 7 to 1 to Germany, so far, Palestinians losses to Israel are running at 100-0, with no end to the carnage in sight.

A week ago I expressed my suspicions about the timing of the kidnapping and murder of the three Israelis teens. Since then, more details have come to light that confirm that the kidnapping was most likely a carefully orchestrated Israeli government propaganda campaign designed to destroy the Fatah/Hamas unity government, demomize the Palestinians as 'terrorists', and, as always, give the psychopaths in Tel Aviv another opportunity to blow Palestinian women and children to pieces.

As clinical studies on the psychopathic mind make clear, psychopaths periodically experience a compelling drive to give vent to their destructive instincts. In the case of psychopaths in positions of power, this usually means some kind of 'war' where innocent civilians (aka 'non-combatants') are targeted for the most brutal suffering. In the specific case of the Israeli psychopathic 'elite', the psychological profile goes something like this:

Netanyahu and his ilk have a deep, almost unconscious desire to obliterate the Palestinians, to 'erase them from the pages of history', because the Palestinians stand in the way of them achieving their goal of a idealized Jewish state where they reign supreme. The Israeli/Zionist ideologues are frequently and privately enraged at the Palestinians because the Palestinians force the Zionists to struggle to find a way to achieve their racist goals without tarnishing their own self-image as 'seeking peace' 'defending the Jewish people' being 'the only Democracy in the Middle East' etc. To the psychopaths in Israel therefore, all Palestinians are 'evil', but there's a problem: the Palestinians are not evil and their cause is just by normal human standards.
If it was up to them, the psychopaths in Israel would just kill all the Palestinians and be done with it. But they can't because they are constrained by human rights, innocence, respect and other 'silly' ideals adhered to by normal people, and to which the psychopaths must also pay lip service if they are to maintain their mask of humanity on the world stage.

To get what they want therefore, the Israeli psychopaths must solve the problem of the Palestinians not conforming (in reality) to the evil image the Israelis have of them, that would allow the Israelis to freely express their destructive urges and achieve their idealized vision of a Jewish state. The solution that psychopathic types everywhere invariably come up with is to 'create their own reality' where they literally manufacture a 'reality' to fit the demonized image they have of the 'enemy' that stands in their way. At that point, they have the 'just cause' to attack the 'enemy' whose mere existence has been 'unfairly' thwarting their attempts to get what they want i.e. achieve their psychopathic agenda.

With that in mind, let's look at the details of events over the past month in Israel/Palestine.