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The Israeli Government Attacks Palestinians Unjustly

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By John Spritzler

July, 2021

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"Zionist" is what people call themselves who believe that there should be a Jewish state in Palestine, and Zionism is the name of the movement that pursued the objective of creating a Jewish state as far back as 1897.  Among Zionists before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a minority (including Albert Einstein) who opposed the creation of a Jewish state and only supported the idea of Jews moving to Palestine and creating Jewish cultural institutions in a state where Jews and non-Jews would be equal under the law. But by 1948 even Einstein supported the creation of a Jewish state. Today Zionism means defending the existence of Israel as a (supposedly) Jewish state of, and only of, the Jewish people with a robust Jewish majority population guaranteed by any means necessary to ensure this. The articles and links below explain how Zionist leaders, going back to World War II up through the present time, have attacked both ordinary non-Jews and ordinary Jews as well.

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The Israeli (Zionist) government virtually openly declares that its violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of making Israel geographically as large as possible while ensuring that there are as few Palestinians living in it as possible; this is ethnic cleansing.

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What Zionist leaders do NOT openly admit is that the reason for this ethnic cleansing is not (as Zionists falsely claim) to make Jews safe but rather to make Palestinians so angry at Israel and sometimes violent that the billionaire ruling class of Israel can then portray Palestinians as a bogeyman enemy of Israeli Jews and thereby frighten them into obedience to the Israeli ruing class that enriches itself by oppressing working class Israeli Jews as I discuss in great detail here.

 

The contempt that Zionist leaders have always had for ordinary Jews is illustrated, for example, by the fact that they sabotaged rescue efforts of Jews during the Holocaust whenever the rescue did not entail sending Jews to Palestine. Zionist leaders did not simply want Jews to go to Palestine, they wanted Jews to go to Palestine where a Jewish upper class of top Zionist leaders would be able to rule over them with governmental power in a so-called Jewish state. This is why Zionist leaders in 1924 assassinated the Jewish man, Jacob Israël de Haan, who was seeking a deal with Arab leaders that would allow unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine in exchange for a Jewish declaration forgoing the Balfour Declaration, which was the British declaration that essentially gave a green light for the future creation of a Jewish state in Mandate Palestine then under the control of Great Britain.

 

Zionist leaders are so contemptuous of the welfare of ordinary Jews that it is fair to accuse them of being antisemitic in the sense of anti-Jewish. Zionism is entirely an anti-working class ideology whose leaders have in the past and still today attack working people whether they are Jewish or not. To be for equality under the law, regardless of religious belief, means to be opposed to Zionism. This is why Jews as well as non-Jews are speaking out against Zionism.

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Bibliography about Palestine and Israel, with both pro- and anti-Zionist authors

 

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For an introduction to understanding the conflict in Palestine, please read this: The Root of the Mid-East conflict and the reason our government supports Israel's government, notes for the speech given by John Spritzler at the Watertown public library

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THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL REASONS THAT ZIONISTS GIVE IN DEFENSE OF ISRAEL REMOVING MOST NON-JEWS FROM ISRAEL AND REFUSING TO LET THEM (THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES) RETURN ARE: #1) THAT GOD GAVE THE LAND TO THE JEWS AND #2) THAT JEWS CANNOT LIVE SAFELY IN THE WORLD UNLESS THERE IS A JEWISH STATE WITH A LARGE MAJORITY JEWISH POPULATION ACHIEVED AND GUARANTEED BY WHATEVER IS NECESSARY, EVEN IF IT REQUIRES (AS IT DOES) VIOLENT ETHNIC CLEANSING OF NON-JEWS. TO SEE THAT #1 IS FALSE, GO HERE; TO SEE THAT #2 IS FALSE, GO HERE.

 

ZIONIST LEADERS HAVE NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT FOR ORDINARY JEWS AND HAVE BETRAYED THEM HORRIBLY SINCE THE DAYS OF THE HOLOCAUST; TO SEE THIS GO HERE.

Read more about this in Israel's Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians This makes the point that Zionism is an ATTACK on ordinary Jews (as well as Palestinians). IT IS ANTI-SEMITIC (MEANING ANTI-ORDINARY-JEWISH-PEOPLE) NOT TO OPPOSE ZIONISM.

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Note that nothing below in any way denies the Holocaust. Read My Thoughts about 'Holocaust Denial'

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Also note that nothing below is in support of the "Two-State Solution." Read

It Is Morally Wrong to Support the "Two State Solution" for Israel/Palestine

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THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT'S ATTACKS ON PALESTINIANS: LINKS TO EVIDENCE FOR THE FACT AND ARGUMENTS WHY IT IS UNJUST

 

 

The chief Zionist assertion is that all gentiles (non-Jews) are innately (if not currently overtly) anti-Semitic, and the chief Zionist argument is that therefore Jews, to be safe in the world, need an exclusively "Jewish state of their own." Read Zionists Are Wrong in Claiming All Gentiles Are Innately Anti-Semitic .

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Israeli historian Benny Morris denies the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, but his own research shows that this was indeed how Israel came into being, by Jeremy R. Hammond | Nov 14, 2016, in Foreign Policy Journal. Benny Morris is a staunch pro-Zionist. In a Haaretz interview of him in 2004 (it's no longer on the Haaretz website) on the occasion of his forthcoming book, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, he said the following (quoted words are those of Morris, non-quoted words are those of the Haaretz interviewer):

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"The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. 

"At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself."... 

Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion? 

"From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created." 

Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"? 

"Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist." 

I don't hear you condemning him. 

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." 

Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948? 

"There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands." 

We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society. 

"A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."

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Section 7A(1) of the Basic Law of Israel explicitly prevents Israeli citizens – Arab or Jewish – from using the "democratic" system of Israeli elections to challenge the inferior status of Arabs under the law; it restricts who can run for political office with this language: "A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if among its goals or deeds, either expressly or impliedly, are one of the following: (1) The negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the State of the Jewish People. …" In a 1989 Israeli Supreme Court ruling (reported in the 1991 Israel Law Review, Vol. 25, p. 219, published by the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Justice S. Levine, speaking for the majority, ruled that this law meant that a political party could not run candidates if it intended to achieve the cancellation of one of the fundamental tenets of the State – namely "the existence of a Jewish majority, the granting of preference to Jews in matters of immigration, and the existence of close and reciprocal relations between the State and the Jews of the Diaspora."

 

Video: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine ( a talk by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and author of the book by the same title.) 

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Video: Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, recounts the history of Zionism and ethnic cleansing in an interview by Chris Hedges conducted after October 7, 2023.

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Israeli laws that discriminate against non-Jewish citizens of Israel.

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Israel's Apartheid Laws, in detail

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The Israeli Knesset (parliament) in 2018 passed the "Jewish nation-state" law that explicitly makes Israel a state based on legal discrimination against non-Jews even though non-Jews are about a fifth of the Israeli population. Read about this law here and read the law itself here.

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Here's a detailed report by B'Tselem: "A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid" 12 January, 2021.

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Israel rebuked for 'biggest demolition of Palestinian homes in years': 

The United Nations has rebuked Israel for carrying out what it said was the biggest demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank for a decade. Some 73 people, including 41 children, were made homeless when their dwellings were knocked down in the Bedouin settlement of Khirbet Humsa, in the Jordan Valley, the UN said.

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Israeli bulldozers demolish Palestinian kindergarten: Just as a new school year is getting underway, Israeli forces demolish a brand-new Palestinian kindergarten, citing, as usual, “lack of permit” in the context of an occupation that only rarely dispenses permits to non-Jews.

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Is Israel an Apartheid State? Rhetoric or Reality by Frances H. Remillard

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Video: Issues Related to a Jewish State in Palestine:   A  speech by John Spritzler at the Walpole, MA, Public Library, Nov. 7, 2005

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Video: Miko Peled, the General's Son, debunks Zionist myths.

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Video: Fmr. IDF Soldier Calls on Americans to Stand Up to Israel War Crimes | Interview with Eran Efrati

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Video: Auschwitz Survivor on Palestine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSlFR541Uoo

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Israeli violence against Palestinians, such as its well-known massacres of people in Gaza, is so terrible that it provoked “327 Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants [to] publish [a] New York Times ad accusing Israel of 'ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people.' The ad was also published in The Guardian and the first two, and last, paragraphs are:


“As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide, we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonisation of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

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“We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached fever-pitch. Politicians and pundits in the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and rightwing Israelis are adopting neo-Nazi insignia…

“We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean “Never again for anyone”.”


http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.612072

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/15/gaza-propaganda-machines

 

Holocaust scholar and director of Hebrew University's Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry: 1932 Is Already Here

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Anti-Zionist Rabbis Call Israeli Ceremony at Auschwitz an Affront to the Memory of the Victims

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Israeli soldiers protect fanatical Jewish settlers who terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank. Here is an account of this from the book The State of Israel vs. The Jews:

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"Breaking the Silence members are Israeli military reservists whose goal is to expose the oppression of Palestinians through firsthand accounts of those who practiced it: the soldiers themselves. BtS was founded in 2003 by officers and noncoms who had served in the West Bank city of Hebron, the place where Israel's control is the most cruel, and also the most unusual. Since 1997, six hundred extremist messianic settlers, protected by about a thousand soldiers, have terrorized tens of thousands of Palestinians living in what is called the H2, the "Jewish zone." That's the location of the Old City and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. On some streets, those Palestinians who haven't yet been driven out by the settlers' constant harassment live like caged animals, behind fencing they have erected to protect themselves. Settlers in buildings above them constantly dump their garbage down into Arab houses, terraces, and courtyards. Their equally fanatical children throw trash and scrawl insults about Arabs and Muslims on walls."

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IS IT ANY WONDER THAT NON-JEWS IN PALESTINE ARE ANGRY AT HOW ZIONIST JEWS SUCH AS THE SEPHARDI CHIEF RABBI TREATS THEM?

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Sephardi chief rabbi says non-Jews forbidden from living in the Land of Israel

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef argues that Jewish law prohibits non-Jews from living in Israel unless they have accepted Noachide laws, adding that some non-Jews live in Israel to serve the Jewish population.

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By Haaretz | Mar. 28, 2016 | 3:51 AM | 26

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said Saturday night that many non-Jews should be forbidden from living in the Land of Israel according to Jewish law.

In a recording of Yosef’s weekly Saturday night lecture obtained by Channel 10, the rabbi can be heard saying, “According to Jewish law, it’s forbidden for a non-Jew to live in the Land of Israel – unless he has accepted the seven Noachide laws.”

“If he’s not willing to accept one of them, [which is] not to commit suicide, if he’s not willing to accept this, you send him to Saudi Arabia,” Yosef continued, apparently referring to suicide attackers. 

The seven Noachide laws include prohibitions on idolatry, blasphemy, murder, illicit sexual relations, stealing and eating the limb of a living animal, plus a positive commandment to establish court systems.  

“If our hands were strong, if we had governing power, then non-Jews shouldn’t live in the Land of Israel,” Yosef added. “But our hands aren’t strong. We’re awaiting our righteous Messiah, who will be the true and complete redemption, and then they’ll do this.”

The reason some non-Jews are allowed to live in Israel, Yosef continued, is to serve the Jewish population. “Who will be the servers? Who will be our assistants? Therefore, we leave them here in the land,” he said.

 

Video: Ordinary Jewish Israelis in an Israeli store objecting to a shop-owner's refusal to sell to a non-Jew, in a "hidden camera" experiment. (This video was made by people who argue, without any basis in fact, that Jewish Israelis are more tolerant than non-Jewish Arabs; but regardless of their motives, the video is quite interesting.)

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The Dispossessed: Sixty-seven years ago, Israel created a Jewish state, and my grandmother was made homeless. By Saleem Haddad

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Video: Amnesty Report Visualizes Israel's War Crimes. Published on Jul 29, 2015. A joint study by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture reconstructs Israel's four-day bombardment of the city of Rafah in Gaza.

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NGO: Israeli checkpoints are 'cruel and inhuman' 

July 4, 2016 at 1:18 pm | Published in: Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine of Middle East Monitor:

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A human rights NGO has accused Israel of forcing Palestinians to withstand "cruel and inhuman" conditions at its borders. The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, also known as B'Tselem, said even those with legitimate work permits were being made to wait for hours in extremely hot weather.

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B'Tselem posted an image on Facebook and said in a statement: "The Palestinians photographed waiting in line have permits that allow them to work in Israel. Such permits are issued only after meticulous security screening."

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"Making people wait in line for hours, in unbearable conditions, highlights the cruel and inhuman aspects of military control over a civilian population.

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B’tselem: Israel killed 290 Palestinians in 2018, most of them innocents

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NGO claims only 90 of 254 killed in Gaza took part in violence; IDF has no comment; Israeli officials say they seek to prevent civilian deaths, accuse Hamas of using human shields

 

Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces

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​I Was a Settler. I Know How Settlers Become Killers

January 31, 2019

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I helped establish the illegal West Bank outpost where the suspects in the murder of a Palestinian woman, Aisha Rabi, studied. I've watched the Israeli right wing radicalize to the point of devaluing human life - for anyone who isn’t Jewish 

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Shabtay Bendit writes in Haaretz, Jan 30, 2019

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Dear Palestinians: We Don't Need a State Under Existing Circumstances, by Khalid Amayreh

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Debunking the pro-Israel mythology that the elite use to attack equality and solidarity and democracy in the U.S. and Middle East:

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Regarding the argument, made famous by former senator Newt Gingrich, that "Palestine was never a state" and therefore there's nothing wrong with making most of it be a Jewish state, please read (and I hope laugh as you read) my "Newt Gingrich's Brilliant Insight about Palestinians."

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Zionism, Judaism and the Jewish State of Israel: Separateness, ontological uniqueness and Jewish morality are its characteristics

by Lynda Burstein Brayer for The Saker Blog

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Why "Pick On" Israel? Here's Why (written in 2006)

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Class Inequality in Israel

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Why U.S. Billionaires Could Destroy the Israel Lobby, But Don't

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"The emperor has no clothes: The West Bank, settlements, and two State Solution" by Miko Peled

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Israel funding Hamas, Olmert admits (If this fact seems hard to believe, read Israeli Leaders and Hamas Need Each Other and it will become a lot easier to understand)

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Living reminder: 126-year-old Palestinian remembers 1948 Nakba

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Here are some more articles about Israel I posted years ago:

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  • Interview with Ilan Pappé: “The Zionist goal from the very beginning was to have as much as Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible.

  • The Jews of Iraq, by Naeim Giladi ["I write this article
    for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called 'cruel Zionism.' I write about it because I was part of it."]

  • Video of Zionist ethnic cleansing going on today in Palestine, carried out by the Israel government that once claimed to have "made the dessert bloom" but now uproots trees Palestinians depend on for their livelihood.

  • "WEXNER ANALYSIS: ISRAELI COMMUNICATION PRIORITIES 2003" This is a professional consulting firm's recommendation to the Israeli government about how to do propaganda in the United States. The only sense in which it reflects the views of New Democracy is that we agree that the Israeli government uses lies and deception to fool people into supporting it's ethnic cleansing practices.

  • Antiwar Statement of Yair Khilou, imprisoned for refusal to serve in the Israeli Army. (From New Profile).

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