Ma'an
The de facto government in Gaza will erect a tent at the Erez crossing to receive Palestinians deported to Gaza under the new Israeli military orders, Hamas government Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Thursday.
The deportees will not be permitted to enter Gaza, but will rather be housed at the tent while international rights groups insist that they be permitted to travel to the West Bank, where their families are, the de facto prime minister explained.
"The regulation simply will not be allowed to stand," he explained, insisting that the the de facto government will force Israel to reverse the strategy by making its implementation impossible.
Refusing Palestinians entry to Gaza is not an effort to deny Palestinians the right to live anywhere they choose in the nation, Haniyeh explained, but rather an insistence that Palestinians be allowed to live where they choose.
On 13 April, two new Israeli military orders went into effect, expanding the definition of an "infiltrator" to include any person residing in the West Bank without Israeli permission. Rights organizations and governments from around the world have condemned the move.
Already, at least two Palestinians have been moved to Gaza, though it is not clear if the orders were used to expel them. One Tulkarem native was released from prison on Wednesday and dropped off at the Erez crossing; he remains stranded at the crossing, and will likely remain in the Hamas-organized tent pending intervention by rights groups.
A second Palestinian man, born in Gaza but residing with his wife and children in the Palestinian community of Yaffa, in Tel Aviv, was detained from a hospital and transported to Gaza. The decision, however, was later reversed for unknown reasons, and he was permitted to travel back to his family. Full story
Friday, April 23, 2010
Child Reveals Abuse, Torture By Israeli soldiers
A Palestinian child, 15 years old, revealed to the Qatar-based, Al Jazeera, details on how Israeli soldiers kidnapped him, struck him and forced him to drink untreated sewage water at the entrance of Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron in the southern part of the West Bank.
The child, Sabri Ibrahim Awad, told Al Jazeera that Israeli soldiers stopped him at the entrance of Beit Ummar and used him as a human shield during clashes with Palestinian youths.
The child was cuffed and forced to stand in front of military jeeps before he was moved to one of the jeeps where he was beaten by several soldiers.
He stated that he was heading to a festival in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners detained by Israel.
He was beaten for approximately two hours before the soldiers forced his face into sewage water. He was beaten even more when he threw-up the sewage water forced into his throat.
Currently Sabri is suffering from bruises and sharp pain in his legs and face, with clear marks and bruises around his eyes.
Before he was released, soldiers threw him on the ground, hurled a gas bomb that fell near him, and drove away.
The Israeli army sealed Beit Ummar six days ago after closing all of its iron gates and placed concrete blocks on main roads leading to it. IMEMC
The child was cuffed and forced to stand in front of military jeeps before he was moved to one of the jeeps where he was beaten by several soldiers.
He stated that he was heading to a festival in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners detained by Israel.
He was beaten for approximately two hours before the soldiers forced his face into sewage water. He was beaten even more when he threw-up the sewage water forced into his throat.
Currently Sabri is suffering from bruises and sharp pain in his legs and face, with clear marks and bruises around his eyes.
Before he was released, soldiers threw him on the ground, hurled a gas bomb that fell near him, and drove away.
The Israeli army sealed Beit Ummar six days ago after closing all of its iron gates and placed concrete blocks on main roads leading to it. IMEMC
ZOA lobbies Congress on Iran, PA
JTA
Activists for the Zionist Organization of America lobbied Congress to consider military action against Iran. In more than 100 meetings with members of Congress on Wednesday, the ZOA said hundreds of its activists also asked the lawmakers to defund the Palestinian Authority, press the U.S. embassy issue and enshrine anti-Jewish discrimination safeguards in education legislation.
Thirty lawmakers addressed the group's luncheon, the ZOA said... Full story
Activists for the Zionist Organization of America lobbied Congress to consider military action against Iran. In more than 100 meetings with members of Congress on Wednesday, the ZOA said hundreds of its activists also asked the lawmakers to defund the Palestinian Authority, press the U.S. embassy issue and enshrine anti-Jewish discrimination safeguards in education legislation.
Thirty lawmakers addressed the group's luncheon, the ZOA said... Full story
Thursday, April 22, 2010
How To Beat Back Israel Divestment Bill: Get Organized - The Forward
Forward
When a bill calling for divestment from some companies doing business with Israel surfaced at a mid-March student government committee hearing at the University of California, Berkeley, local Jewish communal watchdogs were taken by surprise...
Even when the student senate president vetoed the measure, those against divestment hardly saw it as a victory; they knew that the veto could be easily undone, since the bill was passed with more votes than would be needed to overturn the veto.
And so a campaign was launched. The debate on the veto was scheduled for the night of April 14. In the two weeks prior, Berkeley Hillel coordinated a comprehensive national lobbying campaign consisting of a teach-in, face-to-face meetings with student senators and an intervention by a Nobel laureate [Elie Wiesel, former journalist for pre-Israel terrorist group], all aimed at robbing the divestment supporters of three senate votes.
Adam Naftalin-Kelman, the Hillel’s newly installed executive director, said that the strategy for countering divestment efforts was devised at a roundtable meeting convened by Hillel and attended by representatives of local branches of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council, J Street, Israel’s consul general in San Francisco and local rabbis.
Outmaneuvering the pro-divestment supporters, this organizing coup appears to have worked: After a marathon debate that lasted well into the next morning, two senators changed their minds and one abstained, and the veto was upheld.....
..............In the weeks between the first vote and the attempt to overturn the veto, discussions about how to challenge Berkeley student senate support for the bill were held as faraway as Washington, D.C. At an AIPAC conference in Washington in late March, AIPAC leadership development director Jonathan Kessler said that his organization would “make sure that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote,” as recorded in a video taken at the conference by the JTA. “This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s Capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses,” he said.
In Berkeley student government election results announced April 13, one of the senators who had vocally opposed the divestment resolution was elected president of the student government. His party, considered the more moderate of the two Berkeley student parties, won a majority in the senate... Full story
When a bill calling for divestment from some companies doing business with Israel surfaced at a mid-March student government committee hearing at the University of California, Berkeley, local Jewish communal watchdogs were taken by surprise...
Even when the student senate president vetoed the measure, those against divestment hardly saw it as a victory; they knew that the veto could be easily undone, since the bill was passed with more votes than would be needed to overturn the veto.
And so a campaign was launched. The debate on the veto was scheduled for the night of April 14. In the two weeks prior, Berkeley Hillel coordinated a comprehensive national lobbying campaign consisting of a teach-in, face-to-face meetings with student senators and an intervention by a Nobel laureate [Elie Wiesel, former journalist for pre-Israel terrorist group], all aimed at robbing the divestment supporters of three senate votes.
Adam Naftalin-Kelman, the Hillel’s newly installed executive director, said that the strategy for countering divestment efforts was devised at a roundtable meeting convened by Hillel and attended by representatives of local branches of the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council, J Street, Israel’s consul general in San Francisco and local rabbis.
Outmaneuvering the pro-divestment supporters, this organizing coup appears to have worked: After a marathon debate that lasted well into the next morning, two senators changed their minds and one abstained, and the veto was upheld.....
..............In the weeks between the first vote and the attempt to overturn the veto, discussions about how to challenge Berkeley student senate support for the bill were held as faraway as Washington, D.C. At an AIPAC conference in Washington in late March, AIPAC leadership development director Jonathan Kessler said that his organization would “make sure that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote,” as recorded in a video taken at the conference by the JTA. “This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s Capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses,” he said.
In Berkeley student government election results announced April 13, one of the senators who had vocally opposed the divestment resolution was elected president of the student government. His party, considered the more moderate of the two Berkeley student parties, won a majority in the senate... Full story
Israel First: More on Dr. Lani Kass, by Philip Giraldi – Is Top Pentagon advisor security risk?
Philip Giraldi, April 22, 2010
My recent account of the career of Dr. Lani Kass was based on what has appeared about her in the public record and media, including her own comments regarding national defense and security policy. To recapitulate, Kass was born, raised, and educated in Israel. She has a PhD in Russian studies and is fluent in Russian and Hebrew in addition to English. Kass reportedly reached the rank of major in the Israeli air force before moving to the United States and working her way up through the US defense establishment.
She is currently the most senior civilian adviser to Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz and is believed to have access to most American defense secrets. Kass is best known to the public for her role in promoting Air Force cyberwarfare, but she also appears to have been a major player in counter-terrorism policy and in war preparations directed against Iran even though she has no actual substantive background in those areas. She believes that the US is engaged in a long war against Islamo-radicalism and that "winning" against Iran is necessary but the American people must be willing to pay the price to succeed.
My concern regarding Dr. Kass is based on the potential conflict of interest and divided loyalty that is normal in anyone who is born in one country and moves to another. She comes from a country that has a history of large scale and highly aggressive espionage directed against the United States and she appears to continue to have close ties to her birthplace. Dr. Kass has become a naturalized American while apparently retaining her Israeli citizenship and her three children were reportedly born in Israel, not the United States. The information she has access to would be extremely valuable to Israel and potentially damaging to US interests, particularly as she likely knows what the US Air Force response to a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran would be.
The issue of Israel aside, one might reasonably argue in any event that a senior officer in any foreign country’s military establishment should be considered an undesirable candidate for a top post in the Pentagon on security grounds. If Dr. Kass were a dentist it would make absolutely no difference where she came from and what her political views might be, but a person’s ultimate loyalty is not just an abstraction for someone who has relatively free access to the Defense Department’s most highly classified information and is probably also able to influence policy.
I continue to question to what extent Kass has been properly security vetted for her position, to include rigorous inquiry into whether or not she still has ties to the Israeli government. I also can only speculate at the type of advice that Kass is providing to her Pentagon associates as she appears to embrace particularly hard line views about Muslims and about the desirability of going to war with Iran, positions that are rather similar to those promoted by the Israeli government.
Additional information has come to light on Kass that heightens my concern about her high position in the United States government’s defense and security establishment.
Her first job in Washington was with the Advanced International Studies Institute (AISI), a Washington DC area based think tank. After being recommended by someone at the Pentagon, she was hired for her Russian language skills in an unclassified program funded by the Department of Defense called Soviet Watch. Her fellow employees understood that she was a former major in Israeli intelligence. A few months later she moved on to beltway bandit Booz Allen Hamilton. Some months after she departed AISI, one of her colleagues received a call from a personnel manager at the Industrial War College asking to confirm Kass’s employment with AISI. The Industrial War College was, as the name implies, an institute set up to coordinate industrial production with Defense Department needs. Some of its work was classified. Kass’s colleague told the caller that Kass was an intelligence officer who thought of herself as an Israeli and added that putting her in any position of influence would be a bad idea.
From there and then to here and now has taken more than twenty years, proceeding through a number of Defense Department positions with ever-increasing responsibility and access. It would not be out of place to observe that if the report that Kass was truly an intelligence officer for the Israeli Defense Forces is correct the Department of Defense security screeners should have erred on the side of caution based on the supposition that she was still in touch with her former employers. She should never have been given a security clearance and provided access to United States classified information in the first place, which again raises the issue of just if and how thoroughly her background was actually investigated.
More information has also been developed regarding Kass’s current role. According to a highly reliable source, Dr. Lani Kass is now the principal adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen regarding the Middle East. She recently was involved in a very important meeting, one that concerned Israel.
The meeting took place because of concerns that the United States has been losing the "war of ideas" in the Muslim world. At the end of last year, General David Petraeus sent a special emissary out on a fact finding mission to meet with the heads of state and top military officers in all of the Muslim countries considered to be friends or allies of the US for a frank exchange of views. The emissary, an Arabic speaker, learned that no country any longer trusts the United States because it is widely believed that all American policies in the Near East region are subject to veto by Israel. It was also commonly observed that Washington is complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians because of its failure to do anything to restrain Israel, making it extremely difficult to rally popular support in any Muslim country for US policies.
Petraeus was surprised by the unanimity and emotion of the views that were confidentially expressed and thought the issue to be important enough to move it up the chain of command. In February, he met with Admiral Mullen and briefed him on his findings. Mullen was accompanied only by Dr. Lani Kass, who was described to Petraeus as his special assistant for the Middle East. Mullen expressed some dismay at the implications of the findings while Kass disputed Petraeus’ conclusions and said that the concerns being expressed were greatly exaggerated. Petraeus nevertheless presented his report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17th together with his judgment that the failure to address the Palestinian issue was putting US soldiers in danger because it was inflaming anti-American sentiment and giving groups like al-Qaeda an unnecessary propaganda victory.
One might argue that Dr. Lani Kass is just another Israel firster who has risen to high office in the US government, not really unlike Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Douglas Feith. And that might well be true. But at the same time one must challenge the judgment of those who enabled her rise to a position of great responsibility and power and there should be serious questions about whether her bellicose and racially tinged viewpoint comes from objective and honest analysis of the genuine challenges confronting the United States or from her loyalty to her country of birth.
Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer. Full Bio
My recent account of the career of Dr. Lani Kass was based on what has appeared about her in the public record and media, including her own comments regarding national defense and security policy. To recapitulate, Kass was born, raised, and educated in Israel. She has a PhD in Russian studies and is fluent in Russian and Hebrew in addition to English. Kass reportedly reached the rank of major in the Israeli air force before moving to the United States and working her way up through the US defense establishment.
She is currently the most senior civilian adviser to Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz and is believed to have access to most American defense secrets. Kass is best known to the public for her role in promoting Air Force cyberwarfare, but she also appears to have been a major player in counter-terrorism policy and in war preparations directed against Iran even though she has no actual substantive background in those areas. She believes that the US is engaged in a long war against Islamo-radicalism and that "winning" against Iran is necessary but the American people must be willing to pay the price to succeed.
My concern regarding Dr. Kass is based on the potential conflict of interest and divided loyalty that is normal in anyone who is born in one country and moves to another. She comes from a country that has a history of large scale and highly aggressive espionage directed against the United States and she appears to continue to have close ties to her birthplace. Dr. Kass has become a naturalized American while apparently retaining her Israeli citizenship and her three children were reportedly born in Israel, not the United States. The information she has access to would be extremely valuable to Israel and potentially damaging to US interests, particularly as she likely knows what the US Air Force response to a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran would be.
The issue of Israel aside, one might reasonably argue in any event that a senior officer in any foreign country’s military establishment should be considered an undesirable candidate for a top post in the Pentagon on security grounds. If Dr. Kass were a dentist it would make absolutely no difference where she came from and what her political views might be, but a person’s ultimate loyalty is not just an abstraction for someone who has relatively free access to the Defense Department’s most highly classified information and is probably also able to influence policy.
I continue to question to what extent Kass has been properly security vetted for her position, to include rigorous inquiry into whether or not she still has ties to the Israeli government. I also can only speculate at the type of advice that Kass is providing to her Pentagon associates as she appears to embrace particularly hard line views about Muslims and about the desirability of going to war with Iran, positions that are rather similar to those promoted by the Israeli government.
Additional information has come to light on Kass that heightens my concern about her high position in the United States government’s defense and security establishment.
Her first job in Washington was with the Advanced International Studies Institute (AISI), a Washington DC area based think tank. After being recommended by someone at the Pentagon, she was hired for her Russian language skills in an unclassified program funded by the Department of Defense called Soviet Watch. Her fellow employees understood that she was a former major in Israeli intelligence. A few months later she moved on to beltway bandit Booz Allen Hamilton. Some months after she departed AISI, one of her colleagues received a call from a personnel manager at the Industrial War College asking to confirm Kass’s employment with AISI. The Industrial War College was, as the name implies, an institute set up to coordinate industrial production with Defense Department needs. Some of its work was classified. Kass’s colleague told the caller that Kass was an intelligence officer who thought of herself as an Israeli and added that putting her in any position of influence would be a bad idea.
From there and then to here and now has taken more than twenty years, proceeding through a number of Defense Department positions with ever-increasing responsibility and access. It would not be out of place to observe that if the report that Kass was truly an intelligence officer for the Israeli Defense Forces is correct the Department of Defense security screeners should have erred on the side of caution based on the supposition that she was still in touch with her former employers. She should never have been given a security clearance and provided access to United States classified information in the first place, which again raises the issue of just if and how thoroughly her background was actually investigated.
More information has also been developed regarding Kass’s current role. According to a highly reliable source, Dr. Lani Kass is now the principal adviser to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen regarding the Middle East. She recently was involved in a very important meeting, one that concerned Israel.
The meeting took place because of concerns that the United States has been losing the "war of ideas" in the Muslim world. At the end of last year, General David Petraeus sent a special emissary out on a fact finding mission to meet with the heads of state and top military officers in all of the Muslim countries considered to be friends or allies of the US for a frank exchange of views. The emissary, an Arabic speaker, learned that no country any longer trusts the United States because it is widely believed that all American policies in the Near East region are subject to veto by Israel. It was also commonly observed that Washington is complicit in the genocide against the Palestinians because of its failure to do anything to restrain Israel, making it extremely difficult to rally popular support in any Muslim country for US policies.
Petraeus was surprised by the unanimity and emotion of the views that were confidentially expressed and thought the issue to be important enough to move it up the chain of command. In February, he met with Admiral Mullen and briefed him on his findings. Mullen was accompanied only by Dr. Lani Kass, who was described to Petraeus as his special assistant for the Middle East. Mullen expressed some dismay at the implications of the findings while Kass disputed Petraeus’ conclusions and said that the concerns being expressed were greatly exaggerated. Petraeus nevertheless presented his report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 17th together with his judgment that the failure to address the Palestinian issue was putting US soldiers in danger because it was inflaming anti-American sentiment and giving groups like al-Qaeda an unnecessary propaganda victory.
One might argue that Dr. Lani Kass is just another Israel firster who has risen to high office in the US government, not really unlike Dennis Ross, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and Douglas Feith. And that might well be true. But at the same time one must challenge the judgment of those who enabled her rise to a position of great responsibility and power and there should be serious questions about whether her bellicose and racially tinged viewpoint comes from objective and honest analysis of the genuine challenges confronting the United States or from her loyalty to her country of birth.
Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer. Full Bio
Deported prisoner protests at Erez
Sabbah's family was waiting at the Al-Thahriyah crossing in the West Bank to receive their son after 10 years behind bars, when Israeli authorities delivered the news that he had already been deported to Gaza, where they will be unable to see him.
Ma'an – Deported to Gaza on Wednesday after his release from Israeli prison, Tulkarem native Ahmad Sabbah announced a sit-in strike at the Strip's northern Erez crossing in protest.
"I consider myself the first detainee deported to Gaza, and I will stay in this sit-in tent at the Erez terminal until I am allowed to return to my wife and family in Tulkarem," Sabbah said Thursday.
During an interview with Ma'an, Sabbah said the deportation was meant as a further punishment for him, and for all Palestinians detained by Israeli forces.
"Israel is serious about this deportation decision," Sabbah said, saying the country was putting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to let the decision stand.
Sabbah's family was waiting at the Al-Thahriyah crossing in the West Bank to receive their son after 10 years behind bars, but were surprised when Israeli authorities delivered the news that he had already been deported to Gaza.
At the time, Sabbah called the move "discriminatory and harsh." Ma'an
"I consider myself the first detainee deported to Gaza, and I will stay in this sit-in tent at the Erez terminal until I am allowed to return to my wife and family in Tulkarem," Sabbah said Thursday.
During an interview with Ma'an, Sabbah said the deportation was meant as a further punishment for him, and for all Palestinians detained by Israeli forces.
"Israel is serious about this deportation decision," Sabbah said, saying the country was putting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to let the decision stand.
Sabbah's family was waiting at the Al-Thahriyah crossing in the West Bank to receive their son after 10 years behind bars, but were surprised when Israeli authorities delivered the news that he had already been deported to Gaza.
At the time, Sabbah called the move "discriminatory and harsh." Ma'an
Israeli Tanks Invade And Destroy Farm Lands In Southern Gaza Strip
IMEMC Israeli tanks and bulldozers stormed on Thursday the village of Abassan Al Mubra in southern Gaza Strip and destroyed farm lands.
Witnesses told local media that tanks opened fire at residents’ homes as bulldozers uprooted trees and destroyed farm lands owned by local farmers.
Israel tanks frequently invade border areas in the Gaza Strip and destroy lands... Full story
Israel tanks frequently invade border areas in the Gaza Strip and destroy lands... Full story
PPS: “Detainee Who Died Last Week, Was Hit On His Spine, Neck” [70,000 Palestinians imprisoned since 2000, 800 women and 8000 children]
IMEMC
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported that detainee Raed Abu Hammad, who died on April 16, was hit by Israeli interrogators on the center spine and the back on his neck, and died of his wounds in his cell.
Forensic examination revealed that Abu Hammad was healthy and did not suffer from any health condition. He was also an athlete and in a strong body shape.
The examination also revealed that Abu Hammad was tortured during interrogation and was struck on the center of his spine causing damage to the spinal canal in addition to being violently hit on the back of his neck. He was found dead in his cell at the Be’er Sheva Israeli prison.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society held Israel responsible for the death of Abu Hammad, demanded an immediate and independent investigation into his death, and called for prosecuting the interrogators who tortured him.
The PPS stated that this crime is one of hundreds of crimes committed by the Israeli army against the detainees, and added that the forensic examination proves without any doubt that Israeli jailors and interrogators are behind Hammad’s death.
It stated that Palestinian and Arab detainees imprisoned by Israel are subject to constant violations, illegal torture and interrogation techniques.
Nearly 200 Palestinian detainees died of torture and abuse, more than 50 died of medical negligence. Hundreds of detainees died after their release due to illnesses and effects of torture and gunshot wounds suffered prior or during the course of their arrest.
On April 17, the Palestinian Prisoners Day, the PPS reported that Israel arrested more than 70.000 Palestinians since 2000, 800 of them were women and 8000 were children.
Qaddoura Fares, head of the PPS stated that the current number of detainees imprisoned by Israel is 7000, held in 25 prisons, interrogation centers and detention camps.
Israel is holding captive 16 legislators and ministers, 36 female detainees including 4 mothers, and 340 children. 5700 detainees are from the West Bank, 780 are from the Gaza Strip, 450 from Jerusalem and 47 detainees from the Arab world. IMEMC
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) reported that detainee Raed Abu Hammad, who died on April 16, was hit by Israeli interrogators on the center spine and the back on his neck, and died of his wounds in his cell.
Forensic examination revealed that Abu Hammad was healthy and did not suffer from any health condition. He was also an athlete and in a strong body shape.
The examination also revealed that Abu Hammad was tortured during interrogation and was struck on the center of his spine causing damage to the spinal canal in addition to being violently hit on the back of his neck. He was found dead in his cell at the Be’er Sheva Israeli prison.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society held Israel responsible for the death of Abu Hammad, demanded an immediate and independent investigation into his death, and called for prosecuting the interrogators who tortured him.
The PPS stated that this crime is one of hundreds of crimes committed by the Israeli army against the detainees, and added that the forensic examination proves without any doubt that Israeli jailors and interrogators are behind Hammad’s death.
It stated that Palestinian and Arab detainees imprisoned by Israel are subject to constant violations, illegal torture and interrogation techniques.
Nearly 200 Palestinian detainees died of torture and abuse, more than 50 died of medical negligence. Hundreds of detainees died after their release due to illnesses and effects of torture and gunshot wounds suffered prior or during the course of their arrest.
On April 17, the Palestinian Prisoners Day, the PPS reported that Israel arrested more than 70.000 Palestinians since 2000, 800 of them were women and 8000 were children.
Qaddoura Fares, head of the PPS stated that the current number of detainees imprisoned by Israel is 7000, held in 25 prisons, interrogation centers and detention camps.
Israel is holding captive 16 legislators and ministers, 36 female detainees including 4 mothers, and 340 children. 5700 detainees are from the West Bank, 780 are from the Gaza Strip, 450 from Jerusalem and 47 detainees from the Arab world. IMEMC
58 Detained, One Wounded, and 70 Dunams Drowned in Sewage
IMEMC
The lands belong to several residents and are considered their only source of income. IMEMC
Thursday witnessed several attacks carried out by Israeli soldiers and policemen leading to the kidnapping of 58 Palestinians in the West Bank and in the 1948 areas, while one fisherman was wounded in Gaza and 70 Dunams [over 17 acres] of farmlands were flooded by Israeli Sewage.
The Arabs48 news website reported that Israeli policemen arrested on Thursday at dawn 34 Palestinians in the 1948 areas, and 24 Palestinian in several West Bank areas.
Also, one Israeli soldier was wounded after the army invaded Tiqua’ town, near Bethlehem. The army invaded the town while local residents hurled stones at the invading forces.
In the Gaza Strip, a fisherman was wounded after the Israeli Navy opened fire at fishing boats in Al Waha and Al Sudaniyya areas, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
The attack happened while Israeli tanks invaded Al Faraheen area, south of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and opened fire at several homes; no injuries were reported.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian worker suffered concussions and bruises to several parts of his body after Israeli soldiers attacked him for “entering Jerusalem without a permit”.
The resident was identified as Najeeb Qawasma, 36, from the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
Furthermore, Israeli settlers flooded with waste-waters 70 Dunams of Palestinian farmlands in Beit Ummar town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
Also, one Israeli soldier was wounded after the army invaded Tiqua’ town, near Bethlehem. The army invaded the town while local residents hurled stones at the invading forces.
In the Gaza Strip, a fisherman was wounded after the Israeli Navy opened fire at fishing boats in Al Waha and Al Sudaniyya areas, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
The attack happened while Israeli tanks invaded Al Faraheen area, south of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and opened fire at several homes; no injuries were reported.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian worker suffered concussions and bruises to several parts of his body after Israeli soldiers attacked him for “entering Jerusalem without a permit”.
The resident was identified as Najeeb Qawasma, 36, from the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
Furthermore, Israeli settlers flooded with waste-waters 70 Dunams of Palestinian farmlands in Beit Ummar town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The lands belong to several residents and are considered their only source of income. IMEMC
Daily Situation Report: April 20, 2010
PMG
Israeli actions in West Bank and Gaza (Palestinian Occupied Territories)
Israeli actions in West Bank and Gaza (Palestinian Occupied Territories)
- Caused Injury — 1 Fisherman at sea opposite Rafah city beach
- Physical Assaults — 4 Incl. beat workers at Al Hamra checkpoint
- Arrests (per person) — 1 A civilian in Silwan neighborhood
- Detentions — 11 At checkpoints & in residential locales
- Raids — 7 Incl. 2 in Hebron & 1 in Nablus
- Checkpoints — 9 Access impeded at 5 checkpoints
- Flying Checkpoints — 22 Incl. 1 in Nablus & 1 in Bethlehem
- Attacks – 11 Incl. 7 by mil. posts & 1 by helicopters
- Air Patrols — 2 For helicopters above Central Gaza
- Destruction of Property — 1 Uprooting olive trees in Qaryut village
- Wall Construction — — — Suspended
- Closure (per District) — 7 Incl. Jerusalem city & areas in Hebron city
- Closure of Main Roads — 40 Incl. 1 in Qalqiliya & 1 in Jericho
- Closure of Crossing Points — 6 Partial opening of 1 crossing only
- Settler Violence — 8 Incl. entering Silwan neighborhood
- Demonstrations – 2 Incl. in Tulkarm in solidarity with prisoners Full report
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
AIPAC: The Voice of America — Part 1: The Orange and the Pea [Video by Anthony Lawson]
Youtube
There can be no doubt, at least as far as Middle East Policy is concerned, that AIPAC is the Voice of America.
Although I have heard AIPAC pronounced in two distinct ways, one of which is A-PAC, I have chosen to pronounce the acronym with the same initial sound as in the word 'aisle'. To me, this pronunciation is more appropriate, because the use of the A for America sound is subtly misleading. The organization has nothing to do with A for America, it is all about I for Israel.
In the graphic illustration near the end of this video, had the mathematical relationships been absolutely accurate, either the Orange would have filled the screen or the pea would have been invisible. The discrepancy between the power AIPAC wields, compared to the rest of the American population, is immense, and that power benefits one nation: Israel.
There can be no doubt, at least as far as Middle East Policy is concerned, that AIPAC is the Voice of America.
Although I have heard AIPAC pronounced in two distinct ways, one of which is A-PAC, I have chosen to pronounce the acronym with the same initial sound as in the word 'aisle'. To me, this pronunciation is more appropriate, because the use of the A for America sound is subtly misleading. The organization has nothing to do with A for America, it is all about I for Israel.
In the graphic illustration near the end of this video, had the mathematical relationships been absolutely accurate, either the Orange would have filled the screen or the pea would have been invisible. The discrepancy between the power AIPAC wields, compared to the rest of the American population, is immense, and that power benefits one nation: Israel.
How Elie Wiesel Perpetuates the Fraud: Israel's Enabler in the U. S.
CounterPunch - ESAM AL-AMIN
Wiesel is simply “a terrible fraud.”
Every now and then Israel’s enablers in the US embark on a public campaign to apply as much political pressure on US policymakers as they can possibly get away with. Elie Wiesel , a Holocaust survivor and 1986 Nobel laureate, is one of those apologists that Israel employs when it is in trouble.
Wiesel ’s disgraceful history of dismissing the suffering of some in favor of others is well documented. The late historian Howard Zinn called Wiesel’s refusal to include the suffering of non-Jews at the hands of the Nazis at the Holocaust Museum, along with exhibits documenting Jewish suffering, one of the most “shameful moments” in recent memory. In that episode, Wiesel described the inclusion of the terrible affliction of non-Jews by the Nazis in the Museum as an attempt to “falsify reality” and that such calls were tantamount to “stealing the Holocaust from us.”
Two months ago, Wiesel’s name was on a full-page ad in the New York Times, urging atrocious and lethal actions against Iran because of its nuclear energy program. On April 18, a Wiesel-endorsed ad ran in several prominent U.S. dailies, including the NYT and the Washington Post, tackling the issue of Jerusalem because of the public spat between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government.
Since one can hardly think that Wiesel is ignorant of the facts, the number of deliberate lies and misleading information included in the ad was astounding. He asserted that Jerusalem “belongs to the Jewish people,” while dismissing its Islamic and Christian dimensions. His rationale was that Jerusalem was mentioned in the Torah “more than six hundred times,” while “not a single time in the Qur’an.” Such an ignorant statement demonstrates not only a total lack of knowledge regarding Islamic scriptures but also a distortion of history.
Even so, resorting to citing the sheer volume of scriptural references reveals the hollowness of Wiesel 's argument. Is it pertinent to the place of Mecca in the Islamic conscience that the holiest city in Islam is mentioned by name only once in the Qur’an? Moreover, the historical figures of the Bible such as Moses, Aaron, Mary and Jesus are mentioned in the Qur’an 136, 20, 34, and 25 times respectively, while Muhammad is only mentioned five times by name. What does that prove? Yet, Wiesel conveniently ignores the significance in Islamic doctrine of the Muslim prophet’s seminal journey to Jerusalem, in which he prayed in the Aqsa mosque, an event that is not only mentioned vividly in the Islamic scripture, but has been celebrated every year by Muslims around the world for over 1400 years.
Not only does Wiesel ignore history and disregard international law, but he also perpetuates the lie that Israel was attacked in 1967 to justify its occupation of Jerusalem and other Arab lands. Describing Israel’s aggression in June 1967, UN Security Council resolution 242 declared the “inadmissibility of acquisition of land by force,” calling for the total withdrawal by Israel from its recent occupation of Arab lands. In May 1968, the UN Security Council passed resolution 252 that “deplore[d] the failure of Israel to comply” with international law, and “considered[d] that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including the expropriation of land and properties, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status.”
Oblivious to reality, Wiesel falsely asserted that “for the first time in history, Jews, Christian and Muslims may freely worship at their shrines.” But the reality of Palestinian daily life is that Israel does not allow any man under 50 years old to pray at al-Aqsa mosque or at the Dome of the Rock. This discriminatory policy has been in force for years, facilitated by over 500 Israeli military check points, planted across the West Bank, in an apartheid-like control of all aspects of Palestinian civil life. Recently, the historian, Professor Walid Khalidi, presented a remarkable speech about Jerusalem’s history before the United Nations, chronicling its long-established Islamic and Christian roots and exposing the brutal Zionist policies of discrimination and exclusion.
In his address Khalidi stated that, “Israeli colonization in and around east Jerusalem aims at geostrategic control, demographic domination, psychological browbeating, economic and social disruption, doctrinal affirmation, religious fulfillment, and territorial expansion.” Hence, the real objective of Wiesel’s ad was to alleviate the pressure by the Obama administration and the international community over Israel allowing it the time needed to complete its colonization plans......
...... according to Ziad Hammouri, the director of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, more than 30,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem lost their residency rights in the past twenty years. In addition, around 165,000 people are living east of the separation wall that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank. In early April of this year, the Israeli military authority in the West Bank announced that in the near future it will deport over 70,000 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem because “they have no residency rights.”
Wiesel’s history of justifying Israel’s aggressive policies is long and extensive. From as far back as 1947-1949, Wiesel worked as a journalist for the Zionist terrorist group (as designated by the British), the Irgun. He knows the details of the infamous 1948 Deir Yasin massacre of innocent Palestinians (as well as others) perpetrated by his organization, which at the time was led by Menahem Begin and Yitzak Shamir....
The hypocrisy abounds. Wiesel stood before the world during his Nobel peace prize address in 1986 and said, “The world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
He certainly took sides, choosing to praise the oppressor and condemn the victim, not even remaining silent, but enabling brutality, and justifying exclusion despite daily Palestinian suffering and humiliation. Full story
Wiesel is simply “a terrible fraud.”
Every now and then Israel’s enablers in the US embark on a public campaign to apply as much political pressure on US policymakers as they can possibly get away with. Elie Wiesel , a Holocaust survivor and 1986 Nobel laureate, is one of those apologists that Israel employs when it is in trouble.
Wiesel ’s disgraceful history of dismissing the suffering of some in favor of others is well documented. The late historian Howard Zinn called Wiesel’s refusal to include the suffering of non-Jews at the hands of the Nazis at the Holocaust Museum, along with exhibits documenting Jewish suffering, one of the most “shameful moments” in recent memory. In that episode, Wiesel described the inclusion of the terrible affliction of non-Jews by the Nazis in the Museum as an attempt to “falsify reality” and that such calls were tantamount to “stealing the Holocaust from us.”
Two months ago, Wiesel’s name was on a full-page ad in the New York Times, urging atrocious and lethal actions against Iran because of its nuclear energy program. On April 18, a Wiesel-endorsed ad ran in several prominent U.S. dailies, including the NYT and the Washington Post, tackling the issue of Jerusalem because of the public spat between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government.
Since one can hardly think that Wiesel is ignorant of the facts, the number of deliberate lies and misleading information included in the ad was astounding. He asserted that Jerusalem “belongs to the Jewish people,” while dismissing its Islamic and Christian dimensions. His rationale was that Jerusalem was mentioned in the Torah “more than six hundred times,” while “not a single time in the Qur’an.” Such an ignorant statement demonstrates not only a total lack of knowledge regarding Islamic scriptures but also a distortion of history.
Even so, resorting to citing the sheer volume of scriptural references reveals the hollowness of Wiesel 's argument. Is it pertinent to the place of Mecca in the Islamic conscience that the holiest city in Islam is mentioned by name only once in the Qur’an? Moreover, the historical figures of the Bible such as Moses, Aaron, Mary and Jesus are mentioned in the Qur’an 136, 20, 34, and 25 times respectively, while Muhammad is only mentioned five times by name. What does that prove? Yet, Wiesel conveniently ignores the significance in Islamic doctrine of the Muslim prophet’s seminal journey to Jerusalem, in which he prayed in the Aqsa mosque, an event that is not only mentioned vividly in the Islamic scripture, but has been celebrated every year by Muslims around the world for over 1400 years.
Not only does Wiesel ignore history and disregard international law, but he also perpetuates the lie that Israel was attacked in 1967 to justify its occupation of Jerusalem and other Arab lands. Describing Israel’s aggression in June 1967, UN Security Council resolution 242 declared the “inadmissibility of acquisition of land by force,” calling for the total withdrawal by Israel from its recent occupation of Arab lands. In May 1968, the UN Security Council passed resolution 252 that “deplore[d] the failure of Israel to comply” with international law, and “considered[d] that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including the expropriation of land and properties, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status.”
Oblivious to reality, Wiesel falsely asserted that “for the first time in history, Jews, Christian and Muslims may freely worship at their shrines.” But the reality of Palestinian daily life is that Israel does not allow any man under 50 years old to pray at al-Aqsa mosque or at the Dome of the Rock. This discriminatory policy has been in force for years, facilitated by over 500 Israeli military check points, planted across the West Bank, in an apartheid-like control of all aspects of Palestinian civil life. Recently, the historian, Professor Walid Khalidi, presented a remarkable speech about Jerusalem’s history before the United Nations, chronicling its long-established Islamic and Christian roots and exposing the brutal Zionist policies of discrimination and exclusion.
In his address Khalidi stated that, “Israeli colonization in and around east Jerusalem aims at geostrategic control, demographic domination, psychological browbeating, economic and social disruption, doctrinal affirmation, religious fulfillment, and territorial expansion.” Hence, the real objective of Wiesel’s ad was to alleviate the pressure by the Obama administration and the international community over Israel allowing it the time needed to complete its colonization plans......
...... according to Ziad Hammouri, the director of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, more than 30,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem lost their residency rights in the past twenty years. In addition, around 165,000 people are living east of the separation wall that separates Jerusalem from the West Bank. In early April of this year, the Israeli military authority in the West Bank announced that in the near future it will deport over 70,000 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem because “they have no residency rights.”
Wiesel’s history of justifying Israel’s aggressive policies is long and extensive. From as far back as 1947-1949, Wiesel worked as a journalist for the Zionist terrorist group (as designated by the British), the Irgun. He knows the details of the infamous 1948 Deir Yasin massacre of innocent Palestinians (as well as others) perpetrated by his organization, which at the time was led by Menahem Begin and Yitzak Shamir....
The hypocrisy abounds. Wiesel stood before the world during his Nobel peace prize address in 1986 and said, “The world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
He certainly took sides, choosing to praise the oppressor and condemn the victim, not even remaining silent, but enabling brutality, and justifying exclusion despite daily Palestinian suffering and humiliation. Full story
Birthright to bring 21,000 to Israel [To become "foremost strategic asset of the State of Israel]
JTA
Taglit-Birthright Israel will bring 21,000 Jewish youth on a free 10-day trip to Israel this summer, the group announced.
The number represents a doubling of the number of participants over the summer of 2009.
This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the Jewish educational project. Thousands remain on waiting lists, however, the group said in a news release.
“We set a goal for ourselves that within the next 7-10 years, half of Jewish youth living in the Diaspora will visit Israel through our program. They will become alumni who will represent the foremost strategic asset of the State of Israel. The number of participants of the summer season of our 10th year is testimony to our ability to achieve our goals. We are increasing fund-raising around the world in order to meet the great demand....
Over a quarter of a million Jewish youth from more than 50 countries have traveled to Israel with the Taglit-Birthright program. Full story
Taglit-Birthright Israel will bring 21,000 Jewish youth on a free 10-day trip to Israel this summer, the group announced.
The number represents a doubling of the number of participants over the summer of 2009.
This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the Jewish educational project. Thousands remain on waiting lists, however, the group said in a news release.
“We set a goal for ourselves that within the next 7-10 years, half of Jewish youth living in the Diaspora will visit Israel through our program. They will become alumni who will represent the foremost strategic asset of the State of Israel. The number of participants of the summer season of our 10th year is testimony to our ability to achieve our goals. We are increasing fund-raising around the world in order to meet the great demand....
Over a quarter of a million Jewish youth from more than 50 countries have traveled to Israel with the Taglit-Birthright program. Full story
Fifth Annual Conference On Popular Resistance starts in Bil'in
Hundreds of Palestinians along with international and Israeli delegates started on Wednesday the fifth annual conference on popular resistance in village of Bil'in near the central west Bank city of Ramallah.
In addition to Palestinian ministers, European Union, and United States officials joined the opening of the conference. Bil’in is site of weekly nonviolent protest against the wall and settlements for the past five years.
..........In September 2007, following lengthy legal procedings and non-stop resistance by the villagers and their supporters, the Israeli high court ruled to shift the wall from its planned route in a manner that will retrieve half of the land confiscated by the Israeli military.
Since the start of the Bil’in village protests five years ago Israeli and international supporters have joined the residents’ struggle.
..........In September 2007, following lengthy legal procedings and non-stop resistance by the villagers and their supporters, the Israeli high court ruled to shift the wall from its planned route in a manner that will retrieve half of the land confiscated by the Israeli military.
Since the start of the Bil’in village protests five years ago Israeli and international supporters have joined the residents’ struggle.
.......Bil’in conference will end on Friday with the regular weekly protest, last year the military killed Bassem Abu Rahma, a local activist during one of those protests.
Abu Rahma was killed when a gas cansiter fired by Israeli troops hit him directly in the chest at a short range. Full story
Fundamentalist Settlers Attack An Arab Home In Jaffa
The Arabs48 news Website reported Tuesday that a group of fundamentalist settlers of Keryat Arba’ Yeshiva in Jaffa broke on Sunday into an Arab home in the city and attacked its owner telling her that they “will force all Arabs out of Jaffa”.
The settlers struck Zeinab Raheel, and told her that the Arab presence in Jaffa is “temporary”, and that all Arabs will be forced out of “Israel”.
They later held prayers in front of the house carrying Israeli flags and chanting racist slogans against the Arabs and Palestinians.
The attack is one of many recent attacks in Jaffa as the settlers are trying to create at outpost in the center of Al Ajamy neighborhood, the biggest Palestinian neighborhood in the city.
On Monday evening, several residents and leaders of Arab movements in the city held a meeting and decided to hold a protest on Wednesday at 2 in the afternoon, in front of the house of Raheel.
Raheel (Um Al Abed), several Arabs leaders in Jaffa, and leaders of the Arab movement in the country will be participating in the meeting to discuss the steps needed to counter the escalated attacks against the Arabs and Palestinians in the country. Full story
They later held prayers in front of the house carrying Israeli flags and chanting racist slogans against the Arabs and Palestinians.
The attack is one of many recent attacks in Jaffa as the settlers are trying to create at outpost in the center of Al Ajamy neighborhood, the biggest Palestinian neighborhood in the city.
On Monday evening, several residents and leaders of Arab movements in the city held a meeting and decided to hold a protest on Wednesday at 2 in the afternoon, in front of the house of Raheel.
Raheel (Um Al Abed), several Arabs leaders in Jaffa, and leaders of the Arab movement in the country will be participating in the meeting to discuss the steps needed to counter the escalated attacks against the Arabs and Palestinians in the country. Full story
Israeli Tanks Bombard Gaza
IMEMC
On Tuesday evening, Israeli tanks fired several shells into Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and into Dir Al Balah in central Gaza; damage was reported, no injuries.
On Tuesday evening, Israeli tanks fired several shells into Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and into Dir Al Balah in central Gaza; damage was reported, no injuries.
The Israeli army stated that it fired several shells after resistance fighters noticed under-cover forces infiltrating into the area, and exchanged fire with them.
... the tanks fired at least ten shells into an industrial area in Al Qarara, and into Wadi Al Salqa, west of the Kissufim military base.
The Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, stated that its fighters noticed the undercover forces infiltrating through an area near Kissufim, and opened fire at them.
The army then fired several shells to provide cover for the undercover forces in order to withdraw after their plot was uncovered. Full story
... the tanks fired at least ten shells into an industrial area in Al Qarara, and into Wadi Al Salqa, west of the Kissufim military base.
The Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, stated that its fighters noticed the undercover forces infiltrating through an area near Kissufim, and opened fire at them.
The army then fired several shells to provide cover for the undercover forces in order to withdraw after their plot was uncovered. Full story
Thousands March Towards A Destroyed Arab Village Near Al Teera
Thousands of Palestinians, carrying Palestinian flags and posters carrying the names of destroyed Arab villages, marched on Tuesday from Al Teera Arab city towards the ruins of Miska Arab village that was destroyed and its residents were displaced during the creation of Israel on Palestinian lands.
The protestors chanted against the Israeli occupation and its crimes against the Palestinians and their villages, and also chanted the names of hundreds of villages destroyed during the Nakba. The Palestinians living in the 1948 territories are commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs were displaced, and hundreds of towns and villages were wiped-out during the creation of Israel.
13 years ago, the Arabs and Palestinians in the country decided that their protests to commemorate the Nakba would always be called “Their Independence, Our Nakba”, referring to the creation of Israel in Palestine by displacing the indigenous people and stealing their lands and homes.
The Israeli Knesset issued a preliminary ruling last March forbidding any commemoration of the Nakba, and instructing the government to deduct the balances of any local council or municipality that participates in the in the commemoration of the Nakba.
The government will not support any local council that;
1. Does not recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
2. Incites “racism”, “Violence” and “Terrorism”.
3. Supports armed struggle, armed activities and supports groups or countries that fight Israel.
4. Marks the “Israeli Independence” as a Nakba or as a day of mourning.
5. Defaming or sabotaging Israel’s flag and its symbol. Full story
Medic: Israeli forces open fire, injure Gaza fisherman
Ma'an – A Palestinian fisherman sustained a gunshot wound to the hand after Israeli forces opened fire at fishing boats on Wednesday along the Rafah coast south of Gaza, a medical official said.
.... Israeli naval forces opened fire at a number of Palestinian fishing boats along the Rafah coast... Full story
.... Israeli naval forces opened fire at a number of Palestinian fishing boats along the Rafah coast... Full story
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Is Israel Wiretapping America?
Truthtellers.org - Rev. Ted Pike with Aaron and Harmony Daws
The surveillance industry in America got its start in 1994 with passage of CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act). The law mandated that telecom companies configure their networks to supply the government with intercepts authorized by a court-issued warrant. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush enacted a secret executive order for massive, warrantless wiretapping. Only eight members of Congress and one FISA judge were privy to this information. Today, the FBI is also authorized to eavesdrop and a warrant is no longer needed to tap telecommunications of United States’ citizens.
It’s bad enough that the government can listen to you whenever they want. There is an even more troubling side to this Orwellian reality. Israeli companies are wiretapping America. Authorized by our government, they are doing the actual work of listening to and recording the phone, email, and internet communications of at least 100 nations, including America.
Mass surveillance business and competition grew exponentially after 9/11. Each company wanted to build bigger and better mass surveillance systems which were then sold to whomever would pay the price, “including some of the most repressive and authoritarian governments on the planet,” says journalist James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
Bamford reveals that America’s largest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have outsourced the job of eavesdropping through their networks, which carry billions of American communications daily, in cooperation with the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance program. The spy job for these major companies was outsourced “to two mysterious companies with very troubling foreign connections.”
AT&T uses a company called Narus to keep records of everything said on their systems. Narus was founded by an Israeli entrepreneur in Israel with ties to Unit 800 (the NSA of Israel). Verizon’s spy system also relies on an Israeli company named Verint. The founder of Verint is an FBI fugitive who remains so. Congress granted retroactive immunity to these companies (AT&T and Verizon) for allowing their systems to be used to spy on American citizens. Stated plainly, American consumers are subject to warrantless surveillance by Israeli-founded companies without Congressional oversight or public knowledge!
Bamford details how an “Israeli spin-off” of Verint is able to do “advanced voice-mining” that finds one person’s voice in a mountain of intercepted calls.
In 2004, a former intelligence official told LA Times reporters,
Most Americans might not even be startled to learn about Israeli espionage because they are so firmly convinced that Israel is our ally and has American interests at heart. This is not true. In their now famous paper, The Israel Lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt write bluntly that Israel
Which Americans might be most threatened by telephone, email, and internet spying from Israel? Answer: critics of Israel and Israel's PR representative, the Anti-Defamation League. In every way that matters, ADL is Israel. Israel/ADL is particularly troubled by widespread criticism of Israel and matters Jewish from both the intellectual left and the populist right. Their “conspiracy theories” have a way of always leading back to the Jews. ADL and Jewish-dominated media in America are very apprehensive of Tea Party and right-wing efforts to overthrow liberal Democrat power in Congress (See, “Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish”). Victory for the right would, among other things, curb ADL's ability to pass more of its anti-Christian hate crime legislation.
Can these movements of the left or right, potentially threatening Zionist interests, create lasting—even revolutionary—change if Israel/ADL can listen to their every conversation? Of course not.
Already, ADL boasts of monitoring all Christian/conservative media to discover any hint of criticism of Israel or Jewish control. Are they also listening as you plan your next Tea Party rally, militia training exercise or protest of Israeli oppression in Gaza? No one can answer that outside the US Government, AT&T and Verizon, Israel – and probably ADL. One thing we know: There may be little to prevent them.
What can be done? Until there is widespread awareness of Israel's fundamental disloyalty to America and continuing spy operations against us, Americans can do little to protect our most intimate phone and internet communications. Full story
The surveillance industry in America got its start in 1994 with passage of CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act). The law mandated that telecom companies configure their networks to supply the government with intercepts authorized by a court-issued warrant. Soon after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush enacted a secret executive order for massive, warrantless wiretapping. Only eight members of Congress and one FISA judge were privy to this information. Today, the FBI is also authorized to eavesdrop and a warrant is no longer needed to tap telecommunications of United States’ citizens.
It’s bad enough that the government can listen to you whenever they want. There is an even more troubling side to this Orwellian reality. Israeli companies are wiretapping America. Authorized by our government, they are doing the actual work of listening to and recording the phone, email, and internet communications of at least 100 nations, including America.
Mass surveillance business and competition grew exponentially after 9/11. Each company wanted to build bigger and better mass surveillance systems which were then sold to whomever would pay the price, “including some of the most repressive and authoritarian governments on the planet,” says journalist James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
Bamford reveals that America’s largest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have outsourced the job of eavesdropping through their networks, which carry billions of American communications daily, in cooperation with the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance program. The spy job for these major companies was outsourced “to two mysterious companies with very troubling foreign connections.”
AT&T uses a company called Narus to keep records of everything said on their systems. Narus was founded by an Israeli entrepreneur in Israel with ties to Unit 800 (the NSA of Israel). Verizon’s spy system also relies on an Israeli company named Verint. The founder of Verint is an FBI fugitive who remains so. Congress granted retroactive immunity to these companies (AT&T and Verizon) for allowing their systems to be used to spy on American citizens. Stated plainly, American consumers are subject to warrantless surveillance by Israeli-founded companies without Congressional oversight or public knowledge!
Bamford details how an “Israeli spin-off” of Verint is able to do “advanced voice-mining” that finds one person’s voice in a mountain of intercepted calls.
'With remote access to the internal and international voice and data communications of over one hundred countries around the world, including the United States, Verint’s headquarters in Tel Aviv has a capacity rivaled only by NSA’s, if not greater, especially when coupled with PerSay’s voice-mining capability.
'PerSay is an example of how close and interconnected these companies are with Israel’s intelligence community—a factor of great concern considering how much of their bugging equipment is now secretly hardwired into the American telecommunications system.'A former senior official in Shin Bet— Israel’s secret intelligence—is on PerSay’s board of directors. The advisory board for the company that backs PerSay includes a former chief of Israeli Mossad! Bamford says the “greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America’s increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel’s intelligence agencies.”
In 2004, a former intelligence official told LA Times reporters,
'There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli [intelligence] activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States. They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. The denials are laughable.'Last year, a judge dismissed charges against two top AIPAC lobbyists accused of leaking classified information to Israel. US Justice Dept. prosecutors said the case should be dropped because it would require exposing sensitive military intelligence—obvious evidence the lobbyists had been spying!
Most Americans might not even be startled to learn about Israeli espionage because they are so firmly convinced that Israel is our ally and has American interests at heart. This is not true. In their now famous paper, The Israel Lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt write bluntly that Israel
'does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.'
Israel : Part of Every Phone Call?
It is naïve to expect Narus and Verint to remain independent of control by the government of Israel. Which Americans might be most threatened by telephone, email, and internet spying from Israel? Answer: critics of Israel and Israel's PR representative, the Anti-Defamation League. In every way that matters, ADL is Israel. Israel/ADL is particularly troubled by widespread criticism of Israel and matters Jewish from both the intellectual left and the populist right. Their “conspiracy theories” have a way of always leading back to the Jews. ADL and Jewish-dominated media in America are very apprehensive of Tea Party and right-wing efforts to overthrow liberal Democrat power in Congress (See, “Jews Confirm Big Media is Jewish”). Victory for the right would, among other things, curb ADL's ability to pass more of its anti-Christian hate crime legislation.
Can these movements of the left or right, potentially threatening Zionist interests, create lasting—even revolutionary—change if Israel/ADL can listen to their every conversation? Of course not.
Already, ADL boasts of monitoring all Christian/conservative media to discover any hint of criticism of Israel or Jewish control. Are they also listening as you plan your next Tea Party rally, militia training exercise or protest of Israeli oppression in Gaza? No one can answer that outside the US Government, AT&T and Verizon, Israel – and probably ADL. One thing we know: There may be little to prevent them.
What can be done? Until there is widespread awareness of Israel's fundamental disloyalty to America and continuing spy operations against us, Americans can do little to protect our most intimate phone and internet communications. Full story
Suspect arrested in California synagogue shooting [Israeli organized crime of growing concern to LAPD]
JTA: Police have arrested a suspect in the shooting of two worshipers at a southern California synagogue.
Christopher Littlejohn, 37, was taken into custody April 15 in connection with the early-morning shooting last October ..
Littlejohn, of Northridge, Calif., had been arrested last July for pointing a gun
at a person in Beverly Hills. He is being held in lieu of $2 million bond in the synagogue shooting.
Police quickly ruled out that the shooting was a hate crime, as the Jewish community initially feared, or terrorism as a motive.
In the months afterward, police hinted that the knee-capping may have been the work of a local Israeli crime ring followiing an interview in The Jerusalem Post with Deputy Chief Michael Downing of the Los Angeles Police Department. Downing, who heads the LAPD’s Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, in Israel on a professional visit.
“The shooting resembled a targeted surgical strike," he was quoted as saying by the Post, adding that "the two men were targeted as part of a stern warning linked to a criminal organization.”
Downing later qualified the statement, however, saying that he had been quoted out of context and had no evidence that organized crime was involved in the shooting.
Organized crime by Israelis in such areas as real estate, fraud, money laundering and narcotics is of growing concern to the LAPD.
In interviews with JTA, Downing and Capt. Greg Hall, who heads the LAPD Major Crimes Division, said that such activities seem to be on the increase, though it is difficult to gauge their full extent.
“Israeli criminals in this city are very sophisticated,” Hall said. “We have to ask ourselves what else is going on that we don’t know about.”...
Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Synagogue has a membership of some 150 families, primarily North African Jews, with a sprinkling of Latino, American and Israeli Jews. Full story
Christopher Littlejohn, 37, was taken into custody April 15 in connection with the early-morning shooting last October ..
Littlejohn, of Northridge, Calif., had been arrested last July for pointing a gun
at a person in Beverly Hills. He is being held in lieu of $2 million bond in the synagogue shooting.
Police quickly ruled out that the shooting was a hate crime, as the Jewish community initially feared, or terrorism as a motive.
In the months afterward, police hinted that the knee-capping may have been the work of a local Israeli crime ring followiing an interview in The Jerusalem Post with Deputy Chief Michael Downing of the Los Angeles Police Department. Downing, who heads the LAPD’s Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, in Israel on a professional visit.
“The shooting resembled a targeted surgical strike," he was quoted as saying by the Post, adding that "the two men were targeted as part of a stern warning linked to a criminal organization.”
Downing later qualified the statement, however, saying that he had been quoted out of context and had no evidence that organized crime was involved in the shooting.
Organized crime by Israelis in such areas as real estate, fraud, money laundering and narcotics is of growing concern to the LAPD.
In interviews with JTA, Downing and Capt. Greg Hall, who heads the LAPD Major Crimes Division, said that such activities seem to be on the increase, though it is difficult to gauge their full extent.
“Israeli criminals in this city are very sophisticated,” Hall said. “We have to ask ourselves what else is going on that we don’t know about.”...
Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Synagogue has a membership of some 150 families, primarily North African Jews, with a sprinkling of Latino, American and Israeli Jews. Full story
Monday, April 19, 2010
Senate letter urging tensions tamp-down gets 76 signatures [AIPAC victory]
JTA
More than three quarters of the U.S. Senate urged the Obama administration not to allow tensions with Israel to harm relations or the prospects of a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
........The letter refers to tensions that erupted more than a month ago, when the Israeli government announced a major building launch in eastern Jerusalem during what was to have been a friendly visit by Vice President Joe Biden.
.....A companion letter in the U.S. House of Representatives garnered 333 signatures in 72 hours.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbied hard for both letters, which were circulated to coincide with its March 21-23 annual policy conference.
The Senate letter, initiated by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) stops short of the House letter's appeal to the Obama administration to keep disagreements with Israel behind closed doors. Both letters blame the Palestinians for the impasse in talks....
AIPAC commended the letter...."strongly applauds this enormous outpouring of support for the special relationship between the United States and Israel, which is rooted in shared values and common interests, including democracy, tolerance, the rule of law and the pursuit of peace." Full story
More than three quarters of the U.S. Senate urged the Obama administration not to allow tensions with Israel to harm relations or the prospects of a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
........The letter refers to tensions that erupted more than a month ago, when the Israeli government announced a major building launch in eastern Jerusalem during what was to have been a friendly visit by Vice President Joe Biden.
.....A companion letter in the U.S. House of Representatives garnered 333 signatures in 72 hours.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbied hard for both letters, which were circulated to coincide with its March 21-23 annual policy conference.
The Senate letter, initiated by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) stops short of the House letter's appeal to the Obama administration to keep disagreements with Israel behind closed doors. Both letters blame the Palestinians for the impasse in talks....
AIPAC commended the letter...."strongly applauds this enormous outpouring of support for the special relationship between the United States and Israel, which is rooted in shared values and common interests, including democracy, tolerance, the rule of law and the pursuit of peace." Full story
Lawmakers’ letters press Obama on [Iran] sanctions [AIPAC victory]
JTA -- More than three-quarters of the members in both houses of the U.S. Congress wrote to President Obama urging him to unilaterally sanction Iran.
The House of Representatives letter, initiated by Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.), garnered 363 signatories. The Senate letter, initiated by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), garnered 76.
.......The Obama administration has resisted unilateral sanctions, preferring to focus on multilateral sanctions through the U.N. Security Council.
Existing congressional sanctions and a package of enhancements now under consideration are much more punitive than planned multilateral sanctions. The U.N. sanctions would expand the list of Iranian individuals and entities subject to travel and business restrictions. The congressional sanctions target third parties that deal with Iran.
The Obama administration is concerned that such targeting will anger countries it wants on board for the U.N. sanctions.
.........The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which for years has lobbied hard for such sanctions, strongly praised the letters. In a lobbying blitz, delegates to its annual policy conference two weeks ago urged lawmakers to sign.
.....Lee Rosenberg, AIPAC's president and a native of Chicago, credited Jackson for initiating the letter. Noting his influential post on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, Rosenberg told JTA that Jackson "is in a position to make a real and meaningful impact for the U.S.-Israel relationship. His leadership in working to stop Iran's nuclear program and pressing for immediate and increased sanctions is something the whole pro-Israel community should be thankful for." Full story
The House of Representatives letter, initiated by Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.), garnered 363 signatories. The Senate letter, initiated by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), garnered 76.
.......The Obama administration has resisted unilateral sanctions, preferring to focus on multilateral sanctions through the U.N. Security Council.
Existing congressional sanctions and a package of enhancements now under consideration are much more punitive than planned multilateral sanctions. The U.N. sanctions would expand the list of Iranian individuals and entities subject to travel and business restrictions. The congressional sanctions target third parties that deal with Iran.
The Obama administration is concerned that such targeting will anger countries it wants on board for the U.N. sanctions.
.........The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which for years has lobbied hard for such sanctions, strongly praised the letters. In a lobbying blitz, delegates to its annual policy conference two weeks ago urged lawmakers to sign.
.....Lee Rosenberg, AIPAC's president and a native of Chicago, credited Jackson for initiating the letter. Noting his influential post on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, Rosenberg told JTA that Jackson "is in a position to make a real and meaningful impact for the U.S.-Israel relationship. His leadership in working to stop Iran's nuclear program and pressing for immediate and increased sanctions is something the whole pro-Israel community should be thankful for." Full story
Jewish Dem easily takes Wexler’s seat [Deutch required FLA pensions to divest from Iran]
JTA
State Sen. Ted Deutch defeated Ed Lynch, a contractor, with 62 percent of the vote in a district that covers parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Deutch's showing Tuesday matched traditional majorities won by Wexler, who quit Congress in January to run the Center for Middle East Peace and who was the chief Jewish surrogate for the Obama campaign.......
..."Florida 19 is the most heavily Jewish district in the country," said Carly Lindauer, the spokeswoman for the National Jewish Democratic Council. "Deutch’s win demonstrates that the Jewish community continues to support and vote for Democrats."
As a state senator, Deutch initiated a Florida law that requires state pensions to divest from Iran.
In her congratulatory note, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Deutch "will continue to be a leader in bringing peace to the people of Israel and developing a stronger foreign policy to ensure the safety of every family." Full story
State Sen. Ted Deutch defeated Ed Lynch, a contractor, with 62 percent of the vote in a district that covers parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Deutch's showing Tuesday matched traditional majorities won by Wexler, who quit Congress in January to run the Center for Middle East Peace and who was the chief Jewish surrogate for the Obama campaign.......
..."Florida 19 is the most heavily Jewish district in the country," said Carly Lindauer, the spokeswoman for the National Jewish Democratic Council. "Deutch’s win demonstrates that the Jewish community continues to support and vote for Democrats."
As a state senator, Deutch initiated a Florida law that requires state pensions to divest from Iran.
In her congratulatory note, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Deutch "will continue to be a leader in bringing peace to the people of Israel and developing a stronger foreign policy to ensure the safety of every family." Full story
This Independence Day, Israel still turning its back on the Arab peace plan - Akiva Eldar
Ha'aretz
This was one of our most independent years ever. Completely independently, we decided to welcome the vice president of the United States with an announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem; the deputy foreign minister independently humiliated the Turkish ambassador; the foreign minister independently boycotted the president of Brazil; the Knesset independently sabotaged relations with the European Union via legislation that would limit its donation.
The extremists who gathered on Massada also decided independently, some 2,000 years ago, to commit suicide. Since then, the term "independence" has acquired a meaning more complex than an act or decision by an individual or group that takes no account of others or of the environment. In modern Western society, independence is not considered the freedom to do whatever one wishes. Responsible governments, like adult people, must find the right balance between the particular and the global. The policies they shape reflect a compromise between the interests of their own community and the interests of the international and regional community.
Sixty-two years after Israel declared independence, its right-wing government is entitled to decide that the time has come to annex Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and the Jordan Valley - just as the Labor government did 43 years ago, when it decided to annex a sizable territory to Jerusalem. This year, too, Israeli citizens are entitled to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the only capital in the world that hosts not a single embassy. Benjamin Netanyahu can even propose that U.S. President Barack Obama append his list of questions to the Wye Agreement, the road map and the Annapolis Declaration. After all, Israel is an independent country.
.......... the Netanyahu government has implemented the views of the majority of independent Israel's Knesset, which supports the policy of settlements in the West Bank and deepening the Jewish hold on East Jerusalem. To fend off pressure from abroad, Netanyahu has once again transformed the Jewish Diaspora into a defensive army against the might of the nations of the world. The leader of "independent" Israel has transformed Jewish activists into "parties to the conflict" between his government and the American administration (we, of course, are allowed to meddle in American politics).
In its 62nd year of independence, as it has every year since March 2002, Israel is taking advantage of its independence to turn its back on the Arab Peace Initiative. This year, too, it is ignoring a plan that offers it normalization in return for a withdrawal from the occupied territories and a just and agreed resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.
..........It is true that we are entitled to replace the hand extended in peace and neighborliness with a hand that digs the foundations for more outposts and more graves... Full story
This was one of our most independent years ever. Completely independently, we decided to welcome the vice president of the United States with an announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem; the deputy foreign minister independently humiliated the Turkish ambassador; the foreign minister independently boycotted the president of Brazil; the Knesset independently sabotaged relations with the European Union via legislation that would limit its donation.
The extremists who gathered on Massada also decided independently, some 2,000 years ago, to commit suicide. Since then, the term "independence" has acquired a meaning more complex than an act or decision by an individual or group that takes no account of others or of the environment. In modern Western society, independence is not considered the freedom to do whatever one wishes. Responsible governments, like adult people, must find the right balance between the particular and the global. The policies they shape reflect a compromise between the interests of their own community and the interests of the international and regional community.
Sixty-two years after Israel declared independence, its right-wing government is entitled to decide that the time has come to annex Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and the Jordan Valley - just as the Labor government did 43 years ago, when it decided to annex a sizable territory to Jerusalem. This year, too, Israeli citizens are entitled to celebrate Jerusalem Day in the only capital in the world that hosts not a single embassy. Benjamin Netanyahu can even propose that U.S. President Barack Obama append his list of questions to the Wye Agreement, the road map and the Annapolis Declaration. After all, Israel is an independent country.
.......... the Netanyahu government has implemented the views of the majority of independent Israel's Knesset, which supports the policy of settlements in the West Bank and deepening the Jewish hold on East Jerusalem. To fend off pressure from abroad, Netanyahu has once again transformed the Jewish Diaspora into a defensive army against the might of the nations of the world. The leader of "independent" Israel has transformed Jewish activists into "parties to the conflict" between his government and the American administration (we, of course, are allowed to meddle in American politics).
In its 62nd year of independence, as it has every year since March 2002, Israel is taking advantage of its independence to turn its back on the Arab Peace Initiative. This year, too, it is ignoring a plan that offers it normalization in return for a withdrawal from the occupied territories and a just and agreed resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.
..........It is true that we are entitled to replace the hand extended in peace and neighborliness with a hand that digs the foundations for more outposts and more graves... Full story
Defense Minister: Israel needs to recognize the occupation must end
Ha'aretz: Israel must recognize that the world will not put up with decades more of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in unusually frank remarks Monday.
Barak's comments came against the backdrop of severe friction between the U.S. and Israel's hawkish government over an impasse in peacemaking.
"The world isn't willing to accept - and we won't change that in 2010 - the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more," he said. "It's something that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world."
"The alienation that is developing with the United States is not good for Israel," Barak said during a Memorial Day radio interview. "We have strong ties with the United States, a bond, long-term friendship and strategic partnership. We receive three billion dollars from them each year; we get the best planes in the world from them."
........... Barak held out the prospect of reshaping Israel's government so that it could make bold land-for-peace moves.
.........Barak's comments echoed a call last Thursday from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Israel to take "concrete steps toward peace" or risk empowering Islamist militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Obama administration responded angrily last month when Israel announced a project, during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, to build a 1,600 more homes for Jews in a part of the West Bank that it annexed to Jerusalem.
......Netanyahu has yet to respond to a U.S. list of steps that Washington wants him to take to coax them back to the negotiating table.
Political sources in Israel said Washington proposed 11 such "confidence-building" measures, which have not been disclosed publicly but are thought to include freezing Israeli construction in East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they intend to establish in the West Bank, and say settlements could deny them a viable state.
Sources said Netanyahu, who has pledged not to place curbs on building homes for Israelis in and around East Jerusalem, was unlikely to agree in full to all of the steps Washington seeks.
To do so, the sources said, could cause his coalition to disintegrate, and continued friction with Obama could be a price the Israeli leader would be willing to pay to remain at the helm.
Political commentators have raised the possibility of bringing in former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party to keep Netanyahu's coalition in power if pro-settler factions decide to pull out. Full story
Barak's comments came against the backdrop of severe friction between the U.S. and Israel's hawkish government over an impasse in peacemaking.
"The world isn't willing to accept - and we won't change that in 2010 - the expectation that Israel will rule another people for decades more," he said. "It's something that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world."
"The alienation that is developing with the United States is not good for Israel," Barak said during a Memorial Day radio interview. "We have strong ties with the United States, a bond, long-term friendship and strategic partnership. We receive three billion dollars from them each year; we get the best planes in the world from them."
........... Barak held out the prospect of reshaping Israel's government so that it could make bold land-for-peace moves.
.........Barak's comments echoed a call last Thursday from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Israel to take "concrete steps toward peace" or risk empowering Islamist militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The Obama administration responded angrily last month when Israel announced a project, during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, to build a 1,600 more homes for Jews in a part of the West Bank that it annexed to Jerusalem.
......Netanyahu has yet to respond to a U.S. list of steps that Washington wants him to take to coax them back to the negotiating table.
Political sources in Israel said Washington proposed 11 such "confidence-building" measures, which have not been disclosed publicly but are thought to include freezing Israeli construction in East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of the state they intend to establish in the West Bank, and say settlements could deny them a viable state.
Sources said Netanyahu, who has pledged not to place curbs on building homes for Israelis in and around East Jerusalem, was unlikely to agree in full to all of the steps Washington seeks.
To do so, the sources said, could cause his coalition to disintegrate, and continued friction with Obama could be a price the Israeli leader would be willing to pay to remain at the helm.
Political commentators have raised the possibility of bringing in former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party to keep Netanyahu's coalition in power if pro-settler factions decide to pull out. Full story
Jerusalem police charge Haredi youth for torching Israeli flag
Ha'aretz Jerusalem police on Monday charged a 20-year-old ultra-Orthodox man with disorderly conduct and damaging the state flag, after he set Israel's flag on fire in the Shabbat Square in Jerusalem a day earlier.
Police filed for an accelerated hearing due to the fact that the man torched the flag a day before the 62nd Independence Day celebrations.
The Jerusalem District Court has set a court date for the court proceedings.
Meanwhile, dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators belonging to an extreme group of anti-Zionists in Jerusalem on Monday torched Israel's flag and trash cans on Shivtei Israel Street in the capital, while hurling stones at the passing vehicles.
Police arrested a 14-year-old for torching the state flag at the site.
Police filed for an accelerated hearing due to the fact that the man torched the flag a day before the 62nd Independence Day celebrations.
The Jerusalem District Court has set a court date for the court proceedings.
Meanwhile, dozens of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators belonging to an extreme group of anti-Zionists in Jerusalem on Monday torched Israel's flag and trash cans on Shivtei Israel Street in the capital, while hurling stones at the passing vehicles.
Police arrested a 14-year-old for torching the state flag at the site.
Gaza: PRC military wing reports clash with Israeli unit
Ma'an – The military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) said a group of their fighters clashed with a unit of Israeli infantry soldiers who crossed the borders into the northern Gaza Strip on Monday.
Fighters with the An-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades reportedly exchanged machine gun and light weapon fire with the Israeli unit for 25 minutes in the early morning, in a region west of Beit Lahiya known as the Zinda or A'tarta neighborhood. The area is deep into the northern Gaza Strip, south of the almost 1km no-go-zone in the northwestern corner of Gaza.
In a statement, the group said it would continue to fight Israeli soldiers who enter Gaza, in an effort to protect the lands of the Strip.
An Israeli military spokesman said he was unaware of any clashes in the area in the morning. A similar report of clashes on Sunday was also denied by the military.
Fighters with the An-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades reportedly exchanged machine gun and light weapon fire with the Israeli unit for 25 minutes in the early morning, in a region west of Beit Lahiya known as the Zinda or A'tarta neighborhood. The area is deep into the northern Gaza Strip, south of the almost 1km no-go-zone in the northwestern corner of Gaza.
In a statement, the group said it would continue to fight Israeli soldiers who enter Gaza, in an effort to protect the lands of the Strip.
An Israeli military spokesman said he was unaware of any clashes in the area in the morning. A similar report of clashes on Sunday was also denied by the military.
Daily Situation Report: April 17, 2010
PMG
Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territory:
Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territory:
- Arrests (per person) — 5 Incl. 2 in Nablus & 1 in Bethlehem
- Detentions — 12 Incl. 10 international peace activists
- Raids – 24 Incl. 1 in Gaza & 1 in Jenin
- Checkpoints — 10 Access impeded at 7 checkpoints
- Flying Checkpoints — 20 Incl. 2 in Jericho & 1 in Salfit
- Attacks – 2, 1 in a raid & 1 in confrontations
- Air Patrol — 1 By reconnaissance above Gaza district
- Provocation of Pal. Forces — 3 Incl. position troops at police entrance
- Destruction of Property — 1 Settlers damaging construction material
- Wall Construction — — — Suspended for the weekend
- Closure (per District) — 7 Incl. Jerusalem city & areas in Hebron city
- Closure of Main Roads — 40 Incl. 3 in Salfit & 1 in Jericho
- Closure of Crossing Points — 7 All closed.
- Settler Violence — 2 Incl. stone civilian houses in Burin village
- Demonstrations — 3 In solidarity & for the release of prisoners Full report
Sunday, April 18, 2010
For Jerusalem, a response to Elie Wiesel - Haaretz, Yossi Sarid
Ha'aretz
For Jerusalem's sake I, like you, will not rest.
With great interest I read the beautiful openletter you penned to the U.S. president that appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune on Friday, and which will appear in the New York Times today. From it I learned that you know much about heavenly Jerusalem, but less so about its counterpart here on earth.
An outsider reading your letter would probably have concluded that peace has already taken root in the City of Peace. He would learn that in Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship their gods unimpeded, that "all are allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city."
Someone has deceived you, my dear friend. Not only may an Arab not build "anywhere," but he may thank his god if he is not evicted from his home and thrown out onto the street with his family and property. Perhaps you've heard about Arab residents in Sheikh Jarrah, having lived there since 1948, who are again being uprooted and made refugees because certain Jews are chafing from Jerusalem's space constraints.
Those same zealous Jews insist on inserting themselves like so many bones in the throats of Arab neighborhoods, purifying and Judaizing them with the help of rich American benefactors, several of whom you may know personally. Behind the scenes our prime minister and Jerusalem's mayor are pulling the strings of this puppet show while in public deflecting responsibility for this lawlessness and greed. That is the real reason for the "new and old tensions surfacing at a disturbing pace" of which your warn in your letter.
For some reason your historical survey missed an event of the utmost importance, namely the destruction of the Temple. If we are already citing events that happened here 2,000 years ago, let us recall the Sicarii, who blinded by religious zeal murdered opponents within the Jewish community and brought on us the disaster of our 2,000-year exile. We have no choice, you and I, but to ask whether history is now repeating itself.
You, my dear friend, evoke the Jews' biblical deed to Jerusalem, thereby imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues. As if our diplomatic quarrels weren't enough, the worst of our enemies would be glad to dress this epic conflict in the garb of a holy war. We had better not join ranks with them, even if unintentionally.
The fact is and always will be that this city is holy to everyone - such is its blessing and its curse. That's why the solution to the Jerusalem problem can't wait for the end of the Middle East conflict as you suggest, because it will have no end if its resolution is postponed until "the Israeli and Palestinian communities find ways to live together in an atmosphere of security."
"Jerusalem is above politics," you write. It is unfortunate that a man of your standing must confuse fundamental issues and confound the reader. Is it not politics that deals with mankind's weightiest issues, with matters of war and peace, life and death? And is life itself not holier than historical rights, than national and personal memory - holier even than Jerusalem? The living always take precedence over the dead, as must the present and future over the past.
There is nothing in our world "above politics." Yes, politics creates problems, but only through it can those same problems be resolved.
Barack Obama appears well aware of his obligations to try to resolve the world's ills, particularly ours here. Why then undercut him and tie his hands? On the contrary, let's allow him to use his clout to save us from ourselves, to help both bruised and battered nations and free them from their prison. Then he can push both sides to divide the city into two capitals - to give Jewish areas to the Jews and Arab areas to the Arabs - and assign the Holy Basin to an agreed-on international authority.
Only then can Jerusalem be maintained as "the world's Jewish spiritual capital," as you write. The Jewish spirit does not need Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Abu Dis and Shoafat to fulfill God's command to Abraham to "Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it." Ha'aretz
For Jerusalem's sake I, like you, will not rest.
With great interest I read the beautiful open
An outsider reading your letter would probably have concluded that peace has already taken root in the City of Peace. He would learn that in Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship their gods unimpeded, that "all are allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city."
Someone has deceived you, my dear friend. Not only may an Arab not build "anywhere," but he may thank his god if he is not evicted from his home and thrown out onto the street with his family and property. Perhaps you've heard about Arab residents in Sheikh Jarrah, having lived there since 1948, who are again being uprooted and made refugees because certain Jews are chafing from Jerusalem's space constraints.
Those same zealous Jews insist on inserting themselves like so many bones in the throats of Arab neighborhoods, purifying and Judaizing them with the help of rich American benefactors, several of whom you may know personally. Behind the scenes our prime minister and Jerusalem's mayor are pulling the strings of this puppet show while in public deflecting responsibility for this lawlessness and greed. That is the real reason for the "new and old tensions surfacing at a disturbing pace" of which your warn in your letter.
For some reason your historical survey missed an event of the utmost importance, namely the destruction of the Temple. If we are already citing events that happened here 2,000 years ago, let us recall the Sicarii, who blinded by religious zeal murdered opponents within the Jewish community and brought on us the disaster of our 2,000-year exile. We have no choice, you and I, but to ask whether history is now repeating itself.
You, my dear friend, evoke the Jews' biblical deed to Jerusalem, thereby imbuing our current conflict with messianic hues. As if our diplomatic quarrels weren't enough, the worst of our enemies would be glad to dress this epic conflict in the garb of a holy war. We had better not join ranks with them, even if unintentionally.
The fact is and always will be that this city is holy to everyone - such is its blessing and its curse. That's why the solution to the Jerusalem problem can't wait for the end of the Middle East conflict as you suggest, because it will have no end if its resolution is postponed until "the Israeli and Palestinian communities find ways to live together in an atmosphere of security."
"Jerusalem is above politics," you write. It is unfortunate that a man of your standing must confuse fundamental issues and confound the reader. Is it not politics that deals with mankind's weightiest issues, with matters of war and peace, life and death? And is life itself not holier than historical rights, than national and personal memory - holier even than Jerusalem? The living always take precedence over the dead, as must the present and future over the past.
There is nothing in our world "above politics." Yes, politics creates problems, but only through it can those same problems be resolved.
Barack Obama appears well aware of his obligations to try to resolve the world's ills, particularly ours here. Why then undercut him and tie his hands? On the contrary, let's allow him to use his clout to save us from ourselves, to help both bruised and battered nations and free them from their prison. Then he can push both sides to divide the city into two capitals - to give Jewish areas to the Jews and Arab areas to the Arabs - and assign the Holy Basin to an agreed-on international authority.
Only then can Jerusalem be maintained as "the world's Jewish spiritual capital," as you write. The Jewish spirit does not need Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Abu Dis and Shoafat to fulfill God's command to Abraham to "Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it." Ha'aretz
Boldness vs. Bullets at the Gaza Border [Bronner misreports nonviolence]
Truthout - Max Ajl
[April 15]
The razor-wire and concrete frontier between Israel and Gaza is intermittently interrupted by remote-controlled metal observation towers equipped with motion sensors. When the sensors detect something, the metal petals atop the towers peel back, blooming. A small bloom means the interior camera is peering around. A big bloom occurs when the people controlling the machine guns inside the turret are thinking about blasting someone.
On Tuesday, in a border area near Atatra, a neighborhood in Beit Lehiya in northern Gaza, the top only opened a little - just looking around. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) software operator saw us nearing the border, perhaps 200 Palestinians and seven internationals. The Palestinians marched, boisterously and peacefully, holding a banner reading "No for the security wall and we call on international society for urgent intervention to stop the Israeli violations of Palestinian rights."
The bigger group of them stopped maybe 150 meters of the border, well within the Israel-decreed buffer zone. The bolder youth surged forward, to the first string of barbed wire, maybe 25 meters from the border, then around it, past the ring road, then nearly to the border fence. There they defiantly planted a Palestinian flag. They climbed on top of a metal structure, maybe formerly used for transmitting electricity, and planted several Palestinian flags. I mentioned to another international, Rada, that "someone was going to get shot," we were so close to the border. I guessed wrong, luckily. And there we waited. We didn't wait too long.
First one jeep, then two, then three, drove up in a tremendous hurry. IDF marksmen rushed from the jeeps and took up sniping positions on a sand-dune overlooking the enemy: in this case peaceful Palestinian demonstrators clustered on their own land, with a few international witnesses, and a lot of clearly visible press wearing blue flak jackets.
After a few quiet minutes, an order came in and bullets started rifling through the air. First, warning shots. Then shots that were really intended to warn us. Then more ambiguous shots. Bursts of sand started to seemingly explode in front of our shoes, and most of the youth, save a select, surreally brave few, retreated pell-mell. They know what happened on Land Day, when the IDF shot young Palestinian men. But some stayed, and we stayed with them. Bullets start flying close enough to my head that I could feel the passage of the air and the crackle of the passage throb in my ears. These, too, were "warning shots," but the soldiers were perched on a sand dune. Sand isn't great footing. If they had slipped, someone could have caught a bullet. I and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteer Adie Mormech started to retreat to where the rest of the press corps was stationed.
ISM volunteer Eva Bartlett stayed at the forefront, waving her arms as bullets thudded into the sand around her. Eva is identifiably Western, blond and white. The ISM goes in an effort to ensure that Palestinians aren't shot at these demonstrations, and if they are, to document the shootings. It hopes an international presence deters the defense forces.
Sometimes this may be true. Other times, it is not true.
The Israeli army is far more likely to shoot Palestinian protesters than Western ones. People in the West raise less of a fuss over a Palestinian corpse than a Western one. We all know the names of Western activists murdered by the IDF - Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall - and scarcely know the names of the many, many more Palestinians who were slaughtered as they nonviolently mobilized against the occupation.
As I backed up to around 100 meters, bullets kept flying. One of the protest's organizers, Saber Zaaneen, from the Beit Hanoun-based Local Initative, started retreating too. He used to be a member of the muqawama, the armed resistance. He knows about violence and facing Israeli bullets. More recently, he has chosen another path: nonviolence. As he told the Palestine Telegraph, "I wanted to experiment with that strategy in Gaza," he said. "The strength of these demonstrations is that they attract international activists and journalists to see what's really happening."
The spectacle of Israeli sniper bullets cutting the air around me as I stood on Palestinian land remained with me when I sat down at my computer that evening. Ethan Bronner, bureau chief in Jerusalem for The New York Times, had written an article about Palestinian nonviolence. Perhaps he was going to extol the efflorescing nonviolent mobilization in the West Bank? Or he had heard of the recently burgeoning Ghazzawy nonviolent marches for security in the buffer zone? Maybe not.
Bronner wrote that the "Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence ... through acts of popular resistance." Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has apparently attempted to encourage this by planting trees, thereby, if slowly, helping to build a "virtual state."
Others, although not Bronner, have noted a certain inconsistency between the Palestinian Authority's rhetoric and its actions. Saleh al-Naami, a Gaza-based journalist, writes that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah are "are not shy about not tolerating a mood of popular action that could trigger a third Intifada. Adnan Al-Damiri, spokesman for Fayyad's security apparatus, justified security intervention to prevent many demonstrations by various popular movements to protest against Israel's actions." They don't want popular resistance to become popular. So Fayyad partakes in "controlled exclusive events," which are meant to avoid inciting larger mobilizations. Such larger mobilizations are not welcome. As one anonymous military official told Bronner, "We respect Salam Fayyad ... But we don't want him to engage in incitement. Burning goods is incitement. Destroying the fence is incitement and is not nonviolent. They are walking a thin line." The "fence," incidentally, had been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Strange that an Israel Defense Forces officer would call destroying an illegal fence violent. It was almost hallucinogenic to read another bit of Bronner's piece, that, "Nonviolence has never caught on here.... But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways." The ongoing struggles in Bilin and Nilin, villages in the West Bank that struggle against the apartheid wall's theft of their territory, and the campaign against the destruction of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, likewise did not penetrate into the piece.
Bronner's elision of the first Intifada raises different questions. Overwhelmingly nonviolent, from 1987-1989 Palestinians took part in mass mobilization, including strikes, flag-raising, fasting and other varieties of civil disobedience. Bogglingly brave teenagers refused to disperse when tear-gassed or shot with live ammunition. Israel responded to this uprising with mass arrests, murders, curfews and assassinations. Yitzhak Rabin, former and future prime minister, said he would hammer the largely nonviolent mobilization with "force, might and beatings." By December 1989, the IDF had killed over 600 Palestinians, injured perhaps 20,000 and jailed perhaps 50,000. Historians and the entire population of Palestine are well aware that it is not precisely in Palestine that "nonviolence has never caught on." Surprisingly, since the IDF is pretty quick to pepper bullets in the general direction of utterly peaceful protesters. Not the sort of thing to encourage peaceful mobilization, but it keeps happening anyway - just not under the stewardship of Fayyad.
Perhaps Bronner could come check this out himself. I can reserve a spot for him next week in Beit Hanoun - three meters away from the sniper bullets. Cool? Full story & photos
Related story: Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality
[April 15]
The razor-wire and concrete frontier between Israel and Gaza is intermittently interrupted by remote-controlled metal observation towers equipped with motion sensors. When the sensors detect something, the metal petals atop the towers peel back, blooming. A small bloom means the interior camera is peering around. A big bloom occurs when the people controlling the machine guns inside the turret are thinking about blasting someone.
On Tuesday, in a border area near Atatra, a neighborhood in Beit Lehiya in northern Gaza, the top only opened a little - just looking around. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) software operator saw us nearing the border, perhaps 200 Palestinians and seven internationals. The Palestinians marched, boisterously and peacefully, holding a banner reading "No for the security wall and we call on international society for urgent intervention to stop the Israeli violations of Palestinian rights."
The bigger group of them stopped maybe 150 meters of the border, well within the Israel-decreed buffer zone. The bolder youth surged forward, to the first string of barbed wire, maybe 25 meters from the border, then around it, past the ring road, then nearly to the border fence. There they defiantly planted a Palestinian flag. They climbed on top of a metal structure, maybe formerly used for transmitting electricity, and planted several Palestinian flags. I mentioned to another international, Rada, that "someone was going to get shot," we were so close to the border. I guessed wrong, luckily. And there we waited. We didn't wait too long.
First one jeep, then two, then three, drove up in a tremendous hurry. IDF marksmen rushed from the jeeps and took up sniping positions on a sand-dune overlooking the enemy: in this case peaceful Palestinian demonstrators clustered on their own land, with a few international witnesses, and a lot of clearly visible press wearing blue flak jackets.
After a few quiet minutes, an order came in and bullets started rifling through the air. First, warning shots. Then shots that were really intended to warn us. Then more ambiguous shots. Bursts of sand started to seemingly explode in front of our shoes, and most of the youth, save a select, surreally brave few, retreated pell-mell. They know what happened on Land Day, when the IDF shot young Palestinian men. But some stayed, and we stayed with them. Bullets start flying close enough to my head that I could feel the passage of the air and the crackle of the passage throb in my ears. These, too, were "warning shots," but the soldiers were perched on a sand dune. Sand isn't great footing. If they had slipped, someone could have caught a bullet. I and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteer Adie Mormech started to retreat to where the rest of the press corps was stationed.
ISM volunteer Eva Bartlett stayed at the forefront, waving her arms as bullets thudded into the sand around her. Eva is identifiably Western, blond and white. The ISM goes in an effort to ensure that Palestinians aren't shot at these demonstrations, and if they are, to document the shootings. It hopes an international presence deters the defense forces.
Sometimes this may be true. Other times, it is not true.
The Israeli army is far more likely to shoot Palestinian protesters than Western ones. People in the West raise less of a fuss over a Palestinian corpse than a Western one. We all know the names of Western activists murdered by the IDF - Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall - and scarcely know the names of the many, many more Palestinians who were slaughtered as they nonviolently mobilized against the occupation.
As I backed up to around 100 meters, bullets kept flying. One of the protest's organizers, Saber Zaaneen, from the Beit Hanoun-based Local Initative, started retreating too. He used to be a member of the muqawama, the armed resistance. He knows about violence and facing Israeli bullets. More recently, he has chosen another path: nonviolence. As he told the Palestine Telegraph, "I wanted to experiment with that strategy in Gaza," he said. "The strength of these demonstrations is that they attract international activists and journalists to see what's really happening."
The spectacle of Israeli sniper bullets cutting the air around me as I stood on Palestinian land remained with me when I sat down at my computer that evening. Ethan Bronner, bureau chief in Jerusalem for The New York Times, had written an article about Palestinian nonviolence. Perhaps he was going to extol the efflorescing nonviolent mobilization in the West Bank? Or he had heard of the recently burgeoning Ghazzawy nonviolent marches for security in the buffer zone? Maybe not.
Bronner wrote that the "Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence ... through acts of popular resistance." Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has apparently attempted to encourage this by planting trees, thereby, if slowly, helping to build a "virtual state."
Others, although not Bronner, have noted a certain inconsistency between the Palestinian Authority's rhetoric and its actions. Saleh al-Naami, a Gaza-based journalist, writes that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah are "are not shy about not tolerating a mood of popular action that could trigger a third Intifada. Adnan Al-Damiri, spokesman for Fayyad's security apparatus, justified security intervention to prevent many demonstrations by various popular movements to protest against Israel's actions." They don't want popular resistance to become popular. So Fayyad partakes in "controlled exclusive events," which are meant to avoid inciting larger mobilizations. Such larger mobilizations are not welcome. As one anonymous military official told Bronner, "We respect Salam Fayyad ... But we don't want him to engage in incitement. Burning goods is incitement. Destroying the fence is incitement and is not nonviolent. They are walking a thin line." The "fence," incidentally, had been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Strange that an Israel Defense Forces officer would call destroying an illegal fence violent. It was almost hallucinogenic to read another bit of Bronner's piece, that, "Nonviolence has never caught on here.... But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways." The ongoing struggles in Bilin and Nilin, villages in the West Bank that struggle against the apartheid wall's theft of their territory, and the campaign against the destruction of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, likewise did not penetrate into the piece.
Bronner's elision of the first Intifada raises different questions. Overwhelmingly nonviolent, from 1987-1989 Palestinians took part in mass mobilization, including strikes, flag-raising, fasting and other varieties of civil disobedience. Bogglingly brave teenagers refused to disperse when tear-gassed or shot with live ammunition. Israel responded to this uprising with mass arrests, murders, curfews and assassinations. Yitzhak Rabin, former and future prime minister, said he would hammer the largely nonviolent mobilization with "force, might and beatings." By December 1989, the IDF had killed over 600 Palestinians, injured perhaps 20,000 and jailed perhaps 50,000. Historians and the entire population of Palestine are well aware that it is not precisely in Palestine that "nonviolence has never caught on." Surprisingly, since the IDF is pretty quick to pepper bullets in the general direction of utterly peaceful protesters. Not the sort of thing to encourage peaceful mobilization, but it keeps happening anyway - just not under the stewardship of Fayyad.
Perhaps Bronner could come check this out himself. I can reserve a spot for him next week in Beit Hanoun - three meters away from the sniper bullets. Cool? Full story & photos
Related story: Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality
Video interview with family of Palestinian prisoner who died in Israeli custody
Sleepless in Gaza and Jerusalem
Day 48: Palestine marks Prisoners Day with events and activities all over The West Bank & Gaza. ... Rally in down-down Ramallah ....Nadia Khayyat who spent 5 years in Israeli prisons who tells her about life for Palestinian political prisoners.... Deputy Minister of Prisoners in the Palestinian Authority Ziad Abu Ain to give the latest update on number of Freedom Prisoners .... Raed Abu Hamad whose family was informed he died yesterday while in solitary confinement. Diana goes to his home to find the family in shock. Their son, a healthy 31-year-old sportsman, couldn't have died "just like that!" So what are they going to do about it? In Gaza Farah goes to the unified rally of all political parties and pulls out Majed Shaheen from amongst the crowds. Majed had spent 23 years behind bars and Farah wants to know what it was like. Full story
Day 48: Palestine marks Prisoners Day with events and activities all over The West Bank & Gaza. ... Rally in down-down Ramallah ....Nadia Khayyat who spent 5 years in Israeli prisons who tells her about life for Palestinian political prisoners.... Deputy Minister of Prisoners in the Palestinian Authority Ziad Abu Ain to give the latest update on number of Freedom Prisoners .... Raed Abu Hamad whose family was informed he died yesterday while in solitary confinement. Diana goes to his home to find the family in shock. Their son, a healthy 31-year-old sportsman, couldn't have died "just like that!" So what are they going to do about it? In Gaza Farah goes to the unified rally of all political parties and pulls out Majed Shaheen from amongst the crowds. Majed had spent 23 years behind bars and Farah wants to know what it was like. Full story
Israeli forces take Huwarra man in overnight raid [15 Israeli raids iinto West Bank over past 2 days]
Ma'an – Israeli forces detained a young man from the West Bank village of Huwwara, south of Nablus, after ransacking his home, local officials said.
Huwwara Mayor Samir Mur’ib said 21-year-old Shadi Jihad was taken from his home ......Israeli forces raided the West Bank 15 times over the last two days, and detained 15 civilians including two Palestinian police officers.
Witnesses in Bethlehem said Israeli forces entered the Al-Azza and Aida refugee camps overnight, with no reports of detentions. Full story
Huwwara Mayor Samir Mur’ib said 21-year-old Shadi Jihad was taken from his home ......Israeli forces raided the West Bank 15 times over the last two days, and detained 15 civilians including two Palestinian police officers.
Witnesses in Bethlehem said Israeli forces entered the Al-Azza and Aida refugee camps overnight, with no reports of detentions. Full story
Israel sentences PA police officer [22 years old] to 15 years [US officials express "concern"]
Ma'an – An Israeli military court at the Ofer detention center near Ramallah sentenced a Palestinian Authority security officer from Bethlehem to 10 years in prison and another five under probation.
The officer was charged and convicted for membership in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed group that claims affiliation to President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement........
His sentencing comes days after Israeli forces detained two other PA security officials...
Last November, Israeli forces detained the commander and four officers of the PA Intelligence Services.
High-level negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli officials ensued in an effort to have the men released, with American officials entering the debate and expressing "concern" over the Israeli actions..... Full story
The officer was charged and convicted for membership in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed group that claims affiliation to President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement........
His sentencing comes days after Israeli forces detained two other PA security officials...
Last November, Israeli forces detained the commander and four officers of the PA Intelligence Services.
High-level negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli officials ensued in an effort to have the men released, with American officials entering the debate and expressing "concern" over the Israeli actions..... Full story
Prisoners demand international inquiry over death [1,200 prisoners suffer from under-treated illnesses]
Ma'an ......Abdullah Abu Rahma, a Fatah-affiliated Palestinian prisoner held at Ofer detention center, called for the formation of a fact-finding committee to investigate Hammad's death and to press criminal charges against the state if their officers are found guilty.
According to statistics from Palestinian prisoners societies, more than 1,200 Palestinians in Israeli custody suffer from under-treated illnesses, while hundreds of others are subject to solitary confinement on a regular basis.... Full story
According to statistics from Palestinian prisoners societies, more than 1,200 Palestinians in Israeli custody suffer from under-treated illnesses, while hundreds of others are subject to solitary confinement on a regular basis.... Full story
Body of dead prisoner not yet released from Israeli custody [in Abu Kabir forensics facility]
Ma'an – The body of a Palestinian man who died in Israeli custody on Thursday has not yet been released to his family, and remains in an Israeli forensics facility near Tel Aviv, the man's family reported.
The 26-year-old Raed Abu Hammad from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Al-Eizariya was announced dead following time in an isolation cell, despite earlier complaints of illness.
Abu Hammad's body was transported to the Abu Kabir forensics facility in Israel for what his parents were told would be continued investigations into the cause for their son's death.
When the autopsy is concluded, Abu Hammad's body will return to his family for burial.
The 26-year-old Raed Abu Hammad from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Al-Eizariya was announced dead following time in an isolation cell, despite earlier complaints of illness.
Abu Hammad's body was transported to the Abu Kabir forensics facility in Israel for what his parents were told would be continued investigations into the cause for their son's death.
When the autopsy is concluded, Abu Hammad's body will return to his family for burial.
The forgotten plight of Palestinian Christians – Bassim S. Khoury
Malta Independent
Christians around the world have just finished celebrating the Easter holiday – and thousands did so by making the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem (where the Church of Holy Sepulchre is one of Christianity’s most revered sites). Around 300 pilgrims came from Malta, the largest ever as per Palestinian officials. Yet for many Palestinian Christians who have attempted to make this journey, ongoing Israeli restrictions on movement have made this a particularly discouraging holiday, with many being turned away at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, specifically in Bethlehem where hundreds demonstrated in the week leading up to Easter. The brutality of Jerusalem’s police against worshippers was at its worst with the beatings of Catholics on Good Friday and Orthodox during Saturday’s Holy Fire celebrations.
These events combined with the recent US-Israel controversies regarding Jerusalem have begun to shine a light on one of the more problematic if underreported issues surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict: namely, Israel’s problematic approach to the protection of religious freedom. This of course is a far cry from the many attempts of Israeli officials and supporters to claim it as a beacon of religious freedom that protects the rights of religious minorities and notably of the Christian community in the Holy Land. The deputy consul general of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico, Paul Hirschson, recently took this questionable notion to extremes, applauding Israel’s efforts to protect the religious freedoms of Christians while claiming the rest of Middle Eastern countries and the international community were indifferent to or exacerbated their plight. Sadly, it is Israel that is at the cutting edge of contributing to this tragic reality for Christians in the region.
I am a Palestinian, and as my name indicates, I am Christian. I am a descendant of an orthodox priest. My great-grandfather Khalil was one of the largest landowners in the area. He built our family church in Mujeidal, four kilometres to the west of Nazareth in Galilee in the late 1800s. This flourishing period continued up to the 1930s where we managed to have an extremely vibrant life economically, culturally and politically. Though we Christians were the minority, we owned the olive press and the flourmill, and the water springs flowed in our fertile land. In effect, we were central to one of the economic lifelines of the region.
In 1948, however, the village was destroyed and we were made landless refugees. Although our family was living in nearby Nazareth (which became part of Israel), Israeli law, that ‘liberal democracy’ as we are constantly reminded, classified and still classifies us as “absentees” in our ancestral homeland. This label allowed Israel to confiscate the land, the flourmill and the olive press, and our church was turned into a cowshed. The numerous efforts that spanned over 50 years to restore the latter failed, and it was only recently and after a protracted legal battle that we managed to restore it as a place of worship.
To protect us against the repeated attacks of extremists, we were given permission to build a wall around the church. However, the municipality demanded the wall to be 10 to 12 feet high to ensure “the church is not visible from the street” as its “sight might disturb some”. Additionally, we were barred from ringing church bells and from constructing toilets to serve the worshippers. Using a bathroom still depends on the goodwill and the schedule of neighbours. Yet this is did not happen in a pariah state like Sudan, but in an Israel that stands proudly before the international community as a member of the club of western democracies.
To be perfectly candid, the treatment of Christians (and Muslims) by Israel is a crime and the silence of the world, particularly in the West, is a shameful fact. The fate of the Christians in the Holy Land is one that cannot be divorced from the ethnic cleansing of Christians in 1948 when most of us were removed from those population centres where we constituted a majority or a substantial minority – Jaffa, Haifa, Lod, Ramla, Acre, Nazareth and Jerusalem are all examples.
I remind those whose viewpoints neglect these unpleasant truths that the overwhelming majority of those who lost their homes in Bakaa’, Talibiyyeh, Qtamon and other districts that became Israeli West Jerusalem were Christians. Israel turned the Christians of Jerusalem itself into refugees who were forced to move to the predominately Muslim East Jerusalem, and neighbouring Arab countries. Refugees from the West of the city will always be grateful for the kind way in which they were received by the East Jerusalemites, who welcomed the newcomers and shared with them the eastern part of the city. But our properties in the West still stand today as a testament to these crimes. It would behove those who are genuinely interested in our fate to come on a fact finding mission so that they can see for themselves these realities, rather than using “the plight of Christians” to score cheap propaganda points. Those American evangelical Christian communities who send millions every year to support Israeli settlers are especially welcome – they might be surprised at what they see.
This story is of course not just about Christian communities, but the overall picture of Palestinian dispossession and struggle, the essence of which is national, and not religious. In religious terms it is not the “Friday” fighting the “Saturday” first in order to fight the “Sunday” later (Muslim versus Jew, then Christian). What has happened and what continues is that the “Saturday” is squeezing out the “Sunday” to more easily caricature Palestinian society as one filled with anti-West, Muslim extremists.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that Middle Eastern countries outside Israel or the international community should shirk their own responsibilities when it comes to the suffering of Christians in the region. It is apparent, for example, that international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) have often ignored this issue. Quite simply, the abuse of human rights of all minorities in the Middle East, Christians and others, warrant investigation and it is extremely important to air and address incidents of abuse. But to do so, it is an inescapable fact that Israel has to look inward. Deflecting its own deficiencies on such questions to the shortcomings of other countries or the international community, as some of its supporters seem so eager to do, is ultimately a hollow exercise in avoiding responsibility.
I challenge all people of conscience in Israel and in the world who are concerned about the plight of Christians to rectify the injustices that this community suffered decades ago and continues to face. A law should be enacted giving us rights to all our properties confiscated by Israel – something that would not even overturn any legal precedent. Indeed, this is what Israel has done in its recent evictions of Palestinians from properties in both Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, based on pre-1948 Jewish claims to those homes. Under an identical legal standard, we should be entitled to our own pre-1948 properties. As an easy first step, it could start with the northern Galilee Christian villages of Iqret and Kufur Birem (both of which are located in Israel proper). Iqret is 100 per cent Christian Melkite and Kufur Birem is 100 per cent Christian Maronite. During the Israeli war of independence in 1948, its inhabitants were asked to leave ‘temporarily’ until things quieted down. Yet all requests to go back after the war were denied and the initial ‘temporary’ displacement to the nearby villages of Jish and Rammeh were made permanent. These inhabitants still live in Israel in nearby villages – having the status of internally displaced persons – but in a Kafka-esque reality where the remains of their villages are just a stone’s throw away and stand idle on unused land. Even a landmark decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1951, ordering the authorities to let them back, has not been implemented; blocked by governmental and security authorities, the absurdity continues to this day.
Jews and other victims waited for decades to be compensated for the patent injustices that were inflicted on their own communities in the past. I would suggest it’s high time for Israel to put its money where its mouth is and ensure that the process of compensating us Palestinians begins. Full story
Christians around the world have just finished celebrating the Easter holiday – and thousands did so by making the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem (where the Church of Holy Sepulchre is one of Christianity’s most revered sites). Around 300 pilgrims came from Malta, the largest ever as per Palestinian officials. Yet for many Palestinian Christians who have attempted to make this journey, ongoing Israeli restrictions on movement have made this a particularly discouraging holiday, with many being turned away at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, specifically in Bethlehem where hundreds demonstrated in the week leading up to Easter. The brutality of Jerusalem’s police against worshippers was at its worst with the beatings of Catholics on Good Friday and Orthodox during Saturday’s Holy Fire celebrations.
These events combined with the recent US-Israel controversies regarding Jerusalem have begun to shine a light on one of the more problematic if underreported issues surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict: namely, Israel’s problematic approach to the protection of religious freedom. This of course is a far cry from the many attempts of Israeli officials and supporters to claim it as a beacon of religious freedom that protects the rights of religious minorities and notably of the Christian community in the Holy Land. The deputy consul general of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico, Paul Hirschson, recently took this questionable notion to extremes, applauding Israel’s efforts to protect the religious freedoms of Christians while claiming the rest of Middle Eastern countries and the international community were indifferent to or exacerbated their plight. Sadly, it is Israel that is at the cutting edge of contributing to this tragic reality for Christians in the region.
I am a Palestinian, and as my name indicates, I am Christian. I am a descendant of an orthodox priest. My great-grandfather Khalil was one of the largest landowners in the area. He built our family church in Mujeidal, four kilometres to the west of Nazareth in Galilee in the late 1800s. This flourishing period continued up to the 1930s where we managed to have an extremely vibrant life economically, culturally and politically. Though we Christians were the minority, we owned the olive press and the flourmill, and the water springs flowed in our fertile land. In effect, we were central to one of the economic lifelines of the region.
In 1948, however, the village was destroyed and we were made landless refugees. Although our family was living in nearby Nazareth (which became part of Israel), Israeli law, that ‘liberal democracy’ as we are constantly reminded, classified and still classifies us as “absentees” in our ancestral homeland. This label allowed Israel to confiscate the land, the flourmill and the olive press, and our church was turned into a cowshed. The numerous efforts that spanned over 50 years to restore the latter failed, and it was only recently and after a protracted legal battle that we managed to restore it as a place of worship.
To protect us against the repeated attacks of extremists, we were given permission to build a wall around the church. However, the municipality demanded the wall to be 10 to 12 feet high to ensure “the church is not visible from the street” as its “sight might disturb some”. Additionally, we were barred from ringing church bells and from constructing toilets to serve the worshippers. Using a bathroom still depends on the goodwill and the schedule of neighbours. Yet this is did not happen in a pariah state like Sudan, but in an Israel that stands proudly before the international community as a member of the club of western democracies.
To be perfectly candid, the treatment of Christians (and Muslims) by Israel is a crime and the silence of the world, particularly in the West, is a shameful fact. The fate of the Christians in the Holy Land is one that cannot be divorced from the ethnic cleansing of Christians in 1948 when most of us were removed from those population centres where we constituted a majority or a substantial minority – Jaffa, Haifa, Lod, Ramla, Acre, Nazareth and Jerusalem are all examples.
I remind those whose viewpoints neglect these unpleasant truths that the overwhelming majority of those who lost their homes in Bakaa’, Talibiyyeh, Qtamon and other districts that became Israeli West Jerusalem were Christians. Israel turned the Christians of Jerusalem itself into refugees who were forced to move to the predominately Muslim East Jerusalem, and neighbouring Arab countries. Refugees from the West of the city will always be grateful for the kind way in which they were received by the East Jerusalemites, who welcomed the newcomers and shared with them the eastern part of the city. But our properties in the West still stand today as a testament to these crimes. It would behove those who are genuinely interested in our fate to come on a fact finding mission so that they can see for themselves these realities, rather than using “the plight of Christians” to score cheap propaganda points. Those American evangelical Christian communities who send millions every year to support Israeli settlers are especially welcome – they might be surprised at what they see.
This story is of course not just about Christian communities, but the overall picture of Palestinian dispossession and struggle, the essence of which is national, and not religious. In religious terms it is not the “Friday” fighting the “Saturday” first in order to fight the “Sunday” later (Muslim versus Jew, then Christian). What has happened and what continues is that the “Saturday” is squeezing out the “Sunday” to more easily caricature Palestinian society as one filled with anti-West, Muslim extremists.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that Middle Eastern countries outside Israel or the international community should shirk their own responsibilities when it comes to the suffering of Christians in the region. It is apparent, for example, that international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) have often ignored this issue. Quite simply, the abuse of human rights of all minorities in the Middle East, Christians and others, warrant investigation and it is extremely important to air and address incidents of abuse. But to do so, it is an inescapable fact that Israel has to look inward. Deflecting its own deficiencies on such questions to the shortcomings of other countries or the international community, as some of its supporters seem so eager to do, is ultimately a hollow exercise in avoiding responsibility.
I challenge all people of conscience in Israel and in the world who are concerned about the plight of Christians to rectify the injustices that this community suffered decades ago and continues to face. A law should be enacted giving us rights to all our properties confiscated by Israel – something that would not even overturn any legal precedent. Indeed, this is what Israel has done in its recent evictions of Palestinians from properties in both Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, based on pre-1948 Jewish claims to those homes. Under an identical legal standard, we should be entitled to our own pre-1948 properties. As an easy first step, it could start with the northern Galilee Christian villages of Iqret and Kufur Birem (both of which are located in Israel proper). Iqret is 100 per cent Christian Melkite and Kufur Birem is 100 per cent Christian Maronite. During the Israeli war of independence in 1948, its inhabitants were asked to leave ‘temporarily’ until things quieted down. Yet all requests to go back after the war were denied and the initial ‘temporary’ displacement to the nearby villages of Jish and Rammeh were made permanent. These inhabitants still live in Israel in nearby villages – having the status of internally displaced persons – but in a Kafka-esque reality where the remains of their villages are just a stone’s throw away and stand idle on unused land. Even a landmark decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1951, ordering the authorities to let them back, has not been implemented; blocked by governmental and security authorities, the absurdity continues to this day.
Jews and other victims waited for decades to be compensated for the patent injustices that were inflicted on their own communities in the past. I would suggest it’s high time for Israel to put its money where its mouth is and ensure that the process of compensating us Palestinians begins. Full story
Israeli forces storm Prisoners Day event [injure one child and one teenager]
Ma'an – One child and one teenager were injured on Sunday evening when Israeli forces stormed a prisoner solidarity event in Beit Ummar, north of the West Bank city of Hebron.
Spokesman for the Palestine Solidarity Project Mohammad Ayyad Awad said soldiers surrounded the courtyard of the local Zahret Al-Mada'en school, and fired live bullets and tear-gas canisters, injuring Yezan Imad As-Sleibi, 17, sustaining a gunshot wound to the head, receiving treatment at the scene.
Awad added that 15-year-old Sabri Ibrahim Awad sustained bruising after being beaten by Israel soldiers, and was transferred to hospital for treatment.
The festival was organized by the Popular Committee Against the Wall and the Palestine Solidarity Project in solidarity with Palestinian detainees on Prisoners Day.... Full story
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Troops Detain Ten Peace Activists In Hebron
IMEMC Israeli soldiers detained on Saturday evening ten international peace activists in Al Tiwani area in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and prevented others from entering Beit Ummar Town, north of the city.
The peace activists accompanied several Palestinian farmers heading to their lands when the army attacked the activists and the famers and detained ten internationals.
Israeli settlers escalated their attacks against the residents and their lands in the Hebron area and several parts of the occupied West Bank, while Israeli soldiers failed to stop these attacks, and instead attacked Palestinians and peace activists.
Furthermore, soldiers prevented several international activists from entering Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron, and claimed that the town is a closed military zone.
Soldiers also obstructed a peaceful protests against settlements and against sealing the entrances of the village.
Soldiers also attacked several worshipers near the village’s mosque and fired dozens of gas bombs at them.
The army closed the main entrance of Beit Ummar three days ago, and is preventing and vehicles from entering or leaving the town. Full story
The peace activists accompanied several Palestinian farmers heading to their lands when the army attacked the activists and the famers and detained ten internationals.
Israeli settlers escalated their attacks against the residents and their lands in the Hebron area and several parts of the occupied West Bank, while Israeli soldiers failed to stop these attacks, and instead attacked Palestinians and peace activists.
Furthermore, soldiers prevented several international activists from entering Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron, and claimed that the town is a closed military zone.
Soldiers also obstructed a peaceful protests against settlements and against sealing the entrances of the village.
Soldiers also attacked several worshipers near the village’s mosque and fired dozens of gas bombs at them.
The army closed the main entrance of Beit Ummar three days ago, and is preventing and vehicles from entering or leaving the town. Full story
Mezan Center: “Israel Deliberately Killed Reuters Cameraman”
IMEMC On the third anniversary of his death, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights reported that the Israeli army deliberately shot and killed Palestinian cameraman, working for Reuters, Fadel Shana’a, 23, in the Gaza Strip......
Shana’a and his crew were first targeted by a missile and less than five minutes later, the army fired more missile at their clearly marked press vehicle.
The Al Mezan Center conducted an investigation into the issue and found out that the press vehicle was clearly marked, the team was filming in an open area in broad daylight and their cameras and equipment were clearly seen....
Friday marked anniversary of the killing of Shana’a; on the same day, the Israeli army also killed thirteen Palestinians, including eight children while bombarding and shelling the eastern areas of the Gaza valley (Juhr Ad Deek), and the Al Boreij refugee camp. Full story
The Al Mezan Center conducted an investigation into the issue and found out that the press vehicle was clearly marked, the team was filming in an open area in broad daylight and their cameras and equipment were clearly seen....
Friday marked anniversary of the killing of Shana’a; on the same day, the Israeli army also killed thirteen Palestinians, including eight children while bombarding and shelling the eastern areas of the Gaza valley (Juhr Ad Deek), and the Al Boreij refugee camp. Full story
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