JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces arrested 27 Palestinians across East Jerusalem and the West Bank overnight, while clashes erupted again in the flashpoint Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Issawiya.
Israeli authorities conducted detention raids in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Silwan, al-Tur, al-Suwwana, and Jabal al-Mukabbir early Thursday, arresting nine Palestinians.
A lawyer for the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Muhammad Mahmoud, identified the detainees as Hiba Makiyyeh, Muhammad Abu Lafi, Muammar Abu al-Hawa, Ramzi Ibrahim, Fadi Nasser Eweisat and his brother Shadi Nasser Eweisat, Muayyad Eweisat, Musallam Odeh, Hamza Ahmad Abbasi, and ex-prisoner Ihab Hamdan.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society, meanwhile, said that Wajih Makih was also detained in the raids.
The arrests come amid months of raging tensions and clashes in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians have protested widely against a massive Israeli arrest campaign and the Israeli assault on Gaza over summer, which left nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead.
In recent weeks a spate of individual attacks on Jewish settlers in the area have led to harsh reprisals against the 260,000-strong Palestinian community in the city, inflaming tensions further.
These reprisals have included checkpoints and barriers against movement in and around Palestinian neighborhoods, which are heavily segregated and separated by Jewish settlements built in the hills above and between them.
On Thursday, Palestinian residents of the village of al-Issawiya protested against the Israeli authorities' recent decision to shut the main entrance to the village with cement blocks.
Although the neighborhood is located directly beside the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, the cement blocks placed by police at the top of the village has led to major headaches for local residents.
Local activist Muhammad Abu al-Hummus said on Thursday that villagers protested the closure by blocking the eastern entrance of the village.
He said that Israeli soldiers had shut the main entrance to the village three times during the last two months, and the southern entrance to the village has been closed for three months.
Abu al-Hummus said that dozens of students, teachers, and workers gathered at the entrances of al-Issawiya demanding Israeli forces to open the closed entrance.
He added that clashes erupted at the eastern entrance between youths and Israeli soldiers. Dozens of locals suffered severe suffocation as soldiers fired tear-gas grenades at the crowds and leashed police dogs on them.
Abu al-Hummus said that Israeli forces are deployed daily on the eastern entrance of the village, detaining residents and searching cars.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an that the protesters had "rioted" and "thrown stones and petrol bombs at police, who dispersed them with stun grenades."
He added that no injuries nor arrests were reported.
Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as "residents" whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.
They face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and are unable to access services in the West Bank due to the construction of Israel's separation wall.
East Jerusalem is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory, but Israel occupied it in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never considered legitimate abroad.
18 detained across the West Bank
Also on Thursday, Israeli forces engaged in home raids across the West Bank, arresting 18 people.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the arrests, saying 15 were "suspected of involvement in terror and violent riots," while three were suspected of "involvement in illegal activities."
The spokeswoman said that three of the Palestinians detained overnight were "Hamas operatives," including two individuals taken from a village she called "Khirbat Bneizi" northwest of Ramallah as well one from Sair, southwest of Bethlehem.
Of the remaining Palestinian detained overnight, she said that three were taken from homes in Beit Lid near Nablus, one from Anabta east of Tulkaram, one from Rafidia northwest of Nablus, one from Beit Liqia southwest of Ramallah, four from Deir Ballut, three from Hizma southeast of Ramallah, and two from al-Rihiya, south of Hebron.
Of those arrests, Ma'an was able to independently verify 10 of the detainees.
Palestinian security sources confirmed to Ma'an that Israeli forces raided the village of Deir Ballut and detained Wahbi Kayid Judeh, 23, Sami Abdullah, 17, Daoud Khalid Abdullah, 26, and Tariq Rashid Abu Kheir, 23.
In the Bethlehem governorate in the southern West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli forces detained Fouad Omar Salah, 20, from the village of al-Khader and took him to the nearby Etzion detention center for interrogation on Thursday.
Muhammad Salah, Fouad's brother, told Ma'an that Israeli forces raided their home around 1:00 a.m. and detained his brother after they had "wrecked" the home during the raid.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society meanwhile confirmed that in the overnight raids Alaa Muhammad Kayid Nana, Abdullah Tubasi, and Aydah Jabarin were detained from Hebron.
Fifteen-year-old Anas Ismail Moussa was detained from Bethlehem, the group confirmed, while Musallam Nasser Sawalhi, 17, was detained from Beituniya.
More than 5,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including hundreds without charge or trial.
The non-violent direct action is in protest of restrictions on access to the Aqsa Mosque that Israel places on Palestinian worshipers from the West Bank.
Palestinians and international activists use make-shift bridges to cross the separation wall between Qalandiya and Jerusalem, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Some 50 Palestinian and international activists used two make-shift bridges to cross the separation wall between Qalandiya and northern Jerusalem Friday morning. They also cut razor wire adjacent to the wall.
Separately, following a tripartite meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah about tensions on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem, Israel Police announced that it was suspending the ban on worshippers under the age of 50.
That change, however, will not affect the ability of West Bank Palestinians to reach the Old City of Jerusalem, where the mosque is located. Decisions to grant entry permits for West Bank residents are made by the army and Shin Bet.
Palestinians and international activists use make-shift bridges to cross the separation wall between Qalandiya and Jerusalem, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinians and international activists cut razor wire after crossing the separation wall between Qalandiya and Jerusalem, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
At the Hizme checkpoint, used by West Bank settlers to commute to Jerusalem, Palestinians attempted to march toward the holy city. They blocked Israeli traffic and were eventually dispersed by soldiers and police.
Palestinians attempt to march to Jerusalem through the Hizme checkpoint, blocking traffic and protesting against restrictions Israel places on Palestinians trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque in the holy city, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinians attempt to march to Jerusalem through the Hizme checkpoint, blocking traffic and protesting against restrictions Israel places on Palestinians trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque in the holy city, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinians attempt to march to Jerusalem through the Hizme checkpoint, blocking traffic and protesting against restrictions Israel places on Palestinians trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque in the holy city, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
So, if Malala was a Palestinian girl shot by Israel, would the Western world/media have lauded her? That rhetorical question says as much about how Malala is being used for a particular purpose within a particular rhetoric as much as about how all the targeted Palestinian kids, and indeed adults, (targeted for their very Palestinianness) are being completely ignored to do disservice to a rising rhetoric exposing the apartheid racist colony that calls itself Israel and the hypocrisy of its supporters
Israeli police officers look at Palestinian boys leaning against a section of the controversial Israeli barrier during clashes in Jerusalem refugee camp Shufat on Dec. 11, 2011. (Retuers/Ronen Zvulun)
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian child was severely injured after Israeli forces opened fire on a car she was traveling in with family near the Shufat refugee camp checkpoint on Friday.
The shooting comes on a day of clashes with Israeli forces across the West Bank and follows the blinding of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy the day before in clashes in the nearby East Jerusalem village of al-Issawiya.
Mayar Amran Twafic al-Natsheh, 10, was riding in her grandfather's car with her mother, grandfather, and her sibling when a rubber-coated steel bullet smashed through the car's window and hit her in the face.
She was taken Hadassah hospital near al-Issawiya and medical sources said she suffered a fractured skull as a result of the attack.
Mayar's father is currently being detained by Israeli forces.
An Israeli police spokesman said he did not have any information about the incident.
The incident occurred at the Shufat refugee camp checkpoint, which is the only link between the East Jerusalem neighborhood and Jerusalem proper due to the Israeli separation's walls path around the area, which divides it from nearby Jewish settlements as well as other Palestinian neighborhoods.
The shooting comes only a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Jordan to ease tensions in Jerusalem, which has become the site of daily protests across the city's Palestinian neighborhoods that Israeli forces have repressed with dozens of casualties.
The incidents have come amid rising anger and tensions in Jerusalem over an Israeli offensive on Gaza that left nearly 2,200 dead over summer as well as an arrest campaign in the city itself that left hundreds of Hamas-related individuals as well as many protesters in prison.
Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as "residents" whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.
Jerusalem Palestinians face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and are unable to access services in the West Bank due to the construction of Israel's separation wall.
Palestinian officials have repeatedly placed the blame for the violence on Israeli leaders, who have occupied East Jerusalem since 1967.
"Mr. Netanyahu and his extremist government coalition continue to refuse the minimum requirements for peace, including acceptance of the two-state solution. Instead of pursuing peace, his government systematically violates international law in order to consolidate its Apartheid regime in Palestine," top PLO official Saeb Erekat said in a statement in late October, in response to Israeli accusations that Palestinian officials were to blame for "inciting" violence.
"We regret all loss of life. At the same time we reiterate that the Israeli occupation of Palestine remains the main source of violence and instability in the region. Palestinian citizens continue to be oppressed, imprisoned, injured and killed by the occupation forces, with impunity and the full backing of the Israeli government," he added.
Since occupying Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli authorities have pursued a deliberate policy of Judaization, which limits the distribution of building permits to Palestinian residents while constructing large numbers of housing units for Jewish Israelis.
The policy has also entailed the erection of checkpoints and other barriers to movement intended to separate Jerusalem from the West Bank and integrate it into Israel proper.
14th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Ramallah, Occupied Palestine
Friday morning around 50 Palestinian and international activists used makeshift bridges to cross the Apartheid wall between Qalandiya and Northern Jerusalem. This non-violent direct action was in response to the restrictions Israel had placed on Palestinian worshippers wishing to access Al-Aqsa Mosque in the past months.
Activists scaled the wall one by one at around 10 am yesterday morning. Only a few hundred meters from an Israeli settlement, the activists then set about cutting through a barbed-wire fence that had been placed close to the Apartheid wall.
Once all the activists breached the wall, the group cheered and proudly waved Palestinian flags. The action finished peacefully around 11am with no arrests. This non-violent direct action was part of a campaign entitled #On2Jerusalem and it was organized by local Palestinian popular resistance committees to show solidarity with the people of Jerusalem.
Another action that was part of the #On2Jerusalem campaign occurred after where Palestinian and international activists attempted to march toward Jerusalem through Hizme checkpoint. The activists blocked Israeli traffic, waved Palestinian flags and sang pro-Palestine chants. Many of those present wore T-shirts with pictures of Al-Aqsa mosque with the text, “I am Palestinian under 50.” This text referred to the restrictions placed on Palestinian male worshippers under 50 in regards to entering the Al-Aqsa compound. Right away, the activists were met by heavy Israeli military and police presence and were therefore prevented from crossing through Hizme.
The Israeli forces shouted and pushed activists as well as journalists on several occasions and soon after Israeli forces shot a barrage of stun grenades towards the activists and press forcing them to disperse. After violently pushing two international activists carrying a large Palestinian flag, Israeli forces ended up confiscating the flag from them. One of these international activists stated, “We found ourselves holding the Palestinian flag near a group of soldiers. One soldier in front of us tore up a small Palestinian flag in front of us. Afterwards he tried to take the big flag from us. When we wouldn’t let him more soldiers helped him, we were suddenly surrounded by soldiers grabbing and pushing us, and forcing the flag out of our hands.”
Later that day and as part of the#On2Jerusalem actions, activists joined locals at Qalandiya checkpoint where clashes had been taking place for most of the morning. Israeli forces used excessive force shooting dozens of tear gas canisters and grenades in addition to stun grenades at demonstrators. Despite the Israeli army’s aggression, the non-violent demonstrators which were a few hundred in number loudly shouted pro-Palestine chants and waved flags. At one point a demonstrator was able to climb a military lookout post to hang a Palestinian flag on the top.
Five Palestinians have been injured, on Friday evening, and three others kidnapped by Israeli soldiers who invaded Silwad town, east of the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Dozens of residents suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.
Local sources said that the soldiers invaded the Silwad through its western entrance and clashed with dozens of local youth.
The soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets, concussion grenades and gas bombs. Five residents were injured by rubber-coated metal bullets; many suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.
The soldiers also kidnapped three teenagers identified as Ahmad Hatem Hamed, 19, Ra’fat Radwan Hamed, 18, and Assef Omar Hamed, 18.
Soldiers detonated the front doors of the homes of the kidnapped Palestinians, and also detonated the main gate of a local kindergarten before violently searching the grounds, causing excessive property damage.
QALQILIYA (Ma'an) -- Israeli authorities delivered demolition orders to five Palestinian families in the northern West Bank village of Hajja east of Qalqiliya on Sunday morning.
Local sources told Ma'an that Israeli forces "stormed" the village and delivered the orders to five local families.
Locals said that authorities are claiming that the families have built their homes without licenses, and thus intend to demolish them, potentially leaving dozens of family members homeless.
The houses slated for demolition belong to locals Yusuf Omar Ahmad Hilal, Samir Omar Ahmad Hilal, Ibrahim Hilal Ahmad Hilal, Bilal Nur al-Deen Masalha, and Nitham Hussein Masalha.
Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people so far in 2014, according to UNOCHA.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank in areas under their control, or about 80 percent of the total land area.
Some 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures have been demolished by Israel since it occupied the West Bank in 1967.
In May, the EU missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah urged Israel to halt home demolitions in Area C of the West Bank, describing such actions as "forced transfer of population and demolitions of Palestinian housing and infrastructure."
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
WELCOME TO THE 2014 LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL
This year’s festival runs from Friday 28 November through to Thursday 11 December. In all, 22 screenings, director talks, and panel discussions are scheduled. These take place at the Barbican Cinema as well as University of London venues and will feature more than 40 works of film and video by Palestinian and international artists.
thank you for not being a pathetic little apathetic human being! I like the fact that you brought up this subject on a site like Achinect! Architects tend to be very apathetic to anything beyond their little world of architecture!
Driko, another first time poster, possibly reincarnation of another hasbara who changes anonymous names each time gets a raise and earns a living on irrelevancies and hate as depicted below.
Students for Justice in Palestine Says Neo-Nazis are Right about Jews >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
Bondy Beach, Sydney – Jewish Children Bus Attacked By Drunk Pro-Palestinian Thugs >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
Jewish Leader Attacked at Brooklyn Nets Game After Palestinian Flag-Grab Incident >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
“For It”: MSA Student Confesses She Wants a Second Holocaust >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
i don't think he was saying 'kill the palestinians' i hope not anyway.
is your whole notion of the situation that genocide has to happen on one side, and you're simply picking the team you want to win? so you support genocide and the associated killing of children, just as long as you get to pick the winner? you can't see a third option where neither side has to destroy the other?
there are bad people who support israel, as has been pointed out in this thread many times. there are also bad people who support the palestinians. why are you so afraid of trying to understand what's really happening?
tammuz is an anonymous account. you have anonymous accounts. a palestinian killed a 3-month old israeli just last month after driving his car into a public train station.
you're saying i don't understand the meaning behind other people's words because i take them at face value rather than trying to insert my own biases to confirm my own emotional predispositions?
i don't need to confirm my predispositions. if you and tammuz were able to present a clear picture of the problems israel and palestine were facing, i would have no problem changing my opinion. that's what makes me 'right' - the ability to stop being wrong when i find out i made a mistake. i can freely admit i make a lot of mistakes too, so i have practice. as it is, you are apparently unable to accept that both sides have done bad things, and those bad things have played a significant role in creating the inability to compromise between both sides.
the racist actions presented by driko should be condemned, regardless of race or religion. instead of condemning that behavior, why are you hiding it under a moniker of 'hasbara?' if i'm supporting baby killers, then aren't you supporting nazis? or should we try being honest with each other and cut the bullshit?
this thread would be about 6 posts long if the 'irrelevancies and hate' were removed.
Yeah i was just trying to show its really easy showing points for the other side. Its kind of annoying that this thread has been going on for so long. this thread has little to nothing to do with architecture.
why would i support nazis? they are baby killers too. (and as nazis don't represent all the germans, israeli government does not represent all the israelis.)
there is one callous mistake of your arguments kurt which is inability and/or insistence to not comparing apples to apples. it is important to keep things separate in order to assess.
just when i did yet another attempt to introduce the human and cultural aspects of the palestinian cause via the london film festival, somebody had to register a new name in order to ruin the course and the tone. you guys are impossible. why do you come to this thread and then say it is bad and/or not architectural?
the palestinians are also baby killers. you could take the Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing as an example, which is bold and includes capital letters because i just copied it from wikipedia after a quick google search, similar to the copy/paste method tammuz uses in this thread.
i understand why you think israel kills babies; because they do. i don't understand why you think that makes them worse than palestinians, who have committed terroist attacks against civilian targets such as the one i mention here, and killed babies. is it simply a question of numbers? since isreal killed more palestinians since the blockade, that makes them 'baby killers,' but when palestinians kill babies, that's somehow not a problem worth mentioning? how about an apples to apples comparison. hamas is labeled a terrorist organization because they commit acts of terror. giving them more power and ability to commit acts of terror has a downside worth considering.
the blockade and harsh israeli policies, which i agree are wrong, were created because of the attacks palestinians committed against isreal. it's likely that palestinians haven't hurt as many israelis recently because of those policies. if you want a fair comparison, you can't look at one without the other.
What are you doing against "wrong" Israeli policies? I am boycotting. Are you going to at least be critical of them? Are you going to peacefully boycott? I'm not a Hamas supporter either but I will maintain my position of boycotting Israel as long as they keep punishing Palestinians as they have been.
when i tried to engage in dialogue with you and tammuz (tammuz more than you) what i took away is that he wants to destroy the nation and people of isreal because he doesn't think they have a right to exist, and apparently he thinks he has the right to decide who does and does not get the right to exist. that's what i understand of the boycott, as has been presented here, and i haven't seen it presented anywhere else.
i would like to see a peaceful solution between isreal and palestine where both sides are allowed to live freely and not in fear of the other. while that may be impossible, it is for me the only allowable solution. so what i'm going to do is point out that the history of the conflict as portrayed in this thread is not accurate and not helpful towards brokering a peace deal. isreal is not going to accept it's destruction and hand over it's country to hamas, or any other palestinian government, simply because tammuz thinks people born with light skin are colonialists.
hating isreal will not help bring peace to the region, no matter how much tammuz wants to hate them. a thread with 30 pages of reasons why we should hate israel is not going to bring peace. understanding what's actually happened in the conflict that led to the problems they're currently facing might be a good start.
instead of ignorance, i would like to see an honest and educated appraisal of the situation that isn't biased to support the people you want to win. surely as an academic you should be able to appreciate that position?
Israel and its supporters are always keen to assert two points to the international community when defending the reputation of the Zionist state. First, they like to boast that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Second, since the unilateral withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 they insist that Israel is no longer an occupying power controlling the lives of the almost two million Palestinians who live there.
Both these claims are blatant lies and were exposed earlier this week by Israel's words and deeds. The latter included the banning from Gaza of heroic Norwegian surgeon Dr Mads Gilbert, who has toiled around the clock in Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital during a number of Israel's military assaults, including this summer's war when the Strip was blitzed daily by the unrelenting Zionist "defence" forces. Many Palestinian men, women and children owe their lives to his dedication.
On this occasion the lies came tumbling out of the mouth of Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson, who attempted some character assassination by asserting that Dr Gilbert is "not on the side of decency and peace." Speaking to the Independent's Jerusalem correspondent, he added: "He's got a horrible track record. I wouldn't be surprised if his acquaintances are among the worst people in the world."
In short, though, Dr Mads Gilbert has been banned from Palestinian land because he exercised his right to free speech. Isn't free speech a trademark of the kind of democracy that Israel claims to be? If the Zionist state cannot take constructive criticism from a man whose only crime is that he cares about saving lives, then how can it call itself a fully-fledged democracy? The democracy alongside Israel is called Gaza and the West Bank; the voters there, particularly in the Gaza Strip, have been punished collectively for the past 8 years simply for exercising their own democratic right to choose a leadership not to the liking of Tel Aviv.
If Israel really is no longer an occupying power in Gaza (and international law says that it is, a fact disputed by Israel), then by what right does it have to "ban" the trauma surgeon from continuing his life-saving work in the coastal territory? Dr Gilbert was blocked from trying to enter Palestinian land via the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing for "security reasons". It is hard to believe this great humanitarian is a threat to the national security of Israel, a state swamped by paranoia and apparently devoid of compassion for anyone, least of all its neighbours in Gaza.
"This is not about me," said Gilbert. "This is about Israel denying the Palestinian people in Gaza international support. To deny professionals from the medical field the right to go to Gaza is another aspect of the collective punishment. They're exercising the siege in an increasingly harsh and brutal way."
The Norwegian government has raised the issue with Israel. Other European allies of the Zionist state have been urged to do the same.
It is true that Mads Gilbert has been an outspoken critic of Israel. However, he is a man who risked his life daily to save the lives of Palestinians; a man who endured much of the 50-day bombardment of the territory by Israel's army, air force and navy; a man whose criticism comes from first-hand knowledge of what it is like to be at the heart of the war zone hell created by the Israeli military. His voice should be heard and listened to.
He has accused Israel of "state terrorism at the highest levels"; his harrowing and graphic accounts of the emergency room in Al-Shifa have moved many to tears, anger and outrage. In one despatch he wrote: "We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping blood-soaked bandages to clear out. The cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas, the leftovers from death – all taken away to be prepared again to be repeated all over."
After the war he travelled across Europe, including Britain, giving his eyewitness account of what was going on in Gaza during the Israeli blitz. It is not difficult to imagine Israeli officials in Tel Aviv and their supporters overseas squirming as the details of the injuries inflicted on innocent civilians by Israeli munitions were made public by the Norwegian surgeon. These were not the words of a seasoned pro-Palestine activist but the testimony of a doctor who knows the true value of a single life regardless of faith, race or culture.
If Israel is a real democracy it should not fear freedom of speech, no matter how critical it might be. If it is not an occupying power, as it claims, then it should open up the borders to allow Dr Mads Gilbert and other humanitarians to enter the Gaza Strip when their only objective is to save lives. Which truly compassionate human being can deny them that opportunity?
A young Palestinian boy works on the road which connects Yatta to At-Tuwani.
On Saturday 15.11.14 the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee (a nonviolent Palestinian organisation resisting occupation in the South Hebron Hills region), coordinated an action to develop the road which connects Yatta to At-Tuwani and surrounding villages located in the ‘Firing Zone 918’. Under the watchful eyes of the Israeli military and police, the action was attended by members of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee, residents of At-Tuwani, Israeli peace activists from ‘Ta’ayush’, and internationals from Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and EAPPI.
This unpaved road that runs between villages and the town of Yatta is the access route that Palestinians travel for employment, education, water, healthcare and other basic necessities of life. Surrounded by the tarmacked roads developed by the Israeli state for the settlers living illegally in the area, the rubble and holes in the Palestinian roads are tangible manifestations of the stark inequalities of power which characterise the Israeli occupation, and the specific context of the South Hebron Hills and the Firing Zone 918.
The ‘Firing Zone 918’, in which 8 villages are under threat of eviction, is a microcosm of the war of attrition the Israeli state is waging against Palestinians. Located in ‘Area C’ (under full Israeli control), the fear of forced eviction, constant settler violence and military harassment plague the life of over a thousand Palestinians. The majority of these Palestinians earn their living through farming and herding. The grinding realities of life under occupation, such as a near-total ban on construction as well as myriad restrictions on movement, render ‘living off the land’ a constant struggle.
This Saturday, as construction with tractors and other machines is banned in the area without rarely-given Israeli permits, busy hands set about with buckets and hoes attempting to remove rubble and stones and fill in the many potholes on the road.
A member of the South Hebron Hills Popular committee from At-Tuwani explained that:
“This road serves all the people from Yatta and around… This is a very bad road – the school bus can’t and when people need to bring something by tractor, it is very difficult. This road is also not good if you need to use an ambulance to take people to the hospital. Ten years ago it was an asphalt road, but at the start of the Al Aqsa intifada (in 2002), Israel demolished the road.”
He also said that, “we need to build a channel for rain water…Last year with the snow, all this is closed with water…You need a machine to fix this road but the DCO asks us for a permit, but will not give one to us to use a machine to work here….Now every week we try to fix it with small things, with our hands, before the rain comes.”
The racial politics of occupation are clear in his statement that “if a Palestinian comes alone to work here, the army and the police would arrest him quickly and stop him working, but it helps having international people and cameras to film everything.”
The action was an act of nonviolent resistance to the control Israel asserts over the lives of Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. Despite the slow progress being made with hands, buckets and hoes, six Israeli police and military jeeps arrived. Palestinians were told that the work cannot be carried out without a permit, and a soldier declared such work a supposed ‘health and safety’ hazard.
The irony of such a statement is clear given the ‘health and safety’ hazards of the current state of the road and its implications, not to mention the myriad physical and psychological effects of occupation. Legal issues surrounding the firing zone and the South Hebron Hills are complex, with numerous bureaucratic intricacies through which it is nigh impossible for Palestinians to gain a permit for construction. Members of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee asserted the unlikelihood of gaining such a permit ‘requested’ by the military, and managed to converse with soldiers until the action ended at the time initially planned by the committee
Published Friday 14/11/2014 (updated) 15/11/2014 13:33
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- An 11-year-old Palestinian child shot in the face by a sponge bullet during clashes in al-Issawiya on Thursday has been left blind in one eye, a local official said.
Member of a local neighborhood committee, Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, told Ma'an that Saleh Samer Attiyeh Mahmoud, 11, was shot in the face at close range by Israeli forces firing sponge bullets in al-Issawiya during clashes.
He was hit directly between the eyes, causing severe bleeding to his nose and the loss of sight in his left eye. The vision in his right eye is also severely damaged.
Villagers in the East Jerusalem neighborhood were protesting the closure of three out of four entrances to the village by Israeli forces when the incident took place.
Sponge rounds are made from high-density plastic with a foam-rubber head, and are fired from grenade launchers.
Israeli police have been using them in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem since the use of rubber-coated metal bullets was prohibited, but protocol explicitly prohibits firing them at the upper body.
Saleh Samer Attiyeh Mahmoud, 11, pictured in hospital.
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian bus driver was found hanged to death at a terminal northwest of Jerusalem late Sunday.
Yousuf Hasan al-Ramouni, 32, from al-Tur in East Jerusalem was a driver with Israeli company Egged. He was found hanged inside his bus at the Har Hotzvim terminal near Jerusalem.
Witnesses told Ma'an that other drivers saw al-Ramouni's bus parked in the bus terminal during his working hours. A driver checked inside the bus and found al-Ramouni's body hanging from a steel bar in the middle of the bus.
His colleagues cut the body down and he was taken to Hadassah hospital. Medics at the bus station tried to resuscitate him but he was later pronounced dead.
"According to an initial investigation, it appears there is no suspicion of criminal activity, in other words a suicide," Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement, which said there were "no signs of violence on the body."
But fellow bus driver Muatasem Fakeh said he had seen evidence to the contrary.
"We saw signs of violence on his body," he told AFP.
"He was hanged over the steps at the back of the bus in a place where it would be impossible to hang yourself alone," he added.
The victim's brother, Osama al-Ramouni said the family did not accept the verdict of suicide, saying his body "had bruises on it," suggesting he had been "tortured" before his death.
"My brother had children and was a happy man. It is impossible that he killed himself," he told AFP.
"He had no problems that would make him do it," he said, adding that a post-mortem would "reveal everything."
"We reject the suicide theory. We all know it was settlers who killed him," he said.
Several of al-Ramouni's colleagues went on strike Monday in protest at his death.
An autopsy will be carried out later Monday. Al-Ramouni left behind a widow and two children.
Meanwhile, clashes broke out in the al-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem and Abu Dis following news of his death.
but I disagree that this does not involve even the supposedly insular world of architecture. land theft and building on others' lands, theft of home and environment...all these should deeply involve architects, especially those whose tax money is helping subsidize this (by that, relevant to this site, I largely mean american architects) ...furthermore, the fact that Archinect hosts Israeli firms and universities is a direct support for the cultural and economic promotion of that racist colony and its continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people. Thus, it is not me who made Israel a relevancy here...it is Archinect itself and it is invited to rectify this by boycotting Israeli firms, establishments - academic or commercial, academics, architects, etc. All these underpin the Zionist engine of murder and oppression. All these throw an opaque guise of liberal normalcy around what is really happening, a racist colonialism that should have been snuffed out in the 19th century, where it came from.
. It is exactly as if Archinect were to have supported the apartheid South African regime. It is a shameful position..and if there is no shame felt in it, then it is an inhumane position not fitting for people who claim expertise in a practice centred around providing and maintaining people's homes and sense of belonging...rather than home and land theft, murder, torture.
It appears Israel’s ongoing incitement of Palestinian children has taken a particularly macabre turn. These videos have surfaced of Jerusalem police driving calmly through quiet empty East Jerusalem neighborhoods drenching elementary schools and residences with a putrid liquid with the stench of feces and rotting animal carcass, commonly referenced as “skunk spray”. 972+ has the story. “The skunk water targeted the A-Tur [Mount of Olives neighborhood] elementary school for boys, the elementary and high school for girls, a high school for boys and the ‘Basma’ elementary school for disabled children. All four schools are located on the neighborhood’s main street.”
As a result 4,500 children stayed home from school the following day:
In the A-Tur neighborhood, the police shot skunk water at four large schools, forcing the parents of 4,500 students to leave their children at home due to the unbearable smell. “It was this past Friday, at around 5:30 p.m.,” says Khader Abu Sabitan, a member of the parents’ committee in the neighborhood. “I was on the road and saw them pass with their machine, and saw how they began shooting water at the school. I’m telling you – there was nothing there. It is Friday at 5:30 in the evening, and there was no one in the school or on the streets. Nothing. Everyone was home. They went to all four schools in the neighborhood, shot the water, and left.”
Here’s another video taken in the neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber:
This form of collective punishment seems sadistic. I’m at a loss for a better term. Haggai Matar reports that “words cannot express” the stench, that “gagging is almost inevitable” and that it’s almost impossible to get rid of the smell.
The videos were given to 972+ to support residents’ claims that Jerusalem police had been using the spray routinely and arbitrarily. Evidently the practice of spraying the East Jerusalem neighborhoods has been going on for awhile and a complaint was filed with the police last August by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) . Palestinian residents have been meeting with human rights organizations but many are afraid to come forward and give testimony for fear of retribution. Because the practice is being used routinely, regardless of circumstance, the residence are at a loss as to how to respond.
The police claim that spraying the schools and homes is used according to regulations. Inquiries have been made seeking an explanation what those regulations are but the police have refused to tell them. Mater reports “ACRI has attempted to force the police to publish the regulations vis-a-vis the skunk” and that 972+ has also made inquires with the police and plan on publishing their response.
tammuz you are right. as we are talking about lost young lives, maimed bodies, blown up mothers, stolen lands a ruined society imprisoned in their ancestral land, forced to live without basic amenities and jobs, summary accused of terrorism, held captive without trial, etc., etc.. and this person has an audacity and cold emptiness inside to ask me if my computer has any israeli parts in it. he has no trace of that jewish brilliance and humanity in him. he is just riding the train of barbaric practices, government of apartheid and land thieves. he is no jew as i know jews. he is a scumbag and most of my jewish friends and relatives would hit him on the head with their i-pads.
Orhan, you're claiming that you're boycotting and I was just asking to what extent you're adhering to that boycott. Predictably, when confronted with facts, you launch a personal attack on me. Someone mentioned this earlier, but you utterly lack the traits of an actual academic.
It's alarming that you think my fellow Jews would beat me with electronics in light of my views. I disagree -- when I've shared my views with fellow Jews, none have threatened to beat me with iPads. You seem vindictive.
while we are on the topic of maimed bodies, do you have any thoughts of the maimed bodies of Jews who were killed in their Jerusalem (al Quds) synagogue today, by Palestinian men wielding axes?
Or are they just collateral deaths in Hamas's call to resistance?
yes i do have thoughts on that. it is awful. i don't condone violence. but what did you expect? this has been provoked for few weeks now in the west bank where the government threatening the holy muslim sites, blocking access and killing, injuring, blinding, arresting palestinians. what i feel is bit more human than most of you who donned stone faces regardless of little children killed by the hundreds not too long ago. and, my worry now is yet another carnage by israeli prime minister, the butcher, promising to come down heavy handed. we all know what that means. simply google gaza.
.. and.., neatly closed the subject blaming hamas for the death of almost 3000 people, many of them innocent children, their mothers and elderly. some even praying in the mosques and waiting for care in hospitals or taking refuge in united nation schools.
Likewise, the fact that Hamas has celebrated this unprovoked attack speaks volumes about them.
ill add as an aside that the Temple Mount is a holy site for Jews. Right now, the Israeli government is closing off the site to both Jews and Muslims equally because of tensions. Muslim Palestinian leadership had been calling for violence because of a right wing Jewish push for access to the site. While I don't agree with right wingers, don't you think there's an international double standard when Muslims say that Jews will defile the Temple Mount whereas Muslims have free access to other parts of the city?
That you somehow think the murders were justified because of the recent events on the Temple Mount reflects your own bias.
Violence will continue until its very raison d'être is eliminated…and that would be precisely the Zionist occupation of Palestine and its practice of every form of violation against the Palestinians from the individual scale to the communal one, from the everyday racist through the bureaucratic to the existential. There is nothing sporadic or reactive about Zionist's racist and murderous policy in Palestinian and in the middle east. It is an organized, rationalized policy of ethnic cleansing whose intention predates every Palestinian act of resistance.
. Trying to bring this event up, as these Zionist bots do here, without recourse to context or reason is merely to serve their purpose of showing that there is an irrational display of violence perpetrated against Israelis. This is utter nonsense. This is an expression of violence coming from an oppressed dispossessed people against their far superiorly equipped oppressors.
Yes, there is such a detail and there are others…there are Israelis being killed and there are 10 times this number being killed of the Palestinians. This will not end until Zionism is extinguished as another vestige of racist colonialism.
As if on cue, along comes Tammuz, justifying cold blooded murder with a meat cleaver., calling Israel a racist entity that must come to an end.
you know what's racist? Hamas calling for the extermination of Jews (an ethnicity and religious group). Hamas celebrating the murder that occurred this morning through public pronouncements. People dancing in the street, throwing out candies for the murder of people at prayer. That's racist.
To even place Israel's actions on the same moral plane as what happened today is to ignore FACTS that you find so abhorrent.
To quote from a New York Times commenters about the summer's conflict (someone was accusing the IDF of having committed "mass murder" after the summer's conflict)
"Actually it wasn't mass murder. It was a military response to a military attack, thousands of rockets aimed at civilians. A large proportion of the deaths in Gaza were caused by Hamas munitions that fell short, because they're slipshod missiles. Hamas brought that condition on itself, fired missiles from schools and hospitals, sent people into buildings that were about to be bombed, broke several cease fires in a row, executed Palestinians out of paranoia, and basically did everything they could to maximize the Palestinian death toll.
So that 'mass murder' was created and sustained entirely by Hamas, and is thus entirely their fault.."
The New York Times has a thorough piece of reporting up this morning on the Palestinian attack on a West Jerusalem synagogue that killed four Jews. But you have to get well into paragraph 13 to learn this:
But there were celebrations after the attack in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, and other Palestinian leaders praised the attack as a response to what they see as a threat to the holy site [the Al Aqsa mosque], and to the recent death of a Palestinian bus driver in Jerusalem. Relatives and friends of the driver, Yousef al-Ramouni, who was found hanged in his bus Sunday night, insisted he had been lynched by Jews, though the Israeli police said an autopsy on Monday ruled that his death was a suicide.
Palestinians are saying that al-Ramouni was lynched. Even Haaretz questions the suicide finding. And al-Ramouni’s death resulted in unrest in East Jerusalem neighborhoods, which have already been clamped down on by Israeli border police. You’d think that a more balanced account would appear in the American newspaper of record. But for the Times, Jewish lives count more than Palestinian ones. This extends to the Times’ lackluster coverage of the persecution of Palestinians in Jerusalem neighborhoods like Silwan and Issawiya.
Abed Rabo Jedua examines damage to his olive trees in the West Bank village of Tuqu; the trees were attacked by Israeli settlers, accompanied by soldiers.
Israelis who attack Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank are seldom investigated thoroughly or punished, according to a new data sheet published by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.
Published on 12 November, the data sheet’s shocking statistics are based on 1,045 Israeli police files opened in the West Bank between 2005 and 2014.
Yesh Din’s statistics do not include occupied East Jerusalem despite how the United Nations considers it part of the West Bank.
The report paints a picture of widespread impunity for Israeli settlers suspected of violent and vandalistic crimes, as well as a consistent pattern of neglect by the Israeli police authorities assigned to investigate such allegations.
According to the report, nearly half (47.4 percent) of all investigative files opened in that time “involve complaints by Palestinians of damage to their property,” such as homes, vehicles, crops and olive trees. Another 34.5 percent “involve complaints of violence by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Another 13.6 percent are complaints related to theft of Palestinian land, and 4.5 percent “include the killing of farm animals, desecration of mosques and cemeteries, discharging of sewage into Palestinian farmland, dumping of waste on land belonging to Palestinians, and other offenses,” the report notes.
Regarding complaints of “harm caused to Palestinians and their property,” the Israeli police issued indictments in a mere 7.4 percent of 970 cases, and from 2013 until this year, only two files led to indictments.
Settler violence
Settler violence is a daily reality for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation across the West Bank. And as Israeli settlements continue to expand, settler violence continues without pause.
Yesh Din’s fact sheet reports, “Violent incidents include instances of shooting, beatings, stone throwing, assault with clubs, knives and rifle butts, running Palestinians over with a vehicle, as well as threats of assault or harm and other offenses.”
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 125 Jewish-only settlements provide residence to more than 325,000 Israelis in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem).
There are also more than one hundred “outpost” colonies, which, despite being considered illegal even by Israel, are protected by the Israeli military and receive government funding.
“In offenses involving violence, 83.3 percent of the files in which the investigation was completed and the outcome is known to Yesh Din were closed in circumstances suggesting investigative failure,” the Yesh Din fact sheet notes.
The group adds that most investigative files were closed “on the grounds of ‘offender unknown’ or ‘insufficient information.’”
“Price tag” attacks
Attacks on Palestinian property and holy places are often referred to as “price tag” attacks, which occur on both sides of the so-called Green Line dividing the West Bank from present-day Israel.
On 12 November, Israeli settlers torched a mosque in the Ramallah area village of al-Mughayir. The attackers are believed to have come from the nearby settlement of Shilo, according to an Al Jazeera English report published the same day.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the arson attack in al-Mughayir “brings to ten the number of Muslim houses of worship in Israel and the [occupied] territories that have been targeted in arson attacks in less than three and a half years. No one has been charged in any of these incidents.”
In October 2013, Israeli settlers set ablaze a mosque in the West Bank village of Burqa, also near Ramallah, and vandalized three cars belonging to local Palestinians, as The Electronic Intifada reported at the time.
More common, however, are Israeli attacks on Palestinian olive trees, a staple of livelihood in the West Bank and elsewhere.
According to Yesh Din, “vandalism of olive trees and other fruit trees severely damages property owned by Palestinians and directly harms their welfare, as most of the Palestinian population of the West Bank relies on farming as a significant source of income, predominantly olives which supply income and jobs for roughly 100,000 households.”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also reported that “around 10,700 Palestinian-owned trees, including saplings, were cut down or otherwise damaged by Israeli settlers across the West Bank” in 2013.
Jerusalem left out
Yet by leaving out East Jerusalem, the Yesh Din fact sheet only provides a partial picture of the widespread lack of accountability for Israelis who attack Palestinians. Like elsewhere, settler violence, police harassment and systematic neglect is part and parcel to Palestinian life under Israeli occupation in Jerusalem.
The Israeli authorities and settlers have recently escalated an already suffocating atmosphere of siege imposed on Palestinians in Jerusalem.
On 16 November, a Palestinian bus driver was found hanged from a steel bar inside his bus in Jerusalem. Though Israeli occupation authorities claim it was a suicide and that an investigation is ongoing, 32-year-old Yusef al-Ramouni’s family suspect settlers are behind his death.
“We reject the suicide theory. We all know it was settlers who killed him,” Osama al-Ramouni, the victim’s brother, told AFP. “He had no problems that would make him [commit suicide].”
Back in July, a group of Israeli settlers kidnapped, tortured and murdered sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair in Jerusalem. The subsequent autopsy suggested that the child had been forced to drink gasoline before being burned alive.
Though six Israelis were arrested as suspects, The Electronic Intifada reported at the time that three were subsequently released. Given Israel’s long track record of impunity for settler violence, few have faith in a just investigation.
Aminah Abdulhaq, lawyer and advocacy officer for the Jerusalemites Campaign, a group that campaigns for Palestinian rights in that city, said that Palestinians in Jerusalem “are at a particular disadvantage.”
“The police force that is meant to handle legal disputes and crimes are part of the very entity that is occupying their land,” she told The Electronic Intifada by email.
“Because of this, few Jerusalemites have any trust in the police,” Abdulhaq explained. “Most go out of their way to avoid interacting with them, and those that are compelled to report harassment or attacks from Israelis rarely see their assailants charged.”
Well, at least that Zionist bot didn't deny that Israel is a Zionist occupation of Palestine but actually firms it suchlike:
I say: "Violence will continue until its very raison d'être is eliminated…and that would be precisely the Zionist occupation of Palestine and its practice of every form of violation against the Palestinians from the individual scale to the communal one, from the everyday racist through the bureaucratic to the existential. "
It say: " As if on cue, along comes Tammuz, justifying cold blooded murder with a meat cleaver., calling Israel a racist entity that must come to an end."
Although, yes, I believe that Israel as a Zionist regime should be dismantled and ended ...I did not explicitly say "as if on cue" that "Israel [is] a racist entity that must come to an end"...although yes I totally agree with that statement, but I did not say it. What is telling here is: Whatever else I said or meant in others posts, The Zionist bot here is itself making the substitution of terms and accepting to equate Zionist occupation of Palestine with Israel.
In a stunning five minute statement read on state television late Friday, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, leader of Israel’s oldest and most implacable foe, called the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza a “collective massacre” caused by Hamas.
It is just the latest signal in a tectonic shift in Middle East geopolitics that has been largely overlooked by Western media seemingly still committed to building upon its decades-old narrative that Israel remains the united enemy of the Arab world.
In the 75 year history of conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East, no state has been more consistently intransigent against the very notion of a sovereign Jewish presence in the region than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded by Abdullah’s grandfather, Ibn Saud, in 1923.
Just weeks ago, before Hamas’ current war against Israel, it would have unthinkable to suggest that a Saudi King would even hint that any entity other than Israel bore any responsibilities for actions perceived as harmful to Palestinians.
Abdullah’s statement, read by a news anchor on behalf of the ailing 90-year old Monarch, that the violence in Gaza has led to “various forms” of terrorism, whether from groups, organizations, or states, is seen in the Middle East and Arab states as a flat-out repudiationof Hamas.
Perhaps even more remarkable, while King Abdullah condemned the consequences of a war he termed “devastating” to Palestinians, he issued no demands upon Israel.
As has been pointed out numerous times by Breitbart contributors, Saudi Arabia’s now open disavowal of any common cause with Hamas reinforces an emerging and wholly improbable new alliance uniting every Arab state save Qatar together with Israel and against the United States.
As remarkable as was King Abdullah’s statement by itself, it pales in comparison with the transformation of the relationship between Egypt and Israel. From cold no-belligerents under President Mubarak, to near antagonists under the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi, today Israel and Egypt are tightly cleaved military allies.
In the harshest words ever used by a Saudi King to condemn any Palestinian “resistance” to what is routinely called “Zionist aggression,” King Abdullah’s statement said, “It is shameful and disgraceful that these terrorists are doing this in the name of religion, killing the people whose killing Allah has forbidden, and mutilating their bodies and feeling proud in publishing this.”
The king went on to say of Hamas’ war against Israel, “They have distorted the image of Islam with its purity and humanity and smeared it with all sorts of bad qualities by their actions, injustice and crimes.”
Unlike President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, the guardian of Islam’s holy places and thus the putative leader of the entire Muslim world, King Abdullah did not call upon Israel to meet any Hamas demands. He made no calls for “opening up border passages” between Gaza and Israel/Egypt-- thought by many to be the primary strategic objective of Hamas’ war.
He issued no demands that Hamas be permitted to build a seaport, let alone that Israel and Egypt be required to help fund it. Nor did he petition Israel or the Palestinian Authority to resume cash payments to the more than 44,000 Hamas "civil servants" in Gaza rendered jobless as a result of the recent PA-Hamas unity government agreement.
Jewish Voice for Peace statement on the escalating situation in Jerusalem
Submitted by Naomi Dann on Tue, 11/18/2014 - 10:12am
Jewish Voice for Peace is deeply alarmed at the crisis building in Jerusalem over the last several weeks as terrible violence mounts. We mourn all the lives that have been lost, both Palestinian and Israeli. Early this morning, four Jews at prayer were brutally murdered in a Jerusalem synagogue and on Sunday a Palestinian bus driver was likely lynched.
We call on the Israeli government and its supporters to cease further calls to incitement and collective punishment. The international community must bring pressure to bear on the root causes of ongoing violence. Israel’s continual system of occupation, dispossession, and discrimination against Palestinians by its very nature puts the lives and dignity of all people in Israel and Palestine in jeopardy.
The Israeli government continues to escalate state violence against Palestinians, as well as enabling increasingly aggressive actions of settlers. In Abu Dis, Issawiya, and Silwan, to name just three neighborhoods, mobility is severely restricted, and residents are subject to collective punishment as homes and schools are covered in skunk water, which makes them almost unbearable to enter. Last week a mosque and holy Qur’ans were torched in the West Bank village of Al Mughayir by Jewish individuals. The Israeli government continues to declare its intention to build more settlements; the Third Temple Movement, backed by government ministers, continues its provocations at the Temple Mount; laws that mandate 20 year sentences for stone-throwing and to declare Israel a Jewish nation-state, and threats to withdraw the citizenship of Palestinian citizens who protest are being proposed at the highest levels.
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s declared intention to further entrench Israeli control over all of Israel/Palestine and pursue the collective punishment of Palestinians will bring neither peace nor quiet. Palestinians, whether inside Israel, in East Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza, face a future of continued inequality, discrimination, home demolitions, land expropriation, and military violence. A true and just peace for both peoples will only come when Israel is willing to commit to equality, freedom and justice for all people.
Archinect, please boycott Israel (its about time!)
Clashes as Israeli forces detain 27 across Jerusalem and West Bank
Published today (updated) 13/11/2014 20:23
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces arrested 27 Palestinians across East Jerusalem and the West Bank overnight, while clashes erupted again in the flashpoint Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Issawiya.
Israeli authorities conducted detention raids in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Silwan, al-Tur, al-Suwwana, and Jabal al-Mukabbir early Thursday, arresting nine Palestinians.
A lawyer for the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Muhammad Mahmoud, identified the detainees as Hiba Makiyyeh, Muhammad Abu Lafi, Muammar Abu al-Hawa, Ramzi Ibrahim, Fadi Nasser Eweisat and his brother Shadi Nasser Eweisat, Muayyad Eweisat, Musallam Odeh, Hamza Ahmad Abbasi, and ex-prisoner Ihab Hamdan.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society, meanwhile, said that Wajih Makih was also detained in the raids.
The arrests come amid months of raging tensions and clashes in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians have protested widely against a massive Israeli arrest campaign and the Israeli assault on Gaza over summer, which left nearly 2,200 Palestinians dead.
In recent weeks a spate of individual attacks on Jewish settlers in the area have led to harsh reprisals against the 260,000-strong Palestinian community in the city, inflaming tensions further.
These reprisals have included checkpoints and barriers against movement in and around Palestinian neighborhoods, which are heavily segregated and separated by Jewish settlements built in the hills above and between them.
On Thursday, Palestinian residents of the village of al-Issawiya protested against the Israeli authorities' recent decision to shut the main entrance to the village with cement blocks.
Although the neighborhood is located directly beside the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, the cement blocks placed by police at the top of the village has led to major headaches for local residents.
Local activist Muhammad Abu al-Hummus said on Thursday that villagers protested the closure by blocking the eastern entrance of the village.
He said that Israeli soldiers had shut the main entrance to the village three times during the last two months, and the southern entrance to the village has been closed for three months.
Abu al-Hummus said that dozens of students, teachers, and workers gathered at the entrances of al-Issawiya demanding Israeli forces to open the closed entrance.
He added that clashes erupted at the eastern entrance between youths and Israeli soldiers. Dozens of locals suffered severe suffocation as soldiers fired tear-gas grenades at the crowds and leashed police dogs on them.
Abu al-Hummus said that Israeli forces are deployed daily on the eastern entrance of the village, detaining residents and searching cars.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an that the protesters had "rioted" and "thrown stones and petrol bombs at police, who dispersed them with stun grenades."
He added that no injuries nor arrests were reported.
Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as "residents" whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.
They face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and are unable to access services in the West Bank due to the construction of Israel's separation wall.
East Jerusalem is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory, but Israel occupied it in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never considered legitimate abroad.
18 detained across the West Bank
Also on Thursday, Israeli forces engaged in home raids across the West Bank, arresting 18 people.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the arrests, saying 15 were "suspected of involvement in terror and violent riots," while three were suspected of "involvement in illegal activities."
The spokeswoman said that three of the Palestinians detained overnight were "Hamas operatives," including two individuals taken from a village she called "Khirbat Bneizi" northwest of Ramallah as well one from Sair, southwest of Bethlehem.
Of the remaining Palestinian detained overnight, she said that three were taken from homes in Beit Lid near Nablus, one from Anabta east of Tulkaram, one from Rafidia northwest of Nablus, one from Beit Liqia southwest of Ramallah, four from Deir Ballut, three from Hizma southeast of Ramallah, and two from al-Rihiya, south of Hebron.
Of those arrests, Ma'an was able to independently verify 10 of the detainees.
Palestinian security sources confirmed to Ma'an that Israeli forces raided the village of Deir Ballut and detained Wahbi Kayid Judeh, 23, Sami Abdullah, 17, Daoud Khalid Abdullah, 26, and Tariq Rashid Abu Kheir, 23.
In the Bethlehem governorate in the southern West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli forces detained Fouad Omar Salah, 20, from the village of al-Khader and took him to the nearby Etzion detention center for interrogation on Thursday.
Muhammad Salah, Fouad's brother, told Ma'an that Israeli forces raided their home around 1:00 a.m. and detained his brother after they had "wrecked" the home during the raid.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society meanwhile confirmed that in the overnight raids Alaa Muhammad Kayid Nana, Abdullah Tubasi, and Aydah Jabarin were detained from Hebron.
Fifteen-year-old Anas Ismail Moussa was detained from Bethlehem, the group confirmed, while Musallam Nasser Sawalhi, 17, was detained from Beituniya.
More than 5,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including hundreds without charge or trial.
Some of the trashiest people of Hollywood in support of children killing IDF.
http://variety.com/2014/scene/news/haim-sabans-friends-of-the-israel-defense-forces-gala-raises-record-33-million-1201350950/
.
PHOTOS: Palestinians build a bridge over the separation wall
The non-violent direct action is in protest of restrictions on access to the Aqsa Mosque that Israel places on Palestinian worshipers from the West Bank.
Palestinians and international activists use make-shift bridges to cross the separation wall between Qalandiya and Jerusalem, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Some 50 Palestinian and international activists used two make-shift bridges to cross the separation wall between Qalandiya and northern Jerusalem Friday morning. They also cut razor wire adjacent to the wall.
The non-violent direct action was in protest of the restrictions on access to the Aqsa Mosque that Israel places on Palestinians from the West Bank.
Separately, following a tripartite meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah about tensions on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem, Israel Police announced that it was suspending the ban on worshippers under the age of 50.
That change, however, will not affect the ability of West Bank Palestinians to reach the Old City of Jerusalem, where the mosque is located. Decisions to grant entry permits for West Bank residents are made by the army and Shin Bet.
Palestinians and international activists use make-shift bridges to cross the separation wall between Qalandiya and Jerusalem, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinians and international activists cut razor wire after crossing the separation wall between Qalandiya and Jerusalem, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
At the Hizme checkpoint, used by West Bank settlers to commute to Jerusalem, Palestinians attempted to march toward the holy city. They blocked Israeli traffic and were eventually dispersed by soldiers and police.
Palestinians attempt to march to Jerusalem through the Hizme checkpoint, blocking traffic and protesting against restrictions Israel places on Palestinians trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque in the holy city, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinians attempt to march to Jerusalem through the Hizme checkpoint, blocking traffic and protesting against restrictions Israel places on Palestinians trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque in the holy city, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinians attempt to march to Jerusalem through the Hizme checkpoint, blocking traffic and protesting against restrictions Israel places on Palestinians trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque in the holy city, November 14, 2014. (Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
So, if Malala was a Palestinian girl shot by Israel, would the Western world/media have lauded her? That rhetorical question says as much about how Malala is being used for a particular purpose within a particular rhetoric as much as about how all the targeted Palestinian kids, and indeed adults, (targeted for their very Palestinianness) are being completely ignored to do disservice to a rising rhetoric exposing the apartheid racist colony that calls itself Israel and the hypocrisy of its supporters
......................................................................................................
Israeli forces shoot 10-year-old Palestinian in the head in Shufat
Published yesterday (updated) 15/11/2014 13:33
Israeli police officers look at Palestinian boys leaning against a section of the
controversial Israeli barrier during clashes in Jerusalem refugee camp Shufat
on Dec. 11, 2011. (Retuers/Ronen Zvulun)
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian child was severely injured after Israeli forces opened fire on a car she was traveling in with family near the Shufat refugee camp checkpoint on Friday.
The shooting comes on a day of clashes with Israeli forces across the West Bank and follows the blinding of an 11-year-old Palestinian boy the day before in clashes in the nearby East Jerusalem village of al-Issawiya.
Mayar Amran Twafic al-Natsheh, 10, was riding in her grandfather's car with her mother, grandfather, and her sibling when a rubber-coated steel bullet smashed through the car's window and hit her in the face.
She was taken Hadassah hospital near al-Issawiya and medical sources said she suffered a fractured skull as a result of the attack.
Mayar's father is currently being detained by Israeli forces.
An Israeli police spokesman said he did not have any information about the incident.
The incident occurred at the Shufat refugee camp checkpoint, which is the only link between the East Jerusalem neighborhood and Jerusalem proper due to the Israeli separation's walls path around the area, which divides it from nearby Jewish settlements as well as other Palestinian neighborhoods.
The shooting comes only a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Jordan to ease tensions in Jerusalem, which has become the site of daily protests across the city's Palestinian neighborhoods that Israeli forces have repressed with dozens of casualties.
The incidents have come amid rising anger and tensions in Jerusalem over an Israeli offensive on Gaza that left nearly 2,200 dead over summer as well as an arrest campaign in the city itself that left hundreds of Hamas-related individuals as well as many protesters in prison.
Although Palestinians in East Jerusalem live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as "residents" whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.
Jerusalem Palestinians face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and are unable to access services in the West Bank due to the construction of Israel's separation wall.
Palestinian officials have repeatedly placed the blame for the violence on Israeli leaders, who have occupied East Jerusalem since 1967.
"Mr. Netanyahu and his extremist government coalition continue to refuse the minimum requirements for peace, including acceptance of the two-state solution. Instead of pursuing peace, his government systematically violates international law in order to consolidate its Apartheid regime in Palestine," top PLO official Saeb Erekat said in a statement in late October, in response to Israeli accusations that Palestinian officials were to blame for "inciting" violence.
"We regret all loss of life. At the same time we reiterate that the Israeli occupation of Palestine remains the main source of violence and instability in the region. Palestinian citizens continue to be oppressed, imprisoned, injured and killed by the occupation forces, with impunity and the full backing of the Israeli government," he added.
Since occupying Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli authorities have pursued a deliberate policy of Judaization, which limits the distribution of building permits to Palestinian residents while constructing large numbers of housing units for Jewish Israelis.
The policy has also entailed the erection of checkpoints and other barriers to movement intended to separate Jerusalem from the West Bank and integrate it into Israel proper.
VIDEO: Palestinian and international activists cross makeshift bridges over the separation wall
in Photo Story, Ramallah, Reports, Video November 16, 2014
14th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Ramallah, Occupied Palestine
Friday morning around 50 Palestinian and international activists used makeshift bridges to cross the Apartheid wall between Qalandiya and Northern Jerusalem. This non-violent direct action was in response to the restrictions Israel had placed on Palestinian worshippers wishing to access Al-Aqsa Mosque in the past months.
Activists scaled the wall one by one at around 10 am yesterday morning. Only a few hundred meters from an Israeli settlement, the activists then set about cutting through a barbed-wire fence that had been placed close to the Apartheid wall.
Once all the activists breached the wall, the group cheered and proudly waved Palestinian flags. The action finished peacefully around 11am with no arrests. This non-violent direct action was part of a campaign entitled #On2Jerusalem and it was organized by local Palestinian popular resistance committees to show solidarity with the people of Jerusalem.
Another action that was part of the #On2Jerusalem campaign occurred after where Palestinian and international activists attempted to march toward Jerusalem through Hizme checkpoint. The activists blocked Israeli traffic, waved Palestinian flags and sang pro-Palestine chants. Many of those present wore T-shirts with pictures of Al-Aqsa mosque with the text, “I am Palestinian under 50.” This text referred to the restrictions placed on Palestinian male worshippers under 50 in regards to entering the Al-Aqsa compound. Right away, the activists were met by heavy Israeli military and police presence and were therefore prevented from crossing through Hizme.
The Israeli forces shouted and pushed activists as well as journalists on several occasions and soon after Israeli forces shot a barrage of stun grenades towards the activists and press forcing them to disperse. After violently pushing two international activists carrying a large Palestinian flag, Israeli forces ended up confiscating the flag from them. One of these international activists stated, “We found ourselves holding the Palestinian flag near a group of soldiers. One soldier in front of us tore up a small Palestinian flag in front of us. Afterwards he tried to take the big flag from us. When we wouldn’t let him more soldiers helped him, we were suddenly surrounded by soldiers grabbing and pushing us, and forcing the flag out of our hands.”
Later that day and as part of the#On2Jerusalem actions, activists joined locals at Qalandiya checkpoint where clashes had been taking place for most of the morning. Israeli forces used excessive force shooting dozens of tear gas canisters and grenades in addition to stun grenades at demonstrators. Despite the Israeli army’s aggression, the non-violent demonstrators which were a few hundred in number loudly shouted pro-Palestine chants and waved flags. At one point a demonstrator was able to climb a military lookout post to hang a Palestinian flag on the top.
Photos by Jesse Roberts
Activists cut barbed-wire fence after climbing over apartheid wall
Five Injured, Three Kidnapped, In Silwad Near Ramallah
Five Palestinians have been injured, on Friday evening, and three others kidnapped by Israeli soldiers who invaded Silwad town, east of the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Dozens of residents suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.
Local sources said that the soldiers invaded the Silwad through its western entrance and clashed with dozens of local youth.
The soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets, concussion grenades and gas bombs. Five residents were injured by rubber-coated metal bullets; many suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.
The soldiers also kidnapped three teenagers identified as Ahmad Hatem Hamed, 19, Ra’fat Radwan Hamed, 18, and Assef Omar Hamed, 18.
Soldiers detonated the front doors of the homes of the kidnapped Palestinians, and also detonated the main gate of a local kindergarten before violently searching the grounds, causing excessive property damage.
Qalqiliya demolition orders could leave dozens homeless
Published today (updated) 16/11/2014 19:50
(MaanImages/file)
QALQILIYA (Ma'an) -- Israeli authorities delivered demolition orders to five Palestinian families in the northern West Bank village of Hajja east of Qalqiliya on Sunday morning.
Local sources told Ma'an that Israeli forces "stormed" the village and delivered the orders to five local families.
Locals said that authorities are claiming that the families have built their homes without licenses, and thus intend to demolish them, potentially leaving dozens of family members homeless.
The houses slated for demolition belong to locals Yusuf Omar Ahmad Hilal, Samir Omar Ahmad Hilal, Ibrahim Hilal Ahmad Hilal, Bilal Nur al-Deen Masalha, and Nitham Hussein Masalha.
Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people so far in 2014, according to UNOCHA.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank in areas under their control, or about 80 percent of the total land area.
Some 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures have been demolished by Israel since it occupied the West Bank in 1967.
In May, the EU missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah urged Israel to halt home demolitions in Area C of the West Bank, describing such actions as "forced transfer of population and demolitions of Palestinian housing and infrastructure."
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
WELCOME TO THE 2014 LONDON PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL
This year’s festival runs from Friday 28 November through to Thursday 11 December. In all, 22 screenings, director talks, and panel discussions are scheduled. These take place at the Barbican Cinema as well as University of London venues and will feature more than 40 works of film and video by Palestinian and international artists.
Palestine Film Foundation
tammuz,
thank you for not being a pathetic little apathetic human being! I like the fact that you brought up this subject on a site like Achinect! Architects tend to be very apathetic to anything beyond their little world of architecture!
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/students-for-justice-in-palestine-says-neo-nazis-are-right-about-jews/
http://jpupdates.com/2014/08/06/bondy-beach-sydney-jewish-children-bus-attacked-drunk-pro-palestinian-thugs/
http://forward.com/articles/207067/jewish-leader-attacked-at-brooklyn-nets-game-after/
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/05/11/for-it-msa-student-confesses-she-wants-a-second-holocaust/
Driko, another first time poster, possibly reincarnation of another hasbara who changes anonymous names each time gets a raise and earns a living on irrelevancies and hate as depicted below.
Students for Justice in Palestine Says Neo-Nazis are Right about Jews >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
Bondy Beach, Sydney – Jewish Children Bus Attacked By Drunk Pro-Palestinian Thugs >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
Jewish Leader Attacked at Brooklyn Nets Game After Palestinian Flag-Grab Incident >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
“For It”: MSA Student Confesses She Wants a Second Holocaust >>> so, kill the Palestinians in Gaza (children included)
i don't think he was saying 'kill the palestinians' i hope not anyway.
is your whole notion of the situation that genocide has to happen on one side, and you're simply picking the team you want to win? so you support genocide and the associated killing of children, just as long as you get to pick the winner? you can't see a third option where neither side has to destroy the other?
there are bad people who support israel, as has been pointed out in this thread many times. there are also bad people who support the palestinians. why are you so afraid of trying to understand what's really happening?
tammuz is an anonymous account. you have anonymous accounts. a palestinian killed a 3-month old israeli just last month after driving his car into a public train station.
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528
sure you are "right" again. but you still need better reading skills. because you keep missing the meaning behind words.
you're saying i don't understand the meaning behind other people's words because i take them at face value rather than trying to insert my own biases to confirm my own emotional predispositions?
i don't need to confirm my predispositions. if you and tammuz were able to present a clear picture of the problems israel and palestine were facing, i would have no problem changing my opinion. that's what makes me 'right' - the ability to stop being wrong when i find out i made a mistake. i can freely admit i make a lot of mistakes too, so i have practice. as it is, you are apparently unable to accept that both sides have done bad things, and those bad things have played a significant role in creating the inability to compromise between both sides.
the racist actions presented by driko should be condemned, regardless of race or religion. instead of condemning that behavior, why are you hiding it under a moniker of 'hasbara?' if i'm supporting baby killers, then aren't you supporting nazis? or should we try being honest with each other and cut the bullshit?
this thread would be about 6 posts long if the 'irrelevancies and hate' were removed.
Yeah i was just trying to show its really easy showing points for the other side. Its kind of annoying that this thread has been going on for so long. this thread has little to nothing to do with architecture.
why would i support nazis? they are baby killers too. (and as nazis don't represent all the germans, israeli government does not represent all the israelis.)
there is one callous mistake of your arguments kurt which is inability and/or insistence to not comparing apples to apples. it is important to keep things separate in order to assess.
just when i did yet another attempt to introduce the human and cultural aspects of the palestinian cause via the london film festival, somebody had to register a new name in order to ruin the course and the tone. you guys are impossible. why do you come to this thread and then say it is bad and/or not architectural?
the palestinians are also baby killers. you could take the Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing as an example, which is bold and includes capital letters because i just copied it from wikipedia after a quick google search, similar to the copy/paste method tammuz uses in this thread.
i understand why you think israel kills babies; because they do. i don't understand why you think that makes them worse than palestinians, who have committed terroist attacks against civilian targets such as the one i mention here, and killed babies. is it simply a question of numbers? since isreal killed more palestinians since the blockade, that makes them 'baby killers,' but when palestinians kill babies, that's somehow not a problem worth mentioning? how about an apples to apples comparison. hamas is labeled a terrorist organization because they commit acts of terror. giving them more power and ability to commit acts of terror has a downside worth considering.
the blockade and harsh israeli policies, which i agree are wrong, were created because of the attacks palestinians committed against isreal. it's likely that palestinians haven't hurt as many israelis recently because of those policies. if you want a fair comparison, you can't look at one without the other.
What are you doing against "wrong" Israeli policies? I am boycotting. Are you going to at least be critical of them? Are you going to peacefully boycott? I'm not a Hamas supporter either but I will maintain my position of boycotting Israel as long as they keep punishing Palestinians as they have been.
i am not boycotting because i don't see the point
when i tried to engage in dialogue with you and tammuz (tammuz more than you) what i took away is that he wants to destroy the nation and people of isreal because he doesn't think they have a right to exist, and apparently he thinks he has the right to decide who does and does not get the right to exist. that's what i understand of the boycott, as has been presented here, and i haven't seen it presented anywhere else.
i would like to see a peaceful solution between isreal and palestine where both sides are allowed to live freely and not in fear of the other. while that may be impossible, it is for me the only allowable solution. so what i'm going to do is point out that the history of the conflict as portrayed in this thread is not accurate and not helpful towards brokering a peace deal. isreal is not going to accept it's destruction and hand over it's country to hamas, or any other palestinian government, simply because tammuz thinks people born with light skin are colonialists.
hating isreal will not help bring peace to the region, no matter how much tammuz wants to hate them. a thread with 30 pages of reasons why we should hate israel is not going to bring peace. understanding what's actually happened in the conflict that led to the problems they're currently facing might be a good start.
instead of ignorance, i would like to see an honest and educated appraisal of the situation that isn't biased to support the people you want to win. surely as an academic you should be able to appreciate that position?
Orhan, have you checked to see if the parts in your computer are Israeli?
my computer is okay. have you checked your conscience?
My conscience is fine. You might want to read this article:
Boycott Israel? Pass me your Apple Mac, please
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/boycott-israel-pass-me-your-apple-mac-please/
Orhan, what conscience? Not everyone comes with one, let alone programmed hasbara bots.
.................
Israel's lies exposed by surgical strike against Mads Gilbert
Yvonne Ridley
Israel and its supporters are always keen to assert two points to the international community when defending the reputation of the Zionist state. First, they like to boast that it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Second, since the unilateral withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 they insist that Israel is no longer an occupying power controlling the lives of the almost two million Palestinians who live there.
Both these claims are blatant lies and were exposed earlier this week by Israel's words and deeds. The latter included the banning from Gaza of heroic Norwegian surgeon Dr Mads Gilbert, who has toiled around the clock in Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital during a number of Israel's military assaults, including this summer's war when the Strip was blitzed daily by the unrelenting Zionist "defence" forces. Many Palestinian men, women and children owe their lives to his dedication.
On this occasion the lies came tumbling out of the mouth of Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson, who attempted some character assassination by asserting that Dr Gilbert is "not on the side of decency and peace." Speaking to the Independent's Jerusalem correspondent, he added: "He's got a horrible track record. I wouldn't be surprised if his acquaintances are among the worst people in the world."
In short, though, Dr Mads Gilbert has been banned from Palestinian land because he exercised his right to free speech. Isn't free speech a trademark of the kind of democracy that Israel claims to be? If the Zionist state cannot take constructive criticism from a man whose only crime is that he cares about saving lives, then how can it call itself a fully-fledged democracy? The democracy alongside Israel is called Gaza and the West Bank; the voters there, particularly in the Gaza Strip, have been punished collectively for the past 8 years simply for exercising their own democratic right to choose a leadership not to the liking of Tel Aviv.
If Israel really is no longer an occupying power in Gaza (and international law says that it is, a fact disputed by Israel), then by what right does it have to "ban" the trauma surgeon from continuing his life-saving work in the coastal territory? Dr Gilbert was blocked from trying to enter Palestinian land via the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing for "security reasons". It is hard to believe this great humanitarian is a threat to the national security of Israel, a state swamped by paranoia and apparently devoid of compassion for anyone, least of all its neighbours in Gaza.
"This is not about me," said Gilbert. "This is about Israel denying the Palestinian people in Gaza international support. To deny professionals from the medical field the right to go to Gaza is another aspect of the collective punishment. They're exercising the siege in an increasingly harsh and brutal way."
The Norwegian government has raised the issue with Israel. Other European allies of the Zionist state have been urged to do the same.
It is true that Mads Gilbert has been an outspoken critic of Israel. However, he is a man who risked his life daily to save the lives of Palestinians; a man who endured much of the 50-day bombardment of the territory by Israel's army, air force and navy; a man whose criticism comes from first-hand knowledge of what it is like to be at the heart of the war zone hell created by the Israeli military. His voice should be heard and listened to.
He has accused Israel of "state terrorism at the highest levels"; his harrowing and graphic accounts of the emergency room in Al-Shifa have moved many to tears, anger and outrage. In one despatch he wrote: "We still have lakes of blood on the floor in the emergency room, piles of dripping blood-soaked bandages to clear out. The cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shovelling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes, cannulas, the leftovers from death – all taken away to be prepared again to be repeated all over."
After the war he travelled across Europe, including Britain, giving his eyewitness account of what was going on in Gaza during the Israeli blitz. It is not difficult to imagine Israeli officials in Tel Aviv and their supporters overseas squirming as the details of the injuries inflicted on innocent civilians by Israeli munitions were made public by the Norwegian surgeon. These were not the words of a seasoned pro-Palestine activist but the testimony of a doctor who knows the true value of a single life regardless of faith, race or culture.
If Israel is a real democracy it should not fear freedom of speech, no matter how critical it might be. If it is not an occupying power, as it claims, then it should open up the borders to allow Dr Mads Gilbert and other humanitarians to enter the Gaza Strip when their only objective is to save lives. Which truly compassionate human being can deny them that opportunity?
Roads to Resistance: Action to Develop Road in South Hebron Hills
Posted on November 16, 2014 by Christian Peacemaker Teams Palestine
A young Palestinian boy works on the road which connects Yatta to At-Tuwani.
On Saturday 15.11.14 the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee (a nonviolent Palestinian organisation resisting occupation in the South Hebron Hills region), coordinated an action to develop the road which connects Yatta to At-Tuwani and surrounding villages located in the ‘Firing Zone 918’. Under the watchful eyes of the Israeli military and police, the action was attended by members of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee, residents of At-Tuwani, Israeli peace activists from ‘Ta’ayush’, and internationals from Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and EAPPI.
This unpaved road that runs between villages and the town of Yatta is the access route that Palestinians travel for employment, education, water, healthcare and other basic necessities of life. Surrounded by the tarmacked roads developed by the Israeli state for the settlers living illegally in the area, the rubble and holes in the Palestinian roads are tangible manifestations of the stark inequalities of power which characterise the Israeli occupation, and the specific context of the South Hebron Hills and the Firing Zone 918.
The ‘Firing Zone 918’, in which 8 villages are under threat of eviction, is a microcosm of the war of attrition the Israeli state is waging against Palestinians. Located in ‘Area C’ (under full Israeli control), the fear of forced eviction, constant settler violence and military harassment plague the life of over a thousand Palestinians. The majority of these Palestinians earn their living through farming and herding. The grinding realities of life under occupation, such as a near-total ban on construction as well as myriad restrictions on movement, render ‘living off the land’ a constant struggle.
This Saturday, as construction with tractors and other machines is banned in the area without rarely-given Israeli permits, busy hands set about with buckets and hoes attempting to remove rubble and stones and fill in the many potholes on the road.
A member of the South Hebron Hills Popular committee from At-Tuwani explained that:
“This road serves all the people from Yatta and around… This is a very bad road – the school bus can’t and when people need to bring something by tractor, it is very difficult. This road is also not good if you need to use an ambulance to take people to the hospital. Ten years ago it was an asphalt road, but at the start of the Al Aqsa intifada (in 2002), Israel demolished the road.”
He also said that, “we need to build a channel for rain water…Last year with the snow, all this is closed with water…You need a machine to fix this road but the DCO asks us for a permit, but will not give one to us to use a machine to work here….Now every week we try to fix it with small things, with our hands, before the rain comes.”
The racial politics of occupation are clear in his statement that “if a Palestinian comes alone to work here, the army and the police would arrest him quickly and stop him working, but it helps having international people and cameras to film everything.”
The action was an act of nonviolent resistance to the control Israel asserts over the lives of Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. Despite the slow progress being made with hands, buckets and hoes, six Israeli police and military jeeps arrived. Palestinians were told that the work cannot be carried out without a permit, and a soldier declared such work a supposed ‘health and safety’ hazard.
The irony of such a statement is clear given the ‘health and safety’ hazards of the current state of the road and its implications, not to mention the myriad physical and psychological effects of occupation. Legal issues surrounding the firing zone and the South Hebron Hills are complex, with numerous bureaucratic intricacies through which it is nigh impossible for Palestinians to gain a permit for construction. Members of the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee asserted the unlikelihood of gaining such a permit ‘requested’ by the military, and managed to converse with soldiers until the action ended at the time initially planned by the committee
Jerusalem child shot by Israeli forces loses eyesight
Published Friday 14/11/2014 (updated) 15/11/2014 13:33
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- An 11-year-old Palestinian child shot in the face by a sponge bullet during clashes in al-Issawiya on Thursday has been left blind in one eye, a local official said.
Member of a local neighborhood committee, Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, told Ma'an that Saleh Samer Attiyeh Mahmoud, 11, was shot in the face at close range by Israeli forces firing sponge bullets in al-Issawiya during clashes.
He was hit directly between the eyes, causing severe bleeding to his nose and the loss of sight in his left eye. The vision in his right eye is also severely damaged.
Villagers in the East Jerusalem neighborhood were protesting the closure of three out of four entrances to the village by Israeli forces when the incident took place.
Sponge rounds are made from high-density plastic with a foam-rubber head, and are fired from grenade launchers.
Israeli police have been using them in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem since the use of rubber-coated metal bullets was prohibited, but protocol explicitly prohibits firing them at the upper body.
Saleh Samer Attiyeh Mahmoud, 11, pictured in hospital.
Palestinian driver found hanged inside Israeli bus
Published yesterday (updated) 17/11/2014 21:07
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian bus driver was found hanged to death at a terminal northwest of Jerusalem late Sunday.
Yousuf Hasan al-Ramouni, 32, from al-Tur in East Jerusalem was a driver with Israeli company Egged. He was found hanged inside his bus at the Har Hotzvim terminal near Jerusalem.
Witnesses told Ma'an that other drivers saw al-Ramouni's bus parked in the bus terminal during his working hours. A driver checked inside the bus and found al-Ramouni's body hanging from a steel bar in the middle of the bus.
His colleagues cut the body down and he was taken to Hadassah hospital. Medics at the bus station tried to resuscitate him but he was later pronounced dead.
"According to an initial investigation, it appears there is no suspicion of criminal activity, in other words a suicide," Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement, which said there were "no signs of violence on the body."
But fellow bus driver Muatasem Fakeh said he had seen evidence to the contrary.
"We saw signs of violence on his body," he told AFP.
"He was hanged over the steps at the back of the bus in a place where it would be impossible to hang yourself alone," he added.
The victim's brother, Osama al-Ramouni said the family did not accept the verdict of suicide, saying his body "had bruises on it," suggesting he had been "tortured" before his death.
"My brother had children and was a happy man. It is impossible that he killed himself," he told AFP.
"He had no problems that would make him do it," he said, adding that a post-mortem would "reveal everything."
"We reject the suicide theory. We all know it was settlers who killed him," he said.
Several of al-Ramouni's colleagues went on strike Monday in protest at his death.
An autopsy will be carried out later Monday. Al-Ramouni left behind a widow and two children.
Meanwhile, clashes broke out in the al-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem and Abu Dis following news of his death.
A photo taken of al-Ramouni's body by relatives.
thanks lobotomy79.
but I disagree that this does not involve even the supposedly insular world of architecture. land theft and building on others' lands, theft of home and environment...all these should deeply involve architects, especially those whose tax money is helping subsidize this (by that, relevant to this site, I largely mean american architects) ...furthermore, the fact that Archinect hosts Israeli firms and universities is a direct support for the cultural and economic promotion of that racist colony and its continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people. Thus, it is not me who made Israel a relevancy here...it is Archinect itself and it is invited to rectify this by boycotting Israeli firms, establishments - academic or commercial, academics, architects, etc. All these underpin the Zionist engine of murder and oppression. All these throw an opaque guise of liberal normalcy around what is really happening, a racist colonialism that should have been snuffed out in the 19th century, where it came from.
. It is exactly as if Archinect were to have supported the apartheid South African regime. It is a shameful position..and if there is no shame felt in it, then it is an inhumane position not fitting for people who claim expertise in a practice centred around providing and maintaining people's homes and sense of belonging...rather than home and land theft, murder, torture.
Videos: Jerusalem Skunk
Israel/Palestine
Annie Robbins on November 16, 2014 53 Comments
Image of Skunk spraying, apparently on West Bank
It appears Israel’s ongoing incitement of Palestinian children has taken a particularly macabre turn. These videos have surfaced of Jerusalem police driving calmly through quiet empty East Jerusalem neighborhoods drenching elementary schools and residences with a putrid liquid with the stench of feces and rotting animal carcass, commonly referenced as “skunk spray”. 972+ has the story. “The skunk water targeted the A-Tur [Mount of Olives neighborhood] elementary school for boys, the elementary and high school for girls, a high school for boys and the ‘Basma’ elementary school for disabled children. All four schools are located on the neighborhood’s main street.”
As a result 4,500 children stayed home from school the following day:
In the A-Tur neighborhood, the police shot skunk water at four large schools, forcing the parents of 4,500 students to leave their children at home due to the unbearable smell. “It was this past Friday, at around 5:30 p.m.,” says Khader Abu Sabitan, a member of the parents’ committee in the neighborhood. “I was on the road and saw them pass with their machine, and saw how they began shooting water at the school. I’m telling you – there was nothing there. It is Friday at 5:30 in the evening, and there was no one in the school or on the streets. Nothing. Everyone was home. They went to all four schools in the neighborhood, shot the water, and left.”
Here’s another video taken in the neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber:
This form of collective punishment seems sadistic. I’m at a loss for a better term. Haggai Matar reports that “words cannot express” the stench, that “gagging is almost inevitable” and that it’s almost impossible to get rid of the smell.
The videos were given to 972+ to support residents’ claims that Jerusalem police had been using the spray routinely and arbitrarily. Evidently the practice of spraying the East Jerusalem neighborhoods has been going on for awhile and a complaint was filed with the police last August by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) . Palestinian residents have been meeting with human rights organizations but many are afraid to come forward and give testimony for fear of retribution. Because the practice is being used routinely, regardless of circumstance, the residence are at a loss as to how to respond.
The police claim that spraying the schools and homes is used according to regulations. Inquiries have been made seeking an explanation what those regulations are but the police have refused to tell them. Mater reports “ACRI has attempted to force the police to publish the regulations vis-a-vis the skunk” and that 972+ has also made inquires with the police and plan on publishing their response.
Read 972+’s full report here.
(Hat tip Ofer Neiman)
tammuz you are right. as we are talking about lost young lives, maimed bodies, blown up mothers, stolen lands a ruined society imprisoned in their ancestral land, forced to live without basic amenities and jobs, summary accused of terrorism, held captive without trial, etc., etc.. and this person has an audacity and cold emptiness inside to ask me if my computer has any israeli parts in it. he has no trace of that jewish brilliance and humanity in him. he is just riding the train of barbaric practices, government of apartheid and land thieves. he is no jew as i know jews. he is a scumbag and most of my jewish friends and relatives would hit him on the head with their i-pads.
yuck.
serious problem for humanity.
Orhan, you're claiming that you're boycotting and I was just asking to what extent you're adhering to that boycott. Predictably, when confronted with facts, you launch a personal attack on me. Someone mentioned this earlier, but you utterly lack the traits of an actual academic.
It's alarming that you think my fellow Jews would beat me with electronics in light of my views. I disagree -- when I've shared my views with fellow Jews, none have threatened to beat me with iPads. You seem vindictive.
while we are on the topic of maimed bodies, do you have any thoughts of the maimed bodies of Jews who were killed in their Jerusalem (al Quds) synagogue today, by Palestinian men wielding axes?
Or are they just collateral deaths in Hamas's call to resistance?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11237316/Jerusalem-attack.html
yes i do have thoughts on that. it is awful. i don't condone violence. but what did you expect? this has been provoked for few weeks now in the west bank where the government threatening the holy muslim sites, blocking access and killing, injuring, blinding, arresting palestinians. what i feel is bit more human than most of you who donned stone faces regardless of little children killed by the hundreds not too long ago. and, my worry now is yet another carnage by israeli prime minister, the butcher, promising to come down heavy handed. we all know what that means. simply google gaza.
I didn't have a stone face-- I repeatedly said that Hamas was to blame for launching missile attacks against Israel from residential areas in Gaza.
.. and.., neatly closed the subject blaming hamas for the death of almost 3000 people, many of them innocent children, their mothers and elderly. some even praying in the mosques and waiting for care in hospitals or taking refuge in united nation schools.
Likewise, the fact that Hamas has celebrated this unprovoked attack speaks volumes about them.
ill add as an aside that the Temple Mount is a holy site for Jews. Right now, the Israeli government is closing off the site to both Jews and Muslims equally because of tensions. Muslim Palestinian leadership had been calling for violence because of a right wing Jewish push for access to the site. While I don't agree with right wingers, don't you think there's an international double standard when Muslims say that Jews will defile the Temple Mount whereas Muslims have free access to other parts of the city?
That you somehow think the murders were justified because of the recent events on the Temple Mount reflects your own bias.
Orhan, if Nevada were launching missiles into California, what would you expect your government to do?
you frame it as though the IDF attacked Hamas in Gaza unprovoked, because it felt like it.
you should also acknowledge that those UNWRA schools had been discovered to house Hamas ammunition.
And events like this are in response to- and explained by - contextualizing within the near 70 year old occupation of Palestine, its colonialism at the hand of Zionists, their ethnic cleansing from their country and destruction of their villages and cities, the theft/destruction of their homes and lands (keeping in mind that Israel entire is land confiscated from Palestinians), the racism-as-policy practiced by this Zionist entity called Israel against Palestinians (and indeed others) at all levels -institutional (and here) and otherwise, the murder of Palestinian people and children (and here), the history of massacres committed against them that continues to date, the incarceration of their people (here, here and here) and children (and here, 250 children imprisoned) , the torture of their people and children, the destruction of their heritage and the restrictions placed against them to access their sites of worship, the ritualized practice of violence against Palestinians whether within the Zionist colony of Israel or within the occupied remains of Palestine …
Violence will continue until its very raison d'être is eliminated…and that would be precisely the Zionist occupation of Palestine and its practice of every form of violation against the Palestinians from the individual scale to the communal one, from the everyday racist through the bureaucratic to the existential. There is nothing sporadic or reactive about Zionist's racist and murderous policy in Palestinian and in the middle east. It is an organized, rationalized policy of ethnic cleansing whose intention predates every Palestinian act of resistance.
. Trying to bring this event up, as these Zionist bots do here, without recourse to context or reason is merely to serve their purpose of showing that there is an irrational display of violence perpetrated against Israelis. This is utter nonsense. This is an expression of violence coming from an oppressed dispossessed people against their far superiorly equipped oppressors.
Yes, there is such a detail and there are others…there are Israelis being killed and there are 10 times this number being killed of the Palestinians. This will not end until Zionism is extinguished as another vestige of racist colonialism.
tammuz, thank you for always keeping the macro and micro context together.
As if on cue, along comes Tammuz, justifying cold blooded murder with a meat cleaver., calling Israel a racist entity that must come to an end.
you know what's racist? Hamas calling for the extermination of Jews (an ethnicity and religious group). Hamas celebrating the murder that occurred this morning through public pronouncements. People dancing in the street, throwing out candies for the murder of people at prayer. That's racist.
To even place Israel's actions on the same moral plane as what happened today is to ignore FACTS that you find so abhorrent.
To quote from a New York Times commenters about the summer's conflict (someone was accusing the IDF of having committed "mass murder" after the summer's conflict)
"Actually it wasn't mass murder. It was a military response to a military attack, thousands of rockets aimed at civilians. A large proportion of the deaths in Gaza were caused by Hamas munitions that fell short, because they're slipshod missiles. Hamas brought that condition on itself, fired missiles from schools and hospitals, sent people into buildings that were about to be bombed, broke several cease fires in a row, executed Palestinians out of paranoia, and basically did everything they could to maximize the Palestinian death toll.
So that 'mass murder' was created and sustained entirely by Hamas, and is thus entirely their fault.."
You have to go 13 paragraphs in ‘NYT’ to find out it wasn’t only Jews who died in Jerusalem lately
US Politics
James North and Philip Weiss on November 18, 2014 6 Comments
The New York Times has a thorough piece of reporting up this morning on the Palestinian attack on a West Jerusalem synagogue that killed four Jews. But you have to get well into paragraph 13 to learn this:
But there were celebrations after the attack in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, and other Palestinian leaders praised the attack as a response to what they see as a threat to the holy site [the Al Aqsa mosque], and to the recent death of a Palestinian bus driver in Jerusalem. Relatives and friends of the driver, Yousef al-Ramouni, who was found hanged in his bus Sunday night, insisted he had been lynched by Jews, though the Israeli police said an autopsy on Monday ruled that his death was a suicide.
Palestinians are saying that al-Ramouni was lynched. Even Haaretz questions the suicide finding. And al-Ramouni’s death resulted in unrest in East Jerusalem neighborhoods, which have already been clamped down on by Israeli border police. You’d think that a more balanced account would appear in the American newspaper of record. But for the Times, Jewish lives count more than Palestinian ones. This extends to the Times’ lackluster coverage of the persecution of Palestinians in Jerusalem neighborhoods like Silwan and Issawiya.
Update: Chemi Shalev of Haaretz says that a Hebrew report at NRG makes another connection:
NRG links synagogue attack to July murder of Palestinian teen Abu Khdeir: father of perpetrator prays there
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/paragraphs-jerusalem-lately#sthash.RxG7Gx3R.dpuf
All you're doing is justifying the murder. Zero reasoning with you.
Zionist bot with its lies again....back to business...
More context:
..................................................
Israeli forces fail to probe 83 percent of settler violence cases — rights group
Submitted by Patrick Strickland on Mon, 11/17/2014 - 19:31
activestills1385449216w57de.jpg
Abed Rabo Jedua examines damage to his olive trees in the West Bank village of Tuqu; the trees were attacked by Israeli settlers, accompanied by soldiers.
(Ryan Rodrick Beiler / ActiveStills)
Israelis who attack Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank are seldom investigated thoroughly or punished, according to a new data sheet published by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.
Published on 12 November, the data sheet’s shocking statistics are based on 1,045 Israeli police files opened in the West Bank between 2005 and 2014.
Yesh Din’s statistics do not include occupied East Jerusalem despite how the United Nations considers it part of the West Bank.
The report paints a picture of widespread impunity for Israeli settlers suspected of violent and vandalistic crimes, as well as a consistent pattern of neglect by the Israeli police authorities assigned to investigate such allegations.
According to the report, nearly half (47.4 percent) of all investigative files opened in that time “involve complaints by Palestinians of damage to their property,” such as homes, vehicles, crops and olive trees. Another 34.5 percent “involve complaints of violence by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Another 13.6 percent are complaints related to theft of Palestinian land, and 4.5 percent “include the killing of farm animals, desecration of mosques and cemeteries, discharging of sewage into Palestinian farmland, dumping of waste on land belonging to Palestinians, and other offenses,” the report notes.
Regarding complaints of “harm caused to Palestinians and their property,” the Israeli police issued indictments in a mere 7.4 percent of 970 cases, and from 2013 until this year, only two files led to indictments.
Settler violence
Settler violence is a daily reality for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation across the West Bank. And as Israeli settlements continue to expand, settler violence continues without pause.
Yesh Din’s fact sheet reports, “Violent incidents include instances of shooting, beatings, stone throwing, assault with clubs, knives and rifle butts, running Palestinians over with a vehicle, as well as threats of assault or harm and other offenses.”
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, more than 125 Jewish-only settlements provide residence to more than 325,000 Israelis in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem).
There are also more than one hundred “outpost” colonies, which, despite being considered illegal even by Israel, are protected by the Israeli military and receive government funding.
On 19 October, five-year-old Inas Khalil was killed when an Israeli settler used a vehicle to run her over while walking home from school near her hometown of Sinjil, a village near Ramallah.
In Kisan, a village near Bethlehem, armed settlers chased a group of Palestinian schoolgirls, the International Business Times reported last week.
Far from being exempt from violence by Israeli settlers, children are often the deliberate targets.
A March 2014 report by Defense for Children International – Palestine Section (written by this author) examines the widespread and systematic settler violence that often fatally targets Palestinian children.
“In offenses involving violence, 83.3 percent of the files in which the investigation was completed and the outcome is known to Yesh Din were closed in circumstances suggesting investigative failure,” the Yesh Din fact sheet notes.
The group adds that most investigative files were closed “on the grounds of ‘offender unknown’ or ‘insufficient information.’”
“Price tag” attacks
Attacks on Palestinian property and holy places are often referred to as “price tag” attacks, which occur on both sides of the so-called Green Line dividing the West Bank from present-day Israel.
On 12 November, Israeli settlers torched a mosque in the Ramallah area village of al-Mughayir. The attackers are believed to have come from the nearby settlement of Shilo, according to an Al Jazeera English report published the same day.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the arson attack in al-Mughayir “brings to ten the number of Muslim houses of worship in Israel and the [occupied] territories that have been targeted in arson attacks in less than three and a half years. No one has been charged in any of these incidents.”
In October 2013, Israeli settlers set ablaze a mosque in the West Bank village of Burqa, also near Ramallah, and vandalized three cars belonging to local Palestinians, as The Electronic Intifada reported at the time.
More common, however, are Israeli attacks on Palestinian olive trees, a staple of livelihood in the West Bank and elsewhere.
According to Yesh Din, “vandalism of olive trees and other fruit trees severely damages property owned by Palestinians and directly harms their welfare, as most of the Palestinian population of the West Bank relies on farming as a significant source of income, predominantly olives which supply income and jobs for roughly 100,000 households.”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also reported that “around 10,700 Palestinian-owned trees, including saplings, were cut down or otherwise damaged by Israeli settlers across the West Bank” in 2013.
Jerusalem left out
Yet by leaving out East Jerusalem, the Yesh Din fact sheet only provides a partial picture of the widespread lack of accountability for Israelis who attack Palestinians. Like elsewhere, settler violence, police harassment and systematic neglect is part and parcel to Palestinian life under Israeli occupation in Jerusalem.
The Israeli authorities and settlers have recently escalated an already suffocating atmosphere of siege imposed on Palestinians in Jerusalem.
On 16 November, a Palestinian bus driver was found hanged from a steel bar inside his bus in Jerusalem. Though Israeli occupation authorities claim it was a suicide and that an investigation is ongoing, 32-year-old Yusef al-Ramouni’s family suspect settlers are behind his death.
“We reject the suicide theory. We all know it was settlers who killed him,” Osama al-Ramouni, the victim’s brother, told AFP. “He had no problems that would make him [commit suicide].”
Back in July, a group of Israeli settlers kidnapped, tortured and murdered sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair in Jerusalem. The subsequent autopsy suggested that the child had been forced to drink gasoline before being burned alive.
Though six Israelis were arrested as suspects, The Electronic Intifada reported at the time that three were subsequently released. Given Israel’s long track record of impunity for settler violence, few have faith in a just investigation.
Aminah Abdulhaq, lawyer and advocacy officer for the Jerusalemites Campaign, a group that campaigns for Palestinian rights in that city, said that Palestinians in Jerusalem “are at a particular disadvantage.”
“The police force that is meant to handle legal disputes and crimes are part of the very entity that is occupying their land,” she told The Electronic Intifada by email.
“Because of this, few Jerusalemites have any trust in the police,” Abdulhaq explained. “Most go out of their way to avoid interacting with them, and those that are compelled to report harassment or attacks from Israelis rarely see their assailants charged.”
serious blunder.., aren't you the one and your buddies here always justifying the collective punishment and killing of 3000 people?
Well, at least that Zionist bot didn't deny that Israel is a Zionist occupation of Palestine but actually firms it suchlike:
I say: "Violence will continue until its very raison d'être is eliminated…and that would be precisely the Zionist occupation of Palestine and its practice of every form of violation against the Palestinians from the individual scale to the communal one, from the everyday racist through the bureaucratic to the existential. "
It say: " As if on cue, along comes Tammuz, justifying cold blooded murder with a meat cleaver., calling Israel a racist entity that must come to an end."
Although, yes, I believe that Israel as a Zionist regime should be dismantled and ended ...I did not explicitly say "as if on cue" that "Israel [is] a racist entity that must come to an end"...although yes I totally agree with that statement, but I did not say it. What is telling here is: Whatever else I said or meant in others posts, The Zionist bot here is itself making the substitution of terms and accepting to equate Zionist occupation of Palestine with Israel.
again.. an Occupation.
Oddly, Orhan, a Saudi King sides with my views about Hamas. Who would have thunk it?
* * *
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/02/Saudi-King-Publicly-Blames-Hamas-for-Gaza-War
Saudi King Publicly Blames Hamas for Gaza War
In a stunning five minute statement read on state television late Friday, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, leader of Israel’s oldest and most implacable foe, called the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza a “collective massacre” caused by Hamas.
It is just the latest signal in a tectonic shift in Middle East geopolitics that has been largely overlooked by Western media seemingly still committed to building upon its decades-old narrative that Israel remains the united enemy of the Arab world.
In the 75 year history of conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East, no state has been more consistently intransigent against the very notion of a sovereign Jewish presence in the region than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded by Abdullah’s grandfather, Ibn Saud, in 1923.
Just weeks ago, before Hamas’ current war against Israel, it would have unthinkable to suggest that a Saudi King would even hint that any entity other than Israel bore any responsibilities for actions perceived as harmful to Palestinians.
Abdullah’s statement, read by a news anchor on behalf of the ailing 90-year old Monarch, that the violence in Gaza has led to “various forms” of terrorism, whether from groups, organizations, or states, is seen in the Middle East and Arab states as a flat-out repudiationof Hamas.
Perhaps even more remarkable, while King Abdullah condemned the consequences of a war he termed “devastating” to Palestinians, he issued no demands upon Israel.
As has been pointed out numerous times by Breitbart contributors, Saudi Arabia’s now open disavowal of any common cause with Hamas reinforces an emerging and wholly improbable new alliance uniting every Arab state save Qatar together with Israel and against the United States.
As remarkable as was King Abdullah’s statement by itself, it pales in comparison with the transformation of the relationship between Egypt and Israel. From cold no-belligerents under President Mubarak, to near antagonists under the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi, today Israel and Egypt are tightly cleaved military allies.
In the harshest words ever used by a Saudi King to condemn any Palestinian “resistance” to what is routinely called “Zionist aggression,” King Abdullah’s statement said, “It is shameful and disgraceful that these terrorists are doing this in the name of religion, killing the people whose killing Allah has forbidden, and mutilating their bodies and feeling proud in publishing this.”
The king went on to say of Hamas’ war against Israel, “They have distorted the image of Islam with its purity and humanity and smeared it with all sorts of bad qualities by their actions, injustice and crimes.”
Unlike President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, the guardian of Islam’s holy places and thus the putative leader of the entire Muslim world, King Abdullah did not call upon Israel to meet any Hamas demands. He made no calls for “opening up border passages” between Gaza and Israel/Egypt-- thought by many to be the primary strategic objective of Hamas’ war.
He issued no demands that Hamas be permitted to build a seaport, let alone that Israel and Egypt be required to help fund it. Nor did he petition Israel or the Palestinian Authority to resume cash payments to the more than 44,000 Hamas "civil servants" in Gaza rendered jobless as a result of the recent PA-Hamas unity government agreement.
Learn English, Tammuz.
saudi king can kiss my ass.
saudi king... there is a fitting ally for you!
Jewish Voice for Peace statement on the escalating situation in Jerusalem
Submitted by Naomi Dann on Tue, 11/18/2014 - 10:12am
Jewish Voice for Peace is deeply alarmed at the crisis building in Jerusalem over the last several weeks as terrible violence mounts. We mourn all the lives that have been lost, both Palestinian and Israeli. Early this morning, four Jews at prayer were brutally murdered in a Jerusalem synagogue and on Sunday a Palestinian bus driver was likely lynched.
We call on the Israeli government and its supporters to cease further calls to incitement and collective punishment. The international community must bring pressure to bear on the root causes of ongoing violence. Israel’s continual system of occupation, dispossession, and discrimination against Palestinians by its very nature puts the lives and dignity of all people in Israel and Palestine in jeopardy.
The Israeli government continues to escalate state violence against Palestinians, as well as enabling increasingly aggressive actions of settlers. In Abu Dis, Issawiya, and Silwan, to name just three neighborhoods, mobility is severely restricted, and residents are subject to collective punishment as homes and schools are covered in skunk water, which makes them almost unbearable to enter. Last week a mosque and holy Qur’ans were torched in the West Bank village of Al Mughayir by Jewish individuals. The Israeli government continues to declare its intention to build more settlements; the Third Temple Movement, backed by government ministers, continues its provocations at the Temple Mount; laws that mandate 20 year sentences for stone-throwing and to declare Israel a Jewish nation-state, and threats to withdraw the citizenship of Palestinian citizens who protest are being proposed at the highest levels.
Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s declared intention to further entrench Israeli control over all of Israel/Palestine and pursue the collective punishment of Palestinians will bring neither peace nor quiet. Palestinians, whether inside Israel, in East Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza, face a future of continued inequality, discrimination, home demolitions, land expropriation, and military violence. A true and just peace for both peoples will only come when Israel is willing to commit to equality, freedom and justice for all people.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.