Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
SeriousQuestion
Nov 18, 14 4:07 pm
So strange how JVP calls for restraint by Israel but not by Hamas.
chatter of clouds
Nov 18, 14 4:08 pm
Hah, Israeli bots now use the turgid endemically reactionary Wahabi king, who is directly implicated along with his regime for the rise of the likes of ISIS (Wahabism being their theological ideology), as a source of judgment and discrimination. Seriously, this is actually funny. Israel's defenders sink lower and lower; they're practically splurging at the bottom of a cess pool of depleting lies, moral fallibility and intellectual friability.
Anything to cover their Zionist ass...even the words coming out of the head of the horrible regime of Saudi Arabia. Anyway, Wahabi fascism and Zionist fascism coming together is neither novel nor surprising"
There are many reasons to believe that the growing Saudi-Israeli alignment is well suited. Above all, Saudi Arabia and Israel are ideologically compatible in the sense that both have exploited, manipulated and subjugated their respective religions for fascistic purposes. The result is the emergence of racist and violent political ideologies that have been feeding the most narcissistic murder and bloodshed in the region. The implicit agreement between Saudi Wahhabism and Israeli Zionism on fueling destruction of the region is a natural historical outcome of their ideological encounter.
Although the Saudi-Israeli relation is not formalized with a peace treaty, recent years have witnessed intensified cooperation between them, particularly in fields of security, trade and through regular meeting between security and political officials. The first sign of Saudi-Israeli trade relations was expressed in the 2005 Saudi announcement that it was ending its ban on Israeli goods and services. Crucially, Saudi economic normalization with Israel came at a time when Palestinian civil society initiated the global BDS campaign to increase international pressure on Israel through economic boycott.
SeriousQuestion
Nov 18, 14 4:13 pm
I implore you to learn English, Tammuz-- you've coined a bunch of new words in that last post.
My point was NOT that I agree with Saudi Arabia; it's a rejoinder to your assertion that Hamas is somehow beyond reproach. It is hurting Palestinians.
Close to 13,000 Palestinian and international students go through at least one of 600 checkpoints in the West Bank to attend Al Quds University, the only Arab University in East Jerusalem. Established in 1984, the Abu Dis campus now houses 14 academic faculties, and has more than 21 centers and institutes, including the critically acclaimed Abu Jihad Museum for Prisoner Movement Affairs. Besides having a museum dedicated to Palestinian political prisoners on campus, Al Quds University is unique for another controversial reason: the campus community is under constant threat due to methodical and ideologically-based attacks by the Israeli military.
During 2012, 2013 and 2014, the total number of attacks on Al-Quds University main campus was 31. During these attacks 2473 people were injured, 5121 teargas canisters and bullets were shot, and 276 people were called by the Israeli intelligence for investigation.
maybe that is why people here are saying BDS won't work. maybe they are saying (from practice and experience) only way to deal with academia (Al-Quds University) is to physically arrest everyone on campus, shoot them and bulldoze the school if necessary. israeli ingenuity i must say...
chatter of clouds
Nov 18, 14 4:24 pm
Can't that Zionist bot see its doing itself a disservice by continually bringing up Hamas as if that explained the huge and broad display of Zionist violence against and dispossession of Palestinians?
I say: thousands of Palestinians in jail, many without trial
It says: Hamas
I say: a history of occupation going back to the early 20th century
It says: Hamas
I say: Ethnic cleansing
It says: Hamas
I say: Land theft, destruction of homes
It says: Hamas
I say: Torture of Palestinians and Palestinian kids
It says: Hamas
I say: History of massacres, still ongoing as in Gaza
It says: Hamas
so on and so forth
Do they lobotomize these creatures before sending them to "defend" Israel? "Defend" away, bot...you only expose ISrael's ugly face further.
Yes, yes..we know...: Hamas
SeriousQuestion
Nov 18, 14 4:30 pm
Willful ignorance never helped anyone resolve a problem.
Orhan Ayyüce
Nov 18, 14 4:39 pm
.
SeriousQuestion
Nov 18, 14 4:53 pm
Despite the total dismissiveness of Tammuz and Orhan (who once said he supports a two-state solution but now sides with Tammuz's goal of eradicating Israel), I will repeat: Hamas is the problem. Wake up.
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Clashes broke out near Nablus on Tuesday after settlers attacked a Palestinian school in the village of Urif, a Palestinian official said.
Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settler activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that six Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets after Israeli forces intervened in clashes with settlers.
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and stun grenades at villagers after they clashed with settlers trying to attack a local school.
The incident took place hours after a deadly attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem which killed four Israelis.
Earlier, dozens of settlers had gathered along the main road between Nablus and Yizhar settlement following news of the attack, with witnesses saying they planned to attack Palestinian farmers and cars.
An Israeli army spokesman said Palestinians "rioted" and "hurled rocks" at Israeli security forces.
SeriousQuestion
Nov 18, 14 5:20 pm
I give up with this futile debate. I really hope that you both eventually realize that for peace, both sides will need to listen to the other and acknowledge the others' right to exist.
Orhan Ayyüce
Nov 18, 14 5:38 pm
you got nothing. you are that bird. i always respect someone who has anything to say of value. even my opposition. goodby, have a nice day.
curtkram
Nov 18, 14 8:27 pm
of course he has nothing. you say that hamas is not a problem. terrorist acts committed by the palestinians don't count. when palestinians kill babies, you ignore it and call your opposition a baby killer.
israeli's disproportionate actions against the palestinians came from palestinian attacks on civilian israeli and jewish targets. the palestinians look like great people if you omit what they've done, but that isn't really honest is it?
if you think the conflict should continue until the israelis are completely destroyed to the point of having no homes, no government, and no land of their own, more babies will die. that's what tammuz supports. is that really what you want orhan? deep down inside, are you really a baby killer just like the idf?
or, in addition to supporting the bdc, you could support a peaceful resolution. which means rejection tammuz's radicalized hatred. you don't have to say israel is the good guy. they aren't. but you can't support a government that encourages terrorist attacks and praises people for killing unarmed rabbis in their place of worship either.
Orhan Ayyüce
Nov 18, 14 8:35 pm
curtkram, all the stuff you have written is your own poor fabrication. stop throwing dirt and be a decent person. or stop drinking or something. you are not honest as you claim to be around here. you have no problem with twisting others' words so they serve your bs.
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- An Israeli settler shot and seriously injured a Palestinian teenager Tuesday after a settler demonstration on the outskirts of Beitin village east of Ramallah.
Ibrahim Mahmoud, 16, was shot with a live bullet and taken to Palestine Medical Complex with serious injuries. He is now stable and was placed in the ICU.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the report.
Earlier a Palestinian man was stabbed by a group of Israelis in north Jerusalem.
Fadi Jalal Radwan, 22, was attacked and stabbed by four Israelis while walking in the town of Kafr Aqab, his father said. He was stabbed three times in the legs, and once in the back.
The victim was found bleeding in the street and taken to Hadassah hospital for treatment. Doctors said he was in a serious condition.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an that "an Arab man was approached by three suspects" who asked him for light. They then stabbed him in the leg with a small knife.
Israeli police are looking into the background of the incident, Rosenfeld added.
Tuesday November 18, 2014 00:55 by IMEMC News & Agencies
Head of Prisoners Committee Issa Qaraqe said, Monday, that some 1,500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are suffering from various diseases, including 25 cases of cancer.
Mr. Qaraqe says that medical negligence has been a systematic policy by the Israeli Prison Service, according to WAFA correspondence. He notes that three prisoners recently warned to launch a hunger strike against their deteriorating health conditions -- this in addition to several others who are also engaged in ongoing hunger strikes.
The official demonstrated cases of deliberate medical negligence, including urgently needed surgery, as well as cases of numbness and paralysis.
More than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners are still detained in Israeli prisons, of whom dozens are serving a life sentence.
The number of sick prisoners detained in Israeli jails has now reached 1,500, WAFA reports, of whom 80 are suffering from serious health problems and do not receive adequate treatment.
LITS4FormZ
Nov 19, 14 11:10 am
Tammuz and Orhan make up the majority in the middle east and that is why there will never be peace there. Thus this thread will never die and the hate will continue to flow.
Had Israel killed praying clerics the entire region would be on fire, but the hypocrisy of Western media and acid throwing radicals continues to keep the casual observer hating their friends to only placate their true enemies.
all my friends know i usually walk around with couple bottles of acid, don't come near me or you will be burned for your racist hate speech. go back to your formz toilet detailing and don't get into things bigger than your p-brain and you'll be okay.
LITS4FormZ
Nov 19, 14 5:47 pm
...Everyone knows how you operate...spout antisemitic "academic" garbage, someone calls you on your bullshit and your way of dealing with any challenge is to dismiss them with poorly crafted insults again failing to address any real issues.
Then your buddy comes back with more copy/paste to make sure this thread stays near the top of google search results for boycott Israel....
Orhan Ayyüce
Nov 19, 14 6:03 pm
But you must love this since you keep coming back for more. If you call the death of thousands of people not real issues you must have even smaller brain than I originally thought above.
And, from the same publication, a bingo board for Zionist arguments... Almost all tried by the bots here on this thread... Exposed!
chatter of clouds
Nov 20, 14 8:13 pm
1- We here have not attacked Zionism as a proxy for attack against religious jewish content but for their practices on ground (theft of land, kicking people out of their homes, committing massacres and ethic cleansing) and for their ideology of colonialism that makes them Zionists. In short, I could care less whether Zionists were jewish or Christian or Muslim or worshipped UFOs. Fro that religious point of view, I am far from an anti-Semite. I am neither pro or anti-Judaism as much as I am neither pro or anti-Islam or Christianity. My concern is not religion.
2- Given such racial profiling, I would be classified as a semite, much more so than an Ashkenazi whose family converted to Judaism somewhere in central Asia. However, as with religion, I do not care about this racial classification, whether semitic or hamitic or whatever other biblically based assumptions trying to pass off as scientific classifications. As a "Semite" I have more in common with a non-Semitic Turk or non-Semitic Persian or a greek Cypriot than with a Jewish/"Semitic" Russian or English person. Semitism has become a mythical counter-intuitive classification.
So, in my viewpoint,there is absolutely nothing that makes Jews into a nation...as there is nothing that makes Muslims into one or Christians into nation because this de facto excludes others living rightfully alongside them . ..and the notion of Jews as a seperate race was a racist notion advanced by racist theorists of aryanism and so on. In fact, Jews have always been part of the lands -as much as have Christians, Moslems and others- they historically belonged to...whether Germany or Ukraine or Morocco or etc. There is NO contradiction between an Arab and Jewish or a "white European/Caucasian" and Jewish.
Israel is an artificial colony based on a fictional identity created partially by "anti-Semitic" racists and further accepted and propelled by "Semitic" racists. To accept this othering identity of "Semitic" for a group of people who have nothing other than religion in common is itself a to fall into alignment with these pseudo-scientific racist theories.
What makes a people into a people is a shared geography, history, culture, food, music, and yes sometimes religion, as one aspect not more, etc. Something that the Palestinians have always had in common with the larger regional community: a community that does not include the hoard of colonists coming from all over to throw the Palestinians out, whatever their reasons and backgrounds were.
Thus, my concern is not ethnicity or race.
........................
I am therefore a non-anti-Semite "Semite". I have not attacked on the basis of religion or ethnicity- which, in my racially and theologically agnostic opinion, are anyway fictional.
My concern is for a people being kicked out of their rightful homes and being dispossessed on their rightful lands so that another people will take their place. This is pure and barbaric injustice that should have died away a long time ago; Israel and the current civilization of human rights and equality are incompatible.
I have not chosen my sources or my arguments to be in any way meant to demonize people of jewish belief. in fact, I feel very strongly that a huge part of the problem was not the jewish people themselves. In Europe and Russia, their identities -pluralistic, varied, rooted in their original homeland- were firstly violated by racist regimes such as Nazism and then hijacked by a fascist racist regime taking the Jewish religion as its guise.
I never drew out generalizations about jewish people, their religion...in fact, part of my critique is that Zionism is itself an unfair and cruel generalization chosen by some as a representative or avatar of Judaism.
This is exactly the opposite of what that LITZ4Formz does, who equates Zionism with Judaism (and therefore receives attacks against Zionism as attacks on Judaism) and who seems to find it relevant to randomly connect the issue being presented here with an occurrence in Pakistan, a connection calculated to suggest something about Muslims entire and to suggest that Orhan and myself belong to that mould. In fact, this scumbag has previously suggestively asked me to blow myself up (after assuming that I'm possibly of a "moslem"or arab background) . (Side note: If indeed Archinect is going to start imposing restrictions on expressions related to racial / religious/ identitarian hatreds and prejudices, LITZ4Formz would be the second logical candidate ( subgenius, being the first) for censorship. It is LITS4Formz and subgenius that are benefitting from Archinect's non-censorial policy, not me.)
Now that is racism.
Yes, I have hatred in me. I hate colonialism, racism and oppressing a people. I admit to that. This is why I bring the issue up here.
But LITZ4Forms and his ilk's hatred is itself a racially motivated one justifying itself on the grounds of exceptionality, racial/identitarian/ religious generalizations, lies and fabrications to protect the colonialism, racism and oppression.
So, again, Jews, Christians, Moslems, Zoroastrians, whatever...I could care less about what religious identity one chooses for oneself. But I do care when it is used as an excuse to steal from others and kill others because they feel ordained and exceptional, (as do Zionists amongst the Jewish people and ISIS amongst the Moslem people).
Lastly, let me repeat yet again...I do NOt believe that what are now known as Israelis should leave the place where they were born and bred. I believe in a place that accepts who lives there now and who was thrown out of their land, together, equally, whatever their religion or non-religion is. I believe that people who live there now, who built their lives there - Jewish, Christian, Moslem, whatever- and those who were thrown out of their lands (along with their descendants) should have equal right of residence and citizenship. I believe the latter should be compensated and their rights restituted while the rights of the former to remain and function in Palestine as equal citizens should not be compromised. But in the absence of this and the continual oppression of the Palestinians, of the colonized, at the hands of Israel, the colonizer, I completely and wholeheartedly support the right of the Palestinians to resist.
Now...what in any of the above is "anti-Semitic"? Just because I support resisting the criminal who happens to identify herself or himself as being Jewish? But I would do the same if she or he identified themselves as a Moslem or Christian or believed that in a God made out of cheese.
Methods range between severe beatings, putting prisoners under cold water followed by hot water, cuffing or restraining them with their arms behind them and then tying them to a door or window for long periods of time, often lasting hours
Hundreds of torture methods used against Palestinian prisoners during interrogations conducted in Israeli prisoners have been observed by human rights organisations and prisoners' rights associations.
A report by the United Nations lists around 200 methods of torture. The Israeli rights group B'Tselem listed around 105 torture methods. Regardless of the number, all these reports indicate a grave level of violations perpetrated against Palestinians following their arrest.
Fouad Khuffash, director of the Ahrar Centre for Prisoners' Studies and Human Rights, suggests that torture can be divided into two categories; physical and psychological. Some believe that psychological torture is less harmful than physical torture, but the mental scars left by both can leave prisoners traumatised long after their release.
Khuffash adds: "Torture in Israeli prisons is systematic and starts from the moment a prisoner is arrested, not from the moment they begin interrogation. This is a premeditated and staged scenario that changes according to the case of the detainee and the nature of their file. Investigators alternate and play various roles assigned in advance to each investigator."
Fahd Abu Al-Hajj, director of the Abu Jihad Centre for Prisoner Affairs at the University of Jerusalem, noted that there are 73 methods of interrogation considered to be the "most popular" in Israeli jails. These methods demonstrate the barbarism of the occupation and its lack of respect for basic standards of human rights, he stated.
He added: "Nothing evidences this more than the repeated death of prisoners under interrogation, the most recent of which was the death of the prisoner Raed Al-Jabari."
Al-Hajj believes that the use of torture is systematic, adopted by the Israeli intelligence services and that no prisoner detained in any Israeli prison is spared.
He also explained that these methods range between severe beatings, putting prisoners under cold water followed by hot water, cuffing or restraining them with their arms behind them and then tying them to a door or window for long periods of time, often lasting hours. Prisoners are also made to sit on chairs and beaten with sticks until they lose consciousness. These beatings may target sensitive areas of their bodies which have the potential to leave long-term negative effects, sometimes leading to chronic diseases.
Forms of torture
Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem acknowledged in its report that 105 torture methods are used against Palestinian detainees which are considered serious violations of human rights. A UN human rights committee described the torture in Israeli prisons as "crossing the line", noting that Israel's brutal methods of torture included breaking backs, pulling fingers apart and twisting testicles.
Israeli intelligence bases their torture of detainees on the so-called secret guidelines that were approved in 1987, after the outbreak of the first Intifada. These guidelines allow them to apply "moderate" physical and psychological pressure on prisoners. This gives a legal cover to the torture practiced by Israeli intelligence agents.
In the last 10 years, interrogators have decreased their use of torture, moving away from physical torture and instead used harsh psychological methods that can leave enduring scars, while continuing to use direct physical torture of varying degrees.
Mohammed Kilani, who has experienced many interrogations, noted that his solitary confinement which exceeded two months during which he was forced to remain chained to a chair, was the harshest method of torture he has suffered.
He also added that throughout the entire prison system across the globe, there exists no torture method that has not been thought of or used by the Israeli authorities at some point.
According to statistics, around 72 prisoners were killed as a result of torture in Israeli prisons since 1967, out of a total number of over 200 prisoners who died behind bars.
The first prisoner to die as a result of being tortured was Yousef Al-Jabali who died on January 4 1968 in a Nablus prison. Many prisoners have since followed him, such as Qassem Abu Akar, Ibrahim Al-Rai, Abdul Samad Harizat, Attia Za'anin, Mustafa Akkawi, and others, including the most recent, Raed Al-Jabari.
SeriousQuestion
Nov 21, 14 9:23 am
No longer going to debate the Israel question, but just FYI Tammuz, Jews are an ethnoreligious group and, in that sense distinct from Muslims and Christians. We share common genetics (Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews alike).
Our physical differences are the result of the genetic admixture within the communities to which we were historically displaced.
Wading into into the subject of enthnoreligious grouping is wading into doubly murky waters. There is a whole lot here based on myth-making and Israel is of course a most idiosynchratic case of reified myth-making, a nationality built on the rewriting of history through the lens of two domains of mythology: biblical/religious and racial/ethnic taxonomy
Firstly, when one assumes that the Jews are a distinct viable ethnicity, one is claiming that that, historically, it has been an integral and separate lineage self propagating in time (and space). Is that really true? Here is what you need to believe in the "truth" of this:
1- Firstly, you need to believe in the Bible and religious texts as a source of secular history
2- You need to believe that the Jewish "ethnicity" is integral and self definitive and that different ethnicities (Berber, European, Ethiopian, Indian, etc) did not convert to Judaism and therefore constitute the diverse ethnicities that fall under the banner of the "Jewish" people.
3- You need to believe that matrilineal inheritance overrides patrilineal one in defining an ethnicity (since one's ethnicity is as much defined by what it is as by what it is not). Because, there sure are a lot of non-Jews with Jewish fathers. Does that not qualify them - from the DNA point of view- to carry an equal percentage of ethnic inheritance as do Jewish children from non-Jewish fathers and Jewish mothers? After all, the edict that determines one's Jewishness from the matrilineal branch is religious and not scientific.
4- You need to believe that "ethnos" is itself a scientifically qualified concept, since you bring up the issue of DNA. For that, review here
5- From the point of view of DNA, you need to definitively believe that your sources are absolutely correct and there is no possible way to counter them...since this is a matter of so-called science. For that, review here and here
6- You need to kind of be counter intuitive and consider that the fact that a Yememi Jew looks like a Yemeni Muslim, a Polish Jew looks like a Polish Christian, a Moroccan Jew looks like a Morrocan Muslim -and that they indeed share more than looks, also a culture and tradition- is far less reliable than what seems like a desperate and esoteric hunt for a questionably Jewish Y chromosome related feature,
This is asking for too much belief...or, rather, suspension of belief. The more feasible realistic approach would be to view Judaism as a religion with a rich tapestry spanning cultures, races, geographies, carried by people through their travels and through their families, propagated through conversions and through lineage. To boil it down to an "ethnoreligious" group is parsimonious, reductive and, most importantly here, mythical and false, having its roots in false racial theories that the haters, such as the Nazis and their ilk, used for the demonization of the European Jewish community and glorification of the so-called Aryan race...and which Zionists now use in order to define themselves, as a uniform group of "Semites".
chatter of clouds
Nov 22, 14 8:42 pm
continued:
and which Zionists now use in order to define themselves, as a uniform group of "Semites" , from all corners of the world, who believe in the right of return to a place allocated to them within their mythology and based on biblical events while they see no right for the rights of a people, the Palestinians, who have existed on that land for generations and many of whom, indeed, may well harken back to communities existing in Palestine at the time of purported biblical events and man y of whom may well have been, ironically jewish before converting to islam and Christianity.
Israel is a case of a virulent mythology forced upon the reality of normal people living, normally, in their homeland. Israel is also a case of twisted fabricated tortuous lies as much about the history of Jewish people as about the Palestinian and Arab people
SeriousQuestion
Nov 22, 14 11:01 pm
I really don't need someone telling me what my religious and ethnic identity is or is not. You can write all that you want but your points boil down to a gut feeling and not actual facts (your argument is that polish Jews look like polish Catholics-- have you ever been to Poland and been identified as a Jew? Russia?)
You're entitled to opinions on Israel but stop speaking for jews. You're ignorant.
chatter of clouds
Nov 23, 14 2:16 pm
I posited several points based on certain assumptions one would have to make in order to buy into the myth of a Jewish ethnicity. Secondly, I never did "tell you" what your religious identity is or is about.I have stated only that Judaism is as rich a religion as many others, covering several cultural geographic dicrete époques.
This is not about your person and stop trying to victimize yourself, yet another silly transparent ploy. You can have all the beliefs you want about your "ethnicity" but once people start to use their mythologies (a mélange of religion, questionable historical associations to an even more questionable past, and pseudo-science) to justify an oppression and displacement of the Palestinian people who have actually lived in their homelands for generations, the theft of land and so on, then lets confront directly this mythology of theirs for what it is.
My several points still stand as they are ..and no, there is not one single argument as you're trying to insinuate. And in regards to how people of the Jewish faith "look like", from a so-called ethnic point of view, please review this. It is enough to compare the Falasha community, the Colchin one, the Amazigh jewish one, the Kaifing, and the European jewish community etc. How can anyone group those as one ethnic group? Its ridiculously counter intuitive - not unless one is deliberately holding on to a belief which one is desperate enough to go looking through DNA to find a substantiation for religiously based material. Even if there is found that some or many Jews share a certain Y-chromosome related feature (that they share with other non Jewish people), does that override the majoritarian features that bring them far closer to their non-Jewish environs that this feature ( that seems to be as much a site for interpretation): the jewish Berbers to other Berbers, the jewish Yemenis to their non jewish Yemenis, jewish Europeans to non jewish Europeans, so on and so forth.
Again, get over it. Being jewish should be as special or as unspecial as being Moslem or Christian or whatever other religion. Its just a religion, get over it. It doesn't make one more or less distinctive as different people united by the same faith. Fetishizing one's Jewishness or Islamness or Christianity or whatever other religious affiliation is grounds for religious and identitarian fascism.
However, naturally you are free to believe what you wish (after all, Star treck fans seem to think its enough to be a Treckie in order to form a separate community) ; however, I go through this all in relation to Israel and its claims of "rightful" claim to Palestine.
When I say Israel has no right to exist, I mean it totally from A to Z. From the Zionist mythology based on the homogeneously fetishization and falsification of people of the Jewish faith to the from the fabricated lies spun around the rightful claims of a distinctive community designated. by God (and then by imperial powers, like the UK and France followed more recently by the US) as being more deserving of this land, as more deserving of Palestine that the Palestinians themselves. From this A, this claim, to Z, the very mechanisms of oppression, subjugation, ethnic cleansing and so on incurred from that virulent claim.
All in all, the engineering of an "ethnicreligious" (as you put it) identity pursued by the engineering of the ethnic cleansing of a people that were an obstacle for its realization on the land of its myth. And now some quotes from Shlomo Sand's book "The Invention of the Jewish People" (he is, to remind, both Israeli and of Jewish background), translated by Yael Lotan:
"The nationalization of the Bible and its transformation into a reliable history book began with Heinrich Graetz's romantic impetus, developed with diasporic cautiousness by Dubnow and Baron, and completed and perfected by the founders of Zionist historiography who played a significant role in the ideological appropriation of the ancient territory. The first historians who wrote in modern Hebew, which they erroneously believed to have evolved from biblical language, were now regarded as the custodians and excavators of the Jewish nation's "long memory" p107
"Yet as this chapter has to show, it was only the appearance of prenaturalist Jewish historiography in the latter nineteenth century that gave the Bible a leading role in the drama of the rise of the modern Jewish nation. The book was transferred from the shelf of the theological tracts to the history section, and adherents of Jewish nationalism began to read it as if it were a reliable testimony to processes and events. Indeed it was elevated to the status of mythistory, representing an incontrovertible truth. It became the locus of secular sanctity that was not to be touched, and from which all consideration of people and nation must begin. " p. 127
"In this way, the Bible became a secular book that schoolchildren read to learn about their forefathers - children who would later march proudly as soldiers fighting wars of colonization and independence" p128
"Unlike all the ethnonationalist historians, [Uriel] Rapaport did not hesitate to conclude his brilliant thesis with this statement: "Given its great scale, the expansion of Judaism in the ancient world cannot be accounted for by natural increase, by migration from the homeland, or any other explanations that does not include outsiders joining it." As he saw it, the reason for the great Jewish increase was mass conversion. In this, Rapport joined a (non-Jewish) historiographic tradition that included the great scholars that included the great scholars of ancient history - from Ernest Renan and Julius Wellhausen to Eduard Meyer and Emil Shurer-and asserted, to use the sharp words of Thomas Mommsen, that "ancient Judaism was not exclusive at all; it was, rather, as keen to propogate itself as Christianity and Islam would be in the future"." p.154
After presenting a quite detailed historical narrative of conversion to Judaism, the author concludes this chapter ("The Invention of the Exile") with the following:
"It was no accident that modern Jewish nationalism opted for the fictitious ethnic element of the long tradition. It fell upon that concept with glee, manipulated it thoroughly in its ideological laboratories, nurtured it with questionable secular historical data and made it the foundation of its view of the past. The national memory was implanted on a basis of ritual oblivious, hence its amazing success.
Had the memory of the mass conversion to Judaism been preserved, it might have eroded the metanarrative about the biological unity of the Jewish people, whose genealogical roots were believe to trace back all the way to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - not to a heterogeneous mosaic of human populations that lived in the Hasmonean kingdom, in the Persian domain and in the far-flung expanses of the Roman Empire.
Forgetting the forced Judaization and the great voluntary proselytization was essential for the preservation of a linear timeline, along which, back and forth, from past to present and back again, moved a unique nation - wandering, isolated, and, of course, quite imaginary" p.189
.............................
SeriousQuestion
Nov 23, 14 3:45 pm
You first denied that Judaism an ethnoreligious group. You then proceeded to write a multi-paragraph screed arguing, for all intents and purposes, that anyone who believes Judaism to be an ethnoreligious group has been defrauded by a Zionist myth.
Seriously, get help.
chatter of clouds
Nov 23, 14 4:07 pm
your deductive skills are below par.
Zionism benefits from the myth that people of the Jewish faith, globally, form a uniform ethnicity with a uniform continuous history and that Zionist historians have certainly contributed to this fraud.
. I, however, did not say that "anyone who believes Judaism to be an ethnoreligious religion has been defrauded by Zionist myth". Zionism was one of the consequences of this fake, romanticand religio-ethnocentric nationalization happening in Europe around the same time that other romantic ethnocentric nationalisms were burgeoning and forming.v
You are arguing along the lines that, because I say that a cat is an animal, then I must be saying that an animal is a cat. That's of course moronic. I never precluded that others did not buy into that mythology. When I say it is their mythology, I did not say it is Zionists exclusively.
The difference is that Zionists however have employed this purposefully, consolidating it, with added lies and fabrications -as a premise- in a colonial-national project that translates into the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Like most nation-states, Israel is built on a set of myths used to justify and legitimize its existence. In the case of the Zionist state the myths are a compilation of Judeo-Christian misconceptions, steeped in a colonial paradigm with no bearing on actual documented history.
The use of colonial tropes and perversion of history, particularly Jewish history, makes for a powerful combination that has earned Israel support from European and neo-European states alike. Like all myths, however, an elementary understanding of history and the posing of simple, reasonable questions unveil the cracks behind Zionism, the founding ideology of the Israeli state.
One of Zionism’s greatest absurdities is its reliance on the biblical state of Israel as the basis for its legitimacy. This state, as narrated by the Bible, was the only home of the Jewish people.
According to the myth, there was an Israeli kingdom, composed of a community disconnected ethnically from its neighbors, which was subsequently displaced from its homeland by the Romans in 70 CE. Dispersed to the far corners of the world, the Jews of Israel dreamed of returning to their homeland, a hope that was finally realized with the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
While this is an overly simplified paraphrasing of the Zionist narrative, it nevertheless encapsulates the argument repeated by Israeli and American politicians in favor of Israel’s uniqueness and the need for maintaining its Jewish character.
There are several problems with this narrative. Firstly, historians and archeologists have noted that the inhabitants of the unified Kingdom of Israel and Judah were not a separate ethnicity distinct from other populations residing in the region. Indeed, long before the ‘exile’ that followed the Roman destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, a large number of Jews lived outside the Kingdom of Israel and Judah in Babylonia, Persia, and elsewhere, as an integral part of those societies. Moreover, the most important developments in Jewish culture and religious law were born out of Jewish communities living outside of Palestine, such as the writings of Mūsā ibn Maymūn (or Maimonides) who codified the Talmud. There was, as such, no sense of a shared Jewish national identity, nor was there a need for one.
What sense of national identity may have existed during that time would have been extremely time bound.
The united Kingdom of Israel and Judah existed for only a century (1030 BCE – 930 BCE), before splitting into two kingdoms – the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The former was conquered by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE, while the latter existed as an independent state until 586 BCE until it too was absorbed by the Babylonian Empire.
Moreover, because there is no actual archeological proofof the vast Jewish kingdom beyond the Old and New Testament, all this talk of the biblical Jewish state assumes that the bible texts are true.
The biblical narrative also ignores the fact of religious conversion. In the Israeli narrative, religious and ethnic Jewish identity are inseparably intertwined. While Jewish religio-ethnicity plays a critical role in the Israeli national mindset, conversion from and to Judaism undermines the myth of ethnic purity on which the Israeli state rests. For example, the Israeli government has opposed the Palestinian right of return because of its potential impact on the country’s ethnic makeup. However, some geneticists and historians hypothesize that a large amount of historic Palestine’s’ Jewish inhabitants converted to Islam, and that some of today’s Palestinians may well be their descendants.
The biblical justifications for the state of Israel further fracture when considering the claim of exile in 70 CE. As noted above, well before the revolt against the Romans in 66-70 CE, numerous Jewish communities lived outside the lands of Palestine. This makes the trauma of “exile” limited in both impact and meaning. Furthermore, contemporary evidence does not show that large-scale forcible exile occurred during that time. One simply has to ask, if the Romans had indeed exiled a large amount of the Jewish community in Palestine, how then was the community able to conduct another revolt 60 years later that successfully took over the area from the Romans for a period of two years?
Serious historians, including Israelis, have regularly pointed out the flaws in the biblical narrative supporting the Israeli state’s Jewish roots. As the Israeli historian Dr. Shlomo Sand documented in his book, The Invention of the Jewish People, the notion of a national link between Judaism and the lands of historical Palestine is a relatively modern phenomenon developed during the 19th century by European Jews. As such, Zionism, which was born out of this thinking, is steeped in a specifically European experience.
While the Jews of Europe suffered through pogroms and systematic discrimination, Jewish communities elsewhere did not experience nearly the same level of intensity and degree of persecution. Because of these particular roots, the modern Israeli states is defined and shaped by European notions of ethnicity, statehood, and identity, and ultimately driven by a project of state building rooted in a colonial mentality. In other words, indigenous non-European communities living on such lands are routinely marginalized, their rights ignored, and their community and lifestyle dehumanized, pushed aside for the needs of ‘civilized’ Europeans.
Let us not beat around the bush. Israel is a colonial state (in fact, the original Zionist colonizers were unabashed about calling Zionism, a ‘colonial project‘), with certain Apartheid-like structures in place to ensure the continued dominance of a transplanted population over the indigenous people.
Zionism bears numerous similarities to other colonial narratives that manipulate religious understandings in order to justify rule and abuse. As with Zionism, during the late 19th century and early 20th century, South Africa’s white Afrikaners manipulated Christian and Calvinists beliefs to justify their superiority as whites and their divine right to South African land (one can say the same for the United States and its belief in Manifest Destiny as the basis for its expansion over most of the continent). This was quite a common strategy for European and neo-European colonial nation building in the 19th century, and Zionism is built on that zeitgeist.
This historical and religious manipulation does not hold up to today’s current archaeological, scientific, and recorded evidence and will not stand the test of time. Yet, these myths continue to be propagated and used as the underlying justification for Israel’s existence as an exclusively Jewish state. The phrase of a “land without a people, and a people without a land” encapsulates this myth, one that was utilized to horrifying ends in 1947-1948 and continues to allow horrible crimes sixty years later.
Is it not high time to confront these myths?
SeriousQuestion
Nov 23, 14 5:27 pm
Stop pretending that you have a grasp on formal logic. You obviously don't.
chatter of clouds
Nov 23, 14 5:39 pm
You mean informal logic (argument making related). Formal logic is mathematical. Google it if you don't know and want to accuse others of ignorance.
"Formal logic, the abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments."
Why don't you pick up a history book on Judaism and get back to me?
Also, you're ignorant.
chatter of clouds
Nov 24, 14 12:24 am
Yes, formal logic is about mathematical abstraction (you obviously did not note that you quote "abstract" and yet you don't understand it in the context) . In fact, I know a few people doing their maths degrees and they have to take up formal logic in order to pursue discrete maths and mathematical logic courses (in fact, at school, we studied set theory, which of course lays out the vocabulary and elementary base). Informal logic, however is related to the construction of arguments, truthful or fallacious (for instance, the kinds of logical fallacies). You, you ignoble Zionist bot who comes here only in order to defame and to provoke needlessly, meant to say informal logic...but you no neither the difference between informal logic and formal logic as you know neither the difference between a personal subjective and a fascist ideology.
At least have the decency to put the whole definition:
formal logic, the abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments. The discipline abstracts from the content of these elements the structures or logical forms that they embody. The logician customarily uses a symbolic notation to express such structures clearly and unambiguously and to enable manipulations and tests of validity to be more easily applied. Although the following discussion freely employs the technical notation of modern symbolic logic, its symbols are introduced gradually and with accompanying explanations so that the serious and attentive general reader should be able to follow the development of ideas.
Formal logic Formal arguments tend to be simple, straightforward, and extreme.
Example:
Everyone in Manhattan lives in NYC. Everyone in NYC lives in New York State. Therefore, everyone in Manhattan lives in New York State.
There are no assumptions here - it's mathematical, and the evidence fully justifies the conclusion.
Represented in symbols, we can therefore say: Manhattan -> NYC. NYC -> NYS. Therefore, Manhattan -> NYS.
Change the topic to something about climate change or morality, and you've got one of the few formal logic questions in Logical Reasoning. (See my post a few weeks back on 15 Common Logical Reasoning Topics for more on that). Most formal logic on the LSAT happens in Logic Games.
On the LSAT, of course, it might not be that simple. The argument above could be phrased as follows:
If you live in Manhattan, then according to accurate, yet decades-old, government records, you must live in NYC. However, if you're in New York State, then you may or may not be in NYC. On the other hand, if you're in NYC, then you must live in New York State.
I included the 2nd sentence as filler just to make the argument more difficult to understand. Although it's more casual and wordy than the formal logic version, this doesn't mean it's easier.
The two versions above are identical. It's not necessary to represent it in symbols, but it can sometimes help.
Informal logic Informal arguments are much more common on the LSAT. They tend to be complex and contain unstated assumptions.
Example:
Some people in New York State aren't famous. However, because I live in NYC, I ride around Manhattan in limos and hang out with celebrities. Therefore, I'm famous by association.
This can't be diagrammed as neatly, the evidence doesn't fully justify the conclusion (by a long shot), and a lot of other things also need to be true in order for the conclusion to logically follow.
A justice group for Palestinians arrested in Israel has released an explosive report claiming that 40% of children detained by Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli police.
Around 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in Jerusalem since June 2013, the International Middle East Media Centre news agency reports. This means approximately 240 minors could have been abused during their arrest or investigation by Israeli authorities, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PCC).
The PCC say the "daily arrest campaigns" inflicted on young Palestinians living in the historic capital are a "collective punishment against Palestinian residents of Jerusalem".
An attorney with the organisation, Mufeed al-Haj, says other violations were reported during the apprehension of children, including night and dawn raids on family homes, and sexual and physical abuse.
Al-Haj said minors undergoing investigation in Israel should be accompanied by their parents, but "Israeli authorities pay no respect to these laws in many cases".
"Forces often ignore laws and arrest Palestinians without even having warrants," he said to WAFA – the official Palestine news agency.
The PCC is an independent Palestinian organisation set up in 1993, made of 1,600 former Palestinians who spent at least a year in Israeli jails. The club supports Palestinians in Israeli jails by funding legal aid, political action, and by supporting their families.
In March 2013, the United Nation's children fund (Unicef) found that the ill-treatment of Palestinian minors held in Israeli military detention centres is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised".
The UNICEF report that examined the Israeli military court system for holding Palestinian children found evidence of practices it said were "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment".
Published Friday 21/11/2014 (updated) 22/11/2014 21:59
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian was run over by a Jewish settler near the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shufat while she was walking to prayers at a local mosque on Friday, her family told Ma'an.
Suzanne al-Kurd, 29, was struck by a car driven by an Israeli individual and left with bruises all over her legs as she walked in front of the Shufat Mosque, her mother said.
The vehicle reportedly accelerated suddenly as al-Kurd crossed the street and hit her directly before speeding off, leaving her lying on the street in pain.
Palestinian passersby who were nearby at the time of the incident rushed to her aid after the attack, her mother said, adding that she had been taken to the hospital where she was being treated for bruises and pain in her legs, waist, and arms as well as dizziness and headache.
Her mother said her daughter recognized the driver of the vehicle as a Jewish settler because he was wearing a kippah, a skullcap often worn by religious Jews.
"The incident was carried out in a deliberate manner because he ran her over and fled at high speed, all because my daughter was wearing an abaya and hijab," she said, referring to clothes often worn by religious Muslim women.
The incident comes in the wake of a serious of anti-Palestinian hate crimes across Jerusalem, in the West Bank, and inside Israel, with at least four different attacks by Israelis reported overnight.
Many Palestinian taxi drivers have reportedly stopped working in Jerusalem amid an upswing in attacks that began over early summer and has intensified in recent weeks.
The attacks have come amid rising tensions in the city after a series of individual Palestinian attacks on Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem.
These attacks increased during an Israeli offensive on Gaza that left nearly 2,200 dead and an upswing in Israeli military violence across Jerusalem and the West Bank that has left almost 50 dead so far this year, and thousands more in prison.
Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian farmer in the northern Gaza Strip - the first such death since the 50-day Gaza conflict ended, officials have said.
Fadel Mohammed Halawa was shot by soldiers as he searched for songbirds, according to relatives.
The 32-year-old's death - east of the Jabalya refugee camp - was confirmed by the Palestinian Health Ministry, who said the Israeli military were to blame.
An emergency services spokesman said the bullet had hit him in the back, and was seemingly fired from a army watchtower close by.
The Israeli military has claimed that Mr Halawa was accompanied by another Palestinian, and that both men had not responded to calls for them to halt - even when troops had fired warning shots into the air.
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"Once they didn't comply, they fired towards their lower extremities. One was hit," a spokeswoman added.
Tensions have also flared elsewhere in the West Bank. One Palestinian home has been torched in a village near Ramallah, with "Death to Arabs" scrawled on a wall in Hebrew. The owner has blamed the attack on Jewish settlers.
The latest unrest comes amid a refreshed dispute over Jerusalem's holiest site.
The bill that defines country as "Jewish state" now heads towards parliamentary vote in a blow to Israeli Arabs.
"What is problematic about the law in its current form is that if it does get passed, and is enshrined in Israel's legal system, it would effectively mean that those who do not self-identify themselves as Jews become second class citizens"
22nd November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinians participating in a weekly Friday demonstration in the village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers fired .22 caliber bullets, a form of live ammunition which has maimed and killed multiple Palestinians, even as Israel continues to claim it as a “less lethal” way of assaulting demonstrators.
Published Saturday 22/11/2014 (updated) 23/11/2014 13:11
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian youth was attacked and beaten by a group of Jewish settlers at Damascus Gate near the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem on Friday night, a local political activist who was present at the time of the incident said.
22-year-old Ahmad Yaqub al-Ghoul lost consciousness as a result of bruising and bleeding he suffered after three Jewish settlers described as being in their 20s hit him with an iron bar and belts in the al-Musrara area just north of Damascus Gate.
Ramallah, November 20, 2014—Video analysis conducted by Forensic Architecture on behalf of DCI-Palestine has identified the Israeli border policeman who shot and killed Nadeem Nawara, 17, six months ago in the West Bank city of Beitunia.
Although Israeli authorities initially asserted that no live fire was used by soldiers during the May 15, 2014 protests, one border policeman, whose name has not been released, has since been arrested by Israeli police and faces manslaughter charges. This arrest follows Defense for Children International-Palestine’s release of video footage from security cameras which captured the fatal shootings of Nawara and 16-year-old Mohammad Abu Daher, as well as an autopsy’s ruling that a live bullet was the cause of Nawara’s death.
DCI-Palestine commissioned Forensic Architecture, a research agency that provides spatial and media analysis, to investigate the video footage that captured the fatal shootings of Nawara and Abu Daher. A team of architects, video, and audio specialists analyzed the CCTV footage from the four security cameras along with CNN released footage from the same incident to identify Nawara’s shooter, “Soldier A.”
“Using spatial and video analysis we have identified the border policeman that shot and killed the unarmed Nadeem Nawara,” said Eyal Weizman, principal investigator at Forensic Architecture. “Using sound analysis we found that the border policeman fired live ammunition through a rubber bullet extension installed on his gun, perhaps in an attempt to hide his action.”
Despite the Israeli military’s own regulations that live ammunition may only be used “under circumstances of real mortal danger,” DCI-Palestine has documented 10 child fatalities in the West Bank caused by live ammunition since the beginning of 2014. An Amnesty International report found that 41 Palestinians had been killed by live ammunition in the West Bank between 2011 and 2013 alone. The same report cited findings that between September 2000 and June 2013, only 16 investigations ended in indictment of Israeli soldiers.
"While we welcome the arrest of an unnamed Israeli border policeman alleged to have fatally shot Nadeem Nawara, tragically this killing is not exceptional,” said Brad Parker, international advocacy officer at DCI-Palestine. “Past Israeli investigations into similar incidents consistently fail to be serious, impartial or result in indictments. In this case, though there is CCTV footage and news coverage of the shooting, systemic impunity is likely to be an obstacle to justice and accountability."
Forensic Architecture is funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. The project consists of multidisciplinary spatial practitioners – architects, artists, and filmmakers – who undertake architectural research within the framework of international humanitarian law and human rights. Their investigations have provided evidence for international prosecution teams, political organizations, NGOs, and the United Nations.
For me, it is obvious that Palestinians have it much worse than we have ever experienced. Palestinians face racism, but they also face genocide. That genocide takes the form of occupation, removing people from land, and imprisoning them in Gaza: an open-air prison. The West Bank is not that different from Gaza. Palestinians are literally prisoners in a prisoner of war camp. My analysis is that it is a colonial, occupation, settler regime conducting genocide against Palestinians.
From 1948 onwards, when the right wing came to power in South Africa, they tried to introduce a Bantustan system where Africans would be part of those supposed countries. It was similar to what Palestinians face, but the treatment wasn’t half as bad. Africans were required to carry passbooks, like Palestinians. But there was no attempt by the apartheid regime to get rid of Africans or any other group that was not identified white. In fact, there was an economic dependence for cheap labor. There were quite a few massacres in the history of apartheid, but they certainly were not bombed. We never had so many people detained either.
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
chatter of clouds
Nov 25, 14 2:18 pm
Of course, you're not likely to read any of this in mainstream western media.
Tuesday November 25, 2014 10:04 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
Young man attacked by a number of fanatic settlers
Palestinian medical sources have reported, on Monday evening, that a child suffered several fractures and bruises, after being struck by a speeding settler’s vehicle, west of occupied Jerusalem.
File - Image al-Jazeera
The sources said that Khalil Khamis al-Keswani, 14 years of age, suffered a fracture in his left leg, and various cuts and bruises to different parts of his body.
The child’s father, Khamis al-Keswani, said a settler deliberately attacked his son, and chased him with his car, adding that his child managed to run away from the car after the initial impact.
Khamis complained that it took the police and the Israeli ambulance a while before they actually arrived at the scene, near Deir Yassin, in West Jerusalem.
Also on Monday evening, a number of fanatic settlers attacked a Palestinian identified as Mahmoud Issam Obeid, 19, near the French Hill settlement, as he was walking home in the al-‘Eesawiyya town, in occupied East Jerusalem.
Obeid said he was heading home after work when some settlers approached him, asking for a light, and when he said he doesn’t have one; the settlers attacked him while carrying knives and batons.
The assailants tried to stab him, and managed to hit him with their batons before he ran away; he was moved to the al-Makassed hospital suffering a fracture in his left leg.
There have been daily attacks carried out by Israeli extremists against the Palestinians, their cars and property, in different parts of occupied Jerusalem this past week.
The attacks included stabbing, beating, using pepper spray, puncturing tires, and writing racist graffiti.
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers late Monday assaulted a young Palestinian man near the illegal Israeli settlement of French Hill, the man told Ma'an.
Mahmoud Ubeid, 19, told Ma'an he was walking home from work when a car pulled over and one of the five Israelis in the car asked him for a lighter.
"When I said I didn't have a lighter, the settler stepped out of the car and pushed me before the other four stepped out and attacked me," Ubeid said.
The attackers were carrying knives and rods, Ubeid said, adding that he managed to run away before he was seriously hurt.
Ubeid was taken to al-Maqasid hospital for treatment after sustaining injuries to the leg.
An Israeli police spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.
Earlier Monday evening, Israeli media reported Monday that a 45-year-old Jewish man had arrived at a police station in Jerusalem's Old City with stab wounds to his abdomen, saying he had been attacked by "Arabs."
The incidents come amid heavy tensions in Jerusalem, with tit-for-tat attacks increasing between Palestinians and Israelis following an attack on a synagogue last Tuesday that left five Israelis dead and several injured.
Near-daily attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have also been reported in the days following the synagogue attack.
Some 200,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as some 306,000 Palestinians, according to Jerusalem's municipality.
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian teenager sustained injuries late Monday when an Israeli ran into him with his car and fled the scene, the teen's father said.
Khamis Ahmad al-Kiswani told Ma'an that his son Khalil was standing in the Romena neighborhood in West Jerusalem when an Israeli vehicle approached him and "deliberately" ran over his foot.
The driver then fled the scene, al-Kiswani said.
Khalili fell to the ground in pain and called the police, who arrived a half hour later.
The teen was taken to Hadassah Medical Center where doctors said he had fractures in his foot.
An Israeli police spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.
Renowned Israeli academic, historian and activist Ilan Pappe, one of the panelists, believes the Israeli occupation will be defeated like the apartheid regime in South Africa
South African Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande believes that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is worse than what South Africans had suffered under the apartheid regime.
"I always tell people you cannot understand what the Palestinians go through unless you have been there," Nzimande said Wednesday night during a panel discussion at the University of Johannesburg.
He recalled being sent by the South African Communist Party (SACP) to the Palestinian territories in 2002.
"Israel uses water as a weapon of war," Nzimande told a huge audience who attended the event. "They switch it off for days."
He said Gaza felt like a ghost city when he visited it back then.
The South African delegation, Nzimande recalled, could hear bombs and strikes which was unusual for them.
"We must also condemn the hypocrisy of the United States government," said the minister, who is also the SACP general secretary.
"The SACP is of the view that we should expel the Israeli ambassador and recall our ambassador back home," he added.
Nzimande insisted that the conflict in the Middle East is a human rights issue not a religious conflict as often portrayed.
He said they were concerned that some Christian groups in the country were being mobilized on that basis.
Asked by a member of the audience why the South African government remains quiet while some of its citizens serve in the Israeli army, the Minister vowed to raise the issue with his government.
But he also encouraged members of the various Palestinian organizations in the country to seek audience with the government.
"Our own view is, South Africa's freedom shall remain incomplete until Palestine freedom is achieved," Nzimande asserted.
Boycott Israel
The higher education minister congratulated the University of Johannesburg for cutting ties with an Israeli university.
He said he strongly urges other educational institutions to reconsider their ties with institutions in Israel.
The panel discussion was themed "Academic freedom in higher education: Apartheid South Africa and current day Israel as case studies, with a particular focus on the academic boycott."
Nzimande also called on South African universities to consider starting a center for Middle East studies perhaps in partnership with a Palestinian university.
The higher education minister said he believes the center could help academics and students to broaden their understanding of the Palestinian struggle.
Defeat Israel
Renowned Israeli academic, historian and activist Ilan Pappe, one of the panelists, believes the Israeli occupation will be defeated like the apartheid regime in South Africa.
"Apartheid South was defeated by the moral consciousness of the people. This is what Israelis know and fear," he told the audience.
"Moral values of human rights are stronger than F16s," said Pappe who lives in exile due to his academic work and support of the Palestinian struggle, in particular his championing of the academic boycott of Israel.
He is currently a Professor of History at Exeter University in the UK as well as the Director of the European Centre for Palestine.
Pappe insisted that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel was a non-violent, humane movement against racism in the 21st century.
"We need the governments of Africa, Latin America, and south East Asia," he said. "We have heard enough of the USA, they have brought destruction."
The academic told the audience not to confuse the American people with their government.
"There are many Americans, including Jews, who are marching against Israeli atrocities," said Pappe.
Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
........................................................................................................
From Israeli calls for Palestinian blood ring at fever pitch :
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
............................................................................................................
I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
As you might know, there is also the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel , whose mission statement states the following:
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
So strange how JVP calls for restraint by Israel but not by Hamas.
Hah, Israeli bots now use the turgid endemically reactionary Wahabi king, who is directly implicated along with his regime for the rise of the likes of ISIS (Wahabism being their theological ideology), as a source of judgment and discrimination. Seriously, this is actually funny. Israel's defenders sink lower and lower; they're practically splurging at the bottom of a cess pool of depleting lies, moral fallibility and intellectual friability.
Anything to cover their Zionist ass...even the words coming out of the head of the horrible regime of Saudi Arabia. Anyway, Wahabi fascism and Zionist fascism coming together is neither novel nor surprising"
From:
Saudi Arabia and Israel Against Gaza
(...)
There are many reasons to believe that the growing Saudi-Israeli alignment is well suited. Above all, Saudi Arabia and Israel are ideologically compatible in the sense that both have exploited, manipulated and subjugated their respective religions for fascistic purposes. The result is the emergence of racist and violent political ideologies that have been feeding the most narcissistic murder and bloodshed in the region. The implicit agreement between Saudi Wahhabism and Israeli Zionism on fueling destruction of the region is a natural historical outcome of their ideological encounter.
Although the Saudi-Israeli relation is not formalized with a peace treaty, recent years have witnessed intensified cooperation between them, particularly in fields of security, trade and through regular meeting between security and political officials. The first sign of Saudi-Israeli trade relations was expressed in the 2005 Saudi announcement that it was ending its ban on Israeli goods and services. Crucially, Saudi economic normalization with Israel came at a time when Palestinian civil society initiated the global BDS campaign to increase international pressure on Israel through economic boycott.
I implore you to learn English, Tammuz-- you've coined a bunch of new words in that last post.
My point was NOT that I agree with Saudi Arabia; it's a rejoinder to your assertion that Hamas is somehow beyond reproach. It is hurting Palestinians.
Israeli attacks on Al Quds University give new meaning to ‘academic freedom’
Israel/Palestine
Kamilah Moore on November 17, 2014 8 Comments
Al Quds University, right, alongside the Separation Wall.
Close to 13,000 Palestinian and international students go through at least one of 600 checkpoints in the West Bank to attend Al Quds University, the only Arab University in East Jerusalem. Established in 1984, the Abu Dis campus now houses 14 academic faculties, and has more than 21 centers and institutes, including the critically acclaimed Abu Jihad Museum for Prisoner Movement Affairs. Besides having a museum dedicated to Palestinian political prisoners on campus, Al Quds University is unique for another controversial reason: the campus community is under constant threat due to methodical and ideologically-based attacks by the Israeli military.
During 2012, 2013 and 2014, the total number of attacks on Al-Quds University main campus was 31. During these attacks 2473 people were injured, 5121 teargas canisters and bullets were shot, and 276 people were called by the Israeli intelligence for investigation.
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/israeli-university-academic#sthash.l1ZgxMhZ.dpuf
maybe that is why people here are saying BDS won't work. maybe they are saying (from practice and experience) only way to deal with academia (Al-Quds University) is to physically arrest everyone on campus, shoot them and bulldoze the school if necessary. israeli ingenuity i must say...
Can't that Zionist bot see its doing itself a disservice by continually bringing up Hamas as if that explained the huge and broad display of Zionist violence against and dispossession of Palestinians?
I say: thousands of Palestinians in jail, many without trial
It says: Hamas
I say: a history of occupation going back to the early 20th century
It says: Hamas
I say: Ethnic cleansing
It says: Hamas
I say: Land theft, destruction of homes
It says: Hamas
I say: Torture of Palestinians and Palestinian kids
It says: Hamas
I say: History of massacres, still ongoing as in Gaza
It says: Hamas
so on and so forth
Do they lobotomize these creatures before sending them to "defend" Israel? "Defend" away, bot...you only expose ISrael's ugly face further.
Yes, yes..we know...: Hamas
Willful ignorance never helped anyone resolve a problem.
.
Despite the total dismissiveness of Tammuz and Orhan (who once said he supports a two-state solution but now sides with Tammuz's goal of eradicating Israel), I will repeat: Hamas is the problem. Wake up.
encore
Settlers attack Palestinian school near Nablus
Published today (updated) 18/11/2014 22:20
(MaanImages)
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Clashes broke out near Nablus on Tuesday after settlers attacked a Palestinian school in the village of Urif, a Palestinian official said.
Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settler activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that six Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets after Israeli forces intervened in clashes with settlers.
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and stun grenades at villagers after they clashed with settlers trying to attack a local school.
The incident took place hours after a deadly attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem which killed four Israelis.
Earlier, dozens of settlers had gathered along the main road between Nablus and Yizhar settlement following news of the attack, with witnesses saying they planned to attack Palestinian farmers and cars.
An Israeli army spokesman said Palestinians "rioted" and "hurled rocks" at Israeli security forces.
I give up with this futile debate. I really hope that you both eventually realize that for peace, both sides will need to listen to the other and acknowledge the others' right to exist.
you got nothing. you are that bird. i always respect someone who has anything to say of value. even my opposition. goodby, have a nice day.
of course he has nothing. you say that hamas is not a problem. terrorist acts committed by the palestinians don't count. when palestinians kill babies, you ignore it and call your opposition a baby killer.
israeli's disproportionate actions against the palestinians came from palestinian attacks on civilian israeli and jewish targets. the palestinians look like great people if you omit what they've done, but that isn't really honest is it?
if you think the conflict should continue until the israelis are completely destroyed to the point of having no homes, no government, and no land of their own, more babies will die. that's what tammuz supports. is that really what you want orhan? deep down inside, are you really a baby killer just like the idf?
or, in addition to supporting the bdc, you could support a peaceful resolution. which means rejection tammuz's radicalized hatred. you don't have to say israel is the good guy. they aren't. but you can't support a government that encourages terrorist attacks and praises people for killing unarmed rabbis in their place of worship either.
curtkram, all the stuff you have written is your own poor fabrication. stop throwing dirt and be a decent person. or stop drinking or something. you are not honest as you claim to be around here. you have no problem with twisting others' words so they serve your bs.
Israeli shoots, seriously injures Palestinian teen near Ramallah
Published yesterday (updated) 18/11/2014 23:20
(MaanImages)
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- An Israeli settler shot and seriously injured a Palestinian teenager Tuesday after a settler demonstration on the outskirts of Beitin village east of Ramallah.
Ibrahim Mahmoud, 16, was shot with a live bullet and taken to Palestine Medical Complex with serious injuries. He is now stable and was placed in the ICU.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the report.
Earlier a Palestinian man was stabbed by a group of Israelis in north Jerusalem.
Fadi Jalal Radwan, 22, was attacked and stabbed by four Israelis while walking in the town of Kafr Aqab, his father said. He was stabbed three times in the legs, and once in the back.
The victim was found bleeding in the street and taken to Hadassah hospital for treatment. Doctors said he was in a serious condition.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma'an that "an Arab man was approached by three suspects" who asked him for light. They then stabbed him in the leg with a small knife.
Israeli police are looking into the background of the incident, Rosenfeld added.
Prisoners Committee: 1,500 Palestinian Prisoners Are Sick
Head of Prisoners Committee Issa Qaraqe said, Monday, that some 1,500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are suffering from various diseases, including 25 cases of cancer.
Mr. Qaraqe says that medical negligence has been a systematic policy by the Israeli Prison Service, according to WAFA correspondence. He notes that three prisoners recently warned to launch a hunger strike against their deteriorating health conditions -- this in addition to several others who are also engaged in ongoing hunger strikes.
The official demonstrated cases of deliberate medical negligence, including urgently needed surgery, as well as cases of numbness and paralysis.
More than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners are still detained in Israeli prisons, of whom dozens are serving a life sentence.
The number of sick prisoners detained in Israeli jails has now reached 1,500, WAFA reports, of whom 80 are suffering from serious health problems and do not receive adequate treatment.
Tammuz and Orhan make up the majority in the middle east and that is why there will never be peace there. Thus this thread will never die and the hate will continue to flow.
Had Israel killed praying clerics the entire region would be on fire, but the hypocrisy of Western media and acid throwing radicals continues to keep the casual observer hating their friends to only placate their true enemies.
Here's another group of peaceful people...
http://www.newser.com/story/198199/mob-kills-pakistani-couple-accused-of-blasphemy.html
all my friends know i usually walk around with couple bottles of acid, don't come near me or you will be burned for your racist hate speech. go back to your formz toilet detailing and don't get into things bigger than your p-brain and you'll be okay.
...Everyone knows how you operate...spout antisemitic "academic" garbage, someone calls you on your bullshit and your way of dealing with any challenge is to dismiss them with poorly crafted insults again failing to address any real issues.
Then your buddy comes back with more copy/paste to make sure this thread stays near the top of google search results for boycott Israel....
But you must love this since you keep coming back for more. If you call the death of thousands of people not real issues you must have even smaller brain than I originally thought above.
Costly pro-Israel PR campaign fails to stop UCLA divestment
And, from the same publication, a bingo board for Zionist arguments... Almost all tried by the bots here on this thread... Exposed!
1- We here have not attacked Zionism as a proxy for attack against religious jewish content but for their practices on ground (theft of land, kicking people out of their homes, committing massacres and ethic cleansing) and for their ideology of colonialism that makes them Zionists. In short, I could care less whether Zionists were jewish or Christian or Muslim or worshipped UFOs. Fro that religious point of view, I am far from an anti-Semite. I am neither pro or anti-Judaism as much as I am neither pro or anti-Islam or Christianity. My concern is not religion.
2- Given such racial profiling, I would be classified as a semite, much more so than an Ashkenazi whose family converted to Judaism somewhere in central Asia. However, as with religion, I do not care about this racial classification, whether semitic or hamitic or whatever other biblically based assumptions trying to pass off as scientific classifications. As a "Semite" I have more in common with a non-Semitic Turk or non-Semitic Persian or a greek Cypriot than with a Jewish/"Semitic" Russian or English person. Semitism has become a mythical counter-intuitive classification.
So, in my viewpoint,there is absolutely nothing that makes Jews into a nation...as there is nothing that makes Muslims into one or Christians into nation because this de facto excludes others living rightfully alongside them . ..and the notion of Jews as a seperate race was a racist notion advanced by racist theorists of aryanism and so on. In fact, Jews have always been part of the lands -as much as have Christians, Moslems and others- they historically belonged to...whether Germany or Ukraine or Morocco or etc. There is NO contradiction between an Arab and Jewish or a "white European/Caucasian" and Jewish.
Israel is an artificial colony based on a fictional identity created partially by "anti-Semitic" racists and further accepted and propelled by "Semitic" racists. To accept this othering identity of "Semitic" for a group of people who have nothing other than religion in common is itself a to fall into alignment with these pseudo-scientific racist theories.
What makes a people into a people is a shared geography, history, culture, food, music, and yes sometimes religion, as one aspect not more, etc. Something that the Palestinians have always had in common with the larger regional community: a community that does not include the hoard of colonists coming from all over to throw the Palestinians out, whatever their reasons and backgrounds were.
Thus, my concern is not ethnicity or race.
........................
I am therefore a non-anti-Semite "Semite". I have not attacked on the basis of religion or ethnicity- which, in my racially and theologically agnostic opinion, are anyway fictional.
My concern is for a people being kicked out of their rightful homes and being dispossessed on their rightful lands so that another people will take their place. This is pure and barbaric injustice that should have died away a long time ago; Israel and the current civilization of human rights and equality are incompatible.
I have not chosen my sources or my arguments to be in any way meant to demonize people of jewish belief. in fact, I feel very strongly that a huge part of the problem was not the jewish people themselves. In Europe and Russia, their identities -pluralistic, varied, rooted in their original homeland- were firstly violated by racist regimes such as Nazism and then hijacked by a fascist racist regime taking the Jewish religion as its guise.
I never drew out generalizations about jewish people, their religion...in fact, part of my critique is that Zionism is itself an unfair and cruel generalization chosen by some as a representative or avatar of Judaism.
This is exactly the opposite of what that LITZ4Formz does, who equates Zionism with Judaism (and therefore receives attacks against Zionism as attacks on Judaism) and who seems to find it relevant to randomly connect the issue being presented here with an occurrence in Pakistan, a connection calculated to suggest something about Muslims entire and to suggest that Orhan and myself belong to that mould. In fact, this scumbag has previously suggestively asked me to blow myself up (after assuming that I'm possibly of a "moslem"or arab background) . (Side note: If indeed Archinect is going to start imposing restrictions on expressions related to racial / religious/ identitarian hatreds and prejudices, LITZ4Formz would be the second logical candidate ( subgenius, being the first) for censorship. It is LITS4Formz and subgenius that are benefitting from Archinect's non-censorial policy, not me.)
Now that is racism.
Yes, I have hatred in me. I hate colonialism, racism and oppressing a people. I admit to that. This is why I bring the issue up here.
But LITZ4Forms and his ilk's hatred is itself a racially motivated one justifying itself on the grounds of exceptionality, racial/identitarian/ religious generalizations, lies and fabrications to protect the colonialism, racism and oppression.
So, again, Jews, Christians, Moslems, Zoroastrians, whatever...I could care less about what religious identity one chooses for oneself. But I do care when it is used as an excuse to steal from others and kill others because they feel ordained and exceptional, (as do Zionists amongst the Jewish people and ISIS amongst the Moslem people).
Lastly, let me repeat yet again...I do NOt believe that what are now known as Israelis should leave the place where they were born and bred. I believe in a place that accepts who lives there now and who was thrown out of their land, together, equally, whatever their religion or non-religion is. I believe that people who live there now, who built their lives there - Jewish, Christian, Moslem, whatever- and those who were thrown out of their lands (along with their descendants) should have equal right of residence and citizenship. I believe the latter should be compensated and their rights restituted while the rights of the former to remain and function in Palestine as equal citizens should not be compromised. But in the absence of this and the continual oppression of the Palestinians, of the colonized, at the hands of Israel, the colonizer, I completely and wholeheartedly support the right of the Palestinians to resist.
Now...what in any of the above is "anti-Semitic"? Just because I support resisting the criminal who happens to identify herself or himself as being Jewish? But I would do the same if she or he identified themselves as a Moslem or Christian or believed that in a God made out of cheese.
Torture in Israeli prisons: 200 methods used against Palestinian prisoners
Wednesday, 29 October 2014 16:55
Methods range between severe beatings, putting prisoners under cold water followed by hot water, cuffing or restraining them with their arms behind them and then tying them to a door or window for long periods of time, often lasting hours
Hundreds of torture methods used against Palestinian prisoners during interrogations conducted in Israeli prisoners have been observed by human rights organisations and prisoners' rights associations.
A report by the United Nations lists around 200 methods of torture. The Israeli rights group B'Tselem listed around 105 torture methods. Regardless of the number, all these reports indicate a grave level of violations perpetrated against Palestinians following their arrest.
Fouad Khuffash, director of the Ahrar Centre for Prisoners' Studies and Human Rights, suggests that torture can be divided into two categories; physical and psychological. Some believe that psychological torture is less harmful than physical torture, but the mental scars left by both can leave prisoners traumatised long after their release.
Khuffash adds: "Torture in Israeli prisons is systematic and starts from the moment a prisoner is arrested, not from the moment they begin interrogation. This is a premeditated and staged scenario that changes according to the case of the detainee and the nature of their file. Investigators alternate and play various roles assigned in advance to each investigator."
Fahd Abu Al-Hajj, director of the Abu Jihad Centre for Prisoner Affairs at the University of Jerusalem, noted that there are 73 methods of interrogation considered to be the "most popular" in Israeli jails. These methods demonstrate the barbarism of the occupation and its lack of respect for basic standards of human rights, he stated.
He added: "Nothing evidences this more than the repeated death of prisoners under interrogation, the most recent of which was the death of the prisoner Raed Al-Jabari."
Al-Hajj believes that the use of torture is systematic, adopted by the Israeli intelligence services and that no prisoner detained in any Israeli prison is spared.
He also explained that these methods range between severe beatings, putting prisoners under cold water followed by hot water, cuffing or restraining them with their arms behind them and then tying them to a door or window for long periods of time, often lasting hours. Prisoners are also made to sit on chairs and beaten with sticks until they lose consciousness. These beatings may target sensitive areas of their bodies which have the potential to leave long-term negative effects, sometimes leading to chronic diseases.
Forms of torture
Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem acknowledged in its report that 105 torture methods are used against Palestinian detainees which are considered serious violations of human rights. A UN human rights committee described the torture in Israeli prisons as "crossing the line", noting that Israel's brutal methods of torture included breaking backs, pulling fingers apart and twisting testicles.
Israeli intelligence bases their torture of detainees on the so-called secret guidelines that were approved in 1987, after the outbreak of the first Intifada. These guidelines allow them to apply "moderate" physical and psychological pressure on prisoners. This gives a legal cover to the torture practiced by Israeli intelligence agents.
In the last 10 years, interrogators have decreased their use of torture, moving away from physical torture and instead used harsh psychological methods that can leave enduring scars, while continuing to use direct physical torture of varying degrees.
Mohammed Kilani, who has experienced many interrogations, noted that his solitary confinement which exceeded two months during which he was forced to remain chained to a chair, was the harshest method of torture he has suffered.
He also added that throughout the entire prison system across the globe, there exists no torture method that has not been thought of or used by the Israeli authorities at some point.
According to statistics, around 72 prisoners were killed as a result of torture in Israeli prisons since 1967, out of a total number of over 200 prisoners who died behind bars.
The first prisoner to die as a result of being tortured was Yousef Al-Jabali who died on January 4 1968 in a Nablus prison. Many prisoners have since followed him, such as Qassem Abu Akar, Ibrahim Al-Rai, Abdul Samad Harizat, Attia Za'anin, Mustafa Akkawi, and others, including the most recent, Raed Al-Jabari.
No longer going to debate the Israel question, but just FYI Tammuz, Jews are an ethnoreligious group and, in that sense distinct from Muslims and Christians. We share common genetics (Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews alike).
Our physical differences are the result of the genetic admixture within the communities to which we were historically displaced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews#Ethnic_divisions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemenite_Jews#DNA_testing
Wading into into the subject of enthnoreligious grouping is wading into doubly murky waters. There is a whole lot here based on myth-making and Israel is of course a most idiosynchratic case of reified myth-making, a nationality built on the rewriting of history through the lens of two domains of mythology: biblical/religious and racial/ethnic taxonomy
Firstly, when one assumes that the Jews are a distinct viable ethnicity, one is claiming that that, historically, it has been an integral and separate lineage self propagating in time (and space). Is that really true? Here is what you need to believe in the "truth" of this:
1- Firstly, you need to believe in the Bible and religious texts as a source of secular history
2- You need to believe that the Jewish "ethnicity" is integral and self definitive and that different ethnicities (Berber, European, Ethiopian, Indian, etc) did not convert to Judaism and therefore constitute the diverse ethnicities that fall under the banner of the "Jewish" people.
3- You need to believe that matrilineal inheritance overrides patrilineal one in defining an ethnicity (since one's ethnicity is as much defined by what it is as by what it is not). Because, there sure are a lot of non-Jews with Jewish fathers. Does that not qualify them - from the DNA point of view- to carry an equal percentage of ethnic inheritance as do Jewish children from non-Jewish fathers and Jewish mothers? After all, the edict that determines one's Jewishness from the matrilineal branch is religious and not scientific.
4- You need to believe that "ethnos" is itself a scientifically qualified concept, since you bring up the issue of DNA. For that, review here
5- From the point of view of DNA, you need to definitively believe that your sources are absolutely correct and there is no possible way to counter them...since this is a matter of so-called science. For that, review here and here
6- You need to kind of be counter intuitive and consider that the fact that a Yememi Jew looks like a Yemeni Muslim, a Polish Jew looks like a Polish Christian, a Moroccan Jew looks like a Morrocan Muslim -and that they indeed share more than looks, also a culture and tradition- is far less reliable than what seems like a desperate and esoteric hunt for a questionably Jewish Y chromosome related feature,
This is asking for too much belief...or, rather, suspension of belief. The more feasible realistic approach would be to view Judaism as a religion with a rich tapestry spanning cultures, races, geographies, carried by people through their travels and through their families, propagated through conversions and through lineage. To boil it down to an "ethnoreligious" group is parsimonious, reductive and, most importantly here, mythical and false, having its roots in false racial theories that the haters, such as the Nazis and their ilk, used for the demonization of the European Jewish community and glorification of the so-called Aryan race...and which Zionists now use in order to define themselves, as a uniform group of "Semites".
continued:
and which Zionists now use in order to define themselves, as a uniform group of "Semites" , from all corners of the world, who believe in the right of return to a place allocated to them within their mythology and based on biblical events while they see no right for the rights of a people, the Palestinians, who have existed on that land for generations and many of whom, indeed, may well harken back to communities existing in Palestine at the time of purported biblical events and man y of whom may well have been, ironically jewish before converting to islam and Christianity.
Israel is a case of a virulent mythology forced upon the reality of normal people living, normally, in their homeland. Israel is also a case of twisted fabricated tortuous lies as much about the history of Jewish people as about the Palestinian and Arab people
I really don't need someone telling me what my religious and ethnic identity is or is not. You can write all that you want but your points boil down to a gut feeling and not actual facts (your argument is that polish Jews look like polish Catholics-- have you ever been to Poland and been identified as a Jew? Russia?)
You're entitled to opinions on Israel but stop speaking for jews. You're ignorant.
I posited several points based on certain assumptions one would have to make in order to buy into the myth of a Jewish ethnicity. Secondly, I never did "tell you" what your religious identity is or is about.I have stated only that Judaism is as rich a religion as many others, covering several cultural geographic dicrete époques.
This is not about your person and stop trying to victimize yourself, yet another silly transparent ploy. You can have all the beliefs you want about your "ethnicity" but once people start to use their mythologies (a mélange of religion, questionable historical associations to an even more questionable past, and pseudo-science) to justify an oppression and displacement of the Palestinian people who have actually lived in their homelands for generations, the theft of land and so on, then lets confront directly this mythology of theirs for what it is.
My several points still stand as they are ..and no, there is not one single argument as you're trying to insinuate. And in regards to how people of the Jewish faith "look like", from a so-called ethnic point of view, please review this. It is enough to compare the Falasha community, the Colchin one, the Amazigh jewish one, the Kaifing, and the European jewish community etc. How can anyone group those as one ethnic group? Its ridiculously counter intuitive - not unless one is deliberately holding on to a belief which one is desperate enough to go looking through DNA to find a substantiation for religiously based material. Even if there is found that some or many Jews share a certain Y-chromosome related feature (that they share with other non Jewish people), does that override the majoritarian features that bring them far closer to their non-Jewish environs that this feature ( that seems to be as much a site for interpretation): the jewish Berbers to other Berbers, the jewish Yemenis to their non jewish Yemenis, jewish Europeans to non jewish Europeans, so on and so forth.
Again, get over it. Being jewish should be as special or as unspecial as being Moslem or Christian or whatever other religion. Its just a religion, get over it. It doesn't make one more or less distinctive as different people united by the same faith. Fetishizing one's Jewishness or Islamness or Christianity or whatever other religious affiliation is grounds for religious and identitarian fascism.
However, naturally you are free to believe what you wish (after all, Star treck fans seem to think its enough to be a Treckie in order to form a separate community) ; however, I go through this all in relation to Israel and its claims of "rightful" claim to Palestine.
When I say Israel has no right to exist, I mean it totally from A to Z. From the Zionist mythology based on the homogeneously fetishization and falsification of people of the Jewish faith to the from the fabricated lies spun around the rightful claims of a distinctive community designated. by God (and then by imperial powers, like the UK and France followed more recently by the US) as being more deserving of this land, as more deserving of Palestine that the Palestinians themselves. From this A, this claim, to Z, the very mechanisms of oppression, subjugation, ethnic cleansing and so on incurred from that virulent claim.
All in all, the engineering of an "ethnicreligious" (as you put it) identity pursued by the engineering of the ethnic cleansing of a people that were an obstacle for its realization on the land of its myth. And now some quotes from Shlomo Sand's book "The Invention of the Jewish People" (he is, to remind, both Israeli and of Jewish background), translated by Yael Lotan:
.........................................................
"The nationalization of the Bible and its transformation into a reliable history book began with Heinrich Graetz's romantic impetus, developed with diasporic cautiousness by Dubnow and Baron, and completed and perfected by the founders of Zionist historiography who played a significant role in the ideological appropriation of the ancient territory. The first historians who wrote in modern Hebew, which they erroneously believed to have evolved from biblical language, were now regarded as the custodians and excavators of the Jewish nation's "long memory" p107
"Yet as this chapter has to show, it was only the appearance of prenaturalist Jewish historiography in the latter nineteenth century that gave the Bible a leading role in the drama of the rise of the modern Jewish nation. The book was transferred from the shelf of the theological tracts to the history section, and adherents of Jewish nationalism began to read it as if it were a reliable testimony to processes and events. Indeed it was elevated to the status of mythistory, representing an incontrovertible truth. It became the locus of secular sanctity that was not to be touched, and from which all consideration of people and nation must begin. " p. 127
"In this way, the Bible became a secular book that schoolchildren read to learn about their forefathers - children who would later march proudly as soldiers fighting wars of colonization and independence" p128
"Unlike all the ethnonationalist historians, [Uriel] Rapaport did not hesitate to conclude his brilliant thesis with this statement: "Given its great scale, the expansion of Judaism in the ancient world cannot be accounted for by natural increase, by migration from the homeland, or any other explanations that does not include outsiders joining it." As he saw it, the reason for the great Jewish increase was mass conversion. In this, Rapport joined a (non-Jewish) historiographic tradition that included the great scholars that included the great scholars of ancient history - from Ernest Renan and Julius Wellhausen to Eduard Meyer and Emil Shurer-and asserted, to use the sharp words of Thomas Mommsen, that "ancient Judaism was not exclusive at all; it was, rather, as keen to propogate itself as Christianity and Islam would be in the future"." p.154
.............................................................................
After presenting a quite detailed historical narrative of conversion to Judaism, the author concludes this chapter ("The Invention of the Exile") with the following:
..............................................................................
"It was no accident that modern Jewish nationalism opted for the fictitious ethnic element of the long tradition. It fell upon that concept with glee, manipulated it thoroughly in its ideological laboratories, nurtured it with questionable secular historical data and made it the foundation of its view of the past. The national memory was implanted on a basis of ritual oblivious, hence its amazing success.
Had the memory of the mass conversion to Judaism been preserved, it might have eroded the metanarrative about the biological unity of the Jewish people, whose genealogical roots were believe to trace back all the way to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - not to a heterogeneous mosaic of human populations that lived in the Hasmonean kingdom, in the Persian domain and in the far-flung expanses of the Roman Empire.
Forgetting the forced Judaization and the great voluntary proselytization was essential for the preservation of a linear timeline, along which, back and forth, from past to present and back again, moved a unique nation - wandering, isolated, and, of course, quite imaginary" p.189
.............................
You first denied that Judaism an ethnoreligious group. You then proceeded to write a multi-paragraph screed arguing, for all intents and purposes, that anyone who believes Judaism to be an ethnoreligious group has been defrauded by a Zionist myth.
Seriously, get help.
your deductive skills are below par.
Zionism benefits from the myth that people of the Jewish faith, globally, form a uniform ethnicity with a uniform continuous history and that Zionist historians have certainly contributed to this fraud.
. I, however, did not say that "anyone who believes Judaism to be an ethnoreligious religion has been defrauded by Zionist myth". Zionism was one of the consequences of this fake, romanticand religio-ethnocentric nationalization happening in Europe around the same time that other romantic ethnocentric nationalisms were burgeoning and forming.v
You are arguing along the lines that, because I say that a cat is an animal, then I must be saying that an animal is a cat. That's of course moronic. I never precluded that others did not buy into that mythology. When I say it is their mythology, I did not say it is Zionists exclusively.
The difference is that Zionists however have employed this purposefully, consolidating it, with added lies and fabrications -as a premise- in a colonial-national project that translates into the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The Myths of Zionism
October 11th, 2012
Like most nation-states, Israel is built on a set of myths used to justify and legitimize its existence. In the case of the Zionist state the myths are a compilation of Judeo-Christian misconceptions, steeped in a colonial paradigm with no bearing on actual documented history.
The use of colonial tropes and perversion of history, particularly Jewish history, makes for a powerful combination that has earned Israel support from European and neo-European states alike. Like all myths, however, an elementary understanding of history and the posing of simple, reasonable questions unveil the cracks behind Zionism, the founding ideology of the Israeli state.
One of Zionism’s greatest absurdities is its reliance on the biblical state of Israel as the basis for its legitimacy. This state, as narrated by the Bible, was the only home of the Jewish people.
According to the myth, there was an Israeli kingdom, composed of a community disconnected ethnically from its neighbors, which was subsequently displaced from its homeland by the Romans in 70 CE. Dispersed to the far corners of the world, the Jews of Israel dreamed of returning to their homeland, a hope that was finally realized with the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
While this is an overly simplified paraphrasing of the Zionist narrative, it nevertheless encapsulates the argument repeated by Israeli and American politicians in favor of Israel’s uniqueness and the need for maintaining its Jewish character.
There are several problems with this narrative. Firstly, historians and archeologists have noted that the inhabitants of the unified Kingdom of Israel and Judah were not a separate ethnicity distinct from other populations residing in the region. Indeed, long before the ‘exile’ that followed the Roman destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, a large number of Jews lived outside the Kingdom of Israel and Judah in Babylonia, Persia, and elsewhere, as an integral part of those societies. Moreover, the most important developments in Jewish culture and religious law were born out of Jewish communities living outside of Palestine, such as the writings of Mūsā ibn Maymūn (or Maimonides) who codified the Talmud. There was, as such, no sense of a shared Jewish national identity, nor was there a need for one.
What sense of national identity may have existed during that time would have been extremely time bound.
The united Kingdom of Israel and Judah existed for only a century (1030 BCE – 930 BCE), before splitting into two kingdoms – the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The former was conquered by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE, while the latter existed as an independent state until 586 BCE until it too was absorbed by the Babylonian Empire.
Moreover, because there is no actual archeological proof of the vast Jewish kingdom beyond the Old and New Testament, all this talk of the biblical Jewish state assumes that the bible texts are true.
The biblical narrative also ignores the fact of religious conversion. In the Israeli narrative, religious and ethnic Jewish identity are inseparably intertwined. While Jewish religio-ethnicity plays a critical role in the Israeli national mindset, conversion from and to Judaism undermines the myth of ethnic purity on which the Israeli state rests. For example, the Israeli government has opposed the Palestinian right of return because of its potential impact on the country’s ethnic makeup. However, some geneticists and historians hypothesize that a large amount of historic Palestine’s’ Jewish inhabitants converted to Islam, and that some of today’s Palestinians may well be their descendants.
The biblical justifications for the state of Israel further fracture when considering the claim of exile in 70 CE. As noted above, well before the revolt against the Romans in 66-70 CE, numerous Jewish communities lived outside the lands of Palestine. This makes the trauma of “exile” limited in both impact and meaning. Furthermore, contemporary evidence does not show that large-scale forcible exile occurred during that time. One simply has to ask, if the Romans had indeed exiled a large amount of the Jewish community in Palestine, how then was the community able to conduct another revolt 60 years later that successfully took over the area from the Romans for a period of two years?
Serious historians, including Israelis, have regularly pointed out the flaws in the biblical narrative supporting the Israeli state’s Jewish roots. As the Israeli historian Dr. Shlomo Sand documented in his book, The Invention of the Jewish People, the notion of a national link between Judaism and the lands of historical Palestine is a relatively modern phenomenon developed during the 19th century by European Jews. As such, Zionism, which was born out of this thinking, is steeped in a specifically European experience.
While the Jews of Europe suffered through pogroms and systematic discrimination, Jewish communities elsewhere did not experience nearly the same level of intensity and degree of persecution. Because of these particular roots, the modern Israeli states is defined and shaped by European notions of ethnicity, statehood, and identity, and ultimately driven by a project of state building rooted in a colonial mentality. In other words, indigenous non-European communities living on such lands are routinely marginalized, their rights ignored, and their community and lifestyle dehumanized, pushed aside for the needs of ‘civilized’ Europeans.
Let us not beat around the bush. Israel is a colonial state (in fact, the original Zionist colonizers were unabashed about calling Zionism, a ‘colonial project‘), with certain Apartheid-like structures in place to ensure the continued dominance of a transplanted population over the indigenous people.
Zionism bears numerous similarities to other colonial narratives that manipulate religious understandings in order to justify rule and abuse. As with Zionism, during the late 19th century and early 20th century, South Africa’s white Afrikaners manipulated Christian and Calvinists beliefs to justify their superiority as whites and their divine right to South African land (one can say the same for the United States and its belief in Manifest Destiny as the basis for its expansion over most of the continent). This was quite a common strategy for European and neo-European colonial nation building in the 19th century, and Zionism is built on that zeitgeist.
This historical and religious manipulation does not hold up to today’s current archaeological, scientific, and recorded evidence and will not stand the test of time. Yet, these myths continue to be propagated and used as the underlying justification for Israel’s existence as an exclusively Jewish state. The phrase of a “land without a people, and a people without a land” encapsulates this myth, one that was utilized to horrifying ends in 1947-1948 and continues to allow horrible crimes sixty years later.
Is it not high time to confront these myths?
Stop pretending that you have a grasp on formal logic. You obviously don't.
You mean informal logic (argument making related). Formal logic is mathematical. Google it if you don't know and want to accuse others of ignorance.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/213716/formal-logic
"Formal logic, the abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments."
Why don't you pick up a history book on Judaism and get back to me?
Also, you're ignorant.
Yes, formal logic is about mathematical abstraction (you obviously did not note that you quote "abstract" and yet you don't understand it in the context) . In fact, I know a few people doing their maths degrees and they have to take up formal logic in order to pursue discrete maths and mathematical logic courses (in fact, at school, we studied set theory, which of course lays out the vocabulary and elementary base). Informal logic, however is related to the construction of arguments, truthful or fallacious (for instance, the kinds of logical fallacies). You, you ignoble Zionist bot who comes here only in order to defame and to provoke needlessly, meant to say informal logic...but you no neither the difference between informal logic and formal logic as you know neither the difference between a personal subjective and a fascist ideology.
At least have the decency to put the whole definition:
From http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/213716/formal-logic
formal logic, the abstract study of propositions, statements, or assertively used sentences and of deductive arguments. The discipline abstracts from the content of these elements the structures or logical forms that they embody. The logician customarily uses a symbolic notation to express such structures clearly and unambiguously and to enable manipulations and tests of validity to be more easily applied. Although the following discussion freely employs the technical notation of modern symbolic logic, its symbols are introduced gradually and with accompanying explanations so that the serious and attentive general reader should be able to follow the development of ideas.
Do you see me use symbolic notations?
Here is another illustration from http://lsatblog.blogspot.ca/2009/04/formal-informal-logic-lsat-logical.html:
Formal logic
Formal arguments tend to be simple, straightforward, and extreme.
Example:
Everyone in Manhattan lives in NYC. Everyone in NYC lives in New York State. Therefore, everyone in Manhattan lives in New York State.
There are no assumptions here - it's mathematical, and the evidence fully justifies the conclusion.
Represented in symbols, we can therefore say:
Manhattan -> NYC. NYC -> NYS. Therefore, Manhattan -> NYS.
Change the topic to something about climate change or morality, and you've got one of the few formal logic questions in Logical Reasoning. (See my post a few weeks back on 15 Common Logical Reasoning Topics for more on that). Most formal logic on the LSAT happens in Logic Games.
On the LSAT, of course, it might not be that simple. The argument above could be phrased as follows:
If you live in Manhattan, then according to accurate, yet decades-old, government records, you must live in NYC. However, if you're in New York State, then you may or may not be in NYC. On the other hand, if you're in NYC, then you must live in New York State.
I included the 2nd sentence as filler just to make the argument more difficult to understand. Although it's more casual and wordy than the formal logic version, this doesn't mean it's easier.
The two versions above are identical. It's not necessary to represent it in symbols, but it can sometimes help.
Informal logic
Informal arguments are much more common on the LSAT. They tend to be complex and contain unstated assumptions.
Example:
Some people in New York State aren't famous. However, because I live in NYC, I ride around Manhattan in limos and hang out with celebrities. Therefore, I'm famous by association.
This can't be diagrammed as neatly, the evidence doesn't fully justify the conclusion (by a long shot), and a lot of other things also need to be true in order for the conclusion to logically follow.
Israel: 240 Palestinian Children 'Sexually Abused' in Jerusalem Detention Centres, Group Claims
Palestine Prisoners Club says 240 children arrested in Jerusalem abused by Israeli authorities
By Tabatha Kinder
November 22, 2014 10:37 GMT
Israeli police detain a Palestinian child in Jerusalem following clashes in the holy city in late October 2014(Reuters)
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A justice group for Palestinians arrested in Israel has released an explosive report claiming that 40% of children detained by Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli police.
Around 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in Jerusalem since June 2013, the International Middle East Media Centre news agency reports. This means approximately 240 minors could have been abused during their arrest or investigation by Israeli authorities, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PCC).
The PCC say the "daily arrest campaigns" inflicted on young Palestinians living in the historic capital are a "collective punishment against Palestinian residents of Jerusalem".
An attorney with the organisation, Mufeed al-Haj, says other violations were reported during the apprehension of children, including night and dawn raids on family homes, and sexual and physical abuse.
Al-Haj said minors undergoing investigation in Israel should be accompanied by their parents, but "Israeli authorities pay no respect to these laws in many cases".
"Forces often ignore laws and arrest Palestinians without even having warrants," he said to WAFA – the official Palestine news agency.
The PCC is an independent Palestinian organisation set up in 1993, made of 1,600 former Palestinians who spent at least a year in Israeli jails. The club supports Palestinians in Israeli jails by funding legal aid, political action, and by supporting their families.
In March 2013, the United Nation's children fund (Unicef) found that the ill-treatment of Palestinian minors held in Israeli military detention centres is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised".
The UNICEF report that examined the Israeli military court system for holding Palestinian children found evidence of practices it said were "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment".
Palestinian woman run over by Israeli near Shufat
Published Friday 21/11/2014 (updated) 22/11/2014 21:59
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian was run over by a Jewish settler near the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shufat while she was walking to prayers at a local mosque on Friday, her family told Ma'an.
Suzanne al-Kurd, 29, was struck by a car driven by an Israeli individual and left with bruises all over her legs as she walked in front of the Shufat Mosque, her mother said.
The vehicle reportedly accelerated suddenly as al-Kurd crossed the street and hit her directly before speeding off, leaving her lying on the street in pain.
Palestinian passersby who were nearby at the time of the incident rushed to her aid after the attack, her mother said, adding that she had been taken to the hospital where she was being treated for bruises and pain in her legs, waist, and arms as well as dizziness and headache.
Her mother said her daughter recognized the driver of the vehicle as a Jewish settler because he was wearing a kippah, a skullcap often worn by religious Jews.
"The incident was carried out in a deliberate manner because he ran her over and fled at high speed, all because my daughter was wearing an abaya and hijab," she said, referring to clothes often worn by religious Muslim women.
The incident comes in the wake of a serious of anti-Palestinian hate crimes across Jerusalem, in the West Bank, and inside Israel, with at least four different attacks by Israelis reported overnight.
Many Palestinian taxi drivers have reportedly stopped working in Jerusalem amid an upswing in attacks that began over early summer and has intensified in recent weeks.
The attacks have come amid rising tensions in the city after a series of individual Palestinian attacks on Israelis in occupied East Jerusalem.
These attacks increased during an Israeli offensive on Gaza that left nearly 2,200 dead and an upswing in Israeli military violence across Jerusalem and the West Bank that has left almost 50 dead so far this year, and thousands more in prison.
Israeli Forces Shoot Palestinian Dead In Gaza
Israel's army claims that the farmer ignored their warnings as he approached a border fence, and was shot in the back as a result.
12:15, UK, Sunday 23 November 2014
A library picture of Jabalya refugee camp, taken during the 50-day conflict
Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian farmer in the northern Gaza Strip - the first such death since the 50-day Gaza conflict ended, officials have said.
Fadel Mohammed Halawa was shot by soldiers as he searched for songbirds, according to relatives.
The 32-year-old's death - east of the Jabalya refugee camp - was confirmed by the Palestinian Health Ministry, who said the Israeli military were to blame.
An emergency services spokesman said the bullet had hit him in the back, and was seemingly fired from a army watchtower close by.
The Israeli military has claimed that Mr Halawa was accompanied by another Palestinian, and that both men had not responded to calls for them to halt - even when troops had fired warning shots into the air.
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Video: Boy Gives Tour Of Destroyed School
"Once they didn't comply, they fired towards their lower extremities. One was hit," a spokeswoman added.
Tensions have also flared elsewhere in the West Bank. One Palestinian home has been torched in a village near Ramallah, with "Death to Arabs" scrawled on a wall in Hebrew. The owner has blamed the attack on Jewish settlers.
The latest unrest comes amid a refreshed dispute over Jerusalem's holiest site.
Bill reaffirming Israel's status as a "democracy" for Jews only continues to advance
The bill that defines country as "Jewish state" now heads towards parliamentary vote in a blow to Israeli Arabs.
"What is problematic about the law in its current form is that if it does get passed, and is enshrined in Israel's legal system, it would effectively mean that those who do not self-identify themselves as Jews become second class citizens"
It is like apartheid legalized...
Leading Mideast studies group expected to back BDS resolution Monday
Israeli academics present at Middle East Studies Association’s AGM in Washington call the move unprecedented and a game changer.
From:
Three shot with live ammunition during Nabi Saleh protest
in Ramallah, Reports November 22, 2014
22nd November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinians participating in a weekly Friday demonstration in the village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers fired .22 caliber bullets, a form of live ammunition which has maimed and killed multiple Palestinians, even as Israel continues to claim it as a “less lethal” way of assaulting demonstrators.
Palestinian youth beaten by Israelis near Jerusalem Old City
Published Saturday 22/11/2014 (updated) 23/11/2014 13:11
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian youth was attacked and beaten by a group of Jewish settlers at Damascus Gate near the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem on Friday night, a local political activist who was present at the time of the incident said.
22-year-old Ahmad Yaqub al-Ghoul lost consciousness as a result of bruising and bleeding he suffered after three Jewish settlers described as being in their 20s hit him with an iron bar and belts in the al-Musrara area just north of Damascus Gate.
New Forensic Architecture evidence identifies Nadeem Nawara’s killer
Posted on: 20 Nov 2014 | Filed under:
Ramallah, November 20, 2014—Video analysis conducted by Forensic Architecture on behalf of DCI-Palestine has identified the Israeli border policeman who shot and killed Nadeem Nawara, 17, six months ago in the West Bank city of Beitunia.
Although Israeli authorities initially asserted that no live fire was used by soldiers during the May 15, 2014 protests, one border policeman, whose name has not been released, has since been arrested by Israeli police and faces manslaughter charges. This arrest follows Defense for Children International-Palestine’s release of video footage from security cameras which captured the fatal shootings of Nawara and 16-year-old Mohammad Abu Daher, as well as an autopsy’s ruling that a live bullet was the cause of Nawara’s death.
DCI-Palestine commissioned Forensic Architecture, a research agency that provides spatial and media analysis, to investigate the video footage that captured the fatal shootings of Nawara and Abu Daher. A team of architects, video, and audio specialists analyzed the CCTV footage from the four security cameras along with CNN released footage from the same incident to identify Nawara’s shooter, “Soldier A.”
“Using spatial and video analysis we have identified the border policeman that shot and killed the unarmed Nadeem Nawara,” said Eyal Weizman, principal investigator at Forensic Architecture. “Using sound analysis we found that the border policeman fired live ammunition through a rubber bullet extension installed on his gun, perhaps in an attempt to hide his action.”
Despite the Israeli military’s own regulations that live ammunition may only be used “under circumstances of real mortal danger,” DCI-Palestine has documented 10 child fatalities in the West Bank caused by live ammunition since the beginning of 2014. An Amnesty International report found that 41 Palestinians had been killed by live ammunition in the West Bank between 2011 and 2013 alone. The same report cited findings that between September 2000 and June 2013, only 16 investigations ended in indictment of Israeli soldiers.
"While we welcome the arrest of an unnamed Israeli border policeman alleged to have fatally shot Nadeem Nawara, tragically this killing is not exceptional,” said Brad Parker, international advocacy officer at DCI-Palestine. “Past Israeli investigations into similar incidents consistently fail to be serious, impartial or result in indictments. In this case, though there is CCTV footage and news coverage of the shooting, systemic impunity is likely to be an obstacle to justice and accountability."
Forensic Architecture is funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. The project consists of multidisciplinary spatial practitioners – architects, artists, and filmmakers – who undertake architectural research within the framework of international humanitarian law and human rights. Their investigations have provided evidence for international prosecution teams, political organizations, NGOs, and the United Nations.
From
South African activists reflect on parallels between life under apartheid and Israel/Palestine today
(...)
Martin Jansen:
For me, it is obvious that Palestinians have it much worse than we have ever experienced. Palestinians face racism, but they also face genocide. That genocide takes the form of occupation, removing people from land, and imprisoning them in Gaza: an open-air prison. The West Bank is not that different from Gaza. Palestinians are literally prisoners in a prisoner of war camp. My analysis is that it is a colonial, occupation, settler regime conducting genocide against Palestinians.
From 1948 onwards, when the right wing came to power in South Africa, they tried to introduce a Bantustan system where Africans would be part of those supposed countries. It was similar to what Palestinians face, but the treatment wasn’t half as bad. Africans were required to carry passbooks, like Palestinians. But there was no attempt by the apartheid regime to get rid of Africans or any other group that was not identified white. In fact, there was an economic dependence for cheap labor. There were quite a few massacres in the history of apartheid, but they certainly were not bombed. We never had so many people detained either.
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/activists-apartheid-israelpalestine#sthash.UypVuXDt.dpuf
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
Of course, you're not likely to read any of this in mainstream western media.
..............
Child Injured After Being Rammed By Settler’s Vehicle
Young man attacked by a number of fanatic settlers
Palestinian medical sources have reported, on Monday evening, that a child suffered several fractures and bruises, after being struck by a speeding settler’s vehicle, west of occupied Jerusalem.
File - Image al-Jazeera
The sources said that Khalil Khamis al-Keswani, 14 years of age, suffered a fracture in his left leg, and various cuts and bruises to different parts of his body.
The child’s father, Khamis al-Keswani, said a settler deliberately attacked his son, and chased him with his car, adding that his child managed to run away from the car after the initial impact.
Khamis complained that it took the police and the Israeli ambulance a while before they actually arrived at the scene, near Deir Yassin, in West Jerusalem.
Also on Monday evening, a number of fanatic settlers attacked a Palestinian identified as Mahmoud Issam Obeid, 19, near the French Hill settlement, as he was walking home in the al-‘Eesawiyya town, in occupied East Jerusalem.
Obeid said he was heading home after work when some settlers approached him, asking for a light, and when he said he doesn’t have one; the settlers attacked him while carrying knives and batons.
The assailants tried to stab him, and managed to hit him with their batons before he ran away; he was moved to the al-Makassed hospital suffering a fracture in his left leg.
There have been daily attacks carried out by Israeli extremists against the Palestinians, their cars and property, in different parts of occupied Jerusalem this past week.
The attacks included stabbing, beating, using pepper spray, puncturing tires, and writing racist graffiti.
Israelis attack Palestinian in East Jerusalem
Published today (updated) 25/11/2014 21:10
(MaanImages/file)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers late Monday assaulted a young Palestinian man near the illegal Israeli settlement of French Hill, the man told Ma'an.
Mahmoud Ubeid, 19, told Ma'an he was walking home from work when a car pulled over and one of the five Israelis in the car asked him for a lighter.
"When I said I didn't have a lighter, the settler stepped out of the car and pushed me before the other four stepped out and attacked me," Ubeid said.
The attackers were carrying knives and rods, Ubeid said, adding that he managed to run away before he was seriously hurt.
Ubeid was taken to al-Maqasid hospital for treatment after sustaining injuries to the leg.
An Israeli police spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.
Earlier Monday evening, Israeli media reported Monday that a 45-year-old Jewish man had arrived at a police station in Jerusalem's Old City with stab wounds to his abdomen, saying he had been attacked by "Arabs."
The incidents come amid heavy tensions in Jerusalem, with tit-for-tat attacks increasing between Palestinians and Israelis following an attack on a synagogue last Tuesday that left five Israelis dead and several injured.
Near-daily attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have also been reported in the days following the synagogue attack.
Some 200,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as some 306,000 Palestinians, according to Jerusalem's municipality.
Israeli driver 'hits Palestinian teen' in Jerusalem, flees scene
Published today (updated) 25/11/2014 14:02
(MaanImages/File)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian teenager sustained injuries late Monday when an Israeli ran into him with his car and fled the scene, the teen's father said.
Khamis Ahmad al-Kiswani told Ma'an that his son Khalil was standing in the Romena neighborhood in West Jerusalem when an Israeli vehicle approached him and "deliberately" ran over his foot.
The driver then fled the scene, al-Kiswani said.
Khalili fell to the ground in pain and called the police, who arrived a half hour later.
The teen was taken to Hadassah Medical Center where doctors said he had fractures in his foot.
An Israeli police spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment.
Renowned Israeli academic Ilan Pappe believes the Israeli occupation will be defeated like the apartheid regime
Thursday, 07 August 2014 11:41
Renowned Israeli academic, historian and activist Ilan Pappe, one of the panelists, believes the Israeli occupation will be defeated like the apartheid regime in South Africa
South African Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande believes that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is worse than what South Africans had suffered under the apartheid regime.
"I always tell people you cannot understand what the Palestinians go through unless you have been there," Nzimande said Wednesday night during a panel discussion at the University of Johannesburg.
He recalled being sent by the South African Communist Party (SACP) to the Palestinian territories in 2002.
"Israel uses water as a weapon of war," Nzimande told a huge audience who attended the event. "They switch it off for days."
He said Gaza felt like a ghost city when he visited it back then.
The South African delegation, Nzimande recalled, could hear bombs and strikes which was unusual for them.
"We must also condemn the hypocrisy of the United States government," said the minister, who is also the SACP general secretary.
"The SACP is of the view that we should expel the Israeli ambassador and recall our ambassador back home," he added.
Nzimande insisted that the conflict in the Middle East is a human rights issue not a religious conflict as often portrayed.
He said they were concerned that some Christian groups in the country were being mobilized on that basis.
Asked by a member of the audience why the South African government remains quiet while some of its citizens serve in the Israeli army, the Minister vowed to raise the issue with his government.
But he also encouraged members of the various Palestinian organizations in the country to seek audience with the government.
"Our own view is, South Africa's freedom shall remain incomplete until Palestine freedom is achieved," Nzimande asserted.
Boycott Israel
The higher education minister congratulated the University of Johannesburg for cutting ties with an Israeli university.
He said he strongly urges other educational institutions to reconsider their ties with institutions in Israel.
The panel discussion was themed "Academic freedom in higher education: Apartheid South Africa and current day Israel as case studies, with a particular focus on the academic boycott."
Nzimande also called on South African universities to consider starting a center for Middle East studies perhaps in partnership with a Palestinian university.
The higher education minister said he believes the center could help academics and students to broaden their understanding of the Palestinian struggle.
Defeat Israel
Renowned Israeli academic, historian and activist Ilan Pappe, one of the panelists, believes the Israeli occupation will be defeated like the apartheid regime in South Africa.
"Apartheid South was defeated by the moral consciousness of the people. This is what Israelis know and fear," he told the audience.
"Moral values of human rights are stronger than F16s," said Pappe who lives in exile due to his academic work and support of the Palestinian struggle, in particular his championing of the academic boycott of Israel.
He is currently a Professor of History at Exeter University in the UK as well as the Director of the European Centre for Palestine.
Pappe insisted that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel was a non-violent, humane movement against racism in the 21st century.
"We need the governments of Africa, Latin America, and south East Asia," he said. "We have heard enough of the USA, they have brought destruction."
The academic told the audience not to confuse the American people with their government.
"There are many Americans, including Jews, who are marching against Israeli atrocities," said Pappe.