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.
CD.Arch
Sep 10, 14 5:08 pm
If you are so concerned about what Israel has been doing since the UN gave them that land, why are you just now trying to make change? If it really disgusted you this bad you would have tried to do something a long time ago. Are you, as you say, simply "arguing for the sake of arguing" now? On behalf of everyone at Archinect, except for a few people, please drop this thread, let it be buried. Nobody cares anymore, except for you two of course.
chatter of clouds
Sep 11, 14 12:12 am
Cd-Arch
If its just me or us two or three or more who care, and we, like you, are archinect members, then this is enough for us to have a thread dedicated to a topic I and/or we find interesting. There are tens of other posts that you can engage with if you don't find this topic interesting....unless, you do find it interesting but antagonistically so and this is your way of asking me to censor myself in order to preclude mention of subjects irksome to you. Sorry, this is your problem and not mine. You can easily remedy this by ignoring the topic should that be the case.
There are hundreds of Archinectors who are ignoring this thread because they really don't care. That you come here again and again suggests that you care, in whatever form or fashion.
Also, you don't speak on behalf of everyone except for a few people at Archinect. And even if you did, that does not give you the right speak on behalf of everyone. I suppose issues such as freedom of speech and letting people express themselves - as long as this doesn't express racial, sexist and homophobic hatreds- are not too popular where you're at.
chatter of clouds
Sep 11, 14 12:20 am
to specify this correctly: Also, you don't speak on behalf of "everyone except for a few people"
Orhan Ayyüce
Sep 11, 14 2:57 am
To end this thread would be unfair to thousands of people who are reading it daily. Just saying...
If this peaceful thread calling for boycott, protesting Israel for apartheid and murdering innocent people by the thousands is bothering you this much, quit denying the truth and accept the real events, read the quality information worth reading put in front of you by t a m m u z and few of us here. Or, leave the room and shut the door on your way out. Kapish..?
...This report details some of the main legal, political and policy structures that institutionalize discrimination against the Palestinian minority in Israel, and entrench inequalities between Palestinian and Jewish citizens. It provides indicators of inequalities, including official state data, and explains how specific laws and policies work to exclude the Palestinian minority from state resources and services, as well as the structures of power. It further demonstrates how the State of Israel, as an ethnocracy or “ethnic nation- state”, is systematically failing to adopt effective measures to redress the gaps that exist between the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority and, moreover, how, by privileging Jewish citizens in many fields, the state actively preserves and even widens these gaps. Finally, the report reflects on the impact of inequality on the Palestinian minority in Israel and its ramifications for the state as a whole
Main Findings:
The legal framework of inequality
• Inequalities between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel span all fields of public life and have persisted over time. Direct and indirect discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is ingrained in the legal system and in governmental practice.
• The right to equality and freedom from discrimination is not explicitly enshrined in Israeli law as a constitutional right, nor is it protected by statute. While Supreme Court justices have interpreted The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty as comprising the principle of equality, this fundamental right is currently protected by judicial interpretation alone.
• The definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state makes inequality and discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel a reality and a political project. The pairing of “Jewish” and “democratic” both codifies discrimination against non-Jewish citizens and impedes the realization of full equality.
• Numerous groups of Palestinian citizens of Israel face “compound discrimination” or multiple forms of discrimination on the basis of both their national belonging as Arabs/Palestinians and their membership in one or more other distinct subgroups, such as women, the disabled and the elderly.
• More than 30 main laws discriminate, directly or indirectly, against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed a flood of new racist and discriminatory bills which are at various stages in the legislative process.
Citizenship rights
• Palestinian citizens of Israel are afforded differential and unequal treatment under Israeli law in the field of citizenship rights. The most important immigration and nationality laws—including the Law of Return (1950) and the Citizenship Law (1952)—privilege Jews and Jewish immigration.
• If the spouse of a Palestinian citizen of Israel is a Palestinian resident of the OPT, it has been virtually impossible for him or her to gain residency or citizenship status in Israel since May 2002. This ban on family unification is totally disproportionate to the alleged security reasons cited by Israel to justify it; rather, it is motivated by the state’s desire to maintain a Jewish demographic majority.
• A new law makes it possible to strip Israeli citizenship for various reasons related to alleged “disloyalty” to the state or “breach of trust”, indirectly targeting the citizenship rights of Palestinian citizens. Several attempts to pass additional laws that grant the authority to revoke citizenship and impose further loyalty oaths are currently pending in the Knesset.
Income/poverty
• Arab families are greatly over-represented among Israel’s poor: over half of Arab families in Israel are classified as poor, compared to an average poverty rate of one-fifth among all families in Israel. Arab towns and villages are heavily over-represented in the lowest socio-economic rankings, and the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab are the poorest communities in the state.
• Gaps in income and poverty rates are directly related to institutional discrimination against Arab citizens in Israel.
Redistribution of resources and social welfare
•Although the right to equality demands that states take positive steps to bridge the gaps between the various population groups, the State of Israel actively seeks to promote and direct resources to Jewish citizens as a privileged majority within the “Jewish State”. In many policy areas, including the designation of “National Priority Areas” and the use of the military-service criterion to allocate resources, the state actively preserves and perpetuates inequalities between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel.
• The state has consistently failed to take adequate and effective action to address the phenomenon of absolute and relative poverty among the Arab minority in Israel. Where it has initiated development programs targeting the Arab minority, such as the “Multi-Year Plan”, the state has tended to implement them partially, gradually, or not at all.
• Direct state policy measures to reduce poverty disproportionately target Jewish citizens, with the result that poverty rates have fallen far more sharply among Jewish citizens than among their Arab counterparts, and inequalities have consequently persisted.
Employment
• Palestinian citizens of Israel often face discrimination in work opportunities, pay and conditions, both because of the inadequate implementation of equal-opportunity legislation and because of entrenched structural barriers, which particularly affect women, and include poor or non-existent public transportation, a lack of industrial zones, and a shortage of state-run daycare centers. Palestinian citizens are also excluded from the labor force by the use of the military-service criterion as a condition for acceptance for employment, often when there is no connection between the nature of the work and military experience.
• Unemployment rates remain significantly higher among Arab than among Jewish citizens, and the rate of labor-force participation among Palestinian women citizens of Israel, at just about 20%, is among the lowest in the world.
• Palestinian citizens of Israel in general, and women in particular, continue to be sorely underrepresented in the civil service, the largest employer in Israel (in total, Arabs constitute just around 6% of all civil service employees), despite affirmative-action legislation stipulating fair representation for the Arab minority and for women.
• The lack of development and investment in Arab towns and villages inside Israel and the unexploited or under-exploited human resources of the members of the Palestinian minority inhibit the growth of the Israeli economy. The lost potential to Israel’s economy has been estimated at around US$ 8 billion per year by the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD).
Economic assets: land
•In continuation of a pattern that was established with the founding of the state in 1948, Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to be deprived of access and use of the land under long-standing and more recent land laws and policies. Furthermore, new measures—including a new land reform law from 2009 and an amendment to the Land Ordinance from February 2010— aim at confirming state ownership of land confiscated from Palestinians in perpetuity and blocking Palestinian restitution claims.
• Admissions committees operate in around 700 agricultural and community towns and filter out Arab applicants, on the basis of their “social unsuitability”, from future residency in these towns. The operation of admissions committees contributes to the institutionalization of racially- segregated towns and villages throughout the state and perpetuates unequal access to the land.
• The Jewish National Fund (JNF)—a body with quasi-state authority that operates solely for the interests of the Jewish people and controls 13% of the land in the state—continues to wield decisive influence over land policy in Israel, having been allocated six of a total of 13 members of the newly-established Land Authority Council.
• Arab towns and villages in Israel suffer from severe overcrowding, with Arab municipalities exercising jurisdiction over only 2.5% of the total area of the state. Since 1948, the State of Israel has established approximately 600 Jewish municipalities, whereas no new Arab village, town or city has ever been built.
• While the Arab Bedouin population in the Naqab stands at around 170,000 persons, or 14% of the total population in the Naqab, the combined areas of the government-planned and newly-recognized Arab Bedouin towns and villages in the Naqab account for just 0.9% of the land in the district.
• Israel is currently intensifying its efforts to forcibly evacuate the unrecognized villages in the Naqab (referred to as “illegal clusters”), including by demolishing entire villages, as recently witnessed in the repeated demolition of the village of Al-Araqib. In pursuing this policy, the state has rejected the option of affording recognition to these villages, many of which predate the establishment of Israel. Between 75,000 and 90,000 Arab Bedouin live in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab, whom the state characterizes as “trespassers on state land”.
Educational access/attainment
• The Ministry of Education retains centralized control over the form and substance of the curriculum for Arab schools, with few Arab educators wielding decision-making authority. The State Education Law sets educational objectives for state schools that emphasize Jewish history and culture.
• The current under-investment in Arab schools in Israel threatens to sustain the gaps between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority in the future. Since Arab children account for 25% of all children in Israel, the unequal investment in their education and development can be expected to act as a major brake on the Israeli economy in the coming generation.
• State funding to Arab schools in Israel falls far behind that provided to Jewish schools. According to official state data published in 2004, the state provides three times as much funding to Jewish students as to Arab pupils. This underfunding is reflected in many areas, including relatively large class sizes and poor infrastructure and facilities.
• There are few elementary schools in the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab, severely overcrowded and poorly-equipped, and not a single high school. Despite a settlement reached by the state with Adalah to establish the first high school in the unrecognized village of Abu Tulul by 1 September 2009, no school has yet been opened.
• Arab students are dramatically underrepresented in Israel’s universities and other institutes of higher education. Arab academics constitute only about 1.2% of all tenured and tenure-track positions in Israeli universities, leaving Arab citizens marginalized in the production of knowledge in society.
• The Ministry of Education’s policies actually act to entrench the gaps between Arab and Jewish school children, since special programs to assist academically weak or gifted children, such as the “Shahar” academic enrichment programs, are disproportionately awarded to Jewish schools.
The Arabic language
•While Arabic is an official language in Israel, there is clear inequality in the opportunities granted to Arabic-speakers as compared to Hebrew-speakers to enjoy and use their language in official and public fora. In practice, the status of Arabic is vastly inferior to that of Hebrew in terms of the resources dedicated to its use, despite Israel’s duty under international human rights law to protect the language rights of the Arab national minority in Israel.
Health
•Arab citizens of Israel can expect to live shorter lives than Jewish citizens (about four years less) and face significantly higher mortality rates, particularly after the age of 60. The rate of infant mortality among Palestinian citizens is approximately double that among Jewish citizens, and higher still among the Arab Bedouin population in the Naqab (Negev), where it reaches more than 15 per 1,000 live births.
• While Israeli law provides that equitable, high-quality health services should be provided to all residents of Israel, various barriers—including the lack of clinics and hospitals in Arab towns and villages and limitations on mobility—mean that Palestinian citizens are frequently unable to exercise their right to the highest sustainable standard of health.
• The health situation is most critical in the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab, where health services are either limited or non- existent. The inadequate provision of health services in the unrecognized villages is a deliberate policy of neglect on the part of the state, which is seeking to evacuate them and relocate their residents, in part by creating intolerable conditions.
Political participation
• Palestinians citizens have unequal access and lower levels of participation than Jewish citizens in all spheres of public life and decision-making, from the judiciary, the legislature, and government to the civil service. As a result, they have limited access to decision-making processes and centers of power, and a diminished ability to redress inequality and discrimination.
• Recent election cycles have witnessed attempts by the Attorney General (2003) and right-wing political parties and MKs to disqualify Arab parties and MKs from the Knesset, aimed at severely limiting the Palestinian political voice in the legislature. In 2003 and 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned decisions of the Central Elections Committee to disqualify Arab political parties and Arab leaders from participating in the national elections.
• The Arab voice has become increasingly delegitimized in the Israeli political and legislative process: according to recent polls around one- third of Jewish citizens agree that Arab citizens should be denied the rights to vote and to be elected to the Knesset, and more than half of Jewish teenagers would deprive Arabs of the right to be elected to the Knesset.
• The criminal justice system is regularly used as a means of delegitimizing political acts and expression by Palestinian citizens of Israel, including their elected political leadership. Several Arab MKs have been indicted or had parliamentary privileges revoked for legitimate political activities and speech that falls within the scope of their work as elected representatives.
• A series of Israeli laws institute a range of restrictions on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and access to the political system, including ideological limitations on the platforms of political parties and severe restrictions on travel by MKs to Arab states classified as “enemy states”. Such laws are used predominantly to curb the political freedoms of Palestinian citizens and their elected representatives and are steadily shrinking the space for political action available to them.
• The police routinely use force and arrest against Arab demonstrators as a deterrent in order to silence voices of protest. Anti-war protestors against the Israeli military operation “Cast Lead” in Gaza—mainly Arab citizens, including many minors—were subjected to serious police violence. They further encountered disproportionate and systematic mass arrests, primarily on the pretext of their mere presence at the scene.
• Until today, ten years after the fact, no police officer, commander or political leader has been held accountable for the killings of 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000 during demonstrations staged against Israel’s brutal policies in the OPT.
• Years of deliberate discrimination, unequal citizenship and a limited voice in the political system have left Palestinian citizens of Israel with a sense of vulnerability, marginalization, insecurity, and distrust of and alienation from the state. Consistently lower voter turn-out rates among Palestinian citizens are one result: in the 2009 elections, the voter turn-out rate was 64.7% overall and 53% among Arab voters.
• By approaching the Arab minority in Israel as a “fifth column” to be controlled and contained, at times employing state violence and draconian legal measures against them, Israel is ultimately undermining the emergence of genuine stability and a culture of respect for democracy, good governance and human rights norms. It also risks relegating issues of human rights to “threats” to security and sovereignty, to be dealt with by the state.
chatter of clouds
Sep 11, 14 7:26 am
Sorry, to clarify, the above is about is about Palestinians within the Israeli colonized lands of Palestine -so-called Israeli Arabs- rather than in their brethren in Gaza or West Bank, who suffer from being under the virtual control of Israel, occupation-by-proxy, colonizer settlements and their expansion, resources deprivation, etc.
chatter of clouds
Sep 11, 14 7:47 am
Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You do not even know a names of these villages and we do not censure you.
You mean, perhaps, to be echoing Moshe Dayan. More correctly would be to state that Jewish villages were established after the deliberate destruction of Arabs villages by the terrorist Israeli jewish bandits that then formed the Israeli terrorist army after committing massacres of Palestinians in order to sow fear and set them, the Palestinian villagers, fleeing so as to steal their land.
You mean, you do not know the names of these villages. The Palestinians still know the name of each of the villages they came from - that the terrorist Israeli forces, past or present, know very well as well as that of their neighbouring villages and beyond. They have recorded this - and this will haunt Israel, the knowledge that Palestine is remembered and being fought for by all means necessary- until its, Israel's very end. This is the most powerful weapon against Israel,a tabula rasa achieved through ethnic cleansing and mass murder- memory.
Finally, who are you to speak of censoring me. Read my post as a response to CD-Arch's post. Kindly note that comment not intended for you in the first place. Unless you imagine it to be so because of wishful thinking. Now, more topically:
Over a period of two years, from 1947-1949, the Zionists demolished 419 Arab villages and depopulated the Palestinian Arabs in those towns. When the state of Israel was established in 1948 it became apparant that this Zionist policy was a systematic state-sponsored program to replace Palestinians and their land with Jews and Jewish villages
The following are some quotes by a Palestinian author, Walid Khalidi and Israeli war hero, Moshe Dayan [sic - scumbag terrorist mass murderer more like],
“By the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of entire villages had not only been depopulated but obliterated, their houses blown up or bulldozed. While many of the sites are difficult to access, to this day the observant traveller of Israeli roads and highways can see traces of their presence that would escape the notice of the casual passer-by: a fenced-in area, often surmounting a gentle hill, of olive and other fruit trees left untended, of cactus hedges and domesticated plants run wild. Now and then a few crumbled houses are left standing, a neglected mosque or church, collapsing walls along the ghost of a village lane, but in the vast majority of cases, all that remains is a scattering of stones and rubble across a forgotten landscape.”
Walid Khalidi, Palestinian author, All That Remains.
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab Population.”
Moshe Dayan, Israeli war hero [sic - scumbag terrorist mass murderer more like], Address to the Technion, Haifa (as quoted in Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969)
CD.Arch
Sep 11, 14 9:07 am
Tammuz, you didn't quite answer my first question. If Israel, as an existing state for decades now, has appalled you so much from all of their actions since the UN gave them that land, why now do you think to outcry against them?
45 People, Including 17 Children, Killed in 3 Attacks
September 11, 2014
(Jerusalem) – Three Israeli [2] attacks that damaged Gaza schools housing displaced people caused numerous civilian casualties in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. In the first in-depth documentation of the violations, Human Rights Watch investigated the three attacks, which occurred on July 24 and 30, and August 3, 2014, and killed 45 people, including 17 children.
“The Israeli military carried out attacks on or near three well-marked schools where it knew hundreds of people were taking shelter, killing and wounding scores of civilians,” said Fred Abrahams [3], special adviser at Human Rights Watch. “Israel has offered no convincing explanation for these attacks on schools where people had gone for protection and the resulting carnage.”
Two of the three attacks Human Rights Watch investigated – in Beit Hanoun and Jabalya – did not appear to target a military objective or were otherwise unlawfully indiscriminate. The third attack in Rafah was unlawfully disproportionate if not otherwise indiscriminate. Unlawful attacks carried out willfully – that is, deliberately or recklessly – are war crimes.
The laws of war obligate Israel to investigate possible war crimes credibly and to punish those responsible appropriately.The Israeli military said [4] that it has established a “Fact-Finding Assessments Committee” to “examine exceptional incidents” during the latest fighting, and that it had opened five criminal investigations [5], including apparently one into the July 24 attack discussed below. Israel has a long record of failing [6] to undertake credible investigations into alleged war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
In a briefing to media [7], the Israeli military showed photographs of what it said were rockets hidden in and fired from school compounds. None of the photographs were from the three UN-run schools that Human Rights Watch investigated where many civilians died.
In the first attack, at about 3 p.m. on July 24, apparent Israeli mortar shells struck a coeducational elementary school in Beit Hanoun run by the United Nations, killing 13 people, including six children, and wounding dozens of others.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that days of fighting in the area had caused most of the people staying at the school to leave, but several hundred remained. Most were awaiting transport to a safer area when two munitions, probably 81mm or 120mm mortar shells, hit inside the school compound.
Jamal Abu `Owda, 58, said he was sitting outside a classroom when one of the munitions struck. “Most people got killed in the middle of the courtyard,” he said. There were “shredded bodies, a mix of everything, boys, men, girls, women, a mix of different faces and bodies.” Witnesses said a second shell hit the courtyard shortly after the first, followed in quick succession by two more just outside the school compound.
The Israeli military alleged that Hamas fighters had “operated adjacent to” the school. After coming under fire with anti-tank missiles, soldiers responded by “firing several mortars in their direction.” The military said a “single errant mortar” hit the school courtyard, which was “completely empty” – a claim disputed by seven witnesses who separately spoke to Human Rights Watch.
Witnesses described at least four shells striking in and around the compound within a few minutes – a precision that would be extremely unlikely for errant Palestinian munitions. And there were no reports of Israeli troops near the school that might have led the Palestinians to fire mortar rounds there.
On July 30, at least 10 Israeli munitions hit in and around the UN-run girls’ elementary school in Jabalya, then sheltering more than 3,200 people. The shelling killed 20 people, including three children. An inspection of the damage and photographs of munition remnants found at the site suggest that Israel fired 155mm artillery rounds, including smoke, illumination, and standard high explosive shells, the last of which produces extensive blast and fragmentation damage.
Suleiman Hassan Abd el-Dayam, 24, who was staying at the school with his extended family, said three of his family members died and five were wounded in the attack. When he heard the first strike at about 2 a.m, he ran to the classroom where women and children were sleeping, and a second munition hit. “I saw that my wife had a head injury, so I carried her outside,” he said. “Then I looked for my aunt. I found her, and she was saying, ‘I can't see!’ So I took her outside too. And my other cousin, Ibrahim, had his legs cut off.”
The Israeli military said [8] that Palestinian fighters had fired mortars “from the vicinity” of the school, but provided no information to support that claim. In any event, the use of high-explosive, heavy-artillery shells so near a shelter filled with civilians constitutes an indiscriminate attack.
At about 10:45 a.m. on August 3, an apparent Israeli Spike guided missile hit directly outside a UN-run boys’ school in Rafah, killing 12 people, including 8 children, and wounding at least 25. About 3,000 people were taking shelter in the school at the time.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that many civilians, including children, were near the school’s front gate buying sweets when the missile struck directly across the street, about 10 meters away. The Israeli military said it had targeted three Islamic Jihad members on a motorcycle “near” the school, but provided no further information, including why it attacked the men in front of a school sheltering thousands of displaced people rather than before they arrived or after they drove away.
In addition to these three unlawful attacks, Israeli ground forces reportedly [9] occupied at least one school in Gaza, the Beit Hanoun secondary school for boys, leaving behind bullet casings and rations.
National armed forces and armed groups should refrain from using schools [10] for military purposes, Human Rights Watch said. Even if students aren’t there, using schools for military purposes makes them military objectives subject to attack.
In three unrelated cases, the UN reported [11] that Palestinian armed groups had stored weapons in other schools that had closed for the summer and were not being used as shelters by civilians. By storing arms in those schools, the armed groups made those particular schools legitimate targets for Israeli attack and violated the immunity of UN facilities. There have been no allegations that the three schools that Human Rights Watch investigated were being used for military purposes.
All parties to the armed conflict in Gaza must take all necessary measures to minimize harm to the civilian population. The laws of war prohibit attacks that deliberately target civilians or civilian property; that do not target a specific military objective or are otherwise indiscriminate; or that cause civilian harm disproportionate to the anticipated military gain. Schools are presumptively civilian objects that may not be attacked unless they are being used for military purposes, such as a military headquarters or to store weapons.
The Israeli military informed Human Rights Watch that it had created a Fact-Finding Assessments Committee to “examine exceptional incidents” during the seven-week conflict, headed by Maj. Gen. Noam Tibon, commander of the Israel Defense Forces North Formation, and staffed by personnel who were not in the chain of command during the fighting. The military said [4] 44 incidents had been referred to the committee as of September 10.
The Military Advocate General’s office announced [5] on September 10 that it had opened criminal investigations into five incidents, including a July 24 attack on an UNRWA school that killed 15 people. The military said the attack was “in the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Khan Yunis” but Israeli media reported [12] that the incident was the Beit Hanoun school.
Previous inquiries by the Israeli military of alleged war crimes committed by its forces have not met international standards for credible, impartial and independent investigations, Human Rights Watch said.
The Commission of Inquiry [13] recently appointed by the UN Human Rights Council should investigate the attacks striking schools that resulted in civilian deaths and make recommendations for follow-up by the Security Council.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas should also promptly ask the International Criminal Court [14] to extend its jurisdiction to the West Bank and Gaza to allow prosecution of serious international crimes by both sides, Human Rights Watch said.
Israel and Palestinian groups may also be liable for damages caused to buildings used by the UN, including schools and other facilities providing shelter to displaced persons. Such buildings are protected by the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and the Immunities of the United Nations, to which Israel is a party.
After the 2008-09 fighting in Gaza, a UN board of inquiry held Israel, Hamas and other armed groups responsible for damages to UN premises. Israel paid US$10.5 million in damages to the UN.
Out of 2,131 Palestinians who died in the latest fighting, 501 were children, said [15] the United Nations. About 70 percent of the children killed were under 12, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF [16].
“Israel should go beyond sweeping justifications and provide detailed explanations for its attacks in and around these three schools housing hundreds of displaced people,” Abrahams said. “And it should end its practice of impunity by punishing those who violate the laws of war.”
chatter of clouds
Sep 11, 14 3:32 pm
On Zionism using anti-Semitism accusations to fend off criticism
This morning in al-Khalil (Hebron), at Salaymeh checkpoint located in H1 [an area supposedly under full Palestinian control] a seven-year-old was forcefully detained and three more were arrested, including another child.
The farewell of martyr Issa Qatry (22 yo) who was shot dead by Israeli occupation forces at dawn today in Amari refugee camp in #Ramallah..
في وداع الشهيد عيسى القطري (22 عاما) في منزله في مخيم الامعري الذي استشهد فجر اليوم بعد اصابته برصاصه في الصدر خلال اقتحام قوات الاحتلال لمخيم الامعري في مدينة رام الله
Alternate Focus interviews Nurit Peled-Elhanan, author of the forthcoming book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. Nurit Peled-Elhanan argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service. She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity.
Muhammad Sinokrot, buried on 8 September, died of his injuries one week after he was shot by Israeli forces near his home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem.
His picture was hanging on the wall of his classroom in Jerusalem’s al-Rashidiya school, but his desk remained empty.
Muhammad Sinokrot, who would have turned sixteen years old on 9 December, was not particularly fond of school and his grades were not great. But he was a hard-working boy and was keen on improving.
A few months earlier, he had borrowed his cousin’s graduation gown to wear while posing in front of a camera. He had two years left to graduate from high school, and this portrait emboldened him to work even harder.
An Israeli rubber-coated steel bullet in the head, however, decimated his dreams and cut short his very young life.
On 31 August, Sinokrot was shot in the head by Israeli police on his way to the Abdeen mosque in Wadi al-Joz, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem. It was an unusually calm evening despite the presence of Israeli soldiers and border police who have made a habit out of raiding Wadi al-Joz during the last two months.
“Screams at our doorstep”
At the time that Muhammad was shot, there were absolutely no clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth, residents interviewed by The Electronic Intifada asserted.
“It was around 8:15pm. I was making salad and asked [Muhammad] to buy us bread after he finishes evening prayers in the mosque and he left the house abruptly,” Ilham Sinokrot, Muhammad’s mother, told The Electronic Intifada.
“A few minutes later, I heard yells and screams at our doorstep [saying] ‘Your son was shot in the head.’ I ran quickly — the scene of my son bleeding on the street, his head fractured and face disfigured, was shocking,” she recalled.
Palestinians mourn outside Muhammad Sinokrot’s family home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem after the teen’s death was announced on 7 September.
Israeli police told reporters that Muhammad was throwing stones during clashes when he was shot in the leg with a sponge-tipped bullet and fell and hurt his head. His mother vigorously rejects this version of events and a preliminary autopsy report indicates that the boy died of injuries from being shot in the head.
“Nonsense! You think if there were clashes I would have allowed him to go out? No way. And it’s ludicrous to say he was shot in the leg when there is no sign of injury or shooting in his legs,” Muhammad’s mother said.
Muhammad Sinokrot was taken to the Palestinian Al-Makassed hospital, based in the Mount of Olives neighborhood, where doctors told his parents that he required critical surgery. He was later taken to the Hadassah Ein Karem hospital west of Jerusalem, where he spent a week in a coma before he was declared clinically dead.
“Chances that he would live were extremely slim, but we had faith in God. We waited for a miracle; it was not to be,” said Muhammad’s father, Abd al-Majeed Sinokrot, who works for the Jerusalem light rail. “My wife and I stayed in the hospital next to him. It was a very rough week, but we thank God for everything.”
Jerusalem clashes
The announcement of Sinokrot’s death on 7 September was immediately preceded by fierce confrontations between Palestinian youth and Israeli occupation forces in Wadi al-Joz and throughout East Jerusalem.
A normally quiet neighborhood and an industrial hub for Palestinians in Jerusalem known for its automotive garages and businesses, Wadi al-Joz has been anything but calm since the nationalist-motivated kidnapping and brutal murder of sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair on 2 July. Abu Khudair was a resident of Shuafat, a neighborhood close to Wadi al-Joz.
Israel’s onslaught in Gaza only fueled the protests in Jerusalem this summer.
An Israeli policeman shoots tear gas during a protest following the death of Muhammad Sinokrot in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz on 8 September.
Israeli occupation forces have responded with frequent, unprecedented raids on Wadi al-Joz, firing massive amounts of tear gas in densely populated areas and showering houses and businesses with the foul-smelling “skunk water” spray.
“The situation here has been very tense since the martyrdom of Abu Khudair. We are regularly harassed and attacked by Israeli soldiers but we know we have no option but to stand up to them,” observed the bus driver during this writer’s departure from Wadi al-Joz.
“Things may look deceptively calm on the surface, but in truth, the explosion was always inevitable. Israelis thought that they finally managed to placate Jerusalem and they did not expect that the city, particularly places like Shuafat and Wadi al-Joz, would rise up like this,” he said.
Funeral
Muhammad Sinokrot’s funeral took place a day after his death had been announced, with thousands of Palestinians marching from his home in Wadi al-Joz towards the al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Large numbers of Israeli border police and soldiers were deployed, but all attempts to contain the anger of the youth were to no avail as the funeral turned into a mass protest.
“The youth surprised Israeli occupation forces who wanted to squelch any possibility of protests or confrontations during the funeral procession. The youth threw rocks and fireworks at the soldiers who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and sound grenades,” noted Yassin Sbeih, a Palestinian activist from Shuafat refugee camp.
Palestinians carry the body of Muhammad Sinokrot during his funeral in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem on 8 September.
As was the case during the clashes in Shuafat in early July, youth from different Jerusalem-area villages came to Wadi al-Joz for the funeral to show their solidarity.
Also among those who came to pay respects was the mother of Muhammad Jaabis from Jabal al-Mukabber, a young man shot dead in West Jerusalem on 4 August when the mechanical digger he was driving collided with a bus after running over and killing an Israeli pedestrian.
The Israeli authorities have treated the incident as an attack but his family say that it was an accident; there have been multiple instances in recent years in which Palestinians operating such equipment were killed in similar circumstances in the city.
Visibly shattered, Jaabis’ mother hugged Ilham Sinokrot at the funeral and said, “Not all hearts cope with grief similarly. You look so much stronger than I am.”
An injured Palestinian youth is treated by medics after Israeli policemen beat him during the funeral of Muhammad Sinokrot outside Jerusalem’s Old City on 8 September.
Meanwhile, Muhammad’s father insists that he will seek accountability.
“We don’t believe that the executioners will give us any justice, yet we will go to Israeli and international courts and we call on all parents to demand justice for their slain loved ones. We cannot allow the killers of our children to live in impunity,” he said.
Those who spoke to The Electronic Intifada emphasized that Muhammad Sinokrot was killed simply for being Palestinian.
“His crime was being a Palestinian and living in Jerusalem under a system that does not see us as worthy human beings,” said one of the family’s neighbors.
“Yesterday it was Muhammad Sinokrot, and tomorrow it could be my son’s turn,” he added. “All Palestinians are targeted and must collectively rise up against this racist state.”
Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian anarchist and law graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. She can be followed on Twitter: @Budour48.
Friday September 12, 2014 00:55 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
Issa Qaraqe’, head of the Detainees’ Committee at the Palestinian Authority, stated that detainee Raed Abdul-Salaam al-Ja’bari, 37, died after being severely and repeatedly tortured by Israeli interrogators.
Raed al-Ja'bari - Facebook
Qaraqe’ accused Israel of committing two main crimes against al-Ja’bari by alleging he hanged himself in his cell, and by trying to falsify and hide the leading cause of death, which is extreme and brutal torture.
Talking at a press conference from the mourning house of al-Ja’bari in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Qaraqe’ said the autopsy, conducted at the forensic center in Abu Dis, near occupied Jerusalem, concluded that al-Ja’bari was tortured to death.
He said the autopsy proved that al-Ja’bari suffered brain hemorrhage, and that his body showed clear signs of torture, adding that Israeli claims which allege that the slain detainee “committed suicide by hanging himself” are false and evident fabrications, especially since his neck does not show any signs of hanging.
“The autopsy was supposed to be carried out Wednesday, but it was conducted today at the Abu Kabeer Forensic Center, while Dr. Saber al-‘Aloul, head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, attended the autopsy but Israel prevented him from making any statements," Qaraqe’ said.
“After we received the body of al-Ja’bari, we moved him to the Forensic Center in Abu Dis. All reports clearly show al-Ja’bari was tortured to death; he was brutally and savagely tortured by the Israeli interrogators," he added. “The main cause of death is repeated blows to the head and face, leading to hemorrhage, eventually resulting in his death.
Raed Abdul-Salam al-Ja’bari died on September 9, 2014. He worked as a car mechanic technician; he is a married father of five children.
He was first kidnapped and arrested by Israeli soldiers on July 26, 2014, after a traffic accident Israel alleged that, during which, he intentionally rammed a settler.
An Israeli court ordered his release, on an 8000 NIS bail, but the Israeli prosecution filed an appeal, keeping al-Ja’bari held at Ofer prison.
On September 3, he was moved to the Eshil Israeli prison, and was placed into solitary confinement. He was then moved to the Soroka Medical Center where he died, on Tuesday.
A Palestinian man waves national flag near a burning barricade during clashes with Israeli soldiers following a protest against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel and the Israeli Wall of Shame, the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank
IMAGES
42 Palestinian, Israeli, and international organizations have issued an urgent call to the international community to stop Israeli plans to "forcibly transfer" thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank from their communities into "a designated township".
The joint statement is a response to Israeli government plans to "move Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities around Jericho, Ramallah, and Jerusalem", including in so-called "E1", an area that is a long-standing target for illegal settlement expansion.
The NGOs note that Israeli authorities have, in recent months, "used coercive tactics to heighten the pressure on Palestinian Bedouin communities, issuing eviction orders and demolishing homes and livelihood structures", as well as "obstruct[ing] aid agencies from delivering assistance".
Palestinian groups like Al Haq, Badil and PNGO are joined by the likes of Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision. They stress "that the international community must take all possible measures to ensure that individual and mass forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, does not take place".
The Israeli plans publicised this week were also condemned by the Palestinian Minister of Agriculture Shawqi al-Ayasa, who said Israel wants to "create segregated areas" and prevent "Palestinian sovereignty on all of the territory occupied in 1967".
Carrera
Sep 14, 14 1:08 pm
Tammuz – I’ve had this thread in my face for a couple of months and never even desired to peek at it but after this mornings news of another innocent person being beheaded I thought I would crack it open to see if I could learn something about all the horror in the Middle East.
You make a compelling argument about Israel in your opening manifesto and I agree with all of it and can think of many things to add to the list….but, the foundation of the subject of your thread is simply based on a land-grab and killing people by either side will never stop it, in fact as you have documented - it has accelerated it.
If my neighbor built a fence over my property line, I would ask him to move it and if he refused to do it my next step shouldn’t be to threaten him because all that will do is cause him to threaten me…it goes back and forth to a point that someone gets scared and calls the cops….and in this World that’s the U.S.
I know you can be critical of peoples ideas on this Forum and you think I don’t know enough to comment on this - but I think the cops need to go home - even if it all ends with scorched earth. There is terrorism on both sides but one side believes in their soles that killing people, if they don’t convert or conform, is the only answer and it’s becoming so prolific that the whole World is now scared and everybody is calling the cops.
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces have detained 174 Palestinians across the West Bank during the second week of September alone, a Palestinian rights group said Sunday.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society said in a statement that Israeli troops detained the largest number of Palestinians in the northern West Bank district of Jenin, where 69 people were taken in a arrest raids.
The Hebron district came second, with 40 Palestinians detained.
Seventeen were arrested in Ramallah, 12 in Bethlehem, ten in Jerusalem, five in Tulkarem, four in Nablus, and four in Qalqiliya, the statement added.
Thirteen Palestinians were detained in Tubas, Salfit, and Jericho, it added.
In the first week of September, 127 Palestinians were detained.
More than 7,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including around 2,000 detained during Israeli arrest campaigns over the last three months alone.
Palestinian ambassador to South Africa Abdul-Hafid Nofal said that Johannesburg university decided not to accept any student or deal with any academic or lecturer from Israel.
In a press release on Wednesday, Nofal said that the academic council of the university issued a decision prohibiting the admission of Israeli students to any of its collages and departments.
The decision also included a ban on hiring or hosting academics and lecturers who work for Israeli universities, according to the Palestinian ambassador.
He noted that Johannesburg university was the first one in South Africa to have taken a bold decision three years ago to boycott Israeli universities.
Consecutive Israeli military assaults have caused huge damage to Gaza's water and sewage systems, writes Sam Bahour. One result is that almost all Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption. Another is the tide of raw Palestinian sewage lapping on the beaches of Tel Aviv. So who should we feel most sorry for?
(...)
More terrorist shit
The product is Palestinian shit, or more accurately, to maintain the media bias of the times, Palestinian terrorist shit.
We Palestinians have no love affair with the Israelis relaxing on the shores of Tel Aviv. Many of these Israelis have no problem being high-tech professionals in the morning, throwing on their military uniform and participating in turning Gaza into a living hell on earth in the afternoon, then going for a relaxing swim with the family on the shores of Tel Aviv in the evening.
However, we would advise Israelis, and all tourists to Israel for that matter, to please stop swimming in our shit. This practice is not only unhealthy for you and your children, but it is killing us, literally and figuratively.
"Ninety-five percent of the water that Palestinians in Gaza have been consuming for decades has been proven unfit for human consumption. Electricity shortages that have lasted for almost a decade have limited water treatment capacity and thus the availability of water to households, as well as increased the discharge of untreated wastewater into the sea.
Even before the summer assault on Gaza, 90 million liters of untreated or partially treated wastewater were being dumped and continue to be dumped into the [Mediterranean] sea each day due to insufficient treatment facilities."
(...)
This seawater may seriously damage your health
The mass majority of Jewish Israelis prefer to just ignore anything Palestinian; to them we are invisible.
Ever since the founding of the state of Israel, the policy has been clear: Uproot the Palestinian population using all means possible, legal and illegal, destroy Palestinian villages in an attempt to erase the crime, and rebrand anything left, like city and street names, in a policy the Israel government has long ago identified as 'Judaization' of the country.
Sadly, this conflict will not end soon. In the meantime, Israelis, please inform your kids not to swallow the seawater.
Monday September 15, 2014 13:10 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News
The family of detainee Reziq Abdullah Rajoub, 57, from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, voiced an appeal to human rights and legal groups to intervene for his release, especially amidst his deteriorating health condition.
Reziq Rajoub - Ahrar Center
Rajoub’s brother, Hamdan, said the detainee has been repeatedly imprisoned by Israel, spending a total of 22 years in Israeli prisons. His latest arrest came only 15 days after his release.
He has various health conditions, and requires gallbladder surgery as soon as possible.
“My brother was kidnapped on January 7 2014; Israel issued a six-month arbitrary Administrative Detention, without charges," the brother said, “He was repeatedly hospitalized due to low blood count, and complications of a surgery that never healed."
Head of the Ahrar Center, Fuad al-Khoffash, says that Rajoub is facing serious, life-threatening complications, and should be immediately released to receive the urgently needed treatment.
Al-Khoffash warned of the increasing number of ailing detainees, and serious complications they face, due to the lack of specialized and adequate medical attention.
Although no charges were brought against him, Israel refuses to release him, and insists on keeping him imprisoned
Today people lay the blame for the violence in Gaza on Hamas, but Israel did not start its assaults on the Gaza Strip when Hamas was established in the late 1980’s. Israel began attacking Gaza when the Gaza Strip was established and populated with refugees in the early 1950’s. Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, are not faced with an option to resist and be killed or live in peace. They are presented with the options of being killed standing up and fighting or being killed sleeping in their beds.
Gaza is being punished because Gaza is a constant reminder to Israel and the world of the original sin of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the creation of a so-called Jewish state. Even though Palestinian resistance has never presented a military threat to Israel, it has always been portrayed as an existential threat to Israel. Moshe Dayan, the famed Israeli general with the eyepatch described this in a speech in April 1956. He spoke in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, an Israeli settlement on the border of the Gaza strip where Israeli tanks park each time there is a ground invasion of Gaza.
“Beyond this border exists an ocean of hatred and a deep desire for vengeance,” Dayan said then. Ironically, when six months later Israel had occupied Gaza and my father was appointed its military governor he said he saw “no hatred or desire for vengeance but a people eager to live and work together for a better future.”
Still, today, Israeli commanders and politicians say pretty much the same: Israel is destined to live by the sword and must strike Gaza whenever possible. Never mind the fact that Palestinians have never posed a military challenge, much less a threat to Israel. After all, Palestinians have never possessed as much as a tank, a war ship or a fighter jet, not to say a regular army.
A THREAT TO ISRAEL’S LEGITIMACY
So why the fear? Why the constant, six-decade-long campaign against Gaza? Because Palestinians in Gaza, more so than anywhere else, pose a threat to Israel’s legitimacy.
Israel is an illegitimate creation, born of the unholy union between racism and colonialism, and the refugees who make up the majority of the population in the Gaza Strip are a constant reminder of this. They are a reminder of the crime of ethnic cleansing upon which Israel was established. The poverty, lack of resources and lack of freedom stand in stark contrast to the abundance, freedom and power that exist in Israel and that rightfully belongs to Palestinians.
Alshati refugee camp, Gaza, just a few miles from Ashkelon
Back at Ben-Gurion airport that night, I was told that if I cooperate and plead with the shift supervisor it would make the security screening go faster. When I declined this generous offer I was told they “did not like my attitude” and they proceeded to paste a sticker with the same bar code on my luggage and give me the same treatment Palestinians receive.
“NEVER AGAIN?”
As I write these words, the number of innocents murdered by Israel in Gaza has risen beyond two thousand. Ending the insufferable, brutal and racist regime that was created by the Zionists in Palestine is the call of our time. Criticizing Palestinian resistance is unconscionable. Israel must be subjected to boycott, divestment and sanctions. Israeli diplomats must be sent home in shame. Israeli leaders, and Israeli commanders traveling abroad must fear prosecution. And these measures are to be combined with disobedience, non-cooperation and uncompromising resistance. This and only this will show mothers, fathers and children in Gaza that the world cares and that “Never Again” is more than an empty promise.
Tuesday September 16, 2014 09:07 by Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Israel is planning to forcibly transfer thousands of Palestinian Bedouins from their West Bank communities into a designated township to free up land for settlement expansion. Local and international groups are urging world leaders to pressure Israel to stop this violation of Palestinian rights.
Bedouin homes destroyed in E1 (archive image from activestills.org)
The Israeli government publicized, last week, six plans to move Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities around Jericho, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. The plans include moving Bedouins out of the politically sensitive area referred to as the Jerusalem Periphery or “E1,” where Israel has long-intended to demolish 23 Bedouin villages in order to expand and link settlements. Settlement expansion in this area would cut the West Bank in two, further disrupting movement and social and economic ties between major Palestinian cities and limiting the little access Palestinians in the West Bank have to Jerusalem.
All of the Palestinian Bedouin communities slated for transfer are located in Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank where Israel maintains full civil and military control. There are already around 341,000 Israeli settlers living in more than 100 settlements throughout Area C. Although Area C is within the internationally recognized 1967 borders of the occupied Palestinian territory, Israel only allows Palestinians to build on 1 percent of it.
International humanitarian organisations have noted that this lack of authority to build makes Palestinians vulnerable to home demolition, displacement, and forcible transfer and limits their ability to realize their rights to water, to adequate shelter, to education, health, and to livelihood.
Over 40 local and international agencies have called on world leaders to pressure Israel to cancel these plans.
In recent months, the government of Israel has used coercive tactics to heighten the pressure on Palestinian Bedouin communities, issuing eviction orders and demolishing homes and livelihood structures. Aid agencies report that Israel has also obstructed them from delivering assistance to these communities, including by seizing and destroying emergency shelters that international donors provided for families whose homes were demolished and confiscating a swing-set and a slide for a Bedouin school.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that Israel has already demolished more than 350 Palestinian homes or livelihood structures in Area C in 2014, while demolitions in the Jerusalem periphery and E1 area have hit a five-year high, displacing 170 Bedouins, 91 of whom are children.
Orhan Ayyüce
Sep 17, 14 2:06 am
"Damn Bedouins! Stop throwing goat cheese into Israel! Or else... You have land right?"
archanonymous
Sep 17, 14 11:20 pm
we should just leave the whole fuckin middle east alone. Like where is Israel on this whole ISIS thing? Nowhere to be found. They are the worst type of ally - willing to take our moneh and weapons to kill innocent civilians, nowhere to be found when shit gets real. Fuck em.
A Palestinian woman takes part in an 8 September protest at the Red Cross’ office in Gaza City demanding the release of family members held in Israeli jails.
Two dozen Palestinians captured during Israel’s invasion of Gaza this summmer remain in detention more than three weeks after the 51-day offensive ended.
While the men have had limited contact with their families, the legal team representing most of them says several have been tortured.
“They testified in front of our lawyer that they were subjected to torture by the Israeli interrogators,” Issam Younis, director of Gaza’s Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, told The Electronic Intifada on Monday.
Al Mezan represents 22 of the 24 detainees still held by Israel. “At least eight that were visited by the lawyer were subjected to torture,” Younis added. “It doesn’t mean the others were not.”
Their treatment has included beatings with the butts of M-16 rifles, sleep deprivation for at least three consecutive days and handcuffing in painful stress positions, according to Younis.
Additionally, he said, “They were intimidated with threats that Israel would demolish their houses, kill their families and rape their wives
The High Court of Israel, on Wednesday, decided to continue to allow Israeli Jewish communities to discriminate against Arabs and forbid them from living there.
Adalah logo
The Israeli Attorney General defended the law, which allows 'admissions panels' to screen potential residents, with the aim of keeping Arabs out.
According to the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah, which filed the initial claim, the ruling “gives the green light for 434 communities to exist, based on the principle of segregated housing. This law is one of the most racist pieces of legislation enacted in recent years, the primary objective of which is to marginalize Arab citizens and prevent them from accessing housing on 'state land' in many communities. The court's decision upholds one of the most dangerous laws in Israel."
“That day is carved in my memory; I relive the scene every day. Me lying on the street unable to move, smeared with blood, conquered with shock and fear, surrounded by wires and dead and dying bodies, I could only hear screams and the thunderous sound of bombs.” Ahmed said with a choked voice while sitting in a wheelchair in AlQuds hospital in Gaza.
Ahmed abu Shanab, 17 years old, and Mahmoud Naser, 18, recalled the day they were injured. After few days of the Shijaia massacre, the Israeli warplanes and the artillery tanks shelled Al-Shijaia market with several missiles during a ceasefire. The bombing left 17 deaths and 200 injuries. Ahmed and Mahmoud, who after the strike became close friends, were among the injured and are now at Al-Quds hospital receiving treatment
(...)
“I don’t know how in the world we managed to survive, God was watching for us, bombs were falling at us like rain, we ran and ran and never looked back, we didn’t have time to even check if we were among our families or not. My aunt and uncle were killed while they were running for their life. We couldn’t stop to rescue them, shelling was random and non stop.” Ahmed recollected with a voice charged with grief. After a pause he continued: “My cousin was also killed, he went to look for his family after he learned that two of them were injured, he wanted to rescue them, but an Israeli sniper shot him in his leg, chest and head, this is the most dreadful crime.” I then realized he was talking about Salem Al-Shamaly whom his video of being killed spread all around the internet.
Ahmed’s brother was one of Salem closest friends. They used to go out together every day during the war, rarely were they seen separated from each other. Ahmed remembered in agony how his brother and cousin used to be inseparable. “My brother wakes up every night sobbing, when we ask him what’s wrong, he would say that Salem was calling him. My brother is still incapable of accepting his best friend’s death. They planned their future together, Salem wanted to get married this summer, they killed him, they killed my cousin and my brother’s closest friend.”
(...)
Mahmoud spoke bitterly of the day when he was injured critically in his leg that it had to be amputated. “I was shopping in Al-Shijaia market when I heard a deafening blast nearby, I don’t know how my legs led me there, I found myself standing in front of the targeted place, some people were killed and many were injured by the time I arrived, when the ambulances reached the place, another missile dropped over our heads, it threw me to the floor and left me bleeding. I saw blood flooding out of my leg, I tried to stand but my left leg bent and I fell to the floor, I couldn’t feel my legs afterwards. I dropped unconscious and when I woke up in the hospital, I felt that my leg was very light, I knew then that it was amputated. At that moment the only thing I wished for was death.” Mahmoud thinks a lot about how he is going to move on in his life again “I dropped out from school to help my family, I used to work as a plumber, I don’t know now what to do. Doctors say that I’ll be able to walk again with a prosthetic limb.” Mahmoud is waiting now for his visa to travel to Germany for further treatment.
Orhan Ayyüce
Sep 19, 14 5:03 pm
Wake up!
Chris Hedges gave this speech Saturday at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo, Wis., before a crowd of about 2,000. His address followed one there by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who seems to be preparing to run in the Democratic presidential primaries. The Fighting Bob Fest, the annual event at which they appeared, brings together progressive speakers from around the country and honors Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette (1855-1925), a U.S. senator from Wisconsin who opposed the United States’ entry into World War I. Parts of this talk were drawn from Hedges’ past columns.
Sacrificing the Vulnerable, From Gaza to America
"Pundits and news celebrities on the airwaves engage in fevered speculation about whether the wife of a former president will run for office—and this after the mediocre son of another president spent eight years in the White House. This is not politics. It is gossip. Opinion polls, the staple of what serves as political reporting, are not politics. They are forms of social control. The use of billions of dollars to fund election campaigns and pay lobbyists to author legislation is not politics. It is legalized bribery. The insistence that austerity and economic rationality, rather than the welfare of the citizenry, be the primary concerns of the government is not politics. It is the death of civic virtue. The government’s system of wholesale surveillance and the militarization of police forces, along with the psychosis of permanent war and state-orchestrated fear of terrorism, are not politics. They are about eradicating civil liberties and justifying endless war and state violence. The chatter about death panels, abortion, gay rights, guns and undocumented children crossing the border is not politics. It is manipulation by the power elites of emotion, hate and fear to divert us from seeing our own powerlessness."
Every week, several villages across the West Bank demonstrate against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This week, ISM activists attended protests in the villages of Bil’in, Ni’lin, and Nabi Saleh.
During the demonstration in Bil’in, Israeli soldiers shot mass amounts of tear gas at peaceful protesters. Many Palestinians and internationals suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation. An Israeli activist, and a Labour Party Councillor traveling withChi Onwurah, the British Member of Parliament for Newcastle, were arrested.
In Ni’lin, north of Ramallah, the Israeli military shot tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at protesters. The army began shooting unprovoked at Palestinians and internationals as soon as the Friday prayer had finished and people and children as young as five year olds were walking in the area. Several Palestinians were still praying when the military attacked.
The Israeli military shot approximately ten tear gas canisters at a time and also fired rubber coated steel bullets and stun grenades. No one was injured in the demonstration today. For the past weeks the military has moved closer to the residential area of the village, locals have raised concerns that the army will soon enter the village during a demonstration.
During the Nabi Saleh demonstration protesters attempted to reach the gate at the entrance to the village which Israeli forces use to close the village off from the rest of the West Bank. Israeli forces fired many rubber-coated steel bullets at demonstrators and used excessive amounts of tear gas. Several people were injured by rubber coated steel bullets. Many protesters also suffered from the effects of the tear gas, which resulted in a Palestinian women being taken to hospital for tear gas inhalation, she was later released.
20th September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Occupied Palestine
On the 17th of September, under heavy Israeli army protection, Israeli settlers from nearby illegal settlements entered Nablus with the aim of praying at Joseph’s tomb in Balata refugee camp.
Just after midnight, the Israeli army closed the district that surrounds the monument, blocking all the streets leading to the tomb and preventing anyone from passing nearby, either by foot or by car.
Around 1am, between eight and 10 buses full with hundreds of settlers invaded the area.
Clashes began in the area, particularly in the junction just in front of the entry to Balata refugee camp.
Youths threw stones for more then two hours against the army vehicles, that were moving up on the hill and back, seemingly in order to keep them busy and far from the large groups of Zionist settlers. Military trucks also tried several times to run over the Palestinian youths while they were throwing stones.
The Israeli army fired many stun grenades, and the road blockades were kept in place until the settlers left the area.
Clashes around Balata occur almost weekly, any time that the settlers decide to invade the area for praying. The settlers claim this monument belongs to the Biblical patriarch Joseph, while most of the Palestinians believe that the religious guide Sheikh Yusef Dweikat was buried there, according to Islamic tradition. Though Joseph is a sacred figure as well in Muslim, Christian and Samaritan religion, Muslims are not allowed to pray there.
Labeling their own actions as “security measures”, the army can easily shoot down a whole neighborhood and guarantee the Israeli settlers the freedom to move and pray wherever they wish, even in a site which is deeply inside Area A, which is supposed under Palestinian civil and security control. On the other side, most of the Palestinian living in the West Bank are not allowed to pray in their holy places, starting from this Joseph´s tomb to the biggest example of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.
These evidently different treatments intensify the inequality in rights between Palestinians and illegal Israeli settlers and make the life under occupation more and more unbearable.
Friday September 19, 2014 23:45 by IMEMC News & Agencies
Israeli police assaulted, this past Wednesday, 16-year old Shadi Raed Ghurab as he was walking along Nablus Street, in occupied East Jerusalem.
Police severely beat the boy with batons while he was being detained in the interrogation room, at the Salah Eddin Street police station, according to Jerusalem's Wadi Hilweh Information Center. The Center noted that he suffered fractures in his arm and leg, as seen in the photo.
Shadi explained that an officer detained him on Nablus Street and, then, took him to Salah Eddin Street police station. After the interrogator entered the room, he mocked the child for being a resident of the Al-Thori neighborhood, which resulted in a number of verbal altercations.
Additionally, according to the boy's testimony, the interrogator then transferred him to a different room which did not have any cameras, upon which he was assaulted by not one but three officers.
Shadi explained that he was able to leave the station during the arrest of another young man, and was then transferred to Al-Maqased hospital for treatment.
Such inhumane treatment of Palestinians is a common occurrence, by both Israeli authorities and civilian settlers alike.
chatter of clouds
Sep 21, 14 12:45 am
From the International Solidarity Movement Facebook page:
This morning in Hebron, a six-year-old Palestinian boy was attacked by colonial settlers. Whadye Maswdye was walking on Shuhada street with his small dog and some of the family sheep, when a male settler took young Whadye by the neck and slapped him in the face several times. Witnesses reported that the soldiers present at the scene were more interested in preventing the father of Whadye, that had in the meantime arrived to the place, to reach the settlers, than to stop the actual abuse. ISM volunteers asked a local shop owner who witnessed the episode if anything happened to the settler who attacked young Whadye.
He stated: “No, nothing happened to him, they (the settlers) can do whatever they want. If I just threw a stone at a settler I would go to prison for at least six months, imagine what would happen if I beat one of them like this? There is no justice here.”
Monday September 22, 2014 11:10 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
The Israeli Persecution initiated, since the beginning of July, a new policy in occupied East Jerusalem, resulting in keeping hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of children, behind bars for extended periods, until concluding all “legal measures” against them.
File - Arabs48
Israeli daily Haaretz said the new policy, used by Israeli prosecution, is resulting in keeping every detained Palestinian, believed to have thrown stones at the soldiers or settlers, or believed to have committed a violation, behind bars until all legal measures are concluded.
Such measures led to keeping dozens of children imprisoned for a month, and in many cases two months, before there were even sent to trial. Haaretz said the army and police have arrested 260 Palestinian children in the last two months.
24th September 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Muhammed (Photo supplied by family)
Monday afternoon in Hebron, two young Palestinian men were arrested and abused north of Qeitun after being falsely accused of stone throwing.
21-year-old Muhammad Ghaleb Abu Sbeih was walking home from work when soldiers from the Israeli military force arrested him. Six boys had been throwing stones in the area and Muhammad was accused of taking part even though the soldiers had no evidence. A local Palestinian stated that Muhammad had been beaten while walking up to the checkpoint where he was held for two hours along with 19-year old Shadi Abdel Hamed Al-Atras.
When the boys’ families arrived the soldiers were rude to the mothers and Muhammad’s sister. Muhammad’s mother heard her son’s screams from inside the army jeep in which he was being held captive and beaten. Initially, the soldiers denied that anyone by that name was in the jeep but then changed their tactics and started mocking the family, saying bad words to the women in both Arabic and Hebrew.
The soldiers kept laughing and joking around and at one point they wanted the password for Muhammad’s iPhone to access it. After being held inside the jeep for two hours, Muhammad and Shadi were finally driven away and the soldiers shouted, “with love Muhammad“ and clapped.
The young men were driven to Kiryat Arba police station and are still being held. According to the DCO (District Coordination Office) Muhammad is being transferred to Ofer court and Shadi has been moved to a checkpoint in Hebron where he will hopefully soon be released.
Published Thursday 11/07/2013 (updated) 12/07/2013 15:44
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers on Thursday cut down 1,150 olive trees in Palestinian groves near Nablus, a Palestinian Authority official said.
Residents of Itamar settlement used chainsaws to cut down the trees north of Awarta, said Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank.
The trees belonged to 25 Palestinian families and were planted in a 600-dunum grove, Daghlas said.
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian family has begun to demolish part of a building it owns in East Jerusalem to avoid paying fines after the Israeli municipality issued a demolition order, the owner said Tuesday.
Walid al-Ubeidi told Ma'an that due to the size of his family, he expanded the building from three to four floors in 2002, and to five floors in 2004-2005.
He tried to obtain building permits from the municipality for both expansions, but to no avail, al-Ubeidi said.
An Israeli court recently ordered the family to demolish the fifth floor and seal the fourth floor by Sept. 25, or else face paying huge fees for the municipality to bulldoze it.
Some 18 people from his extended family will be displaced as a result of the demolition, he added.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, although 550,000 Jewish settlers are frequently given building permits and allowed to expand their homes and properties.
Only 14 percent of East Jerusalem land is zoned for Palestinian residential construction, while one-third of Palestinian land has been confiscated since 1967 to build illegal Jewish-only settlements, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel says.
23rd September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Violence broke out on the streets of Hebron’s university district (al-Khalil) this morning when Israeli soldiers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators who had been protesting the murders of two Palestinians earlier that day.
Protestors took to the streets after Marwan Kawasme, 29, and Amar Abu Aisha, 32, were killed and burned by Israeli soldiers in the very early hours of this morning. The Israeli military alleged that the two men were behind the deaths of the three settler teenagers in June of this year.
The soldiers used tear gas canisters and live ammunition bullets during the clashes, with numerous injuries including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head and is now in a critical condition in hospital. A representative of the Red Cross stated to ISM that there were over 30 injuries, though the exact number is still unknown.
The building where the murders took place was also set on fire and destroyed.
Tensions had been high all morning as word of the two dead Palestinians spread throughout the area. By 8 am around 200 Palestinian residents had gathered to show their frustration at the senseless taking of life. Although stones were thrown, the protesters were unarmed and did not pose a threat to the violent occupying military. The Israeli army, still present after the earlier incident, unleashed dozens of canisters of tear gas leaving many people unable to breath and in need of medical help. Hemmed in and with nowhere to escape to, the protestors hid behind what ever they could find.
The situation further deteriorated when the Israeli soldiers, without warning began to fire live bullets at the protestors, hitting one boy in the head and injuring a number of others.
After an hour of further violence by the Israeli soldiers, the protestors cleared and the injured were taken away.
Throughout the earlier afternoon however similar incidents of unrest were reported around Hebron (al-Khalil).
chatter of clouds
Sep 25, 14 11:35 am
From a 2009 study Reigniting Violence: How Do Ceasefires End?
Figure 2. For conflict pauses of different durations (i.e., periods of time when no one is killed on either side), we show here the percentage of times from the Second Intifada in which Israelis ended the period of nonviolence by killing one or more Palestinians (black), the percentage of times that Palestinians ended the period of nonviolence by killing Israelis (grey), and the percentage of times that both sides killed on the same day (white). Virtually all periods of nonviolence lasting more than a week were ended when the Israelis killed Palestinians first. We include here the data from all pause durations that actually occurred.
Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.
The lessons from these data are clear:
First, Hamas can indeed control the rockets, when it is in their interest. The data shows that ceasefires can work, reducing the violence to nearly zero for months at a time.
Second, if Israel wants to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, it should cherish and preserve the peace when it starts to break out, not be the first to kill.
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 08/26/2014 - 1:55pm
Only economic pressure on Israel can lead to a true and just peace.
Three times in the last six years, Israel has conducted extraordinarily asymmetrical and brutal operations against the captive population of Gaza, and each time it has been civilians who have paid the major price.
And while Gaza has had the world’s attention during these escalations, the truth is that for 7 years, and for the foreseeable future if the world doesn’t act, the people of Gaza will continue to live under an intolerable state of siege. While for Israelis this war is over, Israel's decades-long assault on Palestinian human rights continues.
There is no true end of violence for the children in jail without charges, the farmers watching soldiers tear apart their orchards, the refugees dreaming of the chance to hold their loved ones and see their homes once more, the young students who cannot attend school— for all of them, the violence of ongoing occupation, siege, and injustice continues.
The shocking public attacks on Palestinians inside of Israel this summer included random physical assaults, public calls for ethnic cleansing and the killing of children from some of Israel's top leaders, and a growing acceptance of open racism in everyday life. The brave actions of small numbers of Israelis during this time gave us inspiration and hope, but we cannot downplay or ignore the degree to which the majority of Israeli society currently rejects equality as a basic value.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s Emergency Session on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge held yesterday in Brussels has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.
The Jury reported: ‘The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment in Gaza appears to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group in Gaza.’
archanonymous
Sep 26, 14 12:38 am
Tammuz, maybe you should make this a blog???? You could organize the posts a little more succinctly, use tags and images more effectively, etc.
chatter of clouds
Sep 26, 14 12:56 am
From the International Solidarity Movement FB page
For the last two days in al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli soldiers have shot tear gas at schoolchildren at the Salaymeh checkpoint. Yesterday, two tear gas canisters were shot at the children, one of which was fired directly at them instead of an arc (to lower the impact velocity). This practice is extremely dangerous and can cause severe injuries or death. Today, one tear gas grenade was thrown and four tear gas canisters were shot, one after another, at high speeds towards the children leaving school.
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
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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.
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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.
If you are so concerned about what Israel has been doing since the UN gave them that land, why are you just now trying to make change? If it really disgusted you this bad you would have tried to do something a long time ago. Are you, as you say, simply "arguing for the sake of arguing" now? On behalf of everyone at Archinect, except for a few people, please drop this thread, let it be buried. Nobody cares anymore, except for you two of course.
Cd-Arch
If its just me or us two or three or more who care, and we, like you, are archinect members, then this is enough for us to have a thread dedicated to a topic I and/or we find interesting. There are tens of other posts that you can engage with if you don't find this topic interesting....unless, you do find it interesting but antagonistically so and this is your way of asking me to censor myself in order to preclude mention of subjects irksome to you. Sorry, this is your problem and not mine. You can easily remedy this by ignoring the topic should that be the case.
There are hundreds of Archinectors who are ignoring this thread because they really don't care. That you come here again and again suggests that you care, in whatever form or fashion.
Also, you don't speak on behalf of everyone except for a few people at Archinect. And even if you did, that does not give you the right speak on behalf of everyone. I suppose issues such as freedom of speech and letting people express themselves - as long as this doesn't express racial, sexist and homophobic hatreds- are not too popular where you're at.
to specify this correctly: Also, you don't speak on behalf of "everyone except for a few people"
To end this thread would be unfair to thousands of people who are reading it daily. Just saying...
If this peaceful thread calling for boycott, protesting Israel for apartheid and murdering innocent people by the thousands is bothering you this much, quit denying the truth and accept the real events, read the quality information worth reading put in front of you by t a m m u z and few of us here. Or, leave the room and shut the door on your way out. Kapish..?
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A thread re-issue;
Collective Punishment in Gaza
This one is about Palestinians within the Israeli colonized lands of Palestine rather than in Gaza or West Bank:
From The Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel by Adalah
...This report details some of the main legal, political and policy structures that institutionalize discrimination against the Palestinian minority in Israel, and entrench inequalities between Palestinian and Jewish citizens. It provides indicators of inequalities, including official state data, and explains how specific laws and policies work to exclude the Palestinian minority from state resources and services, as well as the structures of power. It further demonstrates how the State of Israel, as an ethnocracy or “ethnic nation- state”, is systematically failing to adopt effective measures to redress the gaps that exist between the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority and, moreover, how, by privileging Jewish citizens in many fields, the state actively preserves and even widens these gaps. Finally, the report reflects on the impact of inequality on the Palestinian minority in Israel and its ramifications for the state as a whole
Main Findings:
The legal framework of inequality
• Inequalities between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel span all fields of public life and have persisted over time. Direct and indirect discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is ingrained in the legal system and in governmental practice.
• The right to equality and freedom from discrimination is not explicitly enshrined in Israeli law as a constitutional right, nor is it protected by statute. While Supreme Court justices have interpreted The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty as comprising the principle of equality, this fundamental right is currently protected by judicial interpretation alone.
• The definition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state makes inequality and discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel a reality and a political project. The pairing of “Jewish” and “democratic” both codifies discrimination against non-Jewish citizens and impedes the realization of full equality.
• Numerous groups of Palestinian citizens of Israel face “compound discrimination” or multiple forms of discrimination on the basis of both their national belonging as Arabs/Palestinians and their membership in one or more other distinct subgroups, such as women, the disabled and the elderly.
• More than 30 main laws discriminate, directly or indirectly, against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed a flood of new racist and discriminatory bills which are at various stages in the legislative process.
Citizenship rights
• Palestinian citizens of Israel are afforded differential and unequal treatment under Israeli law in the field of citizenship rights. The most important immigration and nationality laws—including the Law of Return (1950) and the Citizenship Law (1952)—privilege Jews and Jewish immigration.
• If the spouse of a Palestinian citizen of Israel is a Palestinian resident of the OPT, it has been virtually impossible for him or her to gain residency or citizenship status in Israel since May 2002. This ban on family unification is totally disproportionate to the alleged security reasons cited by Israel to justify it; rather, it is motivated by the state’s desire to maintain a Jewish demographic majority.
• A new law makes it possible to strip Israeli citizenship for various reasons related to alleged “disloyalty” to the state or “breach of trust”, indirectly targeting the citizenship rights of Palestinian citizens. Several attempts to pass additional laws that grant the authority to revoke citizenship and impose further loyalty oaths are currently pending in the Knesset.
Income/poverty
• Arab families are greatly over-represented among Israel’s poor: over half of Arab families in Israel are classified as poor, compared to an average poverty rate of one-fifth among all families in Israel. Arab towns and villages are heavily over-represented in the lowest socio-economic rankings, and the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab are the poorest communities in the state.
• Gaps in income and poverty rates are directly related to institutional discrimination against Arab citizens in Israel.
Redistribution of resources and social welfare
• Although the right to equality demands that states take positive steps to bridge the gaps between the various population groups, the State of Israel actively seeks to promote and direct resources to Jewish citizens as a privileged majority within the “Jewish State”. In many policy areas, including the designation of “National Priority Areas” and the use of the military-service criterion to allocate resources, the state actively preserves and perpetuates inequalities between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel.
• The state has consistently failed to take adequate and effective action to address the phenomenon of absolute and relative poverty among the Arab minority in Israel. Where it has initiated development programs targeting the Arab minority, such as the “Multi-Year Plan”, the state has tended to implement them partially, gradually, or not at all.
• Direct state policy measures to reduce poverty disproportionately target Jewish citizens, with the result that poverty rates have fallen far more sharply among Jewish citizens than among their Arab counterparts, and inequalities have consequently persisted.
Employment
• Palestinian citizens of Israel often face discrimination in work opportunities, pay and conditions, both because of the inadequate implementation of equal-opportunity legislation and because of entrenched structural barriers, which particularly affect women, and include poor or non-existent public transportation, a lack of industrial zones, and a shortage of state-run daycare centers. Palestinian citizens are also excluded from the labor force by the use of the military-service criterion as a condition for acceptance for employment, often when there is no connection between the nature of the work and military experience.
• Unemployment rates remain significantly higher among Arab than among Jewish citizens, and the rate of labor-force participation among Palestinian women citizens of Israel, at just about 20%, is among the lowest in the world.
• Palestinian citizens of Israel in general, and women in particular, continue to be sorely underrepresented in the civil service, the largest employer in Israel (in total, Arabs constitute just around 6% of all civil service employees), despite affirmative-action legislation stipulating fair representation for the Arab minority and for women.
• The lack of development and investment in Arab towns and villages inside Israel and the unexploited or under-exploited human resources of the members of the Palestinian minority inhibit the growth of the Israeli economy. The lost potential to Israel’s economy has been estimated at around US$ 8 billion per year by the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD).
Economic assets: land
• In continuation of a pattern that was established with the founding of the state in 1948, Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to be deprived of access and use of the land under long-standing and more recent land laws and policies. Furthermore, new measures—including a new land reform law from 2009 and an amendment to the Land Ordinance from February 2010— aim at confirming state ownership of land confiscated from Palestinians in perpetuity and blocking Palestinian restitution claims.
• Admissions committees operate in around 700 agricultural and community towns and filter out Arab applicants, on the basis of their “social unsuitability”, from future residency in these towns. The operation of admissions committees contributes to the institutionalization of racially- segregated towns and villages throughout the state and perpetuates unequal access to the land.
• The Jewish National Fund (JNF)—a body with quasi-state authority that operates solely for the interests of the Jewish people and controls 13% of the land in the state—continues to wield decisive influence over land policy in Israel, having been allocated six of a total of 13 members of the newly-established Land Authority Council.
• Arab towns and villages in Israel suffer from severe overcrowding, with Arab
municipalities exercising jurisdiction over only 2.5% of the total area of the state. Since 1948, the State of Israel has established approximately 600 Jewish municipalities, whereas no new Arab village, town or city has ever been built.
• While the Arab Bedouin population in the Naqab stands at around 170,000 persons, or 14% of the total population in the Naqab, the combined areas of the government-planned and newly-recognized Arab Bedouin towns and villages in the Naqab account for just 0.9% of the land in the district.
• Israel is currently intensifying its efforts to forcibly evacuate the unrecognized villages in the Naqab (referred to as “illegal clusters”), including by demolishing entire villages, as recently witnessed in the repeated demolition of the village of Al-Araqib. In pursuing this policy, the state has rejected the option of affording recognition to these villages, many of which predate the establishment of Israel. Between 75,000 and 90,000 Arab Bedouin live in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab, whom the state characterizes as “trespassers on state land”.
Educational access/attainment
• The Ministry of Education retains centralized control over the form and substance of the curriculum for Arab schools, with few Arab educators wielding decision-making authority. The State Education Law sets educational objectives for state schools that emphasize Jewish history and culture.
• The current under-investment in Arab schools in Israel threatens to sustain the gaps between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority in the future. Since Arab children account for 25% of all children in Israel, the unequal investment in their education and development can be expected to act as a major brake on the Israeli economy in the coming generation.
• State funding to Arab schools in Israel falls far behind that provided to Jewish schools. According to official state data published in 2004, the state provides three times as much funding to Jewish students as to Arab pupils. This underfunding is reflected in many areas, including relatively large class sizes and poor infrastructure and facilities.
• There are few elementary schools in the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab, severely overcrowded and poorly-equipped, and not a single high school. Despite a settlement reached by the state with Adalah to establish the first high school in the unrecognized village of Abu Tulul by 1 September 2009, no school has yet been opened.
• Arab students are dramatically underrepresented in Israel’s universities and other institutes of higher education. Arab academics constitute only about 1.2% of all tenured and tenure-track positions in Israeli universities, leaving Arab citizens marginalized in the production of knowledge in society.
• The Ministry of Education’s policies actually act to entrench the gaps between Arab and Jewish school children, since special programs to assist academically weak or gifted children, such as the “Shahar” academic enrichment programs, are disproportionately awarded to Jewish schools.
The Arabic language
•While Arabic is an official language in Israel, there is clear inequality in the opportunities granted to Arabic-speakers as compared to Hebrew-speakers to enjoy and use their language in official and public fora. In practice, the status of Arabic is vastly inferior to that of Hebrew in terms of the resources dedicated to its use, despite Israel’s duty under international human rights law to protect the language rights of the Arab national minority in Israel.
Health
•Arab citizens of Israel can expect to live shorter lives than Jewish citizens (about four years less) and face significantly higher mortality rates, particularly after the age of 60. The rate of infant mortality among Palestinian citizens is approximately double that among Jewish citizens, and higher still among the Arab Bedouin population in the Naqab (Negev), where it reaches more than 15 per 1,000 live births.
• While Israeli law provides that equitable, high-quality health services should be provided to all residents of Israel, various barriers—including the lack of clinics and hospitals in Arab towns and villages and limitations on mobility—mean that Palestinian citizens are frequently unable to exercise their right to the highest sustainable standard of health.
• The health situation is most critical in the unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab, where health services are either limited or non- existent. The inadequate provision of health services in the unrecognized villages is a deliberate policy of neglect on the part of the state, which is seeking to evacuate them and relocate their residents, in part by creating intolerable conditions.
Political participation
• Palestinians citizens have unequal access and lower levels of participation than Jewish citizens in all spheres of public life and decision-making, from the judiciary, the legislature, and government to the civil service. As a result, they have limited access to decision-making processes and centers of power, and a diminished ability to redress inequality and discrimination.
• Recent election cycles have witnessed attempts by the Attorney General (2003) and right-wing political parties and MKs to disqualify Arab parties and MKs from the Knesset, aimed at severely limiting the Palestinian political voice in the legislature. In 2003 and 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned decisions of the Central Elections Committee to disqualify Arab political parties and Arab leaders from participating in the national elections.
• The Arab voice has become increasingly delegitimized in the Israeli political and legislative process: according to recent polls around one- third of Jewish citizens agree that Arab citizens should be denied the rights to vote and to be elected to the Knesset, and more than half of Jewish teenagers would deprive Arabs of the right to be elected to the Knesset.
• The criminal justice system is regularly used as a means of delegitimizing political acts and expression by Palestinian citizens of Israel, including their elected political leadership. Several Arab MKs have been indicted or had parliamentary privileges revoked for legitimate political activities and speech that falls within the scope of their work as elected representatives.
• A series of Israeli laws institute a range of restrictions on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and access to the political system, including ideological limitations on the platforms of political parties and severe restrictions on travel by MKs to Arab states classified as “enemy states”. Such laws are used predominantly to curb the political freedoms of Palestinian citizens and their elected representatives and are steadily shrinking the space for political action available to them.
• The police routinely use force and arrest against Arab demonstrators as a deterrent in order to silence voices of protest. Anti-war protestors against the Israeli military operation “Cast Lead” in Gaza—mainly Arab citizens, including many minors—were subjected to serious police violence. They further encountered disproportionate and systematic mass arrests, primarily on the pretext of their mere presence at the scene.
• Until today, ten years after the fact, no police officer, commander or political leader has been held accountable for the killings of 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000 during demonstrations staged against Israel’s brutal policies in the OPT.
• Years of deliberate discrimination, unequal citizenship and a limited voice in the political system have left Palestinian citizens of Israel with a sense of vulnerability, marginalization, insecurity, and distrust of and alienation from the state. Consistently lower voter turn-out rates among Palestinian citizens are one result: in the 2009 elections, the voter turn-out rate was 64.7% overall and 53% among Arab voters.
• By approaching the Arab minority in Israel as a “fifth column” to be controlled and contained, at times employing state violence and draconian legal measures against them, Israel is ultimately undermining the emergence of genuine stability and a culture of respect for democracy, good governance and human rights norms. It also risks relegating issues of human rights to “threats” to security and sovereignty, to be dealt with by the state.
Sorry, to clarify, the above is about is about Palestinians within the Israeli colonized lands of Palestine -so-called Israeli Arabs- rather than in their brethren in Gaza or West Bank, who suffer from being under the virtual control of Israel, occupation-by-proxy, colonizer settlements and their expansion, resources deprivation, etc.
Instead of Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You do not even know a names of these villages and we do not censure you.
You mean, perhaps, to be echoing Moshe Dayan. More correctly would be to state that Jewish villages were established after the deliberate destruction of Arabs villages by the terrorist Israeli jewish bandits that then formed the Israeli terrorist army after committing massacres of Palestinians in order to sow fear and set them, the Palestinian villagers, fleeing so as to steal their land.
You mean, you do not know the names of these villages. The Palestinians still know the name of each of the villages they came from - that the terrorist Israeli forces, past or present, know very well as well as that of their neighbouring villages and beyond. They have recorded this - and this will haunt Israel, the knowledge that Palestine is remembered and being fought for by all means necessary- until its, Israel's very end. This is the most powerful weapon against Israel,a tabula rasa achieved through ethnic cleansing and mass murder- memory.
Finally, who are you to speak of censoring me. Read my post as a response to CD-Arch's post. Kindly note that comment not intended for you in the first place. Unless you imagine it to be so because of wishful thinking. Now, more topically:
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Map of ethnically cleansed, destroyed and excisting Arab Villages in Israel & Palestine
Read more about Ethnic Cleanins, Refugees, Villages, destroyed and Exsisting: Dr. Salman Abu Sitta about Refugees, Location and Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Over a period of two years, from 1947-1949, the Zionists demolished 419 Arab villages and depopulated the Palestinian Arabs in those towns. When the state of Israel was established in 1948 it became apparant that this Zionist policy was a systematic state-sponsored program to replace Palestinians and their land with Jews and Jewish villages
The following are some quotes by a Palestinian author, Walid Khalidi and Israeli war hero, Moshe Dayan [sic - scumbag terrorist mass murderer more like],
“By the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of entire villages had not only been depopulated but obliterated, their houses blown up or bulldozed. While many of the sites are difficult to access, to this day the observant traveller of Israeli roads and highways can see traces of their presence that would escape the notice of the casual passer-by: a fenced-in area, often surmounting a gentle hill, of olive and other fruit trees left untended, of cactus hedges and domesticated plants run wild. Now and then a few crumbled houses are left standing, a neglected mosque or church, collapsing walls along the ghost of a village lane, but in the vast majority of cases, all that remains is a scattering of stones and rubble across a forgotten landscape.”
Walid Khalidi, Palestinian author, All That Remains.
“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab Population.”
Moshe Dayan, Israeli war hero [sic - scumbag terrorist mass murderer more like], Address to the Technion, Haifa (as quoted in Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969)
Tammuz, you didn't quite answer my first question. If Israel, as an existing state for decades now, has appalled you so much from all of their actions since the UN gave them that land, why now do you think to outcry against them?
Israel: In-Depth Look at Gaza School Attacks
45 People, Including 17 Children, Killed in 3 Attacks
September 11, 2014
(Jerusalem) – Three Israeli [2] attacks that damaged Gaza schools housing displaced people caused numerous civilian casualties in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. In the first in-depth documentation of the violations, Human Rights Watch investigated the three attacks, which occurred on July 24 and 30, and August 3, 2014, and killed 45 people, including 17 children.
“The Israeli military carried out attacks on or near three well-marked schools where it knew hundreds of people were taking shelter, killing and wounding scores of civilians,” said Fred Abrahams [3], special adviser at Human Rights Watch. “Israel has offered no convincing explanation for these attacks on schools where people had gone for protection and the resulting carnage.”
Two of the three attacks Human Rights Watch investigated – in Beit Hanoun and Jabalya – did not appear to target a military objective or were otherwise unlawfully indiscriminate. The third attack in Rafah was unlawfully disproportionate if not otherwise indiscriminate. Unlawful attacks carried out willfully – that is, deliberately or recklessly – are war crimes.
The laws of war obligate Israel to investigate possible war crimes credibly and to punish those responsible appropriately.The Israeli military said [4] that it has established a “Fact-Finding Assessments Committee” to “examine exceptional incidents” during the latest fighting, and that it had opened five criminal investigations [5], including apparently one into the July 24 attack discussed below. Israel has a long record of failing [6] to undertake credible investigations into alleged war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.
In a briefing to media [7], the Israeli military showed photographs of what it said were rockets hidden in and fired from school compounds. None of the photographs were from the three UN-run schools that Human Rights Watch investigated where many civilians died.
In the first attack, at about 3 p.m. on July 24, apparent Israeli mortar shells struck a coeducational elementary school in Beit Hanoun run by the United Nations, killing 13 people, including six children, and wounding dozens of others.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that days of fighting in the area had caused most of the people staying at the school to leave, but several hundred remained. Most were awaiting transport to a safer area when two munitions, probably 81mm or 120mm mortar shells, hit inside the school compound.
Jamal Abu `Owda, 58, said he was sitting outside a classroom when one of the munitions struck. “Most people got killed in the middle of the courtyard,” he said. There were “shredded bodies, a mix of everything, boys, men, girls, women, a mix of different faces and bodies.” Witnesses said a second shell hit the courtyard shortly after the first, followed in quick succession by two more just outside the school compound.
The Israeli military alleged that Hamas fighters had “operated adjacent to” the school. After coming under fire with anti-tank missiles, soldiers responded by “firing several mortars in their direction.” The military said a “single errant mortar” hit the school courtyard, which was “completely empty” – a claim disputed by seven witnesses who separately spoke to Human Rights Watch.
Witnesses described at least four shells striking in and around the compound within a few minutes – a precision that would be extremely unlikely for errant Palestinian munitions. And there were no reports of Israeli troops near the school that might have led the Palestinians to fire mortar rounds there.
On July 30, at least 10 Israeli munitions hit in and around the UN-run girls’ elementary school in Jabalya, then sheltering more than 3,200 people. The shelling killed 20 people, including three children. An inspection of the damage and photographs of munition remnants found at the site suggest that Israel fired 155mm artillery rounds, including smoke, illumination, and standard high explosive shells, the last of which produces extensive blast and fragmentation damage.
Suleiman Hassan Abd el-Dayam, 24, who was staying at the school with his extended family, said three of his family members died and five were wounded in the attack. When he heard the first strike at about 2 a.m, he ran to the classroom where women and children were sleeping, and a second munition hit. “I saw that my wife had a head injury, so I carried her outside,” he said. “Then I looked for my aunt. I found her, and she was saying, ‘I can't see!’ So I took her outside too. And my other cousin, Ibrahim, had his legs cut off.”
The Israeli military said [8] that Palestinian fighters had fired mortars “from the vicinity” of the school, but provided no information to support that claim. In any event, the use of high-explosive, heavy-artillery shells so near a shelter filled with civilians constitutes an indiscriminate attack.
At about 10:45 a.m. on August 3, an apparent Israeli Spike guided missile hit directly outside a UN-run boys’ school in Rafah, killing 12 people, including 8 children, and wounding at least 25. About 3,000 people were taking shelter in the school at the time.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that many civilians, including children, were near the school’s front gate buying sweets when the missile struck directly across the street, about 10 meters away. The Israeli military said it had targeted three Islamic Jihad members on a motorcycle “near” the school, but provided no further information, including why it attacked the men in front of a school sheltering thousands of displaced people rather than before they arrived or after they drove away.
In addition to these three unlawful attacks, Israeli ground forces reportedly [9] occupied at least one school in Gaza, the Beit Hanoun secondary school for boys, leaving behind bullet casings and rations.
National armed forces and armed groups should refrain from using schools [10] for military purposes, Human Rights Watch said. Even if students aren’t there, using schools for military purposes makes them military objectives subject to attack.
In three unrelated cases, the UN reported [11] that Palestinian armed groups had stored weapons in other schools that had closed for the summer and were not being used as shelters by civilians. By storing arms in those schools, the armed groups made those particular schools legitimate targets for Israeli attack and violated the immunity of UN facilities. There have been no allegations that the three schools that Human Rights Watch investigated were being used for military purposes.
All parties to the armed conflict in Gaza must take all necessary measures to minimize harm to the civilian population. The laws of war prohibit attacks that deliberately target civilians or civilian property; that do not target a specific military objective or are otherwise indiscriminate; or that cause civilian harm disproportionate to the anticipated military gain. Schools are presumptively civilian objects that may not be attacked unless they are being used for military purposes, such as a military headquarters or to store weapons.
The Israeli military informed Human Rights Watch that it had created a Fact-Finding Assessments Committee to “examine exceptional incidents” during the seven-week conflict, headed by Maj. Gen. Noam Tibon, commander of the Israel Defense Forces North Formation, and staffed by personnel who were not in the chain of command during the fighting. The military said [4] 44 incidents had been referred to the committee as of September 10.
The Military Advocate General’s office announced [5] on September 10 that it had opened criminal investigations into five incidents, including a July 24 attack on an UNRWA school that killed 15 people. The military said the attack was “in the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Khan Yunis” but Israeli media reported [12] that the incident was the Beit Hanoun school.
Previous inquiries by the Israeli military of alleged war crimes committed by its forces have not met international standards for credible, impartial and independent investigations, Human Rights Watch said.
The Commission of Inquiry [13] recently appointed by the UN Human Rights Council should investigate the attacks striking schools that resulted in civilian deaths and make recommendations for follow-up by the Security Council.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas should also promptly ask the International Criminal Court [14] to extend its jurisdiction to the West Bank and Gaza to allow prosecution of serious international crimes by both sides, Human Rights Watch said.
Israel and Palestinian groups may also be liable for damages caused to buildings used by the UN, including schools and other facilities providing shelter to displaced persons. Such buildings are protected by the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and the Immunities of the United Nations, to which Israel is a party.
After the 2008-09 fighting in Gaza, a UN board of inquiry held Israel, Hamas and other armed groups responsible for damages to UN premises. Israel paid US$10.5 million in damages to the UN.
Out of 2,131 Palestinians who died in the latest fighting, 501 were children, said [15] the United Nations. About 70 percent of the children killed were under 12, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF [16].
“Israel should go beyond sweeping justifications and provide detailed explanations for its attacks in and around these three schools housing hundreds of displaced people,” Abrahams said. “And it should end its practice of impunity by punishing those who violate the laws of war.”
On Zionism using anti-Semitism accusations to fend off criticism
Former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni
"Anti-semitic", "its a trick we always use it"
Seven year-old child violently detained by Israeli forces
Published on Sep 8, 2014
This morning in al-Khalil (Hebron), at Salaymeh checkpoint located in H1 [an area supposedly under full Palestinian control] a seven-year-old was forcefully detained and three more were arrested, including another child.
Eye On Palestine
Yesterday
The farewell of martyr Issa Qatry (22 yo) who was shot dead by Israeli occupation forces at dawn today in Amari refugee camp in #Ramallah..
في وداع الشهيد عيسى القطري (22 عاما) في منزله في مخيم الامعري الذي استشهد فجر اليوم بعد اصابته برصاصه في الصدر خلال اقتحام قوات الاحتلال لمخيم الامعري في مدينة رام الله
#Palestine #Palestinian
Edward Said...back in 2003 and still very pertinent
Palestine in Israeli School Books: Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Alternate Focus interviews Nurit Peled-Elhanan, author of the forthcoming book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. Nurit Peled-Elhanan argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service. She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity.
Anger in Jerusalem after Israel kills another Palestinian teen
Budour Youssef Hassan
The Electronic Intifada
Jerusalem
12 September 2014
Muhammad Sinokrot, buried on 8 September, died of his injuries one week after he was shot by Israeli forces near his home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem.
His picture was hanging on the wall of his classroom in Jerusalem’s al-Rashidiya school, but his desk remained empty.
Muhammad Sinokrot, who would have turned sixteen years old on 9 December, was not particularly fond of school and his grades were not great. But he was a hard-working boy and was keen on improving.
A few months earlier, he had borrowed his cousin’s graduation gown to wear while posing in front of a camera. He had two years left to graduate from high school, and this portrait emboldened him to work even harder.
An Israeli rubber-coated steel bullet in the head, however, decimated his dreams and cut short his very young life.
On 31 August, Sinokrot was shot in the head by Israeli police on his way to the Abdeen mosque in Wadi al-Joz, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem. It was an unusually calm evening despite the presence of Israeli soldiers and border police who have made a habit out of raiding Wadi al-Joz during the last two months.
“Screams at our doorstep”
At the time that Muhammad was shot, there were absolutely no clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth, residents interviewed by The Electronic Intifada asserted.
“It was around 8:15pm. I was making salad and asked [Muhammad] to buy us bread after he finishes evening prayers in the mosque and he left the house abruptly,” Ilham Sinokrot, Muhammad’s mother, told The Electronic Intifada.
“A few minutes later, I heard yells and screams at our doorstep [saying] ‘Your son was shot in the head.’ I ran quickly — the scene of my son bleeding on the street, his head fractured and face disfigured, was shocking,” she recalled.
Palestinians mourn outside Muhammad Sinokrot’s family home in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem after the teen’s death was announced on 7 September.
Israeli police told reporters that Muhammad was throwing stones during clashes when he was shot in the leg with a sponge-tipped bullet and fell and hurt his head. His mother vigorously rejects this version of events and a preliminary autopsy report indicates that the boy died of injuries from being shot in the head.
“Nonsense! You think if there were clashes I would have allowed him to go out? No way. And it’s ludicrous to say he was shot in the leg when there is no sign of injury or shooting in his legs,” Muhammad’s mother said.
Muhammad Sinokrot was taken to the Palestinian Al-Makassed hospital, based in the Mount of Olives neighborhood, where doctors told his parents that he required critical surgery. He was later taken to the Hadassah Ein Karem hospital west of Jerusalem, where he spent a week in a coma before he was declared clinically dead.
“Chances that he would live were extremely slim, but we had faith in God. We waited for a miracle; it was not to be,” said Muhammad’s father, Abd al-Majeed Sinokrot, who works for the Jerusalem light rail. “My wife and I stayed in the hospital next to him. It was a very rough week, but we thank God for everything.”
Jerusalem clashes
The announcement of Sinokrot’s death on 7 September was immediately preceded by fierce confrontations between Palestinian youth and Israeli occupation forces in Wadi al-Joz and throughout East Jerusalem.
A normally quiet neighborhood and an industrial hub for Palestinians in Jerusalem known for its automotive garages and businesses, Wadi al-Joz has been anything but calm since the nationalist-motivated kidnapping and brutal murder of sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair on 2 July. Abu Khudair was a resident of Shuafat, a neighborhood close to Wadi al-Joz.
Israel’s onslaught in Gaza only fueled the protests in Jerusalem this summer.
An Israeli policeman shoots tear gas during a protest following the death of Muhammad Sinokrot in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz on 8 September.
Israeli occupation forces have responded with frequent, unprecedented raids on Wadi al-Joz, firing massive amounts of tear gas in densely populated areas and showering houses and businesses with the foul-smelling “skunk water” spray.
“The situation here has been very tense since the martyrdom of Abu Khudair. We are regularly harassed and attacked by Israeli soldiers but we know we have no option but to stand up to them,” observed the bus driver during this writer’s departure from Wadi al-Joz.
“Things may look deceptively calm on the surface, but in truth, the explosion was always inevitable. Israelis thought that they finally managed to placate Jerusalem and they did not expect that the city, particularly places like Shuafat and Wadi al-Joz, would rise up like this,” he said.
Funeral
Muhammad Sinokrot’s funeral took place a day after his death had been announced, with thousands of Palestinians marching from his home in Wadi al-Joz towards the al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Large numbers of Israeli border police and soldiers were deployed, but all attempts to contain the anger of the youth were to no avail as the funeral turned into a mass protest.
“The youth surprised Israeli occupation forces who wanted to squelch any possibility of protests or confrontations during the funeral procession. The youth threw rocks and fireworks at the soldiers who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and sound grenades,” noted Yassin Sbeih, a Palestinian activist from Shuafat refugee camp.
Palestinians carry the body of Muhammad Sinokrot during his funeral in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem on 8 September.
As was the case during the clashes in Shuafat in early July, youth from different Jerusalem-area villages came to Wadi al-Joz for the funeral to show their solidarity.
Also among those who came to pay respects was the mother of Muhammad Jaabis from Jabal al-Mukabber, a young man shot dead in West Jerusalem on 4 August when the mechanical digger he was driving collided with a bus after running over and killing an Israeli pedestrian.
The Israeli authorities have treated the incident as an attack but his family say that it was an accident; there have been multiple instances in recent years in which Palestinians operating such equipment were killed in similar circumstances in the city.
Visibly shattered, Jaabis’ mother hugged Ilham Sinokrot at the funeral and said, “Not all hearts cope with grief similarly. You look so much stronger than I am.”
An injured Palestinian youth is treated by medics after Israeli policemen beat him during the funeral of Muhammad Sinokrot outside Jerusalem’s Old City on 8 September.
Meanwhile, Muhammad’s father insists that he will seek accountability.
“We don’t believe that the executioners will give us any justice, yet we will go to Israeli and international courts and we call on all parents to demand justice for their slain loved ones. We cannot allow the killers of our children to live in impunity,” he said.
Those who spoke to The Electronic Intifada emphasized that Muhammad Sinokrot was killed simply for being Palestinian.
“His crime was being a Palestinian and living in Jerusalem under a system that does not see us as worthy human beings,” said one of the family’s neighbors.
“Yesterday it was Muhammad Sinokrot, and tomorrow it could be my son’s turn,” he added. “All Palestinians are targeted and must collectively rise up against this racist state.”
Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian anarchist and law graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. She can be followed on Twitter: @Budour48.
Autopsy Reveals Slain Detainee Died Of Extreme Torture
Issa Qaraqe’, head of the Detainees’ Committee at the Palestinian Authority, stated that detainee Raed Abdul-Salaam al-Ja’bari, 37, died after being severely and repeatedly tortured by Israeli interrogators.
Raed al-Ja'bari - Facebook
Qaraqe’ accused Israel of committing two main crimes against al-Ja’bari by alleging he hanged himself in his cell, and by trying to falsify and hide the leading cause of death, which is extreme and brutal torture.
Talking at a press conference from the mourning house of al-Ja’bari in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Qaraqe’ said the autopsy, conducted at the forensic center in Abu Dis, near occupied Jerusalem, concluded that al-Ja’bari was tortured to death.
He said the autopsy proved that al-Ja’bari suffered brain hemorrhage, and that his body showed clear signs of torture, adding that Israeli claims which allege that the slain detainee “committed suicide by hanging himself” are false and evident fabrications, especially since his neck does not show any signs of hanging.
“The autopsy was supposed to be carried out Wednesday, but it was conducted today at the Abu Kabeer Forensic Center, while Dr. Saber al-‘Aloul, head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, attended the autopsy but Israel prevented him from making any statements," Qaraqe’ said.
“After we received the body of al-Ja’bari, we moved him to the Forensic Center in Abu Dis. All reports clearly show al-Ja’bari was tortured to death; he was brutally and savagely tortured by the Israeli interrogators," he added. “The main cause of death is repeated blows to the head and face, leading to hemorrhage, eventually resulting in his death.
Raed Abdul-Salam al-Ja’bari died on September 9, 2014.
He worked as a car mechanic technician; he is a married father of five children.
He was first kidnapped and arrested by Israeli soldiers on July 26, 2014, after a traffic accident Israel alleged that, during which, he intentionally rammed a settler.
An Israeli court ordered his release, on an 8000 NIS bail, but the Israeli prosecution filed an appeal, keeping al-Ja’bari held at Ofer prison.
On September 3, he was moved to the Eshil Israeli prison, and was placed into solitary confinement. He was then moved to the Soroka Medical Center where he died, on Tuesday.
Mutiny in the Israeli Stasi: exposing the occupation's worst filth
George Galloway MP - "We are the authors of the Palestinian tragedy"
42 NGOs urge world leaders to stop Israeli plans for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
A Palestinian man waves national flag near a burning barricade during clashes with Israeli soldiers following a protest against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel and the Israeli Wall of Shame, the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank
IMAGES
42 Palestinian, Israeli, and international organizations have issued an urgent call to the international community to stop Israeli plans to "forcibly transfer" thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank from their communities into "a designated township".
The joint statement is a response to Israeli government plans to "move Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities around Jericho, Ramallah, and Jerusalem", including in so-called "E1", an area that is a long-standing target for illegal settlement expansion.
The NGOs note that Israeli authorities have, in recent months, "used coercive tactics to heighten the pressure on Palestinian Bedouin communities, issuing eviction orders and demolishing homes and livelihood structures", as well as "obstruct[ing] aid agencies from delivering assistance".
Palestinian groups like Al Haq, Badil and PNGO are joined by the likes of Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision. They stress "that the international community must take all possible measures to ensure that individual and mass forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, does not take place".
The Israeli plans publicised this week were also condemned by the Palestinian Minister of Agriculture Shawqi al-Ayasa, who said Israel wants to "create segregated areas" and prevent "Palestinian sovereignty on all of the territory occupied in 1967".
Tammuz – I’ve had this thread in my face for a couple of months and never even desired to peek at it but after this mornings news of another innocent person being beheaded I thought I would crack it open to see if I could learn something about all the horror in the Middle East.
You make a compelling argument about Israel in your opening manifesto and I agree with all of it and can think of many things to add to the list….but, the foundation of the subject of your thread is simply based on a land-grab and killing people by either side will never stop it, in fact as you have documented - it has accelerated it.
If my neighbor built a fence over my property line, I would ask him to move it and if he refused to do it my next step shouldn’t be to threaten him because all that will do is cause him to threaten me…it goes back and forth to a point that someone gets scared and calls the cops….and in this World that’s the U.S.
I know you can be critical of peoples ideas on this Forum and you think I don’t know enough to comment on this - but I think the cops need to go home - even if it all ends with scorched earth. There is terrorism on both sides but one side believes in their soles that killing people, if they don’t convert or conform, is the only answer and it’s becoming so prolific that the whole World is now scared and everybody is calling the cops.
Respectfully.
In its proper place :
Israeli forces detain 174 Palestinians in last week alone
Published today (updated) 14/09/2014 18:33
(MaanImages/File)
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces have detained 174 Palestinians across the West Bank during the second week of September alone, a Palestinian rights group said Sunday.
The Palestinian Prisoner's Society said in a statement that Israeli troops detained the largest number of Palestinians in the northern West Bank district of Jenin, where 69 people were taken in a arrest raids.
The Hebron district came second, with 40 Palestinians detained.
Seventeen were arrested in Ramallah, 12 in Bethlehem, ten in Jerusalem, five in Tulkarem, four in Nablus, and four in Qalqiliya, the statement added.
Thirteen Palestinians were detained in Tubas, Salfit, and Jericho, it added.
In the first week of September, 127 Palestinians were detained.
More than 7,000 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, including around 2,000 detained during Israeli arrest campaigns over the last three months alone.
Johannesburg university issues ban on Israeli students and academics
September 12, 2014 By Tarek Sarad 2 3486
Johannesburg university issues ban on Israeli students and academics
Palestinian ambassador to South Africa Abdul-Hafid Nofal said that Johannesburg university decided not to accept any student or deal with any academic or lecturer from Israel.
In a press release on Wednesday, Nofal said that the academic council of the university issued a decision prohibiting the admission of Israeli students to any of its collages and departments.
The decision also included a ban on hiring or hosting academics and lecturers who work for Israeli universities, according to the Palestinian ambassador.
He noted that Johannesburg university was the first one in South Africa to have taken a bold decision three years ago to boycott Israeli universities.
From Gaza's revenge: Israelis swim in Palestinian shit
Sam Bahour
11th September 2014
Consecutive Israeli military assaults have caused huge damage to Gaza's water and sewage systems, writes Sam Bahour. One result is that almost all Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption. Another is the tide of raw Palestinian sewage lapping on the beaches of Tel Aviv. So who should we feel most sorry for?
(...)
More terrorist shit
The product is Palestinian shit, or more accurately, to maintain the media bias of the times, Palestinian terrorist shit.
We Palestinians have no love affair with the Israelis relaxing on the shores of Tel Aviv. Many of these Israelis have no problem being high-tech professionals in the morning, throwing on their military uniform and participating in turning Gaza into a living hell on earth in the afternoon, then going for a relaxing swim with the family on the shores of Tel Aviv in the evening.
However, we would advise Israelis, and all tourists to Israel for that matter, to please stop swimming in our shit. This practice is not only unhealthy for you and your children, but it is killing us, literally and figuratively.
In a new policy brief titled 'Drying Palestine: Israel's Systemic Water War' issued by Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, Muna Dajani writes from Jerusalem of the damage that consecutive Israeli military aggressions have caused to Gaza's water systems:
"Ninety-five percent of the water that Palestinians in Gaza have been consuming for decades has been proven unfit for human consumption. Electricity shortages that have lasted for almost a decade have limited water treatment capacity and thus the availability of water to households, as well as increased the discharge of untreated wastewater into the sea.
Even before the summer assault on Gaza, 90 million liters of untreated or partially treated wastewater were being dumped and continue to be dumped into the [Mediterranean] sea each day due to insufficient treatment facilities."
(...)
This seawater may seriously damage your health
The mass majority of Jewish Israelis prefer to just ignore anything Palestinian; to them we are invisible.
Ever since the founding of the state of Israel, the policy has been clear: Uproot the Palestinian population using all means possible, legal and illegal, destroy Palestinian villages in an attempt to erase the crime, and rebrand anything left, like city and street names, in a policy the Israel government has long ago identified as 'Judaization' of the country.
Sadly, this conflict will not end soon. In the meantime, Israelis, please inform your kids not to swallow the seawater.
Ailing Administrative Detainee Faces Life-Threatening Conditions
The family of detainee Reziq Abdullah Rajoub, 57, from the southern West Bank city of Hebron, voiced an appeal to human rights and legal groups to intervene for his release, especially amidst his deteriorating health condition.
Reziq Rajoub - Ahrar Center
Rajoub’s brother, Hamdan, said the detainee has been repeatedly imprisoned by Israel, spending a total of 22 years in Israeli prisons. His latest arrest came only 15 days after his release.
He has various health conditions, and requires gallbladder surgery as soon as possible.
“My brother was kidnapped on January 7 2014; Israel issued a six-month arbitrary Administrative Detention, without charges," the brother said, “He was repeatedly hospitalized due to low blood count, and complications of a surgery that never healed."
Head of the Ahrar Center, Fuad al-Khoffash, says that Rajoub is facing serious, life-threatening complications, and should be immediately released to receive the urgently needed treatment.
Al-Khoffash warned of the increasing number of ailing detainees, and serious complications they face, due to the lack of specialized and adequate medical attention.
Although no charges were brought against him, Israel refuses to release him, and insists on keeping him imprisoned
From From The Holocaust To The Massacre In Gaza Through Ben-Gurion Airport, by Miko Peled
(...)
HAMAS IS NOT THE PROBLEM
Today people lay the blame for the violence in Gaza on Hamas, but Israel did not start its assaults on the Gaza Strip when Hamas was established in the late 1980’s. Israel began attacking Gaza when the Gaza Strip was established and populated with refugees in the early 1950’s. Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, are not faced with an option to resist and be killed or live in peace. They are presented with the options of being killed standing up and fighting or being killed sleeping in their beds.
Gaza is being punished because Gaza is a constant reminder to Israel and the world of the original sin of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the creation of a so-called Jewish state. Even though Palestinian resistance has never presented a military threat to Israel, it has always been portrayed as an existential threat to Israel. Moshe Dayan, the famed Israeli general with the eyepatch described this in a speech in April 1956. He spoke in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, an Israeli settlement on the border of the Gaza strip where Israeli tanks park each time there is a ground invasion of Gaza.
“Beyond this border exists an ocean of hatred and a deep desire for vengeance,” Dayan said then. Ironically, when six months later Israel had occupied Gaza and my father was appointed its military governor he said he saw “no hatred or desire for vengeance but a people eager to live and work together for a better future.”
Still, today, Israeli commanders and politicians say pretty much the same: Israel is destined to live by the sword and must strike Gaza whenever possible. Never mind the fact that Palestinians have never posed a military challenge, much less a threat to Israel. After all, Palestinians have never possessed as much as a tank, a war ship or a fighter jet, not to say a regular army.
A THREAT TO ISRAEL’S LEGITIMACY
So why the fear? Why the constant, six-decade-long campaign against Gaza? Because Palestinians in Gaza, more so than anywhere else, pose a threat to Israel’s legitimacy.
Israel is an illegitimate creation, born of the unholy union between racism and colonialism, and the refugees who make up the majority of the population in the Gaza Strip are a constant reminder of this. They are a reminder of the crime of ethnic cleansing upon which Israel was established. The poverty, lack of resources and lack of freedom stand in stark contrast to the abundance, freedom and power that exist in Israel and that rightfully belongs to Palestinians.
Alshati refugee camp, Gaza, just a few miles from Ashkelon
Back at Ben-Gurion airport that night, I was told that if I cooperate and plead with the shift supervisor it would make the security screening go faster. When I declined this generous offer I was told they “did not like my attitude” and they proceeded to paste a sticker with the same bar code on my luggage and give me the same treatment Palestinians receive.
“NEVER AGAIN?”
As I write these words, the number of innocents murdered by Israel in Gaza has risen beyond two thousand. Ending the insufferable, brutal and racist regime that was created by the Zionists in Palestine is the call of our time. Criticizing Palestinian resistance is unconscionable. Israel must be subjected to boycott, divestment and sanctions. Israeli diplomats must be sent home in shame. Israeli leaders, and Israeli commanders traveling abroad must fear prosecution. And these measures are to be combined with disobedience, non-cooperation and uncompromising resistance. This and only this will show mothers, fathers and children in Gaza that the world cares and that “Never Again” is more than an empty promise.
Never again?
well said.
Thousands of Palestinians to be Forcibly Moved for Settlement Expansion
Israel is planning to forcibly transfer thousands of Palestinian Bedouins from their West Bank communities into a designated township to free up land for settlement expansion. Local and international groups are urging world leaders to pressure Israel to stop this violation of Palestinian rights.
Bedouin homes destroyed in E1 (archive image from activestills.org)
The Israeli government publicized, last week, six plans to move Palestinian Bedouins out of their communities around Jericho, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. The plans include moving Bedouins out of the politically sensitive area referred to as the Jerusalem Periphery or “E1,” where Israel has long-intended to demolish 23 Bedouin villages in order to expand and link settlements. Settlement expansion in this area would cut the West Bank in two, further disrupting movement and social and economic ties between major Palestinian cities and limiting the little access Palestinians in the West Bank have to Jerusalem.
All of the Palestinian Bedouin communities slated for transfer are located in Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank where Israel maintains full civil and military control. There are already around 341,000 Israeli settlers living in more than 100 settlements throughout Area C. Although Area C is within the internationally recognized 1967 borders of the occupied Palestinian territory, Israel only allows Palestinians to build on 1 percent of it.
International humanitarian organisations have noted that this lack of authority to build makes Palestinians vulnerable to home demolition, displacement, and forcible transfer and limits their ability to realize their rights to water, to adequate shelter, to education, health, and to livelihood.
Over 40 local and international agencies have called on world leaders to pressure Israel to cancel these plans.
In recent months, the government of Israel has used coercive tactics to heighten the pressure on Palestinian Bedouin communities, issuing eviction orders and demolishing homes and livelihood structures. Aid agencies report that Israel has also obstructed them from delivering assistance to these communities, including by seizing and destroying emergency shelters that international donors provided for families whose homes were demolished and confiscating a swing-set and a slide for a Bedouin school.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that Israel has already demolished more than 350 Palestinian homes or livelihood structures in Area C in 2014, while demolitions in the Jerusalem periphery and E1 area have hit a five-year high, displacing 170 Bedouins, 91 of whom are children.
"Damn Bedouins! Stop throwing goat cheese into Israel! Or else... You have land right?"
we should just leave the whole fuckin middle east alone. Like where is Israel on this whole ISIS thing? Nowhere to be found. They are the worst type of ally - willing to take our moneh and weapons to kill innocent civilians, nowhere to be found when shit gets real. Fuck em.
From Israel tortures prisoners captured in Gaza invasion
Joe Catron
The Electronic Intifada
Gaza City
17 September 2014
A Palestinian woman takes part in an 8 September protest at the Red Cross’ office in Gaza City demanding the release of family members held in Israeli jails.
(Mohammed Asad / APA images)
Two dozen Palestinians captured during Israel’s invasion of Gaza this summmer remain in detention more than three weeks after the 51-day offensive ended.
While the men have had limited contact with their families, the legal team representing most of them says several have been tortured.
“They testified in front of our lawyer that they were subjected to torture by the Israeli interrogators,” Issam Younis, director of Gaza’s Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, told The Electronic Intifada on Monday.
Al Mezan represents 22 of the 24 detainees still held by Israel. “At least eight that were visited by the lawyer were subjected to torture,” Younis added. “It doesn’t mean the others were not.”
Their treatment has included beatings with the butts of M-16 rifles, sleep deprivation for at least three consecutive days and handcuffing in painful stress positions, according to Younis.
Additionally, he said, “They were intimidated with threats that Israel would demolish their houses, kill their families and rape their wives
From Israeli High Court Upholds Law Permitting Jewish Housing Developments to Exclude Arabs
The High Court of Israel, on Wednesday, decided to continue to allow Israeli Jewish communities to discriminate against Arabs and forbid them from living there.
Adalah logo
The Israeli Attorney General defended the law, which allows 'admissions panels' to screen potential residents, with the aim of keeping Arabs out.
According to the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah, which filed the initial claim, the ruling “gives the green light for 434 communities to exist, based on the principle of segregated housing. This law is one of the most racist pieces of legislation enacted in recent years, the primary objective of which is to marginalize Arab citizens and prevent them from accessing housing on 'state land' in many communities. The court's decision upholds one of the most dangerous laws in Israel."
From Life after a massacre: The story of Ahmed and Mahmoud
Sarah Salibi
“That day is carved in my memory; I relive the scene every day. Me lying on the street unable to move, smeared with blood, conquered with shock and fear, surrounded by wires and dead and dying bodies, I could only hear screams and the thunderous sound of bombs.” Ahmed said with a choked voice while sitting in a wheelchair in AlQuds hospital in Gaza.
Ahmed abu Shanab, 17 years old, and Mahmoud Naser, 18, recalled the day they were injured. After few days of the Shijaia massacre, the Israeli warplanes and the artillery tanks shelled Al-Shijaia market with several missiles during a ceasefire. The bombing left 17 deaths and 200 injuries. Ahmed and Mahmoud, who after the strike became close friends, were among the injured and are now at Al-Quds hospital receiving treatment
(...)
“I don’t know how in the world we managed to survive, God was watching for us, bombs were falling at us like rain, we ran and ran and never looked back, we didn’t have time to even check if we were among our families or not. My aunt and uncle were killed while they were running for their life. We couldn’t stop to rescue them, shelling was random and non stop.” Ahmed recollected with a voice charged with grief. After a pause he continued: “My cousin was also killed, he went to look for his family after he learned that two of them were injured, he wanted to rescue them, but an Israeli sniper shot him in his leg, chest and head, this is the most dreadful crime.” I then realized he was talking about Salem Al-Shamaly whom his video of being killed spread all around the internet.
Ahmed’s brother was one of Salem closest friends. They used to go out together every day during the war, rarely were they seen separated from each other. Ahmed remembered in agony how his brother and cousin used to be inseparable. “My brother wakes up every night sobbing, when we ask him what’s wrong, he would say that Salem was calling him. My brother is still incapable of accepting his best friend’s death. They planned their future together, Salem wanted to get married this summer, they killed him, they killed my cousin and my brother’s closest friend.”
(...)
Mahmoud spoke bitterly of the day when he was injured critically in his leg that it had to be amputated. “I was shopping in Al-Shijaia market when I heard a deafening blast nearby, I don’t know how my legs led me there, I found myself standing in front of the targeted place, some people were killed and many were injured by the time I arrived, when the ambulances reached the place, another missile dropped over our heads, it threw me to the floor and left me bleeding. I saw blood flooding out of my leg, I tried to stand but my left leg bent and I fell to the floor, I couldn’t feel my legs afterwards. I dropped unconscious and when I woke up in the hospital, I felt that my leg was very light, I knew then that it was amputated. At that moment the only thing I wished for was death.” Mahmoud thinks a lot about how he is going to move on in his life again “I dropped out from school to help my family, I used to work as a plumber, I don’t know now what to do. Doctors say that I’ll be able to walk again with a prosthetic limb.” Mahmoud is waiting now for his visa to travel to Germany for further treatment.
Wake up!
Chris Hedges gave this speech Saturday at the Sauk County Fairgrounds in Baraboo, Wis., before a crowd of about 2,000. His address followed one there by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who seems to be preparing to run in the Democratic presidential primaries. The Fighting Bob Fest, the annual event at which they appeared, brings together progressive speakers from around the country and honors Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette (1855-1925), a U.S. senator from Wisconsin who opposed the United States’ entry into World War I. Parts of this talk were drawn from Hedges’ past columns.
Sacrificing the Vulnerable, From Gaza to America
"Pundits and news celebrities on the airwaves engage in fevered speculation about whether the wife of a former president will run for office—and this after the mediocre son of another president spent eight years in the White House. This is not politics. It is gossip. Opinion polls, the staple of what serves as political reporting, are not politics. They are forms of social control. The use of billions of dollars to fund election campaigns and pay lobbyists to author legislation is not politics. It is legalized bribery. The insistence that austerity and economic rationality, rather than the welfare of the citizenry, be the primary concerns of the government is not politics. It is the death of civic virtue. The government’s system of wholesale surveillance and the militarization of police forces, along with the psychosis of permanent war and state-orchestrated fear of terrorism, are not politics. They are about eradicating civil liberties and justifying endless war and state violence. The chatter about death panels, abortion, gay rights, guns and undocumented children crossing the border is not politics. It is manipulation by the power elites of emotion, hate and fear to divert us from seeing our own powerlessness."
By Chris Hedges
And this one is about complacency and the world isn't lifting a finger.
War? What war? Gaza gets forgotten in a hurry
By Gideon Levy
Tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and arrests
in Bilin, Ramallah, Reports September 19, 2014
19th September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement | Occupied Palestine
Every week, several villages across the West Bank demonstrate against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This week, ISM activists attended protests in the villages of Bil’in, Ni’lin, and Nabi Saleh.
During the demonstration in Bil’in, Israeli soldiers shot mass amounts of tear gas at peaceful protesters. Many Palestinians and internationals suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation. An Israeli activist, and a Labour Party Councillor traveling withChi Onwurah, the British Member of Parliament for Newcastle, were arrested.
In Ni’lin, north of Ramallah, the Israeli military shot tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at protesters. The army began shooting unprovoked at Palestinians and internationals as soon as the Friday prayer had finished and people and children as young as five year olds were walking in the area. Several Palestinians were still praying when the military attacked.
The Israeli military shot approximately ten tear gas canisters at a time and also fired rubber coated steel bullets and stun grenades. No one was injured in the demonstration today. For the past weeks the military has moved closer to the residential area of the village, locals have raised concerns that the army will soon enter the village during a demonstration.
During the Nabi Saleh demonstration protesters attempted to reach the gate at the entrance to the village which Israeli forces use to close the village off from the rest of the West Bank. Israeli forces fired many rubber-coated steel bullets at demonstrators and used excessive amounts of tear gas. Several people were injured by rubber coated steel bullets. Many protesters also suffered from the effects of the tear gas, which resulted in a Palestinian women being taken to hospital for tear gas inhalation, she was later released.
Photo from Tamimi Press
Photo from Tamimi Press
Israeli settlers and soldiers invade Balata refugee camp
in Nablus, Reports September 20, 2014
20th September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Nablus team | Occupied Palestine
On the 17th of September, under heavy Israeli army protection, Israeli settlers from nearby illegal settlements entered Nablus with the aim of praying at Joseph’s tomb in Balata refugee camp.
Just after midnight, the Israeli army closed the district that surrounds the monument, blocking all the streets leading to the tomb and preventing anyone from passing nearby, either by foot or by car.
Around 1am, between eight and 10 buses full with hundreds of settlers invaded the area.
Clashes began in the area, particularly in the junction just in front of the entry to Balata refugee camp.
Youths threw stones for more then two hours against the army vehicles, that were moving up on the hill and back, seemingly in order to keep them busy and far from the large groups of Zionist settlers. Military trucks also tried several times to run over the Palestinian youths while they were throwing stones.
The Israeli army fired many stun grenades, and the road blockades were kept in place until the settlers left the area.
Clashes around Balata occur almost weekly, any time that the settlers decide to invade the area for praying. The settlers claim this monument belongs to the Biblical patriarch Joseph, while most of the Palestinians believe that the religious guide Sheikh Yusef Dweikat was buried there, according to Islamic tradition. Though Joseph is a sacred figure as well in Muslim, Christian and Samaritan religion, Muslims are not allowed to pray there.
Labeling their own actions as “security measures”, the army can easily shoot down a whole neighborhood and guarantee the Israeli settlers the freedom to move and pray wherever they wish, even in a site which is deeply inside Area A, which is supposed under Palestinian civil and security control. On the other side, most of the Palestinian living in the West Bank are not allowed to pray in their holy places, starting from this Joseph´s tomb to the biggest example of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.
These evidently different treatments intensify the inequality in rights between Palestinians and illegal Israeli settlers and make the life under occupation more and more unbearable.
Israeli Police Brutally Assault Jerusalem Youth
Israeli police assaulted, this past Wednesday, 16-year old Shadi Raed Ghurab as he was walking along Nablus Street, in occupied East Jerusalem.
Police severely beat the boy with batons while he was being detained in the interrogation room, at the Salah Eddin Street police station, according to Jerusalem's Wadi Hilweh Information Center. The Center noted that he suffered fractures in his arm and leg, as seen in the photo.
Shadi explained that an officer detained him on Nablus Street and, then, took him to Salah Eddin Street police station. After the interrogator entered the room, he mocked the child for being a resident of the Al-Thori neighborhood, which resulted in a number of verbal altercations.
Additionally, according to the boy's testimony, the interrogator then transferred him to a different room which did not have any cameras, upon which he was assaulted by not one but three officers.
Shadi explained that he was able to leave the station during the arrest of another young man, and was then transferred to Al-Maqased hospital for treatment.
Such inhumane treatment of Palestinians is a common occurrence, by both Israeli authorities and civilian settlers alike.
From the International Solidarity Movement Facebook page:
This morning in Hebron, a six-year-old Palestinian boy was attacked by colonial settlers. Whadye Maswdye was walking on Shuhada street with his small dog and some of the family sheep, when a male settler took young Whadye by the neck and slapped him in the face several times. Witnesses reported that the soldiers present at the scene were more interested in preventing the father of Whadye, that had in the meantime arrived to the place, to reach the settlers, than to stop the actual abuse. ISM volunteers asked a local shop owner who witnessed the episode if anything happened to the settler who attacked young Whadye.
He stated: “No, nothing happened to him, they (the settlers) can do whatever they want. If I just threw a stone at a settler I would go to prison for at least six months, imagine what would happen if I beat one of them like this? There is no justice here.”
From New Israeli Policy Results In Keeping Hundreds Imprisoned
The Israeli Persecution initiated, since the beginning of July, a new policy in occupied East Jerusalem, resulting in keeping hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of children, behind bars for extended periods, until concluding all “legal measures” against them.
File - Arabs48
Israeli daily Haaretz said the new policy, used by Israeli prosecution, is resulting in keeping every detained Palestinian, believed to have thrown stones at the soldiers or settlers, or believed to have committed a violation, behind bars until all legal measures are concluded.
Such measures led to keeping dozens of children imprisoned for a month, and in many cases two months, before there were even sent to trial. Haaretz said the army and police have arrested 260 Palestinian children in the last two months.
Two young Palestinians arrested and abused
in Hebron, Reports September 24, 2014
24th September 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Muhammed (Photo supplied by family)
Monday afternoon in Hebron, two young Palestinian men were arrested and abused north of Qeitun after being falsely accused of stone throwing.
21-year-old Muhammad Ghaleb Abu Sbeih was walking home from work when soldiers from the Israeli military force arrested him. Six boys had been throwing stones in the area and Muhammad was accused of taking part even though the soldiers had no evidence. A local Palestinian stated that Muhammad had been beaten while walking up to the checkpoint where he was held for two hours along with 19-year old Shadi Abdel Hamed Al-Atras.
When the boys’ families arrived the soldiers were rude to the mothers and Muhammad’s sister. Muhammad’s mother heard her son’s screams from inside the army jeep in which he was being held captive and beaten. Initially, the soldiers denied that anyone by that name was in the jeep but then changed their tactics and started mocking the family, saying bad words to the women in both Arabic and Hebrew.
The soldiers kept laughing and joking around and at one point they wanted the password for Muhammad’s iPhone to access it. After being held inside the jeep for two hours, Muhammad and Shadi were finally driven away and the soldiers shouted, “with love Muhammad“ and clapped.
The young men were driven to Kiryat Arba police station and are still being held. According to the DCO (District Coordination Office) Muhammad is being transferred to Ofer court and Shadi has been moved to a checkpoint in Hebron where he will hopefully soon be released.
Settlers cut down 1,150 olive trees in Nablus
Published Thursday 11/07/2013 (updated) 12/07/2013 15:44
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers on Thursday cut down 1,150 olive trees in Palestinian groves near Nablus, a Palestinian Authority official said.
Residents of Itamar settlement used chainsaws to cut down the trees north of Awarta, said Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank.
The trees belonged to 25 Palestinian families and were planted in a 600-dunum grove, Daghlas said.
Palestinian family forced to demolish own house in Jerusalem
Published yesterday 19:33
(MaanImages/File)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian family has begun to demolish part of a building it owns in East Jerusalem to avoid paying fines after the Israeli municipality issued a demolition order, the owner said Tuesday.
Walid al-Ubeidi told Ma'an that due to the size of his family, he expanded the building from three to four floors in 2002, and to five floors in 2004-2005.
He tried to obtain building permits from the municipality for both expansions, but to no avail, al-Ubeidi said.
An Israeli court recently ordered the family to demolish the fifth floor and seal the fourth floor by Sept. 25, or else face paying huge fees for the municipality to bulldoze it.
Some 18 people from his extended family will be displaced as a result of the demolition, he added.
Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, although 550,000 Jewish settlers are frequently given building permits and allowed to expand their homes and properties.
Only 14 percent of East Jerusalem land is zoned for Palestinian residential construction, while one-third of Palestinian land has been confiscated since 1967 to build illegal Jewish-only settlements, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel says.
Two Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces lead to clashes with over 30 injured
in Features, Hebron, Reports September 23, 2014
23rd September 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Violence broke out on the streets of Hebron’s university district (al-Khalil) this morning when Israeli soldiers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators who had been protesting the murders of two Palestinians earlier that day.
Protestors took to the streets after Marwan Kawasme, 29, and Amar Abu Aisha, 32, were killed and burned by Israeli soldiers in the very early hours of this morning. The Israeli military alleged that the two men were behind the deaths of the three settler teenagers in June of this year.
The soldiers used tear gas canisters and live ammunition bullets during the clashes, with numerous injuries including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head and is now in a critical condition in hospital. A representative of the Red Cross stated to ISM that there were over 30 injuries, though the exact number is still unknown.
The building where the murders took place was also set on fire and destroyed.
Tensions had been high all morning as word of the two dead Palestinians spread throughout the area. By 8 am around 200 Palestinian residents had gathered to show their frustration at the senseless taking of life. Although stones were thrown, the protesters were unarmed and did not pose a threat to the violent occupying military. The Israeli army, still present after the earlier incident, unleashed dozens of canisters of tear gas leaving many people unable to breath and in need of medical help. Hemmed in and with nowhere to escape to, the protestors hid behind what ever they could find.
The situation further deteriorated when the Israeli soldiers, without warning began to fire live bullets at the protestors, hitting one boy in the head and injuring a number of others.
After an hour of further violence by the Israeli soldiers, the protestors cleared and the injured were taken away.
Throughout the earlier afternoon however similar incidents of unrest were reported around Hebron (al-Khalil).
From a 2009 study Reigniting Violence: How Do Ceasefires End?
Figure 2. For conflict pauses of different durations (i.e., periods of time when no one is killed on either side), we show here the percentage of times from the Second Intifada in which Israelis ended the period of nonviolence by killing one or more Palestinians (black), the percentage of times that Palestinians ended the period of nonviolence by killing Israelis (grey), and the percentage of times that both sides killed on the same day (white). Virtually all periods of nonviolence lasting more than a week were ended when the Israelis killed Palestinians first. We include here the data from all pause durations that actually occurred.
Thus, a systematic pattern does exist: it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first following a lull. Indeed, it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.
The lessons from these data are clear:
First, Hamas can indeed control the rockets, when it is in their interest. The data shows that ceasefires can work, reducing the violence to nearly zero for months at a time.
Second, if Israel wants to reduce rocket fire from Gaza, it should cherish and preserve the peace when it starts to break out, not be the first to kill.
Bombing stopped, but violence continues
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 08/26/2014 - 1:55pm
Only economic pressure on Israel can lead to a true and just peace.
Three times in the last six years, Israel has conducted extraordinarily asymmetrical and brutal operations against the captive population of Gaza, and each time it has been civilians who have paid the major price.
And while Gaza has had the world’s attention during these escalations, the truth is that for 7 years, and for the foreseeable future if the world doesn’t act, the people of Gaza will continue to live under an intolerable state of siege. While for Israelis this war is over, Israel's decades-long assault on Palestinian human rights continues.
There is no true end of violence for the children in jail without charges, the farmers watching soldiers tear apart their orchards, the refugees dreaming of the chance to hold their loved ones and see their homes once more, the young students who cannot attend school— for all of them, the violence of ongoing occupation, siege, and injustice continues.
The shocking public attacks on Palestinians inside of Israel this summer included random physical assaults, public calls for ethnic cleansing and the killing of children from some of Israel's top leaders, and a growing acceptance of open racism in everyday life. The brave actions of small numbers of Israelis during this time gave us inspiration and hope, but we cannot downplay or ignore the degree to which the majority of Israeli society currently rejects equality as a basic value.
From Russell Tribunal finds evidence of incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity in Gaza -
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s Emergency Session on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge held yesterday in Brussels has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.
The Jury reported: ‘The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment in Gaza appears to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group in Gaza.’
Tammuz, maybe you should make this a blog???? You could organize the posts a little more succinctly, use tags and images more effectively, etc.
From the International Solidarity Movement FB page
For the last two days in al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli soldiers have shot tear gas at schoolchildren at the Salaymeh checkpoint. Yesterday, two tear gas canisters were shot at the children, one of which was fired directly at them instead of an arc (to lower the impact velocity). This practice is extremely dangerous and can cause severe injuries or death. Today, one tear gas grenade was thrown and four tear gas canisters were shot, one after another, at high speeds towards the children leaving school.
HAS THE CRUSHING BOYCOTT COMMENCED?!?
IF NOT NOW, WHEN, archinect?
< thine gassy tears dust bring forth jeers >
:'(
Interview with Miko Peled | Peacemaking in Palestine/Israel region
Miko Peled - an Israeli writer and a peace activist, the author of The General's Son -- Journey of an Israeli in Palestine
Interview led by: Kristýna Tamchynová, Institute of International Relations