tagged w/ Palestinians
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"Hamas’ military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam last month bulldozed part of a site designated of historic value by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in order to make room for the group’s terrorist training, according to Al-Monitor Palestine Pulse.
Less than two years ago, UNESCO voted in Palestine as a member in order to help the Palestinians preserve heritage sites under their control.
The destruction of a portion of the ancient Anthedon Harbor along the Mediterranean coast of Gaza has prompted the group UN Watch to send a blistering letter to the head of UNESCO slamming the world body for ignoring Hamas’ actions. Al-Monitor reports:
The Anthedon seaport, which dates back over 3,000 years to the Mycenaean era, is considered one of the most important sites in the Middle East and is the oldest harbor in Gaza. It was designated an international heritage site by UNESCO in 2012. The location was discovered in 1997 on the space of 180,000 square meters. It contains mosaic floors with historical pillars from the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic ages.
The Ministry of Tourism in Gaza – also run by Hamas – is denying the site was damaged and insists the land will be repurposed for military purposes only “temporarily.”
Deputy Tourism Minister Muhammad Khela tells Al-Monitor, “We can’t stand as an obstacle in the way of Palestinian resistance; we are all a part of a resistance project, yet we promise that the location will be limitedly used without harming it at all.”
The term “resistance” is commonly used by Palestinians to refer to violent acts committed against Israelis, including rocket launchings, bombings and stone-throwing.
Khela tried to justify the decision by blaming the UN for not providing the Hamas government with the proper funding to excavate the site.
“If the location was excavated already, I don’t think it would have been possible for anyone to take it over,” Khela said, adding, “it should be UNESCO and other donating groups’ job to do so.”
The non-profit UN Watch which monitors mismanagement at the world body and the unequal treatment of member states blasted UNESCO for its silence in the face of the site’s disfigurement, particularly because UNESCO voted Palestine as a member in 2011 allegedly to “help protect world heritage sites in Palestinian areas.”
UN Watch is demanding UNESCO step in to stop any further bulldozing of the Gaza site:
The partial destruction of the ancient Anthedon Harbor—which includes the ruins of a Roman temple and archaeological remains from the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras—comes exactly one year after the area was nominated by new UNESCO member state Palestine as a World Heritage site.
UN Watch also pointed to UNESCO’s long-held tradition of singling out Israel for criticism, which is continuing even at the group’s biannual meeting this month.
In a strongly-worded letter to UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer writes:
We note the tragic irony that this destruction by the rulers of Gaza comes exactly one year after the area was nominated by new UNESCO member state Palestine as a World Heritage site. […]
That the UNESCO executive has so far failed to place the Hamas destruction and cynical abuse of this site on its agenda underscores the tragic politicization and diversion of the agency’s mission to protect world culture and heritage.
According the current UNESCO session timetable, there are in fact four agenda items dedicated exclusively to Palestinian issues: Items 9, 10, 34, and 35, while Item 5 includes a fifth report on this issue. Israel is the only country in the world that is targeted for specific criticism in this session.
Previous UNESCO resolutions on these five items were rightly described by US Ambassador David Killion as “highly politicized” and designed to “single out Israel.” The extreme politicization even prompted Russia to successfully oppose discussion of these items, despite vehement Palestinian opposition, at the previous 190th session in October.
UNESCO’s admission of Palestine as a member state in 2011, which caused the organization to lose almost a quarter of its budget when the US suspended its contributions, was justified as a measure to help protect world heritage sites in Palestinian areas. Yet as Hamas turns a cultural heritage site into a terrorist training ground—the antithesis of culture—the silence of UNESCO now places the very credibility of the organization at stake.
This isn’t the first example of Palestinian destruction of an historically significant site. An Israeli archaeologist reported in December that the Waqf – the Muslim religious authority governing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – continues to destroy Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount. This is in violation a ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice.
In 1999, the Wakf employed bulldozers to remove 10,000 tons of dirt from the area known as King Solomon’s Stables saying it needed to make room for an emergency exit for the Marwani Mosque.
The Jerusalem Post reported: “Archeologists were stunned at the wanton disregard for preserving the material. Garbage trucks dumped the debris in a big heap in one end of the nearby Kidron Valley.”
After Palestine was voted in as a UNESCO member, the U.S. pulled its funding for the group, about one fifth of its operating budget. According to UN Watch, the Obama Administration is now trying to convince Congress to waive legislative restrictions and approve $77.7 million in funds for UNESCO.""Hamas’ military wing Izz ad-Din al-Qassam last month bulldozed part of a... more
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Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest – February 18 – and the day of his death – February 23 – his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet’s Kishon interrogation facility.Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he... more
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In 2003-04, after Israel began construction of its 425-mile security fence in the West Bank, a Middle East Affairs listserv I belonged to at the time started circulating news tips, alerts, and sources for those of us interested in developing stories.
One news alert was a catalog of hardships faced by Palestinians as a consequence of the fence, culled from various news sources. Farmers on the West Bank were angry that they could not lead their sheep to pasture or harvest their olive and guava trees because Israel's new fence separated them from their land.
There was a quote from a Palestinian farmer that burrowed under my skin.
Can somebody intervene here? We cannot get through the Israeli fence to our land. All the sheep owned by the village are going to starve. Many of our ewes have miscarried. We cannot bear to watch. You know when birds get stuck in oil slicks or whales get beached, everybody rushes to help them. Maybe helping the Palestinians is complicated. But if the world could help the sheep, that should be simple ...
As easy as that seemed, we in America didn't have "the bandwidth" to take this on. We were trying to make sense of our own confounding adventure in Iraq -- bomb a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 to avenge 9/11, and seed democracy there, for freedom to bloom like cactus flowers -- in the manure of 48-hour mushroom clouds and loamy yellowcake from Niger.
In the face of international media indifference, the Palestinian people decided to start telling their own stories of living under occupation. One of those stories, a film, has been nominated for an Academy Award this year for Best Documentary Feature. 5 Broken Cameras is an astonishing film by a Palestinian farmer from Bilin, a village in the West Bank.
In 2005, the farmer, Emad Burnat, bought a video camera to record the birth of his youngest son, Gibreel. He soon became the village videographer and chronicler of Bilin's communal life. From 2005 to 2011, he began filming Bilin's non-violent weekly demonstrations against Israel's wall construction with a succession of five cameras. Each became a casualty of war -- collateral damage -- broken by angry Jewish settlers, by the Israeli military, with fists, bullets, and tear gas canisters. This is a David and Goliath story where David doesn't have a slingshot or a stone and Goliath has the full arsenal of gleaming military hardware.
Full Story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-hamburg/this-year-in-palestine_b_2708759.htmlIn 2003-04, after Israel began construction of its 425-mile security fence in the West... more
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CITIZENS of Gaza have filmed their own Gangnam Style video to highlight the plight of their people and the poor conditions they are forced to live in.
The darkly ironic clip, which has been posted on YouTube, shows a group of men and a young boy performing South Korean pop star's Psy's signature dance in the streets of Gaza.
In one scene, the group draws attention to Gaza's lack of jobs and work prospects by showing several men playing cards on the beach - with one man wearing a placard bearing the word "unemployment".
In another scene, a man is forced to use a donkey as his mode of transport after turning up to a petrol station only to find a sign reading "no fuel''.
The black comedy's soundtrack is a cover of Psy's Gangnam Style - the most Googled term of 2012 - with the song's chorus changed to "Gaza style''
http://video.heraldsun.com.au/2331619796/Gaza-versus-Gangnam-StyleCITIZENS of Gaza have filmed their own Gangnam Style video to highlight the plight of... more
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In direct reaction to Israel provoking the Al Aqsa Intifada, on October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, some of whom are Christians, but most of whom are Muslims.[i]In direct reaction to Israel provoking the Al Aqsa Intifada, on October 19, 2000, the... more
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A teenage boy was killed by Israeli soldiers on the separation barrier close to the West Bank village of Budrus yesterday, shot from behind as he was running away, according to Palestinian accounts.
Samir Awad, 17, was among a group of boys who had just completed an exam on the last day of school before a midterm break when they approached the barrier, reports said. The Israeli Defence Forces said the youths were "attempting to infiltrate into Israel", and its soldiers "responded immediately". It confirmed live fire was used.
According to villagers, Samir was grabbed by soldiers who were concealed in a trench. He broke free and was running away when a soldier or soldiers opened fire. He was hit by three or four bullets, in his head, torso and leg.
Ayed Morrar, a member of the village popular resistance committee, said: "They shot him in cold blood, they shot him in the back. He wasn't threatening them." He said there had been no stone-throwing at the time of the shooting.
Samir, one of 15 siblings, was buried in the village cemetery overlooking the separation barrier on Tuesday afternoon. A large group of men and boys, some carrying Fatah and Hamas flags, accompanied his shrouded body to the grave.
His brother Jibril, 23, wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt, said he had rushed to help Samir as soon as he heard about the shooting. "The soldiers prevented me from getting near him at first," he said. "There was a soldier on top of him."
He said his family had lost more than five acres of land and 3,000 olive trees when the separation barrier was constructed on Budrus land. His mother had been injured in protests against the route of the barrier, and he had been jailed three times for taking part in popular resistance actions. "All our family has suffered from the wall," he said.
Budrus was the first West Bank village to organise regular weekly protests against the barrier and eventually succeeded in getting its route changed. An eponymous documentary film about the village's struggle was released in 2009.
After Samir's funeral, soldiers fired teargas at village youths who gathered near the barrier. Mouin Awad said Samir's death could trigger further confrontations between villagers and the IDF. "We will throw rocks and protest. What else can we do?"
The IDF said an investigation into "reports regarding a wounded Palestinian" was under way.
On Monday a 21-year-old Gaza man died after being shot in the head by Israeli forces, according to Palestinian officials. The IDF denied being involved.
On Saturday a 21-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops while trying to cross the barrier near the southern West Bank town of Dura. On Friday a 22-year-old man was killed and another injured by Israeli forces in northern Gaza, according to reports.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it had discovered a shaft leading to a tunnel dug from Gaza. The opening was around 100 metres inside Israeli territory and was intended "to execute terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers on Israeli territory", the IDF said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/15/israeli-shot-youth-in-back-palestinians?CMP=twt_guA teenage boy was killed by Israeli soldiers on the separation barrier close to the... more
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BEERSHEVA (IPS) - As campaign posters pop up around Israel ahead of the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections, Palestinian Bedouin citizens of the state are still reeling after being denied the chance to elect their own local council representatives.
Legal rights activists say the move represents the limits of democracy in Israel, particularly with regard to its non-Jewish citizens.
“Every citizen wants to have a say in the affairs of their lives. This is their legal right,” Jazi Abu Kaf, a local leader in Um Batin, a Bedouin village of some 4,000 residents in the southern Naqab (Negev) desert, said. “The authorities don’t want to allow elections or see leaders [emerge] from among the local people.”
The current head of the council is not from the villages, making locals feel alienated from the local government.
Um Batin is one of 11 Bedouin communities in the Naqab that make up the Abu Basma regional council. Formed in 2004, the council is the newest, and one of only three, non-Jewish local councils in Israel.
As of 2011, 53 regional councils governed approximately 850 rural towns and villages in Israel. Made up of elected representatives from communities within each council’s jurisdiction, regional councils help distribute local budgets, provide services to residents and liaise with various government bodies.
While it now represents approximately 30,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel, the Abu Basma regional council is still run by an Israeli government-appointed representative, and Israel has repeatedly delayed elections to appoint representatives from among the local people.
The Israeli ministry of interior passed an amendment to the Regional Councils’ Law in 2009, which allowed it to indefinitely postpone elections in new regional councils. Before this, Israeli law mandated that elections be held within four years of the creation of a new regional council.
In 2011, after local human rights groups appealed the amendment, the Israeli high court (also known as the supreme court) ordered the state to hold elections in December 2012 for the Abu Basma villages (see “Abu Basma law on regional council elections,” Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 6 November 2011).
But only a few months before the elections were set to take place, a special committee created by Israel’s interior ministry suggested splitting the Abu Basma regional council into two new councils: al-Kasum and Neve Midbar. In its justification of the split, the state argued that the residents of Abu Basma were not ready to hold elections, and the council didn’t cover a contiguous territory.
Full Story: http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-denies-bedouins-right-elect-representatives/12034BEERSHEVA (IPS) - As campaign posters pop up around Israel ahead of the... more
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European governments as well as the US are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel over the conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip – drawing the ire of the Muslim world.
By Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer, Bastien Inzaurralde, Correspondent
November 21, 2012
As Israel begins the second week of its offensive against the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, it is enjoying unusual international support. Usually the target of criticism in Europe when it goes to war with Palestinians, Israel has seen the European Union stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US this time in support of Israel, and in placing blame on Hamas.
Today’s bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv is generating more support for Israel. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius condemned "in the strongest terms" the Tel Aviv attack for "targeting civilians at a time when everything must be done to reach a cease-fire" and vowed to meet with his Israeli, Egyptian, and American counterparts again today.
The bombing has made a cease-fire less likely. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and various foreign ministers have descended on the region to hasten an agreement, though prospects are dimming. Last night, Hamas and Egyptian officials were claiming that a truce was agreed, and later blamed Israel for scuttling the deal at the last minute.
But even as international pressure has been mounting for a cease-fire, the US, the UN, and the European Union have been careful to emphasize that Israeli citizens cannot be expected to live under a barrage of rocket fire.
“One thing is clear: The cause of this escalation is the rocket fire from Gaza to Israel’s south. That cannot be justified,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said yesterday in Jerusalem. “The Israeli government does not have to live with this; it has the right to protect its civilian population.”
Israeli officials credit Israel’s application of lessons learned from its 2008-09 Cast Lead operation, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and reduced much of Gaza’s infrastructure to rubble, for their current international support.
“I think this is a little bit longer than the average period that was given to us,” says Nachmann Shai, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense committee with a long career in representing Israel’s interests to the world. “The United Nations gave us generously some time to take care of the terror,” he says, adding that there were clear expectations that Israel was to do its best to avoid civilian casualties and refrain from collective punishment measures.
Fewer casualties
In comparison with Cast Lead, Israel has relied more heavily this time on precision weapons to limit casualties, refrained from a ground invasion, and coordinated a massive public relations campaign, enlisting some 25,000 volunteers to explain to the world why Israel took action against Hamas-run Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is launching a new social media branch in February, has been very engaged on Twitter, sparring with Hamas’s military wing and posting photos of injured Israeli children to counter images of Palestinian suffering.
As the first week of the operation came to a close yesterday, the Palestinian death toll was far lower than it was a week into the Cast Lead operation, despite a greater number of air strikes this time around – 1,500 compared with about 800. The Palestinian death toll as of last night stood at 113, roughly a third of the total death toll after the first week of Cast Lead, when some 400 Palestinians had been killed. The percentage of Palestinian casualties deemed to be civilians varies widely, from 30 to 50 percent, depending on the source.
Five Israelis have been killed since the start of Pillar of Defense, compared with four after the first week of Cast Lead.
American and European leaders' support for Israel has raised the ire of the Muslim world, which is strongly critical of Israel’s targeted assassinations of militants in the Gaza Strip, the collateral damage caused by such strikes, and its restrictions on goods and people flowing in and out of Gaza.
The Iranian government channel Press TV faulted German Foreign Minister Westerwelle for “turning a blind eye to the Israeli aggression.”
In the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, Hanan Ashrawi of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee criticized a statement put out by the European Union for its “glaring absence of any reference to the illegal siege of Gaza and its people,” saying it showed “a lack of will that is necessary to bring an end to such injustice.”
And from Saudi Arabia, radio journalist Samar Fatany – a prominent voice for reform in the kingdom – criticized the “over-exaggerated fear of Palestinian rockets,” saying that such attacks have done “little damage” compared to Israeli policies such as “brutal Israeli airstrikes, the Gaza blockade, the Israeli settlement expansion, the imposed sanctions and boycotts, the erection of the racist separation wall, the banning of construction of Palestinian homes, the closing of Palestinian institutions, the imposition of heavy taxes and the loss of Palestinian livelihood by uprooting olive trees and confiscating land.”
One consideration that may have been holding Israel back from a ground invasion was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire for as much European support as possible when Palestinians go to the UN next week to press for upgrading their status to “observer state.”
If the Palestinian bid were to get strong support from EU countries, Mr. Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman would see that as a “major defeat,” said veteran Israeli diplomat Alon Liel, speaking by phone prior to the Tel Aviv bombing. With nearly 40 European countries still making up their minds about how to vote, “there is a limit to how much Israel can annoy the Europeans now,” he said.
French Foreign Minister Fabius said at a press conference last night that France doesn’t have a position yet on whether it will back or oppose the PLO's bid to obtain observer status at the United Nations on Nov. 29. He said France will make a decision once it knows what the positions of other European countries are, and after reading the resolution containing the bid. However, he said the timing of the Palestinian bid is awkward given the current conflict.
“It doesn’t seem to us that this moment is the best,” he said.
That appears even more true in the wake of today’s bombing in Tel Aviv, the first terrorist attack in the city since 2006.European governments as well as the US are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel... more
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Original Post (Rania Khalek)
"It’s raining Israeli bombs in Gaza yet again and as the death toll mounts some people are having themselves a laugh at the expense of the dead. I’m talking about #HamasBumperStickers, a twitter hashtag that caught on like wildfire yesterday mostly among people who despise Palestinians (and Arabs in general) and think it’s funny when Israel kills them.
While I’m not usually one to amplify the trolling rhetoric of heartless bigots, I feel it’s important that these particular individuals be shamed and ostracized for their sick jokes, especially since the hashtag they are using has apparently been trending worldwide. Here are just a few:"
A reader sends along that it wasn't only IDF spokespeople and random Israel supporters who were pushing the #HamasBumperStickers hashtag. Former AIPAC spokesman, and current Israel Project CEO & President, Josh Block was also promoting the Twitter feed. Here Block retweets rightwing commentator Michelle Malkin pushing the hashtag and linking to a post titled "Supporters of Israel mock jihadists with #HamasBumperStickers, libs outraged."Original Post (Rania Khalek)
"It’s raining Israeli bombs in Gaza yet... more
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More Fallout from Mitt's Secret Video:
More than once we’ve hear the right-wing accuse President Obama of “leading from behind.” They think he’s weak, they think he’s a sympathizer, they think he’s all kinds of horrible. But I will point out that I’ve never heard him say anything close to what GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said recently...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=42823More Fallout from Mitt's Secret Video:
More than once we’ve hear the... more
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Thirty years after 1,700 Palestinians were killed at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, Robert Fisk revisits the killing fieldsThirty years after 1,700 Palestinians were killed at the Sabra and Chatila refugee... more
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Those who attacked Palestinians in central Jerusalem claimed they wanted to prevent them from speaking to Jewish girls. The fear of interracial relations once found only in the fringes of the right are now turning into a legitimate, mainstream political issue in national-religious circles.
Jerusalem Police are still carrying out arrests of suspects – mostly teenagers – in Friday’s shocking attack that took place in the city’s center. A few dozen Israeli Jews beat up three Palestinians, leaving one gravely injured and still hospitalized. According to several testimonies, the attackers also tried to interfere with medical treatment being provided to the wounded. At least one of the suspects was quoted in the Jewish media expressing regret that he and his friends weren’t able to kill their victim.
The event happened only several hours after a firebomb was thrown at a Palestinian taxi, leaving six people wounded. The events were unrelated, but they brought back fears of Jewish terrorism against Palestinians. As Roi Maor notes, unlike Palestinian attacks on Jews, attacks by Jews are under-reported, under-investigated, and under-prosecuted by the authorities.
The latest attack was rightly condemned by left-wing and (few) right-wing politicians. Less discussed was the motive given by some of the suspects for their attempted lynch. According to an eyewitness account published by Yedioth Ahronoth, the attackers claimed that the Palestinians tried to talk to a Jewish girl. Other reports claimed the attack had to do with the desire to prevent contact between Palestinian teenagers and Jewish girls.
Full Story: http://972mag.com/the-holy-war-against-arab-jewish-relations-and-the-jerusalem-lynch/54198/Those who attacked Palestinians in central Jerusalem claimed they wanted to prevent... more
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A seemingly endless debate over politics, religion and territory is coming to a train station near you.
An explosive ad about Israel is now igniting a firestorm of controversy.
The display shows shrinking Palestinian territory in Israel over the years and refers to 4.7 million Palestinians there as refugees.
The ads are appearing in 50 Metro-North stations.
At the train station in White Plains, the politically-charged ad was raising eyebrows.
"That's quite amazing if you ask me," one man told CBS 2′s Scott Rapoport.
Some Jewish leaders said they were concerned.
"I think the ad is very offensive, it's certainly offensive to Jews," said Dovid Efune, the the editor of the Jewish newspaper "The Algemeiner."
Efune said the ad is anti-Semitic.
"It paints Jews as aggressors, as imperialists, as people that are stealing or taking land from others," Efune said.
Henry Clifford, the chairman of a group called the Committee for Peace in Israel and Palestine, spent $25,000 of his own money on the ads.
"The Palestinian people have lost most of their homeland and the map shows exactly what is happened to them," Clifford said.
When asked what he hopes to get out of the ad campaign, Clifford responded by saying he wants to "educate people."
"Simply to open their eyes and let them see what has happened on the map," he said.
The advertisements have caught the eye of commuters in White Plains as well.
"I thought it was all settled back in the 1970s with the 6 Day War," one man responded.
"My reaction is why is there an anti-Israel ad sitting here at the train station?" asked Cliff Argintar, of Hoboken, N.J.
Efune is calling for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to take the ads down. However, the MTA said it doesn't restrict ads on the basis of viewpoint and while it doesn't endorse the ad, the posters will remain up.
The Anti-Defamation League, for its part, called the ads "Deliberately misleading, biased and fundamentally anti-Israel."A seemingly endless debate over politics, religion and territory is coming to a train... more
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A 15 year old Palestinian boy's experience after being arrested at 2AM at his home (documented by Defense of Children International):
"While sitting on the ground near the truck, a person speaking Arabic approached me and grabbed my hands and ordered me to stand up and accompany him. He grabbed me so violently and pulled me. He forced me to walk with him for about 20 meters, and I could see from under the blindfold that we stopped behind a military jeep. He slapped me hard twice and grabbed my testicles so hard and started pressing them. Then, he asked me whether I threw stones and Molotov cocktails
DCI expressed alarm about sworn affidavits children provided, explaining instances of sexual assault or threatened assault to obtain confessions. In 2009 alone, DCI reviewed 100 sworn affidavits attesting to the following:
97% of children said their hands were tied during interrogations;
92% said they were blindfolded or hooded;
81% said forced confessions were made;
69% said they were beaten or kicked;
65% said they were arrested from midnight to 4AM;
50% said they were verbally abused;
49% cited threats or inducements;
32% were forced to sign confessions in Hebrew they didn't understand;
26% cited painful position abuse;
14% were in solitary confinement;
12% were threatened with sexual assault; and
4%, in fact, were sexually assaulted.
Full Article: http://www.examiner.com/article/un-group-joins-condemning-israel-for-abuse-of-palestinian-child-detaineesA 15 year old Palestinian boy's experience after being arrested at 2AM at his... more
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This article deals with how an entire people's experience can be erased by those who get to write the story about them.
Excerpt:
By Sarah Macaraeg, Truthout | News Analysis
After discovering during a recent train trip that Sabra hummus, a boycott target of the Palestine solidarity movement, was served on Amtrak, I wrote this essay to tackle what the Sabra brand's presence on the train evoked for me, the child of a railroad worker: the grim intersections of oppression at home and abroad. Presented in five vignettes, the following thoughts are shaped by the Asian-American experience and by the state of urgency that is anti-racism in the era of Trayvon Martin. I wrote this piece with my fellow people in mind - that is, those people who are compelled to change the world and are trying to figure out how to do it effectively.This article deals with how an entire people's experience can be erased by those... more
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By David Edwards
Monday, April 9, 2012 12:15 EDT
One Fox News host on Monday asserted that Democrats had concocted the “phony” Republican war on women to divert attention from high gas prices and a slow economic recovery.
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy noted that gas prices on Catalina Island in California were around $7 a gallon and President Barack Obama could not use the economy as campaign issue.
“You know, the stimulus didn’t work out so well and he’s got a lot of problems,” Doocy explained. “So in the last couple of months what they have done, the Democrats, is that they have invented this phony war on women. They said Republicans are against women.”
“There’s not really a war on women. There’s a war for women because they would like to have as many women vote for their candidate,” he added.
During a Sunday interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) if it was unfair to call GOP policies a “war on women.”
“The policies that have come out of the Republican Party, saying that we should have a debate again over contraception and whether we should have access to it and it should be affordable, saying that — like Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, you know, he tried to quietly repeal the Equal Pay Act,” Wasserman Schultz noted. “Women aren’t going to stand for that. Governor Walker just signed a bill that repeals the equal pay law they had in Wisconsin for years.”
She continued: “You have Republicans who have engaged themselves for the entire Congress trying to redefine rape as only being forcible rape, defunding Planned Parenthood and family planning programs. The Lilly Ledbetter Act — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act put teeth behind the notion that women deserve equal pay for equal work. That was the first bill the President Obama signed into law. The overwhelming majority of Republicans serving in Congress voted against it.”
“So, the focus of the Republican Party on turning back the clock for women really is something that is unacceptable and shows how callous and insensitive they are towards women’s priorities.”
But Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) told Crowley that Democrats were wrong to accuse Republicans of waging a war on women.
“We’ve got to quit exaggerating our political differences,” Cleaver said, adding that it was also wrong for Republicans to accuse Democrats of a “war on religion.”
A USA Today/Gallup survey of 12 of the top battleground states recently found that likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had lost 14 points among women in the months after he and many other Republicans objected to mandating that contraception be covered by the health insurance offered by religious institutions. Six in 10 voters favored Obama, while only 30 percent supported Romney.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/09/fox-news-host-dems-invented-war-on-women-because-stimulus-didnt-work/
Watch the video from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast on April 9, 2012.
"Only on Fox News can one Lie and for them sitting around it makes sense, I really feel Bad for the folks that back their political views on what these Clowns have to say!!!" =)By David Edwards
Monday, April 9, 2012 12:15 EDT
One Fox News host on Monday... more
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Imagine the media coverage in the Western world if hundreds of Muslims attacked a mall filled with Jewish Israelis while shouting "death to Jews ,"Al Akbar" or some other nonsense.
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An Israeli police spokesman did not respond to inquiries from Ma’an, but witnesses told Haaretz that hundreds of football fans flooded the mall after a match and chanted anti-Arab slogans, screaming “Death to the Arabs.”
But despite CCTV footage of the riot, Jerusalem police told Haaretz that no one was arrested because no complaint was filed.
The football supporters verbally abused and spat on three Palestinian women who were in the food court with their children. When Palestinian workers tried to help them, the mostly-teenage rioters assaulted them.
“They caught some of them and beat the hell out of them,” bakery owner Yair told Haaretz.
“They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. I don’t understand how none shattered into pieces. One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy, and then they had a go at his brother who works in a nearby pizza shop and came to his rescue.”Imagine the media coverage in the Western world if hundreds of Muslims attacked a mall... more
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This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd February, the day after Bertrand Russell's death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo.
The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment.
The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by capitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen resisted Hitler's bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.
The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to “reason” and has suggested “negotiations”. This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.
The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as “the moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry.” Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.
We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number. of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.
All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd... more
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