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Ethnic Cleansing Escalation in Jerusalem

Aletho News | February 8, 2010

Israeli occupation forces manning a military checkpoint at the Shu’fat refugee camp in Jerusalem set off protests Saturday due to the humiliating conditions inflicted on Palestinians on a daily basis. The residents, whom were displaced from their homes across Jerusalem, have been denied access to the city by the apartheid wall as well as various military checkpoints.

There have also been recent protests against home demolitions in the area. Palestine Information Center reports:

In the city’s Sheikh Jarrah suburb, an armed Israeli settler wearing military uniform pointed his rifle at Palestinian lady Refqa Al-Kurd, 85, in a bid to frighten her and force her out of what is remained of her house after the settlers occupied most of it.

Refqa Al-Kurd, aged 85, after assault

The incident prompted clashes between the Palestinian neighbors, who rushed for the help of the elderly woman, and the settlers.

Another Israeli settler in the same suburb dropped a big stone at Palestinian teenager Murad Ateyyah, 14, prompting angry Palestinian citizens to intervene and clash with the settlers before the Israeli occupation police arrived and broke up the clashes.

Palestinian Jerusalemites asserted that attacks by Israeli settlers against them increased rapidly with the aim to force them out of the city.

Tensions were raised further by army raids on private residences in the Anata camp early on Monday. Packs of soldiers ransacked homes at daybreak in surrounding villages abducting residents for torture interrogations. House to house searches without search warrants resulted in the seizure of one homemade rifle.

File photo

Ma’an reports that over 60 Palestinians were seized in the raids. Young Palestinians confronted the intruding forces by throwing stones. Journalists that attempted to record the clashes were fired upon with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades. Eyewitnesses also report the use of live ammunition. Several journalists were injured.

Occupation forces then attacked the local clinic and detained the doctors working there, preventing them from attending to the injured. The camp is now under military control, curfew has been imposed.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Comments Off on Ethnic Cleansing Escalation in Jerusalem

No, the Australian drought was not man-made

Another IPCC scare falls apart

By Andrew Bolt | Herald Sun | February 08, 2010

Melbourne University alarmist David Karoly once claimed a rise in the Murray Darling Basin’s temperatures was “likely due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human acitivity” and:

This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grabbed the scare and exploited it:

BRENDAN Nelson was yesterday accused of being “blissfully immune” to the effects of climate change after he said the crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin was not linked to global warming…

In parliament yesterday, Kevin Rudd attacked Dr Nelson, accusing him of ignoring scientific facts.

“You need to get with the science on this,” the Prime Minister said. “Look at the technical report put together by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

But the latest evidence indicates that Rudd and Karoly were wrong. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Murray Darling drought of man-made warming, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters:

Previous studies of the recent drought in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) have noted that low rainfall totals have been accompanied by anomalously high air temperatures. Subsequent studies have interpreted an identified trend in the residual time-series of non-rainfall related temperature variability as a signal of anthropogenic change, further speculating that increased air temperature has exacerbated the drought through increasing evapotranspiration rates. In this study, we explore an alternative explanation of the recent increases in air temperature. This study demonstrates that significant misunderstanding of known processes of land surface – atmosphere interactions has led to the incorrect attribution of the causes of the anomalous temperatures, as well as significant misunderstanding of their impact on evaporation within the Murray-Darling Basin…

However, to accept the correlation [between temperature and rainfall] as the sole basis for the attribution of cause to human emissions is to implicitly assume that the correlation represents an entirely correct model of the sole driver of maximum air temperature. This is clearly not the case.

What’s causing the evaporation and temperatures is not (man-made) warming. It’s kind of the other way around: more sunshine, through lack of cloud cover, and lack of rain and therefore evaporation is causing higher temperatures.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Comments Off on No, the Australian drought was not man-made

Israeli forces detain wife of mayor in Ramallah

08/02/2010

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli forces detained Muntaha Tawil, wife of Al-Bireh Mayor Jamal Tawil, on Monday, after searching their home in Ramallah.

“Heavily armed soldiers and large numbers of military vehicles raided the mayor’s home on Monday early morning breaking the doors and damaging the house’ interior before they detained Muntaha Tawil, the mayor’s wife,” an Al-Birreh Municipal Council statement said.

Mayor Tawil said his wife’s detention would not hinder his ability to provide his constituents with the services they need, adding that Israel often attempts to exert pressure on mayors of Palestinian villages through detentions, forced home searches and summons orders.

Tawil is the mother of four and her husband has been detained several time by Israeli forces. Mayor Tawil previously served 13 years in an Israeli prison.

An Israeli military spokesman said that Muntaha Tawil was detained overnight by Israeli forces operating in Ramallah because of her involvement in activities “in the Hamas terrorist organization.”

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Editor’s note:

Muntaha Tawil is one of the most active women working in the prisoners’ solidarity movement.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Berlusconi, Israel, and The Big Brother

Alternative Information Center | February 8, 2010

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shares affections with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

After the three-day visit of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to Israel and a short visit to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a judgement is due. Berlusconi came with a large Italian ministry delegation (Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, Public Works Minister Altero Matteoli and Health Minister Ferrucio Fazio) for the first Israeli-Italian joint cabinet meeting. It was the second joint-cabinet meeting for the Israeli government, after the joint German-Israeli session which was held in 2008. The same announcements and topics dominate speeches and actions of the Italian and Israeli politicians these days.

Holocaust, EU and the Big Brother

Berlusconi started his visit to Israel at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. And the reference to the Holocaust pervaded the entire visit. The day before coming to Israel, Berlusconi delivered a written interview published in Haaretz on 31 January. In answer to the first question about the close relationship between his government and Israel (in a certain way new for the Italian political tradition), Berlusconi made reference to the Holocaust: “The visit I made to Auschwitz made a deep impression on me. I told myself there that it was impossible not to be Israeli.” But the most relevant nuance in Berlusconi’s words is that he presented a link between Israeli “struggle for freedom,” the process of European construction and the Holocaust. The result of that equation is that “Israel is part of Europe. It belongs to the West.” In his speech in front of the Knesset on 3 February, Berlusconi continued that “as both Pope John Paul II and Rabbi Eliyahu Tuaf said, Italy is like a ‘big brother’ to Israel, a bond which originates in the friendship and fraternity and common fate.”

In the present period when freedom of speech has become a sensitive issue in Italy with Berlusconi’s continuous attacks against journalists and when Israel restricts the possibilities for foreign journalists to enter, work and live in Israel and Palestinian Territories, the reference to Italy as a Big Brother of Israel reminds one more of the Orwellian 1984 scenario, rather than the particular “brotherhood” between Israelis and Italians.

Iran and the Economy

Iran was a top agenda topic during this visit. In his parallel between the current situation and the age of totalitarianism, Berlusconi stigmatized the Iranian president Ahmadinejad: “We must watch out,” because “we’ve already had one such madman in history,” clearly referring to Adolf Hitler. On 1 February, during the official dinner, talking about the Iranian regime, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu stated that “humanity today is facing one of its most difficult challenges since World War II” and he added that “I must tell you, Silvio, my dear friend, you have a clear vision, you have determination and you have the courage of a genuine leader.”

In the Iranian chapter in the agenda of international relations, a large part is occupied by the economic issue. Meeting the Italian Prime Minister, the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asked Berlusconi on Tuesday to increase pressure on Russia to drop their opposition to economic sanctions against Teheran. Berlusconi’s personal story and career is strictly linked with business and he used that in every context: in the same Haaretz interview, he proudly declared that “for my entire life, first as an entrepreneur and later as prime minister, I have had a love of freedom.” He also proposed “the beautiful town of Arice as a location for future peace talks.” And to please the “little brother,” Berlusconi stated that from 2006, Italy has reduced trade with Iran. But Italy remains the largest European trading partner of Iran, more than 1,000 companies are involved in the Islamic Republic and prominent enterprises like Fiat, Eni and Ansaldo have offices and factories in Iran.

The Arab World

Except for Iran, during this three-day visit, the Arab world was the great absent in the political speeches and references. Even if Berlusconi states that “Italy today is an essential stop, sometimes the first, that Middle Eastern leaders make in Europe,” and that Italy is “involved in a lasting and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian question,” the marginality of the Palestinian cause and reality during this visit is clear to everybody.

Before his meeting with the Palestinian President Abu Mazen, the Italian Prime Minister denied the validity of the Goldstone report, because, according to him, Operation Cast Lead against Gaza last year was a “justified firing on Hamas’ rockets.” As the most important Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, noted, the adjective “justified” is not present in the written version of the speech spread in the Italian government website. This means that the Prime Minister voluntarily added this adjective at the eleventh hour. Moreover, during the press conference with Abu Mazen in Bethlehem, in answer to a question of what kind of feeling the Separation Wall in Bethlehem provoked in him, he replied that he didn’t see the Wall because he was too busy reading his notes.

Kissinger of Arcore

In one of the most important left-wing Italian newspapers, Il Manifesto, on 2 February, there appeared an article written by Zvi Schuldiner, professor of Political Science in the Israeli Sapir College, ironically defining Berlusconi as the “Kissinger of Arcore” (from the name of the village near Milan where Berlusconi lives). The reference to the American Secretary of State during the Nixon era is not casual: Berlusconi himself, in answer to the Haaretz correspondent’s questions, quoted Kissinger to draw a future scenario of war or peace in the Middle East: “Henry Kissinger used to say that there could never be war in the Middle East without Egypt, but no peace was possible without Syria.” However, behind these sentences, Israel knows that, despite his words and declaration, Berlusconi is one of the world’s most controversial men, morally, financially and politically. After this visit, in the next weeks and months the meaning of “brotherhood” between the Italian and Israeli governments will be revealed.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | 2 Comments