Congress still okay with indefinite detention and torture of Americans
RT | 18 May, 2012
Even after a federal court deemed the NDAA unconstitutional, the US House of Representatives refused to exclude indefinite detention provisions from the infamous defense spending bill during a vote on Friday.
An attempt to strike down any provisions allowing for the US military to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge from next year’s National Defense Authorization Act was shot down Friday morning in the House of Representatives.
Following discussions on an amendment to the 2013 NDAA that was proposed by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan), House lawmakers opted against passing the law by a vote of 182-238. Had the Smish-Amash amendment passed, military detention for terror suspects captured in the US would have been excluded in the annual defense spending bill. Provisions that allow for that power, Sections 1021 and 1022, were inserted into the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2012. President Barack Obama signed that legislation on New Year’s Eve, essentially authorizing the US Armed Forces to detain Americans indefinitely at military facilities over only allegation of ties with terrorists and subject them to enhanced interrogation tactics on par with torture.
On Thursday night, Rep. Amash took to his Facebook page to address the amendment with his followers. “No matter how much I am slandered or my positions are demagogued, I will NEVER stop fighting to defend your liberty and the Constitution,” wrote the congressman.
Back on Capitol Hill, Rep. Amash circulated a document to his fellow lawmakers on Thursday outlining his proposed amendment. In urging his colleagues to vote yes on the Smith-Amash amendment, the representative from Michigan explained to Congress that the proposal would offer protection to non-citizens of the United States and is the only amendment up for discussion that would guarantee Americans a charge and trial.
Elsewhere in the paper, Rep. Amash harped on a decision out of a federal court earlier this week that ruled that the NDAA violated the US Constitution.
“Our constituents demand that we protect their right to a charge and a trial — especially after the NDAA was ruled unconstitutional this week,” wrote Rep. Amash.
That decision came Wednesday when United States District Judge Katherine Forrest shunned the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision, saying it had a “chilling impact on First Amendment rights.”
“An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so,” wrote Judge Forrest, who then cited complaints for American journalists who were concerned that they’d be imprisoned without charge solely for speaking with alleged terrorists.
Attorney Carl Mayer represented the plaintiffs in this case and spoke with RT after Judge Forrest’s decision. Mr. Mayer revealed that while the Obama administration can — and most likely will — file an appeal, “we are suggesting that it may not be in their best interest because there are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law.”
Although that opposition has indeed been widespread since even before this year’s NDAA was signed by President Obama on December 31, it was absent on Capitol Hill this Friday when the Smith-Amash amendment was shot down.
Moments before the amendment went up for vote, Rep. Amash wrote on Facebook, “We know the NDAA’s detention provision is unconstitutional. The House will vote on one substantive solution.”
“Will we fix it? And if we don’t, how will we explain that to our constituents?”
Germany Asks European Union to Step Up Support for Venezuela’s Opposition
A German news website has revealed that the German government has been pushing for Eurozone countries to adopt a more active role in backing the current Venezuelan opposition coalition, the Roundtable of Democratic Unity (MUD), in the run up to this year’s presidential elections.
In an article published by Amerika21 earlier this week it was revealed that German diplomats had taken advantage of a recent European Union Council meeting on Latin American affairs to call on members to offer “greater and more open support” to the MUD and its candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, who will stand against incumbent President Chavez in October.
According to the website, German delegates at the meeting in April had said that support for Venezuela’s opposition “should not be hidden from the public”, despite calls from other European nations such as France and Portugal who argued for a “more discreet” approach.
The news was disclosed as a team of representatives from the German Parliament took part in a governmental delegation to Venezuela, where they met solely with members of the country’s political opposition.
According to Prensa Latina news, which had access to the delegation’s agenda, the diplomats met with leading figures from the Venezuelan political opposition such as MUD Secretary General, Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, and other leading figures from opposition parties such as Democratic Action (AD).
The representatives are also reported to have met with anti-government NGOs during their stay, including organizations such as the Venezuelan Prison Observatory, which has previously been accused of carrying out acts aimed at sabotaging the national government and receives funding from the US government.
Meetings with the head of Venezuela’s business federation, Fedecamaras, and the head of Venezuela’s chamber of commerce, were also amongst the delegation’s agenda. “In Venezuela we met almost exclusively with opposition forces, while in Chile, our next stop, we met with people from the government”, reported German representative Heike Hansel from the German Socialist Party, Die Linke, in an interview with Prensa Latina.
The German government currently led by Angela Merkel has recently come under fire for its open backing of French rightwing candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, who lost his bid for reelection to socialist candidate, Francois Hollande, earlier this month.
The MUD currently receives direct financial support from US institutions such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), although President Chavez has warned that the US government may expand its support for the opposition into other areas as the elections draw nearer.
The Venezuelan President has also stated that the MUD is developing a strategy to contest this October’s election results in league with the US government.
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US congressional committee votes to cut aid from states hosting Sudanese president
Sudan Tribune | May 17, 2012
WASHINGTON – A congressional committee in the United States House of Representatives voted to cut off aid to any state that hosts Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in Darfur war crimes.
The amendment to the fiscal year 2013 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill was pushed for by Frank Wolf who is one of Bashir’s most vocal critics.
“Women are being abused and killed for the color of their skin,” Wolf shouted according to ’The Hill’ website.
“This is a moral issue,” he added and threatened to send gruesome videos of violence in Sudan to any committee member who voted down the amendment.
“One lady she pinched her skin and said, ’I’m black. Get Bashir!’ ” the US Republican lawmaker said.
Wolf’s office released his prepared remarks in support of this provision which he said is necessary to further American interests.
“In a time when the foreign affairs budget is being squeezed, I believe our assistance should be a direct reflection of American values and priorities,” he said.
“Surely we can all agree that bringing a war criminal to justice is in our national interest. Leveraging our foreign assistance in this way sends a powerful message,” Wolf added.
The approval of the amendment does not guarantee that it will be included in the final appropriations bill especially as the Democrat-controlled Senate will produce its own version which will later have to be reconciled with the House version and voted on.
The issue has already drawn concern by some of Wolf’s peers in light of its implications on US foreign policy.
“We all agree that the situation in Sudan is deplorable, that President Bashir must be held accountable for his crimes,” Democratic Representative Nita Lowey said.
She noted that Bashir has visited many countries including Ethiopia, China, Egypt, Chad, Malawi, Qatar, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
“My colleague’s amendment would cut off US funding to all of these countries, some of them strategic allies,” had it already been in effect when the visits were made, Lowey said.
Last March, the US announced that it is suspending $350 million allocated to Malawi through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) citing reasons which included receiving Bashir last year.
This month Malawi’s new president Joyce Banda asked the African Union (AU) not to invite Bashir to this year’s summit hosted by her country for fear of its implications on aid Malawi receives.
The Sudanese president denies the ICC charges and refuses to recognise the jurisdiction of the court which he denigrates as a tool of neo-colonialism by the West.
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Obama to announce $6 billion for African agriculture ahead of G-8 summit
By Julian Pecquet – The Hill – 05/18/12
President Barack Obama is expected to unveil a $6 billion international public-private partnership to extend the Green Revolution to Africa.
The initiative, which is linked to this weekend’s G-8 summit, aims to lift 50 million people out of hunger and poverty within a decade by investing in modern agricultural methods and technologies. Rich countries are expected to commit to spending $3 billion – the U.S. share is around $850 million over three years – while three dozen international and African companies will pledge a similar amount in investments such as fertilizer production, grain silos and new food products.
“We’re now putting together a fundamentally new approach to tackling hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Shah said the effort was a continuation of the Green Revolution of the 1970s and 80s, which saved countless lives in Latin American and Asian countries that were facing widespread starvation.
“The effort never made it to Africa, for a broad set of reasons,” Shah said. “Private companies never really invested in Africa in this sector. Public partners abandoned Africa in this sector. And African leaders themselves stopped thinking of agriculture as the solution. This really represents a change in that mindset.”
African heads of state from Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania and Benin will participate in the announcement, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U2’s Bono, U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and officials from the UN World Food Programme and other international organizations. And three dozen companies – including U.S. giants Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto – will pledge to invest millions of dollars in African agriculture.
Such investments, Shah said, will provide long-term savings for donor nations.
“Across the board, countries view their investments in development – especially around food security – as being in the long-term defense of their national interests,” he said. “It is much cheaper to invest in agricultural development in the Horn of Africa than it is to provide food aid in a time of crisis, as we’ve had to do last year.”
The partnership does raise some concerns, however.
One is whether donor countries will stick to their promises.
“Significant progress was made at the G-8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009,” World Vision U.S. President Richard Stearns wrote in an op-ed submitted to The Hill on Thursday. “Global leaders committed to provide $20 billion over three years to help farmers in the poorest countries grow the food those countries need. However the 2011 G8 accountability report found that only 22 percent of funds have been disbursed and the majority of countries have not fulfilled their commitments.”
Another is the African partner nations’ ability to make the reforms necessary to make the private sector investments work.
Ethiopia, in particular, has been under fire for years for its human rights record. This week, Amnesty International urged Obama to use the G-8 summit to press Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi on his government’s crackdown on critics.
“Prime Minister Zenawi is greeted with open arms around the world for the progress his government claims they have made on economic growth, development and counter-terrorism,” Washington office head Frank Jannuzi said in a statement. “But while he is warmly welcomed in his travels, at home the people of Ethiopia are subjected to ever increasing restrictions on their basic rights.”
Shah said U.S. aid is conditioned on every partner living up to their end of the bargain.
African leaders, he said, “will make public a set of policy reform commitments that will tackle corruption in their bureaucracies, that will create a more open business climate for companies, that will change some of their policies on price-setting and export restrictions that will allow for us to be successful together tackling this issue.
“We’re very results-oriented in how we do this work,” he said. “So if the conditions are not in place for the private investments to happen and for our investments to work, then we won’t make them. And neither will the private companies. So it’s a collective action challenge.”
In the end, he said, Africans are the ones who want the partnership to succeed most of all.
“Nobody wants to be receiving a hand-out when they could be investing in their capacity to grow themselves out of poverty and hunger,” Shah said. “We talk about it in terms of saving money, but it really speaks to a far more aspirational concept of human dignity. Everybody wants to be proud of their ability to feed their children and feed their families.”
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London sit-in to protest BBC neglect of prisoner’s hunger strike
Palestine Information Center – 17/05/2012
LONDON – Dozens of activists participated in a sit-in outside the BBC headquarters to protest the organization’s deliberate neglect of the Palestinian prisoners’ issue, and the constant bias in favor of the Zionist entity.
A number of solidarity organizations handed a protest letter to the BBC news administration, to protest its coverage of Palestinian issues, calling for an end to the BBC’s bias when it comes to covering news about Palestinians.
Zaher Al-Berawi, Spokesman for the Palestinian forum, told PIC that the BBC’s continued silence around this recent escalation of the Palestinian prisoners’ strike was not surprising especially that it prevents mentioning the word Palestine in its reports.
Berawi added that the BBC had refused previously to air an appeal for the Gazan people by the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), pointing out that this total bias to the Israeli occupation is a proof that it is influenced by the Zionist lobby that aims to convert it into a tool of the Israeli occupation through which they can get to the British public.
—
The protest letter handed to the BBC (Emphases added)
Dear Ms Boaden
For four weeks, during April and May, around 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails were on hunger strike, protesting against Israel’s use of administrative detention, its policy of placing Palestinian prisoners in solitary confinement for years at a time, and the denial of family visits to inmates.
These prisoners joined others who had been refusing food since March 2012 and who, by the time a deal was reached on 14 May, were close to death.
This mass hunger strike, possibly the biggest in modern history, received minimal coverage on BBC Online and, until its final few days, none on BBC television and radio news.
During this time, the BBC gave prominent coverage to the hunger strike of Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko, and to Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng, yet ignored the 2,000 Palestinians on hunger strike, and the 27 Palestinian MPs imprisoned by Israel, some of whom were also refusing food.
The excuse given by the BBC during the third week of the Palestinian hunger strike for its failure in reporting was that its coverage was in line with other news organisations, citing, specifically, Al Jazeera.
We find it extraordinary and disturbing that the UK’s public-funded broadcaster should point to other news outlets, with the implication that it is content to follow rather than lead in covering world events, in an effort to distract from its own failings.
When BBC News at 10 did finally provide some coverage (11 May), close to four weeks after the mass hunger strike began, it did so without context, without reference to the prisoners’ demands, with no mention of the appalling health conditions, requiring hospitalisation, that many of the hunger strikers were suffering, and with absolutely no comment from a Palestinian spokesperson. Instead, the report by Kevin Connolly, featured Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev, speaking without challenge, comparing those who had taken the drastic step of engaging in a hunger strike to ‘suicide bombers’ and talking, falsely, about an ‘Islamist cause’.
His complete statement was: “It’s difficult when you’re dealing with someone who wants to commit suicide. It’s a problem with suicide bombers, who are prepared to blow themselves up when they want to kill innocent people, and in this tactic if they think for their Islamist cause if they want to kill themselves, it’s a challenge. We could not have as a precedent that every prisoner who goes on hunger strike, gets – to use a term from the game Monopoly – a get out of jail free card.”
This interview, which insulted and totally misrepresented the hunger strikers, was also used on News 24 and on Radio 4 news bulletins during 11 May. None of these reports were balanced with a Palestinian viewpoint, and the Israeli perspective of the hunger strikes was allowed to prevail on the BBC.
The BBC’s attitude towards the hunger strikes and its eventual, biased coverage is appalling in itself. It is also symptomatic of the BBC’s general attitude towards reporting on Palestine and the occupation and the tendency of BBC news programmes to tilt their coverage and analysis in favour of Israel.
It is, unfortunately, an attitude that cuts across the whole of the BBC, from the Director General and his refusal to broadcast a DEC appeal for Gaza to Radio 1Xtra and the censorship of the word ‘Palestine’ from an artist’s rap performance.
We would like to see an end to this bias against Palestine and news coverage from the region that is balanced, fair and reflective of the values of international law, rather than of the narrative provided by the dominant player in this struggle. It is the very least that licence-fee payers, who look to the BBC for honest information, deserve.
Yours sincerely
Gutting START; Re-Starting a Nuclear Arms Race
By ROBERT ALVAREZ | CounterPunch | May 17, 2012
This week the U.S. House of Representatives takes up the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. (H.R. 4310). Below is a section by section analysis of the nuclear weapons provisions I drew up over the past few weeks. Also, here is the White House Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) regarding this legislation.
Democratic members will be offering amendments to strike and/or modify several provisions. House Republicans have cobbled together the most bellicose nuclear arms policy since the height of the Cold War. In doing so, they restore the “production over safety” policy that left behind an enormous human and environmental legacy.
Specifically, this bill:
(1) Blocks funding for implementation of the New START Treaty, and reductions in thousands of non-deployed weapons, known as the “war reserve” to be used in retaliation against civilian populations, unless new nuclear weapons facilities and delivery systems are funded over the next 10 years totaling about $185 billion;
(2) Dictates specific terms and conditions for future nuclear arms reductions driven by Cold War nuclear arms race policies;
(3) Requires the Administration to submit a report on re-deploying tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.
(4) Codifies a process to funnel additional money for the DOE nuclear weapons labs, above and beyond what they already receive from the Department’s of Defense, Homeland Security, and intelligence agencies;
(5) Bestows unprecedented inherent governmental oversight of budgets and Executive Branch nuclear weapons policies to the DOE nuclear weapons contractors;
(6) Eliminates the Energy department’s oversight and enforcement of health, safety security and financial management and transfers it these functions to the National Nuclear Security Agency, within DOE;
(7) Drastically cuts funding by more than $50 million that permits NNSA and DOE to carry-out safety, health, security and financial management oversight and enforcement responsibilities;
(8) Establishes a long-discredited policy by law which places budget and schedules above nuclear safety requirements; and
(9) Seriously weakens the authority of the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB), established after several serious safety lapses, to ensure that the nuclear weapons program meets DOE safety standards and practices.
(10) opens up the coffers of the Defense Department to pay for the multi-billion-dollar construction of new nuclear weapons production facilities;
(11) Codifies a process to funnel additional money for the DOE nuclear weapons labs, above and beyond what they already receive from the Department’s of Defense, Homeland Security, and intelligence agencies;
(12) Bestows unprecedented inherent governmental oversight of budgets and Executive Branch nuclear weapons policies to the DOE nuclear weapons contractors;
(13) Eliminates the Energy department’s oversight and enforcement of health, safety security and financial management and transfers these functions to the National Nuclear Security Agency, within DOE; and
(14) Seriously weakens the authority of the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board (DNFSB), established after several serious safety lapses, to ensure that the nuclear weapons program meets DOE safety standards and practices.
ANALYSIS OF SECTIONS RELATING TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN H.R. 4310
Section 1053 effectively withholds funds for the implementation the New START Treaty if the President, in a report to Congress, does not submit budgets that ensure the U.S. is committed to “providing the resources, at a minimum at the levels set forth in the President’s 10-year plan provided to Congress in November 2010.” This plan called for a steep increase in funding for nuclear weapons R&D, modernization, and deployment of new delivery systems estimated at $185 billion. This provision also withholds funds to allow the President to reduce the number of warheads without justifying it for Congressional approval.
Section 1058 (e) requires the President to certify that the CMMR and UPF are constructed by 2012 and will be operational no later than 2024. This provision also effectively limits reductions in the “war reserve” containing thousands of non-deployed warheads until the construction and operation of these facilities occur.
Section 1062 establishes an “Interagency Council on the Strategic Capability of the National Laboratories.” This codifies the process put in place by the Obama Administration to funnel even more funds above and beyond what DOE labs currently receive from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies.
Section 1059 effectively restricts the reduction the number of nuclear warheads on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles unless the President can certify to Congress that the Russian Federation and China are doing the same.
Section 1060 proscribes the terms and conditions that the U.S. must adhere to in negotiations to reduce tactical nuclear warheads in Europe and prohibits funding for “reduction, consolidation, or withdrawal of nuclear forces based in Europe, until the President certifies that NATO nations concur and that these steps are “specifically authorized by an Act of Congress.”
Section 2894 requires:
- ”that the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Building Replacement (CMRR) project, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) project, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and any nuclear facility of the NNSA initiated on or after October 1, 2013 that is estimated to cost more than $1.0 billion (and is intended to be primarily utilized to support NNSAs nuclear weapons activities), be treated as military construction projects.
- Furthermore, this section would authorize, as military construction, the CMRR project in the amount of $3.5 billion and the UPF project in the amount of $4.2 billion.
- “This section would specify that the Secretary of Energy shall retain authority to regulate design and construction activities for these projects, that the Secretary of Defense must coordinate with the Administrator for Nuclear Security regarding requirements for these facilities, and that the Administrator must make available to the Secretary of Defense the expertise of the NNSA to support design and construction activities.” (P. 315, Committee Report for H.R. 4310)
Section 3114 establishes a NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION COUNCIL, made up of the DOE weapons labs directors and production contractors to provide recommendations for improving “the governance, management, effectiveness, and efficiency” of the NNSA and “scientific and technical issues relating to policy matters, operational concerns, strategic planning and development of priorities related to the mission and operations” of the NNSA and the “Administration of the nuclear security enterprise.” The NNSA and the DOE Secretary must act upon their recommendations within 60 days. This is an unprecedented effort to bestow inherent government oversight authority on DOE nuclear weapons contractors. Section 3115 eliminates DOE oversight of financial, safety, health and security oversight and enforcement and places it in the hands of NNSA. The NNSA can waive current requirements for protection of the public and workers. In Section 3115 (d) the Committee also lowers the bar by legislating a radiation protection framework that was discarded some 40 years ago. Known as “as low as practicable (ALAP),” this practice would allow the NNSA and its contractors to use cost and schedule to override nuclear safety requirements, if they interfere with design, construction and operations of nuclear weapons facilities. By contrast the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the practice of “as low as reasonably achievable,” which is based on a “safety first” criteria and also requires a greater level of inspection and enforcement of standards. The ALAP/Cold War practice in the hands of contractors is discredited by decades of Congressional, Executive Branch and independent reviews. DOE contractors are the only private businesses working for the U.S. government that are granted blanket indemnification for criminal violations of safety. This is a major reason why the U.S. taxpayer is on the hook for an enormous long-term liability at weapons sites. The HASC wants to restore this discredited system that puts workers and the public in harm’s way while increasing tax-payer liabilities. Section 3117 effectively strips the DOE Secretary of its authority to oversee and enforce financial controls over DOE nuclear weapons contractors. In the name of “streamlining,” the HASC delegates approval for work for others and cooperative research and development agreements to the DOE contractors.
Section 3202 does the following:
- It weakens the role of the Chair of the DNFSB by virtually making the other members co-equals, and creates potential problem of “gridlock.”
- It proscribes a greatly weakened public safety standard that the Board must adhere to. As mentioned above: The “low as practicable’ practice allows the NNSA and its contractors to use cost and schedule to override design, construction and operational radiation safety. By contrast the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the practice of “as low as reasonably achievable,” which establishes a “safety first” criteria and also requires a greater level of inspection and enforcement of standards. The ALAP/Cold War practice in the hands of contractors is discredited by decades of Congressional, Executive Branch, and independent reviews.
- It requires the Board to submit draft recommendations to the Secretary. Previously, recommendations made were final. This puts the Board in the position of sending its pre-decisional recommendations to the DOE, and subject safety findings to negotiations. A basic principal of nuclear safety, established by the Nuclear Navy, is that safety findings are not negotiable.
The provision stretches the time that the DOE/NNSA can respond to the Board Recommendations, another item that further weakens the Board.
ROBERT ALVAREZ, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary from 1993 to 1999. www.ips-dc.org
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis likely to visit West Bank site after court decision
Al Akhbar | May 17, 2012
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are likely to visit a West Bank tomb in the coming year, after a Jerusalem court awarded two rabbis legal and administrative control over it in contravention of international law.
Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus is in the part of the West Bank that the Oslo Accords assigned to full Palestinian control.
Consequently, the Israel Defense Forces officially have no jurisdiction in the area and any Israeli involvement there is illegal.
However Israeli court judge Rabbi Haim Rosenthal ruled that rabbis Shlomo Ben-Shimon and Mordechai Gross, who head the settler organization Shechem Ehad (One Nablus), are the “representatives entitled to appear, legally and publicly, before any court or institution on matters connected to” the tomb, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The court granted the two rabbis sole control over the area for the next 18 months, after which it will review the decision.
Currently over 20,000 Jews visit the tomb a year, as it is open from midnight to 4am once a month, but the decision could see that number increase to hundreds of thousands.
In their application, the two rabbis argued that the 20,000 limit “doesn’t at all satisfy the enormous demand.”
The court had previously refused the request, and the decision will be seen as yet another abuse of Palestinian autonomy.
The decision is likely to enrage Palestinians who already suffer an ongoing occupation of the West Bank.
Netanel Shnir, another key figure in Shechem Ehad, was quoted in November 2010 as saying that the ultimate goal of the group was to get Jews to return to Nablus “to settle there and inherit the land.”
Israel continues to encourage the development of illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, despite condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, and rights groups.
The Jewish state refuses to accept Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank, maintaining an illegal occupation in the area while upholding a siege on Gaza.
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Israel ‘arrests TV director, confiscates equipment’
Ma’an – May 17, 2012
JENIN – Israeli forces arrested the director of a Jenin-based satellite channel on Thursday after raiding his home, the executive director of the channel said.
Saher Qassem, chief of the Al-Asir channel, told Ma’an that a group of soldiers arrested Baha Khayri Ata Musa, 32, after raiding his home in Mirka village.
Soldiers confiscated the TV station’s broadcasting equipment from Musa’s home, preventing the channel from being able to continue its coverage, Qassem said.
Al-Asir, or ‘the prisoner’, channel also has offices operating in Bahrain, Qassem said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said one person was detained in Jenin overnight, but could not provide the identify of the person.
In late February, Israeli forces raided Watan TV and Al-Quds Educational TV’s offices in Ramallah, confiscating broadcasting equipment.
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7 casualties in Israeli artillery shelling east of Gaza
Palestine Information Center – 17/05/2012
GAZA — Seven Palestinian citizens were wounded to the east of Gaza city on Thursday in Israeli artillery shelling of the area, medical sources reported.
Adham Abu Salmiya, the spokesman for emergency and ambulance services in Gaza, told the PIC reporter that two of the casualties were in serious condition.
He added that three of the wounded were old men, adding that the casualties were taken to Shifa hospital in moderate condition except the abovementioned two.
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired a number of artillery shells at civilian neighborhoods and farmlands east of Shujaia suburb in Gaza city.
IOF soldiers earlier on Thursday raided southern and northern Gaza Strip areas, firing at random and bulldozing land.
Local sources in Khan Younis, south of the Strip, said that eight IOF armored vehicles infiltrated 800 meters into Fakhari area and bulldozed land amidst indiscriminate shooting.
Other IOF units raided northern Beit Lahia town to the north of the Strip while firing at farmers tending to their land.
Abu Salmiya said that no casualties were reported in the northern area despite earlier news of one casualty among the farmers.
~
Ma’an reports:
An Israeli army spokeswoman said forces opened fire toward “several suspects approaching the security fence.”
She said no hit was identified.
An Israeli army spokesman later added that “tank shells were fired towards the terrorists,” near the Karni crossing east of Gaza City.
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- Modeling Error In Estimating How Clouds Affect Climate Is 8700% Larger Than Alleged CO2 Forcing
- Berlin’s Terror-Blackout Enters 4th Day As Tens Of Thousands Suffer In Cold Without Heat!
- Expect Soon Another PIK Paper Claiming Warming Leads To Cold Snaps Over Europe
- New Study: Human CO2 Emissions Responsible For 1.57% Of Global Temperature Change Since 1750
- Welcome To 2026: Europe Laying Groundwork For Climate Science Censorship!
- New Study Finds A Higher Rate Of Global Warming From 1899-1940 Than From 1983-2024
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