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Palestinian stabbed, shot in settler attack near Nablus

Ma’an – 07/07/2012

NABLUS – A Palestinian man was shot by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank on Saturday, after which a group of Israeli settlers stabbed him repeatedly, a Palestinian official said.

Jawdat Bani Jabir, 43, was shot in the face and the foot by soldiers in Yanun village, south of Nablus, governorate official Ghassan Daghlas told Ma’an.

A group of Israeli settlers who had descended into the village proceeded to stab him in several places, Daghlas added. Jabir’s condition could not be immediately confirmed.

An Israeli army spokesman said he was looking into the incident.

Daghlas said the settlers had entered Yanun village, and fatally stabbed five cattle. He pointed out that the village depends on agriculture and livestock.

Villagers came out to defend their homes, the official added.

Yanun is surrounded by Israeli settler outposts, illegal under both international and Israeli law.


Yanoun: Settlers and soldiers attack village, injuring 5

8th July 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Saturday 7 July, 2012, the village of Yanoun, located 12km southeast of Nablus, was attacked by illegal settlers from the illegal Itamar settlement. Five Palestinians were injured in the attack and large sections of agricultural land were set ablaze.

The attack began at roughly 2pm. The illegal settlers descended on the village and began setting fire to sections of land and firing on sheep while they were grazing. In the course of the attack on Yanoun, 5 residents of Aqraba, (the neighbouring village) were injured to varying degrees. Two men, Ibrahim Hamid Ibrahim, and Adwan Rajih bini Naber were beaten by settlers, and another, Joudat Hamid Ibrahim was stabbed in the shoulder after being beaten as well. When the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) arrived, they joined in the attacks, injuring two more. Hakimun Ahmed Yusuf Bini Jaber, 42, was shot in the arm with live ammunition by an IOF soldier and Ashraf Adel Hamid Ibrahim, 29, was shot in the back with a tear gas canister when the soldiers attempted to scatter villagers who were aiding the injured.

The villagers who were aiding the injured attempted to carry the injured men to ambulances, but IOF soldiers blocked the roads and refused to let them through. The IOF and illegal settlers also stopped residents from putting out the fires. The first ambulance to leave was reportedly stopped at Huwwara checkpoint en route to a hospital in Nablus. Two of the injured men were taken from the ambulance and held in Israeli custody for an undetermined period of time. The second and third ambulance were not allowed to depart with those wounded for two hours.

After the attacks had stopped, IOF soldiers still held Adwan Rajih Bini Jaber captive, refusing to allow the ambulance carrying him to depart. Illegal settlers stood by heavily armed, protecting the fires that they had set to Palestinian land.

Nearing 6pm, illegal settlers and IOF soldiers once again advanced on the Palestinians, as internationals gathered to show solidarity, ending in the firing of tear gas canisters and live ammunition into the air.

Yanoun and its residents have been subject to terrorism by illegal settlers from Itamar for many years. On October 19, 2002, there was a temporary mass exodus due to the harassment, drawing parallels with the refugees created in 1948. The villagers returned little by little in the weeks following, with the help of peace activists from Ta’ayush & other groups but the village still suffers from violent attacks regardless.

July 7, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | 1 Comment

New Israeli military complex planned in Jerusalem

MEMO | July 5, 2012

Planning permission has been approved for the construction of a new military complex on Al-Zaytoun and Al-Mokabber Hills overlooking the southern side of Al-Aqsa Mosque. A site of around 10.5 acres has been earmarked for the project by the Israeli authorities. The new complex will include the HQ of the General Staff, a college of national security, a military academy and accommodation for soldiers and senior officers.

The project is consistent with the strategy of extending Israel’s de facto sovereignty over the so-called “holy basin” that is adjacent to the Al-Aqsa compound and the Old City of Jerusalem. This is planned to make Jerusalem the headquarters of Israel’s security, military and political authorities in order to be declared to be the “capital of the Jewish people” in 2020, at which stage there will be no place for the Palestinians.

A specialist in settlement affairs said that the plan contravenes international conventions and even Israel’s own planning and building regulations. Researcher Ahmed Laban pointed out that the proposed college complex is in occupied East Jerusalem, on the Palestinian side of the old Green Line. This, he added, is intended as yet another settlement in the heart of the Palestinian suburbs of Jerusalem.

The director of the International Jerusalem Centre, an expert in Jerusalem affairs, said that this project is an extension of a series of comprehensive plans started in 2007 to change Jerusalem’s mountains into massive military shelters for the Israeli leadership during non-conventional warfare. Hassan Khater confirmed that the Israeli government has already started on projects in other areas in Jerusalem. “The government is building shelters connected to its headquarter and others connected to the official residence of the Israeli Prime Minister in Jerusalem,” he said. “Despite the secrecy and ambiguity surrounding these projects, it is clear that the Israeli government is carrying on with its Judaisation plans to prepare Jerusalem as the capital of the state.”

Both Khater and Laban confirmed their belief that the Israelis do not discriminate against Islamic heritage and Muslim residents in Jerusalem, pointing out that Palestinian Muslims and Christians are targeted equally. “Many Christian buildings have been destroyed and others are in danger if these projects go ahead,” said Mr. Khater.

Calling on the Palestinian Authority and the international community to take “serious measures” to stop the Judaisation of Jerusalem, both men also asked them to support the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in their struggle against what is seen as the ethnic cleansing of their city by the Israeli authorities.

July 7, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Comments Off on New Israeli military complex planned in Jerusalem

Iran, Russia emphasize need to implement Annan plan in Syria

Press TV – July 7, 2012

The Iranian ambassador to Moscow and the Russian deputy foreign minister have underlined the need for the implementation of the peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to Syria for the settlement of the crisis in the country.

Reza Sajjadi and Mikhail Bogdanov met to discuss the situation in Syria.

During their meeting, they also called for the resolution of the Syrian crisis through solutions proposed in last week’s Geneva meeting, which aim to end the conflict, start national dialog and pave the way for a political resolution of the crisis.

They also stressed the necessity for the settlement of the Syrian crisis through political negotiations between Syrian sides and without any foreign interference.

Both sides also called on foreign players to avoid adopting unilateral measures against Syria and emphasized the need for respecting Damascus sovereignty as well as the Syrian people’s viewpoints in determining their fate.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. The violence has claimed the lives of many people, including security forces.

The West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing protesters, but Damascus blames ‘outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups’ for the unrest, asserting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.

July 7, 2012 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 1 Comment

France’s Zionist Puppet Masters

By Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle | July 6, 2012

France, the nation whose 1789 Revolution gave the world the ideals of Equality, Fraternity and Liberty especially freedom of speech and of the press, jumps to attention (as a docile marionette does) when its Zionist manipulators such as the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism(BNCVA) the France Israel Chamber of Commerce, International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, get a whiff of criticism of Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In June, puppetmaster CRIF frantically pulled its incitement-to-hate-Israel-strings when Professor Christophe Oberlin had the temerity to light a spark of conscience and morality (important qualities for the medical profession) by setting an exam question for his students of humane medicine at Bichat Hospital Faculty of Medicine using the example of the massacre of 22 members of the Samouni family [by the Givati Brigade] during the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza “To what extent does it constitute a perpetual crime (war crime, crime against humanity, genocide crime)?”

Oberlin’s boss, the Puppet, oops, President of Diderot University, Vincent Berger shamefully apologised (for the truth) to CRIF and said an internal investigation would be mounted. Ironically, Diderot University prides itself on Denis Diderot’s humanist values and his profound respect for freedom of knowledge and thought. Diderot himself did not shy from controversy when accused of ‘publishing dangerous ideas’ and Berger’s unworthy coerced apology is at odds with Diderot’s “Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.”

Professors Mads Gilbert and Eric Fosse, Norwegian surgeons, who attended the Samouni survivors and other innocent victims of Israel’s violent Cast Lead Operation in Gaza describe in their book, ‘Eyes in Gaza’, how in April 2009, Norwegian lawyers filed charges of ‘war crimes and gross violation of international humanitarian law’ against the war on Gaza’s key Israeli political and military leaders Ehad Olmert, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, Gabi Ashkenazi, Eliezer Marom, Avi Mizrahi, Ido Nehoshtan, Yoav Galant, Ilan Malka (Givati) and Avi Peled (Golani) and requesting their arrest if they go to Norway. Gilbert and Fosse’s ‘Eyes in Gaza’ details the medical challenges of treating injured civilians in the thick of the fierce Israeli bombardment and severe medical shortages and should be a mandatory text for medical students and Vincent Berger.

Another serious attack on academic independence and freedom of expression occurred in February at the Paris 8 university when a conference titled “Is Israel an apartheid state?” which included the keynote speaker, Omar Barghouti, coordinator of the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was obsequiously banned by the University president Pascal Binczak who closed the university down for 2 days after a delirium of “discrimination against a nation”-and-“incitement to hatred and violence” string-pulling by CRIF and the Simon Weisenthal Centre which warned of the threat to public order and danger to the Jewish community. This is the same Wiesenthal Centre that intolerantly desecrated the Muslim Ma’man Allah cemetery, Jerusalem to build its Museum of Tolerance. Shimon Samuels is the director of both the European Wiesenthal Center and the BNCVA.

The conference was peacefully held off-campus.

In January 2011, CRIF president, Richard Prasquier contacted the Minister of the Universities, Valerie Pécresse convincing her to cancel a BDS conference at the prestigious “l’Ecole Normale Supérieure” (ENS) in an attempt to silence Stephane Hessel, diplomat, ambassador, writer, concentration camp survivor, former French resistance fighter, an editor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and author of Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage) in which he states, “Today, my main indignation concerns Palestine, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank…. This conflict is outrageous.”

Zionists also tried to string along the French justice system since 2010 during a series of trials against French BDS activists citing the 1972 amendments to Law of 1881 whereby racially defamatory comments and incitement to racial hatred were criminalised. CRIF has 80 cases pending trial. In 2011, the judgement from the Bobigny criminal court ruled that “incitement to discrimination could only be applied to a population or a population group, and not to a state or the products of that state.” On 17 June 2011, judges of the tribunal of the 17th magistrate’s court of the Paris law courts ruled on the right of citizens to call for a boycott of Israel and its products.

When Olivia Zemor, president of CAPJPO-EuroPalestine, was acquitted on 8 July, 2011 “the judge explained that the article of law cited by the plaintiffs (article 24, paragraph 8, Law of 1881) is designed to “fight any form of racism” and cannot be cited in order to forbid a call for boycott “suggesting a certain form of conscientious objection, which each of us is free to express or not to express” and “launched by non-governmental organisations without prerogative powers”.

Even so, the new French president Francois Hollande was quick to emulate his predecessor, the Zionist ventriloquist dummy Sarkozy, stating ” I am totally opposed to the boycott of Israeli goods, which is illegal and does not serve the cause of peace.”

Tracking Zionist interests and manipulation of the French government is a matter of following the money which ultimately leads to the Israeli arms industry and to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

France is Israel’s largest European weapons supplier which as David Cronin points out is “at variance with the Union’s decade-old code of conduct on weapons exports. Formally declared legally binding by EU governments last year, the code forbids weapons sales in cases where they may exacerbate regional tensions or where there is a strong likelihood they will be used in violation of human rights.”

Charles Edelstenne, who by the way is also a director of Carrefour, is chairman and co-founder of Dassault Aviation, a major military supplier, which has a stake in Thales, a French multinational company that turns over more than $22 billion in revenue in Aerospace, Space, Defence and Security markets annually. Heron TP aircraft are built by Dassault Aviation and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) which was founded in 1953 by Shimon Peres and is owned by the government of Israel. Le Figaro, France’s second largest national newspaper is owned by Dassault. Lagardère, a French conglomerate with defence and aviation interests, owns the Paris-Match magazine and part owner of Le Monde, Xavier Neil, is a partner of Israeli company, Golan Telecom whose controlling shareholder, Michael Golan made ‘aliyah to Israel in 2007 ‘as part of his Zionist vision’.

Former President of France, Sarkosy (as well as Blair) is a personal [acquaintance of] Bernard Arnault, Europe’s 4th richest man, who controls the luxury goods empire of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) which also owns the French cosmetics chain Sephora and has stakes in the Carrefour supermarkets and in De Beers Diamond Jewellers Limited.

Sephora operates 269 stores in France and more than 1,400 stores in 27 countries. It retails the AHAVA Dead Sea products that are produced in Israel’s illegal colonies. EI blogger, Adri Nieuwhof points out that “Ahava uses Palestinian natural resources without the permission of or compensation to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israel denies Palestinians access to the shores of the Dead Sea and its resources, although one-third of the western shore of the Dead Sea lies in the occupied West Bank.”

French BDS activists have been targeting Carrefour supermarkets deshelving “Israeli agricultural products imported in France by the Israeli company Mehadrin, which is an essential tool for the Israeli policy of colonization of the Palestinian territories. Most of the products come from Israeli settlements, including from settlements located in the Jordan valley where 7,000 settlers have taken over 95 % of the Palestinian farmer’s lands and have ensured the control of 98 % of the water. As per international law, and in particular as per the IVth Geneva Convention, the activities of Mehadrin are criminal.”

Israeli Textile giant, Delta Galil also supplies Carrefour. It’s boss, Dov Lautman is an associate of Ehud Barak and a staunch Zionist. He a member of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors since June 2002 and a member of the Jewish Agency Executive. The Jewish Agency was established by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1929. “It acts as agent of the government in assigning land to Jewish colonists” in Occupied Palestine.

From 2009 until 2011, when it hit a financial slump, Israeli billionaire Nochi Dankner’s Koor Industries Ltd held a 3% share stake in Carrefour. Former president and CEO of Strauss Group Ltd (which actively supports the vicious Golani and Givati elite brigades), Erez Vigodman joined Makhteshim Agan Group in January 2010 which is 40% owned by Danker’s Koor Industries. Maketish Agan is a pesticide factory located in the Ramat Hovav industrial zone that pollutes its environs with hazardous waste including Wadi el-Na’am, a village of more than 5,000 Bedouins. “In a 2004 study commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Health found a high rate of birth defects among children living in the vicinity. In August 2006, Ben Gurion University epidemiologist Batya Sarov, formerly a specialist at Chernobyl, compared the environmental monitoring and health risks to Chernobyl.”

Dankner is also a director of Nesher Israel Cement Enterprises, Israel’s sole cement producer, which supplies construction materials to Israeli companies building the illegal Annexation Wall and ‘products of Nesher were seen in construction sites in West Bank settlements and in the construction of the light rail project in Jerusalem, which connects the settlement neighbourhoods of the city with the city center.’

In 2007 Jonathan Kolber, Koor Industries chairman and former director of Makhteshim, who is also on the board of directors of Elbit (Israel’s largest defence firm specialising in drones ad surveillance), invested in Eyeblaster along with BRM Capital managing director Eli Barkat. Eli’s bother, Nir was a founder of BRM. Nir Barkat, as mayor of Jerusalem drives the judaisation of occupied Jerusalem through ethnic cleansing, home demolitions and illegal colony construction.

LVMH also has the jewellery lines of TAG Heuer, Chaumet, Christian Dior Montres, Zenith, Fred, Hublot, including the joint-venture De Beers Diamond Jewellers Limited. In 2012 Nicky Oppenheimer sold the family’s 40% stake in De Beers after its long and lucrative relationship with Israel’s diamond industry which still continues.

Patrick Galey, in his article “Israeli Blood Diamonds: The Global Coverup’ reveals the close connection between the Israeli diamond industry and the Israeli military. ” Israeli economist Shir Hever, in evidence given at 2010’s Russell Tribunal on Palestine, said that it was the Israeli Defense Forces, among other organizations, that most benefited from Israel’s lucrative diamond business.”

“Overall the Israeli diamond industry contributes about $1 billion annually to the Israeli military and security industries,” Hever told the Tribunal. “Every time somebody buys a diamond that was exported from Israel some of that money ends up in the Israeli military, so the financial connection is quite clear.”

“That is not counting the private diamond revenue that goes to the Israeli Army. Steinmetz, [a buyer of rough diamonds from De Beers] one of the world’s leading diamond producers, owns a charitable foundation that has “adopted” a unit in the Israeli Army. The diamond giant is funding the notorious Givati Brigade, responsible for one of the worst atrocities perpetrated on the people of Gaza during Operation Cast Lead” i.e.. the Samouni massacre.

Zionist puppeteers ensure that the French government protects its interests in Israel. For all the financial loss of billions of dollars, due in part to the successful BDS campaign against it, the massive debt of Veolia Environnement, a multinational French company which is heavily implicated in Israel’s apartheid framework, is being propped up by tax monies by the French government through Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), a public investment authority that manages public funds. Veolia built the Jews-only Light Rail Project in Jerusalem and provides Jews-only bus services along the Jews-only Highway 443 for illegal colonists to the illegal colonies built on stolen Palestinian land in Occupied Palestine.

Little wonder then, in April, that Zionist interests in France could pull strings to prevent 100 Flytilla activist from leaving France when Air France refused to embark passengers marked on Israel’s blacklists. A French woman was taken off an Air France plane when she failed to declare herself an Israeli or a Jew. The French government went as far as urging its citizens not to take part in the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ campaign which simply requested participants to openly state to Israel authorities their intention to travel to Occupied Palestine.

Despite French attitudes that show 20% are positive towards Israel and 65% are negative (BBC Poll), France manifests as a puppet regime of global Zionism surrendering the civil liberties of its citizens, the academic freedom and independence of its universities, and its binding responsibilities to uphold international law noteably the Geneva Conventions which protect Palestinian human rights. It is the determined and principled actions of French activists, withstanding Zionist antisemitism hysteria, who uphold the tattered motto of France- liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters.

July 7, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | 3 Comments

No Accountability Yet for Toronto G20 Police Crimes

TheRealNews | July 5, 2012

“Paul Jay: Until police and their political masters are held responsible under the criminal code, it can all happen again.”

July 7, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | 1 Comment