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Palestinians protest the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir and destroy apartheid tramway

International Solidarity Movement | July 6, 2014

Shu’afat, Occupied Palestine – On the 4th July 2014, at least 2,000 Palestinian mourners gathered in Shu’afat for the funeral of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped last week.

His mutilated body was later found in a forest on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  The autopsy indicates that he was burnt alive.  It is widely believed that the murder was carried out by extremist Israeli settlers.

Mourners gathered by the mosque and marched carrying the body to the burial ground.  Initially the funeral organisers formed a human chain to separate mourners and the police to prevent violence.  Later on, Israeli police clashed with Palestinians for around 12 hours.

It has been reported that at least 30 Palestinians were hurt by rubber-coated bullets while dozens more were treated for the effects of tear gas.  13 Israeli police officers were also injured. A field of wheat was also partly destroyed by fire, probably caused by tear gas canisters.

Throughout the demonstration, undercover police agents, who were also acting violently towards the police, abducted and violently assaulted at least 11 Palestinians, including Tarek Abu Khdeir, Mohammed’s cousin, who was filmed being beaten by police.

Later in the evening, local Palestinian residents took steps to remove the illegal light rail system which runs through their neighbourhood.  Two French companies, Veolia and Alstom, are subject to an international boycott and divestment campaign due to their involvement in the project. The tram primarily services illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied East Jerusalem and thereby facilitates Israel’s illegal policies of colonization and ethnic cleansing.

Local Palestinian’s pulled up bricks and cement that hold the tracks in place and damaged the tracks using an angle grinder.  Many local residents gathered round to express their support for this act of civil disobedience.  One Palestinian resident in his 60′s said that the tram “is for the illegal settlements. Israel takes our land and kills our people…we want them [the Palestinian protesters] to rip it up and take it away completely…we want rid of it”.

July 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hamas calls on Abbas to cancel participation in Israeli conference

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Hamas’ Sami Abu Zuhri
MEMO | July 6, 2014

Hamas has called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from participation at the Israel Peace Conference scheduled for Tuesday in Tel Aviv.

In a press statement on Saturday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Abbas’s participation “would constitute an insult to the feelings of the Palestinian people,” in the aftermath of the lynching of a Palestinian boy in occupied East Jerusalem last Tuesday, as well as the ruthless beating of his cousin two days later.

Abu Zuhri added that Abbas’s participation would give Israel a chance to “beautify its image” after international anger at its “heinous crimes.”

Haaretz has published the agenda of the conference, which includes a pre-recorded speech by Abbas.

Palestinian chief negotiator and senior Fatah official Saeb Erekat turned down an invitation to attend the same conference “out of respect for the feelings of Palestinians and their plight”.

The Israel Peace Conference is an annual event organised by Haaretz to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how to bring about peace.

July 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Enough is enough’: Berlin outraged by alleged US spying

RT | July 6, 2014

The arrest of a German intelligence employee for allegedly spying for the US has caused an uproar among German politicians. The country’s foreign minister has demanded an immediate clarification of the situation from Washington.

“If the reports are true, then we’re not talking about trifles,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on a visit to Mongolia, DPA reports. He added that prompt clarification of the details in the case were in the “US’s own interest.”

Earlier, US Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson was summoned to the German Foreign Office to answer questions concerning the recent arrest of a 31-year-old German foreign intelligence agency (BND) employee, who confessed to having spied for the US.

German tabloid Bild reported that the man had been a double agent for two years, during which time he exchanged bundles of secret documents for €25,000 ($34,100).

The harshest reaction so far has come from German President Joachim Gauck. If the spying allegations are confirmed, “one really has to say, enough is enough,” he told the ZDF broadcaster Saturday.

Angela Merkel on Sunday expressed surprise and disappointment over the possible involvement of US intelligence in the BND espionage scandal, according to German businessmen, accompanying her on her trip to China, Spiegel Online reports. She has not made any comment so far, however.

Last October, Merkel was enraged to learn she was allegedly on the NSA’s tapping list since 2002. The Chancellor called the alleged spying, which became known thanks to Edward Snowden’s leaks, “unacceptable.”

A German parliamentary committee has been holding hearings on the NSA’s spying activities in Germany.

Ironically, the classified materials from the hearings on US spying could get into the hands of US intelligence, as they allegedly were part of the documents stolen by the suspected double agent.

“If the suspicion of espionage is confirmed, that would be an outrageous attack on our parliamentary freedom,” said Thomas Oppermann, the parliamentary leader of the SPD party, a coalition partner of Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

Opposition parties have called for caution in future cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies.

“All cooperation of the German security authorities with friendly services needs to be reviewed,” Green Party leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt told Spiegel Online.

The German government is demanding that the US replace its employees at the Joint Intelligence Staff based in the US Embassy in Berlin, Bild reports.

While most of the criticism is focused on the US, some believe it’s the German leadership’s inability to react properly to the NSA tapping leaks that’s led to the yet another spying scandal. Merkel’s opponents have repeatedly blamed her for too mild a response to the NSA global surveillance revelations.

“That’s a result of Merkel’s transatlantic hypocrisy,” co-chair of the Left Party Katja Kipping said, Der Tagesspiegel reported.

Background:

Germany arrests suspected ‘double agent’ for working for US – report

July 6, 2014 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel and the Palestinians — It’s about Mind Over Matter

 

By Anthony Lawson | July 6, 2014

Ever since the three Israeli teenagers went missing, police and army units have besieged Palestinian towns and villages in the area; their houses and shops have been ransacked and atrocities have been committed; Gaza has been bombed, and the death toll is still rising, yet international leaders have remained largely silent, when they all know that such reprisals amount to collective-punishment which is a War Crime.

A young Palestinian boy, 16-year-old Mohamed Abu Khdeir, was abducted and killed in a suspected revenge attack by Israelis, on July 2nd. See how Britain’s prime minister reacted to his death.

July 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

An Eye for An Eye

By Missie Beattie | CounterPunch | July 4, 2014

A broad moral gulf separates us from our enemies. They sanctify death; we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty, and we mercy and compassion. That is the secret of our strength. –Benjamin Netanyahu, at the funeral of three slain Israeli teenagers.

WTF?

Israel shows no morality, no mercy, and no compassion for Palestinians. Israel’s strength is not a mystery. Their power is dependent on their belief that they are God’s Chosen, on sophisticated weaponry, US tax dollars, and bipartisan Congressional support of Zionism that renders any “peace process” a charade.

During the funeral, right-wing protestors screamed for blood, “Death to Arabs.”

“There is no forgiveness for murderers of children,” said Israeli Economy Minister Naphtali Bennett. “Now is a time for actions, not words.” And action it was, has been for years, and is. Without due process, the Israeli military exploded family homes of two suspects—an uncivilized reaction that continues a cycle of retribution. Go door-to-door, terrorizing men, women, and children. Destroy homes. Bomb them. Strike Gaza. Don’t investigate to determine who’s responsible for the kidnapping and deaths of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel, and Gilad Shaar. And announce with chutzpa, as Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Avalon just did, that settlements will be built to memorialize the three slain teens. Yes, they’d have taken this measure regardless, any excuse, but now it’s exceedingly opportune—exploiting the deaths of the young as a sacrosanct right to seize more land.

Of course Barack Obama issued a statement:

As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing. The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth.

Interesting. Seems Obama’s forgotten Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the teenager and US citizen on his Kill List, incinerated in a CIA-led drone strike. Obama can’t imagine the indescribable pain that this young man’s parent (singular) feels. That’s singular because the boy’s father, Anwar al-Awlaki also was on Obama’s Kill List and droned two weeks before the death of his son. The attack in Yemen on Oct 14, 2011 that killed the young al-Awalaki also killed his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians as they sat in a restaurant. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was 16, the same age as two of the Israelis, but the murder of al-Awlaki was, well, sensible, to Obama.

Earlier today, Tuesday, I was in the lobby of my building where a TV is tuned daily to CNN. I stopped to view the faces of the three Israeli teenagers.

In May, two Palestinian teenagers were shot and killed in separate incidents by Israeli troops. Later, film from a surveillance camera was examined, providing evidence that neither teen posed a threat. Did world leaders speak to this horror? Call for justice? Of course not. Never do we see the faces of Palestinian children kidnapped and killed by the IDF—at least not on mainstream news networks. Nor do we see the wretchedness, the inhumanity, of Gaza.

Identical to American exceptionalism’s sadism, Israel’s violent acts are legitimized by righteousness and a response to the aggressor’s (?) viciousness.

The message is hypocritically clear: Some lives are more valuable than others. We hear the cries of the Jewish parents, the family members, their friends, and we feel their suffering. But let us understand that mothers and fathers, whether they’re Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Yemini, in the lands ravaged by US greed, anywhere, love their children as much as we love ours. Let us love not only the children of those we call our allies and our own but all children. Let us value all life.

Let us value all life was supposed to be the closing sentence in this piece. I should start over, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just add more paragraphs.

The death of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian, has been reported by US mainstream news venues. On Wednesday morning, the teenager was kidnapped, his burned body found a couple of hours later—apparently a reprisal killing. His cousin has demanded that the Israeli police and Israeli government do what they did in Hebron: “Demolish and blow the settler houses who have done this crime.”

Netanyahu, fearful of individual retaliations, this time has called for an investigation, issuing a statement that Israel is a country of laws and “Everyone is ordered to act according to the law”—despite the lawlessness unleashed after the kidnapping of the Israeli teens and further lawlessness after their bodies were discovered. Despite no inquiry to determine who killed them but instead a rampage of terror against the Palestinians.

Reading a New York Times article, I gasped that a Facebook group was created to promote revenge for the deaths of the Israeli teens. A photo was posted of two girls, holding a sign: “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”

This is eye for an eye. And everyone will be blind.

 

July 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 8 Comments