Understanding Israel’s Actions
By MAHMOUD ABU RAHMA | CounterPunch | July 4, 2014
It is essential that US citizens understand that this conflict should not continue to be viewed as a symmetrical one anymore. When they do not hear about it, there are vicious violations of international law against Palestinians every day; including closures/blockades, settlement activities (population transfer on account of our land and natural resources), displacement, killings, detention and torture.
We were all occupied by the developments in the past few days, and shocked to find out about killings. The Israeli government kept from us all that the three settler teenagers were killed from the first day because they wanted to carry out a large military operation in the occupied Palestinian territory. This operation saw hundreds of Palestinians arrested, tortured, killed and injured. Dozens of attacks were also directed at the besieged Gaza Strip. Incitement to violence and hatred went very high.
Since 12 June 2014, the day the teenage settlers went missing, Israel declared that its operation had two aims: find them and put pressure on Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to abandon a recent unity agreement and return to full separation between Gaza and the West Bank. Now we know that the Israeli government knew they were killed from the first day; however, the operation to destroy Palestinian unity and reinstate separation is ongoing. Separation and isolation, if successful, will allow Israel to annex large areas in the West Bank and divide Palestinians to keep them under control by military force; as opposed to a peace agreement that would end the occupation of the territory captured by Israel in 1967. This is a typical case of using violence to achieve political; not security, gains. In doing so, Israel has violated the human rights of Palestinian civilians in many ways, and has created an environment that allowed for kidnapping, murdering, and running over of Palestinian children by Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Americans need to understand this situation. This conflict has not started on 12 June this year, but decades ago. The occupation of oPt [occupied Palestinian territories] in the manner Israel is doing it has been, and will continue to be, the reason behind such tragedies. They should expect to hear about more serious violations of human rights and international law, and they will hear all the security justifications for them. I hope they understand that buying such justifications will only help such violations to continue as Israel pursues fragmenting and destroying the Palestinian people for political reasons.
Mahmoud AbuRahma is communications and international relations director for the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza.
Israeli Police Beat 15-year-old Palestinian-American Cousin of Teen Murdered on Wednesday
IMEMC | July 4, 2014
A Palestinian teenager identified by local sources as the cousin of the 16-year-old who was murdered on Wednesday was beaten and abducted by Israeli police on Thursday, and was refused medical treatment for his broken nose and other injuries while in custody.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported that over 170 Palestinians have been injured since Monday, when the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who had gone missing two weeks earlier were found.
15-year old Tariq was allegedly participating in one of several protests that took place in Shu’fat and nearby areas after Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, was abducted by Israelis, according to eyewitnesses, and later found burned to death on Wednesday.
Hundreds of Palestinians took part in the protests, which were met with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and concussion grenades. At least three incidents have been reported of Israeli police and military using live ammunition against the demonstrators. Of the 170 injured since Monday, at least six are journalists.
Since his death Wednesday, the family of Muhammed Abu Khdeir has faced interrogations, DNA tests and a misinformation campaign started by the Israeli police to claim, based on no evidence, that the boy was killed in a family dispute — in addition to the Israeli police refusing to look at surveillance video showing the assailants, which would normally be a major part of an investigation.
The attack on the 15-year-old appears to be the latest affront to a family that is mourning the brutal death of a child. Tariq is a Palestinian-American who was staying with family in Jerusalem when he was beaten and abducted by Israeli police. The full extent of his injuries are still unknown.
Palestinian boy goes missing in Jerusalem
Al-Akhbar | July 4, 2014
A Palestinian child went missing in East Jerusalem early Friday, a local news site reported, two days after a teenager was kidnapped and killed by suspected settlers in the Israeli-occupied city.
Wafa News Agency said a 13-year-old boy was last spotted walking near a mosque in the neighborhood of Wadi al-Joz around dawn.
Witnesses told the agency that they saw a settler car driving in the area around the same time the boy went missing.
Israeli police were reviewing CCTV footage from cameras set up in the area to determine if the boy was kidnapped, the report added.
In a separate incident, a group of settlers Thursday night was reported to have tried to kidnap a seven-year-old Palestinian boy from his Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina.
Ma’an News Agency reported that family members of Mohammed al-Kiswani chased off four settlers who attempted to snatch the boy as he played outside after breaking Ramadan fast.
The incidents come as the family of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudeir prepare to lay him to rest Friday, two days after he was kidnapped and killed in Jerusalem.
The charred remains of Abu Khudeir were discovered in a forest hours after his family reported him missing.
CCTV footage from Wednesday’s abduction shows suspected settlers forcing the teen into a car around dawn before speeding away.
Hundreds of Israelis had taken to the streets Tuesday chanting “death to Arabs” after the bodies of three Israeli settlers were discovered in the West Bank.
Israeli forces attack mosque in village near Salfit, detaining and beating a child
Photo by a villager from Qarawat Bani Hassan
International Solidarity Movement | July 3, 2014
Qarawat Bani Hassan, Occupied Palestine – At 9 o’clock in the evening of July 2nd, Israeli forces invaded the small Palestinian village of Qarawat Bani Hassan, approximately 10 km northwest of Salfit in the northern half of the West Bank.
They approached the mosque in the center of town and fired tear gas and stun grenades inside. One witness described the scene as follows:
“There were maybe 500 people inside the mosque – many old men, women and children. The tear gas was horrible. It was difficult to breathe. The sound bombs were terrifying, and the children were so afraid.”
The motives of the soldiers remain mystifying, since the streets surrounding the mosque had been empty before the attack. “They just come here to make problems,” suggested one witness.
The occupants of the mosque escaped the tear gas, and clashes ensued on the nearby streets. Qasaam Mareh, a fourteen year old boy, was detained by the soldiers. According to witnesses, they interrogated and beat him, before they took him away in a jeep. Qasaam was held for approximately eighteen hours before finally being released the next day.
Former Israeli Defence Minister calls on government to assassinate Hamas leaders
MEMO | July 3, 2014
Israel’s former Defence Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer called for the Israeli government to immediately assassinate Hamas leaders, an Israeli news site has reported.
Ben-Eliezer is reported to have said: “The government must immediately return to the assassination policy, and let Hamas leaders understand that there is no security for them day and night and that there is no difference between political and army wing leaders.”
He said: “Hamas political leadership incites and inflames the atmosphere [against Israel] and encourages terrorism.”
Ben-Eliezer called on the Israeli government to strengthen Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and to pressure him to remove Hamas from government and then work on the resumption of the peace process.
NATO arming Ukraine with Soviet weapons
RT | July 4, 2014
NATO’s newest Eastern European members are handing over their Soviet arms stockpiles to the Ukrainian army, Russia’s Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin says, adding that the alliance is in danger of pouring gasoline on the flames of that country’s civil war.
Rogozin, who supervises the Russian military industry, has tweeted that NATO is asking its newest members to get rid of operable Soviet military equipment and send it to Ukraine, to aid the miserable state of the country’s military hardware.
“In turn, the US is ready to compensate for the “losses” of the newly co-opted NATO member states. The American military-industrial complex must be happy,” Rogozin wrote in his Twitter account.
“By the way, this is NATO’s commonplace to put out civil wars’ fire with aviation kerosene,” Rogozin added.
Over the months of Ukraine’s hot political crisis, NATO member states, primarily the US, announced they are planning non-lethal aid to Ukrainian troops, supplying uniforms and tents, and even promising to deploy a number of military instructors to train the Ukrainian army to fight the adherents of federalization of the country in Eastern Ukraine.
Political commentator Mikhail Rostovsky told RIA Novosti news agency that the “US and EU are thinking not about Ukraine but about the neutralization of Russia.”
Rostovsky compared the current policies of the European and American leaders with that of British PM Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand towards the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.
Speaking loudly about “the European choice for Ukraine,” the EU and US politicians are essentially seeking ways to drive a wedge between Moscow and Kiev to neutralize what they regard as Russia’s possible “imperial ambitions,” Rostovsky said. “We’re dealing with politics dictated by fear: God forbid the Kremlin’s imperial instincts got awakened! This is a matter of principle to deny the Kremlin such an opportunity and break Ukraine away from Russia.”
Rostovsky said he fully agreed with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who told Der Spiegel in late April that Europe has slid “into the worst crisis since the end of the Cold War.”
“Those who can remember the fall of the Berlin Wall know what we’ve accomplished over the past 25 years. The gains we’ve made almost everywhere in Europe in terms of peace, freedom and prosperity are now at risk,” Steinmeier said, adding that that it was important to take “every measure to prevent things [in Ukraine] from getting worse.”
US warship downed Iran airliner, killed 290, July 3rd 1988
Iranians honor the victims of the 1988 US missile cruiser’s attack on an Iranian passenger plane
Press TV – July 3, 2014
On July 3, 1988, 290 people were killed in a US missile cruiser’s attack on an Iranian passenger plane.
Carrying 274 passengers and 16 crew members, the Airbus A-300 (IR655) had just taken off from the southern Iranian coastal city of Bandar Abbas and was climbing inside an internationally recognized route to Dubai when it was targeted by two Standard missiles fired from USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988.
Following the incident, US officials claimed their warship mistook the jetliner for an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter plane. The allegation was made as highly sophisticated radar systems and electronic battle gear had been mounted on the warship.
The Iranian airliner was equipped with an identification transponder to give off a specific response signal when interrogated by a radar signal from a potential adversary.
Due to delay in takeoff, the Vincennes started issuing warnings on the Military Air Distress frequency, having mistaken the Iranian civilian airplane for a military aircraft.
Vincennes’ attempts to contact Flight 655 failed because they had been sent on wrong frequencies.
Although no data recorder reported any identification, friend or foe (IFF) signal, the staff aboard the Vincennes continued misreporting the signal.
The decision to shoot down the Iranian plane was reportedly taken deliberately on the basis of personal advice passed from junior officers, regardless of a stream of contrary evidence from the electronics aboard.
The US government has so far refused to admit to its crime in the tragic incident and instead keeps falsely blaming Iran for the incident.
Washington later paid some 95 million dollars in compensation for the Iranian victims and the aircraft.
The money, however, failed to placate the anti-US sentiments in Iran, where people expected the USS Vincennes’ captain, William Rogers, to be held responsible for his criminal act.
Instead, Rogers was awarded the prestigious medal of Legion of Merit for his so-called outstanding service.
Cuba: US Fine Against BNP Paribas is Outrageous
Prensa Latina | July 3, 2014
Havana – The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) denounced the U.S.-imposed fine against the French bank BNP Paribas as an outrage against state sovereignty and the rules of free trade and international law.
A MINREX statement warns that with this new fine, the government of President Barack Obama has gone further than all his predecessors, accumulating penalties that exceed $11 billion USD against scores of entities, applied under many different sanctions regimes.
According to the statement, the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Justice and the state of New York imposed a record fine on June 30 of $8.97 billion USD against the French bank BNP Paribas, for disobeying Washington’s unilateral sanctions regimes against many countries.
In the specific case of Cuba, this bank institution is accused, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, of having processed thousands of transactions with the island’s entities, totaling more than $1.7 billion USD.
This fine, the largest imposed in history by the U.S. government for violations of its blockade on Cuba and current sanctions against third countries, violates the rules of International Law, and is described as an extraterritorial and illegal application of U.S. legislation against a foreign entity.
MINREX said that as a Free Trade Agreement between the United States and the European Union is being negotiated, it might be asked whether this is how the U.S. government intends to continue treating its allies.
BNP Paribas joins a long list of U.S. and foreign financial, trade, economic and other entities that have been the object of punitive measures, in the context of the worsening of the blockade and, especially, the financial persecution of Cuba.
Once again, the U.S. government has ignored the overwhelming international rejection of this criminal and failed policy against our nation, the Ministry said, qualifying the fine as an outrage against state sovereignty, and the rules of free trade and international law.
PhRMA Wants US To Use TAFTA/TTIP To Stop EU Releasing Basic Drug Safety Information
By Glyn Moody | Techdirt | July 3, 2014
Back in February, we reported that PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, was pushing to have the EU put on the US’s ‘Priority Watch List’ for its plans to disclose basic safety information about drugs. Now a letter from PhRMA obtained by the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel shows that US pharmaceutical companies are trying to use TAFTA/TTIP to undermine the new EU rules on making clinical trial data available (original in German):
A letter from the U.S. pharmaceutical association (PhRMA) to the TTIP chief negotiator for the United States, Douglas Bell, states: “The disclosure of confidential data from clinical and pre-clinical study files and patient data puts at risk the health system and the well-being of patients.” Why more transparency should harm the health systems, the lobby group doesn’t explain, but it makes clear to the negotiator how he should conduct the negotiations with the EU: the publication of commercially-sensitive data from a market authorization, the PhRMA letter said threateningly, is not only contrary to the rules of the American FDA, but also to the internationally-accepted intellectual property rights of the World Trade Organization, the so-called TRIPS Agreement. “PhRMA and its members call on the U.S. government to influence the EU at all levels in order to eliminate this problem.”
It’s hard to see how the problem can be “eliminated.” Back in April, the European Parliament adopted the Clinical Trials Regulation by a huge majority. Effective from 2016, it states that information from clinical study files “should not generally be considered commercially confidential” and must be made publicly available — exactly what PhRMA is lobbying against.
What’s worrying is that there’s already been one attempt to water down these requirements. Der Tagesspiegel suggests this may have been as a result of pressure from the European Commission, concerned about US reaction to them. It will be interesting to see how the Commission reconciles any US demands during the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations to remove the requirement to publish drug safety information with the new EU regulation that requires it.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Drone memo should reverse Gitmo convictions, attorneys claim
RT | July 3, 2014
Attorneys for a Canadian man who spent a decade detained by the United States military at Guantanamo Bay say details in the Obama administration’s recently released “drone memo” exonerates their client of war crimes.
Omar Khadr was only 15 years old when he was captured by American forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and taken to the Bagram Air Base, then Guantanamo, where he later pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war — according to military prosecutors, Khadr tossed a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer.
After being transferred to Canadian custody in 2012, Khadr said he pleaded guilty to war crimes because he was “left with a hopeless choice” of either accepting the charges or risk facing “continued abuse and torture” at the hands of his Gitmo jailers.
But in a recent court filing [PDF], lawyers for Khadr, now 27, say a just-published US Department of Justice memorandum contains information that directly challenges the American government’s case against their client.
Khadr’s attorneys wrote this week that the secret “drone memo” released by the White House last month — the DOJ document that the government relied on to justify the 2010 drone strike in Yemen that killed American citizen and suspected AL-Qaeda member Anwar Al-Awlaki — suggests prosecutors had no place to charge the Canadian teenager with murder in violation of the laws of war after he allegedly killed an American soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan.
The DOJ memo itself was a penned by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel in response to the question of whether Central Intelligence Agency officers — who are not members of the US military — can be blamed for war crimes by launching drone strikes. The memo was written in July 2010, and justified the strike that later that year killed Al-Awlaki.
According to a footnote within the memo, released June 24 of this year due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, “lethal activities conducted in accordance with the laws of war, and undertaken in the course of lawfully authorized hostilities, do not violate the laws of war by virtue of the fact that they are carried out in part by government actors who are not entitled to the combatant’s privilege.”
“That completely blows away one of the major prongs of the government’s theory in all these Guantanamo cases,” Sam Morison, Khadr’s Pentagon-based lawyer, told The Canadian Press during an interview on Wednesday this week.
Although Khadr was charged with violating the “US common law of war” that dates back centuries, his attorneys say the memo concerning CIA drone strikes suggest such legislation simply doesn’t exist.
“The whole purpose…was to evaluate whether the CIA agents were violating the law,” Morison said. “The only reasonable interpretation of that analysis is that there is no such thing (as the common law of war).”
On Monday this week, Morrison and the rest of Khadr’s legal counsel, filed a motion in Guantanamo’s appeals court asking that the conviction against their client be vacated.
“The Americans made up serious charges that they knew were false,” Dennis Edney, a Canadian based lawyer for Khadr, told the Toronto Star this week. “It’s a complete violation of everything we understand about justice.”
Should Khadr’s attorneys succeed, then a number of cases pertaining to current or former Guantanamo detainees accused of war crimes could be called into question. According to Human Rights Watch, however, only six of the 149 detainees at Gitmo face any formal charges — fewer than the number of prisoners who have died while held there in military custody.
Israeli Soldiers Publish Dozens Of Pictures, Posts, Calling For Murdering Arabs
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | July 3, 2014
Israeli soldiers published dozens of pictures on social media networks calling for murdering the Arabs, and murderous acts of what they describe as “revenge” against any person who is an Arab.
Most of the pictures that spread widely in recent days are actually for soldiers on active military duty, carrying Israeli-issued weapons, and calling on their government and political leadership “to declare an open season” for killing the Arabs.
One of the soldiers even called for “exterminating all Arabs” in a picture he posted, the Arabs48 news website has reported.
Most of the pictures published by the fanatic soldiers are “selfies”, taken by the soldiers themselves, in addition to pictures of military uniforms, weapons, and chains, and many wrote on the pictures threatening words such as revenge, or “what we want is revenge”, and some even wrote “give us the chance to wipe them out”.
Even before fanatic Israeli settlers abducted, burnt and murdered a Palestinian teen in occupied Jerusalem, on Tuesday evening, Israeli security officials warned that Jewish extremists could be planning acts of abduction and execution of Palestinians.
The settlers also attacked, beat and injured several Palestinians, including children, and even tried to kidnap a number of children before they kidnapped and killed Mohammad Khdeir, 16, in occupied Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Israeli fanatics were tweeting slurs and threats such as “death to Arabs”, and acts of what they called revenge, and calling for more violence “to prevent the Palestinians from attacking Israelis”.
In addition, fanatic extremist settler, Baruch Merzel, who lives in an illegal settlement in occupied Hebron, called for using excessive force against the Palestinians, and for more of what he called “acts of revenge”.
Extremist Israeli Politician and former member of Knesset, Michael Ben Ari, also called for acts of revenge against the Palestinian people.
Many Twitter hashtags were created calling for revenge and acts of murder, some just stating “I want to murder”, and “I want weeping Palestinian mothers”, “I want Widows”, and “I Want Orphaned Palestinian Children”.
Some tweets include direct calls for murdering Arab Member of Knesset, Hanin Zoabi, although death threats against her, and various Arab members of Knesset and politicians, are not something new.
Other posts state, “the time has come to punish all Arab families, to let every Palestinian know that his wife and children, and he himself, are subject to punishment, their homes will be demolished and families will be imprisoned”.
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Iran War: United States Military Versus Israel Firsters
By James Petras | November 27, 2007
Why must Jewish organizations be and be seen as the loudest drum-beaters of all? Why can we not bring ourselves to say that military intervention is not on the table at all? Why not stash it under the table, out of sight and mount instead a diplomatic assault? – Leonard Fein, Forward
Introduction
As the White House and Congress escalate their economic sanctions and military threats against Iran, top military commanders and Pentagon officials have launched a counter-offensive, opposing a new Middle East War. While some commentators and journalists, like Chris Hedges (Truthdig, November 13, 2007), privy to this high stakes inter-elite conflict, attribute this to a White House cabal led by Vice President Cheney, a more stringent and accurate assessment puts the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the center of the Iran war debate.
There is a great deal riding in this conflict – the future of the American empire as well as the balance of power in the Middle East. Equally important is the future of the US military and our already heavily constrained democratic freedoms. The outcome of the continuous and deepening confrontation between top US military officials and the Israel Firsters over US foreign policy in the Middle East has raised fundamental questions over self-determination, colonization, civilian primacy and military political intervention, empire or republic. These and related issues are far from being of academic interest only; they concern the future of the United States. … continue
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