A month ago only those who had met him knew Khader Adnan. Now all of Palestine and people across the world know his name and his cause.
Before December 17, when Khader was arrested for the eighth time from his home in Jenin, he was one of thousands of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories who had entered and re-entered administrative detention.
Administrative detention allows Israel to hold Palestinian prisoners without charging them, and potentially indefinitely. There is no specification as to why eachperson is held and the length of the detention has no legal limits.
In its very essence administrative detention is dehumanizing; its effects are to homogenize the Palestinian population and strip each man, woman and family that encounters it of his or her singularity and personal identity. Each person who enters administrative detention is the same as the one who came before, and the one who will follow. This endless cycle of incarceration paints all those who pass through it with the same brush, rendering the Palestinian population indistinct.
“The essence of totalitarian government and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.”
Hannah Arendt wrote these words after observing the trial of Nazi leader, Adolf Eichmann, in Jerusalem. What is perhaps so remarkable about this sentence is the ambiguity of whom she is speaking. Arendt’s words note that both the oppressors and the oppressed become agents of, or cogs in, a regime of totalitarianism. In this understanding, there is no room in a system of oppression for individuals.
But Khader’s unbearably long hunger strike has stopped this process, clearing the fog of bureaucracy that turns humans beings into mechanisms allowing them to disappear into the monochromatic fabric of administrated tyranny.
He told his lawyers, “I am a man who defends his freedom. If I die it will be my fate.”
Khader is a graduate student of Economics, a father of two girls, a husband to Randa, who is pregnant with their third child, and a member of Islamic Jihad. He is a political activist and a baker at a pita shop, Qabatiya, near his home in Jenin.
We cannot know the internal process by which Khader came to his decision to engage in a hunger strike that may end his life. He began the strike as soon as he was detained, so it seems certain that he was neither surprised that he was detained yet again, nor unprepared for a different and meaningful response.
In a letter he wrote from an Israeli hospital on day fifty-six of his strike, Khader stated, “The Israeli occupation has gone to extremes against our people, especially prisoners. I have been humiliated, beaten, and harassed by interrogators for no reason, and thus I swore to God I would fight the policy of administrative detention to which I and hundreds of my fellow prisoners fell prey.”
But we do know that when Khader entered administrative detention on 17 December, he made the decision to interrupt the routine of administrative detention, a system whose banality defines its power.
His reaction, to go on hunger strike, marked a radical departure from obediently waiting out his sentence, as the steady stream of Palestinian detainees had done before him. After Khader refused his meal, Israeli soldiers proceeded to beat him, rip hair from his beard, smear dirt from a soldier’s shoe onto his face, force him into painful stress positions and verbally degrade female members of his family.
Even as Khader nears the end of his sixty-second day, the weakened man remains shackled to his hospital bed by both his feet and one hand—in a strange and symbolic recognition of how threatening and powerful this act truly is.
The might of Khader’s humanity and his valiance in the face of cruelty will not be met with a just response. There is no just response a master can give to a slave—for justice would see the end of the master/slave relationship. And while Khader’s strike will not and cannot lead to the end of Israeli tyranny over Palestinians, it is certainly a profound denial of its power to erase the humanity of Palestinians.
Khader has shown the face of a Palestinian. He has etched his name onto the hearts and thoughts of all who became aware of his plight, and in his quiet, agonizing determination he shows the world the man who Israel murdered with its savage weapon of “administrative detention.” That is a profound feat and for it, we owe Khader Adnan our deepest gratitude.
Charlotte Silver is a journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank and currently the editor of The Palestine Monitor.
Each time a new measure that the city of Chicago is preparing for the coming NATO and G8 summits is unveiled, the tension in the city ratchets up a notch. The latest news comes in the form of reports that Chicago has purchased face shields, and may be considering the implementation of airborne surveillance technology.
As part of the expanded powers given to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for the May summits, the city has authority to accept contracts for goods or services without approval of the City Council or the expected competitive bidding process. The face shields and aerial surveillance technology are the first use of this allowance.
Chicago police officers, and any law enforcement the city chooses to deputize under the measures put in place for NATO/G8, will be equipped with 3,000 new face shields that “will fit easily over gas masks,” according to The Chicago Sun-Times.
The nearly $200,000 contract with Super Seer, a Colorado-based company, was made as an “emergency purchase for the G8 summit,” according to Super Seer President Steve Smith.
Chicagoist also reported that Chicago will get the latest in aerial surveillance equipment, according to the press release from a company called Vislink:
The airborne units will transmit to four strategically located ground-based receiver sites providing city-wide coverage and the ability to simultaneously receive real-time images from two aircraft for viewing at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) operations center. An additional three receive systems will be installed in the city’s mobile command vehicles to facilitate field operations.
These measures will be in addition to “snipers that will stand guard from above,” reported ABC. Overarching security jurisdiction for the summits, which have been designated a national security event, has already been handed over to the Secret Service.
American political scientist and author of the “Holocaust Industry,” Norman Finkelstein – known for his outspoken criticism of Israel and advocacy of Palestinian rights – showed his own fear of the paradigm shift in discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he called the BDS movement a ‘cult’ last week
The interview with Norman Finkelstein that circulated all over the web on Wednesday, in which he calls the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel a “cult” and compares it to Maoism is, I think, a milestone of sorts. Or, more accurately, the symptom of a milestone – a sign that the ground is shifting on Israel/Palestine issues.
Normal Finkelstein has made a career out of being the son of holocaust survivors who doesn’t shy away from picking a fight with Israel’s backers, and who unabashedly defends the rights of Palestinians. At times his controversial positions have set his career back, as when he was denied tenure at DePaul University. However, on balance he has certainly benefited, as a less combative scholar would today likely be simply one of thousands of obscure political science professors.
Everything about the interview is classic Finkelstein: his demeanor, his tendency to raise his voice, his adversarial, passionate approach, everything, that is, except for the things he’s saying. In a bizarre turn of events, he comes off as a Zionist bully, or for that matter, any other angry right wing pundit. He accuses activists for Palestinian civil rights of having a secret agenda, that of destroying Israel. He seems obsessed with some overarching concept of the Law as final arbiter in all matters, as though in this case we weren’t talking about a variety of laws, many of which at times contradict each other, and as though there isn’t a history of the law being written, enforced, and misinterpreted by political actors at the expense of the weak. His complaint that solidarity movement activists want to cherry pick which laws they respect is reminiscent of the claims made by white religious leaders that Dr. Martin Luther King so famously refuted in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Moreover, Finkelstein conveniently ignores the fact that international law recognizes refugees as having a right to return to their homeland. When the law is inconvenient, Finkelstein employs another classic conservative tactic, insisting that the public simply won’t accept the demands of the activists, that they need to be more pragmatic. Again, see “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent refutation of such logic.
Finkelstein even resorts to the desperate tactic of denial. When the interviewer puts forth his contention that the BDS movement is growing in popularity, Finkelstein rejects the idea out of hand, comparing the movement to some Maoist group he apparently was affiliated with at some point in his more idealistic youth.
I recently witnessed BDS’s growing clout at a meeting I attended with a woman working with an Israeli artist helping set up a series of salons in New York to explore and question the Birthright Israel programs, and the idea of a “birthright” in general. The project sounds very interesting, but the woman was visibly frustrated at their inability to find people willing to work with them in the city. They are partially funded by the Israeli Consulate, and as a result have had the proverbial door shut on them by activists, artists, and professors, Arab and Jew alike. This would have been incomprehensible five years ago, when I first heard of the BDS movement at the annual Bil’in conference and it was, at that point, divisive even among conference attendees.
Here is where things stand now. There is a paradigm shift in the works in how the Israel/Palestine conflict is understood and approached. There is an increasing consensus among Israel’s critics to see the issue as one of civil rights, rather than a conflict between two nations. Indeed, some BDS activists harbor a desire to see the end of the Jewish state, and others believe this is the inevitable outcome of a civil rights movement, whether they desire it or not. But many others, I would argue most Palestinians among them, simply don’t care about this abstract One State v. Two State argument. They just don’t think civil rights – indeed human rights – can be trumped by someone’s nationalist claims.
Finkelstein’s sudden hostility to the solidarity movement is a symptom of this paradigm shift. It is easy to rail against Israel when the existence of a Jewish nation-state seems guaranteed in perpetuity. But that guarantee seems to have eroded a bit. For some this will be scary. But then change always is. It was scary in South Africa. It was scary in the Jim Crow American South. For others it is liberating, and you can count among these an increasing number of Israelis who see coexistence – real coexistence, not the tenuous kind that reigns in Jaffa, among other places – as a more attractive guarantee to their security than the ethnocratic state. As the ground continues to shift, some of those who are afraid will flinch, and retreat to safer, more moderate arguments. Finkelstein flinched.
Sean O’Neill worked for Christian Peacemaker Teams from 2006-2009 in the South Hebron Hills supporting Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and continued settlement expansion. He is currently an MA candidate at New York University in Near Eastern Studies and Journalism.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has once again proven that the only thing Americans need fear, is their own government, with the latest “terror attack” foiled being one entirely of their own design.
USA Today reports that a suspect had been arrested by the FBI who was “en route to the U.S. Capitol allegedly to detonate a suicide bomb.” While initial reports portrayed the incident as a narrowly averted terrorist attack, CBS would report that a “high ranking source told CBS News the man was “never a real threat.”” The explosives the would-be bomber carried were provided to him by the FBI during what they described as a “lengthy and extensive operation.” The only contact the suspect had with “Al Qaeda” was with FBI officials posing as associates of the elusive, omnipresent, bearded terror conglomerate. The FBI, much like their MI5 counterparts in England, have a propensity for recruiting likely candidates from mosques they covertly run.
This is but the latest in a string of national terror plots carried out from start to finish by the FBI, who has made a business of approaching likely candidates and grooming them to carry out terror attacks. In September 2011, another FBI terror operation targeting the Capitol was “foiled,” involving a patsy who believed he was to take part in an assault that would involve multiple gunmen and even a drone bomber provided to him by the FBI.
And perhaps the most dubious of all, was the December 2010 Portland “Christmas Tree Bomber,” who was also approached by the FBI, provided demolition training, including a demonstration with live explosives performed in a Lincoln County park, and a van within which the patsy believed his handlers had provided him a bomb. The van with the inert device was parked next to a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony where the patsy attempted to detonate it remotely before being arrested by FBI agents.
It would later turn out that Portland had heroically withdrawn from the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, (JTTF), with the operation then being carried out behind Portland Mayor Sam Adam’s back only for its conclusion to humiliatingly catch the mayor off guard. The city of Portland would eventually rejoin the JTTF after the fallout from the FBI’s own terror plot.
The FBI is carrying out what is essentially a campaign of entrapment fueling what alternative news outlet Media Monarchy appropriately calls “terronoia.” And while it is true that these incidents are being used to foment a climate of fear to justify the ongoing “War on Terror,” there is a more sinister implication readers must be aware of.
In 1993 the FBI was carrying out an identical “sting operation” in New York City. The target was the World Trade Center, the weapon of choice would be a bomb-laden van, that like the above mentioned attacks, was supposed to contain an inert device. Helping the FBI was an Egyptian informant, Emad Salem, who over the course of the investigation grew suspicious of the federal agents and began recording his phone conversations with them.
From these recordings released by the New York Times, it turns out that the FBI switched out the inert device for real explosives at the last moment resulting in an attack that killed 6 and injured over a thousand. Despite this evidence, the 1993 bombing is still to this day attributed to “terrorists” with the FBI’s involvement muted if ever mentioned.
The implications are of course, with the FBI’s current nationwide stable of patsies being trained, directed, and provided material support to carry out attacks which the FBI then “foils,” is that at any given moment, any one of these operations can be switched “live” just as in 1993. The resulting carnage can then be used to manipulate public opinion just as it was in 1993, 2001, on 7/7 in London, and in Madrid, Spain in 2004.
The risk rises exponentially now with Israel being confirmed to be training, arming, and directing US State Department-listed terrorist organization, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK). The US has also played an extensive role in supporting MEK which is currently carrying out a campaign of terror inside of Iran.
This is part of a plot by the US indicated in its own policy papers, openly conspiring to provoke war with Iran. This is best encapsulated in this often cited quote from US policy think-tank, Brookings Institution:
“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) ”
-Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, pages 84-85.
The same report would go on to say:
“In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.”
-Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, page 52.
Clearly those in the West intent on striking Iran realize both the difficulty of obtaining a plausible justification, and the lack of support they have globally to carry out an attack even if they manage to find a suitable pretext. Brookings would continue throughout their report enumerating methods of provoking Iran, including conspiring to fund opposition groups to overthrow the Iranian government, crippling Iran’s economy, and funding US State Department-listed terrorist organizations (MEK) to carry deadly attacks within Iran itself. Despite these overt acts of war, and even considering an option to unilaterally conduct limited airstrikes against Iranian targets, Brookings noted there was still the strong possibility Iran would not allow itself to be sufficiently provoked:
“It would not be inevitable that Iran would lash out violently in response to an American air campaign, but no American president should blithely assume that it would not.”
The report continues:
“However, because many Iranian leaders would likely be looking to emerge from the fighting in as advantageous a strategic position as possible, and because they would likely calculate that playing the victim would be their best route to that goal, they might well refrain from such retaliatory missile attacks.”
-Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, page 95.
With this in mind, and with the 1993 World Trade Center attack as a historical precedent, it is almost a certainty that the West and Mossad are carrying out the current global wave of bombings now being blamed on Iran. This includes two failed bombings in India and Georgia, and a more recent incident in Bangkok, Thailand.
Law enforcement officers across America may be witnessing the FBI conducting through their JTTF what they believe to be a “sting operation” that may end up being the next major terrorist attack on US soil – and the pretext for certain war with Iran.
The fears of Portland Mayor Sam Adams were well founded, and it took an act of terror to strong-arm him and the people of Portland into capitulating to the federal JTTF program. Local law enforcement, for the safety of themselves and the people they are charged to serve and protect, would be wise to keep an eye on the FBI – apparently the most likely source from which terror plots both “foiled” and “successful” are hatched.
Because the Department of Homeland Security has asked parts of the public to report suspicious activity through the “Communities Against Terrorism” program , if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away, says LaTi.
LaTi lists 85 things that might get you on a watch list, if a Halloween G-man spots you in the act:
1) Use Google Maps to find your way around a strange city.
2) Use Google Maps to view photos of sports stadiums.
3) Install online privacy protection software on your personal computer.
4) Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others.
5) Shave your beard, dye your hair or alter your mode of dress.
6) Sweat.
7) Avoid eye contact.
8) Use a cell-phone camera in an airport, train station or shopping mall.
9) Seek to work alone or without supervision.
10) Appear to be out of place.
11) Have bright colored stains on your clothing.
12) Be missing any fingers.
13) Emit strange odors.
14) Travel an “illogical distance” to do your shopping.
15) Have someone pick you up from a beauty supply store.
33) Act impatient.
16) Be nervous.
17) Be a new customer from out of town.
18) Use a credit card in someone else’s name.
19) Chant environmental slogans near construction sites.
20) Enter a construction site after work hours.
21) Rent watercraft for an extended period.
22) Make comments involving radical theology.
23) Make vague or cryptic warnings.
24) Express anti-U.S. sentiments.
25) Purchase a quantity of prepaid or disposable cell phones.
26) Leave store without preprogramming disposable phones.
27) Be overly interested in satellite phones and voice privacy.
28) Ask questions about swapping SIM cards in cell phones.
29) Ask questions about how phone location can be tracked.
30) Rewire cell phone’s ringer or backlight.
31) Express out-of-place and provocative religious or political sentiments.
32) Purchase a police scanner, infrared device or 2-way radio.
33) Act impatient.
34) Drive a vehicle that appears to be overloaded.
35) Depart quickly when seen or approached.
36) Be a person “acting suspiciously.”
37) Make illegible notes on a map.
38) Take photos of the Statue of Liberty or other “symbolic targets.”
39) Overdress for the weather.
40) Ask questions in a hobby shop about remote controlled aircraft.
41) Demonstrate interest that does not seem genuine.
42) Request specific room assignments or locations at a hotel or motel.
43) Arrive at a lodging with unusual amounts of luggage.
52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby.
44) Refuse cleaning service.
45) Avoid the lobby of a hotel or motel.
46) Remain in your hotel or motel room.
47) Leave your hotel for several days, then return.
48) Leave behind clothing and toiletry items.
49) Park your vehicle in an isolated area.
50) Be observed switching a cell phone SIM card.
51) Be observed using multiple cell phones.
52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby.
53) Communicate through a PC game.
54) Download “extreme/radical” content.
55) Exhibit preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attacks.
56) Wear a backpack when the weather is warm.
57) Speak to mall maintenance personnel or security guards.
58) Make racist comments.
59) Mumble to yourself.
60) Pass along any anonymous threats you may receive.
61) Discreetly take a photo in a mass transit site.
62) Arrive with a group of people and split off from them.
63)Demand “identity privacy.”
64) Appear to endorse the use of violence in support of a cause.
65) Make bulk purchases of meals ready to eat.
66) Arrive in America from a land where militant Islamic groups operate.
67) Take a long absence for religious education or charity work.
68) Travel to countries where militant Islam rules.
69) Study technical subjects that would aid a terror operation.
70) Work in a field that “serves as a cover for preparing for an operation.”
71) Exhibit ire at global policies of the U.S.
72) Balk at providing “complete personal information.”
73) Provide multiple names on rental car paperwork.
74) Receive an unusual number of package deliveries.
75) Replace rental property locks without permission.
76) Modify your property to conceal storage areas.
77) Fail to pay rent for a storage unit in a timely manner.
78) Inquire about security systems at your storage facility.
79) Place unusual items in storage units or dumpsters.
80) Avoid contact with rental facility personnel.
81) Access storage facilities an unusual number of times.
82) Request deliveries of items directly to a storage unit.
83) Be part of a group requesting identical tattoos.
84) Request tattoos that could conceal extremist symbols.
85) Fly while appearing to be Muslim on September 11 of any year.
Today my colleague David Cronin wrote about the weasel worded response of the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, for comment on the case of Khader Adnan. Here is my response, which I sent her by email.
Forty-eight hours after my colleague David Cronin first requested it, your spokespersons found the time to issue a statement on the plight of Khader Adnan, who could die at any moment, shackled to his bed, now in his 62nd day of hunger strike against his arbitrary detention by Israel.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Carter Center, and numerous civil society groups all over the world have called for Israel to immediately release or charge Mr. Adnan, as well as the more than 300 other “administrative detainees” including 21 elected members of the Palestinian legislative council currently being held by Israel.
But you didn’t do that. Instead, you washed your hands of Khader Adnan, and to the extent that Khader Adnan has become a symbol of Palestinians’ desperate determination to stand up for their rights against overwhelming Israeli oppression, you washed your hands of all Palestinians too.
“The Israeli occupation has gone to extremes against our people, especially prisoners. I have been humiliated, beaten, and harassed by interrogators for no reason, and thus I swore to God I would fight the policy of administrative detention to which I and hundreds of my fellow prisoners fell prey.”
Addressing you and other members of the “international community” he wrote: “I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on.”
“It is time the international community and the UN support prisoners and force the State of Israel to respect international human rights and stop treating prisoners as if they were not humans.”
But you decided to look away. Your weasel-worded statement merely “requests the government of Israel to do all it can to preserve the health of Mr. Adnan and handle this case while abiding by all legal obligations under international law.” You even affirmed Israel’s right to use administrative detention.
What is this “case”? Let us remind ourselves that Mr. Adnan was abducted from his home at 3.30AM on 17 December. He was taken from his pregnant wife Randa and his two young daughters. He has not been charged with a crime, despite lengthy harsh interrogation, humiliation and abuse. This is what led him to go on hunger strike. He has not eaten since one week before Christmas.
“My father-in-law said to him: ‘We want you to stay alive. You cannot defeat this state on your own.’ He told him he wanted him to end the strike. I told him I wished he would drink a cup of milk. But he said: ‘I did not expect this from you. I know you are with me all the time. Please stop it…. I know my husband. He will not change his mind. I expect him to die.”
He is still alive and he wants to live. Randa Adnan recalled that her husband told one of his lawyers: “I do not want to go to oblivion or death. But I am a man who defends his freedom. If I die it will be my fate.”
You have frequently asserted that “human rights” are at the center of your policy. But we know that any such statements come with an asterisk. Palestinians are exempt from such rights, and Israel is exempt from any accountability. You proved that again today.
What makes this all the more revolting is that you spared no opportunity to call for the release of an Israeli occupation soldier who was held in Gaza, a soldier taken prisoner while bearing arms to enforce the deadly siege and occupation of Gaza.
Perhaps if Khader Adnan had been an armed Israeli occupation soldier, instead of a father who was at home with his family, you would have had more sympathy.
I have not lost hope that Mr. Khader can be saved. I dream of a day when people like you will lead instead of follow. But perhaps that isn’t your function.
What gives me hope still is that people all over Europe, all over the world, are joining the demands that Israel release Adnan, so he can return home.
Read some of their messages to him and his family. Perhaps you will rediscover some of the humanity that your shameful statement so painfully lacks, end your complicity and call on Israel to free this man and all other prisoners of its brutal, merciless, inhumane and EU-subsidized occupation.
An Israeli human rights organization has stated that during 2011, the number of Palestinian administrative detainees held by the Israel authorities increased sharply.
B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, noted that according to figures received from the Israel Prison Service, the number of Palestinian administrative detainees being held in Israel increased from 219 in January 2011, to 307 in December. In a press release published on its website, B’Tselem also noted that, “At the end of 2011, Israel was holding one minor in administrative detention.”
“Twenty-nine per cent of the detainees had been held for six months to one year; another 24 per cent from one to two years. Seventeen Palestinians had been in administrative detention continuously for two to four and a half years, and one man has been held for over five years.”
The organization stated that 2011, “marks the first time since 2008 that there was an increase in the number of administrative detainees after the number had fallen from 813 in January 2008, to 204 in December 2010.”
“Administrative detention is detention without trial, intended to prevent a person from committing an act that is liable to endanger public safety. … [Un]like a criminal proceeding, administrative detention is not intended to punish a person for an offense already committed, but to prevent a future danger. The manner in which Israel uses administrative detention is patently illegal. Administrative detainees are not told the reason for their detention or the specific allegations against them. Although detainees are brought before a judge to approve the detention order, most of the material submitted by the prosecution is classified and not shown to the detainee or his attorney. Since the detainees do not know the evidence against them, they are unable to refute it,” B’Tselem further stated.
The organization’s website also pointed out that the detainees also do not know when they will be released, although each detention order is specified for a year and a half maximum, but detention orders can be renewed indefinitely.
“Over 60% had their detention extended at least once beyond the first detention order. Administrative detention violates the right to liberty and the right to due process, since the detainee is incarcerated for a prolonged period on the basis of secret evidence, without charge or trial.”
The organization noted that over the years, Israel has held thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention for periods ranging from a few months to several years. There were times during the second intifada that Israel held over a thousand Palestinians in administrative detention. “Under international law, it is permissible to administratively detain a person only in exceptional cases, to prevent a grave danger that cannot be prevented through less harmful means. Israel’s use of administrative detention blatantly breaches these rules.” It called on the Israeli army to release all the administrative detainees or prosecute them.
A Paris university has withdrawn permission for a Palestine solidarity conference at the behest of the Zionist lobby.
In a statement issued today, the authorities at the University of Paris 8 said that the title of the conference – “Israel: an apartheid state?” – was “of a strongly polemical character.” Because there had been strong reactions to its theme, the university predicted there could be a “serious risk posed to public order” if the event scheduled for 27 and 28 February went ahead.
The complaint against the conference was made by the representative council for Jewish organizations in France, or CRIF as it’s better known. It had objected to the participation of Omar Barghouti, coordinator of the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Boycott Israel “shock”
Barghouti’s presence in Paris would be “shocking”, according to CRIF, because the ideas that he espouses have “been found on several occasions to constitute an offence of incitement to discrimination.”
CRIF’s claim is misleading. While a number of BDS activists have been accused (ridiculously) of flouting French laws on racism, there have also been important rulings that uphold the right to urge a boycott of Israel. In December last, a court in the eastern city of Mulhouse acquitted 12 campaigners who had urged customers of the supermarket Carrefour not to buy Israeli goods.
This isn’t the first time that CRIF has attempted to muzzle criticism of Israel on French campuses. Last year it strong-armed the authorities at the École normale supérieure (ENS), another Paris college, into forbidding a Palestine solidarity discussion. The big cheese at the ENS succumbed to the pressure but were rebuked for doing so by the French Council of State, which answers government queries on legal issues. By refusing to allocate a room to debate Israeli apartheid, the ENS didn’t respect the freedom of assembly and expression of its students, the Council found.
The “miracle” of Israel
Earlier this month, CRIF underscored its political clout, when Nicolas Sarkozy addressed its annual dinner. The president used the platform to call Israel a “miracle,” marvelling at how “from the debris [of the Holocaust], a democracy has been born.”
On his best behavior now that he is seeking re-election, Sarkozy saluted the “courage” of Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who he has called a “liar” in private conversations with Barack Obama (that were overhead by journalists).
Anyone who has been following events in that “miracle” called Israel will know that Netanyahu and his foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are waging a war of attrition against civil liberties. Aspects of that war have been exported to France, where calling out Israel as an apartheid state is considered a threat to public order or, worse, a crime.
Raymond McCartney, the former Irish hunger striker and current Member of Northern Ireland’s Legislative Assembly for Sinn Féin is the latest from Ireland to send a message of solidarity to Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan, who is entering his 63rd day of hunger strike protesting administrative detention, a policy started by the British and which is illegal under international law.
McCartney, along with six other prisoners (Brendan Hughes, Tom McFeeley, John Nixon, Sean McKenna, Tommy McKearney and Leo Green) participated in what became known as the First Hunger Strike in 1980 in order to attain political status under the British occupation.
After weeks of delays by the British in implementing the promised changes, and confusion among the prisoners and their supporters, it became apparent in January 1981 that political status was not to be granted. The prisoners, faced with no alternative, would be forced to embark on a new fast that would have widespread repercussions in Ireland and abroad.
The Second Hunger Strike is the more famous one, with ten Irish prisoners hunger striking until death.
Oliver Hughes, the brother of Francis Hughes who died in 1981 after 59 days of hunger strike, had sent his message of support a few days earlier. Tommy McKearney, mentioned above, was the first of the former hunger strikers to record a message of solidarity.
Raymond McCartney, who was on hunger strike for 53 days, says that he “understands what [Khader] is feeling at this particular moment in time, so our thoughts are with him and his family.”
He goes on to say:
”All of us here in Ireland in particular those elected representatives should be doing all what we can to put pressure on the Israeli government to release this man. He’s been held by a form of internment, again a tactic well known and understood by people in Ireland. We need to have this man released and we need to ensure that we don’t have a death in present of this Palestinian who is struggling for his human dignity and the dignity for all Palestinians.”
Khader Adnan was arrested from his home at 3:30am in front of his pregnant wife and two young daughters on December 17th. He has not been charged with anything, and as a result has embarked on a hunger strike since December 18th, using his stomach to protest the immoral administrative detention that the incongruent Israeli Prison System characterizes itself with.
Administrative detention is a procedure under which detainees are held without charge or trial for periods of up to six months, which can be renewed repeatedly. Under administrative detention, detainees’ rights to a fair trial as guaranteed by Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are consistently violated.
Khader Adnan is one of 309 Palestinians currently held in administrative detention by the Israeli authorities, including one man held for over five years and 24 Palestinian Legislative Council members. Hundreds of other Palestinian detainees and prisoners have joined Khader Adnan’s hunger strike.
After 62 days of Khader Adnan hunger striking, the international community’s silence has been duly noted. Khader Adnan is a living legend, an icon of resistance and is determined to carry through with his hunger strike until he his released or charged, declaring that “My dignity is more precious than my food.”
The Taser, the non-lethal law enforcement weapon that is meant to incapacitate criminals without causing great harm, has killed at least 500 people last decade. The real number of casualties might be even higher.
In the period between 2001 and early 2012, the stun-gun Taser devices used by law enforcement across America have claimed the lives of 500 people.
Amnesty International, the worldwide advocacy group that condemns torture and human rights violations, delivered the news this week with a report released Wednesday. In it, they reveal that the recent death of a Georgia man who died as a result of a Taser blast puts the body count brought on by the device at 500 in barely a decades’ time.
Despite being branded as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, hundreds of Americans have died from Taser blasts.
On Monday this week, law enforcement responded to a call of a drunk and disorderly person in Houston County, Georgia. When they arrived at a bar, the man in question, 43 year old Johnnie Kamahi Warren, was already on the ground. According to the local Dothan Eagle, a sheriff’s deputy still deployed blasts from a Taser gun on the man. Twice. He died moments later and now the officer who fired those shots is being investigated, all while on paid administrative leave.
Warren is number 500 on the list of Taser-related casualties, and Amnesty International says that number is too high to warrant a wake-up call this late in the game.
“Of the hundreds who have died following police use of Tasers in the United States, dozens and possibly scores of deaths can be traced to unnecessary force being used,” Susan Lee, Americas program director at Amnesty International, writes in a press release. “This is unacceptable, and stricter guidelines for their use are now imperative.”
Over the last decade, hundreds of others like Warren have died either directly or as a result of Taser blasts. Law enforcement continues to use the tools, however, and many feel that often that’s a decision that could be avoided.
In a 2008 report titled USA: Stun weapons in law enforcement, it was revealed that 90 percent of the Taser casualty cases studied involved a victim that was unarmed. Droves of Americans are left dead by Taser blasts every year and in many cases it is revealed that they posed little threat to the officers responsible.
One victim that was executed in 2009 by Taser was only 15 years old. Another person twice that age was victimized that same year by Tasers, but it took 19 blasts from trigger-happy cops to kill that man.
Another recent victim, Billy Walters III, was shot by Tasers in a separate Georgia incident. He was intoxicated when cops arrived, and although he repeatedly told them “I give up,” they acted by firing several blasts into the man.
Walters was hanging from a ledge during the assault. He fell and was later rendered paralyzed.
“Even if deaths directly from Taser shocks are relatively rare, adverse effects can happen very quickly, without warning, and be impossible to reverse,” Amnesty International’s Lee adds. “Given this risk, such weapons should always be used with great caution, in situations where lesser alternatives are unavailable.”
Even with this warning and countless others, however, Tasers continue to be a routine weapon used by law enforcement. After a 2008 incident that left a 17-year-old boy dead after a Taser attack, a federal court ruled that Taser International, the maker of the guns, did not provide adequate warning or instruction to the Charlotte Police Department responsible for the death, and that proper knowledge could have prevented the casualty from occurring.
A federal jury said that Taser International should compensate the family of the slain boy to the tune of $10 million. The manufacturer is planning on appealing that decision.
“I’m glad the verdict was in our favor, but we’re definitely not celebrating,” the mother of slain Darryl Wayne Turner told the Associated Press last year. “It cannot bring back my son’s life. Hopefully, it will help others in the future dealing with Tasers.”
A year later, however, the body count continues to rise.
Amnesty says that between the states of California, Florida and Texas, around 200 people have been killed by Tasers in the last decade in just those three states.The website Truth…Not Tasers put a figure of North American Taser-related deaths at 682 last year.
In a report published last week, members of the United Kingdom Parliament concluded that the Internet plays a major role in the radicalization of terrorists and called on the government to pressure Internet Service Providers in Britain and abroad to censor online speech. The Roots of Violent Radicalisation places the Internet ahead of prisons, universities, and religious establishments in propagating radical beliefs and ultimately recommends that the government “develop a code of practice for the removal of material which promotes violent extremism” binding ISPs.
While the Terrorism Act 2006 authorizes British law enforcement agencies to order certain material to be removed from websites, lawmakers on the Home Affairs Committee stated that “service providers themselves should be more active in monitoring the material they host.” Their report raises serious concerns that political and religious speech will be suppressed. Security expert Peter Neumann who testified before the Committee asked why websites like YouTube and Facebook can’t be as “effective at removing . . . extremist Islamist or extremist right-wing content” as they are at removing sexually explicit content or copyrighted material that violates their own terms of service.
Citing “persuasive evidence about the potential threat from extreme far-right terrorism” and lauding the recent conviction of four London men who used the Internet to plot a bombing of the London Stock Exchange, Parliament Members commended the report saying, “[it] tackles the threat from home-grown terrorism on and off line.” A spokesman for the House of Commons Home Office stated that the Committee would continue to “work closely with police and internet service providers to take Internet hate off the web.”
In an interview with the International Business Times, Trend Micro security director Rik Ferguson criticized the Committee’s recommendations and argued that making ISPs “judge, jury and executioner” imposes responsibilities on ISPs that rightfully belong to law enforcement. “Material of a political or religious nature is by definition much more difficult to define and much more difficult to police without crossing the line to impact on freedom of expression,” Ferguson stated.
EFF believes that it is not the role of intermediaries to serve as gatekeepers for law enforcement. Fortunately, we’re not alone: the UK’s Internet Service Providers’ Association argues that “ISPs are not best placed to determine what constitutes violent extremism and where the line should be drawn. This is particularly true of a sensitive area like radicalisation, with differing views on what may constitute violent extremist.” Indeed–the strategy set forth by the Committee defines extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values.” ISPs and other intermediaries must not be charged with determining what constitutes extremism, particularly when the definition of such is so vague. This type of state-mandated online censorship is inherently corruptible, especially when it is justified to combat national security threats.
An Israeli military force invaded the offices and homes of three Palestinian members of Parliament and confiscated their computers and cell phones in the early hours of Thursday morning, Palestinian media sources reported.
According to the source, Israeli troops broke into the house and office of Ibrahim Dahbour, Khaled Suleiman and Khaled Yahia in the West Bank city of Jenin and were interrogated by an Israeli intelligence officer.
The invading troops took the cell phones, computers and some private documents form the MP’s homes without showing any search warrant.
Khaled Suleiman said the soldiers told him that they are closing the office until further notice, but gave him no written official order proving their claim.
Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.
By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a four-thousand-year clinical record disappeared from mainstream medicine within four decades of the Flexner Report — and what the honest account of silver looks like once that record is reassembled.
Colloidal Silver reconstructs the pre-1938 record from The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the primary literature of the era; recovers Robert Becker’s bioelectric framework from the regeneration research the pharmaceutical model buried; and places silver inside a practical terrain-paradigm guide to its current place — in water, on the body, inside the body, and in the chronic conditions where antibiotics have failed. … continue
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