US Zionists sharply divided over how to censor Palestine speech on campus
By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 10/17/2011
Sharp disagreements have intensified among leading US pro-Israel groups on the best methods to suppress criticism and discussion of Israel’s apartheid, occupation, colonization and human rights abuses, or support for Palestinian rights, on US college campuses.
The dispute centers on the use of US civil rights statutes to lodge complaints against universities, alleging that discussion of Israel amounts to an infringement of the civil rights of Jewish students who might be made “uncomfortable” by hearing such discussions.
The Forward reports:
Simmering divisions within the Jewish community are expected to come to a head this month over efforts to use federal civil rights laws to sanction some forms of alleged anti-Israel activity on campus.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, American Jewry’s primary umbrella group for addressing domestic issues, will vote at its upcoming board meeting on a resolution that, in its current draft, cautions Jewish groups to guard against suppressing free speech and to invoke civil rights laws only after exhausting other measures.
“Lawsuits and threats of legal action should not be used to censor anti-Israel events, statements, and speakers in order to ‘protect’ Jewish students,” the draft resolution warns, “but rather for cases which evidence a systematic climate of fear and intimidation coupled with a failure of the university administration to respond with reasonable corrective measures.”
In September, The Electronic Intifada revealed that a leading pro-Israel group, StandWithUS, has been colluding with Israeli government officials to bring just such a civil rights complaint against Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the university once attended by Rachel Corrie.
Earlier this month, the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation into Columbia University over a claim that a Jewish student had been “steered” away by an adviser from a class taught by Professor Joseph Massad. Massad has been the target of persistent defamation campaigns by pro-Israel groups.
The campaign to abuse US civil rights law to censor unfavorable speech and scholarship about Israel is the brainchild of Kenneth Marcus of the Institute for Jewish Community Research, who is also a member of the pro-Israel group Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Marcus was previously head of the OCR.
Blogger Richard Silverstein has done much to shed light on what he calls Marcus’ “campus Jihad against anti-Israelism.”
Marcus, Silverstein observes,
is one of the key intellectual authors of a new campaign to exploit newly written federal civil rights statutes (Title VI) which forbid campuses from creating a hostile environment for various ethnic and religious groups, including Jews. Marcus and his friends at Stand With Us are uniting to explore campuses where they can apply their new theory. To do so, they must find campuses where they can recruit sufficient Jewish students to complain that they are afraid to be Jews on campus because of the environment of fear and intimidation created by pro-Palestinian groups.
It might be added that Marcus’ strategy can be seen as inherently anti-Semitic because it assumes incorrectly and historically that all criticism of Israel equals criticism of Jews. It also infringes on the rights of all students, including the many Jewish students and faculty, who want to talk, study and act for justice and equality in Palestine. In other words, it falsely stereotypes all Jews as mindless supporters of Israel’s atrocious policies and associates them with those policies.
It seems that at least some in the pro-Israel community fear that this aggressive campaign of censorship and intimidation may do more to cast Israel’s defenders as thugs, than to improve Israel’s image on campuses.
Israeli army arrests Popular Committee official in Beit Ummar early dawn raid
WAFA | October 11, 2011
HEBRON – Israeli army Tuesday arrested Ahmad Abu Hashem, secretary of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Ummar, a village north of Hebron in the southern West Bank, and took him to an unknown destination, said local sources.
The Committee’s spokesman, Mohammad Awad, told WAFA that Israeli army units raided Abu Hashem’s house, beat him and his sons, then arrested Abu Hashem and his son Yousef, 18, who suffered from bruises and injuries to his head and body.
Israeli soldiers used police dogs against Abu Hashem, spreading panic among his family members, and rummaged through his house, said Awad.
Meanwhile, four Palestinian minors from Azzun, a town east of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, were arrested early Tuesday, according to family members.
Israeli soldiers raided the town at dawn, inspected the youths’ family homes and arrested them, added the families, stressing that two of them are only 14 years old while a third is 15.
A Dangerous Precedent
By Ron Paul | October 10, 2011
According to the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, Americans are never to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Constitution is not some aspirational statement of values, allowing exceptions when convenient, but rather, it is the law of the land. It is the basis of our Republic and our principal bulwark against tyranny.
Last week’s assassination of two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, is an outrage and a criminal act carried out by the President and his administration. If the law protecting us against government-sanctioned assassination can be voided when there is a “really bad American”, is there any meaning left to the rule of law in the United States? If, as we learned last week, a secret government committee, not subject to congressional oversight or judicial review, can now target certain Americans for assassination, under what moral authority do we presume to lecture the rest of the world about protecting human rights? Didn’t we just bomb Libya into oblivion under the auspices of protecting the civilians from being targeted by their government? Timothy McVeigh was certainly a threat, as were Nidal Hassan and Jared Lee Loughner. They killed people in front of many witnesses. They took up arms against their government in a literal way, yet were still afforded trials. These constitutional protections are in place because our Founders realized it is a very serious matter to deprive any individual of life or liberty. Our outrage against even the obviously guilty is not worth the sacrifice of the rule of law. Al-Awlaki has been outspoken against the United States and we are told he encouraged violence against Americans. We do not know that he actually committed any acts of violence. Ironically, he was once invited to the Pentagon as part of an outreach to moderate Muslims after 9/11. As the US attacks against Muslims in the Middle East and Central Asia expanded, it is said that he became more fervent and radical in his opposition to US foreign policy.
Many cheer this killing because they believe that in a time of war, due process is not necessary – not even for citizens, and especially not for those overseas. However, there has been no formal declaration of war and certainly not one against Yemen. The post-9/11 authorization for force would not have covered these two Americans because no one is claiming they had any connection to that attack. Al-Awlaki was on a kill list compiled by a secret panel within President Obama’s National Security Council and Justice Department. How many more Americans citizens are on that list? They won’t tell us. What are the criteria? They won’t tell us. Where is the evidence? They won’t tell us.
Al-Awlaki’s father tried desperately to get the administration to at least allow his son to have legal representation to challenge the “kill” order. He was denied. Rather than give him his day in court, the administration, behind closed doors, served as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.The most worrisome aspect of this is that any new powers this administration accrues will serve as precedents for future administrations. Even those who completely trust this administration must understand that if this usurpation of power and denial of due process is allowed to stand, these powers will remain to be expanded on by the next administration and then the next. Will you trust them? History shows that once a population gives up its rights, they are not easily won back. Beware.
Obama: The Assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki by Fiat
By James Petras :: 10.06.2011
The killing of Anwar al-Awlaki a U.S citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on September 30 has been publicized by the mass media, President Obama and the usual experts on al-Qaeda as “a major blow to the jihadist network founded by Osama bin Laden” US officials called Awlaki “the most dangerous figure in Al-Qaeda” (Financial Times Oct. 1 and 2, 2011).
There is ample evidence to suggest that the publicity surrounding the killing of al-Awlaki has greatly exaggerated his political importance and is an attempt to cover up the declining influence of the US in the Islamic world. The State Department’s declaration of a major victory serves to exaggerate US military capacity to defeat its adversaries. The assassination serves to justify Obama’s arbitrary use of death squads to execute overseas US critics and adversaries by executive fiat denying the accused elementary judicial protections.
Myths About al-Awlaki
Al-Awlaki was a theological blogger in a small, poor Islamic country (Yemen). He was confined to propagandizing against Western countries, attempting to influence Islamic believers to resist Western military and cultural intervention. Within Yemen, his organizational affiliations were with a minority sector of the mass popular opposition to US backed dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. His fundamentalist group was largely influential in a few small towns in southern Yemen. He was not a military or political leader in his organization, dubbed by the West as “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” (AQAP). Like most of what the CIA calls “Al-Qaeda”, AQAP was a local autonomous organization, meaning that it was organized and controlled by local leaders even as it expressed agreement with many other loosely associated fundamentalist groups. Awlaki had a very limited role in the Yemeni groups’ military and political operations and virtually no influence in the mass movement engaged in ousting Saleh. There is no evidence, documented or observable, that he was “a very effective propagandist” as ex-CIA and now Brookings Institution member Bruce Riedal claims. In Yemen and among the mass popular movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain or elsewhere his followers were few and far between. One “expert” cites such intangibles as his “spiritual leadership”, which is as good a way as any to avoid the test of empirical evidence: apparently a crystal ball or a tarot read will do.
Given the paucity of evidence demonstrating Awlaki’s political and ideological influence among the mass movements in North Africa, the Middle East or Asia, the US intelligence agencies claim his “real influence was among English-speaking jihadi, some of whom he groomed personally to carry out attacks on the US.”
In other words Washington’s casting Awlaki as an “important threat” revolves around his speeches and writings, since he had no operational role in organizing suicide bomb attacks – or at least no concrete evidence has been presented up to now.
The intelligence agencies “suspect” he was involved in the plot that dispatched bombs in cargo aircraft from Yemen to Chicago in October 2010. US intelligence claims he provided a “theological justification” via e-mail for US army Major Nidal Malik’s killing of 13 people at Fort Hood. In other words, like many US philosophical writers and legal experts like Princeton’s Michael Walzer and Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz, Awlaki discussed “just wars” and the “right” of violent action. If political writings and speeches of publicists are cited by an assassin as the bases for their action, should the White House execute, leading US Islamophobes like Marilyn Geller and Daniel Pipes, cited as inspiration by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Brevik? Or does their Zionist affiliation provide them immunity from Navy Seal assaults and drone missiles?
Even assuming that the unsubstantiated “suspicions” of the CIA, MI 16 and the Al Qaeda “experts” are correct and Awlaki had a direct or indirect hand in “terrorist action” against the US, these activities were absurdly amateurish and abject failures, certainly not a serious threat to our security. The “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s effort to ignite bomb materials on a flight to Detroit, December 25, 2009, led to roasting his testicles! Likewise the bombs dispatched in cargo aircraft from Yemen to Chicago in October 2010 were another bungled job.
If anything the Yemenite AQAP’s hopeless, hapless operational planning served to highlight its technical incompetence. In fact according to Mutallab’s own admission, published on NBC news at the time, Awlaki played no role in the planning or execution of the bomb attack. He merely served to refer Mutallab to the Al Qaeda organization.
Clearly, Awlaki was a minor figure in Yemen’s political struggles. He was a propagandist of little influence in the mass movements during the “Arab Spring”. He was an inept recruiter of English-speaking would be bombers. The claims that he planned and “hatched” two bomb plots (Financial Times, October 1 and 2, page 2) are refuted by the confession of one bomber and the absence of any corroboratory evidence regarding the failed cargo bombs.
The mass media inflate the importance of Awlaki to the stature of a major al-Qaeda leader and subsequently, his killing as a “major psychological blow” to world-wide jihadists. This imagery has no substance. But the puff pieces do have a very important propaganda purpose. Worse still, the killing of Awlaki provides a justification for extra-judicial state serial assassinations of ideological critics of Anglo-American leaders engaged in bloody colonial wars.
Propaganda to Bolster Flagging Military Morale
Recent events strongly suggest that the US and its NATO allies are losing the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban: top collaborator officials are knocked off at the drop of a Taliban turban. After years of occupation, Iraq is moving closer to Iran rather than the US. Libya in the post-Gaddafi period is under warring mercenary forces squaring off for a fight for the billion dollar booty. Al Qaeda prepares battle against neo-liberal expats and Gaddafi renegades.
Washington and NATO’s attempt to regain the initiative via puppet rulers in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen is being countered by a “second wave” of mass pro-democracy movements. The “Arab Spring” is being followed by a “hot autumn”. Positive news and favorable outcomes for Obama are few and far between. He has run out of any pseudo-populist initiative to enchant the Arab-Islamic masses. His rhetoric rings hollow in the face of his UN speech, denying recognition of an independent Palestinian state. His groveling before Israel is clearly seen as an effort to bolster his re-election campaign financing by wealthy Zionists.
Diplomatically isolated and domestically in trouble over failed economic policies, Obama pulls the trigger and shoots an itinerant Muslim preacher in Yemen to send a “message” to the Arab world. In a word he says, “If you, the Arabs, the Islamic world, wont’ join us we can and will execute those of you who can be labeled “spiritual mentors” or are suspected of harboring terrorists.”
Obama’s defense of systematic killing of ideological critics, denying US constitutional norms of judicial due process to a U.S citizen and in blatant rejection of international law defines a homicidal executive.
Let us be absolutely clear what the larger implications are of political murder by executive fiat. If the President can order the murder of a dual American-Yemeni citizen abroad on the bases of his ideological-theological beliefs, what is to stop him from ordering the same in the US? If he uses arbitrary violence to compensate for diplomatic failure abroad what is to stop him from declaring a “heightened internal security threat” in order to suspend our remaining freedoms at home and to round up critics?
We seriously understate our “Obama problem” if we think of this ordered killing merely as an isolated murder of a “jihadist” in strife torn Yemen … Obama’s murder of Awlaki has profound, long term significance because it puts political assassinations at the center of US foreign and domestic policy. As Secretary of Defense Panetta states, “eliminating home grown terrorists” is at the core of our “internal security”.
Revealed: UK government plotted with Israel lobby to ban Salah
By Asa Winstanley – The Electronic Intifada – 6 October 2011
Birmingham – As Palestinian leader Sheikh Raed Salah’s appeal against deportation concluded in a Birmingham court this week, new details of the UK government’s deep links to the Israel lobby have emerged.
This follows a separate High Court ruling in London on 30 September, when a judicial review into the government’s June imprisonment of Salah ruled he was entitled to damages for “wrongful detention.”
While a panel of two immigration judges is expected to deliver a verdict within 10 days of the hearing, internal government emails obtained by The Electronic Intifada show Home Secretary Theresa May moved quickly to ban Salah not long after the pro-Israel group Community Security Trust (CST) sent a secret report on him. The report contained quotes ascribed to Salah with the word “Jews” inserted into his rhetorical attacks on Israeli occupation forces, in an attempt to paint him as an anti-Semite.
In court on Monday, government barrister Neil Sheldon said, “There is no question of this being a doctored quote, or a cooked-up quote,” although he conceded that the words “Jews” did not appear in the original poem written by Salah. A Jerusalem Post report cited by the government against Salah “may well have got it wrong,” Sheldon stated (“Civil Liberties,” 20 June 2009).
But Sheldon seemed to argue that this fact did not matter because that is how the poem was reported in a “respectable media outlet in Israel.”
This and other similar misquotes were then used by May as a principle source for her banning order against Salah. Salah entered the UK legally on 23 June. Neither he nor his organizers were aware of the ban, because the government had not managed to serve it on him in time.
Conservative Party funder on board of group that pushed for Salah to be banned
The Electronic Intifada can reveal that Poju Zabludowicz, a billionaire real estate magnate who bankrolls the ruling Conservative Party (to which May belongs), is named as a CST board member in a report by an expert witnesses called by Salah’s lawyers. The emails obtained by The Electronic Intifada appear to show that CST played a key role in the banning of Salah.
As well as personally funding UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign for the Conservative Party leadership, Zabludowicz’s family used to own Israeli arms company Soltam (now part of Elbit). And he has owned a minority holding in British Israel, a company with several malls — including one in the illegal West Bank settlement Maaleh Adumim.
David Miller, a sociology professor from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, was called by Salah’s lawyers to testify as an expert witness in the case. His report on the CST was entered into evidence. It includes a list names of the CST advisory board from June 2010. In court, he said the list was available in the public domain, and later showed The Electronic Intifada where it could be viewed publicly.
A spokesperson for the CST refused to comment when asked by The Electronic Intifada if Zabludowicz or several other members of the list were still board members. Sheldon said Miller’s conclusions that the CST is not a reliable source on the matter belied the list, which includes several members of parliament, lords and former and current senior police officers.
Pro-Israel group CST pushed privately for Salah to be banned
In a 17 June email to the deputy director of the Special Cases Directorate (SCD) of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), Michael Whine, a CST director, said he was writing following the request of an official from another government department. Whine attached a CST report on Salah “who plans a speaking tour of the UK from the end of next week.”
The report claimed that Salah’s “record of provocative acts and statements carry a risk that his presence in the UK could well have a radicalizing impact on his audiences.”
Only 17 minutes after this report was sent, Faye Johnson, Theresa May’s private secretary, emailed SCD Director Andrew Jackson about “a parliamentary event on 29 June” at which Salah was due to speak. Johnson then asked if there was “anything that we can do to prevent him from attending (e.g. could we exclude him on the grounds of unacceptable behavior?).” It is not clear where May had first heard about Salah.
A few hours later, Jonathan Rosenorn-Lanng at the SCD sent an email asking UKBA colleagues for more information on Salah that could be used to exclude him. But it seems this request was a token, as Rosenorn-Lanng insisted he would be “going with what I’ve got in any event” — seemingly a reference to the CST report on Salah.
Pro-Israel lobby group asked for court sources
The previous Monday, Rosenorn-Lanng was the only witness called by the government lawyers in their response to the appeal. Under cross-examination, he had said that, although he was “not expected to be an expert on the actual issues I’m dealing with,” the recommendations he presented to the Home Secretary on exclusions from the UK were checked by people who were experts.
In court, Sheldon also named pro-Israel lobby group the Board of Deputies of British Jews as a further source for the document put together by Rosenorn-Lanng. This document led to May personally signing the order for Salah’s exclusion from the UK.
But it’s likely this is a confusion borne of out of Michael Whine’s dual roles at both the CST and the Board of Deputies. As well as being director of “Government and International Affairs” at the CST, Whine also holds a director’s position at the Board of Deputies and has written a journal article for the CST on European governmental responsibility toward “combating anti-Semitism” (“Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Diplomatic Progress in Combating Antisemitism,” 2010 [PDF]).
Although Whine sent the report on Salah from a CST email address on 17 June, and with the CST mentioned in his signature, the deputy director of the SCD referred to him as “Mike Whine at the Board of Deputies.”
Although CST predecessor, the Community Security Organization, used to be part of the Board of Deputies, the CST established itself as a charity independent of the Board in 1994 following certain changes in charity law. The CST was granted a special dispensation by the Charity Commission allowing it to withhold public release of the names of its trustees.
Goverment’s only source was anti-Palestinian group
Salah’s barrister Raza Husain had asked why Salah’s hosts in the country had not been consulted by the government or their advice sought on Salah. He also asked why they had not consulted a group like Jews For Justice For Palestinians, who issued a statement in favor of Salah’s right to speak in the country.
Pressed by Husain on this point over the whole three days of hearings, the government was unable to point to a single outside group whose advice it had drawn on, apart from the CST and the Board of Deputies (taken in the context of the emails, it seems both were via Whine).
Husain told the court he was not aware of any primary document in the report to Theresa May compiled by Rosenorn-Lanng that was not from the CST (apart from a “communities impact assessment” from the another government department). Sheldon’s reply was that, if that was the state of the evidence, “that’s the evidence.”
He later said it was “simply not the case” that everything from the CST was “taken at face value,” and he gave the example that a CST report referred to Salah’s presence on the Mavi Marmara as part of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Rosenorn-Lanng had said the government discounted an accusation used in a CST submission that Salah might have been involved in indoctrination that led to an attack on Israeli naval commandos as a “rumor.”
But it also emerges from the emails that even May recognized that the case was “very finely balanced.” May’s private secretary Faye Johnson said as much in an email dated 23 June, 4:26pm, to SCD Deputy Director Rod McLean, thanking him for his submission. This submission is seemingly the documents assembled by Rosenorn-Lanng, who had in court described the CST as a “principal source.” But once Salah had been arrested on 28 June, some civil servants advised May against deportation because he had a ticket to leave the country on 5 July anyway, and arrest would only attract more attention to the case.
Husain’s argument was: if the case was so finely balanced even when only a report from a group biased against Salah had been received, how did the scales tip now that Salah’s side of the story had been heard in court?
Salah’s exclusion order an an affront to free speech
Sheldon’s argument was that the exclusion decision taken by May was something she is democratically accountable for, and that the Tribunal should be “very slow” to substitute its own view for hers, because it had an incomplete jurisdiction. He argued that the accusations against Salah in the document assembled by Rosenorn-Lanng were not counts of an indictment that had to be proved, and that the question for the Tribunal was, was there sufficient evidence for May to base her decision on. He characterized the evidence as disputed.
Husain took exception to that, saying the judges had to deal with the material on its own terms. He argued that the true aim of the exclusion order was to block free speech, pointing to Faye Johnson’s emailed reference to Salah’s scheduled meeting in the Houses of Parliament.
Sheldon argued that Salah’s presence in the country would have the effect of radicalizing “elements of the Muslim community.” Sheldon said Salah had been convicted in Israel of funding charities linked to Hamas and that it was a misrepresentation of a revised indictment to say this related only to charitable work.
Asked by The Electronic Intifada for a response to the accusations heard in court, Mark Gardner of the CST wrote, “It is a disgraceful slur to claim that CST’s attitudes to antisemitism are based upon the assumed religion or ethnicity of those concerned. We completely reject any insinuation that CST used ‘doctored’ quotes. You should note that there was a Guardian article which carried similar accusations to those you are making. They changed it following our legal intervention.”
This last comment seems to be a reference to a Guardian article by David Hearst, who also had access to some of the government emails, to which an amendment notice is appended (“May warned of weak case against Sheikh Raed Salah,” 26 September 2011).
Should Salah win his appeal, the government is likely to challenge the ruling. Since he is a well-known leader of peaceful popular resistance against the Israeli occupation, UK government collusion with Israeli authorities has already caused a great deal of damage to Britain’s reputation in the Arab world. A deportation would only increase such damage.
When the law has just been changed to allow Israel’s former foreign minister and war crimes suspect Tzipi Livni to freely visit Britain even while Salah remains on restrictive bail, one can accuse the UK of rank hypocrisy.
~
Asa Winstanley is a freelance journalist based in London who has lived in and reported from occupied Palestine. He edited the book “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation,” out in October. His website is www.winstanleys.org.
Action urged as Israel punishes dozens of hunger-striking political prisoners
Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 10/04/2011
Thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip rallied in recent days in support of political prisoners who are protesting worsening conditions in Israeli detention. Thousands of prisoners are said to be taking part in the civil disobedience protests which began on 27 September.
The Electronic Intifada reported in August that the Israeli government was imposing harsher measures on Palestinian political prisoners by banning academic study. Ending the abuse of solitary confinement is also a key demand of the civil disobedience campaign.
Another demand is the resumption of family visits. As The Electronic Intifada reported earlier this year, Palestinians in Gaza have escalated the regular sit-ins at the International Committee of the Red Cross because Israel has denied visits to imprisoned family members — a collective punishment measure leveled after an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza.
National unity amongst political prisoners
While national unity efforts between the Hamas and Fatah parties remain at an impasse, detainees affiliated with the two groups are uniting with prisoners associated with the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who initiated the civil disobedience campaign.
Ma’an News Agency reported yesterday:
The rallies were held as inmates saw through the seventh consecutive day of a hunger strike to protest against worsening conditions for Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.…
On Sunday, prisoner support group Addameer said Palestinian detainees affiliated to Hamas and Fatah were joining the Popular Front prisoners who launched the strike, protesting the treatment of PFLP leader Ahmad Saadat, who has been held in isolation for three years.
Director of the Abu Jihad center for prisoners affairs at al-Quds university Fahd Abu al-Hajj said Sunday that 3,000 or so prisoners were taking part.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli Prisons Authority of the number of prisoners who refused food last week, but by Monday, IPA spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said “160 prisoners” were observing a hunger strike.
Israeli Prison Service punishing protesting prisoners
The Palestinian human rights group Addameer (addameer.info) reported on Sunday that prisoners are being punished for their civil disobedience protest. Punishment includes transferring prisoners, as well as withholding salt water from prisoners waging hunger strikes.
Addameer stated:
On 27 September 2011, Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons announced the start of a campaign of disobedience to protest an escalating series of punitive measures taken against them by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) in recent months. The campaign is composed of several elements, including a hunger strike and refusal to cooperate with a number of IPS rules, such as wearing prison uniforms and participating in multiple daily roll calls.
As of 2 October, all Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) prisoners — who launched the campaign — in all Israeli prisons were participating in the campaign on a full-time basis, including an open-ended hunger strike. The campaign has now gained further momentum, with prisoners from other political factions gradually joining the campaign on a part-time basis, whereby they will take part in acts of disobedience three days a week (Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday). In Ramon, Eshel and Nafha prisons, Hamas leaders joined the campaign on 1 October on a part-time basis, and in Ashqelon prison, Fatah and Hamas prisoners are also participating on a part-time basis. In Ofer and Naqab prisons, although a number of prisoners from other political factions have already joined in the campaign on a part-time basis, representatives of all factions will reach a final decision on the matter on 4 October. In Ofer prison in particular, it is estimated that by the end of the week, 250 Hamas prisoners will join the strike on a part-time basis.
The IPS has already started punishing participating prisoners in an effort to undermine the campaign. On 1 and 2 October respectively, it transferred 28 PFLP prisoners from Naqab prison and 6 PFLP prisoners from Ofer prison to as-of-yet unknown locations. In Naqab prison, the IPS also confiscated the hunger-striking prisoners’ only nourishment, salted water.
Addameer issues action appeal
Addameer issued an email alert yesterday, urging action to support the demands of Palestinian political prisoners:
On 27 September 2011, Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons announced the start of a campaign of disobedience to protest an escalating series of punitive measures taken against them by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) in recent months. The campaign is composed of several elements, including a hunger strike and refusal to cooperate with a number of IPS rules, such as wearing prison uniforms and participating in multiple daily roll calls.…
The Palestinian prisoners have made several key demands, some of which are listed below:
– End the abusive use of isolation;
– End restrictions on university education in the prisons;
– End the denial of books and newspapers;
– End the shackling to and from meetings with lawyers and family members;
– End the excessive use of fines as punishment;
– And ultimately end all forms of collective punishment, including the refusal of family visits, night searches of prisoners’ cells, and the denial of basic health treatment.
TAKE ACTION!
In response to these demands, we are calling on all activists and supporters of human rights and justice for the Palestinians to take action in solidarity with the hunger strikers. There are two important ways in which to take action:
– Organize a protest, silent vigil or similar public action outside the Israeli embassy in your country and highlight the demands of the political prisoners. Addameer can send you further information on particular prisoners who are engaged in the hunger strike to support your action.
– Write a letter to the Israeli Prime Minister expressing your concern for the hunger strikers and demanding an end to the arbitrary treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
Please keep Addameer informed of any action you are planning to take and any response given by the Israeli authorities.
Bahraini woman doctor tells of jail abuse
Bahraini authorities have jailed dozens of medics for treating injured anti-government protesters
Press TV – October 3, 2011
A Bahraini woman doctor has detailed the humiliations and beatings she suffered after being arrested on suspicion of supporting anti-government protests.
Roula al-Saffar says her interrogators tried to force her and other medical staff to confess to plotting to overthrow the Manama regime.
Saffar said that she was tortured by electric shocks and beaten by cables.
She also said that she heard the screams of inmates who were being tortured by interrogators in other cells.
Her remarks came days after another female Bahraini doctor, Nada Dhaif, recounted mistreatment at the hands of government’s forces. Dhaif was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for treating injured anti-regime protesters at Salmaniya hospital.
”It was 03:00 a.m., when they broke into my house. I was taken away blindfolded and handcuffed. I didn’t know that they were security forces,” she said adding that ”They were in civilians clothes. So, I thought I was actually kidnapped”.
Dhaif said, ”I was thinking that I was being taken to an unknown place. Later on, I came to know that they were from the Central Investigation Department (CID)”.
”Immediately after I was taken away…I was treated with beating and cursing”. She said the torturers had even touched her face, using ‘electrocuters.’
”I was crying and I lost consciousness two or three times during this time in the military clinic.”
Many of those released from jails in Bahrain have accused the Manama regime of serious abuse. Some also charge that a member of Bahrain’s royal family named Sheikha Noora bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa beat prisoners with sticks and rubber hoses and gave them electric shocks.
Several Bahraini prisoners have died under torture.
Israeli occupation authorities arrest Palestinian woman in bid to pressure brother
Palestine Information Center – 03/10/2011
AL-KHALIL — Israeli occupation authorities arrested a 20-year-old woman from Beit Fajjar Sunday evening, eight kilometers south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, in an apparent bid to pressure her brother into confession.
The detainee Nubal Ali Issa Taqatqa has been summoned on several occasions for questioning by both the Israeli security forces and those of the Palestinian Authority, amid accusations involving the use of the Facebook social network.
Taqatqa’s brother Muhammad Ali Issa Taqatqa was arrested on 1 Sept. 2011 while heading for prayers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil and is still under investigation for suspicion of trying to stab Israeli soldiers.
The family has maintained that Muhammad’s sole purpose of going to Ibrahimi Mosque was to pray and he did not have any implements in his possession.
In separate incidents, the Israeli Damon prison administration has isolated four female prisoners from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after the women joined a hunger strike declared by Palestinian prisoners a week back.
Saudi forces clash with protesters
Press TV – October 3, 2011
Security forces have clashed in Saudi Arabia with pro-reform protesters in the Qatif Governorate in the Eastern Province of the country, Press TV reports.
The Saudis had gathered in an anti-government demonstration in the province’s Awamiyah village, a Press TV correspondent reported. They chanted slogans against the province’s Governor, Prince Mohammed bin Fahd, — the son of the late King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.
Reports say the forces arrested a 70-year-old man, whose son had participated in the protests, demanding the son to surrender himself in exchange for his father’s release.
A larger demonstration is scheduled for Monday in the city of Qatif, where protesters often take to the streets despite a heavy security presence to condemn Riyadh’s role in the brutal crackdown on anti-regime protesters in Bahrain.
The Saudi demonstrators call for respect for human rights, implementation of further reforms, freedom of expression, and the release of political prisoners, some of whom have been held without trial for more than 16 years.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, known for its intolerance of dissent. Earlier in the year, the Saudi Interior Ministry imposed a ban on all kinds of demonstrations and public gatherings.
Human Rights Watch says hundreds of dissidents have been arrested since February as part of the Saudi government’s suppression of anti-government protests.
According to the Saudi-based Human Rights First Society (HRFS), the detainees were subjected to physical and mental torture.
1,000 seized in anti-Wall St. revolt in US
Press TV – October 2, 2011
American police forces have arrested over a thousand anti-Wall Street protesters that took to the streets in New York and other major metropolitan areas across the crisis-hit country, Press TV reports.
The protesters demonstrated against poverty, unemployment, corporatism, social inequality and other grievances that have plagued the United States for more than three years now.
Hundreds of demonstrators were detained late Saturday as the New York police tried to reopen the heavily used Brooklyn Bridge, which was partially shut down by angry protesters. Latest news reports, however, have put the number of those detained by police in New York City metropolitan area at more than 1,000.
“Over 700 summonses and desk appearance tickets have been issued in connection with a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge late this afternoon after multiple warnings by police were given to protesters to stay on the pedestrian walkway and that if they took roadway they would be arrested,” a police spokesman said late Saturday.
The rallies originally started two weeks ago under the name of “Occupy Wall Street” when activists and demonstrators announced their intention to seize the heart of US financial transactions in protest at dire economic conditions believed to be caused by the excessive greed of America’s big corporations.
The movement has now grown dramatically and spread to other major cities across the US.
Great numbers of protesters have gathered in front of the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago, describing themselves as part of the Occupy Chicago movement that is said to have hired its name from Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City.
Similarly, many demonstrators marched through streets in Los Angeles, bearing antiwar signs and expressing frustration with the country’s high unemployment.
In addition to what they view as the use of excessive force against and unfair treatment of minorities, including Muslims, the movement is also protesting against home foreclosures and 2008 bank bailouts.
The protests have gained the support of renowned American filmmaker Michael Moore and actress Susan Sarandon as well as some union members.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, which has some 38000 members, are among those voicing support for and vowing solidarity with it.
Some of the protesters say the idea to occupy the most vital financial centers of the US was inspired by popular uprisings in the past months in Middle Eastern and North African countries, widely referred to as the “Islamic Awakening.”
A protester described the demonstrations as an American version of Egypt’s Tahrir Square takeover, referring to the protests in downtown Cairo that led to the Egyptian revolution and later caused the collapse of the long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Some have also criticized the US government for preaching and encouraging civil disobedience abroad while severely restricting it at home.
They also state that they plan to use the revolutionary tactics people employed in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt to restore America’s lost democracy.
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New Book
The silver that medicine dropped — four thousand years of clinical use, four decades to erase.
Colloidal Silver — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | October 16, 2026
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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