Ahmadinejad: Europe & US need freedom most of all
RussiaToday | August 14, 2011
In an exclusive interview with RT, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pointed out that the 21st century is about knowledge, while nukes are the means of the past.
Commenting on the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, Ahmadinejad said, “We do not want nuclear weapons for a few reasons… This weapon is inhumane. Because of our faith, we are against it. Our religion says it is prohibited, and we are religious people.”
“Nuclear weapons have no capabilities today. If any country tries to build a nuclear bomb, in fact, they waste their money on resources and, secondly, they create a big danger to themselves,” he stated.
No country possessing nuclear weapons has benefited from it, Ahmadinejad said, adding, “The Americans have nuclear bombs and nuclear weapons. Could they win in Iraq or in Afghanistan? Could nuclear weapons help the Zionist regime win in Lebanon and Gaza? Could nuclear weapons help the former Soviet Union avoid collapse?”
Pakistan: Inspector General rejects HRW report
Sinister design to destabilise Pakistan
By Mohammad Jamil | The Nation | August 12, 2011
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims to be the world’s leading independent organisation dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.
According to its mission statement, HRW is committed to safeguard the rights of people around the world, upholding political freedom, protecting the masses from inhumane conduct in wartime, and bringing offenders to justice. But in reality HRW does not focus on human rights violations when the big and mighty like the US invade Iraq and Afghanistan, where thousands of people were tortured and killed. It did not raise its voice against the oppressors accountable for their crimes. Thus, it emboldens the separatists, rebels and criminal elements, who challenge the writ of the state like in Pakistan.
The HRW has released a 132-page report titled We can torture, kill, or keep you for years: Enforced disappearances by Pakistan security forces in Balochistan. There is a perception that it has been done on the behest of those powers that are out to denigrate Pakistan military and ISI, and to destabilise Pakistan.
The report details 45 alleged cases of enforced disappearances – the majority in 2009 and 2010. It also mentions that hundreds of people have disappeared in Balochistan since 2005; whereas dozens of new enforced disappearances have occurred after Pakistan returned to the civilian rule in 2008. In addition, it demands that the Pakistan government should immediately end the widespread disappearances of suspected militants and activists by its military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the southwestern province of Balochistan. The report, however, downplayed the target killings of innocent civilians, teachers, professors and security personnel in Balochistan by the Baloch Liberation Army and other militant organisations. The question is: Whether the lives of non-Balochis are less valuable than the lives of Baloch nationalists for the Watch and other human rights organisations? In December 2010, a report from the HRW stated: “The armed militant groups in Balochistan have increasingly targeted non-Baloch civilians and their businesses, police stations, and major gas installations and infrastructure.”
Nobody in his right sense would condone extrajudicial killings, but those who challenge the writ of the state or are responsible for creating rebellion-like situations are prosecuted and punished in any state worth the name. After every murder of a dissident in Quetta and elsewhere, some pseudo intellectuals and media men start accusing the intelligence agencies and military for the killing and disappearances of the persons. While there could be some suspects arrested by the police or intelligence agencies or even deaths during encounters, but one should not rule out the possibility that a number of missing persons could be in Afghanistan and India. According to a news report published by an English daily last year, more than 100 Pakistani Baloch dissidents were sent to India through the Indian Consulate located in Kandahar (Afghanistan) for six month training. Keeping this in view, Pakistan’s apex court had made some observations.
During the proceedings of the missing persons’ case in the court, Justice Javed Iqbal in June 2011 had remarked: “It has become a trend that NGOs exaggerate the figures of missing persons, but fail to provide details about them. These NGOs were just spreading sensationalism and conducting press conferences without obtaining facts on the missing persons.” He asked the representatives of the NGOs to provide complete details of persons they claim are missing. Meanwhile, the officials of the Interior and Foreign Ministries told the court that 103 Pakistanis were languishing in jails abroad, out of which eight have been brought home.
Anyhow, rejecting the latest HRW report, Inspector General of Frontier Corps (FC) Balochistan said that the report tried to malign the law enforcement agencies and project them in bad light. He pointed out that “800 innocent people had lost their lives, while more than 1,300 civilians and law enforcers were injured in rocket and mines attacks during the last 18 months.”
Moreover, it has to be mentioned that tribalism is firmly rooted in Balochistan, as ethnic and tribal identity is a potent force for both individuals and groups in the province with the result that there exists deep polarisation among different groups. Each of these groups is based on different rules of social organisation, which has left the province inexorably fragmented. Tribal groupism has often failed to integrate the state and enforce a national identity. But those who have not weaned off the poison of sham nationalism should take a look at the history of the Balkans, and the fate they met.
In fact, rivalling big powers, and even countries of the region, eye Balochistan avariciously to push it into their own orbits of influence because it is a mineral-rich and strategically-located province. According to political and defence analysts, the US, Russia, and India are either directly or indirectly widening the ethnic and sectarian schisms in Balochistan and FATA with a view to advancing their agendas. There are reports that the US and UK are also supporting the centrifugal forces and insurgents in Pakistan’s largest province.
Undoubtedly, there should be a judicial enquiry for the missing persons. However, the terms of reference should include not only to locate the missing persons held on various charges, but also to trace them from the ferrari camps or detention centres being run by Baloch sardars and insurgents. Investigations should also be conducted to find out how many people have gone underground or to Afghanistan. Likewise, the Human Rights Watch should do a bit of investigation in this regard and instead of giving sweeping statements it should come out with precise details of the cases where human rights were abused, and where the government had taken action to establish the writ of the state. But the question is: Why the HRW does not feel any qualms about what the US and its allies are doing in Libya and expose them for at least what they call collateral damage killing innocent civilians through drone attacks?
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email:mjamil@hotmail.com
Israel uses “primitive, racist” policies against Palestinian prisoners
By Mel Frykberg – IPS – August 11, 2011
RAMALLAH – “I’m sick with worry about my daughter,” Yehiya al-Shalabi says. “I’m afraid of what they are doing to her. She has done nothing to deserve this. If they have anything against her why don’t they bring her to trial?”
Hana al-Shalabi, Yehiya’s 27-year-old daughter, has been languishing in Israeli administrative detention for more than two years. She is the longest serving Palestinian female political prisoner in administrative detention.
According to her lawyer, the young woman from Jenin in the northern West Bank does not know why Israeli soldiers arrested her several years ago. She also does not know how long they will keep her in jail or what they will charge her with.
Shalabi, like nearly 200 other Palestinian prisoners, is being held in Hasharon prison. A senior Israeli military officer has just renewed the administrative detention order against her for the fourth time.
Israel’s “administrative detention” policy states that Palestinian political prisoners can be held for six months without trial or charges being brought against them. The detention order can be renewed every six months.
According to the official narrative, the policy of administrative detention is used by the Israeli military when they have “classified and secret” information against Palestinian prisoners. Both the prisoner and their lawyer are forbidden from seeing the classified information, and therefore are unable to challenge accusations or to question those who made the accusations.
The administrative detention policy is used when Israeli authorities have “secret witnesses” such as Palestinian informants, or has obtained intelligence in a clandestine manner which would not stand up in an Israeli civilian court but are par for the course in Israeli military courts.
No fair trial
“It’s a primitive and racist way to hold a trial and no civilized country in the world uses such methods. Needless to say Israel’s legal system could never do this to an Israeli Jew. Even the Israeli settlers who carry out acts of terror against Palestinians in the West Bank are not treated in this manner,” Qadura Fares, the president of the Palestinian Society Prisoners’ Club in Ramallah, said.
“Administrative detainees are not given a fair trial. Basically the Israeli military prosecutor and the military judge are in agreement. It is very rare for a judge to disagree with the military prosecutor,” Fares says.
In the 1970s Ali Jamal, also from Jenin, spent seven years in administrative detention. He holds the record for the longest administrative detention to date.
“At that time the Israeli military courts relied on confessions from Palestinian prisoners for convictions,” Fares explained. “But Jamal wouldn’t confess so the laws were changed to allow the ‘secret witnesses and secret files’ to be used by the IDF [Israeli military] to convict political prisoners.”
The soldiers came for Hana al-Shalabi in the middle of the night over two years ago. “They ransacked the house and assaulted me when I tried to stop them from taking my daughter away,” Yehiya al-Shalabi said. “My daughter had finished her studies and was engaged to get married. She was very diligent and stayed home most of the time except for when she helped tend our agricultural crops. She had no social life outside and wasn’t political in any way.”
However, Israeli special forces assassinated Hana’s 24-year-old brother several years ago after they accused him of being a member of Islamic Jihad, Yehiya said. “They had shot and wounded him. He phoned us, as he lay badly injured on the ground. But before he could finish the call the death squad moved in and shot him at close range, several times in the head and in the eye.”
The conditions in administrative detention are harsh, just as they are for all Palestinian prisoners.
Confessions through coercion
“Confessions are coerced through physical and verbal humiliation, torture, emotional blackmail such as bringing in elderly or sick relatives who are held as hostages until the prisoner confesses,” Fares said.
Imani Nafa, aged 47, spent ten years in an Israeli jail as a young woman, from 1987 to 1997 during the first Palestinian intifada. Nafa had everything going for her. She had finished university and was working as a nurse. But, she became politically involved and had planned to carry out a shooting and bombing attack against Israeli soldiers.
Nafa was caught and kept in a filthy, cramped cell with no window. Fluorescent lights were kept on permanently, causing sensory deprivation and the inability to distinguish between day and night.
“I was beaten and held in stress positions while handcuffed for several days, unable to move. I was deprived of sleep and when the interrogation finished I was forced to drink from the drain in my cell and eat mouldy food,” Nafa said. “I was told that if I worked with them to spy on other prisoners I would be freed, but if I refused to do so I would be imprisoned for a very long time and harshly treated.”
Hamas: No improvement at Rafah crossing
Ma’an – August 10, 2011
GAZA CITY — Gaza Interior Ministry deputy Kamel Abu Madi said Wednesday there had been no improvements at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
“The working procedures at the Rafah crossing are as usual and no improvement has occurred,” Abu Madi said.
He added that Egyptian authorities were still preventing Palestinians who had fled Libya from entering the Gaza Strip.
The official said there were serious discussions with Egyptian authorities over ongoing issues which he hoped would be resolved soon.
Egypt permanently opened the Rafah crossing for Palestinians in May 2011 in a significant change of policy from the previous Mubarak regime.
The Rafah border with Egypt is Gaza’s only crossing that bypasses Israel, although it is still lacks the infrastructure required to transport large quantities of goods into the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian and Gazan authorities have struggled to cope with huge demand and coordinating procedures, leading to travel delays.
Woman threatened with exile, children held in vendetta against Jerusalem family
Palestine Information Center – 09/08/2011
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — In an apparent vendetta against Jerusalem native Nasser Abu Sanad, the Israeli occupation authorities have arrested four of his sons and are pursuing banishing his wife to Jordan.
His sons, ranging in age from 13 to 18 years, have all been arrested on suspicion of throwing stones at Israeli occupation forces.
Abu Sanad himself spent seven years in Israeli custody and was just recently released.
With regards to his wife Ala al-Hadira, she is wanted by the occupation authorities for allegedly staying in Jerusalem illegally. They seek to exile her to Jordan.
The woman left for Jordan seven years ago to visit her mother but was not allowed to return. A month ago she managed to enter Jerusalem with a visit permit, but after the one-month term ended, she was denied renewal of her stay with her children and husband.
The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued an arrest and deportation warrant against her. Several attempts have been made to apprehend her, but she managed to evade the occupation authorities and gain refuge in areas Palestinian Authority control.
Abu Sanad said the obvious persecution of his family is an act of retaliation against himself and his wife.
Reut Institute: Israeli Boycott law may backfire
By Adri Nieuwhof – The Electronic Intifada – 08/09/2011
In response to the growing Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Israeli parliament passed an anti-boycott law on 11 July. The law is heavily criticized; for example, Amnesty International denounced the anti-boycott law because it “will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in Israel.”
Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, Ahmad Tibi, criticized the law as “a strike against free speech.” in an article. He pledged his support to the BDS movement:
“Because I believe in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948, I support boycotting — and calling on others to boycott — all Israeli companies that help perpetuate these injustices.”
A few days later, a remarkable warning was published by the Reut Institute, which characterizes itself as “a non-partisan Zionist organization” in a promotional video. Reut mentions in the video its support for strategic decision making processes of the State of Israel which includes advising the Prime Minister’s office, the Ministry of Defense, the Israeli army and the National Security Council..
Reut’s CEO, Roy Keidar and head of Reut’s National Security Team, Eran Shayson, warned on 2 August, that “the greater damage of the boycott law is the controversy forming around it.” They write:
“Indeed, the urgent sense that action must be taken against the de-legitimization phenomenon is both understandable and justified. However, assumptions that the boycott law and other similar laws provide the answer to this challenge, are wrong and may well backfire.”
Fighting ‘delegitmization’
In February 2010, Reut qualified the actions of the BDS movement as delegitimization of Israel in a report on the urgency to respond to the growing international criticism of Israel’s violations of international law and disrespect of the rights of the Palestinian people. Reut referred in the report to critical voices as “delegitimizers”.
“The effectiveness of Israel’s delegitimizers, who represent a relatively marginal political and societal force in Europe and North America, stems from their ability to engage and mobilize others by blurring the lines with Israel’s critics. They do so by branding Israel as a pariah and ‘apartheid’ state; rallying coalitions around ‘outstanding issues’ such as the ‘Gaza blockade’; making pro-Palestinian activity trendy; and promoting grassroots activities such as boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) as a way to ‘correct Israel’s ways.’”
In addition, Reut wrote:
“The Delegitimization Network aims to supersede the Zionist model with a state that is based on the ‘one person, one vote’ principle by turning Israel into a pariah state and by challenging the moral legitimacy of its authorities and existence.”
Comparison with South Africa
When I interviewed Professor John Dugard, former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in October 2010, I asked him to react to accusations that the BDS movement delegitimizes Israel. He said:
“The BDS actions are delegitimizing Israel. There is no question about that. Obviously Israel is unwilling to accept that, similar to apartheid South Africa, which did want to suppress international sanctions. BDS was at that time effective, largely as a result of international advocacy for [boycott, divestment and] sanctions. It delegitimized the state and ultimately led to change in South Africa.
The comparison between Israel and South Africa is important. The situation is very similar at present. The international community is increasingly critical of Israel, advocating for international [boycott, divestment and] sanctions. It is not surprising that Israel is taking steps to prevent them in the same way the South African government did.”
In February 2010, Reut’s policy advice to Israel was to effectively face the “Delegitimization Network” by embracing a network-based logic and response by “Focusing on the hubs of delegitimization – such as London, Paris, Toronto, Madrid, and the Bay Area – and on undermining its catalysts.” Reut called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources towards this end.
Attacking the messenger
Reut’s advice to “undermine the catalysts” of the BDS movement is a perfect example of attacking the messenger. A few months after Reut’s advice, The Electronic Intifada and its Dutch donor were fiercely attacked by the NGO Monitor. Ali Abunimah analyzed the reasons behind the attack in his article “Why NGO Monitor is attacking The Electronic Intifada”.
He wrote:
“NGO Monitor’s attack on The Electronic Intifada is part of a well-financed, Israeli-government endorsed effort to silence reporting about and criticism of Israel by attacking so-called “delegitimizers” — those who speak about well-documented human rights abuses, support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), or promote full equality for Palestinians. Last February, The Electronic Intifada reported that a leading Israeli think-tank had recommended a campaign of “sabotage” against Israel’s critics as a matter of state policy.”
In its criticism of the boycott law, Reut writes that the law applies to Israel while the “delegitimization campaign is global, primarily operating beyond Israel’s borders.” Therefore the law cannot stop the global BDS movement. In addition, Reut identifies the controversy forming around the boycott law as a danger, creating divisions in “the Israeli camp” at a time where unity is needed.
Indeed, the Israeli boycott law is an attack on freedom of expression, and as such another example of Israel’s disrespect for basic human rights. It would have been very disturbing if this law was docilely accepted.
Reporter Files Complaint Against Israeli Military
By Katie Child | International Middle East Media Center | August 05, 2011
Mati Millstein filed a complaint against the Israeli Foreign Press Association on Thursday, August 5, 2011. The photojournalist was covering a Palestinian protest in Nabi Salih, when tear gas canisters were fired directly at the reporters covering the protest.
The Israeli military fired twelve rounds at the reporters who were clearly visible with yellow jackets labeled “PRESS.” or “TV”. None of the reporters were wounded.
When Millstein went to complain to the soldiers about their actions, the reporter was threatened with arrest and told to stand against a wall.
The American Israeli sent an email to the Jerusalem Post on Thursday saying that this event is, “the product of a military environment that increasingly sees the media as an enemy or a fifth column rather than as one of the key elements required for the maintenance of a democratic, transparent state.”
He further explained in the email that lately the Israeli Military has been using more violent and unsophisticated methods in dealing with the weekly Palestinian protests.
None of the other reporters decided to issue a complaint against the Israeli Military. Millstein saw a formal complaint against the Israeli Military was necessary since “draconian” methods of preventing the press from covering events are too often seen as acceptable in the occupied territories.
Millstein told the Jerusalem Post that many reporters have had their rights violated but decide not to complain out of fear of losing their credibility or their professional career.
Rumsfeld Must Face Vet’s Claim He Was Tortured
By JOE CELENTINO | Courthouse News Service | August 4, 2011
A U.S. citizen and Army veteran who says he was imprisoned and tortured by his own military can sue former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally for damages, a federal judge ruled.
Court filings do not name the veteran, but note that he worked for the Marine Corps as an Arabic translator along Iraq’s Syrian border.
He claims he was the first American to begin direct talks with Sunni sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, who later became an important U.S. ally.
In November 2005, as he prepared to return home on leave, the man said he was taken into an interrogation room for four hours. He refused to answer the questions, citing concern for the confidentiality of sensitive information he had learned during his tour.
He was transported to Camp Cropper military jail for “high-value” detainees and kept for more than nine months. His family had no idea of his whereabouts or whether he was alive.
John Doe said interrogators exposed him to extreme cold and continuous bright light. They also allegedly blindfolded and hooded him, kept him awake by banging on the door and windows, and blasted heavy metal or country music into his cell at “intolerably loud volumes.”
Doe said he also sustained physical attacks from other detainees hostile to the United States because they learned about his military affiliation.
Though the government claimed he had provided classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces enter the country, he was never charged with a crime.
A detainee status board authorized the translator’s continued detention in December 2005, determining that he was a threat to coalition forces. Doe never got to talk to a lawyer and was not permitted to see the evidence against him.
In August 2006, Doe was placed on a military flight to Jordan and eventually made it back home. U.S. District Judge James Gwin, presiding in Washington by designation from his court in Ohio, found that Doe clearly has a civil rights case.
“The stakes in holding detainees at Camp Cropper may have been high, but one purpose of the constitutional limitations on interrogation techniques and conditions of confinement even domestically is to strike a balance between government objectives and individual rights even when the stakes are high,” Gwin wrote.
Rumsfeld argued that court intervention would improperly allow the court to review wartime matters and foreign affair constitutionally committed to the president and Congress.
But Gwin rejected this argument.
“Avoiding the ‘risk of assuming a role that is almost always best suited for Congress,’ however, does not recommend that courts be entirely powerless to review legislative or executive action during a time of war,” he wrote. “Rather, ‘a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.'”
Rumsfeld also cannot dodge the suit on qualified immunity grounds, Gwin said.
“Although it may be unlikely that Rumsfeld evaluated the detention conditions of each detainee in detail, it is not implausible that he authorized the use of interrogation techniques on the detainee population at Camp Cropper, or even on specific detainees,” the 47-page ruling states. “Though Doe must eventually support his factual allegations with evidence, a motion to dismiss simply calls upon the court to evaluate whether a plaintiff has alleged with specificity fact supporting a plausible claim.”
“This case affects tens of thousands of American citizens who work on behalf of the United States in warzones,” Doe’s attorney, Mike Kanovitz, told the Government Accountability Project. “We are relieved that the courts are going to exercise their constitutional role of judicial review instead of giving the president a blank check when it comes to the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens. There is a clear record showing that Mr. Rumsfeld authorized the use of brutal interrogation techniques that violated our nation’s constitution. Like all Americans, my clients just want a level playing field and a fair jury. Now they are going to get that.”
Doe’s suit is one of just two that has been allowed to proceed of the many against Rumsfeld alleging torture of detainees in Iraq.
Last year, two Americans filed suit claiming they were tortured following accusations of illegal activities by their company. A Chicago federal judge allowed them to hold Rumsfeld personally responsible for the torture. The 7th Circuit is expected to rule on the case soon.
Protest Israel’s detention of Palestinian writer Ahmad Qatamesh
By Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 08/03/2011
The Palestinian human rights group Addameer issued an appeal today urging supporters to take action on the administrative detention of Palestinian political scientist and writer Ahmad Qatamesh.
Qatamesh has been held in administrative detention after he was arrested on 21 April in the middle of the night. Hanin Ahmad Qatamesh, the detained writer’s daughter, described in an article for The Electronic Intifada how Israeli soldiers invaded their family home in Ramallah. Hanin and other relatives in the home were held hostage as Israeli soldiers demanded the surrender of Ahmad, who was not at home at the time. The Electronic Intifada also interviewed Qatamesh’s wife, Suha Barghouti, a well-known human rights defender.
The full action appeal from Addameer follows:
As part of its recently launched Prisoners at Risk campaign, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association demands the immediate release of Ahmad Qatamish, a well-known political scientist and writer currently held without charge or trial by Israel. The duration of his administrative detention has been set at 4 months, due to expire on 2 September 2011.
Addameer believes that the arrest and detention of Ahmad Qatamish has all the hallmarks of arbitrary detention and is aimed at silencing this prolific writer for his unbridled criticism of the Israeli occupation. Ahmad was arrested on 21 April 2011 in the middle of the night following a raid on his house whilst he was away, in which his wife, daughter, and two other relatives – including a 14-year-old girl – were held hostage by Israeli troops in order to compel him to surrender himself. Since then there has been a catalogue of serious errors and malpractice by the Israeli authorities. Ahmad was held for 13 days – during which time he was interrogated for only 10 minutes – before being informed on 3 May that he would be placed in administrative detention; despite the fact that both he and his lawyer had been told by the Military Court that he would be released that very day. Ahmad’s original administrative detention order was found to be flawed and had to be re-written twice, and even now the order is based on the vague accusation that he is an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – a charge he has consistently and vehemently denied. As the order is based on a secret file which is not accessible to Ahmad or his lawyer, it is impossible for Ahmad to know how to defend himself against any possible charges.
This is not the first time Ahmad has been placed in administrative detention. In the 1990s, he was held for five-and-a-half years without charge or trial, making him one of the longest held administrative detainees in Israeli prisons. For more information about Ahmad’s case, you can read his profile here and follow updates on his detention on facebook.
The Prisoners at Risk campaign aims to highlight cases which raise grave concern and require urgent action. Without international pressure, there is the real risk that Ahmad’s administrative detention order will be renewed again in September. You can help stop this from happening by joining our campaign and doing one of the following:
– Use our template letter to the Israeli authorities to call for Ahmad’s immediate and unconditional release;
– Write to your own government and representatives to call on them to pressure Israel to release Ahmad (if you are a EU citizen, you can use our template letter to members of the European Parliament);
– Organize a vigil or a demonstration to call for Ahmad’s release;
– Write to Ahmad in prison (postal address: Ofer Prison, Givat Zeev, P.O. Box 3007, via Israel);
Israeli Knesset considers bill to end ‘democratic’ element of Israeli state
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – August 04, 2011
A new law currently under consideration by the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) recognizes the inherent contradiction in Israel’s self-definition as both a ‘democratic’ and Jewish state, and calls on the government to favor Jewish law and traditions over democracy.
Forty legislators have sponsored the bill, including the majority of Knesset members from the Kadima party, and Knesset members from the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party, the Labor party, Atzamaut and National Union parties.
It calls on Israeli courts to use Jewish law to make decisions “in situations in which the Jewish character of the state clashes with its democratic character”, and calls for Arabic to be removed as one of Israel’s national languages (20% of the population of Israel are indigenous Palestinians who remained after the state of Israel was created on their land in 1948).
The bill also calls for the state to take action “to ingather the exiles of Israel and [further] Jewish settlement within it, and allocate resources to this end.” Israel already has laws in place to encourage immigration of Jews from around the world into Israel, including housing incentives, free language classes and job assistance.
The Institute for Zionist Strategies helped draft the bill. Among the Institute’s stated goals are stopping Palestinians from constructing new homes and stopping the ‘demographic threat’ posed by Palestinians — a term used by right-wing Zionists to refer to the fact that the 20% of the Israeli population that is Palestinian has a higher birth rate than the majority Jewish population.
Knesset members Zeev Elkin and David Rotem, who introduced the bill, also introduced the controversial law which passed last month banning Israelis from supporting the boycott of Israeli products and practices.
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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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