Jerusalem checkpoint victim shot at point blank range
Ma’an – 12/06/2010
Jerusalem – A report conducted by a Jerusalem rights center following the shooting death of a Palestinian man in East Jerusalem on Friday by Israeli border guards suggests he was shot at point blank.
Ziad Al-Julani, 38, was shot and killed after he allegedly failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Wadi Joz neighborhood in the occupied part of the city.
According to testimony compiled by the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, an initial shot knocked Al-Julani to the floor, after which Israeli Special Forces “fired shots in the face and abdomen at close range.”
Witnesses said Friday he was in serious condition as he was taken to hospital, with Israeli news sites reporting that the man died en route.
Israeli media reports said the man drove toward border guards setting up in the neighborhood, crashed his pickup truck and fled on foot, at which point he was shot dead.
Sa’d Hamed As-Silwadi, from Silwan and the father of a child injured during the shooting, told the center he parked his car beside a butcher shop and saw Al-Julani driving toward the Al-Hadmi neighborhood in Wadi Joz, where he was killed.
He said he saw Al-Julani get out of his vehicle when he was first shot by Israeli forces. A relative of Al-Julani tried to help him, As-Silwadi said, but was kicked by Israeli forces. As-Silwadi returned to his vehicle to find his five-year-old child with a rubber bullet wound to the neck and head, and rushed him the Maqased Hospital on the Mount of Olives.
Ahmad Qutteneh told the center he saw Al-Julani running from four members of Israel’s Special Forces, approaching him and opening fire at close range. “Then I saw one of them come near him and shoot him in the face and body,” Qutteneh told the center.
Mahmud Othman Al-Julani, 34, his cousin, told the center that he was home when the incident happened, near the site of Al-Julani’s death, he said. “I went out of the house to see him laid on the floor, 15 meters away from me. When I tried to help him they [Israeli forces] beat me with sticks,” the center quoted him as saying.
Others told the center the shooter was seen “dancing beside the body singing and cheering ‘I killed an Arab, I killed an Arab’.”
The center called on Israeli authorities to investigate Al-Julani’s death.
A spokesman for Israel’s border guards did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the Jerusalem center’s report on Saturday.
On Friday, other testimony has the man speeding toward the hospital with an injured man in his truck. Two border guards were reportedly injured in the incident.
Following the shooting, clashes erupted in the area, with Palestinian residents angered at what they said was a day of oppression and violence enforced by Israeli soldiers.
Two women, a man, a senior citizen, and a child in a nearby car were said to have been injured in the shouting that erupted after the initial shooting, with Israeli forces using rubber-coated bullets against the crowd. The four were transferred to the Al-Maqasid Hospital for treatment.
Israeli forces sealed off the area as clashes continued.
Al-Julani was a father of four, and a tradesman living in East Jerusalem’s Shu’fat neighborhood.
It is unclear why Israeli border guards set up the checkpoint in Wadi Joz, however, some residents suggested the military installation was erected ahead of potential clashes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of East Jerusalem following Friday prayers, as Israel hosts a light show in the occupied part of the city.
Wikileaks Founder Hunted by Pentagon
“We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,” one U.S. official said of Assange.
By Philip Shenon | The Daily Beast | June 10, 2010
Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast.
The officials acknowledge that even if they found the website founder, Julian Assange, it is not clear what they could do to block publication of the cables on Wikileaks, which is nominally based on a server in Sweden and bills itself as a champion of whistleblowers.
American officials said Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait.
And given the contents of the cables, the feds have good reason to be concerned.
As The Daily Beast reported June 8, Manning, while posted in Iraq, apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East, regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders, according to an American diplomat.
The cables, which date back over several years, went out over interagency computer networks available to the Army and contained information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomat said.
American officials would not discuss the methods being used to find Assange, nor would they say if they had information to suggest where he is now. “We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,” one U.S. official said of Assange.
Assange, who first gained notoriety as a computer hacker, is as secretive as his website and has no permanent home.
He was scheduled to speak Friday in Las Vegas at an International Reporters and Editors conference. But the group’s executive director, Mark Horvit, tells The Daily Beast that Assange canceled the appearance—he was on a panel to discuss anonymous sources—within the last several days as a result of unspecificed “security concerns.” Horvit said he communicated with Assange through email and did not know where he might be.
Last week, Assange was scheduled to join famed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg for a talk at New York’s Personal Democracy Forum. Assange appeared via Skype from Australia instead, saying lawyers recommended he not return to the United States.
Julian Assange, in April 2010, discussing confidential sources in the digital age
Assange was in the United States as recently as several weeks ago, when he gave press interviews to promote the website’s release of an explosive 2007 video of an American helicopter attack in Baghdad that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters.
Wikileaks has not replied directly to email messages from The Daily Beast.
However, in cryptic messages he sent this week via Twitter, Wikileaks referred to an earlier Daily Beast article on the investigation of Manning and said that it “looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S. has.”
In an earlier post, the site said that allegations that “we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.”
This morning, a new Wikileaks tweet went out: “Any signs of unacceptable behavior by the Pentagon or its agents towards this press will be viewed dimly.”
Pentagon investigators say that particular post may have been an effort by Wikileaks to throw them—and news organizations—off the track as the site prepared the library of State Department cables for release, officials said.
“It looks like they’re playing some sort of semantic games,” one American official said of Wikileaks. “They may not have 260,000 cables, but they’ve probably got enough cables to make trouble.”
• Philip Shenon: The State Dept.’s Worst NightmareIn another cryptic Twitter message, the site said that while the State Department might be alarmed about the prospect of the release of classified cables, “we have not been contacted.”
American officials were unwilling to say what would happen if Assange is tracked down, although they suggested they would have many more legal options available to them if he were still somewhere in the United States.
Manning has reportedly admitted that he downloaded 260,000 diplomatic cables and provided them to Wikileaks. In Internet chat logs first revealed by Wired magazine, Manning also took credit for leaking the 2007 video to the website.
“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available,” Manning wrote of the diplomatic cables, according to Wired.
Wikileaks has not confirmed that Manning is a source of any information posted on the site. “We do not know if Mr. Manning is our source, but the U.S. military is claiming he is, so we will defend him,” Wikileaks said in another Twitter message.
Manning was turned in to the Pentagon by a former computer hacker based in California, Adrian Lamo, after Manning approached Lamo for counsel. Manning is believed to have contacted Lamo after reading a recent profile of him in Wired.
In the chat log revealed by Wired, Manning bragged to Lamo about having downloaded a huge library of State Department cables, as well as the 2007 video of the helicopter attack, and having provided the material to Wikileaks.
Manning took credit for having leaked a classified diplomatic cable that has already appeared on the site—a memo prepared by the United States embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, that described a meeting there between American and Icelandic officials over that country’s banking meltdown.
The January 2010 memo may have been of special interest to Wikileaks given the site’s close ties to Iceland, where Assange has based himself at times and where he worked with local lawmakers to draft free-speech laws that give broad freedom to journalists to protect their sources.
A profile this week in The New Yorker magazine depicted Assange feverishly at work with Icelandic colleagues in Reykjavik in March as he organized the release of the 2007 video of the helicopter attack. The edited video was given the title Collateral Murder, and its release infuriated officials at the Defense Department.
With its network of whistleblowers, Wikileaks has published documents and videos on its site that have outraged other foreign governments. To protect the site from attack by intelligence agencies, Assange has placed Wikileaks on several Internet servers, making it all but impossible for any government to shut down the site entirely.
Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.
Man shot dead at East Jerusalem checkpoint
Ma’an – 11/06/2010
Jerusalem – A Palestinian man from Jerusalem was shot and killed by Israeli border guards on Friday, after he reportedly failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Wadi Joz neighborhood.
Witnesses said he was in serious condition as he was taken to hospital, with Israeli news sites reporting that the man died en route to hospital.
Officials identified the man as 38 year old Ziad Al-Julani, and later confirmed he was killed in the incident.
Following the shooting, clashes erupted in the area, with Palestinian residents angered at what they said was a day of oppression and violence enforced by Israeli soldiers. Two women, a man, a senior citizen and a child in a nearby car were said to have been injured in the shouting that erupted after the shooting, with Israeli forces using rubber-coated bullets against the crowd. The four were transferred the Al-Maqasid Hospital for treatment.
Israeli forces sealed off the area as clashes continued.
An Israeli border guard spokesman said Al-Julani drove his car at two border guards manning a checkpoint, installed as part of heavy security deployed throughout the city to restrict Palestinian movement following Friday prayers, and was shot in his vehicle. The spokesman said the two soldiers were lightly injured by the driver.
Google accused of criminal intent over StreetView data
BBC | June 9, 2010
Google is “almost certain” to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to Privacy International (PI).
The search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project.
Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake.
But PI is convinced the audit proves “criminal intent”.
“The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation,” said PI in a statement.
This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added.
Scotland Yard
“The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute,” said Simon Davies, head of PI.
In the UK the ICO has said it is reviewing the audit but that for the time being it had no plans to pursue the matter.
PI however does intend to take the case to the police.
“I don’t see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard,” said Mr Davies.
The revelation that Google had collected such data led the German Information Commissioner to demand it handed over a hard-disk so it could examine exactly what it had collected.
It has not yet received the data and has extended the original deadline for it to be handed over.
The Australian police have also been ordered to investigate Google for possible breach of privacy.
‘Systematic failure’
According to Google, the code which allowed data to be collected was part of an experimental wi-fi project undertaken by an unnamed engineer to improve location-based services and was never intended to be incorporated in the software for StreetView.
“As we have said before, this was a mistake. The report today confirms that Google did indeed collect and store payload data from unencrypted wi-fi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted. We are continuing to work with the relevant authorities to respond to their questions and concerns,” said a Google spokesman.
“This was a failure of communication between and within teams,” he added.
But PI disputes this explanation.
“The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn’t add up. This is complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked,” said Mr Davies.
“It goes to the heart of a systematic failure of management and of duty of care,” he added.
Egypt Prevents Nine Parliamentarians from Entering Gaza
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – June 08, 2010
The Egyptian Authorities stopped nine Egyptian Legislators at the Rafah Terminal who were trying to deliver construction supplies to Gaza.
In Sinai, Egyptian Authorities confiscated four trucks filled with cement and construction materials heading to Gaza.
Hazim Farouq, head of the Egyptian delegation, said that the authorities seized the trucks that were filled with cement and construction materials, and revoked the license cards of the drivers after threatening to arrest them when they were 20 kilometers away from the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian Authorities then said that the trucks will not be allowed into Gaza although the Egyptian President ordered the opening of the Rafah Border Terminal until further notice.
The parliamentarian Change and Reform Bloc of the Hamas Movement, slammed the Egyptian authorities from preventing the Egyptian parliamentarians from entering Gaza, and called for allowing the entry of construction materials and other basic supplies.
Several Egyptian Islamist legislators, members of the convoy, started an open-ended protest in front of the Egyptian side of the Rafah Terminal, demanding that Egypt release the detained relief trucks.
Egyptian Legislator, Mohammad al-Biltaji, told the Ikhwan Online news Website, that the legislators will remain at the terminal and will not end their protest until the authorities release the confiscated aid trucks, and allow them to cross into Gaza.
Deputy head of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Ahmad Bahar, called on Egypt to allow the legislators into Gaza.
It is worth mentioning that Russia also called for lifting the siege on Gaza in order to provide humanitarian and economic relief to the residents.
Independent autopsy: Dog mauled imam
Oralandar Brand-Williams / The Detroit News / June 2, 2010
Southfield –A Muslim advocacy group released a report today claiming an imam was mauled by an FBI dog during a raid and may have fired at it to stop the attack.
The finding comes from an independent autopsy retained by the Council of American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders discussed the report during a news conference this afternoon at their Southfield offices.
The autopsy from forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who is based in Pennsylvania, follows months of controversy over the shooting death of Luqman Abdullah. He was shot by FBI agents in October during a raid in a Dearborn warehouse over a stolen-goods operation.
The agents say they returned fire from Abdullah after he opened fire. A federal indictment labeled him a violent extremist but others have questioned the characterization and called for an independent investigation.
Wecht’s report — which was based on an earlier autopsy and didn’t involve exhuming the body — concluded an FBI dog killed in the raid was responsible for wounds on the imam’s face, hands and arms. The report also concluded that the imam’s jaw was broken as a result of the attack and not from an impact of falling to the ground as previously believed.
Also, Wecht’s report claimed Abdullah, who was shot 21 times, was shot twice in the back and not once as concluded by the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The county report also indicates the imam was shot twice in the chest, four times in the abdomen, twice in the groin, four times in the left hip and side, seven times in the left thigh and once in the scrotum.
CAIR executive director Dawud Walid said the dog bites on Abullah’s body may indicate the imam was trying to protect himself against the attack by the animal.
Walid renewed his call for the FBI, Dearborn Police and the Michigan State police to [provide] videotapes and other information on the case. He also called again for an independent investigation by the Justice Department into Abdullah’s shooting.
“They are the only ones who can do a thorough and robust investigation,” Walid said.
bwilliams@detnews.com (313) 222-2027
© Copyright 2010 The Detroit News
Rep. Sherman: Prosecute U.S. Citizens involved with Gaza Flotilla
Ali Gharib | Lobe Log | June 4th, 2010
On a press call hosted by a pro-Israel organization, Rep. Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, told reporters that he intends seek the prosecution of any U.S. citizens who were aboard or involved with the Freedom Flotilla.
“The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 [PDF] makes it absolutely illegal for any American to give food, money, school supplies, paper clips, concrete or weapons to Hamas or any of its officials,” Sherman said on the Israel Project call, conflating Hamas and Gaza’s civilian population. “And so I will be asking the Attorney General to prosecute any American involved in what was clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization.”
Sherman also said that he plans on working with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that any non-U.S. citizen involved with or aboard the Flotilla are excluded from entering the U.S.
Hamas, considered a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and has held de facto rule over the Gaza Strip since it took the area by force in 2007 in anticipation of an impending U.S.-backed coup d’etat by the rival Fatah faction.
The Freedom Flotilla was organized by the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza — in place since Hamas’s takeover — and deliver tons of food aid, medical and school supplies and building materials to repair buildings damaged in the month-long Israeli assault of Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan. 2009. The Flotilla was raided by Israeli commandos in international waters during the early hours of Monday morning, leaving at least nine people, including one U.S. citizen, dead.
Though the nine were killed by the IDF, Sherman criticized the Obama administration for not directly blaming Hamas, using the logic that the militant movement brought the blockade on itself: “I think the U.S. could be better now about condemning Hamas as responsible for those nine deaths.”
The blockade and the land siege (by Israel and Egypt) have, by international consensus (leaving out Israel and its hard-line American allies) caused a humanitarian crisis among Gaza’s civilian population.
The Congressman, known as a pro-Israel stalwart who has, in the past, joined as the sole Democrat on Republican criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy toward Israel, denied that there was a “hunger crisis” or “humanitarian crisis” in the Gaza Strip. “The health circumstances in Gaza are better than they are in many American cities,” he added later.
Questions about the legality of the Israeli blockade and its enforcement in international waters were quickly dismissed by Sherman, who said that the U.S. had itself blockaded Germany in both World Wars, Japan in the Second, Cuba during the missile crisis, and, curiously, the Confederacy during the Civil War.
The irony of the last example was, I’m sure, lost on Sherman. It was in that war, of course, that another man named Sherman, a Union officer, led a scorched-Earth campaign against the blockaded Confederacy. There are similar examples from the recent Gaza War, which I’d bed Rep. Sherman also had no problem with. (And are we really reduced to using a conflict from 150 years ago to justify military actions of the IDF?)
While Israel alleges ties between IHH, a Turkish relief organization involved in the Flotilla, and terror groups, many credible doubts have been raised about that assertion (see LobeLog contributors Marsha Cohen and Max Blumenthal’s pieces on the subject). Nonetheless, Sherman insisted the group has “clear terrorist ties.”
The California Congressman also blamed the media for the harsh criticisms of Israel since the incident on the Med (even from tiny Central American countries). Sherman employed what he called the “Kent State Rorschach Test” — referring to a generation of journalists who grew up in the Vietnam War-era and viewed Western governments critically because of incidents like the 1970 Kent State massacre.
“The liberal media is misled by that Kent State Rorschach Test that is a belief that those who are poorer, less technological, and more scruffy looking are right,” he said, alluding to skepticism of “Westerners, Europeans, and the U.S.”
All of Israel’s problems, said Sherman, are a distraction from Iran’s nuclear program, which he alleged is aimed at nuclear weapons. If Iran acquires those weapons, he said, the U.S. itself will be in danger: “You could smuggle one into the States in a bale of marijuana.”
“What really matters is the Iran nuclear program and we have a short amount of time to stop that program,” Sherman went on. “And our failure to take all the action to stop that program could force Israel to take an action far more controversial than what they’ve done this week.”
How Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack
By Glenn Greenwald | June 4, 2010
It was clear from the moment news of the flotilla attack emerged that Israel was taking extreme steps to suppress all evidence about what happened other than its own official version. They detained all passengers on the ship and barred the media from speaking with them, thus, as The NYT put it, “refusing to permit journalists access to witnesses who might contradict Israel’s version of events.” They detained the journalists who were on the ship for days and seized their film, video and cameras. And worst of all, the IDF — while still refusing to disclose the full, unedited, raw footage of the incident — quickly released an extremely edited video of their commandos landing on the ship, which failed even to address, let alone refute, the claim of the passengers: that the Israelis were shooting at the ship before the commandos were on board.
This campaign of suppression and propaganda worked to shape American media coverage (as state propaganda campaigns virtually always work on the gullible, authority-revering American media). The edited IDF video was shown over and over on American television without question or challenge. Israeli officials and Israel-devoted commentators appeared all over television — almost always unaccompanied by any Turkish, Palestinian or Muslim critics of the raid — to spout the Israeli version without opposition. Israel-centric pundits in America claimed, based on the edited IDF video, that anyone was lying who even reported on the statements of the passengers that Israeli fired first. In sum, that the Israelis used force only after the passengers attacked the commandos became Unquestioned Truth in American discourse.
But now that the passengers and journalists have been released from Israeli detention and are speaking out, a much different story is emerging. As I noted yesterday, numerous witnesses and journalists are describing Israeli acts of aggression, including the shooting of live ammunition, before the commandos landed. The New York Times blogger Robert Mackey today commendably compiles that evidence — I recommend it highly — and he writes: “now that the accounts of activists and journalists who were detained by Israel after the raid are starting to be heard, it is clear that their stories and that of the Israeli military do not match in many ways.” As Juan Cole says: “Many passengers have now confirmed that they were fired on even before the commandos had boots on the deck. Presumably it is this suppressive fire that killed or wounded some passengers and which provoked an angry reaction and an attack on the commandos.”
Whether the Israelis fired at the passengers before or after landing on the ship matters little to the crux of what happened here. The initial act of aggression was the Israeli seizing of a ship in international waters which was doing nothing hostile; that action was taken to enforce a horrific, inhumane blockade and, more generally, a brutal, decades-long occupation; and whatever else is true, at least nine civilians were killed by the Israeli Navy, only the latest example of Israel (and the U.S.) using massive military force against civilians.
But this incident illustrates — yet again — the eagerness of the American media to “report” on events by doing nothing but mindlessly repeating official government claims. How many of the TV hosts who paraded Israeli officials in front of their audiences all week will put these witnesses on their shows to narrate their version of events? Devotees to Israel have already been convinced that this ship was full of Terrorists and Terrorist-lovers (meaning: anyone who opposes Israeli policy), so anything these passengers say (indeed, anyone who disputes the Israeli version of events) will be automatically dismissed as unreliable — just as Muslim villagers who claim that the U.S. military kills civilians (rather than “militants”) are, for that reason alone, deemed suspect, and just as individuals who denied reports about Iraqi WMDs before the war were deemed suspect for that reason alone. But for those who are not committed to defending Israel no matter what it does, these witnesses deserve to be heard every bit as much as Israeli officials.
Nobody’s claims are entitled to an automatic assumption of truth, including these passengers. But as Mackey argues, all of this compellingly underscores the need for an independent — not an Israeli-led — investigation. Mackey quotes Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheifaz:
Israel has confiscated some of the most important material for the investigation, namely the films, audio and photos taken by the passengers [and] journalists on board and the Mavi Marmara’s security cameras. Since yesterday, Israel has been editing these films and using them for its own PR campaign. In other words, Israel has already confiscated most of the evidence, held it from the world and tampered with it. No court in the world would [trust] it to be the one examining it.
Just as is true for the U.S. on so many occasions, Israel has made unmistakably clear that it is interested only in propagandizing and obfuscating. The very idea that they can be trusted to reveal what actually happened is ludicrous on its face.
* * * * *
One of the more disturbing — though predictable — developments this week is the effort to suggest that Furkan Dogan, the 19-year-old American killed by the Israelis with four bullets to the head and one to the chest, is not a “real citizen.” That, of course, tracks the prior Joe-Lieberman-led proposal to strip Americans of their citizenship (now being replicated in Israel) and the Obama administration’s targeting of Americans for due-process-free assassinations. We now have at least two classes of citizenship: “real citizens” and “not really citizens.” John Cole says all that needs to be said about this disgusting suggestion.
CPJ denounces Israel’s use of footage seized in flotilla raid
Committee to Protect Journalists | June 3, 2010
The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces Israel’s editing and distribution of footage confiscated from foreign journalists aboard the Gaza-bound flotilla that was raided on Monday.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman’s office released edited portions of confiscated video on its YouTube channel, where the footage was labeled as “captured.” The Foreign Press Association in Israel, which represents hundreds of foreign correspondents in Israel, called the use a “clear violation of journalistic ethics and unacceptable” and warned news outlets to “treat the material with appropriate caution.”
CPJ called on the Israeli government to immediately return all equipment, notes, and footage confiscated from journalists. “Israel has confiscated journalistic material and then manipulated it to serve its interests,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Mohamed Abdel Dayem. “It must cease this practice without delay, and return all property seized from journalists who were covering this legitimate news event.”
Journalists have complained of mistreatment during the raid. Al-Jazeera cameraman Issam Zaatar told the Qatar-based channel that as he was filming the raid an Israeli soldier struck him with a stun gun. He said he suffered a broken arm and his camera was damaged during the altercation.
Gadijah Davids, a South African radio journalist, also had her equipment confiscated, according to her station, Radio 786. Rushni Ali, the station manager, told CPJ that Davids is in Turkey and will be leaving for South Africa on Friday. The South African government provided emergency travel documents for Davids because she “had nothing with her: no clothes, no travel document, no equipment” Ali told CPJ.
Paul McGeough, Sydney Morning Herald chief correspondent, told his newspaper that the raid was “very ugly.” He accused Israel of “absolute disrespect” with regard to the way that he and other reporters were treated. “Our job requires us to get the stories, and to reveal things that are not otherwise being revealed,” McGough said in a phone interview that appears on the paper’s Web site. “As Israel’s appalling handling of the flotilla demonstrates, you need journalists there to bear witness, to reveal what is happening out there.”
CPJ’s Abdel Dayem said: “The treatment meted out to our colleagues is unacceptable. It is Israel’s responsibility to conduct its operations in ways that also allow journalists to report the news.”
What if it Were Your Child?
By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH | June 02, 2010
Almost every subject can be argued two ways, especially when the subject at hand is as controversial as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. No matter how unjust the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip is, there will always be those biased souls that justify it with the “Hamas terrorists” argument and the hackneyed Israeli pretext of state security. However, one subject, which cannot possibly have a flip side to it, is the torture of children. Only a deranged and perverted mind could justify that. Oh, and of course, Israel’s security establishment.
On May 18, Defense for Children International released a press statement in which it said it had filed a complaint with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in which it documented the cases of 14 Palestinian children who were either sexually assaulted or threatened with sexual assault by Israeli interrogators, soldiers or police last year. Throughout 2009, DCI’s Palestine chapter reviewed over 100 affidavits from Palestinian minors between the ages of 12 to 16 who gave sworn testimonies of their torture and sexual assault at the hands of Israeli soldiers or interrogators.
To read some of these affidavits is shocking. Israeli interrogators bind boys as young as 13 to chairs, sometimes handcuffed, and squeeze their testicles until the child admits to throwing stones. In other sworn affidavits, all of which were taken immediately after the boys were released, the minors recount how Israeli soldiers or interrogators slap them, kick them, call their mothers whores and threaten to rape them. “He started beating me all over my body and once again he grabbed my testicles and started pressing hard. ‘I won’t let go of your testicles unless you confess,’ he said to me. I felt so much pain and kept shouting. I had no other choice but to confess to throwing stones,” said one 15-year old boy in his testimony to DCI.
It is common knowledge that confessions under torture are inadmissible in court, even for adults. The violations of children’s rights in these cases are off the charts, obviously. For one, the arrest of a child is only to be used as a “last resort”. Israel arrests 700 children on average every year from the West Bank. Furthermore, the Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that each and every person is entitled to a fair trial, something Palestinians in general, children included do not have. Most important though, is this:
Article 2(2) of the UN Convention Against Torture states:
“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
Under no law, except maybe the law of the jungle, is it justifiable to use torture, especially on a child. Israeli forces not only drag children out of their beds in the middle of the night and handcuff and blindfold them in front of their families, they are exposed to terrible conditions once inside the detention center. Children are deprived of sleep, are made to stay in one position for hours, are not allowed sufficient food or water and are intimidated constantly by their interrogators and prison wardens.
The testimonies of sexual abuse however, are the most disturbing. How can such vile acts be going on under the nose of the civilized world? This is Israel, a country that claims it is democratic, that it respects international law and human rights and is constantly extending its hand in peace. This is Israel, a country that prides itself on its judicial system, mocks the primitive systems of neighboring Arab countries and insists that all it does is in the name of its security.
This is when their argument falls through. In the overwhelming majority of cases where children are arrested, either from their homes or from the street, children are charged with throwing stones. Logically, even if a 12-year old had thrown stones at an Israeli army jeep, which is fully armored and bullet-proofed, how could this possibly constitute a threat to the soldiers’ lives? And even if that child had thrown stones at an occupation soldier (a right he is entitled to by the way), torturing him and abusing him sexually cannot be justified even by the staunchest of Israel supporters. These are blatant violations of human rights and international law for which Israel should be held accountable… Full article
Israel to expel lawmaker from Jerusalem
Ma’an – 04/06/2010
Jerusalem – Israeli authorities have summoned Jerusalem PLC member Mohammad Totah (Hamas) and delivered a deportation order stripping him off of his parliamentary residency in the city after seizing his ID card.
Totah told Ma’an that interrogators informed him that he had lost the “right of residency in Jerusalem,” and added that he would not be permitted to enter the city after 3 July under penalty of prosecution.
The Al-Quds Center for Social and Economic Rights, which is following up the deportation files of political and religious figures, stated that “The new procedure against Totah is the second of its kind within a week targeting elected PLC member residents of Jerusalem. … Similar orders were previously issued against other lawmakers in addition to former minister of Jerusalem Affairs Khaled Abu Arafah.”
“New Israeli deportation orders include threats to deport Hatem Abdul Qader, the Fatah official in charge of Jerusalem affairs, stripping him of his right to residency, which stems from pure political motives and has no legal basis,” the center said in a statement.
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Only 19.7% of Americans agree with US State Dept on Israeli settlements
… Most American adults of voting age don’t appear willing to reject the applicability of international law to Israel’s ongoing colonization of occupied territories in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Golan Heights. … Full article
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Albania on fire: who’s behind the riots?
- Egypt’s Civil Democratic Movement rejects involvement in regional war
- Egypt collaborates with Israel to build ‘Green Rafah’ project over erased Palestinian city
- Rising fuel prices and shortages have helped drive ongoing protests and rioting in France
- Tokyo protests demand Takaichi’s resignation over support for ‘Israel’
- Jennifer Kavanagh: Why the U.S. Should Pull Back From the First Island Chain
- Yemen denounces international community’s silence on Saudi aggression, siege
- UAE and Saudi Arabia move toward renewed coordination against Sanaa
- How Iran’s two-week retaliatory strikes exposed cracks in US military architecture in Persian Gulf
- The mother of all propaganda: Why the hype over US MOAB strike against Iran is nothing but theater
- If Americans Knew
- What the UK Is Doing to Pro-Palestine Novelist Sally Rooney Is an Act of Orwellian Villainy
- ‘We will build palaces for Jews in Gaza’: Right-wing activists establish new outpost near border
- ‘You see us burning, you stay silent’: Family’s agony over mother and sons burned to death in Gaza tent
- Israel keeps Palestinian journalist Bushra al-Tawil in isolation for 46 days
- US-Israel integration plan puts US military tech in Israel’s hands
- Israeli Strike Burns Gaza Mother Alive in Front of Toddler, ‘Without Generating Any Headlines’
- ‘The Israel Experience with Mike Huckabee’: The Ambassador’s Family Sells Trips to Israel
- As Gazans carry out mass burial, food insecurity is getting worse – Daily Update
- Israeli rabbi permits occupiers to steal Palestinian olive harvest in West Bank
- Netanyahu’s spin on latest settler attack is laughable – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Proifessor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
