Official: 71 Palestinian prisoners have died of torture in Israeli jails since 1967
MEMO | June 27, 2016
As many as 71 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli jails as a result of torture since 1967, Abdel Nasser Farwana, head of the documentation and studies unit at the detainees and ex-detainees committee, said.
In a statement released on Sunday to mark the International Day Against Torture, Farwana said dozens of others died shortly after being released as an effect of the torture they had endured, adding that many more suffer from long-term physical and psychological disabilities.
“Israel practices a unique and atypical form of physical and psychological torture and it is the only country in the world that legalises torture in its jails and detention camps and protects its perpetrators,” he explained.
“Israel uses torture on institutional level against Palestinian and Arab detainees. According to our data, 100 per cent of the Palestinian prisoners were subjected to one form or another of torture,” he added.
Farwana called on international institutions and human rights organisations to take serious and effective steps to stop all forms of torture against Palestinian prisoners and to prosecute those who practice torture against them.
Israel, Turkey reach agreement to normalize ties – Israeli official
RT | June 26, 2016
Israel and Turkey have reached an agreement to normalize ties, a senior Israeli official told reporters, according to Reuters. This will end the bitter rift over the Israeli Navy’s killing of nine Turkish citizens during a Gaza flotilla raid in 2010.
The agreement, which took three years to reach, is expected to be officially announced on Monday, said the official traveling with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently in Rome.
The restoration of full diplomatic relations that deteriorated after the Israeli navy killed nine Turkish and one Turkish-American pro-Palestinian activists in 2010 has been brokered with the help of Washington.
Israel conducted an operation against six civilian ships that belonged to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The ships fit by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) were carrying humanitarian and construction supplies to the blockaded Gaza Strip.
The deal is likely to involve compensation (of around $20 million) to the families of the killed Turks and higher Turkish aid and development projects for Gaza, Israeli media report.
The $20 million in compensation will come as a humanitarian act to a special fund organized for the families of the victims killed by the Israeli soldiers. The payment is external to the agreement, an act of good will, and doesn’t imply that Israel has acknowledged responsibility for the incident, the official stressed, according to the Jerusalem Post. The transaction will be carried out as soon as Turkey passes legislation making it impossible for the families to file further claims against Israeli officers or soldiers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly pledged to make efforts to release the bodies of two Israeli soldiers that are held by the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip and two other Israeli civilians.
“We asked for and received a document in which the Turkish president instructs the relevant Turkish agencies to work toward resolution of the issue of those kidnapped and missing. The document is in our hands, that’s what Turkey can do for now,” the official said, according to the Times of Israel.
The deal is to be signed on Tuesday by Foreign Ministry Director Dore Gold and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Two of Turkey’s conditions for normalizing diplomatic relations that involved an apology and compensation are going to be fully met, reports say. The third demand – lifting the Gaza blockade – was a matter of disagreement and called for a compromise.
Israel will reportedly allow Turkey to help with the completion of a hospital in the Palestinian enclave and the construction of a new power station as well as a plant for desalination of water.
The Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) has expressed its objections to the agreement on its official Twitter feed, both in English and Turkish. It includes 12 points that explain why Turkey shouldn’t be constrained with the terms of the deal, especially stressing that the agreement “should be based on the conditions of abolishing the blockade, not the embargo.”
Israeli soldiers shot Palestinian boy ‘deliberately’, claims B’Tselem
MEMO | June 25, 2016
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has said that the shooting of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on Tuesday night was “deliberate, entirely unjustified and a direct result of military policy.” The group’s report gave details of the incident during which Mahmoud Badran was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. The boy from Beit Ur a-Tahta was with four of his friends at the time; they were wounded in the unprovoked attack.
“The shots were fired at a car with seven passengers inside, who were making their way back from a night out at a water park,” reported B’Tselem. “The military initially announced the soldiers had ‘targeted terrorists who were throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli cars on Road 443’, but later changed its version and stated the boy had been ‘mistakenly’ killed.” The organisation’s field-researcher indicated that “the soldiers used heavy fire against the moving car without any justification.”
According to B’Tselem, said: “At around 1:30am, seven residents… were making their way home after a night out at the Lin Land Waterpark in the village of Beit Sira. When the car approached a narrow underpass used by Palestinian vehicles to get across Road 443, [Israeli] soldiers standing on the road, on top of the underpass, opened massive fire at the car from a distance of 40 to 50 metres.”
Most of the passengers in the car were hit by the shots, including the driver, who lost control and crashed into a wall. “Five of the seven passengers were hit in the shooting: Mahmoud Badran was killed instantly, four passengers were injured.”
Trump Will Not Recognize Palestinian Statehood if elected President
Sputnik – 25.06.2016
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has backtracked from his neutral position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and is now “committed” to supporting Israeli settlement expansion on territories it has seized illegally, according to an advisor.
David M. Friedman, a real-estate attorney serving as Trump’s main advisor on Israel, said the Republican presidential candidate and reality television star would not support the recognition of the Palestinian state without “the approval of the Israelis.” Friedman also remarked that Trump was unconcerned with the inhabitants of the West Bank, because “nobody really knows how many Palestinians live there.”
Trump made Friedman a part of his campaign staff in April, at a meeting with Orthodox Jews, naming him and Jason Greenblatt, another real-estate lawyer and Trump’s chief attorney, as his advisors on Israel. Friedman said at the time, “Mr. Trump’s confidence is very flattering. My views on Israel are well known, and I would advise him in a manner consistent with those views. America’s geopolitical interests are best served by a strong and secure Israel, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital.” Friedman has made no secret of his feelings about a two-state solution with Palestine, writing that, “It was never a solution, just an illusion that served both the US and the Arabs.”
Trump has earned a reputation for taking contradictory stances on issues, and when asked in May if he thought Israel should cease construction in the West Bank, the candidate said, “No, I don’t think there should be a pause… because I think Israel should have – they really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward.” Later in the same interview he remarked, “I’d love to negotiate peace. I think that, to me, is the all-time negotiation… I would love to see if peace could be negotiated. A lot of people say that’s not a deal that’s possible. But I mean lasting peace, not a peace that lasts for two weeks and they start launching missiles again. So we’ll see what happens.”
Friedman says Trump’s attitude toward Israel is positive, and his view on the Palestinian state springs, in part, to a lack of power on the part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “His [Trump’s] feeling about Israel,” Freidman said, “is that it is a robust democracy. He does not think it is an American imperative for [Gaza Strip and other territories seized by Israel] to be an independent Palestinian state.”
When asked directly about his own feelings on recognizing the State of Palestine, Friedman was open, if tentative.
“If the Israelis conclude that they need to do this [recognize the Palestinian state] in order to enhance their long-term security – which I think we are very skeptical about – but if this is what they conclude they want to do, we will respect this decision…. If the circumstances change… and there is a reason to be optimistic, then great, but the current facts don’t make that [recognizing the Palestinian state] an American imperative at all.” he said.
Israel moves to keep interrogations from being filmed
Ma’an – June 24, 2016
BETHLEHEM – Israel’s Public Security Ministry proposed its latest bill to prevent “security” interrogations from being videotaped, for “fear the footage could reach terror groups that would learn Israeli interrogation techniques,” Israeli media said Friday.
According to the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, there is a “fear” that those being interrogated would refuse to reveal information in the event the video could possibly reach the groups they had informed against, said Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
In 2003 a law came into effect that required Israeli police to document almost all its interrogations, both visually and aurally.
Since then, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has consistently approved an “exemption” for security interrogations, which Israeli Deputy Attorney General Raz Nazri reiterated “stems from security considerations.”
In 2015, the committee agreed to extend the exemption for a year and a half, but rejected a proposed exemption of five years.
Israel has consistently been criticized by international rights groups for its interrogation practices, specifically towards Palestinian children.
Some 700 Palestinian children per year are arrested and face “ill-treatment” by Israeli forces, according to a 2015 report by Child Rights International Network (CRIN).
“Arrested children are commonly taken into custody by heavily armed soldiers, blindfolded with their wrists tied behind their backs before being transported to an interrogation centre,” the CRIN report said.
“Children questioned about their experience frequently report verbal and physical abuse during the arrest.”
According to research conducted by Defense for Children International – Palestine cited by the report, some 56 percent of children report having experienced “coercive” interrogation techniques during their time in Israeli custody.
Some 42 percent say they signed documents in Hebrew, despite the fact that most Palestinian children do not speak or understand the language.
Additionally, 22 percent of detained children say they underwent up to 24 hours of solitary confinement, in violation of international standards.
Some Palestinian teens reported that they were beaten to the point of their bones being fractured while being held in Israeli detention centers.
In a report released in February 2013, the UN children’s agency UNICEF criticized Israel for its treatment of arrested Palestinian children, saying their interrogation mixes “intimidation, threats and physical violence, with the clear purpose of forcing the child to confess.”
According to the latest numbers from prisoner rights group Addameer, there were a total of 414 child prisoners in Israeli prisons in May 2016, 104 of whom were under the age of 16.
US, Israel agree to cyber information-sharing efforts
RT | June 22, 2016
The United States and Israel have signed a joint declaration on cyber defense cooperation, making Israel one of the only nations to join the Department of Homeland Security’s information-sharing platform on cyber threats.
The declaration was signed Tuesday by Israel’s National Cyber Directorate chief Eviatar Matania and Cyber Security Authority head Buky Carmeli, as well as Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, and Under Secretary of Homeland Security Suzanne Spaulding.
The agreement was announced at the 6th Annual International Cybersecurity Conference at Tel Aviv University.
The bilateral cyber defense initiative will commit the US and Israel to expanded cooperation “for the benefit of dealing effectively with common threats in the cyber domain,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
The pact means Israel will be one of the first nations in the world to join the DHS’s Automated Indicator Sharing program, which involves data-sharing on cyber threat indicators between governments and private companies.
The declaration specifically means the two nations will cooperate in real time on the monitoring of cyber activities, defending vital infrastructure, private-sector partnerships, and future efforts at research and development of new technologies, JTA reported.
Spaulding, the undersecretary for national protection and programs with DHS, will oversee the bilateral cyber defense operations, along with Israel’s Carmeli.
Indigenous Leader Killed in Land Dispute in Brazil
By Aline C. Piva | Council on Hemispheric Affairs | June 20, 2016
On June 14, 2016 approximately 70 armed men approached a small group of Guaraní-Kaiowá families and, after terrorizing them by burning their belongings, opened fire, killing 26-year-old indigenous leader Clodiodi Aquileu Rodrigues de Souza Guaraní-Kaiowá. Among those shot, at least 10 other people were injured, including a twelve-year-old boy who was shot in the stomach. The Instituto Socioambiental (Socio-environmental Institute; ISA), a non-profit organization that advocates for human rights observance among the indigenous people, first reported the case, writing that indigenous leaders were taken hostage and that others are missing.[1] The attack happened within a disputed area in the traditional indigenous territory of Tekohá Te’ýikue, located on the indigenous reserve of Dourados-Amambaipegua I. This land is within the municipality of Caarapó, located in the central Brazilian State of Mato Grosso do Sul, a region known for violent conflict between indigenous groups and land owners.
On May 12, as a result of over 30 years of struggle and an intense mobilization of members of the Guaraní and Kaiowá nations in Brasília, the Brazilian government recognized a local parcel of land as an indigenous territory.[2] Although throughout her presidency Dilma Rousseff had done little to advance indigenous rights and to help in reclaiming their traditional lands, this indifference eventually started to change a couple of months before Congress voted on her impeachment process. Rousseff created the National Council for Indigenous Policy and confirmed the demarcation of three indigenous lands. [During] that period, the Ministry of Justice declared five major areas as traditional indigenous territory.[3] It is important to note that these demarcations are now at risk, since Brazilian interim president Michel Temer has stated that he might revise such indigenous demarcations in the country.[4]
Missionaries and indigenous leaders have pointed out that, although the violence against indigenous nations in the region is not a recent development, the attacks have been escalating. According to the Special Indigenous Sanitary District of Mato Grosso do Sul (DSEI/MS), a total of 475 cases of indigenous homicides were recorded in the region from 2001 to 2015. Last year alone, there were 36 murders (34 men and two women), with most of the indigenous people killed being between 15 and 29 years old. In 2014, the DSEI-MS registered 619 cases of physical violence against members of the Guaraní and Kaiowá nations.[5] Large-scale landowners often perpetrate these attacks with the complicity of local authorities so as to evict indigenous communities from their traditional lands illegally and violently with complete disregard for their constitutional rights.
According to Eliel Benites, a professor at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD) who lives in the indigenous village Te’ýikue, the Kaiowá and Guaraní families are very fearful: “All farmers in the region were together to carry out the attack. We are living a war,” stated Benites.[6] The Fundação Nacional do Índio (National Indigenous Foundation, Funai, responsible for the demarcation of indigenous territories) has started investigating the June 14 attack, but no one has been charged yet. A delegation of members of the Human Rights Committee of the Brazilian Lower House traveled to the site of the attack on Wednesday, June 16, to check closely the situation of the indigenous people in the region.[7]
Diogenes Cariaga, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), reiterates that the conflict situation in the region was already being planned and reveals that the Rural Union of Caarapó (the city where the indigenous land is located) has been encouraging farmers to act violently against indigenous families. On May 18, 2016 shortly after the publication of the report that classified the region of Dourados-Amambaipegua I as an indigenous reserve, the Rural Union Council mobilized the farmers in the region to discuss measures against the demarcation. For Cariaga, the State’s lack of response to the violence against indigenous communities allowed landowners to create and finance militias to attack them.[8]
Over six thousand indigenous families of the Guaraní and Kaiowá nations live in the Caarapó region. As explained by Cariaga, “These families were taken forcibly into the reserve and for many years were forced to stay there.” He points out that since the 1980s, the Guarani and Kaiowá in the region have been fighting to repossess their traditional lands. The anthropologist also recalls that the territories within the boundaries of Dourados-Amambaipegua I were part of a Conduct Adjustment Commitment (CAC) signed between Funai and the Federal Public Ministry, requiring the Funai to publish studies of the areas claimed by indigenous people so that they could be ruled as indigenous reserves.[9]
Although the Funai has been prioritizing indigenous land demarcations, the negligence of the Brazilian state to conclude this process to investigate and prosecute the crimes against these communities has contributed to the escalation of violence in the area. Land disputes in the central region of Brazil have led to serious attacks against constitutional and human rights of the indigenous communities, which has amounted to a systematic genocide against Brazilian native peoples.
[1] “Ataque a Comunidade Guarani Kaiowa (MS) Deixa Um Indígena Morto E Pelo Menos Dez Feridos.” ISA. 2016. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/noticias-socioambientais/ataque-a-comunidade-guarani-kaiowa-ms-deixa-um-indigena-morto-e-ate-dez-feridos.
[2] “Após Mobilização De Guarani E Kaiowa, Funai Reconhece TI Dourados-Amambai Pegua I (MS).” Articulação Dos Povos Indígenas Do Brasil. 2016. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://mobilizacaonacionalindigena.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/apos-mobilizacao-de-guarani-e-kaiowa-funai-reconhece-ti-dourados-amambai-pegua-i-ms/.
[3] “Saiba quais foram os últimos atos de Dilma antes de ela ser afastada”. A Tal da Política. Acessed June 16, 2016. http://ataldapolitica.tk/index.php/2016/05/12/saiba-quais-foram-os-ultimos-atos-de-dilma-antes-de-ser-afastada-executivo/
[4] “Temer Diz a Ruralistas Que Vai Revisar Desapropriações E Demarcações.” O Globo. 2016. Accessed June 16, 2016. http://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/temer-diz-ruralistas-que-vai-revisar-desapropriacoes-demarcacoes-19202640.
[5] “MANIFESTO DE REPÚDIO AO MASSACRE DE CAARAPÓ/MS CONTRA O POVO GUARANI E KAIOWÁ.” Google Docs. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hJX2gIKH02gC2d8qCgK7rXVGJ9wE1O-J92UEtXUM7Y4/viewform?c=0.
[6] “Ataque a Comunidade Guarani Kaiowa (MS) Deixa Um Indígena Morto E Pelo Menos Dez Feridos.” ISA. 2016. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/noticias-socioambientais/ataque-a-comunidade-guarani-kaiowa-ms-deixa-um-indigena-morto-e-ate-dez-feridos.
[7] “Comissão De Direitos Humanos: “Os Tiros Foram Para Matar; Atingiram Somente Regiões Vitais” – Viomundo – O Que Você Não Vê Na Mídia.” Viomundo O Que Voc No v Na Mdia Comisso De Direitos Humanos Os Tiros Foram Para Matar Atingiram Somente Regies Vitais. 2016. Accessed June 20, 2016. http://www.viomundo.com.br/denuncias/comissao-de-direitos-humanos-os-tiros-foram-para-matar-atingiram-somente-regioes-vitais.html.
[8] “Ataque a Comunidade Guarani Kaiowa (MS) Deixa Um Indígena Morto E Pelo Menos Dez Feridos.” ISA. 2016. Accessed June 15, 2016. https://www.socioambiental.org/pt-br/noticias-socioambientais/ataque-a-comunidade-guarani-kaiowa-ms-deixa-um-indigena-morto-e-ate-dez-feridos.
[9] ibid



